15. Nihon Shoki I — 15
1A number of these Deities are stated to be the ancestors of noble Japanese families. The explanation of the meaning of these names is often very conjectural. Some are probably names of places. Possibly some of the obscurer names are Corean. The "Seishiroku" speaks of a Corean Sagiri no Mikoto, and other known Corean Deities were worshipped in Japan. The reader will do well to consult here Satow's "Japanese Rituals" in "J.A.S.T.," Vol. VI., Pt. II., p. 120, where he makes the pregnant suggestion that the sun was the earliest among the powers of nature to be deified, and that the long series of gods who precede her in the cosmogony of the "Kojiki" and "Nihongi," most of whom are shown by their names to have been mere abstractions, were invented to give her a genealogy.
2Wo-bashira means literally male-pillar. This word is usually applied to the end-posts or pillars of a railing or balustrade, no doubt on account of the shape of the top, which ends in a sort of a ball (the nu or tama), supposed to resemble the glans. That by wo-bashira Hirata means a phallus is clear from his quoting as its equivalent the Chinese expression 玉莖, i.e. jewel-stalk, an ornate word for the penis. A Japanese word for this is wo-hashi, or wo-bashi, which contains nearly the same etymological elements as wo-bashira.
3A writer quoted in the Tsū-shō commentary on the "Nihongi," says that the Tama-boko (or nu-boko) is the root of coition.
4The late Mr. J. O'Neill, in his "Night of the Gods" (pp. 31, 37, 67), proposed the theory that this spear and other spears of myth "are but symbols of the Earth-axis and its prolongation," an idea which is worked out with much ingenuity and learning in that remarkable work. At p. 88 he argues that this view is not inconsistent with the phallic interpretation.
5There are other indications in the "Nihongi" and "Kojiki" of phallic worship in Ancient Japan, although, probably owing to the influence of Chinese ideas of literary propriety, there are fewer than might have been expected, Vide Index—Phallic worship.
6All travellers in Japan, especially before the Revolution of 1868, must have observed numerous evidences of a phallic cult. The Government have of recent years done their best to suppress this very gross form of nature worship, but it still exists in out-of-the-way places, as has been shown in an interesting Essay by Dr. Edmund Buckley, of the University of Chicago, who has collected numerous facts relating to this subject. Dr. Griffis, in his "Religions of Japan," has also noticed several evidences of it.
7Travelling from Utsunomiya to Nikko, in 1871, I found the road lined at intervals with groups of phalli, connected, no doubt, with the worship of the Sacred Mountain Nan-tai (male-form), which was visited every summer by hundreds of pilgrims of the male sex, access to females being at that time rigorously prohibited.
8A cave at Kamakura formerly contained scores of phalli carved in stone.
9I once witnessed a phallic procession in a town some miles north of Tokio. A phallus several feet high, and painted a bright vermilion colour, was being carried on a sort of a bier by a crowd of shouting, laughing coolies with flushed faces, who zig-zagged along with sudden rushes from one side of the street to another. It was a veritable Bacchic rout. The Dionysia, it will be remembered, had their phalli. A procession of this kind invaded the quiet thoroughfares of the Kobe foreign settlement in 1868, much to the amazement of the European residents.
10That there are domestic shrines in the lupanars where these objects of worship are propitiated by having a small lamp kept constantly burning before them is, perhaps, not to be wondered at.
11Is it a mere coincidence that wo-bashira, male pillar, should contain the element hashira which is used as a numeral for deities? See above, p. 5.
12Some of the Rai-tsui, or thunder-clubs, figured in Kanda's "Ancient Stone Implements," Plate VII., are probably phalli. Their size precludes the view that they were used as weapons.
13It may be, however, that both the Earth-axis and the phallic interpretations of the nu-boko are too subtle. The Hoko may after all be a spear and nothing more, and the nu or jewel merely an ornate epithet, as indeed Hirata suggests.
14"Village of Susa. Nineteen ri due west of the Town-house of the district. Kamu Susa no wo no Mikoto said:—'This is only a small country, but it is a Kuni-dokoro (local capital?). Therefore my name shall not be affixed to wood or stone.' This was accordingly the place where he allowed his august spirit to repose. There were, therefore, established by him the Greater Susa rice-lands and the Lesser Susa rice-lands."
15Susa no wo is therefore simply the "male of Susa." It will be remembered that by one Japanese tradition, Idzumo is the home of the Gods, and that several of the legends respecting them relate to this locality. It is, however, probable that the older derivation is really a volks-etymologie, which has given colour to the stories told of this deity. Idzumo is a chief home of the worship of Susa no wo at the present day. His wife's mother was called Susa no Yatsu-mimi, but it has not occurred to anybody to make her an "impetuous female." Hirata rejects the modern identification of this God with Godzu Tennō.
16Compare also the story of Nachikėtas from the Taittiriya Brāhmana, and the Katha Upanishad:—
17The resemblance of the name Yama of the Indian God of the Lower World to the Japanese Yomi has been noted, and also some points of similarity in the myth of Yami and Yama to that of Izanagi and Izanami. See Lang, "Custom and Myth," p. 171.