THE mythological page of a country's history has an interest of its own apart from legendary relations; it affords indications of the people's creeds and furnishes traces of the nation's genesis. In Japan's mythology there is a special difficulty for the interpreter--a difficulty of nomenclature. It has been the constant habit of foreign writers of Japan's story to speak of an "Age of Gods" (Kami no yo). But the Japanese word Kami* does not necessarily convey any such meaning. It has no divine import. We shall presently find that of the hundreds of families into which Japanese society came to be divided, each had its Kami, and that he was nothing more than the head of the household. Fifty years ago, the Government was commonly spoken of as O Kami (the Honourable Head), and a feudatory frequently had the title of Kami of such and such a locality. Thus to translate Kami by "deity" or "god" is misleading, and as the English language furnishes no exact equivalent, the best plan is to adhere to the original expression. That plan is adopted in the following brief summary of Japanese mythology. *Much stress is laid upon the point by that most accurate scholar, Mr. B. H. Chamberlain. COSMOGONY Japanese mythology opens at the beginning of "the heaven and the earth." But it makes no attempt to account for the origin of things. It introduces us at once to a "plain of high heaven," the dwelling place of these invisible* Kami, one of whom is the great central being, and the other two derive their titles from their productive attributes. But as to what they produced or how they produced it, no special indication is given. Thereafter two more Kami are born from an elementary reedlike substance that sprouts on an inchoate earth. This is the first reference to organic matter. The two newly born Kami are invisible like their predecessors, and like them are not represented as taking any part in the creation. They are solitary, unseeable, and functionless, but the evident idea is that they have a more intimate connexion with cosmos than the Kami who came previously into existence, for one of them is named after the reed-shoot from which he emanated, and to the other is attributed the property of standing eternally in the heavens. *The expression here translated "invisible" has been interpreted in the sense that the Kami "hid their persons," i.e., died, but the true meaning seems to be that they were invisible.