Chapter 1

Fuji stands clear — Nihon-bare, a cloudless sky over Japan.
The age has come when the true power of the Kami of the divine land shall show itself.
Buddha, Christ, and all the rest shall be fully received,
and an age without hardship, without weight, is drawing near;
therefore polish your Mitama without cease,
and hold to the one thread of Makoto (the heart of reality).

One hardship yet remains.
It cannot be crossed by any whose Mi-tama (body-and-soul) is unpolished.
Since this world began there has been no such trial,
and after this there shall never again be its like.
This Musubi (the creative binding spirit) can be fulfilled by no power save the Kami’s;
it is not a reckoning the human abacus can cast.

The soil of Japan shall rise,
and the soil of foreign lands shall sink,
and the Great Cleansing shall reach the capital,
and the countryside,
and the human heart.
This time there shall be no drawing back — not though you cry, “have mercy, hold still.”
So come, and come prepared.
The hour has come to show, without veil,
the power of the Kami of the divine land.

Some shall suffer now because of their former ease;
others shall rejoice now because of their former suffering.
This is the Kami’s land. Without the Kami’s power, nothing is fulfilled.
What, of itself, has human strength ever accomplished?
All has been wrought by the Kami, and through you.
Polish yourselves clean,
that at any moment the Kami may descend upon you.

Some say the war (ikusa) shall end within the year.
This is no such small quarrel.
It is the Great Cleansing of the entire world;
until all that is unneeded is gone,
the war cannot end — do you not see the reason?

This is no war fought by one people against another.
It is Kami against kami,
and Aka against aka,
and Hito against hito,
and Niku against niku,
and Tama against tama.

Look now into your own heart.
The war there is not yet finished, is it?
To think the war has ended — what strange forgetting.
Unless the sweeping is done quickly, the hour shall pass.
Before all else: the sweeping.

Loneliness is not yours alone.
The Kami’s loneliness is ten thousand times yours,
yet the Kami endures it, and waits for the hour.

And Makoto shall be the sovereign of the world.
Yet there are only those who fail to see
that Tenshi-sama (the Son of Heaven) is a Kami.
When mouth and heart and deed are joined as one in Makoto,
this oneness bears the name Mikoto (the sovereign living word).
Every divine subject of the Kami’s land is a Mi-tama
destined to become Mikoto.
The polishing of the Mi-tama — the blessing.