LITERATURE OF THE EAST
23
THE KOJIKI
PART II.—The Quarrel of Izanagi and Izanami
THE LAND OF HADES
Thereupon His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites, wishing to meet and see his younger sister Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, followed after her to the Land of Hades.[1] So when from the palace she raised the door and came out to meet him, His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites spoke, saying: "Thine Augustness, my lovely younger sister! the lands that I and thou made are not yet finished making; so come back!" Then Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites answered, saying: "Lamentable indeed that thou earnest not sooner! I have eaten of the furnace of Hades.[2] Nevertheless, as I reverence[3] the entry here of Thine Augustness,
- ↑ The characters in the original which are here rendered Hades are literally, "Yellow Stream," a Chinese name for the Underworld, to which a remark of Mencius and a story in the "Tso Chuan" appear to have given rise. They here represent the Japanese word Yomo or Yomi, which we find phonetically written in the name of Yomo-tsu-shiko-me a little further on, and which is defined by Motowori as "an underworld, . . . the habitation of the dead, . . . the land whither, when they die, go all men, whether noble or mean, virtuous or wicked." The orthodox Japanese derivation of Yomi is from Yoru, "night," which would give us for Yomo-tsu-kuni some such rendering as "the Land of Gloom." A suggestion quoted by Arawi Hakuseki ("Toga" article Idzumi) that the word may really be but a mispronunciation of Yama, the Sanskrit name of the Buddhist god of hell, is however worthy of consideration; but it seems best on the whole to translate Yomi or Yomo by "Hades," a term which is itself of uncertain derivation, and the signification attached to which closely resembles the Japanese Shinto notion of the world beyond, or rather beneath, the grave.
- ↑ I.e., "of the food of Hades." It would be more obvious (following the text) to translate "I have eaten in the doors, i.e., in the house, of Hades"; but the character in this place stands almost certainly for "a place for cooking," "a furnace."
- ↑ The word kashikoshi, here translated "reverence," exactly corresponds to the modern polite idiom osore-iri-mashita, for which there is no precise equivalent in English, but which conveys some such sentiment as "I am overpowered by the honor you do me," "I am sorry you should have taken the trouble."
