He (the priest) says:  I declare in the presence of the sovran gods, who like innumerable piles of rocks sit closing up the way in the multitudinous road-forkings....  I fulfil your praises by declaring your NAMES, Youth and Maiden of the Many Road-forkings and Come-no-further Gate, and say:  for the OFFERINGS set up that you may prevent [the servants of the monarch] from being poisoned by and agreeing with the things which shall come roughly-acting and hating from the Root-country, the Bottom-country, that you may guard the bottom (of the gate) when they come from the bottom, guard the top when they come from the top, guarding with nightly guard and with daily guard, and may praise them—­peacefully take the great OFFERINGS which are set up by piling them up like a range of hills, that is to say, providing bright cloth, etc., ... and sitting closing-up the way like innumerable piles of rock in the multitudinous road-forkings, deign to praise the sovran GRANDCHILD’S augustness eternally and unchangingly, and to bless his age as a luxuriant AGE.

Retreating to another part of the world—­that is, into southwestern Japan—­Izanami purified himself by bathing in a stream.  While washing himself,[5] many kami were borne from the rinsings of his person, one of them, from the left eye (the left in Japanese is always the honorable side), being the far-shining or heaven-illuminating kami, whose name, Amateras[)u], or Heaven-shiner, is usually translated “The Sun-goddess.”  This personage is the centre of the system of Shint[=o].  The creation of gods by a process of cleansing has had a powerful effect on the Japanese, who usually associate cleanliness of the body (less moral, than physical) with godliness.

It is not necessary to detail further the various stories which make up the Japanese mythology.  Some of these are lovely and beautiful, but others are horrible and disgusting, while the dominant note throughout is abundant filthiness.

Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world such good service in translating into English the whole of the Kojiki, and furnishing it with learned commentary and notes, has well said: 

“The shocking obscenity of word and act to which the ‘Records’ bear witness is another ugly feature which must not quite be passed over in silence.  It is true that decency, as we understand it, is a very modern product, and it is not to be looked for in any society in the barbarous stage.  At the same time, the whole range of literature might perhaps be ransacked for a parallel to the naive filthiness of the passage forming Sec.  IV. of the following translation, or to the extraordinary topic which the hero Yamato-Take and his mistress Miyadz[)u] are made to select as the theme of poetical repartee.  One passage likewise would lead us to suppose that the most beastly crimes were commonly committed."[6]

Indeed, it happens in several instances that the thread by which the marvellous patchwork of unrelated and varying local myths is joined together, is an indecent love story.