es
Susanoo's life-preserving sword and life-preserving bow and arrows as
also his sacred lute,* and taking Princess Forward on his back,
flees. The lute brushes against a tree, and its sound rouses Susanoo.
But before he can disentangle his hair from the rafters, the
fugitives reach the confines of the underworld, and the enraged Kami,
while execrating this visitor who has outwitted him, is constrained
to direct him how to overcome his brethren and to establish his rule
firmly. In all this he succeeds, and having married Princess Yakami,
to whom he was previously engaged,** he resumes the work left
unfinished by Izanagi and Izanami, the work of "making the land."

*Sacred because divine revelations were supposed to be made through a
lute-player.

**In the story of this Kami, we find the first record of conjugal
jealousy in Japan. Princess Forward strongly objects to her husband's
excursions into novel fields.

The exact import of this process, "making the land," is not
discernible. In the hands of Izanagi and Izanami it resolves itself
into begetting, first, a number of islands and, then, a number of
Kami. At the outset it seems to have no more profound significance
for the Great-Name Possessor. Several generations of Kami are
begotten by him, but their names give no indication of the parts they
are supposed to have taken in the "making of the land." They are all
born in Japan, however, and it is perhaps significant that among them
the one child--the Kami of wells--brought forth by Princess Yakami,
is not included. Princess Forward has no children, a fact which
doubtless augments her jealousy of her husband's amours; jealousy
expressed in verses that show no mean poetic skill. Thus, the
Great-Name Possessor on the eve of a journey from Izumo to Yamato,
sings as he stands with one hand on his saddle and one foot in the
stirrup:--

Though thou sayest thou willst not weep
If like the flocking birds, I flock and depart,
If like the led birds, I am led away and
Depart; thou wilt hang down thine head like
A single Eulalia upon the mountain and
Thy weeping shall indeed rise as the mist of
The morning shower.
Then the Empress, taking a wine-cup, approaches and offers it to
him, saying:
Oh! Thine Augustness, the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears!
Thou, my dear Master-of-the-Great-Land indeed,
Being a man, probably hast on the various island headlands thou
seest,
And on ever