Part 4

=22. Esoteric Shinto.= Shinto did not continue very long to hold its newly proclaimed status as the State religion. Its own most devoted adherents and leaders felt that its highest interests would be best served without official and governmental prestige. A wise and prudent State policy determined that its permanence and success should be left to care for themselves and to depend upon the merits of its teachings and its historic and popular hold upon the national, the communal, and the family life. As a cult it is deeply rooted in the civilization of the empire, and its pilgrims swarm along the highways of travel and at the historic shrines. They are found journeying to the summits of sacred mountains, and there performing esoteric rites which induce mystic divine possession. The performance of such mystic rites and incantations seems to be no modern innovation. It may have its connections with Buddhist counting of rosaries, and possibly other foreign influences have helped to cultivate its somewhat mantic forms, but its origin is from a remote antiquity. This "esoteric Shinto" is essentially akin to that self-induced religious fervor which exhibits itself in many lands and in connection with various cults, and is often seen among the Mohammedan dancing and howling dervishes. Its existence and its practices in Japan refute the notion of those who would deny to Shinto the character of a real religion.[40] The excrescences and extravagancies of religious fervor must have some sort of a religion to inspire them.

=23. Mingling of Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism.= The noteworthy fact that Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism have for more than a thousand years mixed with each other in Japan demonstrates the susceptibility of the Japanese people to foreign influence and teaching, and their natural hospitality toward the various religious cults. The ethical teachings of Confucius prepared the way for Buddhism, and, in spite of antipathy and wars between the nations, maintain a powerful hold upon the thoughtful Japanese to-day. Still more remarkable is it that millions of the Japanese appear to accept both Shintoism and Buddhism, and good Shintoists and good Buddhists may be found worshiping in some temples at one and the same time.[41] A Japanese scholar, speaking at the Chicago "Parliament of Religions" on the "Future of Religion in Japan," declared that the three systems named "are not only living together on friendly terms with one another, but, in fact, they are blended together in the minds of the people. One and the same Japanese is at once a Shintoist, a Confucianist, and a Buddhist. Our religion may be likened to a triangle. One angle is Shintoism, another is Confucianism, and a third is Buddhism, all of which make up the religion of the ordinary Japanese. Shintoism furnishes the objects, Confucianism offers the rules of life, while Buddhism supplies the way of salvation."[42]

=24. Roman Catholicism in Japan.= We must not omit altogether a notice of the introduction of Roman Catholic Christianity into Japan about the middle of the sixteenth century. It was in 1549 that the famous Jesuit, Francis Xavier, landed at Kagoshima, and began his marvelous missionary work through Japanese interpreters, and in two years of strenuous toil he succeeded in winning many converts from all classes of the people. Fifty years thereafter the Christian converts throughout the country are said to have numbered nearly a million. But the Jesuit habit and policy of meddling with affairs of State, their intolerance of other cults, and at length their crusade against the ancient national faith and their burning of Buddhist temples and slaughter of Buddhist priests, aroused the bitter reaction and bloody persecutions, which, after some forty years of struggle, succeeded in obliterating every public sign of Christianity from every province of the empire. And for over two hundred years Japan closed her doors to all foreign influences and appeals. It was not until 1873 that the edicts against Christianity were withdrawn. Of the Protestant missionary movements in the island empire since that date, it is not the purpose of this essay to speak.

=25. Present Religious Indifference.= Much is said nowadays about the apparent religious indifference of the Japanese. Some writers seem to think that the Japanese and the Chinese people are alike inferior and defective in religious nature. Mr. Gulick, in his "Evolution of the Japanese," reports Marquis Ito, Japan's most illustrious statesman, as having said: "I regard religion itself as quite unnecessary for a nation's life; science is far above superstition, and what is religion--Buddhism or Christianity--but superstition, and therefore a possible source of weakness to a nation? I do not regret the tendency to free thought and atheism, which is almost universal in Japan, because I do not regard it as a source of danger to the community." And yet this same distinguished statesman is reported on the same page (288) to have given utterance to the following much more recent statement: "The only true civilization is that which rests on Christian principles, and consequently, as Japan must attain her civilization on these principles, those young men who receive Christian education will be the main factors in the development of future Japan." Possibly these two discrepant statements may be reconciled by supposing that, in the first case, Ito's thought was turned especially to the superstitions and temporary phases incident to all religious cults, and in his later remark he spoke of Christianity as somehow synonymous with Western civilization. But in any case it would seem that one who deems the Japanese either irreligious, or non-religious, or deficient in religious sense, ought to explain the manifold facts of the Shinto cult, such as the "god shelf," the ancestral tablets, the daily offerings, and the family worship in almost every household of that Eastern island-empire. What mean the hundreds of thousands of white-robed pilgrims who annually visit the numerous sacred shrines? And is there no element of religion in the devout patriotism that is ever ready to sacrifice life and all that men hold dear for the faith and inheritance of their beloved "central land of Reed-Plains" given long ago to the care of the "Sovran Grandchild" by the celestial deities?

It is only a one-sided concept of religion, and a too prevalent failure to distinguish between its local temporary phases and its deeper essentials as grounded in the spiritual nature of man, that have led superficial observers to deny the profound religious element in the Shinto and Buddhist worship of Japan. If Paul, waiting at Athens, and beholding the city full of idols, could truly say, "I perceive, O Athenians, that in all things ye are very religious," just as truly may we say, in view of the 195,000 temples and the innumerable deities of the Shinto cult, that the Japanese are exceedingly religious.

Let me add the testimony of Mr. Gulick himself, who spent years in the country: "The universality of the tokens of family religion, and the constant and loving care bestowed upon them, are striking testimony to the universality of religion in Japan. The pathos of life is often revealed by the family devotion of the mother to these silent representatives of divine beings, and departed ancestors or children. I have no hesitation in saying that, so far as external appearances go, the average home in Japan is far more religious than the average home in enlightened England or America, especially when compared with such as have no family worship. There may be a genuine religious life in these Western homes, but it does not appear to the casual visitor. Yet no casual visitor can enter a Japanese home, without seeing at once the evidences of some sort of religious life."[43]

It is to be remarked that in the history and evolution of religion, where there has been obvious evolution, periods of long peace and repose, marked by formalism, skepticism, and indifference to religious obligation, are generally followed by great revivals and reforms. Some new light breaks in; some great prophet appears; new ideas and hopes take hold on the popular mind, and thereupon a new era opens in civilization. The renaissance in Japan of the last fifty years may be the prelude to an epoch-making revival of the Orient.

=26. Concluding Observations and Suggestions.= Our study of Shinto has led us over a somewhat unfamiliar field of thought. The mythology and the records of the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_ are far apart from all our Western legends and ideals of the early world, and in great part seem like monstrosities of fantastic speculation. It is affirmed by some that the Japanese people have been halting for two millenniums in a state of childhood, receiving nothing from Confucianism or from Buddhism to quicken or change the national life; but with the introduction of Western thought and enterprise they have suddenly leaped into comparative maturity, and their new departure from a dreamy past is likely to astonish the whole world. It is very obvious that the introduction of modern science into her thousands of elementary schools must sooner or later undermine all faith in the traditional cosmogony, and, along with that, a whole world of notions bound up with the Shinto cult must needs be overthrown. Eminent Japanese scholars say that Western learning has sounded the knell and signed the death warrant of the ancient religion of their island-world.

It is for us very easy, in the light of our New Testament revelation, to point out defects in the Shinto system. Some four or five of these we may briefly mention as matters which a Christian missionary should keep in view as evincing the need of preaching among these people the deeper demands of the religion of Jesus Christ. (1) The first and fundamental defect in Shinto as a religious system is its lack of any clear or helpful concept of one God and Father of all. The doctrine of God is fundamental in any cult, and where the idea is vague and imperfect the entire system of doctrine and practice must needs possess an element of uncertainty and weakness. (2) Another defect is its want of a clear concept of sin as a moral disease of the heart. The Japanese mind needs to be turned inward to a deeper sense of the real sinfulness of sin. (3) Another serious fault in the Japanese civilization is its low estimate of womanhood. Here as in China woman has not attained her proper sphere. She is subjected to three forms of obedience, which in actual life are too abject for her higher development--she must bow to her parents, to her husband, and to her son in a manner that involves what we should call a humiliating form of domestic slavery. Japan needs the practice of a monogamy of the highest Christian type in order to rectify this inferior and one-sided view of the male and female constitution of humanity. (4) There is also in Japan an apparently low estimate of human life. It is probably due largely to the communal and feudal system which has for a long time ruled the people. The individual is nothing; the community is everything. These and other defects show our grounds for believing that the old order and system must sometime change. But it is no strange or unheard of thing in our world for an old order to change and give place to something new and higher. Western civilization has seen not a few examples of such changes; but, as touching religious evolution, what a monumental example we have in the transition from the Old Testament Judaism to the New Testament kingdom of heaven! The main contents and scope of the Epistle to the Hebrews point out the fact that the old covenant, with its sanctuary and altars and tables and sacrifices and priests, could not make their worshipers perfect. Notwithstanding its long and glorious history, it waxed old, and when the Epistle was written it was nigh unto vanishing away (Heb. viii, 13). It did pass away and give place to a more spiritual cult, the gospel of peace on earth and universal love. May not the national cult of Japan--with its faith in the unseen, its rituals of purification, its concepts of a heavenly ancestry, and its intimations of deification after death--be made to give way before a superior cult that may have the wisdom to offer a higher and more rational presentation of the essential truths embodied in the Shinto worship? Whatever men may think or say about the mystical and legendary elements in the Hebrew Scriptures, no one familiar with the literatures of the nations can hesitate for a moment to acknowledge the immense superiority of the Old Testament law and prophets and psalms over the contents of the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_. If, then, the covenants and the rituals of Judaism waxed old and vanished away before the clearer light and truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, much more should we expect that the same superior "Light of the world" must needs, sometime, supersede and supplant the rituals of the Shinto cult.

Accordingly, I shall venture to specify sundry elements of ancient Shinto, which, to use the language of Jesus, are not to be _destroyed_, but rather _fulfilled_, in the higher and more universal truths of the kingdom of Christ. _Fulfilled_, I say for I look upon all the religious longings, and prayers, and penitential psalms of the nations, and their inquiries after the Unseen and Eternal, as so many foregleams of a coming Light, destined to enlighten every man that cometh into the world.

We have seen that one of the most conspicuous aspects of the Shinto cult is its ceremonial of the Great Purification. Physical pollution of any kind is abhorrent to the Japanese. The touch of a dead body, contact with a foul disease, failure to wash and keep one's person clean, are regarded as of the nature of calamities. We know that there was much in the practices and traditions of the Jewish elders that closely resembled these Shinto ideas of pollution. The Pharisees and scribes found fault with Jesus because of His indifference to their "washings of cups, pots, and brazen vessels." But cleanliness, we all admit, is a near neighbor of godliness. St. Paul said, "Glorify God in your body," for he maintained that "your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit which is in you." Jesus found no fault with Jewish ablutions, and enjoined the highest personal purity. But He pointed out the deeper lesson that the more horrible defilement of man is a pollution of the heart. "For from within," He said, "out of the heart of man, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness:--all these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man." This, then, is one fundamental truth which the Shinto worshiper should learn from the teachings of our Lord. The clean body and the pure white robes are eminently proper and beautiful in their way; but they should symbolize the consciousness of a pure heart, and a blameless life that keeps itself "unspotted from the world." Shinto purification needs the supplement of a deeper knowledge of spiritual defilement in order to a deeper knowledge of purity.

More exalted than any mere forms of purification, or rituals of worship, is that notion of a living Presence concealed in all phenomena. There has been and is to-day among all peoples a belief in many invisible spirits that have some sort of power over the clouds, the winds, the waters, the earth, and all its teeming growths. We call it Animism, Shamanism, and in a certain specific form, Fetishism. Belief in a countless multitude of spirits who can influence the elements about us for good or for evil, is firmly rooted in all the ancient peoples of Eastern Asia, from India to Japan. We have seen how deep a hold it had upon the earliest Shinto cult, and the later influences of Confucianism and Buddhism in Japan have tended rather to strengthen than to suppress it in the popular mind.

These animistic conceptions have played a noteworthy part in connection with most, if not all, the religions of mankind. When combined with a groveling fear of the spirits, and with the practice of magic rites and incantations to propitiate them as so many evil demons, the belief has run into the lowest forms of superstition. But is there no element of truth in Animism? Why should we speak disparagingly of the old Japanese worshiper hearing the voices of unseen spirits in the moaning winds, in the sounding waterfalls, in the rolling thunder? Why should he not adore the Sun as the heavenly Benefactor, and see in waving trees and blooming flowers and drifting clouds the presence and activity of beings, perhaps sometimes a Being Supernatural? One-sided, defective puerile notions controlled, no doubt, his thinking, but the one supreme and fundamental fact was that he felt himself in the presence of the Supernatural. And that primeval concept is the one most essential truth of all religion. We have only to divest it of sundry errant, non-essential interpretations in order to come face to face with the grandest, noblest, and most affecting theism, and monotheism as well. For monotheism finds its most advanced exposition in the doctrine of the universal immanence of God,--one God, the Eternal Spirit, in all, through all, over all. How far from such a concept of universal Animism was the old Hebrew psalmist, who sang of Jehovah "laying the beams of His chambers in the waters, making the clouds His chariot, walking upon the wings of the wind, sending forth springs into the valleys, causing the grass to grow upon the mountains," and receiving tribute of praises from the "sea-monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapor; stormy wind performing His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying birds." To such a worshiper the world was all alive with God. And Jesus added an intensity and an affecting beauty to this whole concept of an immanent God when He said: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," and "not one sparrow falleth on the ground without your Father." I can conceive no Animism and no Supernaturalism more minute or more adorable than the ever acting and ever continuous presence of an unseen but all observant "Father in the heavens." The heavens in which He dwells are above, below, within, and all around us.

And this is the higher Animism which ought to be welcomed by the Shinto pilgrims of Japan as the beautiful fulfilling of their ancient dreams. Not so many gods, not a multitude of unfriendly spirits that need propitiation by our gifts of food and clothing, but ONE Heavenly Father, immanent in every plant that grows and in every dewdrop on the flowers, forever working for our good, caring for every birdling, and numbering the very hairs of our head.

With such a monotheistic conception of the world all mythologic and polytheistic notions of deity and the rule of the spirits of the dead must sooner or later disappear. Japanese scholars of high rank are telling their people and others that the modern Western learning has already destroyed the cosmogony of the Shinto cult. What is now most needed is a class of teachers straightforward and broad enough to show these people a nobler and truer concept of the world. The new conception need have no conflict with the belief that the spirits of the dead are all about us, and are deeply interested in us still. The family cult may adjust itself to the new and higher doctrines, and lose none of the beauty and tenderness and sanctity which old affection connects with the domestic tablets of the honored and beloved dead. Herein the new faith is to fulfill rather than destroy the ancient rites of love. Such a monotheistic cult will find no reason or occasion to commit the blunder of the Jesuit missionaries, and seek interference with the government of the land. The Mikado may still command the reverence and the love of the people and be rationally honored as a child of heaven. Loyal Christians do that under every form of government. "Fear God; honor the king; for there is no power but God, and the powers that be are ordained of God; for they are the ministers of God's service;"--these are the precepts of the earliest apostolic gospel, and the modern missionary of Christ is bound to observe and teach them. He should exhibit common sense and discretion in foreign politics, recognize and honor the legitimate power, and like the Great Teacher, "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

The Shinto cult is essentially a religion of race and national patriotism. It is the secret of Japanese heroism and sacrifice in the day of battle. He counts it sweet and glorious to die for his country. He is not his own; he belongs to the State. We are told that the three principal commandments of the public and official Shinto faith are these:

1. "Thou shalt honor the gods and love thy country.

2. "Thou shalt clearly understand the principles of Heaven, and the duty of man.

3. "Thou shalt revere the emperor as thy sovereign, and obey the will of his court."

Surely these principles and precepts are capable of easy adjustment to any form of national government, and the ethics of Christianity are in fundamental accord with their essential claims.

But how can the Christian religion, with its monotheistic worship, adjust itself without antagonism to the ancestor worship of Japan? Many seem to think that in this particular there must needs be an irrepressible conflict, for the worship of ancestors is central and fundamental in the Shinto faith, and the most precious and hallowed bond that holds the family, the community, and the State together.

In this matter we do well to observe a number of relevant facts. Ancestor worship has existed in a variety of forms among many peoples. It has undergone various modifications in different countries, and it appears to have ceased among some peoples and given place to other ideas and forms of worship. The Japanese conception is that their Mikado and all his people are offspring of the gods, and each one, when he dies, becomes a deity, but does not cease to have interest in the relatives and companions of his earthly life. During the siege of Port Arthur, Togo sent the Mikado a message in which he expressed the thought that the patriotic _manes_ of the fallen heroes might hover over the battlefield for a long time and give unseen protection to the Imperial forces. Such a faith and such inspiration from the dead are things which a proud nation does not easily let die.

But may we not approach the devotees of such a faith with the words of the old Hebrew prophet: "Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us?" Ye think your honored ancestors still live, and love to think of you and aid you from their higher sphere; is it not also just as true of the ancestors and heroes of other lands and peoples? You have learned that your beautiful "land of the reed-plains and the fresh rice-ears" is only a very small portion of the world of men. Have these broader lands and more numerous peoples sprung from other and greater gods than yours? May it not rather be that, as there is only one sun to shine on all this habitable world, so there is one Heavenly Father of us all? Then we are all offspring of one Supreme God and we should all be brethren. Our ancestors and dear kindred who have passed out of our sight should lose no place in our affection by this larger thought.[44]