mooted as to the probability of the Japanese mythology being a mixed one warns us to exercise more than usual caution in endeavouring to interpret it. In fact, it bids us wait to interpret it until such time as further research shall have shown which legends belong together. For if they are of heterogeneous origin, it is hopeless to attempt to establish a genealogical tree of the gods, and the very phrase so often heard in discussions on this subject,—“the original religious beliefs of the Japanese,”—ceases to have any precise meaning; for different beliefs may have been equally ancient and original, but distinguished geographically by belonging to different parts of the country. Furthermore it may not be superfluous to call attention to the fact that the gods who are mentioned in the opening phrases of the histories as we now have them are not therefore necessarily the gods that were most anciently worshipped. Surely in religions, as in books, it is not often the preface that is written first. And yet this simple consideration has been constantly neglected, and, one after another, European writers having a tincture of knowledge of Japanese mythology, tell us of original Dualities, Trinities, and Supreme Deities, without so much as pausing to notice that the only two authorities in the matter,—viz., the “Records” and the “Chronicles,”—differ most gravely in the lists they furnish of primary gods. If the present writer ventured to throw out a suggestion where so many random assertions have been made, it would be to the effect that the various abstractions which figure at the commencement of the “Records” and of the “Chronicles” were probably later growths, and perhaps indeed mere inventions of individual priests. There is nothing either in the histories or in the Shintō Rituals to show that these gods, or some one or more of them, were in early days, as has been sometimes supposed, the objects of a purer worship which was afterwards obscured by the legends of Izanagi, Izanami, and their numerous descendants. On the contrary, with the exception of the deity Taka-Mi-Musu-Bi,[1] they are no sooner mentioned than they vanish into space.
- ↑ I.e. the High August Producing Wondrous Deity. He is the second divine personage whose birth is mentioned in the “Records” (see Sect. I Note 5). In the story of the creation given in the “Chronicles” he does not appear except in “One account.”
