of high heaven, deigning to correct with Divine-correcting and Great-correcting, remove hence out to the clean places of the mountain-streams which look far away over the four quarters, and rule them as their own place.  Let the Sovran gods tranquilly take with clear HEARTS, as peaceful OFFERINGS and sufficient OFFERINGS the great OFFERINGS which I set up, piling them upon the tables like a range of hills, providing bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse cloth; as a thing to see plain in—­a mirror:  as things to play with—­beads:  as things to shoot off with—­a bow and arrows:  as a thing to strike and cut with—­a sword:  as a thing which gallops out—­a horse; as to LIQUOR—­raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in rows the bellies of the beer-jars, with grains of rice and ears; as to the things which dwell in the hills—­things soft of hair, and things rough of hair; as to the things which grow in the great field plain—­sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to the things which dwell in the blue sea plain—­things broad of fin and things narrow of fin, down to weeds of the offing and weeds of the shore, and without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be fierce, and deigning to hurt, remove out to the wide and clean places of the mountain-streams, and by virtue of their divinity be tranquil.

In this ritual we find the origin of evil attributed to wicked kami, or gods.  To get rid of them is to be free from the troubles of life.  The object of the ritual worship was to compel the turbulent and malevolent kami to go out from human habitations to the mountain solitudes and rest there.  The dogmas of both god-possession and of the power of exorcism were not, however, held exclusively by the high functionaries of the official religion, but were part of the faith of all the people.  To this day both the tenets and the practices are popular under various forms.

Besides the twenty-seven Norito which are found in the Yengishiki, published at the opening of the tenth century, there are many others composed for single occasions.  Examples of these are found in the Government Gazettes.  One celebrates the Mikado’s removal from Ki[=o]to to T[=o]ki[=o], another was written and recited to add greater solemnity to the oath which he took to govern according to modern liberal principles and to form a national parliament.  To those Japanese whose first idea of duty is loyalty to the emperor, Shint[=o] thus becomes a system of patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion.  Even Christian natives of Japan can use much of the phraseology of the Norito while addressing their petitions on behalf of their chief magistrate to the King of kings.

The primitive worship of the sun, of light, of fire, has left its impress upon the language and in vernacular art and customs.  Among scores of derivations of Japanese words (often more pleasing than scientific), in which the general term hi enters, is that which finds in the word for man, hito, the meaning of “light-bearer.”  On the face of the broad terminal tiles of the house-roofs, we still see moulded the river-weed, with which the Clay-Hill Maiden pacified the Fire-God.  On the frontlet of the warrior’s helmet, in the old days of arrow and armor, glittered in brass on either side of his crest the same symbol of power and victory.