51. Preparations for the Conquest of Korea

1Then, astonished and alarmed, they set him in a mortuary palace, and again taking the country’s great offerings, seeking out all sorts of crimes, such as flaying alive and flaying backwards, breaking down the divisions of rice-fields, filling up ditches, evacuating excrements and urine, marriages between superiors and inferiors, marriages with horses, marriages with cattle, marriages with fowls, and marriages with dogs, and having made a great purification of the land, the Noble Take-uchi again stood in the pure court and requested the Deities’ commands. Thereupon the manner of their instruction and counsel was exactly the same as on the former day: “Altogether this land is a land to be ruled over by the august child in Thine Augustness’s august womb.” Then the Noble Take-uchi said, “[I am filled with] awe, my Great Deities! The august child in this Deity’s womb, what [sort of] child may it be?” [The Deities] replied, saying: “It is a male child.” Then [the Noble Take-uchi] requested more particularly, [saying]: “I wish to know the august names of the Great Deities whose words have now thus instructed us.” Forthwith [the Deities] replied, saying: “It is the august doing of the Great-August-Heaven-Shining-Deity, likewise it is the three great Deities Bottom-Possessing-Male, Middle-Possessing Male and Surface-Possessing-Male. (At this time the august names of these three great Deities were revealed.) If now thou truly thinkest to seek that land, thou must, after presenting the offerings to every one of the Heavenly Deities and Earthly Deities, and likewise of the Deities of the mountains and also of all the Deities of the river and of the sea, and setting our august spirits on the top of thy vessel, put into gourds the ashes of the Podocarpus macrophylla tree, and likewise make a quantity of chopsticks and also of leaf-platters, and must scatter them all on the waves of the great sea, that thou mayest cross over.” So when [she] punctually fulfilled these instructions, equipped an army, marshalled her vessels, and crossed over, the fishes of the sea-plain, both great and small, all bore the august vessel across on their backs, and a strong favourable wind arose, and the august vessel followed the billows.