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Updated: June 10, 2025
In other parts of the country, as in Izumo, farming was forbidden to samurai: they were not even allowed to hold rice-land, though they might own forest-land. But in various provinces they were permitted to farm, even while strictly forbidden to follow any other occupation, any trade or craft.... At no time did any degradation attach to the pursuit of agriculture.
The ofuda are not so curious as those of other famous Izumo temples; but they are most eagerly sought for. Those strips of white paper, bearing the deity's name, and a few words of promise, which are sold for a few rin, are tied to rods of bamboo, and planted in all the fields of the country roundabout. The most curious things sold are tiny packages of rice-seeds.
Hence, in Izumo especially, the attempt to create a Buddhist Shintoism resulted only in the formation of a Shinto-Buddhism. And the secret living force of Shinto to-day that force which repels missionary efforts at proselytising means something much more profound than tradition or worship or ceremonialism. Shinto may yet, without loss of real power, survive all these.
An attendant brings tea. 'The Governor asks, interprets Nishida, 'if you know the old history of Izumo. I reply that I have read the Kojiki, translated by Professor Chamberlain, and have therefore some knowledge of the story of Japan's most ancient province. Some converse in Japanese follows.
For curious reasons, which cannot be stated here, an Izumo woman is very much ashamed of having wavy hair more ashamed than she would be of a natural deformity. 3 Even in the time of the writing of the Kojiki the art of arranging t hair must have been somewhat developed.
In Izumo I found that, prior to Meiji, there were sumptuary laws prescribing not only the material of the dresses to be worn by the various classes, but even the colours of them, and the designs of the patterns.
The "Korea" here spoken of is the present Kimhai in Kyongsan-do. It is further recorded that Susanoo lived for a time at Kumanari-mine, which is the present Kongju. Again, a Japanese book, compiled in the tenth century A.D., enumerates six shrines in the province of Izumo which were called Kara-kuni Itate Jinja, or shrine of Itakeru of Korea.
Remembered smiles; the morning gathering at the threshold of the old yashiki to wish the departing teacher a happy day; the evening gathering to welcome his return; the dog waiting by the gate at the accustomed hour; the garden with its lotus-flowers and its cooing of doves; the musical boom of the temple bell from the cedar groves; songs of children at play; afternoon shadows upon many-tinted streets; the long lines of lantern-fires upon festal nights; the dancing of the moon upon the lake; the clapping of hands by the river shore in salutation to the Izumo sun; the endless merry pattering of geta over the windy bridge: all these and a hundred other happy memories revive for me with almost painful vividness while the far peaks, whose names are holy, slowly turn away their blue shoulders, and the little steamer bears me, more and more swiftly, ever farther and farther from the Province of the Gods.
To judge by all this ideographic testimony, lovers in Japan or at least in Izumo are even more secretive than in our Occident. The enamoured youth never writes his own jitsumyo and his sweetheart's yobi-na together; and the family name, or myoji, he seldom ventures to inscribe.
But her old rival, filled with jealous hate, invented a wicked story about Koto, and the story found root in the rich soil of old Izumo superstition, and grew fantastically. The idea of it had been suggested to Jin's cunning mind by those three soft lines about Koto's neck. She declared that Koto had a NUKE-KUBI. What is a nuke-kubi? 'Kubi' signifies either the neck or head.
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