The Japanese account of the creation is of sufficient interest to be noticed here. I quote it from a translation of the _Annals of the Emperors of Japan_, by Mons. Titsingh, assisted by interpreters of the Dutch Factory at Nagasaki, and rendered into French, after being duly compared with the original by M. J. Klapworth--(printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; London, 1834). In the account of the seven generations of the heavenly bodies, we are told that "anciently the heaven and the earth were not distinct, nor was the female principle then separated from the male. The chaos, having the form of an egg, moved about like the waves of an agitated sea. The germs of everything were there, and these ultimately divided, the pure and transparent ones going upward to form heaven, whilst the dull and opaque ones coagulated and formed the earth. Between the two a divine being sprang up; he was followed by two others in succession." All these were pure males, and engendered without consorts. After them came a male and a female deity, but they had no intercourse with each other. These and three other divine couples, who followed them, reproduced their like by mutual contemplation. The last couple directed the "celestial spear made of a red precious stone"--said by Japanese commentators to be the phallus--into the world below, and stirred it up to the bottom. On withdrawing the lance some drops fell from it and produced an island, upon which the celestial couple descended. Each one then began to walk in opposite directions around the isle, and when they met the feminine spirit sang joyously--"I am delighted to find so handsome a young man." But this vexed the male spirit, who, being a man, asserted that he ought to have been allowed to speak the first. So they parted once more on their solitary walk; and when they met the second time, the woman waited to be spoken to. Then followed a conversation somewhat too coarse for repetition, which was followed by corporeal union. From the intercourse of these divine beings all creation sprang. But, after a time, the partners reflected that there was still wanting a governor for the world which they had engendered. So they again accoupled, and produced a daughter so lovely, that her parents thought her too good for earth; gave her the name of "the precious wisdom of the heavenly sun," and sent her to heaven, there to assume the universal government of all things. The parents once again united, and produced the moon, who was sent to heaven to assist her sister. A terrible fellow was then born from them, who represents the Devil, or those tempests which seem to oppose the beneficent action of the sun upon the soil. The parents returned to heaven, and there are constant contentions between the brother and sister. The former is described as being furious under attempts at control; generally, he was quiet, and always had tears in his eyes (dew