Note 261 — Chapter XII

The native commentators point out that the "Heavenly Offences" are so called because they were first committed by Susa no wo in Heaven. This passage of the norito was therefore suggested by the myth. (See above, p. 83.) The object of the myth-maker, however, was simply to enhance the dramatic quality of his story by attributing to the boisterous Rain-storm God misdeeds whose odious character would forcibly strike his audience, a nation of agriculturists. In the norito the further step is taken of recognizing the same acts, committed on earth, as offences not only against men, but as sins before the Gods. He may have argued that the Sun-Goddess has a tender care for the rice-fields of her beloved race of men as well as for her own, and that any interference with them is therefore hateful to her. The "skewer-planting" above mentioned points to a still earlier attempt to bring agriculture under religious protection. There is no substantial basis for the distinction between Heavenly and Earthly offences. The author's real object in making it was no doubt rhetorical. He wished to break up the long list of offences into two balanced sentences, after a fashion common in Japanese poetry and poetical prose composition. I suspect that the "flaying alive" and "flaying backwards" were magical practices of the same class as the "witchcraft" condemned just below. The flaying was objected to, not for its cruelty, but on account of the malicious use to which the skins so procured were put. See Index, Inugami.