The nature-worship, 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 Shintō 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 Kōbō later captured Shintō, making material for Buddhism out of it and overlaying it in Riyōbu, so the Yamato men made political capital out of their own religion and that of the subject tribes. The divine sovereign of Japan 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 worship of men. The personification and pedigree of the sun were late figments. To connect their ancestors with the sun-goddess and the heavenly gods, was a still later enterprise of the "Mikado reverencers" of this earlier time. Both the god-way in its early forms and Shintō in its later development, were to them political as well as ecclesiastical institutes 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 Shintō.
Not until two centuries after the coming of Buddhism and of Asiatic civilization did it occur to the Japanese 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 assumed 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 Japanese did not borrow the literary forms of the god-way from China, as any one familiar with the short, evenly balanced and antithetical sentences of Chinese style can see at once. The norito are expressions, in the rhythmical and rhetorical form of worship, of the articles of faith set forth in the historic summary which we have given. We propose to illustrate the dogmas by quoting from the rituals in Mr. Satow's masterly translation. The following was addressed to the sun-goddess (Amatérasŭ no Mikami, or the From-Heaven-Shining-Great-Deity) by the priest-envoy of the priestly Nakatomi family sent annually to the temples at Isé, the Mecca of Shintō. 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" (Japan) is used as the correlative of Heaven.
He (the priest-envoy) says: Hear all of you, ministers of the gods and sanctifiers of offerings, the great ritual, the heavenly ritual, declared in the great presence of the From-Heaven-Shining-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 gods 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 multitudinous 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 Gods of Heaven and Earth. The description of the ceremonial is given by Mr. Satow.11 In the prayers offered to the sun-goddess for harvest, and in thanksgiving to her for bestowing dominion over land and sea upon her descendant the Mikado, occurs the following passage:
I declare in the great presence of the From-Heaven-Shining-Great-DEITY who sits in Isé. Because the sovran great GODDESS 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 ships without drying poles or paddles, the ships 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 GODDESS, and will peacefully enjoy the remainder.
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 worship 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 god-way was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the Japanese 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 god-way, that is of ancestor worship. The extent of the phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god-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 worship, who knows how innocent and how truly sincere and even reverent and devout in the use of these symbols the worshippers 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 worship, 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 worshipper. 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 Japanese worshipper simply professes his faith in such solution as has seemed to him attainable.
That this cultus was quite general in pre-Buddhistic Japan, 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 god-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 Japan, the male gods 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 worshipper as ex-voto to hang up in the shrines, such as the mushroom, awabi, various other shells 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 god 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 Japanese 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 god-way, and why there were so many Shintō 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 water13—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 sex. It is immediately on the apparition of the consciousness of sex 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 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 Japanese 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 gods. 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-Shine 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 Japanese 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-Shining-Prince, and another name is the Deity-Fire-Shining-Elder." In the other ancient literature this fire-god is called Ho-musubi, the Fire-Producer.
Izanami yielded up her life upon the birth of her son, the fire-god; or, as the sacred text declares, she "divinely retired"14 into Hades. From her corpse sprang up the pairs of gods 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 entitled 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 petitions as by the inducements of gifts did the ancient worshippers hope to save the palace of the Mikado from the fire-god'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 gods, she also deigned to bear her dear youngest child of all, the Fire-producer god, ... 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 illustrious elder brother's augustness," and going back she bore other children. Having borne the water-goddess, 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-goddess take the gourd, and the clay-hill maiden take the river-weed, and pacify him."
In consequence of this I fulfil his praises, and say that for the things set up, so that he may deign not to be awfully quick of heart in the great place of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness, there are provided bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse cloth, and the five kinds of things; as to things which dwell in the blue-sea plain, there are things wide of fin and narrow of fin, down to the weeds of the shore; as to LIQUOR, raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in rows the bellies of the beer-jars, piling the offerings up, even to rice in grain and rice in ear, like a range of hills, I fulfil his praises with the great ritual, the heavenly ritual.
Izanagi, after shedding tears over his consort, whose death was caused by the birth of the fire-god, slays the fire-god, and follows her into the Root-land, or Hades, whereupon begins another round of wonderful stories of the birth of many gods. Among these, though evidently out of another cycle of legends, is the story of the birth of the three gods—Fire-Shine, Fire-Climax and Fire-Fade, to which we have already referred.
The fire-drill mentioned in the "Kojiki" suggests easily the same line of thought with the myths of cosmogony and theogony, and it is interesting to note that this archaic implement is still used at the sacred temples of Isé to produce fire. After the virgin priestesses perform the sacred dances in honor of local deities the water for their bath is heated by fires kindled by heaps of old harai or amulets made from temple-wood bought at the Mecca of Japan. It is even probable that the retention of the fire-drill in the service of Shintō is but a survival of phallicism.
The liturgy for the pacification of the gods of fire is worth noticing. The full form of the ritual, when compared with a legend in the "Nihongi," shows that a myth was "partly devised to explain the connection of an hereditary family of priests with the god whose shrine they served; it is possible that the claim to be directly descended from the god had been disputed." The Norito first recites poetically the descent of Ninigi, the grandchild of the sun-goddess from heaven, and the quieting of the turbulent kami.
I (the diviner), declare: When by the WORD of the progenitor and progenitrix, who divinely remaining in the plain of high heaven, deigned to make the beginning of things, they divinely deigned to assemble the many hundred myriads of gods in the high city of heaven, and deigned divinely to take counsel in council, saying: "When we cause our Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness to leave heaven's eternal seat, to cleave a path with might through heaven's manifold clouds, and to descend from heaven, with orders tranquilly to rule the country of fresh spikes, which flourishes in the midst of the reed-moor as a peaceful country, what god shall we send first to divinely sweep away, sweep away and subdue the gods who are turbulent in the country of fresh spikes;" all the gods pondered and declared: "You shall send Aménohohi's augustness, and subdue them," declared they. Wherefore they sent him down from heaven, but he did not declare an answer; and having next sent Takémikuma's augustness, he also, obeying his father's words, did not declare an answer. Amé-no-waka-hiko also, whom they sent, did not declare an answer, but immediately perished by the calamity of a bird on high. Wherefore they pondered afresh by the WORD of the heavenly gods, and having deigned to send down from heaven the two pillars of gods, Futsunushi and Takémika-dzuchi's augustness, who having deigned divinely to sweep away, and sweep away, and deigned divinely to soften, and soften the gods who were turbulent, and silenced the rocks, trees, and the least leaf of herbs likewise that had spoken, they caused the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness to descend from heaven.
I fulfil your praises, saying: As to the OFFERINGS set up, so that the sovran gods who come into the heavenly HOUSE of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness, which, after he had fixed upon as a peaceful country—the country of great Yamato where the sun is high, as the centre of the countries of the four quarters bestowed upon him when he was thus sent down from heaven—stoutly planting the HOUSE-pillars on the bottom-most rocks, and exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven, the builders had made for his SHADE from the heavens and SHADE from the sun, and wherein he will tranquilly rule the country as a peaceful country—may, without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be fierce, and deigning to hurt, knowing, by virtue of their divinity, the things which were begun in the plain of high heaven, deigning to correct with Divine-correcting and Great-correcting, remove hence out to the clean places of the mountain-streams which look far away over the four quarters, and rule them as their own place. Let the Sovran gods tranquilly take with clear HEARTS, as peaceful OFFERINGS and sufficient OFFERINGS the great OFFERINGS which I set up, piling them upon the tables like a range of hills, providing bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse cloth; as a thing to see plain in—a mirror: as things to play with—beads: as things to shoot off with—a bow and arrows: as a thing to strike and cut with—a sword: as a thing which gallops out—a horse; as to LIQUOR—raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in rows the bellies of the beer-jars, with grains of rice and ears; as to the things which dwell in the hills—things soft of hair, and things rough of hair; as to the things which grow in the great field plain—sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to the things which dwell in the blue sea plain—things broad of fin and things narrow of fin, down to weeds of the offing and weeds of the shore, and without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be fierce, and deigning to hurt, remove out to the wide and clean places of the mountain-streams, and by virtue of their divinity be tranquil.
In this ritual we find the origin of evil attributed to wicked kami, or gods. To get rid of them is to be free from the troubles of life. The object of the ritual worship was to compel the turbulent and malevolent kami to go out from human habitations to the mountain solitudes and rest there. The dogmas of both god-possession and of the power of exorcism were not, however, held exclusively by the high functionaries of the official religion, but were part of the faith of all the people. To this day both the tenets and the practices are popular under various forms.
Besides the twenty-seven Norito which are found in the Yengishiki, published at the opening of the tenth century, there are many others composed for single occasions. Examples of these are found in the Government Gazettes. One celebrates the Mikado's removal from Kiōto to Tōkiō, another was written and recited to add greater solemnity to the oath which he took to govern according to modern liberal principles and to form a national parliament. To those Japanese whose first idea of duty is loyalty to the emperor, Shintō thus becomes a system of patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion. Even Christian natives of Japan can use much of the phraseology of the Norito while addressing their petitions on behalf of their chief magistrate to the King of kings.
The primitive worship of the sun, of light, of fire, has left its impress upon the language and in vernacular art and customs. Among scores of derivations of Japanese words (often more pleasing than scientific), in which the general term hi enters, is that which finds in the word for man, hito, the meaning of "light-bearer." On the face of the broad terminal tiles of the house-roofs, we still see moulded the river-weed, with which the Clay-Hill Maiden pacified the Fire-God. On the frontlet of the warrior's helmet, in the old days of arrow and armor, glittered in brass on either side of his crest the same symbol of power and victory.
Having glanced at the ritual of Shintō, let us now examine the teachings of its oldest book.
"Japan is not a land where men need pray,
For 'tis itself divine:
Yet do I lift my voice in prayer..."
Hitomaro, + A.D. 737.
"Now when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were not yet manifest, and there was naught named, naught done, who could know its shape? Nevertheless Heaven and Earth first parted, and the three Deities performed the commencement of creation; the Passive and Active Essences then developed, and the Two Spirits became the ancestors of all things."—Preface of Yasumarō (A.D. 712) to the "Kojiki."
"These, the 'Kojiki' and 'Nihongi' are their [the Shintōists] canonical books, ... and almost their every word is considered undeniable truth."
"The Shintō faith teaches that God inspired the foundation of the Mikadoate, and that it is therefore sacred."—Kaburagi.
"We now reverently make our prayer to Them [Our Imperial Ancestors] and to our Illustrious Father [Komei, + 1867], and implore the help of Their Sacred Spirits, and make to Them solemn oath never at this time nor in the future to fail to be an example to Our subjects in the observance of the Law [Constitution] hereby established."—Imperial oath of the Emperor Mutsuhito in the sanctuary in the Imperial Palace, Tōkiō, February 11, 1889.
"Shintō is not our national religion. A faith existed before it, which was its source. It grew out of superstitious teaching and mistaken tradition. The history of the rise of Shintō proves this."—T. Matsugami.
"Makoto wo moté KAMI NO MICHI wo oshiyuréba nari." (Thou teachest the way of God in truth.)—Mark xii. 14.
"Ware wa Micni nuri, Mukoto nari, Inochi nari."—John xiv. 6.—The New Testament in Japanese.
As to the origin of the "Kojiki," we have in the closing sentences of the author's preface the sole documentary authority explaining its scope and certifying to its authenticity. Briefly the statement is this: The "Heavenly Sovereign" or Mikado, Temmu (A.D. 673-686), lamenting that the records possessed by the chief families were "mostly amplified by empty falsehoods," and fearing that "the grand foundation of the monarchy" would be destroyed, resolved to preserve the truth. He therefore had the records carefully examined, compared, and their errors eliminated. There happened to be in his household a man of marvellous memory, named Hiyéda Aré, who could repeat, without mistake, the contents of any document he had ever seen, and never forgot anything which he had heard. This person was duly instructed in the genuine traditions and old language of former ages, and made to repeat them until he had the whole by heart. "Before the undertaking was completed," which probably means before it could be committed to writing, "the emperor died, and for twenty-five years Aré's memory was the sole depository of what afterwards received the title of 'Kojiki.' ... At the end of this interval the Empress Gemmiō ordered Yasumarō to write it down from the mouth of Aré, which accounts for the completion of the manuscript in so short a time as four months and a half,"1 in A.D. 712.
It is from the "Kojiki" that we obtain most of our ideas of ancient life and thought. The "Nihongi," or Chronicles of Japan, expressed very largely in Chinese phrases and with Chinese technical and philosophical terms, further assists us to get a measurably correct idea of what is called The Divine Age. Of the two books, however, the "Kojiki" is much more valuable as a true record, because, though rude in style and exceedingly naïve in expression, and by no means free from Chinese thoughts and phrases, it is marked by a genuinely Japanese cast of thought and method of composition. Instead of the terse, carefully measured, balanced, and antithetical sentences of correct Chinese, those of the "Kojiki" are long and involved, and without much logical connection. The "Kojiki" contains the real notions, feelings, and beliefs of Japanese who lived before the eighth century.
Remembering that prefaces are, like porticos, usually added last of all, we find that in the beginning all things were in chaos. Heaven and earth were not separated. The world substance floated in the cosmic mass, like oil on water or a fish in the sea. Motion in some way began. The ethereal portions sublimed and formed the heavens; the heavier residuum became the present earth. In the plain of high heaven, when the heaven and earth began, were born three kami who "hid their bodies," that is, passed away or died. Out of the warm mould of the earth a germ sprouted, and from this were born two kami, who also were born alone, and died. After these heavenly kami came forth what are called the seven divine generations, or line of seven kami.2
To express the opening lines of the "Kojiki" in terms of our own speech and in the moulds of Western thought, we may say that matter existed before mind and the gods came forth, as it were, by spontaneous evolution. The first thing that appeared out of the warm earth-muck was like a rush-sprout, and this became a kami, or god. From this being came forth others, which also produced beings, until there were perfect bodies, sex and differentiation of powers. The "Nihongi," however, not only gives a different view of this evolution basing it upon the dualism of Chinese philosophy—that is, of the active and passive principles—and uses Chinese technical terminology, but gives lists of kami that differ notably from those in the "Kojiki." This latter fact seems to have escaped the attention of those who write freely about what they imagine to be the early religion of the Japanese.3
After this introduction, in which "Dualities, Trinities, and Supreme Deities" have been discovered by writers unfamiliar with the genius of the Japanese language, there follows an account of the creation of the habitable earth by Izanami and Izanagi, whose names mean the Male-Who-Invites and the Female-Who-Invites. The heavenly kami commanded these two gods to consolidate and give birth to the drifting land. Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, the male plunged his jewel-spear into the unstable waters beneath, stirring them until they gurgled and congealed. When he drew forth the spear, the drops trickling from its point formed an island, ever afterward called Onokoro-jima, or the Island of the Congealed Drop. Upon this island they descended. The creative pair, or divine man and woman, now separated to make a journey round the island, the male to the left, the female to the right. At their meeting the female spoke first: "How joyful to meet a lovely man!" The male, offended that the woman had spoken first, required the circuit to be repeated. On their second meeting, the man cried out: "How joyful to meet a lovely woman!" This island on which they had descended was the first of several which they brought into being. In poetry it is the Island of the Congealed Drop. In common geography it is identified as Awaji, at the entrance of the Inland Sea. Thence followed the creation of the other visible objects in nature.
After the birth of the god of fire, which nearly destroyed the mother's life, Izanami fled to the land of roots or of darkness, that is into Hades. Izanagi, like a true Orpheus, followed his Eurydice and beseeched her to come back to earth to complete with him the work of creation. She parleyed so long with the gods of the underworld that her consort, breaking off a tooth of his comb, lighted it as a torch and rushed in. He found her putrefied body, out of which had been born the eight gods of thunder. Horrified at the awful foulness which he found in the underworld, he rushed up and out, pursued by the Ugly-Female-of-Hades. By artifices that bear a wonderful resemblance to those in Teutonic fairy tales, he blocked up the way. His head-dress, thrown at his pursuer, turned into grapes which she stopped to eat. The teeth of his comb sprouted into a bamboo forest, which detained her. The three peaches were used as projectiles; his staff which stuck up in the ground became a gate, and a mighty rock was used to block up the narrow pass through the mountains. Each of these objects has its relation to place-names in Idzumo or to superstitions that are still extant. The peaches and the rocks became gods, and on this incident, by which the beings in Hades were prevented from advance and successful mischief on earth, is founded one of the norito which Mr. Satow gives in condensed form. The names of the three gods,4 Youth and Maiden of the Many Road-forkings, and Come-no-further Gate, are expressed and invoked in the praises bestowed on them in connection with the offerings.
He (the priest) says: I declare in the presence of the sovran gods, who like innumerable piles of rocks sit closing up the way in the multitudinous road-forkings.... I fulfil your praises by declaring your NAMES, Youth and Maiden of the Many Road-forkings and Come-no-further Gate, and say: for the OFFERINGS set up that you may prevent [the servants of the monarch] from being poisoned by and agreeing with the things which shall come roughly-acting and hating from the Root-country, the Bottom-country, that you may guard the bottom (of the gate) when they come from the bottom, guard the top when they come from the top, guarding with nightly guard and with daily guard, and may praise them—peacefully take the great OFFERINGS which are set up by piling them up like a range of hills, that is to say, providing bright cloth, etc., ... and sitting closing-up the way like innumerable piles of rock in the multitudinous road-forkings, deign to praise the sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness eternally and unchangingly, and to bless his age as a luxuriant AGE.
Retreating to another part of the world—that is, into southwestern Japan—Izanami purified himself by bathing in a stream. While washing himself,5 many kami were borne from the rinsings of his person, one of them, from the left eye (the left in Japanese is always the honorable side), being the far-shining or heaven-illuminating kami, whose name, Amatérasŭ, or Heaven-shiner, is usually translated "The Sun-goddess." This personage is the centre of the system of Shintō. The creation of gods by a process of cleansing has had a powerful effect on the Japanese, who usually associate cleanliness of the body (less moral, than physical) with godliness.
It is not necessary to detail further the various stories which make up the Japanese mythology. Some of these are lovely and beautiful, but others are horrible and disgusting, while the dominant note throughout is abundant filthiness.
Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world such good service in translating into English the whole of the Kojiki, and furnishing it with learned commentary and notes, has well said:
"The shocking obscenity of word and act to which the 'Records' bear witness is another ugly feature which must not quite be passed over in silence. It is true that decency, as we understand it, is a very modern product, and it is not to be looked for in any society in the barbarous stage. At the same time, the whole range of literature might perhaps be ransacked for a parallel to the naïve filthiness of the passage forming Sec. IV. of the following translation, or to the extraordinary topic which the hero Yamato-Také and his mistress Miyadzŭ are made to select as the theme of poetical repartee. One passage likewise would lead us to suppose that the most beastly crimes were commonly committed."6
Indeed, it happens in several instances that the thread by which the marvellous patchwork of unrelated and varying local myths is joined together, is an indecent love story.
A thousand years after the traditions of the Kojiki had been committed to writing, and orthodox Shintō commentators had learned science from the Dutch at Nagasaki, the stirring of the world mud by Izanagi's spear7 was gravely asserted to be the cause of the diurnal revolution of the earth upon its axis, the point of the axis being still the jewel spear.8 Onogoro-jima, or the Island of the Congealed Drop, was formerly at the north pole,9 but subsequently removed to its present position. How this happened is not told.
Now that the Kojiki is in English and all may read it, we can clearly see who and what were the Japanese in the ages before letters and Chinese civilization; for these stories of the kami are but legendary and mythical accounts of men and women. One could scarcely recognize in the islanders of eleven or twelve hundred years ago, the polished, brilliant, and interesting people of to-day. Yet truth compels us to say that social morals in Dai Nippon, even with telegraphs and railways, are still more like those of ancient days than readers of rhapsodies by summer tourists might suppose. These early Japanese, indeed, were possibly in a stage of civilization somewhat above that of the most advanced of the American Indians when first met by Europeans, for they had a rude system of agriculture and knew the art of fashioning iron into tools and weapons. Still, they were very barbarous, certainly as much so as our Germanic "forbears." They lived in huts. They were without writing or commerce, and were able to count only to ten.10 Their cruelty was as revolting as that of the savage tribes of America. The family was in its most rudimentary stage, with little or no restraint upon the passions of men. Children of the same father, but not of the same mother, could intermarry. The instances of men marrying their sisters or aunts were very common. There was no art, unless the making of clay images, to take the place of the living human victims buried up to their necks in earth and left to starve on the death of their masters,11 may be designated as such.
The Magatama, or curved jewels, being made of ground and polished stone may be called jewelry; but since some of these prehistoric ornaments dug up from the ground are found to be of jade, a mineral which does not occur in Japan, it is evident that some of these tokens of culture came from the continent. Many other things produced by more or less skilled mechanics, the origin of which is poetically recounted in the story of the dancing of Uzumé before the cave in which the Sun-goddess had hid herself,12 were of continental origin. Evidently these men of the god-way had passed the "stone age," and, probably without going through the intermediate bronze age, were artificers of iron and skilled in its use. Most of the names of metals and of many other substances, and the terms used in the arts and sciences, betray by their tell-tale etymology their Chinese origin. Indeed, it is evident that some of the leading kami were born in Korea or Tartary.
Then as now the people in Japan loved nature, and were quickly sensitive to her beauty and profoundly in sympathy with her varied phenomena. In the mediæval ages, Japanese Wordsworths are not unknown.13 Sincerely they loved nature, and in some respects they seemed to understand the character of their country far better than the alien does or can. Though a land of wonderful beauty, the Country of Peaceful Shores is enfolded in powers of awful destructiveness. With the earthquake and volcano, the typhoon and the tidal wave, beauty and horror alternate with a swiftness that is amazing.
Probably in no portion of the earth are the people and the land more like each other or apparently better acquainted with each other. Nowhere are thought and speech more reflective of the features of the landscape. Even after ten centuries, the Japanese are, in temperament, what the Kojiki reveals them to have been in their early simplicity. Indeed, just as the modern Frenchman, down beneath his outward environments and his habiliments cut and fitted yesterday, is intrinsically the same Gaul whom Julius Cæsar described eighteen hundred years ago, so the gentleman of Tōkiō or Kiōto is, in his mental make-up, wonderfully like his ancestors described by the first Japanese Stanley, who shed the light of letters upon the night of unlettered Japan and darkest Dai Nippon.
The Kojiki reveals to us, likewise, the childlike religious ideas of the islanders. Heaven lay, not about but above them in their infancy, yet not far away. Although in the "Notices," it is "the high plain of heaven," yet it is just over their heads, and once a single pillar joined it and the earth. Later, the idea was, that it was held up by the pillar-gods of the wind, and to them norito were recited. "The great plain of the blue sea" and "the land of luxuriant reeds" form "the world"—which means Japan. The gods are only men of prowess or renown. A kami is anything wonderful—god or man, rock or stream, bird or snake, whatever is surprising, sensational, or phenomenal, as in the little child's world of to-day. There is no sharp line dividing gods from men, the natural from the supernatural, even as with the normal uneducated Japanese of to-day. As for the kami or gods, they have all sorts of characters; some of them being rude and ill-mannered, many of them beastly and filthy, while others are noble and benevolent. The attributes of moral purity, wisdom and holiness, cannot be, and in the original writings are not, ascribed to them; but they were strong and had power. In so far as they had power they were called kami or gods, whether celestial or terrestrial. Among the kami—the one term under which they are all included—there were heavenly bodies, mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and animals, because those also were supposed to possess force, or at least some kind of influence for good or evil. Even peaches, as we have seen, when transformed into rocks, became gods.14
That there was worship with awe, reverence, and fear, and that the festivals and sacrifices had two purposes, one of propitiating the offended Kami and the other of purifying the worshipper, may be seen in the norito or liturgies, some of which are exceedingly beautiful.15 In them the feelings of the gods are often referred to. Sometimes their characters are described. Yet one looks in vain in either the "Notices," poems, or liturgies for anything definite in regard to these deities, or concerning morals or doctrines to be held as dogmas. The first gods come into existence after evolution of the matter of which they are composed has taken place. The later gods are sometimes able to tell who are their progenitors, sometimes not. They live and fight, eat and drink, and give vent to their appetites and passions, and then they die; but exactly what becomes of them after they die, the record does not state. Some are in heaven, some on the earth, some in Hades. The underworld of the first cycle of tradition is by no means that of the second.16 Some of the kami are in the water, or on the water, or in the air. As for man, there is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and the Iroquois believed in.
It would task the keenest and ablest Shintōist to deduce or construct a system of theology, or of ethics, or of anthropology from the mass of tradition so full of gaps and discord as that found in the Kojiki, and none has done it. Nor do the inaccurate, distorted, and often almost wholly factitious translations, so-called, of French and other writers, who make versions which hit the taste of their occidental readers far better than they express the truth, yield the desired information. Like the end strands of a new spider's web, the lines of information on most vital points are still "in the air."