Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 5/Chapter 5
Chapter V
RELIGION AND RITES
Western students of Buddhism are wont to say that the religion has for its basis the unreality of everything, and for its goal, non-existence; that it regards man's life on earth as a link in a continuous chain of probations, to the length of which every sin adds something, so that salvation may not be reached until three immeasurable æons have lapsed.
Such is not the Buddhism of Japan. The creed, as first preached to the Japanese, was very simple. It prescribed five negative precepts and ten positive virtues,[1] of which it is enough to say that, were they practised to the letter, a high standard of morality would have been reached. These injunctions the disciple was asked to accept with unreasoning assurance. Shintō furnished no code nor formulated any commandment. Buddhism pursued precisely the opposite plan. It issued a guiding canon of the utmost precision, but it refrained from any exposition of motives. Its method tallied exactly with that prescribed by teachers of the ideographic script which had then become the vehicle for transmitting all learning to Japan. Just as the student of the foreign symbols began by mastering their sounds and shapes and was afterwards inducted into their meanings, so an inquirer at the portals of Buddhism was first shown the letter of the law, and when he had learned how to obey, received an explanation of the principles underlying it. In the opening stage of discipline, his own salvation constituted his sole motive of conduct; in the subsequent stage of enlightenment,[2] he developed an ardent desire to save others also. But in both stages alike salvation was separated from him by an interval which his individual exertions could not bridge. Is it not easy to conceive that the great majority of the new creed's disciples never passed beyond the first stage; and is it not easy also to see that to the plebeian and proletariat classes, banished beyond the range of Shintō instincts and the pale of its privileges, this arithmetically precise and comfortably explicit doctrine of the Buddha offered a welcome moral refuge?
But the difference between the ardent practicality of the Japanese mind and the dreamy patience of Oriental dispositions in general, quickly affected the reception accorded to the new creed. In its moral precepts there was nothing that could be called a revelation to the members of the patrician caste, nor did its immeasurably deferred hope compare attractively with their own prospect of certain admission after death to the ranks of the deities. Even the plebeian wanted something more tangible than a heaven from which he was separated by an eternity of effort. Thus Buddhism received its first Japanese modification. A sect arose,[3] preaching that beatitude meant knowledge of the "Lotus Law;" that the attainment of that knowledge ensured immediate entry into Buddhahood, and that the ancient deities whom Japan worshipped were but manifestations of the Buddha. Such adaptations quickly won for Buddhism a strong title to popular regard. It ceased to be an alien creed and became a liberal expansion of the indigenous faith.[4] It secured to the patrician his old privileges while extending them to the plebeian.
But there remained in this new conception two deterrent elements. To reach the knowledge which opened the gate to salvation, it was essential that the disciple should free himself from worldly concerns and influences, should stand aloof from work-a-day existence, should banish all sense of the beautiful, and should become absorbed in meditating on absolute truth.[5] Such a programme repelled the average Japanese. He found it admirable to worship the Buddha of "infinite light and life," and comfortable to think that the state of blessedness might be attained by the work of a single life-span. He readily adjusted his feet to the first three steps of progress, — obedience to the precepts of morality, regulation of food and clothing, and the choice of a suitable house, — but when he came to the fourth, when he had to accept the necessity of turning his back on the busy world and harmonising his faculties to a meditative career, the demand overtaxed his dolicity. Besides, the "Lotus Law" dealt in mysteries beyond comprehension. Its teachings lapsed into a vagueness, its doctrines extended to a comprehensiveness, that bewildered common intelligence. Soon a new system was elaborated. The omnipresent spirit of truth became the centre of the "diamond world" of noumena and the source of organic life in the world of phenomena. To reach to the realisation of the truth two ladders were revealed, an intellectual and a moral, — two canons, each of ten precepts, easy to comprehend and not deterrently difficult to practise. At the head of all virtues stood a charity to which the Christian apostle's celebrated definition might aptly have been applied. The scope of this preeminent virtue was described with minutely practical accuracy. It included the digging of wells, the building of bridges, the making of roads, the maintenance of one's parents, the support of the church, the nursing of the sick, the succouring of the poor, and the duty of recommending these same acts to others. There were further noble precepts, and there was also an elaborate system of daily worship and prayer. All idea of abstention from the affairs of every-day life disappeared, and the hereafter became, not a state of absolute non-existence (nirvana), but the "infinite perception of a beatific vision;" a condition in which each of the saved formed one of a band of great intercessors, pleading continually for their ignorant and struggling brethren upon earth that they might attain to the same heights of perfect enlightenment and bliss.[6]
This is the Shingon Sect, the sect of the "True Word," the sect of the Logos, founded in 816 A.D. by one of the greatest of Japanese religious teachers, Kōbō Daishi. So far as it has been here set down, its outlines might easily be adapted to a partial picture of Christianity. There is a great presiding spirit; there is an ethical system that the followers of the Nazarene might endorse; there is a band of interceding saints in heaven; there is an eternity of happiness; there is an everlasting law of retribution, every infraction of the moral code entailing a commensurate penalty; there are incarnations of the supreme being — not one incarnation, indeed, but several — whose mission is to lead men to the knowledge of the truth. But if such affinities with Christianity exist, so also do differences. There is a belief in previous existences and in their unknown sins, by which the devotee is kept entangled in the cycle of life and death; there is prayer to the gods of the country, the Shintō deities; and there is worship of ancestors, in a modified form indeed, but still worship.
With this development of Buddhism the Japanese may be said to have remained content for three hundred and sixty years. Then, in the presence of perpetual wars, spoliations, and miseries, the creed took another shape, a shape that reflected the conditions of the time. Salvation by faith was preached. The world had fallen upon such evil days that a cry of despair went up to Amida, the Buddha of endless life and light. Men were taught that works could not avail, and that in blind trust, aided by the repetition of ceaseless formula, lay the only hope of salvation. Such was the doctrine of the Sect of the Pure Land (Jodo), founded by Honen Shonin (1174 A.D.). It attracted numerous disciples. The comforting tenet that by simple trust in Amida during life admittance to his paradise might be secured after death perfectly suited the dejected mood of the age, and would, indeed, suit the mood of men in all ages antecedent to the millennium.[7]
Fifty years later, another sect was born, a child of the "Pure Land," namely, the Spirit Sect.[8] The latter did not supplant the former, but rather supplemented it. In this new system love was added to trust. Grateful remembrance of the mercies of Amida, and faith in his willingness and power to save, now sufficed to secure salvation and to keep the devotee's feet in the true path. There were other differences also. The disciple learned, not that Amida waited until the hour of a man's death to conduct him to paradise, but that the coming of the saviour was present and immediate; that he took up his abode at once, even during life, in the heart of the saved. The doctrine, essential to all forms of Buddhism, remained, — the doctrine that misfortune in this world has its root in some evil wrought in a previous state of existence, — but it received the adjunct that neither Amida nor any other Buddha might be invoked to interrupt the natural sequence of cause and effect, and, as a logical corollary, amulets, spells, and all such aids were interdicted. The devotee was no longer invited to become a priest, — to abandon his home and embrace celibacy. All in every rank and of every calling were entitled to entertain an equal hope of salvation. The priests themselves ceased to observe some of the vetoes that chiefly distinguished them from laymen. They married, ate meat, and, if desirable, replaced the stole by the surcoat. They learned in the domestic circle those sympathies and appreciations that a celibate can never develop.
This "Spirit Sect" is the largest in Japan. With its parent, the "Pure Land Sect," it possesses more than one-half of all the temples in the country.[9] It is full of vitality. Its doctrines as to the origin of the world, the sphere of providential functions, original sin, the efficacy of prayer, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, do not so greatly shock ordinary intelligence, or make such large demands on unreasoning credulity, as do the corresponding tenets preached from Western pulpits.[10]
Among the last sects calling for notice here is one that has attracted considerable observation among Occidental students of Japanese Buddhism. It is the sect of the "Flower of the Law" (Hokke-shu), founded (1253 A.D.) by Nichiren (the Lotus of Light), one of the noblest and most picturesque figures among Japanese "saints." The essential difference between the creed of Nichiren and the creeds of all his predecessors is that he preached a god, the prime and only great cause. They showed to their disciples a chain of cause and effect, but had nothing to say about its origin; he taught that the first link in the chain was the Buddha of original enlightenment, of whom all subsequent Buddhas, Sakyamuni and the rest, were only transient reflections, Nichiren thus reached the Christian conception of a god in whom everything lives, moves, and has its being; an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient deity. All phenomena, mental and material, in all time and space, were declared by him to have only subjective existence in the consciousness of the individual. The differences and distinctions observed by the ordinary man were imaginary and misleading; had no foundation in fact. In the eyes of the Buddha there was identity where the vulgar saw variety. To know the underlying sameness of all things; to understand the oneness of the perceiver and the perceived, — that was true wisdom. It followed that this world, so full of evils to mortal vision, did not differ from paradise in the Buddha's sight. To the enlightened all worlds were equally beautiful. "Hence, to proclaim the identity of this evil or phenomenal world with the glorious underlying reality, or noumenon; to point out the way to Buddhahood; to open the path of salvation; above all, to convince the people that one and all of them might become Buddhas, here and now, — that was the mission of the sect of Nichiren."[11]
The tenets of the sects thus far described may be said to represent the forms in which Buddhism appealed to the masses. Such doctrines did not find much vogue among the military class. The favourite creed of the latter was embodied in the dogmas of the Zen Sect, which, whether as a curious coincidence or as an outcome of the tendency of the time, had its origin in the thirteenth century and was therefore coeval with the establishment of military feudalism. Having been instructed in the general problems of life and of salvation, and enlightened about the doctrine of Karma, the Zen disciple was taught the duty of confession, because when a man acknowledges his sins he may be said to have put them away from him. Then followed the process of contemplation (zazen), which was the chief characteristic of the sect. Its successful practice demanded a mood like that of the ascetic, who by sheer force of will subjects all his passions and emotions to the unique purpose of entering into the perfection of religious faith. Partly because such mental training helped to educate inflexibility of resolution, essential to a soldier, and partly because, by carrying the disciple entirely beyond himself and his surroundings, it rendered him indifferent to death or danger, the Zen Sect won many followers among the Samurai. This subject, having already been explained in connection with the Bushido, need not be elaborated here, for the interest of the Zen Sect centres on the part it took in developing the Japanese military type.
Thus the colours that Buddhism took in its transmission through the Japanese mind were all bright hues. Death ceased to be a passage to mere non-existence and became the entrance to actual beatitude. The ascetic selfishness of the contemplative disciple was exchanged for a career of active charity. The endless chain of cause and effect was shortened to a single link. The conception of one supreme, all-merciful being forced itself into prominence. The gulf of social and political distinctions that yawned so widely between the patrician and the plebeian, and all the other unsightlinesses of the world, became subjective eidola destined to disappear at the first touch of moral light. The Buddha and the people were identified.
Religion does not overshadow the daily life of the Japanese. The gloomy fanatic is unknown. Confession of sins, repentance in sackcloth and ashes, solemn and protracted acts of worship, the terrors of an eternity of torture, — these things enter scarcely at all into the layman's existence. The temple presents itself to him as a place where the mortuary tablets of his ancestors are guarded; a place to be visited for the burning of incense at tombs and their adornment with flowers on anniversaries of the deaths of near relatives; a place for the occasional deposit of small coins in an alms-chest; a place for offering up brief prayer when every-day affairs seem in need of the Buddha's divine influence; a place where the ashes of the worshipper himself will in the end be laid to rest, and whither his own friends and relatives will come to honour his memory when he too shall have received from the priests one of those beautiful and benevolent posthumous titles which they know so well how to choose. It is all essentially practical and easy-going. If a man needs moral guidance, he goes to the temple and listens to a sermon. On set days, sometimes every day, one of the priests preaches. He kneels before a small lectern on a dais raised a little above the wide area of the matted nave, and talks to the people sitting around him on the floor. His sermon is generally of the simplest. It deals with the affairs of common life; with the small cares of Osandon, the maid of all work; with the troubles of Detchi, the shop-boy; with the woes of O-yuki, the danseuse, and with the perplexities of Tarobei, the rustic. Great ceremonies of worship may also be attended, but with these the ordinary individual has no intellectual sympathy. They are to him merely spectacular effects; solemn, splendid, and impressive, but incomprehensible. If the devout watches them with awed mien, the little belles of the parish are guilty of no irreverence when they patter up the steps leading to the lofty hall of worship, peep in smilingly at the tonsured chaunters of litanies and reciters of sutras, and patter away again with just such faces of sunny unconcern as they might wear on their way home from a dancing-lesson. Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, can never produce a Puritan or a Covenanter. It weaves no threads of solemnity or sanctimoniousness into the pattern of every-day life. Its worlds of hungry demons and infernal beings are too unsubstantial, too remote, to throw any lurid glare over the present. The festival, indeed, may be called the popular form of worship in Japan — such a festival as can be seen at the Ikegami temple,[12] on the anniversary of Nichiren, whose doctrine of the Flower of the Law has been outlined above. It is a species of gala for the huge multitude — numbering some two hundred thousand — that throng thither during the two days of the fête. If the tiny band of devout folks that listen to the sermon be compared with the gay crowds that roam about the beautiful woods, enjoy the enchanting landscapes and seascapes presenting themselves on every side, and frequent the various entertainments provided for their diversion by itinerant showmen, the ratio of holiness to holiday becomes very suggestive. It may be difficult for the reader to imagine the precincts of a Christian cathedral on a saint's day occupied by acrobats, jugglers, travelling menageries, performing dogs, and such frivolities, while the business of prayer and preaching proceeds vigorously within the walls of the building. Yet such a conception of the Japanese scene is only partial: it must be supplemented by another strange feature, namely, that the temple-building stands open throughout the whole of one side, so that the people who happen to be praying within are virtually a part of the audience enjoying the penny-shows without. Here, as everywhere in Japan, the practical sincerity of the national character shows itself. Even at a religious festival, no effort to dissimulate the traits of which humanity can never divest itself is encouraged or expected. The great majority of the people come for the sake of the outing as much as to pay respect to the memory of the saint. Let them, then, enjoy themselves. Religion does not prescribe austerity of manners or asceticism of life. The Buddhas arc not shocked because a monkey turns summersaults under the caves of their sanctuaries, or a rope-dancer balances in the shadow of their shrines. In this very rope-dancer, too, the observer may see another instance of the spirit of sincerity that presides at the festival. In Europe a female gymnast dresses in flesh-coloured tights and seeks to place her womanhood in suggestive evidence. The Japanese girl at the Ikegami fête has no such fancy. Her business is rope-dancing, not meretricious posing. The latter may be very well in its way, but has nothing to do with the poising of one's body on some strands of plaited hemp. Therefore the Ikegami girl, who undertakes to exhibit skill in the science of equilibrium, wears garments which, while they are excellently suited to the purposes of her performance, are even better qualified to divert attention from the sex of the performer. There, too, in another part of the spacious grounds, a party of priests may be seen watching the manœuvres of some highly trained birds. They are jaunty, saucy little chaffinches as ever exhibited themselves in public; and to see them skip out of their cages, bow to their trainer and to the audience, ring bells, count coins, pound rice, and do the woodpecker business against every convenient post, is to conceive a new respect for bird intelligence. So the praying goes on, and the rattling of cash against the bars of the money-chest, and the burning of incense, and the chattering of monkeys, and the shouting of showmen, and the perpetual rippling of laughter and the babble of cheery talk, as the great, good-humoured multitude flows to and fro, not a bit nearer to hell or farther from heaven because its units have studied no hypocritical mien of sanctimoniousness, nor been trained to deceive their deity by putting a veneer of puritanism over the instincts which he has implanted in their breasts.
But, in such a crowd, what proportion does the literate element bear to the illiterate, the patrician to the plebeian? And if the philosopher is there as well as the bumpkin, the savant as well as the servant, how much of pastime is the motive of each and how much of worship? That is a great question. It amounts to asking what has been the influence of Buddhism upon the educated classes in Japan. Undoubtedly that influence was once very powerful. Undoubtedly the religion possessed, at the time of its advent, numerous features strongly attractive. It brought in its company a noble literature, a literature pregnant with philosophic thought presented to the mind in attractive guise, a literature embodying everything that was profound and beautiful in Oriental speculation. It built for itself temples the grandeur of whose architectural proportions and the gorgeousness of whose decoration surpassed Japanese conception. Its priests manifested a spirit of activity, benevolence, and self-denial that could not but impress a nation entirely strange to the spectacle of religious zeal. It found a people devoting themselves to the study of Chinese literature with all the fervour that marks their descendants' excursions into the domain of Western learning, and it presented to them a library of books within whose ideographic pages was enshrined a mine of speculative thought, a mass of obscure, intricate, subtle metaphysical suggestions that derived a semblance of profundity from their very strangeness, of magnificence from the ignorance of their students. The minute mechanism of the new system constituted an additional attraction. It carried men from the simplest and vaguest of creeds to the most complex and definite; from a faith without ethical code or canons of dogma to a faith extraordinarily rich in both. If there is, as we know there is, a tendency in the human mind to pass from one extreme to another, it is easy to understand how gladly the feet of many turned from wandering in the trackless deserts of Shintō to march in the beaten paths and along the carefully graded highways of Buddhism. Further, the monasteries were the chief seats of learning. Proficiency in Buddhism was synonymous with proficiency in the Chinese language; with possession of the key to all the stores of the Middle Kingdom's learning. Yet, when we come to ask whether from this array of secular and religious arguments the conclusion may be derived that the supernatural phases of Buddhism impressed themselves upon the hearts of the educated classes, the answer must be negative. It is hard, indeed, to imagine a total lack of that kind of faith among men who in mediæval times contributed vast sums to support or endow temples, made them the depositories of their ancestral tablets, and repaired thither at set seasons to hear orisons chaunted, sutras read, and sermons preached. But still more difficult is it to conceive that, had the transcendental doctrines of Buddhism sunk deep into the national mind, some evidence of the fact would not have been furnished in the growth of a philosophical literature, the product of lay pens. There is practically no such literature. On the contrary, there are plain indications that the supernatural beliefs of Buddhist teachers gradually became the object of open or covert ridicule among the learned, and were ultimately relegated to much the same place in the minds of educated men as ghost stories occupy in European or American thought to-day. In short, religion, as distinguished from morality, came to be quietly ignored. Nothing survived beyond an instinctive belief in the immortality of the soul, and a traditional faith in a future world peopled by the shades of parents and relatives loved in life and reverenced after death. Much of the vogue so speedily attained and so steadily retained by Confucianism is doubtless due to the subordinate place assigned to supernatural religion in that system. Confucianism, too, owing to the note of feudalism that sounds through its philosophy, has been found to be more or less out of harmony with the spirit of Occidental civilisation, and is destined, in its turn, to pass into the oblivion where so many Oriental systems lie buried. But through fourteen centuries it worked steadily and powerfully to turn the mind of educated Japan from transcendental subtleties and religious mysticism to a conviction that the only true and rational creed is one which subjects the human faculties to no excessive strain, nor asks men to accept, on the alleged authority of supernatural revelation, propositions lying wholly beyond the range of mortal intelligence. Buddhism, in the comparatively bright and comfortable garments with which Japanese genius clothed it, is the faith of the masses, but the scholar proposes to himself a simpler creed, an essentially work-a-day system of ethics. To be moral, honest, and upright; to be guided by reason and not by passion; to be faithful to friends and benefactors; to abstain from meanness and selfishness in all forms; to be prepared to sacrifice everything to country and king, — that is the ideal of the cultured mind, and in the pursuit of it no priestly guidance is considered necessary. If a Japanese be asked to define the much-talked-of Yamato damashii, — the spirit of Yamato, — he will do so in the words set down here.
As to the masses, the farmer, the artisan, the shopkeeper, and the proletariat, though it may be said that Buddhism is their creed, it must also be said that at sacred service as well as at festival time they do not take their faith very seriously. A visitor to a temple on the day of the sekkyo, the day of the sermon, which has been duly advertised on a species of sign-board at the entrance of the enclosure, cannot fail to note that nine-tenths of the congregation are white-haired, the remainder consisting of children with a sparse admixture of adults. Hodge may be there, driven by the dread that some unsettled account stands between him and the heaven which ought to have averted the typhoon from his rice-field or the insect plague from his mulberry plantation; and little O-setsu may be there, who last evening sat beside her brazier, her dimples banished and her sweet head bowed as she mused over the ingwa, the indissoluble chain of causation, that had linked her to love troubles and a throbbing heart. But these are the exceptions. Generally the worshipper carries with him wrinkles and snowy locks, and a hope that since the affairs of the "fleeting world" have become to him as "dust before the wind," he may by pious practices acquire a vested interest in the affairs of the world to come. He can follow the sermon. It 
Wooden Bridge at Iwakuni.
The religious service is strikingly different from the sermon: the latter a practical, plainly phrased adaptation of saving ethics to every-day affairs; the former, a mysterious, impressive, and enigmatical display, as far removed from mundane affinities as is the lotus throne itself. At one of the great temples, in a hall of worship fifty feet high, four times as many long and three times as many broad, these services may be seen by all comers. The huge hall is absolutely without decoration, except in one spot where stand the shrine and the altar, a mass of glowing gold and rich colours, mellowed by wide spaces on either side to which the daylight scarcely penetrates. Within a circular enclosure at the outer end of the nave sit a band of acolytes, chaunting to an accompaniment of wooden timbrels. Their voices are pitched in octaves, and the number of chaunters is varied from time to time so as to break the monotony of the cadence. When this has continued for some moments, nine priests, richly robed, emerge slowly and solemnly from the back of the chancel, and kneel before an equal number of lecterns ranged in line on the left of the altar. Each priest carries a chaplet of beads, and on each lectern is a missal. Then the chaunt of the acolytes ceases, and the priest in the middle of the line opens the sutra and reads aloud. One by one his companions follow his example, until the nine voices blend in a monotone, which, in turn, is varied by the same device as that previously adopted by the acolytes. After an interval, another similar band pace gravely down the chancel, and kneeling on the right of the altar, opposite the first comers, add their voices, in the same cumulative fashion, to the varying volume of sound. Finally, the chief priest himself emerges, attended by an acolyte, and kneels, facing the altar, at a large lectern placed between the two rows of sutra-readers. He confines himself at first to burning incense, and, as the fumes ascend denser and denser, the intonation of the reading priests grows more and more accelerated, until at last their words pour forth with bewildering volubility. Then suddenly this peal of resonance dies away to a scarcely audible murmur, and while its echoes are still trembling in the air, they are joined by the voice of the chief priest, which by degrees absorbs them into its swelling note, and then itself faints to a whisper, taken up in turn and swelled to a rolling chaunt by the tones of the sutra-readers. These alternations of intoning constitute virtually the whole ceremony. It is grave, awe-inspiring, and massive in its simplicity. It captivates the senses by degrees, and lifts them at last to an ecstasy where reason ceases to discern that the components of the grand ceremony are nothing more than deftly interwoven fragments of a chaunted litany, gorgeous vestments, a heart of glowing gold and soft colours in a vast sepulchre of shadow, and an edifice of noble proportions. But that analytical consciousness certainly comes to the average layman sooner or later. That he has reached it is plainly shown by his mien. The sketchy act of worship that he uses as a passport to such ceremonials bears as little proportion to their magnificence as does the fee paid at the door of a theatre to the tumultuous moods of mirth or sadness produced by the spectacle within. Nothing in which the mechanical element predominates can be permanently interesting. The Buddhist services appeal only to a narrow range of emotions and leave the intellect untouched. The adult Japanese takes little interest in them. To be a frequent temple-goer out of season — that is to say, on occasions other than those dictated by reverence to the memory of a deceased relative or friend — is to be regarded by one's neighbours as uncanny, unpractical, and probably unfortunate.
The priest himself contributes little, either by intellectual culture or a life of conspicuous zeal and virtue, to raise his religion to a place in the people's hearts. He used to be the nation's schoolmaster as well as its scholar. The State has stepped in and relieved him of the former function; the latter title he has long lost. The example he sets is one of indolence. Now and then, in the perfunctory routine of colourless duty, he has to intone a litany that has been ringing in his ears since childhood, and always his figure looms on the horizon of the layman's life when incense has to be burned and prayer said for the soul of the departed. But, for the rest, he is without occupation. He is not to be found waiting with words of comfort at the bedside of the dying, or with hands of helpfulness in the hovels of the poor. Once only, at the great Bon festival, when the spirits of the dead revisit the homes of the living, the priest finds himself busied with ministrations. But it is an interval of only four days, and the work is lightened by its large reward, for during that brief space the major part of the year's income is collected.
The advent of Christianity has galvanised Buddhism into new life. The Western missionary came to uproot the lotus plant. His attack has resulted in making the sap circulate once more through its withered limbs. There is a sort of Buddhist revival. Schools have been established by each sect for the education of its priests; propagandists are sent out; periodicals are published. Buddhism is not dead. It is not even moribund. In the spring of 1895 the disciples of the Monto Sect assembled in Kyōtō to open a temple on the construction of which eight million yen had been spent, and in the transport of whose huge timbers cables made of women's hair had been used. Hundreds of thousands of believers had contributed money and material for the building; hundreds of thousands of women and girls had shorn off their tresses to weave these ropes. There is abundant life in the faith still.
With regard to the relations between religion and the State in Japan, it may be said that, up to the beginning of the ninth century, Shintō was the only officially recognised religion, though Buddhism enjoyed so much favour. A special department (Shingi-kan) of Shintō ceremonies managed all matters connected with worship, and stood at the head of the public offices. From the establishment of the capital at Kyōtō, however, the influence of Buddhism began to be felt, not in open opposition, but rather as an overshadowing and absorbing system, which, by appropriating the chief traditional features of its rival, gradually deprived the latter of individuality and therefore of power. Still the imported faith remained long without State recognition. Its priesthood, though growing in wealth and number, and practically autocratic within the domain of religious affairs, enjoyed no official exemptions or privileges. Their hierarchs were appointed without reference to the secular authorities, and were not included in the roll of official grades. Under the Tokugawa Government a change took place. Following the example of their great predecessor, Iyeyasu, the Shōguns ruling in Yedo spared no pains to cement their relations with Buddhism by extending to it ample patronage and support. Yet, even while striking monuments of that munificence grew up in the splendid mausolea at Shiba, Uyeno, and Nikko, the political status of the creed might have remained unaltered had not the advent of Christianity and the Government's crusade against it led the third Shōgun, Iyemitsu, to conceive the necessity of establishing a certain measure of State control over religious affairs. Regulations were then (early in the seventeenth century) issued that no priest should be promoted unless he had given evidence of erudition by passing an examination and unless he had led a life consistent with the tenets he taught. Further, in order to qualify for establishing a new or an independent temple, a priest must have devoted at least thirty years to investigation of the doctrine he undertook to propagate, and twenty years' study was declared an essential preliminary to public preaching, which also was forbidden to a priest if his conduct showed any lapse from strict morality. A novice had to be of approved ability and aptitude; no man might remain in a monastery unless he spent his time in study and strictly observed the moral law; a branch temple was required under all circumstances to obey the instructions of its principal temple; disputes among priests must be referred to the head of the sect, and might thereafter be carried to Yedo on appeal; radical changes in the denomination of a sect were forbidden, and though an abbot might pass over to a different sect, it was illegal for him to transfer his whole congregation without the sanction of his feudal chief or of the Yedo authorities, — a veto sufficient in itself to prove how little importance the people attached to sectarian questions. Buddhism further became at that epoch an openly recognised instrument in the State's campaign against Christianity. To be borne on a temple register was considered necessary evidence of non-adherence to the alien creed. The sect to which a man belonged, the regularity of his visits to a place of worship, the amount of his contributions for religious purposes, his observance of periodical rites, his habits as to keeping an image of Buddha in his house and praying before it morning and evening, — concerning all these things the priests were expected to furnish information, and they thus acquired a distinctly official status in the eyes of the nation. Otherwise, however, the State exercised little control, the priesthood retaining competence to elect their own prelates, enforce their own canons, and administer their own affairs. Only when propagandism was associated with grossly mischievous practices did the law interfere. Thus, at the close of the eighteenth century, a branch of the Spirit Sect fell under the displeasure of the authorities for constructing an edifice where long fasting and prayers, supposed to be rewarded by a personal manifestation of the Buddha, were carried to such fanatical excess that several people lost their reason and even their lives. Another strange abuse occurred, about the same time, at a temple in Yamato, where the priests claimed power to procure for the faithful a painless admission to Nirvana. They made good their promise by placing the victim in a coffin and killing him with spear-thrusts delivered secretly from beneath during a loud clamour of chaunting and prayer. This tragedy ultimately assumed a more refined form. In lieu of a coffin the priests prepared a bronze vessel shaped like a lotus-flower, and the worshipper having been laid within the petals of this emblem of paradise, his body was pierced by concealed blades. Such extreme abuses were rare; but in general, despite the rules spoken of above, the priests, corrupted by prosperity, sank into a state of ignorance and self-indulgence during the Tokugawa epoch, violating the austere tenets of their faith and breaking their vows of celibacy. The tests of erudition prescribed by law as a preface to promotion lost all practical value. High office was purchased with money rather than earned by merit. Prayers and ceremonials were sold. If a priest won renown by zeal and devotion, a crowd of sordid followers attached themselves to him, perverting his fame into an instrument of gain. Abbots bought the privilege of calling their temple the repository of some nobleman's mortuary tablet in order that they might blazon his crest on the furniture and curtains of the chancel. Many priests of noble character, profound piety, and wide erudition still upheld the best traditions of the creed, but the general moral level of the Buddhist clergy fell to an exceedingly low point.
It does not appear, however, that these priestly abuses brought popular discredit on the faith. The middle and lower classes remained unshaken in their belief. In almost every household an image of Buddha stood enshrined, and at morn and eve prayers and the fumes of incense ascended thence to heaven, while, in addition to these acts of daily worship, there were unfailing visits to temples to tell rosaries and place flowers in memory of the dead, and there were pilgrimages to the thirty-three shrines of Kwannon, to the twenty-four sanctuaries of the Spirit Sect, the twenty-five of the Pure Land, the eighty-eight of Daishi, to those of the Seven Deities in spring and of the six Amidas in autumn, to the six Jizō at all times, or to the twelve Yakushi, or the thirty Benzaiten, or the twenty-one temples of Nichiren, or the thousand sacred places of the central provinces. In short, Buddhism with its fêtes, its festivals, its ceremonials, its duties to the dead, its pilgrimages, its sermons, and its registers, occupied as large a place in the daily life of the Japanese middle and lower orders as Christianity has ever occupied in the life of any Western nation, though the former never exercised the same emotional influence as the latter, nor ever furnished an equally potent code of practical ethics.
It must be repeated, however, that Shintō, the ancient faith of the land, retained its place side by side with Buddhism. If in every district a temple stood for the worship of Buddha, there stood also a shrine for supplications to the guardian deity (Ujigami), and if each household had a Buddhist image, it had also a Shintō altar. From the Nara epoch when, as already stated, the Buddhist propagandists grafted the indigenous faith upon the imported by recognising the Shinto deities to be incarnations of Buddha, the two creeds became a duality (riyobu Shintō), and the Japanese nation presented the unique spectacle of a people paying homage to two systems of religion simultaneously. Not until the fifteenth century was any serious attempt made to separate them again. Yoshida Shingu (1489-1492) then sought to popularise a cult which he called "pure Shintō," but which was in reality indebted for many of its doctrines and ceremonies to the Tendai Sect of Buddhism. Ritualism was the distinguishing feature of this form of Shintō. In the seventeenth century three scholars — Hagiwara Kanetomo, Ideguchi Yenka, and Yamasaki Ansai — promoted another renaissance. Their doctrine, when carefully analysed, is found to have been an attempt to refer the origin of Japanese theology to the philosophy of China, the philosophy of the male and female principles. The effect of this importation of Chinese theories into the ancient faith of Japan was to call into existence a school of thinkers, culminating in the eighteenth century with Mabuchi, Motoori, and Hirata, who endeavoured to purge Shintō from Buddhist and Confucian elements alike and to reëstablish its connection with the beginnings of Japanese history. This last revival, being based on the century's oldest annals and associated with its most revered traditions, differed from that of Yoshida in that it dispensed with rituals and ceremonials, and from that of Yamasaki in that it totally eschewed the doctrine of the Yang and the Ying. It appealed essentially to the erudite section of the nation, whereas to the eyes of the illiterate it presented a cold, emotionless aspect, supplying neither a formula of worship nor a doctrine that could be connected with the interests of daily life. From that point of view the Shintō of Yamasaki Ansai was preferable for the sake of its association with the Book of Changes, with divination, and with fortune-telling; and the Shintō of Yoshida, since it furnished for every disciple the mechanical refuge of a thousand-times-iterated prayer, and for the pilgrim a supplication to which he could attune his steps as he ascended and descended a sacred mountain.[13] Speaking broadly, Shintō holds its place with the masses for the sake of its superstitions and its polytheism. Originally, a distinction existed between the Ubusuna-no-Kami, or local deity, and the Uji-gami, or household deity. But this difference ultimately ceased to be considered, and daily devotions at the domestic shrine were addressed to whichever deity presided over the worshipper's sphere of occupation or interest. In some cases the attributes of the ancient deities had become confused, and even their names forgotten,[14] but men did not trouble themselves about such things so long as some tutelary power could be invoked on every occasion and for every purpose. Perhaps the most intelligible way of differentiating the practical aspects of the two creeds is to say that the Shintō deities are invoked in connection with all the joys and successes of life; the Buddha is worshipped in connection with its sorrows and bereavements. No light is kindled nor any incense burned before the Hotoke at New Year's time or on other festive occasion, and when death or sickness visits a house, the Shintō altar, in turn, stands without worship.
It will readily be conceived that special rites have to be performed when petitions of great import are offered to heaven, — the o-komori, for example, which means twenty-one days of unceasing prayer within a shrine; the kankōri, or pouring ice-cold water over the naked body in midwinter; the hadashi-mairi, or barefooted worship; the hiyakudo-mairi, or hundred acts of devotion, and so on. But in general the pilgrimage is the greatest effort demanded of a Shintō or Buddhist believer.
Neither religion can lay claim to State protection in modern times. The Tokugawa Government added to the body politic a new class of officials called Jisha-bugyo, whose duty was to administer the secular laws in all matters relating to religion, and who were chosen from among the most influential nobles in the Empire. The Church was thus removed beyond the pale of the ordinary tribunals, and brought under the purview of the highest powers in the State. But the scholastic movement in the eighteenth century for the revival of pure Shintō assisted so materially to reëstablish the doctrine of the Throne's divinity, and thus to prepare the way for the Restoration in 1867, that the Meiji Government naturally identified itself with a creed of such political utility. The Jisha-bugyo, whose authority had extended to Shintō and Buddhism alike, were abolished, and in their stead was established the Shingi-sho, an office which ranked above all the State departments, and was practically a resuscitation of the Shingi-kan already mentioned. It is not to be doubted that the aim of the more radical reformers of the time was the ultimate suppression of Buddhism and the elevation of Shintō to the rank of a State church. For whereas the affairs of Shintō received direct superintendence from the new office, those of Buddhism ceased to be recognised by officialdom; the Buddhist temples were stripped of the greater part of their large estates, and since they necessarily lost at the same time the munificent patronage that had been extended to them by the feudal nobles, a season of decadence and impoverishment overtook them. But Buddhism had twined its roots too strongly round the hearts of the people to be overthrown by an official storm. Steadily it reasserted its influence, until, in 1872, the Shingi-sho was replaced by the Kyobu-sho, an office ranking lower than its predecessor, but still very high in the administrative organisation. From this office the priests of the two religions received equal recognition, and the same official title (kyōdō-shoku). Thenceforth the Government's purpose of identifying the interests of Church and State gradually ceased to have practical force, until (in 1884) the ranks and titles of the priests were abolished; the various sects were declared perfectly free to choose their own superintendents and manage their own affairs, and in the administrative organisation there remained only an insignificant Bureau of Shrines and Temples (Shaji-kyoku) to deal with questions from which the secular authority could not prudently dissociate itself.[15] The last tie that bound the Church to the State was severed by the promulgation of the Constitution in 1889, the twenty-seventh article of which declares that, "within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, Japanese subjects shall enjoy freedom of religious belief."
Shintō, however, remains the unique creed of the Imperial House. Appended to the Constitution by which freedom of conscience was unequivocally granted to the people, were three documents, — a preamble, an Imperial oath in the Sanctuary of the Palace, and an Imperial speech, — every one of which contained words that left no doubt of the sovereign's rigid adherence to the patriarchal faith of Japan. In the preamble His Majesty said: "Having, by virtue of the glories of our ancestors, ascended to the throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal; desiring to promote the welfare, and to give development to the moral and intellectual faculties of our subjects who have been favoured with the benevolent care and affectionate vigilance of our ancestors, and hoping to maintain the prosperity of the State in concert with our people and with their support, we hereby promulgate," etc.; in the Imperial oath he said: "We, the successor to the prosperous throne of our predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to the Imperial founder of our house and to our Imperial ancestors that, in consonance with a great policy coextensive with the heavens and with the earth, we shall maintain and secure from decline the ancient form of government. ... These laws (the Constitution) contain only an exposition of grand precepts for the conduct of the government, bequeathed by the Imperial founder of our house and by our other Imperial ancestors. That we have been so fortunate in our reign ... as to accomplish this work, we owe to the glorious spirits of the Imperial founder of our house and of our other Imperial ancestors;" and in the Imperial speech he says: "The Imperial founder of our house and our other Imperial ancestors, by the help and support of the forefathers of our subjects, laid the foundation of our empire upon a basis which is to last for ever. That this brilliant achievement embellishes the annals of our country, is due to the glorious virtues of our sacred Imperial ancestors and to the loyalty and bravery of our subjects, their love of country, and their public spirit." There is no ambiguity here, nor, indeed, any feebleness of language. The Mikado, looking back to the immortals as his progenitors, and persuaded that his dynasty and empire have their protection and the protection of the successive Mikados now enrolled in the ranks of the gods, believes that the past twenty-six centuries of his house's rule and his realm's integrity are an earnest of unbroken continuity awaiting both in the future. People in the Occident, who listen with the calm born of long custom while their monarchs proclaim themselves king or emperor "by the grace of God," and who join to the echoes of their triumphal pæans a prayer for the abiding contenance of the "Lord of Hosts," can scarcely claim an unqualified title to criticise the more comprehensive, though not more robust faith of the Emperor of Japan.
The various religious ceremonials observed at Court are all on the strict lines of orthodox Shintō. On the first day of the first month the Shihō-hai (four-quarter adoration) is celebrated. The Emperor worships the Sun Goddess, whose shrine is at Ise, as well as the celestial and terrestrial deities, and makes offerings before the Imperial cenotaphs, praying for the happiness of his people and the peace of his reign. On the third of the same month, the Imperial ancestors and the deities of heaven and earth are again worshipped, and petitions, now more particularly connected with the tranquillity and prosperity of the reign, are addressed to these supernatural guardians, in a ceremonial called the Genshi-sai (festival of the beginning); the significance being that the new year's work of administration commences with worship. On the eleventh of the second month the Kigen-setsu (memorial of the origin) is held, to commemorate the accession of the first mortal Emperor, Jimmu. On the seventeenth of the tenth month, the first rice of the year, and sakê brewed from it, are offered to the Sun Goddess, the ceremony being called Kanname (divine tasting). On the twenty-third of the eleventh month, a similar rite — the Niiname (new tasting) — is performed, the difference being that the first fruits are now offered to all the deities. The birthday of the Emperor himself is also celebrated, and four solemn mourning services are performed, one on the anniversary (thirtieth January) of the death of the late Emperor (Kōmei); the second on that (third April) of the death of the first Emperor (Jimmu); the third and fourth in memory of all the Imperial ancestors. These two last are called Shunki-kōrei-sai (worship of the Imperial spirits at the vernal equinox), and Shiuki-kōrei-sai (worship of the Imperial spirits at the autumnal equinox), and take place on the spring and autumn equinoctial days, respectively. Ancestral worship thus constitutes a prominent feature of all the religious rites in the Palace.
No material differences distinguish the routine of these ceremonials: to know one is to know all. Within the Palace there is a large hall, — the Kashiko-dokoro, or a place of reverence, — constructed of milk-white, knotless timbers, carefully joined and smooth as mirrors but absolutely devoid of decoration. At one end stands a large shrine, also of snow-pure wood, with delicately chased mountains of silver gilt. It encloses a model of the sacred mirror, representing the great ancestress, the Sun Goddess. Flanking it are two smaller shrines, one dedicated to all the Imperial ancestors since Jimmu, the other to the remaining deities of the Shintō pantheon. Before each shrine stands a censer. The floor is covered with rice-straw mats having borders of white damask, and within the folding doors of the shrines hang curtains woven out of bamboo threads. At the appointed hour — generally the grey of morning — sakaki[16] boughs are laid beside the shrines, and provision of incense (shinko) is made; after which the officials of the Bureau of Rites and those of the Imperial Household file in and seat themselves on either side of the hall. The doors of the shrines are then opened, and offerings of various kinds — vegetables, fish, cloth, and so forth — are carried in and ranged before them, solemn music in Japanese style being performed the while. Thereafter the princes of the blood and all officials of the two highest ranks (shinnin and chokunin), as well as the peers of the "musk chamber" (Jakō-no-ma) and the "golden-pheasant chamber" (Kinkei-no-ma), enter, and when they are seated, the Emperor himself appears, and proceeding slowly to the shrines, bows his head, takes a branch of sakaki with pendent go-hei, and having waved it in token of the purification of sins, ignites sticks of incense and places one upright in each censer, thereafter repeating a ritual (noto). So long as the Emperor is present in the hall, all the officials remain standing. His Majesty then retires, and, on his departure, worship of the same kind, but without any prayer, is performed by a representative of the Prince Imperial, by the princes of the blood, and by the various officials, each in due order of rank. Finally, the offerings are removed, the shrines are closed to accompaniment of music, as before, and all retire. An interval of a few minutes succeeds, and then once more the officials of the Household Department resume their seats, preparatory to worship by the Empress Dowager and the Empress. The routine and rites are exactly as before, but the official worshippers are different. They now include nobles of all orders, officials of the two inferior grades (sonin and hannin), Shintō and Buddhist superintendents, and the chief priests of the Monto Sect. The ceremony, owing to the numbers that take part in it and the unvaried solemnity of their procedure, occupies a long time, but is of the simplest character.
It is significant that the chief representatives of Buddhism join in these acts of Shintō worship; but since, as already shown, the apostles of Buddhism in Japan combined their creed with the indigenous faith by declaring, in the eighth century, that the Buddha of Light (Dainichi Nyorai, the Indian Birushanabutsu) had been incarnated as Amaterasu in Japan, as Saka-muni in India, and as Confucius in China, Buddhist hierarchs of modern times merely obey the tenets of their religion when they bow before the Shintō shrine in the Hall of Reverence. Christianity, however, has made no such adaptation. Yet among the body of officials who meet in the Kashiko-dokoro there must be many Christians. It would be possible for these men to absent themselves on the ground of sickness. In no country does a conventional excuse receive more generous recognition than in Japan. The plea of "indisposition" is accepted without scrutiny, and is understood to be serviceable as an explanation no less than as a reason. But if officials that profess Christianity and attend Christian places of worship made a habit of standing aloof, on whatever plea, from the services conducted by the Emperor in honour of the Sun Goddess and the spirits of the Imperial ancestors, there cannot be any doubt about the impression that such differentiation must ultimately produce upon the mind of the nation. In point of fact Christians do not stand aloof. They bow their heads and burn incense before the shrines in company with the disciples of Shaka and of Shintō. How much violence they do to their own religious convictions in thus acting, how much homage they pay to the god of expediency, need not be inquired. "Men can be strangled with a strand of soft silk," says a Japanese proverb. The impalpable essence of Japanese patriotism takes the place of the soft strand in this instance. The divine origin of the Emperor, the unbroken line of his descent from the immortals, the guardianship that his deified ancestors extended to the realm and its people, — these are essential bases of Japanese patriotism. It is a passionate patriotism, a fierce patriotism, overlaid from time to time in the past by ashes of disloyal ambition or domestic dissension, but now fanned into strong flame by the wind of Western masterfulness and intolerance. Whether any Japanese subject could openly dissociate himself from the tenets of this national cult — for patriotism in modern Japan is nothing less than a national cult — and could yet lead a pleasant, peaceful existence, is at least problematical. At any rate, there has been no evident tendency towards dissociation. Some compromise seems to have been effected between conscience and convention. It must be added, also, that worship as a unit of a large company on the State occasions alluded to above, is not the only ordeal prescribed by custom. Any official, humble or exalted, who is ordered to proceed abroad on public business, must, before leaving Japan, proceed to the Hall of Reverence and perform an act of homage or worship, whichever definition he pleases to adopt. That is a duty; there is no option. Possibly it is regarded in the light merely of a farewell declaration of allegiance. Possibly, also, the main body of the Christians in Japan accept the subtle distinction privately drawn by some of their fellow-believers, that so long as there is no worship in spirit, genuflections performed by the body have no connection with religion. But it is singular that this question has always been excluded from the sphere of public discussion, and singular also that Christians do not apparently recognise how plainly they are differentiated from the rest of the nation by the absence of any representative on ceremonial occasions in the Hall of Reverence. There is no native Christian prelate in Japan. There are Roman Catholic and Protestant hierarchs of European and American origin, — an Archbishop and several Bishops and Archdeacons, — but as yet no Japanese subject has attained such dignity. Each sect, however, has its senior pastor or father of Japanese nationality, and until these attend the ceremonials in the Hall of Reverence, as do the chief representatives of Buddhism, the Christian element of the population will continue to be marked as standing aloof from rites which, in the eyes of patriotic Japanese, are connected with the very basis of nationalism.
The days set apart for these ceremonials within the Palace are not marked by any act of general devotion without, since the Emperor worships in lieu of his people. They are merely observed as national holidays. Every householder hangs the national flag before his gate, but visits are not paid to temples or shrines, nor is there any other evidence of a special occasion. It should be noted, too, that the description given here applies only to the ceremonial system organised subsequently to the Restoration in 1867. Prior to that time, the deities supposed to preside over worldly affairs were worshipped at fifteen set seasons annually. But these rites have been reduced and simplified. Formerly the deities that gave abundant crops, the deities that warded off plague and pestilence, the deities that breathed the spirit of vigour into things animate and inanimate, the deities that guarded against conflagrations, the deities that quelled evil demons, the deities that laid to rest wandering souls of the dead, the deities that made rain fall in time of drought, — all these were severally and collectively placated. But now the Shintō of the State has made a step towards monotheism. Amaterasu is worshipped as the supreme being; her descendants, the ancestors of the Emperor, receive homage as associated deities performing a special tutelary rôle;[17] the other members of the pantheon are collectively reverenced.
Shrines are divided into four official grades, — State, provincial, prefectural, and divisional or district. There are subdivisions. State shrines are dedicated, for the most part, to the divine ancestors, but at a few the objects of worship are sovereigns or subjects that attained special distinction. Between a State shrine of the first grade and a district shrine of the last, there is, of course, a great difference in standing, but there need not be any corresponding difference in the relative importance of the deities worshipped there. Sometimes the object of worship at a State shrine of most imposing character is venerated elsewhere under circumstances that suggest an altogether inferior being. It is simply a question of local repute, financial capabilities, or other independent causes, just as in the Occident the same God is prayed to in city cathedrals and village churches. The shrine of the Sun Goddess, the Daijin-gu of Ise, stands at the head of all, but scarcely a hamlet in the realm is without a Daijin-gu of its own under the alias of Myo-jin. As for the number of the deities, it has never been counted by official statisticians. But the shrines that enjoy any considerable popularity are comparatively few, not more than ten in all.[18] The incomes enjoyed by these shrines are not formidable. Some can boast of forty thousand yen annually; some of only a few hundreds. Small grants from the State, supplemented by the offerings of the pious and the sale of amulets, are the sources of revenue. The special functions assigned by the people to the deities worshipped at these shrines are various. No one knows what spirit of heaven or earth is venerated at the Suiten-gu in Tōkyō, and the shrine enjoys the peculiar distinction of being the private property of a nobleman. It stands within the precincts of his residence, and contributes a handsome sum to his yearly maintenance. But despite the anonymity of the god, people credit him with power to protect against all perils of sea and flood, against burglary, and, by a strange juxtaposition of "spheres of influence," against the pains of parturition. The deity of Inari secures efficacy for prayer and abundance of crops; the Taisha presides over wedlock; the Kompira shares with the Suiten-gu the privilege of guarding those that "go down to the deep."
The rest confer prosperity, avert sickness, cure sterility, bestow literary talent, endow with warlike prowess, and so on. There are no less than 193,476 Shintō shrines in Japan, but 14,766 priests suffice to perform the rites of the creed. It will be asked how one priest manages to officiate at thirteen shrines, — which is the average. The answer is that he does not officiate, as folks in the West understand the term. It may be said generally of the Shintō shrines that not more than one service is performed there annually. The building stands frequently uninhabited, apparently untended. Now and then a worshipper comes, grasps the thick hempen rope that hangs in front, sways it against the gong across which it is suspended, and having thus summoned the presiding spirit, mutters a brief prayer, deposits two or three cash in the alms-chest, and goes his way. The Buddhists have 108,000 temples and 54,000 priests. It will be seen that many of these temples cannot fare better in the matter of ministrations than do the Shintō shrines.
As Shintō shrines are officially graded, so are the priests[19] connected with them. But the rank, held by the greatest of the latter corresponds only with that of a local governor or a vice-minister of State. The hierarchy does not climb to a lofty elevation; there is no Archbishop of Canterbury, no Pope of Rome. Nor would the emoluments of office excite the envy of an English rector. The official allowance, when there is one, varies from 100 yen to 33 yen monthly. Supplemented by a portion of the income accruing to the shrine, the portliest stipend of a Shintō priest probably amounts to twenty pounds sterling per month. In order to qualify for the magnificent chance of such opulence, he has to pass an examination, unless, indeed—and the contingency is not rare—his father and forefathers have been priests for ten generations.
Buddhist priests have no official rank, nor are their temples graded. They live on the contributions of their parishioners and on the income derived from lands that were of great extent and large wealth-yielding capacity until the Government of the Restoration reduced their area to a mere fraction of its original dimensions.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
Note 40.—The five negative precepts were, not to kill, not to be guilty of dishonesty, not to be lewd, not to speak untruth, not to drink intoxicants; the ten virtues were, to be kind to all sentient beings, to be liberal, to be chaste, to speak the truth, to employ gentle and peace-making language, to use refined words, to express everything in a plain, unexaggerated manner, to devote the mind to moral thoughts, to practise charity and patience, and to cultivate pure intentions.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 41.
Note 41.—In this stage he passed to the consideration of the four verities, the twelve-linked chain of causation, the four aspirations, and the six transcendental virtues.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 42.
Note 42.—The Tendai (Heavenly command) Sect, founded by Dengyo Daishi in 805 A. D., under Imperial auspices. It had its chief headquarters at the celebrated monastery of Hiyei-zan.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 43.
Note 43.—It was from this time that Shintō and Buddhism became commingled into the form of creed known as Ryobu-Shintō.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 44.
Note 44.—Fate, with its proverbial irony, decreed that the monastery where this unworldly and meditative sect had its headquarters should have a history resonant with the clash of arms. The monks of Hiyei-zan became, from an early date, a community of soldiers.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 45.
Note 45.—Lloyd's "Developments of Japanese Buddhism," a work of high value to students of this subject.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 46.
Note 46.—This sect received much patronage from the Imperial Court, as well as from the Tokugawa Shōguns. The great temple, Zojō-ji, which stands among the Tokugawa Mausolea in Shiba, belongs to the Jōdo-shu (Shu-sect).
- ↑ See Appendix, note 47.
Note 47.—Shin-shu, called also Montō-shu (Sect of gate-disciples), and Ikko-shu (Undivided sect), founded by Shinran in 1224 A. D.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 48.
Note 48.—Statistics compiled in 1790 show that there were then 469,934 temples in Japan, of which 140,884 belonged to the Spirit Sect (Shin-shu) ; 140,020 to the Pure Land Sect (Jōdo-shu), and 33,020 to the Nichiren Sect, the other sects having comparatively small numbers.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 49.
Note 49.—These doctrines, as expounded by responsible heads of the sect, are fully set forth in the "Annales du Musée Guimet" (1880).
- ↑ See Appendix, note 50.
Note 50.—"The Doctrines of Nichiren;" compiled by the Right Virtuous Abbot Kobayashi; translated by Messrs. K. Tatsumi and F. H. Balfour.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 51.
Note 51.—Near Tōkyō. The festival takes place in October.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 52.
Note 52.—Rokkon shōjo, prayer for the purification of the six senses,—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and spirit. Out of the colourlessness of the Shintō of Motoori and Haruta a sect grew which enjoys some influence to-day, the Tenri-kyo, with its twelve hymns and dances and its faith-cures.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 53.
Note 53.—Some strange admissions were made to the Shintō pantheon which had grown too large to be accurately controlled. The grave of a wrestler (Narihira) in Yedo came to be mistaken for that of the famous poet of the same name, and litterateurs constantly worshipped there. A groom called Koraku, a criminal called Nezu, and more than one notorious malefactor received apotheosis from the ignorant multitude on account of legends associated with their memories.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 54.
Note 54.—The State grants a sum of 216,000 yen annually for the support of Shintō shrines, and extends no aid whatever to Buddhism.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 55.
Note 55.—The use of sakaki (Cleyera Japonica) is referred to the sylvan method of worship practised in the earliest times. A space surrounded by thick trees constituted the hall of rites. The trees were called a "sacred fence" (himorori), and it seems probable that strips of the cloth offered to the deities were hung from the branches. Thus, even after a shrine had been built to receive the divine insignia (the mirror, the sword, and the jewel), a bough of sakaki with white pendants (go-hei) continued to be included in the paraphernalia of the ceremony of worship.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 56.
Note 56.—It might be supposed that many Emperors would have received this distinction. But among the hundred and twenty-eight sovereigns that have sat on the throne of Japan, two only—Ojin and Kwammu—are thus honoured. On the other hand, great subjects have been deified much more frequently: for example, Sugawara no Michizane (Temman), Kusunoki Masashige (Minatogawa), Tokugawa Iyeyasu (Tōsho), Hideyoshi the Tōiko (Toyokuni), etc.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 57.
Note 57.—Daijin-gu (Ise); Tai-sha (Izumo); Hachiman-gu (Kyōtō); Temman-gu (Hakata); Inari (Kyōtō); Kasuga (Nara); Atago (Kyōtō); Kompira (Sanuki); Suiten-gu (Tōkyō), and Suwa (Shinano).
- ↑ See Appendix, note 58.
Note 58.—It is not absolutely correct to speak of a Shintō minister as a "priest." He is called Shinkwan, which signifies rather a "Shintō official."