accord with the theory of a nomadic ancestry for the Japanese people:
it was a practice totally incompatible with a settled civilization
like that of the early Greeks and Romans, whose customs in regard to
burial presuppose small landholdings in permanent occupation. But
there may have been, even in early times, some exceptions to general
custom--exceptions made by necessity. To-day, in various parts of the
country, and perhaps more particularly in districts remote from
temples, it is the custom for farmers to bury their dead upon their
own lands.
[37]--At regular intervals after burial, ceremonies were performed
at the graves; and food and drink were then served to the spirits.
When the spirit-tablet had been introduced from China, and a true
domestic cult established, the practice of making offerings at the
place of burial was not discontinued. It survives to the present
time,--both in the Shinto and the Buddhist rite; and every spring an
Imperial messenger presents at the tomb of the Emperor Jimmu, the
same offerings of birds and fish and seaweed, rice and rice-wine,
which were made to the spirit of the Founder of the Empire
twenty-five hundred years ago. But before the period of Chinese
influence the family would seem to have worshipped its dead only
before the mortuary house, or at the grave; and the spirits were yet
supposed to dwell especially in their tombs, with access to some
mysterious subterranean world. They were supposed to need other
things besides nourishment; and it was customary to place in the
grave various articles for their ghostly use,--a sword, for example,
in the case of a warrior; a mirror in the case of a woman,--together
with certain objects, especially prized during life,--such as objects
of precious metal, and polished stones or gems .... At this stage of
ancestor-worship, when the spirits are supposed to require shadowy
service of a sort corresponding to that exacted during their
life-time in the body, we should expect to hear of [38] human
sacrifices as well as of animal sacrifices. At the funerals of great
personages such sacrifices were common. Owing to beliefs of which all
knowledge has been lost, these sacrifices assumed a character much
more cruel than that of the immolations of the Greek Homeric epoch.
The human victims* were buried up to the neck in a circle about the
grave, and thus left to perish under the beaks of birds and the teeth
of wild beasts. [*How the horses and other animals were sacrificed,
does not clearly appear.] The term applied to this form of
immolation,--hitogaki, or "human hedge,"--implies a considerable
number of victims in each case. This custom was abolished, by the
Emperor Suinin, about nineteen hundred years ago; and the Nihongi
declares that it was then an ancient custom. Being grieved by the
crying of the victims interred in the funeral mound erected over the
grave of his brother, Yamato-hiko-no-mikoto, the Emperor is recorded
to have said: "It is a very painful thing to force those whom one has
loved in life to follow one in death. Though it be an ancient custom,
why follow it, if it is bad? From this time forward take counsel to
put a stop to the following of the dead." Nomi-no-Sukune, a
court-noble--now apotheosized as the patron of wrestlers--then
suggested the substitution of earthen images of men and horses for
the living victims; and his suggestion was approved. The hitogaki,
was thus abolished; but compulsory as well as voluntary following of
the [39] dead certainly continued for many hundred years after, since
we find the Emperor Kotoku issuing an edict on the subject in the
year 646 A.D.:--
"When a man dies, there have been cases of people sacrificing
themselves by strangulation, or of strangling others by way of
sacrifice, or of compelling the dead man's horse to be sacrificed, or
of burying valuables in the grave in honour of the dead, or of
cutting off the hair and stabbing the thighs and [in that condition]
pronouncing a eulogy on the dead. Let all such old customs be
entirely discontinued."--Nihongi; Aston's translation.
As regarded compulsory sacrifice and popular custom, this edict may
have had the immediate effect desired; but voluntary human sacrifices
were not definitively suppressed. With the rise of the military power
there gradually came into existence another custom of junshi, or
following one's lord in death,--suicide by the sword. It is said to
have begun about 1333, when the last of the Hojo regents, Takatoki,
performed suicide, and a number of his retainers took their own lives
by harakiri, in order to follow their master. It may be doubted
whether this incident really established the practice. But by the
sixteenth century junshi had certainly become an honoured custom
among the samurai. Loyal retainers esteemed it a duty to kill
themselves after the death of their lord, in order to attend upon him
during his ghostly journey. A thousand years [40] of Buddhist
teaching had not therefore sufficed to eradicate all primitive
notions' of sacrificial duty. The practice continued into the time of
the Tokugawa shogunate, when Iyeyasu made laws to check it. These
laws were rigidly applied,--the entire family of the suicide being
held responsible for a case of junshi: yet the custom cannot be said
to have become extinct until considerably after the beginning of the
era of Meiji. Even during my own time there have been
survivals,--some of a very touching kind: suicides performed in hope
of being able to serve or aid the spirit of master or husband or
parent in the invisible world. Perhaps the strangest case was that of
a boy fourteen years old, who killed himself in order to wait upon
the spirit of a child, his master's little son.
The peculiar character of the early human sacrifices at graves, the
character of the funeral-rites, the abandonment of the house in which
death had occurred.--all prove that the early ancestor-worship was of
a decidedly primitive kind. This is suggested also by the peculiar
Shinto horror of death as pollution: even at this day to attend a
funeral,--unless the funeral be conducted after the Shinto rite,--is
religious defilement. The ancient legend of Izanagi's descent to the
nether world, in search of his lost spouse, illustrates the terrible
beliefs that once existed as to goblin-powers presiding over decay.
[41] Between the horror of death as corruption, and the apotheosis of
the ghost, there is nothing incongruous: we must understand the
apotheosis itself as a propitiation. This earliest Way of the Gods
was a religion of perpetual fear. Not ordinary homes only were
deserted after a death: even the Emperors, during many centuries,
were wont to change their capital after the death of a predecessor.
But, gradually, out of the primal funeral-rites, a higher cult was
evolved. The mourning-house, or moya, became transformed into the
Shinto temple, which still retains the shape of the primitive hut.
Then under Chinese influence, the ancestral cult became established
in the home; and Buddhism at a later day maintained this domestic
cult. By degrees the household religion became a religion of
tenderness as well as of duty, and changed and softened the thoughts
of men about their dead. As early as the eighth century,
ancestor-worship appears to have developed the three principal forms
under which it still exists; and thereafter the family-cult began to
assume a character which offers many resemblances to the domestic
religion of the old European civilizations.
Let us now glance at the existing forms of this domestic cult,--the
universal religion of Japan. In every home there is a shrine devoted
to it. If the family profess only the Shinto belief, this shrine,
[42] or mitamaya* ("august-spirit-dwelling"),--tiny model of a Shinto
temple,--is placed upon a shelf fixed against the wall of some inner
chamber, at a height of about six feet from the floor. Such a shelf
is called Mitama-San-no-tana, or--"Shelf of the august spirits." [*It
is more popularly termed miya, "august house,"--a name given to the
ordinary Shinto temples.] In the shrine are placed thin tablets of
white wood, inscribed with the names of the household dead. Such
tablets are called by a name signifying "spirit-substitutes"
(mitamashiro), or by a probably older name signifying
"spirit-sticks." ... If the family worships its ancestors according
to the Buddhist rite, the mortuary tablets are placed in the Buddhist
household-shrine, or Butsudan, which usually occupies the upper shelf
of an alcove in one of the inner apartments. Buddhist
mortuary-tablets (with some exceptions) are called ihai,--a term
signifying "soul-commemoration." They are lacquered and gilded,
usually having a carved lotos-flower as pedestal; and they do not, as
a rule, bear the real, but only the religious and posthumous name of
the dead. Now it is important to observe that, in either cult, the
mortuary tablet actually suggests a miniature tombstone--which is a
fact of some evolutional interest, though the evolution itself should
be Chinese rather than Japanese. The plain gravestones in Shinto
cemeteries resemble in form the simple [43] wooden ghost-sticks, or
spirit-sticks; while the Buddhist monuments in the old-fashioned
Buddhist graveyards are shaped like the ihai, of which the form is
slightly varied to indicate sex and age, which is also the case with
the tombstone.
The number of mortuary tablets in a household shrine does not
generally exceed five or six,--only grandparents and parents and the
recently dead being thus represented; but the name of remoter
ancestors are inscribed upon scrolls, which are kept in the Butsudan
or the mitamaya.
Whatever be the family rite, prayers are repeated and offerings are
placed before the ancestral tablets every day. The nature of the
offerings and the character of the prayers depend upon the religion
of the household; but the essential duties of the cult are everywhere
the same. These duties are not to be neglected under any
circumstances; their performance in these times is usually intrusted
to the elders, or to the women of the household.*
[*Not, however, upon any public occasion,--such as a gathering of
relatives at the home for a religious anniversary: at such times the
rites are performed by the head of the household.]
Speaking of the ancient custom (once prevalent in every Japanese
household, and still observed in Shinto homes) of making offerings to
the deities of the cooking range and of food, Sir Ernest Satow
observes: "The rites in honour of these gods were at first performed
by the head of the household; but in after-times the duty came to he
delegated to the women of the family" (Ancient Japanese Rituals). We
may infer that in regard to the ancestral rites likewise, the same
transfer of duties occurred at an early time, for obvious reasons of
convenience. When the duty devolves upon the elders of the
family--grandfather and grandmother--it is usually the grandmother
who attends to the offerings. In the Greek and Roman household the
performance of the domestic rites appears to have been obligatory
upon the head of the household; but we know that the women took part
in them.
[44] There is no long ceremony, no imperative rule about prayers,
nothing solemn: the food-offerings are selected out of the family
cooking; the murmured or whispered invocations are short and few.
But, trifling as the rites may seem, their performance must never be
overlooked. Not to make the offerings is a possibility undreamed of:
so long as the family exists they must be made.
To describe the details of the domestic rite would require much
space,--not because they are complicated in themselves, but because
they are of a sort unfamiliar to Western experience, and vary
according to the sect of the family. But to consider the details will
not be necessary: the important matter is to consider the religion
and its beliefs in relation to conduct and character. It should be
recognized that no religion is more sincere, no faith more touching
than this domestic worship, which regards the dead as continuing to
form a part of the household life, and needing still the affection
and the respect of their children and kindred. Originating in those
dim ages when fear was stronger than love,--when the wish to please
the ghosts of the departed must have been chiefly inspired by dread
of their anger,--the cult at last developed into a religion of
affection; and this it yet remains. The belief that the dead [45]
need affection, that to neglect them is a cruelty, that their
happiness depends upon duty, is a belief that has almost cast out the
primitive fear of their displeasure. They are not thought of as dead:
they are believed to remain among those who loved them. Unseen they
guard the home, and watch over the welfare of its inmates: they hover
nightly in the glow of the shrine-lamp; and the stirring of its flame
is the motion of them. They dwell mostly within their lettered
tablets;--sometimes they can animate a tablet,--change it into the
substance of a human body, and return in that body to active life, in
order to succour and console. From their shrine they observe and hear
what happens in the house; they share the family joys and sorrows;
they delight in the voices and the warmth of the life about them.
They want affection; but the morning and the evening greetings of the
family are enough to make them happy. They require nourishment; but
the vapour of food contents them. They are exacting only as regards
the daily fulfilment of duty. They were the givers of life, the
givers of wealth, the makers and teachers of the present: they
represent the past of the race, and all its sacrifices;--whatever the
living possess is from them. Yet how little do they require in
return! Scarcely more than to be thanked, as the founders and
guardians of the home, in simple words like these:--"For aid
received, by day and by night, accept, August Ones, our reverential
gratitude."... [46]
To forget or neglect them, to treat them with rude indifference, is
the proof of an evil heart; to cause them shame by ill-conduct, to
disgrace their name by bad actions, is the supreme crime. They
represent the moral experience of the race: whosoever denies that
experience denies them also, and falls to the level of the beast, or
below it. They represent the unwritten law, the traditions of the
commune, the duties of all to all: whosoever offends against these,
sins against the dead. And, finally, they represent the mystery of
the invisible: to Shinto belief, at least, they are gods.
It is to be remembered, of course, that the Japanese word for gods,
Kami, does not imply, any more than did the old Latin term,
dii-manes, ideas like those which have become associated with the
modern notion of divinity. The Japanese term might be more closely
rendered by some such expression as "the Superiors," "the Higher
Ones"; and it was formerly applied to living rulers as well as to
deities and ghosts. But it implies considerably more than the idea of
a disembodied spirit; for, according to old Shinto teaching the dead
became world-rulers. They were the cause of all natural events,--of
winds, rains, and tides, of buddings and ripenings, of growth and
decay, of everything desirable or dreadful. They formed a kind of
subtler element,--an ancestral aether,--universally extending and
[47] unceasingly operating. Their powers, when united for any
purpose, were resistless; and in time of national peril they were
invoked en masse for aid against the foe .... Thus, to the eyes of
faith, behind each family ghost there extended the measureless
shadowy power of countless Kami; and the sense of duty to the
ancestor was deepened by dim awe of the forces controlling the
world,--the whole invisible Vast. To primitive Shinto conception the
universe was filled with ghosts;--to later Shinto conception the
ghostly condition was not limited by place or time, even in the case
of individual spirits. "Although," wrote Hirata, "the home of the
spirits is in the Spirit-house, they are equally present wherever
they are worshipped,--being gods, and therefore ubiquitous."
The Buddhist dead are not called gods, but Buddhas (Hotoke),--which
term, of course, expresses a pious hope, rather than a faith. The
belief is that they are only on their way to some higher state of
existence; and they should not be invoked or worshipped after the
manner of the Shinto gods: prayers should be said FOR them, not, as a
rule, TO them.* [*Certain Buddhist rituals prove exceptions to this
teaching.] But the vast majority of Japanese Buddhists are also
followers of Shinto; and the two faiths, though seemingly
incongruous, have long been reconciled in the popular mind. The
Buddhist doctrine has [48] therefore modified the ideas attaching to
the cult much less deeply than might be supposed.
In all patriarchal societies with a settled civilization, there is
evolved, out of the worship of ancestors, a Religion of Filial Piety.
Filial piety still remains the supreme virtue among civilized peoples
possessing an ancestor-cult.... By filial piety must not be
understood, however, what is commonly signified by the English
term,--the devotion of children to parents. We must understand the
word "piety" rather in its classic meaning, as the pietas of the
early Romans,--that is to say, as the religious sense of household
duty. Reverence for the dead, as well as the sentiment of duty
towards the living; the affection of children to parents, and the
affection of parents to children; the mutual duties of husband and
wife; the duties likewise of sons-in-law and daughters-in-law to the
family as a body; the duties of servant to master, and of master to
dependent,--all these were included under the term. The family itself
was a religion; the ancestral home a temple. And so we find the
family and the home to be in Japan, even at the present day. Filial
piety in Japan does not mean only the duty of children to parents and
grandparents: it means still more, the cult of the ancestors,
reverential service to the dead, the gratitude of the present to the
past, and the conduct of the individual in relation [49] to the
entire household. Hirata therefore declared that all virtues derived
from the worship of ancestors; and his words, as translated by Sir
Ernest Satow, deserve particular attention:--
"It is the duty of a subject to be diligent in worshipping his
ancestors, whose minister he should consider himself to be. The
custom of adoption arose from the natural desire of having some one
to perform sacrifices; and this desire ought not to be rendered of no
avail by neglect. Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the
mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them
will ever be disrespectful to the gods or to his living parents. Such
a man also will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and
kind and gentle to his wife and children. For the essence of this
devotion is indeed filial piety."
From the sociologist's point of view, Hirata is right: it is
unquestionably true that the whole system of Far-Eastern ethics
derives from the religion of the household. By aid of that cult have
been evolved all ideas of duty to the living as well as to the
dead,--the sentiment of reverence, the sentiment of loyalty, the
spirit of self-sacrifice, and the spirit of patriotism. What filial
piety signifies as a religious force can best be imagined from the
fact that you can buy life in the East--that it has its price in the
market. This religion is the religion of China, and of countries
adjacent; and life is for sale in China. It was the filial piety of
China that rendered [50] possible the completion of the Panama
railroad, where to strike the soil was to liberate death,--where the
land devoured labourers by the thousand, until white and black labour
could no more be procured in quantity sufficient for the work. But
labour could be obtained from China--any amount of labour--at the
cost of life; and the cost was paid; and multitudes of men came from
the East to toil and die, in order that the price of their lives
might be sent to their families.... I have no doubt that, were the
sacrifice imperatively demanded, life could be as readily bought in
Japan,--though not, perhaps, so cheaply. Where this religion
prevails, the individual is ready to give his life, in a majority of
cases, for the family, the home, the ancestors. And the filial piety
impelling such sacrifice becomes, by extension, the loyalty that will
sacrifice even the family itself for the sake of the lord,--or, by
yet further extension, the loyalty that prays, like Kusunoki
Masashige, for seven successive lives to lay down on behalf of the
sovereign. Out of filial piety indeed has been developed the whole
moral power that protects the state,--the power also that has seldom
failed to impose the rightful restraints upon official despotism
whenever that despotism grew dangerous to the common weal.
Probably the filial piety that centred about the domestic altars of
the ancient West differed in little [51] from that which yet rules
the most eastern East. But we miss in Japan the Aryan hearth, the
family altar with its perpetual fire. The Japanese home-religion
represents, apparently, a much earlier stage of the cult than that
which existed within historic time among the Greeks and Romans. The
homestead in Old Japan was not a stable institution like the Greek or
the Roman home; the custom of burying the family dead upon the family
estate never became general; the dwelling itself never assumed a
substantial and lasting character. It could not be literally said of
the Japanese warrior, as of the Roman, that he fought pro aris et
focis. There was neither altar nor sacred fire: the place of these
was taken by the spirit-shelf or shrine, with its tiny lamp, kindled
afresh each evening; and, in early times, there were no Japanese
images of divinities. For Lares and Penates there were only the
mortuary-tablets of the ancestors, and certain little tablets bearing
names of other gods--tutelar gods .... The presence of these frail
wooden objects still makes the home; and they may be, of course,
transported anywhere.
To apprehend the full meaning of ancestor-worship as a family
religion, a living faith, is now difficult for the Western mind. We
are able to imagine only in the vaguest way how our Aryan forefathers
felt and thought about their dead. But in the [52] living beliefs of
Japan we find much to suggest the nature of the old Greek piety. Each
member of the family supposes himself, or herself, under perpetual
ghostly surveillance. Spirit-eyes are watching every act; spirit-ears
are listening to every word. Thoughts too, not less than deeds, are
visible to the gaze of the dead: the heart must be pure, the mind
must be under control, within the presence of the spirits. Probably
the influence of such beliefs, uninterruptedly exerted upon conduct
during thousands of years, did much to form the charming side of
Japanese character. Yet there is nothing stern or solemn in this
home-religion to-day,--nothing of that rigid and unvarying discipline
supposed by Fustel de Coulanges to have especially characterized the
Roman cult. It is a religion rather of gratitude and tenderness; the
dead being served by the household as if they were actually present
in the body .... I fancy that if we were able to enter for a moment
into the vanished life of some old Greek city, we should find the
domestic religion there not less cheerful than the Japanese home-cult
remains to-day. I imagine that Greek children, three thousand years
ago, must have watched, like the Japanese children of to-day, for a
chance to steal some of the good things offered to the ghosts of the
ancestors; and I fancy that Greek parents must have chidden quite as
gently as Japanese parents [53] chide in this era of Meiji,--mingling
reproof with instruction, and hinting of weird possibilities.*
[*Food presented to the dead may afterwards be eaten by the elders of
the household, or given to pilgrims; but it is said that if children
eat of it, they will grow with feeble memories, and incapable of
becoming scholars.]
[54]
[55]
THE JAPANESE FAMILY