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For the first Kokuzo of Izumo, on becoming pontiff, received the fire-drill for the great temple from the hands of the deity who was the younger brother of the Sun-Goddess, and is now enshrined at Kumano. And from his time the fire-drills for the Oho-yashiro of Kitzuki have been made only at Kumano.
Contrary to the custom at the other great Shinto temples of Japan, such as Ise, the office of miko at Kitzuki has always been hereditary. Formerly there were in Kitzuki more than thirty families whose daughters served the Oho-yashiro as miko: to-day there are but two, and the number of virgin priestesses does not exceed six the one whose portrait I obtained being the chief.
Thereafter I hold my peace on the topic of calligraphy. Vast as the courts of the Oho-yashiro are, the crowd within them is now so dense that one must move very slowly, for the whole population of Kitzuki and its environs has been attracted here by the matsuri.
But this role of veterinarian is not commonly attributed to Koshin; and it appears that something in the fantastic form of the tree suggested the idea. 6 KITZUKI, July 24th Within the first court of the Oho-yashiro, and to the left of the chief gate, stands a small timber structure, ashen-coloured with age, shaped like a common miya or shrine.
Then my interpreter translates his greeting large fine phrases of courtesy to which I reply as I best know how, expressing my gratitude for the exceptional favour accorded me. 'You are, indeed, he responds through Akira, 'the first European ever permitted to enter into the Oho-yashiro.
Then the landlord of the hotel, who seems to be a very kindly person, comes to us with lighted paper lanterns, and invites us to accompany him to the Oho-yashiro. Most of the houses have already closed their wooden sliding doors for the night, so that the streets are dark, and the lanterns of our landlord indispensable; for there is no moon, and the night is starless.
But really the thing looks as if it could only have been broken by an earthquake. 8 KITZUKI, July 25th. At the Oho-yashiro it is the annual festival of the God of Scholarship, the God of Calligraphy Tenjin. Here in Kitzuki, the festival of the Divine Scribe, the Tenjin-Matsuri, is still observed according to the beautiful old custom which is being forgotten elsewhere.
Build quickly, therefore, with that great tree which is mine." And therewith the god disappeared. From these and from other records we learn that the deities have always superintended or aided the building of the great temple of Kitzuki. 'In what part of the Oho-yashiro, I ask, 'do the august deities assemble during the Kami-ari-zuki?
Nor was the fear at all unreasonable; for it was the duty of a miko to be singularly innocent as well as beautiful. And one of the most beautiful miko who belonged to the service of the Oho-yashiro did actually so fall from grace giving to the Japanese world a romance which you can buy in cheap printed form at any large bookstore in Japan.
Since then the structure of the temple has never varied; and the plan then followed has been strictly preserved to the least detail in the construction of the present temple. 'The Oho-yashiro has been rebuilt twenty-eight times; and it has been the custom to rebuild it every sixty-one years. But in the long period of civil war it was not even repaired for more than a hundred years.