In theManyōshiuheaven is mentioned as the destination of a deceased Mikado, while in the very same poem a prince is spoken of as dwelling in his tomb in silence and solitude. TheToko-yo no kuni, or Eternal Land, is another home of the dead. The God Sukunabikona went thither when he died. So did a brother of the first Mikado, Jimmu. TheToko-yo no kuniis identified by some with Hōrai-san, the Chinese island paradise of the Eastern Sea, and by others with China itself. The orange is said to have been introduced from theToko-yo no kuni. In the Manyōshiu poem of Urashima, theToko-yo no kuniis the same as the submarine palace of the Sea-Gods, where death and old age are unknown.Toko-yo tachi(ye immortal ones!) is a complimentary exclamation in a poem of theNihongi.
The most definite statement regarding the continued existence of men after death occurs in theNihongiunder the legendary datea.d.367:--
"The Yemishi rebelled. Tamichi was sent to attack them. He was worsted by the Yemishi, and slain at the harbour of Ishimi. Now one of his followers obtained Tamichi's armlet and gave it to his wife, who embraced the armlet and strangled herself. When the men of that time heard of this they shed tears. After this the Yemishi again made an incursion and dug up Tamichi's tomb, upon which a great serpent started up with glaring eyes and came out of the tomb. It bit the Yemishi, who were every one affected by the serpent's poison, so that many of them died, and only one or two escaped. Therefore the men of that time said: 'Although dead Tamichi at last had his revenge. How can it be said that the dead have no knowledge?'"
Evidently at this time there were two opinions on the subject. Motoöri says that this is a subject which transcends human comprehension. He leans to the view of the old books, that men when they die go to the Land of Yomi, in preference to the sceptical ratiocinations of the Chinese sophists. Hirata takes a more decided attitude. He points to the story just quoted as an example of dead men executing vengeance upon those who were their enemies during life.
Funeral Customs.--Let us now inquire whether anything is to be learned regarding the views of the ancient Japanese as to the condition of the dead from their funeral customs. The bodies of nobles, princes, and sovereigns were deposited in megalithic vaults which were covered by huge mounds of earth.[33]Pending the construction of these, the body was placed temporarily in a building called amoya, or mourning house. It was enclosed in a wooden coffin and in some cases in a sarcophagus of stone or earthenware. These sarcophagi have been found tocontain traces of cinnabar.[34]In all the more modern megalithic tombs the entrance faces the south. This arrangement is connected with the idea, common to the Japanese with the Chinese and other far-eastern races, that the north is the most honourable quarter. The Mikado, on state occasions, stands on the north side of the Hall of Audience. His palace fronts the south. Immediately after death corpses are laid with the head to the north, a position scrupulously avoided by many Japanese for sleep. They say they are unworthy of so great honour.
With the more eminent dead there were buried food, weapons, ornaments, vessels of pottery, and other valuables. Eulogies were pronounced over them, and music was performed at the funeral. Posthumous honours--a Chinese institution--were conferred on those who had merited them by distinguished services. In the more ancient times human sacrifices Were made at the tombs of deceased Mikados and princes. TheNihongi, under the legendary dateb.c.2, states:--
"10th month, 5th day. Yamato-hiko, the Mikado's younger brother by the mother's side, died.
"11th month, 2nd day. Yamato-hiko was buried at Tsuki-zaka in Musa. Thereupon his personal attendants were assembled, and were all buried alive upright in the precinct of the tomb. For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them.
"The Emperor, hearing the sound of their weeping and wailing, was grieved at heart, and commanded his high officers, saying 'It is a very painful thing to force thosewhom one has loved in life to follow him in death. Though it be an ancient custom, why follow it if it is bad? From this time forward, take counsel so as to put a stop to the following of the dead.'
"a.d. 3, 7th month, 6th day. The Empress Hibasu-hime no Mikoto died. Some time before the burial, the Emperor commanded his Ministers, saying: 'We have already recognized that the practice of following the dead is not good. What should now be done in performing this burial?' Thereupon Nomi no Sukune came forward and said: 'It is not good to bury living men upright at the tumulus of a prince. How can such a practice be handed down to posterity? I beg leave to propose an expedient which I will submit to Your Majesty.' So he sent messengers to summon up from the Land of Idzumo a hundred men of the clay-workers' Be. He himself directed the men of the clay-workers' Be to take clay and form therewith shapes of men, horses, and various objects, which he presented to the Emperor, saying: 'Henceforward let it be the law for future ages to substitute things of clay for living men, and to set them up at tumuli.' Then the Emperor was greatly rejoiced, and commanded Nomi no Sukune, saying: 'Thy expedient hath greatly pleased Our heart.' So the things of clay were first set up at the tomb of Hibasu-hime no Mikoto. And a name was given to these clay objects.[35]They were called haniwa, or clay rings.
"Then a decree was issued, saying: 'Henceforth these clay figures must be set up at tumuli: let not men be harmed.' The Emperor bountifully rewarded Nomi no Sukune for this service, and also bestowed on him a kneading-place, and appointed him to the official charge of the clay-workers' Be. His original title was therefore changed, and he was called Hashi no Omi. This was how it came to pass that the Hashi no Muraji superintend the burials of the Emperors."
This narrative is too much in accordance with what we know of other races in the barbaric stage of culture to allow us to doubt that we have here a genuine bit of history, though perhaps the details may be inaccurate, and the chronology is certainly wrong. In an ancient Chinese notice of Japan we read that "at this time (a.d.247) Queen Himeko died. A great mound was raised over her, and more than a hundred of her male and female attendants followed her in death."
Funeral human sacrifice is well known to have existed among the Manchu Tartars and other races of North-Eastern Asia until modern times. The Jesuit missionary Du Halde relates that the Emperor Shunchi, of the T'sing dynasty (died 1662), inconsolable for the loss of his wife and infant child, "signified by his will that thirty men should kill themselves to appease her manes, which ceremony the Chinese look upon with horror, and was abolished by the care of his successor"--the famous Kanghi.
Another missionary, Alvarez Semedo, in his history of the Tartar invasion, says: "It is the custome of the Tartars, when any man of quality dieth, to cast into that fire which consumes the dead corpse as many Servants, Women, and Horses with Bows and Arrows as may be fit to atend and serve them in the next life."
This custom was also practised in China in the most ancient times, though long condemned as barbarous. An ode in the 'Sheking' laments the death of three brothers who were sacrificed at the funeral of Duke Muh,b.c.621. When the Emperor She Hwang-ti died,b.c.209, his son Urh said, "My father's palace-ladies who have no children must not leave the tomb," and compelled them all to follow him in death. Their number was very great.
A King of Kokuryö in Corea dieda.d.248. He was beloved for his virtues, and many of his household wishedto die with him. His successor forbade them to do so, saying that it was not a proper custom. Many of them, however, committed suicide at the tomb. ('Tongkam,' iii. 20.)
Ina.d.502, Silla prohibited the custom of burying people alive at the funerals of the sovereigns. Before this time five men and five women were put to death at the King's tomb. ('Tongkam,' v. 5.)
Cases of suicide at the tomb of a beloved lord or sovereign have not been uncommon in Japan even in modern times. There was one in 1868.
The Japanese, like the Chinese, make no distinction between voluntary deaths and human sacrifices. Both are calledjun-shi, a term which means "following in death." Indeed, as we may see by the Indian suttee, it is often hard to draw the line between these two forms of what is really the same custom.
In the case of common people, of course, no such costly form of burial could have been practised. It was calledno-okuri(sending to a moor or waste place), by which simple interment, or perhaps exposure at a distance from human habitations, was probably meant. The offerings consisted of a little rice and water.
It is often assumed as too obvious to require proof that such funeral customs as these imply a belief in the continued sentient existence of the dead. It is taken for granted that it is for their personal comfort and gratification that wives and attendants are put to death and offerings of food deposited at the tomb.[36]'If we reflect, however, on the reasons for our own funeral observances, which are less different in principle from those of barbarous nations than we are willing to admit, we shall see cause to doubt whether this is really the ruling motive. Most of us have laid flowers on the coffin of some dear one, orerected a tombstone to his memory, or subscribed for a monument to a statesman who in life has deserved well of his country. Were these things done for the physical gratification of the dead? We cannot divide them in principle from more barbarous rites. We do not suppose that the dead see or smell the wreaths laid upon the coffin. Why should it be thought that in a more barbarous state of society it is believed that they enjoy the society of the wife who is sacrificed at the tomb?
The ruling motives for such rites are to be sought elsewhere. In addition to the practical considerations which, as Sir Alfred Lyall has shown, are potent in the case of the Indian suttee, it is to be remembered that the memory of the great dead is a national asset of the highest value (as the memory of our parents is in the domestic circle), and that it is worth while going to great expense in order to perpetuate it. In an age before writing or epic poems existed, cruel sacrifices, pyramids, great tumuli, and other rude monuments were more necessary for this purpose than they are in our day. And if barbarians sacrificed human beings, do not we spend the financial equivalent of many human lives in statues, memorials, and otherwise useless funeral pageantry? The difference between them and us lies not so much in the motive as in the lower value placed by them on human life.
The truth is that offerings to the dead, from a flower or a few grains of rice to a human victim, are partly a symbolical language addressed to the deceased, and partly constitute an appeal for sympathy by the mourners and a response by their friends. They symbolize the union of hearts among those who have suffered by a common bereavement. We must also allow something for the despair which counts nothing that is left of any value, and prompts the survivors to beating of breasts, tearing of garments, cutting the flesh, sitting in sackcloth and ashes, lavish expenditure, and even suicide.
Yet it must be admitted that there is a broad, though secondary and lower, current of opinion, which holds that the dead benefit in some more or less obscure physical sense by the offerings at their tombs. Hirata believed that food offered to the dead loses its savour more rapidly than other food. The ghosts summoned up by Ulysses from Erebus eagerly lapped up the blood offered them. This, although poetry, no doubt represents a real belief.
Mr. Andrew Lang mentions the case of an Irish peasant woman, who, when her husband died, killed his horse, and, to some one who reproached her for her folly, replied, "Would you have my man go about on foot in the next world?" But may we not suspect that the real motive of my countrywoman's action was to express dumbly to the world the love she bore her husband by sacrificing something which she valued highly, and that the answer quoted was nothing more than a consciously frivolous reason, invented for the benefit of an unsympathetic, dull-minded intruder?
Whether or not the dead, apart from any physical benefit from funeral offerings, are grateful for the affectionate remembrance which they symbolize, it may be doubted whether the recognition of such a feeling on their part enters very largely into our motives. Was it for the gratification of Nelson's spirit that the column was erected in Trafalgar Square? Or do those who annually deposit primroses before the statue of Lord Beaconsfield think that his spirit is sensible of this observance?
Funeral ceremonies were not recognized as having anything to do with the older Shinto. It avoided everything connected with death, which was regarded as a source of pollution. Not until the revolution of 1868 was there instituted an authorized form of Shinto burial.[37]
Deified Classes of Men.--In the older Shinto this category of deities had more importance than it has atpresent. Several of the pseudo-ancestors are in reality deified types, analogous to such conceptions as Tommy Atkins or Mrs. Grundy. As a general rule they have two aspects, one as man-Gods, and another as satellites of the Sun-Goddess, a nature deity. They are more particularly described in a later chapter.
Deities of Human Qualities.--As might be expected, Shinto has comparatively few deities of this class. It is represented by the Gods of Pestilence, of Good and Ill Luck, the phallic deities, and theoni, or demons of disease. Such deified abstractions as the Fates, the Furies, Old Age, Time, Themis, Fear, Love, &c., are conspicuously absent.
It will be observed that both of the two great currents of religion-making thought are concerned in the evolution of the last two categories of man-deities. They involve not only the exaltation of human types and qualities to the rank of divinity, but the personification of these general and abstract conceptions. This complication indicates that they belong to a secondary stage of development. Ta-jikara no wo (hand-strength-male), for example, is not a primary deity of the Japanese Pantheon. He is little more than an ornamental adjunct to the myth of the Sun-Goddess. It may be gathered from the myths of theKojikiandNihongithat the phallic deities--personifications of lusty animal vigour--were at first mere magical appliances, which were afterwards personified and raised to divine rank. It was a personified human abstraction--namely, Psyche, who was described by Keats as
The latest born and loveliest by farOf all Olympus' faded hierarchy.
The latest born and loveliest by farOf all Olympus' faded hierarchy.
Mnemosyne, Styx, and all the numerous deified abstractions of humanity in Greek mythology are obviously of later origin than Gaia and Ouranos, or even Zeus and Here.
It is on the narrow basis of these two secondary classes of conceptions that Comte strove to establish his Religionof Humanity. But it is difficult to conceive how on Positivist principles Humanity, whether we regard it as a class or as a quality, could have a sentient existence or transcendent power, without a combination of which there can be no deity and no religion, properly so called. His worship of deceased individual men is open to the same objection. Comte's recognition of nature-deities is brief and contemptuous. He allows a certain reverence to the Sun and Earth as "fetishes."[38]
Animals In Shinto.--Animals may be worshipped for their own sakes, as wonderful, terrible, or uncanny beings. The tiger, the serpent, and the wolf are for this reason called Kami. But there are no shrines in their honour, and they have no regular cult. A more common reason for honouring animals is their association with some deity as his servants or messengers. Thus the deer is sacred to Take-mika-tsuchi at Kasuga, the monkey is sacred at Hiyoshi, the pigeon to the God Hachiman, the white egret at the shrine of Kebi no Miya, the tortoise at Matsunoö, and the crow at Kumano. Thewani, or sea-monster, belongs to the sea-God, and the dragon belongs to (or is) Taka okami (the rain-God). There is also mention of a thunder-beast. In later times the rat is sacred to Daikokusama. The pheasant is the messenger of the Gods generally. The best-known case of the worship of an associated animal is that of Inari, the rice-God, whose attendant foxes are mistaken by the ignorant for the God himself, and whose effigies have offerings of food made to them. The mythicalYatagarasu, or Sun-Crow, had formerly a shrine in its honour. The stoneKoma-inu(Korean dogs), seen in front of many Shinto shrines, are meant not as Gods, but asguardians, like the Buddhist Niō. They are a later introduction.
The Gods are sometimes represented as assuming animal form. Kushiyatama no Kami changes into a cormorant, Koto-shiro-nushi into awani(sea-monster or dragon) eight fathoms long. The God of Ohoyama takes the form of a white deer. The most usual form assumed by deities is that of a snake, serpent, or dragon. Ohonamochi, in his amours with a mortal princess, showed himself to her as a small snake. In the Yamato-dake legend, there is a mountain-deity who takes the shape of a great serpent. At the command of the Mikado Yūriaku, the God of Mimuro was brought to him by one of his courtiers. It was a serpent. Water-Gods are usually serpents or dragons.
Totemism.--I find no distinct traces of totemism in ancient Japan. Tattooing, which some have associated with this form of belief, existed as a means of distinguishing rank and occupation. The most probable derivation of the tribal nameKumasois fromkuma, bear, andoso, otter. A very few surnames are taken from names of animals. Dances, in which the performers represented various animals, were common.
The piecemeal immigration of the Japanese race from the continent of Asia must have done much to break up their original tribal system and to destroy any institutions associated with it.
The law of exogamy, with which totemism is connected, was very narrow in its operation in ancient Japan.[39]
CHAPTER IV.GENERAL FEATURES.
GENERAL FEATURES.
Functions of Gods.--Nature deities seldom confine themselves to their proper nature functions. Shinto exhibits an increasing tendency to recognize in them a providence that influences human affairs. Even in the older Shinto there are examples of the Gods exercising a providential care for mankind outside of their proper spheres of action. The Sun-Goddess not only bestows light on the world, but preserves the seeds of grain for her beloved human beings. She watches specially over the welfare of her descendants the Mikados. Susa no wo, the Rain-storm personified, is the provider of all kinds of useful trees. Practically, all the deities are prayed to for a good harvest, or for rain. Even man-Gods, like Temmangu, may be appealed to for this purpose. Any God may send an earthquake or a pestilence. In 853 there was a great epidemic of smallpox. An oracle from Tsukiyomi, the Moon-God, indicated the means of obtaining relief from this plague, and since then people of every class pray to him when it is prevalent. TheUjigamiandChinju, family and local protective Gods, might be chosen from any class of deities. A modern Japanese writer[40]says: "No one knows what spirit of heaven or earth is venerated at the Suitengū,[41]in Tokyo. But despite the anonymity of the God, people credit him with power to protect against all perils of sea and flood, against burglary, and, by a strange juxtaposition of spheresof influence, against the pains of parturition. The deity of Inari secures efficacy for prayer and abundance of crops; the Taisha [great shrine of Idzumo] presides over wedlock; the Kompira shares with the Suitengū the privilege of guarding those that 'go down to the deep.' The rest confer prosperity, avert sickness, cure sterility, bestow literary talent, endow with warlike powers, and so on."
Polytheistic Character of Shinto.--A nature-worship, such as the older Shinto was in substance, is inevitably polytheistic. The worship of a single nature-God, as the Sun, is indeed conceivable. But in practice, the same impulse which leads to the personification of one nature object or phenomenon never rests there. The Living Universe is a possible monotheistic nature-deity. But this conception requires a greater amount of scientific knowledge than the ancient Japanese possessed. They had necessarily only imperfect and fragmentary glimpses of the vision splendid.
There is some evidence that Shinto took the place of a still grosser and more indiscriminate polytheism. We are told that Take-mika-tsuchi and Futsunushi prepared Japan for the advent of Ninigi by clearing it of savage deities who in the daytime buzzed like summer flies and at night shone like fire-pots, while even the rocks, trees, and foam of water had all power of speech.
The number of Shinto deities is very great. The Yengishiki enumerates 3,132 officially recognized shrines, and although the same Gods are reckoned more than once, as being worshipped in different places, still their name is legion. They are popularly spoken of as eighty myriads, eight hundred myriads, or fifteen hundred myriads. The number of effective deities fluctuates greatly. Oblivion disposes of many. The identification of distinct deities is another cause of depletion in their ranks. This happens very readily in a country where, to parody Pope's line,"most deities have no characters at all." On the other hand their numbers are recruited from time to time by new Gods produced by various processes. The same deity, worshipped at different places, comes to be recognized as so many different deities. Horus in ancient Egypt, the Virgin Mary in Italy, and many of the Greek and Roman deities illustrate this principle. We may be sure that the Ephesians would have resented any attempt to identify their Diana with that of other cities. This process is facilitated in Japan by the practice of speaking of the God, not by his name, but by that of his place of residence--another illustration of the impersonal habit of the Japanese mind already noticed. Indeed the Japanese care little what God it is that is worshipped at any particular place. It is enough for the average pilgrim to know that some powerful deity resides there. A poem composed at the great shrine of Ise says: "What it is that dwelleth here I know not, yet my heart is filled with gratitude and the tears trickle down." Of one of the "Greater Shrines" of the Yengishiki Murray's 'Handbook' informs us that "considerable divergence exists among scholars as to the identity of the Gods to whom this temple is dedicated." During the present reign Kompira was converted by the Japanese Government from a Buddhist to a Shinto deity, without detriment to the popularity of his shrine as a resort of pilgrims. The same God may have greater credit for efficacy in one place than another. Thus the Inari of a certain village has a high reputation for the recovery of stolen property. Such specialties were recognized even by the Government, which awarded different ranks to the same deity at different places. Distinctions of this kind, of course, facilitate the disruption of one deity into several. Another cause of multiplication is the mistake of supposing the same deity with different epithets to be different Gods. In modern times the Shinto Pantheon has been recruited pretty largely from the ranks of human beings. Trees are still deified, and we have sometimes a new deity making his appearance from nobody knows where.
The polytheistic character of Shinto is intimately connected with the weakness of the Central Government of Japan during the period of its development. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that it is another manifestation of the same want of national cohesion.[42]The ancient Mikados were anything but autocrats. Their authority was almost always overshadowed by the influence of ministers who struggled among themselves for the direction of the power nominally vested in the sovereign. The Central Government had little effective jurisdiction beyond the capital and the five home provinces. No wonder that under these circumstances local deities retained their vitality and prestige.
Monotheism was an impossibility in ancient Japan. But we may trace certain tendencies in this direction which are not without interest. A nation may pass from polytheism to monotheism in three ways: Firstly, by singling out one deity and causing him to absorb the functions and the worship of the rest; secondly, by a fresh deification of a wider conception of the universe; and thirdly, by the dethroning of the native deities in favour of a single God of foreign origin. It is this last, the most usual fate of polytheisms, which threatens the old Gods of Japan. Weakened by the encroachments of Buddhism and the paralyzing influence of Chinese sceptical philosophy, they already begin to feel
The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky eyne.
Our business, however, is with the past, not with the future. The first of the three paths which lead to monotheism is illustrated by the tendency to ascribe to several of the Shinto deities a certain superiority over the others. The Sun-Goddess, Kuni-toko-tachi, the first God in point of timeaccording to theNihongi, Ame no mi naka nushi, and in Idzumo, Ohonamochi have been in turn exalted to a unique position by their adherents. But, for reasons which will appear when we come to examine these deities more closely, none of them really deserves the title of Supreme Being. Max Müller's opinion that "the belief in a Supreme Being is inevitable" is not borne out by the facts of Shinto.
The second path, which leads to monotheism through a more comprehensive conception of the universe, is exemplified by the Creator deities, Izanagi and Izanami, personifications of the male and female principles of Nature, and still more so by Musubi, the God of Growth, which might conceivably have developed into a Pantheistic Supreme Being. But philosophic abstractions of this kind are unfitted for human nature's daily food. Musubi never acquired much hold on the people, though at one time his worship held a very prominent place at the Court of the Mikados. He eventually split up, first into two, then into a group of deities, and finally became almost wholly neglected.
TheNihongi, under the datea.d.644, gives the following account of a blind and abortive movement towards a supreme monotheistic deity which claims from us a measure of sympathy:--
"A man of the neighbourhood of the River Fuji, in the East Country, named Ohofube no Ohoshi, urged his fellow-villagers to worship an insect, saying: 'This is the God of the Everlasting World. Those who worship this God will have long life and riches.' At length the wizards[kannagi]and witches[miko]pretending an inspiration of the Gods, said: 'Those who worship the God of the Everlasting World will, if poor, become rich, and, if old, will become young again.' So they more and more persuaded the people to cast out the valuables of their houses, and to set out by the roadside sake, vegetables, and the six domestic animals. Theyalso made them cry out: 'The new riches have come!' Both in the country and in the metropolis people took the insect of the Everlasting World and, placing it in a pure place, with song and dance invoked happiness. They threw away their treasures, but to no purpose whatever. The loss and waste was extreme. Hereupon Kahakatsu, Kadono no Hada no Miyakko, was wroth that the people should be so much deluded, and slew Ohofube no Ohoshi. The wizards and witches were intimidated, and ceased to persuade people to this worship. The men of that time made a song, saying:
UdzumasaHas executedThe God of the Everlasting WorldWho we were toldWas the very God of Gods.
UdzumasaHas executedThe God of the Everlasting WorldWho we were toldWas the very God of Gods.
"This insect is usually bred on orange trees, and sometimes on the hosoki. It is over four inches in length, and about as thick as a thumb. It is of a grass-green colour with black spots, and in appearance very much resembles the silkworm."
We may note here the popular identification of the prophet with the God whom he served, and the worship of a caterpillar, which apparently played the part of the ear of corn in the Eleusinian mysteries.
Shintai.--Concurrent with the development of the spirituality of Shinto there arose a greater necessity for some visible concrete token of the presence of the God.[43]This is known as themitama-shiro(spirit representative, spirit-token), or more commonly as theshintai(god-body). Theshintaivaries much in form. It is frequently a mirroror a sword, but may also be a tablet with the God's name, a sprig of sakaki, a gohei, a bow and arrows, a pillow, a pot, a string of beads, a tree or river-bank, or even the shrine itself. A stone is a very commonshintai, doubtless because it is inexpensive and imperishable. Theshintaiis usually enclosed in a box, which is opened so seldom that sometimes the priest himself does not know what it contains. It is not always the same for the same God worshipped in different places.
Theshintaiin some respects resembles the Greekάγαλμά. Both were originally offerings which became tokens of the God's presence, and by virtue of immemorial association with the deities to whom they were presented came at length to be regarded as sharing their divinity. Theάγαλμα, however, developed into the statue, while theshintai, with a very few exceptions of later origin, did not take this form. Broadly speaking, Shinto has no idols. There is usually no attempt to give theshintaiany resemblance to the supposed form of the God whom it represents. A few exceptions may be noted. The mirror of the Sun-Goddess, which was in reality originally an offering, is stated in one of the myths to have been made in imitation of the form of the sun. The phallic Gods, Yachimata-hiko and Yachimata-hime, were represented by human figures. The scarecrow God, Kuhe-biko, may be regarded as a rude idol. In the province of Noto there are stone idols said to be the images of the Gods Sukuna-bikona and Ohonamochi. The pictures of the Gods sold at Shinto shrines in the present day are owing to Chinese or Buddhist influence.
In the old language the wordhashira, pillar, is added to the numerals for deities and Mikados. For instance, "three Gods" isKami mi-hashira, that is to say, "three pillars of Gods." Now in Korea, a country inhabited by a race closely allied to the Japanese, there are seen by the roadsides posts carved at the top into a rude semblance ofthe human form.[44]Some serve as milestones, and some are erected at the outskirts of villages to keep away the demon small-pox. These figures are called the Opang Chang-gun, or Generals of the Five Quarters. The name is Chinese, but the deities themselves may nevertheless be of Korean origin. If the ancient Japanese had rude figures of this kind it would explain the use ofhashira, pillar, as a numeral for Gods. I am rather disposed, however, to surmise that the use of this term was really owing to the fact that the symbols of divinity most familiar to the ancient Japanese were the phallic emblems set up everywhere by the roadsides. The termwo-bashira, applied to the phallic end-post of the parapet of a bridge, contains the same element.[45]
There is a tendency in Japan, as in other countries, for the token of the God to become regarded, firstly, as the seat of his real presence, and, secondly, as the God himself. Many persons do not distinguish between the mitama and the shintai, and some go so far as to confound the latter with the God'sutsushi-mi, or real body. This is a form of idolatry. The shintai may even be erected into an independent deity. The mirror, which is the shintai of the Sun-Goddess, is the object of a separate worship, under the name of Ame kakasu no kami. Even at the present day religious honours are paid to this mirror or its representative.[46]The sword Futsu no mitama has shrines dedicated to it. Another sword, called Kusanagi, has been worshipped for centuries at Atsuta, near Nagoya. It was this sword which Susa no wo found in the tail of the great serpent slain by him to rescue the Japanese Andromeda, and sent as an offering to his sister the Sun-Goddess. Fetish worship of this kind is a later and degenerate form of religion; and must not be confounded with the worship of the great nature-deities.
Some artificial inanimate objects of worship are not shintai, but are worshipped for their own sakes as helpers of humanity. The fire-place is honoured as a deity. Potters at the present day pay respect to their bellows, which are allowed one day of rest annually, and have offerings made them. The superstitious Japanese housewife still, on the 12th day of the 2nd month, gives her needles a holiday, laying them down on their side and making them little offerings of cakes, &c.[47]
The absence of idols from Shinto is not owing, as in Judaism and Islam, to a reaction against the evils caused by the use of anthropomorphic pictures and images, but to the low artistic development of the Japanese nation before the awakening impulse was received from China. It indicated weakness rather than strength. Much of the vagueness which characterizes the Japanese conceptions of their Gods would have been avoided by a freer use of images. In principle the image and the metaphor are the same. There is no more harm in representing a God, pictorially or in sculpture, as an old man than there is in addressing him as Father, though practically a wide experience shows that the common people do not stop here in either case. There is a strong tendency to debase religion by attributing special virtue to the particular physical object of devotion, or even to forget that there is a God of which it is only a very imperfect symbol.
The Infinite.--Max Müller says that without the faculty of apprehending the Infinite there can be no religion. In that case Shinto is not a religion. The Gods are notconceived of as infinite. They are superior, swift, brave, bright, rich, &c., but not immortal, omnipresent, omniscient, or possessed of infinite power. Where the word infinite is used it is said of infinite time. We hear of the infinite succession of the Mikados, and of infinite or perpetual night (tokoyami). Perhaps what Max Müller really meant was "transcendent," that is, beyond man's power to rival, or even fully to comprehend.
CHAPTER V.MYTH.
MYTH.
Nature of Myth.--Myth and religion have distinct sources. We have seen above[48]that there is a phase of religion antecedent to myth. On the other hand, the earliest form of myth has no religious significance. It is the result of an idle play of fancy without any definite purpose. I have known a child of two or three years of age, who, when he saw a light cloud pass over the rising moon, exclaimed "She is putting on her clothes." Not that he believed the moon to be an animated being, or that he thought that clouds were really her clothes. His childish imagination was stirred by an instinctive impulse, to be compared with that which prompts the gambolling of a kitten who rushes from one place to another without any definite object, or to the butting of a young ruminant before his horns have grown. Closely related to such spontaneous efforts is the myth invented solely for the amusement of the hearer. May we not place in this category some of the nature myths of savages which to all appearance have no worship or belief associated with them, and belong to a pre-religious stage of development. Then we have the myths which are explanatory of some custom, rite, natural phenomenon, political institution, names of places or persons, &c. With these we may associate the genealogical myth. There is also the blunder myth, arising frequently from a misunderstanding of language, and the lie--a myth framed with intent to deceive. All these classes of fiction are abundantly exemplified in the old Japanese books.More important for our present purpose is the religious myth, that
Mysterious veil, of brightness made,At once the lustre and the shade
Mysterious veil, of brightness made,At once the lustre and the shade
of religious conceptions. Like the metaphor, of which it may be regarded as an expansion, it suggests the True by means of the Untrue. It is an acknowledged necessity of religious teaching. In the infancy of language there is no other means of expressing spiritual verities than by physical symbols--in other words by myth and metaphor. And even when a language has acquired some capacity for the direct expression of spiritual facts, it is found that the old methods must still be resorted to in order to excite the interest and impress the imagination of the ignorant multitude. It is not to be supposed that the makers of such myths believed that they were true in their natural physical acceptation. Take for example the parable of the prodigal son. There is no reason to believe that the "far country," "the husks that the swine did eat," "the fatted calf," and the prodigal himself were not figments of Our Lord's imagination. Nor if the story had been true in all its details would this circumstance have added one whit to the value of the lesson taught by it. I believe that the author of the Mosaic story of the Fall of Man would be much surprised to know that his drama, which deals so forcibly in concrete form with temptation, sin, and its punishment, had been taken by the world for many centuries as a narrative of actual fact.
Some high authorities apply a different measure to pagan and savage myth. Dr. Pfleiderer, in his 'Philosophy of Religion,' says that "it must be carefully borne in mind that the religious phantasy, in producing such poetic symbolical legends, is not in the habit of distinguishing, nor can distinguish between the ideal truth and its sensible investment." The late Mr. Fiske held substantially the same view. He goes so far as to apply it to Dante, whose"Charon beating the lagging shades with his oar," "Satan crushing in his monstrous jaws the arch-traitors Judas, Brutus, and Cassius," "Bertrand de Born looking at his own dissevered head," he regards as "in the minds of Dante and his readers living, terrible realities." True it is that a stern reality underlies these grotesque fancies. But it is not of the physical order. No one knew better than Dante the virtue of thealtro intendein such matters. We may be quite sure that he did not believe in a real inscription over the gate of Hell, in Italianterza rima, and composed by himself. It is a mistake, I submit, to imagine him, "like Katerfelto, with his hair on end at his own wonders." When Dickens tells us that he decidedly looked on his heroes as living persons we must take this statementcum grano salis. We know what would have happened if some one had offered him, by way of payment, a cheque bearing the signature of Mr. Boffin, Dombey & Son, or the Brothers Cheeryble.
Mere inferences are often taken for facts, but, under normal conditions, the imaginative man is not the dupe of his own inventive faculty. It may be said that, however true this may be of more modern religious myth, the attitude of the "primitive man" towards the naive creations of his fancy is different. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a primitive man. However far we may go back, we shall find men with parents, and preceded by an infinite line of ancestors. Still there can be no harm in using this term to designate mankind at some ill-defined stage of progress above the highest lower animal and below the savage of our own days. Strange things are told us of the primitive man. He is said to be unable to distinguish between his imaginations and facts, and that he is in the habit of taking his dreams[49]for real occurrences. Fiske says: "Our primitive ancestors knewnothing about laws of nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things.... The only force they knew was the force of which they were directly conscious--the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all the outward world to be endowed with volition and to be directed by it." Of course our primitive ancestors expressed themselves differently from ourselves. They did not talk about laws of nature and the necessary regularity of things. But can we conceive them ignorant of the law of the regular alternation of night and day, of summer and winter, of the phases of the moon? Did not the "primitive man" know just as well as Newton that when an apple is detached from a tree it falls to the ground? He knew that from a blow as cause we may expect pain, wounds, or even death as the effect. He had sufficient acquaintance with dynamics to be aware that he could not raise himself from the ground more than a few feet, and with chemistry to have learnt that the savour of food is improved or spoilt, according to circumstances, by the application of fire. Nor is it true that he ascribed all forces to volition. It is only by exception that the child, the savage, and the primitive man attribute life to inanimate things. This requires imagination, a faculty which is notoriously feebler with them than with the adult civilized man. The progress of humanity is from a sporadic towards a general recognition of will in or behind the material universe, from fitful and sportive fancies involving this idea to an earnest and steady conviction of its truth, and from the fragmentary personification of the part as animated to the conception of a living, universal whole. Agnosticism, which ignores volition in matter, belongs, therefore, to the lower end of the scale of progress. Where it appears in civilized man, it is a case of arrested development. The average savage is a materialist, who associates volition with the energies of nature in a much less thorough and systematic way than theChristian, who believes that a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without the Father.
We must not confound the primitive maker of religious myth with the primitive man. It would lead to error if we modelled our idea of the average modern European on Bunyan, Milton, or Dante.
It is sometimes asserted that the impossible and miraculous occurrences which we so often meet with in the narratives of the primæval myth-maker are to him true. Why should he be limited to fact in this way? No doubt his standard of truth is different from our own. He would regard as possible many things which we know to be impossible. But is it necessary to suppose that his knowledge that a thing was impossible should prevent him, any more than our modern storytellers, from utilizing it in his imaginative work? Jules Verne well knew that a voyage round the moon is an impossibility. The unknown author or authors of 'Cinderella' surely need not be credited with a belief that pumpkins can be converted into coaches by the stroke of a fairy wand; the inventor of the story of the birth of Minerva from the brain of Jupiter knew quite well that such obstetrical operations were not feasible; and it is unnecessary to believe that the myth-makers of theKojikiandNihongithought that children could be produced by crunching jewels in the mouth and spitting them out.
There is, however, an exception to the rule that a storyteller does not believe in the truth of his own inventions. It is notoriously possible for the author of a fictitious narrative to become, after a time, unable to distinguish it from a statement of actual facts. There is a case on record in which a learned judge communicated to the Psychical Society in perfect good faith a ghost story, all the principal features of which were proved to be imaginary. They had their origin in his own talent as a distinguished raconteur. But this is a morbid phenomenon which mustnot be confounded with the normal action of the imagination in the child, the savage, or the primitive (or, indeed, any other) myth-maker.
The inability to distinguish between imagination and fact is really not a special characteristic of the primitive man or savage, but of the literal-minded of all ages, in presence of the creations of imaginative genius. Some few primitive men may distinguish between the spiritual kernel and its imaginative envelopment. But for the multitude this is impossible. Unable to discriminate between these two elements, and dimly conscious that the whole is a valuable possession, they wisely accept it indiscriminately as actual fact.
De Gubernatis, in his 'Zoological Mythology,' relates a story which illustrates the respective attitudes of the myth-maker and his hearers. He tells us that "when he was four years old, as he was walking one day with a brother, the latter pointed to a fantastical cloud on the horizon, and cried, 'Look down there: that is a hungry wolf running after the sheep.' He convinced me so entirely of that cloud being really a hungry wolf that I instantly took to my heels and escaped precipitately into the house." Take, again, the following sun-myth, fresh coined from the mint of Mr. George Meredith:--
"The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green and the pine stems redder gold: leaving brightest footprints upon thickly weeded banks, where the foxglove's last upper bells incline and bramble shoots wander amid moist herbage," &c.
This myth, like the old Greek tales of Prometheus and Tantalus, which Wordsworth calls