Chapter 38

SHINTŌ; MYTHS AND RITUAL

[Footnote 1: The scholar who has made profound researches in all departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of Shintō, is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier. He received the degree of B.A. from the London University. After several years' study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese. To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the T.A.S.J., on The Shintō Shrines at Isé, the Revival of Pure Shintō, and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the original and later forms of Shintō.]

[Footnote 2: The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of Japan's chronology and early history is Mr. W.G. Aston of the British Civil Service. He studied at the Queen's University, Ireland, receiving the degree of M.A. He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August 6, 1864. He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language, and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years. See his valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great Britain. In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, Tōkiō, 1880. He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the Japanese annals. We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 73.

1. The earliest date of the accepted Japanese Chronology, the accuracy of which is confirmed by external evidence, is A.D. 461.

2. Japanese History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the annals of the sixth century must also be received with caution.)

3. Korean History and Chronology are more trustworthy than those of Japan during the period previous to that date.

4. While there was an Empress of Japan in the third century A.D., the statement that she conquered Korea is highly improbable.

5. Chinese learning was introduced into Japan from Korea 120 years later than the date given in Japanese History.

6. The main fact of Japan having a predominant influence in some parts of Korea during the fifth century is confirmed by the Korean and Chinese chronicles, which, however, show that the Japanese accounts are very inaccurate in matters of detail.]

[Footnote 3: Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world of learning such signal service by his works on the Japanese language, and especially by his translation, with critical introduction and commentary, of the Kojiki, is an English gentleman, born at Southsea, Hampshire, England, on the 18th day of October, 1830. His mother was a daughter of the well-known traveller and author, Captain Basil Hall, R.N., and his father an Admiral in the British Navy. He was educated for Oxford, but instead of entering, for reasons of health, he spent a number of years in western Mid southern Europe, acquiring a knowledge of various languages and literatures. His coming to Japan (in May, 1873) was rather the result of an accident--a long sea voyage and a trial of the Japanese climate having been recommended. The country and the field of study suited the invalid well. After teaching for a time in the Naval College the Japanese honored themselves and this scholar by making him, in April, 1886, Professor of Philology at the Imperial University. His works, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, his various grammars and hand-books for the acquisition of the language, his Hand-book for Japan, his Aino Studies, Things Japanese, papers in the T.A.S.J. and his translation of the Kojiki are all of a high order of value. They are marked by candor, fairness, insight, and a mastery of difficult themes that makes his readers his constant debtors.]

[Footnote 4: "If the term 'Altaic' be held to include Korean and Japanese, then Japanese assumes prime importance as being by far the oldest living representative of that great linguistic group, its literature antedating by many centuries the most ancient productions of the Manchus, Mongols, Turks, Hungarians, or Finns."--Chamberlain, Simplified Grammar, Introd., p. vi.]

[Footnote 5: Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 13-14; Mr. Pom K. Soh's paper on Education in Korea; Report of U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1890-91.]

[Footnote 6: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 74; Bramsen's Chronological Tables, Introd., p. 34; T.J., p. 32.]

[Footnote 7: The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., p. 531.]

[Footnote 8: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean." This proverb, so freely quoted throughout Chinese Asia, and in recent years so much applied to themselves by the Japanese, is of Hindu origin and is found in the Sanskrit.]

[Footnote 9: This is shown with literary skill and power in a modern popular work, the title of which, Dai Nippon Kai-biyaku Yurai-iki, which, very freely indeed, may be translated Instances of Divine Interposition in Behalf of Great Japan. A copy of this work was presented to the writer by the late daimiō of Echizen, and was read with interest as containing the common people's ideas about their country and history. It was published in Yedo in 1856, while Japan was still excited over the visits of the American and European fleets. On the basis of the information furnished in this work General Le Gendre wrote his influential book, Progressive Japan, in which a number of quotations from the _Kai-biyaku_ may be read.]

[Footnote 10: In the Kojiki, pp. 101-104, we have the poetical account of the abdication of the lord of Idzumo in favor of the Yamato conqueror, on condition that the latter should build a temple and have him honored among the gods. One of the rituals contains the congratulatory address of the chieftains of Idzumo, on their surrender to "the first Mikado, Jimmu Tennō." See also T.J., p. 206.]

[Footnote 11: "The praying for Harvest, or Toshigoi no Matsuri, was celebrated on the 4th day of the 2d month of each year, at the capital in the Jin-Gi-Kuan or office for the Worship of the Shintō gods, and in the provinces by the chiefs of the local administrations. At the Jin-Gi-Kuan there were assembled the ministers of state, the functionaries of that office, the priests and priestesses of 573 temples, containing 737 shrines, which were kept up at the expense of the Mikado's treasury, while the governors of the provinces superintended in the districts under their administration the performance of rites in honor of 2,395 other shrines. It would not be easy to state the exact number of deities to whom these 3,132 shrines were dedicated. A glance over the list in the 9th and 10th books of the Yengishiki shows at once that there were many gods who were worshipped in more than half-a-dozen different localities at the same time; but exact calculation is impossible, because in many cases only the names of the temples are given, and we are left quite in the dark as to the individuality of the gods to whom they were sacred. Besides these 3,132 shrines, which are distinguished as Shikidai, that is contained in the catalogue of the Yengishiki, there were a large number of enumerated shrines in temples scattered all over the country, in every village or hamlet, of which it was impossible to take any account, just as at the present day there are temples of Hachiman, Kompira, Tenjin sama, San-no sama and Sengen sama, as they are popularly called, wherever twenty or thirty houses are collected together. The shrines are classed as great and small, the respective numbers being 492 and 2,640, the distinction being twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly that the offerings in the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other they were placed on mats spread upon the earth. In the Yengishiki the amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness, but it will be sufficient if the kinds of articles offered are alone mentioned here. It will be seen, by comparison with the text of the norito, that they had varied somewhat since the date when the ritual was composed. The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven silk (_ashiginu_), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff called _shidori_ or _shidzu_, which is supposed by some to have been a striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a pair of tables or altars (called _yo-kura-oki_ and _ya-kura-oki_), a shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag's horns, a hoe, a few measures of saké or rice-beer, some haliotis and bonito, two measures of _kituli_ (supposed to be salt roe), various kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a saké jar, and a few feet of matting for packing. To each of the temples of Watarai in Isé was presented in addition a horse; to the temple of the Harvest god Mitoshi no kami, a white horse, cock, and pig, and a horse to each of nineteen others.

"During the fortnight which preceded the celebration of the service, two smiths and their journeymen, and two carpenters, together with eight inbe [or hereditary priests] were employed in preparing the apparatus and getting ready the offerings. It was usual to employ for the Praying for Harvest members of this tribe who held office in the Jin-Gi-Kuan, but if the number could not he made up in that office, it was supplied from other departments of state. To the tribe of quiver-makers was intrusted the special duty of weaving the quivers of wistaria tendrils. The service began at twenty minutes to seven in the morning, by our reckoning of time. After the governor of the province of Yamashiro had ascertained that everything was in readiness, the officials of the Jin-Gi-Kuan arranged the offerings on the tables and below them, according to the rank of the shrines for which they were intended. The large court of the Jin-Gi-Kuan where the service was held, called the Sai-in, measured 230 feet by 370. At one end were the offices and on the west side were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row, surrounded by a fence, to the interior of which three sacred archways (torii) gave access. In the centre of the court a temporary shed was erected for the occasion, in which the tables or altars were placed. The final preparations being now complete, the ministers of state, the virgin priestesses and priests of the temples to which offerings were sent by the Mikado, entered in succession, and took the places severally assigned to them. The horses which formed a part of the offerings were next brought in from the Mikado's stable, and all the congregation drew near, while the reader recited or read the norito. This reader was a member of the priestly family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their descent back to Ameno-koyané, one of the principal advisers attached to the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth. It is a remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split up into the Five Setsuké or governing families. At the end of each section the priests all responded 'O!' which was no doubt the equivalent of 'Yes' in use in those days. As soon as he had finished, the Nakatomi retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for conveyance and presentation to the gods to whose service they were attached. But a special messenger was despatched with the offerings destined to the temples at Watarai. This formality having been completed, the President of the Jin-Gi-Kuan gave the signal for breaking up the assembly." Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J., Vol. VII, pp. 104-107.]

[Footnote 12: S. and H., p. 461.]

[Footnote 13: Consult Chamberlain's literal translations of the name in the Kojiki, and p. lxv. of his Introduction.]

[Footnote 14: The parallel between the Hebrew and Japanese accounts of light and darkness, day and night, before the sun, has been noticed by several writers. See the comments of Hirata, a modern Shintō expounder.--T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 72.]

[Footnote 15: Westminster Review, July, 1878, p. 19.]