Chapter 37

PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS

[Footnote 1: The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer, and gazetteer. In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this lectureship in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Relation of the Bible to the Sciences," May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand dollars.]

[Footnote 2: An American Missionary in Japan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L. Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Lucretia Coftin Mott.]

[Footnote 4: "I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."--Dr. Legge's Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]

[Footnote 5: The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York, 1881.]

[Footnote 6: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions of 1859 and 1879.]

[Footnote 7: One of the many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern Japanese sword (_katana_) as compared with the long and heavy (_ken_) of the "Divine" (_kami_) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of Japan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 58.]

[Footnote 8: The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia (which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev. Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]

[Footnote 9: This is the contention of Professor Kumi, late of the Imperial University of Japan; see chapter on Shintō.]

[Footnote 10: In illustration, comical or pitiful, the common people in Satsuma believe that the spirit of the great Saigo Takamori, leader of the rebellion of 1877, "has taken up its abode in the planet Mars," while the spirits of his followers entered into a new race of frogs that attack man and fight until killed--Mounsey's The Satsuma Rebellion, p. 217. So, also, the _Heiké-gani_, or crabs at Shimonoséki, represent the transmigration of the souls of the Heiké clan, nearly exterminated in 1184 A.D., while the "Hōjō bugs" are the avatars of the execrated rulers of Kamakura (1219-1333 A.D.).--Japan in History, Folk-lore, and Art, Boston, 1892, pp. 115, 133.]

[Footnote 11: The Future of Religion in Japan. A paper read at the Parliament of Religions by Nobuta Kishimoto.]

[Footnote 12: The Ainos, though they deify all the chief objects of nature, such as the sun, the sea, fire, wild beasts, etc., often talk of a Creator, _Kotan kara kamui_, literally the God who made the World. At the fact of creation they stop short.... One gathers that the creative act was performed not directly, but through intermediaries, who were apparently animals."--Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12. See also on the Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.]

[Footnote 13: See Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Bird (Bishop), Vol. II.; The Ainu of Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchcock's Report, Smithsonian Institute, Washington. Professor B. H. Chamberlain's invaluable "Aino Studies," Tōkiō, 1887, makes scholarly comparison of the Japanese and Aino language, mythology, and geographical nomenclature.]

[Footnote 14: M.E., The Mythical Zoölogy of Japan, pp. 477-488. C.R.M., _passim_.]

[Footnote 15: See the valuable article entitled Demoniacal Possession, T.J., p. 106, and the author's Japanese Fox Myths, _Lippincott's Magazine_, 1873.]

[Footnote 16: See the Aino animal stories and evidences of beast worship in Chamberlain's Aino Studies. For this element in Japanese life, see the Kojiki, and the author's Japanese Fairy World.]

[Footnote 17: The proprietor of a paper-mill in Massachusetts, who had bought a cargo of rags, consisting mostly of farmers' cast off clothes, brought to the author a bundle of scraps of paper which he had found in this cheap blue-dyed cotton wearing apparel. Besides money accounts and personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests' certificates. See also B.H. Chamberlain's Notes on Some Minor Japanese Religious Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May, 1893.]

[Footnote 18: M.E., p. 440.]

[Footnote 19: See the Lecture on Buddhism in its Doctrinal Development.--The Nichiren Sect.]

[Footnote 20: The phallus was formerly a common emblem in all parts of Japan, Hondo, Kiushiu, Shikoku, and the other islands. Bayard Taylor noticed it in the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) Islands; Perry's Expedition to Japan, p. 196; Bayard Taylor's Expedition in Lew Chew; M.E., p. 33, note; Rein's Japan, p. 432; Diary of Richard Cocks, Vol. I., p. 283. The native guide-books and gazetteers do not allude to the subject.

Although the author of this volume has collected considerable data from personal observations and the testimony of personal friends concerning the vanishing nature-worship of the Japanese, he has, in the text, scarcely more than glanced at the subject. In a work of this sort, intended both for the general reader as well as for the scientific student of religion, it has been thought best to be content with a few simple references to what was once widely prevalent in the Japanese archipelago.

Probably the most thorough study of Japanese phallicism yet made by any foreign scholar is that of Edmund Buckley, A.M., Ph.D., of the Chicago University, Lecturer on Shintō, the Ethnic Faith of Japan, and on the Science of Religion. Dr. Buckley spent six years in central and southwestern Japan, most of the time as instructor in the Doshisha University, Kiōto. He will publish the results of his personal observations and studios in a monograph on phallicism, which will be on sale at Chicago University, in which the Buckley collection illustrating Shintō-worship has been deposited.]

[Footnote 21: Mr. Takahashi Gorō, in his Shintō Shin-ron, or New Discussion of Shintō, accepts the derivation of the word _kami_ from _kabé_, mould, mildew, which, on its appearance, excites wonder. For Hirata's discussion, see T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 48. In a striking paper on the Early Gods of Japan, in a recent number of the Philosophical Magazine, published in Tōkiō, a Japanese writer, Mr. Kenjirō Hiradé, states also that the term kami does not necessarily denote a spiritual being, but is only a relative term meaning above or high, but this respect toward something high or above has created many imaginary deities as well as those having a human history. See also T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I., p. 55, note.]

[Footnote 22: "There remains something of the Shintō heart after twelve hundred years of foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they see."--Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by Dr. George Wm. Knox.]

[Footnote 23: M.E., p. 474. Honda the Samurai, pp. 256-267.]

[Footnote 24: Kojiki, pp. 127, 136, 213, 217.]

[Footnote 25: See S. and H., pp. 39, 76.

"The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a sure sign of the presence of divinity. Near the spot where I live in Ko-ishi-kawa, Tōkiō, is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field. The spot looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot of the old tree." ...

"As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe, every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every part is in some measure the seat of the Deity."--Legendre's Progressive Japan, p. 258.]

[Footnote 26: De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.]