rule over the fertile reed-plain, the region of fair rice-ears,[1] as a land of peace."
"'But in the realm thus assigned to him there were savage deities. These were called to a divine account and expelled with a divine expulsion. Moreover, the rocks, trees, and smallest leaves of grass which had power of speech were put to silence. Then they despatched him downward from his celestial everlasting throne, cleaving as he went with an awful way-cleaving the many-piled clouds of Heaven, and delivered to him the Land. At the middle point of the lands of the four quarters thus entrusted to him, Yamato, the High-Sun-Land, was established as a peaceful land, and there was built here for the Sovran Grandchild a fair Palace wherewithal to shelter him from sun and sky,[2] with massy pillars based deep on the nethermost rocks and upraising to the Plain of High Heaven the cross-timbers of its roof.
"'Now of the various faults and transgressions to be committed by the celestial race destined more and more to people this land of his peaceful rule, some are of Heaven, to wit, the breaking down of divisions between rice-fields, filling up of irrigation channels, removing water-pipes, sowing seed over again,[3] planting skewers,[4] flaying alive,
- ↑ Poetical expressions for Japan.
- ↑ That is, rain.
- ↑ Sowing wild oats was one of the misdeeds of Loki, the Scandinavian mischief-God. Compare also Matthew xiii. 24: "The kingdom of Heaven is likened unto a man that sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat." See above, p. 97.
- ↑ Motoöri says that this is with the malicious intention of injuring the feet of the owner of the ground. I prefer the explanation suggested by the Shiki, an ancient commentary on the Nihongi. It says: "Planting rods (or skewers) in the rice-fields with words of incantation is called 'skewer-planting.' The object is the destruction of any one who should wrongly claim that field. The present custom of planting skewers in a field whose ownership is disputed is probably a survival of this." Kushi, or skewer, is the word used for the wand to which offerings are attached. See Florenz's 'Ancient Japanese Rituals' in T. A. S. J., p. 32.
