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Other records of maleficent deities in serpent shape were current, and monkeys and dragons inspired similar terror. Of this superstition there was born an evil custom, the sacrifice of human beings to appease the hostile spirits. The Kami of Chusan in Mimasaka province was believed to be a giant ape, and the Kami of Koya, a big reptile.
The Sun goddess makes various excuses for her brother's lawless conduct, but he is not to be placated. His next exploit is to flay a piebald horse and throw it through a hole which he breaks in the roof of the hall where the goddess is weaving garments for the Kami.
Phallic Symbols. To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way was ancestor-worship.
Applying the same process of reasoning to the socalled "birth" of Kami, that process resolves itself very simply into the creation of chieftains and administrators. It would seem that from Yamato the invaders prosecuted their campaign into the interior, reaching Izumo on the west coast.
For it is to be observed that the sovereign himself was an o-uji no Kami, and all tomobe created for nashiro purposes or to discharge some other functions in connexion with the Court were attached to the Imperial uji. Another kind of be consisted of aliens who had been naturalized in Japan or presented to the Japanese Throne by foreign potentates.
The first appeal to the foreign deity in connexion with natural calamity was in the opening year of the Empress Kogyoku's reign when, in the presence of a devastating drought, sacrifices of horses and cattle to the Shinto Kami, changes of the market-places, and prayers to the river gods having all failed to bring relief, an imposing Buddhist service was held in the south court of the Great Temple.
There being no possibility of mistake, therefore, Oishi Kuranosuké went down on his knees, and addressing the old man very respectfully, said "My lord, we are the retainers of Asano Takumi no Kami. Last year your lordship and our master quarrelled in the palace, and our master was sentenced to hara-kiri, and his family was ruined.
Conspicuous among the statesmen who sought to restore the economical habit of former days was Mizuno Echizen no Kami, who, in 1826 and the immediately subsequent years, promulgated decree after decree vetoing everything in the nature of needless expenditures. It fared with his attempt as it always does with such legislation.
*This expression has reference to the fact that offerings at religious ceremonials were always heaped on low tables for laying before the shrine. The expression "heavenly sovereign" is here applied for the first time to the Emperors of Japan. *The term "earthly" was applied to Kami born on earth, "heavenly" Kami being those born in heaven.
Thus, already in the eighth century when the Records and the Chronicles were compiled, suicide after defeat in battle had become a recognized practice. The submission and self-inflicted death of the Great-Name Possessor did not, however, save his followers. All the rebellious Kami were put to the sword by the envoys from the "plain of high heaven."
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