Ishikoridome means apparently "the stonecutter." Why should the supposed ancestor of the mirror-makers have received this name? The circumstance that stone moulds for casting bronze objects have been found in Japan suggests a possible answer.
Toyo-tama, "rich jewel," the ancestor of the jewel-makers' Be, requires no explanation.
The Kiujiki gives a list of thirty-two deities as forming the Court of Ninigi on his descent to Earth, and adds the names of the noble families who were descended from them. A few of these are nature-deities. Of the remainder some may be deified real men, but I prefer to reckon them provisionally along with such class conceptions as Tommy Atkins, John Bull, Brother Jonathan, and Mrs. Grundy.
Koto-shiro-nushi is one of those secondary formations in which the personification of nature and the deification of man meet and mingle. As the son and counsellor of the Earth-God and Creator Ohonamochi he is related to the class of nature-deities, while as an individualized type of a class of human beings and as the supposed ancestor of certain noble families he belongs to the current of thought which exalts man to divinity.
Shiro in this God's name is for shiru, "to know," and so to attend to, to manage, to govern. Koto-shiro-nushi is, therefore, "thing-govern-master." The character and functions of this deity are not well defined. He was one of the Gods who advised Jingô's famous expedition against Korea, on which occasion he described himself as "the Deity who rules in Heaven, who rules in the Void, the gem-casket-entering-prince, the awful Koto-shiro-nushi." In the Ohonamochi myth he is represented as his father's chief counsellor. Owing to his services in persuading him to transfer the Government of Japan to Ninigi without resistance, he was held in great honour at the Mikado's Court, of which he was considered one of the principal protectors. The Jingikwan included him among the eight Gods specially worshipped by them to the neglect of many more important deities, including even his father, Ohonamochi. In the Manyôshiu he is called upon by a lover to punish him if he is insincere in his protestations. In modern times the cult of Koto-shiro-nushi has fallen into decay, while that of his rebellious younger brother, the God of Suha, flourishes greatly. The pious Motoöri is much perplexed and grieved by this state of things.
Sukuna-bikona.--Another God who is associated with Ohonamochi in myth and worship is the dwarf deity,[153] Sukuna-bikona (little-prince). He is said to have taught mankind the arts of brewing, magic and medicine, and to have provided medicinal thermal springs, where he is still worshipped. But in modern times his cult has been greatly superseded by that of Yakushi the Indian Esculapius, whose avatar he is supposed to be.
I take Sukuna-bikona to be a deified type of medicine man, a "Father of medicine" in the abstract. But the story related of him[154] may have some foundation in the history of a real person.
III. GODS OF ABSTRACT HUMAN QUALITIES.
Sahe no kami.--The Sahe no kami are phallic deities. In approaching this subject, it behoves me to walk warily. For, to some writers so repulsive that they shirk even its necessary elucidation, it exercises a fascination upon others which is not conducive to sound reasoning. Has not a President of the Anthropological Institute declared that "so soon as a man begins to study phallicism he goes crazy"? With phallicism we may conveniently associate the corresponding cult of the kteis.
In Japan, the phallus symbolizes two distinct, although not unrelated, principles. Primarily, it represents the generative or procreative power, and is recognized in this capacity by myth and custom. By a natural transition it has become the symbol of the more abstract conception of lusty animal life, the foe to death and disease. Hence its use as a magical prophylactic appliance. In Shinto, this latter principle is much the more prominent. It is embodied in the name Sahe no kami, which means "preventive deities." The application of this epithet is clear from the circumstance that in a norito they are invoked for protection against the "unfriendly and savage beings of the Root Country," that is to say Yomi or Hades. These by no means imaginary personages are the same as the Ugly Females, the thunders generated from Izanami's dead body and the armies of Yomi of myth.[155] They represent, or rather are identical with, diseases and other evils associated with death and the grave. Epidemic and contagious diseases are specially intended. Hence the Sahe no kami are also called Yakushin, or "Pestilence Deities," meaning the Gods who ward off pestilence, a phrase wrongly taken in later times to signify the Gods who produce pestilence. The use of the phallus and kteis for this purpose is primarily magical, and rests on the wellknown principle that a symbol possesses something of the virtue of the thing which it represents. The deification of these symbols came later.