owing passage:

I declare in the great presence of the
From-Heaven-Shining-Great-DEITY who sits in Ise. Because the
sovran great GODDESS bestows on him the countries of the four
quarters over which her glance extends, as far as the limit
where heaven stands up like a wall, as far as the bounds where
the country stands up distant, as far as the limit where the
blue clouds spread flat, as far as the bounds where the white
clouds lie away fallen--the blue sea plain as far as the limit
whither come the prows of the ships without drying poles or
paddles, the ships which continuously crowd on the great sea
plain, and the road which men travel by land, as far as the
limit whither come the horses' hoofs, with the baggage-cords
tied tightly, treading the uneven rocks and tree-roots and
standing up continuously in a long path without a break--making
the narrow countries wide and the hilly countries plain, and as
it were drawing together the distant countries by throwing many
tons of ropes over them--he will pile up the first-fruits like a
range of hills in the great presence of the sovran great
GODDESS, and will peacefully enjoy the remainder.

Phallic Symbols.

To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic
liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the
worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather
our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the
scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way
was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the
Japanese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the
Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this
reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so
that today the altars of both religions exist in the same house, the
dead ancestors becoming both kami and buddhas.

Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's
symbols of the god-way, that is of ancestor worship. The extent of the
phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god-way,
and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems, tax
severely the credulity of the Occidental reader. The processes of the
ancient mind can hardly be understood except by vigorous power of the
imagination and by sympathy with the primeval ma