Note 26 — Chapter XVII · Culture Mixing in Japan

In Shinto, the ancient religion of the Japanese, prominence is given to pearls and other precious jewels, and even to ornaments like artificial beads, which were not, of course, used merely for personal decoration in the modern sense of the term; beads had a religious significance. A sacred jewel is a tama, a name which has deep significance in Japan, because mi-tama is a soul, or spirit, or double. Mi is usually referred to as an “honorific prefix” or “honorific epithet”, but it appears to have been originally something more than that. A Japanese commentator, as De Visser notes, has pointed out in another connection26 that mi is “an old word for snake”, that is, for a snake-dragon. Mi-tama, therefore, may as “soul” or “double” be all that is meant by “snake-pearl” or “dragon-pearl”.27 The pearl, as we have seen, contained “soul substance”, the “vital principle”, the blood of the Great Mother, like the “jasper of Isis” worn by women to promote birth, and therefore to multiply and prolong life; in China and Japan the pearl was placed in the mouth of the dead to preserve the corpse from decay and ensure longevity or immortality. The connection between jewels and medicine is found among the Maya of Central America. Cit Bolon Tun (the “nine precious stones”) was a god of medicine. The goddess Ix Tub Tun (“she who spits out precious stones”) was “the goddess of the workers in jade and amethysts”. She links with Tlaloc’s wife.