dwell in. So that place is now called Suga.[1] When this Great Deity first built[2] the palace of Suga, clouds rose up thence. Then he made an august song.[3] That song said:[4]
“Eight clouds arise. The eight-fold fence of Idzumo makes an eight-fold fence for the spouses to retire [within]. Oh! that eight-fold fence.”[5]
- ↑ The real derivation of Suga is unknown, all the native commentators accepting the statement in the text, and Motowori supposing that up to the time of the Deity’s arrival it had borne the name of Inada. We may perhaps conjecture some connection between Suga and Susa-no-wo (“Impetuous Male,” see Motowori’s Commentary, Vol. IX, p. 49), and it may be mentioned that the “Eight-Eared Deity of Suga” is also mentioned as the “Eight-Eared Deity of Susa.”
- ↑ Or “began to build.”
- ↑ “Ode” is another rendering of the Japanese term uta, which has been used by the present writer and by others. Uta being however connected with utafu, “to sing,” it seems more consistent to translate it by the English word “song.”
- ↑ Or perhaps rather “in that song he said.”
- ↑ This difficult song has been rather differently rendered by Mr. Aston in the Second Appendix to his “Grammar of the Japanese Written Language” (2nd Edition), and again by Mr. Satow in the note to his translation of the Ritual already quoted. Mr. Aston (premising that he follows Motowori’s interpretation) translates it thus:
“Many clouds arise:
The clouds which come forth (are) a manifold fence:
For the husband and wife to retire within
They have formed a manifold fence:
Oh! that manifold fence!”Mr. Satow’s translation is as follows:
“Many clouds arise.
The manifold fence of the forth-issuing clouds
Makes a manifold fence
For the spouses to be within.
Oh! that manifold fence.”In any case the meaning simply is that the multitudinous clouds rose up like a fence or screen behind which the newly-married deities might retire from public gaze, and Moribe suggests that the repetitions are an after-addition made to bring up to the usual number of thirty-one syllables what were originally but the three lines—
