flaying." The consequences of this impious act were so disastrous that the Sun-Goddess withdrew for a season into a cave, from which the rest of the eight hundred myriad deities with difficulty allured her. The Impetuous Male Deity was thereupon banished, and the Sun-Goddess remained mistress of the field. Yet, strange to say, she thenceforward retires into the background, and the most bulky section of the mythology consists of stories concerning the Impetuous Male Deity and his descendants, who are represented as the monarchs of Japan, or rather of the province of Izumo. The Impetuous Male Deity himself, whom his father had charged with the dominion of the sea, never assumes that rule, but first has a curiously told amorous adventure and an encounter with an eight-forked serpent in Izumo, and afterwards reappears as the capricious and filthy deity of Hades, who, however, seems to retain some authority over the land of the living, as he invests his descendant of the sixth generation with the sovereignty of Japan.
Of this latter personage a whole cycle of stories is told, all centring in the province of Izumo. We learn of his conversations with a hare arid with a rat, of the prowess and cleverness which he displayed on the occasion of a visit to his ancestor in Hades, which is in this cycle of traditions a much less mysterious place than the Hades visited by Izanami, of his loves, of his triumph over his eighty brethren, of his reconciliation with his jealous consort, and of his numerous descendants. We hear too of a Lilliputian deity, who comes across the sea to request this monarch of Izumo to share the kingdom with him.
This last-mentioned legend repeats itself in the sequel. The Sun-Goddess resolves to bestow the sovereignty of Japan on a child of whom it is doubtful whether he were born of her or of her brother, the Impetuous Male Deity. Three embassies are sent from Heaven to Izumo to arrange matters; but it is only a fourth that is successful, the final ambassadors obtaining the submission of the monarch or deity of Izumo, who surrenders his throne, and promises to serve the new dynasty (apparently in the under-world) if a palace or temple be built for him and
