=State of the Dead=.--Like the Old Testament, the ancient Japanese records afford but few and uncertain glimpses of the condition of the dead. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is nowhere taught explicitly. There are no prayers for the dead or for happiness in a future life. There is a land of _yomi_ (darkness) which corresponds to the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheöl. It is also termed _Ne no kuni_ (root-land), _Soko no kuni_ (bottom-land), _Shita-tsu-kuni_ (lower-land), or the _Yaso-kumade_, that is to say, the eighty road-windings, a euphemistic phrase resembling our "going on a long journey." Yomi, however, does not seem to be peopled by human beings or ghosts. Nor do we find any actual cases of their descending thither at death, although the conception was no doubt originally a metaphor for the grave. In the _Nihongi_ myth we find that where one version speaks of Izanami in Yomi, another uses the expression "temporary burying-place." The same work mentions an opinion that the "Even Pass of Yomi" is not any place in particular, but means only the space of time when the breath fails on the approach of death. The _Kojiki_, after relating the death and burial of Izanami on Mount Hiba, at the boundary of the Land of Idzumo, goes on to speak of her descent to Yomi as if it were the same thing. From this it would appear that to many persons, even in these early times, Yomi was a tolerably transparent metaphor for the state of the dead. How difficult it is for even learned and intelligent men to rise above the literal interpretation of metaphor is illustrated by the fact that Motoöri treats this suggestion with great scorn, pointing out that there is an actual entrance to Yomi in the province of Idzumo. Izanami went to Yomi when she died. She is called the Great Deity of Yomi. It is also spoken of as the abode of Susa no wo, who, according to one myth, was appointed to rule this region. We also hear of the deities of Yomi, the armies of Yomi, the ugly females of Yomi, and the Road-Wardens of Yomi. Thunder-Gods are said to have been generated there from the dead body of Izanami. All these are probably various personifications of death and disease. In modern times Yomi has been identified with _Jigoku_, the inferno of the Buddhists, which is a place of torture for the wicked. Our own word hell has undergone a similar change of application.