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Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

by Lafcadio Hearn · English · Gutenberg #5979 · 732,041 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

Author: Lafcadio Hearn


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5979]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5979


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAPAN: AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION ***











[Transcriber's Note: Page numbers are retained in square brackets.]






JAPAN
AN ATTEMPT AT INTERPRETATION

BY LAFCADIO HEARN



1904



Contents

CHAPTER                                   PAGE


I.     DIFFICULTIES.........................1

II.    STRANGENESS AND CHARM................5

III.   THE ANCIENT CULT....................21

IV.    THE RELIGION OF THE HOME............33

V.     THE JAPANESE FAMILY.................55

VI.    THE COMMUNAL CULT...................81

VII.   DEVELOPMENTS OF SHINTO.............107

VIII.  WORSHIP AND PURIFICATION...........133

IX.    THE RULE OF THE DEAD...............157

X.     THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM.......183

XI.    THE HIGHER BUDDHISM................207

XII.   THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION............229

XIII.  THE RISE OF THE MILITARY POWER.....259

XIV.   THE RELIGION OF LOYALTY............283

XV.    THE JESUIT PERIL...................303

XVI.   FEUDAL INTEGRATION.................343

XVII.  THE SHINTO REVIVAL.................367

XVIII. SURVIVALS..........................381

XIX.   MODERN RESTRAINTS..................395

XX.    OFFICIAL EDUCATION.................419

XXI.   INDUSTRIAL DANGER..................443

XXII.  REFLECTIONS........................457

       APPENDIX...........................481

       BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES..............487

       INDEX..............................489






"Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back
to a time of rigid and pervading discipline"--WALTER BAGEHOT.




[1]
DIFFICULTIES

A thousand books have been written about Japan; but among
these,--setting aside artistic publications and works of a purely
special character,--the really precious volumes will be found to
number scarcely a score. This fact is due to the immense difficulty
of perceiving and comprehending what underlies the surface of
Japanese life. No work fully interpreting that life,--no work
picturing Japan within and without, historically and socially,
psychologically and ethically,--can be written for at least another
fifty years. So vast and intricate the subject that the united labour
of a generation of scholars could not exhaust it, and so difficult
that the number of scholars willing to devote their time to it must
always be small. Even among the Japanese themselves, no scientific
knowledge of their own history is yet possible; because the means of
obtaining that knowledge have not yet been prepared,--though
mountains of material have been collected. The want of any good
history upon a modern plan is but one of many discouraging wants.
Data for the study of sociology [2] are still inaccessible to the
Western investigator. The early state of the family and the clan; the
history of the differentiation of classes; the history of the
differentiation of political from religious law; the history of
restraints, and of their influence upon custom; the history of
regulative and cooperative conditions in the development of industry;
the history of ethics and aesthetics,--all these and many other
matters remain obscure.

This essay of mine can serve in one direction only as a contribution
to the Western knowledge of Japan. But this direction is not one of
the least important. Hitherto the subject of Japanese religion has
been written of chiefly by the sworn enemies of that religion: by
others it has been almost entirely ignored. Yet while it continues to
be ignored and misrepresented, no real knowledge of Japan is
possible. Any true comprehension of social conditions requires more
than a superficial acquaintance with religious conditions. Even the
industrial history of a people cannot be understood without some
knowledge of those religious traditions and customs which regulate
industrial life during the earlier stages of its development .... Or
take the subject of art. Art in Japan is so intimately associated
with religion that any attempt to study it without extensive
knowledge of the [3] beliefs which it reflects, were mere waste of
time. By art I do not mean only painting and sculpture, but every
kind of decoration, and most kinds of pictorial representation,--the
image on a boy's kite or a girl's battledore, not less than the
design upon a lacquered casket or enamelled vase,--the figures upon a
workman's towel not less than the pattern of the girdle of a
princess,--the shape of the paper-dog or the wooden rattle bought for
a baby, not less than the forms of those colossal Ni-O who guard the
gateways of Buddhist temples .... And surely there can never be any
just estimate made of Japanese literature, until a study of that
literature shall have been made by some scholar, not only able to
understand Japanese beliefs, but able also to sympathize with them to
at least the same extent that our great humanists can sympathize with
the religion of Euripides, of Pindar, and of Theocritus. Let us ask
ourselves how much of English or French or German or Italian
literature could be fully understood without the slightest knowledge
of the ancient and modern religions of the Occident. I do not refer
to distinctly religious creators,--to poets like Milton or
Dante,--but only to the fact that even one of Shakespeare's plays
must remain incomprehensible to a person knowing nothing either of
Christian beliefs or of the beliefs which preceded them. The real
mastery of any European tongue is impossible [4] without a knowledge
of European religion. The language of even the unlettered is full of
religious meaning: the proverbs and household-phrases of the poor,
the songs of the street, the speech of the workshop,--all are infused
with significations unimaginable by any one ignorant of the faith of
the people. Nobody knows this better than a man who has passed many
years in trying to teach English in Japan, to pupils whose faith is
utterly unlike our own, and whose ethics have been shaped by a
totally different social experience.



[5]

STRANGENESS AND CHARM

The majority of the first impressions of Japan recorded by travellers
are pleasurable impressions. Indeed, there must be something lacking,
or something very harsh, in the nature to which Japan can make no
emotional appeal. The appeal itself is the clue to a problem; and
that problem is the character of a race and of its civilization.

My own first impressions of Japan,--Japan as seen in the white
sunshine of a perfect spring day,--had doubtless much in common with
the average of such experiences. I remember especially the wonder and
the delight of the vision. The wonder and the delight have never
passed away: they are often revived for me even now, by some chance
happening, after fourteen years of sojourn. But the reason of these
feelings was difficult to learn,--or at least to guess; for I cannot
yet claim to know much about Japan .... Long ago the best and dearest
Japanese friend I ever had said to me, a little before his death:
"When you find, in four or five years more, that you cannot
understand the Japanese at [6] all, then you will begin to know
something about them." After having realized the truth of my friend's
prediction,--after having discovered that I cannot understand the
Japanese at all,--I feel better qualified to attempt this essay.

As first perceived, the outward strangeness of things in Japan
produces (in certain minds, at least) a queer thrill impossible to
describe,--a feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with the
perception of the totally unfamiliar. You find yourself moving
through queer small streets full of odd small people, wearing robes
and sandals of extraordinary shapes; and you can scarcely distinguish
the sexes at sight. The houses are constructed and furnished in ways
alien to all your experience; and you are astonished to find that you
cannot conceive the use or meaning of numberless things on display in
the shops. Food-stuffs of unimaginable derivation; utensils of
enigmatic forms; emblems incomprehensible of some mysterious belief;
strange masks and toys that commemorate legends of gods or demons;
odd figures, too, of the gods themselves, with monstrous ears and
smiling faces,--all these you may perceive as you wander about;
though you must also notice telegraph-poles and type-writers,
electric lamps and sewing machines. Everywhere on signs and hangings,
and on the backs of people passing by, you will observe wonderful
Chinese [7] characters; and the wizardry of all these texts makes the
dominant tone of the spectacle.

Further acquaintance with this fantastic world will in nowise
diminish the sense of strangeness evoked by the first vision of it.
You will soon observe that even the physical actions of the people
are unfamiliar,--that their work is done in ways the opposite of
Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after
surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a
hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the
carpenter pulls, instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw.
Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong; and
keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are
accustomed to think the wrong direction. Mr. Percival Lowell has
truthfully observed that the Japanese speak backwards, read
backwards, write backwards,--and that this is "only the abc of their
contrariety." For the habit of writing backwards there are obvious
evolutional reasons; and the requirements of Japanese calligraphy
sufficiently explain why the artist pushes his brush or pencil
instead of pulling it. But why, instead of putting the thread through
the eye of the needle, should the Japanese maiden slip the eye of the
needle over the point of the thread? Perhaps the most remarkable, out
of a hundred possible examples of antipodal action, is furnished by
the Japanese art of fencing. The [8] swordsman, delivering his blow
with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of
striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it, indeed, as other
Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw; yet
there is a pushing motion where we should expect a pulling motion in
the stroke .... These and other forms of unfamiliar action are
strange enough to suggest the notion of a humanity even physically as
little related to us as might be the population of another
planet,--the notion of some anatomical unlikeness. No such
unlikeness, however, appears to exist; and all this oppositeness
probably implies, not so much the outcome of a human experience
entirely independent of Aryan experience, as the outcome of an
experience evolutionally younger than our own.

Yet that experience has been one of no mean order.  Its
manifestations do not merely startle: they also delight. The delicate
perfection of workmanship, the light strength and grace of objects,
the power manifest to obtain the best results with the least
material, the achieving of mechanical ends by the simplest possible
means, the comprehension of irregularity as aesthetic value, the
shapeliness and perfect taste of everything, the sense displayed of
harmony in tints or colours,--all this must convince you at once that
our Occident has much to learn from this remote civilization, not
only in matters of art and taste, but in matters likewise of [9]
economy and utility. It is no barbarian fancy that appeals to you in
those amazing porcelains, those astonishing embroideries, those
wonders of lacquer and ivory and bronze, which educate imagination in
unfamiliar ways. No: these are the products of a civilization which
became, within its own limits, so exquisite that none but an artist
is capable of judging its manufactures,--a civilization that can be
termed imperfect only by those who would also term imperfect the
Greek civilization of three thousand years ago.

But the underlying strangeness of this world,--the psychological
strangeness,--is much more startling than the visible and
superficial. You begin to suspect the range of it after having
discovered that no adult Occidental can perfectly master the
language. East and West the fundamental parts of human nature--the
emotional bases of it--are much the same: the mental difference
between a Japanese and a European child is mainly potential. But with
growth the difference rapidly develops and widens, till it becomes,
in adult life, inexpressible. The whole of the Japanese mental
superstructure evolves into forms having nothing in common with
Western psychological development: the expression of thought becomes
regulated, and the expression of emotion inhibited in ways that
bewilder and astound. The ideas of this people are not our [10]
ideas; their sentiments are not our sentiments their ethical life
represents for us regions of thought and emotion yet unexplored, or
perhaps long forgotten. Any one of their ordinary phrases, translated
into Western speech, makes hopeless nonsense; and the literal
rendering into Japanese of the simplest English sentence would
scarcely be comprehended by any Japanese who had never studied a
European tongue. Could you learn all the words in a Japanese
dictionary, your acquisition would not help you in the least to make
yourself understood in speaking, unless you had learned also to think
like a Japanese,--that is to say, to think backwards, to think
upside-down and inside-out, to think in directions totally foreign to
Aryan habit. Experience in the acquisition of European languages can
help you to learn Japanese about as much as it could help you to
acquire the language spoken by the inhabitants of Mars. To be able to
use the Japanese tongue as a Japanese uses it, one would need to be
born again, and to have one's mind completely reconstructed, from the
foundation upwards. It is possible that a person of European
parentage, born in Japan, and accustomed from infancy to use the
vernacular, might retain in after-life that instinctive knowledge
which could alone enable him to adapt his mental relations to the
relations of any Japanese environment. There is actually an
Englishman named Black, born in Japan, whose proficiency [11] in the
language is proved by the fact that he is able to earn a fair income
as a professional storyteller (hanashika). But this is an
extraordinary case .... As for the literary language, I need only
observe that to make acquaintance with it requires very much more
than a knowledge of several thousand Chinese characters. It is safe
to say that no Occidental can undertake to render at sight any
literary text laid before him--indeed the number of native scholars
able to do so is very small;--and although the learning displayed in
this direction by various Europeans may justly compel our admiration,
the work of none could have been given to the world without Japanese
help.

But as the outward strangeness of Japan proves to be full of beauty,
so the inward strangeness appears to have its charm,--an ethical
charm reflected in the common life of the people. The attractive
aspects of that life do not indeed imply, to the ordinary observer, a
psychological differentiation measurable by scores of centuries: only
a scientific mind, like that of Mr. Percival Lowell, immediately
perceives the problem presented. The less gifted stranger, if
naturally sympathetic, is merely pleased and puzzled, and tries to
explain, by his own experience of happy life on the other side of the
world, the social conditions that charm him. Let us suppose that he
has the good fortune of being able to [12] live for six months or a
year in some old-fashioned town of the interior. From the beginning
of this sojourn he can scarcely fail to be impressed by the apparent
kindliness and joyousness of the existence about him. In the
relations of the people to each other, as well as in all their
relations to himself, he will find a constant amenity, a tact, a
good-nature such as he will elsewhere have met with only in the
friendship of exclusive circles. Everybody greets everybody with
happy looks and pleasant words; faces are always smiling; the
commonest incidents of everyday life are transfigured by a courtesy
at once so artless and so faultless that it appears to spring
directly from the heart, without any teaching. Under all
circumstances a certain outward cheerfulness never falls: no matter
what troubles may come,--storm or fire, flood or earthquake,--the
laughter of greeting voices, the bright smile and graceful bow, the
kindly inquiry and the wish to please, continue to make existence
beautiful. Religion brings no gloom into this sunshine: before the
Buddhas and the gods folk smile as they pray; the temple-courts are
playgrounds for the children; and within the enclosure of the great
public shrines--which are places of festivity rather than of
solemnity--dancing-platforms are erected. Family existence would seem
to be everywhere characterized by gentleness: there is no visible
quarrelling, no loud harshness, no tears and reproaches. Cruelty,
even [13] to animals, appears to be unknown: one sees farmers, coming
to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their
dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads.
Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the
most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a
stupid chicken .... For no inconsiderable time one may live in the
midst of appearances like these, and perceive nothing to spoil the
pleasure of the experience.

Of course the conditions of which I speak are now passing away; but
they are still to be found in the remoter districts. I have lived in
districts where no case of theft had occurred for hundreds of
years,--where the newly-built prisons of Meiji remained empty and
useless,--where the people left their doors unfastened by night as
well as by day. These facts are familiar to every Japanese. In such a
district, you might recognize that the kindness shown to you, as a
stranger, is the consequence of official command; but how explain the
goodness of the people to each other? When you discover no harshness,
no rudeness, no dishonesty, no breaking of laws, and learn that this
social condition has been the same for centuries, you are tempted to
believe that you have entered into the domain of a morally superior
humanity. All this soft urbanity, impeccable honesty, ingenuous
kindliness of speech and act, you might naturally interpret [14] as
conduct directed by perfect goodness of heart. And the simplicity
that delights you is no simplicity of barbarism. Here every one has
been taught; every one knows how to write and speak beautifully, how
to compose poetry, how to behave politely; there is everywhere
cleanliness and good taste; interiors are bright and pure; the daily
use of the hot bath is universal. How refuse to be charmed by a
civilization in which every relation appears to be governed by
altruism, every action directed by duty, and every object shaped by
art? You cannot help being delighted by such conditions, or feeling
indignant at hearing them denounced as "heathen." And according to
the degree of altruism within yourself, these good folk will be able,
without any apparent effort, to make you happy. The mere sensation of
the milieu is a placid happiness: it is like the sensation of a dream
in which people greet us exactly as we like to be greeted, and say to
us all that we like to hear, and do for us all that we wish to have
done,--people moving soundlessly through spaces of perfect repose,
all bathed in vapoury light. Yes--for no little time these fairy-folk
can give you all the soft bliss of sleep. But sooner or later, if you
dwell long with them, your contentment will prove to have much in
common with the happiness of dreams. You will never forget the
dream,--never; but it will lift at last, like those vapours of spring
which lend preternatural [15] loveliness to a Japanese landscape in
the forenoon of radiant days. Really you are happy because you have
entered bodily into Fairyland,--into a world that is not, and never
could be your own. You have been transported out of your own
century--over spaces enormous of perished time--into an era
forgotten, into a vanished age,--back to something ancient as Egypt
or Nineveh. That is the secret of the strangeness and beauty of
things,--the secret of the thrill they give,--the secret of the
elfish charm of the people and their ways. Fortunate mortal! the tide
of Time has turned for you! But remember that here all is
enchantment,--that you have fallen under the spell of the dead,--that
the lights and the colours and the voices must fade away at last into
emptiness and silence.

              *    *    *    *    *    *

Some of us, at least, have often wished that it were possible to live
for a season in the beautiful vanished world of Greek culture.
Inspired by our first acquaintance with the charm of Greek art and
thought, this wish comes to us even before we are capable of
imagining the true conditions of the antique civilization. If the
wish could be realized, we should certainly find it impossible to
accommodate ourselves to those conditions,--not so much because of
the difficulty of learning the environment, as because of the much
greater difficulty of feeling just as people used to feel some thirty
centuries [16] ago. In spite of all that has been done for Greek
studies since the Renaissance, we are still unable to understand many
aspects of the old Greek life: no modern mind can really feel, for
example, those sentiments and emotions to which the great tragedy of
Oedipus made appeal. Nevertheless we are much in advance of our
forefathers of the eighteenth century, as regards the knowledge of
Greek civilization. In the time of the French revolution, it was
thought possible to reestablish in France the conditions of a Greek
republic, and to educate children according to the system of Sparta.
To-day we are well aware that no mind developed by modern
civilization could find happiness under any of those socialistic
despotisms which existed in all the cities of the ancient world
before the Roman conquest. We could no more mingle with the old Greek
life, if it were resurrected for us,--no more become a part of
it,--than we could change our mental identities. But how much would
we not give for the delight of beholding it,--for the joy of
attending one festival in Corinth, or of witnessing the Pan-Hellenic
games? ... And yet, to witness the revival of some perished Greek
civilization,--to walk about the very Crotona of Pythagoras,--to
wander through the Syracuse of Theocritus,--were not any more of a
privilege than is the opportunity actually afforded us to study
Japanese life. Indeed, from the evolutional [17] point of view, it
were less of a privilege,--since Japan offers us the living spectacle
of conditions older, and psychologically much farther away from us,
than those of any Greek period with which art and literature have
made us closely acquainted.

The reader scarcely needs to be reminded that a civilization less
evolved than our own, and intellectually remote from us, is not on
that account to be regarded as necessarily inferior in all respects.
Hellenic civilization at its best represented an early stage of
sociological evolution; yet the arts which it developed still furnish
our supreme and unapproachable ideals of beauty. So, too, this much
more archaic civilization of Old Japan attained an average of
aesthetic and moral culture well worthy of our wonder and praise.
Only a shallow mind--a very shallow mind--will pronounce the best of
that culture inferior. But Japanese civilization is peculiar to a
degree for which there is perhaps no Western parallel, since it
offers us the spectacle of many successive layers of alien culture
superimposed above the simple indigenous basis, and forming a very
bewilderment of complexity. Most of this alien culture is Chinese,
and bears but an indirect relation to the real subject of these
studies. The peculiar and surprising fact is that, in spite of all
superimposition, the original character of the people and of their
society should still remain recognizable. [18] The wonder of Japan is
not to be sought in the countless borrowings with which she has
clothed herself,--much as a princess of the olden time would don
twelve ceremonial robes, of divers colours and qualities, folded one
upon the other so as to show their many-tinted edges at throat and
sleeves and skirt;--no, the real wonder is the Wearer. For the
interest of the costume is much less in its beauty of form and tint
than in its significance as idea,--as representing something of the
mind that devised or adopted it. And the supreme interest of the
old--Japanese civilization lies in what it expresses of the
race-character,--that character which yet remains essentially
unchanged by all the changes of Meiji.

"Suggests" were perhaps a better word than "expresses," for this
race-character is rather to be divined than recognized. Our
comprehension of it might be helped by some definite knowledge of
origins; but such knowledge we do not yet possess. Ethnologists are
agreed that the Japanese race has been formed by a mingling of
peoples, and that the dominant element is Mongolian; but this
dominant element is represented in two very different types,--one
slender and almost feminine of aspect; the other, squat and powerful.
Chinese and Korean elements are known to exist in the populations of
certain districts; and, there appears to have been a large infusion
of Aino blood. Whether there be [19] any Malay or Polynesian element
also has not been decided. Thus much only can be safely
affirmed,--that the race, like all good races, is a mixed one; and
that the peoples who originally united to form it have been so
blended together as to develop, under long social discipline, a
tolerably uniform type of character. This character, though
immediately recognizable in some of Its aspects, presents us with
many enigmas that are very difficult to explain.

Nevertheless, to understand it better has become a matter of
importance. Japan has entered into the world's competitive struggle;
and the worth of any people in that struggle depends upon character
quite as much as upon force. We can learn something about Japanese
character if we are able to ascertain the nature of the conditions
which shaped it,--the great general facts of the moral experience of
the race. And these facts we should find expressed or suggested in
the history of the national beliefs, and in the history of those
social institutions derived from and developed by religion.



[20]

[21]

THE ANCIENT CULT

The real religion of Japan, the religion still professed in one form
or other, by the entire nation, is that cult which has been the
foundation of all civilized religion, and of all civilized
society,--Ancestor-worship. In the course of thousands of years this
original cult has undergone modifications, and has assumed various
shapes; but everywhere in Japan its fundamental character remains
unchanged. Without including the different Buddhist forms of
ancestor-worship, we find three distinct rites of purely Japanese
origin, subsequently modified to some degree by Chinese influence and
ceremonial. These Japanese forms of the cult are all classed together
under the name of "Shinto," which signifies, "The Way of the Gods."
It is not an ancient term; and it was first adopted only to
distinguish the native religion, or "Way" from the foreign religion
of Buddhism called "Butsudo," or "The Way of the Buddha." The three
forms of the Shinto worship of ancestors are the Domestic Cult, the
Communal Cult, and the State Cult;--or, in other words, the worship
of family ancestors, the worship of clan or tribal ancestors, [22]
and the worship of imperial ancestors. The first is the religion of
the home; the second is the religion of the local divinity, or
tutelar god; the third is the national religion. There are various
other forms of Shinto worship; but they need not be considered for
the present.

Of the three forms of ancestor-worship above mentioned, the
family-cult is the first in evolutional order,--the others being
later developments. But, in speaking of the family-cult as the
oldest, I do not mean the home-religion as it exists to-day;--neither
do I mean by "family" anything corresponding to the term "household."
The Japanese family in early times meant very much more than
"household": it might include a hundred or a thousand households: it
was something like the Greek (Greek genos); or the Roman gens,--the
patriarchal family in the largest sense of the term. In prehistoric
Japan the domestic cult of the house-ancestor probably did not
exist;--the family-rites would appear to have been performed only at
the burial-place. But the later domestic cult, having been developed
out of the primal family-rite, indirectly represents the most ancient
form of the religion, and should therefore be considered first in any
study of Japanese social evolution.

The evolutional history of ancestor-worship has been very much the
same in all countries; and that [23] of the Japanese cult offers
remarkable evidence in support of Herbert Spencer's exposition of the
law of religious development. To comprehend this general law, we
must, however, go back to the origin of religious beliefs. One should
bear in mind that, from a sociological point of view, it is no more
correct to speak of the existing ancestor-cult in Japan as
"primitive," than it would be to speak of the domestic cult of the
Athenians in the time of Pericles as "primitive." No persistent form
of ancestor-worship is primitive; and every established domestic cult
has been developed out of some irregular and non-domestic
family-cult, which, again, must have grown out of still more ancient
funeral-rites.

Our knowledge of ancestor-worship, as regards the early European
civilizations, cannot be said to extend to the primitive form of the
cult. In the case of the Greeks and the Romans, our knowledge of the
subject dates from a period at which a domestic religion had long
been established; and we have documentary evidence as to the
character of that religion. But of the earlier cult that must have
preceded the home-worship, we have little testimony; and we can
surmise its nature only by study of the natural history of
ancestor-worship among peoples not yet arrived at a state of
civilization. The true domestic cult begins with a settled
civilization. Now when the Japanese race first established itself in
Japan, it does not appear to have [24] brought with it any
civilization of the kind which we would call settled, nor any
well-developed ancestor-cult. The cult certainly existed; but its
ceremonies would seem to have been irregularly performed at graves
only. The domestic cult proper may not have been established until
about the eighth century, when the spirit-tablet is supposed to have
been introduced from China. The earliest ancestor-cult, as we shall
presently see, was developed out of the primitive funeral-rites and
propitiatory ceremonies.

The existing family religion is therefore a comparatively modern
development; but it is at least as old as the true civilization of
the country, and it conserves beliefs and ideas which are indubitably
primitive, as well as ideas and beliefs derived from these. Before
treating further of the cult itself, it will be necessary to consider
some of these older beliefs.

The earliest ancestor-worship,--"the root of all religions," as
Herbert Spencer calls it,--was probably coeval with the earliest
definite belief in ghosts. As soon as men were able to conceive the
idea of a shadowy inner self, or double, so soon, doubtless, the
propitiatory cult of spirits began. But this earliest ghost-worship
must have long preceded that period of mental development in which
men first became capable of forming abstract ideas. The [25]
primitive ancestor-worshippers could not have formed the notion of a
supreme deity; and all evidence existing as to the first forms of
their worship tends to show that there primarily existed no
difference whatever between the conception of ghosts and the
conception of gods. There were, consequently, no definite beliefs in
any future state of reward or of punishment,--no ideas of any heaven
or hell. Even the notion of a shadowy underworld, or Hades, was of
much later evolution. At first the dead were thought of only as
dwelling in the tombs provided for them,--whence they could issue,
from time to time, to visit their former habitations, or to make
apparition in the dreams of the living. Their real world was the
place of burial,--the grave, the tumulus. Afterwards there slowly
developed the idea of an underworld, connected in some mysterious way
with the place of sepulture. Only at a much later time did this dim
underworld of imagination expand and divide into regions of ghostly
bliss and woe .... It is a noteworthy fact that Japanese mythology
never evolved the ideas of an Elysium or a Tartarus,--never developed
the notion of a heaven or a hell. Even to this day Shinto belief
represents the pre-Homeric stage of imagination as regards the
supernatural.

Among the Indo-European races likewise there appeared to have been at
first no difference between gods and ghosts, nor any ranking of gods
as greater [26] and lesser. These distinctions were gradually
developed. "The spirits of the dead," says Mr. Spencer, "forming, in
a primitive tribe, an ideal group the members of which are but little
distinguished from one another, will grow more and more
distinguished;--and as societies advance, and as traditions, local
and general, accumulate and complicate, these once similar human
souls, acquiring in the popular mind differences of character and
importance, will diverge--until their original community of nature
becomes scarcely recognizable." So in antique Europe, and so in the
Far East, were the greater gods of nations evolved from ghost-cults;
but those ethics of ancestor-worship which shaped alike the earliest
societies of West and East, date from a period before the time of the
greater gods,--from the period when all the dead were supposed to
become gods, with no distinction of rank.

No more than the primitive ancestor-worshippers of Aryan race did the
early Japanese think of their dead as ascending to some extra-mundane
region of light and bliss, or as descending into some realm of
torment. They thought of their dead as still inhabiting this world,
or at least as maintaining with it a constant communication. Their
earliest sacred records do, indeed, make mention of an underworld,
where mysterious Thunder-gods and evil goblins dwelt in corruption;
but this vague world of the dead communicated with the world of the
living; [27] and the spirit there, though in some sort attached to
its decaying envelope, could still receive upon earth the homage and
the offerings of men. Before the advent of Buddhism, there was no
idea of a heaven or a hell. The ghosts of the departed were thought
of as constant presences, needing propitiation, and able in some way
to share the pleasures and the pains of the living. They required
food and drink and light; and in return for these; they could confer
benefits. Their bodies had melted into earth; but their spirit-power
still lingered in the upper world, thrilled its substance, moved in
its winds and waters. By death they had acquired mysterious
force;--they had become "superior ones," Kami, gods.

That is to say, gods in the oldest Greek and Roman sense.  Be it
observed that there were no moral distinctions, East or West, in this
deification. "All the dead become gods," wrote the great Shinto
commentator, Hirata. So likewise, in the thought of the early Greeks
and even of the late Romans, all the dead became gods. M. de
Coulanges observes, in La Cite Antique: "This kind of apotheosis was
not the privilege of the great alone. no distinction was made .... It
was not even necessary to have been a virtuous man: the wicked man
became a god as well as the good man,--only that in this
after-existence, he retained the evil inclinations of his former
life." Such also [28] was the case in Shinto belief: the good man
became a beneficent divinity, the bad man an evil deity,--but all
alike became Kami. "And since there are bad as well as good gods,"
wrote Motowori, "it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings of
agreeable food, playing the harp, blowing the flute, singing and
dancing and whatever is likely to put them in a good humour." The
Latins called the maleficent ghosts of the dead, Larvae, and called
the beneficent or harmless ghosts, Lares, or Manes, or Genii,
according to Apuleius. But all alike were gods,--dii-manes; and
Cicero admonished his readers to render to all dii-manes the rightful
worship: "They are men," he declared, "who have departed from this
life;-consider them divine beings ...."

In Shinto, as in old Greek belief, to die was to enter into the
possession of superhuman power, to become capable of conferring
benefit or of inflicting misfortune by supernatural means .... But
yesterday, such or such a man was a common toiler, a person of no
importance;--to-day, being dead, he becomes a divine power, and his
children pray to him for the prosperity of their undertakings. Thus
also we find the personages of Greek tragedy, such as Alcestis,
suddenly transformed into divinities by death, and addressed in the
language of worship or prayer. But, in despite of their supernatural
[29] power, the dead are still dependent upon the living for
happiness. Though viewless, save in dreams, they need earthly
nourishment and homage,--food and drink, and the reverence of their
descendants. Each ghost must rely for such comfort upon its living
kindred;--only through the devotion of that kindred can it ever find
repose. Each ghost must have shelter,--a fitting tomb;--each must
have offerings. While honourably sheltered and properly nourished the
spirit is pleased, and will aid in maintaining the good-fortune of
its propitiators. But if refused the sepulchral home, the funeral
rites, the offerings of food and fire and drink, the spirit will
suffer from hunger and cold and thirst, and, becoming angered, will
act malevolently and contrive misfortune for those by whom it has
been neglected .... Such were the ideas of the old Greeks regarding
the dead; and such were the ideas of the old Japanese.

Although the religion of ghosts was once the religion of our own
forefathers--whether of Northern or Southern Europe,--and although
practices derived from it, such as the custom of decorating graves
with flowers, persist to-day among our most advanced
communities,--our modes of thought have so changed under the
influences of modern civilization that it is difficult for us to
imagine how people could ever have supposed that the happiness of the
dead depended upon material food. But it [30] is probable that the
real belief in ancient European societies was much like the belief as
it exists in modern Japan. The dead are not supposed to consume the
substance of the food, but only to absorb the invisible essence of
it. In the early period of ancestor-worship the food-offerings were
large; later on they were made smaller and smaller as the idea grew
up that the spirits required but little sustenance of even the most
vapoury kind. But, however small the offerings, it was essential that
they should be made regularly. Upon these shadowy repasts depended
the well-being of the dead; and upon the well-being of the dead
depended the fortunes of the living. Neither could dispense with the
help of the other. the visible and the invisible worlds were forever
united by bonds innumerable of mutual necessity; and no single
relation of that union could be broken without the direst
consequences.

The history of all religious sacrifices can be traced back to this
ancient custom of offerings made to ghosts; and the whole Indo-Aryan
race had at one time no other religion than this religion of spirits.
In fact, every advanced human society has, at some period of its
history, passed through the stage of ancestor-worship; but it is to
the Far East that we must took to-day in order to find the cult
coexisting with an elaborate civilization. Now the Japanese
ancestor-cult--though representing the beliefs of a [31] non-Aryan
people, and offering in the history of its development various
interesting peculiarities--still embodies much that is characteristic
of ancestor-worship in general. There survive in it especially these
three beliefs, which underlie all forms of persistent
ancestor-worship in all climes and countries:--

I.--The dead remain in this world,--haunting their tombs, and also
their former homes, and sharing invisibly in the life of their living
descendants;--

II.--All the dead become gods, in the sense of acquiring supernatural
power; but they retain the characters which distinguished them during
life;--

III.--The happiness of the dead depends upon the respectful service
rendered them by the living; and the happiness of the living depends
upon the fulfilment of pious duty to the dead.

To these very early beliefs may be added the following, probably of
later development, which at one time must have exercised immense
influence:--

IV.--Every event in the world, good or evil,--fair seasons or
plentiful harvests,--flood and famine,--tempest and tidal-wave and
earthquake,--is the work of the dead.

V.--All human actions, good or bad, are controlled by the dead.

The first three beliefs survive from the dawn of civilization, or
before it,--from the time in which [32] the dead were the only gods,
without distinctions of power. The latter two would seem rather of
the period in which a true mythology--an enormous polytheism--had
been developed out of the primitive ghost-worship. There is nothing
simple in these beliefs: they are awful, tremendous beliefs; and
before Buddhism helped to dissipate them, their pressure upon the
mind of a people dwelling in a land of cataclysms, must have been
like an endless weight of nightmare. But the elder beliefs, in
softened form, are yet a fundamental part of the existing cult.
Though Japanese ancestor-worship has undergone many modifications in
the past two thousand years, these modifications have not transformed
its essential character in relation to conduct; and the whole
framework of society rests upon it, as on a moral foundation. The
history of Japan is really the history of her religion. No single
fact in this connection is more significant than the fact that the
ancient Japanese term for government--matsuri-goto--signifies
liberally "matters of worship." Later on we shall find that not only
government, but almost everything in Japanese society, derives
directly or indirectly from this ancestor-cult; and that in all
matters the dead, rather than the living, have been the rulers of the
nation and--the shapers of its destinies.



[33]

THE RELIGION OF THE HOME

Three stages of ancestor-worship are to be distinguished in the
general course of religious and social evolution; and each of these
finds illustration in the history of Japanese society. The first
stage is that which exists before the establishment of a settled
civilization, when there is yet no national ruler, and when the unit
of society is the great patriarchal family, with its elders or
war-chiefs for lords. Under these conditions, the spirits of the
family-ancestors only are worshipped;--each family propitiating its
own dead, and recognizing no other form of worship. As the
patriarchal families, later on, become grouped into tribal clans,
there grows up the custom of tribal sacrifice to the spirits of the
clan-rulers;--this cult being superadded to the family-cult, and
marking the second stage of ancestor-worship. Finally, with the union
of all the clans or tribes under one supreme head, there is developed
the custom of propitiating the spirits of national, rulers. This
third form of the cult becomes the obligatory religion [34] of the
country; but it does not replace either of the preceding cults: the
three continue to exist together.

Though, in the present state of our knowledge, the evolution in Japan
of these three stages of ancestor-worship is but faintly traceable,
we can divine tolerably well, from various records, how the permanent
forms of the cult were first developed out of the earlier
funeral-rites. Between the ancient Japanese funeral customs and those
of antique Europe, there was a vast difference,--a difference
indicating, as regards Japan, a far more primitive social condition.
In Greece and in Italy it was an early custom to bury the family dead
within the limits of the family estate; and the Greek and Roman laws
of property grew out of this practice. Sometimes the dead were buried
close to the house. The author of 'La Cite Antique' cites, among
other ancient texts bearing upon the subject, an interesting
invocation from the tragedy of Helen, by Euripides:--"All hail! my
father's tomb! I buried thee, Proteus, at the place where men pass
out, that I might often greet thee; and so, even as I go out and in,
I, thy son Theoclymenus, call upon thee, father! ..." But in ancient
Japan, men fled from the neighbourhood of death. It was long the
custom to abandon, either temporarily, or permanently, the house in
which a death occurred; [35] and we can scarcely suppose that, at any
time, it was thought desirable to bury the dead close to the
habitation of the surviving members of the household. Some Japanese
authorities declare that in the very earliest ages there was no
burial, and that corpses were merely conveyed to desolate places, and
there abandoned to wild creatures. Be this as it may, we have
documentary evidence, of an unmistakable sort, concerning the early
funeral-rites as they existed when the custom of burying had become
established,--rites weird and strange, and having nothing in common
with the practices of settled civilization. There is reason to
believe that the family-dwelling was at first permanently, not
temporarily, abandoned to the dead; and in view of the fact that the
dwelling was a wooden hut of very simple structure, there is nothing
improbable in the supposition. At all events the corpse was left for
a certain period, called the period of mourning, either in the
abandoned house where the death occurred, or in a shelter especially
built for the purpose; and, during the mourning period, offerings of
food and drink were set before the dead, and ceremonies performed
without the house. One of these ceremonies consisted in the recital
of poems in praise of the dead,--which poems were called shinobigoto.
There was music also of flutes and drums, and dancing; and at night a
fire was kept burning before the house. After all this had been [36]
done for the fixed period of mourning--eight days, according to some
authorities, fourteen according to others--the corpse was interred.
It is probable that the deserted house may thereafter have become an
ancestral temple, or ghost-house,--prototype of the Shinto miya.

At an early time,--though when we do not know,--it certainly became
the custom to erect a moya, or "mourning-house" in the event of a
death; and the rites were performed at the mourning-house prior to
the interment. The manner of burial was very simple: there were yet
no tombs in the literal meaning of the term, and no tombstones. Only
a mound was thrown up over the grave; and the size of the mound
varied according to the rank of the dead.

The custom of deserting the house in which a death took place would
accord with the theory of a nomadic ancestry for the Japanese people:
it was a practice totally incompatible with a settled civilization
like that of the early Greeks and Romans, whose customs in regard to
burial presuppose small landholdings in permanent occupation. But
there may have been, even in early times, some exceptions to general
custom--exceptions made by necessity. To-day, in various parts of the
country, and perhaps more particularly in districts remote from
temples, it is the custom for farmers to bury their dead upon their
own lands.

[37]--At regular intervals after burial, ceremonies were performed
at the graves; and food and drink were then served to the spirits.
When the spirit-tablet had been introduced from China, and a true
domestic cult established, the practice of making offerings at the
place of burial was not discontinued. It survives to the present
time,--both in the Shinto and the Buddhist rite; and every spring an
Imperial messenger presents at the tomb of the Emperor Jimmu, the
same offerings of birds and fish and seaweed, rice and rice-wine,
which were made to the spirit of the Founder of the Empire
twenty-five hundred years ago. But before the period of Chinese
influence the family would seem to have worshipped its dead only
before the mortuary house, or at the grave; and the spirits were yet
supposed to dwell especially in their tombs, with access to some
mysterious subterranean world. They were supposed to need other
things besides nourishment; and it was customary to place in the
grave various articles for their ghostly use,--a sword, for example,
in the case of a warrior; a mirror in the case of a woman,--together
with certain objects, especially prized during life,--such as objects
of precious metal, and polished stones or gems .... At this stage of
ancestor-worship, when the spirits are supposed to require shadowy
service of a sort corresponding to that exacted during their
life-time in the body, we should expect to hear of [38] human
sacrifices as well as of animal sacrifices. At the funerals of great
personages such sacrifices were common. Owing to beliefs of which all
knowledge has been lost, these sacrifices assumed a character much
more cruel than that of the immolations of the Greek Homeric epoch.
The human victims* were buried up to the neck in a circle about the
grave, and thus left to perish under the beaks of birds and the teeth
of wild beasts. [*How the horses and other animals were sacrificed,
does not clearly appear.] The term applied to this form of
immolation,--hitogaki, or "human hedge,"--implies a considerable
number of victims in each case. This custom was abolished, by the
Emperor Suinin, about nineteen hundred years ago; and the Nihongi
declares that it was then an ancient custom. Being grieved by the
crying of the victims interred in the funeral mound erected over the
grave of his brother, Yamato-hiko-no-mikoto, the Emperor is recorded
to have said: "It is a very painful thing to force those whom one has
loved in life to follow one in death. Though it be an ancient custom,
why follow it, if it is bad? From this time forward take counsel to
put a stop to the following of the dead." Nomi-no-Sukune, a
court-noble--now apotheosized as the patron of wrestlers--then
suggested the substitution of earthen images of men and horses for
the living victims; and his suggestion was approved. The hitogaki,
was thus abolished; but compulsory as well as voluntary following of
the [39] dead certainly continued for many hundred years after, since
we find the Emperor Kotoku issuing an edict on the subject in the
year 646 A.D.:--

"When a man dies, there have been cases of people sacrificing
themselves by strangulation, or of strangling others by way of
sacrifice, or of compelling the dead man's horse to be sacrificed, or
of burying valuables in the grave in honour of the dead, or of
cutting off the hair and stabbing the thighs and [in that condition]
pronouncing a eulogy on the dead. Let all such old customs be
entirely discontinued."--Nihongi; Aston's translation.

As regarded compulsory sacrifice and popular custom, this edict may
have had the immediate effect desired; but voluntary human sacrifices
were not definitively suppressed. With the rise of the military power
there gradually came into existence another custom of junshi, or
following one's lord in death,--suicide by the sword. It is said to
have begun about 1333, when the last of the Hojo regents, Takatoki,
performed suicide, and a number of his retainers took their own lives
by harakiri, in order to follow their master. It may be doubted
whether this incident really established the practice. But by the
sixteenth century junshi had certainly become an honoured custom
among the samurai. Loyal retainers esteemed it a duty to kill
themselves after the death of their lord, in order to attend upon him
during his ghostly journey. A thousand years [40] of Buddhist
teaching had not therefore sufficed to eradicate all primitive
notions' of sacrificial duty. The practice continued into the time of
the Tokugawa shogunate, when Iyeyasu made laws to check it. These
laws were rigidly applied,--the entire family of the suicide being
held responsible for a case of junshi: yet the custom cannot be said
to have become extinct until considerably after the beginning of the
era of Meiji. Even during my own time there have been
survivals,--some of a very touching kind: suicides performed in hope
of being able to serve or aid the spirit of master or husband or
parent in the invisible world. Perhaps the strangest case was that of
a boy fourteen years old, who killed himself in order to wait upon
the spirit of a child, his master's little son.

The peculiar character of the early human sacrifices at graves, the
character of the funeral-rites, the abandonment of the house in which
death had occurred.--all prove that the early ancestor-worship was of
a decidedly primitive kind. This is suggested also by the peculiar
Shinto horror of death as pollution: even at this day to attend a
funeral,--unless the funeral be conducted after the Shinto rite,--is
religious defilement. The ancient legend of Izanagi's descent to the
nether world, in search of his lost spouse, illustrates the terrible
beliefs that once existed as to goblin-powers presiding over decay.
[41] Between the horror of death as corruption, and the apotheosis of
the ghost, there is nothing incongruous: we must understand the
apotheosis itself as a propitiation. This earliest Way of the Gods
was a religion of perpetual fear. Not ordinary homes only were
deserted after a death: even the Emperors, during many centuries,
were wont to change their capital after the death of a predecessor.
But, gradually, out of the primal funeral-rites, a higher cult was
evolved. The mourning-house, or moya, became transformed into the
Shinto temple, which still retains the shape of the primitive hut.
Then under Chinese influence, the ancestral cult became established
in the home; and Buddhism at a later day maintained this domestic
cult. By degrees the household religion became a religion of
tenderness as well as of duty, and changed and softened the thoughts
of men about their dead. As early as the eighth century,
ancestor-worship appears to have developed the three principal forms
under which it still exists; and thereafter the family-cult began to
assume a character which offers many resemblances to the domestic
religion of the old European civilizations.

Let us now glance at the existing forms of this domestic cult,--the
universal religion of Japan. In every home there is a shrine devoted
to it. If the family profess only the Shinto belief, this shrine,
[42] or mitamaya* ("august-spirit-dwelling"),--tiny model of a Shinto
temple,--is placed upon a shelf fixed against the wall of some inner
chamber, at a height of about six feet from the floor. Such a shelf
is called Mitama-San-no-tana, or--"Shelf of the august spirits." [*It
is more popularly termed miya, "august house,"--a name given to the
ordinary Shinto temples.] In the shrine are placed thin tablets of
white wood, inscribed with the names of the household dead. Such
tablets are called by a name signifying "spirit-substitutes"
(mitamashiro), or by a probably older name signifying
"spirit-sticks." ... If the family worships its ancestors according
to the Buddhist rite, the mortuary tablets are placed in the Buddhist
household-shrine, or Butsudan, which usually occupies the upper shelf
of an alcove in one of the inner apartments. Buddhist
mortuary-tablets (with some exceptions) are called ihai,--a term
signifying "soul-commemoration." They are lacquered and gilded,
usually having a carved lotos-flower as pedestal; and they do not, as
a rule, bear the real, but only the religious and posthumous name of
the dead. Now it is important to observe that, in either cult, the
mortuary tablet actually suggests a miniature tombstone--which is a
fact of some evolutional interest, though the evolution itself should
be Chinese rather than Japanese. The plain gravestones in Shinto
cemeteries resemble in form the simple [43] wooden ghost-sticks, or
spirit-sticks; while the Buddhist monuments in the old-fashioned
Buddhist graveyards are shaped like the ihai, of which the form is
slightly varied to indicate sex and age, which is also the case with
the tombstone.

The number of mortuary tablets in a household shrine does not
generally exceed five or six,--only grandparents and parents and the
recently dead being thus represented; but the name of remoter
ancestors are inscribed upon scrolls, which are kept in the Butsudan
or the mitamaya.

Whatever be the family rite, prayers are repeated and offerings are
placed before the ancestral tablets every day. The nature of the
offerings and the character of the prayers depend upon the religion
of the household; but the essential duties of the cult are everywhere
the same. These duties are not to be neglected under any
circumstances; their performance in these times is usually intrusted
to the elders, or to the women of the household.*

[*Not, however, upon any public occasion,--such as a gathering of
relatives at the home for a religious anniversary: at such times the
rites are performed by the head of the household.]

Speaking of the ancient custom (once prevalent in every Japanese
household, and still observed in Shinto homes) of making offerings to
the deities of the cooking range and of food, Sir Ernest Satow
observes: "The rites in honour of these gods were at first performed
by the head of the household; but in after-times the duty came to he
delegated to the women of the family" (Ancient Japanese Rituals). We
may infer that in regard to the ancestral rites likewise, the same
transfer of duties occurred at an early time, for obvious reasons of
convenience. When the duty devolves upon the elders of the
family--grandfather and grandmother--it is usually the grandmother
who attends to the offerings. In the Greek and Roman household the
performance of the domestic rites appears to have been obligatory
upon the head of the household; but we know that the women took part
in them.

[44] There is no long ceremony, no imperative rule about prayers,
nothing solemn: the food-offerings are selected out of the family
cooking; the murmured or whispered invocations are short and few.
But, trifling as the rites may seem, their performance must never be
overlooked. Not to make the offerings is a possibility undreamed of:
so long as the family exists they must be made.

To describe the details of the domestic rite would require much
space,--not because they are complicated in themselves, but because
they are of a sort unfamiliar to Western experience, and vary
according to the sect of the family. But to consider the details will
not be necessary: the important matter is to consider the religion
and its beliefs in relation to conduct and character. It should be
recognized that no religion 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,--when the wish to please
the ghosts of the departed must have been chiefly inspired by dread
of their anger,--the cult at last developed into a religion of
affection; and this it yet remains. The belief that the dead [45]
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. They dwell mostly within their lettered
tablets;--sometimes they can animate a tablet,--change it into the
substance of a human body, and return in that body to active life, in
order to succour and console. From their shrine they observe and hear
what happens in the house; they share the family joys and sorrows;
they delight in the voices and the warmth of the life about them.
They want affection; but the morning and the evening greetings of the
family are enough to make them happy. They require nourishment; but
the vapour of food contents them. They are exacting only as regards
the daily fulfilment of duty. They were the givers of life, the
givers of wealth, the makers and teachers of the present: they
represent the past of the race, and all its sacrifices;--whatever the
living possess is from them. Yet how little do they require in
return! Scarcely more than to be thanked, as the 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."... [46]

To forget or neglect them, to treat them with rude indifference, is
the proof of an evil heart; to cause them shame by ill-conduct, to
disgrace their name by bad actions, is the supreme crime. They
represent the moral experience of the race: whosoever denies that
experience denies them also, and falls to the level of the beast, or
below it. They represent the unwritten law, the traditions of the
commune, the duties of all to all: whosoever offends against these,
sins against the dead. And, finally, they represent the mystery of
the invisible: to Shinto belief, at least, they are gods.

It is to be remembered, of course, that the Japanese word for gods,
Kami, does not imply, any more than did the old Latin term,
dii-manes, ideas like those which have become associated with the
modern notion of divinity. The Japanese term might be more closely
rendered by some such expression as "the Superiors," "the Higher
Ones"; and it was formerly applied to living rulers as well as to
deities and ghosts. But it implies considerably more than the idea of
a disembodied spirit; for, according to old Shinto teaching the dead
became world-rulers. They were the cause of all natural events,--of
winds, rains, and tides, of buddings and ripenings, of growth and
decay, of everything desirable or dreadful. They formed a kind of
subtler element,--an ancestral aether,--universally extending and
[47] unceasingly operating. Their powers, when united for any
purpose, were resistless; and in time of national peril they were
invoked en masse for aid against the foe .... Thus, to the eyes of
faith, behind each family ghost there extended the measureless
shadowy power of countless Kami; and the sense of duty to the
ancestor was deepened by dim awe of the forces controlling the
world,--the whole invisible Vast. To primitive Shinto conception the
universe was filled with ghosts;--to later Shinto conception the
ghostly condition was not limited by place or time, even in the case
of individual spirits. "Although," wrote Hirata, "the home of the
spirits is in the Spirit-house, they are equally present wherever
they are worshipped,--being gods, and therefore ubiquitous."

The Buddhist dead are not called gods, but Buddhas (Hotoke),--which
term, of course, expresses a pious hope, rather than a faith. The
belief is that they are only on their way to some higher state of
existence; and they should not be invoked or worshipped after the
manner of the Shinto gods: prayers should be said FOR them, not, as a
rule, TO them.* [*Certain Buddhist rituals prove exceptions to this
teaching.] But the vast majority of Japanese Buddhists are also
followers of Shinto; and the two faiths, though seemingly
incongruous, have long been reconciled in the popular mind. The
Buddhist doctrine has [48] therefore modified the ideas attaching to
the cult much less deeply than might be supposed.

In all patriarchal societies with a settled civilization, there is
evolved, out of the worship of ancestors, a Religion of Filial Piety.
Filial piety still remains the supreme virtue among civilized peoples
possessing an ancestor-cult.... By filial piety must not be
understood, however, what is commonly signified by the English
term,--the devotion of children to parents. We must understand the
word "piety" rather in its classic meaning, as the pietas of the
early Romans,--that is to say, as the religious sense of household
duty. Reverence for the dead, as well as the sentiment of duty
towards the living; the affection of children to parents, and the
affection of parents to children; the mutual duties of husband and
wife; the duties likewise of sons-in-law and daughters-in-law to the
family as a body; the duties of servant to master, and of master to
dependent,--all these were included under the term. The family itself
was a religion; the ancestral home a temple. And so we find the
family and the home to be in Japan, even at the present day. Filial
piety in Japan does not mean only the duty of children to parents and
grandparents: it means still more, the cult of the ancestors,
reverential service to the dead, the gratitude of the present to the
past, and the conduct of the individual in relation [49] to the
entire household. Hirata therefore declared that all virtues derived
from the worship of ancestors; and his words, as translated by Sir
Ernest Satow, deserve particular attention:--

"It is the duty of a subject to be diligent in worshipping his
ancestors, whose minister he should consider himself to be. The
custom of adoption arose from the natural desire of having some one
to perform sacrifices; and this desire ought not to be rendered of no
avail by neglect. Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the
mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them
will ever be disrespectful to the gods or to his living parents. Such
a man also will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and
kind and gentle to his wife and children. For the essence of this
devotion is indeed filial piety."

From the sociologist's point of view, Hirata is right: it is
unquestionably true that the whole system of Far-Eastern ethics
derives from the religion of the household. By aid of that cult have
been evolved all ideas of duty to the living as well as to the
dead,--the sentiment of reverence, the sentiment of loyalty, the
spirit of self-sacrifice, and the spirit of patriotism. What filial
piety signifies as a religious force can best be imagined from the
fact that you can buy life in the East--that it has its price in the
market. This religion is the religion of China, and of countries
adjacent; and life is for sale in China. It was the filial piety of
China that rendered [50] possible the completion of the Panama
railroad, where to strike the soil was to liberate death,--where the
land devoured labourers by the thousand, until white and black labour
could no more be procured in quantity sufficient for the work. But
labour could be obtained from China--any amount of labour--at the
cost of life; and the cost was paid; and multitudes of men came from
the East to toil and die, in order that the price of their lives
might be sent to their families.... I have no doubt that, were the
sacrifice imperatively demanded, life could be as readily bought in
Japan,--though not, perhaps, so cheaply. Where this religion
prevails, the individual is ready to give his life, in a majority of
cases, for the family, the home, the ancestors. And the filial piety
impelling such sacrifice becomes, by extension, the loyalty that will
sacrifice even the family itself for the sake of the lord,--or, by
yet further extension, the loyalty that prays, like Kusunoki
Masashige, for seven successive lives to lay down on behalf of the
sovereign. Out of filial piety indeed has been developed the whole
moral power that protects the state,--the power also that has seldom
failed to impose the rightful restraints upon official despotism
whenever that despotism grew dangerous to the common weal.

Probably the filial piety that centred about the domestic altars of
the ancient West differed in little [51] from that which yet rules
the most eastern East. But we miss in Japan the Aryan hearth, the
family altar with its perpetual fire. The Japanese home-religion
represents, apparently, a much earlier stage of the cult than that
which existed within historic time among the Greeks and Romans. The
homestead in Old Japan was not a stable institution like the Greek or
the Roman home; the custom of burying the family dead upon the family
estate never became general; the dwelling itself never assumed a
substantial and lasting character. It could not be literally said of
the Japanese warrior, as of the Roman, that he fought pro aris et
focis. There was neither altar nor sacred fire: the place of these
was taken by the spirit-shelf or shrine, with its tiny lamp, kindled
afresh each evening; and, in early times, there were no Japanese
images of divinities. For Lares and Penates there were only the
mortuary-tablets of the ancestors, and certain little tablets bearing
names of other gods--tutelar gods .... The presence of these frail
wooden objects still makes the home; and they may be, of course,
transported anywhere.

To apprehend the full meaning of ancestor-worship as a family
religion, a living faith, is now difficult for the Western mind. We
are able to imagine only in the vaguest way how our Aryan forefathers
felt and thought about their dead. But in the [52] living beliefs of
Japan we find much to suggest the nature of the old Greek piety. Each
member of the family supposes himself, or herself, under perpetual
ghostly surveillance. Spirit-eyes are watching every act; spirit-ears
are listening to every word. Thoughts too, not less than deeds, are
visible to the gaze of the dead: the heart must be pure, the mind
must be under control, within the presence of the spirits. Probably
the influence of such beliefs, uninterruptedly exerted upon conduct
during thousands of years, did much to form the charming side of
Japanese character. Yet there is nothing stern or solemn in this
home-religion to-day,--nothing of that rigid and unvarying discipline
supposed by Fustel de Coulanges to have especially characterized the
Roman cult. It is a religion rather of gratitude and tenderness; the
dead being served by the household as if they were actually present
in the body .... I fancy that if we were able to enter for a moment
into the vanished life of some old Greek city, we should find the
domestic religion there not less cheerful than the Japanese home-cult
remains to-day. I imagine that Greek children, three thousand years
ago, must have watched, like the Japanese children of to-day, for a
chance to steal some of the good things offered to the ghosts of the
ancestors; and I fancy that Greek parents must have chidden quite as
gently as Japanese parents [53] chide in this era of Meiji,--mingling
reproof with instruction, and hinting of weird possibilities.*

[*Food presented to the dead may afterwards be eaten by the elders of
the household, or given to pilgrims; but it is said that if children
eat of it, they will grow with feeble memories, and incapable of
becoming scholars.]



[54]

[55]

THE JAPANESE FAMILY

The great general idea, the fundamental idea, underlying every
persistent ancestor-worship, is that the welfare of the living
depends upon the welfare of the dead. Under the influence of this
idea, and of the cult based upon it, were developed the early
organization of the family, the laws regarding property and
succession, the whole structure, in short, of ancient
society,--whether in the Western or the Eastern world.

But before considering how the social structure in old Japan was
shaped by the ancestral cult, let me again remind the reader that
there were at first no other gods than the dead. Even when Japanese
ancestor-worship evolved a mythology, its gods were only transfigured
ghosts,--and this is the history of all mythology. The ideas of
heaven and hell did not exist among the primitive Japanese, nor any
notion of metempsychosis. The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth--a late
borrowing--was totally inconsistent with the archaic Japanese
beliefs, and required an elaborate metaphysical system to support it.
But we may suppose the early ideas of the Japanese about the dead to
have been much [56] like those of the Greeks of the pre-Homeric era.
There was an underground world to which spirits descended; but they
were supposed to haunt by preference their own graves, or their
"ghost-houses." Only by slow degrees did the notion of their power of
ubiquity become evolved. But even then they were thought to be
particularly attached to their tombs, shrines, and homesteads. Hirata
wrote, in the early part of the nineteenth century: "The spirits of
the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere
about us; and they all become gods of varying character and degrees
of influence. Some reside in temples built in their honour; others
hover near their tombs; and they continue to render service to their
prince, parents, wives, and children, as when in the body." Evidently
"the unseen world" was thought to be in some sort a duplicate of the
visible world, and dependent upon the help of the living for its
prosperity. The dead and the living were mutually dependent. The
all-important necessity for the ghost was sacrificial worship; the
all-important necessity for the man was to provide for the future
cult of his own spirit; and to die without assurance of a cult was
the supreme calamity .... Remembering these facts we can understand
better the organization of the patriarchal family,--shaped to
maintain and to provide for the cult of its dead, any neglect of
which cult was believed to involve misfortune.

[57] The reader is doubtless aware that in the old Aryan family the
bond of union was not the bond of affection, but a bond of religion,
to which natural affection was altogether subordinate. This condition
characterizes the patriarchal family wherever ancestor-worship
exists. Now the Japanese family, like the ancient Greek or Roman
family, was a religious society in the strictest sense of the term;
and a religious society it yet remains. Its organization was
primarily shaped in accordance with the requirements of
ancestor-worship; its later imported doctrines of filial piety had
been already developed in China to meet the needs of an older and
similar religion. We might expect to find in the structure, the laws,
and the customs of the Japanese family many points of likeness to the
structure and the traditional laws of the old Aryan
household,--because the law of sociological evolution admits of only
minor exceptions. And many such points of likeness are obvious. The
materials for a serious comparative study have not yet been
collected: very much remains to be learned regarding the past history
of the Japanese family. But, along certain general lines, the
resemblances between domestic institutions in ancient Europe and
domestic institutions in the Far East can be clearly established.

Alike in the early European and in the old Japanese civilization it
was believed that the prosperity [58] of the family depended upon the
exact fulfilment of the duties of the ancestral cult; and, to a
considerable degree, this belief rules the life of the Japanese
family to-day. It is still thought that the good fortune of the
household depends on the observance of its cult, and that the
greatest possible calamity is to die without leaving a male heir to
perform the rites and to make the offerings. The paramount duty of
filial piety among the early Greeks and Romans was to provide for the
perpetuation of the family cult; and celibacy was therefore generally
forbidden,--the obligation to marry being enforced by opinion where
not enforced by legislation. Among the free classes of Old Japan,
marriage was also, as a general rule, obligatory in the case of a
male heir: otherwise, where celibacy was not condemned by law, it was
condemned by custom. To die without offspring was, in the case of a
younger son, chiefly a personal misfortune; to die without leaving a
male heir, in the case of an elder son and successor, was a crime
against the ancestors,--the cult being thereby threatened with
extinction. No excuse existed for remaining childless: the family law
in Japan, precisely as in ancient Europe, having amply provided
against such a contingency. In case that a wife proved barren, she
might be divorced. In case that there were reasons for not divorcing
her, a concubine might be taken for the purpose of obtaining an heir.
Furthermore, every family representative was privileged [59] to adopt
an heir. An unworthy son, again, might be disinherited, and another
young man adopted in his place. Finally, in case that a man had
daughters but no son, the succession and the continuance of the cult
could be assured by adopting a husband for the eldest daughter.

But, as in the antique European family, daughters could not inherit:
descent being in the male line, it was necessary to have a male heir.
In old Japanese belief, as in old Greek and Roman belief, the father,
not the mother, was the life-giver; the creative principle was
masculine; the duty of maintaining the cult rested with the man, not
with the woman.*

[*Wherever, among ancestor-worshipping races, descent is in the male
line, the cult follows the male line. But the reader is doubtless
aware that a still more primitive form of society than the
patriarchal--the matriarchal--is supposed to have had its
ancestor-worship. Mr. Spencer observes: "What has happened when
descent in the female line obtains, is not clear. I have met with no
statement showing that, in societies characterized by this usage, the
duty of administering to the double of the dead man devolved on one
of his children rather than on others,"--Principles of Sociology,
Vol. III, section 601.]

The woman shared the cult; but she could not maintain it. Besides,
the daughters of the family, being destined, as a general rule, to
marry into other households, could bear only a temporary relation to
the home-cult. It was necessary that the religion of the wife should
be the religion of the husband; and the Japanese, like the Greek
woman, on marrying into another household, necessarily became
attached to the cult of her husband's family. For this reason
especially the females in the patriarchal [60] family are not equal
to the males; the sister cannot rank with the brother. It is true
that the Japanese daughter, like the Greek daughter, could remain
attached to her own family even after marriage, providing that a
husband were adopted for her,--that is to say, taken into the family
as a son. But even in this case, she could only share in the cult,
which it then became the duty of the adopted husband to maintain.

The constitution of the patriarchal family everywhere derives from
its ancestral cult; and before considering the subjects of marriage
and adoption in Japan, it will be necessary to say something about
the ancient family-organization. The ancient family was called
uji,--a word said to have originally signified the same thing as the
modern term uchi,--"interior," or "household," but certainly used
from very early times in the sense of "name"--clan-name especially.
There were two kinds of uji: the o-uji, or great families, and the
ko-uji, or lesser families,--either term signifying a large body of
persons united by kinship, and by the cult of a common ancestor. The
o-uji corresponded in some degree to the Greek (Greek genos) or the
Roman gens: the ko-uji were its branches, and subordinate to it. The
unit of society was the uji. Each o-uji, with its dependent ko-uji,
represented something like a phratry or curia; and all the larger
groups making [61] up the primitive Japanese society were but
multiplications of the uji,--whether we call them clans, tribes, or
hordes. With the advent of a settled civilization, the greater groups
necessarily divided and subdivided; but the smallest subdivision
still retained its primal organization. Even the modern Japanese
family partly retains that organization. It does not mean only a
household: it means rather what the Greek or Roman family became
after the dissolution of the gens. With ourselves the family has been
disintegrated: when we talk of a man's family, we mean his wife and
children. But the Japanese family is still a large group. As
marriages take place early, it may consist, even as a household, of
great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children--sons and
daughters of several generations; but it commonly extends much beyond
the limits of one household. In early times it might constitute the
entire population of a village or town; and there are still in Japan
large communities of persons all bearing the same family name. In
some districts it was formerly the custom to keep all the children,
as far as possible, within the original family group--husbands being
adopted for all the daughters. The group might thus consist of sixty
or more persons, dwelling under the same roof; and the houses were of
course constructed, by successive extension, so as to meet the
requirement. (I am mentioning these curious facts [62] only by way of
illustration.) But the greater uji, after the race had settled down,
rapidly multiplied; and although there are said to be
house-communities still in some remote districts of the country, the
primal patriarchal groups must have been broken up almost everywhere
at some very early period. Thereafter the main cult of the uji did
not cease to be the cult also of its sub-divisions: all members of
the original gens continued to worship the common ancestor, or
uji-no-kami, "the god of the uji." By degrees the ghost-house of the
uji-no-kami became transformed into the modern Shinto parish-temple;
and the ancestral spirit became the local tutelar god, whose modern
appellation, ujigami, is but a shortened form of his ancient title,
uji-no-kami. Meanwhile, after the general establishment of the
domestic cult, each separate household maintained the special cult of
its own dead, in addition to the communal cult. This religious
condition still continues. The family may include several households;
but each household maintains the cult of its dead. And the
family-group, whether large or small, preserves its ancient
constitution and character; it is still a religious society, exacting
obedience, on the part of all its members, to traditional custom.

So much having been explained, the customs regarding marriage and
adoption, in their relation [63] to the family hierarchy, can be
clearly understood. But a word first regarding this hierarchy, as it
exists to-day. Theoretically the power of the head of the family is
still supreme in the household. All must obey the head. Furthermore
the females must obey the males--the wives, the husbands; and the
younger members of the family are subject to the elder members. The
children must not only obey the parents and grandparents, but must
observe among themselves the domestic law of seniority: thus the
younger brother should obey the elder brother, and the younger sister
the elder sister. The rule of precedence is enforced gently, and is
cheerfully obeyed even in small matters: for example, at meal-time,
the elder boy is served first, the second son next, and so on,--an
exception being made in the case of a very young child, who is not
obliged to wait. This custom accounts for an amusing popular term
often applied in jest to a second son, "Master Cold-Rice"
(Hiameshi-San); as the second son, having to wait until both infants
and elders have been served, is not likely to find his portion
desirably hot when it reaches him .... Legally, the family can have
but one responsible head. It may be the grandfather, the father, or
the eldest son; and it is generally the eldest son, because according
to a custom of Chinese origin, the old folks usually resign their
active authority as soon as the eldest son is able to take charge of
affairs. [64] The subordination of young to old, and of females to
males,--in fact the whole existing constitution of the
family,--suggests a great deal in regard to the probably stricter
organization of the patriarchal family, whose chief was at once ruler
and priest, with almost unlimited powers. The organization was
primarily, and still remains, religious: the marital bond did not
constitute the family; and the relation of the parent to the
household depended upon his or her relation to the family as a
religious body. To-day also, the girl adopted into a household as
wife ranks only as an adopted child: marriage signifies adoption. She
is called "flower-daughter" (hana-yome). In like manner, and for the
same reasons, the young man received into a household as a husband of
one of the daughters, ranks merely as an adopted son. The adopted
bride or bridegroom is necessarily subject to the elders, and may be
dismissed by their decision. As for the adopted husband, his position
is both delicate and difficult,--as an old Japanese proverb bears
witness: Konuka san-go areba, mukoyoshi to naruna ("While you have
even three go* of rice-bran left, do not become a son-in-law"). [*A
go is something more than a pint.] Jacob does not have to wait for
Rachel: he is given to Rachel on demand; and his service then begins.
And after twice seven years of service, Jacob may be sent away. In
that event his children do not any more belong to him. [65] but to
the family. His adoption may have had nothing to do with affection;
and his dismissal may have nothing to do with misconduct. Such
matters, however they may be settled in law, are really decided by
family interests--interests relating to the maintenance of the house
and of its cult.**

[**Recent legislation has been in favour of the mukoyoshi; but, as a
rule, the law is seldom resorted to except by men dismissed from the
family for misconduct, and anxious to make profit by the dismissal.]

It should not be forgotten that, although a daughter-in-law or a
son-in-law could in former times be dismissed almost at will, the
question of marriage in the old Japanese family was a matter of
religious importance,--marriage being one of the chief duties of
filial piety. This was also the case in the early Greek and Roman
family; and the marriage ceremony was performed, as it is now
performed in Japan, not at a temple, but in the home. It was a rite
of the family religion,--the rite by which the bride was adopted into
the cult in the supposed presence of the ancestral spirits. Among the
primitive Japanese there was probably no corresponding ceremony; but
after the establishment of the domestic cult, the marriage ceremony
became a religious rite, and this it still remains. Ordinary
marriages are not, however, performed before the household shrine or
in front of the ancestral tablets, except under certain
circumstances. The rule, as regards such ordinary marriages, seems to
be that [66] if the parents of the bridegroom are yet alive, this is
not done; but if they are dead, then the bridegroom leads his bride
before their mortuary tablets, where she makes obeisance. Among the
nobility, in former times at least, the marriage ceremony appears to
have been more distinctly religious,--judging from the following
curious relation in the book Shorei-Hikki, or "Record of
Ceremonies"*: "At the weddings of the great, the bridal-chamber is
composed of three rooms thrown into one [by removal of the
sliding-screens ordinarily separating them], and newly decorated ....
The shrine for the image of the family-god is placed upon a shelf
adjoining the sleeping-place." It is noteworthy also that Imperial
marriages are always officially announced to the ancestors; and that
the marriage of the heir-apparent, or other male offspring of the
Imperial house, is performed before the Kashiko-dokoro, or imperial
temple of the ancestors, which stands within the palace-grounds.**
[**That was the case at the marriage of the present Crown-Prince.] As
a general rule it would appear that the evolution of the
marriage-ceremony in Japan chiefly followed Chinese precedent; and in
the Chinese patriarchal family the ceremony is in its own way quite
as much of a religious rite as the early Greek or Roman marriage. And
though the relation of the Japanese [67] rite to the family cult is
less marked, it becomes sufficiently clear upon investigation. The
alternate drinking of rice-wine, by bridegroom and bride, from the
same vessels, corresponds in a sort to the Roman confarreatio. By the
wedding-rite the bride is adopted into the family religion. She is
adopted not only by the living but by the dead; she must thereafter
revere the ancestors of her husband as her own ancestors; and should
there be no elders in the household, it will become her duty to make
the offerings, as representative of her husband. With the cult of her
own family she has nothing more to do; and the funeral ceremonies
performed upon her departure from the parental roof,--the solemn
sweeping-out of the house-rooms, the lighting of the death-fire
before the gate,--are significant of this religious separation.

[*The translation is Mr. Mitford's.  There are no "images" of the
family-god, and I suppose that the family's Shinto-shrine is meant,
with its ancestral tablets.]

Speaking of the Greek and Roman marriage, M. de Coulanges
observes:--"Une telle religion ne pouvait pas admettre la polygamie."
As relating to the highly developed domestic cult of those
communities considered by the author of La Cite Antique, his
statement will scarcely be called in question. But as regards
ancestor-worship in general, it would be incorrect; since polygamy or
polygyny, and polyandry may coexist with ruder forms of
ancestor-worship. The Western-Aryan societies, in the epoch studied
by M. de Coulanges, were practically [68] monogamic. The ancient
Japanese society was polygynous; and polygyny persisted, after the
establishment of the domestic cult. In early times, the marital
relation itself would seem to have been indefinite. No distinction
was made between the wife and the concubines: "they were classed
together as 'women.'"* [*Satow: The Revival of Pure Shintau] Probably
under Chinese influence the distinction was afterwards sharply drawn;
and with the progress of civilization, the general tendency was
towards monogamy, although the ruling classes remained polygynous. In
the 54th article of Iyeyasu's legacy, this phase of the social
condition is clearly expressed,--a condition which prevailed down to
the present era:--

"The position a wife holds towards a concubine is the same as that of
a lord to his vassal. The Emperor has twelve imperial concubines. The
princes may have eight concubines. Officers of the highest class may
have five mistresses. A Samurai may have two handmaids. All below
this are ordinary married men."

This would suggest that concubinage had long been (with some possible
exceptions) an exclusive privilege; and that it should have persisted
down to the period of the abolition of the daimiates and of the
military class, is sufficiently explained by the militant character
of the ancient society.* Though [69] it is untrue that domestic
ancestor-worship cannot coexist with polygamy or polygyny (Mr.
Spencer's term is the most inclusive), it is at least true that such
worship is favoured by the monogamic relation, and tends therefore to
establish it,--since monogamy insures to the family succession a
stability that no other relation can offer. We may say that, although
the old Japanese society was not monogamic, the natural tendency was
towards monogamy, as the condition best according with the religion
of the family, and with the moral feeling of the masses.

[*See especially Herbert Spencer's chapter, "The Family," in Vol. I,
Principles of Sociology, section 315.]

Once that the domestic ancestor-cult had become universally
established, the question of marriage, as a duty of filial pity,
could not be judiciously left to the will of the young people
themselves. It was a matter to be decided by the family, not by the
children; for mutual inclination could not be suffered to interfere
with the requirements of the household religion. It was not a
question of affection, but of religious duty; and to think otherwise
was impious. Affection might and ought to spring up from the
relation. But any affection powerful enough to endanger the cohesion
of the family would be condemned. A wife might therefore be divorced
because her husband had become too much attached to her; an adopted
husband might be divorced because of his power to exercise, through
affection, too [70] great an influence upon the daughter of the
house. Other causes would probably he found for the divorce in either
case--but they would not be difficult to find.

For the same reason that connubial affection could be tolerated only
within limits, the natural rights of parenthood (as we understand
them) were necessarily restricted in the old Japanese household.
Marriage being for the purpose of obtaining heirs to perpetuate the
cult, the children were regarded as belonging to the family rather
than to the father and mother. Hence, in case of divorcing the son's
wife, or the adopted son-in-law,--or of disinheriting the married
son,--the children would be retained by the family. For the natural
right of the young parents was considered subordinate to the
religious rights of the house. In opposition to those rights, no
other rights could be tolerated. Practically, of course, according to
more or less fortunate circumstances, the individual might enjoy
freedom under the paternal roof; but theoretically and legally there
was no freedom in the old Japanese family for any member of it,--not
excepting even its acknowledged chief, whose responsibilities were
great. Every person, from the youngest child up to the grandfather,
was subject to somebody else; and every act of domestic life was
regulated by traditional custom.

Like the Greek or Roman father, the patriarch of the Japanese family
appears to have had in early [71] times powers of life and death over
all the members of the household. In the ruder ages the father might
either kill or sell his children; and afterwards, among the ruling
classes his powers remained almost unlimited until modern times.
Allowing for certain local exceptions, explicable by tradition, or
class-exceptions, explicable by conditions of servitude, it may be
said that originally the Japanese paterfamilias was at once ruler,
priest, and magistrate within the family. He could compel his
children to marry or forbid them to marry; he could disinherit or
repudiate them; he could ordain the profession or calling which they
were to follow; and his power extended to all members of the family,
and to the household dependents. At different epochs limits were
placed to the exercise of this power, in the case of the ordinary
people; but in the military class, the patria potestas was almost
unrestricted. In its extreme form, the paternal power controlled
everything,--the right to life and liberty,--the right to marry, or
to keep the wife or husband already espoused,--the right to one's own
children,--the right to hold property,--the right to hold
office,--the right to choose or follow an occupation. The family was
a despotism.

It should not be forgotten, however, that the absolutism prevailing
in the patriarchal family has its justification in a religious
belief,--in the conviction that everything should be sacrificed for
the sake [72] of the cult, and every member of the family should be
ready to give up even life, if necessary, to assure the perpetuity of
the succession. Remembering this, it becomes easy to understand why,
even in communities otherwise advanced in civilization, it should
have seemed right that a father could kill or sell his children. The
crime of a son might result in the extinction of a cult through the
ruin of the family,--especially in a militant society like that of
Japan, where the entire family was held responsible for the acts of
each of its members, so that a capital offence would involve the
penalty of death on the whole of the household, including the
children. Again, the sale of a daughter, in time of extreme need,
might save a house from ruin; and filial piety exacted submission to
such sacrifice for the sake of the cult.

As in the Aryan family,* property descended by right of primogeniture
from father to son; the eldest-born, even in cases where the other
property was to be divided among the children, always inheriting the
homestead. The homestead property was, however, family property; and
it passed to the eldest son as representative, not as individual.
Generally speaking, sons could not hold property, without the
father's consent, during such time as he retained his [73] headship.
As a rule,--to which there were various exceptions,--a daughter could
not inherit; and in the case of an only daughter, for whom a husband
had been adopted, the homestead property would pass to the adopted
husband, because (until within recent times) a woman could not become
the head of a family. This was the case also in the Western Aryan
household, in ancestor-worshipping times.

[*The laws of succession in Old Japan differed considerably according
to class, place, and era; the entire subject has not yet been fully
treated; and only a few safe general statements can be ventured at
the present time.]

To modern thinking, the position of woman in the old Japanese family
appears to have been the reverse of happy. As a child she was
subject, not only to the elders, but to all the male adults of the
household. Adopted into another household as wife, she merely passed
into a similar state of subjection, unalleviated by the affection
which parental and fraternal ties assured her in the ancestral home.
Her retention in the family of her husband did not depend upon his
affection, but upon the will of the majority, and especially of the
elders. Divorced, she could not claim her children: they belonged to
the family of the husband. In any event her duties as wife were more
trying than those of a hired servant. Only in old age could she hope
to exercise some authority; but even in old age she was under
tutelage--throughout her entire life she was in tutelage. "A woman
can have no house of her own in the Three Universes," declared an old
Japanese proverb. Neither could she have a cult of her own: there was
no special cult for the women of a family [74]--no ancestral rite
distinct from that of the husband. And the higher the rank of the
family into which she entered by marriage, the more difficult would
be her position. For a woman of the aristocratic class no freedom
existed: she could not even pass beyond her own gate except in a
palanquin (kago) or under escort; and her existence as a wife was
likely to be embittered by the presence of concubines in the house.

Such was the patriarchal family in old times; yet it is probable that
conditions were really better than the laws and the customs would
suggest. The race is a joyous and kindly one; and it discovered, long
centuries ago, many ways of smoothing the difficulties of life, and
of modifying the harsher exactions of law and custom. The great
powers of the family-head were probably but seldom exercised in cruel
directions. He might have legal rights of the most formidable
character; but these were required by reason of his responsibilities,
and were not likely to be used against communal judgment. It must be
remembered that the individual was not legally considered in former
times: the family only was recognized; and the head of it legally
existed only as representative. If he erred, the whole family was
liable to suffer the penalty of his error. Furthermore, every extreme
exercise of his authority involved proportionate responsibilities. He
could [75] divorce his wife, or compel his son to divorce the adopted
daughter-in-law; but in either case he would have to account for this
action to the family of the divorced; and the divorce-right,
especially in the samurai class, was greatly restrained by the fear
of family resentment; the unjust dismissal of a wife being counted as
an insult to her kindred. He might disinherit an only son; but in
that event he would be obliged to adopt a kinsman. He might kill or
sell either son or daughter; but unless he belonged to some abject
class, he would have to justify his action to the community.* He
might be reckless in his management of the family property; but in
that case an appeal to communal authority was possible, and the
appeal might result in his deposition. So far as we are able to judge
from the remains of old Japanese law which have been studied, it
would seem to have been the general rule that the family-head could
not sell or alienate the estate. Though the family-rule was despotic,
it was the rule of a body rather than of a chief; the family-head
really exercising authority in the name of the rest .... In this
sense, the family still remains a despotism; but the powers of its
legal head are now checked, from within as well as from without, [76]
by later custom. The acts of adoption, disinheritance, marriage, or
divorce, are decided usually by general consent; and the decision of
the household and kindred is required in the taking of any important
step to the disadvantage of the individual.

[*Samurai fathers might kill a daughter convicted of unchastity, or
kill a son guilty of any action calculated to disgrace the family
name. But they would not sell a child. The sale of daughters was
practised only by the abject classes, or by families of other castes
reduced to desperate extremities. A girl might, however, sell herself
for the sake of her family.]

Of course the old family-organization had certain advantages which
compensated the individual for his state of subjection. It was a
society of mutual help; and it was not less powerful to give aid,
than to enforce obedience. Every member could do something to assist
another member in case of need: each had a right to the protection of
all. This remains true of the family to-day. In a well-conducted
household, where every act is performed according to the old forms of
courtesy and kindness,--where no harsh word is ever spoken, where the
young look up to the aged with affectionate respect,--where those
whom years have incapacitated for more active duty, take upon
themselves the care of the children, and render priceless service in
teaching and training,--an ideal condition has been realized. The
daily life of such a home,--in which the endeavour of each is to make
existence as pleasant as possible for all.,--in which the bond of
union is really love and gratitude,--represents religion in the best
and purest sense; and the place is holy ....

It remains to speak of the dependants in the [77] ancient family.
Though the fact has not yet been fully established, it is probable
that the first domestics were slaves or serfs; and the condition of
servants in later times,--especially of those in families of the
ruling classes,--was much like that of slaves in the early Greek and
Roman families. Though necessarily treated as inferiors, they were
regarded as members of the household: they were trusted familiars,
permitted to share in the pleasures of the family, and to be present
at most of its reunions. They could legally be dealt with harshly;
but there is little doubt that, as a rule, they were treated
kindly,--absolute loyalty being expected from them. The best
indication of their status in past times is furnished by yet
surviving customs. Though the power of the family over the servant no
longer exists in law or in fact, the pleasant features of the old
relation continue; and they are of no little interest. The family
takes a sincere interest in the welfare of its domestics,--almost
such interest as would be shown in the case of poorer kindred.
Formerly the family furnishing servants to a household of higher
rank, stood to the latter in the relation of vassal to liege-lord;
and between the two there existed a real bond of loyalty and
kindliness. The occupation of servant was then hereditary; children
were trained for the duty from an early age. After the man-servant or
maidservant had arrived at a certain age, permission to [78] marry
was accorded; and the relation of service then ceased, but not the
bond of loyalty. The children of the married servants would be sent,
when old enough, to work in the house of the master, and would leave
it only when the time also came for them to marry. Relations of this
kind still exist between certain aristocratic families and former
vassal-families, and conserve some charming traditions and customs of
hereditary service, unchanged for hundreds of years.

In feudal times, of course, the bond between master and servant was
of the most serious kind; the latter being expected, in case of need,
to sacrifice life and all else for the sake of the master or of the
master's household. This also was the loyalty demanded of the Greek
and Roman domestic,--before there had yet come into existence that
inhuman form of servitude which reduced the toiler to the condition
of a beast of burden; and the relation was partly a religious one.
There does not seem to have been in ancient Japan any custom
corresponding to that, described by M. de Coulanges, of adopting the
Greek or Roman servant into the household cult. But as the Japanese
vassal-families furnishing domestics were, as vassals, necessarily
attached to the clan-cult of their lord, the relation of the servant
to the family was to some extent a religious bond.

[79] The reader will be able to understand, from the facts of this
chapter, to what extent the individual was sacrificed to the family,
as a religious body. From servant to master--up through all degrees
of the household hierarchy--the law of duty was the same: obedience
absolute to custom and tradition. The ancestral cult permitted no
individual freedom: nobody could live according to his or her
pleasure; every one had to live according to rule. The individual did
not even have a legal existence;--the family was the unit of society.
Even its patriarch existed in law as representative only, responsible
both to the living and the dead. His public responsibility, however,
was not determined merely by civil law. It was determined by another
religious bond,--that of the ancestral cult of the clan or tribe; and
this public form of ancestor-worship was even more exacting than the
religion of the home.



[80]

[81]

THE COMMUNAL CULT

As by the religion of the household each individual was ruled in
every action of domestic life, so, by the religion of the village or
district the family was ruled in all its relations to the outer
world. Like the religion of the home, the religion of the commune was
ancestor-worship. What the household shrine represented to the
family, the Shinto parish-temple represented to the community; and
the deity there worshipped as tutelar god was called Ujigami, the god
of the Uji, which term originally signified the patriarchal family or
gens, as well as the family name.

Some obscurity still attaches to the question of the original
relation of the community to the Uji-god. Hirata declares the god of
the Uji to have been the common ancestor of the clan-family,--the
ghost of the first patriarch; and this opinion (allowing for sundry
exceptions) is almost certainly correct. But it is difficult to
decide whether the Uji-ko, or "children of the family" (as Shinto
parishioners are still termed) at first included only the descendants
of the clan-ancestor, or also the whole of the inhabitants [82] of
the district ruled by the clan. It is certainly not true at the
present time that the tutelar deity of each Japanese district
represents the common ancestor of its inhabitants,--though, to this
general rule, there might be found exception in some of the remoter
provinces. Most probably the god of the Uji was first worshipped by
the people of the district rather as the spirit of a former ruler, or
the patron-god of a ruling family, than as the spirit of a common
ancestor. It has been tolerably well proved that the bulk of the
Japanese people were in a state of servitude from before the
beginning of the historic period, and so remained until within
comparatively recent times. The subject-classes may not have had at
first a cult of their own: their religion would most likely have been
that of their masters. In later times the vassal was certainly
attached to the cult of the lord. But it is difficult as yet to
venture any general statement as to the earliest phase of the
communal cult in Japan; for the history of the Japanese nation is not
that of a single people of one blood, but a history of many
clan-groups, of different origin, gradually brought together to form
one huge patriarchal society.

However, it is quite safe to assume, with the best native
authorities, that the Ujigami were originally clan-deities, and that
they were usually, though not invariably, worshipped as
clan-ancestors. [83] Some Ujigami belong to the historic period. The
war god Hachiman, for example,--to whom parish-temples are dedicated
in almost every large city,--is the apotheosized spirit of the
Emperor Ojin, patron of the famed Minamoto clan. This is an example
of Ujigami worship in which the clan-god is not an ancestor. But in
many instances the Ujigami is really the ancestor of an Uji; as in
the case of the great deity of Kasuga, from whom the Fujiwara clan
claimed descent. Altogether there were in ancient Japan, after the
beginning of the historic era, 1182 clans, great and small; and these
appear to have established the same number of cults. We find, as
might be expected, that the temples now called Ujigami--which is to
say, Shinto parish-temples in general--are always dedicated to a
particular class of divinities, and never dedicated to certain other
gods. Also, it is significant that in every large town there are
Shinto temples dedicated to the same Uji-gods,--proving the transfer
of communal worship from its place of origin. Thus the Izumo
worshipper of Kasuga-Sama can find in Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo,
parish-temples dedicated to his patron: the Kyushu worshipper of
Hachiman-Sama can place himself under the protection of the same
deity in Musashi quite as well as in Higo or Bungo. Another fact
worth observing is that the Ujigami temple is not necessarily the
most important Shinto temple in the parish: it is the parish-temple,
[84] and important to the communal worship; but it may be outranked
and overshadowed by some adjacent temple dedicated to higher Shinto
gods. Thus in Kitzuki of Izumo, for example, the great Izumo temple
is not the Ujigami,--not the parish-temple; the local cult is
maintained at a much smaller temple .... Of the higher cults I shall
speak further on; for the present let us consider only the communal
cult, in its relation to communal life. From the social conditions
represented by the worship of the Ujigami to-day, much can be
inferred as to its influence in past times.

Almost every Japanese village has its Ujigami; and each district of
every large town or city also has its Ujigami. The worship of the
tutelar deity is maintained by the whole body of parishioners, the
Ujiko, or children of the tutelar god. Every such parish-temple has
its holy days, when all Ujiko are expected to visit the temple, and
when, as a matter of fact, every household sends at least one
representative to the Ujigami. There are great festival-days and
ordinary festival-days; there are processions, music, dancing, and
whatever in the way of popular amusement can serve to make the
occasion attractive. The people of adjacent districts vie with each
other in rendering their respective temple-festivals (matsuri)
enjoyable: every household contributes according to its means. [85]
The Shinto parish-temple has an intimate relation to the life of the
community as a body, and also to the individual existence of every
Ujiko. As a baby he or she is taken to the Ujigami--(at the
expiration of thirty-one days after birth if a boy, or thirty-three
days after birth if a girl)--and placed under the protection of the
god, in whose supposed presence the little one's name is recorded.
Thereafter the child is regularly taken to the temple on holy days,
and of course to all the big festivals, which are made delightful to
young fancy by the display of toys on sale in temporary booths, and
by the amusing spectacles to be witnessed in the temple
grounds,--artists forming pictures on the pavement with coloured
sands,--sweetmeat-sellers moulding animals and monsters out of
sugar-paste,--conjurors and tumblers exhibiting their skill....
Later, when the child becomes strong enough to run about, the temple
gardens and groves serve for a playground. School-life does not
separate the Ujiko from the Ujigami (unless the family should
permanently leave the district); the visits to the temple are still
continued as a duty. Grown-up and married, the Ujiko regularly visits
the guardian-god, accompanied by wife or husband, and brings the
children to pay obeisance. If obliged to make a long journey, or to
quit the district forever, the Ujiko pays a farewell visit to the
Ujigami, as well as to the tombs of the family ancestors; and on
returning to one's native place after prolonged [86] absence, the
first visit is to the god .... I have more than once been touched by
the spectacle of soldiers at prayer before lonesome little temples in
country places,--soldiers but just returned from Korea, China, or
Formosa: their first thought on reaching home was to utter their
thanks to the god of their childhood, whom they believed to have
guarded them in the hour of battle and the season of pestilence.

The best authority on the local customs and laws of Old Japan, John
Henry Wigmore, remarks that the Shinto cult had few relations with
local administration. In his opinion the Ujigami were the deified
ancestors of certain noble families of early times; and their temples
continued to be in the patronage of those families. The office of the
Shinto priest, or "god-master" (kannushi) was, and still is,
hereditary; and, as a rule, any kannushi can trace back his descent
from the family of which the Ujigami was originally the patron-god.
But the Shinto priests, with some few exceptions, were neither
magistrates nor administrators; and Professor Wigmore thinks that
this may have been "due to the lack of administrative organization
within the cult itself."* [87] This would be an adequate explanation.
But in spite of the fact that they exercised no civil function, I
believe it can be shown that Shinto priests had, and still have,
powers above the law. Their relation to the community was of an
extremely important kind: their authority was only religious but it
was heavy and irresistible.

[*The vague character of the Shinto hierarchy is probably best
explained by Mr. Spencer in Chapter VIII of the third volume of
Principles of Sociology: "The establishment of an ecclesiastical
organization separate from the political organization, but akin to it
in its structure, appears to be largely determined by the rise of a
decided distinction in thought between the affairs of this world and
those of a supposed other world. Where the two are conceived as
existing in continuity, or as intimately related, the organizations
appropriate to their respective administrations remain either
identical or imperfectly distinguished .... if the Chinese are
remarkable for the complete absence of a priestly caste, it is
because, along with their universal and active ancestor-worship, they
have preserved that inclusion of the duties of priest in the duties
of ruler, which ancestor-worship in its simple form shows us." Mr.
Spencer remarks in the same paragraph on the fact that in ancient
Japan "religion and government were the same." A distinct Shinto
hierarchy was therefore never evolved.]

To understand this, we must remember that the Shinto priest
represented the religious sentiment of his district. The social bond
of each community was identical with the religious bond,--the cult of
the local tutelar god. It was to the Ujigami that prayers were made
for success in all communal undertakings, for protection against
sickness, for the triumph of the lord in time of war, for succour in
the season of famine or epidemic. The Ujigami was the giver of all
good things,--the special helper and guardian of the people. That
this belief still prevails may be verified by any one who studies the
peasant-life of Japan. It is not to the Buddhas that the farmer prays
for bountiful harvests, or for rain in time of drought; it is not to
the Buddhas [88] that thanks are rendered for a plentiful
rice-crop--but to the ancient local god. And the cult of the Ujigami
embodies the moral experience of the community,--represents all its
cherished traditions and customs, its unwritten laws of conduct, its
sentiment of duty .... Now just as an offence against the ethics of
the family must, in such a society, be regarded as an impiety towards
the family-ancestor, so any breach of custom in the village or
district must be considered as an act of disrespect to its Ujigami.
The prosperity of the family depends, it is thought, upon the
observance of filial piety, which is identified with obedience to the
traditional rules of household conduct; and, in like manner, the
prosperity of the commune is supposed to depend upon the observance
of ancestral custom,--upon obedience to those unwritten laws of the
district, which are taught to all from the time of their childhood.
Customs are identified with morals. Any offence against the customs
of the settlement is an offence against the gods who protect it, and
therefore a menace to the public weal. The existence of the community
is endangered by the crime of any of its members: every member is
therefore held accountable by the community for his conduct. Every
action must conform to the traditional usages of the Ujiko:
independent exceptional conduct is a public offence.

What the obligations of the individual to the [89] community
signified in ancient times may therefore be imagined. He had
certainly no more right to himself than had the Greek citizen three
thousand years ago,--probably not so much. To-day, though laws have
been greatly changed, he is practically in much the same condition.
The mere idea of the right to do as one pleases (within such limits
as are imposed on conduct by English and American societies, for
example) could not enter into his mind. Such freedom, if explained to
him, he would probably consider as a condition morally comparable to
that of birds and beasts. Among ourselves, the social regulations for
ordinary people chiefly settle what must not be done. But what one
must not do in Japan--though representing a very wide range of
prohibition means much less than half of the common obligation: what
one must do, is still more necessary to learn .... Let us briefly
consider the restraints which custom places upon the liberty of the
individual.

First of all, be it observed that the communal will reinforces the
will of the household,--compels the observance of filial piety. Even
the conduct of a boy, who has passed the age of childhood, is
regulated not only by the family, but by the public. He must obey the
household; and he must also obey public opinion in regard to his
domestic relations. Any marked act of disrespect, inconsistent [90]
with filial piety, would be judged and rebuked by, all. When old
enough to begin work or study, a lad's daily conduct is observed and
criticised; and at the age when the household law first tightens
about him, he also commences to feel the pressure of common opinion.
On coming of age, he has to marry; and the idea of permitting him to
choose a wife for himself is quite out of the question: he is
expected to accept the companion selected for him. But should reasons
be found for humouring him in the event of an irresistible aversion,
then he must wait until another choice has been made by the family.
The community would not tolerate insubordination in such matters: one
example of filial revolt would constitute too dangerous a precedent.
When the young man at last becomes the head of a household, and
responsible for the conduct of its members, he is still constrained
by public sentiment to accept advice in his direction of domestic
affairs. He is not free to follow his own judgment, in certain
contingencies. For example, he is bound by custom to furnish help to
relatives; and he is obliged to accept arbitration in the event of
trouble with them. He is not permitted to think of his own wife and
children only,--such conduct would be deemed intolerably selfish: he
must be able to act, to outward seeming at least, as if uninfluenced
by paternal or marital affection in his public conduct. Even
supposing that, later in life, he should be [91] appointed to the
position of village or district headman, his right of action and
judgment would be under just as much restriction as before. Indeed,
the range of his personal freedom actually decreases in proportion to
his ascent in the social scale. Nominally he may rule as headman:
practically his authority is only lent to him by the commune, and it
will remain to him just so long as the commune pleases. For he is
elected to enforce the public will, not to impose his own,--to serve
the common interests, not to serve his own,--to maintain and confirm
custom, not to break with it. Thus, though appointed chief, he is
only the public servant, and the least free man in his native place.
Various documents translated and published by Professor Wigmore, in
his "Notes on Land Tenure and Local Institutions in Old Japan," give
a startling idea of the minute regulation of communal life in
country-districts during the period of the Tokujawa Shoguns. Much of
the regulation was certainly imposed by higher authority; but it is
likely that a considerable portion of the rules represented old local
custom. Such documents were called Kumi-cho or "Kumi*-enactments":
they established the rules of conduct to be observed by all the
members of a village-community, and their social interest is very
great. By personal inquiry I have learned that in various parts of
the country, rules much like those recorded in the Kumi-cho, are
still enforced by village custom. I select a few examples from
Professor Wigmore's translation:--

[*Down to the close of the feudal period, the mass of the population
throughout the country, in the great cities as well as in the
villages, was administratively ordered by groups of families, or
rather of households, called Kumi, or "companies." The general number
of households in a Kumi was five; but there were in some provinces
Kumi consisting of six, and of ten, households. The heads of the
households composing a Kumi elected one of their number as
chief,--who became the responsible representative of all the members
of the Kumi. The origin and history of the Kumi-system is obscure: a
similar system exists in China and in Korea. (Professor Wigmore's
reasons for doubting that the Japanese Kumi-system had a military
origin, appear to be cogent.) Certainly the system greatly
facilitated administration. To superior authority the Kumi was
responsible, not the single household.]

[92] "If there be any of our number who are unkind to parents, or
neglectful or disobedient, we will not conceal it or condone it, but
will report it ...."

"We shall require children to respect their parents, servants to obey
their masters, husbands and wives and brothers and sisters to live
together in harmony, and the younger people to revere and to cherish
their elders .... Each kumi [group of five households] shall
carefully watch over the conduct of its members, so as to prevent
wrongdoing."

"If any member of a kumi, whether farmer, merchant, or artizan, is
lazy, and does not attend properly to his business, the ban-gashira
[chief officer] will advise him, warn him, and lead him into better
ways. If the person does not listen to this advice, and becomes angry
and obstinate, he is to be reported to the toshiyori [village elder]
...."

"When men who are quarrelsome and who like to [93] indulge in late
hours away from home will not listen to admonition, we will report
them. If any other kumi neglects to do this, it will be part of our
duty to do it for them ...."

"All those who quarrel with their relatives, and refuse to listen to
their good advice, or disobey their parents, or are unkind to their
fellow-villagers, shall be reported [to the village officers] ...."

"Dancing, wrestling, and other public shows shall be forbidden.
Singing and dancing-girls and prostitutes shall not be allowed to
remain a single night in the mura [village]."

"Quarrels among the people shall be forbidden.  In case of dispute
the matter shall be reported. If this is not done, all parties shall
be indiscriminately punished ...."

"Speaking disgraceful things of another man, or publicly posting him
as a bad man, even if he is so, is forbidden."

"Filial piety and faithful service to a master should be a matter of
course; but when there is any one who is especially faithful and
diligent in these things, we promise to report him ... for
recommendation to the government ...."

"As members of a kumi we will cultivate friendly feeling even more
than with our relatives, and will promote each other's happiness, as
well as share each other's griefs. If there is an unprincipled or
lawless person in a kumi, we will all share the responsibility for
him."*

[*"Notes on Land Tenure and Local Institutions in Old Japan"
(Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XIX, Part I) I have
chosen the quotations from different kumi-cho, and arranged them
illustratively.]

[94] The above are samples of the moral regulations only: there were
even more minute regulations about other duties.--for instance:--

"When a fire occurs, the people shall immediately hasten to the spot,
each bringing a bucketful of water, and shall endeavour, under
direction of the officers, to put the fire out .... Those who absent
themselves shall be deemed culpable.

"When a stranger comes to reside here, enquiries shall be made as to
the mura whence he came, and a surety shall be furnished by him ....
No traveller shall lodge, even for a single night, in a house other
than a public inn.

"News of robberies and night attacks shall be given by the ringing of
bells or otherwise; and all who hear shall join in pursuit, until the
offender is taken. Any one wilfully refraining, shall, on
investigation, be punished."

From these same Kumi-cho, it appears that no one could leave his
village even for a single night, without permission,--or take service
elsewhere, or marry in another province, or settle in another place.
Punishments were severe,--a terrible flogging being the common mode
of chastisement by the higher authority.... To-day, there are no such
punishments; and, legally, a man can go where he pleases. But as a
matter of fact he can nowhere do as he pleases; for individual
liberty is still largely restricted by the survival of communal
sentiment and old-fashioned custom. In any country community it would
be unwise to proclaim such a doctrine as that [95] a man has the
right to employ his leisure and his means as he may think proper. No
man's time or money or effort can be considered exclusively his
own,--nor even the body that his ghost inhabits. His right to live in
the community rests solely upon his willingness to serve the
community; and whoever may need his help or sympathy has the
privilege of demanding it. That "a man's house is his castle" cannot
be asserted in Japan--except in the case of some high potentate. No
ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of the world.
Everybody's house must be open to visitors: to close its gates by day
would be regarded as an insult to the community,--sickness affording
no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right of
making themselves inaccessible. And to displease the community in
which one lives,--especially if the community be a rural one,--is a
serious matter. When a community is displeased, if acts as an
individual. It may consist of five hundred, a thousand, or several
thousand persons; but the thinking of all is the thinking of one. By
a single serious mistake a man may find himself suddenly placed in
solitary opposition to the common will,--isolated, and most
effectively ostracized. The silence and the softness of the hostility
only render it all the more alarming. This is the ordinary form of
punishment for a grave offence against custom: violence is rare, and
when resorted to is intended (except in [96] some extraordinary cases
presently to be noticed) as a mere correction, the punishment of a
blunder. In certain rough communities, blunders endangering life are
immediately punished by physical chastisement,--not in anger, but on
traditional principle. Once I witnessed at a fishing-settlement, a
chastisement of this kind. Men were killing tunny in the surf; the
work was bloody and dangerous; and in the midst of the excitement,
one of the fishermen struck his killing-spike into the head of a boy.
Everybody knew that it was a pure accident; but accidents involving
danger to life are rudely dealt with, and this blunderer was
instantly knocked senseless by the men nearest him,--then dragged out
of the surf and flung down on the sand to recover himself as best he
might. No word was said about the matter; and the killing went on as
before. Young fishermen, I am told, are roughly handled by their
fellows on board a ship, in the case of any error involving risk to
the vessel. But, as I have already observed, only stupidity is
punished in this fashion; and ostracism is much more dreaded than
violence. There is, indeed, only one yet heavier punishment than
ostracism--namely, banishment, either for a term of years or for
life.

Banishment must in old feudal times have been a very serious penalty;
it is a serious penalty even to-day, under the new order of things.
In former years the man expelled from his native place by the [97]
communal will--cast out from his home, his clan, his occupation
--found himself face to face with misery absolute. In another
community there would be no place for him, unless he happened to have
relatives there; and these would be obliged to consult with the local
authorities, and also with the officials of the fugitive's native
place, before venturing to harbour him. No stranger was suffered to
settle in another district than his own without official permission.
Old documents are extant which record the punishments inflicted upon
households for having given shelter to a stranger under pretence of
relationship. A banished man was homeless and friendless. He might be
a skilled craftsman; but the right to exercise his craft depended
upon the consent of the guild representing that craft in the place to
which he might go; and banished men were not received by the guilds.
He might try to become a servant; but the commune in which he sought
refuge would question the right of any master to employ a fugitive
and a stranger. His religious connexions could not serve him in the
least: the code of communal life was decided not by Buddhist, but by
Shinto ethics. Since the gods of his birthplace had cast him out, and
the gods of any other locality had nothing to do with his original
cult, there was no religious help for him. Besides, the mere fact of
his being a refugee was itself proof that he must have offended
against his own cult. [98] In any event no stranger could look for
sympathy among strangers. Even now to take a wife from another
province is condemned by local opinion (it was forbidden in feudal
times): one is still expected to live, work, and marry in the place
where one has been born,--though, in certain cases, and with the
public approval of one's own people, adoption into another community
is tolerated. Under the feudal system there was incomparably less
likelihood of sympathy for the stranger; and banishment signified
hunger, solitude, and privation unspeakable. For be it remembered
that the legal existence of the individual, at that period, ceased
entirely outside of his relation to the family and to the commune.
Everybody lived and worked for some household; every household for
some clan; outside of the household, and the related aggregate of
households, there was no life to be lived--except the life of
criminals, beggars, and pariahs. Save with official permission, one
could not even become a Buddhist monk. The very outcasts--such as the
Eta classes--formed self-governing communities, with traditions of
their own, and would not voluntarily accept strangers. So the
banished man was most often doomed to become a hinin,--one of that
wretched class of wandering pariahs who were officially termed
"not-men," and lived by beggary, or by the exercise of some vulgar
profession, such as that of ambulant musician or [99] mountebank. In
more ancient days a banished man could have sold himself into
slavery; but even this poor privilege seems to have been withdrawn
during the Tokugawa era.

We can scarcely imagine to-day the conditions of such banishment: to
find a Western parallel we must go back to ancient Greek and Roman
times long preceding the Empire. Banishment then signified religious
excommunication, and practically expulsion from all civilized
society,--since there yet existed no idea of human brotherhood, no
conception of any claim upon kindness except the claim of kinship.
The stranger was everywhere the enemy. Now in Japan, as in the Greek
city of old time, the religion of the tutelar god has always been the
religion of a group only, the cult of a community: it never became
even the religion of a province. The higher cults, on the other hand,
did not concern themselves with the individual: his religion was only
of the household and of the village or district; the cults of other
households and districts were entirely distinct; one could belong to
them only by adoption, and strangers, as a rule, were not adopted.
Without a household or a clan-cult, the individual was morally and
socially dead; for other cults and clans excluded him. When cast out
by the domestic cult that regulated his private life, and by the
local cult that ordered his life in relation to the community, he
simply ceased to exist in relation to human society.

[100] How small were the chances in past times for personality to
develop and assert itself may be imagined from the foregoing facts.
The individual was completely and pitilessly sacrificed to the
community. Even now the only safe rule of conduct in a Japanese
settlement is to act in all things according to local custom; for the
slightest divergence from rule will be observed with disfavour.
Privacy does not exist; nothing can be hidden; everybody's vices or
virtues are known to everybody else. Unusual behaviour is judged as a
departure from the traditional standard of conduct; all oddities are
condemned as departures from custom; and tradition and custom still
have the force of religious obligations. Indeed, they really are
religious and obligatory, not only by reason of their origin, but by
reason of their relation also to the public cult, which signifies the
worship of the past.

It is therefore easy to understand why Shinto never had a written
code of morals, and why its greatest scholars have declared that a
moral code is unnecessary. In that stage of religious evolution which
ancestor-worship represents, there can be no distinction between
religion and ethics, nor between ethics and custom. Government and
religion are the same; custom and law are identified. The ethics of
Shinto were all included in conformity to custom. The traditional
rules of the household, the traditional laws of the commune--these
were [101] the morals of Shinto: to obey them was religion; to
disobey them, impiety .... And, after all, the true significance of
any religious code, written or unwritten, lies in its expression of
social duty, its doctrine of the right and wrong of conduct, its
embodiment of a people's moral experience. Really the difference
between any modern ideal of conduct, such as the English, and the
patriarchal ideal, such as that of the early Greeks or of the
Japanese, would be found on examination to consist mainly in the
minute extension of the older conception to all details of individual
life. Assuredly the religion of Shinto needed no written commandment:
it was taught to everybody from childhood by precept and example, and
any person of ordinary intelligence could learn it. When a religion
is capable of rendering it dangerous for anybody to act outside of
rules, the framing of a code would be obviously superfluous. We
ourselves have no written code of conduct as regards the higher
social life, the exclusive circles of civilized existence, which are
not ruled merely by the Ten Commandments. The knowledge of what to do
in those zones, and of how to do it, can come only by training, by
experience, by observation, and by the intuitive recognition of the
reason of things.

And now to return to the question of the authority of the Shinto
priest as representative of communal [102] sentiment,--an authority
which I believe to have been always very great .... Striking proof
that the punishments inflicted by a community upon its erring members
were originally inflicted in the name of the tutelar god is furnished
by the fact that manifestations of communal displeasure still assume,
in various country districts, a religious character. I have witnessed
such manifestations, and I am assured that they still occur in most
of the provinces. But it is in remote country-towns or isolated
villages, where traditions have remained almost unchanged, that one
can best observe these survivals of antique custom. In such places
the conduct of every resident is closely watched and rigidly judged
by all the rest. Little, however, is said about misdemeanours of a
minor sort until the time of the great local Shinto festival,--the
annual festival of the tutelar god. It is then that the community
gives its warnings or inflicts its penalties: this at least in the
case of conduct offensive to local ethics. The god, on the occasion
of this festival, is supposed to visit the dwellings of his Ujiko;
and his portable shrine,--a weighty structure borne by thirty or
forty men,--is carried through the principal streets. The bearers are
supposed to act according to the will of the god,--to go
whithersoever his divine spirit directs them .... I may describe the
incidents of the procession as I saw it in a seacoast village, not
once, but several times.

[103] Before the procession a band of young men advance, leaping and
wildly dancing in circles: these young men clear the way; and it is
unsafe to pass near them, for they whirl about as if moved by frenzy
.... When I first saw such a band of dancers, I could imagine myself
watching some old Dionysiac revel;--their furious gyrations certainly
realized Greek accounts of the antique sacred frenzy. There were,
indeed, no Greek heads; but the bronzed lithe figures, naked save for
loin-cloth and sandals, and most sculpturesquely muscled, might well
have inspired some vase-design of dancing fauns. After these
god-possessed dancers--whose passage swept the streets clear,
scattering the crowd to right and left--came the virgin priestess,
white-robed and veiled, riding upon a horse, and followed by several
mounted priests in white garments and high black caps of ceremony.
Behind them advanced the ponderous shrine, swaying above: the heads
of its bearers like a junk in a storm. Scores of brawny arms were
pushing it to the right; other scores were pushing it to the left:
behind and before, also, there was furious pulling and pushing; and
the roar of voices uttering invocations made it impossible to hear
anything else. By immemorial custom the upper stories of all the
dwellings had been tightly closed: woe to the Peeping Tom who should
be detected, on such a day, in the impious act of looking down upon
the god!...

[104] Now the shrine-bearers, as I have said, are supposed to be
moved by the spirit of the god--(probably by his Rough Spirit; for
the Shinto god is multiple); and all this pushing and pulling and
swaying signifies only the deity's inspection of the dwellings on
either hand. He is looking about to see whether the hearts of his
worshippers are pure, and is deciding whether it will be necessary to
give a warning, or to inflict a penalty. His bearers will carry him
whithersoever he chooses to go--through solid walls if necessary. If
the shrine strikes against any house,--even against an awning
only,--that is a sign that the god is not pleased with the dwellers
in that house. If the shrine breaks part of the house, that is a
serious warning. But it may happen that the god wills to enter a
house,--breaking his way. Then woe to the inmates, unless they flee
at once through the back-door; and the wild procession, thundering
in, will wreck and rend and smash and splinter everything on the
premises before the god consents to proceed upon his round.

Upon enquiring into the reasons of two wreckings of which I witnessed
the results, I learned enough to assure me that from the communal
point of view, both aggressions were morally justifiable. In one case
a fraud had been practised; in the other, help had been refused to
the family of a drowned resident. Thus one offence had been legal;
the other only moral. A country community [105] will not hand over
its delinquents to the police except in case of incendiarism, murder,
theft, or other serious crime. It has a horror of law, and never
invokes it when the matter can be settled by any other means. This
was the rule also in ancient times, and the feudal government
encouraged its maintenance. But when the tutelar deity has been
displeased, he insists upon the punishment or disgrace of the
offender; and the offender's entire family, as by feudal custom, is
held responsible. The victim can invoke the new law, if he dares, and
bring the wreckers of his home into court, and recover damages, for
the modern police-courts are not ruled by Shinto. But only a very
rash man will invoke the new law against the communal judgment, for
that action in itself would be condemned as a gross breach of custom.
The community is always ready, through its council, to do justice in
cases where innocence can be proved. But if a man really guilty of
the faults charged to his account should try to avenge himself by
appeal to a non-religious law, then it were well for him to remove
himself and his family, as soon as possible thereafter, to some
far-away place.

We have seen that, in Old Japan, the life of the individual was under
two kinds of religious control. All his acts were regulated according
to the traditions either of the domestic or of the communal [106]
cult; and these conditions probably began with the establishment of a
settled civilization. We have also seen that the communal religion
took upon itself to enforce the observance of the household religion.
The fact will not seem strange if we remember that the underlying
idea in either cult was the same,--the idea that the welfare of the
living depended upon the welfare of the dead. Neglect of the
household rite would provoke, it was believed, the malevolence of the
spirits; and their malevolence might bring about some public
misfortune. The ghosts of the ancestors controlled nature;--fire and
flood, pestilence and famine were at their disposal as means of
vengeance. One act of impiety in a village might, therefore, bring
about misfortune to all. And the community considered itself
responsible to the dead for the maintenance of filial piety in every
home.



[107]

DEVELOPMENTS OF SHINTO

The teaching of Herbert Spencer that the greater gods of a
people--those figuring in popular imagination as creators, or as
particularly directing certain elemental forces--represent a later
development of ancestor-worship, is generally accepted to-day.
Ancestral ghosts, considered as more or less alike in the time when
primitive society had not yet developed class distinctions of any
important character, subsequently become differentiated, as the
society itself differentiates, into greater and lesser. Eventually
the worship of some one ancestral spirit, or group of spirits,
overshadows that of all the rest; and a supreme deity, or group of
supreme deities, becomes evolved. But the differentiations of the
ancestor-cult must be understood to proceed in a great variety of
directions. Particular ancestors of families engaged in hereditary
occupations may develop into tutelar deities presiding over those
occupations--patron gods of crafts and guilds. Out of other ancestral
cults, through various processes of mental association, may be
evolved the worship of deities of strength, of health, of long life,
of particular products, of particular localities. [108] When more
light shall have been thrown upon the question of Japanese origins,
it will probably be found that many of the lesser tutelar or patron
gods now worshipped in the country were originally the gods of
Chinese or Korean craftsmen; but I think that Japanese mythology, as
a whole, will prove to offer few important exceptions to the
evolutional law. Indeed, Shinto presents us with a mythological
hierarchy of which the development can be satisfactorily explained by
that law alone. Besides the Ujigami, there are myriads of superior
and of inferior deities. There are the primal deities, of whom only
the names are mentioned,--apparitions of the period of chaos; and
there are the gods of creation, who gave shape to the land. There are
the gods of earth, and, sky, and the gods of the sun and moon. Also
there are gods, beyond counting, supposed to preside over all things
good or evil in human life,--birth and marriage and death, riches and
poverty, strength and disease .... It can scarcely be supposed that
all this mythology was developed out of the old ancestor-cult in
Japan itself: more probably its evolution began on the Asiatic
continent. But the evolution of the national cult--that form of
Shinto which became the state religion--seems to have been Japanese,
in the strict meaning of the word. This cult is the worship of the
gods from whom the emperors claim descent,--the worship of the
"imperial ancestors." [109] It appears that the early emperors of
Japan--the "heavenly sovereigns," as they are called in the old
records--were not emperors at all in the true meaning of the term,
and did not even exercise universal authority. They were only the
chiefs of the most powerful clan, or Uji, and their special
ancestor-cult had probably in that time no dominant influence. But
eventually, when the chiefs of this great clan really became supreme
rulers of the land, their clan-cult spread everywhere, and
overshadowed, without abolishing, all the other cults. Then arose the
national mythology.

We therefore see that the course of Japanese ancestor-worship, like
that of Aryan ancestor-worship, exhibits those three successive
stages of development before mentioned. It may be assumed that on
coming from the continent to their present island home, the race
brought with them a rude form of ancestor-worship, consisting of
little more than rites and sacrifices performed at the graves of the
dead. When the land had been portioned out among the various clans,
each of which had its own ancestor cult, all the people of the
district belonging to any particular clan would eventually adopt the
religion of the clan ancestor; and thus arose the thousand cults of
the Ujigami. Still later, the special cult of the most powerful clan
developed into a national religion,--the worship of the goddess of
the sun, [110] from whom the supreme ruler claimed descent. Then,
under Chinese influence, the domestic form of ancestor-worship was
established in lieu of the primitive family-cult: thereafter
offerings and prayers were made regularly in the home, where the
ancestral tablets represented the tombs of the family dead. But
offerings were still made, on special occasions, at the graves; and
the three Shinto forms of the cult, together with later forms of
Buddhist introduction, continued to exist; and they rule the life of
the nation to-day.

It was the cult of the supreme ruler that first gave to the people a
written account of traditional beliefs. The mythology of the reigning
house furnished the scriptures of Shinto, and established ideas
linking together all the existing forms of ancestor-worship. All
Shinto traditions were by these writings blended into one
mythological history,--explained upon the basis of one legend. The
whole mythology is contained in two books, of which English
translations have been made. The oldest is entitled Ko-ji-ki, or
"Records of Ancient Matters"; and it is supposed to have been
compiled in the year 712 A.D. The other and much larger work is
called Nihongi, "Chronicles of Nihon [Japan]," and dates from about
720 A.D. Both works profess to be histories; but a large portion of
them is mythological, and either begins with a story of creation.
[111] They were compiled, mostly, from oral tradition we are told, by
imperial order. It is said that a yet earlier work, dating from the
seventh century, may have been drawn upon; but this has been lost. No
great antiquity can, therefore, be claimed for the texts as they
stand; but they contain traditions which must be very much
older,--possibly thousands of years older. The Ko-ji-ki is said to
have been written from the dictation of an old man of marvellous
memory; and the Shinto theologian Hirata would have us believe that
traditions thus preserved are especially trustworthy. "It is
probable," he wrote, "that those ancient traditions, preserved for us
by exercise of memory, have for that very reason come down to us in
greater detail than if they had been recorded in documents. Besides,
men must have had much stronger memories in the days before they
acquired the habit of trusting to written characters for facts which
they wished to remember,--as is shown at the present time in the case
of the illiterate, who have to depend on memory alone." We must smile
at Hirata's good faith in the changelessness of oral tradition; but I
believe that folk-lorists would discover in the character of the
older myths, intrinsic evidence of immense antiquity.--Chinese
influence is discernible in both works; yet certain parts have a
particular quality not to be found, I imagine, in anything
Chinese,--a primeval artlessness, a weirdness, and a strangeness
[112] having nothing in common with other mythical literature. For
example, we have, in the story of Izanagi, the world-maker, visiting
the shades to recall his dead spouse, a myth that seems to be purely
Japanese. The archaic naivete of the recital must impress anybody who
studies the literal translation. I shall present only the substance
of the legend, which has been recorded in a number of different
versions:*--

[*See for these different versions Aston's translation of the
Nihongi, Vol I.]

When the time came for the Fire-god, Kagu-Tsuchi, to be born, his
mother, Izanami-no-Mikoto, was burnt, and suffered change, and
departed. Then Izanagi-no-Mikoto, was wroth and said, "Oh! that I
should have given my loved younger sister in exchange for a single
child!" He crawled at her head and he crawled at her feet, weeping
and lamenting; and the tears which he shed fell down and became a
deity .... Thereafter Izanagi-no-Mikoto went after Izanami-no-Mikoto
into the Land of Yomi, the world of the dead. Then Izanami-no-Mikoto,
appearing still as she was when alive, lifted the curtain of the
palace (of the dead), and came forth to meet him; and they talked
together. And Izanagi-no-Mikoto said to her: "I have come because I
sorrowed for thee, my lovely younger sister. O my lovely younger
sister, the lands that I and thou were making together are not [113]
yet finished; therefore come back!" Then Izanami-no-Mikoto made
answer, saying, "My august lord and husband, lamentable it is that
thou didst not come sooner,--for now I have eaten of the
cooking-range of Yomi. Nevertheless, as I am thus delightfully
honoured by thine entry here, my lovely elder brother, I wish to
return with thee to the living world. Now I go to discuss the matter
with the gods of Yomi. Wait thou here, and look not upon me." So
having spoken, she went back; and Izanagi waited for her. But she
tarried so long within that he became impatient. Then, taking the
wooden comb that he wore in the left bunch of his hair, he broke off
a tooth from one end of the comb and lighted it, and went in to look
for Izanami-no-Mikoto. But he saw her lying swollen and festering
among worms; and eight kinds of Thunder-Gods sat upon her .... And
Izanagi, being overawed by that sight, would have fled away; but
Izanami rose up, crying: "Thou hast put me to shame! Why didst thou
not observe that which I charged thee?... Thou hast seen my
nakedness; now I will see thine!" And she bade the Ugly Females of
Yomi to follow after him, and slay him; and the eight Thunders also
pursued him, and Izanami herself pursued him .... Then
Izanagi-no-Mikoto drew his sword, and flourished it behind him as he
ran. But they followed close upon him. He took off his black
headdress and flung it down; [114] and it became changed into grapes;
and while the Ugly Ones were eating the grapes, he gained upon them.
But they followed quickly; and he then took his comb and cast it
down, and it became changed into bamboo sprouts; and while the Ugly
Ones were devouring the sprouts, he fled on until he reached the
mouth of Yomi. Then taking a rock which it would have required the
strength of a thousand men to lift, he blocked therewith the entrance
as Izanami came up. And standing behind the rock, he began to
pronounce the words of divorce. Then, from the other side of the
rock, Izanami cried out to him, "My dear lord and master, if thou
dost so, in one day will I strangle to death a thousand of thy
people!" And Izanagi-no-Mikoto answered her, saying, "My beloved
younger sister, if thou dost so, I will cause in one day to be born
fifteen hundred ...." But the deity Kukuri-hime-no-Kami then came,
and spake to Izanami some word which she seemed to approve, and
thereafter she vanished away ....

The strange mingling of pathos with nightmare-terror in this myth, of
which I have not ventured to present all the startling naiveti,
sufficiently proves its primitive character. It is a dream that some
one really dreamed,--one of those bad dreams in which the figure of a
person beloved becomes horribly transformed; and it has a particular
interest as [115] expressing that fear of death and of the dead
informing all primitive ancestor-worship. The whole pathos and
weirdness of the myth, the vague monstrosity of the fancies, the
formal use of terms of endearment in the moment of uttermost loathing
and fear,--all impress one as unmistakably Japanese. Several other
myths scarcely less remarkable are to be found in the Ko-ji-ki and
Nihongi; but they are mingled with legends of so light and graceful a
kind that it is scarcely possible to believe these latter to have
been imagined by the same race. The story of the magical jewels and
the visit to the sea-god's palace, for example, in the second book of
the Nihongi, sounds oddly like an Indian fairy-tale; and it is not
unlikely that the Ko-ji-ki and Nihongi both contain myths derived
from various alien sources. At all events their mythical chapters
present us with some curious problems which yet remain unsolved.
Otherwise the books are dull reading, in spite of the light which
they shed upon ancient customs and beliefs; and, generally speaking,
Japanese mythology is unattractive. But to dwell here upon the
mythology, at any length, is unnecessary; for its relation to Shinto
can be summed up in the space of a single brief paragraph--

In the beginning neither force nor form was manifest; and the world
was a shapeless mass that floated [116] like a jelly-fish upon water.
Then, in some way--we are not told how--earth and heaven became
separated; dim gods appeared and disappeared; and at last there came
into existence a male and a female deity, who gave birth and shape to
things. By this pair, Izanagi and Izanami, were produced the islands
of Japan, and the generations of the gods, and the deities of the Sun
and Moon. The descendants of these creating deities, and of the gods
whom they brought into being, were the eight thousand (or eighty
thousand) myriads of gods worshipped by Shinto. Some went to dwell in
the blue Plain of High Heaven; others remained on earth and became
the ancestors of the Japanese race.

Such is the mythology of the Ko-ji-ki and the Nihongi, stated in the
briefest possible way. At first it appears that there were two
classes of gods recognized: Celestial and Terrestrial; and the old
Shinto rituals (norito) maintain this distinction. But it is a
curious fact that the celestial gods of this mythology do not
represent celestial forces; and that the gods who are really
identified with celestial phenomena are classed as terrestrial
gods,--having been born or "produced" upon earth. The Sun and Moon,
for example, are said to have been born in Japan,--though afterwards
placed in heaven; the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-no-oho-Kami, having
been produced from the left eye of Izanagi, and the [117] Moon-god,
Tsuki-yomi-no-Mikoto, having been produced from the right eye of
Izanagi when, after his visit to the under-world, he washed himself
at the mouth of a river in the island of Tsukushi. The Shinto
scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries established some
order in this chaos of fancies by denying all distinction between the
Celestial and Terrestrial gods, except as regarded the accident of
birth. They also denied the old distinction between the so-called Age
of the Gods (Kami-yo), and the subsequent period of the Emperors. It
was true, they said, that the early rulers of Japan were gods; but so
were also the later rulers. The whole Imperial line, the "Sun's
Succession," represented one unbroken descent from the Goddess of the
Sun. Hirata wrote: "There exists no hard and fast line between the
Age of the Gods and the present age--and there exists no
justification whatever for drawing one, as the Nihongi does." Of
course this position involved the doctrine of a divine descent for
the whole race,--inasmuch as, according to the old mythology, the
first Japanese were all descendants of gods,--and that doctrine
Hirata boldly accepted. All the Japanese, he averred, were of divine
origin, and for that reason superior to the people of all other
countries. He even held that their divine descent could be proved
without difficulty. These are his words: "The descendants of the gods
who accompanied Ninigi-no-Mikoto [grandson of the Sun-goddess, [118]
and supposed founder of the Imperial house,]--as well as the
offspring of the successive Mikados, who entered the ranks of the
subjects of the Mikados, with the names of Taira, Minamoto, and so
forth,--have gradually increased and multiplied. Although numbers of
Japanese cannot state with certainty from what gods they are
descended, all of them have tribal names (kabane), which were
originally bestowed on them by the Mikados; and those who make it
their province to study genealogies can tell from a man's ordinary
surname, who his remotest ancestor must have been." All the Japanese
were gods in this sense; and their country was properly called the
Land of the Gods,--Shinkoku or Kami-no-kuni. Are we to understand
Hirata literally? I think so--but we must remember that there existed
in feudal times large classes of people, outside of the classes
officially recognized as forming the nation, who were not counted as
Japanese, nor even as human beings: these were pariahs, and reckoned
as little better than animals. Hirata probably referred to the four
great classes only--samurai, farmers, artizans, and merchants. But
even in that case what are we to think of his ascription of divinity
to the race, in view of the moral and physical feebleness of human
nature? The moral side of the question is answered by the Shinto
theory of evil deities, "gods of crookedness," who were alleged to
have "originated from the impurities contracted by [119] Izanagi
during his visit to the under-world." As for the physical weakness of
men, that is explained by a legend of Ninigi-no-Mikoto, divine
founder of the imperial house. The Goddess of Long Life,
Iha-naga-hime (Rock-long-princess), was sent to him for wife; but he
rejected her because of her ugliness; and that unwise proceeding
brought about "the present shortness of the lives of men." Most
mythologies ascribe vast duration to the lives of early patriarchs or
rulers: the farther we go back into mythological history, the
longer-lived are the sovereigns. To this general rule Japanese
mythology presents no exception. The son of Ninigi-no-Mikoto is said
to have lived five hundred and eighty years at his palace of
Takachiho; but that, remarks Hirata, "was a short life compared with
the lives of those who lived before him." Thereafter men's bodies
declined in force; life gradually became shorter and shorter; yet in
spite of all degeneration the Japanese still show traces of their
divine origin. After death they enter into a higher divine condition,
without, however, abandoning this world .... Such were Hirata's
views. Accepting the Shinto theory of origins, this ascription of
divinity to human nature proves less inconsistent than it appears at
first sight; and the modern Shintoist may discover a germ of
scientific truth in the doctrine which traces back the beginnings of
life to the Sun.

[120] More than any other Japanese writer, Hirata has enabled us to
understand the hierarchy of Shinto mythology,--corresponding closely,
as we might have expected, to the ancient ordination of Japanese
society. In the lowermost ranks are the spirits of common people,
worshipped only at the household shrine or at graves. Above these are
the gentile gods or Ujigami,--ghosts of old rulers now worshipped as
tutelar gods. All Ujigami, Hirata tells us, are under the control of
the Great God of Izumo,--Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami,--and, "acting as his
agents, they rule the fortunes of human beings before their birth,
during their life, and after their death." This means that the
ordinary ghosts obey, in the world invisible, the commands of the
clan-gods or tutelar deities; that the conditions of communal worship
during life continue after death. The following extract from Hirata
will be found of interest,--not only as showing the supposed relation
of the individual to the Ujigami, but also as suggesting how the act
of abandoning one's birthplace was formerly judged by common
opinion:--

"When a person removes his residence, his original Ujigami has to
make arrangements with the Ujigami of the place whither he transfers
his abode. On such occasions it is proper to take leave of the old
god, and to pay a visit to the temple of the new god as soon as
possible after coming within his jurisdiction. The apparent reasons
which a man imagines to have induced him to change his [121] abode
may be many; but the real reasons cannot be otherwise than that
either he has offended his Ujigami, and is therefore expelled, or
that the Ujigami of another place has negotiated his transfer ...."*
[*Translated by Satow. The italics are mine.]

It would thus appear that every person was supposed to be the
subject, servant, or retainer of some Ujigami, both during life and
after death. There were, of course, various grades of these
clan-gods, just as there were various grades of living rulers, lords
of the soil. Above ordinary Ujigami ranked the deities worshipped in
the chief Shinto temples of the various provinces, which temples were
termed Ichi-no-miya, or temples of the first grade. These deities
appear to have been in many cases spirits of princes or greater
daimyo, formerly, ruling extensive districts; but all were not of
this category. Among them were deities of elements or elemental
forces,--Wind, Fire, and Sea,--deities also of longevity, of destiny,
and of harvests,--clan-gods, perhaps, originally, though their real
history had been long forgotten. But above all other Shinto
divinities ranked the gods of the Imperial Cult,--the supposed
ancestors of the Mikados.

Of the higher forms of Shinto worship, that of the imperial ancestors
proper is the most important, being the State cult; but it is not the
oldest. There are two supreme cults: that of the Sun-goddess, [122]
represented by the famous shrines of Ise; and the Izumo cult,
represented by the great temple of Kitzuki. This Izumo temple is the
centre of the more ancient cult. It is dedicated to
Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, first ruler of the Province of the Gods, and
offspring of the brother of the Sun-goddess. Dispossessed of his
realm in favour of the founder of the imperial dynasty,
Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami became the ruler of the Unseen World,--that is
to say the World of Ghosts. Unto his shadowy dominion the spirits of
all men proceed after death; and he rules over all of the Ujigami. We
may therefore term him the Emperor of the Dead. "You cannot hope,"
Hirata says, "to live more than a hundred years, under the most
favourable circumstances; but as you will go to the Unseen Realm of
Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami after death, and be subject to him, learn
betimes to bow down before him." ... That weird fancy expressed in
the wonderful fragment by Coleridge, "The Wanderings of Cain," would
therefore seem to have actually formed an article of ancient Shinto
faith: "The Lord is God of the living only: the dead have another
God." ...

The God of the Living in Old Japan was, of course, the Mikado,--the
deity incarnate, Arahito-gami,--and his palace was the national
sanctuary, the Holy of Holies. Within the precincts of that [123]
palace was the Kashiko-Dokoro ("Place of Awe"), the private shrine of
the Imperial Ancestors, where only the court could worship,--the
public form of the same cult being maintained at Ise. But the
Imperial House worshipped also by deputy (and still so worships) both
at Kitzuki and Ise, and likewise at various other great sanctuaries.
Formerly a great number of temples were maintained, or partly
maintained, from the imperial revenues. All Shinto temples of
importance used to be classed as greater and lesser shrines. There
were 304 of the first rank, and 2828 of the second rank. But
multitudes of temples were not included in this official
classification, and depended upon local support. The recorded total
of Shinto shrines to-day is upwards of 195,000.

We have thus--without counting the great Izumo cult of
Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami--four classes of ancestor-worship: the
domestic religion, the religion of the Ujigami, the worship at the
chief shrines [Ichi-no-miya] of the several provinces, and the
national cult at Ise. All these cults are now linked together by
tradition; and the devout Shintoist worships the divinities of all,
collectively, in his daily morning prayer. Occasionally he visits the
chief shrine of his province; and he makes a pilgrimage to Ise if he
can. Every Japanese is expected to visit the shrines of Ise once in
his lifetime, [124] or to send thither a deputy. Inhabitants of
remote districts are not all able, of course, to make the pilgrimage;
but there is no village which does not, at certain intervals, send
pilgrims either to Kitzuki or to Ise on behalf of the community, the
expense of such representation being defrayed by local subscription.
And, furthermore, every Japanese can worship the supreme divinities
of Shinto in his own house, where upon a "god-shelf" (Kamidana) are
tablets inscribed with the assurance of their divine
protection,--holy charms obtained from the priests of Ise or of
Kitzuki. In the case of the Ise cult, such tablets are commonly made
from the wood of the holy shrines themselves, which, according to
primal custom, must be rebuilt every twenty years,--the timber of the
demolished structures being then cut into tablets for distribution
throughout the country.

Another development of ancestor-worship--the cult of gods presiding
over crafts and callings--deserves special study. Unfortunately we
are as yet little informed upon the subject. Anciently this worship
must have been more definitely ordered and maintained than it is now.
Occupations were hereditary; artizans were grouped into
guilds--perhaps we might even say castes;--and each guild or caste
then probably had in patron-deity. In some cases the craft-gods may
have been ancestors [125] of Japanese craftsmen; in other cases they
were perhaps of Korean or Chinese origin,--ancestral gods of
immigrant artizans, who brought their cults with them to Japan. Not
much is known about them. But it is tolerably safe to assume that
most, if not all of the guilds, were at one time religiously
organized, and that apprentices were adopted not only in a craft, but
into a cult. There were corporations of weavers, potters, carpenters,
arrow-makers, bow-makers, smiths, boat-builders, and other tradesmen;
and the past religious organization of these is suggested by the fact
that certain occupations assume a religious character even to-day.
For example, the carpenter still builds according to Shinto
tradition: he dons a priestly costume at a certain stage of the work,
performs rites, and chants invocations, and places the new house
under the protection of the gods. But the occupation of the
swordsmith was in old days the most sacred of crafts: he worked in
priestly garb, and practised Shinto) rites of purification while
engaged in the making of a good blade. Before his smithy was then
suspended the sacred rope of rice-straw (shime-nawa), which is the
oldest symbol of Shinto: none even of his family might enter there,
or speak to him; and he ate only of food cooked with holy fire.

The 195,000 shrines of Shinto represent, however, more than
clan-cults or guild-cults or national-cults .... [126] Many are
dedicated to different spirits of the same god; for Shinto holds that
the spirit of either a man or a god may divide itself into several
spirits, each with a different character. Such separated spirits are
called waka-mi-tama ("august-divided-spirits"). Thus the spirit of
the Goddess of Food, Toyo-uke-bime, separated itself into the God of
Trees, Kukunochi-no-Kami, and into the Goddess of Grasses,
Kayanu-hime-no-Kami. Gods and men were supposed to have also a Rough
Spirit and a Gentle Spirit; and Hirata remarks that the Rough Spirit
of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami was worshipped at one temple, and his
Gentle Spirit at another.*... Also we have to remember that great
numbers of Ujigami temples are dedicated to the same divinity. These
duplications or multiplications are again offset by the fact that in
some of the principal temples a multitude of different deities are
enshrined. Thus the number of Shinto temples in actual existence
affords no indication whatever of the actual number of gods
worshipped, nor of the variety of their cults. Almost every deity
mentioned in the Ko-ji-ki or Nihongi has a shrine somewhere; and
hundreds of others--including many later apotheoses--have their
temples. Numbers of temples have been dedicated, for example, to
[127] historical personages,--to spirits of great ministers,
captains, rulers, scholars, heroes, and statesmen. The famous
minister of the Empress Jingo, Takeno-uji-no-Sukune,--who served
under six successive sovereigns, and lived to the age of three
hundred years,--is now invoked in many a temple as a giver of long
life and great wisdom. The spirit of Sugiwara-no-Michizane, once
minister to the Emperor Daigo, is worshipped as the god of
calligraphy, under the name of Tenjin, or Temmangu: children
everywhere offer to him the first examples of their handwriting, and
deposit in receptacles, placed before his shrine, their worn-out
writing-brushes. The Soga brothers, victims and heroes of a famous
twelfth-century tragedy, have become gods to whom people pray for the
maintenance of fraternal harmony. Kato Kiyomasa, the determined enemy
of Jesuit Christianity, and Hideyoshi's greatest captain, has been
apotheosized both by Buddhism and by Shinto. Iyeyasu is worshipped
under the appellation of Toshogu. In fact most of the great men of
Japanese history have had temples erected to them; and the spirits of
the daimyo were, in former years, regularly worshipped by the
subjects of their descendants and successors.

[*Even men had the Rough and the Gentle Spirit; but a god had three
distinct spirits,--the Rough, the Gentle, and the
Bestowing,--respectively termed Ara-mi-tama, Nigi-mi-tama, and
Saki-mi-tama.--[See SATOW's Revival of Pure Shintau.]

Besides temples to deities presiding over industries and
agriculture,--or deities especially invoked by the peasants, such as
the goddess of silkworms, [128] the goddess of rice, the gods of wind
and weather,--there are to be found in almost every part of the
country what I may call propitiatory temples. These latter Shinto
shrines have been erected by way of compensation to spirits of
persons who suffered great injustice or misfortune. In these cases
the worship assumes a very curious character, the worshipper always
appealing for protection against the same kind of calamity or trouble
as that from which the apotheosized person suffered during life. In
Izumo, for example, I found a temple dedicated to the spirit of a
woman, once a prince's favourite. She had been driven to suicide by
the intrigues of jealous rivals. The story is that she had very
beautiful hair; but it was not quite black, and her enemies used to
reproach her with its color. Now mothers having children with
brownish hair pray to her that the brown may be changed to black; and
offerings are made to her of tresses of hair and Tokyo coloured
prints, for it is still remembered that she was fond of such prints.
In the same province there is a shrine erected to the spirit of a
young wife, who pined away for grief at the absence of her lord. She
used to climb a hill to watch for his return, and the shrine was
built upon the place where she waited; and wives pray there to her
for the safe return of absent husbands .... An almost similar kind of
propitiatory worship is practised in cemeteries. Public pity seeks to
apotheosize those [129] urged to suicide by cruelty, or those
executed for offences which, although legally criminal, were inspired
by patriotic or other motives commanding sympathy. Before their
graves offerings are laid and prayers are murmured. Spirits of
unhappy lovers are commonly invoked by young people who suffer from
the same cause .... And, among other forms of propitiatory worship I
must mention the old custom of erecting small shrines to spirits of
animals,--chiefly domestic animals,--either in recognition of dumb
service rendered and ill-rewarded, or as a compensation for pain
unjustly inflicted.

Yet another class of tutelar divinities remains to be noticed,--those
who dwell within or about the houses of men. Some are mentioned in
the old mythology, and are probably developments of Japanese
ancestor-worship; some are of alien origin; some do not appear to
have any temples; and some represent little more than what is called
Animism. This class of divinities corresponds rather to the Roman dii
genitales than to the Greek (Greek daemones). Suijin-Sarna, the God
of Wells; Kojin, the God of the Cooking-range (in almost every
kitchen there is either a tiny shrine for him, or a written charm
bearing his name); the gods of the Cauldron and Saucepan,
Kudo-no-Kami and Kobe-no-Kami (anciently called Okitsuhiko and
Okitsuhime); the Master of Ponds, Ike-no-Nushi, [130] supposed to
make apparition in the form of a serpent; the Goddess of the
Rice-pot, O-Kama-Sama; the Gods of the Latrina, who first taught men
how to fertilize their fields (these are commonly represented by
little figures of paper, having the forms of a man and a woman, but
faceless); the Gods of Wood and Fire and Metal; the Gods likewise of
Gardens, Fields, Scarecrows, Bridges, Hills, Woods, and Streams; and
also the Spirits of Trees (for Japanese mythology has its dryads):
most of these are undoubtedly of Shinto. On the other hand, we find
the roads under the protection of Buddhist deities chiefly. I have
not been able to learn anything regarding gods of
boundaries,--termes, as the Latins called them; and one sees only
images of the Buddhas at the limits of village territories. But in
almost every garden, on the north side, there is a little Shinto
shrine, facing what is called the Ki-Mon, or "Demon-Gate,"--that is
to say, the direction from which, according to Chinese teaching, all
evils come; and these little shrines, dedicated to various Shinto
deities, are supposed to protect the home from evil spirits. The
belief in the Ki-Mon is obviously a Chinese importation. One may
doubt, however, if Chinese influence alone developed the belief that
every part of a house,--every beam of it,--and every domestic utensil
has its invisible guardian. Considering this belief, it is not
surprising that the building of a [131] house--unless the house be in
foreign style--is still a religious act, and that the functions of a
master-builder include those of a priest.

This brings us to the subject of Animism.  (I doubt whether any
evolutionist of the contemporary school holds to the old-fashioned
notion that animism preceded ancestor-worship,--a theory involving
the assumption that belief in the spirits of inanimate objects was
evolved before the idea of a human ghost had yet been developed.) In
Japan it is now as difficult to draw the line between animistic
beliefs and the lowest forms of Shinto, as to establish a demarcation
between the vegetable and the animal worlds; but the earliest Shinto
literature gives no evidence of such a developed animism as that now
existing. Probably the development was gradual, and largely
influenced by Chinese beliefs. Still, we read in the Ko-ji-ki of
"evil gods who glittered like fireflies or were disorderly as
mayflies," and of "demons who made rocks, and stumps of trees, and
the foam of the green waters to speak,"--showing that animistic or
fetichistic notions were prevalent to some extent before the period
of Chinese influence. And it is significant that where animism is
associated with persistent worship (as in the matter of the reverence
paid to strangely shaped stones or trees), the form of the worship
is, in most cases, Shinto. Before such objects there is usually [132]
to be seen the model of a Shinto gateway,--torii.... With the
development of animism, under Chinese and Korean influence, the man
of Old Japan found himself truly in a world of spirits and demons.
They spoke to him in the sound of tides and of cataracts in the
moaning of wind and the whispers of leafage, in the crying of birds,
and the trilling of insects, in all the voices of nature. For him all
visible motion--whether of waves or grasses or shifting mist or
drifting cloud--was ghostly; and the never moving rocks--nay, the
very stones by the wayside--were informed with viewless and awful
being.



[133]

WORSHIP AND PURIFICATION

We have seen that, in Old Japan, the world of the living was
everywhere ruled by the world of the dead,--that the individual, at
every moment of his existence, was under ghostly supervision. In his
home he was watched by the spirits of his fathers; without it, he was
ruled by the god of his district. All about him, and above him, and
beneath him were invisible powers of life and death. In his
conception of nature all things were ordered by the dead,--light and
darkness, weather and season, winds and tides, mist and rain, growth
and decay, sickness and health. The viewless atmosphere was a
phantom-sea, an ocean of ghost; the soil that he tilled was pervaded
by spirit-essence; the trees were haunted and holy; even the rocks
and the stones were infused with conscious life .... How might he
discharge his duty to the infinite concourse of the invisible?

Few scholars could remember the names of all the greater gods, not to
speak of the lesser; and no mortal could have found time to address
those greater gods by their respective names in his daily [134]
prayer. The later Shinto teachers proposed to simplify the duties of
the faith by prescribing one brief daily prayer to the gods in
general, and special prayers to a few gods in particular; and in thus
doing they were most likely confirming a custom already established
by necessity. Hirata wrote: "As the number of the gods who possess
different functions is very great, it will be convenient to worship
by name the most important only, and to include the rest in a general
petition." He prescribed ten prayers for persons having time to
repeat them, but lightened the duty for busy folk,--observing:
"Persons whose daily affairs are so multitudinous that they have not
time to go through all the prayers, may content themselves with
adoring (1) the residence of the Emperor, (2) the domestic
god-shelf,--kamidana, (3) the spirits of their ancestors, (4) their
local patron-god, Ujigami, (5) the deity of their particular
calling." He advised that the following prayer should be daily
repeated before the "god-shelf":--

"Reverently adoring the great god of the two palaces of Ise in the
first, place,--the eight hundred myriads of celestial gods,--the
eight hundred myriads of terrestrial gods,--the fifteen hundred
myriads of gods to whom are consecrated the great and small temples
in all provinces, all islands, and all places of the Great Land of
Eight Islands,--the fifteen hundred myriads of gods whom they cause
to serve them, and the gods of branch-palaces and branch-temples,
[135]--and Sohodo-no-Kami* whom I have invited to the shrine set up
on this divine shelf, and to whom I offer praises day by day,--I pray
with awe that they will deign to correct the unwilling faults which,
heard and seen by them, I have committed; and that, blessing and
favouring me according to the powers which they severally wield, they
will cause me to follow the divine example, and to perform good works
in the Way."**

[*Sohodo-no-Kami is the god of scarecrows,--protector of the fields.]
[**Translated by Satow.]

This text is interesting as an example of what Shinto's greatest
expounder thought a Shinto prayer should be; and, excepting the
reference to So-ho-do-no-Kami, the substance of it is that of the
morning prayer still repeated in Japanese households. But the modern
prayer is very much shorter.... In Izumo, the oldest Shinto province,
the customary morning worship offers perhaps the best example of the
ancient rules of devotion. Immediately upon rising, the worshipper
performs his ablutions; and after having washed his face and rinsed
his mouth, he turns to the sun, claps his hands, and with bowed head
reverently utters the simple greeting: "Hail to thee this day, August
One!" In thus adoring the sun he is also fulfilling his duty as a
subject, paying obeisance to the Imperial Ancestor .... The act is
performed out of doors, not kneeling, but standing; and the spectacle
of this simple worship is impressive. I can now see in memory,--
[136] just as plainly as I saw with my eyes many years ago, off the
wild Oki coast,--the naked figure of a young fisherman erect at the
prow of his boat, clapping his hands in salutation to the rising sun,
whose ruddy glow transformed him into a statue of bronze. Also I
retain a vivid memory of pilgrim-figures poised upon the topmost
crags of the summit of Fuji, clapping their hands in prayer, with
faces to the East .... Perhaps ten thousand--twenty thousand-years
ago all humanity so worshipped the Lord of Day ....

After having saluted the sun, the worshipper returns to his house, to
pray before the Kamidana and before the tablets of the ancestors.
Kneeling, he invokes the great gods of Ise or of Izumo, the gods of
the chief temples of his province, the god of his parish-temple also
(Ujigami), and finally all the myriads of the deities of Shinto.
These prayers are not said aloud. The ancestors are thanked for the
foundation of the home; the higher deities are invoked for aid and
protection .... As for the custom of bowing in the direction of the
Emperor's palace, I am not able to say to what extent it survives in
the remoter districts; but I have often seen the reverence performed.
Once, too, I saw reverence done immediately in front of the gates of
the palace in Tokyo by country-folk on a visit to the capital. They
knew me, because I had often sojourned in their village; and on
reaching Tokyo [137] they sought me out, and found me, I took them to
the palace; and before the main entrance they removed their hats, and
bowed, and clapped their hands, just as they would have done when
saluting the gods or the rising sun,--and this with a simple and
dignified reverence that touched me not a little.

The duties of morning worship, which include the placing of offerings
before the tablets, are not the only duties of the domestic cult. In
a Shinto household, where the ancestors and the higher gods are
separately worshipped, the ancestral shrine may be said to correspond
with the Roman lararium; while the "god-shelf," with its taima or
o-nusa (symbols of those higher gods especially revered by the
family), may be compared with the place accorded by Latin custom to
the worship of the Penates. Both Shinto cults have their particular
feast-days; and, in the case of the ancestor-cult, the feast-days are
occasions of religious assembly,--when the relatives of the family
should gather to celebrate the domestic rite .... The Shintoist must
also take part in the celebration of the festivals of the Ujigami,
and must at least aid in the celebration of the nine great national
holidays related to the national cult; these nine, out of a total
eleven, being occasions of imperial ancestor-worship.

The nature of the public rites varied according to [138] the rank of
the gods. Offerings and prayers were made to all; but the greater
deities were worshipped with exceeding ceremony. To-day the offerings
usually consist of food and rice-wine, together with symbolic
articles representing the costlier gifts of woven stuffs presented by
ancient custom. The ceremonies include processions, music, singing,
and dancing. At the very small shrines there are few
ceremonies,--only offerings of food are presented. But at the great
temples there are hierarchies of priests and priestesses
(miko)--usually daughters of priests; and the ceremonies are
elaborate and solemn. It is particularly at the temples of Ise
(where, down to the fourteenth century the high-priestess was a
daughter of emperors), or at the great temple of Izumo, that the
archaic character of the ceremonial can be studied to most advantage.
There, in spite of the passage of that huge wave of Buddhism, which
for a period almost submerged the more ancient faith, all things
remain as they were a score of centuries ago;--Time, in those haunted
precincts, would seem to have slept, as in the enchanted palaces of
fairy-tale. The mere shapes of the buildings, weird and tall, startle
by their unfamiliarity. Within, all is severely plain and pure: there
are no images, no ornaments, no symbols visible--except those strange
paper-cuttings (gohei), suspended to upright rods, which are symbols
of offerings and also tokens of the [139] viewless. By the number of
them in the sanctuary, you know the number of the deities to whom the
place is consecrate. There is nothing imposing but the space, the
silence, and the suggestion of the past. The innermost shrine is
veiled: it contains, perhaps, a mirror of bronze, an ancient sword,
or other object enclosed in multiple wrappings: that is all. For this
faith, older than icons, needs no images: its gods are ghosts; and
the void stillness of its shrines compels more awe than tangible
representation could inspire. Very strange, to Western eyes at least,
are the rites, the forms of the worship, the shapes of sacred
objects. Not by any modern method must the sacred fire be
lighted,--the fire that cooks the food of the gods: it can be kindled
only in the most ancient of ways, with a wooden fire-drill. The chief
priests are robed in the sacred colour,--white,--and wear headdresses
of a shape no longer seen elsewhere: high caps of the kind formerly
worn by lords and princes. Their assistants wear various colours,
according to grade; and the faces of none are completely
shaven;--some wear full beards, others the mustache only. The actions
and attitudes of these hierophants are dignified, yet archaic, in a
degree difficult to describe. Each movement is regulated by
tradition; and to perform well the functions of a Kannushi, a long
disciplinary preparation is necessary. The office is hereditary; the
training begins in boyhood; and [140] the impassive deportment
eventually acquired is really a wonderful thing. Officiating, the
Kannushi seems rather a statue than a man,--an image moved by
invisible strings;--and, like the gods, he never winks. Not at least
observably.... Once, during a great Shinto procession, several
Japanese friends, and I myself, undertook to watch a young priest on
horseback, in order to see how long he could keep from winking; and
none of us were able to detect the slightest movement of eyes or
eyelids, notwithstanding that the priest's horse became restive
during the time that we were watching.

The principal incidents of the festival ceremonies within the great
temples are the presentation of the offerings, the repetition of the
ritual, and the dancing of the priestesses. Each of these
performances retains a special character rigidly fixed by tradition.
The food-offerings are served upon archaic vessels of unglazed
pottery (red earthenware mostly): boiled rice pressed into cones of
the form of a sugar-loaf, various preparations of fish and of edible
sea-weed, fruits and fowls, rice-wine presented in jars of immemorial
shape. These offerings are carried into the temple upon white wooden
trays of curious form, and laid upon white wooden tables of equally
curious form;--the faces of the bearers being covered, below the
eyes, with sheets of white paper, in order that their breath may
[141] not contaminate the food of the gods; and the trays, for like
reason, must be borne at arms' length .... In ancient times the
offerings would seem to have included things much more costly than
food,--if we may credit the testimony of what are probably the oldest
documents extant in the Japanese tongue, the Shinto rituals, or
norito.* The following excerpt from Satow's translation of the ritual
prayer to the Wind-gods of Tatsuta is interesting, not only as a fine
example of the language of the norito, but also as indicating the
character of the great ceremonies in early ages, and the nature of
the offerings:--

[*Several have been translated by Satow, whose opinion of their
antiquity is here cited; and translations have also been made into
German.]

"As the great offerings set up for the Youth-god, I set up various
sorts of offerings: for Clothes, bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft
cloth, and coarse cloth,--and the five kinds of things, a mantlet, a
spear, a horse furnished with a saddle;--for the Maiden-god I set up
various sorts of offerings--providing Clothes, a golden thread-box, a
golden tatari, a golden skein-holder, bright cloth, glittering cloth,
soft cloth, and coarse cloth, and the five kinds of things, a horse
furnished with a saddle;--as to Liquor, I raise high the beer-jars,
fill and range-in-a-row the bellies of the beer-jars; soft grain and
coarse grain;--as to things which dwell in the hills, things soft of
hair and things coarse of hair;--as to things which grow in the great
field--plain, sweet herbs and bitter herbs;--as to things which dwell
in the blue sea-plain, things broad of fin and things narrow of
fin--down to the weeds of the offing and weeds of the [142] shore.
And if the sovran gods will take these great offerings which I set
up,--piling them up like a range of hills,--peacefully in their
hearts, as peaceful offerings and satisfactory offerings; and if the
sovran gods, deigning not to visit the things produced by, the great
People of the region under heaven with bad winds and rough waters,
will open and bless them,--I will at the autumn service set up the
first fruits, raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging-in-rows
the bellies of the beer-jars,--and drawing them hither in juice and
in ear, in many hundred rice-plants and a thousand rice-plants. And
for this purpose the princes and councillors and all the
functionaries, the servants of the six farms of the country of
Yamato--even to the males and females of them--have all come and
assembled in the fourth month of this year, and, plunging down the
root of the neck cormorant-wise in the presence of the sovran gods,
fulfil their praise as the Sun of to-day rises in glory."...

The offerings are no longer piled up "like a range of hills," nor do
they include all things dwelling in the mountains and in the sea; but
the imposing ritual remains, and the ceremony is always impressive.
Not the least interesting part of it is the sacred dance. While the
gods are supposed to be partaking of the food and wine set out before
their shrines, the girl-priestesses, robed in crimson and white, move
gracefully to the sound of drums and flutes,--waving fans, or shaking
bunches of tiny bells as they circle about the sanctuary. According
to our Western notions. the performance of the [143] miko could
scarcely be called dancing; but it is a graceful spectacle, and very
curious,--for every step and attitude is regulated by traditions of
unknown antiquity. As for the plaintive music, no Western ear can
discern in it anything resembling a real melody; but the gods should
find delight in it, because it is certainly performed for them to-day
exactly as it used to be performed twenty centuries ago.

I speak of the ceremonies especially as I have witnessed them in
Izumo: they vary somewhat according to cult and province. At the
shrines of Ise, Kasuga, Kompira, and several others which I visited,
the ordinary priestesses are children; and when they have reached the
nubile age, they retire from the service. At Kitzuki the priestesses
are grown-up women: their office is hereditary; and they are
permitted to retain it even after marriage.

Formerly the Miko was more than a mere officiant: the songs which she
is still obliged to learn indicate that she was originally offered to
the gods as a bride. Even yet her touch is holy; the grain sown by
her hand is blessed. At some time in the past she seems to have been
also a pythoness: the spirits of the gods possessed her and spoke
through her lips. All the poetry of this most ancient of religions
centres in the figure of its little Vestal,--child-bride of
ghosts,--as she flutters, [144] like some wonderful white-and-crimson
butterfly, before the shrine of the Invisible. Even in these years of
change, when she must go to the public school, she continues to
represent all that is delightful in Japanese girlhood; for her
special home-training keeps her reverent, innocent, dainty in all her
little ways, and worthy to remain the pet of the gods.

The history of the higher forms of ancestor-worship in other
countries would lead us to suppose that the public ceremonies of the
Shinto-cult must include some rite of purification. As a matter of
fact, the most important of all Shinto ceremonies is the ceremony of
purification,--o-harai, as it is called, which term signifies the
casting-out or expulsion of evils .... In ancient Athens a
corresponding ceremony took place every year; in Rome, every four
years. The o-harai is performed twice every year,--in the sixth month
and the twelfth month by the ancient calendar. It used to be not less
obligatory than the Roman lustration; and the idea behind the
obligation was the same as that which inspired the Roman laws on the
subject .... So long as men believe that the welfare of the living
depends upon the will of the dead,--that all happenings in the world
are ordered by spirits of different characters, evil as well as
good,--that every bad action lends additional power to the viewless
[145] forces of destruction, and therefore endangers the public
prosperity,--so long will the necessity of a public purification
remain an article of common faith. The presence in any community of
even one person who has offended the gods, consciously or
unwillingly, is a public misfortune, a public peril. Yet it is not
possible for all men to live so well as never to vex the gods by
thought, word, or deed,--through passion or ignorance or
carelessness. "Every one," declares Hirata, "is certain to commit
accidental offences, however careful he may be... Evil acts and words
are of two kinds: those of which we are conscious, and those of which
we are not conscious .... It is better to assume that we have
committed such unconscious offences." Now it should be remembered
that for the man of Old Japan,--as for the Greek or the Roman citizen
of early times,--religion consisted chiefly in the exact observance
of multitudinous custom; and that it was therefore difficult to know
whether, in performing the duties of the several cults, one had not
inadvertently displeased the Unseen. As a means of maintaining and
assuring the religious purity of the people periodical lustration was
consequently deemed indispensable.

From the earliest period Shinto exacted scrupulous cleanliness
--indeed, we might say that it regarded physical impurity as
identical with moral impurity, and intolerable to the gods. It has
[146] always been, and still remains, a religion of ablutions. The
Japanese love of cleanliness--indicated by the universal practice of
daily 

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