50
“Ko-ji-ki,” or Records of Ancient Matters.
[Vol. VII.
born first, their birth was from a thing of thine; so doubtless they are thy children.” Thus did she declare the division. So Her Augustness Torrent-Mist-Princess, the Deity born first, dwells in the Inner temple of Munakata.[1] The next, Her Augustness Lovely-Island-Princess, dwells in the middle temple of Munakata. The next, Her Augustness Princess-of-the-Torrent, dwells in the outer temple[2] of Munakata. These three Deities are the three Great Deities[3] held in reverence by the Dukes of Munakata.[4] So His Augustness Brave-Rustic-Illuminator, child of His Augustness Ame-no-hohi, one of the five children born afterwards ([5]this is the ancestor of the Rulers of the Land of
- ↑ A place in the province of Chikuzen. The name signifies either “breast-shape” or “body-shape.”
- ↑ Or “sea-shore temple.”
- ↑ Or “the Great Deities of the three shrines.”
- ↑ Munakata no kimi. Remember that all the names in this and similar lists are hereditary “gentile names” (see Introduction, p. xvi), and that “Duke” and the other titles used in this translation to designate them must only be regarded as approximations towards giving the force of the Japanese originals, which are themselves by no means always clear, either etymologically or historically. Indeed Motowori in a chapter entitled “Kuni no Miyotsuko” (國造) in his “Tama-Katsuma,” Vol. VI, p. 25, remarks that the distinctions obtaining between the various titles of Kimi, Wake, Murazhi, etc., are no longer to be ascertained, if indeed they were ever sharply drawn, and that Kuni no Miyatsuko (here rendered “Rulers of the Land”) seems to have been a general term including all the rest, and roughly corresponding to the modern title of Daimiō.—It must be well understood that all these names, though properly and originally denoting an office, were inherited as titles, and ended (after the custom of conferring new ones had died out) by being little more than an extra surname appended to the surname proper (uji). This kind of quasi-official quasi-titular surname is what is called by the Japanese a kabane, which the translator, for want of a better equivalent, renders by “gentile name.” Motowori’s learned note in Vol. XXXIX, pp. 14–15 of his Commentary, should be consulted for a full exposition of this somewhat intricate subject, on which there has been much misapprehension, chiefly owing to the want of a fitting Chinese character to denote the word kabane.
- ↑ Here and throughout the work passages of this nature containing genealogies are in all the editions printed small, and might therefore be supposed to be either intended as foot-notes, or to be later glosses. Motowori however rightly rejects such an inference. To an English reader the word “this” may seam, by disturbing the grammar of the sentence, to support that inference; but in Japanese
