vincial rank. Thus it may be understood how the word was naturally applied to superiors in general, and especially to those more than human superiors whom we call “gods.” A Japanese, to whom the origin of the word is patent, and who uses it every day in contexts by no means divine, does not receive from the word Kami the same impression of awe which is produced on the more earnest European mind by the words “deity” and “god,” with their very different associations. In using the word “deity,” therefore, to translate the Japanese term Kami we must, so to speak, bring it down from the heights to which Western thought has raised it. In fact Kami does not mean much more than “superior.” This subject will be noticed again in Section V of the present Introduction; but so far as the word Kami itself is concerned, these remarks may suffice.
To conclude this Section, the translator must advert to his treatment of Proper Names, and he feels that he must plead guilty to a certain amount of inconsistency on this head. Indeed the treatment of Proper Names is always an embarrassment, partly because it is often difficult to determine what is a Proper Name, and partly because in translating a text into a foreign tongue Proper Names, whose meanings are evident in the original and perhaps have a bearing on the story, lose their significance; and the translator has therefore first of all to decide whether the name is really a Proper Name at all or simply a description of the personage or place, and next whether he will sacrifice the meaning because the word is used as a name, or preserve the original name and thus fail to render the meaning,—a meaning which may be of importance as revealing the channels in which ancient thought flowed. For instance Oho-kuni-nushi-no-kami, “the Deity Master of the Great Land,” is clearly nothing more than a description of the god in question, who had several other names, and the reason of whoso adoption of this special one was that the sovereignty of the “Great Land,” i.e. of Japan (or rather of Idzumo and the neighbouring provinces in north-western Japan), was ceded to him by another god, whom he deceived and whose daughter he ran away with.[1] Again Toyo-ashi-hara-no-chi-aki-no-naga-i-ho-aki-no-midzu-ho-no-kuni, which signifies “the Luxuriant Reed-
- ↑ See the legend in Sect. XXIII.
