580 CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 



of Japan. As a cosniio myth this falls distinctly short of the high 

 conceptions of its Chinese prototype, hcinj;- criicler, more naive and 

 inconsequential than the other — an imaginative effort of a ruder and 

 less sophisticated folk. Yet its chief vahie, that of the earliest genuine 

 document of a pure Altaic people, can hardly l)e exaggerated; and 

 herein lies the charm to ^^'estern readers of incidents that, but for 

 some of their grotescpie details, might have been taken from the 

 verses of Hesiod or Ovid. Beyond resemblances of the most super- 

 ficial sort (as in the agency of male and female in creation, in the 

 existence of a Great Spirit before heaven aiid earth were made) the 

 Chinese and Japanese myths are radically different. The former arc 

 for the most part ''impassible, passionless, uninteresting," as com- 

 pared with the fancies developed u])on these themes among ancient 

 peoples in the West. Their fundamental idea may ))e loftier, more 

 philosophical, but their inuiginative genius fails in the attempt to per- 

 sonify the operations of nature and endow them with life. 



The Japanese tales, on the other luuid, abound in instances where 

 human traits and i)assions are transferred to the powers above, who 

 feel and act in all respects like men of Hesh and blood, who are disor- 

 derly and irresponsible after the manner of savages, but Avhose 

 human nature renders them in some vague fashion quite engaging 

 to follow. It is with Greece rather than with China that »Iapanese 

 mythology nmst be compared. In both we have the same wayward 

 feeling for impersonation, characteristic alike of children and of 

 primitive races with artistic instincts; the same assemblage of gods 

 in heaven not only caring for but visiting and interfeiingwitlnnortals; 

 the same material representations of Olympus and Hades; the same 

 gradual withdrawal of personal intercourse between human and divine, 

 as the golden age melts away into the dull prose of record<'d histoi'y. 

 In neither set of m3'ths is there anything ])roperly corresponding to 

 a religious system, until they become coordinated by philosophers of 

 a later age. 



Resemblances between individual episodes in these far-distant col- 

 lections of primitive folk-tales are less obvious than their general 

 similarity of type. Mention has been already made of the most 

 striking parallel, that of Izanagi's descent into the lower world to 

 redeem his wife, and Orpheus's expedition for the same purpose. To 

 find a fitting analogy to the withdrawal of Ama Terasu, the Sun God- 

 dess, from the heavens, we should go to an older mythology, that 

 of Babylonia, where, in Ishtar's search for her lover Tammuz in hell, 

 all nature suffers and is dead until her return — clearly a story symljol- 

 izing the torpor of vegetable life in winter and its return to vigor in 

 spring. The Japanese tale runs as follows: A Ijrother of the Sun 

 Goddess having exhausted her patience b}^ a long career of crime and 

 insult, finally caps the climax of his misdeeds by breaking a hole in 



