fficient
OFFERINGS the great OFFERINGS which I set up, piling them upon
the tables like a range of hills, providing bright cloth,
glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse cloth; as a thing to
see plain in--a mirror: as things to play with--beads: as things
to shoot off with--a bow and arrows: as a thing to strike and
cut with--a sword: as a thing which gallops out--a horse; as to
LIQUOR--raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in rows
the bellies of the beer-jars, with grains of rice and ears; as
to the things which dwell in the hills--things soft of hair, and
things rough of hair; as to the things which grow in the great
field plain--sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to the things
which dwell in the blue sea plain--things broad of fin and
things narrow of fin, down to weeds of the offing and weeds of
the shore, and without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be
fierce, and deigning to hurt, remove out to the wide and clean
places of the mountain-streams, and by virtue of their divinity
be tranquil.

In this ritual we find the origin of evil attributed to wicked kami, or
gods. To get rid of them is to be free from the troubles of life. The
object of the ritual worship was to compel the turbulent and malevolent
kami to go out from human habitations to the mountain solitudes and rest
there. The dogmas of both god-possession and of the power of exorcism
were not, however, held exclusively by the high functionaries of the
official religion, but were part of the faith of all the people. To this
day both the tenets and the practices are popular under various forms.

Besides the twenty-seven Norito which are found in the Yengishiki,
published at the opening of the tenth century, there are many others
composed for single occasions. Examples of these are found in the
Government Gazettes. One celebrates the Mikado's removal from Ki[=o]to
to T[=o]ki[=o], another was written and recited to add greater solemnity
to the oath which he took to govern according to modern liberal
principles and to form a national parliament. To those Japanese whose
first idea of duty is loyalty to the emperor, Shint[=o] thus becomes a
system of patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion. Even Christian
natives of Japan can use much of the phraseology of the Norito while
addressing their petitions on behalf of their chief magistrate to the
King of kings.

The primitive wors