=Hachiman= is not mentioned in the _Kojiki_ or _Nihongi_. His history is a curious one. The original place of his worship was Usa in Kiushiu, near the Straits of Shimonoseki, an old, perhaps the oldest, Shinto centre of Japan. He first came into notice in 720, when he helped to repel a piratical descent by Koreans. At a somewhat later period he became associated with the great Minamoto family, and attained to popularity as a War-god. But his cult is deeply tinctured with Buddhism. In his oracles he calls himself by the Buddhist title of Bosatsu (Boddhisattwa), something like our ‘saint,’ and ordains humanitarian festivals for the release of living things, a thoroughly Buddhist institution, and quite incongruous with his character as a Japanese Mars. It is explained that the reason for his deification as a War-god is that he was an unborn child in his mother Jingo’s womb when she achieved her famous conquest of Korea. His identification with the Emperor Ôjin, however, dates from long after he became popular. =Temmangu=, the God of Learning and Caligraphy. If we pass over the honours paid to living and dead Mikados as of doubtful religious quality, the first genuine deified human being on the Shinto record is Sugahara Michizane, who was raised to divine rank under the name of Temmangu. Michizane was born in 845. His family had a hereditary reputation for learning, and traced its descent from the Sun-goddess herself. His erudition gained him high rank in the government, and a system of national education which he established acquired for him the gratitude of the people, who called him the ‘Father of letters.’ But owing to the calumnies of a rival he was banished to Kiushiu, where he died in exile. Great calamities followed, which were attributed to the wrath of Michizane’s ghost, and it was not until his sentence had been formally cancelled, shrines erected, and other honours paid him that it ceased to plague his enemies and the nation. The story has come down to us enriched with a profuse embroidery of legendary details drawn from Buddhist and Chinese sources. Temmangu is, or was until recently, one of the most widely worshipped of Shinto deities, especially by pedagogues and school-boys. In 1820, there were twenty-five shrines to him in Yedo and its neighbourhood. His cult was probably suggested, and was certainly promoted, by the corresponding Chinese honours to Confucius.