Yatagarasu.--Like the Greek Phoibos, who had his κίρκος,[102] the Egyptian Ra, who was accompanied by a hawk, and the Peruvian Sun-God, who was attended by a condor, the Sun-Goddess is provided with a bird as her messenger and attendant. This bird is called in Japanese ya-ta-garasu, which means "eight-hand-crow." It is not, however, a Japanese invention, but is borrowed from China, where it is called the Sun-crow or Golden Crow, and described as a bird with three claws and of a red colour which roosts in the sun. It is mentioned in a Chinese poem written b.c. 314. Possibly it may be traced even further back. A three-legged bird was figured on coins of Pamphylia and Lycia in very ancient times. In Japan the yatagarasu, as a symbol of the Sun, was depicted on the banners set up in front of the Imperial Palace on State occasions as a mark of sovereignty. This custom is known to go back to a.d. 700, and is probably much older.
The Euhemerists have tried their hand on the yatagarasu. Mr. Takahashi Gorô informs us in his dictionary that this was the name of one of Jimmu Tennô's generals, and Klaproth thinks it probable that the "corbeau à huit pattes designe la boussole dont Zimmu s'est servi pour se guider dans son expedition." A Japanese noble family claimed descent from it, and a shrine in its honour is mentioned in the Yengishiki.[103]
There is a God called Ame no hi-washi (heaven-sun-eagle), which, although not to be identified with the yatagarasu, is no doubt a product of the same tendency to associate birds with the Gods. Both are inhabitants of the same celestial region.
Susa no wo.--The history of Susa no wo[104] illustrates the tendency of Nature-Gods to have their original character obscured by the anthropomorphic fancies of successive myth-makers. The Kojiki and Nihongi accounts of him are extremely vague and contradictory. Later Japanese, writers have identified him with the Moon-God, with an Indian Hades deity named Godzu Tennô, and with Emma, the Rhadamanthus of the Buddhist Hell. He has also been made a God of Pestilence, of Love and Wedlock, or of War. European scholars have described him as a "rotating-heavens God" or as "evidently a human being." Dr. Buckley, of Chicago, was the first to suggest[105] that he is the Rain-storm. We need not adopt every detail of this scholar's explanations, and indeed no one theory can solve all the problems presented by the mutually inconsistent stories related of this deity, but there can be no hesitation in accepting Dr. Buckley's view as substantially correct. It is as the Rain-storm that he is "continually weeping, wailing, and fuming with rage"; that he "weeps the mountains bare and the seas and rivers dry"; that he is a lover of destruction;[106] that "by reason of the fierceness of his divine nature he causes a commotion in the sea and makes the hills and mountains groan aloud" when he ascends through cloud and mist to visit his elder sister the Sun-Goddess. Torrent Goddesses are born from the fragments of his sword. He breaks down the divisions between the rice-fields and defiles his sister's dwelling, disgusting her so that she hides in a cave and leaves the world to darkness. He is further represented as going down to earth at the season of continuous rains, and as wearing a broad hat and a rain-coat. When he marries, the nuptial hut to which he retires with his wife is built of thick clouds. The sword which he takes from the serpent's tail is called ama no mura-kumo, that is to say, "the gathering clouds of Heaven." Another appropriate name for the weapon of a rain-storm deity is kusa-nagi, "the herb-queller." His wife's name, Inada-hime (the rice-field lady), is probably not without significance.
But mythology is rarely consistent. An explanation which suits one episode of a story may fail altogether when applied to others. There is nothing of the rain-storm about the Susa no wo who rescues a Japanese Andromeda from the great serpent which comes to devour her, or in the provider of timber and fruit-trees for mankind, or in the names and attributes of his very numerous children. His visit to Korea can hardly have a rain-storm significance. Moreover, it is impossible to pass over the explicit statement of the Nihongi that he was appointed to rule the land of Yomi. A Kojiki myth[107] gives an account of his abode here in which no trace of his rain-storm quality is perceptible.
Dr. Florenz summarily rejects Hirata's theory that Susa no wo is identical with the Moon-God Tsuki-yomi. It must be admitted that if this deity ever had a lunar quality it had become forgotten in the times of the Kojiki and Nihongi. Both these works distinguish him unmistakably from the Moon-God. Nor is the European student likely to adopt the literal-minded Hirata's notion that the land of Yomi at first situated at the bottom of the Earth, became detached after Susa no wo was made its ruler, and was placed in the sky where we now see it--as the moon. Yet there is something to be said for his contention that the two deities were originally identical. The analogy of other mythologies[108] suggests that a God whose relations with the Sun are at one time marital and at another hostile must be the Moon. There is nothing strange in the darkness of night and of the grave being presided over by the same divinity. Persephone, Queen of Hades, was a Moon-Goddess. The original identity of Susa no wo and Tsukiyomi would account for both deities being severally described in different myths as the slayer of the Food-Goddess and as the Ruler of the Sea-plain. It would also explain why the diviners at Ise ascribed to a curse from Tsukiyomi a storm of wind and rain which in 772 uprooted trees and destroyed houses. In an old book quoted by Hirata, Susa no wo is called Haya-Sasura no Kami, "swift-banishment-deity." His daughter while in Yomi is called Suseri-hime, probably identical with the Sasura-hime of the norito[109] who dwells in the Root-country, and whose business it is to "banish" and get rid of the pollutions of the people. A Manyōshiu poem calls the moon Sasurahe-otoko, that is to say, the banished or vagabond youth. All this establishes a presumption that Susa no wo was at one time a lunar deity. If so he would appear in three closely related aspects, the darkness of the storm, of the grave, and of night. Brinton, writing without any special reference to Japan, observes[110] :--"Associated with the gloom of night was the darkness of the storm, which in many mythologies is contrasted with the sunshine in some divine struggle. Endless are the tales and rites which bear upon this contest in early religions."
If we remember the attributes of our own "Prince of Darkness," we shall not be surprised to find traces of a tendency to make of Susa no wo a personification of the evil principle. He is the arch offender of Japanese myth. The crimes committed by him against the Sun-Goddess agree closely with the so-called "celestial offences" of the Great Purification Ceremony. Hence his identification with the horned Godzu Tennô, a minister of the Buddhist hell. The Shinto Miomoku, which makes of him a Trinity under the name Sampô Kwôjin (three-treasure-rough-god), consisting of Kami Susa no wo, Haya Susa no wo, and plain Susa no wo, by the epithet "rough," recognizes the sinister aspect of his character. We may note the same element ara, rough, in the name of the Moon-god's shrine at Ise, namely, Aratama no Miya.
Several of Susa no wo's acts have an unmistakably beneficent character, as his rescue of Inada hime, and his provision of useful trees for man. The modern worship of him as (with his wife) a deity of love and wedlock also recognizes a beneficent aspect of his nature. Hirata explains this contradiction by the theory that he is beneficent when his nigi-tama (gentle spirit) is in the ascendant, and malignant when his ara-tama (rough-spirit) gets the upper hand, as in the leading case of Jekyll and Hyde, reported by R. L. Stevenson. The female deity of Yomi, Sasura-hime, is called by Hirata a waki-dama (side spirit, or double) of Susa no wo, forming with him a dual divinity, as in the case of the Wind-Gods.
Etymology helps us little in determining Susa no wo's character. The ordinary derivation connects his name with the verb susamu, to be impetuous. Hence the "Impetuous Male" of English translators. It agrees well with the rainstorm conception of this deity. There is at the present day a festival celebrated in his honour at Onomachi in Bingo, described as follows by a Japanese writer: "The procession is a tumultuous trial of speed and strength. Bands of strong men seize the sacred cars, race with them to the sea, and having plunged in breast-deep, their burden held aloft, dash back at full speed to the shrine. There refreshments are served out, and then the race is resumed, the goal being the central flag among a number set up in a large plain. Their feet beat time to a wildly shouted chorus, and they sweep along wholly regardless of obstacles or collisions." The ceremony here described is no doubt intended as a dramatic representation of the impetuous character of the God. The susamu etymology derives some support from a comparison of that of Woden, from vatha (the modern German wuthen), to go violently, to rush, and of Hermes, from δρμάω; but it is after all questionable. It implies a noun susa, impetuosity, which does not exist. Moreover, one of Susa no wo's wife's names was Susa no yatsu mimi, where it is not disputed that Susa is the name of a town in Idzumo. There is a legend which represents Susa no wo as giving his name to this place and allowing his mitama to rest here. Susa no wo would therefore be simply the male (God) of Susa, a territorial title (of Tsukiyomi?) for which there are many parallels in Japanese mythology.[111]
The shintai of Susa no wo, or rather of his supposed modern representative, Godzu Tennô, is a naginata, or halbert. But there is some reason to think that the great festival of Goriōye, now held in his honour at Kioto, was originally that of the Sahe no kami, and that the hoko or naginata carried in procession on this occasion is a substitute for an older phallus.