Part 2

(4) The world-idea of this old mythology is in notable keeping with the ancestor worship, and the Animism which enter so largely into the Shinto faith. In spite of all the wars and discords of the deities, this a primordial monism, so to speak, at the basis of Japanese cosmogony, and of all its diverse generations of the heavens and the earth; and yet there is no one Supreme Ruler in all the Pantheon of eight hundred myriad gods. When a great council of the gods assembles in the bed of the Tranquil Heavenly River, no one deity is chief among them, and we are at a loss to imagine who has authority to call them together or to preside over the assembly. Izanagi seems for a while to be the chief creator and ruler, but after a time he disappears, and the Sun Goddess, his daughter Amaterasu, has her heavenly domain shaken and ravaged by her younger brother, but is avenged by the heavenly assembly of gods, who fine and punish the offender, "and expel him with a divine expulsion." So the Sun Goddess maintains her dominion by the help of the eight hundred myriad gods, no one of whom is invested with supreme power. It appears from certain poems of the _Manyoshu_ that the moon as well as the sun was extensively worshiped among the primitive Japanese.[14]

(5) It accords with all these ideas that the devotees of the "pure Shinto" faith trace all their history back to the age of the gods, and recognize some deity in, or back of, all phenomena. Japan is the country of the gods; every Japanese is a descendant or offspring of the gods, and the Mikado is the direct descendant of the imperial line which has continued in unbroken succession from the beginning of the world. Japan is, therefore, superior to all other countries, and the Japanese, being thus directly from the gods, are superior in every respect to other people. Sprung from the gods, they need no codes of moral law (like the Chinese), for they are naturally perfect, and do the right things spontaneously.

=7. The Japanese a Self-centered People.= The Japanese people, with such traditions and such a faith, would naturally be a self-centered people, and they conceived their island-empire as occupying the summit of the earth. The Mikado is the Son of Heaven, entitled and empowered to reign perpetually over the land and the sea. But as all the people are descendants of the gods, and the islands and all that is in them have also been begotten of the gods, it follows that the worship of ancestors is a worship of all the gods of whom they have knowledge, and all the lower animate and inanimate things in the world are also in some way instinct with the deities from whom they were born, and whose they are.

Accordingly, the honoring of the gods is a fundamental thing in the Shinto thought and in the Japanese civilization and government. Every loyal subject of the Mikado's Empire is expected to be true to the ancient faith. It is assumed that religion and worship and the proper administration of government are all essential to each other. The Japanese word (_Matsuri-goto_), which is used to denote the art of government, means, literally, _worshiping_. And it is a common thought and saying: "Everything in the world depends on the spirit of the gods of heaven and earth, and therefore the worship of the gods is a matter of primary importance. The gods who do harm are to be appeased, so that they may not punish those who have offended them; and all the gods are to be worshiped, so that they may be induced to increase their favors."[15] One of the rules which all the ministers of the Mikado emphasized in the old times, before the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, was, "First serve the gods, and afterwards deliberate on matters of government."[16]

=8. Essence of the Shinto Cult.= From what we have now stated it is to be seen that reverence and worship of the ancestors of the Japanese, and the recognition of the Mikado's divinity as the incarnation and earthly representation of the celestial gods, constitute the essence of the Shinto cult. All the Japanese are offsprings of the gods, but the imperial "Sovran Grandchild" of _Amaterasu_, the Sun-Goddess,[17] is pre-eminently divine and worshipful. The first Mikado, however, was not the real son of _Amaterasu_, according to the mythic tradition of the prehistoric time, but her nephew, the son of _Oshi-ho-mi-mi_, whom she adopted as her son. But the title of "Sovran Grandchild," having been applied first to the founder of the Mikado's dynasty, came in time to be the common title of all the Mikado's successors. The imperial worship, accordingly, represents the most conspicuous national form of the Shinto cult.

=9. The Great Sanctuaries.= The Mikado's palace would, accordingly, be the most holy shrine of the national worship, the private and exclusive sanctuary of the imperial ancestors. But the most notable shrine of the Sun-Goddess is not now the residence of the Mikado. On account of some great calamity that occurred far back in prehistoric times, her worship was removed to a separate temple, and was finally established in the province of Isè, in which the temples, called the "Two great divine Palaces," are the resort of thousands of pilgrims every year, and, though not the most ancient, are regarded as first among all the Shinto temples in the land.[18] These two divine palaces, or temples, called _Geku_ and _Naiku_, are about three miles apart, and stand in the midst of groves of aged cryptomeria trees.[19] They are approached through archways (called _torii_, or _toriwi_) of simple construction. The _Geku_ temple is an irregular oblong structure, 247 feet wide at the front, but only 235 feet wide in the rear; while the side to the right of the entrance is 339 feet, and that on the left is 335. Within this large enclosure are others of similar structure, all made of the wood of cryptomeria trees, and left unpainted and without ornamentation. The various buildings of the temples are thus fashioned after the manner of the simple huts, or dwellings of the earliest inhabitants of these islands. Some of the buildings are covered with thatched roofs and have their walls and doors made of rough matting. Mr. Satow, who has visited and described the temples of Isè, says that "All the buildings which form part of the two temples are constructed in a style that is disappointing in its simplicity and perishable nature.... None but those which are roofed with thatch are entitled to be considered as being in strict conformity with the principles of genuine Shinto temple architecture."[20] The perishable nature of these temples is such that it becomes necessary, and is, in fact, the standing rule, to rebuild them every twenty years. Two sites for each temple are used alternatively; they lie close to each other, so that the new building is constructed and ready for use before the old one is removed.

The temple which, though less venerated than those at Isè, is the shrine-center of the more ancient Shinto cult, is the one at Kitzuki, in the ancient province of Idzumo. These famous shrines of Isè and Kitzuki represent the two supreme cults of Shinto; namely, that of the Sun-Goddess, _Amaterasu_, and that of _Oho-kuni-nushi_, offspring of the brother of the Sun-Goddess, who became the ruler of the unseen world of the spirits of the dead. But there are many other great temples maintained in whole or in part from the imperial revenues. Some are of greater sanctity and renown than others, but those of Isè and Kitzuki are the most celebrated, and every Shinto worshiper is expected, at least once in his lifetime, to make a pilgrimage himself, or send a deputy to one of these most famous shrines.

=10. Five Noteworthy Objects Connected with the Worship.= One noteworthy fact is the absence of images from the pure Shinto temples; that is, images exposed as objects of worship. But there is a number of objects connected with these sacred places which should receive brief notice:

(1) There is, first, the wooden archway (called _torii_, or _toriwi_) through which one passes in approaching the temples. It consists of two upright posts set in the ground on the tops of which is laid a long straight beam, the two ends of which project a little beyond the uprights. Under this top beam is another horizontal beam connecting the two side posts after the manner of a girder. According to Satow, "The _toriwi_ was originally a perch for the fowls offered up to the gods, not as food, but to give warning at daybreak. It was erected on any side of the temple indifferently. In later times, not improbably after the introduction of Buddhism, its original meaning was forgotten, and it was placed in front only and supposed to be a gateway."[21]

(2) Opposite the various entrances to the temples is placed a wooden screen, or fence, called _Banpei_, which serves as in other dwellings to guard and hide the privacy of the interior.

(3) Another object of special interest is the _Go-hei_, a slender wand, originally a branch of the sacred tree called _sakaki_. From the Go-hei hang two long slips of white paper notched on the opposite sides. These wands of unpainted wood are supposed to represent offerings of white cloth and to have the power of attracting the gods to the places where they are kept.

(4) The offerings presented consist of cups of water and small vessels filled with rice, vegetables, fruits, salt, fish, birds, and other simplest products of the land and of the sea. It is noteworthy that we find no bloody sacrificial rites in Shinto worship, in which one life, animal or human, was made a vicarious substitute for a guilty soul.

(5) The sacred _mirror_, which figures in the mythology of the Sun-Goddess, and is said to have been once used to entice her from a cave into which she had hid herself in a spell of anger, is carefully guarded in one of these temples, and also many copies of the mirror. "Each mirror is contained in a box which is furnished with eight handles, four on the box itself and four on the lid. The box rests on a low stand and is covered with a piece of cloth said to be white silk. The mirror itself is wrapped in a brocade bag, which is never opened or renewed, but when it begins to fall to pieces from age, another bag is put on, so that the actual covering consists of numerous layers. Over the whole is placed a sort of cage of unpainted wood with ornaments said to be of pure gold, and over this again is thrown a sort of curtain of coarse silk, descending to the floor on all sides."[22] One can not read this description of the sacred mirror thus secretly guarded in a costly box without being reminded of the sacred ark of the Levitical sanctuary, and its enclosed "tables of testimony."

=11. The Ancestor Worship.= We have already observed that ancestor worship is the basis of the Shinto cult. This kind of worship is also conspicuous among the Chinese, and is held by many writers to have been the original cult of all civilized races and peoples. It began, they tell us, with a belief in ghosts, and at the first there was no clear distinction between ghosts and gods. The departed spirit was thought of as abiding near the place where the dead body was deposited, and the earliest shrines would therefore be the graves or tombs of the dead. Later thought would beget the idea that the invisible spirits were present to witness the acts, and share the joys and sorrows of the living. And this fundamental idea would, of course, develop into many diverse conceptions and practices among the different tribes.

Without here discussing this theory of aboriginal religious thought and practice, as applicable to all peoples, we may note that it accords with the facts of Japanese history and civilization so far as we can now trace them back into the mists of prehistoric time.[23] We have seen that Japanese history and mythology run together and blend in remarkable artlessness as they stand recorded in the oldest literature (_e. g._, the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_). Unthinkable monstrosities of the origin of gods and lands and men are told with the same simplicity as the unquestionable facts of historic times. But taking the one leading thought which runs through all these records and appears to be fundamental in the Japanese civilization--namely, that all their islands and emperors and chiefs and people are offspring of the gods, the very first of whom were somehow self-evolved from the primordial elements of the universe--we look upon the Shinto worship as it exists in its purest form to-day, and note the most apparent facts.

Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, in his "attempt at an interpretation" of Japan, has, more clearly than any other writer I have consulted, described the Shinto ancestor-worship under its three forms of _Domestic_, _Communal_, and _State_ cults. In every case it is a worship of the dead, but the individual, whether he be the most obscure servant, the influential citizen, the commanding chieftain, or even the Mikado, is but a part and parcel of the body politic. There is a most remarkable unity of popular and national life. Government and religion are virtually identical, and there is no distinction between religion and morality. Obedience and conformity to the rules of family life, and to the customs of society and the requirements of the State--these are the simple sum-total of Shinto law and gospel. The individual must always stand ready to be sacrificed for the good of the community or of the State. Everything is to be regarded as public, and must serve the public weal. There is no such thing as privacy, and oddities have no respectable standing. Tradition and custom seem to constitute the essence of religion as well as of family, communal, and more public life. There is no code of moral law; there is nothing in the worship that is fairly comparable to what we understand by dogma, creed, or Church. Strictly speaking, this system has no heaven or hell, no deep sense of sin, and no concept of mediatorial redemption from sin and evil. The dead--all the dead of all the ages--are conceived as somehow living in the unseen vacancy around, above, below; they are present at the worship; they haunt the tombs; they are interested in the life and works of their descendants; they visit their former homes and attend the family worship there; their happiness, in fact, depends upon the honor and worship which their living descendants pay them; and also the happiness and prosperity of the living is believed to depend upon their sense of filial duty and proper reverence toward the dead. Furthermore, all the dead are supposed to become gods and attain to supernatural power. But there is no one Supreme Deity; no central throne of God; no paradise of heavenly blessedness. So far as any ideas of this kind obtain among the people, they may be regarded as later conceptions introduced by missionaries or adherents of other religious systems. But the cult implies beyond question a belief in some kind of future life. The _Yomi_, or Hades, of Shinto mythology, into which Izanagi went to seek his lost sister, was conceived as "a hideous and polluted land," and even the realm of the unseen heavenly deities was never longed for by the devotees of Shinto. Dooman observes that "to the Japanese mind and imagination Japan, as a place of residence, was far superior to heaven, and its inhabitants a far more desirable society than those living in the transcendent regions. We see that every god who is sent from heaven to Japan on some important business by the divine assembly marries, and is utterly unwilling to go back once more to the place from which he descended."[24]

=12. Elements of Animism.= The ancestor-worship of Shinto can not be disassociated altogether from the elements of Animism which appear in the names and titles of certain deities, and also in the fact that there are "evil gods" and demons who are capable of working mischief and calamity in the family, the community, and the State. How these evil deities originated is matter of myth, legend, and speculation. Bad men would naturally be supposed to carry their evil character with them into the unseen world of the dead, and to have the same power to work harm among the living as the good spirits have to bestow benefits. But human spirits would hardly be supposed to become deities of the wind, and the thunder, and the waves, and the mountains; of the trees, and the fire, and the sun, and the moon, and the autumn, and the food of men. Here the old mythology of the _Ko-ji-ki_ comes in to tell us of a prehistoric and cosmical origin of evils. When Izanagi went to find his sister Izanami in the hideous and polluted underworld, and found her body swarming with maggots and eight thunder deities dwelling in the different parts of her decaying form, he fled back in astonishment and awe, and she in a rage of shame pursued him with all the horrid forces of that nether sphere. He escaped, but not without contracting much pollution on his august person, and when he sought to wash and cleanse himself in the waters of a certain river, there were born from the filth of his person two deities, named "the wondrous deity of eighty evils," and "the wondrous deity of great evils." These evil gods afterwards multiplied, and may be supposed to be the authors of all the demons, goblins, and mischievous spirits of evil that disturb the world and its inhabitants. But there are also good spirits innumerable that animate all moving things. The winds and the waters, the songs of birds and the hum of the bees, the growing plants and trees, are all instinct with a sort of conscious life, and the spirits that live and move in them are to be recognized and reverenced by prayers and offerings.

The spirits of dead ancestors and the powerful spirits of the winds and the storms and the growths of nature may or may not have been supposed to have concert of action understood between them. The Japanese mind seems never to have elaborated any formal philosophy of this life or any specific theories of the life to come.

=13. The Domestic Cult.= The simplest and most original form of the Shinto worship is that of the family. In the inner chamber of every home there is a high shelf against the wall called the "Shelf of the August Spirits." Upon it is placed a miniature temple, in which are deposited little tablets of white wood bearing the names of the deceased members of the household. These are often spoken of as "spirit sticks" and "spirit substitutes." Before these household shrines simple offerings are offered daily and a few words of prayer are spoken. The ceremony is a very short one, but as regular as the coming of the day. It is usually performed by the head of the family, but it frequently devolves upon the woman, the mother or the grandmother, rather than the father. "No religion," says Hearn, "is more sincere, no faith more touching than this domestic worship, which regards the dead as continuing to form a part of the household life and needing still the affection and the respect of their children and kindred. Originating in those dim ages when fear was stronger than love, ... the cult at last developed into a religion of affection; and this it yet remains. The belief that the dead need affection, that to neglect them is a cruelty, that their happiness depends upon duty, is a belief that has almost cast out the primitive fear of their displeasure. They are not thought of as dead: they are believed to remain among those who loved them. Unseen, they guard the home and watch over the welfare of its inmates; they hover nightly in the glow of the shrine-lamp, and the stirring of its flame is the motion of them.... From their shrine they observe and hear what happens in the house; they share the family joys and sorrows. They were the givers of life; they represent the past of the race, and all its sacrifices.... Yet, how little do they require in return! Scarcely more than to be thanked, as founders and guardians of the home, in simple words like these: 'For aid received, by day and by night, accept, august ones, our reverential gratitude.'"[25]

=14. The Communal Cult.= The next phase of the Shinto worship to be noticed is that which is represented in the temples scattered about everywhere in the land and which are said to number over 195,000 at the present time. In every community, village, and large city is found the parish-temple, and in the larger towns each section or district has its public shrine, in which the whole community honor the deified ancestors of certain noble families of ancient time, or the spirit of the first great patriarch of the clan. The farmers, or those who till the fields, usually dwell in a village on the principal highway, and go out thence to work the rural districts round about. So the villages vary in size from fifty houses set on a single street half a mile long to a large town of many hundred houses. In Simmons and Wigmore's "Notes on Land Tenure and Local Institutions in Old Japan,"[26] we read that the Japanese rural population is, as a rule, "exceedingly stable. The villagers are for the most part engaged wholly or partially as cultivators of land, and in the vast majority of cases many generations of cultivators have been born and have died on the same spot. From the almost numberless replies to inquiries, the answer usually is, 'We do not know where our ancestors came from, or when they came to live on this spot. Our temple register may tell, but we have never thought about the matter.'"

The deity honored at these village temples is called the _Ujigami_, and recognized as the patriarchal and tutelary god of the community. Just whether he were the clan-ancestor of the first settlers in that particular parish, or the spirit of some mighty ruler of that district at a former time, or the patron-god of some noble family once resident there, is as uncertain as the knowledge of the common villagers touching their earliest progenitors. But in every class these _Ujigami_ were worshiped as the tutelar deity of the community in which the temple stood. Also, in the larger towns there are Shinto temples dedicated to certain patron-gods of other localities.

Each one of these parish temples naturally has a most intimate relation to the life of the community about it. Thither every child born in the parish is taken, when a month old, and formally named and placed under the protection of the ancestral deity. As it grows up it is regularly taken to observe all the festivals and the processions and ceremonies, and the temple groves and gardens become its common playground. There is nothing somber or solemn about this religious cult to scare a child, but rather very much to attract and interest.[27] Every village temple has its appointed days of public worship, and neighboring districts vie with each other in making their great festival days occasions of popular delight. To these joyous festivals every family contributes according to ability, and the worship is accompanied by public amusements of various kinds, athletic sports, and the sale of toys for children. The temple worship consisted in the presentation of offerings of cloth, herbs, fruits, and other of the most common products of the country, and in a ritual prayer enumerating the various gifts and supplicating for prosperity and success in all communal affairs, for protection against sickness, plague, and famine, and for the triumph of their chieftains in time of war. In this way the _Ujigami_ was recognized as the tutelar deity of the community and the district, the abiding friend and helper of his offspring. The communal cult thus powerfully confirmed the family cult, and enforced the lesson that no man could live unto himself alone.