But to return to the Creation myth. An ancient native work, the Kiu-ji-ki, which has not yet been translated into English, refers to seven generations of gods, beginning with one of doubtful sex, in whose untranslatable name the sun, moon, earth, and moisture are mentioned. This First Parent of the deities was the offspring of Heaven and Earth. The last couple is Izanagi and Izanami, brother and sister, like Osiris and Isis, who became man and wife.
According to the Ko-ji-ki the first three deities came into being in Takama-no-hara, the “Plain of High Heaven”. They were alone, and afterwards disappeared, i.e. died. The narrative continues: “The names of the deities that were born next from a thing that sprouted up like unto a reed-shoot when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like,[11] were the Pleasant-Reed-Shoot-Prince-Elder-Deity, next the Heavenly-Eternally-Standing-Deity. These two Deities were likewise born alone, and hid their persons.”[12] Earth and mud deities followed, and also the other deities who were before Izanagi and Izanami.
It may be that the “reed-shoot” was the Japanese nig-gil-ma. (See Chapter XIII.) As in one of the early [[350]]Sumerian texts, the mysterious plant, impregnated with preserving and perpetuating “life substance”, was the second product of Creation.
Izanagi and Izanami were told by the elder deities that they must “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land”. They were then given the Ame no tama-boko, the “Celestial Jewel-spear”. It is suggested that the spear is a phallic symbol. The jewel (tama) is “life substance”. Izanagi and Izanami stood on “the floating bridge of heaven”, which Aston identifies with the rainbow, or, as some Japanese scholars put it, the “Heavenly Rock Boat”, or “Heavenly Stairs”, and pushed down the tama-boko and groped with it until they found the ocean. According to the Ko-ji-ki, they “stirred the brine until it went curdle-curdle (koworo-koworo)”, that is, as Chamberlain suggests, “thick and glutinous”. Others think the passage should be translated so as to indicate that the brine gave forth “a curdling sound”. When the primæval waters and the oily mud began to “curdle” or “cook”, the deities drew up the spear. Some of the cosmic “porridge” dropped from the point and formed an island, which was named Onogoro (“self-curdling”, or “self-condensed”). The deities descended from heaven and erected on the island an eight-fathom house[13] with a central pillar. Here we meet with the aniconic pillar, the “herm” of Kamschatkan religion, the pillar of the Vedic world-house erected by the Aryo-Indian god Indra, the “branstock” of Scandinavian religion, the pillar of the “Lion Gate” of Mycenæ; the “pillar” is the “world spine”, like the Indian Mount Meru.[14] “The central pillar of a house (corresponding to our king-post) is,” writes Dr. Aston, “at the present day, an object of [[351]]honour in Japan as in many other countries. In the case of Shinto shrines, it is called Nakago no mibashira (‘central august pillar’), and in ordinary houses the Daikoku-bashira.”[15]
Izanagi and Izanami become man and wife by performing the ceremony of going round the pillar and meeting one another face to face. Their first-born is Hiruko (leech-child). At the age of three he was still unable to stand upright, and was in consequence placed in a reed boat and set adrift on the ocean.
Here we have what appears to be a version of the Moses story. The Indian Karna, who is similarly set adrift, was a son of Surya, god of the sun. The Egyptian Horus was concealed after birth on a floating island, and he was originally a solar deity with a star form.[16] Ra, the Egyptian sun-god, drifted across the heavens on reed floats before he was given a boat. Osiris was, after death, set adrift in a chest. When the Egyptians paid more attention to the constellations than they did in the early period of their history, they placed in the constellation of Argo the god Osiris in a chest or boat. In the Greek period Canopus, the chief star of the constellation of Argo, is the child Horus in his boat. Horus was a reincarnation of Osiris. The Babylonian Ea originally came to Eridu in a boat, which became transformed into a fish-man. As the sign for a god was a star, Ea was apparently supposed to have come from one. Lockyer refers to Egyptian and Babylonian temples, which were “oriented to Canopus”.[17] Sun-gods were the offspring of the mother-star, or their own souls were stars by night. “Hiruko,” says Aston, “is in reality simply a masculine [[352]]form of Hirume, the sun female.”[18] The sun and moon had not, however, come into existence when he was set adrift, and it may be that as the “leech-child” he was a star. He became identified in time with Ebisu (or Yebisu), god of fishermen, and one of the gods of luck.
Izanagi and Izanami had subsequently as children the eight islands of Japan, and although other islands came into existence later, Japan was called “Land-of-the-Eight-great-Islands” (Oho-ya-shima-kuni). “When,” continues the Ko-ji-ki, “they (Izanagi and Izanami) had finished giving birth to countries they began afresh, giving birth to deities (kami).” These included “Heavenly-Blowing Male”, “Youth of the Wind”, the sea-kami, “Great-Ocean-Possessor”, “Foam Calm”, “Foam Waves”, “Heavenly-Water-Divider”, or “Water-Distributor” (Ame-no-mi-kumari-no-kami), and the deities of mountains, passes, and valleys.
According to the Nihon-gi, the gods of the sea to whom Izanagi and Izanami gave birth are called Watatsumi, which means “sea children”, or, as Florenz translates it, “Lords of the Sea”. Wata, so like our “water”, is “an old word for sea”. It is probable that, as De Visser says, “the old Japanese sea-gods were snakes or dragons”.[19]
THE JAPANESE TREASURE SHIP