A literal, or even free, translation into plain English could not, however, be made in a book to be read, unexpurgated, in the family circle. Many physiological details, and not a few references probably, pure to the native pure, would not be suffered by the tastes or moral codes in vogue among the mass of readers in Europe or America. Like the mythology of Greece, that of Japan is full of beauty, pathos, poetic fancy, charming story, and valorous exploit. Like that, it forms the soil of the national art, whether expressed in bronze, porcelain, colors; or poetry, song, picture, the dance, pantomime, romance, symbolism; or the æsthetics of religion.

In spite of Buddhism, rationalism, and skeptical philosophy, it has entered as fully into the life and art and faith of the people of Japan as the mythology of the Aryan nations has entered into the life and art of Europe. Like that of the nations classic to us, the Japanese mythology, when criticised in the light of morals, and as divorced from art, looked at by one of alien clime, race, and faith, contains much that is hideous, absurd, impure, and even revolting. Judged as the growth and creation of the imagination, faith, and intellect of the primitive inhabitants of Japan, influenced by natural surroundings, it is a faithful mirror of their country, and condition and character, before these were greatly modified by outside religion or philosophy. Judged as a religious influence upon the descendants of the ancient Nihonese-the Japanese, as we know them-it may be fairly held responsible for much of the peculiar moral traits of their character, both good and evil. The Japanese mythology is the doctrinal basis of their ancient and indigenous religion, called Kami no michi, or Shinto (way or doctrine of the gods, or, by literal rendering, theology).

One of the greatest pleasures to a student of Japanese art, antiquities, and the life as seen in the Japan of to-day, is to discover the survivals of primitive culture among the natives, or to trace in their customs the fashions and ceremonies current tens of centuries ago, whose genesis is to be sought in the age of the gods. Beneath the poetic and mythical costume are many beautiful truths.

One of the many Japanese rationalistic writers explains the hiding of Amaterasŭ in the cave as an eclipse of the sun. Ebisu, the third child of the first pair, is now worshiped, especially by fishermen and traders, and as the God of Daily Food, catching fish and selling them being considered the first commercial transaction, and fish the staple article of daily food. One need not go far from Kioto to find the identical spots of common earth which the fertile imagination of

the children of Nippon has transfigured into celestial regions. Thus, the prototype of "the dry bed of the river Ame no yasŭ" is now to be seen in front of the city of Kiōto, where the people still gather for pleasure or public ceremony. The "land of roots," to which Sosanoö was banished, is a region evidently situated a few miles north-west of Kiōto. The dancing of Suzumé before the cavern is imitated in the pantomimic dance still seen in every Japanese village and city street. The mirror made from iron in the mines of heaven by the Blacksmithgod was the original of the burnished disks before which the Japanese beauty of to-day, sitting for hours on knee and heels, and nude to the waist, heightens her charms. A mask of Suzumé, representing the laughing face of a fat girl, with narrow forehead, having the imperial spots of sable, and with black hair in rifts on her forehead, cheeks puffed out, and dimpled chin, adorns the walls of many a modern Japanese house, and notably on certain festival days, and on their many occasions of mirth. The stranger, ignorant of its symbolic import, could, without entering the palace, find its prototype in five minutes, by looking around him, from one of the jolly fat girls at the well or the rice-bucket. The magatama jewels, curved and perforated pieces of soap-stone occasionally dug up in various parts of Japan, show the work of the finger of man, and ancient pictures depict the chiefs of tribes decked with these adornments. In the preparations made to attract forth the Sun-goddess, we see the origin of the arts of music by wind and stringed instruments, dancing, divination, adornment, weaving, and carpentry. To this day, when the Japanese female is about to sweep, draw water, or perform household duties, she binds up her sleeves to her armpits, with a string twisted over her shoulders, like the sleeve - binder of the dancing goddess. Before Shinto shrines, trees sacred to the kami, at New-year's-day before gates and doors, and often in children's plays, one sees stretched the twisted ropes of rice-straw. In the month of August especially, but often at the fairs, festivals, and on holidays, the wand of waving jewels, made by suspending colored paper and trinkets to a branch of bamboo, and something like a Christmas-tree, is a frequent sight. The gohei is still the characteristic emblem seen on a Shinto shrine. All these relics, trivial and void of meaning to the hasty tourist, or the alien, whose only motive for dwelling on the island is purely sordid, are, in the eye of the native, and the intelligent foreigner, ancient, sacred, and productive of innocent joy, and to the latter, sources of fresh surprise and enjoyment of a people in themselves intensely interesting.

V.

THE TWILIGHT OF FABLE.

BETWEEN the long night of the unknown ages that preceded the advent of the conquerors, and the morning of what may be called real history, there lies the twilight of mythology and fabulous narration.

The mythology of Nippon, though in essence Chinese, is Japanese in form and coloring, and bears the true flavor of the soil from whence it sprung. The patriotic native or the devout Shintōist may accept the statements of the Kojiki as genuine history; but in the cold, clear eye of an alien they are the inventions of men shaped to exalt the imperial family. They are a living and luxurious growth of fancy around the ruins of facts that in the slow decay of time have lost the shape by which recognition is possible. Chinese history does indeed, at certain points, corroborate what the Japanese traditions declare, and thus gives us some sure light; but for a clear understanding of the period antedating the second century of the Christian era, the native mythology and the fabulous narrations of the Kojiki are but as moonlight.

Jimmu Tennō, the first mikado, was the fifth in descent from the Sun-goddess. His original name was Kan Yamato Iware Hiko no mikoto. The title Jimmu Tennō, meaning "spirit of war," was posthumously applied to him many centuries afterward. When the Ko jiki was compiled, pure Japanese names only were in use. Hence, in that book we meet with many very long quaint names and titles which, when written in the Chinese equivalents, are greatly abbreviated. The introduction of the written characters of China at a later period enabled the Japanese to express almost all their own words, whether names, objects, or abstract ideas, in Chinese as well as Japanese. Thus, in the literature of Japan two languages exist side by side, or imbedded in each other. This applies to the words only. Japanese syntax, being incoercible, has preserved itself almost entirely unchanged.

The Kojiki states that Jimmu was fifty years old when he set out

upon his conquests. He was accompanied by his brothers and a few retainers, all of whom are spoken of as kami, or gods. The country of Japan was already populated by an aboriginal people dwelling in villages, each under a head-man, and it is interesting to notice how the inventors of the Kojiki account for their origin. They declare, and the Japanese popularly believe, that these aboriginal savages were the progeny of the same gods (Izanagi and Izanami) from whom Jimmu sprung; but they were wicked, while Jimmu was righteous.

The interpretation doubtless is, that a band of foreign invaders landed in Hiuga, in Kiushiu, or they were perhaps colonists, who had occupied this part of the country for some time previous. The territory of Hiuga could never satisfy a restless, warlike people. It is mountainous, volcanic, and one of the least productive parts of Japan.

At the foot of the famous mountain of Kirishima, which lies on the boundary between Hiuga and Ōzumi, is the spot where Jimmu resided, and whence he took his departure.

Izanagi and Izanami first, and afterward Ninigi, the fourth ancestor of Jimmu, had descended from this same height to the earth. Every Japanese child who lives within sight of this mountain gazes with reverent wonder upon its summit, far above the sailing clouds and within the blue sky, believing that here the gods came down from heaven.

The story of Jimmu's march is detailed in the Kojiki, and the numerous popular books based upon it. A great many wonderful creatures and men that resembled colossal spiders were encountered and overcome. Even wicked gods had to be fought or circumvented. His path was to Usa, in Buzen; thence to Okada; thence by ship through the windings of the Suwo Nada, a part of the Inland Sea,*

The "Inland Sea" (Séto Uchi) is a name which has been given by foreigners, and adopted by the Japanese, who until modern times had no special name for it as a whole. Indeed, the whole system of Japanese geographical nomenclature proves that the generalizations made by foreigners were absent from their conceptions. The large bays have not a name which unifies all their parts and limbs into one body. The long rivers possess each, not one name, but many local appellations along their length. The main island was nameless, so were Shikoků and Kinshiu for many centuries. Yezo, to the native, is a region, not an island. Even for the same street in a city a single name, as a rule, is not in use, each block receiving a name by itself. This was quite a natural proceeding when the universe, or "all beneath heaven," meant Japan. The Séto Uchi has been in Japanese history what the Mediterranean was to the course of empire in Europe, due allowance being made for proportions, both physical and moral. It extends nearly east and west two hundred and forty miles, with a breadth varying from ten to

landing in Aki.

Here he built a palace, and remained seven years. He then went to the region of Bizen, and, after dwelling there eight years, he sailed to the East. The waves were very rough and rapid at the spot near the present site of Ōzaka,* where he finally succeeded in landing, and he gave the spot the name Nami Haya (swift waves). This afterward became, in the colloquial, and in poetry, Naniwa.

Hitherto the career of the invaders had been one of victory and easy conquest, but they now received their first repulse. After severe fighting, Jimmu was defeated, and one of his brothers was wounded. A council of war was held, and sacred ceremonies celebrated to discover the cause of the defeat. The solemn verdict was that as children of the Sun-goddess they had acted with irreverence and presumption in journeying in opposition to the course of the sun from west to east, instead of moving, as the sun moves, from east to west. Thereupon they resolved to turn to the south, and advance westward. Leaving the ill-omened shores, they coasted round the southern point

thirty miles, with many narrow passages. It has six divisions (nada), taking their names from the provinces whose shores they wash. It contains a vast number of islands, but few known dangers, and has a sea-board of seven hundred miles, densely populated, abounding with safe and convenient anchorages, dotted with many large towns and provincial capitals and castled cities, and noted for the active trade of its inhabitants. It communicates with the Pacific by the channels of Kii on the east, Bungo on the south, and by the Straits of Shimonoseki ("the Gibraltar of Japan"), half a mile wide, on the west. It can be navigated safely at all seasons of the year by day, and now, under ordinary circumstances, by night, thanks to the system of light-houses thoroughly equipped with the latest instruments of optical science, including dioptric and catoptric, fixed and revolving, white and colored lights, in earthquake-proof towers, erected by English engineers in the service of the mikado's Government. The tides and currents of the Séto Uchi are not as yet perfectly known, but are found to be regular at the east and west entrances, the tide-waves coming from the Pacific. In many parts they run with great velocity. The cut on page 57 shows one of these narrow passages where the eddying currents rush past a rock in mid-channel, scouring the shores, and leaving just enough room for the passage of a large steamer.

A very destructive species of mollusk inhabits the Inland Sea, which perforates timber, making holes one-third of an inch in diameter. Sailing-vessels bound to Nagasaki sometimes find it better in winter to work through the Inland Sea rather than to beat round Cape Chichakoff against the Kuro Shiwo. This latter feat is so difficult that sailors are apt to drop the o from the Japanese name (Satano) of this cape (misaki) and turn it into an English or Hebrew word. Those who are trying to prove that the Japanese are the "lost tribes" might make one of their best arguments from this fact. Kaempfer, it may be stated, derived the Japanese, by rapid transit, from the Tower of Babel, across Siberia to the islands.

The spelling of Özaka (accent on the ō) is in accordance with the requirements of Japanese rules of orthography, and the usage of the people in Özaka and Kioto.