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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
white vapours. Again I hear the sounds of the clapping of many hands. For the wayfarers are paying
obeisance to O-Tsuki-San: from the long bridge they are saluting the coming of the White
Moon-Lady.[10]
I sleep, to dream of little children, in some mouldering mossy temple court, playing at the game of
Shadows and of Demons.
Chapter Eight Kitzuki: The Most Ancient Shrine of Japan
SHINKOKU is the sacred name of Japan - Shinkoku, 'The Country of the Gods'; and of all Shinkoku the
most holy ground is the land of Izumo. Hither from the blue Plain of High Heaven first came to dwell
awhile the Earth-makers, Izanagi and Izanami, the parents of gods and of men; somewhere upon the
border of this land was Izanami buried; and out of this land into the black realm of the dead did Izanagi
follow after her, and seek in vain to bring her back again. And the tale of his descent into that strange
nether world, and of what there befell him, is it not written in the Kojiki? [1] And of all legends primeval
concerning the Underworld this story is one of the weirdest - more weird than even the Assyrian legend
of the Descent of Ishtar.
Even as Izumo is especially the province of the gods, and the place of the childhood of the race by whom
Izanagi and Izanami are yet worshiped, so is Kitzuki of Izumo especially the city of the gods, and its
immemorial temple the earliest home of the ancient faith, the great religion of Shinto.
Now to visit Kitzuki has been my most earnest ambition since I learned the legends of the Kojiki
concerning it; and this ambition has been stimulated by the discovery that very few Europeans have
visited Kitzuki, and that none have been admitted into the great temple itself. Some, indeed, were not
allowed even to approach the temple court. But I trust that I shall be somewhat more fortunate; for I have
a letter of introduction from my dear friend Nishida Sentaro, who is also a personal friend of the high
pontiff of Kitzuki. I am thus assured that even should I not be permitted to enter the temple - a privilege
accorded to but few among the Japanese themselves - I shall at least have the honour of an interview with
the Guji, or Spiritual Governor of Kitzuki, Senke Takanori, whose princely family trace back their
descent to the Goddess of the Sun. [2]
1
I leave Matsue for Kitzuki early in the afternoon of a beautiful September day; taking passage upon a
tiny steamer in which everything, from engines to awnings, is Lilliputian. In the cabin one must kneel.
Under the awnings one cannot possibly stand upright. But the miniature craft is neat and pretty as a toy
model, and moves with surprising swiftness and steadiness. A handsome naked boy is busy serving the
passengers with cups of tea and with cakes, and setting little charcoal furnaces before those who desire to
smoke: for all of which a payment of about three-quarters of a cent is expected.
I escape from the awnings to climb upon the cabin roof for a view; and the view is indescribably lovely.
Over the lucent level of the lake we are steaming toward a far-away heaping of beautiful shapes,
coloured with that strangely delicate blue which tints all distances in the Japanese atmosphere - shapes of
peaks and headlands looming up from the lake verge against a porcelain-white horizon. They show no
details, whatever. Silhouettes only they are - masses of absolutely pure colour. To left and right, framing
in the Shinjiko, are superb green surgings of wooded hills. Great Yakuno-San is the loftiest mountain
before us, north-west. South-east, behind us, the city has vanished; but proudly towering beyond looms
Daisen - enormous, ghostly blue and ghostly white, lifting the cusps of its dead crater into the region of
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