CHAPTER III.

Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise,It is the peace-giver, it is the God,It is the treasure.

When a kitchen wench at the present day speaks of theHettsui-sama--samais a honorific and personifying word--she means the cooking-furnace itself regarded as a God, not a spirit inhabiting it. She will even speak of the plasterer making aHettsui-sama.

The second or anthropomorphic stage of the development of the idea of God arises out of the rhetorical necessity of rendering more vivid, even at the expense of exact truth, the presentation of the conception of the powers of nature as living things. Finding that the bare assertion that they are alive produces little impression, the poet or seer goes a step further, and boldly ascribes to them human form, passions, actions, and character. Myth and metaphor are his instruments. The God has bodily parts, parents, sex, and children. He eats, drinks, is angry or alarmed, loves, fights, weaves, cultivates the ground, fishes, hunts, and dies. With the advance of social organization he is a chief or a king. Sometimes in these metaphors we can trace a special application to the deity's natural functions. Sometimes they are introduced merely for general effect. The results of this process for good and for evil are written large in the pagesof human history. It is, on the one hand, the indispensable means by which the high intuitions of the seer are brought home, more or less imperfectly, to the multitude. On the other hand, the true original nature divinity is often lost sight of in a profusion of anthropomorphic fancies, and nothing is left but a magnified man, whose ultimate fate it is to be disavowed by advancing knowledge and enlightenment.

It has been said that the primitive man knows no distinction between fancy and reality. In truth, life would be impossible for such a simpleton. However primitive he may be, he cannot hold a fire in his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. The difference between a real dinner and an imaginary one is palpable even to his limited intelligence. The hunter who could not distinguish between the game of his imagination and the reality could never earn a living. He would be fit only for an imbecile asylum. The child is well aware that his mud pies are not fit to eat. The savage woman who pretends to herself that a stone is her lost baby, knows in her heart that this is nothing more than make-believe. Even a dog appreciates the distinction between a real rat and the object which it pleases him to fancy one, and worries accordingly. The seer is conscious that his anthropomorphic language is only metaphorical. Dante felt this when he said:--

Per questo la Scrittura condescendeA nostra facultate e piedi e manoAttribuisce a Dio ed altro intende.

Metaphor is of the very essence of myth. But the literal-minded vulgar are at all times prone to confound thealtrowhich is clothed in myth and metaphor with its outward husk, and the literal-minded scholar or scientific man is often little better. Hirata says that "what we callkamiare all men. Even among men those who are excellent are calledkami. The natural difference between men and Gods isthat the Gods are high and men are low, owing to the greater care taken by the creator deities in producing the former." He thinks that the Shinto deities are about ten feet high.

The humanization of the nature deities is reflected in the vocabulary of Shinto. The termmioya, or "august parent," is frequently used of them.Tsuchiortsutsu, old forms ofchichi, father, occurs in the names of several. It is primarily by no means physical fatherhood which is meant in such cases, although there are no doubt vulgar minds who are unable to rise above this conception and have thereby done much to corrupt religion.

In Western religions a God must be either male or female. The grammatical structure of their languages compels Europeans to say either he or she in speaking of deities. In Japan this necessity does not exist. The forms of Japanese speech take little account of sex. Many Shinto deities have no sex at all. In others sex is indicated by the incidents of the myth or by the additions of such terminations aswomale,mefemale. There are several pairs of married deities. In art, sex is comparatively little distinguished in Japan.

The reason for attributing one sex to a deity rather than the other is not always evident. Provinces and mountains are sometimes male and sometimes female. The Food Goddess is naturally feminine, as representing the productive principle of nature, and perhaps also because cooking is the business of women. The male sex is more suitable to Susa no wo's violent character as the Rain-storm. Warlike gods like Hachiman are naturally masculine.

The "chieftain" conception of divinity is represented by the use of the wordwo, male,i.e., virile or valiant one, in many of the names of deities, and by the ascription to some of warlike qualities. There is nothing to show that these are deified chieftains. On the contrary, the termwois applied, liketsuchi, father, to what are unmistakably naturedeities, such as the Sea-Gods Soko-tsutsu-wo (bottom-father-male) Naka-tsutsu-wo (middle-father-male), and Uwa-tsutsu-wo (upper-father-male), produced by the lustrations of Izanagi in the sea after his return from Yomi.

Tohe, another word for chieftain, occurs in the name of the Wind-God, Shina tsu tohe.

Nushi, master, is found in the names of several deities.

The application to the Shinto deities of words implying sovereignty is illustrated bysubeorsume, which enters into a number of compounds relating to the Gods or Mikados. This word means "to collect together into one," and hence "to hold general rule over."Sumeraorsumeragi no mikotois the Mikado. Several deities enjoy the honorary epithet ofSume-gami, orSubera-gami.

Mi-koto, august thing, is also applied equally to Gods and Mikados, and in ancient times even to parents. It is nearly equivalent to our "majesty."

Wake, a branch, that is to say, a branch of the imperial family, a prince, is applied to deities.

Hikoandhimeoccur frequently in the names of gods. These words mean literally sun-child and sun-female, but in practice they are equivalent to prince and princess, or lord and lady. In the history of these words one may observe the operation of both of the great currents of deity-forming thought.Hi, sun, is used as an epithet for the glorification of human personages, and the compoundshikoandhimeare in turn applied to nature powers as a personifying term. The Wind-God is ahiko.

The rhetorical impulse to realize in its various phases the human character of the nature deities of Shinto has produced a number of subsidiary personages, who are attached to them as wives, children, ministers, or attendants. Some of these are also nature deities. In others we find a union of the two deity-making tendencies. Thus Koyane, by the circumstance of his descent from Musubi, the God of Growth, and by his position of high-priest to the Sun-Goddess,belongs to the category of nature deities, while as an embodiment of the collective humanity of the Nakatomi sacerdotal corporation, whose ancestor he is feigned to be, he belongs to the class of deified human beings.

In Japan, the myth and metaphor-making faculty--in other words the imagination--though prolific enough, is comparatively feeble. The ancient Japanese especially were appreciably more neglectful than Western races of the distinction between the animate and the inanimate, and there was therefore less scope for the play of fancy in which religious personification consists. Like other Far-Eastern peoples, they realized the personal conception of deity with less intensity than the Aryan or Semitic nations. In this respect Homer and the Bible stand at the opposite pole from Confucius, whoseTienhas as little about it of humanity as is possible for a being who is said to know, to command, to reward, and to punish. Shinto approaches Confucianism in this respect. There is, no doubt, a profuse creation of personified nature-deities, but we find on examination that they are shadowy personages with ill-defined functions and characters wanting in consistency. Moreover, owing to the neglect by the Japanese of grammatical forms indicating number, it is frequently hard to tell whether a given name is that of one deity or of several. Musubi, the God of Growth, is sometimes one God, sometimes two, while at a later period he became split up into five or more deities. The Wind-God is at one time a single deity, at another a married couple. Susa no wo has in recent times been made into a trinity. Such fissiparous reproduction of deities is characteristic of a low degree of organization.[7]To meet the difficulties arising from this state of things Motoöri, in the eighteenth century, propounded his theory ofbun-shin, or "fractional bodies," which may remind us of the "three persons andone substance" of Christian theology. Hirata, his pupil, speaking of the three Sea-deities, Uha tsutsu no wo, Naka tsutsu no wo, and Soko tsutsu no wo, says: "This deity, although, strictly speaking, born as three deities, is described as though one deity were present. This is to be understood of the God dividing his person and again uniting it. The descent of theAdzumi no Muraji(a noble family) from him shows that in this respect he is to be regarded as one."

The circumstance that many of the Gods, like the Japanese themselves, have numerous aliases, adds to the uncertainty. The nomina and the numina do not invariably go together. There is sometimes reason to suspect that it is the same God who appears under different names, while, on the other hand, the same name may cover what are in reality two or more different deities.

There were no arts of sculpture or painting in Japan before their introduction from China in historical times, and the consequent want of images and pictures for which Shinto has been commended must have contributed materially to prevent the Gods from acquiring distinct personalities like those of ancient Greece.

The feeble grasp of personality indicated by the above facts is profoundly characteristic of the Japanese genius. It is illustrated by their unimaginative literature, which makes but sparing use of personification, allegory, and metaphor, by their drama, with its late and imperfect development, and by their art, which has produced little monumental sculpture or portrait painting of importance. It may also be traced in the grammar, which has practically no gender, thus showing that the Japanese mind is comparatively careless of marking the distinction between animate and inanimate and male and female. The law takes far less cognizance of the individual and more of the family than with us. Another fact of the same order is the neglect of distinctions of person shown by thesparing use of personal and other pronouns. In a passage translated from Japanese into English, without any intention of illustrating this fact, there occur only six pronouns in the former against nearly one hundred in the latter. The verb has no person.Yukufor example, means equally I go, thou goest, he goes, we go, you go, and they go. It is true that person may be indicated by the use of honorifics to mark the second person and humble forms for the first, but even when these are taken into account, the absence from Japanese of indications of person is very remarkable.

Herbert Spencer, in his 'Principles of Sociology,' suggests that the comparative fewness of personal pronouns in the languages of the Far East is owing to the circumstance that they "establish with the individual addressed a relation too immediate to be allowed where distance is to be maintained." Now, not only is it possible, and even common, for pronouns to be used for the express purpose of magnifying the distance between the speaker and the person whom he addresses, as in the case of the Germanerwhen used as a pronoun of the second person, but Spencer's explanation does not meet the case of pronouns of the third person, which are just as rare in these languages as those of the first and second. Nor is there anything in the relations between men of high and low degree in these countries which is so radically different from those which have prevailed in Europe as to produce such a far-reaching difference in the language of all classes of society. The truth is that these nations do notavoidpronouns. Their minds are still in a stage of development in which they have not yet realized the advantages in clearness of expression which are to be gained by a more systematic distribution of their ideas into the three categories of first, second, and third person. It is with them not a matter of etiquette, but of poverty of imagination, that power which, as Mr. P. Lowell has remarked, is to the mentaldevelopment what spontaneous variation is to organic development.[8]

In Stages I. and II. of the evolution of nature-deities, it is the nature power or object itself which is the deity. Stage II. (Anthropomorphism), so long as it is not meant literally, is not inconsistent with a direct worship of natural objects and phenomena. But the vulgar are always prone to mistake metaphor for reality. When they are told that the Sun is a goddess, who walks, weaves, wears armour, sows rice, and so on, they take these statements literally, combining an implicit belief in them with the worship of the Sun itself. Even Motoöri says that it is the actual Sun in Heaven which we worship as Ama-terasu no Oho-Kami (the Heaven-shining-great Deity), while he believes at the same time that the Sun-myth of theKojikiis real history. A time comes when it is objected that the Sun has no arms or legs necessary for the performance of the actions attributed to her. It is pointed out that the wind has no bodily form at all. Instead of going back to the true explanation--that these things are only metaphorical, the literal-minded man prefers to accept the suggestion (which brings us to Stage III.) that the deity is not the actual sun, or wind, or sea, or mountain, but a powerful being who rules it. Such beings, however, are not at first conceived of as in any way incorporeal.

There is considerable confusion observable in Shinto between Stages I. and II. and Stage III. We have seen that Motoöri identified Ama-terasu with the Sun. His pupil Hirata, on the other hand, says that the Sun-Goddess was born on earth, and was sent up to Heaven as "Ruler of the Sun." And while it is true that a sea may be directly calledKami, we have also a Sea-God, Toyotama-hiko, who is as clearly distinguished from the physical ocean as Neptune is. This fluctuation is common to all mythologies. Greek literature is full of examples of reverence paid at one time to natural objects and phenomena, and at another to deities which rule them. They adored Apollo as well as Helios. Muir, in the introduction to vol. v. of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' says:--"The same visible object was at different times regarded diversely as being either a portion of the inanimate universe, or an animated being and a cosmical power. Thus in the Vedic hymns, the sun, the sky, and the earth are severally considered, sometimes as natural objects governed by particular gods, and sometimes as themselves gods who generate and control other beings." Our own poets are not a whit disturbed by such inconsistencies. In 'Paradise Lost' the Sun is apostrophized in one place as the "God of this new world," while in another passage of the same poem we have a "Uriel, Regent of the Sun." Shakespeare, in the 'Tempest,' puts into the mouth of an anthropomorphic Iris the words:--

The Queen of the Sky,Whose watery arch and messenger am I.

Spiritism.--We now come to Stage IV., or spiritism. The great and obvious difficulties connected with the anthropomorphic conception of deity, even in the modified form of a belief in corporeal beings detached from natural phenomena, led to spiritism, which may be defined as a partial or complete negation of the material properties of the Gods. Spiritism is therefore far from being a"primitive" religious development, as is so often supposed. "Primitive man," it has been said, "thinks that the world is pervaded by spiritual forces." I would rather describe his mental attitude as a piecemeal conception of the universe as alive, just as he looks on his fellow man as alive without analyzing him into the two distinct entities of body and soul. A dog knows quite well the difference between alive and dead; but the distinction between body and soul is far beyond his intellectual capacity.

In Japan the process of spiritualizing the Gods has not gone very far. Like the Gods of the Homeric Olympus,[9]the Shinto deities are, on the whole, unspiritual beings.

The doctrine of spiritism is associated in Shinto with the wordMitama, for which "spirit" is the nearest English equivalent. Strictly speaking, theMitamais not the God, but an emanation or effluence from him, which inhabits his temple, and is the vehicle of his action at a distance from the place where he himself resides. It therefore corresponds to the Shekinah (that which dwells) of the Jews, and, though in a less marked degree, to the Romannumen. The Shekinah, like theMitama, is a later development. Where Habakkuk, ii. 20, says, "The Lord is in his holy temple," the Targums have, "Jehovah was pleased to cause his Shekinah to dwell in his holy temple." I cannot see that the Shekinah andMitamaowe anything to the analogous doctrine of the separability of the human soul and body. The ghost is not the parent of either.[10]

The unavoidable assumption that an anthropomorphic God can act at a distance from his own abode in Heaven or elsewhere really involves the doctrine of spiritism, though time and thought are required for its development.It is clearly not the Sun-Goddess herself who lives in Ise. Her true place is in Heaven; but she is present in some way on earth, as is proved by her answering the prayers which are addressed to her at her shrine. The explanation which is ultimately forthcoming is that it is theMitama, or spirit, of the Goddess which resides there. We have here a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the omnipresence of deity.

The etymology of the wordMitamawill repay examination.Miis simply a honorific prefix.Tamacontains the root of the verbtabu, to give, more often met with in its lengthened formtamafu.Tamaretains its original signification intama-mono, a gift thing, andtoshi-dama, a new year's present.Tamanext means something valuable, as a jewel. Then, as jewels are mostly globular in shape, it has come to mean anything round. At the same time, owing to its precious quality, it is used symbolically for the sacred emanation from the God which dwells in his shrine, and also for that most precious thing, the human life or soul.[11]

The meaning oftamais illustrated by the following story, which is related in theNihongiof Ohonamochi, the Creator or Kosmos-deity of Idzumo myth:--

"Coming at last to the province of Idzumo, he spake and said; 'This Central Land of Reed-plains had been always waste and wild. The very rocks, trees, and herbs were all given to violence. But I have now reduced them to submission, and there is none that is not compliant!' Therefore he said finally: 'It is I, and I alone, who now govern this land. Is there perchance any one who could join with me in governing the world?' Upon this a divine radiance[12]illuminated the sea, and of a sudden there was something which floated towards him and said: 'Were I not here, how couldst thou subdue this land? It is because of my presence that thou hast been able to accomplish this mighty task! 'Who art thou?' asked Ohonamochi. It replied and said: 'I am thy spirit (tama) of good luck, the wondrous spirit.' Then said Ohonamochi: 'True; I know, therefore, that thou art my spirit (tama) of good luck, the wondrous spirit. Where dost thou now wish to dwell?' The spirit answered and said: 'I wish to dwell on Mount Mimoro, in the province of Yamato.' Accordingly he built a shrine in that place and made the spirit to go and dwell there. This is the God of Oho-miwa."

[Pg 30]

The distinction between the God and his spiritual double so clearly indicated in this extract is often neglected and the deity of Miwa spoken of simply as Ohonamochi. The same uncertainty as to the spiritual character of the God is reflected in his names Oho-kuni-nushi (great-country-master) and Oho-kuni-dama (great-country-spirit), and in a legend told of him in theKojiki, where he is corporeal enough to have a child by a mortal woman and yet sufficiently spiritual to pass through a keyhole.

In theIdzumo Fudoki, Susa no wo speaks of the village of Susa as the place where hismitamawas settled, that is to say, where a shrine was dedicated to him. TheNihongistates that Izanami'smitamawas worshipped at Kumano with music and offerings of flowers. In a modern book the Hi no mitama (spirit of the Sun) is not the Sun-Goddess, but a separate deity of a lower class.

The elementtamaenters into the names of several deities. The Food-Goddess is called either Ukemochi no Kami or Uka no mitama.[13]But the meaning "spirit" is not applicable in every case in which a God's name contains this element. Futo-dama, for example, the name of the supposed ancestor of the Imbe priestly corporation, probably means"great gift or offering." Yorodzu-dama no Kami is not the God of ten thousand spirits, but the God of ten thousand offerings.

It is a curious circumstance that in later times themitamapar excellence were the phallic Sahe no Kami. Their festival was formerly called themitama matsuri. It is now known by the Chinese equivalentGoriōye.

In a few cases themitamais in duplicate, anigi-mitama, or gentle spirit, and anara-mitama, or rough spirit.[14]In theIdzumo Fudokia man who is praying for revenge calls upon thenigi-tamaof theOho-kami(great deity) to remain quiet, and asks theara-tamato attend to his petition. The legendary Empress Jingo was attended on her expedition to Korea by two such sea-godmitama, one to guard her person, the other to lead the van of her army. But we hear little of this distinction in the older records. Thearagami-matsuri(rough-God-festival) of later days was a sort of saturnalia when license was permitted to servants.

TheKojikiandNihongido not theorize about themitama. Hirata's statement that they do not distinguish between theutsushi-mi-mi(real-august-body)[15]and themitamaof the Gods is, as the case of Ohonamochi shows, not quite correct. But there is much foundation for it. In one myth, for example, the Sun-Goddess in handing over the divine mirror to Ninigi, enjoins on him to regard it as hermitama, and in another version of the story to look upon it as herself.

Another indication of an advance towards spirituality in the older Shinto literature is the distinction which is made betweenaraha-goto(public things) andkakure-goto(hidden things), the former term being applied to temporal and the latter to spiritual matters, namely, the service of the unseen Gods. Mystery is not the vital element of religion. It depends on what we know, not on what wedo not know. Still, there perhaps never was a religion which did not betray some feeling that what we know is only an infinitesimal portion of that infinite sum of knowledge for which mankind is possessed with an eternal yearning. Religion, though not based in mystery, must always proceed, like other knowledge, from the known towards the unknown. A good deal, however, that is mysterious in religion is of our own making. Hirata, when he can find no way out of the difficulties arising from his crude, literal-minded anthropomorphism, constantly resorts to the time-honoured expedient of declaring his problems mysteries which transcend human intelligence, exclaiming, "Oh! how wonderful! Oh! how strange! Oh! how strange! Oh! how wonderful!"

Motoöri and Hirata account for the invisibility of such Gods as Musubi, the God of Growth, by the theory that since the Age of the Gods they have removed further from the earth, so that they are now beyond the scope of human vision. In other respects, however, they have, under unacknowledged Chinese influence, greatly developed the hints of the spiritual nature of the Gods which are found in theKojikiandNihongi. Of themitama, Motoöri says[16]:--

"In general, when such or such a God is mentioned in the old scriptures, we must distinguish between the real God and his mitama. The real God is his actual body; the mitama is his divine spirit: the mitama-shiro (spirit-token) is the thing, be it a mirror or aught else, to which the divine spirit attaches itself. It is commonly called the Shintai (God-body). Now both the real body and the spirit are spoken of simply as the God. Thus when we are told that Ama-terasu no Ohokami was entrusted to Toyo-suki-iri-bime and Yamato no Oho-kuni-dama to Nunaki-iri-bime, it is not to be supposed that the real bodies of these two deities were in theImperial Palace. It is unquestionably their mitama-shiro which are spoken of as if they were the real bodies.... Again, when we are told in the history of the same reign that the Mikado assembled the eighty myriads of Gods on the plain of Kami-asachi and inquired of them by divination, this is not like the assembly in the divine age of the real Gods in the Plain of High Heaven. The invitation is to their mitama."

The same writer says that of the attendant deities who came down from Heaven with Ninigi, some came in their real bodies, some asmitama. Among the former he naturally classes all those who are represented as having human descendants. Hirata regards this as a discovery which will endure to all ages.

The following quotation from Hirata'sKoshiden(vi. 9) illustrates further the ideas of this school of theology regarding the spiritual nature of the Gods:--

"Both this God(Chigaheshi) and Kunado[17]were produced by the great mitama of the great God Izanagi applying itself earnestly to preventing the entrance into this world of the things coming furiously from the Land of Yomi, and which accordingly became separated from him and adhered to a staff and a stone. Remaining there, it (the mitama) did good service in both cases. These Gods, moreover, sometimes reveal their real bodies and dispense blessings. This may not be doubted. We find below that Kunado no Kami acted as a guide to Futsunushi; and that Chigaheshi no Oho-Kami was two deities distinguished as hiko and hime (prince and princess)."

Hirata thinks that Gods (and men too) have two doubles, thenigi-tamaand anara-tamamentioned above. These he distinguishes from theZentai no mitama, or "spirit of the entire body." But he admits that these distinctions are not recognized in the old Shinto. There isno limit to the subdivision of themitama. Hirata explains that the deity is like a fire, which may be communicated to a lamp or to firewood while the original fire remains the same. "But the world knows not this." In other words, this is a philosophic refinement too subtle for the popular taste.

While the old records rarely distinguish between the God's real body and hismitama, in later times themitamais often confounded with themitama-shiro(spirit-token), orshintai(god-body) as the concrete representative of the God is called. Even in theNihongithere is a case in which a sword is called Futsu no mitama. TheKiujikicalls the mirror of the Sun-Goddess hermitama. TheShinto Miōmoku(1699) says that Futsu no mitama is the sword of the great deity of Kashima, and speaks of the Toyo-uka no mitama (the Food-spirit) as being, or residing in, a stone. Hirata himself calls a stone idol themitamaof the God, and speaks of the Sun-Goddess'smitamaas going backward and forward between Ise and the sky. The unspiritual vulgar naturally find it hard to distinguish between the spirit of the God and its concrete representative.

The doctrine of the separability of the human body and soul, and of the continued existence of the latter after death, whether in a material or semi-material form, or as a pure spirit, may have been a factor in the spiritualizing of the cruder anthropomorphic conceptions of deity. But there is little or no evidence to this effect in the old Shinto scriptures, and the above pages show that other important influences were at work in producing this result. Whether the idea of God had its origin in the doctrine of separable human souls is a question which may be left to the discerning reader's judgment.

Gods of Classes and Qualities.--No language is possible without some exercise of the powers of generalization and abstraction. In Japanese, however, we miss many of themore general, and especially of the more abstract, conceptions embodied in European languages, a circumstance which limits the scope of the personifying faculty, none too vigorous in itself. Supposing that we take the series of conceptions beginning with the concrete individual tree, and passing through evergreen oak, oak, tree, and vegetable, to the definitive generalization of the universe. The Japanese language has no word for vegetable exceptsōmoku, a recent compound of Chinese origin. The word for universe isAme-tsuchi(Heaven + earth) which is almost certainly a translation of the Chineseten-chi. The consequence is that neither the class of vegetables nor the universe is recognized in the Japanese scheme of nature-deities. Individual trees are deified, and there is a God of trees, but that is all. The neglect of grammatical number in the Japanese language often obscures the distinction between the Gods of individual objects and of classes.Ki no Kamimeans equally the God of the tree and the God of trees.[18]

There is a marked poverty of abstract terms in the Japanese language, and the personification of abstract qualities is correspondingly restricted. There is scarcely anything in Shinto to compare with the numerous personified abstractions of Greek and Roman mythology. Izanagi and Izanami, embodiments of the creative or generative powers of nature, are probably not originally Japanese, but an echo of theYinandYangof Chinese philosophy. I have a suspicion that Musubi, the God of Growth, may yet be traced to a Chinese source.

CHAPTER III.DEIFICATION OF MEN.

DEIFICATION OF MEN.

The importance of the deification of human beings in Shinto has been grossly exaggerated both by European scholars and by modern Japanese writers. Grant Allen, for example, says, in his 'Evolution of the Idea of God': "We know that some whole great national creeds, like the Shinto of Japan, recognize no deities at all, save living kings and dead ancestral spirits." He was probably misled by the old writer Kaempfer, whose ignorance of the subject is stupendous. The truth is that Shinto is derived in a much less degree from the second of the two great currents of religious thought than from the first. It has comparatively little worship of human beings. In theKojiki,Nihongi, andYengishikiwe meet with hardly anything of this element. None of their great Gods are individual human beings, though at a later period a few deities of this class attained to considerable eminence and popularity. An analysis of a list of "Greater Shrines," prepared in the tenth century, yields the following results: Of the Gods comprised in it, seventeen are nature deities, one is a sword, which probably represented a nature deity, two are more or less legendary deceased Mikados, one is the deified type and supposed ancestor of a priestly corporation, one is the ancestor of an empress, and one a deceased statesman.

Deified Individual Men.--Like Nature-Gods, Man-Gods may be divided into three classes--namely, deified individual men, deified classes of men, and deified human qualities. The first of these classes comprises the Mikados, living or dead, and numerous heroes, of whom Yamato-dake, the legendary conqueror of theeastern part of Japan, and Sugahara (Tenjin), the god of learning, may be quoted as examples.

Phases of Conception.--They are variously conceived of, as follow:--

I. X, alive or dead, is a great man, worthy of our love, reverence, gratitude, or fear.

II. X, sometimes when alive, more frequently when dead, is possessed of superhuman powers, usually borrowed from those of nature, such as the control of the weather and the seasons, and of diseases.

III. X's powers reside not in his body but in a more or less spiritual emanation from it.

In the first of these three phases, man-worship is not religion. So long as a man is honoured for those qualities only which he really possesses or possessed, he cannot be called a God. But although rational man-worship is not in itself religion, it is a necessary factor in its development. Our sentiments of gratitude and awe towards the great nature-powers spring up in hearts already prepared by the feelings which we entertain towards our parents, superiors, and other fellow-men. Whether individually or collectively, a man loves his parents before he loves God. The outward signs of divine worship are almost exclusively in the first place acts of reverence towards men. A man bows his head or makes presents to his superiors before he worships or sacrifices to a deity.

There is a tendency to restrict the word worship to the adoration of deity. Thus, when we speak of ancestor-worship, we are apt to think of it as implying deification. But there is much worship of living and dead men which is perfectly rational, and implies no ascription to them of superhuman powers.

The second, or religious, phase of man-worship involves the assumption that some men are possessed of powers of a kind different from those of ordinary mortals. The mere exaggeration of the human faculties may produce an inferiorsort of deity, but no really great man-God can be produced without borrowing some of the transcendent powers of Nature, or in some way identifying him with that increasing cosmic purpose, which from one point of view is tendency and evolution, and from another is a loving Providence. Until this is done a deified king, ancestor, or ghost (if there be such a thing) is a poor specimen of a God. To become a deity of any consequence, the man-God must make rain, avert floods, control the seasons, send and stay plagues, wield thunderbolts, ride upon the storm, or even act as Creator of the world.[19]When the practice of deifying men was once established it was enough to entitle them Gods, the term itself implying the possession of those powers which we call supernatural, but which are only so when predicated of men.

Deification of Mikados.--The misunderstanding of metaphorical language is a fertile source of apotheosis. The deification of the Mikados is a case in point. The Mikado is called "the Heavenly Grandchild," his courtiers are "men above the clouds," rural districts are spoken of as "distant from Heaven," that is, from the Imperial Palace. The heir to the throne was styledhi no miko, or "august child of the Sun," and his residencehi no miya, "the august house of the Sun." The native names of many of the Mikados contain the elementhiko, or "Sun-child." The appearance in Court of the Empress Suiko (a.d.612) is compared to the sun issuing from the clouds.Tenshi, or "Son of Heaven," a Chinese term freely applied to the Mikado in later times, is a variant of the same idea, which, it need hardly be said, is known in other countries besides Japan. The Chinese Emperor is said to call the sun his elder brother, and the moon his sister. Images of the sunand moon were depicted on the banners which were borne before him on State occasions. The same practice had been adopted in Japan as early asa.d.700, and there is a relic of it at the present day in the Japanese national flag, which is a red sun on a white ground.[20]The ancient kings of Egypt called themselves earthly suns. Our own poet Waller, addressing James II., says:--

To your great merrit given,A title to be called the sonne of Heaven.

Let us not pass by these metaphors with a disdainful smile, as mere unsubstantial poetic fancies. They are more or less rude attempts to give expression to the very important truth that the benefits which a nation derives from the rule of a wise and good sovereign are comparable to the blessings of the sun's warmth and light. As Browning, in 'Saul,' has well said:--

Each deed thou hast doneDies, revives, goes to work in the world, and is as the sunLooking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface,Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere traceThe results of his past summer prime--so each ray of thy will,Every flash of thy passion and prowess long over, shall thrillThy whole people, the countless, with ardour till they too give forthA like cheer to their sons, who in turn fill the south and the northWith the radiance thy deed was the germ of----.

It may be objected that it is contrary to the general law of human development to make the higher metaphorical conception precede the lower physical one. It is no doubt true that the physical idea of fatherhood must come before the metaphorical use of this relationship. But it does not follow that when once the metaphor is arrived at, it may not relapse into its original physical acceptation. The forces which produce religious progress act by waves, withintervals of stagnation or retrogression. Even when the general religious condition of a country is advancing it will be found that the lower popular stratum of thought consists less of undeveloped germs of future progress than of a breccia of the debased or imperfectly assimilated ideas of the wise men of preceding generations. In this retrograde movement a large part is played by the invincible tendency of the vulgar to give metaphors their literal signification. This, I take it, is the source of the numerous actual children or descendants of the Sun and other deities who are found all over the world, in Greece, Peru, Japan, and elsewhere. The sequence of ideas may be thus represented:--

I. The King or sage is like the Sun.

II. He is (rhetorically) a Sun, or the Sun's brother or offspring.

III. He is actually descended from the Sun in thenth generation, the intermediate links of the genealogy beinga,b,c,d, &c., and he is therefore himself a divinity.

Herbert Spencer, in his 'Sociology,' says:--

"There are proofs that like confusion of metaphor with fact leads to Sun-worship. Complimentary naming after the sun occurs everywhere, and where it is associated with power, becomes inherited. The chiefs of the Hurons bore the name of the Sun; and Humboldt remarks that 'the "Sun-Kings" among the Natches recall to mind the Heliades of the first eastern colony of Rhodes.' Out of numerous illustrations from Egypt may be quoted an inscription from Silsilis--'Hail to thee! King of Egypt! Sun of the foreign peoples ... Life, salvation, health to him! he is a shining Sun.' In such cases, then, worship of the ancestor readily becomes worship of the Sun.... Personalization of the wind had an origin of this kind."

"Nature-worship, then, is but an aberrant form of ghost-worship."

Surely this is an inversion of the true order of things. Why do kings bear the name of Sun, or child of the Sun? Is it not because the Sun is already looked upon as a glorious being (a God?) with whom it is an honour to be associated? Herbert Spencer himself speaks of "complimentarynaming after the Sun." The Chinese call deificationhai-ten, or "matching with Heaven," showing that with them at least it is the man who acquires his divinity by being placed on a level with Heaven, notvice versâ. Worship of the Sun must be anterior to the very existence of Mikados, and there are certainly more substantial reasons for it than the transfer to him, suggested by metaphorical language, of the reverence paid to human sovereigns or ancestors.

The deification of living Mikados was titular rather than real. I am not aware that any specific so-called miraculous powers[21]were authoritatively claimed for them. In 645 a Japanese minister, addressing some envoys from Korea, described his sovereign as "the Emperor of Japan, who rules the world as a manifest deity." The same official recognized the Korean princes as "Sons of the Gods." The Mikado Keikō, admiring the strength and courage of his son Yamatodake, says to him: "Whereas in outward form thou art our child, in reality thou art a God." The Mikados called themselves, in notifications and elsewhere,Akitsu Kami, that is, manifest or incarnate deities, and claimed a general authority over the Gods of Japan. Yūriaku conversed on equal terms with the God Hito-koto-nushi. He expected obedience from the Thunder-God, but speedily had cause to repent his audacity.[22]

The honours paid to deceased Mikados stand on a somewhat different footing. There is little, however, in the earlier period of Shinto to distinguish the respect shown todeceased Mikados from the customary observances towards the undeified dead. TheKojikiandNihongihave hardly a trace of any practical recognition of their divinity. We are told in theNihongi(a.d.679) that the Mikado Temmu did reverence to the tomb of his mother who had died eighteen years before. In 681 worship was paid (no doubt by the Mikado) to the august spirit of the Mikado's grandfather (or ancestor). There is nothing in these notices to show that divine worship is intended. An oath made by Yemishi or Ainus, when tendering their submission in 581, is more to the point. They pray that "if we break this oath, may all the Gods of Heaven and Earth, and also the spirits of the Mikados destroy our race." Still it must be remembered that the author of theNihongiwas a profound Chinese scholar, and that his work is deeply tinctured with Chinese ideas. I should not be surprised to find that the above oath was simply copied from some Chinese book.

In the time of theYengishiki(tenth century) the honours paid to deceased Mikados had become regularized, and offerings similar to those made to nature-deities were tendered to them periodically. It is, however, a significant circumstance that of the twenty-sevennoritocontained in that work not one relates to their worship, and that the care of their tombs did not belong to the Department of Shinto. Hirata protests vigorously against a modern practice of using a Chinese word meaning Imperial Mausoleum for the shrines of Ise and Kamo.

As early as the ninth century there are several cases of prayers addressed to deceased Mikados for rain, to stay a curse sent by them for disrespect to their tombs, for the restoration of the Mikado's health, for preservation from calamity, &c. In more recent times shrines were erected to them, and prayers put up for blessings which it is far beyond the power of man to grant. Under the name of Hachiman, the Mikado Ojin, visibly owing to Chinese and Buddhist influences, became an important deity in laterShinto. The same may be said of the Empress Jingo. TheKojikiandNihongitreat both as mere mortals.

The honours paid to deceased Mikados were much neglected before the Restoration of 1868. At present they consist in four solemn mourning services held in the Palace, one on the anniversary of the death of the late Emperor, the second on that of the death of Jimmu Tennō, the third and fourth in spring and autumn, in memory of all the Imperial ancestors.[23]Embassies are also despatched to the Imperial tombs (misasagi), which now havetoriwi(the distinctive Shinto honorary gateway) erected in front of them. Two of the Mikados, namely, Ojin and Kwammu, have special State shrines dedicated to them. Concurrent with the enhancement of the political prestige of the Crown there has been a strong tendency in the present reign to increase the respect paid to the Imperial House, so that it now amounts to something like religious worship. The ceremony of thenaishi dokoro,[24]which in ancient times was in honour of the sacred sun-mirror, now includes the tablets of the deceased Mikados.

Other Deifications.--Even in the case of the deification of living and dead Mikados there is much room for suspicion of foreign influence. Of the deification of other men I find no clear evidence in the older records. It is probable, however, that some of the numerous obscure deities mentioned in theKojikiandNihongiare deified men. A number of the legendary and historical personages named in these works were deified at a subsequent period. Others have been added from time to time. The case of the God of Suha has a special interest. Here the God's living descendant, real or supposed, is regarded as a God,and a cave (probably a tomb) occupies the place of the shrine. A fuller account of this cult is given below.[25]The high-priest of the Great Shrine of Idzumo is called aniki-gami, or living deity. Not only good but bad men might be deified or canonized, as in the case of the archrebel Masakado, the robber Kumasaka Chohan, and in our own day, Nishitaro Buntarō, the murderer of Mori, the Minister for Education.

Lafcadio Hearn, in his 'Gleanings in Buddha Fields,' tells a typical story of the deification of a living man. A certain Hamaguchi Gohei, head man of his village, saved the lives of his fellow villagers from destruction by a tidal wave, at the sacrifice of his crop of rice, which he set fire to in order to attract them away from the sea-shore to the higher ground. "So they declared him a God, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi Daimyōjin, and when they rebuilt their village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshipped him there, with prayer and with offerings.... He continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, while his soul was being worshipped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble."

Ancestor-Worship.--If we restrict this term to the religious cult of one's own ancestors, as in China, this form of religion has hardly any place in Shinto. The only case of it, except in modern times and under foreign influences, is that of the Mikados, and even then there is no evidence of its existence before the sixth century. The term ancestor-worship is often used more generally of the worship of dead men of former generations. There is no good reason, however, for distinguishing between the cult of dead and that of living men. If the former is the more common, it is because absence and lapse of time are usually necessary to allow their obviously human character to beforgotten and to raise the popular imagination to the height of attributing to them superhuman powers. Deification is the result of an exaggerated appreciation of what the man was during life, though there is often associated with this primary reason the ascription of imaginary powers to his corpse or ghost.

It is often assumed by English writers that Shinto is substantially, or at least is based on, ancestor-worship. The modern Japanese, imbued with Chinese ideas, throw them back into the old Shinto, and have persuaded themselves that it contains a far more important element of this kind than is actually the case. A recent Japanese writer says: "Ancestor-worship was the basis of Shinto. The divinities, whether celestial or terrestrial, were the progenitors of the nation, from the sovereign and the princes surrounding the throne to the nobles who discharged the services of the State and the soldiers who fought its battles." Hirata, notwithstanding his anti-Chinese prejudices, was unable to resist the influence of Chinese ideas as regards ancestor-worship. He devotes vol. x. of his 'Tamadasuki' to the inculcation of an ancestor-worship which is plainly nothing but the well-known Chinese cult. Histama-ya(spirit-house, or domestic ancestral shrine) is a Chinese institution under a Japanese name, and thetama-shiro, or spirit-token, is the Chineseihai(ancestral tablet). He would have his followers address their prayers, as in China, to their ancestors of every generation, from the parents of the worshipper up to the "Great Ancestor," the founder of the family. Their spirits (mitama) are to be adjured to avert evil from their descendants, to keep watch over them by night and day, and to grant them prosperity and long life. This is genuine ancestor-worship, but it is not Shinto. It was to meet the case of a failure of direct heirs to continue such ancestor-worship that the practice of adoption, unknown in ancient Japan, was introduced from China. The truthis that only a very small part of the Japanese nation knew, or pretended to know, anything about their ancestors. Even of those who had genealogies, many traced their descent from mere undeified mortals, some being Koreans or Chinese. There remain in theShōjirokuand elsewhere a good number of genealogies in which the descent of noble families from Shinto deities is recorded. To what class do these deities belong? It is impossible to assert that some may not be genuine deified ancestors, though I cannot point to any undoubted case of this kind. Many are nature-deities. The descent of the imperial family from the Sun-Goddess is a typical example. The God of Growth, Kuni-toko-tachi, the Yatagarasu or Sun-Crow, the sword Futsunushi, and many other nature-deities appear among the ancestors of theShōjiroku. In the 'Ideals of the East,' a work recently published in English by Mr. Takakura Okasu, the author speaks of the "immaculate ancestrism of Ise and Idzumo." The so-called ancestral Gods worshipped at these places are the Sun-Goddess, the Food-Goddess, Ohonamochi (an Earth-God) and Susa no wo (the Rainstorm). Dr. E. Caird's observation that "in the majority of cases it is not that the being worshipped is conceived of by his worshipper as a God because he is an ancestor, but rather that he is conceived as an ancestor because he is believed to be their God,"[26]obviously applies to this feature of Shinto.

Other nobles traced their lineage from, and paid a special worship to, personages who never existed as individual human beings. Such is Koyane, the reputed ancestor, but really only a personified type of the Nakatomi priestly corporation.

If we have any regard for correct terminology we must call this recognition of nature-deities and class-types as ancestors not ancestor-worship, but pseudo-ancestor-worship. When Britain's sons declare, as they do withsufficient emphasis, that "Britannia rules the waves," is this ancestor-worship? Or supposing that Macaulay's New Zealander found a remnant of the English people worshipping John Bull as their reputed ancestor, would he be right to conclude that ancestor-worship was an English institution?

Uji-Gami.--These pseudo-ancestors are called in Japaneseuji-gami, or surname gods. Theujiwere originally official designations, whether of Court officials or of local officials or chieftains, which, as these offices became hereditary, took the character of hereditary titles, and eventually became mere surnames. They may be compared with such titles as Duke of Wellington or with surnames like Chamberlain, Constable, or Baillie. In ancient times the common people had no surnames, and therefore no ancestor-worship, pseudo or real.

The wordujiis also used collectively of the noble house of persons bearing the same surname. It does not seem a very ancient institution, and must date from a time when an organized Government had already been established. Of the cult of theUji-gamias such we know very little. TheKojikimentions the fact of various deities being worshipped by certain noble families. A modern authority says: "All descendants of deities haduji. Everyujiconsisted of members calledukara. The chief of theujiwas termed theuji no kami(the superior of theuji). It was his duty, on festival occasions, to convene theukarafor the worship of the ancestral God." In later times theUji-gamibecame simply the tutelary deity of one's birthplace, and was also calledubusuna(birth-sand). Infants born in his jurisdiction are presented to him soon after birth, and parturient women pray to him for relief. They also procure earth from the site of his shrine, in the belief that it has a magical power to assist their delivery. The same earth is credited with the property of relaxing the rigidity of a corpse.

The modernUji-gamiare taken indiscriminately from all classes of deities, perhaps including even a few genuine ancestors. One or two Indian deities have been madeUji-gami. The Nakatomi had threeUji-gami--namely, Take-mika-dzuchi, Futsunushi, and Koyane. Noble families have been known to change theirUji-gami,

TheUji-gamicorrespond in some respects to the Greekάρχηγός.

Biso.--Analogous to theUji-gamiare the trades-deities of modern times. They are calledbiso(author or inventor), and may be either nature-deities, deceased men, or merely the deified type of the particular trade or profession. Wrestlers worship Nomi no Sukune, who was probably a real person, and Chinese doctors the legendary Chinese Emperor Shinnung. Confucian pundits worship Confucius, poets honour Hitomaro, and Haikwai poets Bashô. Professors of the art of tea-drinking show reverence to the founder of that particular branch of it which they practise. Soothsayers,miko, football players, flower-arrangers, and actors worship the so-called ancestral gods of their several professions. There is aKaji-so-sha, or blacksmith-ancestor-shrine. Carpenters, for some reason, have adopted Shōtoku Daishi, an Imperial Prince who lived in the seventh century, as their patron. Merchants worship Yebisu. They also pay some sort of respect to Fukusuke,[27]a dwarfish figure with a large head, attired in the ceremonialkami-shimo, and seated in a squatting position, which may often be seen in the larger shops. A figure of a cat with uplifted paw, called themaneki-neko, or "beckoning cat," and a recumbent cow covered with rugs are also objects of respect with them. It is in many cases a question whether the honour shown amounts really to divine worship.

Spirits.--The older Shinto scriptures afford but scanty evidence of the spiritualization of deified human beings. In theNihongithere is one reference to the worshipof a Mikado'smitama(spirit). In another case themitamaof the Mikados are called upon to punish oath-breakers. Yamato-dake'smitamais in one place said to have been changed into a white bird. Of themitamaof ordinary undeified human beings there is no mention in theKojikiorNihongi; but, of course, this may be owing to the imperfection of the record.Tamashiï, a derivative oftama, is the ordinary word for soul at the present day, and is undoubtedly of considerable antiquity. Still there are cases where we should expect to findmitamaspoken of, but where a more material conception--namely, that of metamorphosis--takes its place. Among several instances of this kind may be quoted that of Yamato-dake. He died, and was buried, upon which he took the form of a white bird, which flew away leaving the tomb empty. The modern name for ghost testifies to the prevalence of this conception in Japan. It isbake-mono, or "transformation," and is applied to foxes which change into human form as well as to the ghosts of the dead and to hobgoblins of uncertain origin.Bake-monoare not worshipped in Japan, any more than ghosts are with ourselves, but there is a beginning of reverence to them in the honorific particleowhich is frequently prefixed to the word, especially by women. There are no proper ghosts in theKojikiorNihongi, although the writers of these works were fond of recording strange and miraculous occurrences. The metamorphosed appearances mentioned in them are never phantoms with a resemblance to the human form, and possess no spiritual qualities. Even now thebakemono, though differing little from our ghost, is quite distinct from the humanmitamaortamashiï(soul).

Tama, as we have seen above,[28]may mean either a jewel, a round object, or the effluence of a deity or a spirit. Here literal-minded Dullness, with whom the Gods themselves contend in vain, leaps to the conclusion that thephysical globulartamais not merely a symbol of the soul, but the soul itself. By the ignorant in modern times it is conceived of as a small round black object, which has the power of leaving the body during sleep. The popular name for the will-of-the-wisp, namely,hito-dama(man-ball-soul) enshrines a like superstition.[29]It is asserted that the souls of the newly dead have been seen to float away over the eaves and roof as a transparent globe of impalpable essence.

We may compare with these Japanese notions the following cases, which I quote from Herbert Spencer's 'Sociology': "According to Ximenes, when a lord died in Vera Cruz, the first thing they did after his death was to put a precious stone in his mouth. The object of it was that the stone should receive his soul. The Mexicans along with a man's remains put a gem of more or less value, which they said would serve him in place of a heart in the other world." Such material conceptions of the soul are to be found everywhere. Mr. Hartland, in his 'Legend of Perseus,' observes: "To the savage, as to our own forefathers, and to the folk of all civilized countries still, the idea of an incorporeal soul is incomprehensible. It is everywhere in the lower culture conceived of as material, though capable of changing its form and appearance without losing its identity."[30]Hirata, after pointing out correctly that themitama(jewel or spirit) is so called because there is nothing in the body so precious as the soul, immediately relapses into a more material conception when he proceeds to explain that, although we cannot discern its shape, seen from the Gods it must have the shape of a jewel (that is, spherical).[31]

The history of themitamasuggests that the material, or partially material, conceptions of the soul are a comparatively recent development. Though religion is on the whole progressive, it by no means follows that all movements of religious thought are in a forward direction. The spiritual edifice which poets and seers build up is being constantly reduced to ruin by the inept handling of the material-minded vulgar, to be reared anew by others more splendid than before. But let us not mistake the ruin for the first courses of a new building, the dead husk for the living germ. Ghosts and ball-souls are aberrant conceptions which belong to the former category. The dullards to whom such notions are due are quite incapable of originating the pregnant, though artificial, conception of body and soul as two distinct entities.

Let me add a few more etymological facts which bear on the question of spirituality.

Mi-kage, or "august shadow," is an ancient synonym formi-tama. It is unnecessary to suppose that anything but a metaphorical meaning was originally intended. There is, however, a modern superstition that when a man is near his death his shadow becomes thinner.

The ordinary Japanese word for "to die" isshinuru, that is to say, "breath-depart." Death is also called concealment, long concealment, body-concealment, rock-concealment (in allusion to the practice of burial in dolmens), change, and ending. In the case of the Gods, death is called divine departure or divine ascent.

Iki, "breath," one of the vital functions, is put by metonymy for their sum, that is, life. It has not, like our word "spirit" and the Greek "psyche," taken the further step of coming to mean the human soul, except we identify it with thekeofhotoke, which has been plausibly derived fromhito, "man," andke, "spirit." It is now the common Buddhist term for Buddha and his saints, and also for the spirits of the sainted dead. The material-minded man, as usual, drags it down to his own level. To him the corpseat a funeral is thehotoke. It is not certain, however, that the elementkeof this word is not of Chinese origin, China, always far in advance of Japan in spirituality, has exercised a profound influence on the development of Japanese ideas regarding spiritual matters.

Another material conception of the life or soul is contained in a poem of theManyôshiu, in which a fisherman named Urashima is related to have found his way to theToko yo no kuni, or "Eternal Land." When about to return to earth he received from his wife a casket, with the injunction that he must not open it. He does open it, upon which his life or soul comes out and flies away like a white cloud to the "Eternal Land." He dies soon after. But this is a poetic fancy, open to strong suspicions of Chinese inspiration.

There is a ceremony callediki-mitama(living soul), which consists in paying respect to an absent parent, &c., as if he were present. Another similar practice is that ofkage-zen(shadow-food), in which a meal is set out for an absent member of the family, especially when it is not known whether he is dead or alive. The termiki-su-dama(living spirit) is applied to the angry spirit (double?) of a living person, which is supposed to work a curse, sometimes unknown even to himself.Su-damaare defined as the essences of woods or mountains, which assume a metamorphosed form--elves, as we should say. All these are comparatively modern ideas.

TheShinto Do-itsu, a modern Shinto manual, frankly adopts the Chinese views of the soul. A manual of this sect has the following: "Thekom-pakuare in China the animal and rational souls. When a man dies, hiskongoes up to Heaven and hishakureturns to Earth. Man at birth derives his breath (or life) from Heaven and Earth. Therefore when he dies it returns to Heaven and Earth. Thekonis theyangor male, positive spirit; thehakuis theyinor female, negative spirit (tama). In everything there istheyinand theyangheart. All men haveki(breath),kei(form), andsei(life). Thekonrules thekiand thesei. Thehakurules the form and the body.Kimeans literally breath, on which man's life depends. From the Buddhist point of view there are two functions of the material body, namely, life and death, each of which has its soul. Thesaki-dama(spirit of luck) is thekon; thekushi-dama(wondrous spirit) is thehaku.[32]Again the five viscera have each a God in shape like a man."

State of the Dead.--Like the Old Testament, the ancient Japanese records afford but few and uncertain glimpses of the condition of the dead. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is nowhere taught explicitly. There are no prayers for the dead or for happiness in a future life. There is a land ofyomi(darkness) which corresponds to the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheöl. It is also termedNe no kuni(root-land),Soko no kuni(bottom-land),Shita-tsu-kuni(lower-land), or theYaso-kumade, that is to say, the eighty road-windings, a euphemistic phrase resembling our "going on a long journey." Yomi, however, does not seem to be peopled by human beings or ghosts. Nor do we find any actual cases of their descending thither at death, although the conception was no doubt originally a metaphor for the grave. In theNihongimyth we find that where one version speaks of Izanami in Yomi, another uses the expression "temporary burying-place." The same work mentions an opinion that the "Even Pass of Yomi" is not any place in particular, but means only the space of time when the breath fails on the approach of death. TheKojiki, after relating the death and burial of Izanami on Mount Hiba, at the boundary of the Land of Idzumo, goes on to speak of her descent to Yomi as if it were the same thing. From this it would appear that to many persons, even in these early times, Yomi was a tolerably transparent metaphor for the state of the dead.How difficult it is for even learned and intelligent men to rise above the literal interpretation of metaphor is illustrated by the fact that Motoöri treats this suggestion with great scorn, pointing out that there is an actual entrance to Yomi in the province of Idzumo.

Izanami went to Yomi when she died. She is called the Great Deity of Yomi. It is also spoken of as the abode of Susa no wo, who, according to one myth, was appointed to rule this region. We also hear of the deities of Yomi, the armies of Yomi, the ugly females of Yomi, and the Road-Wardens of Yomi. Thunder-Gods are said to have been generated there from the dead body of Izanami. All these are probably various personifications of death and disease.

In modern times Yomi has been identified withJigoku, the inferno of the Buddhists, which is a place of torture for the wicked. Our own word hell has undergone a similar change of application.

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