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Updated: June 10, 2025
No explanation whatever of this discrepancy is offered, but it cannot be supposed that Yamato was regarded as a halfway house to Izumo, seeing that they lie on opposite coasts of Japan and are two hundred miles distant.
They had a tiger and many curious animals and the stuffed Kudan; and they took the Izumo Maru for Mionoseki. As the steamer entered the port a sudden squall came; and the priests of the temple said the god was angry because things impure bones and parts of dead animals had been brought to the town. And the show people were not even allowed to land: they had to go back to Sakai on the same steamer.
For the wayfarers are paying obeisance to O-Tsuki-San: from the long bridge they are saluting the coming of the White Moon-Lady. I sleep, to dream of little children, in some mouldering mossy temple court, playing at the game of Shadows and of Demons. SHINKOKU is the sacred name of Japan Shinkoku, 'The Country of the Gods'; and of all Shinkoku the most holy ground is the land of Izumo.
After emerging from the beautiful lagoon of Naka-umi into the open sea, the little packet follows the long coast of Izumo to the left. Very lofty this coast is, all cliffs and hills rising from the sea, mostly green to their summits, and many cultivated in terraces, so as to look like green pyramids of steps.
One legend recalls another; and I hear to-night many strange ones. The most remarkable is a tale which my attendant suddenly remembers a legend of Izumo. Once there lived in the Izumo village called Mochida-noura a peasant who was so poor that he was afraid to have children. And each time that his wife bore him a child he cast it into the river, and pretended that it had been born dead.
Until very recent times the ceremony of delivering the new fire-drill to the Guji of Kitzuki always took place at the great temple of Oba, on the occasion of the festival called Unohimatauri. This ancient festival, which used to be held in the eleventh month, became obsolete after the Revolution everywhere except at Oba in Izumo, where Izanami-no-Kami, the mother of gods and men, is enshrined.
It is said that in the beginning the God of Izumo, gazing over the land, said, 'This new land of Izumo is a land of but small extent, so I will make it a larger land by adding unto it. Having so said, he looked about him over to Korea, and there he saw land which was good for the purpose. With a great rope he dragged therefrom four islands, and added the land of them to Izumo.
If one dare judge the efficacy of prayer to these kind gods of Shinto from the testimony of their worshippers, I should certainly say that Akira has good reason to hope. Each of these little white things is a banner of victory, and a lover's witness of gratitude. You will find such little flags stuck into the ground about nearly all the great Shinto temples of Izumo.
It is ordinarily a thin rope of rice straw; but before the dwellings of high Shinto officials, such as the Taisha-Guji of Kitzuki, its size and weight are enormous. One of the first curious facts that the traveller in Izumo cannot fail to be impressed by is the universal presence of this symbolic rope of straw, which may sometimes even be seen round a rice-field.
And mothers suffering from want of milk come hither to pray that milk may be given unto them; and their prayer is heard. And mothers having more milk than their infants need come hither also, and pray to Jizo that so much as they can give may be taken for the dead children; and their prayer is heard, and their milk diminishes. At least thus the peasants of Izumo say.
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