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Updated: June 14, 2025
There are some kakemono representing Iyeyasu and his retainers; and on either side of the door, separating the inner from the outward sanctuary, there are life-size images of Japanese warriors in antique costume. On the altars of the inner shrine are small images, grouped upon a miniature landscape-work of painted wood the Jiugo- Doji, or Fifteen Youths the Sons of the Goddess Benten.
If he love a woman, he shall surely win her -though he should have to wait. And many happinesses will come to him. The dai-kitsu paper reads almost similarly, with the sole differences that, instead of Kwannon, the deities of wealth and prosperity Daikoku, Bishamon, and Benten are to be worshipped, and that the fortunate man will not have to wait at all for the woman loved.
This islet is sacred to Benten, the Goddess of Eloquence and Beauty, wherefore it is called Benten-no-shima. But it is more commonly called Yomega-shima, or 'The Island of the Young Wife, by reason of a legend. It is said that it arose in one night, noiselessly as a dream, bearing up from the depths of the lake the body of a drowned woman who had been very lovely, very pious, and very unhappy.
A beautiful little damask snake is undulating up the lattice-work, poking its head through betimes to look at us. It does not seem in the least afraid, nor has it much reason to be, seeing that its kind are deemed the servants and confidants of Benten. Sometimes the great goddess herself assumes the serpent form; perhaps she has come to see us.
Notice the hair of a Kwannon or a Benten, and the tresses of the Tennin those angel-maidens who float in azure upon the ceilings of the great temples. The particular attractiveness of the modern styles is the way in which the hair is made to serve as an elaborate nimbus for the features, giving delightful relief to whatever of fairness or sweetness the young face may possess.
On the right more steps, another torii, another terrace; and more mossed green lions and stone lamps; and a monument inscribed with the record of the change whereby Enoshima passed away from Buddhism to become Shino. Beyond, in the centre of another plateau, the second shrine of Benten. But there is no Benten! Benten has been hidden away by Shinto hands. The second shrine is void as the first.
Even Benten, the naturalized Venus, who, like her Hellenic sister, is said to have risen from the sea, is a person quite incapable of inspiring a reckless infatuation. Utterly unlike was this pantheon to the pantheon of the Greeks, the personifying tendency of whose Aryan mind was forever peopling nature with half-human inhabitants. Under its quickening fancy the very clods grew sentient.
The separate elements of this conglomerate, so typical of Japanese religion, are from no fewer than four different sources: Brahmanism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shint[=o]ism. "Thus, Bishamon is the Buddhist Vâis'ramana and the Brahmanic Kuvera; Benten is Sarasvatî, the wife of Brahmâ; Daikoku is an extremely popularised form of Mahakala, the black-faced Temple Guardian; Hotéi has Taoist attributes, but is regarded as an incarnation of M
And the romance of Benten, too, the Deity of Beauty, the Divinity of Love, the Goddess of Eloquence. Rightly is she likewise named Goddess of the Sea. For is not the Sea most ancient and most excellent of Speakers -the eternal Poet, chanter of that mystic hymn whose rhythm shakes the world, whose mighty syllables no man may learn? We return by another route.
He stands in the big shop windows in Tokyo as in London, with his red cloak, his long white beard and his sack full of toys. Sometimes he is to be seen chatting with Buddhist deities, with the hammer-bearing Daikoku, with Ebisu the fisherman, with fat naked Hotei, and with Benten, the fair but frail.
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