Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 5/Chapter 4

by Captain F. Brinkley

Chapter IV

CREED AND CASTE

The growth of worlds in space, the separation of seas and lands by word of command, the creation of light and the genesis of all things, as recounted by Moses, make no smaller demand upon human credulity than do the cosmographical legends of primeval Japan. Yet to the former centuries of thought and cycles of discussion are devoted, while the latter are dismissed with a note of exclamation.

The sequence of ideas that presided at the elaboration of the Japanese cosmogony is at once logical and illogical. Sometimes it shocks the most lenient intelligence; sometimes it surprises the most skeptical scrutiny. In the beginning of all sentient things two supreme beings are placed,—Izanagi and Izanami,—themselves the outcome of a series of semi-mystical, semi-realistic processes of evolution. Matter already exists. With its origin the Japanese cosmographist does not attempt to deal. Ex nihilo nihil fit seems to him an undeniable proposition, as it seemed to Moses also. But it is matter almost completely lacking consistency, an indescribable, nebulous, unsubstantial, floating, muddy foam. Drops of this filmy thing, falling from the point of Izanagi's spear, crystallise into the first land, rising small and solitary from the "blue waste of sea." By that time the evolution of the creator and creatrix has attained such a stage that they are capable of procreation. They beget the islands of Japan as well as a number of lesser divinities, fashioned after their own image.

It is to be observed that the Japanese cosmographist did not rise to the idea of immaculate conception. He found the process of procreation sufficiently inscrutable, sufficiently miraculous, even as he knew it, to be worthy of the great originators of all things, and he saw no occasion to explain a miracle by a miracle.

To the islands thus begotten a number of the new deities descend. These are the terrestrial divinities. At the outset the condition of the land born in the waste of waters is almost as that of the earth in the language of the Pentateuch, — without form, and void, darkness brooding over the face of the deep. Then the god of fire is brought forth, his celestial mother expiring in travail. The creator follows her to the under-world, but fails to recover her from its shades, and, on his return, purifies himself by washing in the waves, during which process many new deities are evolved, among them, and chief among them, the Goddess of the Sun (Amaterasu), but among them, also, a legion of evil spirits of pollution, destined to torment and afflict human beings through all ages. The eating of the forbidden fruit bequeathed to the Christian world its legacy of sorrow and suffering and its awful doctrine of original sin. The violation of a law higher than his own mandates condemned Izanagi to become the father of his children's enemies.

It will be observed that the conception of cleanliness and the birth of light are synchronised in the Japanese system. Thereafter ensues an epoch during which the spirits of evil gain sway in the newly created world, confusion and tumult increase, until at last the creator delegates to the Sun Goddess the task of restoring peace and order. She dispatches her nephew Ninigi to do the god's bidding, and by him the terrestrial divinities are induced to surrender the sceptre, though they continue during centuries to struggle for power, until Jimmu, the first mortal descendant of Ninigi, completes their subjugation.

In this cosmogony the birth of fire precedes that of light, but both constitute a part of the celestial cataclysm by which the earth is transformed from chaos to cosmos. Other pens, tracing the same story under other skies, constructed a not dissimilar version, still reverentially taught in the nurseries and churches of the Occident, — a world of indescribable matter, formless, void, and dark; the creation of land and its separation from water; a sun called into existence to lighten and vivify; a long era of preparation, divided into six epochs by the inspired writers of the Old Testament, but of indefinite length in the Japanese cosmogony; finally, the subjugation of the rebellious angels, the appearance of man upon the scene, and his acquisition of dominion.

It has been said that whoever the earliest invaders of the Far-Eastern islands were, there is no more reason to suppose that they came to Japan without a religion than that they arrived there without a language. It has been further said by a learned sinologue that Amaterasu is identical with the Persian Mithras. A slightly increased strain upon the imaginative faculty might extend the line of Jimmu's ancestors to the city of Ur and the thirty-million-bricked temple of the Sun God; for if it be once conceded that the Japanese cosmogony is not indigenous but exotic, and if ingenuity applies itself to trace analogies between the outlines of Shintō and those of some continental "revelation," or likenesses between the nomenclatures of the two, startling results are soon reached. Such speculations are beside the business of showing what the Japanese believed, and how their beliefs influenced their lives.

Touching briefly upon these topics in a previous chapter, note was taken of the possibility of translating Japan's semi-mythical traditions into a vulgar record of aggressive invasions and defensive struggles; conflicts between the lust of conquest and the love of altar and hearth. Interesting as such interpretations prove to the historian, they must not be allowed to exclude other considerations; for whatever secular facts may be embodied in these ancient cosmographies, they enshrine also the germs of Japan's primitive religion, Shintō, or "the Way of the Gods," as it came to be called when the presence of other creeds made a distinctive appellation necessary. Before passing to a brief examination of the creed, a word may be said as to how its supernatural elements presented themselves to the national mind.

Among foreign observers it is commonly said that destructive criticism has never been permitted to invade the cosmogonal realm in Japan; that the basis of the national polity being the divine origin of the Emperor, any doubts thrown upon the traditions by which that genealogy is established would be counted treasonable. There is a large measure of truth in the supposition, but it is not the whole truth. If anti-Christian persecutions be excepted — and these were altogether political — men did not suffer any penalty for their opinions in Japan. The celebrated scholar Arai Hakuseki published a work of strongly rationalistic tendencies in the beginning of the eighteenth century; and some sixty years later, Ichikawa Tatsumaro wrote a brochure containing many of the criticisms that have been given to the world with such telling effect by modern European sinologues.^[1] It would not have been possible for any critic to attack more ruthlessly the principle of the Mikado's divine descent than Ichikawa attacked it. Yet he went unscathed; nay more, he and Arai received the high appreciation justly accorded to those who, through a sense of duty, oppose the strong current of popular opinion. With regard, on the other hand, to the faith of believers in the bases of Shintō, it may be summed up in the words attributed by Byron to Athena's wisest son. "All that we know is, nothing can be known." "It is impossible for man with his limited intelligence," writes Motoori Norinaga,^[2] "to find out the principles which govern the acts of the gods;" they "are not to be explained by ordinary theories. It is true that the traditions of the creation and of its divine directors, as handed down from antiquity, involve the idea of acts which, judged by the petty standards of human philosophy, are accounted miracles. But if the age of the gods has passed away, if they no longer work world-fashioning and heaven-unrolling wonders, none the less are we surrounded on all sides by inexplicable miracles. The suspension of the earth in space, the functions of the human body, the flight of birds and insects through the air, the blossoming of plants and trees, the ripening of seeds and fruits, — do not these things transcend human intelligence as hopelessly as the begetting of matter and the birth of the sun? And if it be called irrational to believe in gods that are invisible to human eyes, may we not answer that the existence of many things is unquestioningly accepted, though our eyes cannot discern their shapes? Do we not know that sweet odours exist, and soft sounds; that the air caresses our cheek, and that the wind blows over the sea; do we not know that fire is hot and water cold, though of the nature of heat and cold we know nothing? The principles that animate the universe are beyond the power of analysis, neither can they be fathomed by human intelligence. All statements founded on pretended explanations of them are to be rejected. All that man can think out and know is limited by the power of sight, of feeling, and of calculation. What transcends those powers lies beyond the potential range of thought."^[3] There would not be much difficulty in fitting foreign analogies to this suggestive framework of Japanese conceptions.

Side by side with an attitude so humble towards the mysteries of nature, there was an almost fierce assertion of Japan's claim to be the repository of revealed truth. "Our country," says Hirata Atsutane, "owing to the facts that it was begotten by the two gods Izanagi and Izanami, that it was the birthplace of the Sun Goddess, and that it is ruled by her sublime descendants for ever and ever, as long as the universe shall endure, is infinitely superior to other countries, whose chief and head it is. Its people are honest and upright of heart, not given to useless theorising and falsehoods like other nations. Thus it possesses correct and true information with regard to the origin of the universe, — information transmitted to us from the age of the gods, unaltered and unmixed, even in the slightest degree, with unsupported notions of individuals. This is the genuine and true tradition." Here again the reader, if he pleases, can find in the Occident parallel examples of defiant faith based on an equally small grain of mustard seed.

From what has thus far been written, it will be seen at once that ancestor-worship was the basis of Shintō. The divinities, whether celestial or terrestrial, were the progenitors of the nation, from the sovereign and the princes surrounding the Throne to the nobles who discharged the services of the State and the soldiers who fought its battles.

Worship of these gods seems to have been originally conducted in the open air. Shrines were not constructed until the first century before the Christian era. Very soon, however, the children of the deities found no lack of set places to pray, for from the naiku and geku of Ise, the Mecca of Japan, to the miniature miyas that dotted the rice plains, thousands of shrines might be counted throughout the realm, and every house had its Kami-dana, or "god shelf," before which morning and evening prayers were said with unfailing regularity and devoutness. Many Western critics have alleged that Shintō is not a religion; that it provides no system of morals, offers no ethical code, has no ritual, and does not concern itself about a future state. Nevertheless, creed or cult, Shintō may certainly claim to have established a strong hold upon the heart of the people. The annual pilgrimages to the Shrines of Ise, where the Goddess of the Sun and the Goddess of Abundance are worshipped, attract tens of thousands of devotees each spring, and the renovation of the buildings every twentieth year^[4] rouses the whole nation to a fervour of faith. Not a peasant believes that his farm can be productive, not a merchant that his business can thrive, unless he pays, or honestly resolves to pay, at least one visit to Ise during his lifetime, and no household believes itself purged of sin unless its members clasp hands and bow heads regularly before the Kami-dana. Shintō, in truth, is essentially a family creed. Its roots are entwined around the principle of the household's integrity and perpetuity. Nothing that concerns the welfare of the family or the peace and prosperity of the household is too small or too humble for apotheosis. There is a deity of the caldron in which the rice is boiled, as there is a deity of thunder; there is a god of the saucepan, as there is a divinity of the harvest; there is a spirit of the "long-rope well," as there is a spirit of physical perfection. All the affairs of man are supposed to have a claim on the benevolent solicitude of these immortal guardians. In the ritual for invoking fortune on behalf of the Imperial Palace at the time of building — the ritual of dedication — the spirits of rice and of timber are besought, with the utmost precision of practical detail, to forefend the calamity of serpents' crawling under the threshold; the calamity of birds' flying in through the smoke-holes in the roof and defiling the food; the calamity of pillars' loosening and joints' creaking at night. On the other hand, all great affairs of State, all national enterprises, are similarly entrusted to the fostering care of the deities. As for rituals, details of ceremonial, and rules for the guidance of priests and priestesses, they fill fifty volumes, and descend to the utmost minutiæ, the part taken by each functionary being carefully set forth, from that of the chief cook who laid on the fire and set the rice-pot over it, or that of the superintendent of fisheries who fanned the flame, to that of the priest-noble who recited the ritual. The presentation of offerings to the tutelary deity or to the departed spirit just enrolled among the immortals, formed an important part of the ceremonial, and the ritual used on the occasion enumerated the offerings,^[5] while at the same time setting forth the grounds for paying reverence to the deceased.^[6] However obscure the origin of some among the multitude of observances prescribed by the sacred canon, an analysis of the twenty-seven great rituals shows that the main purpose of worship was to secure the blessings of peace and plenty. The family on earth associated itself by offerings and orisons with the family in heaven. Among the whole twenty-seven rituals^[7] one only is designed to avert the influence of evil spirits. It does not appear to have entered largely into the theory of the creed that enmities formed on this side of the grave continued to be active in the region beyond. The disquieting contingency was there, indeed. The curse of a dying foe might be fulfilled by his spirit after death, and services of exorcism were prescribed to meet that emergency. But this tatari was confined to the generation responsible for its origin. The general conception was that of kindly spirits, from the all-father and the all-mother to the shades of departed parents and relatives, ready to extend useful tutelage to their mortal descendants. The capacity to work injury after death was explained by a theory corresponding with the Occidental idea of the duality of man's nature. Every human being possessed a rough spirit and a gentle spirit. The former, when stirred to intense activity by a sense of suffering or the passion of resentment, acquired the potentiality of a mischievous agent, acting independently of matter, and could even assume the shape of the sufferer or of the avenger for the purpose of tormenting the injurer or the enemy. Such phenomena were not necessarily preceded by the liberation of the divine element from its mortal prison; they might take place during life, and even without the knowledge of the person exercising the telepathic influence. Nor were they confined to the rough spirit. The gentle spirit also, under strongly emotional circumstances, became capable of defying the restraints of time and space.^[8] The permanent existence of evil gods, however, constituted an article of the faith. Shintō did not propound to its disciples the inscrutable problem of an omniscient, omnipotent, and all-merciful deity creating beings foredoomed to eternal torture, and licensing a Satan to ply the trade of tempter and perverter. It adopted the simpler theory that the malign demons were the outcome of a fault of creation. Born of the corruption contracted by Izanagi during his visit to the land of the shades, these wicked spirits, who "glittered like fireflies and were as disorderly as spring insects; who gave voices to rocks, tree-stumps, leaves, and the foam of the green sea,"^[9] had been expelled from the terrestrial region but not annihilated: they continued to interfere mischievously in human affairs, and it was necessary to propitiate them with offerings, music, and dancing. Their doings did not, however, seriously perturb the even tenor of daily life. There never was any tendency to regard the world as a battlefield of demons and angels, as was the belief of mediæval Europe, or to entertain a Manichean belief in the frequent victories of evil spirits.

In the shrines there were no images. The only object exposed to invite the adoration of the worshipper was a mirror, the "spirit substitute" which the Goddess of Light gave to be to her descendants a representative of her presence in their midst. Often the place of the mirror is taken by a pillow for the repose of the guardian deity or by some other "spirit substitute," for the mirror, being the special symbol of the Goddess of Light, is not placed in shrines dedicated to local divinities (uji-gami). Two objects are always openly associated with a Shintō shrine, the go-hei and the torii. The latter, as its name indicates,^[10] was originally designed to typify a perch for birds. In Shintō traditions it is associated with the eclipse of the Sun Goddess. Outside the cave into which the goddess had retreated, cocks, collected by the gods, were set crowing to create the impression that even without the rising of the orb of day morn had dawned. Barn-door fowls thus found a place among the offerings to the goddess through all time, and the torii typified the fact. Its degradation in later ages to the rank of a gate is an error for which its shape is doubtless responsible, but it may generally be seen in its true rôle beside the little shrines of Inari,^[11] where the peasant prays. The go-hei, or sacred offering, takes the form of a wand supporting a pendant of paper zigzags. It represents the coarse cloth and fine cloth that always appeared among the offerings. From symbolising the concrete devotion of the worshipper and its abstract acceptance by the deity, the go-hei became, by an easily conceived transition, an evidence of the favouring presence of the worshipped spirit, and in that character acquired powers of inspiration the exercise of which has been made the basis of a theory of esoteric Shintō.^[12]

From what has already been said about the "rough spirit" and the "gentle spirit," the reader will not be surprised to find in Shintō practices a repetition of the phenomenon that has puzzled so many minds, from the days of Njal and his forspan to those of Charcot and second sight. The aura epileptica blew in the old Japan and still blows in the new, as it has blown among all nations in all ages. Before Shintō shrines one may constantly see examples of what some folks call "mountain-moving faith," and others more prosaically regard as an abnormal mood produced by concentrated attention and abeyance of the will, namely, unconscious cerebration, taking the form of a hypnotic trance with telepathic capabilities, wonderful and inscrutable to vulgar minds. These "spirit-possessions" find their prototype in the phrensy of the goddess that danced before the cave of the Sun Deity, and in the oracle-uttering mood of the Empress Jingo. Sometimes this idea that the spirits of the deified may be induced to obey the summons of their earthly relatives is played with by mercenary charlatans, as was and is the case in Europe; sometimes it appears to be capable of exciting a nervous ecstasy during which the body becomes insensible to pain. It is unnecessary to dwell upon these things. They have their counterpart everywhere, and can scarcely be regarded as distinctive of Shintō.

A contention often advanced is that Shintō has no code of morals and does not concern itself about a future state. As to the former argument, it may be pointed out that the intuitive system of morality receives its fullest recognition when ethical sanctions are not coded. If man derives the first principles of his duties from intuition; if he be so constituted that the notion of right carries with it a sense of obligation, then a schedule of rules and regulations for the direction of every-day conduct becomes not only superfluous but illogical. That was the moral basis of Shintō. If the feet were kept steadfast in the path of truth, the guardianship of the Gods was assured even without praying for it.^[13] The all-creator took care, when he fashioned man, that a knowledge of good and evil should be an integral part of the structure. Unless such a knowledge be assumed, man becomes inferior to the animals, all of which have a guiding instinct. To have acquired the conviction that there is no ethical system to be learned and practised, is to have acquired the method of acting as the gods act. For the rest, precept is far inferior to example. The former suggests itself only when the latter is absent. Show a man a record of noble deeds actually performed, and he will burn with a desire to emulate them, whereas a statement of the principles of courage and loyalty will leave him comparatively unmoved. The gods are not to be importuned with prolix prayers, or asked to condone crimes knowingly committed. The petitions of humanity are wafted by the wind to the plain of high heaven: "I say, with awe, deign to bless me by correcting the unwilling faults which, seen and heard by you, I have committed; by blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods might inflict; by causing me to live long^[14] like the hard and lasting rock, and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin and to the gods of earthly origin the petitions which I present every day, along with your breath, that they may hear with the sharp-earedness of the forth-galloping colt."^[15] Such was the morning prayer to the Spirit of the Wind. Apart from the satisfaction of well-doing, uniform obedience to the dictates of conscience brought its reward. It is true that the rule did not always hold; the evil sometimes prospered while the good experienced misfortunes. That was because the "Spirits of Crookedness" were occasionally able to defy the "Spirits of Benevolence." But, on the whole, the hatred of the "Invisible Gods"^[16] was assured to wrong-doers. "The deities bestow blessings and happiness on him that practises virtue as effectually as though they appeared before us bearing treasures. And even if the virtuous do not obtain material recompense, they enjoy exemption from disease, good fortune, and longevity, and their descendants prosper. Pay no attention to the praise or blame of fellow-men, but act so that you need not be ashamed before the Gods of the Unseen. If you desire to practise true virtue, learn to stand in awe of the Unseen, and that will prevent you from doing wrong. Make a vow to the God that rules over the Unseen, and cultivate the conscience implanted in you, and thus you will never wander from the Way."^[17]

But if virtue might be expected to bring some recompense in this world, fear of eternal punishment did not reinforce the prompting of conscience, nor did hope of reward beyond the grave constitute a dominant incentive to well-doing. An under-world did, indeed, find a place in the system. The "August Creator" descended to it in search of his spouse after her demise in travail of fire. The God of the Sea, weary of banishment from the heavenly plains, would fain have gone to his mother beneath the earth. The efficacy of the "Sacred Jewel" consisted in holding back the believer from the road to the region of the dead. But this under-world was not connected with any idea of merciless tortures inflicted on the damned through endless ages. It was simply the place of darkness, — the moon, according to some; the depths of the ocean, according to others. The finite was not followed by an infinite aftermath of misery. The worship of the beloved and revered dead precluded all idea of their condemnation to everlasting torment, just as it necessarily included the conception of the soul's immortality. Rituals were not read nor offerings piled up to victims of annihilation. Those that passed the portals still lived, a large, a more potential, a deathless life, waiting to be joined by those they had preceded. Within every man was something of the god, and though, after death, one obtained higher place than an- other in the divine hierarchy, all were sure of apotheosis.^[18] The issue of human enterprises, the distribution of fortune's favours, were considered to be under the control of the tutelary deities, the ancestral spirits, but men were themselves endowed with capacity for distinguishing between good and evil, and with strength to follow their judgment so tenaciously as to qualify for fellowship with the denizens of high heaven. At the same time error was theoretically avoidable and should therefore have been practically unpardonable. But sins might be expiated or forgiven. The sovereign occupied the position of the nation's high-priest. Twice annually he celebrated the great festival of general purification by which the people were purged of offences and pollutions and saved from consequent calamities. Every family also kept within the Kami-dana an amulet consisting of pieces of the sacred wand used at these festivals, the possession of the token being supposed to ward off the effects of evil-doing.^[19]

Of the cleanliness that this creed inculcated much might be written; of the lustrations that preceded every sacred rite; of the shrinking from every source of pollution and contamination; of the simplicity of every ceremonial apparatus; of the unvaried rusticity observed in the architecture of the shrines, and of the unsculptured, unornamented purity of the timber used in their construction. Indeed this phase of Shintō had a dehumanising influence. Excessive dread of contamination led to violations of a far higher duty: the sick were not duly tended, and the maimed or diseased were often thrust out to die. Charity was a virtue scarcely suggested by the Shintō cosmogony, and not inculcated by the rituals or ceremonials of the creed. Kindness to animals received isolated recognition,^[20] but "the golden rule" was not written between the lines of any prayer or any legend.

The part assigned to woman, however, and the value attached to female virtue distinguish Shintō from other Oriental cults or creeds, especially from the patriarchal system of the Chinese, with which it is often confounded. In China a girl child being disqualified to conduct ancestral worship, her birth is counted a misfortune and the preservation of her life a burden. In Shintō the principal objects of national adoration, the deities worshipped at the grand shrines of Ise, are the Sun Goddess and the Goddess of Food. Among the attributes assigned to the former, in addition to her prime functions, are those of selecting the guests or frequenters of the Emperor's abode; of correcting and softening discontent and unruliness; of keeping the male and female attendants in order; of preventing princes, councillors, and functionaries from indulging their independent inclinations. At the foundation and construction of sacred buildings, young virgins cleared and levelled the ground, dug holes for the corner posts, took the axe and made the first cut in the trees to be felled for timber. A priestess was the central figure in the great Ceremony of Purification at the Kasuga temple; a young girl cleaned the shrine; women and girls on horseback moved in the procession; after the sacrificial vessels and chests of offerings followed carriages containing some of the Emperor's female attendants. Even the wind was under the control of a female deity as well as a male; for to the disciples of Shintō the wind did not present itself as a fierce, turbulent agent of nature, but rather as an ether filling the space between earth and sky, the ladder by which spirits ascended to heaven. When Susano-o, expelled from the company of the gods, repaired to earth, his first exploit was to save a maiden from an eight-headed dragon which, year by year, had devoured one of her seven sisters. It was to a priest-princess that the Emperor Sujin entrusted the sacred mirror and sword after a divine revelation that they must no longer be kept in his own palace; it was by her niece, the subsequent depository of the insignia, that the site of the Ise shrine was chosen. Virgin priestesses danced in honour of the gods of each locality, and the birth of three maidens from the fragments of the "Impetuous Male Deity's" sword was held to prove the purity of his intentions. From the earliest times, legendary or historical, the sovereign was surrounded by a number of females, and down to the reign of the present Emperor's immediate predecessor, women alone were admitted to the Imperial presence, in accordance with the belief that, among the eight tutelary deities of the Mikado, one represented the female influence surrounding the Throne and imparting a gentle smoothness to the ruler's relations with the ruled.

The high rank accorded to woman in the

Buddhist Priests

Buddhist Priests.

Shintō system, the important functions assigned to her, and the value attaching to virginal purity, are thus amply proved. But while the beauty of virginity was recognised, no merit attached to celibacy. The maidens engaged in the service of the gods must preserve their chastity during the period of ministration, but after they had quitted the priesthood, no obstacle stood in the way of their marriage. Neither do we find any direct or indirect inculcation of the principle of monogamy. On the contrary, the chief of the terrestrial deities when, by a display of pity to an animal, he had won the hand of a princess for whose love he was his brothers' rival, made her his second wife, and, moreover, became the father of many children by other women.

Shintō traditions offer no distinct precedent for a custom characteristic of the educated Japanese in all ages; the custom of resorting to suicide as an honourable exit from a humiliating or hopeless situation. One incident, indeed, may possibly be quoted as the prototype of the practice. The son of the chief terrestrial deity, when he decided to abandon his right of succession in favour of the delegates of heaven, trod on the edge of his boat so as to overturn it, and with his hands crossed behind his back in token of submission, disappeared, — abdicated and killed himself, in simpler language. There is no warrant for assuming, however, that the example of the deity had any influence in establishing the Japanese habit of anticipating surrender by suicide. If a creed which divests death of all terrors by representing it as a prelude to apotheosis ought to have helped to make suicide easy, it should also have tended to impart to death the character of emancipation from the body's thraldom, whereas the history of the Japanese people does not show that escape from life ever presented itself seriously to cultured minds as euthanasia, a means of eluding the pangs of disease or preventing the dotage of age. Japan never had a Seneca or a Hegesias. A man did not abandon life because he counted the loss a blessing or a boon, or because he regarded the grave as a place of rest. When existence became an intolerable punishment, the victim of destitution or cruelty sometimes chose the last road to freedom, and it was a common habit of lovers, when all hope of union in life had disappeared, to die in each other's arms.^[21] Doubtless, also, during the long centuries of warfare described in previous chapters, a certain indifference to death must have been educated by the constant necessity of inflicting it, and, as in Rome before the time of Domitian, so in Japan before the Meiji era (1867), suicide secured a political offender against an ignominious fate and the confiscation of his goods. But the influence of Shintō in this matter does not appear to have been appreciable, except in so far as it taught that death was only apotheosis; a passage from the visible world to the invisible region of revered spirits.

Here the question presents itself whether Shintō should be regarded as a creed indigenous to Japan or as an importation from abroad. Japan owed so much to China in early days that the borrowing of a creed would not have greatly increased the debt or seriously shocked any patriotic instinct. It has already been shown that plausible grounds exist for attributing the bases of Japanese mythology to Chinese traditions, and the posthumous names of prehistoric Mikados to foreign sources. On the other hand, any attempt to differentiate native from alien is hampered by the constant difficulty of discerning whether the things adopted were actually Chinese systems or merely Chinese methods of systemisation. A man taught to write after he reaches adult years is not unlikely to take the rules of literary composition and even the terminology of his teachers, as well as their script, though the thoughts he sets down may be his own. That certainly was often the case with the Japanese, and it becomes necessary to look very closely before finally distinguishing the indigenous from the exotic. Thus Confucianism, a system of ethics widely embraced by the educated classes in Japan, has been credited with supplying some of the central ideas of Shintō, and the theory is superficially plausible. But there had existed in China for centuries before the days of Confucius a belief in a supreme power and in the existence of some special channel of communication between that power and the ruler of the State, so that the latter acted as mediator for his subjects. The relation between the Emperor of Japan and the Sun Goddess finds here an analogy. Confucius, however, would have set aside the Shintō cosmogony as something wholly beyond the range of rational speculation. He recognised the power of an impersonal heaven, but he limited his moral horizon to things visible and temporal, and his recorded conduct could not possibly be reconciled with the Shintō faith in the direction of nature's courses and of human fortunes by a hierarchy of deities. That man should devote himself earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, should keep aloof from them, — that was the Chinese sage's definition of wisdom. He did not, as is frequently supposed, institute the worship of ancestors: it had existed in China for centuries before his time. He did not even directly inculcate the propriety of such a practice. As to a future state, he declined to predicate anything about the world beyond the grave. He did not even commit himself to an admission that sentient existence might be continued after death. Life was a mystery in his eyes; death equally inscrutable. In the vague possibilities of numbers and diagrams he vainly sought an explanation of the phenomena of the physical universe, and the sole outcome of his cosmical studies was a discovery that if the span of his life permitted fifty years' uninterrupted groping among the pages of the Book of Changes (Yih King), he might hope to reach the truth. In one important respect his philosophy corresponded with Shintō: it was inductive. The rule of life for men in all their relations was to be found within themselves: heaven had conferred on every human being a moral sense, compliance with which would keep him always in the right path. He did not recognise, however, that consideration for woman and her chivalrous treatment should be catalogued among the promptings of conscience. With the high place assigned to woman in the Shintō cosmogony and the Shintō ceremonials, he would have been absolutely unsympathetic. Confucianism, in short, was pure secularism. Faithful followers of the Chinese sage lived as units of their families, thoughtless of a hereafter, and persuaded that the recompense of their acts would be found, if not in their own fortunes, then in those of their descendants.

It is thus easy to see how greatly Confucianism differed from Shintō, while, at the same time, both had much in common. The similarities and dissimilarities of the two systems are here alluded to, not simply for the sake of establishing the independence of Shintō, but also, and mainly, because from the time of Japan's first acquaintance with Chinese literature, Confucianism won for itself a firm place in the minds of her educated classes. It came to her strengthened and supplemented by the genius of Mencius, and in some respects it supplied an evident want. Shintō, providing no moral code and relying solely on the promptings of conscience for ethical guidance, was too much of an abstraction to satisfy the ordinary mind. Confucianism, as elaborated by Mencius, offered a system of morals avowedly based on inductive sanctions yet evidently endorsed by the lessons of experience. To a profound belief in the innate goodness of human nature, it added plain expositions of the four fundamental virtues, — benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. It taught that the first aim of administration should be the material good of the people; the second, their education. It indicated divine ordination in human affairs, and defined death in the discharge of duty as compliance with that ordination, a disgraceful death as a departure from it; which canon secured implicit obedience from the Japanese in every age. It bade men regard suffering and misfortune as Heaven's instruments for stimulating the mind, bracing the heart, and compensating defects, — a precept to which the Japanese owed much of their stoicism in adversity and their cheerfulness in poverty. It defined society as a compound of five relationships, — sovereign and subject, husband and wife, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, friend and friend, — the first four linked together by the principle of righteous and benevolent rule on the one side, and righteous and sincere submission on the other; the last, by the mutual desire of promoting virtue. Side by side with these and other equally noble bases of ethics, it laid down an axiom which never obtained open endorsement in Japan, but which any reader following the historical retrospect contained in previous chapters must have again and again detected underlying the conduct of prominent actors upon the political stage. Confucius and Mencius alike held that the Throne is an institution of heaven, but what the former's teaching only implied, the latter's boldly formulated, namely, that the claim of "divine right" ceases to be valid unless it inures to the people's good. The people were the most important element in the Chinese Sage's conception of a nation. If the sovereign's rule were injurious to them, he must be dethroned. No Japanese in any epoch would have subscribed such a doctrine in its naked outlines. Yet in practice it received constant, though limited obedience, and the methods of obedience show striking conformity with the sequence of Mencius' prescriptions. For that philosopher laid down that the task of removing an unworthy ruler should be undertaken, first, by a member of the ruler's family; secondly, by a high minister, acting purely with a view to the public weal; and thirdly, failing either of these, by some subordinate "instrument of heaven." Mencius did not inculcate sedition, regicide, or open violence; the standard to be raised was not of rebellion, but of righteousness. In turning over the pages of Japan's annals, it is repeatedly seen that, while the "divine right" was uniformly recognised in theory, prince after prince, minister after minister, subordinate after subordinate, did not scruple to contrive the compulsory retirement of sovereign, Shōgun, or feudal chief, easily persuading himself, or being honestly forced by circumstances to believe, that his own elevation to the place of the deposed ruler would make for the good of the people. Shintō educated no such tendency. Buddhism did not educate it. Whence, then, its origin but in Chinese philosophy?^[22] It has become crystallised in the ethics of the nation. Scarcely a Japanese, however lowly his origin or humble his station, lacks the conviction that he carries a natural mandate to redress wrong in a superior, and that the method of redress depends upon his own choice, provided that his failure in "submission" be compensated by strength of "sincerity," — the coördinates of loyal obedience. Practical illustrations of this characteristic are to to be found in the field of modern Japanese politics, as of ancient.

It is seen that Japan received from China a philosophy only. Her religion was her own, in so far as concerned a future state, the immortality of the soul, the cosmogony and the providence of the gods.

If the reader asks why to Chinese philosophy imported into Japan results are here attributed that did not attend its propagandism in the land of its origin, the only answer is that the same seed may produce dissimilar fruit in different soils.

That a connection existed between the religious creed of the nation and the castes into which society was divided, is apparent from the nomenclature of these castes, namely, the Shimbetsu, or "divine tribe," to which the sovereign and princes of the blood belonged, — in other words, the tribe including all direct descendants of the deities; the Kwobetsu, or "imperial tribe," composed of all remote descendants from the heavenly stock; and the Bambetsu, or "foreign tribe," consisting of the foreign elements of the population. The difference indicated by these terms is not clearly explicable. Japanese commentators are disposed to interpret Bambetsu in its literal sense, that is to say, as indicating, first, such of the aboriginal inhabitants as fell under the sway of the invaders, and secondly, aliens who, having either attached themselves to the Japanese proper during the latter's passage across the Asiatic continent to the Far-Eastern isles, or immigrated thither afterwards from Korea and China, were finally naturalised in Japan. There is also a plausible theory that inasmuch as the last and ultimately dominant body of Japanese immigrants found a part of the islands already under the sway of men who were not of the aboriginal race and whose fighting qualities commanded respect, the principal figures among these prior immigrants were admitted to the ranks of the Kwobetsu, while their lower orders were classed as Bambetsu. There appears to be little hope that these questions will be fully elucidated. As to the main lines of division, however, no doubt exists. The chiefs of the two great tribes, the Shimbetsu and the Kwobetsu, were priests as well as rulers. At the head of all stood the Mikado, — the Suberagi of ancient nomenclature, — who, originally within the precincts of the Palace only and afterwards by occasional visits to the principal shrine, performed religious rites on behalf of the nation's welfare. Immediately following him in order of dignity came the great families of Nakatomi, Mononobe, and Imbe representing the Kwobetsu. The heads of these houses possessed the right of disposing of the lives and properties of members, and the same right devolved upon the heads of the various branches into which the original households became divided as time elapsed. The Nakatomi traced their lineage to one of the principal councillors attached to the grandchild of the Sun Goddess when he descended to assume the rule of Japan; the Imbe to the deity that held the mirror and the go-hei before the cave on the immemorial occasion of the Sun Goddess' self-effacement; the Mononobe, to Susa-no-ō himself. Into whatever cloud-land of myth and marvel the line of these patriarchal families ascends, their title to divine origin has received the assent of all generations of Japanese, and the links that connect their pedigrees with the present prosaic era become visible in the facts that a branch of the Nakatomi changed their name to Fujiwara,^[23] in the seventh century, an epoch at which administrative functions began to interest them more than sacerdotal; that they were subsequently separated into the Five Governing Families (Go-Sekke); that up to the centralisation of the administration in 1868, the nominal prime-minister of every sovereign after he came of age, and the regent during his minority, belonged to the Fujiwara; that the Mononobe family has eight representatives among the present nobility, one of them being the celebrated Count Katsu, who played such a conspicuous part in the Restoration of 1867; and that no hereditary Shintō official (Kannushi) of this Meiji era entertains or admits any doubt of his ancestors' consanguinity with some deity, great or small.^[24] Of such materials is the Japanese nobility of to-day composed, for from some Kwobetsu or Shimbetsu family all the holders of hereditary titles in modern times can trace their descent.

At the other end of the scale stood the Bambetsu, including the commoner (heimin) and the serf (semmin), who were immeasurably removed from the patrician and excluded from association with him in this life or beyond the grave. Shintō indeed, was essentially the creed of the upper classes. They alone enjoyed the guardianship of the celestial and terrestrial divinities from whom they claimed descent and to whose ranks they would be admitted after death, and they obeyed the inductive system of Shintō morality which, though lacking codified tenets, certainly tended in many cases to produce a high type of character and to nurture a happy faith in the possibilities of a future state. But the heimin and the semmin, the commoners and the serfs, what religion did they embrace? Some of them, especially the farmers and artisans, might consider that they belonged remotely to the congregation of Shintō worshippers; but others were effectually excluded, since they lacked the essential qualification of consanguinity with the deities. Looking at the sharp lines of caste cleavage that divided both heimin and semmin from the patrician class, it seems evident that all these commoners and serfs stood originally outside the pale of the patrician creed. At any rate, if the place of the commoner in the hierarchy of the hereafter is to be regulated by his station in the society of the present, the life beyond the grave cannot have presented to him a very smiling aspect.

To a nation thus constituted Buddhism came in the second half of the sixth century. Buddhism has no element of exclusiveness. It resembles that house of many mansions on which the hopes of the numerous multiple-minded sections of Christian humanity are fixed with equal assurance that each has found the truth. In its library of over two thousand sutras, one of which, translated into Chinese, is twenty-five times as large as the whole Christian Bible, every searcher after the great verity may find materials to construct a creed according to the pattern of his own intellectual and emotional nature, and none can confidently assert that upon him alone the light of inspiration has shone, for none dare pretend to imagine that his researches have been exhaustive. It is here that an explanation may be found of the tranquil tolerance amid which the various sects of Buddhism have been evolved. It is here, too, that the faith attracts special interest, for, by inviting eclecticism, it becomes a mirror of its interpreter's mind. In each vessel of water drawn from the well where Buddhist truth lies so profoundly buried, a reflection may be seen of the drawer's moral features, and it follows that were it possible to trace accurately the developments received by Buddhism and the changes it has undergone during the twelve hundred years of its active existence in Japan, the student would find himself looking very closely at the genius of the Japanese people and at the guiding spirit of their civilisation.

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1. See Appendix, note 16.

   Note 16.—Ichikawa's view has been ably summarised by Sir Earnest Satow. He sets out by declaring that all unwritten traditions must be considered unworthy of belief, not only because they rest on the very fallible testimony of memory and hearsay, but also because the most striking, and therefore the most improbable, stories are precisely those most likely to be thus preserved. He then goes on to show that, on the most favourable hypothesis, the art of writing did not become known in Japan until a thousand years had separated the reign of the first mortal ruler from the compilation of the first manuscript record. He conjectures that "Amaterasu" was a title of comparatively modern invention. He contends that no cosmogony can be credible which makes vegetation antecedent to the birth of the sun. He declares unhesitatingly that the claim of sun-genesis was probably invented by the earliest Mikado for political purposes. He denies that the gods in heaven make any racial distinctions, geographical conditions being alone responsible for such accidents. He refuses to accept any arithmetic of years when the calculators were men without cyclical signs or assisting script, and he concludes by declaring that if the ancestors of living men were not human beings, they arc more likely to have been animals or birds than gods,—by which last proposition he seems to indicate a belief in progressive evolution.

2. See Appendix, note 17.

   Note 17.—This remarkable scholar and philosopher was born in 1730 and died in 1801. He is justly regarded by his countrymen as the greatest interpreter of their ancient faith. The brief review of his opinions given in the text is a summary of Sir Earnest Satow's analysis of his works in "The Revival of Pure Shintō."

3. See Appendix, note 18.

   Note 18.—Hirata Atsutane.

4. See Appendix, note 19.

   Note 19.—Being constructed of wood, the buildings are so perishable that instead of resorting to a process of constant repair, new edifices are erected, on an alternate site, every second decade.

5. See Appendix, note 20.

   Note 20.—The offerings varied, more or less, but generally included a bow, a sword, a mirror, a silk baldachin, "bright cloth, glittering cloth, fine cloth, and coarse cloth," saké jars, sweet herbs and bitter herbs, "things narrow of fin and wide of fin," etc., all of which, to use the language of the ritual, were "piled up like ranges of hills."

6. See Appendix, note 21.

   Note 21.—These funeral orations often rise to heights of remarkable pathos, dignity, and beauty, and are read aloud by the chief priest in a manner at once simple and impressive.

7. See Appendix, note 22.

   Note 22.—The language of these rituals is sometimes full of fervour and eloquence.

8. See Appendix, note 23.

   Note 23.—Compare Mr. Alfred Wallace's account of the young lady's "double," inspected with a phosphorus lamp and afterwards embraced by a fellow of the Royal Society.

9. See Appendix, note 24.

   Note 24.—Closely resembling the "Pottergeist" of the Germans, and having some affinities with the "Pixies" of Anglo-Saxondom.

10. See Appendix, note 25.

    Note 25.—From tori (a bird) and i (to rest, or perch).

11. See Appendix, note 26.

    Note 26.—Thousands of these miniature shrines are to be seen in the rice-fields or in the vicinity of hamlets. They are erected in honour of the Spirit of Food. As to the name "Inari," it is said by some sinologues to be that of a place, but the general belief in Japan makes it a contraction of ine-ninai or the rice-carrier. The fox is supposed to be an agent of the god; hence the stone foxes usually placed near the shrine.

12. See Appendix, note 27.

    Note 27.—Mr. Percival Lowell has published a delightfully written volume on this subject.

13. See Appendix, note 28.
    Note 28.—

    Kokoro dani
    Makoto no michi ni
    Kanainaba,
    Inorazu totemo
    Kani ga mamoran

    That is the code of Shintō ethics as summed up in the tenth century by Fujiwara no Michizane, the deity Tenjin of subsequent eras.

14. See Appendix, note 29.

    Note 29.— "The Revival of Pure Shintō," Satow, in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Japan.

15. See Appendix, note 30.

    Note 30.—It was believed that man depended on the wind for his breath.

16. See Appendix, note 31.

    Note 31.—The Terrestrial Deities ruled over the "Unseen." They were the god O-kuni-nushi (who yielded the sovereignty of Japan to Ninigi), and his consort Suberi-hime. On them devolved the direction of everything that could not be ascribed to a definite author: as the tranquillity of the State, its prosperity, and the lives and fortunes of its people.

17. See Appendix, note 32.

    Note 32.—Hirata Atsutane in "The Revival of Pure Shintō," Satow.

18. See Appendix, note 33.

    Note 33.—"The Spirits of the dead," writes Hirata Atsutane in the Tama no Mihashira, "continue to exist in the unseen world, which is everywhere about us. They all become gods of varying character and degrees of influence. Some reside in temples built in their honour; others never leave their tombs. They continue to render services to their princes, wives, and children, as when in the body." Elsewhere he says: "You cannot hope to live more than a hundred years under the most favourable circumstances, but as you will go to the Unseen Realm of O-kuni-nushi after death and be subject to his rule, learn betimes to bow down before him."

19. See Appendix, note 34.

    Note 34.—The final use to which these pieces of wood were put is curious. They had to be exchanged every half year for new fragments, and the old were employed to light the fire under a bath for the virgin priestesses that danced at the festival of purification.

20. See Appendix, note 35.

    Note 35.—A hare, desiring to cross from a mid-ocean island to the mainland, taunted the sea-sharks by alleging that its tribe numbered more than theirs. By way of practical test, it invited them to range themselves in line between shore and shore. That done, the hare, jumping from back to back and professing to count as it leaped, reached its desired destination. But ultimately conceit prompted it to jeer before its feet were fairly planted on dry land, and by the last shark in the line its skin was torn off. As it lay writhing and weeping, a band of deities approached. The elder brothers of O-kuni-nushi (the terrestrial ruler of Japan), they were journeying to pay court to Princess Yakimi of Inaba, whom they all loved. Observing the hare's misery, they bade it bathe in the brine of the sea and lie thereafter exposed to sun and wind, by which unkindly prescription the animnal's sufferings were doubled. Presently O-kuni-nushi, who had been degraded by his brothers to the position of baggage-carrier, came along bearing his burden. He told the unhappy hare to wash in the fresh water of the river and roll its body in the pollen of the sedges; and being thus restored, it promised that he, not his brothers, should win the princess, which so fell out.

21. See Appendix, note 36.

    Note 36.—This is a complete answer to the shallow critics who allege that love, in the Occidental sense of the term, is not known in Japan. Hope of finding beyond the grave the union which in life circumstances forbid, is responsible for suicides so numerous that the theory of these critics becomes mere silliness.

22. See Appendix, note 37.

    Note 37.—Motoori Motonaga, the celebrated exponent of "Pure Shintō" in the eighteenth century endorses the above view which has here been arrived at by direct comparison of Chinese philosophy and Japanese history. He says that the ethics enumerated by the Sages of China may be reduced to two simple rules: "Take other people's territory and hold it fast when you've got it," and he distinctly attributes to the influence of Chinese learning the contumacy shown toward the Mikado in the middle ages by the Hōjō, the Ashikaga, and others. He might have greatly extended his list and carried it back much farther.

23. See Appendix, note 38.

    Note 38.—It may be accepted as a historical fact that eight names instituted by the Emperor Temmu at the close of the seventh century corresponded pretty closely with our modern idea of titles of nobility. For example, members of the Kwobetsu who became governors of provinces, received the name Mabito. Members of the same tribe hitherto called Omi were thenceforth designated A-son; others previously called Muraji became Suku-ne and so on.

24. See Appendix, note 39.

    Note 39.—The chief Shintō official at the great shrine in Izuma claims to be the eighty-second descendant in a direct line from the deity Susano-o.

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