[120] More than any other Japanese writer, Hirata has enabled us to understand the hierarchy of Shinto mythology,--corresponding closely, as we might have expected, to the ancient ordination of Japanese society. In the lowermost ranks are the spirits of common people, worshipped only at the household shrine or at graves. Above these are the gentile gods or Ujigami,--ghosts of old rulers now worshipped as tutelar gods. All Ujigami, Hirata tells us, are under the control of the Great God of Izumo,--Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami,--and, "acting as his agents, they rule the fortunes of human beings before their birth, during their life, and after their death." This means that the ordinary ghosts obey, in the world invisible, the commands of the clan-gods or tutelar deities; that the conditions of communal worship during life continue after death. The following extract from Hirata will be found of interest,--not only as showing the supposed relation of the individual to the Ujigami, but also as suggesting how the act of abandoning one's birthplace was formerly judged by common opinion:-- "When a person removes his residence, his original Ujigami has to make arrangements with the Ujigami of the place whither he transfers his abode. On such occasions it is proper to take leave of the old god, and to pay a visit to the temple of the new god as soon as possible after coming within his jurisdiction. The apparent reasons which a man imagines to have induced him to change his [121] abode may be many; but the real reasons cannot be otherwise than that either he has offended his Ujigami, and is therefore expelled, or that the Ujigami of another place has negotiated his transfer ...."* [*Translated by Satow. The italics are mine.] It would thus appear that every person was supposed to be the subject, servant, or retainer of some Ujigami, both during life and after death. There were, of course, various grades of these clan-gods, just as there were various grades of living rulers, lords of the soil. Above ordinary Ujigami ranked the deities worshipped in the chief Shinto temples of the various provinces, which temples were termed Ichi-no-miya, or temples of the first grade. These deities appear to have been in many cases spirits of princes or greater daimyo, formerly, ruling extensive districts; but all were not of this category. Among them were deities of elements or elemental forces,--Wind, Fire, and Sea,--deities also of longevity, of destiny, and of harvests,--clan-gods, perhaps, originally, though their real history had been long forgotten. But above all other Shinto divinities ranked the gods of the Imperial Cult,--the supposed ancestors of the Mikados.