=Sukuna-bikona=.--Another God who is associated with Ohonamochi in myth and worship is the dwarf deity,[153] Sukuna-bikona (little-prince). He is said to have taught mankind the arts of brewing, magic and medicine, and to have provided medicinal thermal springs, where he is still worshipped. But in modern times his cult has been greatly superseded by that of Yakushi the Indian Esculapius, whose avatar he is supposed to be.
I take Sukuna-bikona to be a deified type of medicine man, a "Father of medicine" in the abstract. But the story related of him[154] may have some foundation in the history of a real person.
=Sahe no kami=.--The Sahe no kami are phallic deities. In approaching this subject, it behoves me to walk warily. For, to some writers so repulsive that they shirk even its necessary elucidation, it exercises a fascination upon others which is not conducive to sound reasoning. Has not a President of the Anthropological Institute declared that "so soon as a man begins to study phallicism he goes crazy"? With phallicism we may conveniently associate the corresponding cult of the _kteis_.
In Japan, the phallus symbolizes two distinct, although not unrelated, principles. Primarily, it represents the generative or procreative power, and is recognized in this capacity by myth and custom. By a natural transition it has become the symbol of the more abstract conception of lusty animal life, the foe to death and disease. Hence its use as a magical prophylactic appliance. In Shinto, this latter principle is much the more prominent. It is embodied in the name Sahe no kami, which means "preventive deities." The application of this epithet is clear from the circumstance that in a _norito_ they are invoked for protection against the "unfriendly and savage beings of the Root Country," that is to say Yomi or Hades. These by no means imaginary personages are the same as the Ugly Females, the thunders generated from Izanami's dead body and the armies of Yomi of myth.[155] They represent, or rather are identical with, diseases and other evils associated with death and the grave. Epidemic and contagious diseases are specially intended. Hence the Sahe no kami are also called Yakushin, or "Pestilence Deities," meaning the Gods who ward off pestilence, a phrase wrongly taken in later times to signify the Gods who produce pestilence. The use of the _phallus_ and _kteis_ for this purpose is primarily magical, and rests on the wellknown principle that a symbol possesses something of the virtue of the thing which it represents. The deification of these symbols came later.