Shinto: The ancient religion of Japan

=Origins.=—The Japanese are in the main a continental race. Their language and physical characteristics show conclusively that they come from Northern Asia, and geographical con...

=Kami= is the ordinary Japanese word for God. It means primarily above, superior, and is applied to many other things besides deities, such as nobles, the authorities, the ‘miss...

=Character of Japanese Myth.=—Japanese myth covers much the same ground as the myths of other countries. We have the explanatory myth, invented in order to account for some cust...

Some of the principal gods have already been introduced in the preceding chapter. Let us now consider them separately, according to the classification already indicated (p. 8)....

In ancient Japan, the sacred and the secular were imperfectly differentiated from one another. The Department of Shinto was simply a Government bureau. Miya meant equally shrine...

With a few exceptions, of no great importance in Shinto, the outward forms of the worship of the gods have been previously made use of as tokens of respect to living men. Whethe...

=Moral Code.=—Shinto has hardly anything in the shape of a code of morals. The Ohoharahi, a service in which the Mikado, by divine authority, declared to his ministers and peopl...

=Divination.=—The most ancient official method of divination was by interpreting the cracks made by fire on the shoulder-blade of a deer. This process is known in many places fr...

Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth century, but it had at first little influence on the native religion. Two centuries later a process of pacific penetration began...