Shinto Priest, with qnhei, in prayer to the kami. IX.— X X
tion, and an iron mannikin was made of the size of the mikado and thrown into the river. The ancient elabo- rate systems of purification bj' salt or water in the cases of birth, death, etc., binding the mouth of the officiating priest with paper, lest breath pollute the offerings, are only observed at present by Shinto purists, and their modern expression is that of rinsing the mouth or dip- ping the hands in water before prayer at the shrine. The following is a characteristic Shinto prayer. The worshipper at the shrine pulls a white rope attached to a bell hung in the roof above the shrine, claps his hands thrice, folds them palm to palm, bow'S his head on his thumbs, and prays, " I say with awe, deign to bless me by correcting the unwitting faults which, seen and heard by j'ou, I have committed; by blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods might in- flict ; by causing me to live long and hard, like the last- ing rock; and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin and to the gods of earthly origin the petitions which I present every day, along with your breath, that they may hear with the sharp-earedness of the forth-gal- loping colt." In the Engishiki, or Book of Ceremonial Law, there are numerous specimens of prayers and joy- ful chants for harvest, remarkable alike for their sol- emn simplicity and poetic beauty. The deified forces of nature — thunder, lightning, earthquakes — and the kami of the sea, rivers, hot springs, mountains, trees, roads, yards, and wells, are all worshipped and addressed in prayer.
Such is " pure Shinto" — a bald mythology, a patri- archal cult of autochthons, a literary scaffolding for propping up the supremacy of a tribe of conquerors, a religious device for a nation in its savage infancy — a Robinson Crusoe among religions. Motoori teaches that morals were invented by the Chinese because they were an immoral people; but in .Japan there is no necessity for any system of morals, as every Japanese acted aright if he only consulted his own heart. The duty of a good Japanese consists in obej'ing the mikado, without questioning whether these commands are right or wrong. It is only immoral people like the Chinese who presume to discuss the character of their sovereigns. Hence, in ancient Japan, government and religion were one and the same. The mikado is the centre of Church and State, which are one.* He is more than sovereign pontiff. Japan is the land of the gods. The mikado is god and vicar of all tiie gods, and in his hands rests the ownership of all the land ; hence, what a Japanese eats, drinks, and enjoys is from the mikado and his heavenly ancestors. And, above all, is the crowning glory of the Holy Country — one djniasty of heaven-de- scended rulers, which i'rom all time has stood unchanged, and to all eternity will stand unchangeable. (In Japan the dynasty has never changed. The present mikado is the 123d of the line, while in China there have been thirty-three or thirty-four dynasties. The date fixed for the accession of Jimmu Tenno is B.C. 660.) As a political force, Shinto has no parallel in the history of Japan, if indeed of any nation. More than all else, it has contributed to the unity of the Japanese people. It was the main-spring of the tremendous revolution of 1868, whose secondary effect and outward phases have attracted the attention of the world. Such was Shinto before the advent of Confucian ethics or Buddhism. "It is quite possible to show that the indigenous belief of the ancient Japanese contained unformed materials out of which might have been evolved, in the course of ages, both positive morality and law, had not the process been interrupted at an early stage."
II. Hixtory of Skintoism, including its Developments and Modifications by Buddhism and Chinese Ethics (A.D. 600-1700). — The Chinese ethical system reached Japan long before Buddhism. Confucianism easily lends itself to despotism, and the Five Relations of the Chinese sage were grafted on Shinto before the creed of Buddha be- gan to influence the Japanese in and after A.D. 552. The new faith from India met with ready acceptance.
SHINTO
690
SHINTO
its gorg:cous ritual soon eclipsing the old cult, which gradually lost many of its distinguishing character- istics, and for centuries was unknown in its purity to the masses, though jealously guarded by a few court nobles. In some sequestered miyas its rites were per- fectly preserved, even to the lighting of tire by means only of t he tire-drill and littiiihpora oblusa wood, whence the native word hinoki, "tire-wood."
In spite of the attractions of their more sensuous worship, the liuddhist propagandists found that the roots of Shinto were very deep in the hearts of the martial Japanese. To retain permanent hold upon the national heart, it would be necessary to propound some scheme of reconciliation by which the ancient traditions of their divine ancestors were woven into the Indian dog- mas. To do this required some master siurit profound- ly learned in both Shinto and Buddhism, a deep student of the Japanese nature, bold, and perhaps unscrupulous. The conversion of a line of theocratic emperors, whose authority was derived from their divine origin and sac- erdotal character, is a striking anomaly in Japanese his- tory ; but to fuse into unity such cults as Shinto and Buddhism was a task like that of reconciling Homer and Moses — Grecian and Hebrew culture. Neverthe- less, a Japanese Pliilo was at liand. Kobo, a Buddhist priest (b. 774, d. 835), perhaps Japan's mightiest intel- lect— the resemblance of whose head to that of Shak- speare has been pointed out — achieved the work with almost perfect success. Kobo was a scholar in Sanscrit, Pali, and Chinese, a zealous student of Buddhism in Corea and China, and a master of the Shinto Scriptures, which he studied at the Japanese Mecca, Ise. While at the shrine of the goddess Toyo, she manifested her- self to him and delivered the revelation on which his system is founded. His scheme, brief!}' stated, is that the Shinto deities were the incarnations of Buddha in Japan previous to the teaching of his perfect doctrines. Each Shinto kami is rebaptized with a Buddhist name. Thus Amaterasu becomes Amida, Ojin, Hachiman, etc. The legends of the Kojiki were explained according to the philosophy of Buddhism, and shown to contain the essence and tenets of Buddha's teachings. A charac- teristic specimen of this style of reasoning is the Sanka- iri, one of the best Japanese theological works. Ko- bo's system finally secured the complete ascendency of Buddhism. The mikado was so pleased that he gave it the name of Riobu-Shinto (twofold doctrine of the gods). In the daily worship for each month, the Buddh- ist Bosatsu (I'odhisattra) and certain of the Shinto kami are worshipped as one and the same. The general name for the kami, who wore incarnations of Buddha, is gonyen. Thenceforth, until within the last decade, the form of Shinto generally known and practiced, and as such treated of by European writers, was ltiril)u, impure or Buddhai/.ed Shinto, which is utterly rejjudiated by true Shintoists, who accuse Kobo of fraii<l and forgery. We have not space to do more than mention that there are fifteen or more sects of corrupt Shintoists, but pass on to glance brieHy at the recent developments and sudden outburst of Shinto as a tremendous ixilitical force in and since the ever-memorable year of 1X()«, when .la- pan achieverl the paradox of a return to the ancient re- gime and to the modern order of things.