The _Ame no tama-boko_ or Jewel-Spear of Heaven has been the subject of much dissertation. Hirata, whose view is endorsed by several eminent scholars, native and foreign, thinks that it is a phallus. Its use in creating, which in Japanese myth is the same thing as begetting, the first island, countenances this idea. The derivation of _tama-boko_ also lends itself to it. _Tama_ may be rendered ball or knob as well as jewel, and the _tama-boko_ might therefore be a shaft surmounted by a knob representing the glans, reminding us of the spears tipped with pine cones which were carried by the Bacchantes in the Dionysia. We have another Japanese case of a conventionalized phallus in the _wo-bashira_.[58] Moreover, on the theory that the _tama-boko_ is a phallus, we have a satisfactory explanation of the circumstance that _tama-boko no_ is used as a standing epithet of _michi_, road, which has puzzled Japanese scholars. The _tama-boko no michi_ would then mean "the road where phallic symbols are set up." There is abundant evidence that objects of this kind were a familiar sight by the roadsides near the capital in ancient times. The poet Tsura-yuki (tenth century) has left a short poem in which he expresses his intention of praying to the Tamaboko no chiburi no kami when starting on a journey. The Chiburi no kami were the phallic road deities, protectors of travellers. Notwithstanding the Japanese poets' habit of using stock epithets without much regard to their proper meaning, this juxtaposition is highly suggestive. Another name for the phallic Sahe no kami[59] was Chimata no kami, or road-fork-gods, because they had no temples and were worshipped by the road-sides and at cross-ways. The road between Utsu-nomiya and Nikkô, when I travelled along it in 1870, was still a _tama-boko no michi_--in the phallic sense.[60] Another link between the _hoko_ and the phallus is suggested by a statement in the _Shiki Monogatari_ that the weapon which formed, and still forms, the central object in the great _Goriōye_ festival procession at Kioto is known as the _Sai no hoko_. Now the _Goriōye_ is a survival of the old festival in honour of the phallic Sahe no kami.