Volume 1, Section III: The Island of Onogoro

Hereupon all the Heavenly Deities [1] commanded [2] the two deities His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites and Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, ordering them to "make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land [3]." Granting to them a heavenly jewelled spear, they [thus] deigned to charge them [4]. So the two Deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven [5], pushed down the jewelled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stirred the brine till it went curdle-curdle [6], and drew the [spear] up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became and island. This is the island of Onogoro [7]

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General comments

Finally a chapter that's not limited to a series of names! Here we see the beginning of the myth of the creation of Japan proper (even though Onogoro seems to have been a mythical island - see notes below) which is the theme of most of the following chapters, and are better introduced to the important deities Izanagi and Izanami, that is His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites, respectively Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, which are the only two deities that you truely need to remember from the previous two chapters, the others playing a role solely as a collective body like that of the the Heavenly Deities (see notes). Various versions of Izanagi and Izanami's myth exist

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Notes

[1] Here this applies probably to the Seperate Heavenly Deities

[2] Depending on the versions of Izanagi and Izanami's myth, they are not always sent by the Heavenly Deities; it seems that it was added here in keeping with a tradition that all deities descending from heaven to work on Earth must do so under a heavenly mandate, but most manuscripts of the Nihon Shoki do not have this

[3] This refers to the "earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like" of chapter 1

[4] That is they entrusted this mission to Izanagi and Izanami

[5] This passage is translated in Philippi as "They stirred the brine with a churning-churning sound". It is difficult to translate the onomatopoeia koworo-koworo. . Philippi believes that this part of the chapter may have been inspired by the traditional way of manufacturing salt by boiling sea water

[6] In Japanese "Kami-musu-bi-no-kami" and sometimes later appears as "Kami-musu-bi-mi-oya-no-mikoto, which can be translated as "His Augustness the Deity-Producing-Wondrous-August-Ancestor"

[7] Onogoro means literally "self-curdling" and is a mythical island, although the author must have believed it to exist somewhere in the Island Sea, west of the island of Awaji


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