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+Project Gutenberg's The Religions of Japan, by William Elliot Griffis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Religions of Japan
+       From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji
+
+Author: William Elliot Griffis
+
+Release Date: March 31, 2005 [EBook #15516]
+[Most recently updated: May 22, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nathan Strom, Frank van Drogen, David King, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
+
+FROM THE DAWN OF HISTORY
+TO THE ERA OF MEIJI
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS, D.D.
+
+FORMERLY OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF TOKIO; AUTHOR OF "THE MIKADO'S
+EMPIRE" AND "COREA, THE HERMIT NATION;" LATE LECTURER ON THE MORSE
+FOUNDATION IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN NEW YORK
+
+"I came not to destroy, but to fulfil."--THE SON OF MAN
+
+NEW YORK
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+1895
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+TROW DIRECTORY
+PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
+NEW YORK
+
+
+IN GLAD RECOGNITION OF THEIR SERVICES TO THE WORLD
+AND
+IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MY OWN GREAT DEBT TO BOTH
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+SO UNWORTHY OF ITS GREAT SUBJECT
+TO
+THOSE TWO NOBLE BANDS OF SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH
+THE FACULTY OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
+OF WHOM
+CHARLES A. BRIGGS AND GEORGE L. PRENTISS
+ARE THE HONORED SURVIVORS
+AND TO
+THAT TRIO OF ENGLISH STUDENTS
+ERNEST M. SATOW, WILLIAM G. ASTON AND BASIL H. CHAMBERLAIN
+WHO LAID THE FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP IN JAPAN
+
+"IN UNCONSCIOUS BROTHERHOOD, BINDING THE SELF-SAME SHEAF"
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book makes no pretence of furnishing a mirror of contemporary
+Japanese religion. Since 1868, Japan has been breaking the chains of her
+intellectual bondage to China and India, and the end is not yet. My
+purpose has been, not to take a snap-shot photograph, but to paint a
+picture of the past. Seen in a lightning-flash, even a tempest-shaken
+tree appears motionless. A study of the same organism from acorn to
+seed-bearing oak, reveals not a phase but a life. It is something like
+this--"_to_ the era of Meiji" (A.D. 1868-1894+) which I have essayed.
+Hence I am perfectly willing to accept, in advance, the verdict of smart
+inventors who are all ready to patent a brand-new religion for Japan,
+that my presentation is "antiquated."
+
+The subject has always been fascinating, despite its inherent
+difficulties and the author's personal limitations. When in 1807, the
+polite lads from Satsuma and Kiōto came to New Brunswick, N.J., they
+found at least one eager questioner, a sophomore, who, while valuing
+books, enjoyed at first hand contemporaneous human testimony.
+
+When in 1869, to Rutgers College, came an application through Rev. Dr.
+Guido F. Verbeck, of Tōkiō, from Fukui for a young man to organize
+schools upon the American principle in the province of Echizen
+(ultra-Buddhistic, yet already so liberally leavened by the ethical
+teachings of Yokoi Héishiro), the Faculty made choice of the author.
+Accepting the honor and privilege of being one of the "beginners of a
+better time," I caught sight of peerless Fuji and set foot on Japanese
+soil December 29, 1870. Amid a cannonade of new sensations and fresh
+surprises, my first walk was taken in company with the American
+missionary (once a marine in Perry's squadron, who later invented the
+jin-riki-sha), to see a hill-temple and to study the wayside shrines
+around Yokohama. Seven weeks' stay in the city of Yedo--then rising out
+of the débris of feudalism to become the Imperial capital, Tōkiō,
+enabled me to see some things now so utterly vanished, that by some
+persons their previous existence is questioned. One of the most
+interesting characters I met personally was Fukuzawa, the reformer, and
+now "the intellectual father of half of the young men of ... Japan." On
+the day of the battle of Uyéno, July 11, 1868, this far-seeing patriot
+and inquiring spirit deliberately decided to keep out of the strife, and
+with four companions of like mind, began the study of Wayland's Moral
+Science. Thus were laid the foundations of his great school, now a
+university.
+
+Journeying through the interior, I saw many interesting phenomena of
+popular religions which are no longer visible. At Fukui in Echizen, one
+of the strongholds of Buddhism, I lived nearly a year, engaged in
+educational work, having many opportunities of learning both the
+scholastic and the popular forms of Shintō and of Buddhism. I was
+surrounded by monasteries, temples, shrines, and a landscape richly
+embroidered with myth and legend. During my four years' residence and
+travel in the Empire, I perceived that in all things the people of Japan
+were _too_ religious.
+
+In seeking light upon the meaning of what I saw before me and in
+penetrating to the reasons behind the phenomena, I fear I often made
+myself troublesome to both priests and lay folk. While at work in
+Tōkiō, though under obligation to teach only physical science, I
+voluntarily gave instruction in ethics to classes in the University. I
+richly enjoyed this work, which, by questioning and discussion, gave me
+much insight into the minds of young men whose homes were in every
+province of the Empire. In my own house I felt free to teach to all
+comers the religion of Jesus, his revelation of the fatherhood of God
+and the ethics based on his life and words. While, therefore, in
+studying the subject, I have great indebtedness to acknowledge to
+foreigners, I feel that first of all I must thank the natives who taught
+me so much both by precept and practice. Among the influences that have
+helped to shape my own creed and inspire my own life, have been the
+beautiful lives and noble characters of Japanese officers, students and
+common people who were around and before me. Though freely confessing
+obligation to books, writings, and artistic and scholastic influences, I
+hasten first to thank the people of Japan, whether servants, superior
+officers, neighbors or friends. He who seeks to learn what religion is
+from books only, will learn but half.
+
+Gladly thanking those, who, directly or indirectly, have helped me with
+light from the written or printed page, I must first of all gratefully
+express my especial obligations to those native scholars who have read
+to me, read for me, or read with me their native literature.
+
+The first foreign students of Japanese religions were the Dutch, and the
+German physicians who lived with them, at Déshima. Kaempfer makes
+frequent references, with test and picture, in his Beschryving van
+Japan. Von Siebold, who was an indefatigable collector rather than a
+critical student, in Vol. V. of his invaluable _Archiv_ (Pantheon von
+Nippon), devoted over forty pages to the religions of Japan. Dr. J.J.
+Hoffman translated into Dutch, with notes and explanations, the
+Butsu-zō-dzu-i, which, besides its 163 figures of Buddhist holy men,
+gives a bibliography of the works mentioned by the native author. In
+visiting the Japanese museum on the Rapenburg, Leyden, one of the
+oldest, best and most intelligently arranged in Europe, I have been
+interested with the great work done by the Dutchmen, during two
+centuries, in leavening the old lump for that transformation which in
+our day as New Japan, surprises the world. It requires the shock of
+battle to awaken the western nations to that appreciation of the racial
+and other differences between the Japanese and Chinese, which the
+student has already learned.
+
+The first praises, however, are to be awarded to the English scholars,
+Messrs. Satow, Aston, Chamberlain, and others, whose profound researches
+in Japanese history, language and literature have cleared the path for
+others to tread in. I have tried to acknowledge my debt to them in both
+text and appendix.
+
+To several American missionaries, who despite their trying labors have
+had the time and the taste to study critically the religions of Japan, I
+owe thanks and appreciation. With rare acuteness and learning, Rev. Dr.
+George Wm. Knox has opened on its philosophical, and Rev. Dr. J.H.
+DeForest on its practical side, the subject of Japanese Confucianism. By
+his lexicographical work, Dr. J.C. Hepburn has made debtors to him both
+the native and the alien. To our knowledge of Buddhism in Japan, Dr.
+J.C. Berry and Rev. J.L. Atkinson have made noteworthy contributions. I
+have been content to quote as authorities and illustrations, the names
+of those who have thus wrought on the soil, rather than of those, who,
+even though world-famous, have been but slightly familiar with the
+ethnic and the imported faith of Japan. The profound misunderstandings
+of Buddhism, which some very eminent men of Europe have shown in their
+writings, form one of the literary curiosities of the world.
+
+In setting forth these Morse lectures, I have purposely robbed my pages
+of all appearance of erudition, by using as few uncouth words as
+possible, by breaking up the matter into paragraphs of moderate length,
+by liberally introducing subject-headings in italics, and by relegating
+all notes to the appendix. Since writing the lectures, and even while
+reading the final proofs, I have ransacked my library to find as many
+references, notes, illustrations and authorities as possible, for the
+benefit of the general student. I have purposely avoided recondite and
+inaccessible books and have named those easily obtainable from American
+or European publishers, or from Messrs. Kelly & Walsh, of Yokohama,
+Japan. In using oriental words I have followed, in the main, the
+spelling of the Century Dictionary. The Japanese names are expressed
+according to that uniform system of transliteration used by Hepburn,
+Satow and other standard writers, wherein consonants have the same
+general value as in English (except that initial g is always hard),
+while the vowels are pronounced as in Italian. Double vowels must be
+pronounced double, as in Méiji (mā-ē-jē); those which are long
+are marked, as in ō or ū; i before o or u is short. Most of the
+important Japanese, as well as Sanskrit and Chinese, terms used, are
+duly expressed and defined in the Century Dictionary.
+
+I wish also to thank especially my friends, Riu Watanabe, Ph.D., of
+Cornell University, and William Nelson Noble, Esq., of Ithaca. The
+former kindly assisted me with criticisms and suggestions, while to the
+latter, who has taken time to read all the proofs, I am grateful for
+considerable improvement in the English form of the sentences.
+
+In closing, I trust that whatever charges may be brought against me by
+competent critics, lack of sympathy will not be one. I write in sight of
+beautiful Lake Cayuga, on the fertile and sloping shores of which in old
+time the Iroquois Indian confessed the mysteries of life. Having planted
+his corn, he made his pregnant squaw walk round the seed-bed in hope of
+receiving from the Source of life increased blessing and sustenance for
+body and mind. Between such a truly religious act of the savage, and
+that of the Christian sage, Joseph Henry, who uncovered his head while
+investigating electro-magnetism to "ask God a question," or that of
+Samuel F.B. Morse, who sent as his first telegraphic message "What hath
+God wrought," I see no essential difference. All three were acts of
+faith and acknowledgment of a power greater than man. Religion is one,
+though religions are many. As Principal Fairbairn, my honored
+predecessor in the Morse lectureship, says: "What we call superstition
+of the savage is not superstition _in him_. Superstition is the
+perpetuation of a low form of belief along with a higher knowledge....
+Between fetichism and Christian faith there is a great distance, but a
+great affinity--the recognition of a supra-sensible life."
+
+"For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing
+of the sons of God.... The creation itself shall be delivered from the
+bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of
+God."
+
+W.E.G.
+
+ITHACA, N.Y., October 27, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS, PAGE 1
+
+Salutatory.--The Morse Lectureship and its provisions.--The Science of
+Comparative Religion is Christianity's own child.--The Parliament of
+Religions.--The Study of Religion most appropriate in a Theological
+Seminary.--Shortening weapons and lengthening boundaries.--The right
+missionary spirit that of the Master, who "came not to destroy but to
+fulfil."--Characteristics of Japan.--Bird's-eye view of Japanese history
+and religion.--Popularly, not three religions but one
+religion.--Superstitions which are not organically parts of the
+"book-religions."--The boundary line between the Creator and his
+creation not visible to the pagan.--Shamanism: Fetichism.--Mythical
+monsters, Kirin, Phoenix, Tortoise, Dragon.--Japanese mythical
+zoölogy.--The erection of the stone fetich.--Insurance by amulets upon
+house and person.--Phallicism.--Tree-worship.--Serpent-worship.--These
+unwritten superstitions condition the "book-religions."--Removable by
+science and a higher religion.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHINTO: MYTHS AND RITUAL, PAGE 35
+
+Japan is young beside China and Korea.--Japanese history is
+comparatively modern.--The oldest documents date from A.D. 712.--The
+Japanese archipelago inhabited before the Christian era.--Faith, worship
+and ritual are previous to written espression.--The Kojiki, Manyōshu
+and Norito.--Tendency of the pupil nations surrounding China to antedate
+their civilization.--Origin of the Japanese people and their
+religion.--Three distinct lines of tradition from Tsukushi, Idzumo and
+Yamato.--War of the invaders against the aborigines--Mikadoism is the
+heart of Shintō.--Illustrations from the liturgies.--Phallicism among
+the aborigines and common people.--The mind or mental climate of the
+primæval man.--Representation of male gods by emblems.--Objects of
+worship and _ex-voto_.--Ideas of creation.--The fire-myth,
+Prometheus.--Comparison of Greek and Japanese mythology.--Ritual for the
+quieting of the fire-god.--The fire-drill.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE KOJIKI AND ITS TEACHINGS, PAGE 59
+
+Origin of the Kojiki. Analysis of its opening lines--Norito.--Indecency
+of the myths of the Kojiki.--Modern rationalistic interpretations--Life
+in prehistoric Japan.--Character and temperament of the people then and
+now.--Character of the kami or gods.--Hades.--Ethics.--The Land of the
+Gods.--The barbarism of the Yamato conquerors an improvement upon the
+savagery of the aborigines.--Cannibalism and human sacrifices.--The
+makers of the God-way captured and absorbed the religion of the
+aborigines.--A case of syncretism.--Origin of evil in bad
+gods.--Pollution was sin.--Class of offences enumerated in the
+norito.--Professor Kumi's contention that Mikadoism usurped a simple
+worship of Heaven.--Difference between the ancient Chinese and ancient
+Japanese cultus.--Development of Shintō arrested by
+Buddhism.--Temples and offerings.--The tori-i.--Pollution and
+purification.--Prayer.--Hirata's ordinal and specimen prayers.--To the
+common people the sun is a god.--Prayers to myriads of gods.--Summary of
+Shintō.--Swallowed up in the Riyōbu system.--Its modern
+revival.--Kéichin.--Kada Adzumarō.--Mabuchi, Motoöri.--Hirata.--In
+1870, Shintō is again made the state religion.--Purification of
+Riyōbu temples.--Politico-religious lectures.--Imperial
+rescript.--Reverence to the Emperor's photograph.--Judgment upon
+Shintō.--The Christian's ideal of Yamato-damashii.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN, PAGE 99
+
+In what respects Confucius was unique as a teacher.--Outline of his
+life.--The canon.--Primitive Chinese faith a sort of monotheism.--How
+the sage modified it.--History of Confucianism until its entrance into
+Japan.--Outline of the intellectual and political history of the
+Japanese.--Rise of the Samurai class.--Shifting of emphasis from filial
+piety to loyalty.--Prevalence of suicide in Japan.--Confucianism has
+deeply tinged the ideas of the Japanese.--Great care necessary in
+seeking equivalents in English for the terms used in the Chino-Japanese
+ethics; e.g., the emperor, "the father of the people."--Impersonality of
+Japanese speech.--Christ and Confucius.--"Love" and
+"reverence."--Exemplars of loyalty.--The Forty-seven Rōnins.--The
+second relation.--The family in Chinese Asia and in Christendom.--The
+law of filial piety and the daughter.--The third relation.--Theory of
+courtship and marriage.--Chastity.--Jealousy.--Divorce.--Instability of
+the marriage bond.--The fourth relation.--The elder and the younger
+brother.--The house or family everything, the individual nothing.--The
+fifth relation.--The ideas of Christ and those of Confucius.--The Golden
+and the Gilded rule.--Lao Tsze and Kung.--Old Japan and the
+alien.--Commodore Perry and Professor Hayashi.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM, PAGE 131
+
+Harmony of the systems of Confucius and Buddha in Japan during a
+thousand years.--Revival of learning in the seventeenth century.--Exodus
+of the Chinese scholars on the fall of the Ming dynasty.--Their
+dispersion and work in Japan.--Founding of schools of the new Chinese
+learning.--For two and a half centuries the Japanese mind has been
+moulded by the new Confucianism.--Survey of its rise and
+developments.--Four stages in the intellectual history of China.--The
+populist movement in the eleventh century.--The literary
+controversy.--The philosophy of the Cheng brothers and of Chu Hi, called
+in Japan Tei-Shu system.--In Buddhism the Japanese were startling
+innovators, in philosophy they were docile pupils.--Paucity of Confucian
+or speculative literature in Japan.--A Chinese wall built around the
+Japanese intellect.--Yelo orthodoxy.--Features of the Téi-Shu
+system.--Not agnostic but pantheistic.--Its influence upon
+historiography.--Ki (spirit) Ri (way) and Ten (heaven).--The writings of
+Ohashi Junzo.--Confucianism obsolescent in New Japan.--A study of
+Confucianism in the interest of comparative religion.--Man's place in
+the universe.--The Samurai's ideal, obedience.--His fearlessness in the
+face of death.--Critique of the system.--The ruler and the ruled.--What
+has Confucianism done for woman?--Improvement and revision of the fourth
+and fifth relations.--The new view of the universe and the new mind in
+New Japan. The ideal of Yamato-damashii revised and improved.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA, PAGE 153
+
+Buddha--sun myth or historic personage?--Buddhism one of the
+protestantisms of the world.--Characteristics of new religions.--Survey
+of the history of Indian thought.--The age of the Vedas.--The epic
+age.--The rationalistic age.--Our fellow-Aryans and the story of their
+conquests.--Their intellectual energy and inventions.--Systems of
+philosophy.--Condition of religion at the birth of Gautama.--Outline of
+his life.--He attains enlightenment or buddhahood.--In what respects
+Buddhism was an old, and in what a new religion.--Did Gautama intend to
+found a new religion, or return to simpler and older
+faith?--Monasticism, Kharma and Nirvana,--Enthusiasm of the disciples of
+the new faith.--The great schism.--The Northern Buddhists.--The
+canon.--The two Yana or vehicles.--Simplicity of Southern and luxuriance
+of Northern Buddhism.--Summary of the process of thought in Nepal.--The
+old gods of India come back again.--Maitreya, Manjusri and
+Avalokitesvara.--The Legend of Manjusri.--Separation of attributes and
+creation of new Buddhas or gods.--The Dhyani
+Buddhas.--Amida.--Adi-Buddhas.--Abstractions become gods.--The Tantra
+system.--Outbursts of doctrine and art.--Prayer-mills.--The noble
+eight-fold path of self-denial and benevolence forgotten.--Entrance of
+Buddhism from Korea into Japan.--Condition of the country at that
+time.--Dates and first experiences.--Soga no
+Inamé.--Shōtoku.--Japanese pilgrims to China.--Changes wrought by the
+new creed and cult.--Temples, monasteries and images.--Influence upon
+the Mikado's name, rank and person, and upon Shintō.--Relative
+influence of Buddhism in Asia and of Christianity in Europe.--The three
+great characteristics of Buddhism.--How the clouds returned after the
+rain.--Buddhism and Christianity confronting the problem of life.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM, PAGE 189
+
+The experience of two centuries and a half of Buddhism in
+Japan.--Necessity of using more powerful means for the conversion of the
+Japanese.--Popular customs nearly ineradicable.--Analogy from European
+history.--Syncretism in Christian history.--In the Arabian Nights.--How
+far is the process of Syncretism honest?--Examples not to be recommended
+for imitation.--The problem of reconciling the Kami and the
+Buddhas.--Northern Buddhism ready for the task.--The Tantra or
+Yoga-chara system.--Art and its influence on the imagination.--The
+sketch replaced by the illumination and monochrome by colors.--Japanese
+art.--Mixed Buddhism rather than mixed Shintō.--Kōbō the
+wonder-worker who made all Japanese history a transfiguration of
+Buddhism.--Legends about his extraordinary abilities and industry.--His
+life, and studies in China.--The kata-kana syllabary.--Kōbōo's
+revelation from the Shintō goddess Toyo-Uké-Bimé.--The gods of Japan
+were avatars of Buddha.--Kōbō's plan of propaganda.--Details of
+the scheme.--A clearing-house of gods and Buddhas.--Relative rise and
+fall of the native and the foreign deities.--Legend of Daruma.
+"Riyōbu Shintō."--Impulse to art and art industry.--The Kami no
+Michi falls into shadow.--Which religion suffered most?--Phenomenally
+the victory belonged to Buddhism.--The leavening power was that of
+Shintō.--Buddhism's fresh chapter of decay.--Influence of Riyōbu
+upon the Chinese ethical system in Japan.--Influence on the
+Mikado.--Abdication all along the lines of Japanese life.--Ultimate
+paralysis of the national intellect.--Comparison with Chinese
+Buddhism.--Miracle-mongering.--No self-reforming power in Buddhism.--The
+Seven Happy Gods of Fortune.--Pantheism's destruction of
+boundaries.--The author's study of the popular processions in
+Japan.--Masaka Do.--Swamping of history in legend.--The jewel in the
+lotus.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS, PAGE 225
+
+Four stages of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in Japan.--Reasons
+for the formation of sects.--The Saddharma Pundarika.--Shastras and
+Sutras.--The Ku-sha sect.--Book of the Treasury of Metaphysics.--The
+Jō-jitsu sect, its founder and its doctrines.--The Ris-shu or Viyana
+sect.--Japanese pilgrims to China.--The Hos-sō sect and its
+doctrines.--The three grades of disciples.--The San-ron or Three-shastra
+sect and its tenets.--The Middle Path.--The Kégon sect.--The
+Unconditioned, or realistic pantheism.--The Chinese or Tendai sect.--Its
+scriptures and dogmas.--Buddhahood attainable in the present
+body.--Vagradrodhi.--The Yoga-chara system.--The "old sects."--Reaction
+against excessive idol-making.--The Zen sect.--Labor-saving devices in
+Buddhism.--Making truth apparent by one's own thought.--Transmission of
+the Zen doctrine.--History of Zen Shu.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE, PAGE 257
+
+The Jō-dō or Pure Land sect.--Substitution of faith in Amida for
+the eight-fold Path.--Succession of the propagators of true
+doctrine.--Zendō and Hō-nen.--The Japanese path-finder to the Pure
+Land.--Doctrine of Jō-dō.--Buddhistic influence on the Japanese
+language.--Incessant repetition of prayers.--The Pure Land in the
+West.--The Buddhist doctrine of justification by faith.--Hō-nen's
+universalism.--Tendency of doctrinal development after
+Hō-nen.--"Reformed" Buddhism.--Synergism _versus_ salvation by faith
+only.--Life of Shinran.--Posthumous honors.--Policy and aim of the Shin
+sect, methods and scriptures.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT, PAGE 287
+
+The missionary history of Japanese Buddhism is the history of
+Japan.--The first organized religion of the Japanese.--Professor Basil
+Hall Chamberlain's testimony--A picture of primeval life in the
+archipelago.--What came in the train of the new religion from "the
+West". Missionary civilizers, teachers, road-makers, improvers of diet.
+Language of flowers and gardens.--The house and home.--Architecture--The
+imperial capital--Hiyéizan.--Love of natural scenery.--Pilgrimages and
+their fruits.--The Japanese aesthetic.--Art and decoration in the
+temples.--Exterior resemblances between the Roman form of Christianity
+and of Buddhism.--Quotation from "The Mikado's Empire."--Internal vital
+differences.--Enlightenment and grace.--Ingwa and love.--Luxuriance of
+the art of Northern Buddhism.--Variety in individual treatment.--Place
+of the temple in the life of Old Japan.--The protecting trees.--The bell
+and its note.--The graveyard and the priests' hold upon it.--Japanese
+Buddhism as a political power.--Its influence upon military
+history.--Abbots on horseback and monks in armor.--Battles between the
+Shin and Zen sects.--Nobunaga.--Influence of Buddhism in literature and
+education.--The temple school.--The _kana_ writing.--Survey and critique
+of Buddhist history in Japan.--Absence of organized charities.--Regard
+for animal and disregard for human life.--The Eta.--The Aino.--Attitude
+to women.--Nuna and numerics.--Polygamy and concubinage.--Buddhism
+compared with Shintō.--Influence upon morals.--The First Cause.--Its
+leadership among the sects.--Unreality of Amida Buddha.--Nichiren.--His
+life and opinions.--Idols and avatars.--The favorite scripture of the
+sect, the Saddharma Pundarika.--Its central dogma, everything in the
+universe capable of Buddha-ship.--The Salvation Army of
+Buddhism.--Kōbō's leaven working.--Buddhism ceases to be an
+intellectual force.--The New Buddhism.--Are the Japanese eager for
+reform?
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ROMAN CHRISTIANITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, PAGE 323
+
+The many-sided story of Japanese Christianity.--One hundred years of
+intercourse between Japan and Europe.--State of Japan at the
+introduction of Portuguese Christianity.--Xavier and Anjiro.--Xavier at
+Kiōto and in Bungo.--Nobunaga and the Buddhists.--High-water mark of
+Christianity.--Hideyoshi and the invasion of Korea.--Kato and
+Konishi.--Persecutions.--Arrival of the Spanish friars.--Their violation
+of good faith.--Spirit of the Jesuits and Franciscans.--Crucifixion on
+the bamboo cross.--Hidéyori.--Kato Kiyomasa.--The Dutch in the Eastern
+seas.--Will Adams.--Iyéyasŭ suspects designs against the sovereignty
+of Japan.--The Christian religion outlawed.--Hidétada follows up the
+policy of Iyéyasŭ, excludes aliens, and shuts up the country.--The
+uprising of the Christians at Shimabara in 1637.--Christianity buried
+from sight.--Character of the missionaries and the form of the faith
+introduced by them.--Noble lives and ideals.--The spirit of the
+Inquisition in Japan.--Political animus and complexion.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE, PAGE 351
+
+Policy of the Japanese government after the suppression of
+Christianity.--Insulation of Japan.--The Hollanders at
+Déshima.--Withdrawal of the English.--Relations with Korea.--Policy of
+inclusion.--"A society impervious to foreign ideas."--Life within
+stunted limits.--Canons of art and literature.--Philosophy made an
+engine of government.--Esoteric law.--Social waste of
+humanity.--Attempts to break down the wall--External and
+internal.--Seekers after God.--The goal of the pilgrims.--The Déshima
+Dutchman as pictured by enemies and rivals, _versus_ reality and
+truth.--Eager spirits groping after God.--Morning stars of the Japanese
+reformation.--Yokoi Héishiro.--The anti-Christian edicts.--The Buddhist
+Inquisitors.--The Shin-gaku or New Learning movement.--The story of
+nineteenth century Christianity, subterranean and interior before being
+phenomenal.--Sabbath-day service on the U.S.S. Mississippi.--The first
+missionaries.--Dr. J.C. Hepburn--Healing and the Bible.--Yedo becomes
+Tōkiō.--Despatch of the Embassy round the world.--Eyes
+opened.--The Acts of the Apostles in Japan.
+
+
+NOTES, AUTHORITIES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, PAGE 375
+
+INDEX, PAGE 451
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS
+
+    "The investigation of the beginnings of a religion is never the
+    work of infidels, but of the most reverent and conscientious
+    minds."
+
+    "We, the forty million souls of Japan, standing firmly and
+    persistently upon the basis of international justice, await
+    still further manifestations as to the morality of
+    Christianity,"--Hiraii, of Japan.
+
+    "When the Creator [through intermediaries that were apparently
+    animals] had finished treating this world of men, the good and
+    the bad Gods were all mixed together promiscuously, and began
+    disputing for the possession of this world."--The Aino Story of
+    the Creation.
+
+    "If the Japanese have few beast stories, the Ainos have
+    _apparently_ no popular tales of heroes ... The Aino mythologies
+    ... lack all connection with morality.... Both lack priests and
+    prophets.... Both belong to a very primitive stage of mental
+    development ... Excepting stories ... and a few almost metreless
+    songs, the Ainos have no other literature at all."--Aino
+    Studies.
+
+    "I asked the earth, and it answered, 'I am not He;' and
+    whatsoever are therein made the same confession. I asked the sea
+    and the deep and the creeping things that lived, and they
+    replied, 'We are not thy God; seek higher than we.' ... And I
+    answered unto all things which stand about the door of my flesh,
+    'Ye have told me concerning my God, that ye are not he; tell me
+    something about him.' And with a loud voice they explained, 'It
+    is He who hath made us!'"--Augustine's Confessions.
+
+    "Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the
+    shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with
+    night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them
+    out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name."--Amos.
+
+    "That which hath been made was life in Him."--John.
+
+
+CHAPTER I - PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS
+
+The Morse Lectureship and the Study of Comparative
+Religion.
+
+
+As a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York,
+in the Class of 1877, your servant received and accepted with pleasure
+the invitation of the President and Board of Trustees to deliver a
+course of lectures upon the religions of Japan. In that country and in
+several parts of it, I lived from 1870 to 1874. I was in the service
+first of the feudal daimiō of Echizen and then of the national
+government of Japan, helping to introduce that system of public schools
+which is now the glory of the country. Those four years gave me
+opportunities for close and constant observation of the outward side of
+the religions of Japan, and facilities for the study of the ideas out of
+which worship springs. Since 1867, however, when first as a student in
+Rutgers College at New Brunswick, N.J., I met and instructed those
+students from the far East, who, at risk of imprisonment and death had
+come to America for the culture of Christendom, I have been deeply
+interested in the study of the Japanese people and their thoughts.
+
+To attempt a just and impartial survey of the religions of Japan may
+seem a task that might well appall even a life-long Oriental scholar.
+Yet it may be that an honest purpose, a deep sympathy and a gladly
+avowed desire to help the East and the West, the Japanese and the
+English-speaking people, to understand each other, are not wholly
+useless in a study of religion, but for our purpose of real value. These
+lectures are upon the Morse[1] foundation which has these specifications
+written out by the founder:
+
+    The general subject of the lectures I desire to be: "The
+    Relation of the Bible to any of the Sciences, as Geography,
+    Geology, History, and Ethnology, ... and the relation of the
+    facts and truths contained in the Word of God, to the
+    principles, methods, and aims of any of the sciences."
+
+Now, among the sciences which we must call to our aid are those of
+geography and geology, by which are conditioned history and ethnology of
+which we must largely treat; and, most of all, the science of
+Comparative Religion.
+
+This last is Christianity's own child. Other sciences, such as geography
+and astronomy, may have been born among lands and nations outside of and
+even before Christendom. Other sciences, such as geology, may have had
+their rise in Christian time and in Christian lands, their foundation
+lines laid and their main processes illustrated by Christian men, which
+yet cannot be claimed by Christianity as her children bearing her own
+likeness and image; but the science of Comparative Religion is the
+direct offspring of the religion of Jesus. It is a distinctively
+Christian science. "It is so because it is a product of Christian
+civilization, and because it finds its impulse in that freedom of
+inquiry which Christianity fosters."[2] Christian scholars began the
+investigations, formulated the principles, collected the materials and
+reared the already splendid fabric of the science of Comparative
+Religion, because the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify
+this. Jesus bade his disciples search, inquire, discern and compare.
+Paul, the greatest of the apostolic Christian college, taught: "Prove
+all things; hold fast that which is good." In our day one of Christ's
+loving followers[3] expressed the spirit of her Master in her favorite
+motto, "Truth for authority, not authority for truth." Well says Dr.
+James Legge, a prince among scholars, and translator of the Chinese
+classics, who has added several portly volumes to Professor Max Müller's
+series of the "Sacred Books of the East," whose face to-day is bronzed
+and whose hair is whitened by fifty years of service in southern China
+where with his own hands he baptized six hundred Chinamen:[4]
+
+    The more that a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is
+    governed by Christian principle, the more anxious will he be to
+    do justice to every other system of religion, and to hold his
+    own without taint or fetter of bigotry.[5]
+
+It was Christianity that, in a country where the religion of Jesus has
+fullest liberty, called the Parliament of Religions, and this for
+reasons clearly manifest. Only Christians had and have the requisites of
+success, viz.: sufficient interest in other men and religions; the
+necessary unity of faith and purpose; and above all, the brave and bold
+disregard of the consequences. Christianity calls the Parliament of
+Religions, following out the Divine audacity of Him who, so often,
+confronting worldly wisdom and priestly cunning, said to his disciples,
+"Think not, be not anxious, take no heed, be careful for nothing--only
+for love and truth. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
+
+Of all places therefore, the study of comparative religion is most
+appropriate in a Christian theological seminary. We must know how our
+fellow-men think and believe, in order to help them. It is our duty to
+discover the pathways of approach to their minds and hearts. We must
+show them, as our brethren and children of the same Heavenly Father, the
+common ground on which we all stand. We must point them to the greater
+truth in the Bible and in Christ Jesus, and demonstrate wherein both the
+divinely inspired library and the truth written in a divine-human life
+fulfil that which is lacking in their books and masters.
+
+To know just how to do this is knowledge to be coveted as a most
+excellent gift. An understanding of the religion of our fellow-men is
+good, both for him who goes as a missionary and for him who at home
+prays, "Thy kingdom come."
+
+The theological seminary, which begins the systematic and sympathetic
+study of Comparative Religion and fills the chair with a professor who
+has a vital as well as academic interest in the welfare of his
+fellow-men who as yet know not Jesus as Christ and Lord, is sure to lead
+in effective missionary work. The students thus equipped will be
+furnished as none others are, to begin at once the campaign of help and
+warfare of love.
+
+It may be that insight into and sympathy with the struggles of men who
+are groping after God, if haply they may find him, will shorten the
+polemic sword of the professional converter whose only purpose is
+destructive hostility without tactics or strategy, or whose chief idea
+of missionary success is in statistics, in blackening the character of
+"the heathen," in sensational letters for home consumption and reports
+properly cooked and served for the secretarial and sectarian palates.
+Yet, if true in history, Greek, Roman, Japanese, it is also true in the
+missionary wars, that "the race that shortens its weapons lengthens its
+boundaries."[6]
+
+Apart from the wit or the measure of truth in this sentence quoted, it
+is a matter of truth in the generalizations of fact that the figure of
+the "sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," used by Paul, and
+also the figure of the "word of God, living and active, sharper than any
+two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of the soul and
+spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and
+intents of the heart," of the writer to the Hebrews, had for their
+original in iron the victorious _gladium_ of the Roman legionary--a
+weapon both short and sharp. We may learn from this substance of fact
+behind the shadow of the figure a lesson for our instant application.
+The disciplined Romans scorned the long blades of the barbarians, whose
+valor so often impetuous was also impotent against discipline. The
+Romans measured their blades by inches, not by feet. For ages the
+Japanese sword has been famed for its temper more than its weight.[7]
+The Christian entering upon his Master's campaigns with as little
+impediments of sectarian dogma as possible, should select a weapon that
+is short, sure and divinely tempered.
+
+To know exactly the defects of the religion we seek to abolish, modify,
+supplement, supplant or fulfil, means wise economy of force. To get at
+the secrets of its hold upon the people we hope to convert leads to a
+right use of power. In a word, knowledge of the opposing religion, and
+especially of alien language, literature and ways of feeling and
+thinking, lengthens missionary life. A man who does not know the moulds
+of thought of his hearers is like a swordsman trying to fight at long
+range but only beating the air. Armed with knowledge and sympathy, the
+missionary smites with effect at close quarters. He knows the vital
+spots.
+
+Let me fortify my own convictions and conclude this preliminary part of
+my lectures by quoting again, not from academic authorities, but from
+active missionaries who are or have been at the front and in the
+field.[8]
+
+The Rev. Samuel Beal, author of "Buddhism in China," said (p. 19) that
+"it was plain to him that no real work could be done among the people
+[of China and Japan] by missionaries until the system of their belief
+was understood."
+
+The Rev. James MacDonald, a veteran missionary in Africa, in the
+concluding chapter of his very able work on "Religion and Myth," says:
+
+    The Church that first adopts for her intending missionaries the
+    study of Comparative Religion as a substitute for subjects now
+    taught will lead the van in the path of true progress.
+
+
+The People of Japan.
+
+
+In this faith then, in the spirit of Him who said, "I come not to
+destroy but to fulfil," let us cast our eyes upon that part of the world
+where lies the empire of Japan with its forty-one millions of souls.
+Here we have not a country like India--a vast conglomeration of nations,
+languages and religions occupying a peninsula itself like a continent,
+whose history consists of a stratification of many civilizations. Nor
+have we here a seemingly inert mass of humanity in a political structure
+blending democracy and imperialism, as in China, so great in age, area
+and numbers as to weary the imagination that strives to grasp the
+details. On the contrary, in Dai Nippon, or Great Land of the Sun's
+Origin, we have a little country easy of study. In geology it is one of
+the youngest of lands. Its known history is comparatively modern. Its
+area roughly reckoned as 150,000 square miles, is about that of our
+Dakotas or of Great Britain and Ireland. The census completed December
+31, 1892, illustrates here, as all over the world, nature's argument
+against polygamy. It tells us that the relation between the sexes is,
+numerically at least, normal. There were 20,752,366 males and 20,337,574
+females, making a population of 41,089,940 souls. All these people are
+subjects of the one emperor, and excepting fewer than twenty thousand
+savages in the northern islands called Ainos, speak one language and
+form substantially one race. Even the Riu Kiu islanders are Japanese in
+language, customs and religion. In a word, except in minor differences
+appreciable or at least important only to the special student, the
+modern Japanese are a homogeneous people.
+
+In origin and formation, this people is a composite of many tribes.
+Roughly outlining the ethnology of Japan, we should say that the
+aborigines were immigrants from the continent with Malay reinforcement
+in the south, Koreans in the centre, and Ainos in the east and north,
+with occasional strains of blood at different periods from various parts
+of the Asian mainland. In brief, the Japanese are a very mixed race.
+Authentic history before the Christian era is unknown. At some point of
+time, probably later than A.D. 200, a conquering tribe, one of many from
+the Asian mainland, began to be paramount on the main island. About the
+fourth century something like historic events and personages begin to be
+visible, but no Japanese writings are older than the early part of the
+eighth century, though almanacs and means of measuring time are found in
+the sixth century. Whatever Japan may be in legend and mythology, she is
+in fact and in history younger than Christianity. Her line of rulers, as
+alleged in old official documents and ostentatiously reaffirmed in the
+first article of the constitution of 1889, to be "unbroken for ages
+eternal," is no older than that of the popes. Let us not think of Aryan
+or Chinese antiquity when we talk of Japan. Her history as a state began
+when the Roman empire fell. The Germanic nations emerged into history
+long before the Japanese.
+
+Roughly outlining the political and religious life of the ancient
+Japanese, we note that their first system of government was a rude sort
+of feudalism imposed by the conquerors and was synchronous with
+aboriginal fetichism, nature worship, ancestral sacrifices, sun-worship
+and possibly but not probably, a very rude sort of monotheism akin to
+the primitive Chinese cultus.[9] Almost contemporary with Buddhism, its
+introduction and missionary development, was the struggle for
+centralized imperialism borrowed from the Chinese and consolidated in
+the period from the seventh to the twelfth century. During most of this
+time Shintō, or the primitive religion, was overshadowed while the
+Confucian ethics were taught. From the twelfth to this nineteenth
+century feudalism in politics and Buddhism in religion prevailed, though
+Confucianism furnished the social laws or rules of daily conduct. Since
+the epochal year of 1868, with imperialism reestablished and the feudal
+system abolished, Shintō has had a visible revival, being kept alive
+by government patronage. Buddhism, though politically disestablished, is
+still the popular religion with recent increase of life,[10] while
+Confucianism is decidedly losing force. Christianity has begun its
+promising career.
+
+
+The Amalgam of Religions.
+
+
+Yet in the imperial and constitutional Japan of our day it is still true
+of probably at least thirty-eight millions of Japanese that their
+religion is not one, Shintō, Confucianism or Buddhism, but an amalgam
+of all three. There is not in every-day life that sharp distinction
+between these religions which the native or foreign scholar makes, and
+which both history and philosophy demand shall be made for the student
+at least. Using the technical language of Christian theologians,
+Shintō furnishes theology, Confucianism anthropology and Buddhism
+soteriology. The average Japanese learns about the gods and draws
+inspiration for his patriotism from Shintō, maxims for his ethical
+and social life from Confucius, and his hope of what he regards as
+salvation from Buddhism. Or, as a native scholar, Nobuta Kishimoto,[11]
+expresses it,
+
+    In Japan these three different systems of religion and morality
+    are not only living together on friendly terms with one another,
+    but, in fact, they are blended together in the minds of the
+    people, who draw necessary nourishment from all of these
+    sources. One and the same Japanese is both a Shintōist, a
+    Confucianist, and a Buddhist. He plays a triple part, so to
+    speak ... Our religion may be likened to a triangle....
+    Shintōism furnishes the object, Confucianism offers the rules
+    of life, while Buddhism supplies the way of salvation; so you
+    see we Japanese are eclectic in everything, even in religion.
+
+These three religious systems as at present constituted, are "book
+religions." They rest, respectively, upon the Kojiki and other ancient
+Japanese literature and the modern commentators; upon the Chinese
+classics edited and commented on by Confucius and upon Chu Hi and other
+mediaeval scholastics who commented upon Confucius; and upon the
+shastras and sutras with which Gautama, the Buddha, had something to do.
+Yet in primeval and prehistoric Nippon neither these books nor the
+religions growing out of the books were extant. Furthermore, strictly
+speaking, it is not with any or all of these three religions that the
+Christian missionary comes first, oftenest or longest in contact. In
+ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times the student notices a great
+undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions,
+though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism,
+shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there
+in awful reality. It is as omnipresent, as persistent, as hard to kill
+as the scrub bamboo which both efficiently and sufficiently takes the
+place of thorns and thistles as the curse of Japanese ground.
+
+The book-religions can be more or less apprehended by those alien to
+them, but to fully appreciate the depth, extent, influence and tenacity
+of these archaic, unwritten and unformulated beliefs requires residence
+upon the soil and life among the devotees. Disowned it may be by the
+priests and sages, indignantly disclaimed or secretly approved in part
+by the organized religions, this great undergrowth of superstition is as
+apparent as the silicious bamboo grass which everywhere conditions and
+modifies Japanese agriculture. Such prevalence of mental and spiritual
+disease is the sad fact that confronts every lover of his fellow-men.
+This paganism is more ancient and universal than any one of the
+religions founded on writing or teachers of name and fame. Even the
+applied science and the wonderful inventions imported from the West, so
+far from eradicating it, only serve as the iron-clad man-of-war in warm
+salt water serves the barnacles, furnishing them food and hold.
+
+We propose to give in this our first lecture, a general or bird's-eye
+view of this dead level of paganism above which the systems of
+Shintō, Confucianism and Buddhism tower like mountains. It in by this
+omnipresent superstition that the respectable religious have been
+conditioned in their history and are modified at present, even as
+Christianity has been influenced in its progress by ethnic or local
+ideas and temperaments, and will be yet in its course of victory in the
+Mikado's empire.
+
+Just as the terms "heathen" (happily no longer, in the Revised Version
+of the English Bible) and "pagan" suggest the heath-man of Northern
+Europe and the isolated hamlet of the Roman empire, while the cities
+were illuminated with Christian truth, so, in the main, the matted
+superstitious of Chinese Asia are more suggestive of distances from
+books and centres of knowledge, though still sufficiently rooted in the
+crowded cities.
+
+One to whom the boundary line between the Creator and his world is
+perfectly clear, one who knows the eternal difference between mind and
+matter, one born amid the triumphs of science can but faintly realize
+the mental condition of the millions of Japan to whom there is no
+unifying thought of the Creator-Father. Faith in the unity of law is the
+foundation of all science, but the average Asiatic has not this thought
+or faith. Appalled at his own insignificance amid the sublime mysteries
+and awful immensities of nature, the shadows of his own mind become to
+him real existences. As it is affirmed that the human skin, sensitive to
+the effects of light, takes the photograph of the tree riven by
+lightning, so, on the pagan mind lie in ineffaceable and exaggerated
+grotesqueness the scars of impressions left by hereditary teaching, by
+natural phenomena and by the memory of events and of landmarks. Out of
+the soil of diseased imagination has sprung up a growth as terrible as
+the drunkard's phantasies. The earthquake, flood, tidal wave, famine,
+withering or devastating wind and poisonous gases, the geological
+monsters and ravening bird, beast and fish, have their representatives
+or supposed incarnations in mythical phantasms.
+
+Frightful as these shadows of the mind appear, they are both very real
+and, in a sense, very necessary to the ignorant man. He must have some
+theory by which to explain the phenomena of nature and soothe his own
+terrors. Hence he peoples the earth and water, not only with invisible
+spirits more or less malevolent, but also with bodily presences usually
+in terrific bestial form. To those who believe in one Spirit pervading,
+ordering, governing all things, there is unity amid all phenomena, and
+the universe is all order and beauty. To the mind which has not reached
+this height of simplicity, instead of one cause there are many. The
+diverse phenomena of nature are brought about by spirits innumerable,
+warring and discordant. Instead of a unity to the mind, as of sun and
+solar system, there is nothing but planets, asteroids and a constant
+rain of shooting-stars.
+
+
+Shamanism.
+
+
+Glancing at some phases of the actual unwritten religions of Japan we
+name Shamanism, Mythical Zoölogy, Fetichism, Phallicism, and Tree and
+Serpent Worship.
+
+In actual Shamanism or Animism there may or there may not be a belief in
+or conception of a single all-powerful Creator above and beyond all.[12]
+Usually there is not such a belief, though, even if there be, the actual
+government of the physical world and its surroundings is believed to lie
+in the hands of many spirits or gods benevolent and malevolent. Earth,
+air, water, all things teem with beings that are malevolent and
+constantly active. In time of disaster, famine, epidemic the universe
+seems as overcrowded with them as stagnant water seems to be when the
+solar microscope throw its contents into apparition upon the screen. It
+is absolutely necessary to propitiate these spirits by magic rites and
+incantations.
+
+Among the tribes of the northern part of the Chinese Empire and the
+Ainos of Japan this Shamanism exists as something like an organized
+cultus. Indeed, it would be hard to find any part of Chinese Asia from
+Korea to Annam or from Tibet to Formosa, not dominated by this belief in
+the power and presence of minor spirits. The Ainos of Yezo may be called
+Shamanists or Animists; that is, their minds are cramped and confused by
+their belief in a multitude of inferior spirits whom they worship and
+propitiate by rites and incantations through their medicine-man or
+sorcerer. How they whittle sticks, keeping on the fringe of curled
+shavings, and set up these, called _inao_ in places whence evil is
+suspected to lurk, and how the shaman conducts his exorcisms and works
+his healings, are told in the works of the traveller and the
+missionary.[13] In the wand of shavings thus reared we see the same
+motive as that which induced the Mikado in the eighth century to build
+the great monasteries on Hiyéizan, northeast of Kiōto, this being the
+quarter in which Buddhist superstition locates the path of advancing
+evil, to ward off malevolence by litanies and incense. Or, the _inao_ is
+a sort of lightning-rod conductor by which impending mischief may be led
+harmlessly away.
+
+Yet, besides the Ainos,[14] there are millions of Japanese who are
+Shamanists, even though they know not the name or organized cult. And if
+we make use of the term Shamanism instead of the more exact one of
+Animism, it is for the very purpose of illustrating our contention that
+the underlying paganisms of the Japanese archipelago, unwritten and
+unformulated, are older than the religions founded on books; and that
+these paganisms, still vital and persistent, constantly modify and
+corrupt the recognized religious. The term Shaman, a Pali word, was
+originally a pure Buddhist term meaning one who has separated from his
+family and his passions. One of the designations of the Buddha was
+Shamana-Gautama. The same word, Shamon, in Japanese still means a bonze,
+or Buddhist priest. Its appropriation by the sorcerers, medicine-men,
+and lords of the misrule of superstition in Mongolia and Manchuria shows
+decisively how indigenous paganism has corrupted the Buddhism of
+northern Asia even as it has caused its decay in Japan.
+
+As out of Animism or Shamanism grows Fetichism in which a visible object
+is found for the abode or medium of the spirit, so also, out of the same
+soil arises what we may call Imaginary Zoölogy. In this mental growth,
+the nightmare of the diseased imagination or of the mind unable to draw
+the line between the real and the unreal, Chinese Asia differs notably
+from the Aryan world. With the mythical monsters of India and Iran we
+are acquainted, and with those of the Semitic and ancient European cycle
+of ideas which furnished us with our ancients and classics we are
+familiar. The lovely presences in human form, the semi-human and bestial
+creations, sphinxes, naiads, satyrs, fauns, harpies, griffins, with
+which the fancy of the Mediterranean nations populated glen, grotto,
+mountain and stream, are probably outnumbered by the less beautiful and
+even hideous mind-shadows of the Turanian world. Chief among these are
+what in Chinese literature, so slavishly borrowed by the Japanese, are
+called the four supernatural or spiritually endowed creatures--the Kirin
+or Unicorn, the Phoenix, the Tortoise and the Dragon.[15]
+
+
+Mythical Zoölogy.
+
+
+Of the first species the _ki_ is the male, the _lin_ is the female,
+hence the name Kilin. The Japanese having no _l_, pronounce this Kirin.
+Its appearance on the earth is regarded as a happy portent of the advent
+of good government or the birth of men who are to prove virtuous rulers.
+It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and a single, soft horn.
+As messenger of mercy and benevolence, the Kirin never treads on a live
+insect or eats growing grass. Later philosophy made this imaginary beast
+the incarnation of those five primordial elements--earth, air, water,
+fire and ether of which all things, including man's body, are made and
+which are symbolized in the shapes of the cube, globe, pyramid, saucer
+and tuft of rays in the Japanese gravestones. It is said to attain the
+age of a thousand years, to be the noblest form of the animal creation
+and the emblem of perfect good. In Chinese and Japanese art this
+creature holds a prominent place, and in literature even more so. It is
+not only part of the repertoire of the artist's symbols in the Chinese
+world of ideas, but is almost a necessity to the moulds of thought in
+eastern Asia. Yet it is older than Confucius or the book-religions, and
+its conception shows one of the nobler sides of Animism.
+
+The Feng-hwang or Phoenix, Japanese Hō-wō, the second of the
+incarnations of the spirits, is of wondrous form and mystic nature. The
+rare advent of this bird upon the earth is, like that of the kirin or
+unicorn, a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers and good government.
+It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a
+tortoise, and the features of the dragon and fish. Its colors and
+streaming feathers are gorgeous with iridian sheen, combining the
+splendors of the pheasant and the peacock. Its five colors symbolize the
+cardinal virtues of uprightness of mind, obedience, justice, fidelity
+and benevolence. The male bird _Hō_, and female _wō_, by their
+inseparable fellowship furnish the artist, poet and literary writer with
+the originals of the ten thousand references which are found in Chinese
+and its derived literatures. Of this mystic Phoenix a Chinese dictionary
+thus gives description:
+
+    The Phoenix is of the essence of water; it was born in the
+    vermilion cave; it perches not but on the most beautiful of all
+    trees; it eats not but of the seed of the bamboo; its body is
+    adorned with the five colors; its song contains the five notes;
+    as it walks it looks around; as it flies hosts of birds follow
+    it.
+
+Older than the elaborate descriptions of it and its representations in
+art, the Hō-wō is one of the creations of primitive Chinese
+Animism.
+
+The Kwei or Tortoise is not the actual horny reptile known to
+naturalists and to common experience, but a spirit, an animated creature
+that ages ago rose up out of the Yellow River, having on its carapace
+the mystic writing out of which the legendary founder of Chinese
+civilization deciphered the basis of moral teachings and the secrets of
+the unseen. From this divine tortoise which conceived by thought alone,
+all other tortoises sprang. In the elaboration of the myths and legends
+concerning the tortoise we find many varieties of this scaly
+incarnation. It lives a thousand years, hence it is emblem of longevity
+in art and literature. It is the attendant of the god of the waters. It
+has some of the qualities and energies of the dragon, it has the power
+of transformation. In pictures and sculptures we are familiar with its
+figure, often of colossal size, as forming the curb of a well, the base
+of a monument or tablet. Yet, whatever its form in literature or art, it
+is the later elaborated representation of ancient Animism which selected
+the tortoise as one of the manifold incarnations or media of the myriad
+spirits that populate the air.
+
+Chief and leader of the four divinely constituted beasts is the Lung,
+Japanese Riō, or Dragon, which has the power of transformation and of
+making itself visible or invisible. At will it reduces itself to the
+size of a silk-worm, or is swollen until it fills the space of heaven
+and earth. This is the creature especially preeminent in art, literature
+and rhetoric. There are nine kinds of dragons, all with various features
+and functions, and artists and authors revel in their representation.
+The celestial dragon guards the mansions of the gods and supports them
+lest they fall; the spiritual dragon causes the winds to blow and rain
+to descend for the service of mankind; the earth dragon marks out the
+courses of rivers and streams; the dragon of the hidden treasures
+watches over the wealth concealed from mortals, etc. Outwardly, the
+dragon of superstition resembles the geological monsters brought to
+resurrection by our paleontologists. He seems to incarnate all the
+attributes and forces of animal life--vigor, rapidity of motion,
+endurance, power of offence in horn, hoof, claw, tooth, nail, scale and
+fiery breath. Being the embodiment of all force the dragon is especially
+symbolical of the emperor. Usually associated with malevolence, one
+sees, besides the conventional art and literature of civilization, the
+primitive animistic idea of men to whose mind this mysterious universe
+had no unity, who believed in myriad discordant spirits but knew not of
+"one Law-giver, who is able both to save and to destroy." An
+enlargement, possibly, of prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct
+monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical
+embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. We shall
+see how, when Buddhism entered China, the cobra-de-capello, so often
+figured in the Buddhistic representations of India, is replaced by the
+dragon.
+
+Yet besides these four incarnations of the spirits that misrule the
+world there is a host, a menagerie of mythical monsters. In Korea, one
+of the Asian countries richest in demonology, beast worship is very
+prevalent. Mythical winged tigers and flying serpents with attributes of
+fire, lightning and combinations of forces not found in any one
+creature, are common to the popular fancy. In Japan, the _kappa_, half
+monkey half tortoise, which seizes children bathing in the rivers, as
+real to millions of the native common folk as is the shark or porpoise;
+the flying-weasel, that moves in the whirlwind with sickle-like blades
+on his claws, which cut the face of the unfortunate; the wind-god or imp
+that lets loose the gale or storm; the thunder-imp or hairy, cat-like
+creature that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or
+rattle; the earthquake-fish or subterranean bull-head or cat-fish that
+wriggles and writhes, causing the earth to shiver, shudder and open; the
+_ja_ or dragon centipede; the _tengu_ or long-nosed and winged mountain
+sprite, which acts as the messenger of the gods, pulling out the tongues
+of fibbing, lying children; besides the colossal spiders and mythical
+creatures of the old story-books; the foxes, badgers, cats and other
+creatures which transform themselves and "possess" human beings, still
+influence the popular mind. These, once the old _kami_ of the primitive
+Japanese, or _kamui_ of the aboriginal Aino, show the mental soil and
+climate[16] which were to condition the growth of the seed imported from
+other lands, whether of Buddhism or Christianity. It is very hard to
+kill a god while the old mind that grew and nourished him still remains
+the same. Banish or brand a phantom or mind-shadow once worshipped as
+divine, and it will appear as a fairy, a demon, a mythical animal, or an
+_oni_; but to annihilate it requires many centuries of higher culture.
+
+As with the superstitions and survival of Animism and Fetichism from our
+pagan ancestors among ourselves, many of the lingering beliefs may be
+harmless, but over the mass of men in Japan and in Chinese Asia they
+still exert a baleful influence. They make life full of distress; they
+curtail human joy; they are a hindrance, to spiritual progress and to
+civilization.
+
+
+Fetichism.
+
+
+The animistic tendency in that part of Asia dominated by the Chinese
+world of ideas shows itself not only in a belief in messengers or
+embodiments of divine malevolence or benevolence, but also in the
+location of the spiritual influence in or upon an inanimate object or
+fetich. Among men in Chinese Asia, from the clodhopper to the gentleman,
+the inheritance of Fetichism from the primeval ages is constantly
+noticeable. Let us glance at the term itself.
+
+As the Chinaman's "Joss" is only his own pronunciation of the Portuguese
+word _Deos_, or the Latin _Deus_, so the word "fetich" is but the
+Portuguese modification of the Latin word _facticius_, that is
+_feitiço_. Portugal, beginning nearly five hundred years ago, had the
+honor of sending the first ships and crews to explore the coasts of
+Africa and Asia, and her sailors by this word, now Englished as fetich,
+described the native charms or talismans. The word "fetichism" came into
+the European languages through the work of Charles de Brosses, who, in
+1760, wrote on "Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches." In Fetichism, the "object
+is treated as having personal consciousness and power, is talked with,
+worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, petted or ill-treated with
+reference to its past or future behavior to its votaries."
+
+Let me draw a picture from actual observation. I look out of the windows
+of my house in Fukui. Here is a peasant who comes back after the winter
+to prepare his field for cultivation. The man's horizon of ideas, like
+his vocabulary, is very limited. His view of actual life is bounded by a
+few rice-fields, a range of hills, and the village near by. Possibly one
+visit to a city or large town has enriched his experience. More
+probably, however, the wind and clouds, the weather, the soil, crops and
+taxes, his family and food and how to provide for them, are the main
+thoughts that occupy his mind. Before he will strike mattock or spade in
+the soil, lay axe to a tree, collect or burn underbrush, he will select
+a stone, a slab of rock or a stick of wood, set it upon hill side or mud
+field-boundary, and to this he will bow, prostrate himself or pray. To
+him, this stone or stick is consecrated. It has power to placate the
+spirits and ward off their evil. It is the medium of communication
+between him and them. Now, having attended, as he thinks, to the
+proprieties in the case, he proceeds to dig, plough, drain, put in order
+and treat soil or water, tree or other growth as is most convenient for
+his purpose. His fetich is erected to "the honorable spirits." Were this
+not attended to, some known or unknown bad luck, sinister fortune, or
+calamity would befall him. Here, then, is a fetich-worshipper. The stick
+or stone is the medium of communication between the man and the spirits
+who can bless or harm him, and which to his mind are as countlessly
+numerous as the swarms of mosquitoes which he drives out of and away
+from his summer cottage by smudge fires in August.
+
+One need not travel in Yezo or Saghalin to see practical Fetichism. Go
+where you will in Japan, there are fetich worshippers. Among the country
+folk, the "_inaka_" of Japanese parlance, Fetichism is seen in its
+grossest forms. Yet among probably millions of Buddhists, especially of
+certain sects, the Nichiren for example, and even among the
+rationalistic Confucians, there are fetich-worshippers. Rare is the
+Japanese farmer, laborer, mechanic, ward-man, or _hei-min_ of any trade
+who does not wear amulet, charm or other object which he regards with
+more or less of reverence as having relation to the powers that help or
+harm.[17] In most of the Buddhist temples these amulets are sold for the
+benefit of the priests or of the shrine or monastery. Not a few even of
+the gentry consider it best to be on the safe side and wear in pouch or
+purse these protectors against evil.
+
+Of the 7,817,570 houses in the empire, enumerated in the census of 1892,
+it is probable that seven millions of them are subjects of insurance by
+fetich.[18] They are guaranteed against fire, thieves, lightning, plague
+and pestilence. It is because of money paid to the priests that the
+wooden policies are duly nailed on the walls, and not on account of the
+wise application of mathematical, financial or medical science. Examine
+also the paper packages carefully tied and affixed above the transom,
+decipher the writing in ink or the brand left by the hot iron on the
+little slabs of pine-wood--there may be one or a score of them--and what
+will you read? Names of the temples with date of issue and seal of
+certificate from the priests, mottoes or titles from sacred books, often
+only a Sanskrit letter or monogram, of which the priest-pedler may long
+since have forgotten the meaning. To build a house, select a cemetery or
+proceed to any of the ordinary events of life without making use of some
+sort of material fetich, is unusual, extraordinary and is voted
+heterodox.
+
+Long after the brutish stage of thought is past the fetichistic instinct
+remains in the sacredness attached to the mere letter or paper or
+parchment of the sacred book or writing, when used as amulet, plaster or
+medicine. The survivals, even in Buddhism, of ancient and prehistoric
+Fetichism are many and often with undenied approval of the religious
+authorities, especially in those sects which are themselves reversions
+to primitive and lower types of religion.
+
+Among the Ainos of Yezo and Saghalin the medicine-man or shaman is
+decorated with fetichistic bric-à-brac of all sorts, and these bits of
+shells, metals, and other clinking substances are believed to be media
+of communication with mysterious influences and forces. In Korea
+thousands of trees bedecked with fluttering rags, clinking scraps of
+tin, metal or stone signify the same thing. In Japan these primitive
+tinkling scraps and clinking bunches of glass have long since become the
+_suzu_ or wind-bells seen on the pagoda which tintinabulate with every
+passing breeze. The whittled sticks of the Aino, non-conductors of evil
+and protectors of those who make and rear them, stuck up in every place
+of awe or supposed danger, have in the slow evolution of centuries
+become the innumerable flag-poles, banners and streamers which one sees
+at their _matsuris_ or temple festivals. Millions of towels and
+handkerchiefs still flutter over wells and on sacred trees. In old Japan
+the banners of an army almost outnumbered the men who fought beneath
+them. Today, at times they nearly conceal the temples from view.
+
+The civilized Japanese, having passed far beyond the Aino's stage of
+religion, still show their fetichistic instincts in the veneration
+accorded to priestly inventions for raising revenue.[19] This instinct
+lingers in the faith accorded to medicine in the form of decoction,
+pill, bolus or poultice made from the sacred writing and piously
+swallowed; in the reverence paid to the idol for its own sake, and in
+the charm or amulet worn by the soldier in his cap or by the gentleman
+in his pill-box, tobacco-pouch or purse.
+
+As the will of the worshipper who selects the fetich makes it what it
+is, so also, by the exercise of that will he imagines he can in a
+certain measure be the equal or superior of his god. Like the Italian
+peasant who beats or scolds his bambino when his prayers are not
+answered or his wishes gratified, so the fetich is punished or not
+allowed to know what is going on, by being covered up or hidden away.
+Instances of such rough handling of their fetiches by the people are far
+from unknown in the Land of Great Peace. At such childishness we may
+wonder and imagine that fetich-worship is the very antipodes of
+religion; and yet it requires but little study of the lower orders of
+mind and conduct in Christendom to see how fetich-worship still lingers
+among people called Christians, whether the fetich be the image of a
+saint or the Virgin, or a verse of the Bible found at random and used
+much as is a penny-toss to decide minor actions. Or, to look farther
+south, what means the rabbit's foot carried in the pocket or the various
+articles of faith now hanging in the limbo between religion and
+folk-lore in various parts of our own country?
+
+
+Phallicism.
+
+
+Further illustrations of far Eastern Animism and Fetichism are seen in
+forms once vastly more prevalent in Japan than now. Indeed, so far
+improved off the face of the earth are they, that some are already
+matters of memory or archæology, and their very existence even in former
+days is nearly or wholly incredible to the generation born since
+1868--when Old Japan began to vanish in dissolving views and New Japan
+to emerge. What the author has seen with his own eyes, would amaze many
+Japanese born since 1868 and the readers of the rhapsodies of tourists
+who study Japan from the _jin-riki-sha_. Phases of tree and serpent
+worship are still quite common, and will be probably for generations to
+come; but the phallic shrines and emblems abolished by the government in
+1872 have been so far invisible to most living travellers and natives,
+that their once general existence and use are now scarcely suspected.
+Even profound scholars of the Japanese language and literature whose
+work dates from after the year 1872 have scarcely suspected the
+universality of phallic worship. Yet what we could say of this cult and
+its emblems, especially in treating of Shintō, the special ethnic
+faith of Japan, would be from sight of our own eyes besides the
+testimony of many witnesses.[20]
+
+The cultus has been known in the Japanese archipelago from Riu Kin to
+Yezo. Despite official edicts of abolition it is still secretly
+practised by the "heathen," the _inaka_ of Japan. "Government law lasts
+three days," is an ancient proverb in Nippon. Sharp eyes have, within
+three months of the writing of this line, unearthed a phallic shrine
+within a stone's-throw of Shintō's most sacred temples at Isé.
+Formerly, however, these implements of worship were seen numerously--in
+the cornucopia distributed in the temples, in the _matsuris_ or
+religious processions and in representation by various plastic
+material--and all this until 1872, to an extent that is absolutely
+incredible to all except the eye-witnesses, some of whose written
+testimonies we possess. What seems to our mind shocking and revolting
+was once a part of our own ancestors' faith, and until very recently was
+the perfectly natural and innocent creed of many millions of Japanese
+and is yet the same for tens of thousands of them.
+
+We may easily see why and how that which to us is a degrading cult was
+not only closely allied to Shintō, but directly fostered by and
+properly a part of it, as soon as we read the account of the creation of
+the world, an contained in the national "Book of Ancient Traditions,"
+the "Kojiki." Several of the opening paragraphs of this sacred book of
+Shintō are phallic myths explaining cosmogony. Yet the myths and the
+cult are older than the writing and are phases of primitive Japanese
+faith. The mystery of fatherhood is to the primitive man the mystery of
+creation also. To him neither the thought nor the word was at hand to
+put difference and transcendental separation between him and what he
+worshipped as a god.
+
+Into the details of the former display and carriage of these now obscene
+symbols in the popular celebrations; of the behavior of even respectable
+citizens during the excitement and frenzy of the festivals; of their
+presence in the wayside shrines; of the philosophy, hideousness or
+pathos of the subject, we cannot here enter. We simply call attention to
+their existence, and to a form of thought, if not of religion, properly
+so-called, which has survived all imported systems of faith and which
+shows what the native or indigenous idea of divinity really is--an idea
+that profoundly affects the organization of society. To the enlightened
+Buddhist, Confucian, and even the modern Shintoist the
+phallus-worshipper is a "heathen," a "pagan," and yet he still practises
+his faith and rites. It is for us to hint at the powerful influence such
+persistent ideas have upon Japanese morals and civilization. Still
+further, we illustrate the basic fact which all foreign religions and
+all missionaries, Confucian, Buddhist, Mahometan or Christian must deal
+with, viz.: That the Eastern Asiatic mind runs to pantheism as surely as
+the body of flesh and blood seeks food.
+
+
+Tree and Serpent Worship.
+
+
+In prehistoric and medieval Japan, as among the Ainos to-day, trees and
+serpents as well as rocks, rivers and other inanimate objects were
+worshipped, because such of them as were supposed for reasons known and
+felt to be awe-inspiring or wonderful were "kami," that is, above the
+common, wonderful.[21] This word kami is usually translated god or
+deity, but the term does not conform to our ideas, by a great gulf of
+difference. It is more than probable that the Japanese term kami is the
+same as the Aino word _kamui_, and that the despised and conquered
+aboriginal savage has furnished the mould of the ordinary Japanese idea
+of god--which even to-day with them means anything wonderful or
+extraordinary.[22] From the days before history the people have
+worshipped trees, and do so yet, considering them as the abodes of and
+as means of communication with supernatural powers. On them the people
+hang their votive offerings, twist on the branches their prayers written
+on paper, avoid cutting down, breaking or in any way injuring certain
+trees. The _sakaki_ tree is especially sacred, even to this day, in
+funeral or Shintō services. To wound or defile a tree sacred to a
+particular god was to call forth the vengeance of the insulted deity
+upon the insulter, or as the hearer of prayer upon another to whom guilt
+was imputed and punishment was due.
+
+Thus, in the days older than this present generation, but still within
+this century, as the writer has witnessed, it was the custom of women
+betrayed by their lovers to perform the religious act of vengeance
+called _Ushi toki mairi_, or going to the temple at the hour of the ox,
+that is at 2 A.M. First making an image or manikin of straw, she set out
+on her errand of revenge, with nails held in her mouth and with hammer
+in one hand and straw figure in the other, sometimes also having on her
+head a reversed tripod in which were stuck three lighted candles.
+Arriving at the shrine she selected a tree dedicated to a god, and then
+nailed the straw simulacrum of her betrayer to the trunk, invoking the
+kami to curse and annihilate the destroyer of her peace. She adjures the
+god to save his tree, impute the guilt of desecration to the traitor and
+visit him with deadly vengeance. The visit is repeated and nails are
+driven until the object of the incantation sickens and dies, or is at
+least supposed to do so. I have more than once seen such trees and straw
+images upon them, and have observed others in which the large number of
+rusted nails and fragments of straw showed how tenaciously the
+superstition lingered.[23]
+
+In instances more pleasant to witness, may be seen trees festooned with
+the symbolical rice-straw in cords and fringes. With these the people
+honor the trees as the abode of the kami, or as evidence of their faith
+in the renown accredited in the past.
+
+In common with most human beings the Japanese consider the serpent an
+object of mystery and awe, but most of them go further and pay the
+ophidian a reverence and awe which is worship. Their oldest literature
+shows how large a part the serpent played in the so-called divine age,
+how it acted as progenitress of the Mikado's ancestry, and how it
+afforded means of incarnation for the kami or gods. Ten species of
+ophidia are known in the Japanese islands, but in the larger number of
+more or less imaginary varieties which figure in the ancient books we
+shall find plenty of material for fetich-worship. In perusing the
+"Kojiki" one scarcely knows, when he begins a story, whether the
+character which to all appearance is a man or woman is to end as a
+snake, or whether the mother after delivering her child will or will not
+glide into the marsh or slide away into the sea, leaving behind a trail
+of slime. A dragon is three-fourths serpent, and both the dragon and the
+serpent are prominent figures, perhaps the most prominent of the kami or
+gods in human or animal form in the "Kojiki" and other early legends of
+the gods, though the crocodile, crow, deer, dog, and other animals are
+kami.[24] It is therefore no wonder that serpents have been and are
+still worshipped by the people, that some of their gods and goddesses
+are liable at any time to slip away in scaly form, that famous temples
+are built on sites noted as being the abode or visible place of the
+actual water or land snake of natural history, and that the spot where a
+serpent is seen to-day is usually marked with a sacred emblem or a
+shrine.[25] We shall see how this snake-worship became not only a part
+of Shintō but even a notable feature in corrupt Buddhism.
+
+
+Pantheism's Destruction of Boundaries.[26]
+
+
+In its rudest forms, this pantheism branches out into animism or
+shamanism, fetichism and phallicism. In its higher forms, it becomes
+polytheism, idolatry and defective philosophy. Having centuries ago
+corrupted Buddhism it is the malaria which, unseen and unfelt, is ready
+to poison and corrupt Christianity. Indeed, it has already given over to
+disease and spiritual death more than one once hopeful Christian
+believer, teacher and preacher in the Japan of our decade.
+
+To assault and remove the incubus, to replace and refill the mind, to
+lift up and enlighten the Japanese peasant, science as already known and
+faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in
+hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant _inaka_
+or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet
+flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no
+surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which
+gives the unifying thought to him who looks into creation.
+
+Keep the boundary line clear between God and his world and all is order
+and discrimination. Obliterate that boundary and all is pathless morass,
+black chaos and on the mind the phantasms which belong to the victim of
+_delirium tremens_.
+
+There is one Lawgiver. In the beginning, God. In the end, God, all in
+all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - SHINTŌ: MYTHS AND RITUAL
+
+    "In the great days of old,
+     When o'er the land the gods held sov'reign sway,
+     Our fathers lov'd to say
+     That the bright gods with tender care enfold
+     The fortunes of Japan,
+     Blessing the land with many an holy spell:
+     And what they loved to tell,
+     We of this later age ourselves do prove;
+     For every living man
+     May feast his eyes on tokens of their love."
+
+     --Poem of Yamagami-no Okura,
+       A.D. 733.
+
+    Baal: "While I on towers and banging terraces,
+    In shaft and obelisk, behold my sign.
+    Creative, shape of first imperious law."
+
+    --Bayard Taylor's "Masque of the Gods."
+
+    "Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my
+    silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of
+    men, and didst commit whoredom with them, and tookest thy
+    broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine
+    oil and mine incense before them. My meat also which I gave
+    thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou
+    hast even set it before them for a sweet savor: and thus it was,
+    saith the Lord GOD."--Ezekiel.
+
+    If it be said (as has been the case), 'Shintoism has nothing in
+    it,' we should be inclined to answer, 'So much the better, there
+    is less error to counteract.' But there _is_ something in it,
+    and that ... of a kind of which we may well avail ourselves when
+    making known the second commandment, and the 'fountain of
+    cleansing from all sin.'"--E.W. Syle.
+
+    "If Shintō has a dogma, it is purity."--Kaburagi.
+
+    "I will wash my hands in innocency, O Lord: and so will I go to
+    thine altar."--Ps. xxvi. 6.
+
+
+CHAPTER II - SHINTŌ: MYTHS AND RITUAL
+
+The Japanese a Young Nation.
+
+
+What impresses us in the study of the history of Japan is that, compared
+with China and Korea, she is young. Her history is as the story of
+yesterday. The nation is modern. The Japanese are as younger children in
+the great family of Asia's historic people. Broadly speaking, Japan is
+no older than England, and authentic Japanese history no more ancient
+than British history. In Albion, as in the Honorable Country, there are
+traditions and mythologies that project their shadows aeons back of
+genuine records; but if we consider that English history begins in the
+fifth, and English literature in the eighth century, then there are
+other reasons besides those commonly given for calling Japan "the
+England of the East."
+
+No trustworthy traditions exist which carry the known history of Japan
+farther back than the fifth century. The means for measuring and
+recording time were probably not in use until the sixth century. The
+oldest documents in the Japanese language, excepting a few fragments of
+the seventh century, do not antedate the year 712, and even in these the
+Chinese characters are in many instances used phonetically, because the
+meaning of the words thus transliterated had already been forgotten.
+Hence their interpretation in detail is still largely a matter of
+conjecture.
+
+Yet the Japanese Archipelago was inhabited long before the dawn of
+history. The concurrent testimony of the earliest literary monuments, of
+the indigenous mythology, of folk-lore, of shell-heaps and of
+kitchen-middens shows that the occupation by human beings of the main
+islands must be ascribed to times long before the Christian era. Before
+written records or ritual of worship, religion existed on its active or
+devotional side, and there were mature growths of thought preserved and
+expressed orally. Poems, songs, chants and _norito_ or liturgies were
+kept alive in the human memory, and there was a system of worship, the
+_name_ of which was given long after the introduction of Buddhism. This
+descriptive term, Kami no Michi in Japanese, and Shin-tō in the
+Chinese as pronounced by Japanese, means the Way of the Gods, the tō
+or final syllable being the same as tao in Taoism. We may say that
+Shintō means, literally, theoslogos, theology. The customs and
+practices existed centuries before contact with Chinese letters, and
+long previous to the Shintō literature which is now extant.
+
+Whether Kami no Michi is wholly the product of Japanese soil, or whether
+its rudimentary ideas were imported from the neighboring Asian continent
+and more or less allied to the primitive Chinese religion, is still an
+open question. The preponderance of argument tends, however, to show
+that it was an importation as to its origin, for not a few events
+outlined in the Japanese mythology cast shadows of reminiscence upon
+Korea or the Asian mainland. In its development, however, the cultus is
+almost wholly Japanese. The modern forms of Shintō, as moulded by the
+revivalists of the eighteenth century, are at many points notably
+different from the ancient faith. At the World's Parliament of Religions
+at Chicago, Shintō seemed to be the only one, and probably the last,
+of the purely provincial religions.
+
+In order to gain a picture of life in Japan before the introduction of
+Chinese civilization, we must consult those photographs of the minds of
+the ancient islanders which still exist in their earliest literature.
+The fruits of the study of ethnology, anthropology and archaeology
+greatly assist us in picturing the day-break of human life in the
+Morning Land. In preparing materials for the student of the religions of
+Japan many laborers have wrought in various fields, but the chief
+literary honors have been taken by the English scholars, Messrs.
+Satow,[1] Aston,[2] and Chamberlain.[3] These untiring workers have
+opened the treasures of ancient thought in the Altaic world.[4]
+
+Although even these archaic Japanese compositions, readable to-day only
+by special scholars, are more or less affected by Chinese influences,
+ideas and modes of expression, yet they are in the main faithful
+reflections of the ancient life before the primitive faith of the
+Japanese people was either disturbed or reduced to system in presence of
+an imported religion. These monuments of history, poetry and liturgies
+are the "Kojiki," or Notices of Ancient Things; the "Manyöshu" or Myriad
+Leaves or Poems, and the "Norito," or Liturgies.
+
+
+The Ancient Documents.
+
+
+The first book, the "Kojiki," gives us the theology, cosmogony,
+mythology, and very probably, in its later portions, some outlines of
+history of the ancient Japanese. The "Kojiki" is the real, the dogmatic
+exponent, or, if we may so say, the Bible, of Shintō. The
+"Manyōshu," or Book of Myriad Poems, expresses the thoughts and
+feelings; reflects the manners and customs of the primitive generations,
+and, in the same sense as do the Sagas of the Scandinavians, furnishes
+us unchronological but interesting and more or less real narratives of
+events which have been glorified by the poets and artists. The ancient
+codes of law and of ceremonial procedure are of great value, while the
+"Norito" are excellent mirrors in which to see reflected the religion
+called Shintō on the more active side of worship.
+
+In a critical study, either of the general body of national tradition or
+of the ancient documents, we must continually be on our guard against
+the usual assumption that Chinese civilization came in earlier than it
+really did. This assumption colors all modern Japanese popular ideas,
+art and literature. The vice of the pupil nations surrounding the Middle
+Kingdom is their desire to have it believed that Chinese letters and
+culture among them is an nearly coeval with those of China as can be
+made truly or falsely to appear. The Koreans, for example, would have us
+believe that their civilization, based on letters and introduced by
+Kishi, is "four thousand years old" and contemporaneous with China's
+own, and that "the Koreans are among the oldest people of the world."[5]
+The average modern Japanese wishes the date of authentic or official
+history projected as far back as possible. Yet he is a modest man
+compared with his mediæval ancestor, who constructed chronology out of
+ink-stones. Over a thousand years ago a deliberate forgery was
+officially put on paper. A whole line of emperors who never lived was
+canonized, and clever penmen set down in ink long chapters which
+describe what never happened.[6] Furthermore, even after, and only eight
+years after the fairly honest "Kojiki" had been compiled, the book
+called "Nihongi," or Chronicles of Japan, was written. All the internal
+and not a little external evidence shows that the object of this book is
+to give the impression that Chinese ideas, culture and learning had long
+been domesticated in Japan. The "Nihongi" gives dates of events supposed
+to have happened fifteen hundred years before, with an accuracy which
+may be called villainous; while the "Kojiki" states that Wani, a Korean
+teacher, brought the "Thousand Character Classic" to Japan in A.D. 285,
+though that famous Chinese book was not composed until the sixth
+century, or A.D. 550.[7]
+
+Even to this day it is nearly impossible for an American to get a Korean
+"frog in the well"[8] to understand why the genuine native life and
+history, language and learning of his own peninsular country is of
+greater value to the student than the pedantry borrowed from China. Why
+these possess any interest to a "scholar" is a mystery to the head in
+the horsehair net. Anything of value, he thinks, _must_ be on the
+Chinese model. What is not Chinese is foolish and fit for women and
+children only. Furthermore, Korea "always had" Chinese learning. This is
+the sum of the arguments of the Korean literati, even as it used to be
+of the old-time hatless Yedo scholar of shaven skull and topknot.
+
+Despite Japanese independence and even arrogance in certain other lines,
+the thought of the demolition of cherished notions of vast antiquity is
+very painful. Critical study of ancient traditions is still dangerous,
+even in parliamentary Nippon. Hence the unbiassed student must depend on
+his own reading of and judgment upon the ancient records, assisted by
+the thorough work done by the English scholars Aston, Satow,
+Chamberlain, Bramsen and others.
+
+It was the coming of Buddhism in the sixth century, and the implanting
+on the soil of Japan of a system of religion in which were temples with
+all that was attractive to the eye, gorgeous ritual, scriptures,
+priesthood, codes of morals, rigid discipline, a system of dogmatics in
+which all was made positive and clear, that made the variant myths and
+legends somewhat uniform. The faith of Shaka, by winning adherents both
+at the court and among the leading men of intelligence, reacted upon the
+national traditions so as to compel their collection and arrangemeut
+into definite formulas. In due time the mythology, poetry and ritual
+was, as we have seen, committed to writing and the whole system called
+Shintō, in distinction from Butsudō, the Way of the Gods from the
+Way of the Buddhas. Thus we can see more clearly the outward and visible
+manifestations of Shintō. In forming our judgment, however, we must
+put aside those descriptions which are found in the works of European
+writers, from Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto down to the year 1870. Though
+these were good observers, they were often necessarily mistaken in their
+deductions. For, as we shall see in our lecture on Riyōbu or Mixed
+Buddhism, Shintō was, from the ninth century until late into the
+nineteenth century, absorbed in Buddhism so as to be next to invisible.
+
+
+Origins of the Japanese People.
+
+
+Without detailing processes, but giving only results, our view of the
+origin of the Japanese people and of their religion is in the main as
+follows:
+
+The oldest seats of human habitation in the Japanese Archipelago lie
+between the thirtieth and thirty-eighth parallels of north latitude.
+South of the thirty-fourth parallel, it seems, though without proof of
+writing or from tradition, that the Malay type and blood from the far
+south probably predominated, with, however, much infusion from the
+northern Asian mainland.
+
+Between the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth parallels, and west of the
+one hundred and thirty-eighth meridian of longitude, may be found what
+is still the choicest, richest and most populous part of The Country
+Between Heaven and Earth. Here the prevailing element was Korean and
+Tartar.
+
+To the north and east of this fair country lay the Emishi savages, or
+Ainos.
+
+In "the world" within the ken of the prehistoric dwellers in what is now
+the three islands, Hondo, Kiushiu and Shikoku, there was no island of
+Yezu and no China; while Korea was but slightly known, and the lands
+farther westward were unheard of except as the home of distant tribes.
+
+Three distinct lines of tradition point to the near peninsula or the
+west coast of Japan as the "Heaven" whence descended the tribe which
+finally grew to be dominant. The islands of Tsushima and Iki were the
+stepping-stones of the migration out of which rose what may be called
+the southern or Tsukushi cycle of legend, Tsukushi being the ancient
+name of Kiushiu.
+
+Idzumo is the holy land whence issued the second stream of tradition.
+
+The third course of myth and legend leads us into Yamato, whence we
+behold the conquest of the Mikado's home-land and the extension of his
+name and influence into the regions east of the Hakoné Mountains,
+including the great plain of Yedo, where modern Tōkiō now stands.
+
+We shall take the term "Yamato" as the synonym of the prehistoric but
+discernible beginnings of national life. It represents the seat of the
+tribe whose valor and genius ultimately produced the Mikado system. It
+was through this house or tribe that Japanese history took form. The
+reverence for the ruler long afterward entitled "Son of Heaven" is the
+strongest force in the national history. The spirit and prowess of these
+early conquerors have left an indelible impress upon the language and
+the mind of the nation in the phrase Yamato Damashi--the spirit of
+(Divine and unconquerable) Japan.
+
+The story of the conquest of the land, in its many phases, recalls that
+of the Aryans in India, of the Hebrews in Canaan, of the Romans in
+Europe and of the Germanic races in North America. The Yamato men
+gradually advanced to conquest under the impulse, as they believed, of a
+divine command.[9] They were sent from Takama-no-hara, the High Plain of
+Heaven. Theirs was the war, of men with a nobler creed, having
+agriculture and a feudal system of organization which furnished
+resources for long campaigns, against hunters and fishermen. They had
+improved artillery and used iron against stone. Yet they conquered and
+pacified not only by superior strategy, tactics, weapons and valor, but
+also by advanced fetiches and dogma. They captured the religion of their
+enemies as well as their bodies, lands and resources. They claimed that
+their ancestors were from Heaven, that the Sun was their kinswoman and
+that their chief, or Mikado, was vicegerent of the Heavenly gods, but
+that those whom they conquered were earth-born or sprung from the
+terrestrial divinities.
+
+
+Mikadoism the Heart of Shintō.
+
+
+As success came to their arms and their chief's power was made more
+sure, they developed further the dogma of the Mikado's divinity and made
+worship centre in him as the earthly representative of the Sun and
+Heaven. His fellow-conquerors and ministers, as fast as they were put in
+lordship over conquered provinces, or indigenous chieftains who
+submitted obediently to his sway or yielded graciously to his prowess,
+were named as founders of temples and in later generations worshipped
+and became gods.[10] One of the motives for, and one of the guiding
+principles in the selections of the floating myths, was that the
+ancestry of the chieftains loyal to the Mikado might be shown to be from
+the heavenly gods. Both the narratives of the "Kojiki" and the liturgies
+show this clearly.
+
+The nature-worship, which was probably practised throughout the whole
+archipelago, became part of the system as government and society were
+made uniform on the Yamato model. It seems at least possible, if
+Buddhism had not come in so soon, that the ordinary features of a
+religion, dogmatic and ethical codes, would have been developed. In a
+word, the Kami no Michi, or religion of the islanders in prehistoric
+times before the rise of Mikadoism, must be carefully distinguished from
+the politico-ecclesiasticism which the system called Shintō reveals
+and demands. The early religion, first in the hands of politicians and
+later under the pens and voices of writers and teachers at the Imperial
+Court, became something very different from its original form. As surely
+as Kōbō later captured Shintō, making material for Buddhism out
+of it and overlaying it in Riyōbu, so the Yamato men made political
+capital out of their own religion and that of the subject tribes. The
+divine sovereign of Japan and his political church did exactly what the
+state churches of Europe, both pagan and Christian, have done before and
+since the Christian era.
+
+Further, in studying the "Kojiki," we must remember that the sacred
+writings sprang out of the religion, and that the system was not an
+evolution from the book. Customs, ritual, faith and prayer existed long
+before they were written about or recorded in ink. Moreover, the
+philosophy came later than the practice, the deeds before the myths, and
+the joy and terror of the visible universe before the cosmogony or
+theogony, while the book-preface was probably written last of all.
+
+The sun was first, and then came the wonder, admiration and worship of
+men. The personification and pedigree of the sun were late figments. To
+connect their ancestors with the sun-goddess and the heavenly gods, was
+a still later enterprise of the "Mikado reverencers" of this earlier
+time. Both the god-way in its early forms and Shintō in its later
+development, were to them political as well as ecclesiastical institutes
+of dogma. Both the religion which they themselves brought and cultivated
+and the aboriginal religion which the Yamato men found, were used as
+engines in the making of Mikadoism, which is the heart of Shintō.
+
+Not until two centuries after the coming of Buddhism and of Asiatic
+civilization did it occur to the Japanese to reduce to writing the
+floating legends and various cycles of tradition which had grown up
+luxuriantly in different parts of "the empire," or to express in the
+Chinese character the prayers and thanksgivings which had been handed
+down orally through many generations. These norito had already assumed
+elegant literary form, rich in poetic merit, long before Chinese writing
+was known. They, far more than the less certain philosophy of the
+"Kojiki," are of undoubted native origin. It is nearly certain that the
+prehistoric Japanese did not borrow the literary forms of the god-way
+from China, as any one familiar with the short, evenly balanced and
+antithetical sentences of Chinese style can see at once. The norito are
+expressions, in the rhythmical and rhetorical form of worship, of the
+articles of faith set forth in the historic summary which we have given.
+We propose to illustrate the dogmas by quoting from the rituals in Mr.
+Satow's masterly translation. The following was addressed to the
+sun-goddess (Amatérasŭ no Mikami, or the
+From-Heaven-Shining-Great-Deity) by the priest-envoy of the priestly
+Nakatomi family sent annually to the temples at Isé, the Mecca of
+Shintō. The _sevran_ referred to in the ritual is the Mikado. This
+word and all the others printed in capitals are so rendered in order to
+express in English the force of "an untranslatable honorific syllable,
+supposed to be originally identical with a root meaning 'true,' but no
+longer possessing that signification." Instead of the word "earth," that
+of "country" (Japan) is used as the correlative of Heaven.
+
+
+Ritual in Praise of the Sun-goddess.
+
+
+    He (the priest-envoy) says: Hear all of you, ministers of the
+    gods and sanctifiers of offerings, the great ritual, the
+    heavenly ritual, declared in the great presence of the
+    From-Heaven-Shining-Great-DEITY, whose praises are fulfilled by
+    setting up the stout pillars of the great HOUSE, and exalting
+    the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven at the sources of
+    the Isuzu River at Uji in Watarai.
+
+    He says: It is the sovran's great WORD. Hear all of you,
+    ministers of the gods and sanctifiers of offerings, the
+    fulfilling of praises on this seventeenth day of the sixth moon
+    of this year, as the morning sun goes up in glory, of the
+    Oho-Nakatomi, who--having abundantly piled up like a range of
+    hills the TRIBUTE thread and sanctified LIQUOR and FOOD
+    presented as of usage by the people of the deity's houses
+    attributed to her in the three departments and in various
+    countries and places, so that she deign to bless his [the
+    Mikado's] LIFE as a long LIFE, and his AGE as a luxuriant AGE
+    eternally and unchangingly as multitudinous piles of rock; may
+    deign to bless the CHILDREN who are born to him, and deigning to
+    cause to flourish the five kinds of grain which the men of a
+    hundred functions and the peasants of the countries in the four
+    quarters of the region under heaven long and peacefully
+    cultivate and eat, and guarding and benefiting them to deign to
+    bless them--is hidden by the great offering-wands.
+
+In the Imperial City the ritual services were very imposing. Those in
+expectation of the harvest were held in the great hall of the
+Jin-Gi-Kuan, or Council of the Gods of Heaven and Earth. The description
+of the ceremonial is given by Mr. Satow.[11] In the prayers offered to
+the sun-goddess for harvest, and in thanksgiving to her for bestowing
+dominion over land and sea upon her descendant the Mikado, occurs the
+following passage:
+
+    I declare in the great presence of the
+    From-Heaven-Shining-Great-DEITY who sits in Isé. Because the
+    sovran great GODDESS bestows on him the countries of the four
+    quarters over which her glance extends, as far as the limit
+    where heaven stands up like a wall, as far as the bounds where
+    the country stands up distant, as far as the limit where the
+    blue clouds spread flat, as far as the bounds where the white
+    clouds lie away fallen--the blue sea plain as far as the limit
+    whither come the prows of the ships without drying poles or
+    paddles, the ships which continuously crowd on the great sea
+    plain, and the road which men travel by land, as far as the
+    limit whither come the horses' hoofs, with the baggage-cords
+    tied tightly, treading the uneven rocks and tree-roots and
+    standing up continuously in a long path without a break--making
+    the narrow countries wide and the hilly countries plain, and as
+    it were drawing together the distant countries by throwing many
+    tons of ropes over them--he will pile up the first-fruits like a
+    range of hills in the great presence of the sovran great
+    GODDESS, and will peacefully enjoy the remainder.
+
+
+Phallic Symbols.
+
+
+To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic
+liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the
+worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather
+our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the
+scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way
+was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the
+Japanese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the
+Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this
+reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so
+that today the altars of both religions exist in the same house, the
+dead ancestors becoming both kami and buddhas.
+
+Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's
+symbols of the god-way, that is of ancestor worship. The extent of the
+phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god-way,
+and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems, tax
+severely the credulity of the Occidental reader. The processes of the
+ancient mind can hardly be understood except by vigorous power of the
+imagination and by sympathy with the primeval man. To the critical
+student, however, who has lived among the people and the temples devoted
+to this worship, who knows how innocent and how truly sincere and even
+reverent and devout in the use of these symbols the worshippers are, the
+matter is measurably clear. He can understand the soil, root and flower
+even while the most strange specimen is abhorrent to his taste, and
+while he is most active in destroying that mental climate in which such
+worship, whether native or exotic, can exist and flourish.
+
+In none of the instances in which I have been eyewitness of the cult, of
+the person officiating or of the emblem, have I had any reason to doubt
+the sincerity of the worshipper. I have never had reason to look upon
+the implements or the system as anything else than the endeavor of man
+to solve the mystery of Being and Power. In making use of these emblems,
+the Japanese worshipper simply professes his faith in such solution as
+has seemed to him attainable.
+
+That this cultus was quite general in pre-Buddhistic Japan, as in many
+other ancient countries, is certain from the proofs of language,
+literature, external monuments and relics which are sufficiently
+numerous. Its organic connection with the god-way may be clearly shown.
+
+To go farther back in point of time than the "Kojiki," we find that even
+before the development of art in very ancient Japan, the male gods were
+represented by a symbol which thus became an image of the deity himself.
+This token was usually made of stone, though often of wood, and in later
+times of terra-cotta, of cast and wrought iron and even of gold.[12]
+
+Under the direct influence of such a cult, other objects appealed to the
+imagination or served the temporary purpose of the worshipper as
+_ex-voto_ to hang up in the shrines, such as the mushroom, awabi,
+various other shells and possibly the fire-drill. It is only in the
+decay of the cultus, in the change of view and centre of thought
+compelled by another religion, that representations of the old emblems
+ally themselves with sensualism or immorality. It is that natural
+degradation of one man's god into another man's devil, which conversion
+must almost of necessity bring, that makes the once revered symbol
+"obscene," and talk about it become, in a descending scale, dirty, foul,
+filthy, nasty. That the Japanese suffer from the moral effluvia of a
+decayed cult which was once as the very vertebral column of the national
+body of religion, is evident to every one who acquaints himself with
+their popular speech and literature.
+
+How closely and directly phallicism is connected with the god-way, and
+why there were so many Shintō temples devoted to this latter cult and
+furnished with symbols, is shown by study of the "Kojiki." The two
+opening sections of this book treat of kami that were in the minds even
+of the makers of the myths little more than mud and water[13]--the mere
+bioplasm of deity. The seven divine generations are "born," but do
+nothing except that they give Izanagi and Izanami a jewelled spear. With
+this pair come differentiation of sex. It is immediately on the
+apparition of the consciousness of sex that motion, action and creation
+begin, and the progress of things visible ensues. The details cannot be
+put into English, but it is enough, besides noting the conversation and
+union of the pair, to say that the term meaning giving birth to, refers
+to inanimate as well as animate things. It is used in reference to the
+islands which compose the archipelago as well as to the various kami
+which seem, in many cases, to be nothing more than the names of things
+or places.
+
+
+Fire-myths and Ritual.
+
+
+Fire is, in a sense, the foundation and first necessity of civilization,
+and it is interesting to study the myths as to the origin of fire, and
+possibly even more interesting to compare the Greek and Japanese
+stories. As we know, old-time popular etymology makes Prometheus the
+fore-thinker and brother of Epimetheus the after-thinker. He is the
+stealer of the fire from heaven, in order to make men share the secret
+of the gods. Comparative philology tells us, however, that the Sanskrit
+_Pramantha_ is a stick that produces fire. The "Kojiki" does indeed
+contain what is probably the later form of the fire-myth about two
+brothers, Prince Fire-Shine and Fire-Fade, which suggests both the later
+Greek myth of the fore- and after-thinker and a tradition of a flood.
+The first, and most probably older, myth in giving the origin of fire
+does it in true Japanese style, with details of parturition. After
+numerous other deities had been born of Izanagi and Izanami, it is said
+"that they gave birth to the Fire-Burning-Swift-Male-Deity, another name
+for whom is the Deity-Fire-Shining-Prince, and another name is the
+Deity-Fire-Shining-Elder." In the other ancient literature this fire-god
+is called Ho-musubi, the Fire-Producer.
+
+Izanami yielded up her life upon the birth of her son, the fire-god; or,
+as the sacred text declares, she "divinely retired"[14] into Hades. From
+her corpse sprang up the pairs of gods of clay, of metal, and other kami
+that possessed the potency of calming or subduing fire, for clay resists
+and water extinguishes. Between the mythical and the liturgical forms of
+the original narrative there is considerable variation.
+
+The Norito entitled the "Quieting of Fire" gives the ritual form of the
+myth. It contains, like so many Norito, less the form of prayer to the
+Fire-Producer than a promise of offerings. Not so much by petitions as
+by the inducements of gifts did the ancient worshippers hope to save the
+palace of the Mikado from the fire-god's wrath. We omit from the text
+those details which are offensive to modern and western taste.
+
+    I declare with the great ritual, the heavenly ritual, which was
+    bestowed on him at the time when, by the WORD of the Sovran's
+    dear progenitor and progenitrix, who divinely remain in the
+    plain of high heaven, they bestowed on him the region under
+    heaven, saying:
+
+    "Let the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness tranquilly rule over the
+    country of fresh spikes which flourishes in the midst of the
+    reed-moor as a peaceful region."
+
+    When ... Izanami ... had deigned to bear the many hundred
+    myriads of gods, she also deigned to bear her dear youngest
+    child of all, the Fire-producer god, ... and said:
+
+    "My dear elder brother's augustness shall rule the upper
+    country; I will rule the lower country," she deigned to hide in
+    the rocks; and having come to the flat hills of darkness, she
+    thought and said: "I have come hither, having borne and left a
+    bad-hearted child in the upper country, ruled over by my
+    illustrious elder brother's augustness," and going back she bore
+    other children. Having borne the water-goddess, the gourd, the
+    river-weed, and the clay-hill maiden, four sorts of things, she
+    taught them with words, and made them to know, saying: "If the
+    heart of this bad-hearted child becomes violent, let the
+    water-goddess take the gourd, and the clay-hill maiden take the
+    river-weed, and pacify him."
+
+    In consequence of this I fulfil his praises, and say that for
+    the things set up, so that he may deign not to be awfully quick
+    of heart in the great place of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S
+    augustness, there are provided bright cloth, glittering cloth,
+    soft cloth, and coarse cloth, and the five kinds of things; as
+    to things which dwell in the blue-sea plain, there are things
+    wide of fin and narrow of fin, down to the weeds of the shore;
+    as to LIQUOR, raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in
+    rows the bellies of the beer-jars, piling the offerings up, even
+    to rice in grain and rice in ear, like a range of hills, I
+    fulfil his praises with the great ritual, the heavenly ritual.
+
+Izanagi, after shedding tears over his consort, whose death was caused
+by the birth of the fire-god, slays the fire-god, and follows her into
+the Root-land, or Hades, whereupon begins another round of wonderful
+stories of the birth of many gods. Among these, though evidently out of
+another cycle of legends, is the story of the birth of the three
+gods--Fire-Shine, Fire-Climax and Fire-Fade, to which we have already
+referred.
+
+The fire-drill mentioned in the "Kojiki" suggests easily the same line
+of thought with the myths of cosmogony and theogony, and it is
+interesting to note that this archaic implement is still used at the
+sacred temples of Isé to produce fire. After the virgin priestesses
+perform the sacred dances in honor of local deities the water for their
+bath is heated by fires kindled by heaps of old _harai_ or amulets made
+from temple-wood bought at the Mecca of Japan. It is even probable that
+the retention of the fire-drill in the service of Shintō is but a
+survival of phallicism.
+
+The liturgy for the pacification of the gods of fire is worth noticing.
+The full form of the ritual, when compared with a legend in the
+"Nihongi," shows that a myth was "partly devised to explain the
+connection of an hereditary family of priests with the god whose shrine
+they served; it is possible that the claim to be directly descended from
+the god had been disputed." The Norito first recites poetically the
+descent of Ninigi, the grandchild of the sun-goddess from heaven, and
+the quieting of the turbulent kami.
+
+    I (the diviner), declare: When by the WORD of the progenitor and
+    progenitrix, who divinely remaining in the plain of high heaven,
+    deigned to make the beginning of things, they divinely deigned
+    to assemble the many hundred myriads of gods in the high city of
+    heaven, and deigned divinely to take counsel in council, saying:
+    "When we cause our Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness to leave
+    heaven's eternal seat, to cleave a path with might through
+    heaven's manifold clouds, and to descend from heaven, with
+    orders tranquilly to rule the country of fresh spikes, which
+    flourishes in the midst of the reed-moor as a peaceful country,
+    what god shall we send first to divinely sweep away, sweep away
+    and subdue the gods who are turbulent in the country of fresh
+    spikes;" all the gods pondered and declared: "You shall send
+    Aménohohi's augustness, and subdue them," declared
+    they. Wherefore they sent him down from heaven, but he did not
+    declare an answer; and having next sent Takémikuma's augustness,
+    he also, obeying his father's words, did not declare an
+    answer. Amé-no-waka-hiko also, whom they sent, did not declare
+    an answer, but immediately perished by the calamity of a bird on
+    high. Wherefore they pondered afresh by the WORD of the heavenly
+    gods, and having deigned to send down from heaven the two
+    pillars of gods, Futsunushi and Takémika-dzuchi's augustness,
+    who having deigned divinely to sweep away, and sweep away, and
+    deigned divinely to soften, and soften the gods who were
+    turbulent, and silenced the rocks, trees, and the least leaf of
+    herbs likewise that had spoken, they caused the Sovran
+    GRANDCHILD'S augustness to descend from heaven.
+
+    I fulfil your praises, saying: As to the OFFERINGS set up, so
+    that the sovran gods who come into the heavenly HOUSE of the
+    Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness, which, after he had fixed upon
+    as a peaceful country--the country of great Yamato where the sun
+    is high, as the centre of the countries of the four quarters
+    bestowed upon him when he was thus sent down from
+    heaven--stoutly planting the HOUSE-pillars on the bottom-most
+    rocks, and exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven,
+    the builders had made for his SHADE from the heavens and SHADE
+    from the sun, and wherein he will tranquilly rule the country as
+    a peaceful country--may, without deigning to be turbulent,
+    deigning to be fierce, and deigning to hurt, knowing, by virtue
+    of their divinity, the things which were begun in the plain of
+    high heaven, deigning to correct with Divine-correcting and
+    Great-correcting, remove hence out to the clean places of the
+    mountain-streams which look far away over the four quarters, and
+    rule them as their own place. Let the Sovran gods tranquilly
+    take with clear HEARTS, as peaceful OFFERINGS and sufficient
+    OFFERINGS the great OFFERINGS which I set up, piling them upon
+    the tables like a range of hills, providing bright cloth,
+    glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse cloth; as a thing to
+    see plain in--a mirror: as things to play with--beads: as things
+    to shoot off with--a bow and arrows: as a thing to strike and
+    cut with--a sword: as a thing which gallops out--a horse; as to
+    LIQUOR--raising high the beer-jars, filling and ranging in rows
+    the bellies of the beer-jars, with grains of rice and ears; as
+    to the things which dwell in the hills--things soft of hair, and
+    things rough of hair; as to the things which grow in the great
+    field plain--sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to the things
+    which dwell in the blue sea plain--things broad of fin and
+    things narrow of fin, down to weeds of the offing and weeds of
+    the shore, and without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be
+    fierce, and deigning to hurt, remove out to the wide and clean
+    places of the mountain-streams, and by virtue of their divinity
+    be tranquil.
+
+In this ritual we find the origin of evil attributed to wicked kami, or
+gods. To get rid of them is to be free from the troubles of life. The
+object of the ritual worship was to compel the turbulent and malevolent
+kami to go out from human habitations to the mountain solitudes and rest
+there. The dogmas of both god-possession and of the power of exorcism
+were not, however, held exclusively by the high functionaries of the
+official religion, but were part of the faith of all the people. To this
+day both the tenets and the practices are popular under various forms.
+
+Besides the twenty-seven Norito which are found in the Yengishiki,
+published at the opening of the tenth century, there are many others
+composed for single occasions. Examples of these are found in the
+Government Gazettes. One celebrates the Mikado's removal from Kiōto
+to Tōkiō, another was written and recited to add greater solemnity
+to the oath which he took to govern according to modern liberal
+principles and to form a national parliament. To those Japanese whose
+first idea of duty is loyalty to the emperor, Shintō thus becomes a
+system of patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion. Even Christian
+natives of Japan can use much of the phraseology of the Norito while
+addressing their petitions on behalf of their chief magistrate to the
+King of kings.
+
+The primitive worship of the sun, of light, of fire, has left its
+impress upon the language and in vernacular art and customs. Among
+scores of derivations of Japanese words (often more pleasing than
+scientific), in which the general term _hi_ enters, is that which finds
+in the word for man, _hito_, the meaning of "light-bearer." On the face
+of the broad terminal tiles of the house-roofs, we still see moulded the
+river-weed, with which the Clay-Hill Maiden pacified the Fire-God. On
+the frontlet of the warrior's helmet, in the old days of arrow and
+armor, glittered in brass on either side of his crest the same symbol of
+power and victory.
+
+Having glanced at the ritual of Shintō, let us now examine the
+teachings of its oldest book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS
+
+    "Japan is not a land where men need pray,
+      For 'tis itself divine:
+    Yet do I lift my voice in prayer..."
+
+      Hitomaro, + A.D. 737.
+
+    "Now when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were
+    not yet manifest, and there was naught named, naught done, who
+    could know its shape? Nevertheless Heaven and Earth first
+    parted, and the three Deities performed the commencement of
+    creation; the Passive and Active Essences then developed, and
+    the Two Spirits became the ancestors of all things."--Preface of
+    Yasumarō (A.D. 712) to the "Kojiki."
+
+    "These, the 'Kojiki' and 'Nihongi' are their [the Shintōists]
+    canonical books, ... and almost their every word is considered
+    undeniable truth."
+
+    "The Shintō faith teaches that God inspired the foundation of
+    the Mikadoate, and that it is therefore sacred."--Kaburagi.
+
+    "We now reverently make our prayer to Them [Our Imperial
+    Ancestors] and to our Illustrious Father [Komei, + 1867], and
+    implore the help of Their Sacred Spirits, and make to Them
+    solemn oath never at this time nor in the future to fail to be
+    an example to Our subjects in the observance of the Law
+    [Constitution] hereby established."--Imperial oath of the
+    Emperor Mutsuhito in the sanctuary in the Imperial Palace,
+    Tōkiō, February 11, 1889.
+
+    "Shintō is not our national religion. A faith existed before
+    it, which was its source. It grew out of superstitious teaching
+    and mistaken tradition. The history of the rise of Shintō
+    proves this."--T. Matsugami.
+
+    "Makoto wo moté KAMI NO MICHI wo oshiyuréba nari." (Thou
+    teachest the way of God in truth.)--Mark xii. 14.
+
+    "Ware wa Micni nuri, Mukoto nari, Inochi nari."--John
+    xiv. 6.--The New Testament in Japanese.
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS
+
+"The Kojiki" mid its Myths of Cosmogony.
+
+
+As to the origin of the "Kojiki," we have in the closing sentences of
+the author's preface the sole documentary authority explaining its scope
+and certifying to its authenticity. Briefly the statement is this: The
+"Heavenly Sovereign" or Mikado, Temmu (A.D. 673-686), lamenting that the
+records possessed by the chief families were "mostly amplified by empty
+falsehoods," and fearing that "the grand foundation of the monarchy"
+would be destroyed, resolved to preserve the truth. He therefore had the
+records carefully examined, compared, and their errors eliminated. There
+happened to be in his household a man of marvellous memory, named Hiyéda
+Aré, who could repeat, without mistake, the contents of any document he
+had ever seen, and never forgot anything which he had heard. This person
+was duly instructed in the genuine traditions and old language of former
+ages, and made to repeat them until he had the whole by heart. "Before
+the undertaking was completed," which probably means before it could be
+committed to writing, "the emperor died, and for twenty-five years Aré's
+memory was the sole depository of what afterwards received the title of
+'Kojiki.' ... At the end of this interval the Empress Gemmiō ordered
+Yasumarō to write it down from the mouth of Aré, which accounts for
+the completion of the manuscript in so short a time as four months and a
+half,"[1] in A.D. 712.
+
+It is from the "Kojiki" that we obtain most of our ideas of ancient life
+and thought. The "Nihongi," or Chronicles of Japan, expressed very
+largely in Chinese phrases and with Chinese technical and philosophical
+terms, further assists us to get a measurably correct idea of what is
+called The Divine Age. Of the two books, however, the "Kojiki" is much
+more valuable as a true record, because, though rude in style and
+exceedingly naïve in expression, and by no means free from Chinese
+thoughts and phrases, it is marked by a genuinely Japanese cast of
+thought and method of composition. Instead of the terse, carefully
+measured, balanced, and antithetical sentences of correct Chinese, those
+of the "Kojiki" are long and involved, and without much logical
+connection. The "Kojiki" contains the real notions, feelings, and
+beliefs of Japanese who lived before the eighth century.
+
+Remembering that prefaces are, like porticos, usually added last of all,
+we find that in the beginning all things were in chaos. Heaven and earth
+were not separated. The world substance floated in the cosmic mass, like
+oil on water or a fish in the sea. Motion in some way began. The
+ethereal portions sublimed and formed the heavens; the heavier residuum
+became the present earth. In the plain of high heaven, when the heaven
+and earth began, were born three kami who "hid their bodies," that is,
+passed away or died. Out of the warm mould of the earth a germ sprouted,
+and from this were born two kami, who also were born alone, and died.
+After these heavenly kami came forth what are called the seven divine
+generations, or line of seven kami.[2]
+
+To express the opening lines of the "Kojiki" in terms of our own speech
+and in the moulds of Western thought, we may say that matter existed
+before mind and the gods came forth, as it were, by spontaneous
+evolution. The first thing that appeared out of the warm earth-muck was
+like a rush-sprout, and this became a kami, or god. From this being came
+forth others, which also produced beings, until there were perfect
+bodies, sex and differentiation of powers. The "Nihongi," however, not
+only gives a different view of this evolution basing it upon the dualism
+of Chinese philosophy--that is, of the active and passive
+principles--and uses Chinese technical terminology, but gives lists of
+kami that differ notably from those in the "Kojiki." This latter fact
+seems to have escaped the attention of those who write freely about what
+they imagine to be the early religion of the Japanese.[3]
+
+After this introduction, in which "Dualities, Trinities, and Supreme
+Deities" have been discovered by writers unfamiliar with the genius of
+the Japanese language, there follows an account of the creation of the
+habitable earth by Izanami and Izanagi, whose names mean the
+Male-Who-Invites and the Female-Who-Invites. The heavenly kami commanded
+these two gods to consolidate and give birth to the drifting land.
+Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, the male plunged his
+jewel-spear into the unstable waters beneath, stirring them until they
+gurgled and congealed. When he drew forth the spear, the drops trickling
+from its point formed an island, ever afterward called Onokoro-jima, or
+the Island of the Congealed Drop. Upon this island they descended. The
+creative pair, or divine man and woman, now separated to make a journey
+round the island, the male to the left, the female to the right. At
+their meeting the female spoke first: "How joyful to meet a lovely man!"
+The male, offended that the woman had spoken first, required the circuit
+to be repeated. On their second meeting, the man cried out: "How joyful
+to meet a lovely woman!" This island on which they had descended was the
+first of several which they brought into being. In poetry it is the
+Island of the Congealed Drop. In common geography it is identified as
+Awaji, at the entrance of the Inland Sea. Thence followed the creation
+of the other visible objects in nature.
+
+Izanagi's Visit to Hades and Results.
+
+
+After the birth of the god of fire, which nearly destroyed the mother's
+life, Izanami fled to the land of roots or of darkness, that is into
+Hades. Izanagi, like a true Orpheus, followed his Eurydice and beseeched
+her to come back to earth to complete with him the work of creation. She
+parleyed so long with the gods of the underworld that her consort,
+breaking off a tooth of his comb, lighted it as a torch and rushed in.
+He found her putrefied body, out of which had been born the eight gods
+of thunder. Horrified at the awful foulness which he found in the
+underworld, he rushed up and out, pursued by the Ugly-Female-of-Hades.
+By artifices that bear a wonderful resemblance to those in Teutonic
+fairy tales, he blocked up the way. His head-dress, thrown at his
+pursuer, turned into grapes which she stopped to eat. The teeth of his
+comb sprouted into a bamboo forest, which detained her. The three
+peaches were used as projectiles; his staff which stuck up in the ground
+became a gate, and a mighty rock was used to block up the narrow pass
+through the mountains. Each of these objects has its relation to
+place-names in Idzumo or to superstitions that are still extant. The
+peaches and the rocks became gods, and on this incident, by which the
+beings in Hades were prevented from advance and successful mischief on
+earth, is founded one of the norito which Mr. Satow gives in condensed
+form. The names of the three gods,[4] Youth and Maiden of the Many
+Road-forkings, and Come-no-further Gate, are expressed and invoked in
+the praises bestowed on them in connection with the offerings.
+
+    He (the priest) says: I declare in the presence of the sovran
+    gods, who like innumerable piles of rocks sit closing up the way
+    in the multitudinous road-forkings.... I fulfil your praises by
+    declaring your NAMES, Youth and Maiden of the Many Road-forkings
+    and Come-no-further Gate, and say: for the OFFERINGS set up that
+    you may prevent [the servants of the monarch] from being
+    poisoned by and agreeing with the things which shall come
+    roughly-acting and hating from the Root-country, the
+    Bottom-country, that you may guard the bottom (of the gate) when
+    they come from the bottom, guard the top when they come from the
+    top, guarding with nightly guard and with daily guard, and may
+    praise them--peacefully take the great OFFERINGS which are set
+    up by piling them up like a range of hills, that is to say,
+    providing bright cloth, etc., ... and sitting closing-up the way
+    like innumerable piles of rock in the multitudinous
+    road-forkings, deign to praise the sovran GRANDCHILD'S
+    augustness eternally and unchangingly, and to bless his age as a
+    luxuriant AGE.
+
+Retreating to another part of the world--that is, into southwestern
+Japan--Izanami purified himself by bathing in a stream. While washing
+himself,[5] many kami were borne from the rinsings of his person, one of
+them, from the left eye (the left in Japanese is always the honorable
+side), being the far-shining or heaven-illuminating kami, whose name,
+Amatérasŭ, or Heaven-shiner, is usually translated "The Sun-goddess."
+This personage is the centre of the system of Shintō. The creation of
+gods by a process of cleansing has had a powerful effect on the
+Japanese, who usually associate cleanliness of the body (less moral,
+than physical) with godliness.
+
+It is not necessary to detail further the various stories which make up
+the Japanese mythology. Some of these are lovely and beautiful, but
+others are horrible and disgusting, while the dominant note throughout
+is abundant filthiness.
+
+Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world such good
+service in translating into English the whole of the Kojiki, and
+furnishing it with learned commentary and notes, has well said:
+
+    "The shocking obscenity of word and act to which the 'Records'
+    bear witness is another ugly feature which must not quite be
+    passed over in silence. It is true that decency, as we
+    understand it, is a very modern product, and it is not to be
+    looked for in any society in the barbarous stage. At the same
+    time, the whole range of literature might perhaps be ransacked
+    for a parallel to the naïve filthiness of the passage forming
+    Sec. IV. of the following translation, or to the extraordinary
+    topic which the hero Yamato-Také and his mistress Miyadzŭ are
+    made to select as the theme of poetical repartee. One passage
+    likewise would lead us to suppose that the most beastly crimes
+    were commonly committed."[6]
+
+Indeed, it happens in several instances that the thread by which the
+marvellous patchwork of unrelated and varying local myths is joined
+together, is an indecent love story.
+
+A thousand years after the traditions of the Kojiki had been committed
+to writing, and orthodox Shintō commentators had learned science from
+the Dutch at Nagasaki, the stirring of the world mud by Izanagi's
+spear[7] was gravely asserted to be the cause of the diurnal revolution
+of the earth upon its axis, the point of the axis being still the jewel
+spear.[8] Onogoro-jima, or the Island of the Congealed Drop, was
+formerly at the north pole,[9] but subsequently removed to its present
+position. How this happened is not told.
+
+
+Life in Japan During the Divine Age.
+
+
+Now that the Kojiki is in English and all may read it, we can clearly
+see who and what were the Japanese in the ages before letters and
+Chinese civilization; for these stories of the kami are but legendary
+and mythical accounts of men and women. One could scarcely recognize in
+the islanders of eleven or twelve hundred years ago, the polished,
+brilliant, and interesting people of to-day. Yet truth compels us to say
+that social morals in Dai Nippon, even with telegraphs and railways, are
+still more like those of ancient days than readers of rhapsodies by
+summer tourists might suppose. These early Japanese, indeed, were
+possibly in a stage of civilization somewhat above that of the most
+advanced of the American Indians when first met by Europeans, for they
+had a rude system of agriculture and knew the art of fashioning iron
+into tools and weapons. Still, they were very barbarous, certainly as
+much so as our Germanic "forbears." They lived in huts. They were
+without writing or commerce, and were able to count only to ten.[10]
+Their cruelty was as revolting as that of the savage tribes of America.
+The family was in its most rudimentary stage, with little or no
+restraint upon the passions of men. Children of the same father, but not
+of the same mother, could intermarry. The instances of men marrying
+their sisters or aunts were very common. There was no art, unless the
+making of clay images, to take the place of the living human victims
+buried up to their necks in earth and left to starve on the death of
+their masters,[11] may be designated as such.
+
+The Magatama, or curved jewels, being made of ground and polished stone
+may be called jewelry; but since some of these prehistoric ornaments dug
+up from the ground are found to be of jade, a mineral which does not
+occur in Japan, it is evident that some of these tokens of culture came
+from the continent. Many other things produced by more or less skilled
+mechanics, the origin of which is poetically recounted in the story of
+the dancing of Uzumé before the cave in which the Sun-goddess had hid
+herself,[12] were of continental origin. Evidently these men of the
+god-way had passed the "stone age," and, probably without going through
+the intermediate bronze age, were artificers of iron and skilled in its
+use. Most of the names of metals and of many other substances, and the
+terms used in the arts and sciences, betray by their tell-tale etymology
+their Chinese origin. Indeed, it is evident that some of the leading
+kami were born in Korea or Tartary.
+
+Then as now the people in Japan loved nature, and were quickly sensitive
+to her beauty and profoundly in sympathy with her varied phenomena. In
+the mediæval ages, Japanese Wordsworths are not unknown.[13] Sincerely
+they loved nature, and in some respects they seemed to understand the
+character of their country far better than the alien does or can. Though
+a land of wonderful beauty, the Country of Peaceful Shores is enfolded
+in powers of awful destructiveness. With the earthquake and volcano, the
+typhoon and the tidal wave, beauty and horror alternate with a swiftness
+that is amazing.
+
+Probably in no portion of the earth are the people and the land more
+like each other or apparently better acquainted with each other. Nowhere
+are thought and speech more reflective of the features of the landscape.
+Even after ten centuries, the Japanese are, in temperament, what the
+Kojiki reveals them to have been in their early simplicity. Indeed, just
+as the modern Frenchman, down beneath his outward environments and his
+habiliments cut and fitted yesterday, is intrinsically the same Gaul
+whom Julius Cæsar described eighteen hundred years ago, so the gentleman
+of Tōkiō or Kiōto is, in his mental make-up, wonderfully like
+his ancestors described by the first Japanese Stanley, who shed the
+light of letters upon the night of unlettered Japan and darkest Dai
+Nippon.
+
+The Kojiki reveals to us, likewise, the childlike religious ideas of the
+islanders. Heaven lay, not about but above them in their infancy, yet
+not far away. Although in the "Notices," it is "the high plain of
+heaven," yet it is just over their heads, and once a single pillar
+joined it and the earth. Later, the idea was, that it was held up by the
+pillar-gods of the wind, and to them norito were recited. "The great
+plain of the blue sea" and "the land of luxuriant reeds" form "the
+world"--which means Japan. The gods are only men of prowess or renown. A
+kami is anything wonderful--god or man, rock or stream, bird or snake,
+whatever is surprising, sensational, or phenomenal, as in the little
+child's world of to-day. There is no sharp line dividing gods from men,
+the natural from the supernatural, even as with the normal uneducated
+Japanese of to-day. As for the kami or gods, they have all sorts of
+characters; some of them being rude and ill-mannered, many of them
+beastly and filthy, while others are noble and benevolent. The
+attributes of moral purity, wisdom and holiness, cannot be, and in the
+original writings are not, ascribed to them; but they were strong and
+had power. In so far as they had power they were called kami or gods,
+whether celestial or terrestrial. Among the kami--the one term under
+which they are all included--there were heavenly bodies, mountains,
+rivers, trees, rocks and animals, because those also were supposed to
+possess force, or at least some kind of influence for good or evil. Even
+peaches, as we have seen, when transformed into rocks, became gods.[14]
+
+That there was worship with awe, reverence, and fear, and that the
+festivals and sacrifices had two purposes, one of propitiating the
+offended Kami and the other of purifying the worshipper, may be seen in
+the norito or liturgies, some of which are exceedingly beautiful.[15] In
+them the feelings of the gods are often referred to. Sometimes their
+characters are described. Yet one looks in vain in either the "Notices,"
+poems, or liturgies for anything definite in regard to these deities, or
+concerning morals or doctrines to be held as dogmas. The first gods come
+into existence after evolution of the matter of which they are composed
+has taken place. The later gods are sometimes able to tell who are their
+progenitors, sometimes not. They live and fight, eat and drink, and give
+vent to their appetites and passions, and then they die; but exactly
+what becomes of them after they die, the record does not state. Some are
+in heaven, some on the earth, some in Hades. The underworld of the first
+cycle of tradition is by no means that of the second.[16] Some of the
+kami are in the water, or on the water, or in the air. As for man, there
+is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or
+what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with
+the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and
+the Iroquois believed in.
+
+It would task the keenest and ablest Shintōist to deduce or construct
+a system of theology, or of ethics, or of anthropology from the mass of
+tradition so full of gaps and discord as that found in the Kojiki, and
+none has done it. Nor do the inaccurate, distorted, and often almost
+wholly factitious translations, so-called, of French and other writers,
+who make versions which hit the taste of their occidental readers far
+better than they express the truth, yield the desired information. Like
+the end strands of a new spider's web, the lines of information on most
+vital points are still "in the air."
+
+
+The Ethics of the God-way.
+
+
+There are no codes of morals inculcated in the god-way, for even its
+modern revivalists and exponents consider that morals are the invention
+of wicked people like the Chinese; while the ancient Japanese were pure
+in thought and act. They revered the gods and obeyed the Mikado, and
+that was the chief end of man, in those ancient times when Japan was the
+world and Heaven was just above the earth. Not exactly on Paul's
+principle of "where there is no law there is no transgression," but
+utterly scouting the idea that formulated ethics were necessary for
+these pure-minded people, the modern revivalists of Shintō teach that
+all that is "of faith" now is to revere the gods, keep the heart pure,
+and follow its dictates.[17] The naïveté of the representatives of
+Shintō at Chicago in A.D. 1893, was almost as great as that of the
+revivalists who wrote when Japan was a hermit nation.
+
+The very fact that there was no moral commandments, not even of loyalty
+or obedience such as Confucianism afterward promulgated and formulated,
+is proof to the modern Shintōist that the primeval Japanese were pure
+and holy; they did right, naturally, and hence he does not hesitate to
+call Japan, the Land of the Gods, the Country of the Holy Spirits, the
+Region Between Heaven and Earth, the Island of the Congealed Drop, the
+Sun's Nest, the Princess Country, the Land of Great Peace, the Land of
+Great Gentleness, the Mikado's Empire, the Country ruled by a Theocratic
+Dynasty. He considers that only with the vice brought over from the
+Continent of Asia were ethics both imported and made necessary.[18]
+
+All this has been solemnly taught by famous Shintō scholars of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is still practically
+promulgated in the polemic Shintō literature of to-day, even after
+the Kojiki has been studied and translated into European languages. The
+Kojiki shows that whatever the men may have been or done, the gods were
+abominably obscene, and both in word and deed were foul and revolting,
+utterly opposed in act to those reserves of modesty or standards of
+shame that exist even among the cultivated Japanese to-day.[19] Even
+among the Ainos, whom the Japanese look upon as savages, there is still
+much of the obscenity of speech which belongs to all society[20] in a
+state of barbarism; but it has been proved that genuine modesty is a
+characteristic of the Aino women.[21] A literal English translation of
+the Kojiki, however, requires an abundant use of Latin in order to
+protect it from the grasp of the law in English-speaking Christendom. In
+Chamberlain's version, the numerous cesspools are thus filled up with a
+dead language, and the road is constructed for the reader, who likes the
+language of Edmund Spencer, of William Tyndale and of John Ruskin kept
+unsoiled.
+
+The cruelty which marks this early stage shows that though moral codes
+did not exist, the Buddhist and Confucian missionary were for Japan
+necessities of the first order. Comparing the result to-day with the
+state of things in the early times, one must award high praise to
+Buddhism that it has made the Japanese gentle, and to Confucianism that
+it has taught the proprieties of life, so that the polished Japanese
+gentleman, as to courtesy, is in many respects the peer and at some
+external points the superior, of his European confrère.
+
+Another fact, made repulsively clear, about life in ancient Japan, is
+that the high ideals of truth and honor, characteristic at least of the
+Samurai of modern times, were utterly unknown in the days of the kami.
+Treachery was common. Instances multiply on the pages of the Kojiki
+where friend betrayed friend. The most sacred relations of life were
+violated. Altogether these were the darkest ages of Japan, though, as
+among the red men of America, there were not wanting many noble examples
+of stoical endurance, of courage, and of power nobly exerted for the
+benefit of others.
+
+
+The Rise of Mikadoism.
+
+
+Nevertheless we must not forget that the men of the early age of the
+Kami no Michi conquered the aborigines by superior dogmas and fetiches,
+as well as by superior weapons. The entrance of these heroes, invaders
+from the highlands of the Asian continent, by way of Korea, was
+relatively a very influential factor of progress, though not so
+important as was the Aryan descent upon India, or the Norman invasion of
+England, for the aboriginal tribes were vastly lower in the scale of
+humanity than their subduers. Where they found savagery they introduced
+barbarism, which, though unlettered and based on the sword, was a vast
+improvement over what may be called the geological state of man, in
+which he is but slightly raised above the brutes.
+
+For the proofs from the shell heaps, combined with the reflected
+evidences of folk-lore, show, that cannibalism[22] was common in the
+early ages, and that among the aboriginal hill tribes it lingered after
+the inhabitants of the plain and shore had been subdued. The conquerors,
+who made themselves paramount over the other tribes and who developed
+the Kami religion, abolished this relic of savagery, and gave order
+where there had been chronic war. Another thing that impresses us
+because of its abundant illustrations, is the prevalence of human
+sacrifices. The very ancient folk-lore shows that beautiful maidens were
+demanded by the "sea-gods" in propitiation, or were devoured by the
+"dragons." These human victims were either chosen or voluntarily
+offered, and in some instances were rescued from their fate by
+chivalrous heroes[23] from among the invaders.
+
+These gods of the sea, who anciently were propitiated by the sacrifice
+of human beings, are the same to whom Japanese sailors still pray,
+despite their Buddhism. The title of the efficient victims was
+_hitoga-shira_, or human pillars. Instances of this ceremony, where men
+were lowered into the water and drowned in order to make the sure
+foundation for bridges, piers or sea-walls, or where they were buried
+alive in the earth in order to lay the right bases for walls or castles,
+are quite numerous, and most of the local histories contain specific
+traditions.[24] These traditions, now transfigured, still survive in
+customs that are as beautiful as they are harmless. To reformers of
+pre-Buddhistic days, belongs the credit of the abolition of jun-shi, or
+dying with the master by burial alive, as well as of the sacrifice to
+dragons and sea-gods.
+
+Strange as it may seem, before Buddhism captured and made use of
+Shintō for its own purposes (just as it stands ready to-day to absorb
+Christianity by making Jesus one of the Palestinian avatars of the
+Buddha), the house or tribe of Yamato, with its claim to descent from
+the heavenly gods, and with its Mikado or god-ruler, had given to the
+Buddhists a precedent and potent example. Shintō, as a state religion
+or union of politics and piety, with its system of shrines and
+festivals, and in short the whole Kami no Michi, or Shintō as we know
+it, from the sixth to the eighth century, was in itself (in part at
+least), a case of the absorption of one religion by another.
+
+In short, the Mikado tribe or Yamato clan did, in reality, capture the
+aboriginal religion, and turn it into a great political machine. They
+attempted syncretism and succeeded in their scheme. They added to their
+own stock of dogma and fetich that of the natives. Only, while
+recognizing the (earth) gods of the aborigines they proclaimed the
+superiority of the Mikado as representative and vicegerent of Heaven,
+and demanded that even the gods of the earth, mountain, river, wind, and
+thunder and lightning should obey him. Not content, however, with
+absorbing and corrupting for political purposes the primitive faith of
+the aborigines, the invaders corrupted their own religion by carrying
+the dogma of the divinity and infallibility of the Mikado too far.
+Stopping short of no absurdity, they declared their chief greater even
+than the heavenly gods, and made their religion centre in him rather
+than in his alleged heavenly ancestors, or "heaven." In the interest of
+politics and conquest, and for the sake of maintaining the prestige of
+their tribe and clan, these "Mikado-reverencers" of early ages advanced
+from dogma to dogma, until their leader was virtually chief god in a
+great pantheon.
+
+A critical native Japanese, student of the Kojiki and of the early
+writings, Professor Kumi, formerly of the Imperial University in
+Tōkiō, has brought to light abundant evidence to show that the
+aboriginal religion found by the Yamato conquerors was markedly
+different at many vital points, from that which was long afterward
+called Shintō.
+
+If the view of recent students of anthropology be correct, that the
+elements dominating the population in ancient Japan were in the south,
+Malay; in the north, Aino; and in the central region, or that occupied
+by the Yamato men, Korean; then, these continental invaders may have
+been worshippers of Heaven and have possessed a religion closely akin to
+that of ancient China with its monotheism. It is very probable also that
+they came into contact with tribes or colonies of their
+fellow-continentals from Asia. These tribes, hunters, fishermen, or rude
+agriculturists--who had previously reached Japan--practised many rites
+and ceremonies which were much like those of the new invaders. It is
+certain also, as we have seen, that the Yamato men made ultimate
+conquest and unification of all the islanders, not merely by the
+superiority of their valor and of their weapons of iron, but also by
+their dogmas. After success in battle, and the first beginnings of rude
+government, they taught their conquered subjects or over-awed vassals,
+that they were the descendants of the heavenly gods; that their
+ancestors had come down from heaven; find that their chief or Mikado was
+a god. According to the same dogmatics, the aborigines were descendants
+of the earth-born gods, and as such must obey the descendants of the
+heavenly gods, and their vicegerent upon the earth, the Mikado.
+
+
+Purification of Offences.
+
+
+These heaven-descended Yamato people were in the main agriculturists,
+though of a rude order, while the outlying tribes were mostly hunters
+and fishermen; and many of the rituals show the class of crimes which
+nomads, or men of unsettled life, would naturally commit against their
+neighbors living in comparatively settled order. It is to be noted that
+in the god-way the origin of evil is to be ascribed to evil gods. These
+kami pollute, and pollution is iniquity. From this iniquity the people
+are to be purged by the gods of purification, to whom offerings are duly
+made.
+
+He who would understand the passion for cleanliness which characterizes
+the Japanese must look for its source in their ancient religion. The
+root idea of the word _tsumi_, which Mr. Satow translated as "offence,"
+is that of pollution. On this basis, of things pure and things defiling,
+the ancient teachers of Shintō made their classification of what was
+good and what was bad. From the impression of what was repulsive arose
+the idea of guilt.
+
+In rituals translated by Mr. Satow, the list of offences is given and
+the defilements are to be removed to the nether world, or, in common
+fact, the polluted objects and the expiatory sacrifices are to be thrown
+into the rivers and thence carried to the sea, where they fall to the
+bottom of the earth. The following norito clearly shows this.
+Furthermore, as Mr. Satow, the translator, points out, this ritual
+contains the germ of criminal law, a whole code of which might have been
+evolved and formulated under Shintō, had not Buddhism arrested its
+growth.
+
+    Amongst the various sorts of offences which may be committed in
+    ignorance or out of negligence by heaven's increasing people,
+    who shall come into being in the country, which the Sovran
+    GRANDCHILD'S augustness, hiding in the fresh RESIDENCE, built by
+    stoutly planting the HOUSE-pillars on the bottom-most rocks, and
+    exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven, as his
+    SHADE from the heavens and SHADE from the sun, shall tranquilly
+    ruin as a peaceful country, namely, the country of great Yamato,
+    where the sun is soon on high, which he fixed upon as a peaceful
+    country, as the centre of the countries of the four quarters
+    thus bestowed upon him--breaking the ridges, filling up
+    water-courses, opening sluices, double-sowing, planting stakes,
+    flaying alive, flaying backwards, and dunging; many of such
+    offences are distinguished as heavenly offences, and as earthly
+    offences; cutting living flesh, cutting dead flesh, leprosy,
+    proud-flesh, ... calamities of crawling worms, calamities of a
+    god on high, calamities of birds on high, the offences of
+    killing beasts and using incantations; many of such offences may
+    be disclosed.
+
+    When he has thus repeated it, the heavenly gods will push open
+    heaven's eternal gates, and cleaving a path with might through
+    the manifold clouds of heaven, will hear; and the country gods,
+    ascending to the tops of the high mountains, and to the tops of
+    the low hills, and tearing asunder the mists of the high
+    mountains and the mists of the low hills, will hear.
+
+    And when they have thus heard, the
+    Maiden-of-Descent-into-the-Current, who dwells in the current of
+    the swift stream which boils down the ravines from the tops of
+    the high mountains, and the tops of the low hills, shall carry
+    out to the great sea plain the offences which are cleared away
+    and purified, so that there be no remaining offence; like as
+    Shinato's wind blows apart the manifold clouds of heaven, as the
+    morning wind and the evening wind blow away the morning mist and
+    the evening mist, as the great ships which lie on the shore of a
+    great port loosen their prows, and loosen their sterns to push
+    out into the great sea-plain; as the trunks of the forest trees,
+    far and near, are cleared away by the sharp sickle, the sickle
+    forged with fire: so that there ceased to be any offence called
+    an offence in the court of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness to
+    begin with, and in the countries of the four quarters of the
+    region under heaven.
+
+    And when she thus carries them out and away, the deity called
+    the Maiden-of-the-Swift-cleansing, who dwells in the
+    multitudinous meetings of the sea waters, the multitudinous
+    currents of rough sea-waters shall gulp them down.
+
+    And when she has thus gulped them down, the lord of the
+    Breath-blowing-place, who dwells in the Breath-blowing-place,
+    shall utterly blow them away with his breath to the
+    Root-country, the Bottom-country.
+
+    And when he has thus blown them away, the deity called the
+    Maiden-of-Swift-Banishment, who dwells in the Root-country, the
+    Bottom-country, shall completely banish them, and get rid of
+    them.
+
+    And when they have thus been got rid of, there shall from this
+    day onwards be no offence which is called offence, with regard
+    to the men of the offices who serve in the court of the Sovran,
+    nor in the four quarters of the region under heaven.
+
+Then the high priest says:
+
+    Hear all of you how he leads forth the horse, as a thing that
+    erects its ears towards the plain of high heaven, and deigns to
+    sweep away and purify with the general purification, as the
+    evening sun goes down on the last day of the watery moon of this
+    year.
+
+    O diviners of the four countries, take (the sacrifices) away out
+    to the river highway, and sweep them away.
+
+
+Mikadoism Usurps the Primitive God-way.
+
+
+A further proof of the transformation of the primitive god-way in the
+interest of practical politics, is shown by Professor Kumi in the fact
+that some of the festivals now directly connected with the Mikado's
+house, and even in his honor, were originally festivals with which he
+had nothing to do, except as leader of the worship, for the honor was
+paid to Heaven, and not to his ancestors. Professor Kumi maintains that
+the thanksgivings of the court were originally to Heaven itself, and not
+in honor of Amatérasŭ, the sun-goddess, as is now popularly believed.
+It is related in the Kojiki that Amatérasŭ herself celebrated the
+feast of Niinamé. So also, the temple of Isé, the Mecca of Shintō,
+and the Holy shrine in the imperial palace were originally temples for
+the worship of Heaven. The inferior gods of earthly origin form no part
+of primitive Shintō.
+
+Not one of the first Mikados was deified after death, the deification of
+emperors dating from the corruption which Shintō underwent after the
+introduction of Buddhism. Only by degrees was the ruler of the country
+given a place in the worship, and this connection was made by
+attributing to him descent from Heaven. In a word, the contention of
+Professor Kumi is, that the ancient religion of at least a portion of
+the Japanese and especially of those in central Japan, was a rude sort
+of monotheism, coupled, as in ancient China, with the worship of
+subordinate spirits.
+
+It is needless to say that such applications of the higher criticism to
+the ancient sacred documents proved to be no safer for the applier than
+if he had lived in the United States of America. The orthodox
+Shintōists were roused to wrath and charged the learned critic with
+"degrading Shintō to a mere branch of Christianity." The government,
+which, despite its Constitution and Diet, is in the eyes of the people
+really based on the myths of the Kojiki, quickly put the professor on
+the retired list.[25]
+
+It is probably correct to say that the arguments adduced by Professor
+Kumi, confirm our theory of the substitution in the simple god-way, of
+Mikadoism, the centre of the primitive worship being the sun and nature
+rather than Heaven.
+
+Between the ancient Chinese religion with its abstract idea of Heaven
+and its personal term for God, and the more poetic and childlike system
+of the god-way, there seems to be as much difference as there is
+racially between the people of the Middle Kingdom and those of the Land
+Where the Day Begins. Indeed, the entrance of Chinese philosophical and
+abstract ideas seemed to paralyze the Japanese imagination. Not only did
+myth-making, on its purely æsthetic and non-utilitarian side cease
+almost at once, but such myths as were formed were for direct business
+purposes and with a transparent tendency. Henceforth, in the domain of
+imagination the Japanese intellect busied itself with assimilating or
+re-working the abundant material imported by Buddhism.
+
+
+Ancient Customs and Usages.
+
+
+In the ancient god-way the temple or shrine was called a miya. After the
+advent of Buddhism the keepers of the shrine were called kannushi, that
+is, shrine keepers or wardens of the god. These men were usually
+descendants of the god in whose honor the temples were built. The gods
+being nothing more than human founders of families, reverence was paid
+to them as ancestors, and so the basis of Shintō is ancestor worship.
+The model of the miya, in modern as in ancient times, is the primitive
+hut as it was before Buddhism introduced Indian and Chinese
+architecture. The posts, stuck in the ground, and not laid upon stones
+as in after times, supported the walls and roof, the latter being of
+thatch. The rafters, crossed at the top, were tied along the ridge-pole
+with the fibres of creepers or wistaria vines. No paint, lacquer,
+gilding, or ornaments of any sort existed in the ancient shrine, and
+even to-day the modern Shintō temple must be of pure hinoki or
+sun-wood, and thatched, while the use of metal is as far as possible
+avoided. To the gods, as the norito show, offerings of various kinds
+were made, consisting of the fruits of the soil, the products of the
+sea, and the fabrics of the loom.
+
+Inside modern temples one often sees a mirror, in which foreigners with
+lively imaginations read a great deal that is only the shadow of their
+own mind, but which probably was never known in Shintō temples until
+after Buddhist times. They also see in front of the unpainted wooden
+closets or casements, wands or sticks of wood from which depend masses
+or strips of white paper, cut and notched in a particular way.
+Foreigners, whose fancy is nimble, have read in these the symbols of
+lightning, the abode of the spirits and various forthshadowings unknown
+either to the Japanese or the ancient writings. In reality these
+_gohei_, or honorable offerings, are nothing more than the paper
+representatives of the ancient offerings of cloth which were woven, as
+the arts progressed, of bark, of hemp and of silk.
+
+The chief Shintō ministers of religion and shrine-keepers belonged to
+particular families, which were often honored with titles and offices by
+the emperor. In ordinary life they dressed like others of their own rank
+or station, but when engaged in their sacred office were robed in white
+or in a special official costume, wearing upon their heads the _éboshi_
+or peculiar cap which we associate with Japanese archæology. They knew
+nothing of celibacy; but married, reared families and kept their scalps
+free from the razor, though some of the lower order of shrine-keepers
+dressed their hair in ordinary style, that is, with shaven poll and
+topknot. At some of the more important shrines, like those at Isé, there
+were virgin priestesses who acted as custodians both of the shrines and
+of the relics.[26]
+
+In front of the miyas stood what we should suppose on first seeing was a
+gateway. This was the _torii_ or bird-perch, and anciently was made only
+of unpainted wood. Two upright tree-trunks held crosswise on a smooth
+tree-trunk the ends of which projected somewhat over the supports, while
+under this was a smaller beam inserted between the two uprights. On the
+torii, the birds, generally barn-yard fowls which were sacred to the
+gods, roosted. These creatures were not offered up as sacrifices, but
+were chanticleers to give notice of day-break and the rising of the sun.
+The cock holds a prominent place in Japanese myth, legend, art and
+symbolism. How this feature of pure Japanese architecture, the torii,
+afterward lost its meaning, we shall show in our lecture on Riyōbu or
+mixed Buddhism.
+
+
+Shintō's Emphasis on Cleanliness.
+
+
+One of the most remarkable features of Shintō was the emphasis laid
+on cleanliness. Pollution was calamity, defilement was sin, and physical
+purity at least, was holiness. Everything that could in any way soil the
+body or the clothing was looked upon with abhorrence and detestation.
+Disease, wounds and death were defiling, and the feeling of disgust
+prevailed over that of either sympathy or pity. Birth and death were
+especially polluting. Anciently there were huts built both for the
+mother about to give birth to a child, or for the man who was dying or
+sure to die of disease or wounds. After the birth of the infant or the
+death of the patient these houses were burned. Cruel as this system was
+to the woman at a time when she needed most care and comfort, and brutal
+as it seems in regard to the sick and dying, yet this ancient custom was
+continued in a few remote places in Japan as late as the year 1878.[27]
+In modern days with equal knowledge of danger and defilement, tenderness
+and compassion temper the feeling of disgust, and prevail over it.
+Horror of uncleanliness was so great that the priests bathed and put on
+clean garments before making the sacred offerings or chanting the
+liturgies, and were accustomed to bind a slip of paper over their mouths
+lest their breath should pollute the offering. Numerous were the special
+festivals, observed simply for purification. Salt also was commonly used
+to sprinkle over the ground, and those who attended a funeral must free
+themselves from contamination by the use of salt.[28] Purification by
+water was habitual and in varied forms. The ancient emperors and priests
+actually performed the ablution of the people or made public lustration
+in their behalf.
+
+Afterwards, and probably because population increased and towns sprang
+up, we find it was customary at the festivals of purification to perform
+public ablution, vicariously, as it were, by means of paper mannikins
+instead of making applications of water to the human cuticle. Twice a
+year paper figures representing the people were thrown into the river,
+the typical meaning of which was that the nation was thereby cleansed
+from the sins, that is, the defilements, of the previous half-year.
+Still later, the Mikado made the chief minister of religion at Kiōto
+his deputy to perform the symbolical act for the people of the whole
+country.
+
+
+Prayers to Myriads of Gods.
+
+
+In prayer, the worshipper, approaching the temple but not entering it,
+pulls a rope usually made of white material and attached to a
+peculiar-shaped bell hung over the shrine, calling the attention of the
+deity to his devotions. Having washed his hands and rinsed out his
+mouth, he places his hands reverently together and offers his petition.
+
+Concerning the method and words of prayer, Hirata, a famous exponent of
+Shintō, thus writes:
+
+    As the number of the gods who possess different functions is so
+    great, it will be convenient to worship by name only the most
+    important and to include the rest in a general petition. Those
+    whose daily affairs are so multitudinous that they have not time
+    to go through the whole of the following morning prayers, may
+    content themselves with adoring the residence of the emperor,
+    the domestic kami-dana, the spirits of their ancestors, their
+    local patron god and the deity of their particular calling in
+    life.
+
+    In praying to the gods the blessings which each has it in his
+    power to bestow are to be mentioned in a few words, and they are
+    not to be annoyed with greedy petitions, for the Mikado in his
+    palace offers up petitions daily on behalf of his people, which
+    are far more effectual than those of his subjects.
+
+    Rising early in the morning, wash your face and hands, rinse out
+    the mouth and cleanse the body. Then turn toward the province of
+    Yamato, strike the palms of the hands together twice, and
+    worship, bowing the head to the ground. The proper posture is
+    that of kneeling on the heels, which is ordinarily assumed in
+    saluting a superior.
+
+    PRAYER.
+
+    From a distance I reverently worship with awe before Amé no
+    Mi-hashira (Heaven-pillar) and Kuni no Mi-hashira
+    (Country-pillar), also called Shinatsu-hiko no kami and
+    Shinatsu-himé no kami, to whom is consecrated the Palace built
+    with stout pillars at Tatsuta no Tachinu in the department of
+    Héguri in the province of Yamato.
+
+    I say with awe, deign to bless me by correcting the unwitting
+    faults which, seen and heard by you, I have committed, by
+    blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods
+    might inflict, by causing me to live long like the hard and
+    lasting rock, and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin
+    and to the gods of earthly origin the petitions which I present
+    every day, along with your breath, that they may hear with the
+    sharp-earedness of the forth-galloping colt.
+
+To the common people the sun is actually a god, as none can doubt who
+sees them worshipping it morning and evening. The writer can never
+forget one of many similar scenes in Tōkiō, when late one
+afternoon after O Tentō Sama (the sun-Lord of Heaven), which had been
+hidden behind clouds for a fortnight, shone out on the muddy streets. In
+a moment, as with the promptness of a military drill, scores of people
+rushed out of their houses and with faces westward, kneeling, squatting,
+began prayer and worship before the great luminary. Besides all the
+gods, supreme, subordinate and local, there is in nearly every house the
+Kami-dana or god-shelf. This is usually over the door inside. It
+contains images with little paper-covered wooden tablets having the
+god's name on them. Offerings are made by day and a little lamp is
+lighted at night. The following is one of several prayers which are
+addressed to this kami-dana.
+
+    Reverently adoring the great god of the two palaces of Isé, in
+    the first place, the eight hundred myriads of celestial gods,
+    the eight hundred myriads of terrestrial gods, all the fifteen
+    hundred myriads of gods to whom are consecrated the great and
+    small temples in all provinces, all islands and all places of
+    the Great Land of Eight Islands, the fifteen hundreds of myriads
+    of gods whom they cause to serve them, and the gods of branch
+    palaces and branch temples, and Sohodo no kami, whom I have
+    invited to the shrine set up on this divine shelf, and to whom I
+    offer praises day by day, I pray with awe that they will deign
+    to correct the unwitting faults, which, heard and seen by them,
+    I have committed, and blessing and favoring me according to the
+    powers which they severally wield, cause me to follow the divine
+    example, and to perform good works in the Way.
+
+
+Shintō Left in a State of Arrested Development.
+
+
+Thus from the emperor to the humblest believer, the god-way is founded
+on ancestor worship, and has had grafted upon its ritual system nature
+worship, even to phallicism.[29] In one sense it is a self-made religion
+of the Japanese. Its leading characteristics are seen in the traits of
+the normal Japanese character of to-day. Its power for good and evil may
+be traced in the education of the Japanese through many centuries.
+Knowing Shintō, we to a large degree know the Japanese, their virtues
+and their failings.
+
+What Shintō might have become in its full evolution had it been left
+alone, we cannot tell. Whether in the growth of the nation and without
+the pressure of Buddhism, Confucianism or other powerful influences from
+outside, the scattered and fragmentary mythology might have become
+organized into a harmonious system, or codes of ethics have been
+formulated, or the doctrines of a future life and the idea of a Supreme
+Being with personal attributes have been conceived and perfected, are
+questions the discussion of which may seem to be vain. History, however,
+gives no uncertain answer as to what actually did take place. We do but
+state what is unchallenged fact, when we say, that after commitment to
+writing of the myths, poems and liturgies which may be called the basis
+of Shintō, there came a great flood of Chinese and Buddhistic
+literature and a tremendous expansion of Buddhist missionary activity,
+which checked further literary growth of the kami system. These prepared
+the way for the absorption of the indigenous into the foreign cultus
+under the form called by an enthusiastic emperor, Riyōbu Shintō,
+or the "two-fold divine doctrine." Of this, we shall speak in another
+lecture.
+
+Suffice it here to say that by the scheme of syncretism propounded by
+Kōbō in the ninth century, Shintō was practically overlaid by
+the new faith from India, and largely forgotten as a distinct religion
+by the Japanese people. As late as A.D. 927, there were three thousand
+one hundred and thirty-two enumerated metropolitan and provincial
+temples, besides many more unenumerated village and hamlet shrines of
+Shintō. These are referred to in the revised codes of ceremonial law
+set forth by imperial authority early in the tenth century. Probably by
+the twelfth century the pure rites of the god-way were celebrated, and
+the unmixed traditions maintained, in families and temples, so few as to
+be counted on the fingers. The ancient language in which the archaic
+forms had been preserved was so nearly lost and buried, that out of the
+ooze of centuries of oblivion, it had to be rescued by the skilled
+divers of the seventeenth century. Mabuchi, Motöri and the other
+revivalists of pure Shintō, like the plungers after orient pearls,
+persevered until they had first recovered much that had been supposed
+irretrievably lost. These scholars deciphered and interpreted the
+ancient scriptures, poetry, prose, history, law and ritual, and once
+more set forth the ancient faith, as they believed, in its purity.
+
+Whether, however, men can exactly reproduce and think for themselves the
+thoughts of others who have been dead for a millennium, is an open
+question. The new system is apt to be transparent. Just as it is nearly
+impossible for us to restore the religious life, thoughts and orthodoxy
+of the men who lived before the flood, so in the writings of the
+revivalists of pure Shintō we detect the thoughts of Dutchmen, of
+Chinese, and of very modern Japanese. Unconsciously, those who would
+breathe into the dry bones of dead Shintō the breath of the
+nineteenth century, find themselves compelled to use an oxygen and
+nitrogen generator made in Holland and mounted with Chinese apparatus;
+withal, lacquered and decorated with the art of to-day. To change from
+metaphor to matter of fact, modern "pure Shintō" is mainly a mass of
+speculation and philosophy, with a tendency of which the ancient god-way
+knew nothing.
+
+
+The Modern Revivalists of Kami no Michi.
+
+
+Passing by further mention of the fifteen or more corrupt sects of
+Shintōists, we name with honor the native scholars of the
+seventeenth century, who followed the illustrious example of Iyéyasŭ,
+the political unifier of Japan. They ransacked the country and purchased
+from temples, mansions and farmhouses, old manuscripts and books, and
+forming libraries began anew the study of ancient language and history.
+Kéichu (1640-1701), a Buddhist priest, explored and illumined the poems
+of the Manyōshu. Kada Adzumarō, born in 1669 near Kiōto, the
+son of a shrine-keeper at Inari, attempted the mastery of the whole
+archaic native language and literature. He made a grand beginning. He is
+unquestionably the founder of the school of Pure Shintō. He died in
+1736. His successor and pupil was Mabuchi (1697-1769), who claimed
+direct descent from that god which in the form of a colossal crow had
+guided the first chief of the Yamato tribe as he led his invaders
+through the country to found the line of Mikados. After Mabuchi came
+Motoöri (1730-1801) a remarkable scholar and critic, who, with erudition
+and acuteness, analyzed the ancient literature and showed what were
+Chinese or imported elements and what was of native origin. He
+summarized the principles of the ancient religion, reasserted and
+illuminated with amazing learning and voluminous commentary the archaic
+documents, expounded and defended the ancient cosmogony, and in the
+usual style of Japanese polemics preached anew the doctrines of
+Shintō. With wonderful naïveté and enthusiasm, Motoöri taught that
+Japan was the first part of the earth created, and that it is therefore
+The Land of the Gods, the Country of the Holy Spirits. The stars were
+created from the muck which fell from the spear of Izanagi as he thrust
+it into the warm earth, while the other countries were formed by the
+spontaneous consolidation of the foam of the sea. Morals were invented
+by the Chinese because they were an immoral people, but in Japan there
+is no necessity for any system of morals, as every Japanese acts aright
+if he only consults his own heart. The duty of a good Japanese consists
+in obeying the Mikado, without questioning whether his commands are
+right or wrong. The Mikado is god and vicar of all the gods, hence
+government and religion are the same, the Mikado being the centre of
+Church and State, which are one. Did the foreign nations know their duty
+they would at once hasten to pay tribute to the Son of Heaven in
+Kiōto.
+
+It is needless here to dwell upon the tremendous power of Shintō as a
+political system, especially when wedded with the forces, generated in
+the minds of the educated Japanese by modern Confucianism. The Chinese
+ethical system, expanded into a philosophy as fascinating as the English
+materialistic school of to-day, entered Japan contemporaneously with the
+revival of the Way of the Gods and of native learning. In full rampancy
+of their vigor, in the seventeenth century these two systems began that
+generation of national energy, which in the eighteenth century was
+consolidated and which in the nineteenth century, though unknown and
+unsuspected by Europeans or Americans, was all ready for phenomenal
+manifestation and tremendous eruption, even while Perry's fleet was
+bearing the olive branch to Japan. As we all know, this consolidation of
+forces from the inside, on meeting, not with collision but with union,
+the exterior forces of western civilization, formed a resultant in the
+energies which have made New Japan.
+
+
+The Great Purification of 1870.
+
+
+In 1870, with the Shōgun of Yedo deposed, the dual system abolished,
+feudalism in its last gasp and Shintō in full political power, with
+the ancient council of the gods (Jin Gi Kuan) once more established, and
+purified Shintō again the religion of state, thousands of Riyōbu
+Shintō temples were at once purged of all their Buddhist ornaments,
+furniture, ritual, and everything that might remind the Japanese of
+foreign elements. Then began, logically and actually, the persecution of
+those Christians, who through all the centuries of repression and
+prohibition had continued their existence, and kept their faith however
+mixed and clouded. Theoretically, ancient belief was re-established, yet
+it was both physically and morally impossible to return wholly to the
+baldness and austere simplicity of those early ages, in which art and
+literature were unknown. For a while it seemed as though the miracle
+would be performed, of turning back the dial of the ages and of plunging
+Japan into the fountain of her own youth. Propaganda was instituted, and
+the attempts made to convert all the Japanese to Shintō tenets and
+practice were for a while more lively than edifying; but the scheme was
+on the whole a splendid failure, and bitter disappointment succeeded the
+first exultation of victory. Confronted by modern problems of society
+and government, the Mikado's ministers found themselves unable, if
+indeed willing, to entomb politics in religion, as in the ancient ages.
+For a little while, in 1868, the Jin Gi Kuan, or Council of the Gods of
+Heaven and Earth, held equal authority with the Dai Jō Kuan, or Great
+Council of the Government. Pretty soon the first step downward was
+taken, and from a supreme council it was made one of the ten departments
+of the government. In less than a year followed another retrograde
+movement and the department was called a board. Finally, in 1877, the
+board became a bureau. Now, it is hard to tell what rank the Shintō
+cultus occupies in the government, except as a system of guardianship
+over the imperial tombs, a mode of official etiquette, and as one of the
+acknowledged religions of the country.
+
+Nevertheless, as an element in that amalgam of religions which forms the
+creed of most Japanese, Shintō is a living force, and shares with
+Buddhism the arena against advancing Christianity, still supplying much
+of the spring and motive to patriotism.
+
+The Shintō lecturers with unblushing plagiarism rifled the
+storehouses of Chinese ethics. They enforced their lessons from the
+Confucian classics. Indeed, most of their homiletical and illustrative
+material is still derived directly therefrom. Their three main official
+theses and commandments were:
+
+    1. Thou shalt honor the Gods and love thy country.
+
+    2. Thou shalt clearly understand the principles of Heaven, and
+    the duty of man.
+
+    3. Thou shalt revere the Emperor as thy sovereign and obey the
+    will of his Court.
+
+For nearly twenty years this deliverance of the Japanese Government,
+which still finds its strongest support in the national traditions and
+the reverence of the people for the throne, sufficed for the necessities
+of the case. Then the copious infusion of foreign ideas, the
+disintegration of the old framework of society, and the weakening of the
+old ties of obedience and loyalty, with the flood of shallow knowledge
+and education which gave especially children and young people just
+enough of foreign ideas to make them dangerous, brought about a
+condition of affairs which alarmed the conservative and patriotic. Like
+fungus upon a dead tree strange growths had appeared, among others that
+of a class of violently patriotic and half-educated young men and boys,
+called _Soshí_. These hot-headed youths took it upon themselves to
+dictate national policy to cabinet ministers, and to reconstruct
+society, religion and politics. Something like a mania broke out all
+over the country which, in certain respects, reminds us of the
+Children's Crusade, that once afflicted Europe and the children
+themselves. Even Christianity did not escape the craze for
+reconstruction. Some of the young believers and pupils of the
+missionaries seemed determined to make Christianity all over so as to
+suit themselves. This phase of brain-swelling is not yet wholly over.
+One could not tell but that something like the Tai Ping rebellion, which
+disturbed and devastated China, might break out.
+
+These portentous signs on the social horizon called forth, in 1892, from
+the government an Imperial Rescript, which required that the emperor's
+photograph be exhibited in every school, and saluted by all teachers and
+scholars whatever their religious tenets and scruples might be. Most
+Christians as well as Buddhists, saw nothing in this at which to
+scruple. A few, however, finding in it an offence to conscience,
+resigned their positions. They considered the mandate an unwarrantable
+interference with their rights as conferred by the constitution of 1889,
+which in theory is the gift of the emperor to his people.
+
+The radical Shintōist, to this day, believes that all political
+rights which Japanese enjoy or can enjoy are by virtue of the Mikado's
+grace and benevolence. It is certain that all Japanese, whatever may be
+their religious convictions, consider that the constitution depends for
+its safeguards and its validity largely upon the oath which the Mikado
+swore at the shrine of his heavenly ancestors, that he would himself be
+obedient to it and preserve its provisions inviolate. For this solemn
+ceremony a special norito or liturgy was composed and recited.
+
+
+Summary of Shintō.
+
+
+Of Shintō as a system we have long ago given our opinion. In its
+higher forms, "Shintō is simply a cultured and intellectual atheism;
+in its lower forms it is blind obedience to governmental and priestly
+dictates." "Shintō," says Mr. Ernest Satow, "as expounded by Motoöri
+is nothing more than an engine for reducing the people to a condition of
+mental slavery." Japan being a country of very striking natural
+phenomena, the very soil and air lend themselves to support in the
+native mind this system of worship of heroes and of the forces of
+nature. In spite, however, of the conservative power of the ancestral
+influences, the patriotic incentives and the easy morals of Shintō
+under which lying and licentiousness shelter themselves, it is doubtful
+whether with the pressure of Buddhism, and the spread of popular
+education and Christianity, Shintō can retain its hold upon the
+Japanese people. Yet although this is our opinion, it is but fair, and
+it is our duty, to judge every religion by its ideals and not by its
+failings. The ideal of Shintō is to make people pure and clean in all
+their personal and household arrangements; it is to help them to live
+simply, honestly and with mutual good will; it is to make the Japanese
+love their country, honor their imperial house and obey their emperor.
+Narrow and local as this religion is, it has had grand exemplars in
+noble lives and winning characters.
+
+So far as Shintō is a religion, Christianity meets it not as
+destroyer but fulfiller, for it too believes that cleanliness is not
+only next to godliness but a part of it. Jesus as perfect man and
+patriot, Captain of our salvation and Prince of peace, would not destroy
+the Yamato damashii--the spirit of unconquerable Japan--but rather
+enlarge, broaden, and deepen it, making it love for all humanity.
+Reverence for ancestral virtue and example, so far from being weakened,
+is strengthened, and as for devotion to king and ruler, law and society,
+Christianity lends nobler motives and grander sanctions, while
+showing clearly, not indeed the way of the eight million or more gods,
+but the way to God--the one living, only and true, even through Him who
+said "I am the Way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN
+
+
+    "Things being investigated, knowledge became complete; knowledge
+    being complete, thoughts were sincere; thoughts being sincere,
+    hearts were rectified; hearts being rectified, persons were
+    cultivated; persons being cultivated, families were regulated;
+    families being regulated, states were rightly governed; states
+    being rightly governed, the whole nation was made tranquil and
+    happy."
+
+    "When you know a thing to hold that you know it; and when you do
+    not know a thing to allow that you do not know it; this is
+    knowledge."
+
+    "Old age sometimes becomes second childhood; why should not
+    filial piety become parental love?"
+
+    "The superior man accords with the course of the mean. Though he
+    may be all unknown, unregarded by the world, he feels no regret.
+    He is only the sage who is able for this."--Sayings of
+    Confucius.
+
+    "There is, in a word, no bringing down of God to men in
+    Confucianism in order to lift them up to Him. Their moral
+    shortcomings, when brought home to them, may produce a feeling
+    of shame, but hardly a conviction of guilt."--James Legge.
+
+    "Do not to others what you would not have them do to you."--The
+    Silver Rule.
+
+    "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
+    even so to them."--The Golden Rule.
+
+    "In respect to revenging injury done to master or father, it is
+    granted by the wise and virtuous (Confucius) that you and the
+    injurer cannot live together under the canopy of
+    heaven."--Legacy of Iyéyasŭ, Cap. iii, Lowder's translation.
+
+    "But I say unto you forgive your enemies."--Jesus.
+
+    "Thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer, thy name is from
+    everlasting."--Isaiah.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN
+
+Confucius a Historical Character.
+
+
+If the greatness of a teacher is to be determined by the number of his
+disciples, or to be measured by the extent and diversity of his
+influence, then the foremost place among all the teachers of mankind
+must be awarded to The Master Kung (or Confucius, as the Jesuit scholars
+of the seventeenth century Latinized the name). Certainly, he of all
+truly historic personages is to-day, and for twenty-three centuries has
+been, honored by the largest number of followers.
+
+Of the many systems of religion in the world, but few are based upon the
+teachings of one person. The reputed founders of some of them are not
+known in history with any certainty, and of others--as in the case of
+Buddhism--have become almost as shadows among a great throng of
+imaginary Buddhas or other beings which have sprung from the fancies of
+the brain and become incorporated into the systems, although the
+original teachers may indeed have been historical.
+
+Confucius is a clear and distinct historic person. His parentage, place
+of birth, public life, offices, work and teaching, are well known and
+properly authenticated. He used the pen freely, and not only compiled,
+edited and transmitted the writings of his predecessors, but composed an
+historical and interpretative book. He originated nothing, however, but
+on the contrary disowned any purpose of introducing new ideas, or of
+expressing thoughts of his own not based upon or in perfect harmony with
+the teaching of the ancients. He was not an original thinker. He was a
+compiler, an editor, a defender and reproclaimer of the ancient
+religion, and an exemplar of the wisdom and writings of the Chinese
+fathers. He felt that his duty was exactly that which some Christian
+theologians of to-day conscientiously feel to be theirs--to receive
+intact a certain "deposit" or "system" and, adding nothing to it, simply
+to teach, illuminate, defend, enforce and strongly maintain it as "the
+truth." He gloried in absolute freedom from all novelty, anticipating in
+this respect a certain illustrious American who made it a matter for
+boasting, that his school had never originated a new idea.[1] Whether or
+not the Master Kung did nevertheless, either consciously or
+unconsciously, modify the ancient system by abbreviating or enlarging
+it, we cannot now inquire.
+
+Confucius wan born into the world in the year 551 B.C., during that
+wonderful century of religious revival which saw the birth of Ezra,
+Gautama, and Lao Tsze, and in boyhood he displayed an unusually sedate
+temperament which made him seem to be what we would now call an
+"old-fashioned child." The period during which he lived was that of
+feudal China. From the ago of twenty-two, while holding an office in the
+state of Lu within the modern province of Shan-Tung, he gathered around
+him young men as pupils with whom, like Socrates, he conversed in
+question and answer. He made the teachings of the ancients the subjects
+of his research, and he was at all times a diligent student of the
+primeval records. These sacred books are called King, or Kiō in
+Japanese, and are: Shu King, a collection of historic documents; Shih
+King, or Book of Odes; Hsiao King, or Classic of Filial Piety, and Yi
+King, or Book of Changes.[2] This division of the old sacred canon,
+resembles the Christian or non-Jewish arrangement of the Old Testament
+scriptures in the four parts of Law, History, Poetry and Prophesy,
+though in the Chinese we have History, Poetry, Ethics and Divination.[3]
+
+His own table-talk, conversations, discussions and notes were compiled
+by his pupils, and are preserved in the work entitled in English, "The
+Confucian Analects," which is one of the four books constituting the
+most sacred portion of Chinese philosophy and instruction. He also wrote
+a work named "Spring and Autumn, or Chronicles of his Native State of Lu
+from 722 B.C., to 481[4] B.C." He "changed his world," as the Buddhists
+say, in the year 478 B.C., having lived seventy-three years.
+
+
+Primitive Chinese Faith.
+
+
+The pre-Confucian or primitive faith was monotheistic, the forefathers
+of the Chinese nation having been believers in one Supreme Spiritual
+Being. There is an almost universal agreement among scholars in
+translating the term "Shang Ti" as God, and in reading from these
+classics that the forefathers "in the ceremonies at the altars of Heaven
+and earth ... served God." Concurrently with the worship of one Supreme
+God there was also a belief in subordinate spirits and in the idea of
+revelation or the communication of God with men. This restricted worship
+of God was accompanied by reverence for ancestors and the honoring of
+spirits by prayers and sacrifices, which resulted, however, neither in
+deification nor polytheism. But, as the European mediæval schoolmen have
+done with the Bible, so, after the death of Confucius the Chinese
+scholastics by metaphysical reasoning and commentary, created systems of
+interpretation which greatly altered the apparent form and contents of
+his own and of the ancient texts. Thus, the original monotheism of the
+pre-Confucian documents has been completely obscured by the later webs
+of sophistry which have been woven about the original scriptures. The
+ancient simplicity of doctrine has been lost in the mountains of
+commentary which were piled upon the primitive texts. Throughout the
+centuries, the Confucian system has been conditioned and greatly
+modified by Taoism, Buddhism and the speculations of the Chinese wise
+men.
+
+Confucius, however, did not change or seriously modify the ancient
+religion except that, as is more than probable, he may have laid
+unnecessary emphasis upon social and political duties, and may not have
+been sufficiently interested in the honor to be paid to Shang Ti or God.
+He practically ignored the God-ward side of man's duties. His teachings
+relate chiefly to duties between man and man, to propriety and
+etiquette, and to ceremony and usage. He said that "To give one's self
+to the duties due to men and while respecting spiritual beings to keep
+aloof from them, may be called wisdom."[5]
+
+We think that Confucius cut the tap-root of all true progress, and
+therefore is largely responsible for the arrested development of China.
+He avoided the personal term, God (Ti), and instead, made use of the
+abstract term, Heaven (Tien). His teaching, which is so often quoted by
+Japanese gentlemen, was, "Honor the Gods and keep them far from you."
+His image stands in thousands of temples and in every school, in China,
+but he is only revered and never deified.
+
+China has for ages suffered from agnosticism; for no normal Confucianist
+can love God, though he may learn to reverence him. The Emperor
+periodically worships for his people, at the great marble altar to
+Heaven in Peking, with vast holocausts, and the prayers which are
+offered may possibly amount to this: "Our Father who art in Heaven,
+Hallowed be thy name." But there, as it seems to a Christian, Chinese
+imperial worship stops. The people at large, cut off by this restricted
+worship from direct access to God, have wandered away into every sort of
+polytheism and idolatry, while the religion of the educated Chinese is a
+mediæval philosophy based upon Confucianism, of which we shall speak
+hereafter.
+
+The Confucian system as a religion, like a giant with a child's head, is
+exaggerated on its moral and ceremonial side as compared with its
+spiritual development. Some deny that it is a religion at all, and call
+it only a code. However, let us examine the Confucian ethics which
+formed the basis and norm of all government in the family and nation,
+and are summed up in the doctrine of the "Five Relations." These are:
+Sovereign and Minister; Father and Son; Husband and Wife; Elder Brother
+and Younger Brother; and Friends. The relation being stated, the
+correlative duty arises at once. It may perhaps be truly said by
+Christians that Confucius might have made a religion of his system of
+ethics, by adding a sixth and supreme relation--that between God and
+man. This he declined to do, and so left his people without any
+aspiration toward the Infinite. By setting before them only a finite
+goal he sapped the principles of progress.[6]
+
+
+Vicissitudes of Confucianism.
+
+
+After the death of Confucius (478 B.C.) the teachings of the great
+master were neglected, but still later they were re-enforced and
+expounded in the time (372-289 B.C.) of Meng Ko, or Mencius (as the name
+has been Latinized) who was likewise a native of the State of Lu. At one
+time a Chinese Emperor attempted in vain to destroy not only the
+writings of Confucius but also the ancient classics. Taoism increased as
+a power in the religion of China, especially after the fall of its
+feudal system. The doctrine of ancestral worship as commended by the
+sage had in it much of good, both for kings and nobles. The common
+people, however, found that Taoism was more satisfying. About the
+beginning of the Christian era Buddhism entered the Middle Kingdom, and,
+rapidly becoming popular, supplied needs for which simple Confucianism
+was not adequate. It may be said that in the sixth century--which
+concerns us especially--although Confucianism continued to be highly
+esteemed, Buddhism had become supreme in China--that venerable State
+which is the mother of civilization in all Asia cast of the Ganges, and
+the Middle Kingdom among pupil nations.
+
+Confucianism overflowed from China into Korea, where to this day it is
+predominant even over Buddhism. Thence, it was carried beyond sea to the
+Japanese Archipelago, where for possibly fifteen hundred years it has
+shaped and moulded the character of a brave and chivalrous people. Let
+us now turn from China and trace its influence and modifications in the
+Land of the Rising Sun.
+
+It must be remembered that in the sixth century of the Christian Era,
+Confucianism was by no means the fully developed philosophy that it is
+now and has been for five hundred years. In former times, the system of
+Confucius had been received in China not only as a praiseworthy
+compendium of ceremonial observances, but also as an inheritance from
+the ancients, illumined by the discourses of the great sage and
+illustrated by his life and example. It was, however, very far from
+being what it is at present--the religion of the educated men of the
+nation, and, by excellence, the religion of Chinese Asia. But in those
+early centuries it did not fully satisfy the Chinese mind, which turned
+to the philosophy of Taoism and to the teachings of the Buddhist for
+intellectual food, for comfort and for inspiration.
+
+The time when Chinese learning entered Japan, by the way of Korea, has
+not been precisely ascertained.[7] It is possible that letters[8] and
+writings were known in some parts of the country as early as the fourth
+century, but it is nearly certain, that, outside the Court of the
+Emperor, there was scarcely even a sporadic knowledge of the literature
+of China until the Korean missionaries of Buddhism had obtained a
+lodgement in the Mikado's capital. Buddhism was the real purveyor of the
+foreign learning and became the vehicle by means of which Confucianism,
+or the Chinese ethical principles, reached the common people of Japan.
+The first missionaries in Japan were heartily in sympathy with the
+Confucian ethics, from which no effort was made to alienate them. They
+were close allies, and for a thousand years wrought as one force in the
+national life. They were not estranged until the introduction, in the
+seventeenth century, of the metaphysical and scholastic forms given to
+the ancient system by the Chinese schoolmen of the Sung dynasty (A.D.
+960-1333).
+
+
+Japanese Confucianism and Feudalism Contemporary.
+
+
+The intellectual history of the Japanese prior to their recent contact
+with Christendom, may be divided into three eras:
+
+1. The period of early insular or purely native thought, from before the
+Christian era until the eighth century; by which time, Shintō, or the
+indigenous system of worship--its ritual, poetry and legend having been
+committed to writing and its life absorbed in Buddhism--had been, as a
+system, relegated from the nation and the people to a small circle of
+scholars and archæologists.
+
+2. The period from 800 A.D. to the beginning of the seventeenth century;
+during which time Buddhism furnished to the nation its religion,
+philosophy and culture.
+
+3. From about 1630 A.D. until the present time; during which period the
+developed Confucian philosophy, as set forth by Chu Hi in the twelfth
+century, has been the creed of a majority of the educated men of Japan.
+
+The political history of the Japanese may also be divided into three
+eras:
+
+1. The first extends from the dawn of history until the seventh century.
+During this period the system of government was that of rude feudalism.
+The conquering tribe of Yamato, having gradually obtained a rather
+imperfect supremacy over the other tribes in the middle and southern
+portions of the country now called the Empire of Japan, ruled them in
+the name of the Mikado.
+
+2. The second period begins in the seventh century, when the Japanese,
+copying the Chinese model, adopted a system of centralization. The
+country was divided into provinces and was ruled through boards or
+ministries at the capital, with governors sent out from Kiōto for
+stated periods, directly from the emperor. During this time literature
+was chiefly the work of the Buddhist priests and of the women of the
+imperial court.
+
+While armies in the field brought into subjection the outlying tribes
+and certain noble families rose to prominence at the court, there was
+being formed that remarkable class of men called the Samurai, or
+servants of the Mikado, which for more than ten centuries has exercised
+a profound influence upon the development of Japan.
+
+In China, the pen and the sword have been kept apart; the civilian and
+the soldier, the man of letters and the man of arms, have been distinct
+and separate. This was also true in old Loo Choo (now Riu Kiu), that
+part of Japan most like China. In Japan, however, the pen and the sword,
+letters and arms, the civilian and the soldier, have intermingled. The
+unique product of this union is seen in the Samurai, or servant of the
+Mikado. Military-literati, are unknown in China, but in Japan they
+carried the sword and the pen in the same girdle.
+
+3. This class of men had become fully formed by the end of the twelfth
+century, and then began the new feudal system, which lasted until the
+epochal year 1868 A.D.--a year of several revolutions, rather than of
+restoration pure and simple. After nearly seven hundred years of
+feudalism, supreme magistracy, with power vastly increased beyond that
+possessed in ancient times, was restored to the emperor. Then also was
+abolished the duarchy of Throne and Camp, of Mikado and Shōgun, and
+of the two capitals Kiōto and Yedo, with the fountain of honor and
+authority in one and the fountain of power and execution in the other.
+Thereupon, Japan once more presented to the world, unity.
+
+Practically, therefore, the period of the prevalence of the Confucian
+ethics and their universal acceptance by the people of Japan nearly
+coincides with the period of Japanese feudalism or the dominance of the
+military classes.
+
+Although the same ideograph, or rather logogram, was used to designate
+the Chinese scholar and the Japanese warrior as well, yet the former was
+man of the pen only, while the latter was man of the pen and of two
+swords. This historical fact, more than any other, accounts for the
+striking differences between Chinese and Japanese Confucianism. Under
+this state of things the ethical system of the sage of China suffered a
+change, as does almost everything that is imported into Japan and
+borrowed by the islanders, but whether for the better or for the worse
+we shall not inquire too carefully. The point upon which we now lay
+emphasis is this: that, although the Chinese teacher had made filial
+piety the basis of his system, the Japanese gradually but surely made
+loyalty (Kun-Shin), that is, the allied relations of sovereign and
+minister, of lord and retainer, and of master and servant, not only
+first in order but the chief of all. They also infused into this term
+ideas and associations which are foreign to the Chinese mind. In the
+place of filial piety was Kun-shin, that new growth in the garden of
+Japanese ethics, out of which arose the white flower of loyalty that
+blooms perennial in history.
+
+
+In Japan, Loyalty Displaces Filial Piety.
+
+
+This slow but sure adaptation of the exotic to its new environment, took
+place during the centuries previous to the seventeenth of the Christian
+era. The completed product presented a growth so strikingly different
+from the original as to compel the wonder of those Chinese refugee
+scholars, who, at Mito[9] and Yedo, taught the later dogmas which are
+orthodox but not historically Confucian.
+
+Herein lies the difference between Chinese and Japanese ethical
+philosophy. In old Japan, loyalty was above filial obedience, and the
+man who deserted parents, wife and children for the feudal lord,
+received unstinted praise. The corner-stone of the Japanese edifice of
+personal righteousness and public weal, is loyalty. On the other hand,
+filial piety is the basis of Chinese order and the secret of the amazing
+national longevity, which is one of the moral wonders of the world, and
+sure proof of the fulfilment of that promise which was made on Sinai and
+wrapped up in the fourth commandment.
+
+This master passion of the typical Samurai of old Japan made him regard
+life as infinitely less than nothing, whenever duty demanded a display
+of the virtue of loyalty. "The doctrines of Koshi and Moshi" (Confucius
+and Mencius) formed, and possibly even yet form, the gospel and the
+quintessence of all wordly wisdom to the Japanese gentleman; they became
+the basis of his education and the ideal which inspired his conceptions
+of duty and honor; but, crowning all his doctrines and aspirations was
+his desire to be loyal. There might abide loyal, marital, filial,
+fraternal and various other relations, but the greatest of all these was
+loyalty. Hence the Japanese calendar of saints is not filled with
+reformers, alms-givers and founders of hospitals or orphanages, but is
+over-crowded with canonized suicides and committers of _hara-kiri_. Even
+today, no man more quickly wins the popular regard during his life or
+more surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the
+suicide, though he may have committed a crime. In this era of Meiji or
+enlightened peace, most appalling is the list of assassinations
+beginning with the murder in Kiōto of Yokoi Héishiro, who was slain
+for recommending the toleration of Christianity, down to the last
+cabinet minister who has been knifed or dynamited. Yet in every case the
+murderers considered themselves consecrated men and ministers of
+Heaven's righteous vengeance.[10] For centuries, and until
+constitutional times, the government of Japan was "despotism tempered by
+assassination." The old-fashioned way of moving a vote of censure upon
+the king's ministers was to take off their heads. Now, however, election
+by ballot has been substituted for this, and two million swords have
+become bric-à-brac.
+
+A thousand years of training in the ethics of Confucius--which always
+admirably lends itself to the possessors of absolute power, whether
+emperors, feudal lords, masters, fathers, or older brothers--have so
+tinged and colored every conception of the Japanese mind, so dominated
+their avenues of understanding and shaped their modes of thought, that
+to-day, notwithstanding the recent marvellous development of their
+language, which within the last two decades has made it almost a new
+tongue,[11] it is impossible with perfect accuracy to translate into
+English the ordinary Japanese terms which are congregated under the
+general idea of Kun-shin.
+
+Herein may be seen the great benefit of carefully studying the minds of
+those whom we seek to convert. The Christian preacher in Japan who uses
+our terms "heaven," "home," "mother," "father," "family," "wife,"
+"people," "love," "reverence," "virtue," "chastity," etc., will find
+that his hearers may indeed receive them, but not at all with the same
+mental images and associations, nor with the same proportion and depth,
+that these words command in western thought and hearing. One must be
+exceedingly careful, not only in translating terms which have been used
+by Confucius in the Chinese texts, but also in selecting and rendering
+the current expressions of the Japanese teachers and philosophers. In
+order to understand each other, Orientals and Occidentals need a great
+deal of mutual intellectual drilling, without which there will be waste
+of money, of time, of brains and of life.
+
+
+The Five Relations.
+
+
+Let us now glance at the fundamentals of the Confucian ethics--the Five
+Relations--as they were taught in the comparatively simple system which
+prevailed before the new orthodoxy was proclaimed by Sung schoolmen.
+
+First. Although each of the Chinese and Japanese emperors is supposed to
+be, and is called, "father of the people," yet it would be entirely
+wrong to imagine that the phrase implies any such relation, as that of
+William the Silent to the Dutch, or of Washington to the American
+nation. In order to see how far the emperor was removed from the people
+during a thousand years, one needs but to look upon a brilliant painting
+of the Yamato-Tosa school, in which the Mikado is represented as sitting
+behind a cloud of gold or a thick curtain of fine bamboo, with no one
+before the matting-throne but his prime ministers or the empress and his
+concubines. For centuries, it was supposed that the Mikado did not touch
+the ground with his feet. He went abroad in a curtained car; and he was
+not only as mysterious and invisible to the public eye as a dragon, but
+he was called such. The attributes of that monster with many powers and
+functions, were applied to him, with an amazing wealth of rhetoric and
+vocabulary. As well might the common folks to-day presume to pray unto
+one of the transcendent Buddhas, between whom and the needy suppliant
+there may be hosts upon hosts of interlopers or mediators, as for an
+ordinary subject to petition the emperor or even to gaze upon his dragon
+countenance. The change in the constitutional Japan of our day is seen
+in the fact that the term "Mikado" is now obsolete. This description of
+the relation of sovereign and minister (inaccurately characterised by
+some writers on Confucianism as that of "King and subject," a phrase
+which might almost fit the constitutional monarchy of to-day) shows the
+relation, as it did exist for nearly a thousand years of Japanese
+history. We find the same imitation of procedure, even when imperialism
+became only a shadow in the government and the great Shōgun who
+called himself "Tycoon," the ruler in Yedo, aping the majesty of
+Kiōto, became so powerful as to be also a dragon. Between the Yedo
+Shōgun and the people rose a great staircase of numberless
+subordinates, and should a subject attempt to offer a petition in person
+he must pay for it by crucifixion.[12]
+
+As, under the emperor there were court ministers, heads of departments,
+governors and functionaries of all kinds before the people were reached,
+so, under the Shōgun in the feudal days, there were the Daimiōs or
+great lords and the Shomiōs or small lords with their retainers in
+graduated subordination, and below these were the servants and general
+humanity. Even after the status of man was reached, there were
+gradations and degradations through fractions down to ciphers and indeed
+to minus quantities, for there existed in the Country of Brave Warriors
+some tens of thousands of human beings bearing the names of _eta_
+(pariah) and _hī-nin_ (non-human), who were far below the pale of
+humanity.
+
+
+The Paramount Idea of Loyalty.
+
+
+The one idea which dominated all of these classes,[13]--in Old Japan
+there were no masses but only many classes--was that of loyalty. As the
+Japanese language shows, every faculty of man was subordinated to this
+idea. Confucianism even conditioned the development of Japanese grammar,
+as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and
+suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular
+lines. Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a
+certain sense unknown. In European languages, the pronoun shows how
+clearly the ideas of personality and of individuality have been
+developed; but in the Japanese language there really are no pronouns, in
+the sense of the word as used by the Germanic nations, at least,
+although there are hundreds of impersonal and topographical substitutes
+for them.[14] The mirror, of the language itself, reflects more truth
+upon this point of inquiry than do patriotic assertions, or the protests
+of those who in the days of this Meiji era so handsomely employ the
+Japanese language as the medium of thought. Strictly speaking, the ego
+disappears in ordinary conversation and action, and instead, it is the
+servant speaking reverently to his master; or it is the master
+condescending to the object which is "before his hand" or "to the side"
+or "below" where his inferior kneels; or it is the "honorable right"
+addressing the "esteemed left."
+
+All the terms which a foreigner might use in speaking of the duties of
+sovereign and minister, of lord and retainer and of master and servant,
+are comprehended in the Japanese word, Kun-shin, in which is
+crystallized but one thought, though it may relate to three grades of
+society. The testimony of history and of the language shows, that the
+feelings which we call loyalty and reverence are always directed upward,
+while those which we term benevolence and love invariably look downward.
+
+Note herein the difference between the teachings of Christ and those of
+the Chinese sage. According to the latter, if there be love in the
+relation of the master and servant, it is the master who loves, and not
+the servant who may only reverence. It would be inharmonious for the
+Japanese servant to love his master; he never even talks of it. And in
+family life, while the parent may love the child, the child is not
+expected to love the parent but rather to reverence him. So also the
+Japanese wife, as in our old scriptural versions, is to "see that she
+_reverence_ her husband." Love (not _agapé_, but _eros_) is indeed a
+theme of the poets and of that part of life and of literature which is,
+strictly speaking, outside of the marriage relation, but the thought
+that dominates in marital life, is reverence from the wife and
+benevolence from the husband. The Christian conception, which requires
+that a woman should love her husband, does not strictly accord with the
+Confucian idea.
+
+Christianity has taught us that when a man loves a woman purely and
+makes her his wife, he should also have reverence for her, and that this
+element should be an integral part of his love. Christianity also
+teaches a reverence for children; and Wordsworth has but followed the
+spirit of his great master, Christ, when expressing this beautiful
+sentiment in his melodious numbers. Such ideas as these, however, are
+discords in Japanese social life of the old order. So also the Christian
+preaching of love to God, sounds outlandish to the men of Chinese mind
+in the middle or the pupil kingdom, who seem to think that it can only
+come from the lips of those who have not been properly trained. To "love
+God" appears to them as being an unwarrantable patronage of, and
+familiarity with "Heaven," or the King of Kings. The same difficulty,
+which to-day troubles Christian preachers and translators, existed among
+the Roman Catholic missionaries three centuries ago.[15] The moulds of
+thought were not then, nor are they even now, entirely ready for the
+full truth of Christian revelation.
+
+
+Suicide Made Honorable.
+
+
+In the long story of the Honorable Country, there are to be found many
+shining examples of loyalty, which is the one theme oftenest illustrated
+in popular fiction and romance. Its well-attested instances on the
+crimson thread of Japanese history are more numerous than the beads on
+many rosaries. The most famous of all, perhaps, is the episode of the
+Forty-Seven Rōnins, which is a constant favorite in the theatres, and
+has been so graphically narrated or pictured by scores of native poets,
+authors, artists, sculptors and dramatists, and told in English by
+Mitford, Dickens and Grecy.[16]
+
+These forty-seven men hated wife, child, society, name, fame, food and
+comfort for the sake of avenging the death of their master. In a certain
+sense, they ceased to be persons in order to become the impersonal
+instruments of Heaven's retribution. They gave up every thing--houses,
+lands, kinsmen--that they might have in this life the hundred-fold
+reward of vengeance, and in the world-life of humanity throughout the
+centuries, fame and honor. Feeding the hunger of their hearts upon the
+hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of their victim, they
+waited long years. When once their swords had drunk the consecrated
+blood, they laid the severed head upon their master's tomb and then
+gladly, even rapturously, delivered themselves up, and ripping open
+their bowels they died by that judicially ordered seppuku which cleansed
+their memory from every stain, and gave to them the martyr's fame and
+crown forever. The tombs of these men, on the hillside overlooking the
+Bay of Yedo, are to this day ever fragrant with fresh flowers, and to
+the cemetery where their ashes lie and their memorials stand, thousands
+of pilgrims annually wend their way. No dramas are more permanently
+popular on the stage than those which display the virtues of these
+heroes, who are commonly spoken of as "The righteous Samurai." Their
+tombs have stood for two centuries, as mighty magnets drawing others to
+self-impalement on the sword--as multipliers of suicides.
+
+Yet this alphabetic number, this _i-ro-ha_ of self-murder, is but one of
+a thousand instances in the Land of Noble Suicides. From the
+pre-historic days when the custom of _Jun-shi_, or dying with the
+master, required the interment of the living retainers with the dead
+lord, down through all the ages to the Revolution of 1868, when at
+Sendai and Aidzu scores of men and boys opened their bowels, and mothers
+slew their infant sons and cut their own throats, there has been flowing
+through Japanese history a river of suicides' blood[17] having its
+springs in the devotion of retainers to masters, and of soldiers to a
+lost cause as represented by the feudal superior. Shigémori, the son of
+the prime minister Kiyomori, who protected the emperor even against his
+own father, is a model of that Japanese kun-shin which placed fidelity
+to the sovereign above filial obedience; though even yet Shigémori's
+name is the synonym of both virtues. Kusunoki Masashigé,[18] the white
+flower of Japanese chivalry, is but one, typical not only of a thousand
+but of thousands of thousands of soldiers, who hated parents, wife,
+child, friend in order to be disciple to the supreme loyalty. He sealed
+his creed by emptying his own veins. Kiyomori,[19] like King David of
+Israel, on his dying bed ordered the assassination of his personal
+enemy.
+
+The common Japanese novels read like records of slaughter-houses. No
+Moloch or Shiva has won more victims to his shrine than has this idea of
+Japanese loyalty which is so beautiful in theory and so hideous in
+practice. Despite the military clamps and frightful despotism of Yedo,
+which for two hundred and fifty years gave to the world a delusive idea
+of profound quiet in the Country of Peaceful Shores, there was in fact a
+chronic unrest which amounted at many times and in many places to
+anarchy. The calm of despotism was, indeed, rudely broken by the aliens
+in the "black ships" with the "flowery flag"; but, without regarding
+influences from the West, the indications of history as now read,
+pointed in 1850 toward the bloodiest of Japan's many civil wars. Could
+the statistics of the suicides during this long period be collected,
+their publication would excite in Christendom the utmost incredulity.
+
+Nevertheless, this qualifying statement should be made. A study of the
+origin and development of the national method of self-destruction shows
+that suicide by seppuku, or opening of the abdomen, was first a custom,
+and then a privilege. It took, among men of honor, the place of the
+public executions, the massacres in battle and siege, decimation of
+rebels and similar means of killing at the hands of others, which so
+often mar the historical records of western nations. Undoubtedly,
+therefore, in the minds of most Japanese, there are many instances of
+_hara-kiri_ which should not be classed as suicide, but technically as
+execution of judicial sentence. And yet no sentence or process of death
+known in western lands had such influence in glorifying the victim, as
+had seppuku in Japan.
+
+
+The Family Idea.
+
+
+The Second Relation is that of father and son, thus preceding what we
+should suppose to be the first of human relations--husband and wife--but
+the arrangement entirely accords with the Oriental conception that the
+family, the house, is more important than the individual. In Old Japan
+the paramount idea in marriage, was not that of love or companionship,
+or of mutual assistance with children, but was almost wholly that of
+offspring, and of maintaining the family line.[20] The individual might
+perish but the house must live on.
+
+Very different from the family of Christendom, is the family in Old
+Japan, in which we find elements that would not be recognized where
+monogamy prevails and children are born in the home and not in the herd.
+Instead of father, mother and children, there are father, wife,
+concubines, and various sorts of children who are born of the wife or of
+the concubine, or have been adopted into the family. With us, adoption
+is the exception, but in Japan it is the invariable rule whenever either
+convenience or necessity requires it of the house. Indeed it is rare to
+find a set of brothers bearing the same family name. Adoption and
+concubinage keep the house unbroken.[21] It is the house, the name,
+which must continue, although not necessarily by a blood line. The name,
+a social trade-mark, lives on for ages. The line of Japanese emperors,
+which, in the Constitution of 1889, by adding mythology to history is
+said to rule "unbroken from ages eternal," is not one of fathers and
+sons, but has been made continuous by concubinage and adoption. In this
+view, it is possibly as old as the line of the popes.
+
+It is very evident that our terms and usages do not have in such a home
+the place or meaning which one not familiar with the real life of Old
+Japan would suppose. The father is an absolute ruler. There is in Old
+Japan hardly any such thing as "parents," for practically there is only
+one parent, as the woman counts for little. The wife is honored if she
+becomes a mother, but if childless she is very probably neglected. Our
+idea of fatherhood implies that the child has rights and that he should
+love as well as be loved. Our customs excite not only the merriment but
+even the contempt of the old-school Japanese. The kiss and the embrace,
+the linking of the child's arm around its father's neck, the address on
+letters "My dear Wife" or "My beloved Mother" seem to them like
+caricatures of propriety. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that
+in reverence toward parents--or at least toward one of the parents--a
+Japanese child is apt to excel the one born even in a Christian home.
+
+This so-called filial "piety" becomes in practice, however, a horrible
+outrage upon humanity and especially upon womanhood. During centuries
+the despotic power of the father enabled him to put an end to the life
+of his child, whether boy or girl.
+
+Under this abominable despotism there is no protection for the daughter,
+who is bound to sell her body, while youth or beauty last or perhaps for
+life, to help pay her father's debts, to support an aged parent or even
+to gratify his mere caprice. In hundreds of Japanese romances the
+daughter, who for the sake of her parents has sold herself to shame, is
+made the theme of the story and an object of praise. In the minds of the
+people there may be indeed a feeling of pity that the girl has been
+obliged to give up her home life for the brothel, but no one ever thinks
+of questioning the right of the parent to make the sale of the girl's
+body, any more than he would allow the daughter to rebel against it.
+This idea still lingers and the institution remains,[22] although the
+system has received stunning blows from the teaching of Christian
+ethics, the preaching of a better gospel and the improvements in the law
+of the land.
+
+
+The Marital Relation.
+
+
+The Third Relation is that of husband and wife. The meaning of these
+words, however, is not the same with the Japanese as with us. In
+Confucius there is not only male and female, but also superior and
+inferior, master and servant.[23] Without any love-making or courtship
+by those most interested, a marriage between two young people is
+arranged by their parents through the medium of what is called a
+"go-between." The bride leaves her father's house forever--that is, when
+she is not to be subsequently divorced--and entering into that of her
+husband must be subordinate not only to him but also to his parents, and
+must obey them as her own father and mother. Having all her life under
+her father's roof reverenced her superiors, she is expected to bring
+reverence to her new domicile, but not love. She must always obey but
+never be jealous. She must not be angry, no matter whom her husband may
+introduce into his household. She must wait upon him at his meals and
+must walk behind him, but not with him. When she dies her children go to
+her funeral, but not her husband.
+
+A foreigner, hearing the Japanese translate our word chastity by the
+term _téiso_ or _misao_, may imagine that the latter represents mutual
+obligation and personal purity for man and wife alike, but on looking
+into the dictionary he will find that _téiso_ means "Womanly duties." A
+circumlocution is needed to express the idea of a chaste man.
+
+Jealousy is a horrible sin, but is always supposed to be a womanish
+fault, and so an exhibition of folly and weakness. Therefore, to apply
+such a term to God--to say "a jealous God"--outrages the good sense of a
+Confucianist,[24] almost as much as the statement that God "cannot lie"
+did that of the Pundit, who wondered how God could be Omnipotent if He
+could not lie.
+
+How great the need in Japanese social life of some purifying principle
+higher than Confucianism can afford, is shown in the little book
+entitled "The Japanese Bride,"[25] written by a native, and scarcely
+less in the storm of native criticism it called forth. Under the system
+which has ruled Japan for a millennium and a half, divorce has been
+almost entirely in the hands of the husband, and the document of
+separation, entitled in common parlance the "three lines and a half,"
+was invariably written by the man. A woman might indeed nominally obtain
+a divorce from her husband, but not actually; for the severance of the
+marital tie would be the work of the house or relatives, rather than the
+act of the wife, who was not "a person" in the case. Indeed, in the
+olden time a woman was not a person in the eye of the law, but rather a
+chattel. The case is somewhat different under the new codes,[26] but the
+looseness of the marriage tie is still a scandal to thinking Japanese.
+Since the breaking up of the feudal system and the disarrangement of the
+old social and moral standards, the statistics made annually from the
+official census show that the ratio of divorce to marriage is very
+nearly as one to three.[27]
+
+
+The Elder and the Younger Brother.
+
+
+The Fourth Relation is that of Elder Brother and Younger Brother. As we
+have said, foreigners in translating some of the Chinese and Japanese
+terms used in the system of Confucius are often led into errors by
+supposing that the Christian conception of family life prevails also in
+Chinese Asia. By many writers this relation is translated "brother to
+brother;" but really in the Japanese language there is no term meaning
+simply "brother" or "sister,"[28] and a circumlocution is necessary to
+express the ideas which we convey by these words. It is always "older
+brother" or "younger brother," and "older sister" or "younger
+sister"--the male or female "_kiyodai_" as the case may be. With
+us--excepting in lands where the law of primogeniture still
+prevails--all the brothers are practically equal, and it would be
+considered a violation of Christian righteousness for a parent to show
+more favor to one child than to another. In this respect the "wisdom
+that cometh from above" is "without partiality." The Chinese ethical
+system, however, disregards the principle of mutual rights and duties,
+and builds up the family on the theory of the subordination of the
+younger brother to the elder brother, the predominant idea being not
+mutual love, but, far more than in the Christian household, that of rank
+and order. The attitude of the heir of the family toward the other
+children is one of condescension, and they, as well as the widowed
+mother, regard the oldest son with reverence. It is as though the
+commandment given on Sinai should read, "Honor thy father and thy elder
+brother."
+
+The mother is an instrument rather than a person in the life of the
+house, and the older brother is the one on whom rests the responsibility
+of continuing the family line. The younger brothers serve as subjects
+for adoption into other families, especially those where there are
+daughters to be married and family names to be continued. In a word, the
+name belongs to the house and not to the individual. The habit of naming
+children after relatives or friends of the parents, or illustrious men
+and women, is unknown in Old Japan, though an approach to this common
+custom among us is made by conferring or making use of part of a name,
+usually by the transferrence of one ideograph forming the name-word.
+Such a practice lays stress upon personality, and so has no place in the
+country without pronouns, where the idea of continuing the personal
+house or semi-personal family, is predominant. The customs prevalent in
+life are strong even in death, and the elder brother or sister, in some
+provinces, did not go to the funeral of the younger. This state of
+affairs is reflected in Japanese literature, and produces in romance as
+well as in history many situations and episodes which seem almost
+incredible to the Western mind.
+
+In the lands ruled by Confucius the grown-up children usually live under
+the parental roof, and there are few independent homes as we understand
+them. The so-called family is composed both of the living and of the
+dead, and constitutes the unit of society.
+
+
+Friendship and Humanity.
+
+
+The Fifth Relation--Friends. Here, again, a mistake is often made by
+those who import ideas of Christendom into the terms used in Chinese
+Asia, and who strive to make exact equivalent in exchanging the coins of
+speech. Occidental writers are prone to translate the term for the fifth
+relation into the English phrase "man to man," which leads the Western
+reader to suppose that Confucius taught that universal love for man, as
+man, which was instilled and exemplified by Jesus Christ. In translating
+Confucius they often make the same mistake that some have done who read
+in Terence's "Self-Tormentor" the line, "I am a man, and nothing human
+is foreign to me,"[29] and imagine that this is the sentiment of an
+enlightened Christian, although the context shows that it is only the
+boast of a busybody and parasite. What Confucius taught under the fifth
+relation is not universality, and, as compared to the teachings of
+Jesus, is moonlight, not sunlight. The doctrine of the sage is clearly
+expressed in the Analects, and amounts only to courtesy and propriety.
+He taught, indeed, that the stranger is to be treated as a friend; and
+although in both Chinese and Japanese history there are illustrious
+proofs that Confucius had interpreters nobler than himself, yet it is
+probable that the doctrine of the stranger's receiving treatment as a
+friend, does not extend to the foreigner. Confucius framed something
+like the Golden Rule--though it were better called a Silver Rule, or
+possibly a Gilded Rule, since it is in the negative instead of being
+definitely placed in the positive and indicative form. One may search
+his writings in vain for anything approaching the parable of the Good
+Samaritan, or the words of Him who commended Elijah for replenishing the
+cruse and barrel of the widow of Sarepta, and Elisha for healing Naaman
+the Syrian leper, and Jonah for preaching the good news of God to the
+Assyrians who had been aliens and oppressors. Lao Tsze, however, went so
+far as to teach "return good for evil." When one of the pupils of
+Confucius interrogated his Master concerning this, the sage answered;
+"What then will you return for good? Recompense injury with justice, and
+return good for good."
+
+But if we do good only to those who do good to us, what thanks have we?
+Do not the publicans the same? Behold how the Heavenly Father does good
+alike unto all, sending rain upon the just and unjust!
+
+How Old Japan treated the foreigner is seen in the repeated repulse,
+with powder and ball, of the relief ships which, under the friendly
+stars and stripes, attempted to bring back to her shores the shipwrecked
+natives of Nippon.[30] Granted that this action may have been purely
+political and the Government alone responsible for it--just as our
+un-Christian anti-Chinese legislation is similarly explained--yet it is
+certain that the sentiment of the only men in Japan who made public
+opinion,--the Samurai of that day,--was in favor of this method of
+meeting the alien.
+
+In 1852 the American expedition was despatched to Japan for the purpose
+of opening a lucrative trade and of extending American influence and
+glory, but also unquestionably with the idea of restoring shipwrecked
+Japanese as well as securing kind treatment for shipwrecked American
+sailors, thereby promoting the cause of humanity and international
+courtesy; in short, with motives that were manifestly mixed.[31] In the
+treaty pavilion there ensued an interesting discussion between Commodore
+Perry and Professor Hayashi upon this very subject.
+
+Perry truthfully complained that the dictates of humanity had not been
+followed by the Japanese, that unnecessary cruelty had been used against
+shipwrecked men, and that Japan's attitude toward her neighbors and the
+whole world was that of an enemy and not of a friend.
+
+Hayashi, who was then probably the leading Confucianist in Japan, warmly
+defended his countrymen and superiors against the charge of intentional
+cruelty, and denounced the lawless character of many of the foreign
+sailors. Like most Japanese of his school and age, he wound up with
+panegyrics on the pre-eminence in virtue and humanity, above all
+nations, of the Country Ruled by a Theocratic Dynasty, and on the glory
+and goodness of the great Tokugawa family, which had given peace to the
+land during two centuries or more.[32]
+
+It is manifest, however, that so far as this hostility to foreigners,
+and this blind bigotry of "patriotism" were based on Chinese codes of
+morals, as officially taught in Yedo, they belonged as much to the old
+Confucianism as to the new. Wherever the narrow philosophy of the sage
+has dominated, it has made Asia Chinese and nations hermits. As a rule,
+the only way in which foreigners could come peacefully into China or the
+countries which she intellectually dominated was as vassals,
+tribute-bearers, or "barbarians." The mental attitude of China, Korea,
+Annam and Japan has for ages been that of the Jews in Herodian times,
+who set up, between the Court of Israel and the Court of the Gentiles,
+their graven stones of warning which read:[33]
+
+    "No foreigner to proceed within the partition wall and enclosure
+    around the sanctuary; whoever is caught in the same will on that
+    account be liable to incur death."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM
+
+    "After a thousand years the pine decays; the flower has its
+    glory in blooming for a day."--Hakkyoi, Chinese Poet of the Tang
+    Dynasty.
+
+    "The morning-glory of an hour differs not in heart from the
+    pine-tree of a thousand years."--Matsunaga of Japan.
+
+    "The pine's heart is not of a thousand years, nor the
+    morning-glory's of an hour, but only that they may fulfil their
+    destiny."
+
+    "Since Iyéyasú, his hair brushed by the wind, his body anointed
+    with rain, with lifelong labor caused confusion to cease and
+    order to prevail, for more than a hundred years there has been
+    no war. The waves of the four seas have been unruffled and no
+    one has failed of the blessing of peace. The common folk must
+    speak with reverence, yet it is the duty of scholars to
+    celebrate the virtue of the Government."--Kyūso of Yedo.
+
+    "A ruler must have faithful ministers. He who sees the error of
+    his lord and remonstrates, not fearing his wrath, is braver than
+    he who bears the foremost spear in battle."--Iyéyasú.
+
+    "The choice of the Chinese philosophy and the rejection of
+    Buddhism was not because of any inherent quality in the Japanese
+    mind. It was not the rejection of supernaturalism or the
+    miraculous. The Chinese philosophy is as supernaturalistic as
+    some forms of Buddhism. The distinction is not between the
+    natural and the supernatural in either system, but between the
+    seen and the unseen."
+
+    "The Chinese philosophy is as religious as the original teaching
+    of Gautama. Neither Shushi nor Gautama believed in a Creator,
+    but both believed in gods and demons.... It has little place for
+    prayer, but has a vivid sense of the Infinite and the Unseen,
+    and fervently believes that right conduct is in accord with the
+    'eternal verities.'"--George William Knox.
+
+    "In him is the yea."--Paul.
+
+
+CHAPTER V - CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM
+
+Japan's Millennium of Simple Confucianism.
+
+
+Having seen the practical working of the ethics of Confucianism,
+especially in the old and simple system, let us now glance at the
+developed and philosophical forms, which, by giving the educated man of
+Japan a creed, made him break away from Buddhism and despise it, while
+becoming often fanatically Confucian.
+
+For a thousand years (from 600 to 1600 A.D.) the Buddhist religious
+teachers assisted in promulgating the ethics of Confucius; for during
+all this time there was harmony between the various Buddhisms imported
+from India, Tibet, China and Korea, and the simple undeveloped system of
+Chinese Confucianism. Slight modifications were made by individual
+teachers, and emphasis was laid upon this or that feature, while out of
+the soil of Japanese feudalism were growths of certain virtues as phases
+of loyalty, phenomenal beyond those in China. Nevertheless, during all
+this time, the Japanese teachers of the Chinese ethic were as students
+who did but recite what they learned. They simply transmitted, without
+attempting to expand or improve.
+
+Though the apparatus of distribution was early known, block printing
+having been borrowed from the Chinese after the ninth century, and
+movable types learned from the Koreans and made use of in the sixteenth
+century,[1] the Chinese classics were not printed as a body until after
+the great peace of Genna (1615). Nor during this period were
+translations made of the classics or commentaries, into the Japanese
+vernacular. Indeed, between the tenth and sixteenth centuries there was
+little direct intercourse, commercial, diplomatic or intellectual,
+between Japan and China, as compared with the previous eras, or the
+decades since 1870.
+
+Suddenly in the seventeenth century the intellect of Japan, all ready
+for new surprises in the profound peace inaugurated by Iyéyasŭ,
+received, as it were, an electric thrill. The great warrior, becoming
+first a unifier by arms and statecraft, determined also to become the
+architect of the national culture. Gathering up, from all parts of the
+country, books, manuscripts, and the appliances of intellectual
+discipline, he encouraged scholars and stimulated education. Under his
+supervision the Chinese classics were printed, and were soon widely
+circulated. A college was established in Yedo, and immediately there
+began a critical study of the texts and principal commentaries. The fall
+of the Ming dynasty in China, and the accession of the Manchiu Tartars,
+became the signal for a great exodus of learned Chinese, who fled to
+Japan. These received a warm welcome, both at the capital and in Yedo,
+as well as in some of the castle towns of the Daimiōs, among whom
+stand illustrious those of the province of Mito.[2]
+
+These men from the west brought not only ethics but philosophy; and the
+fertilizing influences of these scholars of the Dispersion, may be
+likened to those of the exodus of the Greek learned men after the
+capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Confucian schools were
+established in most of the chief provincial cities. For over two hundred
+years this discipline in the Chinese ethics, literature and history
+constituted the education of the boys and men of Japan. Almost every
+member of the Samurai classes was thoroughly drilled in this curriculum.
+All Japanese social, official, intellectual and literary life was
+permeated with the new spirit. Their "world" was that of the Chinese,
+and all outside of it belonged to "barbarians." The matrices of thought
+became so fixed and the Japanese language has been so moulded, that even
+now, despite the intense and prolonged efforts of thirty years of acute
+and laborious scholarship, it is impossible, as we have said, to find
+English equivalents for terms which were used for a century or two past
+in every-day Japanese speech. Those who know most about these facts, are
+most modest in attempting with English words to do justice to Japanese
+thought; while those who know the least seem to be most glib, fluent and
+voluminous in showing to their own satisfaction, that there is little
+difference between the ethics of Chinese Asia and those of Christendom.
+
+
+Survey of the Intellectual History of China.
+
+
+The Confucianism of the last quarter-millennium in Japan is not that of
+her early centuries. While the Japanese for a thousand years only
+repeated and recited--merely talking aloud in their intellectual sleep
+but not reflecting--China was awake and thinking hard. Japan's continued
+civil wars, which caused the almost total destruction of books and
+manuscripts, secured also the triumph of Buddhism which meant the
+atrophy of the national intellect. When, after the long feuds and
+battles of the middle ages, Confucianism stepped the second time into
+the Land of _Brave_ Scholars, it was no longer with the simple rules of
+conduct and ceremonial of the ancient days, nor was it as the ally of
+Buddhism. It came like an armed man in full panoply of harness and
+weapons. It entered to drive Buddhism out, and to defend the intellect
+of the educated against the wiles of priestcraft. It was a full-blown
+system of pantheistic rationalism, with a scheme of philosophy that to
+the far-Oriental mind seemed perfect as a rule both of faith and
+practice. It came in a form that was received as religion, for it was
+not only morality "touched" but infused with motion. Nor were the
+emotions kindled, those of the partisan only, but rather also those of
+the devotee and the martyr. Henceforth Buddhism, with its inventions,
+its fables, and its endless dogmatism, was for the common people, for
+women and children, but not for the Samurai. The new Confucianism came
+to Japan as the system of Chu Hi. For three centuries this system had
+already held sway over the intellect of China. For two centuries and a
+half it has dominated the minds of the Samurai so that the majority of
+them to-day, even with the new name Shizoku, are Confucianists so far as
+they are anything.
+
+To understand the origin of Buddhism we must know something of the
+history and the previous religious and philosophical systems of India,
+and so, if we are to appreciate modern "orthodox" Confucianism, we must
+review the history of China, and see, in outline, at least, its
+literature, politics and philosophy during the middle ages.
+
+"Four great stages of literary and national development may be pointed
+to as intervening (in the fifteen hundred years) between the great sage
+and the age called that of the Sung-Ju,"[3] from the tenth to the
+fourteenth century, in which the Confucian system received its modern
+form. Each of them embraced the course of three or four centuries.
+
+I. From the sixth to the third century before Christ the struggle was
+for Confucian and orthodox doctrine, led by Mencius against various
+speculators in morals and politics, with Taoist doctrine continually
+increasing in acceptance.
+
+II. The Han age (from B.C. 206 to A.D. 190) was rich in critical
+expositors and commentators of the classics, but "the tone of
+speculation was predominantly Taoist."
+
+III. The period of the Six Dynasties (from A.D. 221 to A.D. 618) was the
+golden age of Buddhism, when the science and philosophy of India
+enriched the Chinese mind, and the wealth of the country was lavished on
+Buddhist temples and monasteries. The faith of Shaka became nearly
+universal and the Buddhists led in philosophy and literature, founding a
+native school of Indian philosophy.
+
+IV. The Tang period (from A.D. 618 to 905) marked by luxury and poetry,
+was an age of mental inaction and enervating prosperity.
+
+V. The fifth epoch, beginning with the Sung Dynasty (from A.D. 960 to
+1333) and lasting to our own time, was ushered in by a period of intense
+mental energy. Strange to say (and most interesting is the fact to
+Americans of this generation), the immediate occasion of the recension
+and expansion of the old Confucianism was a Populist movement.[4] During
+the Tang era of national prosperity, Chinese socialists questioned the
+foundations of society and of government, and there grew up a new school
+of interpreters as well as of politicians. In the tenth century the
+contest between the old Confucianism and the new notions, broke out with
+a violence that threatened anarchy to the whole empire.
+
+One set of politicians, led by Wang (1021-1086), urged an extension of
+administrative functions, including agricultural loans, while the
+brothers Cheng (1032-1085, 1033-1107) reaffirmed, with fresh
+intellectual power, the old orthodoxy.
+
+The school of writers and party agitators, led by Szma Kwaug
+(1009-1086)[5] the historian, contended that the ancient principles of
+the sages should be put in force. Others, the Populists of that age and
+land, demanded the entire overthrow of existing institutions.
+
+In the bitter contest which ensued, the Radicals and Reformers
+temporarily won the day and held power. For a decade the experiment of
+innovation was tried. Men turned things social and political upside down
+to see how they looked in that position. So these stood or oscillated
+for thirteen years, when the people demanded the old order again. The
+Conservatives rose to power. There was no civil war, but the Radicals
+were banished beyond the frontier, and the country returned to normal
+government.
+
+This controversy raised a landmark in the intellectual history of
+China.[6] The thoughts of men were turned toward deep and acute inquiry
+into the nature and use of things in general. This thinking resulted in
+a literature which to-day is the basis of the opinions of the educated
+men in all Chinese Asia. Instead of a sapling we now have a mighty tree.
+The chief of the Chinese writers, the Calvin of Asiatic orthodoxy, who
+may be said to have wrought Confucianism into a developed philosophy,
+and who may be called the greatest teacher of the mind, of modern China,
+Korea and Japan, is Chu Hi, who reverently adopted the criticisms on the
+Chinese classics of the brothers Cheng.[7] It is evident that in Chu
+Hi's system, we have a body of thought which may be called the result of
+Chinese reflection during a millennium and a half. It is the ethics of
+Confucius transfused with the mystical elements of Taoism and the
+speculations of Buddhism. As the common people of China made an amalgam
+of the three religions and consider them one, so the philosophers have
+out of these three systems made one, calling that one Confucianism. The
+dominant philosophy in Japan to-day is based upon the writings of Chu Hi
+(in Japanese, Shu Shi) and called the system of Téi-Shu, which is the
+Japanese pronunciation of the names of the Cheng brothers and of Chu
+(Hi). It is a medley which the ancient sage could no more recognize than
+would Jesus know much of the Christianity that casts out devils in his
+name.
+
+
+Contrast between the Chinese and Japanese Intellect.
+
+
+Here we must draw a contrast between the Chinese and Japanese intellect
+to the credit of the former; China made, Japan borrowed. While history
+shows that the Chinese mind, once at least, possessed mental initiative,
+and the power of thinking out a system of philosophy which to-day
+satisfies largely, if not wholly, the needs of the educated Chinaman,
+there has been in the Japanese mind, as shown by its history, apparently
+no such vigor or fruitfulness. From the literary and philosophical
+points of view, Confucianism, as it entered Japan, in the sixth century,
+remained practically stationary for a thousand years. Modifications,
+indeed, were made upon the Chinese system, and these were striking and
+profound, but they were less developments of the intellect than
+necessities of the case. The modifications were made, as molten metal
+poured into a mould shaped by other hands than the artist's own, rather
+than as clay made plastic under the hand of a designer. Buddhism, being
+the dominant force in the thoughts of the Japanese for at least eight
+hundred years, furnished the food for the requirements of man on his
+intellectual and religious side.
+
+Broadly speaking, it may be said that the Japanese, receiving passively
+the Chinese classics, were content simply to copy and to recite what
+they had learned. As compared with their audacity in not only going
+beyond the teachings of Buddha, but in inventing systems of Buddhism
+which neither Gautama nor his first disciples could recognize, the
+docile and almost slavish adherence to ancient Confucianism is one of
+the astonishing things in the history of religions in Japan. In the
+field of Buddhism we have a luxuriant growth of new and strange species
+of colossal weeds that overtower and seem to have choked out whatever
+furze of original Buddhism there was in Japan, while in the domain of
+Confucianism there is a barren heath. Whereas, in China, the voluminous
+literature created by commentators on Confucius and the commentaries on
+the commentators suggests the hyperbole used by the author of John's
+Gospel,[8] yet there is probably nothing on Confucianism from the
+Japanese pen in the thousand years under our review which is worth the
+reading or the translation.[9] In this respect the Japanese genius
+showed its vast capabilities of imitation, adoption and assimilation.
+
+As of old, Confucianism again furnished a Chinese wall, within which the
+Japanese could move, and wherein they might find food for the mind in
+all the relations of life and along all the lines of achievement
+permitted them. The philosophy imported from China, as shown again and
+again in that land of oft-changing dynasties, harmonizing with arbitrary
+government, accorded perfectly with the despotism of the Tokugawas, the
+"Tycoons" who in Yedo ruled from 1603 to 1868. Nothing new was
+permitted, and any attempt at modification, enlargement, or improvement
+was not only frowned and hissed down as impious innovation, but usually
+brought upon the daring innovator the ban of the censor, imprisonment,
+banishment, or death by enforced suicide.[10] In Yedo, the centre of
+Chinese learning, and in other parts of the country, there were, indeed,
+thinkers whose philosophy did not always tally with what was taught by
+the orthodox,[11] but as a rule even when these men escaped the ban of
+the censor, or the sword of the executioner, they were but us voices
+crying in the wilderness. The great mass of the gentry was orthodox,
+according to the standards of the Séido College, while the common people
+remained faithful to Buddhism. In the conduct of daily life they
+followed the precepts which had for centuries been taught them by their
+fathers.
+
+
+Philosophical Confucianism the Religion of the Samurai.
+
+
+What were the features of this modern Confucian philosophy, which the
+Japanese Samurai exalted to a religion?[12] We say philosophy and
+religion, because while the teachings of the great sage lay at the
+bottom of the system, yet it is not true since the early seventeenth
+century, that the thinking men of Japan have been satisfied with only
+the original simple ethical rules of the ancient master. Though they
+have craved a richer mental pabulum, yet they have enjoyed less the
+study of the original text, than acquaintance with the commentaries and
+communion with the great philosophical exponents, of the master. What,
+then, we ask, are the features of the developed philosophy, which,
+imported from China, served the Japanese Samurai not only as morals but
+for such religion as he possessed or professed?
+
+We answer: The system was not agnostic, as many modern and western
+writers assert that it is, and as Confucius, transmitting and probably
+modifying the old religion, had made the body of his teachings to be.
+Agnostic, indeed, in regard to many things wherein a Christian has
+faith, modern Confucianism, besides being bitterly polemic and hostile
+to Buddhism, is pantheistic.
+
+Certain it is that during the revival of Pure Shintō in the
+eighteenth century, the scholars of the Shintō school, and those of
+its great rival, the Chinese, agreed in making loyalty[13] take the
+place of filial duty in the Confucian system. To serve the cause of the
+Emperor became the most essential duty to those with cultivated minds.
+The newer Chinese philosophy mightily influenced the historians, Rai
+Sanyo and those of the Mito school, whose works, now classic, really
+began the revolution of 1868. By forming and setting in motion the
+public opinion, which finally overthrew the Shōgun and feudalism,
+restored the Emperor to supreme power, and unified the nation, they
+helped, with modern ideas, to make the New Japan of our day. The
+Shintō and the Chinese teachings became amalgamated in a common
+cause, and thus the philosophy of Chu Hi, mingling with the nationalism
+and patriotism inculcated by Shintō, brought about a remarkable
+result. As a native scholar and philosopher observes, "It certainly is
+strange to see the Tokugawa rule much shaken, if not actually
+overthrown, by that doctrine which generations of able Shōguns and
+their ministers had earnestly encouraged and protected. It is perhaps
+still more remarkable to see the Mito clan, under many able and active
+chiefs, become the centre of the Kinno[14] movement, which was to result
+in the overthrow of the Tokugawa family, of which it was itself a
+branch."
+
+
+A Medley of Pantheism.
+
+
+The philosophy of modern Confucianism is wholly pantheistic. There is in
+it no such thing or being as God. The orthodox pantheism of Old Japan
+means that everything in general is god, but nothing in particular is
+God; that All is god, but not that God is all. It is a "pantheistic
+medley."[15]
+
+Chu Hi and his Japanese successors, especially Kyū-so, argue finely
+and discourse volubly about _Ki_[16] or spirit; but it is not Spirit, or
+spiritual in the sense of Him who taught even a woman at the well-curb
+at Sychar. It is in the air. It is in the earth, the trees, the flowers.
+It comes to consciousness in man. His _Ri_ is the Tao of Lao Tsze, the
+Way, Reason, Law. It is formless, invisible.
+
+    "Ri is not separate from Ki, for then it were an empty abstract
+    thing. It is joined to Ki, and may be called, by nature, one
+    decreed, changeless Norm. It is the rule of Ki, the very centre,
+    the reason why Ki is Ki."
+
+Ten or Heaven is not God or the abode of God, but an abstraction, a sort
+of Unknowable, or Primordial Necessity.
+
+    "The doctrine of the Sages knows and worships Heaven, and
+    without faith in it there is no truth. For men and things, the
+    universe, are born and nourished by Heaven, and the 'Way,' the
+    'ri,' that is in all, is the 'Way,' the 'ri' of Heaven.
+    Distinguishing root and branch, the heart is the root of Heaven
+    and the appearance, the revolution of the sun and moon, the
+    order of the stars, is the branch. The books of the sages teach
+    us to conform to the heart of Heaven and deal not with
+    appearances."
+
+    "The teaching of the sages is the original truth and, given to
+    men, it forms both their nature and their relationships. With it
+    complete, naught else is needed for the perfect following of the
+    'Way.' Let then the child make its parents Heaven, the retainer,
+    his Lord, the wife her husband, and let each give up life for
+    righteousness. Thus will each serve for Heaven. But if we exalt
+    Heaven above parent or Lord, we shall come to think we can serve
+    it though they be disobeyed and like tiger or wolf shall rejoice
+    to kill them. To such fearful end does the Western learning
+    lead.... Let each one die for duty, there is naught else we can
+    do."
+
+Thus wrote Ohashi Junzo, as late as 1857 A.D., the same year in which
+Townsend Harris entered Yedo to teach the practical philosophy of
+Christendom, and the brotherhood of man as expressed in diplomacy.
+Ohashi Junzo bitterly opposed the opening of Japan to modern
+civilization and the ideas of Christendom. His book was the swan-song of
+the dying Japanese Confucianism. Slow as is the dying, and hard as its
+death may be, the mind of new Japan has laid away to dust and oblivion
+the Téi-shu philosophy. "At present they (the Chinese classics) have
+fallen into almost total neglect, though phrases and allusions borrowed
+from them still pass current in literature, and even to some extent in
+the language of every-day life." Séido, the great temple of Confucius in
+Tokyo, is now utilized as an educational Museum.[17]
+
+A study of this subject and of comparative religion, is of immediate
+practical benefit to the Christian teacher. The preacher, addressing an
+audience made up of educated Japanese, who speaks of God without
+describing his personality, character, or attributes as illustrated in
+Revelation, will find that his hearers receive his term as the
+expression for a bundle of abstract principles, or a system of laws, or
+some kind of regulated force. They do, indeed, make some reference to a
+"creator" by using a rare word. Occasionally, their language seems to
+touch the boundary line on the other side of which is conscious
+intelligence, but nothing approaching the clearness and definiteness of
+the early Chinese monotheism of the pre-Confucian classics is to be
+distinguished.[18] The modern Japanese long ago heard joyfully the
+words, "Honor the gods, but keep them far from you," and he has done it.
+
+To love God would no more occur to a Japanese gentleman than to have his
+child embrace and kiss him. Whether the source and fountain of life of
+which they speak has any Divine Spirit, is very uncertain, but whether
+it has, or has not, man need not obey, much less worship him. The
+universe is one, the essence is the same. Man must seek to know his
+place in the universe; he is but one in an endless chain; let him find
+his part and fulfil that part; all else is vanity. One need not inquire
+into the origins or the ultimates. Man is moved by a power greater than
+himself; he has no real independence of his own; everything has its rank
+and place; indeed, its rank and place is its sole title to a separate
+existence. If a man mistakes his place he is a fool, he deserves
+punishment.
+
+
+The Ideals of a Samurai.
+
+
+Out of his place, man is not man. Duty is more important than being.
+Nearly everything in our life is fixed by fate; there may seem to be
+exceptions, because some wicked men are prosperous and some righteous
+men are wretched, but these are not real exceptions to the general rule
+that we are made for our environment and fitted to it. And then, again,
+it may be that our judgments are not correct. Let the heart be right and
+all is well. Let man be obedient and his outward circumstance is
+nothing, having no relation to his joy or happiness. Even when as to his
+earthly body man passes away, he is not destroyed; the drop again
+becomes part of the sea, the spark re-enters the flame, and his life
+continues, though it be not a conscious life. In this way man is in
+harmony with the original principle of all things. He outlasts the
+universe itself.
+
+Hence to a conscientious Samurai there is nothing in this world better
+than obedience, in the ideal of a true man. What he fears most and hates
+most is that his memory may perish, that he shall have no seed, that he
+shall be forgotten or die under a cloud and be thought treacherous or
+cowardly or base, when in reality his life was pure and his motives
+high. "Better," sang Yoshida Shoin, the dying martyr for his principles,
+"to be a crystal and to be broken, than to be a tile upon the housetop
+and remain."
+
+So, indeed, on a hundred curtained execution grounds, with the dirk of
+the suicide firmly grasped and about to shed their own life-blood, have
+sung the martyrs who died willingly for their faith in their idea of
+Yamato Damashii.[19] In untold instances in the national history, men
+have died willingly and cheerfully, and women also by thousands, as
+brave, as unflinching as the men, so that the story of Japanese chivalry
+is almost incredible in its awful suicides. History reveals a state of
+society in which cool determination, desperate courage and fearlessness
+of death in the face of duty were quite unique, and which must have had
+their base in some powerful though abnormal code of ethics.
+
+This leads us to consider again the things emphasized by Japanese as
+distinct from Chinese and Korean[20] Confucianism, and to call attention
+to its fruits, while at the same time we note its defects, and show
+wherein it failed. We shall then show how this old system has already
+waxed old and is passing away. Christ has come to Japan, and behold a
+new heaven and a new earth!
+
+
+New Japan Makes Revision.
+
+
+First. For sovereign and minister, there are coming into vogue new
+interpretations. This relation, if it is to remain as the first, will
+become that of the ruler and the ruled. Constitutional government has
+begun; and codes of law have been framed which are recognizing the
+rights of the individual and of the people. Even a woman has rights
+before the law, in relation to husband, parents, brothers, sisters and
+children. It is even beginning to be thought that children have rights.
+Let us hope that as the rights are better understood the duties will be
+equally clear.
+
+It is coming to pass in Japan that even in government, the sovereign
+must consult with his people on all questions pertaining to their
+welfare. Although, thus far the constitutional government makes the
+ministers responsible to the Sovereign instead of to the Diet, yet the
+contention of the enlightened men and the liberal parties is, that the
+ministers shall be responsible to the Diet. The time seems at hand when
+the sovereign's power over his people will not rest on traditions more
+or less uncertain, on history manufactured by governmental order, on
+mythological claims based upon the so-called "eternal ages," on
+prerogatives upheld by the sword, or on the supposed grace of the gods,
+but will be "broad-based upon the people's will." The power of the
+rulers will be derived from the consent of the governed. The Emperor
+will become the first and chief servant of the nation.
+
+Revision and improvement of the Second Relation will make filial piety
+something more real than that unto which China has attained, or Japan
+has yet seen, or which is yet universally known in Christendom. The
+tyranny of the father and of the older brother, and the sale of
+daughters to shame, will pass away; and there will arise in the Japanese
+house, the Christian home.
+
+It would be hard to say what Confucianism has done for woman. It is
+probable that all civilizations, and systems of philosophy, ethics and
+religion, can be well tested by this criterion--the position of woman.
+Confucianism virtually admits two standards of morality, one for man,
+another for woman.[21] In Chinese Asia adultery is indeed branded as one
+of the vilest of crimes, but in common idea and parlance it is a woman's
+crime, not man's. So, on the other hand, chastity is a female virtue, it
+is part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man personally.
+Right revision and improvement of the Third Relation will abolish
+concubinage. It will reform divorce. It will make love the basis of
+marriage. It will change the state of things truthfully pictured in such
+books as the Genji Monogatari, or Romance of Prince Genji, with its
+examples of horrible lust and incests; the Kojiki or Ethnic scripture,
+with its naïve accounts of filthiness among the gods; the Onna Dai Gaku,
+Woman's Great Study, with its amazing subordination and moral slavery of
+wife and daughter; and The Japanese Bride, of yesterday--all truthful
+pictures of Japanese life, for the epoch in which each was written.
+These books will become the forgotten curiosities of literature, known
+only to the archæologist.
+
+Improvement and revision of the Fourth Relation, will bring into the
+Japanese home more justice, righteousness, love and enjoyment of life.
+It will make possible, also, the cheerful acceptance and glad practice
+of those codes of law common in Christendom, which are based upon the
+rights of the individual and upon the idea of the greatest good to the
+greatest number. It will help to abolish the evils which come from
+primogeniture and to release the clutch of the dead hand upon the
+living. It will decrease the power of the graveyard, and make thought
+and care for the living the rule of life. It will abolish sham and
+fiction, and promote the cause of truth. It will hasten the reign of
+righteousness and love, and beneath propriety and etiquette lay the
+basis of "charity toward all, malice toward none."
+
+Revision with improvement of the Fifth Relation hastens the reign of
+universal brotherhood. It lifts up the fallen, the down-trodden and the
+outcast. It says to the slave "be free," and after having said "be
+free," educates, trains, and lifts up the brother once in servitude, and
+helps him to forget his old estate and to know his rights as well as his
+duties, and develops in him the image of God. It says to the hinin or
+not-human, "be a man, be a citizen, accept the protection of the law."
+It says to the eta, "come into humanity and society, receive the
+protection of law, and the welcome of your fellows; let memory forget
+the past and charity make a new future." It will bring Japan into the
+fraternity of nations, making her people one with the peoples of
+Christendom, not through the empty forms of diplomacy, or by the craft
+of her envoys, or by the power of her armies and navies reconstructed on
+modern principles, but by patient education and unflinching loyalty to
+high ideals. Thus will Japan become worthy of all the honors, which the
+highest humanity on this planet can bestow.
+
+
+The Ideal of Yamato Damashii Enlarged.
+
+
+In this our time it is not only the alien from Christendom, with his
+hostile eye and mordant criticism, who is helping to undermine that
+system of ethics which permitted the sale of the daughter to shame, the
+introduction of the concubine into the family and the reduction of
+woman, even though wife and mother, to nearly a cipher. It is not only
+the foreigner who assaults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta,
+kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the
+Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family
+to the house, and suppressed individuality and personality. It is the
+native Japanese, no longer a hermit, a "frog in the well, that knows not
+the great ocean" but a student, an inquirer, and a critic, who assaults
+the old ethical and philosophical system, and calls for a new way
+between heaven and earth, and a new kind of Heaven in which shall be a
+Creator, a Father and a Saviour. The brain and pen of New Japan, as well
+as its heart, demand that the family shall be more than the house and
+that the living members shall have greater rights as well as duties,
+than the dead ancestors. They claim that the wife shall share
+responsibility with the husband, and that the relation of husband and
+wife shall take precedence of that of the father and son; that the
+mother shall possess equal authority with the father; that the wife,
+whether she be mother or not, shall not be compelled to share her home
+with the concubine; and that the child in Japan shall be born in the
+home and not in the herd. The sudden introduction of the Christian ideas
+of personality and individuality has undoubtedly wrought peril to the
+framework of a society which is built according to the Confucian
+principles; but faith in God, love in the home, and absolute equality
+before the law will bring about a reign of righteousness such as Japan
+has never known, but toward the realization of which Christian nations
+are ever advancing.
+
+Even the old ideal of the Samurai embodied in the formula Yamato
+Damashii will be enlarged and improved from its narrow limits and
+ferocious aspects, when the tap-root of all progress is allowed to
+strike into deeper truth, and the Sixth Relation, or rather the first
+relation of all, is taught, namely, that of God to Man, and of Man to
+God. That this relation is understood, and that the Samurai ideal,
+purified and enlarged, is held by increasing numbers of Japan's
+brightest men and noblest women, is shown in that superb Christian
+literature which pours from the pens of the native men and women in the
+Japanese Christian churches. Under this flood of truth the old obstacles
+to a nobler society are washed away, while out of the enriched soil
+rises the new Japan which is to be a part of the better Christendom that
+is to come. Christ in Japan, as everywhere, means not destruction, but
+fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA
+
+    "Life is a dream is what the pilgrim learns,
+     Nor asks for more, but straightway home returns."
+    --Japanese medieval lyric drama.
+
+    "The purpose of Buddha's preaching was to bring into light the
+    permanent truth, to reveal the root of all suffering and thus to
+    lead all sentient beings into the perfect emancipation from all
+    passions."--Outlines of the Mahayana.
+
+    "Buddhism will stand forth as the embodiment of the eternal
+    verity that as a man sows he will reap, associated with the
+    duties of mastery over self and kindness to all men, and
+    quickened into a popular religion by the example of a noble and
+    beautiful life."--Dharmapala of Ceylon.
+
+    "Buddhism teaches the right path of cause and effect, and
+    nothing which can supersede the idea of cause and effect will be
+    accepted and believed. Buddha himself cannot contradict this law
+    which is the Buddha, of Buddhas, and no omnipotent power except
+    this law is believed to be existent in the universe.
+
+    "Buddhism does not quarrel with other religions about the truth
+    ... Buddhism is truth common to every religion regardless of the
+    outside garment."--Horin Toki, of Japan.
+
+    "Death we can face; but knowing, as some of us do, what is human
+    life, which of us is it that without shuddering could (if we
+    were summoned) face the hour of birth?" -De Quinccy.
+
+    The prayer of Buddhism, "Deliver us from existence."
+    The prayer of the Christian, "Deliver us from evil."
+
+    "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
+    earth."--Genesis.
+
+    "I am come that they might have life and that they might have it
+    more abundantly."--Jesus.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA
+
+Pre-Buddhistic India.
+
+
+Does the name of Gautama, the Buddha, stand for a sun-myth or for a
+historic personage? One set of scholars and writers, represented by
+Professor Kern,[1] of Leyden, thinks the Buddha a mythical personage.
+Another school, represented by Professor T. Rhys Davids,[2] declares
+that he lived in human flesh and breathed the air of earth. We accept
+the historical view as best explaining the facts.
+
+In order to understand a religion, in its origin at least, we must know
+some of the conditions out of which it arose. Buddhism is one of the
+protestantisms of the world. Yet, is not every religion, in one sense,
+protestant? Is it not a protest against something to which it opposes a
+difference? Every new religion, like a growing plant, ignores or rejects
+certain elements in the soil out of which it springs. It takes up and
+assimilates, also, other elements not used before, in order to produce a
+flower or fruit different from other growths out of the same soil. Yet
+whether the new religion be considered as a development, fulfilment, or
+protest, we must know its historical perspective or background. To
+understand the origin of Buddhism, one of the best preparations is to
+read the history of India and especially of the thought of her many
+generations; for the landmarks of the civilizations of India, as a Hindu
+may proudly say, are its mighty literatures. At these let us glance.[3]
+
+The age of the Vedas extends from the year 2000 to 1400 B.C., and the
+history of this early India is wonderfully like that of America. During
+this era, the Hindus, one of the seven Aryan tribes of which the
+Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sclav and Teutonic form the other six,
+descending from the mid-Asian plateau, settled the Punjab in Northwest
+India. They drove the dark-skinned aborigines before them and reclaimed
+forest and swamp to civilization, making the land of the seven rivers
+bright with agriculture and brilliant with cities. This was the glorious
+heroic age of joyous life and conquest, when men who believed in a
+Heavenly Father[4] made the first epoch of Hindu history.
+
+Then followed the epic age, 1400-1000 B.C., when the area of
+civilization was extended still farther down the Ganges Valley, the
+splendor of wealth, learning, military prowess and social life excelling
+that of the ancestral seats in the Punjab. Amid differences of wars and
+diplomacy with rivalries and jealousies, a common sacred language,
+literature and religion with similar social and religious institutions,
+united the various nations together. In this time the old Vedas were
+compiled into bodies or collections, and the Brahmanas and the
+Upanishads, besides the great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the
+Ramayana were composed.
+
+The next, or rationalistic epoch, covers the period from 1000 B.C. to
+320 B.C., when the Hindu expansion had covered all India, that is, the
+peninsula from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. Then, all India, including
+Ceylon, was Hinduized, though in differing degrees; the purest Aryan
+civilization being in the north, the less pure in the Ganges Valley and
+south and east, while the least Aryan and more Dravidian was in Bengal,
+Orissa, and India south of the Kistna River.
+
+This story of the spread of Hindu civilization is a brilliant one, and
+seems as wonderful as the later European conquest of the land, and of
+the other "Indians" of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
+Beside the conquests in material civilization of these our fellow-Aryans
+(who were the real Indians, and who spoke the language which is the
+common ancestor of our own and of most European tongues), what impresses
+us most of all, in these Aryans, is their intellectual energy. The
+Hindus of the rationalistic age made original discoveries. They invented
+grammar, geometry, arithmetic, decimal notation, and they elaborated
+astronomy, medicine, mental philosophy and logic (with syllogism) before
+these sciences were known or perfected in Greece. In the seventh century
+before Christ, Kapila taught a system of philosophy, of which that of
+the Europeans, Schopenhaur and Hartmann, seems largely a reproduction.
+
+Following this agnostic scheme of thought, came, several centuries
+later, the dualistic Yoga[5] system in which the chief feature is the
+conception of Deity as a means of final emancipation of the human soul
+from further transmigration, and of union with the Universal Spirit or
+World Soul. There is, however, perhaps no sadder chapter in the history
+of human thought than the story of the later degeneration of the Yoga
+system into one of bloody and cruel rites in India, and of superstition
+in China.
+
+Still other systems followed: one by Gautama, of the same clan or family
+of the later Buddha, who develops inference by the construction of
+syllogism; while Kanada follows the atomic philosophy in which the atoms
+are eternal, but the aggregates perishable by disintegration.
+
+Against these schools, which seemed to be dangerous "new departures,"
+orthodox Hindus, anxious for their ancient beliefs and practices as laid
+down in the Vedas, started fresh systems of philosophy, avowedly more in
+consonances with their ancestral faith. One system insisted on the
+primitive Vedic ritual, and another laid emphasis on the belief in a
+Universal Soul first inculcated in the Upanishads.
+
+
+Conditions out of which Buddhism Arose.
+
+
+Whatever we may think of these schools of philosophy, or the connection
+with or indebtedness of Gautama, the Buddha, to them, they reveal to us
+the conceptions which his contemporaries had of the universe and the
+beings inhabiting it. These were honest human attempts to find God. In
+them the various beings or six conditions of sentient existence are
+devas or gods; men; asuras or monsters; pretas or demons; animals; and
+beings in hell. Furthermore, these schools of Hindu philosophy show us
+the conditions out of which Buddhism arose, furnish us with its
+terminology and technical phrases, reveal to us what the reformer
+proposed to himself to do, and, what is perhaps still more important,
+show us the types to which Buddhism in its degeneration and degradation
+reverted. The strange far-off oriental words which today scholars
+discuss, theosophists manipulate, and charlatans employ as catchpennies
+were common words in the every-day speech of the Hindu people, two or
+three thousand years ago.
+
+Glancing rapidly at the condition of religion in the era ushering in the
+birth of Buddha, we note that the old joyousness of life manifested in
+the Vedic hymns is past, their fervor and glow are gone. In the morning
+of Hindu life there was no caste, no fixed priesthood, and no idols; but
+as wealth, civilization, easy and settled life succeeded, the taste for
+pompous sacrifices conducted by an hereditary priestly caste increased.
+Greater importance was laid upon the detail of the ceremonies, the
+attention of the worshipper being turned from the deities "to the
+minutiæ of rites, the erection of altars, the fixing of the proper
+astronomical moments for lighting the fire, the correct pronunciation of
+prayers, and to the various requisite acts accompanying a sacrifice."[6]
+In the chapter of decay which time wrote and literature reflects, we
+find "grotesque reasons given for every minute rite, dogmatic
+explanation of texts, penances for every breach of form and rule, and
+elaborate directions for every act and moment of the worshipper."
+
+The literature shows a degree of credulity and submission on the part of
+the people and of absolute power on the part of the priests, which
+reminds us of the Middle Ages in Europe. The old inspiring wars with the
+aborigines are over. The time of bearing a noble creed, meaning culture
+and civilization as against savagery and idolatry, is past, and only
+intestine quarrels and local strife have succeeded. The age of creative
+literature is over, and commentators, critics and grammarians have
+succeeded. Still more startling are the facts disclosed by literary
+history. The liquid poetry has become frozen prose; the old flaming fuel
+of genius is now slag and ashes. We see Hindus doing exactly what Jewish
+rabbis, and after them Christian schoolmen and dogma-makers, did with
+the old Hebrew poems and prophecies. Construing literally the prayers,
+songs and hopes of an earlier age, they rebuild the letter of the text
+into creeds and systems, and erect an amazing edifice of steel-framed
+and stone-cased tradition, to challenge which is taught to be heresy and
+impiety. The poetical similes used in the Rig Vedas have been
+transformed into mythological tales. In the change of language the Vedas
+themselves are unreadable, except by the priests, who fatten on popular
+beliefs in the transmigration of souls and in the power of priestcraft
+to make that transmigration blissful--provided liberal gifts are duly
+forthcoming. Idolatry and witchcraft are rampant. Some saviour, some
+light was needed.
+
+
+Buddhism a Logical Product of Hindu Thought.
+
+
+At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at
+Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares. We pass over the
+details[7] of the life of him called Prince, Lord, Lion of the Tribe of
+Shaka, and Saviour; of his desertion of wife and child, called the first
+Great Renunciation; of his struggles to obtain peace; of his
+enlightenment or Buddhahood; of his second or Greater Renunciation; of
+merit on account of austerities; and give the story told in a mountain
+of books in various tongues, but condensed in a paragraph by Romesh
+Chunder Dutt.
+
+    "At an early age, Prince Gautama left his royal home, and his
+    wife, and new-born child, and became a wanderer and a mendicant,
+    to seek a way of salvation for man. Hindu rites, accompanied by
+    the slaughter of innocent victims, repelled his feelings. Hindu
+    philosophy afforded him no remedy, and Hindu penances and
+    mortifications proved unavailing after he had practised them for
+    years. At last, by severe contemplation, he discovered the long
+    coveted truth; a holy and calm life, and benevolence and love
+    toward all living creatures seemed to him the essence of
+    religion. Self-culture and universal love--this was his
+    discovery--this is the essence of Buddhism."[8]
+
+From one point of view Buddhism was the logical continuance of Aryan
+Hindoo philosophy; from another point of view it was a new departure.
+The leading idea in the Upanishads is that the object of the wise man
+should be to know, inwardly and consciously, the Great Soul of all; and
+by this knowledge his individual soul would become united to the Supreme
+Being, the true and absolute self. This was the highest point reached in
+the old Indian philosophy[9] before Buddha was born.
+
+So, looking at Buddhism in the perspective of Hindu history and thought,
+we may say that it is doubtful whether Gautama intended to found a new
+religion. As, humanly speaking, Saul of Tarsus saved Christianity from
+being a Jewish sect and made it universal, so Gautama extricated the new
+enthusiasm of humanity from the priests. He made Aryan religion the
+property of all India. What had been a rare monopoly as narrow as
+Judaism, he made the inheritance of all Asia. Gautama was a protestant
+and a reformer, not an agnostic or skeptic. It is more probable that he
+meant to shake off Brahmanism and to restore the pure and original form
+of the Aryan religion of the Vedas, as far as it was possible to do so.
+In one sense, Buddhism was a revolt against hereditary and sacerdotal
+privilege--an attack of the people against priestcraft. The Buddha and
+his disciples were levellers. In a different age and clime, but along a
+similar path, they did a work analogous to that of the so-called
+Anabaptists in Europe and Independents in England, centuries later.
+
+It is certain, however, that Buddhism has grown logically out of ancient
+Hinduism. In its monastic feature--one of its most striking
+characteristics--we see only the concentration and reduction to system,
+of the old life of the ascetics and religious mendicants recognized and
+respected by Hinduism. For centuries the Buddhist monks and nuns were
+regarded in India as only a new sect of ascetics, among many others
+which flourished in the land.
+
+The Buddhist doctrine of karma, or in Japanese, _ingwa_, of cause and
+effect, whereby it is taught that each effect in this life springs from
+a cause in some previous incarnation, and that each act in this life
+bears its fruit in the next, has grown directly out of the Hindu idea of
+the transmigration of souls. This idea is first inculcated in the
+Upanishads, and is recognized in Hindu systems of philosophy.
+
+So also the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana, or the attainment of a sinless
+state of existence, has grown out of the idea of final union of the
+individual soul with the Universal Soul, which is also inculcated in the
+Upanishads. Yet, as we shall see, the Buddhists were, in the eyes of the
+Brahmans, atheists, because in the ken of these new levellers gods and
+men were put on the same plane. Brahmanism has never forgiven Buddhism
+for ignoring the gods, and the Hindoos finally drove out the followers
+of Gautama from India. It eventuated that after a millenium or so of
+Buddhism in India, the old gods, Brahma, Indra, etc., which at first had
+been shut out from the ken of the people, by Gautama, found their places
+again in the popular faith of the Buddhists, who believed that the gods
+as well as men, were all progressing toward the blessed Nirvana--that
+sinless life and holy calm, which is the Buddhist's heaven and
+salvation.
+
+It is certainly very curious, and in a sense amusing, to find
+flourishing in far-off Japan the old gods of India, that one would
+suppose to have been utterly dead and left behind in oblivion. As
+acknowledged devas or kings and bodhisattvas or soon-to-be Buddhas, not
+a few once defunct Hindu gods, utterly unknown to early Buddhism, have
+forced their way into the company of the elect. Though most of them have
+not gained the popularity of the indigenous deities of Nippon, they yet
+attract many worshippers. They remind one that amid the coming of the
+sons of Elohim before Jehovah, "the satan" came also.[10]
+
+From another point of view Buddhism was a new religion; for it swept
+away and out of the field of its vision the whole of the World or
+Universal Soul theory. "It proclaimed a salvation which each man could
+gain for himself and by himself, in this world during this life, without
+the least reference to God, or to gods, either great or small." "It
+placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no longer a
+knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real nature as they
+supposed it to be of men and things." In a word, Gautama never reached
+the idea of a personal self-existent God, though toward that truth he
+groped. He was satisfied too soon.[11] His followers were even more
+easily satisfied with abstractions. When Gautama saw the power over the
+human heart of inward culture and of love to others, he obtained peace,
+he rested on certainty, he became the Buddha, that is, the enlightened.
+Perhaps he was not the first Buddhist. It may be that the historical
+Gautama, if so he is worthy to be called, merely made the sect or the
+new religion famous. Hardly a religion in the full sense of the word,
+Buddhism did not assume the rôle of theology, but sought only to know
+men and things. In one sense Buddhism is atheism, or rather, atheistic
+humanism. In one sense, also, the solution of the mystery of God, of
+life, and of the universe, which Gautama and his followers attained, was
+one of skepticism rather than of faith. Buddhism is, relatively, a very
+modern religion; it is one of the new faiths. Is it paradoxical to say
+that the Buddhists are "religious atheists?"
+
+
+The Buddhist Millennium in India.
+
+
+Let us now look at the life of the Founder. Day after day, the
+pure-souled teacher attracted new disciples while he with alms-bowl went
+around as mendicant and teacher. Salvation merely by self-control, and
+love without any rites, ceremonies, charms, priestly powers, gods or
+miracles, formed the burden of his teachings. "Thousands of people left
+their homes, embraced the holy order and became monks, ignoring caste,
+and relinquishing all worldly goods except the bare necessaries of life,
+which they possessed and enjoyed in common." Probably the first monastic
+_system_ of the world, was that of the Indian Buddhists.
+
+The Buddha preached the good news during forty-five years. After his
+death, five hundred of his followers assembled at Rajagriha and chanted
+together the teachings of Gautama, to fix them in memory. A hundred
+years later, in 377 B.C., came the great schism among the Buddhists, out
+of which grew the divisions known as Northern and Southern Buddhism.
+There was disagreement on ten points. A second council was therefore
+called, and the disputed points determined to the satisfaction of one
+side. Thereupon the seceders went away in large numbers, and the
+differences were never healed; on the contrary, they have widened in the
+course of ages.
+
+The separatists began what may be called the Northern Buddhisms of
+Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. The orthodox or Southern Buddhists
+are those of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. The original canon of Southern
+Buddhism is in Pali; that of Northern Buddhism is in Sanskrit. The one
+is comparatively small and simple; the other amazingly varied and
+voluminous. The canon of Southern scripture is called the Hinayana, the
+Little or Smaller Vehicle; the canon of Northern Buddhism is named the
+Mahayana or Great Vehicle. Possibly, also, besides the Southern and
+Northern Buddhisms, the Buddhism of Japan may be treated by itself and
+named Eastern Buddhism.
+
+In the great council called in 242 B.C., by King Asoka, who may be
+termed the Constantine of Buddhism, the sacred texts were again chanted.
+It was not until the year 88 B.C. in Ceylon, six hundred years after
+Gautama, that the three Pitakas, Boxes or Baskets, were committed to
+writing in the Pali language. In a word, Buddhism knows nothing of
+sacred documents or a canon of scripture contemporary with its first
+disciples.
+
+The splendid Buddhist age of India lasted nearly a thousand years, and
+was one of superb triumphs in civilization. It was an age of spiritual
+emancipation, of freedom from idol worship, of nobler humanity and of
+peace.[12] It was followed by the Puranic epoch and the dark ages. Then
+Buddhism was, as some say, "driven out" from the land of its birth,
+finding new expansion in Eastern and Northern Asia, and again, a still
+more surprising development in the ultima-Thule of the Asiatic
+continent, Japan. There is now no Buddhism in India proper, the faith
+being represented only in Ceylon and possibly also on the main land, by
+the sect of the Jains, and peradventure in Persia by Babism which
+contains elements from three religions.[13] Like Christianity, Buddhism
+was "driven out" of its old home to bless other nations of the world. It
+is probably far nearer the truth to say that Buddhism was never expelled
+from India, but rather that it died by disintegration and relapse.[14]
+It had become Brahmanism again. The old gods and the old idol-worship
+came back. It is in Japan that the ends of the earth, eastern and
+western civilization, and the freest and fullest or at least the latest
+developments of Christianity and of Buddhism, have met.
+
+In its transfer to distant lands and its developments throughout Eastern
+Asia, the faith which had originated in India suffered many changes.
+Dividing into two great branches, it became a notably different religion
+according as it moved along the southern, the northern, or the eastern
+channel. By the vehicle of the Pali language it was carried to Ceylon,
+Siam, Burma, Cambodia and the islands of the south; that is, to southern
+or peninsular and insular Asia. Here there is little evidence of any
+striking departure from the doctrines of the Pali Pitakas; and, as
+Southern Buddhism does not greatly concern us in speaking of the
+religions of Japan, we may pass it by. For although the books and
+writings belonging to Southern Buddhism, and comprehended under the
+formula of the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, have been studied in China,
+Korea and Japan, yet they have had comparatively little influence upon
+doctrinal, ritualistic, or missionary development in Chinese Asia.
+
+Astonishingly different has been the case with the Northern Buddhisms
+which are those of Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Korea and
+Japan. As luxuriant as the evolutions of political and dogmatic
+Christianity and as radical in their departures from the primitive
+simplicity of the faith, have been these forms of Buddhist doctrine,
+ritual and organization. We cannot now dwell upon the wonderful details
+of the vast and complicated system, differing so much in various
+countries. We pass by, or only glance at, the philosophy of the Punjaub;
+the metaphysics of Nepal--with its developments into what some writers
+consider to be a close approach to monotheism, and others, indeed,
+monotheism itself; the system of Lamaism in Tibet, which has paralleled
+so closely the development of the papal hierarchy; the possibly two
+thousand years' growth and decay of Chinese Buddhism; the varieties of
+the Buddhism of Mongolia--almost swamped in the Shamanistic
+superstitions of these dwellers on the plains; the astonishing success,
+quick ripening, decay, and almost utter annihilation, among the learned
+and governing classes, of Korean Buddhism;[15] and study in detail only
+Eastern or Japanese Buddhism.
+
+We shall in this lecture attempt but two things:
+
+I. A summary of the process of thought by which the chief features of
+the Northern Buddhisms came into view.
+
+II. An outline of the story of Japanese Buddhism during the first three
+centuries of its existence.
+
+
+The Development of Northern Buddhism
+
+
+Leaving the early Buddha legends and the solid ground of history, the
+makers of the newer Buddhist doctrines in Nepal occupied themselves with
+developing the theory of Buddhahood and of the Buddhas;[16] for we must
+ever remember that Buddha[17] is not a proper name, but a common
+adjective meaning enlightened, from the root to know, perceive, etc.
+They made constant and marvellous additions to the primitive doctrine,
+giving it a momentum which gathered force as the centuries went on; and,
+as propaganda, it moved against the sun.
+
+This development theory ran along the line of _personification_. Not
+being satisfied with "the wheel of the law," it personified both the hub
+and the spokes. It began with the spirit of kindness out of which all
+human virtues rise, and by the power of which the Buddhist organization
+will conquer all sin and unbelief and become victorious throughout the
+world. This personification is called the Maitreya Buddha, the
+unconquerable one, or the future Buddha of benevolence, the Buddha who
+is yet to come. Here was a tremendous and revolutionary movement in the
+new faith, the beginning of a long process. It was as though the
+Christians had taken the particular attributes, justice, mercy, etc., of
+God and, after personifying each one, deified it, thus multiplying gods.
+
+What was the soil for the new sowing, and what was the harvest to be
+reaped in due time?
+
+With many thousands of India Buddhists whose minds were already steeped
+in Brahministic philosophy and mythology, who were more given to
+speculation and dreaming than to self-control and moral culture, and who
+mourned for the dead gods of Hinduism, the soil was already prepared for
+a growth wholly abnormal to true Buddhism, but altogether in keeping
+with the older Brahministic philosophies from which these dreamers had
+been but partially converted to Buddhism.[18]
+
+The seed is found in the doctrine which already forms part of the system
+of the Little Vehicle, when it tells of the personal Buddhas and the
+Buddhas elect, or future Buddhas. In the Jataka stories, or Birth tales,
+"the Buddha elect" is the title given to each of the beings, man, angel,
+or animal, who is held to be a Bodhisattva, or the future Buddha in one
+of his former births. The title Bodhisattva[19] is the name given to a
+being whose Karma will produce other beings in a continually ascending
+scale of goodness until it becomes vested in a Buddha. Or, in the more
+common use of the word, a Bodhisattva (Japanese bosatsu) is a being
+whose essence has become intelligence, and who will have to pass through
+human existence once more only before entering Nirvana.
+
+In Southern Buddhist temples, the pure white image of Maitreya is
+sometimes found beside the idol representing Gautama or the historical
+Buddha. While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of
+development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in
+Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect
+named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had
+already become general. Manjusri,[20] the Great Being or "Prince Royal,"
+is the personification of wisdom, and especially of the mystic religious
+insight which has produced the Great Vehicle or canon of Northern
+Buddhism; or, as a Japanese author says, the third collection of the
+Tripitaka was that made by Manjusri and Maitreya. Avalokitesvara,[21]
+the Lord of View or All-sided One, is the personification of power, the
+merciful protector and preserver of the world and of men. Both are
+frequently and voluminously mentioned in the Saddharma Pundarika,[22] in
+which the good law is made plain by flowers of rhetoric, and of which we
+shall have occasion frequently to speak. Manjusri is the mythical author
+of this influential work,[23] the twenty-fourth chapter being devoted to
+a glorification of the character, the power, and the advantages to be
+derived from the worship of Avalokitesvara.
+
+
+The Creation of Gods.
+
+
+Possibly the name of Manjusri may be derived from that of the Indian
+mendicant, the traditional introducer of Buddhism and its accompanying
+civilization into Nepal. The Tibetans identify him with the minister of
+a great King Strongstun, who lived in the seventh century of our era and
+who was the great patron of Buddhism into Tibet. He is the founder of
+that school of thought which ended in the Great Vehicle,--the literature
+of Northern Buddhism.[24] From Nepal to Japan, in the books of the
+Northern Buddhists there is certainly much confusion between the
+metaphysical being and the legendary civilizer and teacher of Nepal. The
+other name, Avalokitesvara, which means the Lord of View, "the lord who
+looks down from on high," instead of being a purely metaphysical
+invention, may he only an adaptation of one epithet of Shiva, which
+meant Master of View.
+
+Later and by degrees the attributes were separated and each one was
+personified. For example, the power of Avalokitesvara was separated from
+his protecting care and providence. His power was personified as the
+bearer of the thunder-bolt, or the lightning-handed one; and this new
+personification added to the two other Buddhas elect, made a triad, the
+first in Northern Buddhism. In this triad, the thunder-bolt holder was
+Vagrapani; Manjusri was the deified teacher; and Avalokitesvara was the
+Spirit of the Buddhas present in the church. Before many centuries had
+elapsed, these imaginary beings, with a few others, had become gods to
+whom men prayed; and thus Buddhism became a religion with some kind of
+theism,--which Gautama had expressly renounced.
+
+If any one wants proof of this reversion into the old religions of
+India, he has only to notice that the name, given to the new god made by
+personification of the attribute of power, Vagrapani, or Vadjradhara, or
+the bearer of the thunder-bolt, had formerly been used as an epithet of
+the old fire-god of the Vedas, Indra.
+
+It were tedious to recount all the steps in the further development of
+Northern Buddhism.[25] Suffice it to say, that out of ideas and
+principles set forth in the earlier Buddhism, and under the generating
+force reborn from old Brahminism, the Dhyani Buddhas (that is the
+Buddhas evolved out of the mind in mystic trance) were given their elect
+Buddhas; and so three sets of five were co-ordinated.[26] That is,
+first, five pre-penultimate Buddhas; then their Bodhisattvas or
+penultimate Buddhas; and then the ultimate or human Buddhas, of which
+Gautama was one. Or, first abstraction; then pre-human effluence; then
+emanation.
+
+All this multiplication of beings is unknown to Southern Buddhism,
+unknown to the Saddharma Pundarika, and very probably unknown also to
+the Chinese pilgrims who visited India in the fifth and seventh
+centuries. Professor Rhys Davids, in his compact little manual of
+Buddhism, says:[27]
+
+    "Among those hypothetical beings--the creations of a sickly
+    scholasticism, hollow abstractions without life or reality--the
+    fourth Amitabha, 'Immeasurable Light,' whose Bodhisatwa is
+    Avalokitesvara, and whose emanation is Gautama, occupies of
+    course the highest and most important rank. Surrounded by
+    innumerable Bodhisatwas, he sits enthroned under a Bo-tree in
+    Sukhavati, i.e., the Blissful, a paradise of heavenly joys,
+    whose description occupies whole tedious books of the so-called
+    Great Vehicle. By this theory, each of the five Buddhas has
+    become three, and the fourth of these five sets of three is the
+    second Buddhist Trinity, the belief in which must have arisen
+    after the seventh century of our era."
+
+Buddhism has been called the light of Asia, and Gautama its illuminator;
+but certainly the light has not been pure, nor the products of its
+illumination wholesome. Pardon an illustration. In Christian churches
+and cathedrals of Europe, there is still a great prejudice against the
+use of pipes, and of gas made from coal, because of the machinery and of
+the impure emanations. The prejudice is a wholesome one; for we all know
+that most of the elements forming common illuminating gas are worthless
+except to convey the very small amount of light-giving material, and
+that these elements in combustion vitiate the air and give off
+deleterious products which corrode, tarnish and destroy. Now though
+Buddhist doctrine may have been the light of India, yet to reach the
+Northern and Eastern nations of Asia it had, apparently, to be
+adulterated for conveyance, as much as is the illuminating gas in our
+cities. From the first, Northern Buddhism showed a wonderful affinity,
+not only for Brahministic superstitions and speculations, but for almost
+everything else with which it came in contact in countries beyond India.
+Instead of combating, it absorbed. It adapted itself to circumstances,
+and finding certain beliefs prevalent among the people, it imbibed them,
+and thus gained by accretion until its bulk, both of beliefs and of
+disciples, was in the inverse ratio of its purity. Even to-day, the
+occult theosophy of "Isis Unveiled," and of the school of writers such
+as Blavatsky, Olcott, etc., seems to be a perfectly logical product of
+the Northern Buddhisms, and may be called one of them; yet it is simply
+a repetition of what took place centuries ago. Most of the primitive
+beliefs and superstitions of Nepal and Tibet were absorbed in the ever
+hungry and devouring system of Buddhistic scholasticism.
+
+
+The Making of a Pantheon.
+
+
+Let us glance again at this Nepal Buddhism. In the tenth century we find
+what at first seems to be a growth out of Polytheism into Monotheism,
+for a new Being, to whom the attributes of infinity, self-existence and
+omniscience are ascribed, is invented and named Adi-Buddha, or the
+primordial Buddha. According to the speculations of the thinkers, he had
+evolved himself out of the five Dhyani-Buddhas by the exercise of the
+five meditations, while each of these had evolved out of itself by
+wisdom and contemplation, the corresponding Buddhas elect. Again, each
+of the latter evolved out of his own essence a material world,--our
+present world being the fourth of these, that is of Avaloki. One almost
+might consider that this setting forth of the primordial Buddha was real
+Monotheism; but on looking more carefully one sees that it is as little
+real Monotheism as was possible in the system of Gnosticism. Indeed the
+force of evolution could not stop here; for, since even this primordial
+Buddha rested upon Ossa of hypothesis piled upon Pelion of hypothesis,
+there must be other hypotheses yet to come, and so the Tantra system, a
+compound of old Brahminism with the magic and witchcraft and Shamanism
+of Northern Asia burst into view. As this was to travel into Japan and
+be hailed as purest Buddhism, let us note how this tenth century Tantra
+system grew up. To see this clearly, is to look upon the parable of the
+man with the unclean spirit being acted out on a vast scale in history.
+
+In the sixth century of our era, one Asanga, or Asamga, wrote the
+Shastra, called the Shastra Yoga-chara Bhumi.[28] With great dexterity
+he erected a sort of clearing-house for both the corrupt Brahminism and
+corrupt Buddhism of his day, and exchanging and rearranging the gods and
+devils in both systems, he represented them as worshippers and
+supporters of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara. In such a system, the old
+primitive Buddhism of the noble eight-fold path of self-conquest and
+pure morals was utterly lost. Instead of that, the worshipper gave his
+whole powers to obtaining occult potencies by means of magic phrases and
+magic circles. Then grew up whole forests of monasteries and temples,
+with an outburst of devilish art representing many-headed and many-eyed
+and many-handed idols on the walls, on books, on the roadside, with
+manifold charms and phrases the endless repetitions of which were
+supposed to have efficacy with the hypothetical being who filled the
+heavens. That was _the_ age of idols for China as well as for India; and
+the old Chinese house, once empty, swept and garnished by Confucianism,
+was now filled with a mob of unclean spirits each worse than the first.
+With more courageous logic than the more matter-of-fact Chinese, the
+Tibetan erected his prayer-mills[29] and let the winds of heaven and the
+flowing waters continually multiply his prayers and holy syllables. And
+these inventions were duly imported into Japan, and even now are far
+from being absent.[30]
+
+Passing over for the present the history of Buddhism in China,[31]
+suffice it to say that the Buddhism which entered Japan from Korea in
+the sixth century, was not the simple atheism touched with morality, the
+bald skepticism or benevolent agnosticism of Gautama, but a religion
+already over a thousand years old. It was the system of the Northern
+Buddhists. These, dissatisfied, or unsatisfied, with absorption into a
+passionless state through self-sacrifice and moral discipline, had
+evolved a philosophy of religion in which were gods, idols and an
+apparatus of conversion utterly unknown to the primitive faith.
+
+
+Buddhism Already Corrupted when brought to Japan.
+
+
+This sixth century Buddhism in Japan was not the army with banners,
+which was introduced still later with the luxuriances of the fully
+developed system, its paradise wonderfully like Mohammed's and its
+over-populated pantheon. It was, however, ready with the necessary
+machinery, both material and mental, to make conquest of a people which
+had not only religious aspirations, but also latent aesthetic
+possibilities of a high order. As in its course through China this
+Northern Buddhism had acted as an all-powerful absorbent of local
+beliefs and superstitions, so in Japan it was destined to make a more
+remarkable record, and, not only to absorb local ideas but actually to
+cause the indigenous religion to disappear.
+
+Let us inquire who were the people to whom Buddhism, when already
+possessed of a millenium of history, entered its Ultima Thule in Eastern
+Asia. At what stage of mutual growth did Buddhism and the Japanese meet
+each other?
+
+Instead of the forty millions of thoroughly homogeneous people in
+Japan--according to the census of December 31, 1892--all being loyal
+subjects of one Emperor, we must think of possibly a million of hunters,
+fishermen and farmers in more or less warring clans or tribes. These
+were made up of the various migrations from the main land and the drift
+of humanity brought by the ocean currents from the south; Ainos,
+Koreans, Tartars and Chinese, with probably some Malay and Nigrito
+stock. In the central part of Hondo, the main island, the Yamato tribe
+dominated, its chief being styled Suméru-mikoto, or Mikado. To the south
+and southwest, the Mikado's power was only more or less felt, for the
+Yamato men had a long struggle in securing supremacy. Northward and
+eastward lay great stretches of land, inhabited by unsubdued and
+uncivilized native tribes of continental and most probably of Korean
+origin, and thus more or less closely akin to the Yamato men. Still
+northward roamed the Ainos, a race whose ancestral seats may have been
+in far-off Dravidian India. Despite the constant conflicts between the
+Yamato people who had agriculture and the beginnings of government, law
+and literature, and their less civilized neighbors, the tendency to
+amalgamation was already strong. The problem of the statesman, was to
+extend the sway of the Mikado over the whole Archipelago.
+
+Shintō was, in its formation, made use of as an engine to conquer,
+unify and civilize all the tribes. In one sense, this conquest of men
+having lower forms of faith, by believers in the Kami no Michi, or Way
+of the Gods, was analogous to the Aryan conquest of India and the
+Dravidians. However this may be, the energy and valor displayed in these
+early ages formed the ideal of Yamato Damashii (The Spirit of
+unconquerable Japan), which has so powerfully influenced the modern
+Japanese. We shall see, also, how grandly Buddhism also came to be a
+powerful force in the unification of the Japanese people. At first, the
+new faith would be rejected as an alien invader, stigmatized as a
+foreign religion, and, as such, sure to invoke the wrath of the native
+gods. Then later, its superiority to the indigenous cult would be seen
+both by the wise and the practically minded, and it would be welcomed
+and enjoyed.
+
+
+The Inviting Field.
+
+
+Never had a new religion a more inviting field or one more sure of
+success, than had Buddhism on stepping from the Land of Morning Dawn to
+the Land of the Rising Sun. Coming as a gorgeous, dazzling and
+disciplined array of all that could touch the imagination, stimulate the
+intellect and move the heart of the Japanese, it was irresistible. For
+the making of a nation, Shintō was as a donkey engine, compared to
+the system of furnaces, boilers, shaft and propeller of a
+ten-thousand-ton steel cruiser, moved by the energies of a million years
+of sunbeam force condensed into coal and released again through
+transmigration by fire.
+
+All accounts in the vernacular Japanese agree, that their Butsu-dō or
+Buddhism was imported from Korea. In the sixteenth year of Kéitai, the
+twenty-seventh Mikado (of the list made centuries after, and the
+eleventh after the impossible line of the long-lived or mythical
+Mikados), A.D. 534, it is said that a man from China brought with him an
+image of Buddha into Yamato, and setting it up in a thatched cottage
+worshipped it. The people called it "foreign-country god." Visitors
+discussed with him the religion of Shaka, as the Japanese call
+Shakyamuni, and some little knowledge of Buddhism was gained, but no
+notable progress was made until A.D. 552, which is generally accepted
+and celebrated as the year of the introduction of the faith into Japan.
+Then a king of Hiaksai in Korea, sent over to the court and to the
+Mikado golden images of the Buddha and of the triad of "precious ones,"
+with Sutras and sacred books. These holy relics are believed to be still
+preserved in the famous temple of Zenkōji,[32] belonging to the
+temple of the Tendai Sect at Nagano in Northern Japan, this shrine being
+dedicated to Amida and his two followers Kwannon (Avalokitesvara) and
+Dai-séi-shi (Mahastanaprapta). This group of idols, as the custodian of
+the shrine will tell you, was made by Shaka himself out of gold, found
+at the base of the tree which grows at the centre of the universe. After
+remaining in Korea for eleven hundred and twelve years, it was brought
+to Japan. Mighty is the stream of pilgrims which continually sets toward
+the holy place. A common proverb declares that even a cow can find her
+way thither.
+
+In A.D. 572 and again in 584, new images, sutras and teachers came over
+from another part of Korea. The Mikado called a council to determine
+what should be done with the idols, to the worship of which he was
+himself inclined; but a majority were against the idea of insulting the
+native gods by receiving the presents and thus introducing a foreign
+religion. The minister of state, however, one Soga no Inamé, expressed
+himself in favor of Buddhism, and put the images in his country house
+which he converted into a temple. When, soon after, the land was
+afflicted with a pestilence, the opponents of the new faith attributed
+it to the wrath of the gods at the hospitality given to the new idols.
+War broke out, fighting took place, and the Buddhist temple was burned
+and the idols thrown into the river, near Osaka. Great portents
+followed, and the enemies of Buddhism were, it is said, burned up by
+flames descending from heaven.
+
+The tide then turned in favor of the Indian faith, and Soga rebuilt his
+temple. Priests and missionaries were invited to come over from Korea,
+being gladly furnished by the allies of Japan from the state of Shinra,
+and Buddhism again flourished at the court, but not yet among the
+people. Once more, fighting broke out; and again the temple of the alien
+gods was destroyed, only to be rebuilt again. The chief champion of
+Buddhism was the son of a Mikado, best known by his posthumous title,
+Shōtoku,[33] who all his life was a vigorous defender and propagator
+of the new faith. Through his influence, or very probably through the
+efforts of the Korean missionaries, the devastating war between the
+Japanese and Koreans was ended. In the peace which followed, notable
+progress was made through the vigor of the missionaries encouraged by
+the regent Shōtoku, so that at his death in the year A.D. 621, there
+were forty-six temples, and thirteen hundred and eighty-five priests,
+monks and nuns in Japan. Many of the most famous temples, which are now
+full of wealth and renown, trace their foundations to this era of
+Shōtoku and of his aunt, the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), who were
+friendly to the new religion. Shōtoku may be almost called the
+founder of Japanese Buddhism. Although a layman, he is canonized and
+stands unique in the Pantheon of Eastern Buddhism, his image being
+prominently visible in thousands of Japanese temples.
+
+Legend, in no country more luxurious than in Japan, tells us that the
+exotic religion made no progress until Amida, the boundlessly Merciful
+One, assuming the shape of a concubine of the imperial prince who
+afterward became the Mikado Yomé, gave birth to Shōtoku, who was
+himself Kwannon or the goddess of mercy in human form; and that when he
+grew up, he took to wife an incarnation of the Buddha elect,
+Mahastana-prapta, or in Japanese Dai-séi-shi, whose idol is honored at
+Zenkōji.
+
+
+The New Faith Becomes Popular.
+
+
+Then Buddhism became popular, passing out from the narrow circle of the
+court to be welcomed by the people. In A.D. 623, monks came over
+directly from China, and we find mentioned two sects, the Sanron and the
+Jōjitsu, which are no longer extant in Japan. In about A.D. 650 the
+fame of Yuan Chang (Hiouen Thsang) the Chinese pilgrim to India, or the
+holy land, reached-Japan; and his illustrious example was
+enthusiastically followed. History now frequently repeated itself. The
+Japanese monk, Dōshō, crossed the seas to China to gaze upon the
+face and become the pupil of that illustrious Chinese pilgrim, who had
+seen Buddha Land. Later on, other monks crossed to the land of Sinim,
+until we find that in this and succeeding centuries, hundreds of
+Japanese in their frail junks, braved the dangers of the stormy ocean,
+in order to study Sanskrit, to read the old scriptures, to meet the new
+lights of learning or revelation, and to become versed in the latest
+fashions of religion. We find the pilgrims returning and founding new
+sects or sub-sects, and stimulating by their enthusiasm the monks and
+the home missionaries. In the year A.D. 700 the custom of cremation was
+introduced. This wrought not only a profound change in customs, but also
+became the seed of a rich crop of superstitions; since out of the
+cremated bodies of the saints came forth the _shari_ or, in Sanskrit,
+_sarira_. These hard substances or pellets, preserved in crystal
+cabinets, are treated as holy gems or relics. Thus venerated, they
+become the nuclei of cycles of fairy lore.
+
+In A.D. 710, the great monastery at Nara was founded; and here we must
+notice or at least glance at the great throng of civilizing influences
+that came in with Buddhism, and at the great army of artists, artisans
+and skilled men and women of every sort of trade and craft. We note that
+with the building of this great Nara monastery came another proof of
+improvement and the added element of stability in Japanese civilization.
+The ancient dread which the Japanese had, of living in any place where a
+person had died was passing away. The nomad life was being given up. The
+successor of a dead Mikado was no longer compelled to build himself a
+new capital. The traveller in Japan, familiar with the ancient poetry of
+the Manyō-shu, finds no fewer than fifty-eight sites[34] as the early
+homes of the Japanese monarchy. Once occupying the proud position of
+imperial capitals, they are now for the most part mere hamlets,
+oftentimes mere names, with no visible indication of former human
+habitation; while the old rivers or streams once gay with barges filled
+with silken-robed lords and ladies, have dried up to mere washerwomen's
+runnels. For the first time after the building of this Buddhist
+monastery, the capital remained permanent, Nara being the imperial
+residence during seventy-five years. Then beautiful Kiōto was chosen,
+and remained the residence of successive generations of emperors until
+1868. In A.D. 735, we read of the Kégon sect. Two years later a large
+monastery, with a seven-storied pagoda alongside of it, was ordered to
+be built in every province. These, with the temples and their
+surroundings, and with the wayside shrines beginning to spring up like
+exotic flowers, made a striking alteration in the landscape of Japan.
+The Buddhist scriptures were numerously copied and circulated among the
+learned class, yet neither now nor ever, except here and there in
+fragments, were they found among the people. For, although the Buddhist
+canon has been repeatedly imported, copied by the pen and in modern
+times printed, yet no Japanese translation has ever been made. The
+methods of Buddhism in regard to the circulation of the scriptures are
+those, not of Protestantism but of Roman Catholicism.
+
+In the same year, the Mikado called for contributions from all the
+people for the building of a colossal image of the Buddha, which was to
+be of bronze and gilded. Yet, fearing that the Shintō gods might be
+offended, a skilful priest named Giyoku,--probably the same man who
+introduced the potter's wheel into Japan,--was sent to the shrine of the
+Sun-goddess in Isé to present her with a shari or relic of the Buddha,
+and find out how she would regard his project. After seven days and
+nights of waiting, the chapel doors flew open and the loud-voiced oracle
+was interpreted in a favorable sense. The night following the return of
+the priest, the Mikado dreamed that the sun-goddess appeared to him in
+her own form and said "The sun is Birushana" (Vairokana). This meant
+that the chief deity of the Japanese proclaimed herself an avatar or
+incarnation of one of the old Hindu gods.[35] She also approved the
+project of the image; and in this same year, 759, native gold was found
+in Japan, which sufficed for the gilding of the great idol that, after
+eleven hundred years and many vicissitudes, still stands, the glory of a
+multitude of pilgrims.
+
+In A.D. 754 a famous priest, who introduced the new Ritsu Sect, was able
+to convert the Mikado and obtain four hundred converts in the imperial
+court. Thirteen years later, another tremendous triumph of Buddhism was
+scored and a deadly blow at Shintō was struck. The Buddhist priests
+persuaded the Mikados to abandon their ancient title of Sumeru and adopt
+that of Tennō (Heavenly King or Tenshi) Son of Heaven, after the
+Chinese fashion. At the same time it was taught that the emperor could
+gain great merit and sooner become a Buddha, by retiring from the active
+cares of the throne and becoming a monk, with the title of Hō-ō,
+or Cloistered Emperor. This innovation had far-reaching consequences,
+profoundly altering the status of the Mikado, giving sensualism on the
+one hand and priestcraft on the other, their coveted opportunity,
+changing the ruler of the nation from an active statesman into a recluse
+and the recluse into a pious monk, or a licentious devotee, as the case
+might be. It paved the way for the usurpation of the government by the
+unscrupulous soldier, "the man on horseback," who was destined to rule
+Japan for seven hundred years, while the throne and its occupant were in
+the shadow. One of a thousand proofs of the progress of the propaganda
+scheme is seen in the removal of the Shintō temple which had stood at
+Nikkō, and the erection in its place of a Buddhist temple. In A.D.
+805 the famous Tendai, and in 806 the powerful Shingon Sect were
+introduced. All was now ready in Japan for the growth not only of one
+new Buddhism, but of several varieties among the Northern Buddhisms
+which so arouse the astonishment of those who study the simple Pali
+scriptures that contain the story of Gautama, and who know only the
+southern phase of the faith, that is to Asia, relatively, what
+Christianity is to Europe. We say relatively, for while Buddhism made
+Chinese Asia gentle in manners and kind to animals, it covered the land
+with temples, monasteries and images; on the other hand the religion of
+Jesus filled Europe not only with churches, abbeys, monasteries and
+nunneries, but also with hospitals, orphan asylums, lighthouses, schools
+and colleges. Between the fruits of Christendom and Buddhadom, let the
+world judge.
+
+
+Survey and Summary.
+
+
+To sum up: Buddhism is the humanitarian's, and also the skeptic's,
+solution of the problem of the universe. Its three great distinguishing
+characteristics are atheism, metempsychosis and absence of caste. It was
+in its origin pure democracy. As against despotic priesthood and
+oppressive hierarchy, it was congregational. Theoretically it is so yet,
+though far from being so practically. It is certainly sacerdotal and
+aristocratic in organization. As in any other system which has so vast a
+hierarchy with so many grades of honor and authority, its theory of
+democracy is now a memory. First preached in a land accursed by caste
+and under spiritual and secular oppressions, it acknowledged no caste,
+but declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally
+capable of being freed from sin and misery through Buddhahood, that is,
+knowledge or enlightenment.[36]
+
+The three-fold principle laid down by Gautama, and now in dogma,
+literature, art and worship, a triad or formal trinity, is, Buddha, the
+attainment of Buddha-hood, or perfect enlightenment, through meditation
+and benevolence; Karma, the law of cause and effect; and Dharma,
+discipline or order; or, the Lord, the Law and the Church. Paying no
+attention to questions of cosmogony or theogony, the universe is
+accepted as an ultimate fact. Matter is eternal. Creation exists but not
+a Creator. All is god, but God is left out of consideration. The gods
+are even less than Buddhas. Humanity is glorified and the stress of all
+teaching is upon this life. In a word: a sinless life, attainable by
+man, through his own exertions in this world, above all the powers or
+beings of the universe, is the essence of original Buddhism. Original
+Nirvana meant death which ends all, extinction of existence.
+
+Gautama's immediate purpose was to emancipate himself and his followers
+from the fetters of Brahminism. He tried to leave the world of Hindu
+philosophy behind him and to escape from it.
+
+Did he succeed? Partially.
+
+Buddha hoped also to rise above the superstitions of the common people,
+but in this he was again only partially successful.[37] "The clouds
+returned after the rain." The old dead gods of Brahminism came back
+under new names and forms. The malarial exhalations of corrupt
+Brahmanistic philosophy, continually poisoned the atmosphere which
+Buddha's disciples breathed. Still worse, as his religion transmigrated
+into other lands, it became itself a history of transformation, until
+to-day no religion on earth seems to be such a kaleidoscopic
+phantasmagoria. Polytheism is rampant over the greater part of the
+Buddhist world to-day. In the larger portion of Chinese Asia, pantheism
+dominates the mind. In modern Babism,--a mixture of Mohammedanism,
+Christianity and Buddhism,--there are streaks of dualism. If Monotheism
+has ever dawned on the Buddhist world, it has been in fitful pulses as
+in auroral flashes, soon to leave darkness darker.
+
+For us is this lesson: Buddhism, brought face to face with the problem
+of the world's evil and possible improvement, evades it; begs the whole
+question at the outset; prays: "Deliver us from existence. Save us from
+life and give us as little as possible of it." Christianity faces the
+problem and flinches not; orders advance all along the line of endeavor
+and prays: "Deliver us from evil;" and is ever of good cheer, because
+Captain and leader says: "I have overcome the world." Go, win it for me.
+"I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
+abundantly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM
+
+    "All things are nothing but mind."
+
+    "The doctrines of Buddhism have no fixed forms."
+
+    "There is nothing in things themselves that enables us to
+    distinguish in them either good or evil, right or wrong. It is
+    but man's fancy that weighs their merits and causes him to
+    choose one and reject the other."
+
+    "Non-individuality is the general principle of
+    Buddhism."--Outlines of the Mahāyāna.
+
+    "It (Shintō) was smothered before reaching maturity, but
+    Buddhism and Confucianism had to disguise and change in order to
+    enter Japan."
+
+    "Life has a limited span and naught may avail to extend it. This
+    is manifested by the impermanence of human beings. But yet
+    whenever necessary I will hereafter make my appearance from time
+    to time as a god, a sage, or a Buddha."--Last words of Shaka the
+    Buddha, in Japanese biography.
+
+    "It is our opinion that Buddhism cannot long hold its ground,
+    and that Christianity must finally prevail throughout all
+    Japan.... Now, when Buddhism and Christianity are in conflict
+    for the ascendency, this indifference of the Japanese people to
+    the difference of sects is a great disadvantage to Buddhism.
+    That they should worship Jesus Christ with the same mind as they
+    do _Inari_ or _Miōjin_ is not at all inconsistent in their
+    estimation or contrary to their custom."--Fukuzawa, of
+    Tōkiō.
+
+    "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God,
+    follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."--Elijah.
+
+    "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"--Jesus.
+
+    "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and
+    bitter?"--James.
+
+    "What concord hath Christ with Belial?"--Paul.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM
+
+Syncretism in Religion.
+
+
+Two centuries and a half of Buddhism in Japan, showed the leaders and
+teachers of the Indian faith that complete victory over the whole nation
+was yet very far off. The court had indeed been invaded and won. Even
+the Mikado, the ecclesiastical head of Shintō, and the incarnation
+and vicar of the heavenly gods, had not only embraced Buddhism, but in
+many instances had shorn the hair and taken the vows of the monk. Yet
+the people clung tenaciously to their old traditions, customs and
+worship; for their gods were like themselves and indeed were of
+themselves, since Shintō is only a transfiguration of Japanese life.
+In the Japanese of those days we can trace the same traits which we
+behold in the modern son of Nippon, especially his intense patriotism
+and his warlike tendencies. To convert these people to the peaceful
+dogmas of Siddartha and to make them good Buddhists, something more than
+teaching and ritual was necessary. It was indispensable that there
+should be complete substitution, all along the ruts and paths of
+national habit, and especially that the names of the gods and the
+festivals should be Buddhaized.
+
+Popular customs are nearly immortal and ineradicable. Though wars may
+come, dynasties rise and fall, and convulsions in nature take place, yet
+the people's manners and amusements are very slow in changing. If, in
+the history of Christianity, the European missionaries found it
+necessary in order to make conquest of our pagan forefathers, to baptize
+and re-name without radically changing old notions and habits, so did it
+seem equally indispensable that in Japan there should be some system of
+reconciliation of the old and the new, some theological revolution,
+which should either fulfil, absorb, or destroy Shintō.
+
+In the histories of religions in Western Asia, Northern Africa and
+Europe, we are familiar with efforts at syncretism. We have seen how
+Philo attempted to unite Hebrew righteousness and Greek beauty, and to
+harmonize Moses and Plato. We know of Euhemerus, who thought he read in
+the old mythologies not only the outlines of real history, but the
+hieroglyphics of legend and tradition, truth and revelation.[1] Students
+of Church history are well aware that this principle of interpretation
+was followed only too generously by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
+Lactantius, Chrysostom and others of the Church Fathers. Indeed, it
+would be hard to find in any of the great religions of the world an
+utter absence of syncretism, or the union of apparently hostile
+religious ideas. In the Thousand and One Nights, we have an example in
+popular literature. We see that the ancient men of India, Persia and
+pre-Mohammedan Arabia now act and talk as orthodox Mussulmans. In
+matters pertaining to art and furniture, the statue of Jupiter in Rome
+serves for St. Peter, and in Japan that of the Virgin and child for the
+Buddha and his mother.[2]
+
+What, however, chiefly concerns the critic and student of religions is
+to inquire how far the process has been natural, and the efforts of
+those who have brought about the union have been honest, and their
+motives pure. The Bible pages bear witness, that Israelites too often
+tried to make the same fountain give forth sweet waters and bitter, and
+to grow thistles and grapes on the same stem, by uniting the cults of
+Jehovah and the Baalim. King Solomon's enterprises in the same direction
+are more creditable to him as a politician than as a worshipper.[3] In
+the history of Christianity one cannot commend the efforts either of the
+Gnostics or the neo-Platonists, nor always justify the medieval
+missionaries in their methods. Nor can we accurately describe as
+successful the ingenuity of Vossius, the Dutch theologian, who,
+following the scheme of Euhemerus, discovered the Old Testament
+patriarchs in the disguise of the gods of Paganism. Nor, even though
+Germany be the land of learning, can the clear-headed scholar agree with
+some of her rationalists, who are often busy in the same field of
+industry, setting forth wild criticism as "science."
+
+
+The Kami and the Buddhas.
+
+
+In Japan, to solve the problem of reconciliation between the ancient
+traditions of the divine ancestors and the dogmas of the Indian cult, it
+was necessary that some master spirit, profoundly learned in the two
+Ways, of the Kami and of the Buddhas, should be bold, and also as it
+seems, crafty and unscrupulous. To convert a line of theocratic
+emperors, whose authority was derived from their alleged divine origin
+and sacerdotal character, into patrons and propagandists of Buddhism,
+and to transform indigenous Shintō gods into Buddhas elect, or
+Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks
+that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the
+capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion for
+all mankind.
+
+Yet from such a task continental Buddhism had not shrunk before and did
+not shrink then, nor indeed from it do the insular Japanese sects shrink
+now. Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up
+Japanese Christianity. With all encompassing tentacles, and with
+colossal powers of digestion and assimilation, Northern Buddhism had
+drawn into itself a large part of the Brahmanism out of which it
+originally sprang,[4] reversing the old myth of Chronos by swallowing
+its parents. It had gathered in, pretty much all that was in the heavens
+above and the earth beneath and the waters that were under the earth, in
+Nepal, Tibet, China, and Korea. Thoroughly exercised and disciplined, it
+was ready to devour and digest all that the imagination of Japan had
+conceived.
+
+We must remember that, at the opening of the ninth century, the Buddhism
+rampant in China and indeed throughout Chinese Asia was the Tantra
+system of Yoga-chara.[5] This compound of polytheism and pantheism, with
+its sensuous paradise, its goddess of mercy and its pantheon of every
+sort of worshipable beings, was also equipped with a system of
+philosophy by which Buddhism could be adapted to almost every yearning
+of human nature in its lowest or its highest form, and by which things
+apparently contradictory could be reconciled. Furthermore--and this is
+not the least important thing to consider when the work to be done is
+for the ordinary man as an individual and for the common people in the
+mass--it had also a tremendous apparatus for touching the imagination
+and captivating the fancy of the unthinking and the uneducated.
+
+For example, consider the equipment of the Buddhist priests of the ninth
+century in the matter of art alone. Shintō knows next to nothing of
+art,[6] and indeed one might almost say that it knows little of
+civilization. It is like ultra-Puritanic Protestantism and Iconoclasm.
+Buddhism, on the contrary, is the mother of art, and art is her
+ever-busy child and handmaid. The temples of the Kami were bald and
+bare. The Kojiki told nothing of life hereafter, and kept silence on a
+hundred points at which human curiosity is sure to be active, and at
+which the Yoga system was voluble. Buddhism came with a set of visible
+symbols which should attract the eye and fire the imagination, and
+within ethical limits, the passions also. It was a mixed and variegated
+system,--a resultant of many forces.[7] It came with the thought of
+India, the art-influence of Greece, the philosophy of Persia, the
+speculations of the Gnostics and, in all probability, with ideas
+borrowed indirectly from Nestorian or other forms of Christianity; and
+thus furnished, it entered Japan.
+
+
+The Mission of Art.
+
+
+Thus far the insular kingdom had known only the monochrome sketches of
+the Chinese painters, which could have a meaning for the educated few
+alone. The composite Tantra dogmas fed the fancy and stimulated the
+imagination, filling them with pictures of life, past, present and
+future. "The sketch was replaced by the illumination." Whole schools of
+artists, imported from China and Korea, multiplied their works and
+attracted the untrained senses of the people, by filling the temples
+with a blaze of glory. "This result was sought by a gorgeous but studied
+play of gold and color, and a lavish richness of mounting and
+accessories, that appear strangely at variance with the begging bowl and
+patched garments of primitive Buddhism."[8] The change in the Japanese
+temple was as though the gray clouds had been kissed by the sun and made
+to laugh rainbows. The country of the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags was
+transformed. It suddenly became the land wherein gods grew not singly
+but in whole forests. Like the Shulamite, when introduced among the
+jewelled ladies of Solomon's harem, so stood the boor amid the sheen and
+gold of the new temples.
+
+    "Gold was the one thing essential to the Buddhist altar-piece,
+    and sometimes, when applied on a black ground, was the only
+    material used. In all cases it was employed with an unsparing
+    hand. It appeared in uniform masses, as in the body of the
+    Buddha or in the golden lakes of the Western Paradise; in minute
+    diapers upon brocades and clothing, in circlets and undulating
+    rays, to form the glory surrounding the head of Amitaba; in
+    raised bosses and rings upon the armlets or necklets of the
+    Bodhisattvas and Devas, and in a hundred other manners. The
+    pigments chosen to harmonize with this display were necessarily
+    body colors of the most pronounced lines, and were untoned by
+    any trace of chiaroscuro. Such materials as these would surely
+    try the average artist, but the Oriental painter knew how to
+    dispose them without risk of crudity or gaudiness, and the
+    precious metal, however lavishly applied, was distributed over
+    the picture with a judgment that would make it difficult to
+    alter or remove any part without detriment to the beauty of the
+    work."[9]
+
+In our day, Japanese art has won its own place in the world's temple of
+beauty. Even those familiar with the master-pieces of Europe do not
+hesitate to award to the artists of Nippon a meed of praise which,
+within certain limits, is justly applied to them equally with the
+masters of the Italian, the Dutch, the Flemish, or the French schools.
+It serves our purpose simply to point out that art was a powerful factor
+in the religious conquest of the Japanese for the new doctrines of the
+Yoga system, which in Japan is called Riyōbu, or Mixed Buddhism.
+
+We say Mixed Buddhism rather than Riyōbu Shintō, for Shintō was
+less corrupted than swallowed up, while Buddhism suffered one more
+degree of mixture and added one more chapter of decay. It increased in
+its visible body, while in its mind it became less and less the religion
+of Buddha and more and more a thing with the old Shintō heart still
+in it, making a strange growth in the eyes of the continental believers.
+To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or Japanese
+Buddhism.
+
+Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom
+and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and
+traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?
+
+
+Kōbō the Wonder Worker.
+
+
+The Philo and Euhemerus of Japan was the priest Kukai, who was born in
+the province of Sanuki, in the year 774. He is better known by his
+posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, or the Great Teacher who promulgates
+the Law. By this name we shall call him. About his birth, life and
+death, have multiplied the usual swaddling bands of Japanese legend and
+tradition,[10] and to his tomb at the temple on Mount Kō-ya, the
+Campo Santo of Japanese Buddhism, still gather innumerable pilgrims. The
+"hall of ten thousand lamps," each flame emblematic of the Wisdom that
+saves, is not, indeed, in these days lighted annually as of old; but the
+vulgar yet believe that the great master still lives in his mausoleum,
+in a state of profoundly silent meditation. Into the hall of bones near
+by, covering a deep pit, the teeth and "Adam's apple" of the cremated
+bodies of believers are thrown by their relatives, though the pit is
+cleared out every three years. The devotees believe that by thus
+disposing of the teeth and "Adam's apple," they obtain the same
+spiritual privileges as if they were actually entombed there, that is,
+of being born again into the heaven of the Bodhisattva or the Pure Land
+of Absolute Bliss, by virtue of the mystic formulas repeated by the
+great master in his lifetime.
+
+Let us sketch the life of Kōbō,
+
+First named Toto-mono, or Treasure, by his parents, who sent him to
+Kiōtō to be educated for the priesthood, the youth spent four
+years in the study of the Chinese classics. Dissatisfied with the
+teachings of Confucius, he became a disciple of a famous Buddhist
+priest, named Iwabuchi (Rock-edge or throne). Soon taking upon himself
+the vows of the monk, he was first named Kukai, meaning "space and sea,"
+or heaven and earth.[11] He overcame the dragons that assaulted him, by
+prayers, by spitting at them the rays of the evening star which had
+flown from heaven into his mouth and by repeating the mystic formulas
+called Dharani.[12] Annoyed by hobgoblins with whom he was obliged to
+converse, he got rid of them by surrounding himself with a consecrated
+imaginary enclosure into which they were unable to enter against his
+will.
+
+We mention these legends only to call the attention to the fact that
+they are but copies of those already accepted in China at that time, and
+are the logical and natural fruit of the Tantra school at which we have
+glanced. In 804, Kōbō was appointed to visit the Middle Kingdom as
+a government student. By means of his clever pen and calligraphic skill
+he won his way into the Chinese capital. He became the favored disciple
+of a priest who taught him the mystic doctrines of the Yoga. Having
+acquired the whole of the system, and equipped himself with a large
+library of Buddhist doctrinal works and still more with every sort of
+ecclesiastical furniture and religious goods, he returned to Japan.
+
+Multitudes of wonders are reported about Kōbō, all of which show
+the growth of the Tantra school. It is certain that his erudition was
+immense, and that he was probably the most learned man of Japan in that
+age, and possibly of any other age. Besides being a Japanese Ezra in
+multiplying writings, he is credited with the invention of the
+hira-gana, or running script, and if correctly so, he deserves on this
+account alone an immortal honor equal to that of Cadmus or Sequoia. The
+kana[13] is a syllabary of forty-seven letters, which by diacritical
+marks, may be increased to seventy. The kata-kana is the square or print
+form, the hira-kana is the round or "grass" character for writing.
+Though not as valuable as a true phonetic alphabet, such as the Koreans
+and the Cherokees possess, the _i-ro-ha_, or kana script, even though a
+syllabary and not an alphabet, was a wonderful aid to popular writing
+and instruction.
+
+Evidently the idea of the i-ro-ha, or Japanese ABC, was derived from the
+Sanskrit alphabet, or, what some modern Anglo-Indian has called the
+Deva-Nagari or the god-alphabet. There is no evidence, however, to show
+that Kōbō did more than arrange in order forty-seven of the
+easiest Chinese signs then used, in such a manner that they conveyed in
+a few lines of doggerel the sense of a passage from a sutra in which the
+mortality of man and the emptiness of all things are taught, and the
+doctrine of Nirvana is suggested.[14] Hokusai, the artist, in a sketch
+which embodies the popular idea of this bonze's immense industry,
+represents him copying the shastras and sutras. Kōbō is on a seat
+before a large upright sheet of paper. He holds a brush-pen in his
+mouth, and one in each of his hands and feet, all moving at once.[15]
+Favorite portions of the Buddhist scriptures were indeed so rapidly
+multiplied in Japan in the ninth century, as to suggest the idea, that,
+even in this early age, block printing had been imported from China,
+whence also afterward, in all probability, it was exported into Europe
+before the days of Gutenberg and Coster.[16] The popular imagination,
+however, was more easily moved on seeing five brushes kept at work and
+all at once by the muscles in the fingers, toes and mouth of one man.
+Yet, had his life lasted six hundred years instead of sixty, he could
+hardly have graven all the images, scaled all the mountain peaks,
+confounded all the sceptics, wrought all the miracles and performed all
+the other feats with which he is popularly credited.[17]
+
+
+Kōbō Irenicon.
+
+
+Kōbō indeed was both the Philo and Euhemerus of Japan, plus a
+large amount of priestly cunning and what his enemies insist was
+dishonesty and forgery. Soon after his return from China, he went to the
+temples of Isé,[18] the most holy place of Shintō.[19] Taking a
+reverent attitude before the chief shrine, that of Toko Uké Bimé no Kami
+or Abundant-Food-Lady-God, or the deified Earth as the producer of food
+and the upholder of all things upon its surface, the suppliant waited
+patiently while fasting and praying.
+
+In this, Kōbō did but follow out the ordinary Shintō plan for
+securing god-possession and obtaining revelation; that is, by starving
+both the stomach and the brain.[20] After a week's waiting he obtained
+the vision. The Food-possessing Goddess revealed to him the yoke (or
+Yoga) by which he could harness the native and the imported gods to the
+chariot of victorious Buddhism. She manifested herself to him and
+delivered the revelation on which his system is founded, and which,
+briefly stated, is as follows:
+
+All the Shintō deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They
+were manifestations to the Japanese, before Gautama had become the
+enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of
+the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire.
+Further more, provision was made for the future gods and deified holy
+ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other
+Japanese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus
+recorded in a Japanese popular work:
+
+    "Life has a limited span, and naught may avail to extend it.
+    This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings, but yet,
+    whenever necessary, I will hereafter make my appearance from
+    time to time as a god (Kami), a sage (Confucian teacher), or a
+    Buddha (Hotoké)."[21]
+
+In a word, the Shintō goddess talked as orthodox (Yoga) Buddhism as
+the ancient characters of the Indian, Persian and pre-Islam-Arabic
+stories in the Arabian Nights now talk the purest Mohammedanism.[22]
+According to the words put into Gautama's mouth at the time of his
+death, the Buddha was already to reappear in the particular form and in
+all the forms, acceptable to Shintōists, Confucianists, or Buddhists
+of whatever sect.
+
+Descending from the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete
+scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shintō and
+Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly
+named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, Kōbō
+forthwith baptized each native Shintō deity with a new
+Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shintō festival he arranged a
+corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a
+band of disciples, he sent them forth proclaiming the new irenicon.
+
+
+The Hindu Yoga Becomes Japanese Riyōbu.
+
+
+It was just the time for this brilliant and able ecclesiastic to
+succeed. The power and personal influence of the Mikado were weakening,
+the court swarmed with monks, the rising military classes were already
+safely under the control of the shavelings, and the pen of learning had
+everywhere proved itself mightier than the sword and muscle.
+Kōbō's particular dialectic weapons were those of the Yoga-chara,
+or in Japanese, the Shingon Shu, or Sect of the True Word.[23] He, like
+his Chinese master, taught that we can attain the state of the
+Enlightened or Buddha, while in the present physical body which was born
+of our parents.
+
+This branch of Buddhism is said to have been founded in India about A.D.
+200, by a saint who made the discovery of an iron pagoda inhabited by
+the holy one, Vagrasattva, who communicated the exact doctrine to those
+who have handed it down through the Hindoo and Chinese patriarchs. The
+books or scriptures of this sect are in three sutras; yet the essential
+point in them is the Mandala or the circle of the Two Parts, or in
+Japanese Riyōbu. Introduced into China, A.D. 720, it is known as the
+Yoga-chara school.
+
+Kōbō finding a Chinese worm, made a Japanese dragon, able to
+swallow a national religion. In the act of deglutition and the long
+process of the digestion of Shintō, Japanese Buddhism became
+something different from every other form of the faith in Asia. Noted
+above all previous developments of Buddhism for its pantheistic
+tendencies, the Shingon sect could recognize in any Shintō god,
+demi-god, hero, or being, the avatar in a previous stage of existence of
+some Buddhist being of corresponding grade.
+
+For example,[24] Amatérasŭ or Ten-Shō-Dai-Jin, the sun-goddess,
+becomes Dai Nichi Niōrai or Amida, whose colossal effigies stand in
+the bronze images Dai Butsu at Nara, Kiōto and Kamakura. Ojin, the
+god of war, became Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, or the great Bodhisattva of the
+Eight Banners. Adopted as their patron by the fighting Genji or Minamoto
+warriors of mediæval times, the Buddhists could not well afford to have
+this popular deity outside their pantheon.
+
+For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in Japanese
+pronunciation Bosatsu, was appointed. Each of these Bodhisattvas became
+a Dai Miō Jin or Great Enlightened Spirit, and was represented as an
+avatar in Japan of Buddha in the previous ages, when the Japanese were
+not yet prepared to receive the holy law of Buddhism.
+
+Where there were not enough Dai Miō Jin already existing in native
+traditions to fill out the number required by the new scheme, new titles
+were invented. One of these was Ten-jin, Heavenly being or spirit. The
+famous statesman and scholar of the tenth century, Sugawara Michizané,
+was posthumously named Tenjin, and is even to this day worshipped by
+many children of Japan as he was formerly for a thousand years by nearly
+all of them, as the divine patron of letters. Kompira, Benten and other
+popular deities, often considered as properly belonging to Shintō,
+"are evidently the offspring of Buddhist priestly ingenuity."[25] Out of
+the eight millions or so of native gods, several hundred were catalogued
+under the general term Gon-gen, or temporary manifestations of Buddha.
+In this list are to be found not only the heroes of local tradition, but
+even deified forces of nature, such as wind and fire. The custom of
+making gods of great men after their death, thus begun on a large scale
+by Kōbō, has gone on for centuries. Iyéyasŭ, the political
+unifier of Japan, shines as a star of the first magnitude in the heavens
+of the Riyōbu system, under the mime of Tō-shō-gū, or Great
+Light of the East. The common people speak of him as Gon-gen Sama, the
+latter word being an honorary form of address for all beings from a baby
+to a Bosatsu.
+
+In this way, Kōbō arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock
+company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings,
+in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.
+In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repetition
+in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India
+three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara
+Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and Japan is
+Asanga, Hiukiō and Kōbō.
+
+
+The Happy Family of Riyōbu.
+
+
+Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an
+ox and ass in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It
+will sometimes happen that one god escapes the classification made by
+the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shintō, or _vice versa_;
+while again the label-makers and pasters--as numerous in scholastic
+Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom--have hard work to make the labels
+stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Miō-jin, whose name and renown has
+for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as
+regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old
+Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield
+outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the
+efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in
+recent years by fiercely zealous Shintōists, savor of the smartness
+of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It
+often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous
+Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shintō, to extricate the
+various gods out of the mixture and mess of Riyōbu Shintō, and to
+keep them from jostling each other.
+
+This reclaiming and kidnapping of gods and transferring them from one
+camp to another, has been especially active since 1870, when, under
+government auspices, the Riyōbu temples were purged of all Buddhist
+idols, furniture and influences. The term Dai Miō Jin, or Great
+Illustrious Spirit, is no longer officially permitted to be used of the
+old kami or gods of Shintō, who were known to have existed before the
+days of Kōbō. In some cases these gods have lost much of the
+esteem in which they were held for centuries. Especially is this true of
+the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance
+into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its
+shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots. His place as a deity (Kanda
+Dai Miō Jin, or Great Illustrious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by
+another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-god who, in the
+ages of the Kami, "resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado's
+ancestors when they descended from Heaven." The apotheosis of the rebel
+Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the
+unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people. This method of
+laying a ghost by making a god of him, was for centuries a favorite one
+in Japanese Buddhism. Indeed, a large part of the practical and
+parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits
+of the departed.
+
+All Japanese popular religion of the past has been intensely local and
+patriotic. The ancient idea that Nippon was the first country created
+and the centre of the world, has persisted through the ages, modifying
+every imported religion. Hence the noticeable fact in Japanese Buddhism,
+of the comparative degradation of the Hindu deities and the exaltation
+of those which were native to the soil.
+
+The normal Japanese, be he priest or lay brother, theologian or
+statesman, is nothing if not patriotic. Even the Chinese gods and
+goddesses which, clothed in Indian drapery and still preserving their
+Aryan features, were imported to Japan, could not hold their own in
+competition with the popularity of the indigenous inhabitants of the
+Japanese pantheon. The normal Japanese eye does not see the ideals of
+beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision.
+Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties
+of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of
+the Japanese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols
+imported from India. So also, the worshipper to whom the lovely scenery
+of Japan was fresh from the hands of the kami who were so much like
+himself, turned naturally in preference, to the "gods many" of his own
+land.
+
+Succeeding centuries only made it worse for the imported devas or gods,
+while the kami, or the gods sprung from the soil created by Izanami and
+Izanagi steadily rose in honor.
+
+
+Degradation of the Foreign Deities.
+
+
+For example, the Indian saint Dharma is reputed to have come to the
+Dragon-fly Country long before the advent of Buddhism, but the people
+were not ready for him or his teachings, and therefore he returned to
+India. So at least declares the book entitled San Kai Ri[27] (Mountain,
+Sea and Earth), which is a re-reading and explanation of Japanese
+mythology and tradition as recorded in the Kojiki, by a Kiōtō
+priest of the Shin Shu Sect. Of this Dharma, it is said, that he outdid
+the Roman Regulus who suffered involuntary loss of his eyelids at the
+hands of the Carthaginians. Dharma cut off his own eyelids, because he
+could not keep awake.[28] Throwing the offending flesh upon the ground,
+he saw the tea-plant arise to help holy men to keep vigil. Daruma, as
+the Japanese spell his name, has a temple in central Japan. It is
+related that when Shōtoku, the first patron of Buddhism, was one day
+walking abroad he found a poor man dying of hunger, who refused to
+answer any questions or give his name. Shōtoku ordered food to be
+given him, and wrapped his own mantle round him. Next day the beggar
+died, and the prince charitably had him buried on the spot. Shortly
+afterward it was observed that the mantle was lying neatly folded up, on
+the tomb, which on examination proved to be empty. The supposed dying
+beggar was no other than the Indian Saint Dharma, and a pagoda was built
+over the grave, in which images of the priest and saint were
+enshrined.[29] Yet, alas, to-day Daruma the Hindoo and foreigner,
+despite his avatar, his humility, his vigils and his self-mutilation,
+has been degraded to be the shop-sign of the tobacconists. Besides being
+ruthlessly caricatured, he is usually pictured with a scowl, his lidless
+eyes as wide open as those upon a Chinese junk-prow or an Egyptian
+coffin-lid. Often even, he has a pipe in his mouth--a comical
+anachronism, suggestive to the smoker of the dark ages that knew no
+tobacco, before nicotine made the whole world of savage and of civilized
+kin. Legless dolls and snow-men are named after this foreigner, whose
+name is associated almost entirely with what is ludicrous.
+
+On Kōbō's expounding his scheme to the Mikado, the emperor was so
+pleased with his servant's ingenuity, that he gave it the name of
+Riyōbu[30] Shintō; that is, the two-fold divine doctrine, double
+way of the gods, or amalgamated theology. Henceforth the Japanese could
+enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate. As for the people,
+they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does
+not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings,
+and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the
+merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[31] which are usually only other
+names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch. The Yoga had
+become a _kubiki_, for Shintō and Buddhism were now harnessed
+together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably
+as two oxen making the same furrow.
+
+Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of
+Shintō and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols
+might be in the front, and the Shintōist in the rear of the sacred
+hall, or _vice versa_, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the
+two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shintō interior
+contained a museum of idols.
+
+Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or _hinoki_
+wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given
+places in the new and enlarged pantheon. The multiplication was always
+on the side of Buddhism. Soon, also, the architecture was altered from
+the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with
+great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and
+imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which,
+in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist
+paradise. Many of these still remain even after the national purgation
+of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble
+palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus
+or Constantinople. The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood,
+but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished. Sometimes it
+was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms,
+surmounted, it may be, with tablets of painted or stained wood, on which
+were Chinese letters glittering with gold. This departure from the
+primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on
+the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth
+century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted
+boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still
+more radical and even scandalous innovation.
+
+
+Shintō Buried in Buddhism.
+
+
+So complete was the victory of Riyōbuism, that for nearly a thousand
+years Shintō as a religion, except in a few isolated spots, ceased
+from sight and sank to a mere mythology or to the shadow of a mythology.
+The very knowledge even of the ancient traditions was lost in the
+Buddhaized forms in which the old stories[33] were cast, or in the
+omnipresent ritual of the Buddhist tera.
+
+Yet, after all, it is a question as to which suffered most, Buddhism or
+Shintō. Who can tell which was the base and which was the true metal
+in the alloy that was formed? The San Kai Ri shows how superstitious
+manifold became imbedded in Buddhism. It was not alone through the
+Shingon sect, which Kōbō introduced, that this Yoga or union came.
+In the other great sect called the Tendai, and in the later sects, more
+especially in that of Nichiren, the same principle of absorption was
+followed. These sects also adopted many elements derived from the
+god-way and thus became Shintōized. Indeed, it seems certain that
+that vast development of Japanese Buddhism, peculiar to Japan and
+unknown to the rest of the Buddhist world, scouted by the Southern
+Buddhists as dreadful heresy, and rousing the indignation of students of
+early Buddhism, like Max Müller and Professor Whitney, is largely owing
+to this attempted digestion of Japanese mythology. The anaconda may
+indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its
+abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the
+ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least
+made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and
+pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on
+the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit,
+subterranean or superficial growth, that we are eating. So in Riyōbu,
+whether it be most _imo_ or _kabocha_ is a fair question. If the
+Buddhism in Japan did but add a chapter of decay and degradation to the
+religion of the Light of Asia, is not this owing to the act of
+Kōbō--justified indeed by those who imitated his example, yet
+hardly to be called honest? A stroke of ecclesiastical dexterity, it may
+have been, but scarcely a lawful example or an illustrious and
+commendable specimen of syncretism in religion.
+
+Many students have asked what is the peculiar, the characteristic
+difference between the Buddhism of Japan and the other Buddhisms of the
+Asian continent. If there be one cause, leading all others, we incline
+to believe it is because Japanese Buddhism is not the Buddhism of
+Gautama, but is so largely Riyōbu or Mixed. Yet in the alloy, which
+ingredient has preserved most of its qualities? Is Japanese Buddhism
+really Shintōized Buddhism, or Buddhaized Shintō? Which is the
+parasite and which the parasitized? Is the hermit crab Shintō, and
+the shell Buddhism, or _vice versa_? About as many corrupt elements from
+Shintō entered into the various Buddhist sects as Buddhism gave to
+Shintō.
+
+This process of Shintōizing Buddhism or of Buddhaizing
+Shintō--that is, of combining Shintō or purely Japanese ideas and
+practices with the systems imported from India, went on for five
+centuries. The old native habits and mental characteristics were not
+eradicated or profoundly modified; they were rather safely preserved in
+so-called Buddhism, not indeed as dead flies in amber but as live
+creatures, fattening on a body, which, every year, while keeping outward
+form and name, was being emptied of its normal and typical life. It is
+no gain to pure water to add either microbes or the food which nourishes
+them.
+
+
+Buddhism Writes New Chapters of Decay.
+
+
+Phenomenally, the victory was that of Buddhism. The mustard-seed has
+indeed become a great tree, lodging every fowl of heaven, clean and
+unclean; but potentially and in reality, the leavening power, as now
+seen, seems to have been that of Shintō. Or, to change metaphor,
+since the hermit crab and the shell were separated by law only one
+generation ago, in 1870, we shall soon, before many generations, discern
+clearly which has the life and which has only the shell.[34]
+
+There are but few literary monuments[35] of Riyōbuism, and it has
+left few or no marks in the native chronicles, misnamed history, which
+utterly omit or ignore so many things interesting to the student and
+humanist.[36] Yet to this mixture or amalgamation of Buddhism with
+Shintō, more probably than to any other direct influence, may also be
+ascribed that striking alteration in the system of Chinese ethics or
+Confucianism which differentiates the Japanese form from that prevalent
+in China. That is, instead of filial piety, the relation of parent and
+child, occupying the first place, loyalty, the relation of lord and
+retainer, master and servant, became supreme. Although Buddhism made the
+Mikado first a King (Tennō) or Son of Heaven (Ten-Shi), and then a
+monk (Hō-ō), and after his death a Hotoké or Buddhist deity, it
+caused him early to abdicate from actual life. Buddhism is thus directly
+responsible for the habitual Japanese resignation from active life
+almost as soon as it is entered, by men in all classes. Buddhism started
+all along and down through the lines of Japanese society the idea of
+early retirement from duty; so that men were considered old at forty,
+and _hors concours_ before forty-five.[37] Life was condemned as vanity
+of vanities before it was mature, and old age a friend that nobody
+wished to meet,[38] although Japanese old age is but European prime. In
+a measure, Buddhism is thus responsible for the paralysis of Japanese
+civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the
+top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the
+Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone,
+Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a
+whole library of despondency and despair.
+
+Nevertheless, the ethical element held its own in the Japanese mind; and
+against the pessimism and puerility of Buddhism and the religious
+emptiness of Shintō, the bond of Japanese society was sought in the
+idea of loyalty. While then, as we repeat, everything that comes to the
+Japanese mind suffers as it were "a sea change, into something new and
+strange," is it not fair to say that the change made by Kōbō was
+at the expense of Buddhism as a system, and that the thing that suffered
+reversion was the exotic rather than the native plant? For, in the
+emergence of this new idea of loyalty as supreme, Shintō and not
+Buddhism was the dictator.
+
+Even more after Kōbō's death than during his life, Japan improved
+upon her imported faith, and rapidly developed new sects of all degrees
+of reputableness and disreputableness. Had Kōbō lived on through
+the centuries, as the boors still believe;[39] he could not have
+stopped, had he so desired, the workings of the leaven he had brought
+from China. From the sixth to the twelfth century, was the missionary
+age of Japanese Buddhism. Then followed two centuries of amazing
+development of doctrine. Novelties in religion blossomed, fruited and
+became monuments as permanent as the age-enduring forests Hakoné, or
+Nikkō. Gautama himself, were he to return to "red earth" again, could
+not recognize his own cult in Japan.
+
+In China to-day Buddhism is in a bad state. One writer calls it, "The
+emasculated descendant that now occupies the land with its drone of
+priests and its temples, in which scarce a worthy disciple of the
+learned patriarchs of ancient days is to be found. Received with open
+arms, persecuted, patronized, smiled upon, tolerated, it with the last
+phase of its existence, has reached, not the halcyon days of peace and
+rest, but its final stage, foreshadowing its decay from rottenness and
+corruption."[40] So also, in a like report, agree many witnesses. The
+common people of China are to-day Taoists rather than Buddhists.[41]
+
+If this be the position in China, something not very far from it is
+found in Japan to-day. Whatever may be the Buddhism of the few learned
+scholars, who have imbibed the critical and scientific spirit of
+Christendom, and whatever be the professions and representations of its
+earnest adherents and partisans, it is certain that popular Buddhism is
+both ethically and vitally in a low state. In outward array the system
+is still imposing. There are yet, it may be, millions of stone statues
+and whole forests of wayside effigies, outdoors and
+unroofed--irreverently called by the Japanese themselves, "wet gods."
+Hosts upon hosts of lacquered and gilded images in wood, sheltered under
+the temple tiles or shingles, still attract worshippers. Despite
+shiploads of copper Buddhas exported as old metal to Europe and America,
+and thousands of tons of gods and imps melted into coin or cannon, there
+are myriads of metal reminders of those fruits of a religion that once
+educated and satisfied; but these are, in the main, no longer to the
+natives instruments of inspiration or compellers to enthusiasm. In this
+time of practical charity, they are poor substitutes for those hospitals
+and orphan asylums which were practically unknown in Japan until the
+advent of Christianity.
+
+Kōbō's smart example has been followed only too well by the people
+in every part of the country. One has but to read the stacks of books of
+local history to see what an amazing proportion of legends, ideas,
+superstitions and revelations rests on dreams; how incredibly numerous
+are the apparitions; how often the floating images of Buddha are found
+on the water; how frequently flowers have rained out of the sky; how
+many times the idols have spoken or shot forth their dazzling rays--in a
+word; how often art and artifices have become alleged and accepted
+reality. Unfortunately, the characteristics of this literature and
+undergrowth of idol lore are monotony and lack of originality; for
+nearly all are copies of Kōbō's model. His cartoon has been
+constantly before the busy weavers of legend.
+
+It may indeed be said, and said truly, that in its multiplication of
+sects and in its growth of legend and superstition, Buddhism has but
+followed every known religion, including traditional Christianity
+itself. Yet popular Buddhism has reached a point which shows, that,
+instead of having a self-purgative and self-reforming power, it is
+apparently still treading in the steps of the degradation which
+Kōbōbegan.
+
+
+The Seven Gods of Good Fortune.
+
+
+We repeat it, Riyōbu Buddhism is Japanese Buddhism with vengeance. It
+is to-day suffering from the effect of its own sins. Its _ingwa_ is
+manifest. Take, for example, the little group of divinities known as the
+Seven Gods of Good Fortune, which forms a popular appendage to Japanese
+Buddhism and which are a direct and logical growth of the work done by
+Kōbō, as shown in his Riyōbu system. Not from foreign writers
+and their fancies, nor even from the books which profess to describe
+these divinities, do we get such an idea of their real meaning and of
+their influence with the people, as we do by observation of every-day
+practice, and a study of the idols themselves and of Japanese folk-lore,
+popular romance, local history and guidebooks. Those familiar
+divinities, indeed, at the present day owe their vitality rather to the
+artists than to priests, and, it may be, have received, together with
+some rather rude handling, nearly the whole of their extended popularity
+and influence from their lay supporters. The Seven Happy Gods of Fortune
+form nominally a Buddhist assemblage, and their effigies on the
+kami-dana or god-shelf, found in nearly every Japanese house, are
+universally visible. The child in Japan is rocked to sleep by the
+soothing sound of the lullaby, which is often a prayer to these gods.
+Even though it may be with laughing and merriment, that, in their name
+the evil gods and imps are exorcised annually on New Year's eve, with
+showers of beans which are supposed to be as disagreeable to the
+Buddhist demons "as drops of holy water to the Devil," yet few
+households are complete without one or more of the images or the
+pictures of these favorite deities.
+
+The separate elements of this conglomerate, so typical of Japanese
+religion, are from no fewer than four different sources: Brahmanism,
+Buddhism, Taoism and Shintōism. "Thus, Bishamon is the Buddhist
+_Vâis'ramana_[42] and the Brahmanic Kuvera; Benten is Sarasvatî, the
+wife of Brahmâ; Daikoku is an extremely popularised form of Mahakala,
+the black-faced Temple Guardian; Hotéi has Taoist attributes, but is
+regarded as an incarnation of Màitreyâ, the Buddhist Messiah;
+Fuku-roku-jiu is of purely Taoist origin, and is perhaps a
+personification of Lao-Tsze himself; Ju-ró-jin is almost certainly a
+duplicate of Fuku-roku-jiu; and, lastly, Ebisu, as the son of Izanagi
+and Izanami, is a contribution from the Shintō hero-worship."[43] If
+Riyōbu Buddhism be two-fold, here is a texture or amalgam that is
+_shi-bu_, four-fold. Let us watch lest _go-bu_, with Christianity mixed
+in, be the next result of the process. To play the Japanese game of
+go-ban, with Christianity as the fifth counter, and Jesus as a
+Palestinian avatar of some Dhyani Buddha, crafty priests in Japan are
+even now planning.
+
+This illustration of the Seven Gods of Happiness, whose local
+characters, functions and relations have been developed especially
+within the last three or four hundred years, is but one of many that
+could be adduced, showing what proceeded on a larger scale. The
+Riyōbu process made it almost impossible for the average native to
+draw the line between history and mythology. It destroyed the boundary
+lines, as Pantheism invariably does, between fact and fiction, truth and
+falsehood. The Japanese mind, by a natural, possibly by a racial,
+tendency, falls easily into Pantheism, which may be called the destroyer
+of boundaries and the maker of chaos and ooze. Pretty much all early
+Japanese "history" is ooze; yet there are grave and learned men, even in
+the Constitutional Japan of the Méiji era--masters in their arts and
+professions, graduates of technical and philosophical courses--who
+solemnly talk about their "first emperor ascending the throne, B.C.
+660," and to whom the dragon-born, early Mikados, and their
+fellow-tribesmen, seen through the exaggerated mists of the Kojiki, are
+divine personages.
+
+
+The Gon-gen in the Processions.
+
+
+While living in Japan between 1870 and 1874, the writer used to enjoy
+watching and studying the long processions which celebrated the
+foundation of temples, national or local festivals, or the completion of
+some great public enterprise, such as the railway between Tōkio and
+Yokohama. In rich costume, decoration, and representation most of the
+cultus-objects were marvels of art and skill. Besides the gala dresses
+and uniforms, the fantastic decorations and personal adornments, the
+dances which represented the comedies and tragedies of the gods and the
+striking scenes in the Kojiki, there wore colossal images of Kami,
+Bodhisattvas, Gon-gen, Dai Miō Jin, and of imps, oni, mythical animal
+forms and imaginary monsters.[44] More interesting than anything else,
+however, were the male and female figures, set high upon triumphal cars
+having many tiers, and arrayed in characteristic primeval, ancient,
+medieval, or early modern dress. Some were of scowling, others of benign
+visage. In some years, everyone of the eight hundred and eight streets
+of Yedo sent its contribution of men, money, decorations, or vehicles.
+
+As seen by four kinds of spectators, the average ignorant native, the
+Shintōist, the learned Buddhist, and the critical historical scholar,
+these effigies represented three different characters or creations.
+Especially were those divine personages called Gon-gen worth the study
+of the foreign observer.
+
+(1) The common boor or streetman saluted, for example, this or that Dai
+Miō Jin, as the great illustrious spirit or god of its particular
+district. To this spirit and image he prayed; in his honor he made
+offerings; his wrath he feared; and his smile he hoped to win, for the
+Gon-gen was a divine being.
+
+(2) To the Shintōist, who hated Buddhism and the Riyōbu Shintō
+which had overlaid his ancestral faith, and who scorned and tabooed this
+Chinese term Dai Miō Jin, this or that image represented a divine
+ancestor whose name had in it many Japanese syllables, with no defiling
+Chinese sounds, and who was the Kami or patron deity of this or that
+neighborhood.
+
+(3) To the Buddhist, this or that personage, in his lifetime, in the
+early ages of Japanese history, had been an avatar of Buddha who had
+appeared in human flesh and brought blessings to the people and
+neighborhood; yet the people of the early ages being unprepared to
+receive his doctrine or revelation, he had not then revealed or preached
+it; but now, as for a thousand years since the time of the illustrious
+and saintly Kōbō, he had his right name and received his just
+honors and worship as an avatar of the eternal Buddha. So, although
+Buddhist and Shintōist might quarrel as to his title, and divide,
+even to anger, on minor points, they would both agree in letting the
+common people take their pleasure, enjoy the festivals and merriment,
+and preserve their reverence and worship.
+
+(4) Still another spectator studied with critical interest the swaying
+figure high in air. With a taste for archaeology, he admired the
+accuracy of the drapery and associations. He was amused, it may be, with
+occasional anachronisms as to garments or equipments. He knew that the
+original of this personage had been nothing more than a human being, who
+might indeed have been conspicuous as a brave soldier in war, or as a
+skilful physician who helped to stop the plague, or as a civilizer who
+imported new food or improved agriculture.
+
+In a word, had this subject of the ancient Mikado lived in modern
+Christendom, he might be honored through the government, patent office,
+privy council, the admiralty, the university, or the academy, as the
+case or worth might be. He might shine in a plastic representation by
+the sculptor or artist, or be known in the popular literature; but he
+would never receive religious worship, or aught beyond honor and praise.
+In this swamping of history in legend and of fact in dogma, we behold
+the fruit of Kōbō's work, Riyōbu Buddhism.
+
+
+Kōbō's Work Undone.
+
+
+Buddhism calls itself the jewel in the lotus. Japanese poetry asks of
+the dewdrop "why, having the heart of the lotus for its home, does it
+pretend to be a gem?" For a thousand years Riyōbu Buddhism was
+received as a pure brilliant of the first water, and then the
+scholarship of the Shintō revivalists of the eighteenth century
+exposed the fraudulent nature of the unrelated parts and declared that
+the jewel called Riyōbu was but a craftsman's doublet and should be
+split apart. Only a splinter of diamond, they declared, crowned a mass
+of paste. Indignation made learning hot, and in 1870 the cement was
+liquefied in civil war. The doublet was rent asunder by imperial decree,
+as when a lapidist melts the mastic that holds in deception adamant and
+glass, while real diamond stands all fire short of the hydro-oxygen
+flame. The Riyōbu temples were purged of all Buddhist symbols,
+furniture, equipment and personnel, and were made again to assume their
+august and austere simplicity. In the eyes of the purely aesthetic
+critic, this national purgation was Puritanical iconoclasm; in those of
+the priests, cast out to earn rice elsewise and elsewhere, it was
+outrage, which in individual instances called for reprisal in blood,
+fire and assassination; to the Shintōist, it was an exhibition of the
+righteous judgment of the long-insulted gods; in the ken of the critical
+student, it seems very much like historic and poetic justice.
+
+In our day and time, Riyōbu Buddhism furnishes us with a warning,
+for, looked at from a purely human point of view, what happened to
+Shintō may possibly happen to Japanese Christianity. The successors
+of those who, in the ninth century, did not scruple to Buddhaize
+Shintō, and in later times, even our own, to Shintōize Buddhism
+while holding to Buddha's name and all the revenue possible, will
+Buddhaize Christianity if they have power and opportunity; and signs are
+not wanting to show that this is upon their programme.
+
+The water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass, which needs
+cleansing to purity by a knowledge of one God who is Light and Love.
+Without such knowledge, the manifold changes in Buddhism will but form
+fresh chapters of degradation and decay. Holding such knowledge,
+Christianity may pass through endless changes, for this is her
+capability by Divine power and the authorization of her Founder. The now
+Buddhism of our day is endeavoring to save itself through reformation
+and progress. In doing so, the danger of the destruction of the system
+is great, for thus far change has meant decay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS
+
+
+    "To the millions of China, Corea, and Japan, creator and
+    creation are new and strange terms,"--J.H. De Forest.
+
+    "The Law of our Lord, the Buddha, is not a natural science or a
+    religion, but a doctrine of enlightenment; and the object of it
+    is to give rest to the restless, to point out the Master (the
+    Inmost Man) to those that are blind and do not perceive their
+    Original State."
+
+    "The Saddharma Pundarika Sutra teaches us how to obtain that
+    desirable knowledge of the mind as it is in itself [universal
+    wisdom] ... Mind is the One Reality, and all Scriptures are the
+    micrographic photographs of its images. He that fully grasps the
+    Divine Body of Sakyamuni, holds ever, even without the written
+    Sutra, the inner Saddharma Pundarika in his hand. He ever reads
+    it mentally, even though he would never read it orally. He is
+    unified with it though he has no thought about it. He is the
+    true keeper of the Sutra."--Zitsuzen Ashitsu of the Tendai sect.
+
+    "It [Buddhism] is idealistic. Everything is as we think it. The
+    world is my idea.... Beyond our faith is naught. Hold the
+    Buddhist to his creed and insist that such logic destroys
+    itself, and he triumphs smilingly, 'Self-destructive! Of course
+    it is. All logic is. That is the centre of my philosophy.'"
+
+    "It [Buddhism] denounces all desire and offers salvation as the
+    reward of the murder of our affections, hopes, and aspirations.
+    It is possible where conscious existence is believed to be the
+    chief of evils."--George William Knox.
+
+    "Swallowing the device of the priests, the people well
+    satisfied, dance their prayers."--Japanese Proverb.
+
+    "The wisdom that is from above is ... without variance, without
+    hypocrisy."--James.
+
+    "The mystery of God, even Christ in whom are all the treasures
+    of wisdom and knowledge."--Paul.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS
+
+Chronological Outline.
+
+
+In sketching the history of the doctrinal developments of Buddhism in
+Japan, we note that the system, greatly corrupted from its original
+simplicity, was in 552 A.D. already a millennium old. Several distinct
+phases of the much-altered faith of Gautama, were introduced into the
+islands at various times between the sixth and the ninth century. From
+these and from others of native origin have sprung the larger Japanese
+sects. Even as late as the seventeenth century, novelties in Buddhism
+were imported from China, and the exotics took root in Japanese soil;
+but then, with a single exception, only to grow as curiosities in the
+garden, rather than as the great forests, which had already sprung from
+imported and native specimens.
+
+We may divide the period of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in
+Japan into four epochs:
+
+I. The first, from 552 to 805 A.D., will cover the first six sects,
+which had for their centre of propagation, Nara, the southern capital.
+
+II. Then follows Riyōbu Buddhism, from the ninth to the twelfth
+centuries.
+
+III. This was succeeded by another explosion of doctrine wholly and
+peculiarly Japanese, and by a wide missionary propagation.
+
+IV. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, there is little that
+is doctrinally noticeable, until our own time, when the new Buddhism of
+to-day claims at least a passing notice.
+
+The Japanese writers of ecclesiastical history classify in three groups
+the twelve great sects as the first six, the two mediæval, and the four
+modern sects.
+
+In this lecture we shall merely summarize the characteristics of the
+first five sects which existed before the opening of the ninth century
+but which are not formally extant at the present time, and treat more
+fully the purely Japanese developments. The first three sects may be
+grouped under the head of the Hinayana, or Smaller Vehicle, as Southern
+or primitive orthodox Buddhism is usually called.
+
+Most of the early sects, as will be seen, were founded upon some
+particular sutra, or upon selections or collections of sutras. They
+correspond to some extent with the manifold sects of Christendom, and
+yet this illustration or reference must not be misleading. It is not as
+though a new Christian sect, for example, were in A.D. 500 to be formed
+wholly on the gospel of Luke, or the book of the Revelation; nor as
+though a new sect should now arise in Norway or Tennessee because of a
+special emphasis laid on a combination of the epistle to the Corinthians
+and the book of Daniel. It is rather as though distinct names and
+organizations should be founded upon the writings of Tertullian, of
+Augustine, of Luther, or of Calvin, and that such sects should accept
+the literary work of these scholars not only as commentaries but as Holy
+Scripture itself.
+
+The Buddhist body of scriptures has several times been imported and
+printed in Japan, but has never been translated into the vernacular. The
+canon[1] is not made up simply of writings purporting to be the words of
+Buddha or of the apostles who were his immediate companions or
+followers. On the contrary, the canon, as received in Japan, is made up
+of books, written for the most part many centuries after the last of the
+contemporaries of Gautama had passed away. Not a few of these writings
+are the products of the Chinese intellect. Some books held by particular
+sects as holy scripture were composed in Japan itself, the very books
+themselves being worshipped. Nevertheless those who are apparently
+farthest away from primitive Buddhism, claim to understand Buddha most
+clearly.
+
+
+The Standard Doctrinal Work.
+
+
+One of the most famous of books, honored especially by several of the
+later and larger sects in Japan, and probably the most widely read and
+most generally studied book of the canon, is the Saddharma Pundarika.[2]
+Professor Kern, who has translated this very rhetorical work into
+English, thinks it existed at or some time before 250 A.D., and that in
+its most ancient form it dates some centuries earlier, possibly as early
+as the opening of the Christian era. It has now twenty-seven chapters,
+and may be called the typical scripture of Northern Buddhism. It is
+overflowingly full of those sensuous images and descriptions of the
+Paradise, in which the imagination of the Japanese Buddhist so revels,
+and in it both rhetoric and mathematics run wild. Of this book, "the
+cream of the revealed doctrine," we shall hear often again. It is the
+standard of orthodoxy in Japanese Buddhism, the real genius of which is
+monastic asceticism in morals and philosophical scepticism in religion.
+
+In most of the other sutras the burden of thought is ontology.
+Doctrinally, Buddhism seems to be less a religion than a system of
+philosophy. Hundreds of volumes in the canon concern themselves almost
+wholly with ontological speculations. The Japanese mind,[3] as described
+by those who have studied most acutely and profoundly its manifestations
+in language and literature, is essentially averse to speculation. Yet
+the first forms of Buddhism presented to the Japanese, were highly
+metaphysical. The history of thought in Japan, shows that these
+abstractions of dogma were not congenial to the islanders. The new faith
+won its way among the people by its outward sensuous attractions, and by
+appeals to the imagination, the fancy and the emotions; though the men
+of culture were led captive by reasoning which they could not answer,
+even if they could comprehend it. Though these early forms of dogma and
+philosophy no longer survive in Japan, having been eclipsed by more
+concrete and sensuous arguments, yet it is necessary to state them in
+order to show: first, what Buddhism really is; second, doctrinal
+development in the farthest East; and, third, the peculiarities of the
+Japanese mind.
+
+In this task, we are happy to be able to rely upon native witness and
+confession.[4] The foreigner may easily misrepresent, even when
+sincerely inclined to utter only the truth. Each religion, in its theory
+at least, must be judged by its ideals, and not by its failures. Its
+truth must be stated by its own professors. In the "History of The
+Twelve Japanese Sects," by Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A. Oxon., and in "Le
+Bouddhisme Japonais," by Ryauon Fujishima, we have the untrammelled
+utterances, of nine living lights of the religion of Shaka as it is held
+and taught in Dai Nippon. The former scholar is a master of texts, and
+the latter of philosophy, each editor excelling in his own department;
+and the two books complement each other in value.
+
+Buddhism, being a logical growth out of Brahmanism, used the old sacred
+language of India and inherited its vocabulary. In the Tripitaka, that
+is, the three book-baskets or boxes, we have the term for canon of
+scripture, in the complete collection of which are _sutra_, _vinaya_ and
+_abidharma_. We shall see, also, that while Gautama shut out the gods,
+his speculative followers who claimed to be his successors, opened the
+doors and allowed them to troop in again. The democracy of the
+congregation became a hierarchy and the empty swept and garnished house,
+a pantheon.
+
+A sutra, from the root _siv_, to sew, means a thread or string, and in
+the old Veda religion referred to household rites or practices and the
+moral conduct of life; but in Buddhist phraseology it means a body of
+doctrine. A shaster or shastra, from the Sanskrit root _ças_, to govern,
+relates to discipline. Of those shastras and sutras we must frequently
+speak. In India and China some of those sutras are exponents, of schools
+of thought or opinion, or of views or methods of looking at things,
+rather than of organizations. In Japan these schools of philosophy, in
+certain instances, become sects with a formal history.
+
+In China of the present day, according to a Japanese traveller and
+author, "the Chinese Buddhists seem ... to unite all different sects, so
+as to make one harmonious sect." The chief divisions are those of the
+blue robe, who are allied with the Lamaism of Tibet and whose doctrine
+is largely "esoteric," and those of the yellow robe, who accept the
+three fundamentals of principle, teaching and discipline. Dhyana or
+contemplation is their principle; the Kégon or Avatamsaka sutra and the
+Hokké or Saddharma Pundarika sutra, etc., form the basis of their
+teaching; and the Vinaya of the Four Divisions (Dharmagupta) is their
+discipline. On the contrary, in Japan there are vastly greater
+diversities of sect, principle, teaching and discipline.
+
+
+Buddhism as a System of Metaphysics.
+
+
+The date of the birth of the Buddha in India, accepted by the Japanese
+scholars is B.C. 1027--the day and month being also given with
+suspicious accuracy. About nine centuries after Gautama had attained
+Nirvana, there were eighteen schools of the Hinayana or the doctrine of
+the Smaller Vehicle. Then a shastra or institute of Buddhist ontology in
+nine chapters, was composed, the title of which in English, is, Book of
+the Treasury of Metaphysics. It had such a powerful influence that it
+was called an intelligence-creating, or as we say, an epoch-making book.
+
+This Ku-sha shastra, from the Sanskrit _kosa_, a store, is eclectic, and
+contains nine chapters embodying the views of one of the schools, with
+selections from those of others. It was translated in A.D. 563, into
+Chinese by a Hindu scholar; but about a hundred years later the famous
+pilgrim, whom the Japanese call Gen-jō, but who is known in Europe as
+Hiouen Thsang,[5] made a better translation, while his disciples added
+commentaries.
+
+In A.D. 658, two Japanese priests[6] made the sea-journey westward into
+China, as Gen-jō had before made the land pilgrimage into India, and
+became pupils of the famous pilgrim. After long study they returned,
+bringing the Chinese translation of this shastra into Japan. They did
+not form an independent sect; but the doctrines of this shastra, being
+eclectic, were studied by all Japanese Buddhist sects. This Ku-sha
+scripture is still read in Japan as a general institute of ontology,
+especially by advanced students who wish to get a general idea of the
+doctrines. It is full of technical terms, and is well named The
+Store-house of Metaphysics.
+
+The Ku-sha teaches control of the passions, and the government of
+thought. The burden of its philosophy is materialism; that is, the
+non-existence of self and the existence of the matter which composes
+self, or, as the Japanese writer says: "The reason why all things are so
+minutely explained in this shastra is to drive away the idea of self,
+and to show the truth in order to make living beings reach Nirvana."
+Among the numerous categories, to express which many technical terms are
+necessary, are those of "forms," eleven in number, including the five
+senses and the six objects of sense; the six kinds of knowledge; the
+forty-six mental qualities, grouped under six heads; and the fourteen
+conceptions separated from the mind; thus making in all seventy-two
+compounded things and three immaterial things. These latter are
+"conscious cessation of existence," "unconscious cessation of
+existence," and "space."
+
+The Reverend Shuzan Emura, of the Shin-shu sect of Japan, after
+specifying these seventy-five Dharmas, or things compounded and things
+immaterial, says:[7] "The former include all things that proceed from a
+cause. This cause is Karma, to which everything existing is due, Space
+and Nirvana alone excepted. Again, of the three immaterial things the
+last two are not subjects to be understood by the wisdom not free from
+frailty. Therefore the 'conscious cessation of existence' is considered
+as being the goal of all effort to him who longs for deliverance from
+misery."
+
+In a word, this one of the many Buddhisms of Asia is vastly less a
+religion, in any real sense of the word, than a system of metaphysics.
+However, the doctrine to be mastered is graded in three Yanas or
+Vehicles; for there are now, as in the days of Shaka, three classes of
+being, graded according to their ability or power to understand "the
+truth." These are:
+
+(I.) The Sho-mon or lowest of the disciples of Shaka, or hearers who
+meditate on the cause and effect of everything. If acute in
+understanding, they become free from confusion after three births; but
+if they are dull, they pass sixty kalpas[8] or aeons before they attain
+to the state of enlightenment.
+
+(II.) The Engaku or Pratyeka Buddhas, that is, "singly enlightened," or
+beings in the middle state, who must extract the seeds or causes of
+actions, and must meditate on the twelve chains of causation, or
+understand the non-eternity of the world, while gazing upon the falling
+flowers or leaves. They attain enlightenment after four births or a
+hundred kalpas, according to their ability.
+
+(III.) The Bodhisattvas or Buddhas-elect, who practise the six
+perfections (perfect practice of alms-giving, morality, patience,
+energy, meditation and wisdom) as preliminaries to Nirvana, which they
+reach only after countless kalpas.
+
+These three grades of pupils in the mysteries of Buddha doctrine, are
+said to have been ordered by Shaka himself, because understanding human
+beings so thoroughly, he knew that one person could not comprehend two
+ways or vehicles (Yana) at once. People were taught therefore to
+practise anyone of the three vehicles at pleasure.
+
+We shall see how the later radical and democratic Japanese Buddhism
+swept away this gradation, and declaring but the one vehicle (éka),
+opened the kingdom to all believers.
+
+The second of the early Japanese schools of thought, is the
+Jō-jitsu,[9] or the sect founded chiefly upon the shastra which means
+The Book of the Perfection of the Truth, containing selections from and
+explanations of the true meaning of the Tripitaka. This shastra was the
+work of a Hindu whose name means Lion-armor, and who lived about nine
+centuries after Gautama. Not satisfied with the narrow views of his
+teacher, who may have been of the Dharmagupta school (of the four
+Disciplines), he made selections of the best and broadest
+interpretations then current in the several different schools of the
+Smaller Vehicle. The book is eclectic, and attempts to unite all that
+was best in each of the Hinayana schools; but certain Chinese teachers
+consider that its explanations are applicable to the Great Vehicle also.
+Translated into Chinese in 406 A.D., the commentaries upon it soon
+numbered hundreds, and it was widely expounded and lectured upon.
+Commentaries upon this shastra were also written in Korean by
+Dō-zō. From the peninsula it was introduced into Japan. This
+Jō-jitsu doctrine was studied by prince Shōtoku, and promulgated
+as a division of the school called San-Ron. The students of the
+Jō-jitsu school never formed in Japan a distinct organization.
+
+The burden of the teachings of this school is pure nihilism, or the
+non-existence of both self and of matter. There is an utter absence of
+substantiality in all things. Life itself is a prolonged dream. The
+objects about us are mere delusive shadows or mirage, the product of the
+imagination alone. The past and the future are without reality, but the
+present state of things only stands as if it were real. That is to say:
+the true state of things is constantly changing, yet it seems as if the
+state of things were existing, even as does a circle of fire seen when a
+rope watch is turned round very quickly.
+
+
+Japanese Pilgrims to China.
+
+
+The Ris-shu or Vinaya sect is one of purely Chinese origin, and was
+founded, or rather re-founded, by the Chinese priest Dōsen, who lived
+on Mount Shunan early in the seventh century, and claimed to be only
+re-proclaiming the rules given by Gautama himself. He was well
+acquainted with the Tripitaka and especially versed in the Vinaya or
+rules of discipline. His purpose was to unite the teachings of both the
+Greater and the Lesser Vehicle in a sutra whose burden should be one of
+ethics and not of dogma.
+
+The founder of this sect was greatly honored by the Chinese Emperor.
+Furthermore, he was honored in vision by the holy Pindola or
+Binzura,[10] who praised the founder as the best man that had
+promulgated the discipline since Buddha himself. In later centuries,
+successors of the founder compiled commentaries and reproclaimed the
+teachings of this sect.
+
+In A.D. 724 two Japanese priests went over to China, and having mastered
+the Ris-shu doctrine, received permission to propagate it in Japan. With
+eighty-two Chinese priests they returned a few years later, having
+attempted, it is said, the journey five times and spent twelve years on
+the sea. On their return, they received an imperial invitation to live
+in the great monastery at Nara, and soon their teachings exerted a
+powerful influence on the court. The emperor, empress and four hundred
+persons of note were received into the Buddhist communion by a Chinese
+priest of the Ris-shu school in the middle of the eighth century. The
+Mikado Shō-mu resigned his throne and took the vow and robes of a
+monk, becoming Hō-ō or cloistered emperor. Under imperial
+direction a great bronze image of the Vairokana Buddha, or Perfection of
+Morality, was erected, and terraces, towers, images and all the
+paraphernalia of the new kind of Buddhism were prepared. Even the earth
+was embroidered, as it were, with sutras and shastras. Symbolical
+landscape gardening, which, in its mounds and paths, variously shaped
+stones and lanterns, artificial cascades and streamlets, teaches the
+holy geography as well as the allegories and hidden truths of Buddhism,
+made the city of Nara beautiful to the eyes of faith as well as of
+sight.
+
+This sect, with its excellence in morality and benevolence, proved
+itself a beautifier of human life, of society and of the earth itself.
+Its work was an irenicon. It occupied itself exclusively with the higher
+ethics, the higher meditations and the higher knowledge. Interdicting
+what was evil and prescribing what was good, its precepts varied in
+number and rigor according to the status of the disciple, lay or
+clerical. It is by the observance of the _sila_, or grades of moral
+perfection, that one becomes a Buddha. Besides making so powerful a
+conquest at the southern capital, this sect was the one which centuries
+afterward built the first Buddhist temple in Yedo. Being ordinary human
+mortals, however, both monk and layman occasionally illustrated the
+difference between profession and practice.
+
+These three schools or sects, Ku-sha, Jō-jitsu, and Ris-shu, may be
+grouped under the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, with more or less
+affiliation with Southern Buddhism; the others now to be described were
+wholly of the Northern division.
+
+The Hossō-shu, or the Dharma-lakshana sect, as described by the Rev.
+Dai-ryo Takashi of the Shin-gon sect, is the school which studies the
+nature of Dharmas or things. The three worlds of desire, form and
+formlessness, consist in thought only; and there is nothing outside
+thought. Nine centuries after Gautama, Maitreya,[11] or the Buddha of
+kindness, came down from the heaven of the Bodhisattva to the
+lecture-hall in the kingdom in central India at the request of the
+Buddhas elect, and discounted five shastras. After that two Buddhist
+fathers who were brothers, composed many more shastras and cleared up
+the meaning of the Mahāyanā. In 629 A.D., in his twenty-ninth
+year, the famous Chinese pilgrim, Gen-jō (Hiouen-thsang), studied
+these shastras and sciences, and returning to China in 645 A.D., began
+his great work of translation, at which he continued for nineteen years.
+One of his disciples was the author of a hundred commentaries on sutras
+and shastras. The doctrines of Gen-jō and his disciples were at four
+different times, from 653 to 712 A.D., imported into Japan, and named,
+after the monasteries in which they were promulgated, the Northern and
+Southern Transmission.
+
+
+The Middle Path.
+
+
+The burden of the teachings of this sect is subjective idealism. They
+embrace principles enjoining complete indifference to mundane affairs,
+and, in fact, thorough personal nullification and the ignoring of all
+actions by its disciples. In these teachings, thought only, is real. As
+we have already seen with the Ku-sha teaching, human beings are of three
+classes, divided according to intellect, into higher, middle and lower,
+for whom the systems of teachings are necessarily of as many kinds. The
+order of progress with those who give themselves to the study of the
+Hossō tenets, is,[12] first, they know only the existence of things,
+then the emptiness of them, and finally they enter the middle path of
+"true emptiness and wonderful existence."
+
+From the first, such discipline is long and painful, and ultimate
+victory scarcely comes to the ordinary being. The disciple, by training
+in thought, by destroying passions and practices, by meditating on the
+only knowledge, must pass through three kalpas or aeons. Constantly
+meditating, and destroying the two obstacles of passion and cognizable
+things, the disciple then obtains four kinds of wisdom and truly attains
+perfect enlightenment or Pari-Nirvana.
+
+The San-ron Shu, as the Three-Shastra sect calls itself, is the sect of
+the Teachings of Buddha's whole life.[13] Other sects are founded upon
+single sutras, a fact which makes the student liable to narrowness of
+opinion. The San-ron gives greater breadth of view and catholicity of
+opinion. The doctrines of the Greater Vehicle are the principal
+teachings of Gautama, and these are thoroughly explained in the three
+shastras used by this sect, which, it is claimed, contain Buddha's own
+words. The meanings of the titles of the three favorite sutras, are, The
+Middle Book, The Hundred, and The Book of Twelve Gates. Other books of
+the canon are also studied and valued by this sect, but all of them are
+apt to be perused from a particular point of view; i.e., that of
+Pyrronism or infinite negation.
+
+There are two lines of the transmission of this doctrine, both of them
+through China, though, the introduction to Japan was made from Korea, in
+625 A.D. Not to dwell upon the detail of history, the burden of this
+sect's teaching, is, infinite negation or absolute nihilism. Truth is
+the inconceivable state, or, in the words of the Japanese writer: "The
+truth is nothing but the state where thoughts come to an end; the right
+meditation is to perceive this truth. He who has obtained this
+meditation is called Buddha. This is this doctrine of the San-ron sect."
+
+This sect, by its teachings of the Middle Path, seems to furnish a
+bridge from the Hinayana or Southern school, to the Mahāyanā or
+Northern school of Buddhism. Part of its work, as set forth by the Rev.
+Kō-chō Ogurasu, of the Shin sect, is to defend the authenticity,
+genuineness and canonicity of the books which form the Northern body of
+scriptures.
+
+In these two sects Hos-sō and San-ron, called those of Middle Path,
+and much alike in principle and teaching, the whole end and aim of
+mental discipline, is nihilism--in the one case subjective, and in the
+other absolute, the end and goal being nothing--this view into the
+nature of things being considered the right one.
+
+Is it any wonder that such teachings could in the long run satisfy
+neither the trained intellects nor the unthinking common people of
+Japan? Is it far from the truth to suspect that, even when accepted by
+the Japanese courtiers and nobles, they were received, only too often,
+in a Platonic, not to say a Pickwickian, sense? The Japanese is too
+polite to say "no" if he can possibly say "yes," even when he does not
+mean it; while the common people all over the world, as between
+metaphysics and polytheism, choose the latter. Is it any wonder that,
+along with this propagation of Nihilism as taught in the cloisters and
+the court, history informs us of many scandals and much immorality
+between the women of the court and the Buddhist monks?
+
+Such dogmas were not able to live in organized forms, after the next
+importations of Buddhism which came in, not partly but wholly, under the
+name of the Mahāyanā or Great Vehicle, or Northern Buddhism. By
+the new philosophy, more concrete and able to appeal more closely to the
+average man, these five schools, which, in their discussions, dealt
+almost wholly with _noumena_, were absorbed. As matter of fact, none of
+them is now in existence, nor can we trace them, speaking broadly,
+beyond the tenth century. Here and there, indeed, may be a temple
+bearing the name of one of the sects, or grades of doctrine, and
+occasionally an eccentric individual who "witnesses" to the old
+metaphysics; but these are but fossils or historical relics, and are
+generally regarded as such.
+
+Against such baldness of philosophy not only might the cultivated
+Japanese intellect revolt and react, but as yet the common people of
+Japan, despite the modern priestly boast of the care of the imperial
+rulers for what the bonzes still love to call "the people's religion,"
+were but slightly touched by the Indian faith.
+
+
+The Great Vehicle.
+
+
+The Kégon-Shu or Avatamsaka-sutra sect, is founded on a certain teaching
+which Gautama is said to have promulgated in nine assemblies held at
+seven different places during the second week of his enlightenment. This
+sutra exists in no fewer than six texts, around each of which has
+gathered some interesting mythology. The first two tests were held in
+memory and not committed to palm leaves; the second pair are secretly
+preserved in the dragon palace of Riu-gu[14] under the sea, and are not
+kept by the men of this world. The fifth text of 100,000 verses, was
+obtained by a Bodhisattva from the palace of the dragon king of the
+world under the sea and transmitted to men in India. The sixth is the
+abridged text.
+
+It concerns us to notice that the shorter texts were translated into
+Chinese in the fourth century, and that later, other translations were
+made--36,000 verses of the fifth text, 45,000 verses of the sixth text,
+etc. When the doctrine of the sect had been perfected by the fifth
+patriarch and he lectured on the sutra, rays of white light came from
+his mouth, and there rained wonderful heavenly flowers. In A.D. 736 a
+Chinese Vinaya teacher or instructor in Buddhist discipline, named
+Dō-sen, first brought the Kégon scriptures to Japan. Four years later
+a Korean priest gave lectures on them in the Golden-Bell Hall of the
+Great Eastern Monastery at Nara. He completed his task of expounding the
+sixty volumes in three years. Henceforth, lecturing on this sutra became
+one of the yearly services of the Eastern Great Monastery.
+
+"The Ké-gon sutra is the original book of Buddha's teachings of his
+whole life. All his teachings therefore sprang from this sutra. If we
+attribute all the branches to the origin, we may say that there is no
+teaching of Buddha for his whole life except this sutra."[15] The title
+of the book, when literally translated, is
+Great-square-wide-Buddha-flower-adornment-teaching--a title sufficiently
+indicative of its rhetoric. The age of hard or bold thinking was giving
+way to flowery diction, and the Law was to be made easy through fine
+writing.
+
+The burden of doctrine is the unconditioned or realistic, pantheism.
+Nature absolute, or Buddha-tathata, is the essence of all things.
+Essence and form were in their origin combined and identical. Fire and
+water, though phenomenally different, are from the point of view of
+Buddha-tathata absolutely identical. Matter and thought are one--that is
+Buddha-tathata. In teaching, especially the young, it must be remembered
+that the mind resembles a fair page upon which the artist might trace a
+design, especial care being needed to prevent the impression of evil
+thoughts, in order to accomplish which one must completely and always
+direct the mind to Buddha.[16] One notable sentence in the text is,
+"when one first raises his thoughts toward the perfect knowledge, he at
+once becomes fully enlightened."
+
+In some parts of the metaphysical discussions of this sect we are
+reminded of European mediaeval scholasticism, especially of that
+discussion as to how many angels could dance on the point of a cambric
+needle without jostling each other. It says, "Even at the point of one
+grain of dust, of immeasurable and unlimited worlds, there are
+innumerable Buddhas, who are constantly preaching the Ké-gon kiō
+(sutra) throughout the three states of existence, past, present and
+future, so that the preaching is not at all to be collected.[17]
+
+
+A New Chinese Sect.
+
+
+In its formal organization the Ten-dai sect is of Chinese origin. It is
+named after Tien Tai,[18] a mountain in China about fifty miles south of
+Ningpo, on which the book which forms the basis of its tenets was
+composed by Chi-sha, now canonized as a Dai Shi or Great teacher. Its
+special doctrine of completion and suddenness was, however, transmitted
+directly from Shaka to Vairokana and thence to Maitreya, so that the
+apostolical succession of its orthodoxy cannot be questioned.
+
+The metaphysics of this sect are thought to be the most profound of the
+Greater Vehicle, combining into a system the two opposite ideas of being
+and not being. The teachers encourage all men, whether quick or slow in
+understanding, to exercise the principle of "completion" and
+"suddenness," together with four doctrinal divisions, one or all of
+which are taught to men according to their ability. The object of the
+doctrine is to make men get an excellent understanding, practise good
+discipline and attain to the great fruit of Enlightenment or
+Buddha-hood.
+
+Out of compassion, Gautama appeared in the world and preached the truth
+in several forms, according to the circumstances of time and place.
+There are four doctrinal divisions of "completion," "secrecy,"
+"meditation," and "moral precept," which are the means of knowing the
+principle of "completion." From Gautama, Vairokana and Maitreya the
+doctrine passed through more than twenty Buddhas elect, and arrived in
+China on the twentieth day of the twelfth month, A.D. 401. The delivery
+to disciples was secret, and the term used for this esoteric
+transmission means "handed over within the tower."
+
+In A.D. 805, two Japanese pilgrims went to China, and received orthodox
+training. With twenty others, they brought the Ten-dai doctrines into
+Japan. During this century, other Japanese disciples of the same sect
+crossed the seas to study at Mount Tien Tai. On coming back to Japan
+they propagated the various shades of doctrine, so that this main sect
+has many branches. It was chiefly through these pilgrims from the West
+that the Sanskrit letters, writing and literature were imported. In our
+day, evidences of Sanskrit learning, long since neglected and forgotten,
+are seen chiefly in the graveyards and in charms and amulets.
+
+Although the philosophical doctrines of Ten-dai are much the same as
+those of the Ké-gon sect, being based on pantheistic realism, and
+teaching that the Buddha-tathata or Nature absolute is the essence of
+all things, yet the Ten-dai school has striking and peculiar features of
+its own. Instead of taking some particular book or books in the canon,
+shastra, or sutra, selection or collection, as a basis, the Chinese monk
+Chi-sha first mastered, and then digested the whole canon. Then
+selecting certain doctrines for emphasis he supported them by a wide
+range of quotation, professing to give the gist of the pure teachings of
+Gautama rather than those of his disciples. In practice, however, the
+Saddharma Pundarika is the book most honored by this sect; the other
+sutras being employed mainly as commentary. Furthermore, this sect makes
+as strenuous a claim for the true apostolical succession from the
+Founder, as do the other sects.
+
+The teachers of Ten-dai doctrine must fully estimate character and
+ability in their pupils, and so apportion instruction. In this respect
+and in not a few others, they are like the disciples of Loyola, and have
+properly been called the Jesuits of Buddhism. They are ascetics, and
+teach that spiritual insight is possible only through prolonged thought.
+Their purpose is to recognize the Buddha, in all the forms he has
+assumed in order to save mankind. Nevertheless, the highest truths are
+incomprehensible except to those who have already attained to
+Buddha-hood.[19] In contrast to the Nichirenites, who give an emotional
+and ultra-concrete interpretation and expression to the great sutra,
+Hokké Kiō, the Ten-dai teachers are excessively philosophical and
+intellectual.
+
+In its history the Ten-dai sect has followed out its logic. Being
+realistic in pantheism, it reverences not only Gautama the historic
+Buddha, but also, large numbers of the Hindu deities, the group of idols
+called Jizō, the god Fudo, and Kuannon the god or goddess of mercy,
+under his or her protean forms. In its early history this sect welcomed
+to its pantheon the Shintō gods, who, according to the scheme of
+Riyōbu Shintō, were declared to be avatars or manifestations of
+Buddha. The three sub-sects still differ in their worship of the avatars
+selected as supreme deities, but their philosophy enables them to sweep
+in the Buddhas of every age and clime, name and nation. Many other
+personifications are found honored in the Ten-dai temples. At the
+gateways may usually be seen the colossal painted and hideous images of
+the two Devas or kings (Ni-O). These worthies are none other than Indra
+and Brahma of the old Vedic mythology.
+
+Space and time--which seem never to fail the Buddhists in their
+literature--would fail us to describe this sect in full, or to show in
+detail its teachings, wherein are wonderful resemblances to European
+ideas and facts--in philosophy, to Hegel and Spinoza find in history, to
+Jesuitism. Nor can we stay to point out the many instances in which,
+invading the domain of politics, the Ten-dai abbots with their armies of
+monks, having made their monasteries military arsenals and issuing forth
+clad in armor as infantry and cavalry, have turned the scale of battle
+or dictated policies to emperors. Like the Praetorian guard of Rome or
+the clerical militia in Spain, these men of keen intellect have left
+their marks deep upon the social and political history of the country in
+which they dwelt. They have understood thoroughly the art of practising
+religion for the sake of revenue. To secure their ends, priests have
+made partnerships with other sects; in order to hold Shintō shrines,
+they have married to secure heirs and make office hereditary; and
+finally in the Purification of 1870, when the Riyōbu system was blown
+to the winds by the Japanese Government, not a few priests of this sect
+became laymen, in order to keep both office and emolument in the
+purified Shintō shrines.
+
+
+The Sect of the True Word.
+
+
+It is probable that the conquest and obliteration of Shintō might
+have been accomplished by some priest or priests of the Ten-dai sect,
+had such a genius as Kōbō been found in its household; but this
+great achievement was reserved for the man who introduced into Japan the
+Shin-gon Shu, or Sect of the True Word. The term _gon_ is the equivalent
+of Mantra,[20] a Sanskrit term meaning word, but in later use referring
+to the mystic salutations addressed to the Buddhist gods. "The doctrine
+of this sect is a great secret law. It teaches us that we can attain to
+the state of the 'Great Enlightened,' that is the state of 'Buddha,'
+while in the present physical body, which was born of our parents (and
+which consists of six elements,[21] Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Ether, and
+Knowledge), if we follow the three great secret laws, regarding Body,
+Speech, and Thought."[22]
+
+The history of the transmission of the doctrine from the greatest of the
+spirit-bodied Buddhas to the historic founder, Vagrabodhi, is carefully
+given. The latter was a man very learned in regard to many doctrines of
+Buddhism and other religious, and was especially well acquainted with
+the deepest meaning of the doctrine of this sect, which he taught in
+India for a considerable time. The doctrine is recorded in several
+sutras, yet the essential point is nothing but the Mandala, or circle of
+the two parts, or, in Japanese, Riyōbu.
+
+The great preacher, Vagrabodhi, in 720 A.D., came with his disciples to
+the capital of China, and translated the sacred books, seventy-seven in
+number. This doctrine is the well-known Yoga-chara, which has been well
+set forth by Doctor Edkins in his scholarly volume on Chinese Buddhism.
+As "yoga" becomes in plain English "yoke," and as "mantra" is from the
+same root as "man" and "mind," we have no difficulty in recognizing the
+original meaning of these terms; the one in its nobler significance
+referring to union with Buddha or Gnosis, and the other to the thought
+taking lofty expression or being debased to hocus-pocus in charm or
+amulet. Like the history of so many Sanskrit words as now uttered in
+every-day English speech, the story of the word mantra forms a picture
+of mental processes and apparently of the degradation of thought, or, as
+some will doubtless say, of the decay of religion. The term mantra meant
+first, a thought; then thought expressed; then a Vedic hymn or text;
+next a spell or charm. Such have been the later associations, in India,
+China and Japan with the term mantra.
+
+The burden of the philosophy of the Shin-gon, looked at from one point
+of view, is mysticism, and from another, pantheism. One of the forms of
+Buddha is the principle of everything. There are ten stages of thought,
+and there are two parts, "lengthwise" and "crosswise" or exoteric and
+esoteric. Other doctrines of Buddhism represent the first, or exoteric
+stage; and those of the Shin-gon or true word, the second, or esoteric.
+The primordial principle is identical with that of Maha-Vairokana, one
+of the forms[23] of Buddha. The body, the word and the thought are the
+three mysteries, which being found in all beings, animate and inanimate,
+are to be fully understood only by Buddhas, and not by ordinary men.
+
+To show the actual method of intellectual procedure in order to reach
+Buddha-hood, many categories, tables and diagrams are necessary; but the
+crowning tenet, most far reaching in its practical influence, is the
+teaching that it is possible to reach the state of Buddha-hood in this
+present body.
+
+As discipline for the attainment of excellence along the path marked out
+in the "Mantra sect," there are three mystic rites: (1) worshipping the
+Buddha with the hand in certain positions called signs; (2) repeating
+Dharani, or mystic formulas; (3) contemplation.
+
+Kōbō himself and all those who imitated him, practised fasting in
+order to clear the spiritual eyesight. The thinking-chairs, so
+conspicuous in many old monasteries, though warmed at intervals through
+the ages by the living bodies of men absorbed in contemplation, are
+rarely much worn by the sitters, because almost absolute cessation of
+motion characterizes the long and hard thinkers of the Shin-gon
+philosophers. The idols in the Shin-gon temples represent many a saint
+and disciple, who, by perseverance in what a critic of Buddhism calls
+"mind-murder," and the use of mystic finger twistings and magic
+formulas, has won either the Nirvana or the penultimate stage of the
+Bodhisattva.
+
+In the sermons and discourses of Shin-gon, the subtle points of an
+argument are seized and elaborated. These are mystical on the one side,
+and pantheistic on the other. It is easily seen how Buddha, being in
+Japanese gods as well as men, and no being without Buddha, the way is
+made clear for that kind of a marriage between Buddhism and Shintō,
+in which the two become one, and that one, as to revenue and advantage,
+Buddhism.
+
+
+Truth Made Apparent by One's Own Thought.
+
+
+The Japanese of to-day often speak of these seven religious bodies which
+we have enumerated and described, as "the old sects," because much of
+the philosophy, and many of the forms and prayers, are common to all,
+or, more accurately speaking, are popularly supposed to be; while the
+priests, being celibates, refrain from saké, flesh and fish, and from
+all intimate relations with women. Yet, although these sects are
+considered to be more or less conformable to the canon of the Greater
+Vehicle, and while the last three certainly introduce many of its
+characteristic features--one sect teaching that Buddha-hood could be
+obtained even in the present body of flesh and blood--yet the idea of
+Paradise had not been exploited or emphasized. This new gospel was to be
+introduced into Japan by the Jō-dō Shu or Sect of the Pure Land.
+
+Before detailing the features of Jō-dō, we call attention to the
+fact that in Japan the propagation of the old sects was accompanied by
+an excessive use of idols, images, pictures, sutras, shastras and all
+the furniture thought necessary in a Buddhist temple. The course of
+thought and action in the Orient is in many respects similar to that in
+the Occident. In western lands, with the ebb and flow of religious
+sentiment, the iconolater has been followed by the iconoclast, and the
+overcrowded cathedrals have been purged by the hammer and fire of the
+Protestant and Puritan. So in Japan we find analogous, though not
+exactly similar, reactions. The rise and prosperity of the believers in
+the Zen dogmas, which in their early history used sparingly the eikon,
+idol and sutra, give some indication of protest against too much use of
+externals in religion. May we call them the Quakers of Japanese
+Buddhism? Certainly, theirs was a movement in the direction of
+simplicity.
+
+The introduction of the Zen, or contemplative sect, did, in a sense,
+both precede and follow that of Shingon. The word Zen is a shortened
+form of the term Zenna, which is a transliteration into Chinese of the
+Sanskrit word Dhyana, or contemplation. It teaches that the truth is not
+in tradition or in books, but in one's self. Emphasis is laid on
+introspection rather than on language. "Look carefully within and there
+you will find the Buddha," is its chief tenet. In the Zen monasteries,
+the chair of contemplation is, or ought to be, always in use.
+
+The Zen Shu movement may be said to have arisen out of a reaction
+against the multiplication of idols. It indicated a return to simpler
+forms of worship and conduct. Let us inquire how this was.
+
+It may be said that Buddhism, especially Northern Buddhism, is a vast,
+complicated system. It has a literature and a sacred canon which one can
+think of only in connection with long trains of camels to carry, or
+freight trains to transport, or ships a good deal bigger than the
+Mayflower to import. Its multitudinous rules and systems of discipline
+appall the spirit and weary the flesh even to enumerate them; so that,
+from one point of view, the making of new sects is a necessity. These
+are labor-saving inventions. They are attempts to reduce the great bulk
+of scriptures to manageable proportions. They seek to find, as it were,
+the mother-liquor of the great ocean, so as to express the truth in a
+crystal. Hence the endeavors to simplify, to condense; here, by a
+selection of sutras, rather than the whole collection; there, by
+emphasis on a single feature and a determination to put the whole thing
+in a form which can be grasped, either by the elect few or by the people
+at large.
+
+The Zen sect did this in a more rational way than that set forth as
+orthodox by later priestcraft, which taught that to the believer who
+simply turned round the revolving library containing the canon, the
+merit of having read it all would be imputed. The rin-zō[24] found
+near the large temples,--the cunning invention of a Chinese priest in
+the sixth century,--soon became popular in Japan. The great wooden
+book-case turning on a pivot contains 6,771 volumes, that being the
+number of canonical volumes enumerated in China and Japan.
+
+The Zen sect teaches that, besides all the doctrines of the Greater and
+the Lesser Vehicles, whether hidden or apparent, there is one distinct
+line of transmission of a secret doctrine which is not subject to any
+utterance at all. According to their tenet of contemplation, one is to
+see directly the key to the thought of Buddha by his own thought, thus
+freeing himself from the multitude of different doctrines--the number of
+which is said to be eighty-four thousand. In fact, Zen Shu or "Dhyana
+sect" teaches the short method of making truth apparent by one's own
+thought, apart from the writings.
+
+The story of the transmission of the true Zen doctrine is this:
+
+    "When the blessed Shaka was at the assembly on Vulture's Peak,
+    there came the heavenly king, who offered the Buddha a
+    golden-colored flower and asked him to preach the law. The
+    Blessed One simply took the flower and held it in his hand, but
+    said no word. No one in the whole assembly could tell what he
+    meant. The venerable Mahahasyapa alone smiled. Than the Blessed
+    One said to him, 'I have the wonderful thought of Nirvana, the
+    eye of the Right Law, which I shall now give to you.'[25] Thus
+    was ushered in the doctrine of thought transmitted by thought."
+
+After twenty-eight patriarchs had taught the doctrine of contemplation,
+the last came into China in A.D. 520, and tried to teach the Emperor the
+secret key of Buddha's thought. This missionary Bodhidharma was the
+third son of a king of the Kashis, in Southern India, and the historic
+original of the tobacconist's shop-sign in Japan, who is known as
+Daruma. The imperial Chinaman was not yet able to understand the secret
+key of Buddha's thought. So the Hindu missionary went to the monastery
+on Mount Su, where in meditation, he sat down cross-legged with his face
+to a wall, for nine years, by which time, says the legend, his legs had
+rotted off and he looked like a snow-image. During that period, people
+did not know him, and called him simply the Wall-gazing Brahmana.
+Afterward he had a number of disciples, but they had different views
+that are called the transmissions of the skin, flesh, or bone of the
+teacher. Only one of them got the whole body of his teachings. Two great
+sects were formed: the Northern, which was undivided, and the Southern,
+which branched off into five houses and seven schools. The Northern Sect
+was introduced into Japan by a Chinese priest in 729 A.D., while the
+Southern was not brought over until the twelfth century. In both it is
+taught that perfect tranquillity of body and mind is essential to
+salvation. The doctrine is the most sublime one, of thought transmitted
+by thought being entirely independent of any letters or words. Another
+name for them is, "The Sect whose Mind Assimilates with Buddha," direct
+from whom it claims to have received its articles of faith.
+
+Too often this idea of Buddhaship, consisting of absolute freedom from
+matter and thought, means practically mind-murder, and the emptiness of
+idle reverie.
+
+Contrasting modern reality with their ancient ideal, it must be
+confessed that in practice there is not a little letter worship and a
+good deal of pedantry; for, in all the teachings of abstract principles
+by the different sects, there are endless puns or plays upon words in
+the renderings of Chinese characters. This arises from that antithesis
+of extreme poverty in sounds with amazing luxuriance in written
+expression, which characterizes both the Chinese and Japanese languages.
+
+In the temples we find that the later deities introduced into the
+Buddhist pantheon are here also welcome, and that the triads or groups
+of three precious ones, the "Buddhist trinity," so-called,[26] are
+surrounded by gods of Chinese or Japanese origin. The Zen sect,
+according to its professions and early history, ought to be indifferent
+to worldly honors and emoluments, and indeed many of its devotees are.
+Its history, however, shows how poorly mortals live up to their
+principles and practise what they preach. Furthermore, these professors
+of peace and of the joys of the inner life in the Sō-tō or
+sub-sect have made the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth years of Meiji, or
+A.D. 1893 and 1894, famous and themselves infamous by their
+long-continued and scandalous intestine quarrels. Of the three
+sub-sects, those called Rin-zai and Sō-tō, take their names from
+Chinese monks of the ninth century; while the third, O-baku, founded in
+Japan in the seventeenth century, is one of the latest importations of
+Chinese Buddhistic thought in the Land of the Rising Sun.
+
+Japanese authors usually classify the first six denominations at which
+we have glanced, some of which are phases of thought rather than
+organizations, as "the ancient sects." Ten-dai and Shin-gon are "the
+medieval sects." The remaining four, of which we shall now treat, and
+which are more particularly Japanese in spirit and development, are "the
+modern sects."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE
+
+    "A drop of spray cast by the infinite
+    I hung an instant there, and threw my ray
+    To make the rainbow. A microcosm I
+    Reflecting all. Then back I fell again,
+    And though I perished not, I was no more."--
+    The Pantheist's Epitaph.
+
+    "Buddhism is essentially a religion of compromise."
+
+    "Where Christianity has One Lord, Buddhism has a dozen."
+
+    "I think I may safely challenge the Buddhist priesthood to give
+    a plain historical account of the Life of Amida, Kwannon,
+    Dainichi, or any other Mahāyāna Buddha, without being in
+    serious danger of forfeiting my stakes."
+
+    "Christianity openly puts this Absolute Unconditioned Essence in
+    the forefront of its teaching. In Buddhism this absolute
+    existence is only put forward, when the logic of circumstances
+    compels its teachers to have recourse to it."--A. Lloyd, in The
+    Higher Buddhism in the Light of the Nicene creed.
+
+    "Now these six characters, 'Na-mu-A-mi-da-Butsu,' Zend-ō has
+    explained as follows: 'Namn' means [our] following His
+    behest--and also [His] uttering the Prayer and bestowing [merit]
+    upon us. 'Amida Butsu' is the practice of this, consequently by
+    this means a certainty of salvation is attained."
+
+    "By reason of the conferring on us sentient creators of this
+    great goodness and great merit through the utterance of the
+    Prayer, and the bestowal [by Amida] the evil Karma and [effect
+    of the] passions accumulated through the long Kalpas, since when
+    there was no beginning, are in a moment annihilated, and in
+    consequence, those passions and evil Karma of ours all
+    disappearing, we live already in the condition of the steadfast,
+    who do not return [to revolve in the cycle of Birth and
+    Death]."--Rennyō of the Shin sect, 1473.
+
+    "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
+    the Word was God."--John.
+
+    "The Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness,
+    neither shadow of turning."--James.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE
+
+The Western Paradise.
+
+
+We cannot take space to show how, or how much, or whether at all,
+Buddhism was affected by Christianity, though it probably was. Suffice
+it to say that the Jō-dō Shu, or Sect of the Pure Land, was the
+first of the many denominations in Buddhism which definitely and clearly
+set forth that especial peculiarity of Northern Buddhism, the Western
+Paradise. The school of thought which issued in Jō-dō Shu was
+founded by the Hindoo, Memio. In A.D. 252 an Indian scholar, learned in
+the Tripitaka, came to China, and translated one of the great sutras,
+called Amitayus. This sutra gives a history of Tathagata Amitabha,[1]
+from the first spiritual impulses which led him to the attainment of
+Buddha-hood in remote Kalpas down to the present time, when he dwells in
+the Western World, called the Happy, where he receives all living beings
+from every direction, helping them to turn away from confusion and to
+become enlightened.[2] The apocalyptic twentieth chapter of the Hokké
+Kiō is a glorification of the transcendent power of the Tathagatas,
+expressed in flamboyant oriental rhetoric.
+
+We have before called attention to the fact that, with the
+multiplication of sutras or the Sacred Canon and the vast increase of
+the apparatus of Buddhism as well as of the hardships of brain and body
+to be undergone in order to be a Buddhist, it was absolutely necessary
+that some labor-saving system should be devised by which the burden
+could be borne. Now, as a matter of fact, all sects claim to found their
+doctrine on Buddha or his work. According to the teaching of certain
+sects, the means of salvation are to be found in the study of the whole
+canon, and in the practice of asceticism and meditation. On the
+contrary, the new lights of Buddhism who came as missionaries into
+China, protested against this expenditure of so much mental and physical
+energy. One of the first Chinese propagators of the Jō-dō doctrine
+declared that it was impossible, owing to the decay of religion in his
+own age, for anyone to be saved in this way by his own efforts. Hence,
+instead of the noble eight-fold path of primitive Buddhism, or of the
+complicated system of the later Buddhistic Phariseeism of India, he
+substituted for the difficult road to Nirvana, a simple faith in the
+all-saving power of Amida. In one of the sutras it is taught, that if a
+man keeps in his memory the name of Amida one day, or seven days, the
+Buddha together with Buddhas elect, will meet him at the moment of his
+death, in order to let him be born in the Pure Land, and that this
+matter has been equally approved by all other Buddhas of ten different
+directions.
+
+One of the sutras, translated in China during the fifth century,
+contains the teaching of Buddha, which he delivered to the wife of the
+King of Magudha, who on account of the wickedness of her son was feeling
+weary of this world. He showed her how she might be born into the Pure
+Land. Three paths of good actions were pointed out. Toward the end of
+the particular sutra which he advised her to read and recite, Buddha
+says: "Let not one's voice cease, but ten times complete the thought,
+and repeat the formula, of the adoration of Amida." "This practice,"
+adds the Japanese exegete and historian, "is the most excellent of all."
+
+How well this latter teaching is practised may be demonstrated when one
+goes into a Buddhist temple of the Jō-dō sect in Japan, and hears
+the constant refrain,--murmured by the score or more of listeners to the
+sermon, or swelling like the roar of the ocean's waves, on festival
+days, when thousands sit on the mats beneath the fretted roof to enjoy
+the exposition of doctrine--"Namu Amida Butsu"--"Glory to the Eternal
+Buddha!"[3]
+
+The apostolical succession or transmission through the patriarchs and
+apostles of India and China, is well known and clearly stated, withal
+duly accredited and embellished with signs and wonders, in the
+historical literature of the Jō-dō sect. In Buddhism, as in
+Christianity, the questions relating to True Churchism, High Churchism,
+the succession of the apostles, teachers and rulers, and the validity of
+this or that method of ordination, form a large part of the literature
+of controversy. Nevertheless, as in the case of many a Christian sect
+which calls itself the only true church, the date of the organization of
+Jō-dō was centuries later than that of the Founder and apostles of
+the original faith. Five hundred years after Zen-dō (A.D. 600-650),
+the great propagator of the Jō-dō philosophy, Hō-nen, the
+founder of the Jō-dō sect, was born; and this phase of organized
+Buddhism, like that of Shin Shu and Nichirer Shu, may be classed under
+the head of Eastern or Japanese Buddhism.
+
+When only nine years of age, the boy afterward called Hō-nen, was
+converted by his father's dying words. He went to school in his native
+province, but his priest-teacher foreseeing his greatness, sent him to
+the monastery of Hiyéizan, near Kiōto. The boy's letter of
+introduction contained only these words: "I send you an image of the
+Bodhisattva, (Mon-ju) Manjusri." The boy shaved his head and received
+the precepts of the Ten-dai sect, but in his eighteenth year, waiving
+the prospect of obtaining the headship of the great denomination, he
+built a hut in the Black Ravine and there five times read through the
+five thousand volumes[4] of the Tripitaka. He did this for the purpose
+of finding out, for the ordinary and ignorant people of the present day,
+how to escape from misery. He studied Zen-dō's commentary, and
+repeated his examination eight times. At last, he noticed a passage in
+it beginning with the words, "Chiefly remember or repeat the name of
+Amida with a whole and undivided heart." Then he at once understood the
+thought of Zen-dō, who taught in his work that whoever at any time
+practises to remember Buddha, or calls his name even but once, will gain
+the right effect of going to be born in the Pure Land after death. This
+Japanese student then abandoned all sorts of practices which he had
+hitherto followed for years, and began to repeat the name of Amida
+Buddha sixty thousand times a day. This event occurred in A.D. 1175.
+
+
+Hō-nen, Founder of the Pure Land Sect.
+
+
+This path-finder to the Pure Land, who developed a special doctrine of
+salvation, is best known by his posthumous title of Hō-nen. During
+his lifetime he was very famous and became the spiritual preceptor of
+three Mikados. After his death his biography was compiled in forty-eight
+volumes by imperial order, and later, three other emperors copied or
+republished it. In the history of Japan this sect has been one of the
+most influential, especially with the imperial and shōgunal families.
+In Kiōto the magnificent temples and monasteries of Chiōn-in, and
+in Tōkiō Zō-jō-ji, are the chief seats of the two principal
+divisions of this sect. The gorgeous mausoleums,--well known to every
+foreign tourist,--at Shiba and Uyéno in Tōkiō, and the clustered
+and matchless splendors of Nikkō, belong to this sect, which has been
+under the patronage of the illustrious line of the Tokugawa,[5] while
+its temples and shrines are numbered by many thousands.
+
+The doctrine of the Jō-dō, or the Pure Land Sect, is easily
+discerned. One of Buddha's disciples said, that in the teachings of the
+Master there are two divisions or vehicles. In the Maha-yana also there
+are two gates; the Holy path, and the Pure Land. The Smaller Vehicle is
+the doctrine by which the immediate disciples of Buddha and those for
+five hundred years succeeding, practised the various virtues and
+discipline. The gateway of the Maha-yana is also the doctrine, by which
+in addition to the trainings mentioned, there are also understood the
+three virtues of spiritual body, wisdom and deliverance. The man who is
+able successfully to complete this course of discipline and practice is
+no ordinary person, but is supposed to possess merit produced from good
+actions performed in a former state of existence. The doctrine by which
+man may do so, is called the gate of the Holy Path.
+
+During the fifteen hundred years after Buddha there were from time to
+time, such personages in the world, who attained the end of the Holy
+Path; but in these latter days people are more insincere, covetous and
+contentious, and the discipline is too hard for degenerate times and
+men. The three trainings already spoken of are the correct causes of
+deliverance; but if people think them as useless as last year's almanac,
+when can they complete their deliverance? Hō-nen, deeply meditating
+on this, shut up the gate of the Holy Path and opened that of the Pure
+Land; for in the former the effective deliverance is expected in this
+world by the three trainings of morality, thought and learning, but in
+the latter the great fruit of going to be born in the Pure Land after
+death, is expected through the sole practice of repeating Buddha's name.
+
+Moreover, it is not easy to accomplish the cause and effect of the Holy
+Path, but both those of the doctrine of the Pure Land are very easy to
+be completed. The difference is like that between travelling by land and
+travelling by water.[6] The doctrines preached by the Buddha are
+eighty-four thousand in number; that is to say, he taught one kind of
+people one system, that of the Holy Path, and another kind that of the
+Pure Land. The Pure Land doctrine of Hō-nen was derived from the
+sutra preached by the great teacher Shaka.
+
+This simple doctrine of "land travel to Paradise" was one which the
+people of Japan could easily understand, and it became amazingly
+popular. Salvation along this route is a case of being "carried to the
+skies on flowery beds of ease, while others sought to win the prize and
+sailed through bloody seas."
+
+Largely through the influence of Jō-dō Shu and of those sects most
+closely allied to it, the technical terms, peculiar phraseology and
+vocabulary of Buddhism became part of the daily speech of the Japanese.
+When one studies their language he finds that it is a complicated
+organism, including within itself several distinct systems. Just as the
+human body harmonizes within itself such vastly differing organized
+functions as the osseous, digestive, respiratory, etc., so, embedded in
+what is called the Japanese language, there are, also, a Chinese
+vocabulary, a polite vernacular, one system of expression for superiors,
+another for inferiors, etc. Last of all, there is, besides a peculiar
+system of pronunciation taught by the priests, a Buddhist language,
+which suggests a firmament of starry and a prairie of flowery metaphors,
+with intermediate deeps of space full of figurative expressions.
+
+In our own mother tongue we have something similar. The dialect of
+Canaan, the importations of Judaism, the irruptions of Hebraic idioms,
+phrases and names into Puritanism, and the ejaculations of the
+camp-meeting, which vein and color our English speech, may give some
+idea of the variegated strains which make up the Japanese language.
+Further, the peculiar nomenclature of the Fifth Monarchy men, is fully
+paralleled in the personal names of priests and even of laymen in Japan.
+
+
+Characteristics of the Jō-dō Sect.
+
+
+Hō-nen teaches that the solution of abstract questions and doctrinal
+controversies is not needed as means of grace to promote the work of
+salvation. Whether the priests and their followers were learned and
+devout, or the contrary, mattered little as regards the final result, as
+all that is necessary is the continual repetition of the prayer to
+Amida.
+
+It may be added that his followers practise the master's precepts with
+emphasis. Their incessant pounding upon wooden fish-drums and
+bladder-shaped bells during their public exercises, is as noisy as a
+frontier camp-meeting. The rosary is a notable feature in the private
+devotions of the Buddhists, but the Jō-dō sect makes especial use
+of the double rosary, which was invented with the idea of being
+manipulated by the left hand only; this gave freedom to the right hand,
+"facilitating a happy combination of spiritual and secular duty." At
+funerals of believers a particular ceremony was exclusively practised by
+this sect, at which the friends of the deceased sat in a circle facing
+the priest, making as many repetitions as possible.[7]
+
+In Mohammedan countries, blind men, who cannot look down into the
+surrounding gardens or house tops at the pretty women in or on them, but
+who have clear and penetrating voices, are often chosen us muezzins to
+utter the call to prayer from the minarets. On much the same principle,
+in Old Japan, Jō-dō priests, blind to metaphysics, but handsome,
+elegantly dressed and with fine delivery, went about the streets singing
+and intoning prayers, rich presents being made to them, especially by
+the ladies. The Jō-dō people cultivate art and aesthetic
+ornamentation to a notable degree. They also understand the art of
+fictitious and sensational miracle-mongering. It is said that Zen-dō,
+the famous Chinese founder of this Chinese sect, when writing his
+commentary, prayed for a wonderful exhibition of supernatural power.
+Thereupon, a being arrayed as a priest of dignified presence gave him
+instruction on the division of the text in his first volume. Hence
+Zen-dō treats his own work as if it were the work of Buddha, and says
+that no one is allowed either to add or to take away even a word or
+sentence of the book.
+
+The Pure Land is the western world where Amida lives. It is perfectly
+pure and free from faults. Those who wish to go thither will certainly
+be re-born there, but otherwise they will not. This world, on the
+contrary, is the effect of the action of all beings, so that even those
+who do not wish to be born here are nevertheless obliged to come. This
+world is called the Path of Pain, because it is full of all sorts of
+pains, such as birth, old age, disease, death, etc. This is therefore a
+world not to be attached to, but to be estranged and separated from. One
+who is disgusted with this world, and who is filled with desire for that
+world, will after death be born there. Not to doubt about these words of
+Buddha, even in the slightest degree, is called deep faith; but if one
+entertains the least doubts he will not be born there. Hence the saying:
+"In the great sea of the law of Buddha, faith is the only means to
+enter."
+
+
+Salvation Through the Merits of Another.
+
+
+In this absolute trust in the all-saving power of Amida as compared with
+the ways promulgated before, we see the emergence of the Buddhist
+doctrine of justification by faith, the simplification of theology, and
+a revolt against Buddhist scholasticism. The Japanese technical term,
+"_tariki_," or relying upon the strength of another, renouncing all idea
+of _ji-riki_ or self-power,[8] is the substance of the Jō-dō
+doctrine; but the expanded term _ta-riki chin no ji-riki_, or
+"self-effort depending on another," while expressing the whole dogma, is
+rather scornfully applied to the Jō-dōists by the men of the Shin
+sect. The invocation of Amida is a meritorious act of the believer, much
+repetition being the substance of this combination of personal and
+vicarious work.
+
+Hō-nen, after making his discovery, believing it possible for all
+mankind eventually to attain to perfect Buddhaship, left, as we have
+seen, the Ten-dai sect, which represented particularism and laid
+emphasis on the idea of the elect. Hō-nen taught Buddhist
+universalism. Belief and repetition of prayer secure birth into the Pure
+Land after the death of the body, and then the soul moves onward toward
+the perfection of Buddha-hood.
+
+The Japanese were delighted to have among them a genius who could thus
+Japanize Buddhism, and Jō-dō doctrine went forth conquering and to
+conquer. From the twelfth century, the tendency of Japanese Buddhism is
+in the direction of universalism and democracy. In later developments of
+Jō-dō, the pantheistic tendencies are emphasized and the
+syncretistic powers are enlarged. While mysticism is a striking feature
+of the sect and the attainment of truth is by the grace of Amida, yet
+the native Kami of Japan are logically accepted as avatars of Buddha.
+History had little or no rights in the case; philosophy was dictator,
+and that philosophy was Hō-nen's. Those later Chinese deities made by
+personifying attributes or abstract ideas, which sprang up after the
+introduction of Buddhism into China, are also welcomed into the temples
+of this sect. That the common people really believe that they themselves
+may attain Buddha-hood at death, and enter the Pure Land, is shown in
+the fact that their ordinary expression for the dead saint is Hotoké--a
+general term for all the gods that were once human. Some popular
+proverbs indicate this in a form that easily lends itself to irreverence
+and merriment.
+
+The whole tendency of Japanese Buddhism and its full momentum were now
+toward the development of doctrine even to startling proportions.
+Instead of the ancient path of asceticism and virtue with agnosticism
+and atheism, we see the means of salvation put now, and perhaps too
+easily, within the control of all. The pathway to Paradise was made not
+only exceedingly plain, but also extremely easy, perhaps even
+ridiculously so; while the door was open for an outburst of new and
+local doctrines unknown to India, or even to China. The rampant vigor
+with which Japanese Buddhism began to absorb everything in heaven, earth
+and sea, which it could make a worshipable object or cause to stand as a
+Kami or deity to the mind, will be seen as we proceed. The native
+proverb, instead of being an irreverent joke, stands for an actual
+truth--"Even a sardine's head may become an object of worship."
+
+
+"Reformed" Buddhism.
+
+
+We now look at what foreigners call "Reformed" Buddhism, which some even
+imagine has been borrowed from Protestant Christianity--notwithstanding
+that it is centuries older than the Reformation in Europe.
+
+The Shin Shu or True Sect, though really founded on the Jō-dō
+doctrines, is separate from the sect of the Pure Land. Yet, besides
+being called the Shin Shu, it is also spoken of as the Jō-dō Shin
+Shu or the True Sect of the Pure Land. It is the extreme form of the
+Protestantism of Buddhism. It lays emphasis on the idea of salvation
+wholly through the merits of another, but it also paints in richer tints
+the sensuous delights of the Western Paradise. As the term Pure Land is
+antithetical to that of the Holy Path, so the word Shin, or True,
+expresses the contrary of what are termed the "temporary expedients."
+
+While some say that we should practise good works, bring our stock of
+merits to maturity, and be born in the Pure Land, others say that we
+need only repeat the name of Amida in order to be born in the Pure Land,
+by the merit produced from such repetition. These doctrines concerning
+repetitions, however, are all considered but "temporary expedients." So
+also is the rigid classification, so prominent in "the old sects," of
+all beings or pupils into three grades. As in Islam or Calvinism, all
+believers stand on a level. To Shin-ran the Radical, the practices even
+of Jō-dō seemed complicated and difficult, and all that appeared
+necessary to him was faith in the desire of Amida to bless and save. To
+Shinran,[9] faith was the sole saving act.
+
+To rely upon the power of the Original Prayer of Amitabha Buddha with
+the whole heart and give up all idea of _ji-riki_ or self-power, is
+called the truth. This truth is the doctrine of this sect of Shin.[10]
+In a word, not synergism, not faith _and_ works, but faith only is the
+teaching of Shin Shu.
+
+Shinran, the founder of this sect in Japan, was born A.D. 1173 and died
+in the year 1262. He was very naturally one who had been first educated
+in the Jō-dō sect, then the ruling one at the imperial court in
+Kiōto. Shall we call him a Japanese Luther, because of his insistence
+on salvation by faith only? He is popularly believed to have been
+descended from one of the Shintō gods, being on his father's side the
+twenty-first in the line of generation. On his mother's side he was of
+the lineage of the Minamoto or Genji, a clan sprung from Mikados and
+famous during centuries for its victorious warriors. Hō-nen was his
+teacher, and like his teacher, Shinran studied at the great monastery
+near Kiōto, learning first the doctrine of the Tendai, and then, at
+the age of twenty-nine, receiving from Hō-nen the tenets of the
+Jō-dō sect. Shortly after, at thirty years of age, he began to
+promulgate his doctrines. Then he took a step as new to Buddhism, as was
+Luther's union with Katharine von Bora, to the ecclesiasticism of his
+time. He married a lady of the imperial court, named Tamayori, who was
+the daughter of the Kuambaku or premier.
+
+Shinran thus taught by example, if not formally and by written precept,
+that marriage was honorable, and that celibacy was an invention of the
+priests not warranted by primitive Buddhism. Penance, fasting,
+prescribed diet, pilgrimages, isolation from society whether as hermits
+or in the cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by
+this sect. Monasteries imposing life-vows are unknown within its pale.
+Family life takes the place of monkish seclusion. Devout prayer, purity,
+earnestness of life and trust in Buddha himself as the only worker of
+perfect righteousness, are insisted upon. Morality is taught to be more
+important than orthodoxy.
+
+In practice, the Shin sect even more than the Jō-dō, teaches that
+it is faith in Buddha, which accomplishes the salvation of the believer.
+Instead of waiting for death in order to come under the protection of
+Amida, the faithful soul is at once received into the care of the
+Boundlessly Compassionate. In a word, the Shin sect believes in
+instantaneous conversion and sanctification. Between the Roman and the
+Reformed soteriology of Christendom, was Melancthonism or the
+coōperate union of the divine and the human will. So, the old
+Buddhism prior to Shinran taught a phase of synergism, or the union of
+faith and works. Shinran, in his "Reformed" Buddhism, taught the
+simplicity of faith.
+
+So also _in_ regard to the sacred writings, Shinran opposed the San-ron
+school and the three-grade idea. The scriptures of other sects are in
+Sanskrit and Chinese, which only the learned are able to read. The
+special writings of Shinran are in the vernacular. Three of the sutras,
+also, have been translated into Japanese and expressed in the kana
+script. Singleness of purpose characterised this sect, which was often
+called Monto, or followers of the gate, in reference to its unity of
+organization, and the opening of the way to all by Shinran and the
+doctrine taught by him. Yet, lest the gate might seem too broad, the
+Shin teachers insist that morality is as important as faith, and indeed
+the proof of it. The high priests of Shin Shu have ever held a high
+position and wielded vast influence in the religious development of the
+people. While the temples of other sects are built in sequestered places
+among the hills, those of Shin Shu are erected in the heart of cities,
+on the main streets, and at the centres of population,--the priests
+using every means within their power to induce the people to come to
+them. The altars are on an imposing scale of magnificence and gorgeous
+detail. No Roman Catholic church or cathedral can outshine the splendor
+of these temples, in which the way to the Western Paradise is made so
+clear and plain. Another name for the sect is Ikko.
+
+After the death of Shinran, his youngest daughter and one of his
+grandsons erected a monastery near his tomb in the eastern suburbs of
+Kiōto, to which the Mikado gave the title of Hon-guanji, or Monastery
+of the Original Vow. This was in allusion to the vow made by Amida, that
+he would not accept Buddhaship except under the condition that salvation
+be made attainable for all who should sincerely desire to be born into
+his kingdom, and signify their desire by invoking his name ten
+times.[11] It is upon the passage in the sutra where this vow is
+recorded, that the doctrine of the sect is based. Its central idea is
+that man is to be saved by faith in the mercy of the boundlessly
+compassionate Amida, and not by works or vain repetitions. Within our
+own time, on November 28, 1876, the present reigning Mikado bestowed
+upon Shinran the posthumous title Ken-shin Dai-shi, or Great Teacher of
+the Revelation of Truth.
+
+
+The Protestants of Japanese Buddhism.
+
+
+This is the sect which, being called "Reformed" Buddhism[12] and
+resembling Protestantism in so many points, both large and minute,
+foreigners think has been borrowed or imitated from European
+Protestantism.[13] As matter of fact, the foundation principles of
+Shin-Shu are at least six hundred years old. They are perfectly clear in
+the writings of the founder,[14] as well as in those of his successor
+Renniō,[15] who wrote the Ofumi or sacred writings, now daily read by
+the disciples of this denomination. With the characteristic object of
+reaching the masses, they are written, as we have shown, not in the
+mixed Chinese and Japanese characters, but in the common script, or
+kana, which all the people of both sexes can read. Within the last two
+decades the Shin educators have been the first to organize their schools
+of learning on the models of those in Christendom, so that their young
+men might be trained to resist Shintō or Christianity, or to measure
+the truth in either. Their new temples also show European influence in
+architecture and furniture. Liberty of thought and action, and
+incoercible desire to be free from governmental, traditional,
+ultra-ecclesiastical, or Shintō influence--in a word, protestantism
+in its pure sense, is characteristic of the great sect founded by
+Shinran.
+
+Indeed the Shin sect, which sprang out of the Jō-dō, maintains
+that it alone professes the true teaching of Hō-nen, and that the
+Jō-dō sect has wandered from the original doctrines of its
+founder. Whereas the Jō-dō or Pure Land sect believes that Amida
+will come to meet the soul of the believer on its separation from the
+body, in order to conduct it to Paradise, the Shin or True Sect of the
+Pure Land believes in immediate salvation and sanctification. It
+preaches that as soon as a man believes in Amida he is taken by him
+under him merciful protection. Some might denominate these people the
+Methodists of Buddhism.
+
+One good point in their Protestantism is their teaching that morality is
+of equal importance with faith. To them Buddha-hood means the perfection
+and unlimitedness of wisdom and compassion. "Therefore," writes one,
+"knowing the inability of our own power we should believe simply in the
+vicarious Power of the Original Prayer. If we do so, we are in
+correspondence with the wisdom of the Buddha and share his great
+compassion, just as the water of rivers becomes salt as soon as it
+enters the sea. For this reason this is called the faith in the Other
+Power."
+
+To their everlasting honor, also, the Shin believers have probably led
+all other Japanese Buddhists in caring for the Eta, even as they
+probably excel in preaching the true spiritual democracy of all
+believers, yes, even of women.[16] "According to the earlier and general
+view of Buddhism, women are condemned, in virtue of the pollution of
+their nature, to look forward to rebirth in other forms. By no
+possibility can they, in their existence as women, reach the higher
+grades of holiness which lead to Nirvana. According to the Shin Shu
+system, on the other hand, a believing woman may hope to attain the goal
+of the Buddhist at the close of her present life."[17] This doctrine
+seems to be founded on that passage in the eleventh chapter of the
+Saddharma Pundarika, in which the daughter of Sāgara, the
+Nāga-king, loses her sex as female and reappears as a Bodhisattva of
+male sex.[18]
+
+The Shin sect is the largest in Japan, having more than twice as many
+temples as any four of the great sects, and five thousand more than the
+So-dō or sub-sect of Jō-dō, which is the next largest; or, over
+nineteen thousand in all. It is also supposed to be one of the richest
+and most powerful of all the Japanese sects. In reality, however, it
+possesses no fixed property, and is dependent entirely upon the
+voluntary contributions of its adherents. To-day, it is probably the
+most active of them all in education, learning and missionary operations
+in Yezo, China and Korea.
+
+Interesting as is the development of the Jō-dō and Shin sects,
+which became popular largely through their promulgation of dogmas
+founded on the Western Paradise, we must not forget that both of them
+preached a new Buddha--not the real figure in history, but an unhistoric
+and unreal phantom, the creation and dream of the speculator and
+visionary. Amida, the personification of boundless light, is one of the
+luxuriant growths of a sickly scholasticism--a hollow abstraction
+without life or reality. Amidaism is utterly repudiated by many Japanese
+Buddhists, who give no place to his idol on their altars, and reject
+utterly the teaching as to Paradise and salvation through the merits of
+another.
+
+Yet these two special developments by natives, though embodying
+tendencies of the Japanese mind, did not reach the limit to which
+Northern Buddhism was to go in those almost incredible lengths, which
+prompted Professor Whitney[19] to call it "the high-faluting school,"
+and which we have seen in our own time under the cultivation of western
+admirers.
+
+
+The Nichiren Sect.
+
+
+The Japanese mind runs to pantheism as naturally as an unpruned
+grape-vine runs to fibre and leaves.
+
+When Nichiren, the ultra-patriotic and ultra-democratic bonze, saw the
+light in A.D. 1222, he was destined to bring religion not only down to
+man, but even down to the beasts and to the mud. He founded the
+Saddharma-Pundarika sect, now called Nichiren Shu.
+
+Born at Kominato, near the mouth of Yedo Bay, he became a neophite in
+the Shin-gon sect at the age of twelve, and was admitted into the
+priesthood when but fifteen years old. Then he adopted his name, which
+means Sun-lotus, because, according to a typical dream very common in
+Korea and Japan, his mother thought that she had conceived by the sun
+entering her body. Through a miracle, he acquired a thorough knowledge
+of the whole Buddhist canon, in the course of which he met with words,
+which he converted into that formula which is constantly in the mouth of
+the members of the Nichiren sect, Namu-myō-ho-ren-gé-kyō--"O, the
+Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law."[20] His history, full of
+amazing activity and of romantic adventure, is surrounded by a perfect
+sunrise splendor, or, shall we say, sunset gorgeousness, of mythology
+and fable. The scenes of his life are mostly laid in the region of the
+modern Tōkiō, and to the cultivated traveller, its story lends
+fascinating charms to the landscape in the region of Yedo Bay. Nichiren
+was a fiery patriot, and ultra-democratic in his sympathies. He was a
+radical believer in "Japan for the Japanese." He was an ecclesiastical
+_Soshi_. He felt that the developments of Buddhism already made, were
+not sufficiently comprehensive, or fully suited to the common people.
+So, in A.D. 1282, he founded a new sect which gradually included within
+its pantheon all possible Buddhas, and canonized pretty nearly all the
+saints, righteous men and favorite heroes known to Dai Nippon. Nichiren
+first made Japan the centre of the universe, and then brought religion
+down to the lowest. He considered that the period in which he lived was
+the latter day of the law, and that all creatures ought to share in the
+merit of Buddha-hood. Only the original Buddha is the real moon in the
+sky, but all Buddhas of the subordinate states are like the images of
+the moon, reflected upon the waters. All these different Buddhas, be
+they gods or men, beasts, birds or snakes, are to be honored. Indeed,
+they are both honored and worshipped in the Nichiren pantheon. Besides
+the historic Buddha, this sect, which is the most idolatrous of all,
+admits as objects of its reverence such personages as Nichiren, the
+founder; Kato Kiyomasa, the general who led the army of invasion in
+Korea and was the persecutor of the Christians; and Shichimen--a word
+which means seven points of the compass or seven faces. This Shichimen
+is the being that appeared to Nichiren as a beautiful woman, but
+disappeared from his sight in the form of a snake, twenty feet long,
+covered with golden scales and armed with iron teeth. It is now deified
+under the name meaning the Great God of the Seven Faces, and is
+identified with the Hindoo deity Siva.
+
+Another idol usually seen in the Nichiren temples is Mioken. Under this
+name the pole star is worshipped, usually in the form of a Buddha with a
+wheel of a Buddha elect. Standing on a tortoise, with a sword in his
+right hand, and with the left hand half open--a gesture which symbolizes
+the male and female principles in the physical world, and the
+intelligence and the law in the spiritual world--Mioken is a striking
+figure. Indeed, the list of glorified animals reminds us somewhat of the
+ancient beast-worship of Egypt. In the Nichiren hierology, it is as
+though the symbolical figures in the Book of Revelation had been deified
+and worshipped. It is evident that all the creatures in that Buddhist
+chamber of imagery, the Hokké Kiō, that could possibly be made into
+gods have received apotheosis. The very book itself is also worshipped,
+for the Nichirenites are extreme believers in verbal inspiration, and
+pay divine honors to each jot and tittle of the sutra, which to them is
+a god. They adore also the triad of the three precious ones, the Buddha,
+the Rule or Discipline, and the Organization; or, Being, Law, and
+Church. The hideous idol, Fudo, "Eleven-faced," "Horse-headed,"
+"Thousand-handed," or girt in a robe of fiery flame, is believed by
+Buddhists to represent Avalokitesvara; but, in recent times he has been
+recognized, detected and recaptured by the Shintōists as Kotohira.
+The goddess Kishi, and that miscellaneous assortment or group known as
+the Seven Patrons of Happiness, which form a sort of encyclopaedia or
+museum of curiosities derived from the cults of India, China and Japan,
+are also components of the amazing menagerie and pantheon of this sect,
+in which scholasticism run mad, and emotional kindness to animals become
+maudlin, join hands.
+
+
+The Ultra-realism of Northern Buddhism.
+
+
+Like most of the other Japanese sects, the Nichirenites claim that their
+principles are contained in the Hok-ké-kiō, which is considered the
+consummate white flower of Buddhist doctrine and literature. This is the
+Japanese name for that famous sutra, the Saddharma Pundarika, so often
+mentioned in these chapters but a thousand-fold more so in Japanese
+literature. The Ten-dai and the Nichiren sects are allied, in that both
+lay supreme emphasis upon this sutra; but the former interprets it with
+an intellectual, and the latter with an emotional emphasis.
+Philosophically, the two bodies have much in common. Outwardly they are
+very far apart. One has but to read their favorite scripture, to see the
+norm upon which the gorgeous art of Japan has been developed. Probably
+no single book in the voluminous canon of the Greater Vehicle gives one
+so masterful a key to Japanese Buddhism. Its pages are crowded with
+sensuous descriptions of all that is attractive to both the reason and
+the understanding. Its descriptions of Paradise are those which would
+suit also the realistic Mussulman. Its rhetoric and visions seem to be
+those of some oriental De Quincey, who, out of the dreams of an
+opium-eater, has made the law-book of a religion. Translated into
+matter-of-fact Chinese, none better than Nichiren knew how to present
+its realism to his people.
+
+In its ethical standards, which are two, this sect, like most others,
+prescribes one course of life for the monk, which is difficult, and
+another for the laity, which is easy. The central dogma is that every
+part of the universe, including not only gods and men, but animals,
+plants and the very mud itself, is capable, by successive
+transmigrations, of attaining to Buddhaship. In one sense, Nichirenism
+is the transfiguration of atheistic evolution. In its teachings there
+are also two forms: the one, largely in symbol, is intended to attract
+followers; the other, the pure truth, is employed to convert the
+obstinately ignorant, against their wills. As in the history of the
+papal organization in Europe, a materialistic interpretation has been
+given to the canons of dogma and discipline.
+
+Contrary to the doctrine of those sects which teach the attainment of
+salvation solely through the aid of Amida, or Another, the Nichirenites
+insist that it is necessary for man to work out his own salvation, by
+observing the law, by self-examination, by reflecting on the blessings
+vouchsafed to the members of this elect and orthodox sect and by
+constant prayer. They consider themselves as in the only true church,
+and their succession to the priesthood, the only valid one. The strict
+Nichiren churchmen will not have the Shintō gods in their household
+shrines, nor will they intermarry among the sects. The Nichirenites are
+also very fond of controversy, and their language in speaking of other
+creeds and sects is not that characteristic of the gentle Buddha. The
+people of this sect are much given to the belief in demoniacal
+possession, and a considerable part of the duty and revenue-yielding
+business of the Nichiren priests consists in exorcising the foxes,
+badgers and other demons, which have possessed subjects who are
+generally women at certain stages of illness or convalescence. The
+phenomena and pathology of these disorders seem to be allied to those of
+hysteria and hypnotism.
+
+This popular sect also makes greatest use of charms, spells and amulets,
+lays great store on pilgrimages, and is very fond of noise-making
+instruments whether prayer-books or the wooden bells or drums which are
+prominent features in their temples and revival meetings. In one sense
+it is the Salvation Army of Buddhism, being especially powerful in what
+strikes the eye and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the
+Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and
+reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are
+familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects.
+Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even
+against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian
+sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the
+lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for
+the priests of all other sects." When the Parliament of Religions was
+called in Chicago, the successors of Nichiren, with their characteristic
+high-church modesty, promptly sent letters to America, warning the world
+against all other Japanese Buddhists, and denouncing especially those
+coming to speak in the Parliament, as misrepresenting the true doctrines
+of Buddha.
+
+
+Doctrinal Culmination.
+
+
+When the work of Nichiren had been completed, and his realistic
+pantheism had been able to include within its great receiver and
+processes of Buddha-making, everything from gods to mud, the circle of
+doctrine was complete. Kōbō's leaven had now every possible lump
+in which to do its work. All grades of men in Japan, from the most
+devout and intellectual to the most ranting and fanatical, could choose
+their sect. Yet it may be that Buddhism in Nichiren's day was in danger
+of stagnation and formalism, and needed the revival which this fiery
+bonze gave it; for, undoubtedly, along with zeal even to bigotry, came
+fresh life and power to the religion. This invigoration was followed by
+the mighty missionary labors of the last half of the thirteenth century,
+which carried Buddhism out to the northern frontier and into Yezo.
+Although, from time to time minor sects were formed either limiting or
+developing further the principles of the larger parent sects, and
+although, even as late as the seventeenth century, a new subsect, the
+Oba-ku of Zen Shu, was imported from China, yet no further doctrinal
+developments of importance took place; not even in presence of or after
+sixteenth century Christianity and seventeenth century Confucianism.
+
+The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries form the golden age of Japanese
+Buddhism.
+
+In the sixteenth century, the feudal system had split into fragments and
+the normal state of the country was that of civil war. Sect was arrayed
+against sect, and the Shin bonzes, especially, formed a great military
+body in fortified monasteries.
+
+In the first half of the sixteenth century, came the tremendous
+onslaught of Portuguese Christianity. Then followed the militarism and
+bloody persecutions of Nobunaga.
+
+In clashing with the new Confucianism of the seventeenth century,
+Buddhism utterly weakened as an intellectual power. Though through the
+favor of the Yodo shōguns it recovered lands and wealth, girded
+itself anew as the spy, persecutor and professed extirpator of
+Christianity, and maintained its popularity with the common people, it
+was, during the eighteenth century, among the educated Japanese, as good
+as dead. Modern Confucianism and the revival of Chinese learning,
+resulted in eighteenth century scepticism and in nineteenth century
+agnosticism.
+
+
+The New Buddhism.
+
+
+In our day and time, Japanese Buddhism, in the presence of aggressive
+Christianity, is out of harmony with the times, and the needs of
+forty-one millions of awakened and inquiring people; and there are deep
+searchings of heart. Politically disestablished and its landed
+possessions sequestrated by the government, it has had, since 1868, a
+history, first of depression and then of temporary revival. Now, amid
+much mechanical and external activity, the employment of the press, the
+organization of charity, of summer schools of "theology," and of young
+men's and other associations copied from the Christians, it is
+endeavoring to keep New Japan within its pale and to dictate the future.
+It seeks to utilize the old bottles for the new vintage.
+
+There is, however, a movement discernible which may be called the New
+Buddhism, and has not only new wine but new wineskins. It is democratic,
+optimistic, empirical or practical; it welcomes women and children; it
+is hospitable to science and every form of truth. It is catholic in
+spirit and has little if any of the venom of the old Buddhist
+controvertists. It is represented by earnest writers who look to natural
+and spiritual means, rather than to external and mechanical methods. As
+a whole, we may say that Japanese Buddhism is still strong to-day in its
+grip upon the people. Though unquestionably moribund, its death will be
+delayed. Despite its apparent interest in, and harmony with,
+contemporaneous statements of science, it does not hold the men of
+thought, or those who long for the spiritual purification and moral
+elevation of Japan.
+
+Are the Japanese eager for reform? Do they possess that quality of
+emotion in which a tormenting sense of sin, and a burning desire for
+self-surrender to holiness, are ever manifest?
+
+Frankly and modestly, we give our opinion. We think not. The average
+Japanese man has not come to that self-consciousness, that searching of
+heart, that self-seeing of sin in the light of a Holy God's countenance
+which the gospel compels. Yet this is exactly what the Japanese need.
+Only Christ's gospel can give it.
+
+The average man of culture in Dai Nippon has to-day no religion. He is
+waiting for one. What shall be the issue, in the contest between a faith
+that knows no personal God, no Creator, no atonement, no gospel of
+salvation from sin, and the gospel which bids man seek and know the
+great First Cause, as Father and Friend, and proclaims that this
+Infinite Friend seeks man to bless him, to bestow upon him pardon and
+holiness and to give him earthly happiness and endless life? Between one
+religion which teaches personality in God and in man, and another which
+offers only a quagmire of impersonality wherein a personal god and an
+individual soul exist only as the jack-lights of the marsh, mere
+phosphorescent gleams of decay, who can fail to choose? Of the two
+faiths, which shall be victor?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT
+
+
+    "The heart of my country, the power of my country, the Light of
+    my country, is Buddhism."--Yatsubuchi, of Japan.
+
+    "Buddhism was the teacher under whose instruction the Japanese
+    nation grew up."--Chamberlain.
+
+    "Buddhism was the civilizer. It came with the freshness of
+    religious zeal, and religious zeal was a novelty. It come as the
+    bearer of civilization and enlightenment."
+
+    "Buddhism has had a fair field in Japan, and its outcome has not
+    been elevating. Its influence has been aesthetic and not
+    ethical. It added culture and art to Japan, as it brought with
+    itself the civilization of continental Asia. It gave the arts,
+    and more, it added the artistic atmosphere.... Reality
+    disappears. 'This fleeting borrowed world' is all mysterious, a
+    dream; moonlight is in place of the clear hot sun.... It has so
+    fitted itself to its surroundings that it seems
+    indigenous."--George William Knox.
+
+    "The Japanese ... are indebted to Buddhism for their present
+    civilization and culture, their great susceptibility to the
+    beauties of nature, and the high perfection of several branches
+    of artistic industry."--Rein.
+
+    "We speak of _God_, and the Japanese mind is filled with idols.
+    We mention _sin_, and he thinks of eating flesh or the killing
+    of insects. The word _holiness_ reminds him of crowds of
+    pilgrims flocking to some famous shrine, or of some anchorite
+    sitting lost in religions abstraction till his legs rot off. He
+    has much error to unlearn before he can take in the
+    truth-"--R.E. McAlpine.
+
+    "There in a life of study, prayer, and thought,
+    Kenshin became a saintly priest--not wide
+    In intellect nor broad in sympathies,
+    For such things come not from the ascetic life;
+    But narrow, strong, and deep, and like the stream
+    That rushes fervid through the narrow path
+    Between the rooks at Nikkō--so he grasped,
+    Heart, soul, and strength, the holy Buddha's Law
+    With no room left for doubt, or sympathy
+    For other views."--Kenshin's Vision.
+
+    "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the
+    same, my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place
+    incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offering, for my
+    name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of
+    hosts."--Malachi.
+
+
+CHAPTER X - JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT
+
+Missionary Buddhism the Measure of Japan's Civilization.
+
+
+Broadly speaking, the history of Japanese Buddhism in its missionary
+development is the history of Japan. Before Buddhism came, Japan was
+pre-historic. We know the country and people through very scanty notices
+in the Chinese annals, by pale reflections cast by myths, legends and
+poems, and from the relics cast up by the spade and plough. Chinese
+civilization had filtered in, though how much or how little we cannot
+tell definitely; but since the coming of the Buddhist missionaries in
+the sixth century, the landscape and the drama of human life lie before
+us in clear detail. Speaking broadly again, it may be said that almost
+from the time of its arrival, Buddhism became on its active side the
+real religion of Japan--at least, if the word "religion" be used in a
+higher sense than that connoted by either Shintō or Confucianism.
+Though as a nation the Japanese of the Méiji era are grossly forgetful
+of this fact, yet, as Professor Chamberlain says,[1] "All education was
+for centuries in Buddhist hands. Buddhism introduced art; introduced
+medicine; created the folk-lore of the country; created its dramatic
+poetry; deeply influenced politics, and every sphere of social and
+intellectual activity; in a word, Buddhism was the teacher under whose
+instruction the Japanese nation grew up."
+
+For many centuries all Japanese, except here and there a stern
+Shintōist, or an exceptionally dogmatic Confucian, have acknowledged
+these patent facts, and from the emperor to the eta, glorified in them.
+It was not until modern Confucian philosophy entered the Mikado's empire
+in the seventeenth century, that hostile criticism and polemic tenets
+denounced Buddhism, and declared it only fit for savages. This bitter
+denunciation of Buddhism at the lips and hands of Japanese who had
+become Chinese in mind, was all the more inappropriate, because Buddhism
+had for over a thousand years acted as the real purveyor and disperser
+of the Confucian ethics and culture in Japan. Such denunciation came
+with no better grace from the Yedo Confucianists than from the Shintō
+revivalists, like Motoöri, who, while execrating everything Chinese,
+failed to remember or impress upon his countrymen the fact, that almost
+all which constituted Japanese civilization had been imported from the
+Middle Kingdom.
+
+Buddhism, in its purely doctrinal development, seems to be rather a
+system of metaphysics than a true religion, being a conglomeration, or
+rather perhaps an agglomeration, of all sorts of theories relating to
+the universe and its contents. Its doctrinal and metaphysical side,
+however, is to be carefully distinguished from its popular and external
+features, for in its missionary development Buddhism may be called a
+system of national improvement. The history of its propagation, in the
+land farthest east from its cradle, is not only the outline of the
+history of Japanese civilization, but is nearly the whole of it.
+
+
+Pre-Buddhistic Japan.
+
+
+It is not perhaps difficult to reconstruct in imagination the landscape
+of Japan in pre-Buddhistic days. Certainly we may, with some accuracy,
+draw a contrast between the appearance of the face of the earth then and
+now. Supposing that there were as many as a million or two of souls in
+the Japanese Archipelago of the sixth century--the same area which in
+the nineteenth century contains over forty-one millions--we can imagine
+only here and there patches of cultivated fields, or terraced gullies.
+There were no roads except paths or trails. The horse was probably yet a
+curiosity to the aborigines, though well known to the sons of the gods.
+Sheep and goats then, as now, were unknown. The cow and the ox were in
+the land, but not numerous.[2] In architecture there was probably little
+but the primeval hut. Tools were of the rudest description; yet it is
+evident that the primitive Japanese were able to work iron and apply it
+to many uses. There were other metals, though the tell-tale etymology of
+their names in Japanese metallurgy, as in so many other lines of
+industry and articles of daily use, points to a Chinese origin. It is
+the almost incredible fact that the Japanese man or woman wore on the
+person neither gold nor silver jewelry. In later times, decoration was
+added to the sword hilt and pins were thrust in the hair.
+
+Possibly a prejudice against metal touching the skin, such as exists in
+Korea, may account for this absence of jewelry, though silver was not
+discovered until A.D. 675, or gold until A.D. 749. The primitive
+Japanese, however, did wear ornaments of ground and polished stone, and
+these so numerously as to compel contrast with the severer tastes of
+later ages. Some of these magatama--curved jewels or perforated
+cylinders--were made of very hard stone which requires skill to drill,
+cut and polish. Among the substances used was jade, a mineral found only
+in Cathay.[3] Indeed, we cannot follow the lines of industry and
+manufactures, of personal adornment and household decoration, of
+scientific terms and expressions, of literary, intellectual and
+religious experiment, without continually finding that the Japanese
+borrowed from Chinese storehouses. Possibly their debt began at the time
+of the alleged conquest of Korea[4] in the third century.
+
+In Japanese life, as it existed before the introduction of Buddhism,
+there was, with barbaric simplicity, a measure of culture somewhat
+indeed above the level of savagery, but probably very little that could
+be appraised beyond that of the Iroquois Indians in the days of their
+Confederacy. For though granting that there were many interesting
+features of art, industry, erudition and civilization which have been
+lost to the historic memory, and that the research of scholars may
+hereafter discover many things now in oblivion; yet, on the other hand,
+it is certain that much of what has long been supposed to be of
+primitive Japanese origin, and existent before the eighth century, has
+been more or less infused or enriched with Chinese elements, or has been
+imported directly from India, or Persia,[5] or has crystallized into
+shape from the mixture of things Buddhistic and primitive Japanese.
+
+Apart from all speculation, we know that in the train of the first
+missionaries came artisans, and instructors in every line of human
+industry and achievement, and that the importation of the inventions and
+appliances of "the West"--the West then being Korea and China, and the
+"Far West," India--was proportionately as general, as far-reaching, as
+sensational, as electric in its effects upon the Japanese minds, as, in
+our day, has been the introduction of the modern civilization of Europe
+and the United States.[6]
+
+
+The Purveyors of Civilization.
+
+
+The Buddhist missionaries, in their first "enthusiasm of humanity," were
+not satisfied to bring in their train, art, medicine, science and
+improvements of all sorts, but they themselves, being often learned and
+practical men, became personal leaders in the work of civilizing the
+country. In travelling up and down the empire to propagate their tenets,
+they found out the necessity of better roads, and accordingly, they were
+largely instrumental in having them made. They dug wells, established
+ferries and built bridges.[7] They opened lines of communication; they
+stimulated traffic and the exchange of merchandise; they created the
+commerce between Japan and China; and they acted as peacemakers and
+mediators in the wars between the Japanese and Koreans. For centuries
+they had the monopoly of high learning. In the dark middle ages when
+civil war ruled, they were the only scholars, clerks, diplomatists,
+mediators and peacemakers.
+
+Japanese diet became something new under the direction of the priests.
+The bonzes taught the wickedness of slaughtering domestic animals, and
+indeed, the wrong of putting any living thing to death, so that kindness
+to animals has become a national trait. To this day it may be said that
+Japanese boys and men are, at least within the limits of their light,
+more tender and careful with all living creatures than are those of
+Christendom.[8] The bonzes improved the daily fare of the people, by
+introducing from Korea and China articles of food hitherto unknown. They
+brought over new seeds and varieties of vegetables and trees.
+Furthermore, necessity being the mother of invention, not a few of the
+shorn brethren made up for the prohibition of fish and flesh, by
+becoming expert cooks. They so exercised their talents in the culinary
+art that their results on the table are proverbial. Especially did they
+cultivate mushrooms, which in taste and nourishment are good substitutes
+for fish.
+
+The bonzes were lovers of beauty and of symbolism. They planted the
+lotus, and the monastery ponds became seats of splendor, and delights to
+the eye. Their teachings, metaphysical and mystical, poetical and
+historical, scientific and literary, created, it may be said, the
+Japanese garden, which to the refined imagination contains far more than
+meets the eye of the alien.[9] Indeed, the oriental imitations in earth,
+stone, water and verdure, have a language and suggestion far beyond what
+the usual parterres and walks, borders and lines, fountains and statuary
+of a western garden teach. It may be said that our "language of flowers"
+is more luxuriant and eloquent than theirs; yet theirs is very rich
+also, besides being more subtle in suggestion. The bonzes instilled
+doctrine, not only by sermons, books and the emblems and furniture of
+the temples, but they also taught dogma and ethics by the flower-ponds
+and plots, by the artificial landscape, and by outdoor symbolism of all
+kinds. To Buddhism our thanks are due, for the innumerable miniature
+continents, ranges of mountains, geographical outlines and other
+horticultural allusions to their holy lands and spiritual history, seen
+beside so many houses, temples and monasteries in Japan. In their floral
+art, no people excels the Japanese in making leaf and bloom teach
+history, religion, philosophy, aesthetics and patriotism.
+
+Not only around the human habitation,[10] but within it, the new
+religion brought a marvellous change. Instead of the hut, the
+dwelling-house grew to spacious and comfortable proportions, every part
+of the Japanese house to-day showing to the cultured student, especially
+to one familiar with the ancient poetry, the lines of its origin and
+development, and in the larger dwellings expressing a wealth of
+suggestion and meaning. The oratory and the kami-dana or shelf holding
+the gods, became features in the humblest dwelling. Among the well-to-do
+there were of course the gilded ancestral tablets and the worship of
+progenitors, in special rooms, with imposing ritual and equipment, with
+which Buddhism did not interfere; but on the shelf over the door of
+nearly every house in the land, along with the emblems of the kami,
+stood images representing the avatars of Buddha.[11] There, the light
+ever burned, and there, offerings of food and drink were thrice daily
+made. Though the family worship might vary in its length and variety of
+ceremony, yet even in the home where no regular system was followed, the
+burning lights and the stated offering made, called the mind up to
+thoughts higher than the mere level of providing for daily wants. The
+visitation of the priests in time of sorrow, or of joy, or for friendly
+converse, made religion sweetly human.[12]
+
+Outwardly the Buddhist architecture made a profound change in the
+landscape. With a settled religion requiring gorgeous ceremonial, the
+chanting of liturgies by large bodies of priests and the formation of
+monasteries as centres of literary and religious activity, there were
+required stability and permanence in the imperial court itself. While,
+therefore, the humble village temples arose all over the country, there
+were early erected, in the place where the court and emperor dwelt,
+impressive religious edifices.[13] The custom of migration ceased, and a
+fixed spot selected as the capital, remained such for a number of
+generations, until finally Héian-jō or the place of peace, later
+called Kiōto, became the "Blossom Capital" and the Sacred City for a
+thousand years. At Nara, where flourished the first six sects introduced
+from Korea, were built vast monasteries, temples and images, and thence
+the influence of civilisation and art radiated. From the first,
+forgetting its primitive democracy and purely moral claims, Buddhism
+lusted for power in the State. As early as A.D. 624, various grades were
+assigned to the priesthood by the government.[14] The sects eagerly
+sought and laid great stress upon imperial favor. To this day they
+keenly enjoy the canonization of their great teachers by letters patent
+from the Throne.
+
+
+Ministers of Art.
+
+
+On the establishment of the imperial capital, at Kiōto, toward the
+end of the eighth century, we find still further development and
+enlargement of those latent artistic impulses with which the Heavenly
+Father endowed his Japanese child. That capacity for beauty, both in
+appreciation and expression, which in our day makes the land of dainty
+decoration the resort of all those who would study oriental art in
+unique fulness and decorative art in its only living school--a school
+founded on the harmonious marriage of the people and the nature of the
+country--is discernible from quite early ages. The people seem to have
+responded gladly to the calls for gifts and labor. The direction from
+which it is supposed all evils are likely to come is the northeast; this
+special point of the compass being in pan-Asian spiritual geography the
+focus of all malign influences. Accordingly, the Mikado Kwammu, in A.D.
+788, built on the highest mountain called Hiyéi a superb temple and
+monastery, giving it in charge of the Ten-dai sect, that there should
+ever be a bulwark against the evil that might otherwise swoop upon the
+city. Here, as on castellated walls, should stand the watchman, who, by
+the recitation of the sacred liturgies, would keep watch and ward. In
+course of time this great mountain became a city of three thousand
+edifices and ten thousand monks, from which the droning of litanies and
+the chanting of prayers ascended daily, and where the chief industries
+were, the counting of beads on rosaries and the burning of incense
+before the altars. This was in the long bright day of a prosperity which
+has been nourished by vast sums obtained from the government and nobles.
+One notes the contrast at the end of our century, when "disestablished"
+as a religion and its bonzes reduced to beggary, Hiyéi-san is used as
+the site of a Summer School of Christian Theology.
+
+Along with the blossoming of the lotus in every part of the empire,
+bloomed the grander flowers of sculpture, of painting and of temple
+architecture. It was because of the carpenter's craft in building
+temples that he won his name of Dai-ku, or the great workman. The
+artificers of the sunny islands cultivated an ambition, not only to
+equal but to excel, their continental brethren of the saw and hammer.
+Yet the carpenter was only the leader of great hosts of artisans that
+were encouraged, of craftsmen that were educated and of industries that
+were called into being by the spread of Buddhism.[15] It was not enough
+that village temples and town monasteries should be built, under an
+impulse that meant volumes for the development of the country. The
+ambitious leaders chose sightly spots on mountains whence were lovely
+vistas of scenery, on which to erect temples and monasteries, while it
+seemed to be their further ambition to allow no mountain peak to be
+inaccessible. With armies of workmen, supported by the contributions of
+the faithful who had been aroused to enthusiasm by the preaching of the
+bonzes, great swaths were cut in the forest; abundant timber was felled;
+rocky plateaus were levelled; and elegant monastic edifices were reared,
+soon to be filled with eager students, and young men in training for the
+priesthood.
+
+Whether the pilgrimage[16] be of Shintō or of Buddhist origin, or
+simply a contrivance of human nature to break the monotony of life, we
+need not discuss. It is certain that if the custom be indigenous, the
+imported faith adopted, absorbed and enlarged it. The peregrinations
+made to the great temples and to the mountain tops, being meritorious
+performances, soon filled the roads with more or less devout travellers.
+In thus finding vent for their piety, the pilgrims mingled
+sanctification with recreation, enjoying healthful holidays, and
+creating trade with varied business, commercial and commissarial
+activities, while enlarging also their ideas and learning something of
+geography. Thus, in the course of time, it has come to pass that Japan
+is a country of which almost every square mile is known, while it is
+well threaded with paths, banded with roads, and supplied to a
+remarkable extent with handy volumes of description and of local
+history.[17] Her people being well educated in their own lore and local
+traditions, possessed also a voluminous literature of guidebooks and
+cyclopedias of information. The devotees were, withal, well instructed
+and versed in a code of politeness and courtesy, as pilgrimage and
+travel became settled habits of a life. As a further result, the
+national tongue became remarkably homogeneous. Broadly speaking, it may
+be said that the Japanese language, unlike the Chinese in this as it is
+in almost every other point, has very little dialectic variation.[18]
+Except in some few remote eddies lying outside the general currents,
+there is a uniform national speech. This is largely owing to that annual
+movement of pilgrims in the summer months especially, habitual during
+many centuries.
+
+Buddhism coming to Japan by means of the Great Vehicle, or with the
+features of the Northern development, was the fertile mother of art. In
+the exterior equipment of the temple, instead of the Shintō thatch,
+the tera or Buddhist edifice called for tiles on its sweeping roof, with
+ornamental terra-cotta at the end of its imposing roof-ridge, or for
+sheets of copper soon to be made verdant, then sombre and then sable by
+age and atmosphere. Outwardly the edifice required the application of
+paint and lacquer in rich tints, its recurved roof-edges gladly
+welcoming the crest and monogram of the feudal prince, and its railings
+and stairways accepting willingly the bronze caps and ornaments. In
+front of its main edifice was the imposing gateway with proportions
+almost as massive as the temple itself, with prodigal wealth of
+curiously fitted and richly carved, painted and gilded supports and
+morticings, with all the fancies and adornments of the carpenter's art,
+and having as its frontlet and blazon the splendidly gilt name, style or
+title. Often these were impressive to eye and mind, to an extent which
+the terse Chinese or curt monosyllables could scarcely suggest to an
+alien.[19] The number, forms and positions of the various parts of the
+temple easily lent themselves to the expression of the elaborate
+symbolism of the India faith.
+
+
+Resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity.
+
+
+Within the sacred edifice everything to strike the senses was lavishly
+displayed. The passion of the East, as opposed to Greek simplicity, is
+for decoration; yet in Japan, decorative art, though sometimes bursting
+out in wild profusion or running to unbridled lengths, was in the main a
+regulated mass of splendor in which harmony ruled. Differing though the
+Buddhist sects do in their temple furniture and altar decorations, they
+are, most of them, so elaborately full in their equipment as to suggest
+repeatedly the similarity between the Roman Catholic organization,
+altars, vestments and ritual, and those of Buddhism, and remarks on this
+point seem almost commonplace. Almost everything in Roman Catholicism is
+found in Buddhism,[20] and one may even say, _vice versa_, at least in
+things exterior. We take the liberty of transcribing here a passage from
+the chapter entitled "Christianity and Foreigners" in The Mikado's
+Empire, written twenty years ago.
+
+    "Furthermore, the transition from the religion of India to that
+    of Rome was extremely easy. The very idols of Buddha served,
+    after a little alteration with the chisel, for images of Christ.
+    The Buddhist saints were easily transformed into the Twelve
+    Apostles. The Cross took the place of the _torii_. It was
+    emblazoned on the helmets and banners of the warriors, and
+    embroidered on their breasts. The Japanese soldiers went forth
+    to battle like Christian crusaders. In the roadside shrine
+    Kuanon, the Goddess of Mercy, made way for the Virgin, the
+    mother of God. Buddhism was beaten with its own weapons. Its own
+    artillery was turned against it. Nearly all the Christian
+    churches were native temples, sprinkled and purified. The same
+    bell, whose boom had so often quivered the air announcing the
+    orisons and matins of paganism, was again blessed and sprinkled,
+    and called the same hearers to mass and confession; the same
+    lavatory that fronted the temple served for holy water or
+    baptismal font; the same censer that swung before Amida could be
+    refilled to waft Christian incense; the new convert could use
+    unchanged his old beads, bells, candles, incense, and all the
+    paraphernalia of his old faith in celebration of the new.
+
+    "Almost everything that is distinctive in the Roman form of
+    Christianity is to be found in Buddhism: images, pictures,
+    lights, altars, incense, vestments, masses, beads, wayside
+    shrines, monasteries, nunneries, celibacy, fastings, vigils,
+    retreats, pilgrimages, mendicant vows, shorn heads, orders,
+    habits, uniforms, nuns, convents, purgatory, saintly and
+    priestly intercession, indulgences, works of supererogation,
+    pope, archbishops, abbots, abbesses, monks, neophytes, relics
+    and relic-worship, exclusive burial-ground, etc., etc.,
+    etc."[21]
+
+Nevertheless, these resemblances are almost wholly superficial, and have
+little or nothing to do with genuine religion. Such matters are of
+aesthetic and of commercial, rather than of spiritual, interest. They
+concern priestcraft and vulgar superstition rather than truth and
+righteousness. "In point of dogma a whole world of thought separates
+Buddhism from every form of Christianity. Knowledge, enlightenment, is
+the condition of Buddhistic grace, not faith. Self-perfectionment is the
+means of salvation, not the vicarious sufferings of a Redeemer. Not
+eternal life is the end and active participation in unceasing prayer and
+praise, but absorption into Nirvana (Jap. Nehan), practical
+annihilation."[22] At certain points, the metaphysic of Buddhism is so
+closely like that of Christian theology, that a connection on reciprocal
+exchange of ideas is not only possible but probable. In their highest
+thinking,[23] the sincere Christian and Buddhist approach each other in
+their search after truth.
+
+The key-word of Buddhism is Ingwa, which means law or fate, the chain of
+cause and effect in which man is found, atheistic "evolution applied to
+ethics," the grinding machinery of a universe in which is no
+Creator-Father, no love, pity or heart. If the cry of the human spirit
+has compelled the makers of Buddhist theology to furnish a goddess of
+mercy, it is but one subordinate being among many. If a boundlessly
+compassionate Amida is thought out, it is an imaginary being. The symbol
+of Buddhism is the wheel of the law, which revolves as mercilessly as
+ceaselessly.[24]
+
+The key-word of Christianity is love, and its message is grace. Its
+symbol is the cross, and its sacrament the supper, in token of the
+infinite love of the Father who wrote his revelation in a human life.
+The resemblances between the religions of Gautama and of Jesus, are
+purely superficial. They appear to the outward man. The inward man
+cannot, even from Darien peaks of observation or in his scrutiny _de
+profundis_, discover any vital or historical connection between the two
+faiths, Christianity and Buddhism. In his theology the Christian says
+God is all; but the Buddhist says All is god. Buddhism says destroy the
+passions: Christianity says control them. The Buddhist's watchword is
+Nirvana. The Christian's is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus.[25]
+
+
+The Temples and Their Symbolism.
+
+
+In the vast airy halls of a Buddhist temple one will often see columns
+made of whole tree-trunks, sheeted with gold and supporting massive
+ceilings which are empanelled and gorgeous with every hue and tint known
+to the palette. Besides the coloring, carving and gilding, the rich
+symbolism strikes the eye and touches the imagination. It is a pleasing
+study for one familiar with the background and world of Buddhism, to
+note their revelation and expression in art, as well as to discern what
+the varying sects accept or reject. There is the lotus, in leaf, bud,
+flower and calyx;[26] the diamond in every form, real and imaginary,
+with the vagra or emblem of conquest; while on the altars, beside the
+central image, be it that of Shaka or of Amida, are Bodhisattvas or
+Buddhas by brevet, beings in every state of existence, as well as
+deities of many names and forms. Abstract ideas and attributes are
+expressed in the art language not only of Japan, Korea and China, but
+also in that of India and even of Persia and Greece,[27] until one
+wonders how an Aryan religion, like Buddhism, could have so conquered
+and unified the many nations of Chinese Asia. He wonders, indeed, until
+he remembers how it has itself been transformed and changed in popular
+substance, from lofty metaphysics and ethics into pantheism for the
+shorn, and into polytheism for the unshorn.
+
+Looking at early Japanese pictures with the eye of the historian, as
+well as of the connoisseur of art, one will see that the first real
+school of Japanese art was Buddhistic. The modern school of pictorial
+art, named from the monkish phrase, Ukioyé--pictures of the Passing
+World--is indeed very interesting to the western student, because it
+seems to be more in touch with the human nature of the whole world, as
+distinct from what is local, Chinese, or sectarian. Yet, casting a
+glance back of the mediaeval Kano, Chinese and Yamato-Tosa styles, he
+finds that Buddhism gave Japan her first examples of and stimulus to
+pictorial art.[28] He sees further that instead of the monochrome of
+Chinese exotic art, or the first rude attempts of the native pencil,
+Buddhism began Japanese sculpture, carving and nearly every other form
+of plastic or pictorial representation, in which are all the elements of
+Northern Buddhism, as so lavishly represented, for example, in that
+great sutra which is the book, _par excellence_, of Japanese Buddhism,
+the Saddharma Pundarika.
+
+Turning from text to art, we behold the golden lakes of joy, the
+mountain of gems, the floating female angels with their marvellous
+drapery and lovely faces, the gentle benignity of the goddesses of
+mercy, the rays of light and the glory streaming from face and head of
+the holy ones, the splendors of costume, the varied beauties of the
+lotus, the hosts of ministering intelligences, the luxuriant symbolism,
+the purple clouds, the wheel of the law, the swastika[29] or double
+cross, and the vagra,[30] or diamond trefoil. All that color, perfume,
+sensuous delights, art and luxury can suggest, are here, together with
+all the various orders of beings that inhabit the Buddhist universe; and
+these are set forth in their fulness and detail. In the six conditions
+of sentient existence are devas or gods, men, asuras or monsters, pretas
+or demons, beasts, and beings in hell. In portraying these, the artists
+and sculptors do not always slavishly follow tradition or uniformity.
+The critical eye notes nearly as much genius, wit and variety as in the
+mediaeval cathedral architecture of Europe. Probably the most popular
+groups of idols are those of the seven or the thirty-three Kuannon, of
+the six Jizo[31] or compassionate helpers, and of the sixteen or the
+five hundred Rakan[32] or circles of primitive disciples of Gautama. The
+angelic beings and sweetly singing birds of Paradise are also favorite
+subjects of the artists.
+
+One who has lived alongside the great temples; who knows the daily
+routine and sees what powerful engines of popular instruction they are;
+who has been present at the great festivals and looked upon the mighty
+kitchens and refectories in operation; and who has gone in and out among
+their monasteries and examined their records, their genealogies and
+their relics, can see how powerfully Buddhism has moulded the whole life
+of the people through long ages. The village temple is often the epitome
+and repository of the social life of the people now living, and of the
+story of their ancestors for generations upon generations past. It is
+the historico-genealogical society, the museum, the repository of
+documents and trophies, the place of national thanksgiving and praise,
+of public sorrow and farewell, a place of rendezvous and separation, the
+starting-point of procession, and the centre of festival and joy; and
+thus it is linked with the life of the people.
+
+In other respects, also, the temple is like the old village cathedral of
+mediaeval Europe. It is in many sects the centre of popular pleasure of
+all sorts, both reputable and disreputable. Not only shops and bazaars,
+fairs and markets, games and sports, cluster around it, but also
+curiosities and works of popular art, the relics of war, and the
+trophies of travel and adventure. Except that Buddhism--outside of
+India--never had the unity of European Christianity, the Buddhist temple
+is the mirror and encyclopaedia both of history and of contemporary
+life. As fame and renown are necessary for the glory of the place or the
+structure, favorite gods, or rather their idols, are frequently carried
+about on "starring" tours. At the opening to public view of some famous
+image or relic, a great festival or revival called Kai-chō is held,
+which becomes a scene of trade and merry-making like that of the
+mediaeval fair or kermis in Europe. The far-oriental is able as
+skilfully as his western confrère, to mix business and religion and to
+suppose that gain is godliness. Further, the manufacture of legend
+becomes a thriving industry; while the not-infrequent sensation of a
+popular miracle is manipulated by the bonzes--for priestcraft in all
+ages and climes is akin throughout the world. It is no wonder that some
+honest Japanese, incensed at the shams utilized by the religious, has
+struck out like coin the proverb that rings true--"Good doctrine needs
+no miracle."
+
+
+The Bell and the Cemetery.
+
+
+The Buddhist missionaries, and especially the founders of temples,
+thoroughly understood the power of natural beauty to humble, inspire and
+soothe the soul of man. The instinctive love of the Japanese people for
+fine scenery, was made an ally of faith. The sites for temples were
+chosen with reference to their imposing surroundings or impressive
+vistas. Whether as spark-arresters and protectives against fire, or to
+compel reverent awe, the loftiest evergreen trees are planted around the
+sacred structure. These "trees of Jehovah" are compellers to reverence.
+The _alien's_ hat comes off instinctively--though it may be less
+convenient to shed boots than sandals--as he enters the sacred
+structure.
+
+The great tongueless bell is another striking accessory to the temple
+services. Near at hand stands the belfry out of which boom forth tidings
+of the hours. In the flow of time and years, the note of the bell
+becomes more significant, and in old age solemn, making in the lapse of
+centuries an educating power in seriousness. "As sad as a temple bell"
+is the coinage of popular speech. Many of the inscriptions, though with
+less of sunny hope and joy than even Christian grave-stones bear, are
+yet mournfully beautiful.[33] They preach Buddhism in its reality.
+Whereas, the general associations of the Christian spire and belfry,
+apart from the note of time, are those of joy, invitation and good news,
+those of the tongueless and log-struck bells of Buddhism are sombre and
+saddening. "As merry as a marriage bell," could never be said of the
+boom from a Buddhist temple, even though it pour waves of sound through
+sunny leagues. There is a vast difference between the peal and play of
+the chimes of Europe and the liquid melody which floods the landscape of
+Chinese Asia. The one music, high in air, seems ever to tell of faith,
+triumph and aspiration; the other in minor notes, from bells hung low on
+yokes, perpetually echoes the pessimism of despair, the folly of living
+and the joy that anticipates its end.
+
+Above all, the temple holds and governs the cemetery[34] as well as the
+cradle; while from it emanate influences that enwrap and surround the
+villager, from birth to death. Since the outlawry of Christianity, and
+especially since the division of the empire into Buddhist parishes, the
+bonzes have had the oversight of birth, death, marriage and divorce.
+Particularly tenacious, in common with priestcraft all over the world,
+is their clutch upon what they call "consecrated ground." In a large
+sense Japan is still, what China has always been, a country governed by
+the graveyard. These cities of the dead are usually kept in attractive
+order and made beautiful with flowers in memoriam. The study of epitaphs
+and mortuary architecture, though not without elements bordering on the
+ludicrous, is enjoyed by the thoughtful student.[35]
+
+    In every community the inhabitants are enrolled at birth at the
+    local temple, whose priests are the authorized religious
+    teachers, and are always expected to take charge of the funerals
+    of those whose names are thus enrolled. So long as an individual
+    remains in the region of the family temple, the tie which binds
+    him to it is exceedingly difficult to break; but if he moves
+    away he is no longer bound by this tie. This explains the fact,
+    so often observed by missionaries, that the membership of
+    Christian churches is made up almost entirely of people who have
+    come from other localities. In the city of Osaka, for instance,
+    it is a very rare thing to find a native Osakan in any of the
+    churches. The same is true in all parts of the country. So long
+    as a Japanese remains in the neighborhood of his family temple
+    it is almost impossible to get him to break the temple tie and
+    join a Christian church; but when he moves to another place he
+    is free to do as he likes.[36]
+
+This statement of a resident in modern Japan will long remain true for a
+large part of the empire.
+
+
+Political and Military Influences.
+
+
+A volume might be written and devoted to Japanese Buddhism as a
+political power; for, having quickly obtained intellectual possession of
+the court and emperor, it dictated the policies of the rulers. In A.D.
+624, it was recognized as a state religion, and the hierarchy of priests
+was officially established. At this date there were 46 temples and
+monasteries, with 816 monks and 569 nuns. As early as the eighth
+century, beginning with Shōmu, who reigned A.D. 724-728, and who with
+his daughter, afterward the female Mikado, became a disciple of Shaka,
+the habit of the emperors becoming monks, shaving their heads and
+retiring from public life, came in vogue and lasted until near the
+nineteenth century. By this means the bonzes were soon enabled to call
+Buddhism "the people's religion," and to secure the resources of the
+national treasury as an aid to their temple and monastery building, and
+for the erection of those images and wayside shrines on which so many
+millions of dollars have been lavished. In addition to this subsidized
+propaganda, the Buddhist confessor was too often able, by means of the
+wife, concubine, or other female member of the household, imperial or
+noble, to dictate the imperial policy in accordance with monkish or
+priestly ideas. Ugéno Dō-kiō, a monk, is believed to have aspired
+to the throne. Being made premier by the Empress Kō-ken, whose
+passion for him is the scandal of history, he made no scruple of
+extending the power as well as the influence of the Buddhist hierarchy.
+
+Buddhism had also a distinct influence on the military history of the
+country,[37] and this was greatest during the civil wars of the rival
+Mikados (1336-1392), when the whole country was a camp and two lines of
+nominees claimed to be descendants of the sun-goddess. Japan's only
+foreign wars have been in the neighboring peninsula of Korea, and
+thither the bonzes went with the armies in the expeditions of the early
+centuries, and in that great invasion of 1592-1597, which has left a
+scar even to this day on the Korean mind. At home, Buddhist priests only
+too gladly accompanied the imperial armies of conquest and occupation.
+During centuries of activity in the southwest and in the far east and
+extreme north, the military brought the outlying portions of the empire,
+throughout the whole archipelago, under the sway of the Yamato tribe and
+the Mikado's dominion. The shorn clerks not only lived in camp,
+ministered to the sick and shrived the dying soldier, but wrote texts
+for the banners, furnished the amulets and war cries, and were ever
+assistant and valuable in keeping up the temper and morals of the
+armies.[38] No sooner was the campaign over and peace had become the
+order of the day, than the enthusiastic missionaries began to preach and
+to teach in the pacified region. They set up the shrines, anon started
+the school and built the temple; usually, indeed, with the aid of the
+law and the government, acting as agents of a politico-ecclesiastical
+establishment, yet with energy and consecration.
+
+In later feudal days, when the soldier classes obtained the upper hand,
+overawed the court and Mikado and gradually supplanted the civil
+authority, introducing feudalism and martial law, the bonzes often
+represented the popular and democratic side. Protesting against
+arbitrary government, they came into collision with the warrior rulers,
+so as to be exposed to imprisonment and the sword. Yet even as refugees
+and as men to whom the old seats of activity no longer offered success
+or comfort, they went off into the distant and outlying provinces,
+preaching the old tenets and the new fashions in theology. Thus again
+they won hosts of converts, built monasteries, opened fresh paths and
+were purveyors of civilization.
+
+The feudal ages in Japan bred the same type of militant priest known in
+Europe--the military bishop and the soldier monk. So far from Japan's
+being the "Land of Great Peace," and Buddhism's being necessarily gentle
+and non-resistant, we find in the chequered history of the island empire
+many a bloody battle between the monks on horseback and in armor.[39]
+Rival sectarians kept the country disquieted for years. Between
+themselves and their favored laymen, and the enemy, consisting of the
+rival forces, lay and clerical, in like array, many a bloody battle was
+fought.
+
+The writer lived for one year in Echizen, which, in the fifteenth
+century, was the battle-ground for over fifty years, of warring monks.
+The abbot of the Monastery of the Original Vow, of the Shin sect, in
+Kiōto, had built before the main edifice a two-storied gate, which
+was expected to throw into the shade every other gateway in Japan, and
+especially to humble the pride of the monks of the Tendai sect, in
+Hiyéizan, The monks of the mountain, swarming down into the capital
+city, attacked the gate and monastery of the Shin sect and burned the
+former to ashes. The abbot thus driven off by fire, fled northward, and,
+joined by a powerful body of adherents, made himself possessor of the
+rich provinces of Kaga and Echizen, holding this region for half a
+century, until able to rebuild the mighty fortress-monasteries near
+Kiōto and at Osaka.
+
+These strongholds of the fighting Shin priests had become so powerful as
+arsenals and military headquarters, that in 1570, Nobunaga, skilful
+general as he was, and backed by sixty thousand men, was unsuccessful in
+his attempt to reduce them. For ten years, the war between Nobunaga and
+the Shin sectarians kept the country in disorder. It finally ended in
+the conflagration of the great religious fortress at Osaka, and the
+retreat of the monks to another part of the country. By their treachery
+and incendiarism, the shavelings prevented the soldiers from enjoying
+the prizes.
+
+To detail the whole history of the fighting monks would be tedious. They
+have had a foothold for many centuries and even to the present time, in
+every province except that of Satsuma. There, because they treacherously
+aided the great Hidéyoshi to subdue the province, the fiery clansmen,
+never during Tokugawa days, permitted a Buddhist priest to come.[40]
+
+
+Literature, and Education.
+
+
+In its literary and scholastic development, Japanese Buddhism on its
+popular educational side deserves great praise. Although the Buddhist
+canon[41] was never translated into the vernacular,[42] and while the
+library of native Buddhism, in the way of commentary or general
+literature, reflects no special credit upon the priests, yet the
+historian must award them high honor, because of the part taken by them
+as educators and schoolmasters.[43] Education in ancient and mediaeval
+times was, among the laymen, confined almost wholly to the imperial
+court, and was considered chiefly to be, either as an adjunct to polite
+accomplishments, or as valuable especially in preparing young men for
+political office.[44] From the first introduction of letters until well
+into the nineteenth century, there was no special provision for
+education made by the government, except that, in modern and recent
+times in the castle towns of the Daimiōs, there were schools of
+Chinese learning for the Samurai. Private schools and school-masters[45]
+were also creditably numerous. In original literature, poetry, fiction
+and history, as well as in the humbler works of compilation, in the
+making of text-books and in descriptive lore, the pens of many priests
+have been busy.[46] The earliest biography written in Japan was of
+Shōtoku, the great lay patron of Buddhism. In the ages of war the
+monastery was the ark of preservation amid a flood of desolation.
+
+The temple schools were early established, and in the course of
+centuries became at times almost coextensive with the empire. Besides
+the training of the neophytes in the Chinese language and the
+vernacular, there were connected with thousands of temples, schools in
+which the children, not only of the well-to-do, but largely of the
+people, were taught the rudiments of education, chiefly reading and
+writing. Most of the libraries of the country were those in monasteries.
+Although it is not probable that Kōbō invented the Kana or common
+script, yet it is reasonably certain that the bonzes[47] were the chief
+instrument in the diffusion and popularization of that simple system of
+writing, which made it possible to carry literature down into the homes
+of the merchant and peasant, and enabled even women and children to
+beguile the tedium of their lives. Thus the people expanded their
+thoughts through the medium of the written, and later of the printed,
+page.[48] Until modern centuries, when the school of painters, which
+culminated in Hokŭsai and his contemporaries, brought a love of art
+down to the lowest classes of the people, the only teacher of pictorial
+and sculptural art for the multitude, was Buddhism. So strong is this
+popular delight in things artistic that probably, to this passion as
+much as to the religious instinct, we owe many of the wayside shrines
+and images, the symbolical and beautifully prepared landscapes, and
+those stone stairways which slope upward toward the shrines on the
+hill-tops. In Japan, art is not a foreign language; it is vernacular.
+
+Thus, while we gladly point out how Buddhism, along the paths of
+exploration, commerce, invention, sociology, military and political
+influence, education and literature, not only propagated religion, but
+civilized Japan,[49] it is but in the interest of fairness and truth
+that we point out that wherein the great system was deficient. If we
+make comparison with Christendom and the religion of Jesus, it is less
+with the purpose of the polemic who must perhaps necessarily disparage,
+and more with the idea of making contrast between what we have seen in
+Japan and what we have enjoyed as commonplace in the United States and
+Europe.
+
+
+Things Which Buddhism Left Undone.
+
+
+In the thirteen hundred years of the life of Buddhism in Japan, what are
+the fruits, and what are the failures? Despite its incessant and
+multifarious activities, one looks in vain for the hospital, the orphan
+asylum, the home for elderly men or women or aged couples, or the asylum
+for the insane, and much less, for that vast and complicated system of
+organized charities, which, even amid our material greed of gain, make
+cities like New York, or London, or Chicago, so beautiful from the point
+of view of humanity. Buddhism did indeed teach kindness to animals,
+making even the dog, though ownerless and outcast, in a sense sacred.
+Because of his faith in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the
+toiling laborer will keep his wheels or his feet from harming the cat or
+dog or chicken in the road, even though it be at risk and trouble and
+with added labor to himself. The pious will buy the live birds or eels
+from the old woman who sits on the bridge, in order to give them life
+and liberty again in air or water. The sacred rice is for sale at the
+temples, not only to feed but to fatten the holy pigeons.
+
+Yet, while all this care is lavished on animals, the human being
+suffers.[50] Buddhism is kind to the brute, and cruel to man. Until the
+influx of western ideas in recent years, the hospital and the orphanage
+did not exist in Japan, despite the gentleness and tenderness of Shaka,
+who, with all his merits, deserted his wife and babe in order to
+enlighten mankind.[51] If Buddhism is not directly responsible for the
+existence of that class of Japanese pariahs called _hi-nin_, or
+not-human, the name and the idea are borrowed from the sutras; while the
+execration of all who prepare or sell the flesh of animals is
+persistently taught in the sacred books. These unfortunate bearers of
+the human image, during twelve hundred years and until the fiat of the
+present illustrious emperor made them citizens, were not reckoned in the
+census, nor was the land on which they dwelt measured. The imperial
+edict which finally elevated the Eta to citizenship, was suggested by
+one whose life, though known to men as that of a Confucian, was probably
+hid with Christ, Yokoi Héishiro.[52] The emperor Mutsuhito, 123d of the
+line of Japan, born on the day when Perry was on the Mississippi and
+ready to sail, placed over these outcast people in 1871, the protecting
+aegis of the law.[53] Until that time, the people in this unfortunate
+class, numbering probably a million, or, as some say, three millions,
+were compelled to live outside of the limits of human habitation, having
+no lights which society or the law was bound to respect. They were given
+food or drink only when benevolence might be roused; but the donor would
+never again touch the vessel in which the offering was made. The
+Eta,[54] though in individual cases becoming measurably rich, rotted and
+starved, and were made the filth, and off-scouring of the earth, because
+they were the butchers, the skinners, the leather workers, and thus
+handled dead animals, being made also the executioners and buriers of
+the dead. After a quarter of a century the citizens, whose ancestry is
+not forgotten, suffer social ostracism even more than do the freed
+slaves of our country, though between them and the other Japanese there
+is no color line, but only the streak of difference which Buddhism
+created and has maintained. Nevertheless, let it be said to the eternal
+honor of Shin Shu and of some of the minor sects, that they were always
+kind and helpful to the Eta.
+
+Furthermore it would be hard to discover Buddhist missionary activities
+among the Ainos, or benefits conferred upon them by the disciples of
+Gautama. One would suppose that the Buddhists, professing to be
+believers in spiritual democracy, would be equally active among all
+sorts and conditions of men; but they have not been so. Even in the days
+when the regions of the Ebisu or barbarians (Yezo) extended far
+southward upon the main island, the missionary bonze was conspicuous by
+his absence among these people. It would seem as though the popular
+notion that the Ainos are the offspring of dogs, had been fed by
+prejudices inculcated by Buddhism. It has been reserved for Christian
+aliens to reduce the language of these simple savages to writing, and to
+express in it for their spiritual benefit the ideas and literature of a
+religion higher than their own, as well as to erect church edifices and
+build hospitals.
+
+
+The Attitude Toward Woman.
+
+
+In its attitude toward woman, which is perhaps one of the crucial tests
+of a religion as well as of a civilization, Buddhism has somewhat to be
+praised and much to be blamed for. It is probable that the Japanese
+woman owes more to Buddhism than to Confucianism, though relatively her
+position was highest under Shintō. In Japan the women are the freest
+in Asia, and probably the best treated among any Asiatic nation, but
+this is not because of Gautama's teaching.[55] Very early in its history
+Japanese Buddhism welcomed womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56]
+yet the Japanese _ama, bikuni_, or nun, never became a sister of mercy,
+or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the
+Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a
+notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even
+by the native scholar--except in fiction.
+
+So far as we can see, the religion founded by one who deserted his wife
+and babe did nothing to check concubinage or polygamy. It simply allowed
+these things, or ameliorated their ancient barbaric conditions through
+the law of kindness. Nevertheless, it brought education and culture
+within the family as well as within the court. It would be an
+interesting question to discuss how far the age of classic vernacular
+prose or the early mediaeval literature of romance, which is almost
+wholly the creation of woman,[57] is due to Buddhism, or how far the
+credit belongs, by induction or reaction, to the Chinese movement in
+favor of learning. Certainly, the faith of India touches and feeds the
+imagination far more than does that of China. Certainly also, the
+animating spirit of most of the popular literature is due to Buddhistic
+culture. The Shin sect, which permits the marriage of the priests and
+preaches the salvation of woman, probably leads all others in according
+honor to her as well as in elevating her social position.
+
+Buddhism, like Roman Catholicism, and as compared to Confucianism which
+is protestant and masculine, is feminine in its type. In Japan the place
+of the holy Virgin Mary is taken by Kuannon, the goddess of mercy; and
+her shrine is one of the most popular of all. Much the same may be said
+of Benten, the queen of the heaven and mistress of the seas. The angels
+of Buddhism are always feminine, and, as in the unscriptural and pagan
+conception of Christian angels, have wings.[58] So also in the legends
+of Gautama, in the Buddhist lives of the saints, and in legendary lore
+as well as in glyptic and pictorial art, the female being transfigured
+in loveliness is a striking figure. Nevertheless, after all is summed up
+that can possibly be said in favor of Buddhism, the position it accords
+to woman is not only immeasurably beneath that given by Christianity,
+but is below that conceded by Shintō, which knows not only goddesses
+and heroines, but also priestesses and empresses.[59]
+
+According to the popular ethical view as photographed in language,
+literature and art, jealousy is always represented by a female demon.
+Indeed, most of the tempters, devils, and transformations of humanity
+into malign beings, whether pretas, asuras, oni, foxes, badgers, or
+cats, are females. As the Chinese ideographs associate all things weak
+or vile with women, so the tell-tale words of Japanese daily speech are
+but reflections of the dogmas coined in the Buddhist mint. In Japanese,
+chastity means not moral cleanliness without regard to sex, but only
+womanly duties. For, while the man is allowed a loose foot, the woman is
+expected not only to be absolutely spotless, but also never to show any
+jealousy, however wide the husband may roam, or however numerous may be
+the concubines in his family. In a word, there is the double standard of
+morals, not only of priest and laity, but of man and woman. The position
+of the Japanese woman even of to-day, despite that eagerness once shown
+to educate her--an eagerness which soon cooled in the government
+schools, but which keeps an even pulse in the Christian home and
+college--is still relatively one of degradation as compared with that of
+her sister in Christendom. For this, the mid-Asian religion is not
+wholly responsible, yet it is largely so.
+
+
+Influence on the Japanese Character.
+
+
+In regard to the influence of Buddhism upon the morals and character of
+the Japanese, there is much to be said in praise, and much also in
+criticism. It has aided powerfully to educate the people in habits of
+gentleness and courtesy, but instead of aspiration and expectancy of
+improvement, it has given to them that spirit of hopeless resignation
+which is so characteristic of the Japanese masses. Buddhism has so
+dominated common popular literature, daily life and speech, that all
+their mental procedure and their utterance is cast in the moulds of
+Buddhist doctrine. The fatalism of the Moslem world expressed in the
+idea of Kismet, has its analogue in the Japanese Ingwa, or "cause and
+effect,"--the notion of an evolution which is atheistic, but viewed from
+the ethical side. This idea of Ingwa is the key to most Japanese novels
+as well as dramas of real life.[60] While Buddhism continually preaches
+this doctrine of Karma or Ingwa,[61] the law of cause and effect, as
+being sufficient to explain all things, it shows its insufficiency and
+emptiness by leaving out the great First Cause of all. In a word,
+Buddhism is law, but not gospel. It deals much with man, but not with
+man's relations with his Creator, whom it utterly ignores. Christianity
+comes not to destroy its ethics, beautiful as they are, nor to ignore
+its metaphysics; but to fulfil, to give a higher truth, and to reveal a
+larger Universe and One who fills it all--not only law, but a Law-giver.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY
+
+    "_Sicut cadaver._"
+
+    "Et fiet unum ovile et unus pastor."--Vulgate, John x. 16.
+
+    "He (Xavier) has been the moon of that 'Society of Jesus' of
+    which Ignatius Loyola was the guiding sun."--S.W. Duffield.
+
+    "My God I love Thee; not because I hope for Heaven thereby,
+    Nor yet because, who love Thee not, must, die eternally.
+    So would I love Thee, dearest Lord, and in Thy praise will sing;
+    Solely because thou art my God, and my eternal King."
+    --Hymn attributed to Francis Xavier.
+
+    "Half hidden, stretching in a lengthened line
+    In front of China, which its guide shall be,
+    Japan abounds in mines of Silver fine,
+    And shall enlighten'd be by holy faith divine."
+    --Camoens
+
+    "The people of this Iland of Japon are good of nature, curteous
+    aboue measure, and valiant in warre; their justice is seuerely
+    executed without any partialitie vpon transgressors of the law.
+    They are gouerned in great ciuilitie. I meane, not a land better
+    gouerned in the world by ciuill policie. The people be verie
+    superstitious in their religion, and are of diuers
+    opinions."--Will Adams, October 22, 1611.
+
+    "A critical history of Japan remains to be written ... We should
+    know next to nothing of what may be termed the Catholic episode
+    of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had we access to
+    none but the official Japanese sources. How can we trust those
+    sources when they deal with times yet more remote?"--Chamberlain.
+
+    "The annals of the primitive Church furnish no instances of
+    sacrifice or heroic constancy, in the Coliseum or the Roman
+    arenas, that were not paralleled on the dry river-beds or
+    execution-grounds of Japan."
+
+    "They ... rest from their labors; and their works do follow
+    them. "--Revelation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY
+
+Darkest Japan.
+
+
+The story of the first introduction and propagation of Roman
+Christianity in Japan, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
+has been told by many writers, both old and new, and in many languages.
+Recent research upon the soil,[1] both natives and foreigners making
+contributions, has illustrated the subject afresh. Relics and memorials
+found in various churches, monasteries and palaces, on both sides of the
+Pacific and the Atlantic, have cast new light upon the fascinating
+theme. Both Christian and non-Christian Japanese of to-day, in their
+travels in the Philippines, China, Formosa, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and
+Italy, being keenly alert for memorials of their countrymen, have met
+with interesting trovers. The descendants of the Japanese martyrs and
+confessors now recognize their own ancestors, in the picture galleries
+of Italian nobles, and in Christian churches see lettered tombs bearing
+familiar names, or in western museums discern far-eastern works of art
+brought over as presents or curiosities, centuries ago.
+
+Roughly speaking, Japanese Christianity lasted phenomenally nearly a
+century, or more exactly from 1542 to 1637, During this time, embassies
+or missions crossed the seas not only of Chinese and Peninsular Asia,
+circumnavigating Africa and thus reaching Europe, but also sailed across
+the Pacific, and visited papal Christendom by way of Mexico and the
+Atlantic Ocean.
+
+This century of Southern Christianity and of commerce with Europe
+enabled Japan, which had previously been almost unheard of, except
+through the vague accounts of Marco Polo and the semi-mythical stories
+by way of China, to leave a conspicuous mark, first upon the countries
+of southern Europe, and later upon Holland and England. As in European
+literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu was recognized as
+Japan, so also the curiosities, the artistic fabrics, the strange things
+from the ends of the earth, soon became familiar in Europe. Besides the
+traffic in mercantile commodities, there were exchanges of words. The
+languages of Europe were enriched by Japanese terms, such as soy, moxa,
+goban, japan (lacquer or varnish), etc., while the tongue of Nippon
+received an infusion of new terms,[2] and a notable list of inventions
+was imported from Europe.
+
+We shall merely outline, with critical commentary, the facts of history
+which have been so often told, but which in our day have received
+luminous illustration. We shall endeavor to treat the general phenomena,
+causes and results of Christianity in Japan in the same judicial spirit
+with which we have considered Buddhism.
+
+Whatever be the theological or political opinions of the observer who
+looks into the history of Japan at about the year 1540, he will
+acknowledge that this point of time was a very dark moment in her known
+history. Columbus, who was familiar with the descriptions of Marco Polo,
+steered his caravels westward with the idea of finding Xipangu, with its
+abundance of gold and precious gems; but the Genoese did not and could
+not know the real state of affairs existing in Dai Nippon at this time.
+Let us glance at this.
+
+The duarchy of Throne and Camp, with the Mikado in Kiōto and the
+Shōgun at Kamakura, with the elaborate feudalism under it, had fallen
+into decay. The whole country was split up into a thousand warring
+fragments. To these convulsions of society, in which only the priest and
+the soldier were in comfort, while the mass of the people were little
+better than serfs, must be added the frequent violent earthquakes,
+drought and failure of crops, with famine and pestilence. There was
+little in religion to uplift and cheer. Shintō had sunk into the
+shadow of a myth. Buddhism had become outwardly a system of political
+gambling rather than the ordered expression of faith. Large numbers of
+the priests were like the mercenaries of Italy, who sold their influence
+and even their swords or those of their followers, to the highest
+bidder. Besides being themselves luxurious and dissolute, their
+monasteries were fortresses, in which only the great political gamblers,
+and not the oppressed people, found comfort and help. Millions of once
+fertile acres had been abandoned or left waste. The destruction of
+libraries, books and records is something awful to contemplate; and "the
+times of Ashikaga" make a wilderness for the scapegoat of chronology.
+Kiōto, the sacred capital, had been again and again plundered and
+burnt. Those who might be tempted to live in the city amid the ruins,
+ran the risk of fire, murder, or starvation. Kamakura, once the
+Shō-gun's seat of authority, was, a level waste of ashes.
+
+Even China, Annam and Korea suffered from the practical dissolution of
+society in the island empire; for Japanese pirates ravaged their coasts
+to steal, burn and kill. Even as for centuries in Europe, Christian
+churches echoed with that prayer in the litanies: "From the fury of the
+Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us," so, along large parts of the deserted
+coasts of Chinese Asia, the wretched inhabitants besought their gods to
+avenge them against the "Wojen." To this day in parts of Honan in China,
+mothers frighten their children and warn them to sleep by the fearful
+words "The Japanese are coming."
+
+
+First Coming of Europeans.
+
+
+This time, then, was that of darkest Japan. Yet the people who lived in
+darkness saw great light, and to them that dwelt in the shadow of death,
+light sprang up.
+
+When Pope Alexander VI. bisected the known world, assigning the western
+half, including America to Spain, and the eastern half, including Asia
+and its outlying archipelagos to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and
+fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese.
+In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon
+was reached. Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been
+driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island
+called Tanégashima. This name among the country folks is still
+synonymous with guns and pistols, for Pinto introduced fire-arms, and
+powder.[3]
+
+During six months spent by the "mendacious" Pinto on the island, the
+imitative people made no fewer than six hundred match-locks or
+arquebuses. Clearing twelve hundred per cent. on their cargo, the three
+Portuguese loaded with presents, returned to China. Their countrymen
+quickly flocked to this new market, and soon the beginnings of regular
+trade with Portugal were inaugurated. On the other hand, Japanese began
+to be found as far west as India. To Malacca, while Francis Xavier was
+laboring there, came a refugee Japanese, named Anjiro. The disciple of
+Loyola, and this child of the Land of the Rising Sun met. Xavier, ever
+restless and ready for a new field, was fired with the idea of
+converting Japan. Anjiro, after learning Portuguese and becoming a
+Christian, was baptized with the name of Paul. The heroic missionary of
+the cross and keys then sailed with his Japanese companion, and in 1549
+landed at Kagoshima,[4] the capital of Satsuma. As there was no central
+government then existing in Japan, the entrance of the foreigners, both
+lay and clerical, was unnoticed.
+
+Having no skill in the learning of languages, and never able to master
+one foreign tongue completely, Xavier began work with the aid of an
+interpreter. The jealousy of the daimiō, because his rivals had been
+supplied with fire-arms by the Portuguese merchants, and the plots and
+warnings of those Buddhist priests (who were later crushed by the
+Satsuma clansmen as traitors), compelled Xavier to leave this province.
+He went first to Hirado,[5] next to Nagatō, and then to Bungo, where
+he was well received. Preaching and teaching through his Japanese
+interpreter, he formed Christian congregations, especially at
+Yamaguchi.[6] Thus, within a year, the great apostle to the Indies had
+seen the quick sprouting of the seed which he had planted. His ambition
+was now to go to the imperial capital, Kiōto, and there advocate the
+claims of Christ, of Mary and of the Pope.
+
+Thus far, however, Xavier had seen only a few seaports of comparatively
+successful daimiōs. Though he had heard of the unsettled state of the
+country because of the long-continued intestine strife, he evidently
+expected to find the capital a splendid city. Despite the armed bands of
+roving robbers and soldiers, he reached Kiōto safely, only to find
+streets covered with ruins, rubbish and unburied corpses, and a general
+situation of wretchedness. He was unable to obtain audience of either
+the Shōgun or the Mikado. Even in those parts of the city where he
+tried to preach, he could obtain no hearers in this time of war and
+confusion. So after two weeks he turned his face again southward to
+Bungo, where he labored for a few months; but in less than two years
+from his landing in Japan, this noble but restless missionary left the
+country, to attempt the spiritual conquest of China. One year later,
+December 2, 1551, he died on the island of Shanshan, or Sancian, in the
+Canton River, a few miles west of Macao.
+
+
+Christianity Flourishes.
+
+
+Nevertheless, Xavier's inspiring example was like a shining star that
+attracted scores of missionaries. There being in this time of political
+anarchy and religious paralysis none to oppose them, their zeal, within
+five years, bore surprising fruits. They wrote home that there were
+seven churches in the region around Kiōto, while a score or more of
+Christian congregations had been gathered in the southwest. In 1581
+there were two hundred churches and one hundred and fifty thousand
+native Christians. Two daimiōs had confessed their faith, and in the
+Mikado's minister, Nobunaga (1534-1582), the foreign priests found a
+powerful supporter.[7] This hater and scourge of the Buddhist priesthood
+openly welcomed and patronized the Christians, and gave them eligible
+sites on which to build dwellings and churches. In every possible way he
+employed the new force, which he found pliantly political, as well as
+intellectually and morally a choice weapon for humbling the bonzes, whom
+he hated as serpents. The Buddhist church militant had become an army
+with banners and fortresses. Nobunaga made it the aim of his life to
+destroy the military power of the hierarchy, and to humble the priests
+for all time. He hoped at least to extract the fangs of what he believed
+to be a politico-religious monster, which menaced the life of the
+nation. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in 1582. To this day the
+memory of Nobunaga is execrated by the Buddhists. They have deified Kato
+Kiyomasa and Iyéyasŭ, the persecutors of the Christians. To Nobunaga
+they give the title of Bakadono, or Lord Fool.
+
+In 1583, an embassy of four young noblemen was despatched by the
+Christian daimiōs of Kiushiu, the second largest island in the
+empire, to the Pope to declare themselves spiritual--though as some of
+their countrymen suspected, political--vassals of the Holy See. It was
+in the three provinces of Bungo, Omura and Arima, that Christianity was
+most firmly rooted. After an absence of eight years, in 1590, the envoys
+from the oriental to the occidental ends of the earth, returned to
+Nagasaki, accompanied by seventeen more Jesuit fathers--an important
+addition to the many Portuguese "religious" of that order already in
+Japan.
+
+Yet, although there was to be still much missionary activity, though
+printing presses had been brought from Europe for the proper diffusion
+of Christian literature in the Romanized colloquial,[8] though there
+were yet to be built more church edifices and monasteries, and Christian
+schools to be established, a sad change was nigh. Much seed which was
+yet to grow in secret had been planted,--like the exotic flowers which
+even yet blossom and shed their perfume in certain districts of Japan,
+and which the traveller from Christendom instantly recognizes, though
+the Portuguese Christian church or monastery centuries ago disappeared
+in fire, or fell to the earth and disappeared. Though there were to be
+yet wonderful flashes of Christian success, and the missionaries were to
+travel over Japan even up to the end of the main island and accompany
+the Japanese army to Korea; yet it may be said that with the death of
+Nobunaga at the hands of the traitor Akéchi, we see the high-water mark
+of the flood-tide of Japanese Christianity. "Akéchi reigned three days,"
+but after him were to arise a ruler and central government jealous and
+hostile. After this flood was to come slowly but surely the ebb-tide,
+until it should leave, outwardly at least, all things as before.
+
+The Jesuit fathers, with instant sensitiveness, felt the loss of their
+champion and protector, Nobunaga. The rebel and assassin, Akéchi,
+ambitious to imitate and excel his master, promised the Christians to do
+more for them even than Nobunaga had done, provided they would induce
+the daimiō Takayama to join forces with his. It is the record of
+their own friendly historian, and not of an enemy, that they, led by the
+Jesuit father Organtin, attempted this persuasion. To the honor of the
+Christian Japanese Takayama, he refused.[9] On the contrary, he marched
+his little army of a thousand men to Kiōto, and, though opposed to a
+force of eight thousand, held the capital city until Hidéyoshi, the
+loyal general of the Mikado, reached the court city and dispersed the
+assassin's band. Hidéyoshi soon made himself familiar with the whole
+story, and his keen eye took in the situation.
+
+This "man on horseback," master of the situation and moulder of the
+destinies of Japan, Hidéyoshi (1536-1598), was afterward known as the
+Taikō, or Retired Regent. The rarity of the title makes it applicable
+in common speech to this one person. Greater than his dead master,
+Nobunaga, and ingenious in the arts of war and peace, Hidéyoshi
+compelled the warring daimiōs, even the proud lord of Satsuma,[10] to
+yield to his power, until the civil minister of the emperor, reverently
+bowing, could say: "All under Heaven, Peace." Now, Japan had once more a
+central government, intensely jealous and despotic, and with it the new
+religion must sooner or later reckon. Religion apart from politics was
+unknown in the Land of the Gods.
+
+Yet, in order to employ the vast bodies of armed men hitherto accustomed
+to the trade of war, and withal jealous of China and hostile to Korea,
+Hidéyoshi planned the invasion of the little peninsular kingdom by these
+veterans whose swords were restless in their scabbards. After months of
+preparation, he despatched an army in two great divisions, one under the
+Christian general Konishi, and one under the Buddhist general Kato.
+After a brilliant campaign of eighteen days, the rivals, taking
+different routes, met in the Korean capital. In the masterly campaign
+which followed, the Japanese armies penetrated almost to the extreme
+northern boundary of the kingdom. Then China came to the rescue and the
+Japanese were driven southward.
+
+During the six or seven years of war, while the invaders crossed swords
+with the natives and their Chinese allies, and devastated Korea to an
+extent from which she has never recovered, there were Jesuit
+missionaries attending the Japanese armies. It is not possible or even
+probable, however, that any seeds of Christianity were at this time left
+in the peninsula. Korean Christianity sprang up nearly two centuries
+later, wind-wafted from China.[11]
+
+During the war there was always more or less of jealousy, mostly
+military and personal, between Konishi and Kato, which however was
+aggravated by the priests on either side. Kato, being then and afterward
+a fierce champion of the Buddhists, glorified in his orthodoxy, which
+was that of the Nichiren sect. He went into battle with a banneret full
+of texts, stuck in his back and flying behind him. His example was
+copied by hundreds of his officers and soldiers. On their flags and
+guidons was inscribed the famous apostrophe of the Nichiren sect, so
+often heard in their services and revivals to-day (Namu miyō ho ren
+gé kiō), and borrowed from the Saddharma Pundarika: "Glory be to the
+salvation-bringing Lotus of the True Law."
+
+
+The Hostility of Hidéyoshi.
+
+
+Konishi, on the other hand, was less numerously and perhaps less
+influentially backed by, and made the champion of, the European
+brethren; and as all the negotiations between the invaders and the
+allied Koreans and Chinese had to be conducted in the Chinese script,
+the alien fathers were, as secretaries and interpreters, less useful
+than the native Japanese bonzes.
+
+Yet this jealousy and hostility in the camps of the invaders proved to
+be only correlative to the state of things in Japan. Even supposing the
+statistics in round numbers, reported at that time, to be exaggerated,
+and that there were not as many as the alleged two hundred thousand
+Christians, yet there were, besides scores of thousands of confessing
+believers among the common people, daimiōs, military leaders, court
+officers and many persons of culture and influence. Nevertheless, the
+predominating influence at the Kiōto court was that of Buddhism; and
+as the cult that winks at polygamy was less opposed to Hidéyoshi's
+sensualism and amazing vanity, the illustrious upstart was easily made
+hostile to the alien faith. According to the accounts of the Jesuits, he
+took umbrage because a Portuguese captain would not please him by
+risking his ship in coming out of deep water and nearer land, and
+because there were Christian maidens of Arima who scorned to yield to
+his degrading proposals. Some time after these episodes, an edict
+appeared, commanding every Jesuit to quit the country within twenty
+days. There were at this time sixty-five foreign missionaries in the
+country.
+
+Then began a series of persecutions, which, however, were carried on
+spasmodically and locally, but not universally or with system. Bitter in
+some places, they were neutralized or the law became a dead letter, in
+other parts of the realm. It is estimated that ten thousand new converts
+were made in the single year, 1589, that is, the second year after the
+issue of the edict, and again in the next year, 1590. It might even be
+reasonable to suppose that, had the work been conducted wisely and
+without the too open defiance of the letter of the law, the awful sequel
+which history knows, might not have been.
+
+Let us remember that the Duke of Alva, the tool of Philip II., failing
+to crush the Dutch Republic had conquered Portugal for his master. The
+two kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula were now united under one crown.
+Spain longed for trade with Japan, and while her merchants hoped to
+displace their Portuguese rivals, the Spanish Franciscans not scrupling
+to wear a political cloak and thus override the Pope's bull of
+world-partition, determined to get a foothold alongside of the Jesuits.
+So, in 1593 a Spanish envoy of the governor of the Philippine Islands
+came to Kiōto, bringing four Spanish Franciscan priests, who were
+allowed to build houses in Kiōto, but only on the express
+understanding that this was because of their coming as envoys of a
+friendly power, and with the explicitly specified condition that they
+were not to preach, either publicly or privately. Almost immediately
+violating their pledge and the hospitality granted them, these
+Spaniards, wearing the vestments of their order, openly preached in the
+streets. Besides exciting discord among the Christian congregations
+founded by the Jesuits, they were violent in their language.
+
+Hidéyoshi, to gratify his own mood and test his power as the actual
+ruler for a shadowy emperor, seized nine preachers while they were
+building churches at Kiōto and Osaka. They were led to the
+execution-ground in exactly the same fashion as felons, and executed by
+crucifixion, at Nagasaki, February 5, 1597. Three Portuguese Jesuits,
+six Spanish Franciscans and seventeen native Christians were stretched
+on bamboo crosses, and their bodies from thigh to shoulder were
+transfixed with spears. They met their doom uncomplainingly.
+
+In the eye of the Japanese law, these men were put to death, not as
+Christians, but as law-breakers and as dangerous political conspirators.
+The suspicions of Hidéyoshi were further confirmed by a Spanish
+sea-captain, who showed him a map of the world on which were marked the
+vast dominions of the King of Spain; the Spaniard informing the
+Japanese, in answer to his shrewd question, that these great conquests
+had been made by the king's soldiers following up the priests, the work
+being finished by the native and foreign allies.
+
+
+The Political Character of Roman Christianity.
+
+
+The Roman Catholic "Histoire del' Église Chrétienne" shows the political
+character of the missionary movement in Japan, a character almost
+inextricably associated with the papal and other political Christianity
+of the times, when State and Church were united in all the countries of
+Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. Even republican Holland, leader of
+toleration and forerunner of the modern Christian spirit, permitted,
+indeed, the Roman Catholics to worship in private houses or in sacred
+edifices not outwardly resembling churches, but prohibited all public
+processions and ceremonies, because religion and politics at that time
+were as Siamese twins. Only the Anabaptists held the primitive Christian
+and the American doctrine of the separation of politics from
+ecclesiasticism. Except in the country ruled by William the Silent, all
+magistrates meddled with men's consciences.[12]
+
+In 1597, Hidéyoshi died, and the missionaries took heart again. The
+Christian soldiers returning by thousands from Korea, declared
+themselves in favor of Hidéyori, son of the dead Taikō. Encouraged by
+those in power, and by the rising star Iyéyasŭ (1542-1616), the
+fathers renewed their work and the number of converts increased.
+
+Though peace reigned, the political situation was one of the greatest
+uncertainty, and with two hundred thousand soldiers gathered around
+Kiōto, under scores of ambitious leaders, it was hard to keep the
+sword in the sheath. Soon the line of cleavage found Iyéyasŭ and his
+northern captains on one side, and most of the Christian leaders and
+southern daimiōs on the other. In October, 1600, with seventy-five
+thousand men, the future unifier of Japan stood on the ever-memorable
+field of Sékigahara. The opposing army, led largely by Christian
+commanders, left their fortress to meet the one whom they considered a
+usurper, in the open field. In the battle which ensued, probably the
+most decisive ever fought on the soil of Japan, ten thousand men lost
+their lives. The leading Christian generals, beaten, but refusing out of
+principle because they were Christians, to take their own lives by
+_hara-kiri_, knelt willingly at the common blood-pit and had their heads
+stricken off by the executioner.
+
+Then began a new era in the history of the empire, and then were laid by
+Iyéyasŭ the foundation-lines upon which the Japan best known to
+Europe has existed for nearly three centuries. The creation of a central
+executive government strong enough to rule the whole empire, and hold
+down even the southern and southwestern daimiōs, made it still worse
+for the converts of the European teachers, because in the Land of the
+Gods government is ever intensely pagan.
+
+In adjusting the feudal relations of his vassals in Kiushiu, Iyéyasŭ
+made great changes, and thus the political status of the Christians was
+profoundly altered. The new daimiōs, carrying out the policy of their
+predecessors who had been taught by the Jesuits, but reversing its
+direction, began to persecute their Christian subjects, and to compel
+them to renounce their faith. One of the leading opposers of the
+Christians and their most cruel persecutor, was Kato, the zealous
+Nichirenite. Like Brandt, the famous Iroquois Indian, who, in the Mohawk
+Valley is execrated as a bloodthirsty brute, and on the Canadian side is
+honored with a marble statue and considered not only as the translator
+of the prayer-book but also as a saint; even also as Claverhouse, who,
+in Scotland is looked upon as a murderous demon, but in England as a
+conscientious and loyal patriot; so Kato, the _vir ter execrandus_ of
+the Jesuits, is worshipped in his shrine at the Nichiren temple at
+Ikégami, near Tōkiō,[13] and is praised by native historians as
+learned, brave and true.
+
+The Christians of Kiushiu, in a few cases, actually took up arms against
+their new rulers and oppressors, though it was a new thing under the
+Japanese sun for peasantry to oppose not only civil servants of the law,
+but veterans in armor. Iyéyasŭ, now having time to give his attention
+wholly to matters of government and to examine the new forces that had
+entered Japanese life, followed Hidéyoshi in the suspicion that, under
+the cover of the western religion, there lurked political designs. He
+thought he saw confirmation of his theories, because the foreigners
+still secretly or openly paid court to Hidéyori, and at the same time
+freely disbursed gifts and gold as well as comfort to the persecuted.
+Resolving to crush the spirit of independence in the converts and to
+intimidate the foreign emissaries, Iyéyasŭ with steel and blood put
+down every outbreak, and at last, in 1606, issued his edict[14]
+prohibiting Christianity.
+
+
+The Quarrels of the Christians.
+
+
+About the same time, Protestant influences began to work against the
+papal emissaries. The new forces from the triumphant Dutch republic,
+which having successfully defied Spain for a whole generation had
+reached Japan even before the Great Truce, were opposed to the Spaniards
+and to the influence of both Jesuits and Franciscans. Hollanders at
+Lisbon, obtaining from the Spanish archives charts and geographical
+information, had boldly sailed out into the Eastern seas, and carried
+the orange white and blue flag to the ends of the earth, even to Nippon.
+Between Prince Maurice, son of William the Silent, and the envoys of
+Iyéyasŭ, there was made a league of commerce as well as of peace and
+friendship. Will Adams,[15] the English pilot of the Dutch ships, by his
+information given to Iyéyasŭ, also helped much to destroy the Jesuits
+influence and to hurt their cause, while both the Dutch and English were
+ever busy in disseminating both correct information and polemic
+exaggeration, forging letters and delivering up to death by fire the
+_padres_ when captured at sea.
+
+In general, however, it may be said that while Christian converts and
+the priests were roughly handled in the South, yet there was
+considerable missionary activity and success in the North. Converts were
+made and Christian congregations were gathered in regions remote from
+Kiōto and Yedo, which latter place, like St. Petersburg in the West,
+was being made into a large city. Even outlying islands, such as Sado,
+had their churches and congregations.
+
+
+The Anti-Christian Policy of the Tokugawas.
+
+
+The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,[16] however, were
+probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the
+Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the
+government was especially aroused against the _bateren_, as the people
+called the _padres_, by their open and persistent violation of Japanese
+law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles
+had been sent to work the mines, Iyéyasŭ believed he had obtained
+documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long
+suspected--the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts
+and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject
+state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he
+believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo
+Shōgun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January
+27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple
+enemies--of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This
+proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come
+to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp
+possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof
+of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in
+this state paper, Iyéyasŭ shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese
+patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he
+tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two
+Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen
+foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists,
+were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of
+combustibles to Macao.
+
+Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves
+in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and
+continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of
+the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hidéyori would mount to
+power; but in 1615, Iyéyasŭ, finding a pretext for war,[19] called
+out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the
+most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it
+is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished.
+On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. After
+thousands of Hidéyori's followers had committed _hara-kiri_, and his own
+body had been burned into ashes, the Christian cause was irretrievably
+ruined.
+
+Hidétada, the successor of Iyéyasŭ in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to
+1622, seeing that his father's peaceful methods had failed in
+extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now pronounced
+sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the
+country. The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that
+ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from
+every country in Europe;[20] though from the Japanese side "The Catholic
+martyrology of Japan is still an untouched field for a [native]
+historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left
+standing were demolished, and temples and pagodas were erected upon
+their ruins. In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and
+Nagasaki. In 1621, Japanese were forbidden ever to leave the country. In
+1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels
+were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks,
+were allowed to be built.
+
+
+The Books of the Inferno Opened.
+
+
+For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were
+opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists
+equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in
+1636, even Japanese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination
+and submission, could stand it no longer. Then a man named Nirado Shiro
+raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others
+to follow him. Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and
+children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them,
+gathered from parts of Kiushiu. After burning Shintō and Buddhist
+temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving
+to die rather than submit. Against an army of veterans, led by skilled
+commanders, the fortress held out during four months. At last, after a
+bloody assault, it was taken, and men, women and children were
+slaughtered.[22] Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and
+sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling
+hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist Hells.
+
+All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also
+everything of foreign planting. The Portuguese were banished and the
+death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or
+half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao.
+All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and
+their relatives punished. The Christian cause now became like the doomed
+city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand
+and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to
+the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was
+the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to
+resurrection. So, Japanese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was
+supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments
+to prove the extirpative power of persecution.[23]
+
+Yet in 1859, on the opening of the country by treaty, the Roman Catholic
+fathers at Nagasaki found to their surprise that they were re-opening
+the old mines, and that their work was in historic continuity with that
+of their predecessors. The blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the
+church. Amid much ignorance and darkness, there were thousands of people
+who, through the Virgin, worshipped God; who talked of Jesus, and of the
+Holy Spirit; and who refused to worship at the pagan shrines[24].
+
+
+Summary of Roman Christianity in Japan.
+
+
+Let us now strive impartially to appraise the Christianity of this era,
+and inquire what it found, what it attempted to do, what it did not
+strive to attain, what was the character of its propagators, what was
+the mark it made upon the country and upon the mind of the people, and
+whether it left any permanent influence.
+
+The gospel net which had gathered all sorts of fish in Europe brought a
+varied quality of spoil to Japan. Among the Portuguese missionaries,
+beginning with Xavier, there are many noble and beautiful characters,
+who exemplified in their motives, acts, lives and sufferings some of the
+noblest traits of both natural and redeemed humanity. In their praise,
+both the pagan and the Christian, as well as critics biased by their
+prepossessions in favor either of the Reformed or the Roman phase of the
+faith, can unite.
+
+The character of the native converts is, in many instances, to be
+commended, and shows the direct truth of Christianity in fields of life
+and endeavor, in ethics and in conceptions, far superior to those which
+the Japanese religious systems have produced. In the teaching that there
+should be but one standard of morality for man and woman, and that the
+male as well as the female should be pure; in the condemnation of
+polygamy and licentiousness; in the branding of suicide as both wicked
+and cowardly; in the condemnation of slavery; and in the training of men
+and women to lofty ideals of character, the Christian teachers far
+excelled their Buddhist or Confucian rivals.
+
+The benefits which Japan received through the coming of the Christian
+missionaries, as distinct and separate from those brought by commerce
+and the merchants, are not to be ignored. While many things of value and
+influence for material improvement, and many beneficent details and
+elements of civilization were undoubtedly imported by traders, yet it
+was the priests and itinerant missionaries who diffused the knowledge of
+the importance of these things and taught their use throughout the
+country. Although in the reaction of hatred and bitterness, and in the
+minute, universal and long-continued suppression by the government, most
+of this advantage was destroyed, yet some things remained to influence
+thought and speech, and to leave a mark not only on the language, but
+also on the procedure of daily life. One can trace notable modifications
+of Japanese life from this period, lasting through the centuries and
+even until the present time.
+
+Christianity, in the sixteenth century, came to Japan only in its papal
+or Roman Catholic form. While in it was infused much of the power and
+spirit of Loyola and Xavier, yet the impartial critic must confess that
+this form was military, oppressive and political.[25] Nevertheless,
+though it was impure and saturated with the false principles, the vices
+and the embodied superstitions of corrupt southern Europe, yet, such as
+it was, Portuguese Christianity confronted the worst condition of
+affairs, morally, intellectually and materially, which Japan has known
+in historic times. Defective as the critic must pronounce the system of
+religion imported from Europe, it was immeasurably superior to anything
+that the Japanese had hitherto known.
+
+It must be said, also, that Portuguese Christianity in Japan tried to do
+something more than the mere obtaining of adherents or the nominal
+conversion of the people.[26] It attempted to purify and exalt their
+life, to make society better, to improve the relations between rulers
+and ruled; but it did not attempt to do what it ought to have done. It
+ignored great duties and problems, while it imitated too fully, not only
+the example of the kings of this world in Europe but also of the rulers
+in Japan. In the presence of soldier-like Buddhist priests, who had made
+war their calling, it would have been better if the Christian
+missionaries had avoided their bad example, and followed only in the
+footsteps of the Prince of Peace; but they did not. On the contrary,
+they brought with them the spirit of the Inquisition then in full blast
+in Spain and Portugal, and the machinery with which they had been
+familiar for the reclamation of native and Dutch "heretics." Xavier,
+while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition
+in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this
+infernal enginery in Japan if they could have done so. They had stamped
+and crushed out "heresy" in their own country, by a system of hellish
+tortures which in its horrible details is almost indescribable. The
+rusty relics now in the museums of Europe, but once used in church
+discipline, can be fully appreciated only by a physician or an
+anatomist. In Japan, with the spirit of Alva and Philip II., these
+believers in the righteousness of the Inquisition attacked violently the
+character of native bonzes, and incited their converts to insult the
+gods, destroy the Buddhist images, and burn or desecrate the old
+shrines. They persuaded the daimiōs, when these lords had become
+Christians, to compel their subjects to embrace their religion on pain
+of exile or banishment. Whole districts were ordered to become
+Christian. The bonzes were exiled or killed, and fire and sword as well
+as preaching, were employed as means of conversion. In ready imitation
+of the Buddhists, fictitious miracles were frequently got up to utilize
+the credulity of the superstitious in furthering the faith--all of which
+is related not by hostile critics, but by admiring historians and by
+sympathizing eye-witnesses.[27]
+
+The most prominent feature of the Roman Catholicism of Japan, was its
+political animus and complexion. In writings of this era, Japanese
+historians treat of the Christian missionary movement less as something
+religious, and more as that which influenced government and polities,
+rather than society on its moral side. So also, the impartial historian
+must consider that, on the whole, despite the individual instances of
+holy lives and unselfish purposes, the work of the Portuguese and
+Spanish friars and "fathers" was, in the main, an attempt to bring Japan
+more or less directly within the power of the Pope or of those rulers
+called Most Catholic Majesties, Christian Kings, etc., even as they had
+already brought Mexico, South America, and large portions of India under
+the same control. The words of Jesus before the Roman procurator had not
+been apprehended:--"My kingdom is not of this world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE
+
+    "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean"
+                            --Sanskrit and Japanese Proverb.
+
+    "When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch."
+                            --Japanese Proverb.
+
+    "The little island of Déshima, well and prophetically signifying
+    Fore-Island, was Japan's window, through which she looked at the
+    whole Occident ... We are under obligation to Holland for the
+    arts of engineering, mining, pharmacy, astronomy, and medicine
+    ... 'Rangaku' (i.e., Dutch learning) passed almost as a synonym
+    for medicine," [1615-1868].--Inazo Nitobé.
+
+    "The great peace, of which we are so proud, was more like the
+    stillness of stagnant pools than the calm surface of a clear
+    lake."--Mitsukuri.
+
+    "The ancestral policy of self-contentment must be done away
+    with. If it was adopted by your forefathers, because it was wise
+    in their time, why not adopt a new policy if it in sure to prove
+    wise in your time."--Sakuma Shozan, wrote in 1841, assassinated
+    1864.
+
+    "And slowly floating onward go
+    Those Black Ships, wave-tossed to and fro."
+                        --Japanese Ballad of the Black Ship, 1845.
+
+    "The next day was Sunday (July 10th), and, as usual, divine
+    service was held on board the ships, and, in accordance with
+    proper reverence for the day, no communication was held with the
+    Japanese authorities."
+        --Perry's Narrative.
+
+    "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
+    Praise Him, all creatures here below,
+    Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
+    Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
+        --Sung on U.S.S.S. Mississippi, in Yedo Bay, July 10, 1853.
+
+    "I refuse to see anyone on Sunday, I am resolved to set an
+    example of a proper observance of the Sabbath ... I will try to
+    make it what I believe it was intended to be--a day of
+    rest."--Townsend Harris's Diary, Sunday, August 31, 1856.
+
+    "I have called thee by thy name. I have surnamed thee, though
+    thou hast not known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else;
+    besides me there is no God."--Isaiah.
+
+    "I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been
+    slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they
+    held."--John.
+
+    "That they should seek God, If haply they might feel after him,
+    though he is not far from each one of us."--Paul.
+
+    "Other sheep have I which are not of this fold: them also I must
+    bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one
+    flock, one shepherd"--Jesus.
+
+CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE
+
+The Japanese Shut In.
+
+
+Sincerely regretting that we cannot pass more favorable judgments upon
+the Christianity of the seventeenth century in Japan, let us look into
+the two centuries of silence, and see what was the story between the
+paling of the Christian record in 1637, and the glowing of the
+palimpsest in 1859, when the new era begins.
+
+The policy of the Japanese rulers, after the supposed utter extirpation
+of Christianity, was the double one of exclusion and inclusion. A
+deliberate attempt, long persisted in and for centuries apparently
+successful, was made to insulate Japan from the shock of change. The
+purpose was to draw a whole nation and people away from the currents and
+movements of humanity, and to stereotype national thought and custom.
+This was carried out in two ways: first, by exclusion, and then by
+inclusion. All foreign influences were shut off, or reduced to a
+minimum. The whole western world, especially Christendom, was put under
+ban.
+
+Even the apparent exception made in favor of the Dutch was with the
+motive of making isolation more complete, and of securing the perfect
+safety which that isolation was expected to bring. For, having built,
+not indeed with brick and mortar, but by means of edict and law, both
+open and secret, a great wall of exclusion more powerful than that of
+China's, it was necessary that there should be a port-hole, for both
+sally and exit, and a slit for vigilant scrutiny of any attempt to force
+seclusion or violate the frontier. Hence, the Hollanders were allowed to
+have a small place of residence in front of a large city and at the head
+of a land-locked harbor. There, the foreigners being isolated and under
+strict guard, the government could have, as it were, a nerve which
+touched the distant nations, and could also, as with a telescope, sweep
+the horizon for signs of danger.
+
+So, in 1640, the Hollanders were ordered to evacuate Hirado, and occupy
+the little "outer island" called Déshima, in front of the city of
+Nagasaki, and connected therewith by a bridge. Any ships entering this
+hill-girdled harbor, it was believed, could be easily managed by the
+military resources possessed by the government. Vessels were allowed
+yearly to bring the news from abroad and exchange the products of Japan
+for those of Europe. The English, who had in 1617 opened a trade and
+conducted a factory for some years,[1] were unable to compete with the
+Dutch, and about 1624, after having lost in the venture forty thousand
+pounds sterling, withdrew entirely from the Japanese trade. The Dutch
+were thus left without a rival from Christendom.
+
+Japan ceased her former trade and communications with the Philippine
+Islands, Annam, Siam, the Spice Islands and India,[2] and begun to
+restrict trade and communication with Korea and China. The Koreans, who
+were considered as vassals, or semi-vassals, came to Japan to present
+their congratulations on the accession of each new Shōgun; and some
+small trade was done at Fusan under the superintendence of the daimiō
+of Tsushima. Even this relation with Korea was rather one of
+watchfulness. It sprang from the pride of a victor rather than from any
+desire to maintain relations with the rest of the world. As for China,
+the communication with her was astonishingly little, only a few junks
+crossing yearly between Nankin and Nagasaki; so that, with the exception
+of one slit in their tower of observation, the Japanese became well
+isolated from the human family.
+
+This system of exclusion was accompanied by an equally vigorous policy
+of inclusiveness. It was deliberately determined to keep the people from
+going abroad, either in their bodies or minds. All seaworthy ships were
+destroyed. Under pain of imprisonment and death, all natives were
+forbidden to go to a foreign country, except in the rare cases of urgent
+government service. By settled precedents it was soon made to be
+understood that those who were blown out to sea or carried away in
+stress of weather, need not come back; if they did, they must return
+only on Chinese and Korean vessels, and even then would be grudgingly
+allowed to land. It was given out, both at home and to the world, that
+no shipwrecked sailors or waifs would be welcomed when brought on
+foreign vessels.
+
+This inclusive policy directed against physical exportation, was still
+more stringently carried out when applied to imports affecting the minds
+of the Japanese. The "government deliberately attempted to establish a
+society impervious to foreign ideas from without, and fostered within by
+all sorts of artificial legislation. This isolation affected every
+department of private and public life. Methods of education were cast in
+a definite mould; even matters of dress and household architecture were
+strictly regulated by the State, and industries were restricted or
+forced into specified channels, thus retarding economic
+developments."[3]
+
+
+Starving of the Mind.
+
+
+In the science of keeping life within stunted limits and artificial
+boundaries, the Japanese genius excels. It has been well said that "the
+Japanese mind is great in little things and little in great things." To
+cut the tap-root of a pine-shoot, and, by regulating the allowance of
+earth and water, to raise a pine-tree which when fifty years old shall
+be no higher than a silver dollar, has been the proud ambition of many
+an artist in botany. In like manner, the Tokugawa Shōguns (1604-1868)
+determined to so limit the supply of mental food, that the mind of Japan
+should be of those correctly dwarfed proportions of puniness, so admired
+by lovers of artificiality and unconscious caricature. Philosophy was
+selected as a chief tool among the engines of oppression, and as the
+main influence in stunting the intellect. All thought must be orthodox
+according to the standards of Confucianism, as expounded by Chu Hi.
+Anything like originality in poetry, learning or philosophy must be
+hooted down. Art must follow Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese traditions.
+Any violation of this order would mean ostracism. All learning must be
+in the Chinese and Japanese languages--the former mis-pronounced and in
+sound bearing as much resemblance to Pekingise speech as "Pennsylvania
+Dutch" does to the language of Berlin. Everything like thinking and
+study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established
+order of things. The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or
+wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup.
+If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and
+plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant
+blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature
+and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance,
+of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the
+vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo
+authorities.
+
+Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in
+which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in
+order to test vital potency. It recalls the pretty little story of
+Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of
+the bricks in a prison yard. Besides the potent bonds of the only
+orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally
+recognized religions, there was gradually formed a marvellous system of
+legislation, that turned the whole nation into a secret society in which
+spies and hypocrites flourished like fungus on a dead log. Besides the
+unwritten code of private law,[4] that is, the local and general customs
+founded on immemorial usage, there was that peculiar legal system framed
+by Iyéyasŭ, bequeathed as a legacy and for over two hundred years
+practically the supreme law of the land.
+
+What this law was, it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly
+impossible, for the aliens dwelling in the country at Nagasaki ever to
+find out. Keenly intellectual, as many of the physicians,
+superintendents and elect members of the Dutch trading company were,
+they seem never to have been able to get hold of what has been called
+"The Testament of Iyéyasŭ."[5] This consisted of one hundred laws or
+regulations, based on a home-spun sort of Confucianism, intended to be
+orthodoxy "unbroken for ages eternal."
+
+To a man of western mode of thinking, the most astonishing thing is that
+this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible
+force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand.
+Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood,
+and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original
+instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the
+people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue of awe.
+
+
+The Dutchmen at Déshima.
+
+
+The Dutchmen who lived at Déshima for two centuries and a half, and the
+foreigners who first landed at the treaty ports in 1859, on inquiring
+about the methods of the Japanese Government, the laws and their
+administration, found that everything was veiled behind a vague
+embodiment of something which was called "the Law." What that law was,
+by whom enacted, and under what sanctions enforced, no one could tell;
+though all seemed to stand in awe of it as something of superhuman
+efficiency. Its mysteriousness was only equalled by the abject
+submission which it received.
+
+Foreign diplomatists, on trying to deal with the seat and source of
+authority, instead of seeing the real head of power, played, as it were,
+a game of chess against a mysterious hand stretched out from behind a
+curtain. Morally, the whole tendency of such a dual system of exclusion
+and of inclusion was to make a nation of liars, foster confirmed habits
+of deceit, and create a code of politeness vitiated by insincerity.
+
+With such repression of the natural powers of humanity, it was but in
+accordance with the nature of things that licentiousness should run
+riot, that on the fringes of society there should be the outcast and the
+pariah, and that the social waste of humanity by prostitution, by
+murder, by criminal execution under a code that prescribed the death
+penalty for hundreds of offences, should be enormous. It is natural also
+that in such a state of society population[7] should be kept down within
+necessary limits, not only by famine, by the restraints of feudalism, by
+legalized murder in the form of vendetta, by a system of prostitution
+that made and still makes Japan infamous, by child murder, by lack of
+encouragement given to feeble or malformed children to live, and by
+various devices known to those who were ingenious in keeping up so
+artificial a state of society.
+
+That there were many who tried to break through this wall, from both the
+inside and the outside, and to force the frontiers of exclusion and
+inclusion, is not to be wondered at. Externally, there were bold spirits
+from Christendom who burned to know the secrets of the mysterious land.
+Some even yearned to wear the ruby crown. The wonderful story of past
+Christian triumphs deeply stirred the heart of more than one fiery
+spirit, and so we find various attempts made by the clerical brethren of
+southern Europe to enter the country. Bound by their promises, the Dutch
+captains could not introduce these emissaries of a banned religion
+within the borders; yet there are several notable instances of Roman
+Catholic "religious"[8] getting themselves left by shipmasters on the
+shores of Japan. The lion's den of reality was Yedo. Like the lion's den
+of fable, the footprints all led one way, and where these led the bones
+of the victims soon lay.
+
+Besides these men with religious motives, the ships of the West came
+with offers of trade and threats of invasion. These were English,
+French, Russian and American, and the story of the frequent episodes has
+been told by Hildreth, Aston,[9] Nitobé, and others. There is also a
+considerable body of native literature which gives the inside view of
+these efforts to force the seclusion of the hermit nation, and coax or
+compel the Japanese to be more sociable and more human. All were in vain
+until the peaceful armada, under the flag of thirty-one stars, led by
+Matthew Calbraith Perry,[10] broke the long seclusion of this Thorn-rose
+of the Pacific, and the unarmed diplomacy of Townsend Harris,[11]
+brought Japan into the brotherhood of commercial and Christian nations.
+
+Within the isolating walls and the barred gates the story of the seekers
+after God is a thrilling one. The intellect of choice spirits, beating
+like caged eagles the bars of their prisons, yearned for more light and
+life. "Though an eagle be starving," says the Japanese proverb, "it will
+not eat grain;" and so, while the mass of the people and even the
+erudite, were content with ground food--even the chopped straw and husks
+of materialistic Confucianism and decayed Buddhism--there were noble
+souls who soared upward to exercise their God-given powers, and to seek
+nourishment fitted for that human spirit which goeth upward and not
+downward, and which, ever in restless discontent, seeks the Infinite.
+
+
+Protests of Inquiring Spirits.
+
+
+There is no stronger proof of the true humanity and the innate
+god-likeness of the Japanese, of their worthiness to hold and their
+inherent power to win a high place among the nations of the earth, than
+this longing of a few elect ones for the best that earth could give and
+Heaven bestow. We find men in travail of spirit, groping after God if
+haply they might find Him, following the ways of the Spirit along lines
+different, and in pathways remote, from those laid down by Confucius and
+his materialistic commentators, or by Buddha and his parodists or
+caricaturists. The story of the philosophers, who mutinied against the
+iron clamps and governmentally nourished system of the Séido College
+expounders, is yet to be fully told.[12] It behooves some Japanese
+scholar to tell it.
+
+How earnest truth-seeking Japanese protested and rebelled against the
+economic fallacies, against the political despotism, against the
+abominable usurpations, against the false strategies and against the
+inherent immoralities of the Tokugawa system, has of late years been set
+forth with tantalizing suggestiveness, but only in fragments, by the
+native historians. Heartrending is the narrative of these men who
+studied, who taught, who examined, who sifted the mountains of chaff in
+the native literature and writings, who made long journeys on foot all
+over the country, who furtively travelled in Korea and China, who
+boarded Dutch and Russian vessels, who secretly read forbidden books,
+who tried to improve their country and their people. These men saw that
+their country was falling behind not only the nations of the West, but,
+as it seemed to them, even the nations of the East. They felt that
+radical changes were necessary in order to reform the awful poverty,
+disease, licentiousness, national weakness, decay of bodily powers, and
+the creeping paralysis of the Samurai intellect and spirit. How they
+were ostracized, persecuted, put under ban, hounded by the spies, thrown
+into prison; how they died of starvation or of disease; how they were
+beheaded, crucified, or compelled to commit _hara-kiri_; how their books
+were purged by the censors, or put under ban or destroyed,[13] and their
+maps, writings and plates burned, has not yet been told. It is a story
+that, when fully narrated, will make a volume of extraordinary interest.
+It is a story which both Christian and human interests challenge some
+native author to tell. During all this time, but especially during the
+first half of the nineteenth century, there was one steady goal to which
+the aspiring student ever kept his faith, and to which his feet tended.
+There was one place of pilgrimage, toward which the sons of the morning
+moved, and which, despite the spy and the informer and the vigilance of
+governors, fed their spirits, and whence they carried the sacred fire,
+or bore the seed whose harvest we now see. That goal of the pilgrim band
+was Nagasaki, and the place where the light burned and the sacred flames
+were kindled was Déshima. The men who helped to make true patriots,
+daring thinkers, inquirers after truth, bringers in of a better time,
+yes, and even Christians and preachers of the good news of God, were
+these Dutchmen of Déshima.
+
+
+A Handful of Salt in a Stagnant Mass.
+
+
+The Nagasaki Hollanders were not immaculate saints, neither were they
+sooty devils. They did not profess to be Christian missionaries. On the
+other hand, they were men not devoid of conscience nor of sympathy with
+aspiring and struggling men in a hermit nation, eager for light and
+truth. The Dutchman during the time of hermit Japan, as we see him in
+the literature of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in
+trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking
+only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion,
+for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better,
+certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of
+his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the
+interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently
+honorable men far above the average European, and shining examples of
+Christianity and humanity. Even in his submission to the laws of the
+country, the Dutchman did no more, no less, but exactly as the
+daimiōs,[14] who like himself were subject to the humiliations
+imposed by the rulers in Yedo.
+
+It was the Dutch, who, for two hundred years supplied the culture of
+Europe to Japan, introduced Western science, furnished almost the only
+intellectual stimulant, and were the sole teachers of medicine and
+science.[15] They trained up hundreds of Japanese to be physicians who
+practised rational medicine and surgery. They filled with needed courage
+the hearts of men, who, secretly practising dissection of the bodies of
+criminals, demonstrated the falsity of Chinese ideas of anatomy. It was
+Dutch science which exploded and drove out of Japan that Chinese system
+of medicine, by means of which so many millions have, during the long
+ages, been slowly tortured to death.
+
+The Déshima Dutchman was a kindly adviser, helper, guide and friend, the
+one means of communication with the world, a handful of salt in the
+stagnant mass. Long before the United States, or Commodore Perry, the
+Hollanders advised the Yodo government in favor of international
+intercourse. The Dutch language, nearest in structure and vocabulary to
+the English, even richer in the descriptive energy of its terms, and
+saturated withal with Christian truth, was studied by eager young men.
+These speakers of an impersonal language which in psychological
+development was scarcely above the grade of childhood, were exercised in
+a tongue that stands second to none in Europe for purity, vigor,
+personality and philosophical power. The Japanese students of Dutch held
+a golden key which opened the treasures of modern thought and of the
+world's literature. The minds of thinking Japanese were thus made
+plastic for the reception of the ideas of Christianity. Best of all,
+though forbidden by their contracts to import Bibles into Japan, the
+Dutchmen, by means of works of reference, pointed more than one
+inquiring spirit to the information by which the historic Christ became
+known. The books which they imported, the information which they gave,
+the stimulus which they imparted, were as seeds planted within
+masonry-covered earth, that were to upheave and overthrow the fabric of
+exclusion and inclusion reared by the Tokugawa Shōguns.
+
+Time and space fail us to tell how eager spirits not only groped after
+God, but sought the living Christ--though often this meant to them
+imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all
+Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters
+of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots
+of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new
+ideas could be detected. To-day, as inquiry among the oldest of the
+Christian leaders and scores of volumes of modern biography shows, the
+most earnest and faithful among the preachers, teachers and soldiers in
+the Christian army, were led into their new world of ideas through Dutch
+culture. The fact is revealed in repeated instances, that, through
+father, grandfather, uncle, or other relative--some pilgrim to the Dutch
+at Nagasaki--came their first knowledge, their initial promptings, the
+environment or atmosphere, which made them all sensitive and ready to
+receive the Christian truth when it came in its full form from the
+living missionary and the vital word of God. Some one has well said that
+the languages of modern Europe are nothing more than Christianity
+expressed with differing pronunciation and vocabulary. To him who will
+receive it, the mastery of any one of the languages of Christendom, is,
+in a large sense, a revelation of God in Christ Jesus.
+
+
+Seekers after God.
+
+
+Pathetic, even to the compulsion of tears, is the story of these seekers
+after God. We, who to-day are surrounded by every motive and inducement
+to Christian living and by every means and appliance for the practice of
+the Christian life, may well consider for a moment the struggle of
+earnest souls to find out God. Think of this one who finds a Latin Bible
+cast up on the shore from some broken ship, and bearing it secretly in
+his bosom to the Hollander, gains light as to the meaning of its
+message. Think of the nobleman, Watanabé Oboru,[16] who, by means of the
+Japanese interpreter of Dutch, Takano Choyéi, is thrilled with the story
+of Jesus of Nazareth who helped and healed and spake as no other man
+spake, teaching with an authority above that of the masters Confucius or
+Buddha. Think of the daimiō of Mito,[17] who, proud in lineage,
+learned and scholarly, and surrounded by a host of educated men, is yet
+unsatisfied with what the wise of his own country could give him, and
+gathers around him the relics unearthed from the old persecutions. From
+a picture of the Virgin, a fragment of a litany, or it may be a part of
+a breviary, he tries to make out what Christianity is.
+
+Think of Yokoi Héishiro,[18] learned in Confucius and his commentators,
+who seeks better light, sends to China for a Chinese translation of the
+New Testament, and in his lectures on the Confucian ethics, to the
+delight and yet to the surprise of his hearers who hear grander truth
+than they are able to find in text or commentary, really preaches
+Christ, and prophesies that the time will come when the walls of
+isolation being levelled, the brightest intellects of Japan will welcome
+this same Jesus and His doctrine. Think of him again, when unable to
+purify the Augean stables of Yedo's moral corruption, because the time
+was at hand for other cleansing agencies, he retires to his home,
+content awhile with his books and flowers. Again, see him summoned to
+the capital, to sit at Kiōto--like aged Franklin among the young
+statesmen of the Constitution in Philadelphia--with the Mikado's
+youthful advisers in the new government of 1868. Think of him pleading
+for the elevation of the pariah Eta, accursed and outcast through
+Buddhism, to humanity and citizenship. Then hear him urge eloquently the
+right of personal belief, and argue for toleration under the law, of
+opinions, which the Japanese then stigmatized as "evil" and devilish,
+but which we, and many of them now, call sound and Christian. Finally,
+behold him at night in the public streets, assaulted by assassins, and
+given quick death by their bullet and blades. See his gray head lying
+severed from his body and in its own gore, the wretched murderers
+thinking they have stayed the advancing tide of Christianity; but at
+home there dwells a little son destined in God's providence to become an
+earnest Christian and one of the brilliant leaders of the native
+Christianity of Japan in our day.
+
+
+The Buddhist Inquisitors.
+
+
+During the nation's period of Thorn-rose-like seclusion, the three
+religions recognized by the law were Buddhism, Shintō and
+Confucianism. Christianity was the outlawed sect. All over the country,
+on the high-roads, at the bridges, and in the villages, towns and
+cities, the fundamental laws of the country were written on wooden
+tablets called kosatsŭ. These, framed and roofed for protection from
+the weather, but easily before the eyes of every man, woman and child,
+and written in a style and language understood of all, denounced the
+Christian religion as an accursed "sect," and offered gold to the spy
+and informer;[19] while once a year every Samurai was required to swear
+on the true faith of a gentleman that he had nothing to do with
+Christianity. From the seventeenth century, the country having been
+divided into parishes, the inquisition was under the charge of the
+Buddhist priests who penetrated into the house and family and guarded
+the graveyards, so that neither earth nor fire should embrace the
+carcass of a Christian, nor his dust or ashes defile the ancestral
+graveyards. Twice--in 1686 and in 1711--were the rewards increased and
+the Buddhist bloodhounds of Japan's Inquisition set on fresh trails. On
+one occasion, at Osaka, in 1839,[20] a rebellion broke out which was
+believed, though without evidence, to have been instigated in some way
+by men with Christian ideas, and was certainly led by Oshio, the bitter
+opponent of Buddhism, of Tokugawa, and of the prevalent Confucianism.
+Possibly, the uprising was aided by refugees from Korea. Those
+implicated were, after speedy trial, crucified or beheaded. In the
+southern part of the country the ceremony of Ebumi or trampling on the
+cross,[21] was long performed. Thousands of people were made to pass
+through a wicket, beneath which and on the ground lay a copper plate
+engraved with the image of the Christ and the cross. In this way it was
+hoped to utterly eradicate the very memory of Christianity, which, to
+the common people, had become the synonym for sorcery.
+
+But besides the seeking after God by earnest souls and the protest of
+philosophers, there was, amid the prevailing immorality and the
+agnosticism and scepticism bred by decayed Buddhism and the
+materialistic philosophy based on Confucius, some earnest struggles for
+the purification of morals and the spiritual improvement of the people.
+
+
+The Shingaku Movement.
+
+
+One of the most remarkable of the movements to this end was that of the
+Shingaku or New Learning. A class of practical moralists, to offset the
+prevailing tendency of the age to much speculation and because Buddhism
+did so little for the people, tried to make the doctrines of Confucius a
+living force among the great mass of people. This movement, though
+Confucian in its chief tone and color, was eclectic and intended to
+combine all that was best in the Chinese system with what could be
+utilized from Shintō and Buddhism. With the preaching was combined a
+good deal of active benevolence. Especially in the time of famine, was
+care for humanity shown. The effect upon the people was noticeable,
+followers multiplied rapidly, and it is said that even the government in
+many instances made them, the Shingaku preachers, the distributors of
+rice and alms for the needy. Some of the preachers became famous and
+counted among their followers many men of influence. The literary side
+of the movement[22] has been brought to the attention of English readers
+through Mr. Mitford's translation of three sermons from the volume
+entitled Shingaku Dōwa. Other discourses have been from time to time
+rendered into English, those by Shibata, entitled The Sermons of the
+Dove-like Venerable Master, being especially famous.
+
+This movement, interesting as it was, came to an end when the country
+began to be convulsed by the approaching entrance of foreigners, through
+the Perry treaty; but it serves to show, what we believe to be the
+truth, that the moral rottenness as well as the physical decay of the
+Japanese people reached their acme just previous to the apparition of
+the American fleet in 1853.
+
+The story of nineteenth century Reformed Christianity in Japan does not
+begin with Perry, or with Harris, or with the arrival of Christian
+missionaries in 1859; for it has a subterranean and interior history, as
+we have hinted; while that of the Roman form and order is a story of
+unbroken continuity, though the life of the tunnel is now that of the
+sunny road. The parable of the leaven is first illustrated and then that
+of the mustard-seed. Before Christianity was phenomenal, it was potent.
+Let us now look from the interior to the outside.
+
+On Perry's flag-ship, the Mississippi, the Bible lay open, a sermon was
+preached, and the hymn "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne" was sung, waking
+the echoes of the Japan hills. The Christian day of rest was honored on
+this American squadron. In the treaty signed in 1854, though it was
+made, indeed, with use of the name of God and terms of Christian
+chronology, there was nothing upon which to base, either by right or
+privilege, the residence of missionaries in the country. Townsend
+Harris, the American Consul-General, who hoisted his flag and began his
+hermit life at Shimoda, in September, 1855, had as his only companion a
+Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, who was later, in Yedo, to be assassinated
+by ronins.
+
+Without ship or soldier, overcoming craft and guile, and winning his way
+by simple honesty and perseverance, Mr. Harris obtained audience[23] of
+"the Tycoon" in Yedo, and later from the Shōgun's daring minister Ii,
+the signature to a treaty which guaranteed to Americans the rights of
+residence, trade and commerce. Thus Americans were enabled to land as
+citizens, and pursue their avocation as religious teachers. As the
+government of the United States of America knows nothing of the religion
+of American citizens abroad, it protects all missionaries who are
+law-abiding citizens, without regard to creed.[24]
+
+
+Japan Once More Missionary Soil.
+
+
+The first missionaries were on the ground as soon as the ports were
+open. Though surrounded by spies and always in danger of assassination
+and incendiarism, they began their work of mastering the language. To do
+this without trained teachers or apparatus of dictionary and grammar,
+was then an appalling task. The medical missionary began healing the
+swarms of human sufferers, syphilitic, consumptive, and those scourged
+by small-pox, cholera and hereditary and acute diseases of all sorts.
+The patience, kindness and persistency of these Christian men literally
+turned the edge of the sword, disarmed the assassin, made the spies'
+occupation useless, shamed away the suspicious, and conquered the nearly
+invincible prejudices of the government. Despite the awful under-tow in
+the immorality of the sailor, the adventurer and the gain-greedy
+foreigner, the tide of Christianity began steadily to rise.
+Notwithstanding the outbursts of the flames of persecution, the torture
+and imprisonment of Christian captives and exiles, and the slow worrying
+to death of the missionary's native teachers, inquirers came and
+converts were made. In 1868, after revolution and restoration, the old
+order changed, and duarchy and feudalism passed away. Quick to seize the
+opportunity, Dr. J.C. Hepburn, healer of bodies and souls of men,
+presented a Bible to the Emperor, and the gift was accepted.
+
+No sooner had the new government been established in safety, and the
+name of Yedo, the city of the Baydoor, been changed into that of
+Tōkiō, the Eastern Capital, than an embassy[25] of seventy persons
+started on its course round the world. At its head were three cabinet
+ministers of the new government and the court noble, Iwakura, of
+immemorial lineage, in whose veins ran the blood of the men called gods.
+Across the Pacific to the United States they went, having their initial
+audience of the President of the Republic that knows no state church,
+and whose Christianity had compelled both the return of the shipwrecked
+Japanese and the freedom of the slave.
+
+This embassy had been suggested and its course planned by a Christian
+missionary, who found that of the seventy persons, one-half had been his
+pupils.[26]
+
+
+The Imperial Embassy Round the World.
+
+
+The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of
+Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality
+clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their
+soil, and to regulate their own tariff. Secondarily, its members
+went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in
+the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in
+American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of
+education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others
+of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and
+obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.
+
+In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers,
+secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw
+them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and
+backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the
+modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life
+of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their
+inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces,
+their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless
+family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free
+churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the
+leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was
+barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely
+the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the
+telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public
+view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution
+was broken.
+
+The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in Japan is told,
+first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering
+of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and
+waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. A study of the Book of the
+Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian
+Church began. On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of
+the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in
+the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry's treaty
+ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in
+Japan.
+
+At this point our task is ended. We cannot even glance at the native
+Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to
+appraise the work of the foreign missionaries. He has read these pages
+in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the
+Japanese have been trained for higher forms of faith.
+
+The armies of Japan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing
+lines. The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being
+snapped asunder. May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of
+truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace
+whose kingdom is not of this world.
+
+May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the
+self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus
+Christ, be ushered in.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works:
+T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Kojiki, for
+Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes,
+Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things
+Japanese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow
+and Hawes's Hand-book for Japan, now continued in new editions (4th,
+1894), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers's Chinese
+Reader's Manual; M.E., The Mikado's Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr.
+Bunyiu Nanjio's A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects,
+Tōkiō, 1887.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who
+applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son
+of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer,
+and gazetteer. In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this
+lectureship in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Relation of
+the Bible to the Sciences," May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand
+dollars.]
+
+[Footnote 2: An American Missionary in Japan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L.
+Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Lucretia Coftin Mott.]
+
+[Footnote 4: "I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and
+making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I
+believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for
+all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that
+missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the
+languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."--Dr.
+Legge's Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York,
+1881.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions
+of 1859 and 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 7: One of the many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled
+by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the
+Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the
+modern Japanese sword (_katana_) as compared with the long and heavy
+(_ken_) of the "Divine" (_kami_) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of
+Japan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 8: The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia
+(which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in
+Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the
+Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev.
+Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]
+
+[Footnote 9: This is the contention of Professor Kumi, late of the
+Imperial University of Japan; see chapter on Shintō.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In illustration, comical or pitiful, the common people in
+Satsuma believe that the spirit of the great Saigo Takamori, leader of
+the rebellion of 1877, "has taken up its abode in the planet Mars,"
+while the spirits of his followers entered into a new race of frogs that
+attack man and fight until killed--Mounsey's The Satsuma Rebellion, p.
+217. So, also, the _Heiké-gani_, or crabs at Shimonoséki, represent the
+transmigration of the souls of the Heiké clan, nearly exterminated in
+1184 A.D., while the "Hōjō bugs" are the avatars of the execrated
+rulers of Kamakura (1219-1333 A.D.).--Japan in History, Folk-lore, and
+Art, Boston, 1892, pp. 115, 133.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The Future of Religion in Japan. A paper read at the
+Parliament of Religions by Nobuta Kishimoto.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The Ainos, though they deify all the chief objects of
+nature, such as the sun, the sea, fire, wild beasts, etc., often talk of
+a Creator, _Kotan kara kamui_, literally the God who made the World. At
+the fact of creation they stop short.... One gathers that the creative
+act was performed not directly, but through intermediaries, who were
+apparently animals."--Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12. See also on the
+Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Bird (Bishop),
+Vol. II.; The Ainu of Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's
+Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchcock's Report, Smithsonian
+Institute, Washington. Professor B. H. Chamberlain's invaluable "Aino
+Studies," Tōkiō, 1887, makes scholarly comparison of the Japanese
+and Aino language, mythology, and geographical nomenclature.]
+
+[Footnote 14: M.E., The Mythical Zoölogy of Japan, pp. 477-488. C.R.M.,
+_passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 15: See the valuable article entitled Demoniacal Possession,
+T.J., p. 106, and the author's Japanese Fox Myths, _Lippincott's
+Magazine_, 1873.]
+
+[Footnote 16: See the Aino animal stories and evidences of beast worship
+in Chamberlain's Aino Studies. For this element in Japanese life, see
+the Kojiki, and the author's Japanese Fairy World.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The proprietor of a paper-mill in Massachusetts, who had
+bought a cargo of rags, consisting mostly of farmers' cast off clothes,
+brought to the author a bundle of scraps of paper which he had found in
+this cheap blue-dyed cotton wearing apparel. Besides money accounts and
+personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests'
+certificates. See also B.H. Chamberlain's Notes on Some Minor Japanese
+Religious Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May,
+1893.]
+
+[Footnote 18: M.E., p. 440.]
+
+[Footnote 19: See the Lecture on Buddhism in its Doctrinal
+Development.--The Nichiren Sect.]
+
+[Footnote 20: The phallus was formerly a common emblem in all parts of
+Japan, Hondo, Kiushiu, Shikoku, and the other islands. Bayard Taylor
+noticed it in the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) Islands; Perry's Expedition to
+Japan, p. 196; Bayard Taylor's Expedition in Lew Chew; M.E., p. 33,
+note; Rein's Japan, p. 432; Diary of Richard Cocks, Vol. I., p. 283. The
+native guide-books and gazetteers do not allude to the subject.
+
+Although the author of this volume has collected considerable data from
+personal observations and the testimony of personal friends concerning
+the vanishing nature-worship of the Japanese, he has, in the text,
+scarcely more than glanced at the subject. In a work of this sort,
+intended both for the general reader as well as for the scientific
+student of religion, it has been thought best to be content with a few
+simple references to what was once widely prevalent in the Japanese
+archipelago.
+
+Probably the most thorough study of Japanese phallicism yet made by any
+foreign scholar is that of Edmund Buckley, A.M., Ph.D., of the Chicago
+University, Lecturer on Shintō, the Ethnic Faith of Japan, and on the
+Science of Religion. Dr. Buckley spent six years in central and
+southwestern Japan, most of the time as instructor in the Doshisha
+University, Kiōto. He will publish the results of his personal
+observations and studios in a monograph on phallicism, which will be on
+sale at Chicago University, in which the Buckley collection illustrating
+Shintō-worship has been deposited.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Mr. Takahashi Gorō, in his Shintō Shin-ron, or New
+Discussion of Shintō, accepts the derivation of the word _kami_ from
+_kabé_, mould, mildew, which, on its appearance, excites wonder. For
+Hirata's discussion, see T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 48. In a
+striking paper on the Early Gods of Japan, in a recent number of the
+Philosophical Magazine, published in Tōkiō, a Japanese writer, Mr.
+Kenjirō Hiradé, states also that the term kami does not necessarily
+denote a spiritual being, but is only a relative term meaning above or
+high, but this respect toward something high or above has created many
+imaginary deities as well as those having a human history. See also
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I., p. 55, note.]
+
+[Footnote 22: "There remains something of the Shintō heart after
+twelve hundred years of foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the
+marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the
+ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple
+countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and
+offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they
+see."--Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by Dr. George Wm. Knox.]
+
+[Footnote 23: M.E., p. 474. Honda the Samurai, pp. 256-267.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Kojiki, pp. 127, 136, 213, 217.]
+
+[Footnote 25: See S. and H., pp. 39, 76.
+
+"The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a
+sure sign of the presence of divinity. Near the spot where I live in
+Ko-ishi-kawa, Tōkiō, is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very
+old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field. The spot
+looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been
+placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot
+of the old tree." ...
+
+"As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the
+productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe,
+every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every
+part is in some measure the seat of the Deity."--Legendre's Progressive
+Japan, p. 258.]
+
+[Footnote 26: De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper,
+Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the
+Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.]
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHINTŌ; MYTHS AND RITUAL
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The scholar who has made profound researches in all
+departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of
+Shintō, is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier. He
+received the degree of B.A. from the London University. After several
+years' study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as
+student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill
+under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese.
+To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much
+indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides
+unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the
+way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing
+the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the
+T.A.S.J., on The Shintō Shrines at Isé, the Revival of Pure
+Shintō, and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for
+Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the
+original and later forms of Shintō.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen
+united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of
+Japan's chronology and early history is Mr. W.G. Aston of the British
+Civil Service. He studied at the Queen's University, Ireland, receiving
+the degree of M.A. He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August
+6, 1864. He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language,
+and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing
+of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years. See his
+valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great
+Britain. In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.,
+pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he
+is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late
+William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, Tōkiō,
+1880. He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the
+Japanese annals. We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 73.
+
+1. The earliest date of the accepted Japanese Chronology, the accuracy
+of which is confirmed by external evidence, is A.D. 461.
+
+2. Japanese History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist
+previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the
+annals of the sixth century must also be received with caution.)
+
+3. Korean History and Chronology are more trustworthy than those of
+Japan during the period previous to that date.
+
+4. While there was an Empress of Japan in the third century A.D., the
+statement that she conquered Korea is highly improbable.
+
+5. Chinese learning was introduced into Japan from Korea 120 years later
+than the date given in Japanese History.
+
+6. The main fact of Japan having a predominant influence in some parts
+of Korea during the fifth century is confirmed by the Korean and Chinese
+chronicles, which, however, show that the Japanese accounts are very
+inaccurate in matters of detail.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world of learning
+such signal service by his works on the Japanese language, and
+especially by his translation, with critical introduction and
+commentary, of the Kojiki, is an English gentleman, born at Southsea,
+Hampshire, England, on the 18th day of October, 1830. His mother was a
+daughter of the well-known traveller and author, Captain Basil Hall,
+R.N., and his father an Admiral in the British Navy. He was educated for
+Oxford, but instead of entering, for reasons of health, he spent a
+number of years in western Mid southern Europe, acquiring a knowledge of
+various languages and literatures. His coming to Japan (in May, 1873)
+was rather the result of an accident--a long sea voyage and a trial of
+the Japanese climate having been recommended. The country and the field
+of study suited the invalid well. After teaching for a time in the Naval
+College the Japanese honored themselves and this scholar by making him,
+in April, 1886, Professor of Philology at the Imperial University. His
+works, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, his various grammars and
+hand-books for the acquisition of the language, his Hand-book for Japan,
+his Aino Studies, Things Japanese, papers in the T.A.S.J. and his
+translation of the Kojiki are all of a high order of value. They are
+marked by candor, fairness, insight, and a mastery of difficult themes
+that makes his readers his constant debtors.]
+
+[Footnote 4: "If the term 'Altaic' be held to include Korean and
+Japanese, then Japanese assumes prime importance as being by far the
+oldest living representative of that great linguistic group, its
+literature antedating by many centuries the most ancient productions of
+the Manchus, Mongols, Turks, Hungarians, or Finns."--Chamberlain,
+Simplified Grammar, Introd., p. vi.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 13-14; Mr. Pom K. Soh's paper
+on Education in Korea; Report of U.S. Commissioner of Education,
+1890-91.]
+
+[Footnote 6: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 74; Bramsen's Chronological Tables,
+Introd., p. 34; T.J., p. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., p. 531.]
+
+[Footnote 8: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean." This
+proverb, so freely quoted throughout Chinese Asia, and in recent years
+so much applied to themselves by the Japanese, is of Hindu origin and is
+found in the Sanskrit.]
+
+[Footnote 9: This is shown with literary skill and power in a modern
+popular work, the title of which, Dai Nippon Kai-biyaku Yurai-iki,
+which, very freely indeed, may be translated Instances of Divine
+Interposition in Behalf of Great Japan. A copy of this work was
+presented to the writer by the late daimiō of Echizen, and was read
+with interest as containing the common people's ideas about their
+country and history. It was published in Yedo in 1856, while Japan was
+still excited over the visits of the American and European fleets. On
+the basis of the information furnished in this work General Le Gendre
+wrote his influential book, Progressive Japan, in which a number of
+quotations from the _Kai-biyaku_ may be read.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In the Kojiki, pp. 101-104, we have the poetical account
+of the abdication of the lord of Idzumo in favor of the Yamato
+conqueror, on condition that the latter should build a temple and have
+him honored among the gods. One of the rituals contains the
+congratulatory address of the chieftains of Idzumo, on their surrender
+to "the first Mikado, Jimmu Tennō." See also T.J., p. 206.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "The praying for Harvest, or Toshigoi no Matsuri, was
+celebrated on the 4th day of the 2d month of each year, at the capital
+in the Jin-Gi-Kuan or office for the Worship of the Shintō gods, and
+in the provinces by the chiefs of the local administrations. At the
+Jin-Gi-Kuan there were assembled the ministers of state, the
+functionaries of that office, the priests and priestesses of 573
+temples, containing 737 shrines, which were kept up at the expense of
+the Mikado's treasury, while the governors of the provinces
+superintended in the districts under their administration the
+performance of rites in honor of 2,395 other shrines. It would not be
+easy to state the exact number of deities to whom these 3,132 shrines
+were dedicated. A glance over the list in the 9th and 10th books of the
+Yengishiki shows at once that there were many gods who were worshipped
+in more than half-a-dozen different localities at the same time; but
+exact calculation is impossible, because in many cases only the names of
+the temples are given, and we are left quite in the dark as to the
+individuality of the gods to whom they were sacred. Besides these 3,132
+shrines, which are distinguished as Shikidai, that is contained in the
+catalogue of the Yengishiki, there were a large number of enumerated
+shrines in temples scattered all over the country, in every village or
+hamlet, of which it was impossible to take any account, just as at the
+present day there are temples of Hachiman, Kompira, Tenjin sama, San-no
+sama and Sengen sama, as they are popularly called, wherever twenty or
+thirty houses are collected together. The shrines are classed as great
+and small, the respective numbers being 492 and 2,640, the distinction
+being twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of
+offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly that the offerings in
+the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other
+they were placed on mats spread upon the earth. In the Yengishiki the
+amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness,
+but it will be sufficient if the kinds of articles offered are alone
+mentioned here. It will be seen, by comparison with the text of the
+norito, that they had varied somewhat since the date when the ritual was
+composed. The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven
+silk (_ashiginu_), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff
+called _shidori_ or _shidzu_, which is supposed by some to have been a
+striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity
+of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a
+pair of tables or altars (called _yo-kura-oki_ and _ya-kura-oki_), a
+shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag's
+horns, a hoe, a few measures of saké or rice-beer, some haliotis and
+bonito, two measures of _kituli_ (supposed to be salt roe), various
+kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a saké jar, and a few feet
+of matting for packing. To each of the temples of Watarai in Isé was
+presented in addition a horse; to the temple of the Harvest god Mitoshi
+no kami, a white horse, cock, and pig, and a horse to each of nineteen
+others.
+
+"During the fortnight which preceded the celebration of the service, two
+smiths and their journeymen, and two carpenters, together with eight
+inbe [or hereditary priests] were employed in preparing the apparatus
+and getting ready the offerings. It was usual to employ for the Praying
+for Harvest members of this tribe who held office in the Jin-Gi-Kuan,
+but if the number could not he made up in that office, it was supplied
+from other departments of state. To the tribe of quiver-makers was
+intrusted the special duty of weaving the quivers of wistaria tendrils.
+The service began at twenty minutes to seven in the morning, by our
+reckoning of time. After the governor of the province of Yamashiro had
+ascertained that everything was in readiness, the officials of the
+Jin-Gi-Kuan arranged the offerings on the tables and below them,
+according to the rank of the shrines for which they were intended. The
+large court of the Jin-Gi-Kuan where the service was held, called the
+Sai-in, measured 230 feet by 370. At one end were the offices and on the
+west side were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row,
+surrounded by a fence, to the interior of which three sacred archways
+(torii) gave access. In the centre of the court a temporary shed was
+erected for the occasion, in which the tables or altars were placed. The
+final preparations being now complete, the ministers of state, the
+virgin priestesses and priests of the temples to which offerings were
+sent by the Mikado, entered in succession, and took the places severally
+assigned to them. The horses which formed a part of the offerings were
+next brought in from the Mikado's stable, and all the congregation drew
+near, while the reader recited or read the norito. This reader was a
+member of the priestly family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their
+descent back to Ameno-koyané, one of the principal advisers attached to
+the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth. It is a
+remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the
+year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of
+age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to
+the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from
+Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split
+up into the Five Setsuké or governing families. At the end of each
+section the priests all responded 'O!' which was no doubt the equivalent
+of 'Yes' in use in those days. As soon as he had finished, the Nakatomi
+retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for
+conveyance and presentation to the gods to whose service they were
+attached. But a special messenger was despatched with the offerings
+destined to the temples at Watarai. This formality having been
+completed, the President of the Jin-Gi-Kuan gave the signal for breaking
+up the assembly." Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J., Vol. VII, pp.
+104-107.]
+
+[Footnote 12: S. and H., p. 461.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Consult Chamberlain's literal translations of the name in
+the Kojiki, and p. lxv. of his Introduction.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The parallel between the Hebrew and Japanese accounts of
+light and darkness, day and night, before the sun, has been noticed by
+several writers. See the comments of Hirata, a modern Shintō
+expounder.--T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 72.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Westminster Review, July, 1878, p. 19.]
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Kojiki, pp. 9-18; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 2: M.E., p. 43; McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, Art.
+Shintō; in T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, is to be found Mr. Satow's
+digest of the commentaries of the modern Shintō revivalists; in Mr.
+Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki, the text with abundant notes.
+See also Mr. Twan-Lin's Account of Japan up to A.D. 1200, by E.H.
+Parker. T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I.]
+
+[Footnote 3: "The various abstractions which figure at the commencement
+of the 'Records' (Kojiki) and of the 'Chronicles' (Nihongi) were
+probably later growths, and perhaps indeed were inventions of individual
+priests."--Kojiki, Introd., p. lxv. See also T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part
+I, p. 56. "Thus, not only is this part of the Kojiki pure twaddle, but
+it is not even consistent twaddle."]
+
+[Footnote 4: Kojiki, Section IX.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Dr. Joseph Edkins, D.D., author of Chinese Buddhism, who
+believes that the primeval religious history of men is recoverable, says
+in Early Spread of Religious Ideas, Especially in the Far East, p. 29,
+"In Japan Amatérasŭ, ... in fact, as I suppose, Mithras written in
+Japanese, though the Japanese themselves are not aware of this
+etymology." Compare Kojiki, Introduction, pp. lxv.-lxvii.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Kojiki, p. xlii.]
+
+[Footnote 7: T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 67.]
+
+[Footnote 8: E. Satow, Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 67-68.]
+
+[Footnote 9: This curious agreement between the Japanese and other
+ethnic traditions in locating "Paradise," the origin of the human family
+and of civilization, at the North Pole, has not escaped the attention of
+Dr. W.F. Warren, President of Boston University, who makes extended
+reference to it in his interesting and suggestive book, Paradise Found:
+The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole; A Study of the
+Prehistoric World, Boston, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The pure Japanese numerals equal in number the fingers;
+with the borrowed Chinese terms vast amounts can be expressed.]
+
+[Footnote 11: This custom was later revived, T.A.S.J., pp. 28, 31.
+Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II., p. 57; M.E., pp. 156, 238.]
+
+[Footnote 12: See in Japanese Fairy World, "How the Sun-Goddess was
+enticed out of her Cave." For the narrative see Kojiki, pp. 54-59;
+T.A.S.J., Vol. II., 128-133.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See Choméi and Wordsworth, A Literary Parallel, by J.M.
+Dixon, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., pp. 193-205; Anthologie Japonaise, by Leon de
+Rosny; Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese; Suyématsŭ's
+Genji Monogatari, London, 1882.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Oftentimes in studying the ancient rituals, those who
+imagine that the word Kami should be in all cases translated gods, will
+be surprised to see what puerility, bathos, or grandiloquence, comes out
+of an attempt to express a very simple, it may be humiliating,
+experience.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Mythology and Religious Worship of the Japanese,
+Westminster Review, July, 1878; Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J.,
+Vols. VII., IX.; Esoteric Shintō, by Percival Lowell, T.A.S.J, Vol.
+XXI.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Compare Sections IX. and XXIII. of the Kojiki.]
+
+[Footnote 17: This indeed seems to be the substance of the modern
+official expositions of Shintō and the recent Rescripts of the
+Emperor, as well as of much popular literature, including the
+manifestoes or confessions found on the persons of men who have
+"consecrated" themselves as "the instruments of Heaven for punishing the
+wicked," i.e., assassinating obnoxious statesmen. See The Ancient
+Religion, M.E., pp. 96-100; The Japan Mail, _passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 25-38.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Japanese Homes, by E.S. Morse, pp. 228-233, note, p. 832.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Geological Survey of Japan, by Benj. S. Lyman, 1878-9.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The Shell Mounds of Omori; and The Tokio Times, Jan. 18,
+1879, by Edward S. Morse; Japanese Fairy World, pp. I78, 191, 196.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Kojiki, pp. 60-63.]
+
+[Footnote 24: S. and H., pp. 58, 337, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 25: This study in comparative religion by a Japanese, which
+cost the learned author his professorship in the Téi-Koku Dai Gaku or
+Imperial University (lit. Theocratic Country Great Learning Place), has
+had a tendency to chill the ardor of native investigators. His paper was
+first published in the Historical Magazine of the University, but the
+wide publicity and popular excitement followed only after republication,
+with comments by Mr. Taguchi, in the Kéizai Zasshi (Economical Journal).
+The Shintōists denounced Professor Kumi for "making our ancient
+religion a branch of Christianity," and demanded and secured his
+"retirement" by the Government. See Japan Mail, April 2, 1892, p. 440.]
+
+[Footnote 26: T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., p. 282.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Kojiki, p. xxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 28: For the use of salt in modern "Esoteric" Shintō, both
+in purification and for employment as of salamandrine, see T.A.S.J., pp.
+125, 128.]
+
+[Footnote 29: In the official census of 1893, nine Shintō sects are
+named, each of which has its own Kwancho or Presiding Head, recognized
+by the government. The sectarian peculiarities of Shintō have been
+made the subject of study by very few foreigners. Mr. Satow names the
+following:
+
+The Yui-itsu sect was founded by Toshida Kané-tomo. His signature
+appears as the end of a ten-volume edition, issued A.D. 1503, of the
+liturgies extracted from the Yengishiki or Book of Ceremonial Law, first
+published in the era of Yengi (or En-gi), A.D. 901-922. He is supposed
+to be the one who added the _kana_, or common vernacular script letters,
+to the Chinese text and thus made the norito accessible to the people.
+The little pocket prayer-books, folded in an accordeon-like manner, are
+very cheap and popular. The sect is regarded as heretical by strict
+Shintōists, as the system Yuwiitsu consists "mainly of a Buddhist
+superstructure on a Shintō foundation." Yoshida applied the tenets of
+the Shingon or True Word sect of Buddhists to the understanding and
+practice of the ancient god-way.
+
+The Suiga sect teaches a system which is a combination of Yuwiitsu and
+of the modern philosophical form of Confucianism as elaborated by Chu
+Hi, and known in Japan as the Téi-shu philosophy. The founder was
+Yamazaki Ansai, who was born in 1618 and died in 1682. By combining the
+forms of the Yoshida sect, which is based on the Buddhism of the Shingon
+sect, with the materialistic philosophy of Chu Hi, he adapted the old
+god-way to what he deemed modern needs.
+
+In the Déguchi sect, the ancient belief is explained by the Chinese Book
+of Changes (or Divination). Déguchi Nobuyoshi, the founder, was
+god-warden or _kannushi_ of the Géiku or Outer Palace Temple at Isé. He
+promulgated his views about the year 1660, basing them upon the book
+called Éki by the Japanese and Yi-king by the Chinese. This Yi-king,
+which Professor Terrien de Laeouporie declares is only a very ancient
+book of pronunciation of comparative Accadian and Chinese Syllabaries,
+has been the cause of incredible waste of labor, time, and brains in
+China--enough to have diked the Yellow River or drained the swamps of
+the Empire. It is the chief basis of Chinese superstition, and the
+greatest literary barrier to the advance of civilization. It has also
+made much mischief in Japan. Déguchi explained the myths of the age of
+the gods by divination or éki, based on the Chinese books. As late as
+1893 there was published in Tōkiō a work in Japanese, with good
+translation info English, on Scientific Morality, or the practical
+guidance of life by means of divination--The Takashima Ékidan (or
+Monograph on the Éki of Mr. Takashima), by S. Sugiura.
+
+The Jikko sect, according to its representative at the World's
+Parliament of Religions at Chicago, is "the practical." It lays stress
+less upon speculation and ritual, and more upon the realization of the
+best teachings of Shintō. It was founded by Haségawa Kakugiō, who
+was born at Nagasaki in 1541. Living in a cave in Fuji-yama, "he
+received inspiration through the miraculous power of the mountain." It
+believes in one absolute Deity, often mentioned in the Kojiki, which,
+self-originated, took the embodiment of two deities, one with the male
+nature and the other female, though these two deities are nothing but
+forms of the one substance and unite again in the absolute deity. These
+gave birth to the Japanese Archipelago, the sun and moon, the mountains
+and streams, the divine ancestors, etc. According to the teachings of
+this sect, the peerless mountain, Fuji, ought to be reverenced as the
+sacred abode of the divine lord, and as "the brains of the whole globe."
+The believer must make Fuji the example and emblem of his thought and
+action. He must be plain and simple, as the form of the mountain, making
+his body and mind pure and serene, as Fuji itself. The present world
+with all its practical works must be respected more than the future
+world. We must pray for the long life of the country, lead a life of
+temperance and diligence, cooperating with one another in doing good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Statistics of Shintōism._
+
+From the official Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon, 1894. In 1801
+there were nine administrative heads of sects; 75,877 preachers,
+priests, and shrine-keepers, with 1,158 male and 228 female students.
+There were 163 national temples of superior rank and 136,652 shrines or
+temples in cities and prefectures; a total of 193,153, served by 14,700
+persons of the grade of priests. Most of the expenses, apart from
+endowments and local contributions, are included in the first item of
+the annual Treasury Budget, "Civil List, Appanage and Shintō
+Temples."]
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated
+a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate
+of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial
+Calvinism of a later day."--Francis L. Patton, in Schaff-Herzog
+Encyclopædia, Article on Charles Hodge.]
+
+[Footnote 2: We use Dr. James Legge's spelling, by whom these classics
+have been translated into English. See Sacred Books of the East, edited
+by Max Müller.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary
+history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of
+exposition, and of criticism, both "lower" and "higher." As arranged
+under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of--I. The
+Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius's book,
+The Annals of State of Lu); II. The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the
+same work of Confucius; III. The Old Text of the Book of History; IV.
+The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the
+Odes as handed down to the present day. The generally accepted
+arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty
+(A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century: I.
+The Great Learning; II. The Doctrine of the Mean; III. Conversations of
+Confucius; IV. The Sayings of Mencius.--C.R.M., pp. 306-309.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge's
+Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.]
+
+[Footnote 6: See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political
+Science, Chicago, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 7: This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow,
+Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shintō and Japanese
+history. On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by
+William Bramsen, Tōkiō, 1880, and Dr. David Murray's Japan (p.
+95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.]
+
+[Footnote 8: The absurd claim made by some Shintōists that the
+Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi
+(god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in
+Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol. III.,
+Appendix, p. 77. Mr. Satow shows "their unmistakable identity with the
+Corean alphabet."]
+
+[Footnote 9: For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who
+fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and
+Professor E.W. Clement's paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.]
+
+[Footnote 10: "We have consecrated ourselves as the instruments of
+Heaven for punishing the wicked man,"--from the document submitted to
+the Yedo authorities, by the assassins of Ii Kamon no Kami, in Yedo,
+March 23, 1861, and signed by seventeen men of the band. For numerous
+other instances, see the voluminous literature of the Forty-seven
+Rōnins, and the Meiji political literature (1868-1893), political and
+historical documents, assassins' confessions, etc., contained in that
+thesarus of valuable documents, The Japan Mail; Kinsé Shiriaku, or Brief
+History of Japan, 1853-1869, Yokohama, 1873, and Nihon Guaishi,
+translated by Mr. Ernest Satow; Adams's History of Japan; T.A.S.J., Vol.
+XX., p. 145; Life and Letters of Yokoi Héishiro; Life of Sir Harry
+Parkes, London, 1893, etc., for proof of this assertion.]
+
+[Footnote 11: For proof of this, as to vocabulary, see Professor B.H.
+Chamberlain's Grammars and other philological works; Mr. J.H. Gubbins's
+Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, with Introduction, three vols.,
+Tōkiō 1892; and for change in structure, Rev. C. Munzinger, on The
+Psychology of the Japanese Language in the Transactions of the Gorman
+Asiatic Society of Japan. See also Mental Characteristics of the
+Japanese, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., pp. 17-37.]
+
+[Footnote 12: See The Ghost of Sakura, in Mitfoid's Tales of Old Japan,
+Vol. II, p. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 13: M.E., 277-280. See an able analysis of Japanese feudal
+society, by M.F. Dickins, Life of Sir Harry Parkes, pp. 8-13; M.E., pp.
+277-283.]
+
+[Footnote 14: This subject is discussed in Professor Chamberlain's
+works; Mr. Percival Lowell's The Soul of the Far East; Dr. M.L. Gordon's
+An American Missionary in Japan; Dr. J.H. De Forest's The Influence of
+Pantheism, in The Japan Evangelist, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 15: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., p. 96.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The Forty Seven-Rōnins, Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.;
+Chiushiugura, by F.V. Dickens; The Loyal Rōnins, by Edward Greey;
+Chiushiugura, translated by Enouyé.]
+
+[Footnote 17: See Dr. J.H. De Forest's article in the Andover Review,
+May, June, 1893, p. 309. For details and instances, see the Japanese
+histories, novels, and dramas; M.E.; Rein's Japan; S. and H.; T.A.S.J.,
+etc. Life of Sir Harry Parkes, p. 11 _et passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 18: M.E. pp. 180-192, 419. For the origin and meaning of
+hara-kiri, see T.J., pp. 199-201; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.,
+Appendix; Adams's History of Japan, story of Shimadzŭ.]
+
+[Footnote 19: M.E., p. 133.]
+
+[Footnote 20: For light upon the status of the Japanese family, see F.O.
+Adams's History of Japan, Vol. II., p. 384; Kinsé Shiriaku, p. 137;
+Naomi Tamura, The Japanese Bride, New York, 1893; E.H. House, Yoné
+Santo, A Child of Japan, Chicago, 1888; Japanese Girls and Women, by
+Miss A.M. Bacon, Boston, 1891; T.J., Article Woman, and in Index,
+Adoption, Children, etc.; M.E., 1st ed., p. 585; Marriage in Japan,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 114; and papers in the German Asiatic Society
+of Japan.]
+
+[Footnote 21: See Mr. F.W. Eastlake's papers in the Popular Science
+Monthly.]
+
+[Footnote 22: See Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. II, pp. 181-182. "It is
+to be feared, however, that this reform [of the Yoshiwara system], like
+many others in Japan, never got beyond paper, for Mr. Norman in his
+recent book, The Real Japan [Chap. XII.], describes a scarcely modified
+system in full vigor." See also Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 289-292.]
+
+[Footnote 23: See Pung Kwang Yu's paper, read at the Parliament of
+Religions in Chicago, and The Chinese as Painted by Themselves, by
+Colonel Tcheng-Ki-Tong, New York and London, 1885. Dr. W.A.P. Martin's
+scholarly book, The Chinese, New York, 1881, in the chapter Remarks on
+the Ethical Philosophy of the Chinese, gives in English and Chinese a
+Chart of Chinese Ethics in which the whole scheme of philosophy, ethics,
+and self-culture is set forth.]
+
+[Footnote 24: See an exceedingly clear, able, and accurate article on
+The Ethics of Confucius as Seen in Japan, by the veteran scholar, Rev.
+J.H. De Forest, The Andover Review, May, June, 1893. He is the authority
+for the statements concerning non-attendance (in Old Japan) of the
+husband at the wife's, and older brother at younger brother's funeral.]
+
+[Footnote 25: A Japanese translation of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures,
+in a Tōkiō morning newspaper "met with instant and universal
+approval," showing that Douglas Jerrold's world-famous character has her
+counterpart in Japan, where, as a Japanese proverb declares, "the tongue
+three inches long can kill a man six feet high." Sir Edwin Arnold and
+Mr. E.H. House, in various writings, have idealized the admirable traits
+of the Japanese woman. See also Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's Glimpses of
+Unfamiliar Japan, Boston, 1894; and papers (The Eternal Feminine, etc.),
+in the Atlantic Monthly.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Summary of the Japanese Penal Codes, T.A.S.J., Vol. V.,
+Part II.; The Penal Code of Japan, and The Code of Criminal Procedure of
+Japan, Yokohama.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 114; the Chapter on Marriage
+and Divorce, in Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 57-84. The following
+figures are from the Résumé Statistique de L'Empire du Japon, published
+annually by the Imperial Government:
+
+        MARRIAGES.              DIVORCES.
+        Number.  Per 1,000    Number.  Per 1,000
+                 Persons.              Persons.
+
+1887....334,149  8.55         110,859  2.84
+1888....330,246  8.34         109,175  2.76
+1889....340,445  8.50         107,458  2.68
+1890....325,141  8.04         197,088  2.70
+1891....352,051  8.00         112,411  2.76
+1892....348,489  8.48         113,498  2.76
+]
+
+[Footnote 28: This was strikingly brought out in the hundreds of English
+compositions (written by students of the Imperial University, 1872-74,
+describing the home or individual life of students), examined and read
+by the author.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto--Héauton
+Tomoroumenos, Act--, Scene 1, line 25, where Chremes inquires about his
+neighbor's affairs. For the golden rule of Jesus and the silver rule of
+Confucius, see Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese.]
+
+[Footnote 30: "What you do not want done to yourselves, do not do to
+others." Legge, The Religions of China, p. 137; Doolittle's Social Life
+of the Chinese; The Testament of Iyéyasŭ;, Cap. LXXI., translated by
+J.C. Lowder, Yokohama, 1874.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Die politische Bedeutung der amerikanischer Expedition
+nach Japan, 1852, by Tetsutaro Yoshida, Heidelberg, 1893; The United
+States and Japan (p. 39), by Inazo Nitobé, Baltimore, 1891; Matthew
+Calbraith Perry, Chap. XXVIII.; T.J., Article Perry; Life and Letters of
+S. Wells Williams, New York, 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 32: See Life of Matthew Calbraith Perry, pp. 363, 364.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Lee's Jerusalem Illustrated, p. 88.]
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM
+
+
+[Footnote 1: See On the Early History of Printing in Japan, by E.M.
+Satow, T.A.S.J., Vol. X., pp. 1-83, 252-259; The Jesuit Mission Press in
+Japan, by E.M. Satow (privately printed, 1888), and Review of this
+monograph by Professor B.H. Chamberlain, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., pp.
+91-100.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, by Ernest W. Clement,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., pp. 1-24, and Letters in The Japan Mail, 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Effect of Buddhism on the Philosophy of the Sung Dynasty,
+p. 318, Chinese Buddhism, by Rev. J. Edkins, Boston, 1880.]
+
+[Footnote 4: C.R.M., p. 200; The Middle Kingdom, by S. Wells Williams,
+Vol. II., p. 174.]
+
+[Footnote 5: C.R.M., p. 34. He was the boy-hero, who smashed with a
+stone the precious water-vase in order to save from drowning a playmate
+who had tumbled in, so often represented in Chinese popular art.]
+
+[Footnote 6: C.R.M., pp. 25-26; The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., pp. 113,
+540, 652-654, 677.]
+
+[Footnote 7: This decade in Chinese history was astonishingly like that
+of the United States from 1884 to 1894, in which the economical theories
+advocated in certain journals, in the books Progress and Poverty,
+Looking Backward, and by the Populists, have been so widely read and
+discussed, and the attempts made to put them into practice. The Chinese
+theorist of the eleventh century, Wang Ngan-shih was "a poet and author
+of rare genius."--C.R.M., p. 244.]
+
+[Footnote 8: John xxi. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 9: This is the opinion of no less capable judges than Dr.
+George Wm. Knox and Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The United States and Japan, pp. 25-27; Life of Takano
+Choyéi by Kato Sakayé, Tōkiō, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Note on Japanese Schools of Philosophy, by T. Haga, and
+papers by Dr. G.W. Knox, Dr. T. Inoué, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX, Part I.]
+
+[Footnote 12: A religion, surely, with men like Yokoi Héishiro.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See pp. 110-113.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Kinno_--loyalty to the Emperor; T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p.
+147.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "Originally recognizing the existence of a Supreme
+personal Deity, it [Confucianism] has degenerated into a pantheistic
+medley, and renders worship to an impersonal _anima mundi_ under the
+leading forms of visible nature."--Dr. W.A.P. Martin's The Chinese, p.
+108.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Ki, Ri, and Ten, Dr. George Wm. Knox, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX.,
+pp. 155-177.]
+
+[Footnote 17: T.J., p. 94.]
+
+[Footnote 18: T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. 156.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Matthew Calbraith Perry, p. 373; Japanese Life of Yoshida
+Shoin, by Tokutomi, Tōkiō, 1894; Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol.
+II., p. 83.]
+
+[Footnote 20: "The Chinese accept Confucius in every detail, both as
+taught by Confucius and by his disciples.... The Japanese recognize both
+religions [Buddhism and Confucianism] equally, but Confucianism in Japan
+has a direct bearing upon everything relating to human affairs,
+especially the extreme loyalty of the people to the emperor, while the
+Koreans consider it more useful in social matters than in any other
+department of life, and hardly consider its precepts in their business
+and mercantile relations."
+
+"Although Confucianism is counted a religion, it is really a system of
+sociology.... Confucius was a moralist and statesman, and his disciples
+are moralists and economists."--Education in Korea, by Mr. Pom K. Soh,
+of the Korean Embassy to the United States; Report of U.S. Commissioner
+of Education, 1890-91, Vol. I., pp. 345-346.]
+
+[Footnote 21: In Bakin, who is the great teacher of the Japanese by
+means, of fiction, this is the idea always inculcated.]
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA
+
+
+[Footnote 1: See his Introduction to the Saddharma Pundarika, Sacred
+Books of the East, and his Buddhismus.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Buddhism;
+Non-Christian Religious Systems--Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The sketch of Indian thought here following is digested
+from material obtained from various works on Buddhism and from the
+Histories of India. See the excellent monograph of Romesh Chunder Dutt,
+in Epochs of Indian History, London and New York, 1893; and Outlines of
+The Mahayana, as Taught by Buddha ("for circulation among the members of
+the Parliament of Religions," and distributed in Chicago), Tokiō,
+1893.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Dyaus-Pitar, afterward _zeus patêr_. See Century
+Dictionary, Jupiter.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Yoga is the root form of our word yoke, which at once
+suggests the union of two in one. See Yoga, in The Century Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Dutt's History of India.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The differences between the simple primitive narrative of
+Gautama's experiences in attaining Buddhahood, and the richly
+embroidered story current in later ages, may be seen by reading, first,
+Atkinson's Prince Sidartha, the Japanese Buddha, and then Arnold's Light
+of Asia. See also S. and H., Introduction, pp. 70-84, etc. Atkinson's
+book is refreshing reading after the expurgation and sublimation of the
+same theme in Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Romesh Chunder Dutt's Ancient India, p. 100.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Origin and Growth of Religion by T. Rhys Davids, p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Job i. 6, Hebrew.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Buddhism so far from tracing 'all things' to 'matter' as
+their original, denies the reality of matter, but it nowhere denies the
+reality of existence."--The Phoenix, Vol. I., p. 156.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See A Year among the Persians, by Edward G. Browne,
+London, 1893.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Dutt's History of India, pp. 153-156. See also Mozoomdar's
+The Spirit of God, p. 305. "Buddhism, though for a long time it
+supplanted the parent system, was the fulfilment of the prophecy of
+universal peace, which Hinduism had made; and when, in its turn, it was
+outgrown by the instincts of the Aryans, it had to leave India indeed
+forever, but it contributed quite as much to Indian religion as it had
+ever borrowed."]
+
+[Footnote 15: Korean Repository, Vol. I., pp. 101, 131, 153; Siebold's
+Nippon, Archiv; Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1890-91,
+Vol. I., p. 346; Dallet's Histoire de l'Église de Corée, Vol. 1.,
+Introd., p. cxlv.; Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 331.]
+
+[Footnote 16: See Brian H. Hodgson's The Literature and History of the
+Buddhists, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which is
+epitomized in The Phoenix, Vol. I.; Beal's Buddhism in China, Chap. II.;
+T. Rhys Davids's Buddhism, etc. To Brian Houghton Hodgson, (of whose
+death at the ripe age of ninety-three years we read in Luzac's Oriental
+List) more than to any one writer, are we indebted for our knowledge of
+Northern or Mahayana Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 17: See the very accurate, clear, and full definitions and
+explanations in The Century Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 18: This subject is fully discussed by Professor T. Rhys
+Davids in his compact Manual of Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 19: See Century Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Jap. Mon-ju. One of the most famous images of this
+Bodhisattva is at Zenkô-ji, Nagano. See Kern's Saddharma Pundarika, p.
+8, and the many referents to Manjusri in the Index. That Manjusri was
+the legendary civilizer of Nepaul seems probable from the following
+extract from Brian Hodgson: "The Swayambhu Purana relates in substance
+as follows: That formerly the valley of Nepaul was of circular form, and
+full of very deep water, and that the mountains confining it were
+clothed with the densest forests, giving shelter to numberless birds and
+beasts. Countless waterfowl rejoiced in the waters....
+
+"... Vipasyi, having thrice circumambulated the lake, seated himself in
+the N.W. (Váyubona) side of it, and, having repeated several mantras
+over the root of a lotos, he threw it into the water, exclaiming, 'What
+time this root shall produce a flower, then, from out of the flower,
+Swayambhu, the Lord of Agnishtha Bhuvana, shall be revealed in the form
+of flame; and then shall the lake become a cultivated and populous
+country.' Having repeated these words, Vipasyi departed. Long after the
+date of this prophecy, it was fulfilled according to the letter....
+
+"... When the lake was dessicated (by the sword of Manjusri says the
+myth--probably earthquake) Karkotaka had a fine tank built for him to
+dwell in; and there he is still worshipped, also in the cave-temple
+appendant to the great Buddhist shrine of Swayambhu Nath....
+
+"... The Bodhisatwa above alluded to is Manju Sri, whose native place is
+very far off, towards the north, and is called Pancha Sirsha Parvata
+(which is situated in Maha China Des). After the coming of Viswabhu
+Buddha to Naga Vasa, Manju Sri, meditating upon what was passing in the
+world, discovered by means of his divine science that
+Swayambhu-jyotirupa, that is, the self-existent, in the form of flame,
+was revealed out of a lotos in the lake of Naga Vasa. Again, he
+reflected within himself: 'Let me behold that sacred spot, and my name
+will long be celebrated in the world;' and on the instant, collecting
+together his disciples, comprising a multitude of the peasantry of the
+land, and a Raja named Dharmakar, he assumed the form of Viswakarma, and
+with his two Devis (wives) and the persons above-mentioned, set out upon
+the long journey from Sirsha Parvata to Naga Vasa. There having arrived,
+and having made puja to the self-existent, he began to circumambulate
+the lake, beseeching all the while the aid of Swayambhu in prayer. In
+the second circuit, when he had reached the central barrier mountain to
+the south, he became satisfied that that was the best place whereat to
+draw off the waters of the lake. Immediately he struck the mountain with
+his scimitar, when the sundered rock gave passage to the waters, and the
+bottom of the lake became dry. He then descended from the mountain, and
+began to walk about the valley in all directions."--The Phoenix, Vol.
+II., pp. 147-148.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Jap. Kwannon, god or goddess of mercy, in his or her
+manifold forms, Thousand-handed, Eleven-faced, Horse-headed, Holy, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Or, The Lotus of the Good Law, a mystical name for the
+cosmos. "The good law is made plain by flowers of rhetoric." See Bernouf
+and Kern's translations, and Edkin's Chinese Buddhism, pp. 43, 214.
+Translations of this work, so influential in Japanese Buddhism, exist in
+French, German, and English. See Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXI., by
+Professor H. Kern, of Leyden University. In the Introduction, p. xxxix.,
+the translator discusses age, authorship, editions, etc. Bunyiu Nanjio's
+Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, pp. 132-134. Beal
+in his Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, pp. 389-396, has translated
+Chapter XXIV.]
+
+[Footnote 23: At the great Zenkōji, a temple of the Tendai sect, at
+Nagano, Japan, dedicated to three Buddhist divinities, one of whom is
+Kwannon (Avalokitesvara, the rafters of the vast main hall are said to
+number 69,384, in reference to the number of Chinese characters
+contained in the translation of the Saddharma Pundarika.]
+
+[Footnote 24: "The third (collection of the Tripitaka) was ... made by
+Manjusri and Maitreya. This is the collection of the Mahayana books.
+Though it is as clear or bright as the sun at midday yet the men of the
+Hinayana are not ashamed of their inability to know them and speak evil
+of them instead, just as the Confucianists call Buddhism a law of
+barbarians, without reading the Buddhist books at all."--B.N., p. 51.]
+
+[Footnote 25: See the writings of Brian Hodgson, J. Edkins, E.J. Eitel,
+S. Beal, T. Rhys Davids, Bunyiu Nanjio, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See Chapter VIII. in T. Rhys Davids's Buddhism, a book of
+great scholarship and marvellous condensation.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Davids's Buddhism, p. 206. Other illustrations of the
+growth of the dogmas of this school of Buddhism we select from Brian
+Hodgson's writings.
+
+1. The line of division between God and man, and between gods and man,
+was removed by Buddhism.
+
+"Genuine Buddhism never seems to contemplate any measures of acceptance
+with the deity; but, overleaping the barrier between finite and infinite
+mind, urges its followers to aspire by their own efforts to that divine
+perfectibility of which it teaches that man is capable, and by attaining
+which man becomes God--and thus is explained both the quiescence of the
+imaginary celestial, and the plenary omnipotence of the real Manushi
+Buddhas--thus, too, we must account for the fact that genuine Buddhism
+has no priesthood; the saint despises the priest; the saint scorns the
+aid of mediators, whether on earth or in heaven; 'conquer (exclaims the
+adept or Buddha to the novice or BodhiSattwa)--conquer the importunities
+of the body, urge your mind to the meditation of abstraction, and you
+shall, in time, discover the great secret (Sunyata) of nature: know
+this, and you become, on the instant, whatever priests have feigned of
+Godhead--you become identified with Prajna, the sum of all the power and
+all the wisdom which sustain and govern the world, and which, as they
+are manifested out of matter, must belong solely to matter; not indeed
+in the gross and palpable state of pravritti, but in the archetypal and
+pure state of nirvritti. Put off, therefore, the vile, pravrittika
+necessities of the body, and the no less vile affections of the mind
+(Tapas); urge your thought into pure abstraction (Dhyana), and then, as
+assuredly you can, so assuredly you shall, attain to the wisdom of a
+Buddha (Bodhijnana), and become associated with the eternal unity and
+rest of nirvritti.'"--The Phoenix, Vol. I., p. 194.
+
+2. A specimen of "esoteric" and "exoteric" Buddhism;--the Buddha
+Tatkagata.
+
+"And as the wisdom of man is, in its origin, but an effluence of the
+Supreme wisdom (_Prajná_) of nature, so is it perfected by a refluence
+to its source, but without loss of individuality; whence Prajna is
+feigned in the exoteric system to be both the mother and the wife of all
+the Buddhas, '_janani sarva Buddkánám_,' and '_Jina-sundary_;' for the
+efflux is typified by a birth, and the reflux by a marriage.
+
+"The Buddha is the adept in the wisdom of Buddhism (_Bodhijnána_) whose
+first duty, so long as he remains on earth, is to communicate his wisdom
+to those who are willing to receive it. These willing learners are the
+'Bodhisattwas,' so called from their hearts being inclined to the wisdom
+of Buddhism, and 'Sanghas,' from their companionship with one another,
+and with their Buddha or teacher, in the _Viháras_ or coenobitical
+establishments."
+
+"And such is the esoteric interpretation of the third (and inferior)
+member of the Prajniki Triad. The Bodhisattwa or Sangha continues to be
+such until he has surmounted the very last grade of that vast and
+laborious ascent by which he is instructed that he can 'scale the
+heavens,' and pluck immortal wisdom from its resplendent source: which
+achievement performed, he becomes a Buddha, that is, an Omniscient
+Being, and a _Tathágata_--a title implying the accomplishment of that
+gradual increase in wisdom by which man becomes immortal or ceases to be
+subject to transmigration."--The Phoenix, Vol. I., pp. 194, 195.
+
+3. Is God all, or is all God?
+
+"What that grand secret, that ultimate truth, that single reality, is,
+whether all is God, or God is all, seems to be the sole _proposition_ of
+the oriental philosophic religionists, who have all alike sought to
+discover it by taking the high _priori_ road. That God is all, appears
+to be the prevalent dogmatic determination of the Brahmanists; that all
+is God, the preferential but sceptical solution of the _Buddhists_; and,
+in a large view, I believe it would be difficult to indicate any further
+essential difference between their theoretic systems, both, as I
+conceive, the unquestionable growth of the Indian soil, and both founded
+upon transcendental speculation, conducted in the very same style and
+manner."--The Phoenix, Vol. II., p. 45.
+
+4. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
+
+"In a philosophical light, the precedence of Buddha or of Dharma
+indicates the theistic or atheistic school. With the former, Buddha is
+intellectual essence, the efficient cause of all, and underived. Dharma
+is material essence, the plastic cause, and underived, a co-equal
+biunity with Buddha; or else the plastic cause, as before, but dependent
+and derived from Buddha. Sangha is derived from, and compounded of,
+Buddha, and Dharma, is their collective energy in the state of action;
+the immediate operative cause of creation, its type or its agent. With
+the latter or atheistic schools, Dharma is _Diva natura_, matter as the
+sole entity, invested with intrinsic activity and intelligence, the
+efficient and material cause of all.
+
+"Buddha is derivative from Dharma, is the active and intelligent force
+of nature, first put off from it and then operating upon it. Sangha is
+the _result_ of that operation; is embryotic creation, the type and sum
+of all specific forms, which are spontaneously evolved from the union of
+Buddha with Dharma."--The Phoenix, Vol. II., p. 12.
+
+5. The mantra or sacred sentence best known in the Buddhadom and abroad.
+
+"_Amitábha_ is the fourth _Dhyani_ or celestial _Budda: Padma-pani_ his
+_Æon_ and executive minister. _Padma-pani_ is the _praesens Divus_ and
+creator of the _existing_ system of worlds. Hence his identification
+with the third member of the _Triad_. He is figured as a graceful youth,
+erect, and bearing in either hand a _lotos_ and a jewel. The last
+circumstance explains the meaning of the celebrated _Shadakshári
+Mantra_, or six-lettered invocation of him, viz., _Om! Manipadme hom!_
+of which so many corrupt versions and more corrupt interpretations have
+appeared from Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and other sources. The
+_mantra_ in question is one of three, addressed to the several members
+of the _Triad_. 1. _Om sarva vidye hom_. 2. _Om Prajnáye hom_. 3. _Om
+mani-padme hom_. 1. The mystic triform Deity is in the all-wise
+(Buddha). 2. The mystic triform Deity is in Prajna (Dharma). 3. The
+mystic triform Deity is in him of the jewel and lotos (Sangha). But the
+praesens Divus, whether he be Augustus or _Padma-pani_, is everything
+with the many. Hence the notoriety of this _mantra_, whilst the others
+are hardly ever heard of, and have thus remained unknown to our
+travellers."--The Phoenix, Vol. II., p. 64.]
+
+[Footnote 28: "Nine centuries after Buddha, Maitreya (Miroku or Ji-shi)
+came down from the Tushita heaven to the lecture-hall in the kingdom of
+Ayodhya (A-ya-sha) in Central India, at the request of the Bodhisattva
+Asamga (Mu-jaku) and discoursed five Sastras, 1, Yoga-karya-bhumi-sastra
+(Yu-ga-shi-ji-ron), etc.... After that, the two great Sastra teachers,
+Asanga and Vasubandhu (Se-shin), who were brothers, composed many
+Sastras (Ron) and cleared up the meaning of the Mahayana" (or Greater
+Vehicle, canon of Northern Buddhism).--B.N., p. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Buddhism, T. Rhys Davids, pp. 206-211.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Prayer-wheels in Japan are used by the Tendai and Shingon
+sects, but without written prayers attached, and rather as an
+illustration of the doctrine of cause and effect (ingwa); the prayers
+being usually offered to Jizo the merciful.--S. and H., p. 29; T. J., p.
+360.]
+
+[Footnote 31: For this see Edkins's Chinese Buddhism; Eitel's Three
+Lectures, and Hand-book; Rev. S. Beal's Buddhism, and A Catena of
+Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese; The Romantic Legend of Sakya
+Buddha, from the Chinese; Texts from the Buddhist canon commonly known
+as the Dhammapeda; Notes on Buddhist Words and Phrases, the
+Chrysanthemum, Vol. I.; The Phoenix, Vols. I-III.
+
+See, also, a spirited sketch of Ancient Japan, by Frederick Victor
+Dickins, in the Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. II., pp. 4-14.]
+
+[Footnote 32: S. and H., pp. 289, 293; Chamberlain's Hand-book for
+Japan, p. 220; Summer's Notes on Osaka, T.A.S.J., Vol. VIL, p. 382;
+Buddhism, and Traditions Concerning its Introduction into Japan,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XIV., p. 78.]
+
+[Footnote 33: S. and H., p. 344.]
+
+[Footnote 34: T.J., p. 73.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Vairokana is the first or chief of the five
+personifications of Wisdom, and in Japan the idol is especially
+noticeable in the temples of the Tendai sect.--"The Action of Vairokana,
+or the great doctrine of the highest vehicle of the secret union," etc.,
+B.N., p. 75.]
+
+[Footnote 36: S. and H., p. 390; B.N., p. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 37: "Hinduism stands for philosophic spirituality and emotion,
+Buddhism for ethics and humanity, Christianity for fulness of God's
+incarnation in man, while Mohammedanism is the champion of
+uncompromising monotheism."--F.P.C. Mozoomdar's The Spirit of God,
+Boston, 1894, p. 305.]
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Is not something similar frankly attempted in Rev. Dr.
+Joseph Edkins's The Early Spread of Religious Ideas in the Far East
+(London, 1893)?]
+
+[Footnote 2: M.E., p. 252; Honda the Samurai, pp. 193-194.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See The Lily Among Thorns, A Study of the Biblical Drama
+Entitled the Song of Songs (Boston 1890), in which this subject is
+glanced at.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See The Religion of Nepaul, Buddhist Philosophy, and the
+writings of Brian Hodgson in The Phoenix, Vols. I., II., III.]
+
+[Footnote 5: See Century Dictionary, Yoga; Edkins's Chinese Buddhism,
+pp. 169-174; T. Rhys Davids's Buddhism, pp. 206-211; Index of B.N.,
+under Vagrasattwa; S. and H., pp. 85-87.]
+
+[Footnote 6: T.J., p. 226; Kojiki, Introduction.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1893, a
+very valuable paper by Mr. L.A. Waddell, on The Northern Buddhist
+Mythology, epitomized in the Japan Mail, May 5, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See Catalogue of Chinese and Japanese Paintings in the
+British Museum, and The Pictorial Arts of Japan, by William Anderson,
+M.D.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Anderson's Catalogue, p. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 10: S. and H., p. 415; Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan;
+T.J.; M.E., p. 162, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The names of Buddhist priests and monks are usually
+different from those of the laity, being taken from events in the life
+of Gautama, or his original disciples, passages in the sacred classics,
+etc. Among some personal acquaintances in the Japanese priesthood were
+such names as Lift-the-Kettle, Take-Hold-of-the-Dipper,
+Drivelling-Drunkard, etc. In the raciness, oddity, literalness, realism,
+and close connection of their names with the scriptures of their system,
+the Buddhists quite equal the British Puritans.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Kern's Saddharma-Pundarika, pp. 311, 314; Davids's
+Buddhism p. 208; The Phoenix, Vol. I., p. 169; S. and H., p. 502; Du
+Bose's Dragon, Demon, and Image, p. 407; Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 134;
+Hough's Corean Collections, Washington, 1893, p. 480, plate xxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Japan in History, Folk-lore and Art, pp. 86, 80-88; A
+Japanese Grammar, by J.J. Hoffman, p. 10; T.J., pp. 465-470.]
+
+[Footnote 14: This is the essence of Buddhism, and was for centuries
+repeated and learned by heart throughout the empire:
+
+  "Love and enjoyment disappear,
+    What in our world endureth here?
+  E'en should this day it oblivion be rolled,
+    'Twas only a vision that leaves me cold."
+]
+
+[Footnote 15: This legend suggests the mediaeval Jewish story, that
+Ezra, the scribe, could write with five pens at once; Hearn's Glimpses
+of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 29-33.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Brave Little Holland, and What She Taught Us, p. 124.]
+
+[Footnote 17: T.J., pp. 75, 342; Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan, p.
+41; M.E., p. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 18: T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 101; S. and H., p. 176.]
+
+[Footnote 19: It was for lifting with his walking-stick the curtain
+hanging before the shrine of this Kami that Arinori Mori, formerly
+H.I.J.M. Minister at Washington and London, was assassinated by a
+Shintō fanatic, February 11, 1889; T. J., p. 229; see Percival
+Lowell's paper in the Atlantic Monthly.]
+
+[Footnote 20: See Mr. P. Lowell's Esoteric Shintō, T.A.S.J., Vol.
+XXI, pp. 165-167, and his "Occult Japan."]
+
+[Footnote 21: S. and H., Japan, p. 83.]
+
+[Footnote 22: See the Author's Introduction to the Arabian Nights'
+Entertainments, Boston, 1891.]
+
+[Footnote 23: B.N., Index and pp. 78-103; Edkins's Chinese Buddhism, p.
+169.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Satow's or Chamberlain's Guide-books furnish hundreds of
+other instances, and describe temples in which the renamed kami are
+worshipped.]
+
+[Footnote 25: S. and H., p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 26: M.E., pp. 187, 188; S. and H., pp. 11, 12.]
+
+[Footnote 27: San Kai Ri (Mountain, Sea, and Land). This work,
+recommended to me by a learned Buddhist priest in Fukui, I had
+translated and read to me by a Buddhist of the Shin Shu sect. In like
+manner, even Christian writers in Japan have occasionally endeavored to
+rationalize the legends of Shintō, see Kojiki, p. liii., where Mr. T.
+Goro's Shintō Shin-ron is referred to. I have to thank my friend Mr.
+C. Watanabé, of Cornell University, for reading to me Mr. Takahashi's
+interesting but unconvincing monographs on Shintō and Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 28: T.J., p. 402; Some Chinese Ghosts, by Lafcadio Hearn, p.
+129.]
+
+[Footnote 29: S. and H., Japan, p. 397; Classical Poetry of the
+Japanese, p. 201, note.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The Japanese word Ryō means both, and is applied to the
+eyes, ears, feet, things correspondent or in pairs, etc.; _bu_ is a term
+for a set, kind, group, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Rein, p. 432; T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., pp. 241-270; T.J., p.
+339.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The Chrysanthemum, Vol. I., p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Even the Takétori Monogatari (The Bamboo Cutter's
+Daughter), the oldest and the best of the Japanese classic romances is
+(at least in the text and form now extant) a warp of native ideas with a
+woof of Buddhist notions.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Mr. Percival Lowell argues, in Esoteric Shintō,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., that besides the habit of pilgrimages,
+fire-walking, and god-possession, other practices supposed to be
+Buddhistic are of Shintō origin.]
+
+[Footnote 35: The native literature illustrating Riyōbuism is not
+extensive. Mr. Ernest Satow in the American Cyclopædia (Japan:
+Literature) mentions several volumes. The Tenchi Réiki Noko, in eighteen
+books contains a mixture of Buddhism and Shintō, and is ascribed by
+some to Shōtoku and by others to Kōbō, but now literary critics
+ascribe these, as well as the books Jimbetsuki and Tenshoki, to be
+modern forgeries by Buddhist priests. The Kogoshiui, written in A.D.
+807, professes to preserve fragments of ancient tradition not recorded
+in the earlier books, but the main object is that which lies at the
+basis of a vast mass of Japanese literature, namely, to prove the
+author's own descent from the gods. The Yuiitsu Shintō Miyoho Yoshiu,
+in two volumes, is designed to prove that Shintō and Buddhism are
+identical in their essence. Indeed, almost all the treatises on
+Shintō before the seventeenth century maintained this view. Certain
+books like the Shintō Shu, for centuries popular, and well received
+even by scholars, are now condemned on account of their confusion of the
+two religions. One of the most interesting works which we have found is
+the San Kai Ri, to which reference has been made.]
+
+[Footnote 36: T.J., p. 224.]
+
+[Footnote 37: "Human life is but fifty years," Japanese Proverb; M.E.,
+p. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese, p. 130.]
+
+[Footnote 39: S. and H., p. 416.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Things Chinese, by J. Dyer Ball, p. 70; see also Edkins
+and Eitel.]
+
+[Footnote 41: The Japan Weekly Mail of April 28, 1893, translating and
+condensing an article from the Bukkyō, a Buddhist newspaper, gives
+the results of a Japanese Buddhist student's tour through China--"Taoism
+prevails everywhere.... Buddhism has decayed and is almost dead."]
+
+[Footnote 42: Vaisramana is a Deva who guarded, praised, fed with
+heavenly food, and answered the questions of the Chinese Dō-sen
+(608-907 A.D.) who founded the Risshu or Vinaya sect.--B.N., p. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Anderson, Catalogue, pp. 29-45.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Some of those are pictured in Aimé Humbert's Japon
+Illustré, and from the same pictures reproduced by electro-plates which,
+from Paris, have transmigrated for a whole generation through the
+cheaper books on Japan, in every European language.]
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NORTHERN BUDDHISM IS ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS
+
+
+[Footnote 1: On the Buddhist canon, see the writings of Beal, Spence
+Hardy, T. Rhys Davids, Bunyiu Nanjio, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Edkins's Chinese Buddhism, pp. 43, 108, 214; Classical
+Poetry of the Japanese, p. 173.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., Part I., pp. 17-37; The Soul of
+the Far East; and the writings of Chamberlain, Aston, Dickins,
+Munzinger, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Much of the information as to history and doctrine
+contained in this chapter has been condensed from Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio's A
+Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, translated out of
+the Japanese into English. This author, besides visiting the old seats
+of the faith in China, studied Sanskrit at Oxford with Professor Max
+Müller, and catalogued in English the Tripitaka or Buddhist canon of
+China and Japan, sent to England by the ambassador Iwakura. The nine
+reverend gentlemen who wrote the chapters and introduction of the Short
+History are Messrs. Kō-chō Ogurusu, and Shu-Zan Emura of the Shin
+sect; Rev. Messrs. Shō-hen Uéda, and Dai-ryo Takashi, of the Shin-gon
+Sect; Rev. Messrs. Gyō-kai Fukuda, Keu-kō Tsuji, Renjō
+Akamatsu, and Zé-jun Kobayashi of the Jō-dō, Zen, Shin, and
+Nichiren sects, respectively. Though execrably printed, and the English
+only tolerable, the work is invaluable to the student of Japanese
+Buddhism. It has a historical introduction and a Sanskrit-Chinese Index,
+1 vol., pp. 172, Tōkiō, 1887. Substantially the same work,
+translated into French, is Le Bouddhisme Japonais, by Ryauon Fujishima,
+Paris, 1889. Satow and Hawes's Hand-book for Japan has brief but
+valuable notes in the Introduction, and, like Chamberlain's continuation
+of the same work, is a storehouse of illustrative matter. Edkine's and
+Eitel's works on Chinese Buddhism have been very helpful.]
+
+[Footnote 5: M. Abel Remusat published a translation of a Chinese
+Pilgrim's travels in 1836; M. Stanislais Julien completed his volume on
+Hiouen Thsang in 1858; and in 1884 Rev. Samuel Beal issued his Travels
+of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India (400
+A.D. and 518 A.D.). The latter work contains a map.]
+
+[Footnote 6: B.N., p. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 7: B.N., p. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Three hundred and twenty million years. See Century
+Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 9: See the paper of Rev. Shō-hen Uéda of the Shingon sect,
+in B.N., pp. 20-31; and R. Fujishima's Le Bouddhisme Japonais, pp. xvi.,
+xvii., from which most of the information here given has been derived.]
+
+[Footnote 10: M.E., p. 383; S. and H., pp. 23, 30. The image of Binzuru
+is found in many Japanese temples to-day, a famous one being at Asakusa,
+in Tōkiō. He is the supposed healer of all diseases. The image
+becomes entirely rubbed smooth by devotees, to the extinguishment of all
+features, lines, and outlines.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Davids's Buddhism, pp. 180, 200; S. and H., pp. (87) 389,
+416.]
+
+[Footnote 12: B.N., pp. 32-43.]
+
+[Footnote 13: B.N., pp. 44-56.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Japanese Fairy World, p. 282; Anderson's Catalogue, pp.
+l03-7.]
+
+[Footnote 15: B.N., p. 62.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Pfoundes, Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 102.]
+
+[Footnote 17: B.N., p. 58. See also The Monist for January, 1894, p.
+168.]
+
+[Footnote 18: "Tien Tai, a spot abounding in Buddhist antiquities, the
+earliest, and except Puto the largest and richest seat of that religion
+in eastern China. As a monastic establishment it dates from the fourth
+century."--Edkins's Chinese Buddhism, pp. 137-142.]
+
+[Footnote 19: S. and H., p. 87. See the paper read at the Parliament of
+Religions by the Zen bonze Ashitsu of Hiyéisan, the poem of Right
+Reverend Shaku Soyen, and the paper on The Fundamental Teachings of
+Buddhism, in The Monist for January, 1894; Japan As We Saw It, p. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 20: See Century Dictionary, _mantra_.]
+
+[Footnote 21: See Chapter XX. Ideas and Symbols in Japan: in History,
+Folk-lore, and Art. Buddhist tombs (go-rin) consist of a cube (earth),
+sphere (water), pyramid (fire), crescent (wind), and flame-shaped stone
+(ether), forming the go-rin or five-blossom tomb, typifying the five
+elements.]
+
+[Footnote 22: B.N., p. 78.]
+
+[Footnote 23: To put this dogma into intelligible English is, as Mr.
+Satow says, more difficult than to comprehend the whole doctrine, hard
+as that may be. "Dai Nichi Ni-yorai (Vairokana) is explained to be the
+collectivity of all sentient beings, acting through the mediums of
+Kwan-non, Ji-zō, Mon-ju, Shaka, and other influences which are
+popularly believed to be self-existent deities." In the diagram called
+the eight-leaf enclosure, by which the mysteries of Shingon are
+explained, Maha-Vairokana is in the centre, and on the eight petals are
+such names as Amitabha, Manjusri, Maitreya, and Avalokitesvara; in a
+word, all are purely speculative beings, phantoms of the brain, the
+mushrooms of decayed Brahmanism, and the mould of primitive Buddhism
+disintegrated by scholasticism.]
+
+[Footnote 24: S. and H., p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 25: B.N., p. 115.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Here let me add that in my studies of oriental and ancient
+religion, I have never found one real Trinity, though triads, or
+tri-murti, are common. None of these when carefully analyzed yield the
+Christian idea of the Trinity.]
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Tathagata is one of the titles of the Buddha, meaning "thus
+come," i.e., He comes bringing human nature as it truly is, with perfect
+knowledge and high intelligence, and thus manifests himself. Amitabha is
+the Sanskrit of Amida, or the deification of boundless light.]
+
+[Footnote 2: B.N., p. 104.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Literally, I yield to, or I adore the Boundless or the
+Immeasurable Buddha.]
+
+[Footnote 4: A Chinese or Japanese volume is much smaller than the
+average printed volume in Europe.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Legacy of Iyéyasŭ, Section xxviii. Doctrinally, this
+famous document, written probably long after Iyéyasŭ's death and
+canonization as a _gongen_, is a mixture or _Riyōbu_ of Confucianism
+and Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 6: At first glance a forcible illustration, since the Japanese
+proverb declares that "A sea-voyage is an inch of hell." And yet the
+original saying of Ryū-ju, now proverbial in Buddhadom, referred to
+the ease of sailing over the water, compared with the difficulty of
+surmounting the obstacles of land travel in countries not yet famous for
+good roads. See B.N., p. 111.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 108; Descriptive Notes on the Rosaries
+as used by the different Sects of Buddhists in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol.
+IX., pp. 173-182.]
+
+[Footnote 8: B.N., p. 122.]
+
+[Footnote 9: S. and H., p. 361.]
+
+[Footnote 10: S. and H., pp. 90-92; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II.,
+pp. 242-253.]
+
+[Footnote 11: These three sutras are those most in favor with the
+Jō-dō sect also, they are described, B.N., 104-106, and their
+tenets are referred to on pp. 260, 261.]
+
+[Footnote 12: For modern statements of Shin tenets and practices, see
+E.J. Reed's Japan, Vol. I., pp. 84-86; The Chrysanthemum, April, 1881,
+pp. 109-115; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II., 242-246; B.N., 122-131.
+Edkins's Religion in China, p. 153. The Chrysanthemum, April, 1881, p.
+115.]
+
+[Footnote 13: S. and H., p. 361; B.N., pp. 105, 106. Toward the end of
+the Amitayus-dhyana sutra, Buddha says: "Let not one's voice cease, but
+ten times complete the thought, and repeat Namo'mitābhāya
+Buddhāya (Namu Amida Butsu) or adoration to Amitbāha Buddha."]
+
+[Footnote 14: M.E., pp. 164-166.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Schaff's Encyclopaedia, Article, Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 16: On the Tenets of the Shin Shiu, or "True Sect" of
+Buddhists, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIV., p. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The Gobunsho, or Ofumi, of Rennyō Shōnin, T.A.S.J.,
+Vol. XVII., pp. 101-143.]
+
+[Footnote 18: At the gorgeous services in honor of the founder of the
+great Higashi Hongwanji Western Temple of the Original Vow at Asakusa,
+Tōkiō, November 21 to 28, annually, the women attend wearing a
+head-dress called "horn-hider," which seems to have been named in
+allusion to a Buddhist text which says: "A woman's exterior is that of a
+saint, but her heart is that of a demon."--Chamberlain's Hand-book for
+Japan, p. 82; T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., pp. 106, 141; Sacred Books of the
+East, Vol. XXI., pp. 251-254.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Review of Buddhist Texts from Japan, The Nation, No. 875,
+April 6, 1882. "The _Mahāyāna_ or Great Vehicle (we might fairly
+render it 'highfalutin') school.... Filled as these countries (Tibet,
+China, Japan) are with Buddhist monasteries, and priests, and nominal
+adherents, and abounding in voluminous translations of the Sanskrit
+Buddhistic literature, little understood and wellnigh unintelligible
+(for neither country has had the independence and mental force to
+produce a literature of its own, or to add anything but a chapter of
+decay to the history of this religion)...."]
+
+[Footnote 20: M.E., pp. 164, 165; B.N., pp. 132-147; Mitford's Tales of
+Old Japan, Vol. II., pp. 125-134.]
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT
+
+
+[Footnote 1: T.J., p. 71. Further illustrations of this statement may be
+found in his Classical Poetry of the Japanese, especially in the
+Selection and Appendices of this book; also in T.R.H. McClatchie's
+Japanese Plays (Versified), London, 1890.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See Introduction to the Kojiki, pp. xxxii.-xxxiv., and in
+Bakin's novel illustrating popular Buddhist beliefs, translated by
+Edward Greey, A Captive of Love, Boston, 1886.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See jade in Century Dictionary; "Magatama, so far as I am
+aware, do not ever appear to have been found in shell heaps" (of the
+aboriginal Ainos), Milne's Notes on Stone Implements, T.A.S.J., Vol.
+VIII., p. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Concerning this legendary, and possibly mythical, episode,
+which has so powerfully influenced Japanese imagination and politics,
+see T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., Part I., pp. 39-75; M.E., pp. 75-85.]
+
+[Footnote 5: See Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 1, 2; Persian Elements in
+Japanese Legends, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., Part I, pp. 1-10; Journal of the
+Royal Asiatic Society, January, 1894. Rein's book, The Industries of
+Japan, points out, as far as known, the material debt to India. Some
+Japanese words like _beni-gari_ (Bengal) or rouge show at once their
+origin. The mosaic of stories in the Taéktori Monogatari, an allegory in
+exquisite literary form, illustrating the Buddhist dogma of Ingwa, or
+law of cause and effect, and written early in the ninth century, is made
+up of Chinese-Indian elements. See F.V. Dickins's translation and notes
+in Journal of the Royal Oriental Society, Vol. XIX., N.S. India was the
+far off land of gems, wonders, infallible drugs, roots, etc.; Japanese
+Fairy World, p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 6: M.E., Chap. VIII.; Klaproth's Annales des Empereurs du
+Japon (a translation of Nippon 0 Dai Ichi Ran); Rein's Japan, p. 224.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See Klaproth's Annales, _passim_. S. and H. p. 85. Bridges
+are often symbolical of events, classic passages in the shastras and
+sutras, or are antetypes of Paradisaical structures. The ordinary native
+_hashi_ is not remarkable as a triumph of the carpenter's art, though
+some of the Japanese books mention and describe in detail some
+structures that are believed to be astonishing.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Often amusingly illustrated, M.E., p. 390. A translation
+into Japanese of Goethe's Reynard the Fox is among the popular works of
+the day. "Strange to say, however, the Japanese lose much of the
+exquisite humor of this satire in their sympathy with the woes of the
+maltreated wolf."--The Japan Mail. This sympathy with animals grows
+directly out of the doctrine of metempsychosis. The relationship between
+man and ape is founded upon the pantheistic identity of being. "We
+mention sin," says a missionary now in Japan, "and he [the average
+auditor] thinks of eating flesh, or the killing of insects." Many of the
+sutras read like tracts and diatribes of vegetarians.]
+
+[Footnote 9: See The Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol.
+XIV.; Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangements, by J. Conder, T.A.S.J.,
+Vol. XVII.; T.J., p. 168; M.E., p. 437; T.J., p. 163.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _The_ book, by excellence, on the Japanese house, is
+Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, by E.S. Morse. See also
+Constructive Art in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 57, III., p. 20;
+Feudal Mansions of Yedo, Vol. VII., p. 157.]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 385, 410,
+and _passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: For pathetic pictures of Japanese daily life, see Our
+Neighborhood, by the late Dr. T.A. Purcell, Yokohama, 1874; A Japanese
+Boy, by Himself (S. Shigémi), New Haven, 1889; Lafcadio Hearn's Glimpses
+of Unfamiliar Japan, Boston, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Klaproth's Annales, and S. and H. _passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: See Pfoundes's Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 130, for a list of
+grades from Ho-ō or cloistered emperor, Miya or sons of emperors,
+chief priests of sects, etc., down to priests in charge of inferior
+temples. This Budget of Notes, pp. 99-144, contains much valuable
+information, and was one of the first publications in English which shed
+light upon the peculiarities of Japanese Buddhism.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Isaiah xl. 19, 20, and xli. 6, 7, read to the dweller in
+Japan like the notes of a reporter taken yesterday.]
+
+[Footnote 16: T.J., p. 339; Notes on Some Minor Japanese Religious
+Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May, 1893;
+Lowell's Esoteric Shintō, T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI.; Satow's The Shintō
+Temples of Isé, T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 113.]
+
+[Footnote 17: M.E., p. 45; American Cyclopaedia, Japan,
+Literature--History, Travels, Diaries, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 18: That is, no dialects like those which separate the people
+of China. The ordinary folks of Satsuma and Suruga, for example,
+however, would find it difficult to understand each other if only the
+local speech were used. Men from the extremes of the Empire use the
+Tōkiō standard language in communicating with each other.]
+
+[Footnote 19: For some names of Buddhist temples in Shimoda see Perry's
+Narrative, pp. 470-474, described by Dr. S. Wells Williams; S. and H.
+_passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 20: The Abbé Huc in his Travels in Tartary was one of the
+first to note this fact. I have not noticed in my reading that the
+Jesuit missionaries in Japan in the seventeenth century call attention
+to the matter. See also the writings of Arthur Lillie, voluminous but
+unconvincing, Buddha and Early Buddhism, and Buddhism and Christianity,
+London, 1893.]
+
+[Footnote 21: M.E., p. 252.]
+
+[Footnote 22: T.J., p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 23: See The Higher Buddhism in the Light of the Nicene Creed,
+Tōkiō, 1894, by Rev. A. Lloyd.]
+
+[Footnote 24: "I preach with ever the same voice, taking enlightenment
+as my text. For this is equal for all; no partiality is in it, neither
+hatred nor affection.... I am inexorable, bear no love or hatred towards
+anyone, and proclaim the law to all creatures without distinction, to
+the one as well as to the other."--Saddharma Pundarika.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II., p. 247.]
+
+[Footnote 26: For the symbolism of the lotus see M.E., p. 437; Unbeaten
+Tracks in Japan, Vol. I., p. 299; M.E. index; and Saddharma Pundarika,
+Kern's translation, p. 76, note:
+
+"Here the Buddha is represented as a wise and benevolent father; he is
+the heavenly father, Brahma. As such ho was represented as sitting on a
+'lotus-seat.' How common this representation was in India, at least in
+the sixth century of our era, appears from Varâhamihira's
+Brihat-Sainhita, Ch. 58, 44, where the following rule is laid down for
+the Buddha idols: 'Buddha shall be (represented) sitting on a
+lotus-seat, like the father of the world.'"]
+
+[Footnote 27: See The Northern Buddhist Mythology in _Journal of the
+Royal Asiatic Society_, January, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See The Pictorial Arts of Japan, and Descriptive and
+Historical Catalogue, William Anderson, pp. 13-94.]
+
+[Footnote 29: See fylfot in Century Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The word _vagra_, diamond, is a constituent in scores of
+names of sutras, especially those whose contents are metaphysical in
+their nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the
+name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka
+on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received
+enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a
+thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the
+two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood
+to be compared to the secret truth which is always in existence and not
+to be broken. In the latter sense it implies the power of the
+enlightened, that destroys the obstacles of passions."--B.N., p. 88. "As
+held in the arms of Kwannon and other images in the temples," the vagra
+or "diamond club" (is that) with which the foes of the Buddhist Church
+are to be crushed.--S. and H., p. 444. Each of the gateway gods Ni-ō
+(two Kings, Indra and Brahma) "bears in his hand the tokko (Sanskrit
+_vagra_), an ornament originally designed to represent a diamond club,
+and now used by priests and exorcists, as a religious sceptre
+symbolizing the irresistible power of prayer, meditation, and
+incantation."--Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan, p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Jizō is the compassionate helper of all in trouble,
+especially of travellers, of mothers, and of children. His Sanskrit name
+is Kshiugarbha. His idol is one of the most common in Japan. It is
+usually neck-laced with baby's bibs, often by the score, while the
+pedestal is heaped with small stones placed there by sorrowing
+mothers.--S. and H., p. 29, 394; Chamberlain's Handbook of Japan, 29,
+101. Hearn's Japan, p. 34, and _passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Sanskrit _arhat_ or _arhan_, meaning worthy or deserving,
+i.e., holy man, the highest rank of Buddhist saintship. See Century
+Dictionary.]
+
+[Footnote 33: M.E., p. 201. The long inscription on the bell in
+Wellesley College, which summons the student-maidens to their hourly
+tasks has been translated by the author and Dr. K. Kurahara and is as
+follows:
+
+1. A prose preface or historical statement.
+
+2. Two stanzas of Chinese poetry, in four-syllable lines, of four verses
+each, with an apostrophe in two four-syllable lines.
+
+3. The chronology.
+
+4. The names of the composer and calligraphist, and of the
+bronze-founder.
+
+The characters in vertical lines are read from top to bottom, the order
+of the columns being from right to left. There are in all 117
+characters.
+
+The first tablet reads:
+
+Lotus-Lily Temple (of) Law-Grove Mountain; Bell-inscription (and)
+Preface.
+
+"Although there had been of old a bell hung in the Temple of the
+Lotus-Lily, yet being of small dimensions its note was quickly
+exhausted, and no volume of melody followed (after having been struck).
+Whereupon, for the purpose of improving upon this state of affairs, we
+made a subscription, and collected coin to obtain a new bell. All
+believers in the doctrine, gods as well as devils, contributed freely.
+Thus the enterprise was soon consummated, and this inscription prepared,
+to wit:
+
+"'The most exalted Buddha having pitiful compassion upon the people,
+would, by means of this bell, instead of words, awaken them from earthly
+illusions, and reveal the darkness of this world.
+
+"'Many of the living hearkening to its voice, and making confession, are
+freed from the bondage of their sins, and forever released from their
+disquieting desires.
+
+"'How great is (Buddha's) merit! Who can utter it? Without measure,
+boundless!'
+
+"Eleventh year of the Era of the Foundation of Literature (and of the
+male element) Wood (and of the zodiac sign) Dog; Autumn, seventh month,
+fifteenth day (A.D. August 30,1814).
+
+"Composition and penmanship by Kaméda Koyé-sen. Cast by the artist
+Sugiwara Kuninobu."
+
+(The poem in unrhymed metre.)
+
+  Buddha in compassion tender
+  With this bell, instead of words,
+  Wakens souls from life's illusions,
+  Lightens this world's darkness drear.
+
+  Many souls its sweet tones heeding,
+  From their chains of sin are freed;
+  All the mind's unrest is soothed,
+  Sinful yearnings are repressed.
+
+  Oh how potent is his merit,
+  Without bounds in all the worlds!
+]
+
+[Footnote 34: Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 129.]
+
+[Footnote 35: M.E., pp. 287-290, 513-514; Perry's Narrative, pp. 471,
+472; Our Neighborhood, pp. 119-124. The following epitaphs are gathered
+from various sources:
+
+"This stone marks the remains of the believer who never grows old."
+
+"The believing woman Yu-ning, Happy was the day of her departure."
+
+"Multitudes fill the graves."
+
+"Only by this vehicle--the coffin--can we enter Hades."
+
+"As the floating grass is blown by the gentle breeze, or the glancing
+ripples of autumn disappear when the sun goes down, or as a ship returns
+to her old shore--so is life. It is a vapor, a morning-tide."
+
+"Buddha himself wishes to hear the name of the deceased that he may
+enter life."
+
+"He who has left humanity is now perfected by Buddha's name, as the
+withered moss by the dew."
+
+"Life is like a candle in the wind."
+
+"The wise make our halls illustrious, and their monuments endure for
+ages."
+
+"What permanency is there to the glory of the world? It goes from the
+sight like hoar-frost in the sun."
+
+"If men wish to enter the joys of heavenly light,
+Let them smell the fragrance of the law of Buddha."
+
+"Whoever wishes to have his merit reach even to the abode of demons, let
+him, with us, and all living, become perfect in the doctrine."]
+
+[Footnote 36: Rev. C.B. Hawarth in the _New York Independent_, January
+18, 1894.]
+
+[Footnote 37: In 781 the Buddhist monk Kéi-shun dedicated a chapel to
+Jizo, on whom he conferred the epithet of Sho-gun or general, to suit
+the warlike tastes of the Japanese people.--S. and H., p. 384. So also
+Hachiman became the god of war because adopted as the patron deity of
+the Genji warriors.--S. and H., p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Dixon's Japan, p. 41; S. and H., Japan, _passim_; Rein's
+Japan; Story of the Nations, Japan, by David Murray, p. 201, note;
+Dening's life of Toyotomi Hidéyoshi; M.E., Chapters XV., XVI., XX.,
+XXIII., XXIV.; Gazetteer of Echizen; Shiga's History of Nations,
+Tōkiō, 1888, pp. 115, 118; T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII., pp. 94, 134,
+143.]
+
+[Footnote 40: T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII., Hidéyoshi and the Satsuma Clan in
+the Sixteenth Century, by J.H. Gubbins; The Times of Taikō, by R.
+Brinkley, in _The Japan Times_.]
+
+[Footnote 41: The Copy of the Buddhist Tripitaka, or Northern
+Collection, made by order of the Emperor, Wan-Li, in the sixteenth
+century, when the Chinese capital (King) was changed from the South
+(Nan) to the North (Pe), was reproduced in Japan in 1679 and again in
+1681-83, and in over two thousand volumes, making a pile a hundred feet
+high, was presented by the Japanese Government, through the Junior Prime
+Minister, Mr. Tomomi Iwakura, to the Library of the India Office. See
+Samuel Beal's The Buddhist Tripitaka, as it is known in China and Japan,
+A Catalogue and Compendious Report, London, 1876. The library has been
+rearranged by Mr. Bunyin Nanjio, who has published the result of his
+labors, with Sanskrit equivalents of the titles and with notes of the
+highest value.]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Neither country (China or Japan) has had the independence
+and mental force to produce a literature of its own, and to add anything
+but a chapter of decay to the history of this religion."--Professor
+William D. Whitney, in review of Anecdota Oxoniensia, Buddhist Texts
+from Japan, in _The Nation_, No. 875.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Education in Japan, A series of papers by the writer,
+printed in _The Japan Mail_ of 1873-74, and reprinted in the educational
+journals of the United Status. A digest of these papers is given in the
+appendix of F.O. Adams's History of Japan; Life of Sir Harry Parkes,
+Vol. II., pp. 305, 306.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Japan: in Literature, Folk-Lore, and Art, p. 77.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Japanese Education at the Philadelphia Exposition, New
+York, 1876.]
+
+[Footnote 46: See Japanese Literature, by E.M. Satow, in The American
+Cyclopædia.]
+
+[Footnote 47: The word bonze (Japanese _bon-so_ or _bozu_, Chinese
+_fan-sung_) means an ordinary member of the congregation, just as the
+Japanese term _bon-yo_ or _bon-zuko_ means common people or the ordinary
+folks. The word came into European use from the Portuguese missionaries,
+who heard the Japanese thus pronounce the Chinese term _fan_, which, as
+_bon_, is applied to anything in the mass not out of the common.]
+
+[Footnote 48: See On the Early History of Printing in Japan, by E.M.
+Satow, T.A.S.J., Vol. X., Part L, p. 48; Part II., p. 252.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Japanese mediaeval monastery life has been ably pictured
+in English fiction by a scholar of imagination and literary power,
+withal a military critic and a veteran in Japanese lore. "The Times of
+Taikō," in the defunct Japanese Times (1878), deserves reprint as a
+book, being founded on Japanese historical and descriptive works. In Mr.
+Edward's Greey's A Captive of Love, Boston, 1880, the idea of ingwa (the
+effects in this life of the actions in a former state of existence), is
+illustrated. See also S. and H., p. 29; T.J., p. 360.]
+
+[Footnote 50: It is curious that while the anti-Christian polemics of
+the Japanese Buddhists have used the words of Jesus, "I came to send not
+peace but a sword," Matt, x. 34, and "If any man ... hate not his father
+and mother," etc., Luke xiv. 26, as a branding iron with which to stamp
+the religion of Jesus as gross immorality and dangerous to the state,
+they justify Gautama in his "renunciation" of marital and paternal
+duties.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See Public Charity in Japan, Japan Mail, 1893; and The
+Annual (Appleton's) Cyclopaedia for 1893.]
+
+[Footnote 52: I have some good reasons for making this suggestion. Yokoi
+Héishiro had dwelt for some time in Fukui, a few rods away from the
+house in which I lived, and the ideas he promulgated among the Echizen
+clansmen in his lectures on Confucianism, were not only Christian in
+spirit but, by their own statement, these ideas could not be found in
+the texts of the Chinese sage or of his commentators. Although the
+volume (edited by his son, Rev. J.F. Yokoi) of his Life and Letters
+shows him to have been an intense and at times almost bigoted
+Confucianist, he, in one of his later letters, prophesied that when
+Christianity should be taught by the missionaries, it would win the
+hearts of the young men of Japan. See also Satow's Kinsé Shiriaku, p.
+183; Adams's History of Japan; and in fiction, see Honda The Samurai, p.
+242, and succeeding chapters.]
+
+[Footnote 53: In the colorless and unsentimental language of government
+publications, the Japanese edict of emancipation, issued to the local
+authorities in October, 1871, ran as follows: "The designations of eta
+and hinin are abolished. Those who bore them are to be added to the
+general registers of the population and their social position and
+methods of gaining a livelihood are to be identical with the rest of the
+people. As they have been entitled to immunity from the land tax and
+other burdens of immemorial custom, you will inquire how this may be
+reformed and report to the Board of Finance." (Signed) Council of
+State.]
+
+[Footnote 54: In English fiction, see The Eta Maiden and the Hatamoto,
+in Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., pp. 210-245. Discussions as to
+the origin of the Eta are to be found in Adams's History of Japan, Vol.
+I, p. 77; M.E., index; T.J., p. 147; S. and H., p. 36; Honda the
+Samurai, pp. 246, 247; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., pp.
+210-245. The literature concerning the Ainos is already voluminous. See
+Chamberlain's Aino Studies, with bibliography; and Rev. John Batchelor's
+Ainu Grammar, published by The Imperial University of Tōkiō;
+T.A.S.J., Vols. X., XL, XVI., XVIII., XX.; The Ainu of Japan, New York,
+1892, by J. Batchelor (who has also translated the Book of Common
+Prayer, and portions of the Bible into the Ainu tongue); M. E., Chap.
+II.; T.A.S.J., Vol. X., and following volumes; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,
+Vol. II.; Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, London, 1895.]
+
+[Footnote 55: "Then the venerable Sāriputra said to that daughter of
+Sagara, the Nāga-king: 'Thou hast conceived the idea of
+enlightenment, young lady of good family, without sliding back, and art
+gifted with immense wisdom, but supreme, perfect enlightenment is not
+easily won. It may happen, sister, that a woman displays an unflagging
+energy, performs good works for many thousands of Aeons, and fulfils the
+six perfect virtues (Pāramitās), but as yet there is no example of
+her having reached Buddhaship, and that because a woman cannot occupy
+the five ranks, viz., 1, the rank of Brahma; 2, the rank of Indra; 3,
+the rank of a chief guardian of the four quarters; 4, the rank of
+Kakravartin; 5, the rank of a Bodhisattva incapable of sliding back,"
+Saddharma Pundarika, Kern's Translation, p. 252.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Chiū-jō-himé was the first Japanese nun, and the
+only woman who is commemorated by an idol. "She extracted the fibres of
+the lotus root, and wove them with silk to make tapestry for altars."
+Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 128. Her romantic and marvellous story is given in
+S. and H., p. 397. "The practice of giving ranks to women was commenced
+by Jito Tennō (an empress, 690-705)." Many women shaved their heads
+and became nuns "on becoming widows, as well as on being forsaken by, or
+after leaving their husbands. Others were orphans." One of the most
+famous nuns (on account of her rank) was the Nii no Ama, widow of
+Kiyomori and grandmother of the Emperor Antoku, who were both drowned
+near Shimono-séki, in the great naval battle of 1185 A.D. Adams's
+History of Japan, Vol. I., p. 37; M.E., p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 57: M.E., p. 213; Japanese Women, World's Columbian
+Exhibition, Chicago, 1893, Chap. III.]
+
+[Footnote 58: There is no passage in the original Greek texts, or in the
+Revised Version of the New Testament which ascribes wings to the
+_aggelos_, or angel. In Rev. xii. 14, a woman is "given two wings of a
+great eagle."]
+
+[Footnote 59: Japanese Women in Politics, Chap. I., Japanese Women,
+Chicago, 1893; Japanese Girls and Women, Chapters VI. and VII.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Bakin's novels are dominated by this idea, while also
+preaching in fiction strict Confucianism. See A Captive of Love, by
+Edward Greey.]
+
+[Footnote 61: "Fate is one of the great words of the East. _Japan's
+language is loaded and overloaded with it._ Parents are forever saying
+before their children, 'There's no help for it.' I once remarked to a
+school-teacher, 'Of course you love to teach children.' His quick reply
+was, 'Of course I don't. I do it merely because there is no help for
+it.' Moralists here deplore the prosperity of the houses of ill-fame and
+then add with a sigh, 'There's no help for it.' All society reverberates
+with this phrase with reference to questions that need the application
+of moral power, will power."--J.H. De Forest.
+
+"I do not say there is no will power in the East, for there is. Nor do I
+say there is no weak yielding to fate in lands that have the doctrine of
+the Creator, for there is. But, putting the East and West side by side,
+one need not hesitate to affirm that the reason the will power of the
+East is weak cannot be fully explained by any mere doctrine of
+environment, but must also have some vital connection with the fact that
+the idea of a personal almighty Creator has for long ages been wanting.
+And one reason why western nations have an aggressive character that
+ventures bold things and tends to defy difficulties cannot be wholly
+laid to environment but must have something to do with the fact that
+leads millions daily reverently to say 'I believe in the Almighty
+Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth.'"--J.H. De Forest.]
+
+
+STATISTICS OF BUDDHISM IN JAPAN.
+
+
+(From The official "Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon,"
+Tōkiō, 1894.)
+
+In 1891 there were 71,859 temples within city or town limits, and 35,959
+in the rural districts, or 117,718 in all, under the charges of 51,791
+principal priests and 720 principal priestesses, or 52,511 in all.
+
+The number of temples, classified by sects, were as follows: Tendai,
+with 3 sub-sects, 4,808; Shingon, with 2 sub-sects, 12,821, of which 45
+belonged to the Hossō shu; Jō-do, with 2 sub-sects, 8,323, of
+which 21 were of the Ké-gon shu; Zen, with 3 sub-sects, 20,882, of which
+6,146 were of the Rin-Zai shu; 14,072 of the Sō-dō shu, and 604 of
+the O-bakushu; Shin, with 10 sub-sects, 19,146; Nichiren, with 7
+sub-sects, 5,066; Ji shu, 515; Yu-dzū; Nembutsu, 358; total, 38 sects
+and 71,859 temples.
+
+The official reports required by the government from the various sects,
+show that there are 38 administrative heads of sects; 52,638
+priest-preachers and 44,123 ordinary priests or monks; and 8,668 male
+and 328 female, or a total of 8,996, students for the grade of monk or
+nun. In comparison with 1886, the number of priest-preachers was 39,261,
+ordinary priests 38,189: male students, 21,966; female students, 642.
+
+
+CHAPTER  XI
+
+ROMAN CHRISTIANITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: See for a fine example of this, Mr. C. Meriwether's Life of
+Daté Masamuné, T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., pp. 3-106. See also The Christianity
+of Early Japan, by Koji Inaba, in The Japan Evangelist, Yokohama,
+1893-94; Mr. E. Satow's papers in T.A.S.J.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See M.E., p. 280; Rein's Japan, p. 312; Shigétaka Shiga's
+History of Nations, p. 139, quoting from M.E. (p. 258).]
+
+[Footnote 3: M.E., 195.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The Japan Mail of April and May, 1894, contains a
+translation from the Japanese, with but little new matter, however, of a
+work entitled Paul Anjiro.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The "Firando" of the old books. See Cock's Diary. It is
+difficult at first to recognize the Japanese originals of some of the
+names which figure in the writings of Charlevoix, Léon Pagés, and the
+European missionaries, owing to their use of local pronunciation, and
+their spelling, which seems peculiar. One of the brilliant
+identifications of Mr. Ernest Satow, now H.B.M. Minister at Tangier, is
+that of Kuroda in the "Kondera"' of the Jesuits.]
+
+[Footnote 6: See Mr. E.M. Matow's Vicissitudes of the Church at
+Yamaguchi. T.A.S.J., Vol. VII., pp. 131-156.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Nobunaga was Nai Dai Jin, Inner (Junior) Prime Minister,
+one in the triple premiership, peculiar to Korea and Old Japan, but was
+never Shōgun, as some foreign writers have supposed.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, by E. Satow,
+1591-1610 (privately printed, London, 1888). Review of the same by B.H.
+Chamberlain, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., p. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Histoire de l'Église, Vol. I, p. 490; Rein, p. 277.
+Takayama is spoken of in the Jesuit Records as Jûsto Ucondono. A curious
+book entitled Justo Ucondono, Prince of Japan, in which the writer, who
+is "less attentive to points of style than to matters of faith," labors
+to show that "the Bible alone" is "found wanting," and only the
+"Teaching Church" is worthy of trust, was published in Baltimore, in
+1854.]
+
+[Footnote 10: How Hidéyoshi made use of the Shin sect of Buddhists to
+betray the Satsuma clansmen is graphically told in Mr. J.H. Gubbin's
+paper, Hidéyoshi and the Satsuma Clan, T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII, pp. 124-128,
+143.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Corea the Hermit Nation, Chaps. XII.-XXI., pp. 121-123;
+Mr. W.G. Aston's Hidéyoshi's Invasion of Korea, T.A.S.J., Vol. VI., p.
+227; IX, pp. 87, 213; XI., p. 117; Rev. G.H. Jones's The Japanese
+Invasion, The Korean Repository, Seoul, 1892.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Brave Little Holland and What She Taught Us, Boston, 1893,
+p. 247.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See picture and description of this temple--"fairly
+typical of Japanese Buddhist architecture," Chamberlain's Handbook for
+Japan, p. 26; G.A. Cobbold's, Religion in Japan, London, 1894, p. 72.]
+
+[Footnote 14: T.A.S.J., see Vol. VI., pp. 46, 51, for the text of the
+edicts.]
+
+[Footnote 15: M.E., p. 262, Chamberlain's Handbook for Japan, p. 59.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The Origin of Spanish and Portuguese Rivalry in Japan, by
+E.M. Satow, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., p. 133.]
+
+[Footnote 17: See Chapter VIII., W.G. Dixon's Gleanings from Japan.]
+
+[Footnote 18: T.A.S.J., Vol. VI., pp. 48-50.]
+
+[Footnote 19: In the inscription upon the great bell, at the temple
+containing the image of Dai Butsŭ or Great Buddha, reared by Hidéyori
+and his mother, one sentence contained the phrase _Kokka anko, ka_ and
+_ko_ being Chinese for _Iyé_ and _yasŭ_, which the Yedo ruler
+professed to believe mockery. In another sentence, "On the East it
+welcomes the bright moon, and on the West bids farewell to the setting
+sun," Iyéyasŭ discovered treason. He considered himself the rising
+sun, and Hidéyori the setting moon.--Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan,
+p. 300.]
+
+[Footnote 20: I have found the Astor Library in New York especially rich
+in works of this sort.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Nitobé's United States and Japan, p. 13, note.]
+
+[Footnote 22: This insurrection has received literary treatment at the
+hands of the Japanese in Shimabara, translated in The Far East for 1872;
+Woolley's Historical Notes on Nagasaki, T.A.S.J., Vol. IX., p. 125;
+Koeckebakker and the Arima Rebellion, by Dr. A.J.C. Geerts, T.A.S.J.,
+Vol. XI., 51; Inscriptions on Shimabara and Amakusa, by Henry Stout,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. VII, p. 185.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "Persecution extirpated Christianity from Japan."--History
+of Rationalism, Vol. II, p. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 24: T.A.S.J., Vol. VI., Part I., p. 62; M.E. pp. 531, 573.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Political, despite the attempt of many earnest members of
+the order to check this tendency to intermeddle in politics; see Dr.
+Murray's Japan, p. 245, note, 246.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See abundant illustration in Léon Pagés' Histoire de la
+Religion Chrétienne en Japon, a book which the author read while in
+Japan amid the scenes described.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _The Japan Evangelist_, Vol. I., No. 2, p. 96.]
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE
+
+
+[Footnote 1: See Diary of Richard Cocks, and Introduction by R.M.
+Thompson, Hakluyt Publications, 1883.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For the extent of Japanese influence abroad, see M.E., p.
+246; Rein, Nitobe, and Hildreth; Modern Japanese Adventurers, T.A.S.J.,
+Vol. VII., p. 191; The Intercourse between Japan and Siam in the
+Seventeenth Century, by E.M. Satow, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 139; Voyage
+of the Dutch Ship Grol, T.A.S.J., Vol. XI., p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The United States and Japan, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See Professor J.H. Wigmore's elaborate work, Materials for
+the Study of Private Law in Old Japan, T.A.S.J., Tōkiō, 1892.]
+
+[Footnote 5: See the Legacy of Iyéyasŭ, by John Frederic Lowder,
+Yokohama, 1874, with criticisms and discussions by E.M. Satow and others
+in the _Japan Mail_; Dixon's Japan, Chapter VII.; Professor W.E.
+Grigsby, in T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Part II., p. 131, gives another
+version, with analysis, notes, and comments; Rein's Japan, pp. 314,
+315.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Old Japan in the days of its inclusiveness was a secret
+society on a vast scale, with every variety and degree of selfishness,
+mystery, secrecy, close-corporationism, and tomfoolery. See article
+Esotericism in T.J., p. 143.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Since the abolition of feudalism, with the increase of the
+means of transportation, the larger freedom, and, at many points,
+improved morality, the population of Japan shows an unprecedented rate
+of increase. The census taken in 1744 gave, as the total number of souls
+in the empire, 26,080,000 (E.J. Reed's Japan, Vol. I., p. 236); that of
+1872, 33,110,825; that of 1892, 41,089,910, showing a greater increase
+during the past twenty years than in the one hundred and thirty-eight
+years previous. See Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon,
+Tōkiō, 1894; Professor Garrett Droppers' paper on The Population
+of Japan during the Tokugawa Period, read June 27th, 1894; T.A.S.J.,
+Vol. XXII.]
+
+[Footnote 8: For the notable instance of Pere Sidotti, see M.E, p. 63;
+Séi Yō Ki Buu, by S.R. Brown, D.D., a translation of Arai Hakuséki's
+narrative, Yedo, 1710, T.N.C.A.S.; Capture and Captivity of Pere
+Sidotti, T.A.S.J., Vol. IX., p. 156; Christian Valley, T.A.S.J., Vol.
+XVI., p. 207.]
+
+[Footnote 9: T.A.S.J., Vol. I., p. 78, Vol. VII., p. 323.]
+
+[Footnote 10: See Matthew Calbraith Perry, Boston, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 11: See the author's Townsend Harris, First American Minister
+to Japan, _The Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1891.]
+
+[Footnote 12: See Honda the Samurai, Boston, 1890; Nitobe's United
+States and Japan; The Japan Mail _passim_; Dr. G.F. Verbeck's History of
+Protestant Missions in Japan, Yokohama, 1883; Dr. George Wm. Knox's
+papers on Japanese Philosophy, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. l58, etc. Recent
+Japanese literature, of which the writer has a small shelf-full,
+biographies, biographical dictionaries, the histories of New Japan, Life
+of Yoshida Shoin, and recent issues of The Nation's Friend (Kokumin no
+Tomo), are very rich on this fascinating subject.]
+
+[Footnote 13: A typical instance was that of Rin Shihei, born 1737,
+author of _Sun Koku Tsu Ran to Setsu_, translated into French by
+Klaproth, Paris, 1832. Rin learned much from the Dutch and Prussians,
+and wrote books which had a great sale. He was cast into prison, whence
+he never emerged. The (wooden) plates of his publications were
+confiscated and destroyed. In 1876, the Mikado visited his grave in
+Sendai, and ordered a monument erected to the honor of this far-seeing
+patriot.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Rein, pp. 336, 337]
+
+[Footnote 15: Rein, p. 339; The Early Study of Dutch in Japan, by K.
+Mitsukuri, T.A.S.J., Vol. V., p. 209; History of the Progress of
+Medicine in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. XII., p. 245; Vijf Jaren in Japan,
+J.L.C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, 2d Ed., Leyden, 1808.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Honda the Samurai, pp. 249-251; Nitobé, 25-27.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, by Professor E. W. Clement,
+T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII, p. 14; Nitobé's United States and Japan, p. 25,
+note.]
+
+[Footnote 18: M.E. (6 Ed.), p. 608; Adams's History of Japan, Vol. II.,
+p. 171.]
+
+[Footnote 19: See the text of the anti-Christian edicts, M.E., p. 369.]
+
+[Footnote 20: T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., p. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 21: T.A.S.J., Vol. IX., p. 134.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II., p. 125; A Japanese Buddhist
+Preacher, by Professor M.K. Shimomura, in the New York Independent;
+other sermons have been printed in The Japan Mail; Kino Dowa, two
+sermons and vocabulary, has been edited by Rev. C.S. Eby, Yokohama.]
+
+[Footnote 23: On Sunday, November 29, 1857, Mr. Harris, resting at
+Kawasaki, over Sunday, on his way to Yedo and audience of the Shōgun,
+having Mr. Heusken as his audience and fellow-worshipper, read service
+from the Book of Common Prayer.]
+
+[Footnote 24: See a paper written by the author and read at the World's
+Columbian Exhibition Congress of Missions, Chicago, September, 1893, on
+The Citizen Rights of Missionaries.]
+
+[Footnote 25: This embassy was planned and first proposed to the Junior
+premier, Tomomi Iwakura, and the route arranged by the Rev. Guido F.
+Verbeck, then President of the Imperial University. One half of the
+members of the embassy had been Dr. Verbeck's pupils at Nagasaki.]
+
+[Footnote 26: A somewhat voluminous native Japanese literature is the
+result of the various embassies and individual pilgrimages abroad, since
+1860. Immeasurably superior to all other publications, in the practical
+influence over his fellow-countrymen, is the Séiyo Jijo (The Condition
+of Western Countries) by Fukuzawa, author, educator, editor, decliner of
+numerously proffered political offices, and "the intellectual father of
+one-half of the young men who now fill the middle and lower posts in the
+government of Japan." For the foreign side, see The Japanese in America,
+by Charles Lanman, New York, 1872, and in The Life of Sir Harry Parkes,
+London, 1894, and for an amusing piece of literary ventriloquism,
+Japanese Letters, Eastern Impressions of Western Men and Manners, London
+and New York, 1891.
+
+See History of Protestant Missions in Japan, by G. F. Verbeck, Yokohama,
+1893.]
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Abbess, 318.
+Abbots, 312.
+Abdication, 214.
+Aborigines, 9, 38, 43, 77-79, 177.
+Adams, Will, 334, 340.
+Adi-Buddha, 174.
+Adoption, 122, 126.
+Adultery, 149.
+Aidzu, 119.
+Ainos, 2, 9, 16, 73, 177, 317, 379.
+Akamatsu, Rev. Renjo, 425.
+Akéchi, 332.
+Alphabets, 199, 200.
+Altaic, 39, 389.
+Amalgam of religions, 11, 13.
+Amatérasŭ, see Sun-goddess.
+American relations, 11, 12, 157.
+Amidaism, 276, 303.
+Anabaptists, 162.
+Analects, 128.
+Ancestral worship, 106.
+Anderson, Dr. Win, 435.
+Angels, 304.
+Animism, 15-17.
+Anjiro, 329.
+Apostolical succession, 262.
+Arabian Nights, 192, 201.
+Architecture, 82, 84, 210, 298-300.
+Art, 68, 1l4, 195-197, 297, 298, 303-305, 314, 356.
+Aryan Conquest of India, 44, 156, 157, 177, 207.
+Asanga, 175, 205.
+Assassination, 367.
+Asoka, 165.
+Aston, Mr. Wm. G., 360, 386, 387.
+Atheism, 163, 164.
+Atkinson, Rev, J.L., 410.
+Avalokitesvara, 170, 171, 179.
+Avatars, 201, 208, 221, 247, 269, 295.
+
+Babism, 166.
+Bakin, 444.
+Bangor Theological Seminary, 378.
+Batchelor, Rev. John, 317.
+Beal, Rev. Samuel, 8.
+Beauty, 207.
+Beggars, 208.
+Bells, 307, 308.
+Benten, 204, 207, 218.
+Bible, 27, 104, 364, 386.
+Binzuru, 237.
+Birth, 84.
+Bishamon, 218.
+Bodhidharma, see Daruma.
+Bodhisattva, 169, 204, 234.
+Bonzes, 310.
+Bosatsu, 170, 204; see Bodhsattva.
+Brahma, 247.
+Brahmanism, 163, 185, 186, 218.
+Brothers, 125, 126.
+Buddha. Amida, see Amidaism.
+  the Buddha, 101, 103, 161, 162.
+  Gautama, 155, 161-164.
+  Shakyamuni, 160.
+  Siddartha, 410.
+  Tathagata, 259.
+  Tathata, 243.
+Bunyin Nanjio, Rev., 231, 425.
+Buddhism, 42, 74, 76, 106, 133, 136, 137, 140, 185, 186, 227, 231.
+Buddhist, 165, 166, 183, 214, 229, 252.
+
+Cannibalism, 74.
+Canon, Chinese, 103; Shintō, 39-41.
+Capitals of Japan, 182, 183, 296.
+Celibacy, 272.
+Cemeteries, 308.
+Chair of Contemplation, 252.
+Chamberlain, Prof. B. Hall, 39, 324, 388.
+Chastity, 68, 124, 149, 320.
+Cheng Brothers, 138, 139.
+China, 134, 199, 215, 328, 355.
+Chinese, 83, 134; Buddhism, 232.
+Christianity and Buddhism, 166, 183, 185, 187, 195, 217, 218, 265, 270,
+    300-302, 306, 315, 319.
+Chronology, 41, 370, 387.
+Chu Hi, 11, 108, 139, 143, 144, 356.
+Cleanliness, 84, 97.
+Clement, Prof. E.M., 407.
+Cobra-de-capello, 21.
+Cocks, Mr. Richard, 380.
+Columbus, 328.
+Comparative religion, 4-6.
+Confucius, 100-106.
+Confucianism, 74, 107, 213.
+Concubinage, 149.
+Constitution of 1889, 96, 122.
+Corea, see Korea.
+Courtship, 124.
+Creator, 145, 285.
+Cremation, 182.
+Crucifixion, 115, 368.
+
+Dai Butsu, 203.
+Daikoku, 218.
+Dai Miō Jin, 190, 204, 206, 230.
+Daruma, 186, 208, 254.
+Davids, T. Rhys, 155, 172.
+Death, 84.
+De Brosses, 23.
+De Forest, Rev. J.H., 226.
+Demoniacal possession, 281.
+Déshima, 354, 358, 362-365.
+Dharari, 199.
+Dharma, see Daruma, 186.
+Dhyana Buddhas and Sect, 172, 252, 254.
+Diet, 293, 294.
+Divorce, 125, 149.
+Dō-sen, 236.
+Dō-shō, 181.
+Dragon, 20, 21, 74, 115, 198, 242.
+Dutch, 90, 336, 340, 353, 354, 358, 360, 362, 363-365, 366.
+Dutt, Mr. Romesh Chunder, 161.
+
+Ebisu, 218.
+Ecclesiastes, 214.
+Echizen, 312.
+Edicts against Christianity, 335, 336, 342.
+Edkins, Dr. J., 249.
+Education, 313, 320.
+Embassy round the world, 373.
+Emperor, 148.
+Emura, Rev. Shu-zan, 232.
+England, 37.
+Eta, 115, 150, 275, 316, 317, 367.
+Ethics, 92, 94.
+Euhemerus, 192, 193, 197, 201.
+Eurasians, 344.
+Evil, 58, 78.
+Evolution, 62.
+Ezekiel, 36.
+Ezra, 102.
+
+Family Life, 122, 125-127.
+Female divinities, 66, 305, 319.
+Fetichism, 22-27.
+Feudalism, 10, 108-110.
+Filial piety, 123, 149, 213.
+Fire-drill, 55, 56.
+Fire, God of, 53.
+Fire-myths, 53.
+Five Relations, 105, 114, 148-150.
+Flags, 26.
+Flood, 53.
+Flowers, 58.
+Forty-seven Rōnins, 118, 119.
+Franciscans, 336, 337.
+Friends, 127.
+Fudo, 279.
+Fuji Mountain, 400.
+Fujishima, Rev. Ryauon, 231.
+Fukuda, Rev. Gyo-kai, 425.
+Fukui, 23.
+Fuku-roku-jin, 218.
+
+Gardens, 237, 294, 295.
+Gautama, 158, 161, 164.
+Genji Monogatari, 149.
+Genjō, 181, 232, 233, 238, 239.
+Germanic nations, 10, 44.
+Ghosts, 206.
+Giyoku, 183.
+Gnostics, 193, 195.
+God-possession, 201.
+Gold, 184, 196, 210, 291.
+Golden Rule, 128.
+Gongen, 204, 205, 220.
+Gore, Mr. T., 7, 384.
+Graveyards, 308, 368.
+Greater Vehicle, 165, 170, 240, 244.
+Gubbins, Mr. J.H., 403, 447.
+
+Hachiman, 204.
+Hades, 53, 64.
+Hara-kiri, 112, 121, 339.
+Harris, Mr. Townsend, 145, 352, 360, 370, 371.
+Hayashi, 129.
+Heathen, 13, 30.
+Heaven, 62, 63, 70, 81, 105, 112, 118, 144.
+Hepburn, Dr. J.C., 372.
+Hidéyori, 340, 342.
+Hidéyoshi, 313, 333, 338.
+Hindu history, 156.
+Hi-nin, 115, 150.
+Hinayana, 165, 167, 169, 228, 232, 238.
+Hiouen Thsang, see Genjō.
+Hiraii, 2.
+Hirata, 86.
+History of China, intellectual, 137.
+  of Japan, intellectual, 230.
+  of Japan, political, 10, 37, 44, 219.
+  of Japan, religious, 227, 228.
+Hitomarō, 60.
+Hiyéisan, 16, 297.
+Hodge, 102.
+Hodgson, Mr. Brian H., 411, 414.
+Hokké-Kiō, see Saddharma Pundarika.
+Hokusai, 314.
+Holland, 338.
+Hōnen, 261, 264.
+Hō-ō, 184, 237.
+Hospitals, 216, 315.
+Hossō-Shu, 238, 239.
+Hotéi, 218.
+Hotoké, 202, 269.
+
+Idols, 175, 207, 216.
+Idzumo, 44, 65.
+Ikkō, 273.
+Inari, 190.
+Indra, 163, 247.
+Ingwa, 217, 302, 321; see Karma.
+Inquisition, 347, 348, 368.
+Insurance by fetich, 24, 25.
+Isaiah, 100.
+Isé, 28, 184, 201.
+Iyéyasŭ, 91, 100, 132, 134, 204, 205, 338, 342, 357, 358.
+Izanagi and Izanami, 52, 63, 64, 207, 218.
+
+Jade, 292.
+Jains, 166.
+Japan, area, 9.
+  Census, 9.
+  Ethnology, 43, 44.
+  Geography, 9, 43, 44.
+  Government, 40.
+  History, 10, 37, 44, 109.
+  Origins, 43.
+  Population, 8, 9.
+  Various names of, 73.
+Japanese Bride, The, 125, 149.
+Japanese characteristics, 112, 285, 361.
+  Language, 113, 116, 135.
+  Writing, 200.
+Jataka tales, 169.
+Jealousy, 124.
+Jesuits, 247, 329, 337, 341, 342.
+Jesus, 76, 97, 100, 117.
+Jimmu Tennō, 389,
+Jin Gi Kuan, 49, 94, 390-392.
+Jizo, 247, 305.
+Jō dō sect, 250, 275.
+John, 2, 60.
+Jō-jitsu sect, 181, 235.
+Joss, 23.
+Jun-shi, 68, 76, 119.
+Ju-rŭ-jin, 218.
+
+Kaburagi, 36, 60.
+Kada Adzumarō, 91.
+Kamui, 30.
+Kami-dana, 86, 88, 295.
+Kamui, 30.
+Kana, 199, 200, 274.
+Kanda, Dai Miō-Jin, 205.
+Karma, 162, 169, 186, 234, 258.
+Kato Kyomasa, 278, 334, 339.
+Ké-gon sect, 242-244.
+Kéichu, 91.
+Kern, Prof. H., 155, 239.
+Kiōto, 183, 296, 330, 336.
+Kirin, 19.
+Kishimoto, Mr. Nobuta., 11.
+Kiushiu, 339.
+Kiyomori, 120.
+Knos, Dr. George Wm., 182, 228, 288, 385.
+Kobayashi, Rev. Zé-jun, 425.
+Kōbō, 89, 197, 205, 248, 250.
+Kojiki, 29, 32, 40, 41, 52, 74, 82-90, 149, 195, 197.
+Ko-ken, Empress, 310.
+Kompira, 204.
+Konishi, 334, 335.
+Korea, 9, 21, 26, 40, 41, 74, 106, 107, 168, 179, 180, 292, 310, 328,
+    332, 333, 334, 355, 368.
+Kosatsu, 368.
+Ku-ya, 198.
+Kumi, Prof., 76-82.
+Kun-shin, 111, 113, 116, 117, 213.
+Ku-sha sutra, 232, 233.
+Kwannon, 181, 207, 247, 319.
+Kyūso, 132, 144.
+
+Lamaism, 107.
+Language of China, 237.
+  of England, 295.
+  of Holland, 364, 365.
+  of Japan, 39, 113, 116, 134, 265, 295, 299, 364.
+  of Korea, 116.
+Lao Tsze, 102, 144, 218.
+Laws of Japan, 358.
+Lecky, Mr., 344.
+Legendre, Gen., 385, 389.
+Legge, Dr. J., 100, 378.
+Libraries, 253, 327.
+Lingam, see Phallicism.
+Literature, 39, 100, 141, 156, 159, 216, 252, 313, 318, 369.
+Liturgy, see Norito.
+Lloyd, Rev. A., 258.
+Loo-choo, see Rin Kin.
+Lotus, 434, 435, 437.
+Love, 117, 118.
+Lowell, Mr. Percival, 397, 423.
+Loyalty, see Kun-shin.
+Luther, 271.
+Lyman, Prof. B.S., 383.
+
+Mabuchi, 90, 91.
+MacDonald, Rev. James, 8.
+Magatama, 68, 292.
+Mahayana, 105; see Greater Vehicle.
+Maitreya, 169, 170, 218, 236, 244.
+Malays, 9, 43.
+Mandala, 203.
+Munjusri, 170, 171, 179, 262.
+Mantra, 248.
+Manyū-shu, 39, 40.
+Marco Polo, 42.
+Mark, 60.
+Marriage, 123, 126, 149.
+Martyrs, 337, 344, 359, 360, 362, 366-369.
+Masakado, 209.
+Matsugami, 209.
+Matsuri, 28.
+Meiji Era, 112, 116, 256.
+Mencius, 106, 112, 137.
+Mendez, Pinto, 42.
+Mexico, 349.
+Mikado, 44, 45, 76, 92, 95, 96, 114, 117, 184, 191, 201.
+Mikadoism, 45-49, 74-82, 184, 202.
+Military monks, 247.
+Minamoto, 271.
+Ming dynasty, 134.
+Mioken, 279.
+Miracles, 216, 267.
+Mirror, 83.
+Missionary training, 6-8.
+Mito, 111, 134, 143, 366.
+Miya, 82-84, 209.
+Monasteries, 162, 165, 298, 311, 312.
+Monotheism, 15, 81, 103, 104, 145, 174, 187.
+Morse lectureship, 4.
+Morse, Prof E.S., 377.
+Motoöri, 80, 91, 290.
+Mozoomdar, 411, 420.
+Müller, Prof. Max, 211.
+Munzinger, Rev. C., 403.
+Murray, Dr. David, 402.
+Mutsuhito, 60, 316.
+
+Nagasaki, 332, 337, 343, 344, 358, 362.
+Nakatomi, 48.
+Names, 127, 202, 265.
+Names of Japan, 73, 82.
+Namu-Amida-Butsu, 259, 261.
+Nanjio Bunyin, 231.
+Nara, 182, 237, 243, 296.
+Nehan, see Nirvana.
+Nepal, 167, 168, 171.
+New Buddhism, 284, 285.
+Nichiren, 277, 278.
+   Sect, 277-280, 334, 339.
+Nihilism, 236, 240, 241.
+Nihongi, 41, 56, 62.
+Nikkō, 185, 263.
+Nirvana, 162, 163, 186, 200, 302, 303.
+Nitobé, Mr. Inazo, 352, 360.
+Nobunaga, 312, 331, 332.
+Norito, 38, 47-49, 54, 55-58, 79, 80, 96.
+Northern Buddhism, 165.
+
+Obaku sect, 283.
+Offerings, 57.
+Ogurusu, Rev. Ku-chō, 214.
+Obashi Junzo, 145.
+Ojin, 204.
+Onna-ishi, see Phallicism.
+Original prayer, 271.
+Original vow, 273, 312.
+Orphan asylums, 216.
+Osaka, 130, 312, 368.
+
+Pagés, Mr. Leon, 449.
+Pagodas, 203.
+Pantheism, 31, 142, 143, 187, 219, 243.
+Paradise, 210, 229, 259, 261, 280.
+Parliament of Religions, 5, 39, 72, 283.
+Peking, 105.
+Perry, Commodore M.C., 129, 316, 352, 360, 364, 365.
+Persecutions, 93, 343.
+Persian elements, 195, 202, 304.
+Personality, 116.
+Pessimism, 214.
+Phallicism, 29-30, 49-53, 88, 380-384.
+Philo, 192, 197, 201.
+Phoenix, 19, 20.
+Pilgrimages, 298, 290.
+Pindola, see Binzuru.
+Poetry, 223; see Manyūshu.
+Politeness, 74, 241.
+Popular customs, 192.
+Population, 8, 9, 177, 291, 359.
+Popular movement in China, 138.
+Portuguese, 344, 345, 347.
+Pratyekas, 234.
+Prayers, 86-88.
+Prayer-wheels, 175.
+Printing, 133, 134, 200.
+Prometheus, 53.
+Protestantism, 155, 162, 252, 274.
+Pronouns, 116.
+Proverbs, 28, 179, 226, 270, 307, 332, 352, 389.
+Psychology of the Japanese, 230, 241.
+Pure Land of Bliss, 198, 263-265.
+Purification of 1870, 206, 210, 213, 222, 248, 360.
+Pyrronism, 240.
+
+Rai Sanyo, 143.
+Rakan, 305.
+"Reformed" Buddhism, 270, 274-277.
+Rennyō Shō-nin, 258.
+Revision of Confucianism, 148-152.
+Revival of pure Shintō, 91-96.
+Revolving libraries, 253.
+Ris-shu, 236-238.
+Rituals, see Norito.
+Riu Kiu, 9, 109.
+Riyōbu, 89, 191, 203, 209, 211, 212, 223.
+Rosaries, 266.
+
+Saddharma Pundarika, 170, 229, 246, 280, 304.
+Sado, 341.
+Salt, 85.
+Samurai, 110, 119, 146, 151, 152.
+San Kai Ri, 211.
+Sanron sect, 182, 240.
+Sanskrit, 25, 182, 200, 210, 245, 249.
+Saratashi, 218.
+Satow, Mr. Ernest, 39, 47, 386.
+Satsuma, 313.
+Schools of Philosophy:
+  Chinese, 136-139.
+  Indian, 159-164, 232.
+  Japanese, 356-358, 369.
+Sekigaharu, 338.
+Sendai, 119.
+Seppuku, see Hara-kiri.
+Serpent-worship, 30-33, 278, 279, 385.
+Seven Gods of Good Fortune, 217, 218.
+Shaka, 160, 161, 179, 254.
+Shakyamuni, see Shaka.
+Shaminism, 15-17.
+Shang-Ti, 103, 104.
+Shari, 182.
+Shastra and Sutra, 231.
+Shichimen, 278.
+Shigomori, 120.
+Shimabara, 344.
+Shingaku movement, 369, 370.
+Shingon sect, 185, 203, 248-251.
+Shinran, 271-274.
+Shin sect, 270-276, 317.
+Shintō, 38, 42, 76, 89, 96, 97, 142, 184, 195, 214, 319.
+Sin, 285, 288.
+Shō-gun, 110, 115, 143.
+Shomon, 236.
+Shōtoku, 180, 181, 208, 236, 313.
+Siddartha, 410.
+Soga no Inamé, 180.
+Soshi, 95, 278.
+Southern Buddhism, 165, 167.
+Spaniards, 336, 337, 340, 347.
+Stars, 92.
+Statistics of Buddhism, 309.
+  of Shintō, 400, 401.
+Sugawara Michizané, 204.
+Suicide, 112, 118-121, 147, 151.
+Suiko, 180.
+Sung dynasty, 414, 437.
+Sun-goddess, 66, 104, 201, 203.
+Sun-worship, 46, 47, 82, 87.
+Swastika, 305.
+Swords, 7, 378.
+Syle, Rev. E.W., 36.
+Syncretism, 191-194, 205.
+Synergism, 268, 271, 272.
+Szma Kwang, 138.
+
+Taikō, see Hidéyoshi.
+Takahashi, Mr. Gorō, 384.
+Takashi, Rev. Dai-Ryo, 238.
+Takétori Monogatari, 423.
+Tantra system, 194.
+Taōism, 106, 215, 218.
+Tathagata, 259.
+Tathata, 243, 246.
+Taylor, Bayard, 380.
+Tea plant, 208.
+Téi-Shn philosophy, 139, 145.
+Temples, 83, 93, 209, 305-309.
+Ten, 144.
+Tendai sect, 185, 244-248, 268.
+Tenjin, 204.
+Tennō, 184.
+Tenshi, 184.
+Terence, 128.
+Theism, 172.
+Theological seminaries, 6-8.
+Tibet, 165, 167, 170.
+Tobacco, 209.
+Tokugawas, 141, 143, 356, 365.
+Torii, 84, 210.
+Tortoise, 19.
+Transmigration of souls, 315.
+Tree-worship, 30, 31.
+Triads, 171, 255, 279.
+Trinity, 428.
+Tripitaka, 160, 170, 231.
+Tsuji, Rev. Ken-ko, 425.
+Tsukushi, 44.
+Tsushima, 44.
+Tycoon, see Shō-gun.
+
+Uéda, Rev. Sho-Hen, 425.
+Upanishads, 156, 161, 162.
+Ushi toki mairi, 31.
+Uzumé, 68.
+
+Vagra, 305.
+Vagrabodhi, 248, 249.
+Vairokana, 184, 244, 250.
+Vedas, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162.
+Vehicles, the three, 234, 235; see also Hinayana and Mahayana.
+Victims, 74.
+
+Washington, 114.
+Western Paradise, 277.
+Wheel of the law, 302.
+Whitney, Prof. W.D., 211, 277.
+William the Silent, 114.
+Woman, 123, 149, 275, 318-320.
+
+Xavier, 324, 329, 330, 345, 346, 347.
+
+Yamato, 44, 76, 87, 91, 109, 177, 179.
+   Damashii, 44, 147, 151, 152, 172.
+Yamato-Tosa art, 114,
+Yedo, 110, 115, 119, 141, 220, 238, 340, 360, 366.
+Yen Sect, 252-256.
+Yezo, 43, 317.
+Yoga, 157, 197, 199, 201, 209, 211.
+Yoga-chara, 194, 203, 249.
+Yokoi Héishiro, 112, 316, 366, 367.
+Yori, see Phallicism.
+Yoshida Shoin, 147.
+Yoshiwara system, 404.
+
+Zendō, 261-262, 267.
+Zenkōji, 179, 181.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Religions of Japan, by William Elliot Griffis
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