Note 13 — Chapter XVIII · Japanese Gods and Dragons

Izanagi and Izanami were told by the elder deities that they must “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land”. They were then given the Ame no tama-boko, the “Celestial Jewel-spear”. It is suggested that the spear is a phallic symbol. The jewel (tama) is “life substance”. Izanagi and Izanami stood on “the floating bridge of heaven”, which Aston identifies with the rainbow, or, as some Japanese scholars put it, the “Heavenly Rock Boat”, or “Heavenly Stairs”, and pushed down the tama-boko and groped with it until they found the ocean. According to the Ko-ji-ki, they “stirred the brine until it went curdle-curdle (koworo-koworo)”, that is, as Chamberlain suggests, “thick and glutinous”. Others think the passage should be translated so as to indicate that the brine gave forth “a curdling sound”. When the primæval waters and the oily mud began to “curdle” or “cook”, the deities drew up the spear. Some of the cosmic “porridge” dropped from the point and formed an island, which was named Onogoro (“self-curdling”, or “self-condensed”). The deities descended from heaven and erected on the island an eight-fathom house13 with a central pillar. Here we meet with the aniconic pillar, the “herm” of Kamschatkan religion, the pillar of the Vedic world-house erected by the Aryo-Indian god Indra, the “branstock” of Scandinavian religion, the pillar of the “Lion Gate” of Mycenæ; the “pillar” is the “world spine”, like the Indian Mount Meru.14 “The central pillar of a house (corresponding to our king-post) is,” writes Dr. Aston, “at the present day, an object of honour in Japan as in many other countries. In the case of Shinto shrines, it is called Nakago no mibashira (‘central august pillar’), and in ordinary houses the Daikoku-bashira.”15