THE DELIVERANCE OF AMATERASU
No mortal man can, without incongruity, honor the moon by a public devotion. She is the computer and the fabricator of our months, the spinner of a thread avariciously measured. In the clear light of day we rejoice to see everything in harmony, beautiful like an ample, multicolored fabric. But as soon as the night is come, I find the fatal shuttle weaving again across the web of the sky. My friend, may thine eye alone avow it, glamoured by its evil light,—and those five fingernails which shine on the handle of thy lute! But the sun, always pure and young, always the same,—intensely radiant, intensely white,—does it abate each day the flowering of its glory, the generosity of its face? And who can look at it without being forced to laugh also? With a laugh as free, then, as when you gather up a pretty little child, give your heart to the good sun! Why, in the most shallow waters, in the narrowest puddle left at the turning of the public road, it will find something to mirror itsruddy face; and shall the secret soul of Man alone remain so sealed that it refuses such an image, and shows in the depth of its shadows no touch of gold?
Scarcely had the shabby race of sons of the soil commenced to dabble in the mud of the nourishing earth than, pressed by the furious desire to eat, they forgot the splendid sun, the eternal epiphany in which they were permitted to live. As the engraver, applying himself to cut his block according to the grain of the wood, occupies himself but little with the lamp above his head, which lights him; just so the farmer, reducing his whole view to that of his two hands and the black back of his buffalo, caring only to plow his furrows straight, forgot the luminous heart of the universe. Then Amaterasu was indignant in the sun. She is the soul of the sun by which it shines, and she is the breath in its sounding trumpet. “When the beasts,” she said, “have filled their bellies, they love me, they rejoice with simplicity in my caresses; they sleep in the warmth of my glance, lulled by the regular beating of their blood within their bodies, the inner rhythm of their crimson life; but Man, brutal and impious, is never sated with eating. All day long the flowers adore me, and nourish theirdevout hearts in the splendor of my face. Only Man is badly set on his stem. He deprives me of the sacred mirror in him that was made for my reflection. Let us fly, then, let us hide this beauty that is not honored!” Like a dove which slips into a hole in a wall, she descended into a deep cavern at the mouth of the river Yokigawa and, with an enormous rock, hermetically sealed the enclosure.
It grew dark—not the ordinary blackness of night, but the very darkness there was before the world was made. Crude and atrocious blackness filled the living earth. There was a strange vacancy in the sky; space had lost its center, the person of the sun had vanished like some one who disappears, like a judge who leaves his court. Then these ingrates knew the beauty of Amaterasu. How they searched in the drear air! A great sigh ran through all the islands,—the agony of penitence, the abomination of fear. As in the evening the mosquitoes in myriads fill the stagnant air, the earth was delivered to the brigandage of demons, and of the dead whom one could recognize by this sign: that they had no navels. As a pilot covers his nearest lights, the better to see into the distance; so, by the suppression of this central lamp,space widened around them. And, from a part of the horizon unseen before, they saw a strange whiteness beyond the sky, like the frontier of a neighboring world: the reflection of another sun.
Then all the gods and goddesses, the familiar spirits of the earth, which assist Man and are his companions like horses and oxen,—all were moved by the miserable cries of the hairless creatures, like the barking of little dogs; and they all assembled at the mouth of the river Yokigawa, spirits both of the sea and of the air,—like herds of buffalo, like schools of herring, like flocks of starlings. There the virgin Amaterasu was hidden in a cave in the earth, like a honeycomb in the hollow of a tree, like a treasure in a jug.
“A lamp is not extinguished except by a more brilliant light,” they said. “Amaterasu is there! We do not see her, but we know that she has not left us. Her glory has not suffered diminution. She is hidden in the earth like a cricket, like an ascetic in the retreat of his own thoughts. How shall we make her come out? What appeal can we make to her, and what can we offer her that will be as beautiful as she?”
Then from a stone fallen from heaven they made a mirror, very pure, completelyround. They tore down a pine-tree and swathed it in garments of gold and scarlet, like a doll. They adorned it like a woman, and they put the mirror upon it for a face. And they placed this sacredgoheiexactly in front of the cavern, which contained the indignant soul of light.
What voice could they choose powerful enough to pierce the earth, to say, “Amaterasu, I am here! I am here, and I know that you are here also! Show yourself to me, oh vision of my eyes! Oh Life, come out of the sepulcher!” The familiar voice, the first voice that she hears when she passes the horizon of human life: the cock calling from the farms on every side at the first crimson streak of dawn,—his is the cry of light itself, the trumpet that no obscurity can stifle! Night or day, indifferent to the visible presence of his goddess or to her withdrawal, indefatigably he carries on his fanfare, with precision he articulates his faith. So before the buried Amaterasu they led the great white bird. And he crowed. And, having crowed, he crowed again.
Then, as if they could not fail to respond to his summons, all the noises of life awoke: the murmur of the day; active, interminable speech; the sound of thousandsthronging the hours; the vibrating word whose rhythm is meted out by the bonze with his mallet of wood in the depth of his temple. All these sounded at once,—all the gods, responding to their names. They were very timid, very faint. However Amaterasu in the earth heard them, and was astonished.
And here one must insert the image of Uzumé, just as, in the little popular books, her picture interrupts the black shower of letters. She had invented all this, the dear goddess. She had concocted this wonderful strategy. And now she danced intrepidly on the stretched skin of her drum, frantic with hope; and all that she could find to lure out the sun was a poor little song invented for children:Hito futa miyo....
Hito futa miyoItsu muyu nanaYokokono tariMomochi yorodzu,
Hito futa miyoItsu muyu nanaYokokono tariMomochi yorodzu,
Hito futa miyoItsu muyu nanaYokokono tariMomochi yorodzu,
as one might say:One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand!—and as if one said also:All of you, look at the door! Her Majesty has appeared. Hurrah! Our hearts are filled with happiness.
Then in the fury of the dance she untied her belt, she threw it impatiently aside; and, with draperies flowing, laughing and crying, she stamped and bounded on the elastic and resonant skin which she struck sharply with her feet. And, when they saw her robust and buxom form like that of a little girl, relief came into the hearts of all and they began to laugh.The sun is no longer in the sky, and still there are not lamentations, but laughter?Amaterasu heard them, and her heart was filled with chagrin. Unable to conquer her curiosity, she softly opened the door of the cavern: “Why are you laughing?”
A great ray swept across the assembled gods; it leaped the border of the earth; it illumined the moon in the empty sky. Suddenly the Day-Star flamed in the lifeless heavens. As an overripe fruit bursts, behold!—the blind earth could no longer contain the jealous eye, the burning fire of curiosity placed in its center, the woman who is the sun! “Why are you laughing?”—“Oh Amaterasu!” said Uzumé.
And all the gods in unison cried, “Oh Amaterasu!” prostrating themselves.
“Oh Amaterasu, you were not with us; you thought you had withdrawn your face from us; but look, here is some one morebeautiful than you are!Look!” she said, showing thegohei, showing the sacred mirror which, concentrating the flame, produced an insupportable brilliance. “Look!”
She saw; and, jealous, raptured, astonished, fascinated, she took one step out of the cavern; and instantly the night was gone!
All the great worlds, that turn about the sun as an eagle circles his prey, were astonished to see the day shining in such an unaccustomed place and the little earth all devoured with glory, like a chandelier which disappears in its own light.
She took one step out of the cavern, and immediately the strongest of the gods leaped forward to close the door behind her. Before her image, surrounded by seven rainbows,—adorable spirit, living fire, from which, with the divine face, emerged only two hands, two pink feet, and the curls of her hair,—so young, so formidable stood this brilliant and essential soul! And, like the swallow which lifts itself in larger and larger circles above the sparkling fields, so Amaterasu, reconquered by her own image, mounted toward her celestial throne. And Time began again with its first day!
At the doorway of the Shinto temples,by means of a cord of straw, the earth still guards against the disappearance of its light; and, in the last recess of the bare sanctuary, they hide, instead of the Eleusinian fire, a little round mirror of polished metal.