Students of Far-Eastern mythology and literature have observed the feeble grasp of personality which distinguishes them from the similar products of the Western mind.[1] They are characterised by a certain poverty of imagination which is manifested in various directions, and more especially by the almost total absence of personified abstractions of human qualities. We look in vain for such conceptions as Age, Youth, Love, Fear, Patience, Hope, Charity, and a host of other personified qualities. Ta-jikara no wo (hand-strength-male) is one of the few examples of this class. He it was who, when the Sun-goddess partly opened the door of the Rock-cave to which she had retired, took her by the hand and dragged her out. But he is little worshipped, and indeed is only a poetical adjunct to the mythical narrative. In this respect he greatly resembles the Kratos and Bia of Hesiod and Æschylus. [1] See Percival Lowell’s _Soul of the Far East_. =Phallic Gods.=—Far more important are the Sahe no Kami, or phallic deities. Their symbols were a familiar sight by the roadsides and at crossings in ancient Japan. They might be seen even in the busy thoroughfares of the capital itself. At first representatives of the procreative, life-giving power, they were used as magical appliances for promoting fertility. But they became symbolical of life generally—the enemy of death and disease—and, on the well-known principle of magic that the symbol possesses something of the actual physical virtue of the thing which it represents, were employed as prophylactics against death and pestilence. For their services in this capacity they were deified. Their cult has long ago disappeared from the state religion, but it still lingers in the out-of-the-way parts of Eastern Japan. CHAPTER V THE PRIESTHOOD In ancient Japan, the sacred and the secular were imperfectly differentiated from one another. The Department of Shinto was simply a Government bureau. Miya meant equally shrine and palace. Matsuri, a Shinto festival, is the same word that we also find in Matsurigoto, government. The Mikado was at once the high priest and the sovereign of the nation. In the oldest legends he appears frequently in a sacerdotal capacity, and, even at the present day, he takes a personal part in some of the Shinto rites. Only last year he went to Ise to perform the ceremony of Nihiname, or tasting the first rice of the new harvest after making an offering of it to the Sun-goddess. But even in the oldest records there occur instances of his deputing his sacerdotal functions. Jimmu Tenno is said to have appointed Michi No Omi (minister-of-the-way) as ‘Ruler of a festival.’ The rubrics of the _norito_ (rituals) show that they were intended to be read by a deputy and not by the Mikado in person.