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Above these are the gentile gods or Ujigami, ghosts of old rulers now worshipped as tutelar gods. All Ujigami, Hirata tells us, are under the control of the Great God of Izumo, Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, and, "acting as his agents, they rule the fortunes of human beings before their birth, during their life, and after their death."
Dispossessed of his realm in favour of the founder of the imperial dynasty, Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami became the ruler of the Unseen World, that is to say the World of Ghosts. Unto his shadowy dominion the spirits of all men proceed after death; and he rules over all of the Ujigami. We may therefore term him the Emperor of the Dead.
'There are many deities enshrined at Kitzuki, are there not? I ask. 'Yes; but the great deity of Kitzuki is Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, whom the people more commonly call Daikoku. Here also is worshipped his son, whom many call Ebisu.
Now while the great Deity Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami is passing through the streets, he is followed by the highest Shinto priest of the shrine this kannushi having been formerly called Bekkwa.
There seems to be a sense of divine magic in the very atmosphere, through all the luminous day, brooding over the vapoury land, over the ghostly blue of the flood a sense of Shinto. With my fancy full of the legends of the Kojiki, the rhythmic chant of the engines comes to my ears as the rhythm of a Shinto ritual mingled with the names of gods: Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami.
Gods and men were supposed to have also a Rough Spirit and a Gentle Spirit; and Hirata remarks that the Rough Spirit of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami was worshipped at one temple, and his Gentle Spirit at another.*... Also we have to remember that great numbers of Ujigami temples are dedicated to the same divinity.
The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones. There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt, flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama.
"You cannot hope," Hirata says, "to live more than a hundred years, under the most favourable circumstances; but as you will go to the Unseen Realm of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami after death, and be subject to him, learn betimes to bow down before him." ... That weird fancy expressed in the wonderful fragment by Coleridge, "The Wanderings of Cain," would therefore seem to have actually formed an article of ancient Shinto faith: "The Lord is God of the living only: the dead have another God." ...
If there be any images, they will probably be such as have been made only within recent years at Kitauki: those small twin figures of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami and of Koto-shiro- nushi-no-Kami, described in a former paper upon the Kitzuki-no-oho- yashiro.
There are two supreme cults: that of the Sun-goddess, represented by the famous shrines of Ise; and the Izumo cult, represented by the great temple of Kitzuki. This Izumo temple is the centre of the more ancient cult. It is dedicated to Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, first ruler of the Province of the Gods, and offspring of the brother of the Sun-goddess.
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