The Religions of Japan Part 3

In a critical study, either of the general body of national tradition or of the ancient doc.u.ments, we must continually be on our guard against the usual a.s.sumption that Chinese civilization came in earlier than it really did. This a.s.sumption colors all modern j.a.panese popular ideas, art and literature. The vice of the pupil nations surrounding the Middle Kingdom is their desire to have it believed that Chinese letters and culture among them is an nearly coeval with those of China as can be made truly or falsely to appear. The Koreans, for example, would have us believe that their civilization, based on letters and introduced by Kis.h.i.+, is "four thousand years old" and contemporaneous with China's own, and that "the Koreans are among the oldest people of the world."[5]

The average modern j.a.panese wishes the date of authentic or official history projected as far back as possible. Yet he is a modest man compared with his mediaeval ancestor, who constructed chronology out of ink-stones. Over a thousand years ago a deliberate forgery was officially put on paper. A whole line of emperors who never lived was canonized, and clever penmen set down in ink long chapters which describe what never happened.[6] Furthermore, even after, and only eight years after the fairly honest "Kojiki" had been compiled, the book called "Nihongi," or Chronicles of j.a.pan, was written. All the internal and not a little external evidence shows that the object of this book is to give the impression that Chinese ideas, culture and learning had long been domesticated in j.a.pan. The "Nihongi" gives dates of events supposed to have happened fifteen hundred years before, with an accuracy which may be called villainous; while the "Kojiki" states that Wani, a Korean teacher, brought the "Thousand Character Cla.s.sic" to j.a.pan in A.D. 285, though that famous Chinese book was not composed until the sixth century, or A.D. 550.[7]

Even to this day it is nearly impossible for an American to get a Korean "frog in the well"[8] to understand why the genuine native life and history, language and learning of his own peninsular country is of greater value to the student than the pedantry borrowed from China. Why these possess any interest to a "scholar" is a mystery to the head in the horsehair net. Anything of value, he thinks, _must_ be on the Chinese model. What is not Chinese is foolish and fit for women and children only. Furthermore, Korea "always had" Chinese learning. This is the sum of the arguments of the Korean literati, even as it used to be of the old-time hatless Yedo scholar of shaven skull and topknot.

Despite j.a.panese independence and even arrogance in certain other lines, the thought of the demolition of cherished notions of vast antiquity is very painful. Critical study of ancient traditions is still dangerous, even in parliamentary Nippon. Hence the unbia.s.sed student must depend on his own reading of and judgment upon the ancient records, a.s.sisted by the thorough work done by the English scholars Aston, Satow, Chamberlain, Bramsen and others.

It was the coming of Buddhism in the sixth century, and the implanting on the soil of j.a.pan of a system of religion in which were temples with all that was attractive to the eye, gorgeous ritual, scriptures, priesthood, codes of morals, rigid discipline, a system of dogmatics in which all was made positive and clear, that made the variant myths and legends somewhat uniform. The faith of Shaka, by winning adherents both at the court and among the leading men of intelligence, reacted upon the national traditions so as to compel their collection and arrangemeut into definite formulas. In due time the mythology, poetry and ritual was, as we have seen, committed to writing and the whole system called s.h.i.+nt[=o], in distinction from Butsud[=o], the Way of the G.o.ds from the Way of the Buddhas. Thus we can see more clearly the outward and visible manifestations of s.h.i.+nt[=o]. In forming our judgment, however, we must put aside those descriptions which are found in the works of European writers, from Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto down to the year 1870. Though these were good observers, they were often necessarily mistaken in their deductions. For, as we shall see in our lecture on Riy[=o]bu or Mixed Buddhism, s.h.i.+nt[=o] was, from the ninth century until late into the nineteenth century, absorbed in Buddhism so as to be next to invisible.

Origins of the j.a.panese People.

Without detailing processes, but giving only results, our view of the origin of the j.a.panese people and of their religion is in the main as follows:

The oldest seats of human habitation in the j.a.panese Archipelago lie between the thirtieth and thirty-eighth parallels of north lat.i.tude.

South of the thirty-fourth parallel, it seems, though without proof of writing or from tradition, that the Malay type and blood from the far south probably predominated, with, however, much infusion from the northern Asian mainland.

Between the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth parallels, and west of the one hundred and thirty-eighth meridian of longitude, may be found what is still the choicest, richest and most populous part of The Country Between Heaven and Earth. Here the prevailing element was Korean and Tartar.

To the north and east of this fair country lay the Emis.h.i.+ savages, or Ainos.

In "the world" within the ken of the prehistoric dwellers in what is now the three islands, Hondo, Kius.h.i.+u and s.h.i.+koku, there was no island of Yezu and no China; while Korea was but slightly known, and the lands farther westward were unheard of except as the home of distant tribes.

Three distinct lines of tradition point to the near peninsula or the west coast of j.a.pan as the "Heaven" whence descended the tribe which finally grew to be dominant. The islands of Tsus.h.i.+ma and Iki were the stepping-stones of the migration out of which rose what may be called the southern or Tsukus.h.i.+ cycle of legend, Tsukus.h.i.+ being the ancient name of Kius.h.i.+u.

Idzumo is the holy land whence issued the second stream of tradition.

The third course of myth and legend leads us into Yamato, whence we behold the conquest of the Mikado's home-land and the extension of his name and influence into the regions east of the Hakone Mountains, including the great plain of Yedo, where modern T[=o]ki[=o] now stands.

We shall take the term "Yamato" as the synonym of the prehistoric but discernible beginnings of national life. It represents the seat of the tribe whose valor and genius ultimately produced the Mikado system. It was through this house or tribe that j.a.panese history took form. The reverence for the ruler long afterward ent.i.tled "Son of Heaven" is the strongest force in the national history. The spirit and prowess of these early conquerors have left an indelible impress upon the language and the mind of the nation in the phrase Yamato Damas.h.i.+--the spirit of (Divine and unconquerable) j.a.pan.

The story of the conquest of the land, in its many phases, recalls that of the Aryans in India, of the Hebrews in Canaan, of the Romans in Europe and of the Germanic races in North America. The Yamato men gradually advanced to conquest under the impulse, as they believed, of a divine command.[9] They were sent from Takama-no-hara, the High Plain of Heaven. Theirs was the war, of men with a n.o.bler creed, having agriculture and a feudal system of organization which furnished resources for long campaigns, against hunters and fishermen. They had improved artillery and used iron against stone. Yet they conquered and pacified not only by superior strategy, tactics, weapons and valor, but also by advanced fetiches and dogma. They captured the religion of their enemies as well as their bodies, lands and resources. They claimed that their ancestors were from Heaven, that the Sun was their kinswoman and that their chief, or Mikado, was vicegerent of the Heavenly G.o.ds, but that those whom they conquered were earth-born or sprung from the terrestrial divinities.

Mikadoism the Heart of s.h.i.+nt[=o].

As success came to their arms and their chief's power was made more sure, they developed further the dogma of the Mikado's divinity and made wors.h.i.+p centre in him as the earthly representative of the Sun and Heaven. His fellow-conquerors and ministers, as fast as they were put in lords.h.i.+p over conquered provinces, or indigenous chieftains who submitted obediently to his sway or yielded graciously to his prowess, were named as founders of temples and in later generations wors.h.i.+pped and became G.o.ds.[10] One of the motives for, and one of the guiding principles in the selections of the floating myths, was that the ancestry of the chieftains loyal to the Mikado might be shown to be from the heavenly G.o.ds. Both the narratives of the "Kojiki" and the liturgies show this clearly.

The nature-wors.h.i.+p, which was probably practised throughout the whole archipelago, became part of the system as government and society were made uniform on the Yamato model. It seems at least possible, if Buddhism had not come in so soon, that the ordinary features of a religion, dogmatic and ethical codes, would have been developed. In a word, the Kami no Michi, or religion of the islanders in prehistoric times before the rise of Mikadoism, must be carefully distinguished from the politico-ecclesiasticism which the system called s.h.i.+nt[=o] reveals and demands. The early religion, first in the hands of politicians and later under the pens and voices of writers and teachers at the Imperial Court, became something very different from its original form. As surely as K[=o]b[=o] later captured s.h.i.+nt[=o], making material for Buddhism out of it and overlaying it in Riy[=o]bu, so the Yamato men made political capital out of their own religion and that of the subject tribes. The divine sovereign of j.a.pan and his political church did exactly what the state churches of Europe, both pagan and Christian, have done before and since the Christian era.

Further, in studying the "Kojiki," we must remember that the sacred writings sprang out of the religion, and that the system was not an evolution from the book. Customs, ritual, faith and prayer existed long before they were written about or recorded in ink. Moreover, the philosophy came later than the practice, the deeds before the myths, and the joy and terror of the visible universe before the cosmogony or theogony, while the book-preface was probably written last of all.

The sun was first, and then came the wonder, admiration and wors.h.i.+p of men. The personification and pedigree of the sun were late figments. To connect their ancestors with the sun-G.o.ddess and the heavenly G.o.ds, was a still later enterprise of the "Mikado reverencers" of this earlier time. Both the G.o.d-way in its early forms and s.h.i.+nt[=o] in its later development, were to them political as well as ecclesiastical inst.i.tutes of dogma. Both the religion which they themselves brought and cultivated and the aboriginal religion which the Yamato men found, were used as engines in the making of Mikadoism, which is the heart of s.h.i.+nt[=o].

Not until two centuries after the coming of Buddhism and of Asiatic civilization did it occur to the j.a.panese to reduce to writing the floating legends and various cycles of tradition which had grown up luxuriantly in different parts of "the empire," or to express in the Chinese character the prayers and thanksgivings which had been handed down orally through many generations. These norito had already a.s.sumed elegant literary form, rich in poetic merit, long before Chinese writing was known. They, far more than the less certain philosophy of the "Kojiki," are of undoubted native origin. It is nearly certain that the prehistoric j.a.panese did not borrow the literary forms of the G.o.d-way from China, as any one familiar with the short, evenly balanced and ant.i.thetical sentences of Chinese style can see at once. The norito are expressions, in the rhythmical and rhetorical form of wors.h.i.+p, of the articles of faith set forth in the historic summary which we have given.

We propose to ill.u.s.trate the dogmas by quoting from the rituals in Mr.

Satow's masterly translation. The following was addressed to the sun-G.o.ddess (Amateras[)u] no Mikami, or the From-Heaven-s.h.i.+ning-Great-Deity) by the priest-envoy of the priestly Nakatomi family sent annually to the temples at Ise, the Mecca of s.h.i.+nt[=o]. The _sevran_ referred to in the ritual is the Mikado. This word and all the others printed in capitals are so rendered in order to express in English the force of "an untranslatable honorific syllable, supposed to be originally identical with a root meaning 'true,' but no longer possessing that signification." Instead of the word "earth," that of "country" (j.a.pan) is used as the correlative of Heaven.

Ritual in Praise of the Sun-G.o.ddess.

He (the priest-envoy) says: Hear all of you, ministers of the G.o.ds and sanctifiers of offerings, the great ritual, the heavenly ritual, declared in the great presence of the From-Heaven-s.h.i.+ning-Great-DEITY, whose praises are fulfilled by setting up the stout pillars of the great HOUSE, and exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven at the sources of the Isuzu River at Uji in Watarai.

He says: It is the sovran's great WORD. Hear all of you, ministers of the G.o.ds and sanctifiers of offerings, the fulfilling of praises on this seventeenth day of the sixth moon of this year, as the morning sun goes up in glory, of the Oho-Nakatomi, who--having abundantly piled up like a range of hills the TRIBUTE thread and sanctified LIQUOR and FOOD presented as of usage by the people of the deity's houses attributed to her in the three departments and in various countries and places, so that she deign to bless his [the Mikado's] LIFE as a long LIFE, and his AGE as a luxuriant AGE eternally and unchangingly as mult.i.tudinous piles of rock; may deign to bless the CHILDREN who are born to him, and deigning to cause to flourish the five kinds of grain which the men of a hundred functions and the peasants of the countries in the four quarters of the region under heaven long and peacefully cultivate and eat, and guarding and benefiting them to deign to bless them--is hidden by the great offering-wands.

In the Imperial City the ritual services were very imposing. Those in expectation of the harvest were held in the great hall of the Jin-Gi-Kuan, or Council of the G.o.ds of Heaven and Earth. The description of the ceremonial is given by Mr. Satow.[11] In the prayers offered to the sun-G.o.ddess for harvest, and in thanksgiving to her for bestowing dominion over land and sea upon her descendant the Mikado, occurs the following pa.s.sage:

I declare in the great presence of the From-Heaven-s.h.i.+ning-Great-DEITY who sits in Ise. Because the sovran great G.o.dDESS bestows on him the countries of the four quarters over which her glance extends, as far as the limit where heaven stands up like a wall, as far as the bounds where the country stands up distant, as far as the limit where the blue clouds spread flat, as far as the bounds where the white clouds lie away fallen--the blue sea plain as far as the limit whither come the prows of the s.h.i.+ps without drying poles or paddles, the s.h.i.+ps which continuously crowd on the great sea plain, and the road which men travel by land, as far as the limit whither come the horses' hoofs, with the baggage-cords tied tightly, treading the uneven rocks and tree-roots and standing up continuously in a long path without a break--making the narrow countries wide and the hilly countries plain, and as it were drawing together the distant countries by throwing many tons of ropes over them--he will pile up the first-fruits like a range of hills in the great presence of the sovran great G.o.dDESS, and will peacefully enjoy the remainder.

Phallic Symbols.

To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the wors.h.i.+p at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the G.o.d-way was ancestor-wors.h.i.+p. From the very first this trait and habit of the j.a.panese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so that today the altars of both religions exist in the same house, the dead ancestors becoming both kami and buddhas.

Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's symbols of the G.o.d-way, that is of ancestor wors.h.i.+p. The extent of the phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the G.o.d-way, and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems, tax severely the credulity of the Occidental reader. The processes of the ancient mind can hardly be understood except by vigorous power of the imagination and by sympathy with the primeval man. To the critical student, however, who has lived among the people and the temples devoted to this wors.h.i.+p, who knows how innocent and how truly sincere and even reverent and devout in the use of these symbols the wors.h.i.+ppers are, the matter is measurably clear. He can understand the soil, root and flower even while the most strange specimen is abhorrent to his taste, and while he is most active in destroying that mental climate in which such wors.h.i.+p, whether native or exotic, can exist and flourish.

In none of the instances in which I have been eyewitness of the cult, of the person officiating or of the emblem, have I had any reason to doubt the sincerity of the wors.h.i.+pper. I have never had reason to look upon the implements or the system as anything else than the endeavor of man to solve the mystery of Being and Power. In making use of these emblems, the j.a.panese wors.h.i.+pper simply professes his faith in such solution as has seemed to him attainable.

That this cultus was quite general in pre-Buddhistic j.a.pan, as in many other ancient countries, is certain from the proofs of language, literature, external monuments and relics which are sufficiently numerous. Its organic connection with the G.o.d-way may be clearly shown.

To go farther back in point of time than the "Kojiki," we find that even before the development of art in very ancient j.a.pan, the male G.o.ds were represented by a symbol which thus became an image of the deity himself.

This token was usually made of stone, though often of wood, and in later times of terra-cotta, of cast and wrought iron and even of gold.[12]

Under the direct influence of such a cult, other objects appealed to the imagination or served the temporary purpose of the wors.h.i.+pper as _ex-voto_ to hang up in the shrines, such as the mushroom, awabi, various other sh.e.l.ls and possibly the fire-drill. It is only in the decay of the cultus, in the change of view and centre of thought compelled by another religion, that representations of the old emblems ally themselves with sensualism or immorality. It is that natural degradation of one man's G.o.d into another man's devil, which conversion must almost of necessity bring, that makes the once revered symbol "obscene," and talk about it become, in a descending scale, dirty, foul, filthy, nasty. That the j.a.panese suffer from the moral effluvia of a decayed cult which was once as the very vertebral column of the national body of religion, is evident to every one who acquaints himself with their popular speech and literature.

How closely and directly phallicism is connected with the G.o.d-way, and why there were so many s.h.i.+nt[=o] temples devoted to this latter cult and furnished with symbols, is shown by study of the "Kojiki." The two opening sections of this book treat of kami that were in the minds even of the makers of the myths little more than mud and water[13]--the mere bioplasm of deity. The seven divine generations are "born," but do nothing except that they give Izanagi and Izanami a jewelled spear. With this pair come differentiation of s.e.x. It is immediately on the apparition of the consciousness of s.e.x that motion, action and creation begin, and the progress of things visible ensues. The details cannot be put into English, but it is enough, besides noting the conversation and union of the pair, to say that the term meaning giving birth to, refers to inanimate as well as animate things. It is used in reference to the islands which compose the archipelago as well as to the various kami which seem, in many cases, to be nothing more than the names of things or places.

Fire-myths and Ritual.

Fire is, in a sense, the foundation and first necessity of civilization, and it is interesting to study the myths as to the origin of fire, and possibly even more interesting to compare the Greek and j.a.panese stories. As we know, old-time popular etymology makes Prometheus the fore-thinker and brother of Epimetheus the after-thinker. He is the stealer of the fire from heaven, in order to make men share the secret of the G.o.ds. Comparative philology tells us, however, that the Sanskrit _Pramantha_ is a stick that produces fire. The "Kojiki" does indeed contain what is probably the later form of the fire-myth about two brothers, Prince Fire-s.h.i.+ne and Fire-Fade, which suggests both the later Greek myth of the fore- and after-thinker and a tradition of a flood.

The first, and most probably older, myth in giving the origin of fire does it in true j.a.panese style, with details of parturition. After numerous other deities had been born of Izanagi and Izanami, it is said "that they gave birth to the Fire-Burning-Swift-Male-Deity, another name for whom is the Deity-Fire-s.h.i.+ning-Prince, and another name is the Deity-Fire-s.h.i.+ning-Elder." In the other ancient literature this fire-G.o.d is called Ho-musubi, the Fire-Producer.

Izanami yielded up her life upon the birth of her son, the fire-G.o.d; or, as the sacred text declares, she "divinely retired"[14] into Hades. From her corpse sprang up the pairs of G.o.ds of clay, of metal, and other kami that possessed the potency of calming or subduing fire, for clay resists and water extinguishes. Between the mythical and the liturgical forms of the original narrative there is considerable variation.

The Norito ent.i.tled the "Quieting of Fire" gives the ritual form of the myth. It contains, like so many Norito, less the form of prayer to the Fire-Producer than a promise of offerings. Not so much by pet.i.tions as by the inducements of gifts did the ancient wors.h.i.+ppers hope to save the palace of the Mikado from the fire-G.o.d's wrath. We omit from the text those details which are offensive to modern and western taste.

I declare with the great ritual, the heavenly ritual, which was bestowed on him at the time when, by the WORD of the Sovran's dear progenitor and progenitrix, who divinely remain in the plain of high heaven, they bestowed on him the region under heaven, saying:

"Let the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness tranquilly rule over the country of fresh spikes which flourishes in the midst of the reed-moor as a peaceful region."

When ... Izanami ... had deigned to bear the many hundred myriads of G.o.ds, she also deigned to bear her dear youngest child of all, the Fire-producer G.o.d, ... and said:

"My dear elder brother's augustness shall rule the upper country; I will rule the lower country," she deigned to hide in the rocks; and having come to the flat hills of darkness, she thought and said: "I have come hither, having borne and left a bad-hearted child in the upper country, ruled over by my ill.u.s.trious elder brother's augustness," and going back she bore other children. Having borne the water-G.o.ddess, the gourd, the river-weed, and the clay-hill maiden, four sorts of things, she taught them with words, and made them to know, saying: "If the heart of this bad-hearted child becomes violent, let the water-G.o.ddess take the gourd, and the clay-hill maiden take the river-weed, and pacify him."