GENERAL FEATURES.--PERSONIFICATION.
=Religion=.--Religion, a general term which includes all our relations
to the Divine, is a cord of three strands, namely, Emotion, Thought,
and Conduct. Emotion comprises gratitude, hope, and fear. Thought
yields conceptions and beliefs. Religious conduct consists in doing
that which is pleasing to the superior powers, and in refraining from
acts which are thought to be offensive to them. It includes worship,
purity, and morality.
These elements of religion are inseparable. Emotion stimulates and
sharpens the intellectual faculties, which in turn provide fresh food
for emotion. Each without the other is evanescent and barren. Nothing
worthy of the name of religion is possible without a long succession of
alternate moods of thought and feeling.
Emotion and thought lead in all healthy minds to action of some sort.
Man is impelled by his very nature to testify his gratitude to the
powers on which he feels himself dependent, to express his hopes of
future blessings from them, and to avoid acts which might offend
them. Moreover, as a social animal, he is prompted to communicate
his religious thoughts and feelings to his fellow men. Without such
intercommunication, no religion is possible. No individual man ever
evolved a religion out of his own inner consciousness alone.
=Emotional Source of Religion=.--The emotional basis of religion
is gratitude, love, and hope, rather than fear. If life is worth
living--and what sane man doubts it?--there are necessarily far more
frequent occasions for the former than for the latter. The statement of
the old Roman poet that "Primus in orbe Deus fecit timor" is untrue
even of the Greek and Roman mythology to which he more particularly
referred. Zeus, the Shining One, the Father of Gods and Men, though
he may occasionally destroy a wicked man with his thunder, is loved
rather than feared. "Alma Venus, hominum divomque voluptas," is not the
offspring of our terrors. Nor is Ceres, Bacchus, Here Eileithuia, or
Kora. In Mars, by an exception the malignant quality predominates.
Shinto is essentially a religion of gratitude and love. The great Gods,
such as the Sun-Goddess and the Deity of Food, are beneficent beings.
They are addressed as parents, or dear divine ancestors, and their
festivals have a joyous character.[1] An eighth-century poet says,
"Every living man may feast his eyes with tokens of their love." The
_Kogoshiui_ tells us that when the Sun-Goddess emerged from her cave,
"Heaven above at length became clear, and all people could see each
other's faces distinctly. They stretched forth their hands and danced
and sang together, exclaiming, 'Oh! how delightful! how pleasant! how
clear!'" The _Nihongi_ says that on the same occasion all the Gods
rejoiced greatly. Have we not here a rudiment of the beatific vision
which in its higher developments embraces not only the sunlight but all
things in Heaven and earth, and hell itself, founded, as Dante says,
by the _primo Amore_? Even the boisterous Rain-Storm God, who of the
_Dii Majores_ most nearly approaches the type of an evil deity, has his
good points. The demons of disease and calamity are for the most part
obscure and nameless personages.
=Intellectual Basis of Religion. The Idea of God=.--A God may be
defined as a sentient being possessed of superhuman power. The phrase
"supernatural being," which is sometimes used as equivalent to God, is
open to objection The word "supernatural" belongs to the vocabulary
of a comparatively scientific age. To the savage, phenomena are
ordinary or strange, not natural or supernatural. Moreover, there are
many objects of worship which are not at all supernatural, as, for
instance, the sun. "Spiritual being" is insufficiently comprehensive
as an equivalent for God. The Lama of Tibet is a God; but he is not a
spiritual being. Neither is the Wind nor the Moon. The assumption that
Gods are always spirits has been the source of much confusion.
=Kami=.--The most common and comprehensive word for deity in the
Japanese language is _Kami_. It is probably connected with _kaburu_, to
cover, and has the general meaning of "above," "superior." _Kami_ is
the part of Japan which lies near the capital, as opposed to _Shimo_,
the lower country or provinces. _Kaha-kami_ means the upper waters of a
river. _Kami no ke_, or simply _kami_, is the hair of the head. _Kami_
is applied not only to Gods, but to Mikados and nobles. The heads of
State Departments were at one time called _Kami_, and in later times
this word became equivalent to our "Lord" in territorial titles. _O
Kami_ is frequently said vaguely of "the authorities," while _O Kami
San_ is the domestic authority, namely, "the mistress." Whether _Kami_
is used of Gods or men, it is in both cases a secondary application of
the general meaning "upper." The Gods are _Kami_ because they reside
in Heaven (_superi, caelicoli_, Ὁνρανίωνες, Most High, Father in
Heaven); men are _Kami_ on account of their higher rank. No doubt both
gain prestige by their association under the same title--the Gods by a
reflection from the pomp and ceremony which attend on mortal _Kami_;
and men by assimilation with the transcendent power and glory of the
great nature-deities.
Why should height come to be everywhere associated with excellence and
rank? Herbert Spencer's characteristic contribution[2] to the solution
of this problem is as follows: "In battle it is important to get the
force of gravity to fight on your side, and hence the anxiety to seize
a position above that of the foe. Conversely the combatant who is
thrown down cannot further resist without struggling against his own
weight as well as against his antagonist's strength. Hence being below
is so habitually associated with defeat as to have made maintainance of
this relation (literally expressed by the words superior and inferior)
a leading element in ceremony at large." To this it may be added that
the upper part of the human body--namely, the head--is also the most
important and honourable. "Chief" is derived from _caput_: "capital,"
as an adjective, means excellent. "Headman," "head-centre," "head
and front of my offending," are familiar phrases which involve the
assumption of the superior importance of the head. A Japanese raises to
his head a present or other object to which he wishes to show respect.
A further and decisive consideration is the circumstance that the most
incomparably glorious, excellent, and majestic thing with which we
are acquainted is also immeasurably the highest. Even pre-religious
man cannot have been wholly insensible to the glory of the sky--"hoc
sublime candens"--with its sun and moon, its dawns and sunsets, its
clouds, thunders, and storms. No wonder that the words heavenly and
celestial have come to convey the idea of supreme excellence.
The following quotations will help us to realize more fully what the
Japanese mean by the word _Kami_. Motoöri says:--
"The term _Kami_ is applied in the first place to the various deities
of Heaven and Earth who are mentioned in the ancient records as well as
to their spirits (_mi-tama_) which reside in the shrines where they are
worshipped. Moreover, not only human beings, but birds, beasts, plants
and trees, seas and mountains, and all other things whatsoever which
deserve to be dreaded and revered for the extraordinary and pre-eminent
powers which they possess, are called _Kami_. They need not be eminent
for surpassing nobleness, goodness, or serviceableness alone. Malignant
and uncanny beings are also called _Kami_ if only they are the objects
of general dread.[3] Among _Kami_ who are human beings I need hardly
mention first of all the successive Mikados--with reverence be it
spoken.... Then there have been numerous examples of divine human
beings, both in ancient and modern times, who, although not accepted by
the nation generally, are treated as gods, each of his several dignity,
in a single province, village, or family.... Amongst _Kami_ who are not
human beings I need hardly mention Thunder [in Japanese _Naru kami_
or the Sounding God]. There are also the Dragon, the Echo [called in
Japanese _Ko-dama_ or the Tree Spirit], and the Fox, who are _Kami_ by
reason of their uncanny and fearful natures. The term _Kami_ is applied
in the _Nihongi_ and _Manyōshiu_ to the tiger and wolf. Izanagi gave
to the fruit of the peach and to the jewels round his neck names which
implied that they were _Kami_.... There are many cases of seas and
mountains being called _Kami_. It is not their spirits which are meant.
The word was applied directly to the seas[4] or mountains themselves as
being very awful things."
Hirata defines _kami_ as a term which comprises all things strange,
wondrous, and possessing _isao_ or virtue. A recent dictionary gives
the following essentially modern definitions of this word :--
_Kami_. 1. Something which has no form but is only spirit, has
unlimited supernatural power, dispenses calamity and good fortune,
punishes crime and rewards virtue. 2. Sovereigns of all times, wise and
virtuous men, valorous and heroic persons whose spirits are prayed to
after their death. 3. Divine things which transcend human intellect. 4.
The Christian God, Creator, Supreme Lord.
=Double Current of Religious Thought=.--If we accept the definition of
a God as a sentient being possessed of superhuman power, it follows
that the idea of God may be arrived at in two ways. We may ascribe
sense to those superhuman elemental powers of whose action we are
daily witnesses, or we may reverse this process and endow sentient
beings, especially men, with powers which they do not actually
possess. In other words, the idea of God may be arrived at either by
personification or by deification.
Strictly speaking, the first of these processes is the only legitimate
one. The second involves the assumption that man may be or may become
God. But without questioning the reality of an intimate union of the
human with the divine, both in this world and the next, it is better to
maintain a clear distinction between these two terms. Ultimately, after
the errors of anthropomorphism, polytheism, and spiritism have been
eliminated, the two methods of arriving at the idea of God yield the
substantially identical formulas:--
A. God = infinite power + absolute humanity.
B. God = absolute humanity + infinite power.
But in the stage of religious progress represented by Shinto, we are
far indeed from such a result.
The priority of the second of these two processes has been assumed or
contended for by many writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Others argue
that there can be no deification until the idea of deity has somehow
been arrived at previously, as for example, by the personification of
natural powers. It appears to me impossible to say which of the two
comes first in order of time. The germs of both may be observed at a
stage of intellectual development prior to all religion. Children,
as we have all observed, sometimes personify inanimate objects. I
have known a boy of three years of age complain that, "Bad mustard
did bite my tongue." The baby who cries for the moon credits his
nurse--ignorantly, of course--with powers far transcending those
of humanity. The argument that there can be no deification without
a previous acquaintance with the idea of deity loses sight of the
circumstance that deity is a compound conception, which combines
the ideas of great power and sense. Of these two a man has sense
already. To make him a God all that is necessary is to ascribe to him
transcendent power. Deification, therefore, does not necessarily imply
a previous knowledge of the conception of deity. In practice, however,
men are usually deified by being raised to the level of already known
deities.[5]
Each of these two processes rests on a basis of truth. The
personification of natural objects and powers springs from some
glimmering notion that the so-called inanimate world is really alive.
Everything physical has its metaphysical counterpart. There is no
motion without something akin to sensation, and no sensation without
motion. As all our sensations, emotions, and thoughts are accompanied
by corresponding disturbances of the molecules of our brain and nervous
system, so all natural phenomena have associated with them something
varying in quality and intensity, for which our human language has no
better word than sensation, while along with the sum of the infinitely
interwoven physical energies of the universe there goes what we, in our
imperfect speech, must call emotion, purpose, thought.
Ordinarily the lower animal, the child, the savage, and the primitive
man do not realize this truth. Under the pressure of imperious
practical necessities they recognize with sufficient accuracy the
difference between the animate and the inanimate. They do not take
the further step of seeing that there is animation in the so-called
inanimate. Sense and volition are not habitually attributed by them to
inanimate objects. Much less do they assume, as we are sometimes told,
the presence in them of a conscious agent not visible to the senses.
There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Some of these are simple
mistakes. I have known a dog take a doll for a living person, and only
discover his error after close examination and long consideration. A
large stone-ware image of the Buddhist Saint Daruma, of stern aspect,
which stood in my garden in Tōkiō, caused unmistakable alarm to stray
dogs who unexpectedly found themselves face to face with it. Children
sometimes beat inanimate objects by which they have been hurt, and
savages have been known to regard a watch as a living being.
A second exception is the case of conscious make-believe, of which we
may observe instances in the play of children, and even of the lower
animals. Errors and fancies of this kind do not constitute religion,
though they may prepare the way for it. A time comes, however, when
some savage or primitive man, gifted beyond his fellows, arrives
at a partial and hesitating recognition of the truth that with the
energies of nature there really goes something of the same kind that
he is conscious of in himself, and has learned to recognize in his
fellow beings--namely, sense and will. He sees the sun move across
the heavens, diffusing light and warmth, and says to himself, "He is
alive." With the intellectual perception there is associated emotion.
He feels that the sun is kind to him, and bows his head as he would to
his chief, partly to express his thanks and partly in order that others
may share his thoughts and feelings. This is religion. It comprises the
three elements of thought, emotion, and action. Religion is at first
exceptional. Every primitive man is not a seer or maker of religious
myth. His ordinary attitude towards the powers of nature is that of the
Chinaman, who thought that the moon was "all the same lamp pigeon."
He is an unconscious Agnostic, and knows nothing of volition in the
inanimate world.
The deification of men, although involving a contradiction in terms,
has yet a substantial and most important truth associated with it.
Great captains, wise rulers, inspired poets, sages and seers, whether
alive or dead, deserve honour to which it is not easy to place a limit.
Napoleon said that one of his generals was worth an army division. Who
shall estimate the value to their respective races, and, indeed, to
humanity, of such men as Shakespeare, Confucius, Mahomet, or Buddha?
Nor are they dead. They live in their works, and subjectively in
the hearts and minds of their countrymen. And may we not go a step
further? Our actions, even the most insignificant, do not remain
locked up in ourselves. As by sensation the whole universe affects us,
so does every impulse of our ego react upon the universe, leaving an
impression which is indelible. The physical world is different for the
most trifling act of the meanest human being that ever lived. All our
emotions and thoughts have a counterpart in our physical constitution,
which is resolvable into motion, and is therefore indestructible. The
doctrine of the conservation of energy is the physical counterpart of
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Each involves the other.
Assuming, therefore, that all motion is accompanied by something
akin to sensation, it will be seen that dead men may continue to have
perhaps even a sentient existence equal to the sum of the reactions of
their ego upon its environment, animate or inanimate, during life. It
is the remembered total energies of the man which, I take it, form the
object of honour and worship after he is dead, and not his corpse or
ghost. The latter is a mere accident, of secondary origin, and is by no
means universally recognized.
In justification of man-worship, it may also be pleaded that if the
nature-deity is truer, the man-deity is nearer to us and more capable
of vivid realization. And as it is from the sympathetic recognition
of life in our fellow men that we proceed to the recognition of life
in the so-called inanimate universe, so it is by the contemplation of
the highest types of humanity that we are able to refine and exalt our
conception of divinity.
The two great sources of religious thought, personification and
deification, are constantly intermingling their streams and reacting
upon each other. A deity who begins his career as a Nature-God often in
course of time loses this quality, and becomes hardly distinguishable
from a magnified man. The Zeus of Homer is an example. He is much
more the Father of Gods and men than a Sky or Weather-God. In Japan
it is only the scholar who recognizes in Susa no wo the deity of the
Rain-storm. To the people even Tenshōdaijin (the Sun Goddess) is
nothing more than the great providential deity who resides at Ise. Her
solar quality is practically forgotten. Men, on the other hand, may be
exalted to such a height by the ascription to them of nature-powers
that their original humanity is much obscured.
It is sometimes difficult to determine to which of the two currents
of religious thought a particular deity belongs. For example, we find
a sword worshipped as a deity. Is it on account of its wonderful
cutting property, or because it was once an offering to a nature or a
man-deity, and had therefore at length absorbed to itself a portion
of his divinity? Or is it the Excalibur of some forgotten deified
chieftain? There is no general answer to such questions. They must be
decided, if at all, by the evidence in each case. To call objects of
this kind "fetishes" helps us nothing. In the _Yengishiki_ we find
mention of a shrine to Iha no hime (the lady of the rock). At first
sight this looks like a Nature-God. But when we find that an Iha no
hime was the mother of the Mikado Richiu (end of fourth century) it
seems more probable that the Iha no hime of this shrine was a deified
mortal.
In Shinto it is the first of the two great currents of religious
thought with which we are chiefly concerned. It is based much more on
the conception--fragmentary, shallow, and imperfect as it is--of the
universe as sentient than on the recognition of pre-eminent qualities
in human beings, alive or dead. It springs primarily from gratitude
to--and, though in a less degree, fear of--the great natural powers
on which our existence depends. The desire to commemorate the virtues
and services of great men and to perpetuate a loving remembrance of
departed parents and forefathers takes a secondary place.
=Classification of Deities=.--Both Nature-Gods and Man-Gods may be
deities of individuals, of classes, or of abstract qualities. We have,
therefore, six classes of Gods, as follows:--
_Nature-Gods_.
Individuals, as the Sun.
Classes, as the God of Trees.
Properties, as the God of Growth.
_Man-Gods_.
Individuals, as Temmangu.
Classes, as Koyane.
Properties, as Ta-jikara no wo (Hand-strength-male).
This is the logical sequence; but it by no means follows that all Gods
of individuals precede all Gods of classes, or that there were no
deities of abstractions before some of the later individual or class
deities were evolved.
The distinction between individual objects deified and deities of
classes is not always well maintained in Shinto. It is doubtful, for
example, whether Kamado no Kami is the God of all cooking furnaces, or
whether there is a separate God for each. Different worshippers might
give different answers. The habitual neglect by the Japanese nation of
the grammatical distinction between singular and plural is a potent
obstacle to clearness in such matters.
=Phases of Conception=.--The conception of individual parts of the
universe as deities passes through the phases represented in the
following formulas:--
I. The Sun (Moon, Wind, Sea, &c.) is alive.
II. The Sun is a man, a father, a chief or a king--first rhetorically,
and then literally.
III. The Sun is a material object, ruled by an unseen but not
incorporeal being with human form and passions.
IV. The Sun is (_a_) a material object ruled by an anthropomorphic
being which has a spiritual double, or (_b_)is animated by a spiritual
being.
These formulas exhibit the logical sequence of development. In practice
the various phases are found to overlap one another considerably. Even
in the latest Shinto the direct conception of the natural object as
alive is not forgotten.
The first stage,[6] in which we have the religious conception before
it is clothed in myth or metaphor, is abundantly exemplified in
Shinto. A well, for example, is, like Horace's "Fons Bandusiæ,"
worshipped without name or myth attached to it, or anything to show
whether it is regarded as male or female. The same is the case with
sites, buildings, provinces, trees, all of which are deified and have
religious rites in their honour without any very definite personality
being attributed to them. They are simply thought of as in some sort
of way living things. Mud and sand are dubbed _Kami_, and there the
personification ends. There are a good many colourless deities of
this kind in Shinto. Motoöri declares explicitly that when a sea or a
mountain is called _Kami_, it is not the spirit of the sea or mountain
which is meant, but the sea or mountain itself. A poet of the Manyoshiu
says of Fujiyama:--
Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise,
It is the peace-giver, it is the God,
It is the treasure.
When a kitchen wench at the present day speaks of the
_Hettsui-sama_--_sama_ is a honorific and personifying word--she means
the cooking-furnace itself regarded as a God, not a spirit inhabiting
it. She will even speak of the plasterer making a _Hettsui-sama_.
The second or anthropomorphic stage of the development of the idea
of God arises out of the rhetorical necessity of rendering more
vivid, even at the expense of exact truth, the presentation of the
conception of the powers of nature as living things. Finding that the
bare assertion that they are alive produces little impression, the
poet or seer goes a step further, and boldly ascribes to them human
form, passions, actions, and character. Myth and metaphor are his
instruments. The God has bodily parts, parents, sex, and children. He
eats, drinks, is angry or alarmed, loves, fights, weaves, cultivates
the ground, fishes, hunts, and dies. With the advance of social
organization he is a chief or a king. Sometimes in these metaphors
we can trace a special application to the deity's natural functions.
Sometimes they are introduced merely for general effect. The results
of this process for good and for evil are written large in the pages
of human history. It is, on the one hand, the indispensable means
by which the high intuitions of the seer are brought home, more or
less imperfectly, to the multitude. On the other hand, the true
original nature divinity is often lost sight of in a profusion of
anthropomorphic fancies, and nothing is left but a magnified man,
whose ultimate fate it is to be disavowed by advancing knowledge and
enlightenment.
It has been said that the primitive man knows no distinction between
fancy and reality. In truth, life would be impossible for such a
simpleton. However primitive he may be, he cannot hold a fire in
his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. The difference between
a real dinner and an imaginary one is palpable even to his limited
intelligence. The hunter who could not distinguish between the game of
his imagination and the reality could never earn a living. He would be
fit only for an imbecile asylum. The child is well aware that his mud
pies are not fit to eat. The savage woman who pretends to herself that
a stone is her lost baby, knows in her heart that this is nothing more
than make-believe. Even a dog appreciates the distinction between a
real rat and the object which it pleases him to fancy one, and worries
accordingly. The seer is conscious that his anthropomorphic language is
only metaphorical. Dante felt this when he said:--
Per questo la Scrittura condescende
A nostra facultate e piedi e mano
Attribuisce a Dio ed altro intende.
Metaphor is of the very essence of myth. But the literal-minded vulgar
are at all times prone to confound the _altro_ which is clothed in myth
and metaphor with its outward husk, and the literal-minded scholar
or scientific man is often little better. Hirata says that "what we
call _kami_ are all men. Even among men those who are excellent are
called _kami_. The natural difference between men and Gods is that the
Gods are high and men are low, owing to the greater care taken by the
creator deities in producing the former." He thinks that the Shinto
deities are about ten feet high.
The humanization of the nature deities is reflected in the vocabulary
of Shinto. The term _mioya_, or "august parent," is frequently used of
them. _Tsuchi_ or _tsutsu_, old forms of _chichi_, father, occurs in
the names of several. It is primarily by no means physical fatherhood
which is meant in such cases, although there are no doubt vulgar minds
who are unable to rise above this conception and have thereby done much
to corrupt religion.
In Western religions a God must be either male or female. The
grammatical structure of their languages compels Europeans to say
either he or she in speaking of deities. In Japan this necessity does
not exist. The forms of Japanese speech take little account of sex.
Many Shinto deities have no sex at all. In others sex is indicated by
the incidents of the myth or by the additions of such terminations as
_wo_ male, _me_ female. There are several pairs of married deities. In
art, sex is comparatively little distinguished in Japan.
The reason for attributing one sex to a deity rather than the other
is not always evident. Provinces and mountains are sometimes male
and sometimes female. The Food Goddess is naturally feminine, as
representing the productive principle of nature, and perhaps also
because cooking is the business of women. The male sex is more suitable
to Susa no wo's violent character as the Rain-storm. Warlike gods like
Hachiman are naturally masculine.
The "chieftain" conception of divinity is represented by the use of
the word _wo_, male, _i.e._, virile or valiant one, in many of the
names of deities, and by the ascription to some of warlike qualities.
There is nothing to show that these are deified chieftains. On the
contrary, the term _wo_ is applied, like _tsuchi_, father, to what
are unmistakably nature deities, such as the Sea-Gods Soko-tsutsu-wo
(bottom-father-male) Naka-tsutsu-wo (middle-father-male), and
Uwa-tsutsu-wo (upper-father-male), produced by the lustrations of
Izanagi in the sea after his return from Yomi.
_Tohe_, another word for chieftain, occurs in the name of the Wind-God,
Shina tsu tohe.
_Nushi_, master, is found in the names of several deities.
The application to the Shinto deities of words implying sovereignty
is illustrated by _sube_ or _sume_, which enters into a number of
compounds relating to the Gods or Mikados. This word means "to collect
together into one," and hence "to hold general rule over." _Sumera_ or
_sumeragi no mikoto_ is the Mikado. Several deities enjoy the honorary
epithet of _Sume-gami_, or _Subera-gami_.
_Mi-koto_, august thing, is also applied equally to Gods and Mikados,
and in ancient times even to parents. It is nearly equivalent to our
"majesty."
_Wake_, a branch, that is to say, a branch of the imperial family, a
prince, is applied to deities.
_Hiko_ and _hime_ occur frequently in the names of gods. These words
mean literally sun-child and sun-female, but in practice they are
equivalent to prince and princess, or lord and lady. In the history
of these words one may observe the operation of both of the great
currents of deity-forming thought. _Hi_, sun, is used as an epithet for
the glorification of human personages, and the compounds _hiko_ and
_hime_ are in turn applied to nature powers as a personifying term. The
Wind-God is a _hiko_.
The rhetorical impulse to realize in its various phases the human
character of the nature deities of Shinto has produced a number of
subsidiary personages, who are attached to them as wives, children,
ministers, or attendants. Some of these are also nature deities. In
others we find a union of the two deity-making tendencies. Thus Koyane,
by the circumstance of his descent from Musubi, the God of Growth, and
by his position of high-priest to the Sun-Goddess, belongs to the
category of nature deities, while as an embodiment of the collective
humanity of the Nakatomi sacerdotal corporation, whose ancestor he is
feigned to be, he belongs to the class of deified human beings.
In Japan, the myth and metaphor-making faculty--in other words the
imagination--though prolific enough, is comparatively feeble. The
ancient Japanese especially were appreciably more neglectful than
Western races of the distinction between the animate and the inanimate,
and there was therefore less scope for the play of fancy in which
religious personification consists. Like other Far-Eastern peoples,
they realized the personal conception of deity with less intensity
than the Aryan or Semitic nations. In this respect Homer and the
Bible stand at the opposite pole from Confucius, whose _Tien_ has as
little about it of humanity as is possible for a being who is said
to know, to command, to reward, and to punish. Shinto approaches
Confucianism in this respect. There is, no doubt, a profuse creation of
personified nature-deities, but we find on examination that they are
shadowy personages with ill-defined functions and characters wanting
in consistency. Moreover, owing to the neglect by the Japanese of
grammatical forms indicating number, it is frequently hard to tell
whether a given name is that of one deity or of several. Musubi, the
God of Growth, is sometimes one God, sometimes two, while at a later
period he became split up into five or more deities. The Wind-God is at
one time a single deity, at another a married couple. Susa no wo has in
recent times been made into a trinity. Such fissiparous reproduction
of deities is characteristic of a low degree of organization.[7] To
meet the difficulties arising from this state of things Motoöri,
in the eighteenth century, propounded his theory of _bun-shin_, or
"fractional bodies," which may remind us of the "three persons and one
substance" of Christian theology. Hirata, his pupil, speaking of the
three Sea-deities, Uha tsutsu no wo, Naka tsutsu no wo, and Soko tsutsu
no wo, says: "This deity, although, strictly speaking, born as three
deities, is described as though one deity were present. This is to be
understood of the God dividing his person and again uniting it. The
descent of the _Adzumi no Muraji_ (a noble family) from him shows that
in this respect he is to be regarded as one."
The circumstance that many of the Gods, like the Japanese themselves,
have numerous aliases, adds to the uncertainty. The nomina and the
numina do not invariably go together. There is sometimes reason to
suspect that it is the same God who appears under different names,
while, on the other hand, the same name may cover what are in reality
two or more different deities.
There were no arts of sculpture or painting in Japan before their
introduction from China in historical times, and the consequent want
of images and pictures for which Shinto has been commended must have
contributed materially to prevent the Gods from acquiring distinct
personalities like those of ancient Greece.
The feeble grasp of personality indicated by the above facts is
profoundly characteristic of the Japanese genius. It is illustrated
by their unimaginative literature, which makes but sparing use of
personification, allegory, and metaphor, by their drama, with its
late and imperfect development, and by their art, which has produced
little monumental sculpture or portrait painting of importance. It may
also be traced in the grammar, which has practically no gender, thus
showing that the Japanese mind is comparatively careless of marking the
distinction between animate and inanimate and male and female. The law
takes far less cognizance of the individual and more of the family than
with us. Another fact of the same order is the neglect of distinctions
of person shown by the sparing use of personal and other pronouns. In
a passage translated from Japanese into English, without any intention
of illustrating this fact, there occur only six pronouns in the former
against nearly one hundred in the latter. The verb has no person.
_Yuku_ for example, means equally I go, thou goest, he goes, we go, you
go, and they go. It is true that person may be indicated by the use of
honorifics to mark the second person and humble forms for the first,
but even when these are taken into account, the absence from Japanese
of indications of person is very remarkable.
Herbert Spencer, in his 'Principles of Sociology,' suggests that the
comparative fewness of personal pronouns in the languages of the
Far East is owing to the circumstance that they "establish with the
individual addressed a relation too immediate to be allowed where
distance is to be maintained." Now, not only is it possible, and even
common, for pronouns to be used for the express purpose of magnifying
the distance between the speaker and the person whom he addresses, as
in the case of the German _er_ when used as a pronoun of the second
person, but Spencer's explanation does not meet the case of pronouns of
the third person, which are just as rare in these languages as those of
the first and second. Nor is there anything in the relations between
men of high and low degree in these countries which is so radically
different from those which have prevailed in Europe as to produce such
a far-reaching difference in the language of all classes of society.
The truth is that these nations do not _avoid_ pronouns. Their minds
are still in a stage of development in which they have not yet realized
the advantages in clearness of expression which are to be gained by a
more systematic distribution of their ideas into the three categories
of first, second, and third person. It is with them not a matter of
etiquette, but of poverty of imagination, that power which, as Mr. P.
Lowell has remarked, is to the mental development what spontaneous
variation is to organic development.[8]
In Stages I. and II. of the evolution of nature-deities, it is
the nature power or object itself which is the deity. Stage II.
(Anthropomorphism), so long as it is not meant literally, is not
inconsistent with a direct worship of natural objects and phenomena.
But the vulgar are always prone to mistake metaphor for reality. When
they are told that the Sun is a goddess, who walks, weaves, wears
armour, sows rice, and so on, they take these statements literally,
combining an implicit belief in them with the worship of the Sun
itself. Even Motoöri says that it is the actual Sun in Heaven which
we worship as Amaterasu no Oho-Kami (the Heaven-shining-great Deity),
while he believes at the same time that the Sun-myth of the _Kojiki_
is real history. A time comes when it is objected that the Sun has no
arms or legs necessary for the performance of the actions attributed to
her. It is pointed out that the wind has no bodily form at all. Instead
of going back to the true explanation--that these things are only
metaphorical, the literal-minded man prefers to accept the suggestion
(which brings us to Stage III.) that the deity is not the actual sun,
or wind, or sea, or mountain, but a powerful being who rules it.
Such beings, however, are not at first conceived of as in any way
incorporeal.
There is considerable confusion observable in Shinto between Stages I.
and II. and Stage III. We have seen that Motoöri identified Ama-terasu
with the Sun. His pupil Hirata, on the other hand, says that the
Sun-Goddess was born on earth, and was sent up to Heaven as "Ruler
of the Sun." And while it is true that a sea may be directly called
_Kami_, we have also a Sea-God, Toyotama-hiko, who is as clearly
distinguished from the physical ocean as Neptune is. This fluctuation
is common to all mythologies. Greek literature is full of examples
of reverence paid at one time to natural objects and phenomena, and
at another to deities which rule them. They adored Apollo as well as
Helios. Muir, in the introduction to vol. v. of his 'Sanskrit Texts,'
says:--"The same visible object was at different times regarded
diversely as being either a portion of the inanimate universe, or
an animated being and a cosmical power. Thus in the Vedic hymns,
the sun, the sky, and the earth are severally considered, sometimes
as natural objects governed by particular gods, and sometimes as
themselves gods who generate and control other beings." Our own poets
are not a whit disturbed by such inconsistencies. In 'Paradise Lost'
the Sun is apostrophized in one place as the "God of this new world,"
while in another passage of the same poem we have a "Uriel, Regent of
the Sun." Shakespeare, in the 'Tempest,' puts into the mouth of an
anthropomorphic Iris the words:--
The Queen of the Sky,
Whose watery arch and messenger am I.
=Spiritism=.--We now come to Stage IV., or spiritism. The great and
obvious difficulties connected with the anthropomorphic conception
of deity, even in the modified form of a belief in corporeal beings
detached from natural phenomena, led to spiritism, which may be defined
as a partial or complete negation of the material properties of the
Gods. Spiritism is therefore far from being a "primitive" religious
development, as is so often supposed. "Primitive man," it has been
said, "thinks that the world is pervaded by spiritual forces." I
would rather describe his mental attitude as a piecemeal conception
of the universe as alive, just as he looks on his fellow man as alive
without analyzing him into the two distinct entities of body and soul.
A dog knows quite well the difference between alive and dead; but
the distinction between body and soul is far beyond his intellectual
capacity.
In Japan the process of spiritualizing the Gods has not gone very far.
Like the Gods of the Homeric Olympus,[9] the Shinto deities are, on the
whole, unspiritual beings.
The doctrine of spiritism is associated in Shinto with the word
_Mitama_, for which "spirit" is the nearest English equivalent.
Strictly speaking, the _Mitama_ is not the God, but an emanation or
effluence from him, which inhabits his temple, and is the vehicle of
his action at a distance from the place where he himself resides.
It therefore corresponds to the Shekinah (that which dwells) of the
Jews, and, though in a less marked degree, to the Roman _numen_. The
Shekinah, like the _Mitama_, is a later development. Where Habakkuk,
ii. 20, says, "The Lord is in his holy temple," the Targums have,
"Jehovah was pleased to cause his Shekinah to dwell in his holy
temple." I cannot see that the Shekinah and _Mitama_ owe anything to
the analogous doctrine of the separability of the human soul and body.
The ghost is not the parent of either.[10]
The unavoidable assumption that an anthropomorphic God can act at a
distance from his own abode in Heaven or elsewhere really involves the
doctrine of spiritism, though time and thought are required for its
development. It is clearly not the Sun-Goddess herself who lives in
Ise. Her true place is in Heaven; but she is present in some way on
earth, as is proved by her answering the prayers which are addressed to
her at her shrine. The explanation which is ultimately forthcoming is
that it is the _Mitama_, or spirit, of the Goddess which resides there.
We have here a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the omnipresence of
deity.
The etymology of the word _Mitama_ will repay examination. _Mi_ is
simply a honorific prefix. _Tama_ contains the root of the verb _tabu_,
to give, more often met with in its lengthened form _tamafu_. _Tama_
retains its original signification in _tama-mono_, a gift thing,
and _toshi-dama_, a new year's present. _Tama_ next means something
valuable, as a jewel. Then, as jewels are mostly globular in shape,
it has come to mean anything round. At the same time, owing to its
precious quality, it is used symbolically for the sacred emanation from
the God which dwells in his shrine, and also for that most precious
thing, the human life or soul.[11]
The meaning of _tama_ is illustrated by the following story, which is
related in the _Nihongi_ of Ohonamochi, the Creator or Kosmos-deity of
Idzumo myth:--
"_Coming at last to the province of Idzumo, he spake and said; 'This
Central Land of Reed-plains had been always waste and wild. The very
rocks, trees, and herbs were all given to violence. But I have now
reduced them to submission, and there is none that is not compliant!'
Therefore he said finally: 'It is I, and I alone, who now govern this
land. Is there perchance any one who could join with me in governing
the world?' Upon this a divine radiance_[12] _illuminated the sea, and
of a sudden there was something which floated towards him and said:
'Were I not here, how couldst thou subdue this land? It is because of
my presence that thou hast been able to accomplish this mighty task!
'Who art thou?' asked Ohonamochi. It replied and said: 'I am thy spirit
(tama) of good luck, the wondrous spirit.' Then said Ohonamochi:
'True; I know, therefore, that thou art my spirit (tama) of good luck,
the wondrous spirit. Where dost thou now wish to dwell?' The spirit
answered and said: 'I wish to dwell on Mount Mimoro, in the province
of Yamato.' Accordingly he built a shrine in that place and made the
spirit to go and dwell there. This is the God of Oho-miwa."_
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The distinction between the God and his spiritual double so clearly
indicated in this extract is often neglected and the deity of Miwa
spoken of simply as Ohonamochi. The same uncertainty as to the
spiritual character of the God is reflected in his names Oho-kuni-nushi
(great-country-master) and Oho-kuni-dama (great-country-spirit), and in
a legend told of him in the _Kojiki_, where he is corporeal enough to
have a child by a mortal woman and yet sufficiently spiritual to pass
through a keyhole.
In the _Idzumo Fudoki_, Susa no wo speaks of the village of Susa as the
place where his _mitama_ was settled, that is to say, where a shrine
was dedicated to him. The _Nihongi_ states that Izanami's _mitama_ was
worshipped at Kumano with music and offerings of flowers. In a modern
book the Hi no mitama (spirit of the Sun) is not the Sun-Goddess, but a
separate deity of a lower class.
The element _tama_ enters into the names of several deities. The
Food-Goddess is called either Ukemochi no Kami or Uka no mitama.[13]
But the meaning "spirit" is not applicable in every case in which a
God's name contains this element. Futo-dama, for example, the name of
the supposed ancestor of the Imbe priestly corporation, probably means
"great gift or offering." Yorodzu-dama no Kami is not the God of ten
thousand spirits, but the God of ten thousand offerings.
It is a curious circumstance that in later times the _mitama_ par
excellence were the phallic Sahe no Kami. Their festival was formerly
called the _mitama matsuri_. It is now known by the Chinese equivalent
_Goriōye_.
In a few cases the _mitama_ is in duplicate, a _nigi-mitama_, or gentle
spirit, and an _ara-mitama_, or rough spirit.[14] In the _Idzumo
Fudoki_ a man who is praying for revenge calls upon the _nigi-tama_ of
the _Oho-kami_ (great deity) to remain quiet, and asks the _ara-tama_
to attend to his petition. The legendary Empress Jingo was attended
on her expedition to Korea by two such sea-god _mitama_, one to guard
her person, the other to lead the van of her army. But we hear little
of this distinction in the older records. The _aragami-matsuri_
(rough-God-festival) of later days was a sort of saturnalia when
license was permitted to servants.
The _Kojiki_ and _Nihongi_ do not theorize about the _mitama_. Hirata's
statement that they do not distinguish between the _utsushi-mi-mi_
(real-august-body)[15] and the _mitama_ of the Gods is, as the case
of Ohonamochi shows, not quite correct. But there is much foundation
for it. In one myth, for example, the Sun-Goddess in handing over the
divine mirror to Ninigi, enjoins on him to regard it as her _mitama_,
and in another version of the story to look upon it as herself.
Another indication of an advance towards spirituality in the older
Shinto literature is the distinction which is made between _araha-goto_
(public things) and _kakure-goto_ (hidden things), the former term
being applied to temporal and the latter to spiritual matters, namely,
the service of the unseen Gods. Mystery is not the vital element of
religion. It depends on what we know, not on what we do not know.
Still, there perhaps never was a religion which did not betray some
feeling that what we know is only an infinitesimal portion of that
infinite sum of knowledge for which mankind is possessed with an
eternal yearning. Religion, though not based in mystery, must always
proceed, like other knowledge, from the known towards the unknown.
A good deal, however, that is mysterious in religion is of our own
making. Hirata, when he can find no way out of the difficulties arising
from his crude, literal-minded anthropomorphism, constantly resorts to
the time-honoured expedient of declaring his problems mysteries which
transcend human intelligence, exclaiming, "Oh! how wonderful! Oh! how
strange! Oh! how strange! Oh! how wonderful!"
Motoöri and Hirata account for the invisibility of such Gods as Musubi,
the God of Growth, by the theory that since the Age of the Gods they
have removed further from the earth, so that they are now beyond the
scope of human vision. In other respects, however, they have, under
unacknowledged Chinese influence, greatly developed the hints of the
spiritual nature of the Gods which are found in the _Kojiki_ and
_Nihongi_. Of the _mitama_, Motoöri says[16]:--
_"In general, when such or such a God is mentioned in the old
scriptures, we must distinguish between the real God and his mitama.
The real God is his actual body; the mitama is his divine spirit: the
mitama-shiro (spirit-token) is the thing, be it a mirror or aught else,
to which the divine spirit attaches itself. It is commonly called the
Shintai (God-body). Now both the real body and the spirit are spoken
of simply as the God. Thus when we are told that Amaterasu no Ohokami
was entrusted to Toyo-suki-iri-bime and Yamato no Oho-kuni-dama to
Nunaki-iri-bime, it is not to be supposed that the real bodies of these
two deities were in the Imperial Palace. It is unquestionably their
mitama-shiro which are spoken of as if they were the real bodies....
Again, when we are told in the history of the same reign that the
Mikado assembled the eighty myriads of Gods on the plain of Kami-asachi
and inquired of them by divination, this is not like the assembly
in the divine age of the real Gods in the Plain of High Heaven. The
invitation is to their mitama."_
The same writer says that of the attendant deities who came down from
Heaven with Ninigi, some came in their real bodies, some as _mitama_.
Among the former he naturally classes all those who are represented as
having human descendants. Hirata regards this as a discovery which will
endure to all ages.
The following quotation from Hirata's _Koshiden_ (vi. 9) illustrates
further the ideas of this school of theology regarding the spiritual
nature of the Gods:--
_"Both this God(Chigaheshi) and Kunado[17] were produced by the great
mitama of the great God Izanagi applying itself earnestly to preventing
the entrance into this world of the things coming furiously from the
Land of Yomi, and which accordingly became separated from him and
adhered to a staff and a stone. Remaining there, it (the mitama) did
good service in both cases. These Gods, moreover, sometimes reveal
their real bodies and dispense blessings. This may not be doubted. We
find below that Kunado no Kami acted as a guide to Futsunushi; and that
Chigaheshi no Oho-Kami was two deities distinguished as hiko and hime
(prince and princess)."_
Hirata thinks that Gods (and men too) have two doubles, the _nigi-tama_
and an _aratama_ mentioned above. These he distinguishes from the
_Zentai no mitama_, or "spirit of the entire body." But he admits
that these distinctions are not recognized in the old Shinto. There
is no limit to the subdivision of the _mitama_. Hirata explains that
the deity is like a fire, which may be communicated to a lamp or to
firewood while the original fire remains the same. "But the world knows
not this." In other words, this is a philosophic refinement too subtle
for the popular taste.
While the old records rarely distinguish between the God's real body
and his _mitama_, in later times the _mitama_ is often confounded
with the _mitama-shiro_ (spirit-token), or _shintai_ (god-body)
as the concrete representative of the God is called. Even in the
_Nihongi_ there is a case in which a sword is called Futsu no mitama.
The _Kiujiki_ calls the mirror of the Sun-Goddess her _mitama_. The
_Shinto Miōmoku_ (1699) says that Futsu no mitama is the sword of the
great deity of Kashima, and speaks of the Toyo-uka no mitama (the
Food-spirit) as being, or residing in, a stone. Hirata himself calls
a stone idol the _mitama_ of the God, and speaks of the Sun-Goddess's
_mitama_ as going backward and forward between Ise and the sky. The
unspiritual vulgar naturally find it hard to distinguish between the
spirit of the God and its concrete representative.
The doctrine of the separability of the human body and soul, and of the
continued existence of the latter after death, whether in a material
or semi-material form, or as a pure spirit, may have been a factor in
the spiritualizing of the cruder anthropomorphic conceptions of deity.
But there is little or no evidence to this effect in the old Shinto
scriptures, and the above pages show that other important influences
were at work in producing this result. Whether the idea of God had its
origin in the doctrine of separable human souls is a question which may
be left to the discerning reader's judgment.
=Gods of Classes and Qualities=.--No language is possible without some
exercise of the powers of generalization and abstraction. In Japanese,
however, we miss many of the more general, and especially of the more
abstract, conceptions embodied in European languages, a circumstance
which limits the scope of the personifying faculty, none too vigorous
in itself. Supposing that we take the series of conceptions beginning
with the concrete individual tree, and passing through evergreen
oak, oak, tree, and vegetable, to the definitive generalization of
the universe. The Japanese language has no word for vegetable except
_sōmoku_, a recent compound of Chinese origin. The word for universe is
_Ame-tsuchi_ (Heaven + earth) which is almost certainly a translation
of the Chinese _ten-chi_. The consequence is that neither the class
of vegetables nor the universe is recognized in the Japanese scheme
of nature-deities. Individual trees are deified, and there is a God
of trees, but that is all. The neglect of grammatical number in the
Japanese language often obscures the distinction between the Gods of
individual objects and of classes. _Ki no Kami_ means equally the God
of the tree and the God of trees.[18]
There is a marked poverty of abstract terms in the Japanese language,
and the personification of abstract qualities is correspondingly
restricted. There is scarcely anything in Shinto to compare with the
numerous personified abstractions of Greek and Roman mythology. Izanagi
and Izanami, embodiments of the creative or generative powers of
nature, are probably not originally Japanese, but an echo of the _Yin_
and _Yang_ of Chinese philosophy. I have a suspicion that Musubi, the
God of Growth, may yet be traced to a Chinese source.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] At the festival of Nifu Miōjin in Kiī, when the procession bearing
offerings arrives before the shrine, the village chief calls out in
a loud voice, "According to our annual custom, let us all laugh." To
which a hearty response is given. This is because this God does not go
to Idzumo for an annual visit like the others.
[2] 'Sociology,' p. 153.
[3] Compare with this the following description of the _huacas_ of
the ancient Peruvians. "All those things which from their beauty and
excellence are superior to other things of a like kind; things that are
ugly and monstrous or that cause horror and fright; things out of the
usual course of nature."
[4] In the spirit of Wordsworth's
"Listen, the mighty being is awake
And doth with his eternal motion make
A noise like thunder everlastingly."
[5] M. Goblet d'Alviella says: "I maintain that neither of these two
forms of worship necessarily presupposes the other; but that man having
been led by different roads to personify the souls of the dead on the
one hand and natural objects and phenomena on the other, subsequently
attributed to both alike the character of mysterious superhuman beings.
Let us add that this must have taken place everywhere, for there is not
a people on earth in which we do not come upon these forms of belief
side by side and intermingled." Dr. Pfleiderer's view is substantially
identical.
[6] Max Müller speaks of "that ancient stratum of thought which
postulated an agent in the sky, the sun, &c." This is really a
secondary conception.
[7] It was not unknown in ancient Greece and Rome. Zeus, Hercules, and
other deities became divided up in this way.
[8] "Mr. Tyler has justly observed that the true lesson of the new
science of Comparative Mythology is the barrenness in primitive times
of the faculty which we most associate with mental fertility, the
imagination.... Among these multitudes (the millions of men who fill
what we vaguely call the East) Literature, Religion, and Art--or what
correspond to them--move always within a distinctly drawn circle of
unchanging notions.... This condition of thought is rather the infancy
of the human mind prolonged than a different maturity from that most
familiar to us."--Maine, 'Early History of Institutions,' pp. 225-6.
This characteristic of the mental development of the races of the Far
East is discussed in 'A Comparative Study of the Japanese and Korean
Languages,' by W. G. Aston, in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Asiatic
Society, August, 1879, and more fully by Mr. Percival Lowell, in
his 'Soul of the Far East,' 1888. See also Mr. B. H. Chamberlain's'
Kojiki,' Introd., lxvi.
[9] Homer implicitly denies the spirituality of his Gods when he
says that the Hercules which was summoned up by Ulysses was only his
_eidolon_, or phantom, the real man being in Olympus among the happy
Gods.
[10] See an instructive article on 'Shekinah' in Dr. Hastings's
'Dictionary of the Bible'.
[11] "And mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of
man."--'Macbeth,' Act III. scene i.
[12] The Shekinah was also associated with a divine radiance, or glory.
[13] _Mi mi_ (august body) in the names of others involves a more
material conception of deity.
[14] Corresponding to the _mo acha_, uncle of peace, and _ski acha_,
rough uncle, of the Ainus.
[15] Homer's άντός
[16] _Sakitake no Ben, 21_.
[17] See Index.
[18] For deities of classes consult Dr. Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,'
ii. 242.