A thousand years after the traditions of the Kojiki had been committed to writing, and orthodox Shint[=o] commentators had learned science from the Dutch at Nagasaki, the stirring of the world mud by Izanagi’s spear[7] was gravely asserted to be the cause of the diurnal revolution of the earth upon its axis, the point of the axis being still the jewel spear.[8] Onogoro-jima, or the Island of the Congealed Drop, was formerly at the north pole,[9] but subsequently removed to its present position.  How this happened is not told.

Life in Japan During the Divine Age.

Now that the Kojiki is in English and all may read it, we can clearly see who and what were the Japanese in the ages before letters and Chinese civilization; for these stories of the kami are but legendary and mythical accounts of men and women.  One could scarcely recognize in the islanders of eleven or twelve hundred years ago, the polished, brilliant, and interesting people of to-day.  Yet truth compels us to say that social morals in Dai Nippon, even with telegraphs and railways, are still more like those of ancient days than readers of rhapsodies by summer tourists might suppose.  These early Japanese, indeed, were possibly in a stage of civilization somewhat above that of the most advanced of the American Indians when first met by Europeans, for they had a rude system of agriculture and knew the art of fashioning iron into tools and weapons.  Still, they were very barbarous, certainly as much so as our Germanic “forbears.”  They lived in huts.  They were without writing or commerce, and were able to count only to ten.[10] Their cruelty was as revolting as that of the savage tribes of America.  The family was in its most rudimentary stage, with little or no restraint upon the passions of men.  Children of the same father, but not of the same mother, could intermarry.  The instances of men marrying their sisters or aunts were very common.  There was no art, unless the making of clay images, to take the place of the living human victims buried up to their necks in earth and left to starve on the death of their masters,[11] may be designated as such.

The Magatama, or curved jewels, being made of ground and polished stone may be called jewelry; but since some of these prehistoric ornaments dug up from the ground are found to be of jade, a mineral which does not occur in Japan, it is evident that some of these tokens of culture came from the continent.  Many other things produced by more or less skilled mechanics, the origin of which is poetically recounted in the story of the dancing of Uzume before the cave in which the Sun-goddess had hid herself,[12] were of continental origin.  Evidently these men of the god-way had passed the “stone age,” and, probably without going through the intermediate bronze age, were artificers of iron and skilled in its use.  Most of the names of metals and of many other substances, and the terms used in the arts and sciences, betray by their tell-tale etymology their Chinese origin.  Indeed, it is evident that some of the leading kami were born in Korea or Tartary.