To go farther back in point of time than the "Kojiki," we find that even
before the development of art in very ancient Japan, the male gods were
represented by a symbol which thus became an image of the deity himself.
This token was usually made of stone, though often of wood, and in later
times of terra-cotta, of cast and wrought iron and even of gold.[12]
Under the direct influence of such a cult, other objects appealed to the
imagination or served the temporary purpose of the worshipper as
_ex-voto_ to hang up in the shrines, such as the mushroom, awabi,
various other shells and possibly the fire-drill. It is only in the
decay of the cultus, in the change of view and centre of thought
compelled by another religion, that representations of the old emblems
ally themselves with sensualism or immorality. It is that natural
degradation of one man's god into another man's devil, which conversion
must almost of necessity bring, that makes the once revered symbol
"obscene," and talk about it become, in a descending scale, dirty, foul,
filthy, nasty. That the Japanese suffer from the moral effluvia of a
decayed cult which was once as the very vertebral column of the national
body of religion, is evident to every one who acquaints himself with
their popular speech and literature.
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