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Updated: September 10, 2025
One gentleman of Matsue, a good agriculturist of the modern school, speculated in the fox-terror fifteen years ago, and purchased a vast tract of land in eastern Izumo which no one else would bid for. That land has sextupled in value, besides yielding generously under his system of cultivation; and by selling it now he could realise an immense fortune.
Within comparatively recent times, the great Daimyo of Izumo, for example, were apotheosised; and the peasants of Shimane still pray before the shrines of the Matsudaira. Moreover Shinto, like the faiths of Hellas and of Rome, has its deities of the elements and special deities who preside over all the various affairs of life.
'In the period when the temple was built upon a larger scale, I ask, 'were the timbers for its construction obtained from the forests of Izumo? The priest Sasa, who guided us into the shrine, makes answer: 'It is recorded that on the fourth day of the seventh month of the third year of Ten-in one hundred large trees came floating to the sea coast of Kitzuki, and were stranded there by the tide.
They were richly mottled with dusky browns and silver greys of various tones. Many flying night-comers, however, avoid the lamp. Most fantastic of all visitors is the toro or kamakiri, called in Izumo kamakake, a bright green praying mantis, extremely feared by children for its capacity to bite. It is very large. I have seen specimens over six inches long.
To the eye, the sea looked level as oil; but there were long invisible swells ocean-pulses that made themselves felt beneath the surface. Hoki evaporated; the Izumo hills turned grey, a their grey steadily paled as I watched them. They grew more and more colourless seemed to become transparent. And then they were not. Only blue sky and blue sea, welded together in the white horizon.
5 This attitude of the shachihoko is somewhat de rigueur, whence the common expression shachihoko dai, signifying to stand on ones head. It is a ceremonial gift at weddings and on congratu-latory occasions. The Japanese call it also the king of fishes. 7 Nandina domestica. 8 The most lucky of all dreams, they say in Izumo, is a dream of Fuji, the Sacred Mountain.
What are the personalities, the individualities of us but countless vibrations in the Universal Being? Are we not all One in the unknowable Ultimate? One with the inconceivable past? One with the everlasting future? In Oki, as in Izumo, the public school is slowly but surely destroying many of the old superstitions.
To remove him from Nishi-no-Shima was not difficult to contrive, but to traverse the provinces of Izumo or Hoki en route for a safe asylum seemed at first impossible, for in Izumo not only the governor but also the chief official of the great Shinto shrine were hostile, and in Hoki the strictest watchfulness had been enjoined from Rokuhara.
But in Izumo people know a certain household charm whereby Bimbogami may sometimes be cast out. Before any cooking is done in a Japanese kitchen, the little charcoal fire is first blown to a bright red heat with that most useful and simple household utensil called a hifukidake.
Therefore, on every New Year's Day, the leaves of the yuzuriha, mingled with fronds of fern, are attached to the shimenawa which is then suspended before every Izumo home. The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its position and purpose in the composition.
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