53
to be judged by such a standard, what a helpless, good-for-nothing creature he would be. But his slow development is a proof of his superiority, and the same holds good with regard to the development of nations.
A common but extremely erroneous phrase which has obtained currency, is “the Seven Generations of Celestial Gods and the Five Generations of Terrestrial Gods.” In the first place neither the Kojiki nor the Nihongi, although they speak of the succession of gods beginning with Kuni-no-toko-dachi and ending with Izanagi and Izanami as seven generations of the Divine Age, call them Celestial Gods; the reason being that all these gods came into existence on the earth. The Kojiki gives the name of Celestial Gods to Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi, the two creator gods, Umashi-ashi-kabi-hikoji and Ame-no-toko-dachi. The term Terrestrial Gods was given to the gods of this country after the time of Ninigi no mikoto, to distinguish them from the Celestial Gods. It is a huge error to call the succession of gods beginning with Amaterasu and ending with the father of Jimmu Tennô the Five generations of Terrestrial Gods, for in the first place Amaterasu, though born on the earth, was made ruler over the sun, and is therefore distinctly a Celestial God; and secondly Oshi-ho-mimi and Ninigi were both born in heaven; neither was the title Terrestrial Gods ever applied to their descendants. The inventor of the phrase was Imbe no Masanori, the author of the Jindai no maki no kuketsu, who wrote about the middle of the fourteenth century. There exists no hard and fast line between the age of the gods and the present age, and there is no justification whatever for drawing one, as the Nihongi does, between Ukaya-fuki-ahezu and Jimma Tennô.
The descendants of the gods who accompanied Ninigi no mikoto, as well as the offspring of the successive Mikados, who entered the ranks of the subjects of the Mikados with the surnames of Taira, Minamoto and so forth, have gradually increased and multiplied. Although numbers of Japanese cannot state with any certainty from what gods they are descended, all of them have tribal
