Shinto: The Way of the GodsShintoScholarly ReconstructionEnglish study drawing on Japanese sourcesShareShinto: The Way of the Gods 31Aston - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableAstonLanguageEnglishEspañol‹Shinto: The Way of the Gods 1Shinto: The Way of the Gods 2Shinto: The Way of the Gods 3Shinto: The Way of the Gods 4Shinto: The Way of the Gods 5Shinto: The Way of the Gods 6Shinto: The Way of the Gods 7Shinto: The Way of the Gods 8Shinto: The Way of the Gods 9Shinto: The Way of the Gods 10Shinto: The Way of the Gods 11Shinto: The Way of the Gods 12Shinto: The Way of the Gods 13Shinto: The Way of the Gods 14Shinto: The Way of the Gods 15Shinto: The Way of the Gods 16Shinto: The Way of the Gods 17Shinto: The Way of the Gods 18Shinto: The Way of the Gods 19Shinto: The Way of the Gods 20Shinto: The Way of the Gods 21Shinto: The Way of the Gods 22Shinto: The Way of the Gods 23Shinto: The Way of the Gods 24Shinto: The Way of the Gods 25Shinto: The Way of the Gods 26Shinto: The Way of the Gods 27Shinto: The Way of the Gods 28Shinto: The Way of the Gods 29Shinto: The Way of the Gods 30Shinto: The Way of the Gods 31›Decay Of Shinto.--Its Modern Sects.Shinto: The Way of the Gods 31ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1=Rise of Buddhism=.--The later history of Shinto is one of neglect and decay. Such vitality as it retained was owing mainly to the Buddhist ideas which were engrafted upon it. The influence of Chinese systems of ethics and philosophy was also very perceptible, especially in more recent times. The Buddhism of Japan is not simply the doctrine of the founder, described by some as atheistic. It is a real religion, and besides the worship of other Buddhas, comprises that of an Infinite Being--the Buddha Amida--having certain attributes which we should term divine, and of his assessors, with doctrines far more abstruse and profound than those which were taught by Sakyamuni himself. In the main a form of the northern branch of Buddhism, it found its way originally to Japan viâ Tibet, Western China, and Korea.[331] 2In A.D. 552 the King of Pèkché, in Korea, sent an embassy to Japan with a present to the Mikado of an image of Shaka (Sakyamuni) and several volumes of Sutras. They were gladly received, and were entrusted to the charge of a Minister with instructions to practise the new faith. But the jealousy of the adherents of the older religion was aroused. When a pestilence broke out soon after, they attributed it to the wrath of the native deities, and found means to have the Buddhist temple burnt and the holy image thrown into a canal. Other attempts to propagate Buddhism were little more successful, and it was not until the time of the Regent Shōtoku Taishi that it made any substantial progress. At his death in 621 there were in Japan 46 temples or monasteries and 1385 monastics, male and female. In 686 it was decreed that every household should have its domestic Buddhist shrine. 3When Buddhism, after Christianity the great religion of the world, had once gained a foothold in Japan, its ultimate victory was certain. There was nothing in Shinto which could rival in attraction the sculpture, architecture, painting, costumes, and ritual of the foreign faith. Its organization was more complete and effective. It presented ideals of humanity, charity, self-abnegation, and purity, far higher than any previously known to the Japanese nation. Its doctrines of sin and repentance, of fate, of future bliss and woe, its profound metaphysics, and, perhaps more than aught else, the satisfaction which it offered to the yearnings of many a wounded spirit for a holy contemplative life, detached from the toil and worry, the sorrow and the disturbing passions of the world, were well calculated to find a welcome in their hearts. 4At first the two religions held aloof from one another. But while Buddhism flourished more and more, Shinto was gradually weakened by the diversion into another channel of material resources and religious thought which might otherwise have been bestowed upon itself. 5=Ryôbu Shinto=.--The two religions came into more direct contact in the eighth century, when there began a process of pacific penetration of the weaker by the stronger cult, which yielded some curious and important results. Buddhism is not a militant religion in the sense that Islam was. It owes little or nothing to the aid of the secular arm, and avoids rather than seeks open conflicts with other faiths. What the Japanese call hōben (pious device) and to which we should often apply the harsher terms "pious fraud" or "priestcraft," are more congenial to it. A notable application of the hōben method occurred in the time of the Mikado Shōmu, who reigned at Nara from 724 to 756. Wishing to celebrate his reign by the erection of a great Buddhist temple and image, he took advice of Gyōgi, a priest renowned to this day for many services to civilization, and despatched him to Ise with a present for the Sun-Goddess of a relic of Buddha. Gyōgi spent seven days and seven nights in prayer under a tree close to the gate of the shrine, and was then vouchsafed an oracle in the form of some couplets of Chinese verse couched in purely Buddhistic phraseology. It spoke of the Sun of truth enlightening the long night of life and death and of the Moon of eternal reality dispersing the clouds of sin and ignorance. 6This was interpreted to mean that the Sun-Goddess identified herself with Vairochana, called by the Japanese Birushana or Dainichi (great Sun), a person of a Buddhist trinity and described as the personification of essential bodhi (enlightenment) and absolute purity. The Sun-Goddess subsequently appeared to the Mikado in a dream and confirmed this view of her character. The temple (Tōdaiji) founded by Shōmu--though not the original building--is still in existence. It contains the famous colossal statue of Birushana, which is at this day one of the wonders of Japan. 7The principle of recognizing the Kami as avatars or incarnations of Buddhist deities, of which the case of the Sun-Goddess and Vairochana was the first in Japan--it had been already applied in China to Laotze and Confucius--was subsequently much extended, and, with a spice of Chinese philosophy added, formed the basis of a new sect called Ryōbu Shinto. Its Buddhist character is indicated by its name, which means "two parts," the two parts being the two mystic worlds of Buddhism, namely, the Kongôkai and the Taizōkai. The principal founder of Ryōbu was the famous (and fabulous) Kōbō Daishi (died 835), to whom the invention of the Hiragana syllabary and quite a miraculous number of sculptures, writings, and paintings are ascribed. The sect of Buddhism engrafted by him on Shinto is that known as Shingon (true word). It is not one of its highest forms, and deals much in magic finger-twistings, endless repetitions of mystic formulæ unintelligible to the worshipper, and other superstitious practices. 8Despite its professions of eclecticism, the soul of Ryōbu is essentially Buddhist. It borrows little more from Shinto than the names of a few deities, notably Kuni-toko-tachi, to whom it gives an importance by no means justified by anything in the older Shinto writings.[332] Ryōbu owed much of its success to forgeries and other means, which were considered less objectionable in those days than they would be at present. Great indulgence has always been shown in Japan towards means of edification (hōben) that would hardly recommend themselves to our more scrupulous minds. Yet there was something more than priestcraft in the attempt to weld Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto into one consistent whole. It is surely a true instinct which leads mankind to recognize an essential unity in all religions, and to reconcile, as far as possible, the outwardly conflicting forms in which it is clothed. The religious history of Japan is full of such endeavours.[333] But Shinto, Buddhism of various sects, Confucianism, and Sung philosophy constituted a very refractory mass of material, and the results obtained, while they testify to much industry and ingenuity, are more curious than valuable. 9=Yui-itsu=.--The Yui-itsu Shinto was a branch of Ryōbu. It was invented about the end of the fifteenth century. Yui-itsu is short for Ten-jin-yui-itsu (Heaven-man-only-one), a doctrine borrowed, according to Hirata, by the Chinese philosophers from Buddhism. Of course in this connexion Ten does not mean the visible sky. It is rather a conception which fluctuates between Nature and God. It will be seen that the fundamental problem which has so much occupied the minds of Western theologians and philosophers--namely, that of the relation which exists between the human and the divine--has not escaped the attention of Far Eastern thinkers. Motoöri treats the doctrine of the identity of Ten and man with much contempt. "How can there be anything in common," he asks, "between Ten, the country where the Gods live, and man?" 10To the people, a Ryōbu shrine was one where Buddhist priests officiated, a Yui-itsu shrine one where none but Shinto functionaries were seen. 11Other sects, or rather schools, of Shinto were those of Deguchi and Suwiga, both of which arose in the seventeenth century. The former explains the phenomena of the Divine Age on principles derived from the Yih-King, an ancient Chinese book of divination; the latter is a combination of Yui-itsu Shinto with Sung philosophy. 12All these sects were much given to strained analogies and fanciful comparisons in support of their views. The conversion of Saruta-hiko into a great moral teacher by the Deguchi Shinto is an example. Saruta-hiko is worshipped at road sides. He therefore came to be considered the God of roads and the guide and protector of travellers. But the road or way may be used metaphorically for the path of duty or virtue. Hence we have the astonishing result by which a phallic deity figures as the chief Shinto apostle of morality. 13Other instances are the symbolic meanings ascribed to the regalia and the notion that the cross timbers of the roof of the typical Shinto shrine represent the (Chinese) virtues of benevolence, justice, courtesy, and wisdom. 14These and many more of a similar character are argute scholastic speculations in which the people take little concern. 15The Ryōbu, which retained its predominance until the eighteenth century, was by far the most important of these so-called Shinto sects. 16It is impossible to trace here their somewhat complicated history. I may, however, note a few facts which will illustrate the character and extent of the encroachment of Buddhist and Chinese ideas on the native faith and cult. 17As early as the eighth century a Mikado began the custom, subsequently continued during many centuries, of abdicating the throne after a few years' reign and assuming the Buddhist tonsure. The mode of imperial burial was modified in accordance with Buddhist ideas of the worthlessness of these mortal frames of ours. Some Mikados were cremated. One described himself as a slave of Buddha, and another in an official ordinance spoke of the Kami as obeying the laws of Buddha. After such an example was set by the high priests of Shinto, it could not be expected that their Court should be more faithful to the older cult. In the Heian period the nobles could not be induced to trouble themselves about the Shinto ceremonies, which were either deputed to subordinates or omitted altogether. The regular embassies to the shrines were neglected, except on some great emergency, such as famine, plague, or earthquake. Even the greatest Shinto rite of all--the Ohonihe, or coronation ceremony--was in abeyance for eight reigns, viz., from 1465 to 1687. What would have seemed even more shocking to an old Shintoist was the circumstance that Buddhist priests were allowed to take part in it. 18Buddhist priests had the custody of nearly all the shrines, read Sutras, and performed Buddhist ceremonies there, such as baptism and goma sprinkling. Relics of Buddha were deposited in them. Buddhist temples had Shinto shrines of a Chinjiu, or protecting Kami, built in their courtyards. Buddhist architecture and ornaments were used for the Miya and ni-wô (the two kings, guardians of the gate) or shishi (lions) set up before them. The latter are an Indian conceit. They were originally set up at cemeteries in order to frighten wild beasts and prevent them from tearing up the dead. We are told that in the reign of Horikawa (1099) nearly all the shrines were in ruin. 19The Onyôshi, or official college of professors of the Yin and Yang natural philosophy of China, who were equally prepared to compute an almanac or to exorcise a demon, were for many centuries entrusted with the performance of the harahi (purification ceremonies), and other Shinto functions. 20The accompanying illustration shows another form of the admixture of Buddhism with Shinto which prevailed until quite recently. Of the three shrines here represented, the central only is dedicated to a Shinto Deity, viz., Atago, or the Fire-God, who, moreover, has the Buddhist epithet Daigongen affixed to his name. The other two are dedicated to the Buddhist deities Benzaiten and Bishamon. 21The myths of the Kojiki and Nihongi did not escape from admixture with Indian cosmology and Chinese philosophy, a process which yielded the strangest results. Thus a fourteenth-century writer described the Yin and Yang as evolving by their mutual interaction Izanagi and Izanami, the earlier generations of the Nihongi story being omitted. Their child, the Sun Goddess, proves to be a manifestation of Buddha, one of whose services to humanity was at some far remote period to subdue the "Evil Kings of the Six Heavens" of Indian myth, and compel them to withdraw their opposition to the spread of the true doctrine (that is, Buddhism) in Japan. 22Still there were a few exceptions to the general decay. At the two great shrines of Ise and Idzumo, the old cult was maintained in tolerable purity, and doubtless many local shrines were preserved by their insignificance from Buddhist encroachment. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that, although the history of Shinto under foreign influence was one of neglect and decay, in so far as its original elements were concerned, it borrowed from Buddhism and Confucianism germs of a higher thought, which under more favourable circumstances might have borne precious fruit. I have before me a book entitled, 'Wa Rongo; or, Japanese (Confucian) Analects,' which shows the later Shinto in a more favourable light. It was published in 1669. The preface states that the original work belongs to the reign of Gotoba no In (1184-1198), and gives a list of successive editors or compilers from 1219 to 1628. It is a collection of oracles of Shinto gods and wise utterances of mikados, princes, and others, of a tolerably heterogeneous kind. Most of them, however, bear the stamp of the Ryōbu Shinto. They are Buddhism, Confucianism, or Sung philosophy in a Shinto dress. The first volume contains 108 (the number of beads in a Buddhist rosary) oracles attributed to the Gods of various Shinto shrines throughout Japan. 23These oracles are by no means consistent with one another. Some are frankly Buddhist in character, others inculcate the doctrine of the identity of Kami and Buddhas, while others, again, denounce the practice of alien religions. In some, Heaven-and-Earth is recognized as a sort of pantheistic deity, distinct from the physical universe. Here we have Chinese inspiration. Purity of heart, charity to the poor, and the avoidance of vain repetitions are much insisted on. No moral code is anywhere set forth. When virtue is spoken of, it is the Confucian morality, or the observance of the Buddhist commandments, that must be understood. 24In the following examples the reader will find himself in a wholly different and far higher moral and religious atmosphere from that of the unadulterated older Shinto described in the preceding chapters. 25=Shinto Oracles=.--The Sun-Goddess enjoins uprightness and truth, on pain of being sent to Ne no kuni.[334] Men should make their hearts like unto Heaven-and-Earth.[335] Wearisome ceremonies and repetitions (of some Buddhist sects) should be abandoned, and reverence shown to the Gods of the ancestral shrines.[336] 26The Mikado Gotoba no In received the following inspiration in a dream from the two shrines of Ise:-- 27In the last days the world will be disturbed and all men troubled. The sovereign house will show respect for the military house, and local governors will make friends with wearisome fellows (Buddhist monks). Buddhist priests will take to them wives, eat flesh, and propagate base doctrines. The land of Ashihara of the fair rice-ears is the rightful property of my descendants. 28I refuse the offerings of the impure of heart. Some Gods are great, some small, some good and others bad. My name is Dai jizai wō bosatsu.[337] 29Loving-kindness is of the Buddhas: Uprightness of the Kami: Error of the sons of men. Thus of the same heart there is a triple division. 30The Gods of Kamo promise their divine help and the fulfilment of their prayers to their worshippers, especially those who regularly visit the shrine. 31Even though men prepare for us a pure abode and offer there the rare things of the land, though they hang up offerings of the seven precious things, and with anxious hearts pray to us for hundreds of days, yet will we refuse to enter the house of the depraved and miserly. But we will surely visit the dwellings even of those in deep mourning[338] without an invitation, if loving-kindness is there always. The reason is that we make loving-kindness our shintai. 32Hear all men! If you desire to obtain help from the Gods, put away pride. Even a hair of pride shuts you off from the Gods as it were by a great cloud. 33Hear all men! The good Kami find their strength and their support in piety. Therefore they love not the offerings of those who practise tedious ceremonies. 34Any one who makes a single obeisance to one Kami will receive infinite help: much more so any one who makes pure his heart and enters the great way of single-minded uprightness. 35Oracle of Temman tenjin, the deified Minister Sugahara no Michizane[339]:-- 36All ye who come before me hoping to attain the accomplishment of your desires, pray with hearts pure from falsehood, clean within and without, reflecting the truth like a mirror. If those who are falsely accused of crime[340] come to me for help, within seven days their prayer will be granted, or else call me not a God. 37An oracle of Mume no miya promises that if an offering of sand is made help will be given to women in child-birth, and children to those who have none. 38An oracle of Atago (the Fire-God) denounces his vengeance on those who pollute fire, and on the wealthy who do not assist their poorer neighbours. 39Leave the things of this world and come to me daily and monthly with pure bodies and pure hearts. You will then enjoy paradise in this world and have all your desires accomplished. 40Oracle of the God of Kashima[341]:-- 41I am the protector of Japan against foreign violence and break the spear-points of Heavenly demons and Earthly demons. All enjoy my divine power. I derive strength from the multiplication of devout men in the land. Then do the forces of demons melt away like snow in the sun. When devout men are few, my powers dwindle, my heart is distressed and the demon powers gain vigour while the divine power is weakened. 42All ye men who dwell under Heaven. Receive the just commands of the Gods. Regard Heaven as your father, Earth as your mother, and all things as your brothers and sisters. You will then enjoy this divine country which excels all others, free from hate and sorrow. Obey the instructions of the Heaven-shining Deity and honour the Mikado. If any are rebellious, come before me and name their names. I will surely crush the foe and yield you satisfaction. 43An oracle of the God of Suha[342] promises to hear the prayers of all true worshippers, even though they may have eaten flesh. No outward purity avails a whit. 44Oracle of Tatsuta (the Wind-God):-- 45All ye of high and low degree, rather than pray to Heaven-and-Earth, rather than pray to all the Kami, dutifully serve your parents. For your parents are the Gods of without and within.[343] If that which is within is not bright it is useless to pray only for that which is without. 46An oracle of Inari, near Kioto, speaks of this polluted world (a Buddhist phrase), and recommends the reading of Sutras and Dharani. 47The following sentiments are ascribed to the God of Fujiyama:-- 48Ye men of mine. Shun desire. If you shun desire you will ascend to a level with the Gods. Every little yielding to anxiety is a step away from the natural heart of man. If one leaves the natural heart of man, he becomes a beast. That men should be made so, is to me intolerable pain and unending sorrow. 49A son of a Mikado received the following inspiration in a dream:-- 50It is the upright heart of all men which is identical with the highest of the high, and therefore the God of Gods. There is no room in Heaven-and-Earth for the false and crooked person. 51The following poem was revealed in a dream to the Mikado Seiwa:-- 52If we keep unperverted the human heart, which is like unto Heaven and received from Earth, that is God. The Gods have their abode in the heart. Amongst the various ordinances none is more excellent than that of religious meditation. 53When the sky is clear, and the wind hums in the fir-trees, 'tis the heart of a God who thus reveals himself. 54An oracle of Hachiman (the War-God) enjoins on his worshippers to be full of pity and mercy for beggars and lepers, and even for ants and crickets. Those whose pity and charity are wide will have their precious cord (of life) extended immeasurably; their posterity will be spread abroad like the wings of a crane. They will become the upright heart of the Gods of Heaven. 55All men's love of children and love of self are heinous crimes. Nothing is more admirable than to sever, were it only for a time, all earthly relations. 56If men will have upright hearts they must be neither foolish nor clever, they must indulge neither in grief nor in hate, but be as the flowers which unfold under the genial warmth of a vernal sun. 57If there be any who, having studied the books of China or practised the teachings of India, despise the instructions of the Gods of our own Japan, I will go to their houses and either slay their infant children or visit them with sore disease, or turn away from them their followers, or by the God of Fire destroy their dwellings. This is not because I hate the doctrines of China or India, but because it is rejecting the root for the branches. 58Of old the people of my country knew not my name. Therefore I was born into the visible world and endured a base existence. In highest Heaven I am the Deity of the Sun, in the mid-sky I show my doings. I hide in the great Earth and produce all things: in the midst of the Ocean I am the eight Dragon-kings, and my power pervades the four seas. If the poorest of mankind come here once for worship, show me their faces and declare their wishes, within seven days, fourteen days, twenty-one days, or it may be three years or seven years, according to the person and the importance of his prayer, I will surely grant their heart's desire. But the wicked of heart must not apply to me. Those who do not abandon mercy will not be abandoned by me. 59=Revival of Pure Shinto=.--The seventeenth century witnessed a great revival of Chinese learning in Japan. It embraced not only the renewed study of the ancient classics of Confucius and Mencius, but the philosophical writings of Chu-hi and other sceptical writers of the Sung Dynasty (960-1278). The Samurai, or governing caste of the nation, devoted themselves to these studies with amazing zeal and enthusiasm, to the great neglect of Buddhism, which from this time forward was left mainly to the common people. This movement reached a climax in the eighteenth century, when a reaction set in. Kada, Mabuchi, and other patriotic scholars, resenting the undue preponderance allowed to Chinese thought, did their utmost, by commentaries and exegetical treatises, to recall attention to the monuments of the ancient national literature, such as the Kojiki, Nihongi, and Manyōshiu, which had been so long neglected that they were in great part unintelligible even to educated men. Under their pupil and successor Motoöri (1730-1801), this movement assumed a religious character. His patriotic prejudices were offended by the foreign elements which he found in the Ryōbu and other prevailing forms of Shinto, while the Sung doctrine of a "Great Absolute" was not only odious to him on account of its alien origin, but failed to satisfy his soul-hunger for a more personal object of worship. He therefore turned back to the older form of Shinto. 60To its propagation by lectures and books he devoted many years of his life, and not without success. He had numerous followers among the more educated classes. 61Motoöri's principal work is the Kojiki den, a commentary on the Kojiki, in which he loses no opportunity of attacking everything Chinese and of exalting the old Japanese customs, language, and religion in a spirit of ardent and undiscriminating patriotism. He seems to have been wholly blind to the fact that the exotic faiths and philosophies, whose intrusion into Shinto he so bitterly resented, contain elements far otherwise valuable to mankind than the ritual of the Yengishiki and the old-world myths of the Kojiki. 62His pupil Hirata (1776-1843) was less of a literary man and more of a theologian than his master. In a long life he wrote numbers of books, amounting to hundreds of volumes, and delivered innumerable lectures urging the claims of the old Shinto. His teaching was so successful that it at last drew upon him the attention of the Shōgun's Government, who, finding that their own authority was being undermined by the prominence given to the de jure sovereign rights of the Sun-Goddess's descendants, forbade his lectures and banished him to his native province of Dewa. Hirata's anti-foreign prejudices did not prevent him from believing in the immortality of the soul--a doctrine of Buddhist origin--or from borrowing from China a worship of ancestors quite different from anything in the old Shinto. He adopts the Chinese duty of "filial piety," and makes strenuous but unavailing efforts to find countenance for it in the Kojiki and Nihongi. Though he says that the Kami detest Buddhism because it teaches us to abandon lord and parent, wife and child, and is therefore destructive of morality, and because its adherents are filthy beggars, who boast of wearing cast-off rags and eating food given in charity, in another place he goes so far as to admit Buddha to his Shinto Pantheon, on condition that he shall be content with an inferior position. 63He tacitly accepts the moral code of China, while protesting that such things are unnecessary, as we are endowed by nature with an intuitive knowledge of right and wrong. 64The agitation for the revival of Pure Shinto was a retrograde movement, which could only end in failure. It contributed substantially, however, to the success of the political revolution which in 1868 brought about the restoration of the Mikado to the sovereign position which was the logical outcome of Motoöri's and Hirata's teachings. The Shinto reformation of the same date, when the Buddhist priests were removed from the Ryōbu shrines, and a certain purification of ritual and ornaments was effected, was also due to their influence.[344] 65=Shingaku=.--A school of preachers who called their doctrine shingaku or "heart-learning," and professed to combine Shinto with Buddhism and Confucianism, had some vogue in the first half of the nineteenth century. These men were in reality rationalists, who took the maxims of Confucius and Mencius as the basis of their doctrines. Any Shinto element which they may contain is quite inappreciable. Their sermons, of which a good number have been printed, are in the colloquial dialect. They are very entertaining and, despite an occasional bit of indecency, not unedifying. 66=Tenrikyô=,[345] or the "teaching of the Heavenly Reason," is a modern sect. The founder was a woman named Omiki, who was born in the province of Yamato in 1798, and died in 1887. Her religion owes much to the Shingaku and Ryōbu doctrines. While professing to worship Kunitokotachi, Izanagi, Izanami, and seven other Shinto deities, practically Izanagi and Izanami are her only Gods. The former (identified with the sun) is taken to represent the male, and the latter the female principle, corresponding in nature to Heaven and Earth, and in human society to husband and wife. These Gods are spiritual beings, chiefly revealed in the heart of man, and are endowed with personal attributes. Tenrikyô has high moral aims, and has made rapid progress. In 1894 there were claimed for it 10,000 priests and preachers, and 1,400,000 adherents. 67=Remmonkyô=.[346]--The name of this sect implies that, like the spotless lotus-flower, which has its roots in the mud, it attains to purity in the midst of a wicked world. It is stated to have originated with a certain Yanagita Ichibeimon, but its real founder was his disciple, a woman named Shimamura Mitsuko, who was still alive and preaching in 1901. 68The Remmonkyô professes to be a reformed Shinto, but in reality it owes little to this source beyond the names of the Gods Ame no minaka nushi, Taka-musubi, and Kami-musubi, who are termed the three Creator Deities. They are considered, however, to be only manifestations of the Ji no Myôhô, or "Wonderful Law of Things," and the real God of the sect is the personified Myôhô (wonderful law) a conception borrowed from the Buddhist Nichiren sect. The followers of Shimamura call her an ikigami (live God), and regard her as identical with the Myôhô. How often in Japanese religious history do we meet with this idea of the incarnation of the God in his priest or prophet! 69The shintai, or material representative of the Myôhô, is a slip of paper bearing the words "Ji no Myôhô," written by the founder herself. It is sold as a charm against disease and danger. Faith-healing is a practice of this sect, as it is of the Tenrikyô. Their moral code is of the ordinary Confucian type. 70The last-named two sects are not likely to play an important part in religious history. The founders of both were ignorant women, and their doctrines are a mere jumble of conflicting ideas borrowed from various sources, and inspired by no great central thought. We may, perhaps, compare their position in Japan to that of the Salvation Army or the Plymouth Brethren in this country. 71=Official Shinto=.--The official cult of the present day is substantially the "Pure Shinto" of Motoöri and Hirata. But it has little vitality. A rudimentary religion of this kind is quite inadequate for the spiritual sustenance of a nation which in these latter days has raised itself to so high a pitch of enlightenment and civilization. No doubt some religious enthusiasm is excited by the great festivals of Ise, Idzumo, and a few other shrines, and by the annual pilgrimages--which, however, have other raisons d'être. The reverence paid to the Mikado is not devoid of a religious quality which has its source in Shinto. But the main stream of Japanese piety has cut out for itself new channels. It has turned to Buddhism, which, at the time of the Restoration in a languishing state, is now showing signs of renewed life and activity. Another and still more formidable rival has appeared, to whose progress, daily increasing in momentum, what limit shall be prescribed? 72As a national religion, Shinto is almost extinct. But it will long continue to survive in folk-lore and custom, and in that lively sensibility to the divine in its simpler and more material aspects which characterizes the people of Japan. ‹Previous chapterShinto: The Way of the Gods 30Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg