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To me the great marvel of the Hinomisaki-jinja is that structures so vast, and so costly to maintain, can exist in a mere fishing hamlet, in an obscure nook of the most desolate coast of Japan. Assuredly the contributions of peasant pilgrims alone could not suffice to pay the salary of a single kannushi; for Hinomisaki, unlike Kitzuki, is not a place possible to visit in all weathers.
Before the little shrine I notice, besides the usual Kitzuki ex-voto of seaweed, several little effigies of horses made of straw. Why these offerings of horses of straw?
It is related that there was a man who, believing himself to have become rich by favour of the Daikoku of Kitzuki, desired to express his gratitude by a gift of robes to the Kokuzo. The Kokuzo courteously declined the proffer; but the pious worshipper persisted in his purpose, and ordered a tailor to make the robes.
Nishida, explaining the object of your visit, has made it a pleasure for us to receive you thus. Again I express my thanks; and after a second exchange of courtesies the conversation continues through the medium of Akira. 'Is not this great temple of Kitzuki, I inquire, 'older than the temples of Ise? 'Older by far, replies the Guji; 'so old, indeed, that we do not well know the age of it.
Thus in Kitzuki of Izumo, for example, the great Izumo temple is not the Ujigami, not the parish-temple; the local cult is maintained at a much smaller temple .... Of the higher cults I shall speak further on; for the present let us consider only the communal cult, in its relation to communal life.
When, for the first time, I stood before the shrine of the Great Deity of Kitzuki, as the first Occidental to whom that privilege had been accorded, not without a sense of awe there came to me the 'This is the Shrine of the Father of a Race; this is the symbolic centre of a nation's reverence for its past. And I, too, paid reverence to the memory of the progenitor of this people.
And the tenth month of our year is called the "No-God-month," because in that month all the deities leave their temples to assemble in the province of Izumo, at the great temple of Kitzuki; and for the same reason that month is called in Izumo, and only in Izumo, the "God-is- month." But educated persons sometimes call it the "God-present- festival," using Chinese words.
These things I learn: Each year the temple receives a new fire-drill; but the fire-drill is never made in Kitzuki, but in Kumano, where the traditional regulations as to the manner of making it have been preserved from the time of the gods.
I leave Matsue for Kitzuki early in the afternoon of a beautiful September day; taking passage upon a tiny steamer in which everything, from engines to awnings, is Lilliputian. In the cabin one must kneel. Under the awnings one cannot possibly stand upright. But the miniature craft is neat and pretty as a toy model, and moves with surprising swiftness and steadiness.
At the Temple of the Soul of the God, where the sacred fire-drill used to be delivered each year with solemn rites to the great Kokuzo of Kitzuki, there are curious things to be seen a colossal grain of rice, more than an inch long, preserved from that period of the Kamiyo when the rice grew tall as the tallest tree and bore grains worthy of the gods; and a cauldron of iron in which the peasants say that the first Kokuzo came down from heaven; and a cyclopean toro formed of rocks so huge that one cannot imagine how they were ever balanced upon each other; and the Musical Stones of Oba, which chime like bells when smitten.
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