"I, Yasumaro, say: Now when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were not yet manifest, and there was naught named, naught done, who could know its shape? Nevertheless Heaven and Earth first parted, and the Three Deities performed the commencement of creation; the Passive and Active Essences then developed, and the Two Spirits became the ancestors of all things. Therefore did he [Izanagi] enter obscurity and emerge into light, and the Sun and Moon were revealed by the washing of his eyes; he floated on and plunged into the sea-water, and heavenly and earthly Deities appeared through the ablutions of his person. So in the dimness of the great beginning, we, by relying on the original teaching, learn the time of the conception of the earth and of the birth of islands; in the remoteness of the original beginning, we by trusting the former sages, perceive the era of the genesis of Deities and of the establishment of men." This brief fragment from the compiler's "Preface" furnishes a condensed outline of what we read in the first part of the _Ko-ji-ki_, and it indicates the peculiar cosmogony of the Japanese mythology. The early sections of the book record the names of the first deities, who are said to have been "born alone, and hid their persons;" which seems to mean that they came into being in some exceptional way, and then disappeared. Then followed what are termed "the Seven Divine Generations," among which we find such names as "the Earthly-eternally-standing-Deity," "the Mud-Earth-Lord, and his younger sister, the Mud-Earth-Lady;" "the Germ-Integrating Deity, and his younger sister, the Life-Integrating Deity." These seven generations of gods end with the birth of a brother and sister, named _Izanagi_ and _Izanami_ (_i. e._, "the male-who-invites and the female-who-invites"). These two are commanded by the higher and more ancient heavenly deities to "make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land;" whereupon they two, "standing upon the floating Bridge of Heaven, pushed down a jewelled spear, and stirred the ocean brine till it became thick and sticky;[10] and then, drawing the spear upward, the brine that dropped down from the end of the spear became an island." Upon this island Izanagi and Izanami descended from the Heaven above, and in course of time generated all the islands of the Japanese world. When they had finished giving birth to countries they proceeded to give birth to deities, and so by them were begotten fourteen islands and thirty-five deities. There is little room to doubt that Izanagi and Izanami are a mythological representation of the generative powers of nature; but their portraiture in the Japanese literature has probably received some coloring from Chinese influence and thought.