The Religions of Japan Part 5

Probably in no portion of the earth are the people and the land more like each other or apparently better acquainted with each other. Nowhere are thought and speech more reflective of the features of the landscape.

Even after ten centuries, the j.a.panese are, in temperament, what the Kojiki reveals them to have been in their early simplicity. Indeed, just as the modern Frenchman, down beneath his outward environments and his habiliments cut and fitted yesterday, is intrinsically the same Gaul whom Julius Caesar described eighteen hundred years ago, so the gentleman of T[=o]ki[=o] or Ki[=o]to is, in his mental make-up, wonderfully like his ancestors described by the first j.a.panese Stanley, who shed the light of letters upon the night of unlettered j.a.pan and darkest Dai Nippon.

The Kojiki reveals to us, likewise, the childlike religious ideas of the islanders. Heaven lay, not about but above them in their infancy, yet not far away. Although in the "Notices," it is "the high plain of heaven," yet it is just over their heads, and once a single pillar joined it and the earth. Later, the idea was, that it was held up by the pillar-G.o.ds of the wind, and to them norito were recited. "The great plain of the blue sea" and "the land of luxuriant reeds" form "the world"--which means j.a.pan. The G.o.ds are only men of prowess or renown. A kami is anything wonderful--G.o.d or man, rock or stream, bird or snake, whatever is surprising, sensational, or phenomenal, as in the little child's world of to-day. There is no sharp line dividing G.o.ds from men, the natural from the supernatural, even as with the normal uneducated j.a.panese of to-day. As for the kami or G.o.ds, they have all sorts of characters; some of them being rude and ill-mannered, many of them beastly and filthy, while others are n.o.ble and benevolent. The attributes of moral purity, wisdom and holiness, cannot be, and in the original writings are not, ascribed to them; but they were strong and had power. In so far as they had power they were called kami or G.o.ds, whether celestial or terrestrial. Among the kami--the one term under which they are all included--there were heavenly bodies, mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and animals, because those also were supposed to possess force, or at least some kind of influence for good or evil. Even peaches, as we have seen, when transformed into rocks, became G.o.ds.[14]

That there was worship with awe, reverence, and fear, and that the festivals and sacrifices had two purposes, one of propitiating the offended Kami and the other of purifying the worshipper, may be seen in the norito or liturgies, some of which are exceedingly beautiful.[15] In them the feelings of the G.o.ds are often referred to. Sometimes their characters are described. Yet one looks in vain in either the "Notices,"

poems, or liturgies for anything definite in regard to these deities, or concerning morals or doctrines to be held as dogmas. The first G.o.ds come into existence after evolution of the matter of which they are composed has taken place. The later G.o.ds are sometimes able to tell who are their progenitors, sometimes not. They live and fight, eat and drink, and give vent to their appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions, and then they die; but exactly what becomes of them after they die, the record does not state. Some are in heaven, some on the earth, some in Hades. The underworld of the first cycle of tradition is by no means that of the second.[16] Some of the kami are in the water, or on the water, or in the air. As for man, there is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and the Iroquois believed in.

It would task the keenest and ablest Shint[=o]ist to deduce or construct a system of theology, or of ethics, or of anthropology from the ma.s.s of tradition so full of gaps and discord as that found in the Kojiki, and none has done it. Nor do the inaccurate, distorted, and often almost wholly fact.i.tious translations, so-called, of French and other writers, who make versions which hit the taste of their occidental readers far better than they express the truth, yield the desired information. Like the end strands of a new spider's web, the lines of information on most vital points are still "in the air."

The Ethics of the G.o.d-way.

There are no codes of morals inculcated in the G.o.d-way, for even its modern revivalists and exponents consider that morals are the invention of wicked people like the Chinese; while the ancient j.a.panese were pure in thought and act. They revered the G.o.ds and obeyed the Mikado, and that was the chief end of man, in those ancient times when j.a.pan was the world and Heaven was just above the earth. Not exactly on Paul's principle of "where there is no law there is no transgression," but utterly scouting the idea that formulated ethics were necessary for these pure-minded people, the modern revivalists of Shint[=o] teach that all that is "of faith" now is to revere the G.o.ds, keep the heart pure, and follow its dictates.[17] The navete of the representatives of Shint[=o] at Chicago in A.D. 1893, was almost as great as that of the revivalists who wrote when j.a.pan was a hermit nation.

The very fact that there was no moral commandments, not even of loyalty or obedience such as Confucianism afterward promulgated and formulated, is proof to the modern Shint[=o]ist that the primeval j.a.panese were pure and holy; they did right, naturally, and hence he does not hesitate to call j.a.pan, the Land of the G.o.ds, the Country of the Holy Spirits, the Region Between Heaven and Earth, the Island of the Congealed Drop, the Sun's Nest, the Princess Country, the Land of Great Peace, the Land of Great Gentleness, the Mikado's Empire, the Country ruled by a Theocratic Dynasty. He considers that only with the vice brought over from the Continent of Asia were ethics both imported and made necessary.[18]

All this has been solemnly taught by famous Shint[=o] scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is still practically promulgated in the polemic Shint[=o] literature of to-day, even after the Kojiki has been studied and translated into European languages. The Kojiki shows that whatever the men may have been or done, the G.o.ds were abominably obscene, and both in word and deed were foul and revolting, utterly opposed in act to those reserves of modesty or standards of shame that exist even among the cultivated j.a.panese to-day.[19] Even among the Ainos, whom the j.a.panese look upon as savages, there is still much of the obscenity of speech which belongs to all society[20] in a state of barbarism; but it has been proved that genuine modesty is a characteristic of the Aino women.[21] A literal English translation of the Kojiki, however, requires an abundant use of Latin in order to protect it from the grasp of the law in English-speaking Christendom. In Chamberlain's version, the numerous cesspools are thus filled up with a dead language, and the road is constructed for the reader, who likes the language of Edmund Spencer, of William Tyndale and of John Ruskin kept unsoiled.

The cruelty which marks this early stage shows that though moral codes did not exist, the Buddhist and Confucian missionary were for j.a.pan necessities of the first order. Comparing the result to-day with the state of things in the early times, one must award high praise to Buddhism that it has made the j.a.panese gentle, and to Confucianism that it has taught the proprieties of life, so that the polished j.a.panese gentleman, as to courtesy, is in many respects the peer and at some external points the superior, of his European confrere.

Another fact, made repulsively clear, about life in ancient j.a.pan, is that the high ideals of truth and honor, characteristic at least of the Samurai of modern times, were utterly unknown in the days of the kami.

Treachery was common. Instances multiply on the pages of the Kojiki where friend betrayed friend. The most sacred relations of life were violated. Altogether these were the darkest ages of j.a.pan, though, as among the red men of America, there were not wanting many n.o.ble examples of stoical endurance, of courage, and of power n.o.bly exerted for the benefit of others.

The Rise of Mikadoism.

Nevertheless we must not forget that the men of the early age of the Kami no Michi conquered the aborigines by superior dogmas and fetiches, as well as by superior weapons. The entrance of these heroes, invaders from the highlands of the Asian continent, by way of Korea, was relatively a very influential factor of progress, though not so important as was the Aryan descent upon India, or the Norman invasion of England, for the aboriginal tribes were vastly lower in the scale of humanity than their subduers. Where they found savagery they introduced barbarism, which, though unlettered and based on the sword, was a vast improvement over what may be called the geological state of man, in which he is but slightly raised above the brutes.

For the proofs from the sh.e.l.l heaps, combined with the reflected evidences of folk-lore, show, that cannibalism[22] was common in the early ages, and that among the aboriginal hill tribes it lingered after the inhabitants of the plain and sh.o.r.e had been subdued. The conquerors, who made themselves paramount over the other tribes and who developed the Kami religion, abolished this relic of savagery, and gave order where there had been chronic war. Another thing that impresses us because of its abundant ill.u.s.trations, is the prevalence of human sacrifices. The very ancient folk-lore shows that beautiful maidens were demanded by the "sea-G.o.ds" in propitiation, or were devoured by the "dragons." These human victims were either chosen or voluntarily offered, and in some instances were rescued from their fate by chivalrous heroes[23] from among the invaders.

These G.o.ds of the sea, who anciently were propitiated by the sacrifice of human beings, are the same to whom j.a.panese sailors still pray, despite their Buddhism. The t.i.tle of the efficient victims was _hitoga-shira_, or human pillars. Instances of this ceremony, where men were lowered into the water and drowned in order to make the sure foundation for bridges, piers or sea-walls, or where they were buried alive in the earth in order to lay the right bases for walls or castles, are quite numerous, and most of the local histories contain specific traditions.[24] These traditions, now transfigured, still survive in customs that are as beautiful as they are harmless. To reformers of pre-Buddhistic days, belongs the credit of the abolition of jun-shi, or dying with the master by burial alive, as well as of the sacrifice to dragons and sea-G.o.ds.

Strange as it may seem, before Buddhism captured and made use of Shint[=o] for its own purposes (just as it stands ready to-day to absorb Christianity by making Jesus one of the Palestinian avatars of the Buddha), the house or tribe of Yamato, with its claim to descent from the heavenly G.o.ds, and with its Mikado or G.o.d-ruler, had given to the Buddhists a precedent and potent example. Shint[=o], as a state religion or union of politics and piety, with its system of shrines and festivals, and in short the whole Kami no Michi, or Shint[=o] as we know it, from the sixth to the eighth century, was in itself (in part at least), a case of the absorption of one religion by another.

In short, the Mikado tribe or Yamato clan did, in reality, capture the aboriginal religion, and turn it into a great political machine. They attempted syncretism and succeeded in their scheme. They added to their own stock of dogma and fetich that of the natives. Only, while recognizing the (earth) G.o.ds of the aborigines they proclaimed the superiority of the Mikado as representative and vicegerent of Heaven, and demanded that even the G.o.ds of the earth, mountain, river, wind, and thunder and lightning should obey him. Not content, however, with absorbing and corrupting for political purposes the primitive faith of the aborigines, the invaders corrupted their own religion by carrying the dogma of the divinity and infallibility of the Mikado too far.

Stopping short of no absurdity, they declared their chief greater even than the heavenly G.o.ds, and made their religion centre in him rather than in his alleged heavenly ancestors, or "heaven." In the interest of politics and conquest, and for the sake of maintaining the prestige of their tribe and clan, these "Mikado-reverencers" of early ages advanced from dogma to dogma, until their leader was virtually chief G.o.d in a great pantheon.

A critical native j.a.panese, student of the Kojiki and of the early writings, Professor k.u.mi, formerly of the Imperial University in T[=o]ki[=o], has brought to light abundant evidence to show that the aboriginal religion found by the Yamato conquerors was markedly different at many vital points, from that which was long afterward called Shint[=o].

If the view of recent students of anthropology be correct, that the elements dominating the population in ancient j.a.pan were in the south, Malay; in the north, Aino; and in the central region, or that occupied by the Yamato men, Korean; then, these continental invaders may have been worshippers of Heaven and have possessed a religion closely akin to that of ancient China with its monotheism. It is very probable also that they came into contact with tribes or colonies of their fellow-continentals from Asia. These tribes, hunters, fishermen, or rude agriculturists--who had previously reached j.a.pan--practised many rites and ceremonies which were much like those of the new invaders. It is certain also, as we have seen, that the Yamato men made ultimate conquest and unification of all the islanders, not merely by the superiority of their valor and of their weapons of iron, but also by their dogmas. After success in battle, and the first beginnings of rude government, they taught their conquered subjects or over-awed va.s.sals, that they were the descendants of the heavenly G.o.ds; that their ancestors had come down from heaven; find that their chief or Mikado was a G.o.d. According to the same dogmatics, the aborigines were descendants of the earth-born G.o.ds, and as such must obey the descendants of the heavenly G.o.ds, and their vicegerent upon the earth, the Mikado.

Purification of Offences.

These heaven-descended Yamato people were in the main agriculturists, though of a rude order, while the outlying tribes were mostly hunters and fishermen; and many of the rituals show the cla.s.s of crimes which nomads, or men of unsettled life, would naturally commit against their neighbors living in comparatively settled order. It is to be noted that in the G.o.d-way the origin of evil is to be ascribed to evil G.o.ds. These kami pollute, and pollution is iniquity. From this iniquity the people are to be purged by the G.o.ds of purification, to whom offerings are duly made.

He who would understand the pa.s.sion for cleanliness which characterizes the j.a.panese must look for its source in their ancient religion. The root idea of the word _tsumi_, which Mr. Satow translated as "offence,"

is that of pollution. On this basis, of things pure and things defiling, the ancient teachers of Shint[=o] made their cla.s.sification of what was good and what was bad. From the impression of what was repulsive arose the idea of guilt.

In rituals translated by Mr. Satow, the list of offences is given and the defilements are to be removed to the nether world, or, in common fact, the polluted objects and the expiatory sacrifices are to be thrown into the rivers and thence carried to the sea, where they fall to the bottom of the earth. The following norito clearly shows this.

Furthermore, as Mr. Satow, the translator, points out, this ritual contains the germ of criminal law, a whole code of which might have been evolved and formulated under Shint[=o], had not Buddhism arrested its growth.

Amongst the various sorts of offences which may be committed in ignorance or out of negligence by heaven's increasing people, who shall come into being in the country, which the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness, hiding in the fresh RESIDENCE, built by stoutly planting the HOUSE-pillars on the bottom-most rocks, and exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven, as his SHADE from the heavens and SHADE from the sun, shall tranquilly ruin as a peaceful country, namely, the country of great Yamato, where the sun is soon on high, which he fixed upon as a peaceful country, as the centre of the countries of the four quarters thus bestowed upon him--breaking the ridges, filling up water-courses, opening sluices, double-sowing, planting stakes, flaying alive, flaying backwards, and dunging; many of such offences are distinguished as heavenly offences, and as earthly offences; cutting living flesh, cutting dead flesh, leprosy, proud-flesh, ... calamities of crawling worms, calamities of a G.o.d on high, calamities of birds on high, the offences of killing beasts and using incantations; many of such offences may be disclosed.

When he has thus repeated it, the heavenly G.o.ds will push open heaven's eternal gates, and cleaving a path with might through the manifold clouds of heaven, will hear; and the country G.o.ds, ascending to the tops of the high mountains, and to the tops of the low hills, and tearing asunder the mists of the high mountains and the mists of the low hills, will hear.

And when they have thus heard, the Maiden-of-Descent-into-the-Current, who dwells in the current of the swift stream which boils down the ravines from the tops of the high mountains, and the tops of the low hills, shall carry out to the great sea plain the offences which are cleared away and purified, so that there be no remaining offence; like as Shinato's wind blows apart the manifold clouds of heaven, as the morning wind and the evening wind blow away the morning mist and the evening mist, as the great ships which lie on the sh.o.r.e of a great port loosen their prows, and loosen their sterns to push out into the great sea-plain; as the trunks of the forest trees, far and near, are cleared away by the sharp sickle, the sickle forged with fire: so that there ceased to be any offence called an offence in the court of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness to begin with, and in the countries of the four quarters of the region under heaven.

And when she thus carries them out and away, the deity called the Maiden-of-the-Swift-cleansing, who dwells in the mult.i.tudinous meetings of the sea waters, the mult.i.tudinous currents of rough sea-waters shall gulp them down.

And when she has thus gulped them down, the lord of the Breath-blowing-place, who dwells in the Breath-blowing-place, shall utterly blow them away with his breath to the Root-country, the Bottom-country.

And when he has thus blown them away, the deity called the Maiden-of-Swift-Banishment, who dwells in the Root-country, the Bottom-country, shall completely banish them, and get rid of them.

And when they have thus been got rid of, there shall from this day onwards be no offence which is called offence, with regard to the men of the offices who serve in the court of the Sovran, nor in the four quarters of the region under heaven.

Then the high priest says:

Hear all of you how he leads forth the horse, as a thing that erects its ears towards the plain of high heaven, and deigns to sweep away and purify with the general purification, as the evening sun goes down on the last day of the watery moon of this year.

O diviners of the four countries, take (the sacrifices) away out to the river highway, and sweep them away.

Mikadoism Usurps the Primitive G.o.d-way.

A further proof of the transformation of the primitive G.o.d-way in the interest of practical politics, is shown by Professor k.u.mi in the fact that some of the festivals now directly connected with the Mikado's house, and even in his honor, were originally festivals with which he had nothing to do, except as leader of the worship, for the honor was paid to Heaven, and not to his ancestors. Professor k.u.mi maintains that the thanksgivings of the court were originally to Heaven itself, and not in honor of Amateras[)u], the sun-G.o.ddess, as is now popularly believed.

It is related in the Kojiki that Amateras[)u] herself celebrated the feast of Niiname. So also, the temple of Ise, the Mecca of Shint[=o], and the Holy shrine in the imperial palace were originally temples for the worship of Heaven. The inferior G.o.ds of earthly origin form no part of primitive Shint[=o].

Not one of the first Mikados was deified after death, the deification of emperors dating from the corruption which Shint[=o] underwent after the introduction of Buddhism. Only by degrees was the ruler of the country given a place in the worship, and this connection was made by attributing to him descent from Heaven. In a word, the contention of Professor k.u.mi is, that the ancient religion of at least a portion of the j.a.panese and especially of those in central j.a.pan, was a rude sort of monotheism, coupled, as in ancient China, with the worship of subordinate spirits.

It is needless to say that such applications of the higher criticism to the ancient sacred doc.u.ments proved to be no safer for the applier than if he had lived in the United States of America. The orthodox Shint[=o]ists were roused to wrath and charged the learned critic with "degrading Shint[=o] to a mere branch of Christianity." The government, which, despite its Const.i.tution and Diet, is in the eyes of the people really based on the myths of the Kojiki, quickly put the professor on the retired list.[25]

It is probably correct to say that the arguments adduced by Professor k.u.mi, confirm our theory of the subst.i.tution in the simple G.o.d-way, of Mikadoism, the centre of the primitive worship being the sun and nature rather than Heaven.

Between the ancient Chinese religion with its abstract idea of Heaven and its personal term for G.o.d, and the more poetic and childlike system of the G.o.d-way, there seems to be as much difference as there is racially between the people of the Middle Kingdom and those of the Land Where the Day Begins. Indeed, the entrance of Chinese philosophical and abstract ideas seemed to paralyze the j.a.panese imagination. Not only did myth-making, on its purely aesthetic and non-utilitarian side cease almost at once, but such myths as were formed were for direct business purposes and with a transparent tendency. Henceforth, in the domain of imagination the j.a.panese intellect busied itself with a.s.similating or re-working the abundant material imported by Buddhism.

Ancient Customs and Usages.

In the ancient G.o.d-way the temple or shrine was called a miya. After the advent of Buddhism the keepers of the shrine were called kannushi, that is, shrine keepers or wardens of the G.o.d. These men were usually descendants of the G.o.d in whose honor the temples were built. The G.o.ds being nothing more than human founders of families, reverence was paid to them as ancestors, and so the basis of Shint[=o] is ancestor worship.

The model of the miya, in modern as in ancient times, is the primitive hut as it was before Buddhism introduced Indian and Chinese architecture. The posts, stuck in the ground, and not laid upon stones as in after times, supported the walls and roof, the latter being of thatch. The rafters, crossed at the top, were tied along the ridge-pole with the fibres of creepers or wistaria vines. No paint, lacquer, gilding, or ornaments of any sort existed in the ancient shrine, and even to-day the modern Shint[=o] temple must be of pure hinoki or sun-wood, and thatched, while the use of metal is as far as possible avoided. To the G.o.ds, as the norito show, offerings of various kinds were made, consisting of the fruits of the soil, the products of the sea, and the fabrics of the loom.

Inside modern temples one often sees a mirror, in which foreigners with lively imaginations read a great deal that is only the shadow of their own mind, but which probably was never known in Shint[=o] temples until after Buddhist times. They also see in front of the unpainted wooden closets or cas.e.m.e.nts, wands or sticks of wood from which depend ma.s.ses or strips of white paper, cut and notched in a particular way.