of Hades to pursue him. So he, drawing the ten-grasp sabre that was augustly girded on him, fled forward brandishing it in his back hand;[1] and as they still pursued, he took, on reaching the base of the Even Pass of Hades,[2] three peaches that were growing at its lase, and waited and smote [his pursuers therewith], so that they all fled back. Then His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites announced to the peaches: “Like as ye have helped me, so must ye help all living people[3] in the Central Land of Reed-Plains[4] when they shall fall into troublous circumstances and be harrassed!”—and he gave [to the peaches] the designation of Their Augustnesses Great-Divine-Fruit.[5] Last of all his younger sister Her Augustness the Princess-Who-Invites came out herself in pursuit. So he drew a thousand-draught rock,[6] and [with it] blocked up the Even Pass of Hades, and placed the rock in the middle; and they stood opposite
- ↑ I.e., brandishing it behind him.
- ↑ Or Flat Hill of Hades, Yomo-tsu-hira-saka, said by Motowori to form the frontier-line between Hades and the World of the Living. See also Note 27 to this Section.
- ↑ The three characters 青人草 here rendered “people” are evidently (Motowori notwithstanding) meant to be equivalent to the common Chinese expression 蒼生, which has that signification. The word translated “living” means literally “present,” “visible.”
- ↑ Ashi-hara-no-naka-tsu-kuni, a common periphrastic designation of Japan. It is better to translate the name thus than to render it by “the Land in the Middle of the Reed-Plains,” a forced interpretation which Motowori and Hirata would only seem to adopt in order to veil the fact that one of the most ancient and revered names of their native land was imitated from that of China,—everything Chinese being an abomination in the sight of these ardent Shintoists. Yamazaki Suiga, as quoted by Tanigaha Shisei, is more sensible when he remarks that each country naturally considers itself central and foreign countries barbarous, and that Japan is not peculiar in being looked on by its inhabitants as the centre of the universe. This is also the view taken by the other earlier scholars.
- ↑ Oho-kamu-dzu-mi-no-mikoto. The difference between Singular and Plural is not often present to the Japanese mind, and though there were three peaches, we might just as well render their name by the words “His Augustness, etc.,” considering the three as forming together but one divinity. The interpretation of the name here adopted is the simple and natural one which Motowori borrowed from Tanigaha Shisei.
- ↑ I.e., a rock which it would take a thousand men to lift.
