fact that Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism have for more than
a thousand years mixed with each other in Japan demonstrates the
susceptibility of the Japanese people to foreign influence and
teaching, and their natural hospitality toward the various religious
cults. The ethical teachings of Confucius prepared the way for
Buddhism, and, in spite of antipathy and wars between the nations,
maintain a powerful hold upon the thoughtful Japanese to-day. Still
more remarkable is it that millions of the Japanese appear to accept
both Shintoism and Buddhism, and good Shintoists and good Buddhists
may be found worshiping in some temples at one and the same time.[41]
A Japanese scholar, speaking at the Chicago "Parliament of Religions"
on the "Future of Religion in Japan," declared that the three
systems named "are not only living together on friendly terms with
one another, but, in fact, they are blended together in the minds
of the people. One and the same Japanese is at once a Shintoist,
a Confucianist, and a Buddhist. Our religion may be likened to a
triangle. One angle is Shintoism, another is Confucianism, and a
third is Buddhism, all of which make up the religion of the ordinary
Japanese. Shintoism furnishes the objects, Confucianism offers the
rules of life, while Buddhism supplies the way of salvation."[42]
=24. Roman Catholicism in Japan.= We must not omit altogether a notice
of the introduction of Roman Catholic Christianity into Japan about the
middle of the sixteenth century. It was in 1549 that the famous Jesuit,
Francis Xavier, landed at Kagoshima, and began his marvelous missionary
work through Japanese interpreters, and in two years of strenuous toil
he succeeded in winning many converts from all classes of the people.
Fifty years thereafter the Christian converts throughout the country
are said to have numbered nearly a million. But the Jesuit habit
and policy of meddling with affairs of State, their intolerance of
other cults, and at length their crusade against the ancient national
faith and their burning of Buddhist temples and slaughter of Buddhist
priests, aroused the bitter reaction and bloody persecutions, which,
after some forty years of struggle, succeeded in obliterating every
public sign of Christianity from every province of the empire. And for
over two hundred years Japan closed her doors to all foreign influences
and appeals. It was not until 1873 that the edicts against Christianity
were withdrawn. Of the Protestant missionary movements in the island
empire since that date, it is not the purpose of this essay to speak.
=25. Present Religious Indifference.= Much is said nowadays about the
apparent religious indifference of the Japanese. Some writers seem to
think that the Japanese and the Chinese people are alike inferior and
defective in religious nature. Mr. Gulick, in his "Evolution of the
Japanese," reports Marquis Ito, Japan's most illustrious statesman,
as having said: "I regard religion itself as quite unnecessary for
a nation's life; science is far above superstition, and what is
religion--Buddhism or Christianity--but superstition, and therefore a
possible source of weakness to a nation? I do not regret the tendency
to free thought and atheism, which is almost universal in Japan,
because I do not regard it as a source of danger to the community."
And yet this same distinguished statesman is reported on the same
page (288) to have given utterance to the following much more recent
statement: "The only true civilization is that which rests on Christian
principles, and consequently, as Japan must attain her civilization
on these principles, those young men who receive Christian education
will be the main factors in the development of future Japan." Possibly
these two discrepant statements may be reconciled by supposing
that, in the first case, Ito's thought was turned especially to the
superstitions and temporary phases incident to all religious cults,
and in his later remark he spoke of Christianity as somehow synonymous
with Western civilization. But in any case it would seem that one
who deems the Japanese either irreligious, or non-religious, or
deficient in religious sense, ought to explain the manifold facts of
the Shinto cult, such as the "god shelf," the ancestral tablets, the
daily offerings, and the family worship in almost every household of
that Eastern island-empire. What mean the hundreds of thousands of
white-robed pilgrims who annually visit the numerous sacred shrines?
And is there no element of religion in the devout patriotism that is
ever ready to sacrifice life and all that men hold dear for the faith
and inheritance of their beloved "central land of Reed-Plains" given
long ago to the care of the "Sovran Grandchild" by the celestial
deities?
It is only a one-sided concept of religion, and a too prevalent failure
to distinguish between its local temporary phases and its deeper
essentials as grounded in the spiritual nature of man, that have led
superficial observers to deny the profound religious element in the
Shinto and Buddhist worship of Japan. If Paul, waiting at Athens, and
beholding the city full of idols, could truly say, "I perceive, O
Athenians, that in all things ye are very religious," just as truly may
we say, in view of the 195,000 temples and the innumerable deities of
the Shinto cult, that the Japanese are exceedingly religious.
Let me add the testimony of Mr. Gulick himself, who spent years in the
country: "The universality of the tokens of family religion, and the
constant and loving care bestowed upon them, are striking testimony
to the universality of religion in Japan. The pathos of life is
often revealed by the family devotion of the mother to these silent
representatives of divine beings, and departed ancestors or children. I
have no hesitation in saying that, so far as external appearances go,
the average home in Japan is far more religious than the average home
in enlightened England or America, especially when compared with such
as have no family worship. There may be a genuine religious life in
these Western homes, but it does not appear to the casual visitor. Yet
no casual visitor can enter a Japanese home, without seeing at once the
evidences of some sort of religious life."[43]
It is to be remarked that in the history and evolution of religion,
where there has been obvious evolution, periods of long peace and
repose, marked by formalism, skepticism, and indifference to religious
obligation, are generally followed by great revivals and reforms.
Some new light breaks in; some great prophet appears; new ideas and
hopes take hold on the popular mind, and thereupon a new era opens in
civilization. The renaissance in Japan of the last fifty years may be
the prelude to an epoch-making revival of the Orient.
=26. Concluding Observations and Suggestions.= Our study of Shinto has
led us over a somewhat unfamiliar field of thought. The mythology and
the records of the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_ are far apart from all
our Western legends and ideals of the early world, and in great part
seem like monstrosities of fantastic speculation. It is affirmed by
some that the Japanese people have been halting for two millenniums
in a state of childhood, receiving nothing from Confucianism or
from Buddhism to quicken or change the national life; but with the
introduction of Western thought and enterprise they have suddenly
leaped into comparative maturity, and their new departure from a dreamy
past is likely to astonish the whole world. It is very obvious that
the introduction of modern science into her thousands of elementary
schools must sooner or later undermine all faith in the traditional
cosmogony, and, along with that, a whole world of notions bound up with
the Shinto cult must needs be overthrown. Eminent Japanese scholars
say that Western learning has sounded the knell and signed the death
warrant of the ancient religion of their island-world.
It is for us very easy, in the light of our New Testament revelation,
to point out defects in the Shinto system. Some four or five of these
we may briefly mention as matters which a Christian missionary should
keep in view as evincing the need of preaching among these people the
deeper demands of the religion of Jesus Christ. (1) The first and
fundamental defect in Shinto as a religious system is its lack of any
clear or helpful concept of one God and Father of all. The doctrine
of God is fundamental in any cult, and where the idea is vague and
imperfect the entire system of doctrine and practice must needs possess
an element of uncertainty and weakness. (2) Another defect is its want
of a clear concept of sin as a moral disease of the heart. The Japanese
mind needs to be turned inward to a deeper sense of the real sinfulness
of sin. (3) Another serious fault in the Japanese civilization is its
low estimate of womanhood. Here as in China woman has not attained her
proper sphere. She is subjected to three forms of obedience, which
in actual life are too abject for her higher development--she must
bow to her parents, to her husband, and to her son in a manner that
involves what we should call a humiliating form of domestic slavery.
Japan needs the practice of a monogamy of the highest Christian type
in order to rectify this inferior and one-sided view of the male
and female constitution of humanity. (4) There is also in Japan an
apparently low estimate of human life. It is probably due largely to
the communal and feudal system which has for a long time ruled the
people. The individual is nothing; the community is everything. These
and other defects show our grounds for believing that the old order and
system must sometime change. But it is no strange or unheard of thing
in our world for an old order to change and give place to something
new and higher. Western civilization has seen not a few examples of
such changes; but, as touching religious evolution, what a monumental
example we have in the transition from the Old Testament Judaism to
the New Testament kingdom of heaven! The main contents and scope of
the Epistle to the Hebrews point out the fact that the old covenant,
with its sanctuary and altars and tables and sacrifices and priests,
could not make their worshipers perfect. Notwithstanding its long and
glorious history, it waxed old, and when the Epistle was written it
was nigh unto vanishing away (Heb. viii, 13). It did pass away and
give place to a more spiritual cult, the gospel of peace on earth and
universal love. May not the national cult of Japan--with its faith in
the unseen, its rituals of purification, its concepts of a heavenly
ancestry, and its intimations of deification after death--be made to
give way before a superior cult that may have the wisdom to offer a
higher and more rational presentation of the essential truths embodied
in the Shinto worship? Whatever men may think or say about the mystical
and legendary elements in the Hebrew Scriptures, no one familiar with
the literatures of the nations can hesitate for a moment to acknowledge
the immense superiority of the Old Testament law and prophets and
psalms over the contents of the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_. If, then,
the covenants and the rituals of Judaism waxed old and vanished away
before the clearer light and truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ,
much more should we expect that the same superior "Light of the world"
must needs, sometime, supersede and supplant the rituals of the Shinto
cult.
Accordingly, I shall venture to specify sundry elements of ancient
Shinto, which, to use the language of Jesus, are not to be _destroyed_,
but rather _fulfilled_, in the higher and more universal truths of the
kingdom of Christ. _Fulfilled_, I say for I look upon all the religious
longings, and prayers, and penitential psalms of the nations, and
their inquiries after the Unseen and Eternal, as so many foregleams of
a coming Light, destined to enlighten every man that cometh into the
world.
We have seen that one of the most conspicuous aspects of the Shinto
cult is its ceremonial of the Great Purification. Physical pollution
of any kind is abhorrent to the Japanese. The touch of a dead body,
contact with a foul disease, failure to wash and keep one's person
clean, are regarded as of the nature of calamities. We know that there
was much in the practices and traditions of the Jewish elders that
closely resembled these Shinto ideas of pollution. The Pharisees and
scribes found fault with Jesus because of His indifference to their
"washings of cups, pots, and brazen vessels." But cleanliness, we all
admit, is a near neighbor of godliness. St. Paul said, "Glorify God
in your body," for he maintained that "your body is a sanctuary of
the Holy Spirit which is in you." Jesus found no fault with Jewish
ablutions, and enjoined the highest personal purity. But He pointed
out the deeper lesson that the more horrible defilement of man is
a pollution of the heart. "For from within," He said, "out of the
heart of man, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders,
adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil
eye, railing, pride, foolishness:--all these evil things proceed from
within, and defile the man." This, then, is one fundamental truth
which the Shinto worshiper should learn from the teachings of our
Lord. The clean body and the pure white robes are eminently proper and
beautiful in their way; but they should symbolize the consciousness
of a pure heart, and a blameless life that keeps itself "unspotted
from the world." Shinto purification needs the supplement of a deeper
knowledge of spiritual defilement in order to a deeper knowledge of
purity.
More exalted than any mere forms of purification, or rituals of
worship, is that notion of a living Presence concealed in all
phenomena. There has been and is to-day among all peoples a belief in
many invisible spirits that have some sort of power over the clouds,
the winds, the waters, the earth, and all its teeming growths. We call
it Animism, Shamanism, and in a certain specific form, Fetishism.
Belief in a countless multitude of spirits who can influence the
elements about us for good or for evil, is firmly rooted in all the
ancient peoples of Eastern Asia, from India to Japan. We have seen
how deep a hold it had upon the earliest Shinto cult, and the later
influences of Confucianism and Buddhism in Japan have tended rather to
strengthen than to suppress it in the popular mind.
These animistic conceptions have played a noteworthy part in connection
with most, if not all, the religions of mankind. When combined with a
groveling fear of the spirits, and with the practice of magic rites and
incantations to propitiate them as so many evil demons, the belief has
run into the lowest forms of superstition. But is there no element of
truth in Animism? Why should we speak disparagingly of the old Japanese
worshiper hearing the voices of unseen spirits in the moaning winds,
in the sounding waterfalls, in the rolling thunder? Why should he not
adore the Sun as the heavenly Benefactor, and see in waving trees and
blooming flowers and drifting clouds the presence and activity of
beings, perhaps sometimes a Being Supernatural? One-sided, defective
puerile notions controlled, no doubt, his thinking, but the one supreme
and fundamental fact was that he felt himself in the presence of the
Supernatural. And that primeval concept is the one most essential
truth of all religion. We have only to divest it of sundry errant,
non-essential interpretations in order to come face to face with the
grandest, noblest, and most affecting theism, and monotheism as well.
For monotheism finds its most advanced exposition in the doctrine of
the universal immanence of God,--one God, the Eternal Spirit, in all,
through all, over all. How far from such a concept of universal Animism
was the old Hebrew psalmist, who sang of Jehovah "laying the beams of
His chambers in the waters, making the clouds His chariot, walking upon
the wings of the wind, sending forth springs into the valleys, causing
the grass to grow upon the mountains," and receiving tribute of praises
from the "sea-monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapor;
stormy wind performing His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful
trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying
birds." To such a worshiper the world was all alive with God. And Jesus
added an intensity and an affecting beauty to this whole concept of an
immanent God when He said: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,"
and "not one sparrow falleth on the ground without your Father." I
can conceive no Animism and no Supernaturalism more minute or more
adorable than the ever acting and ever continuous presence of an unseen
but all observant "Father in the heavens." The heavens in which He
dwells are above, below, within, and all around us.
And this is the higher Animism which ought to be welcomed by the
Shinto pilgrims of Japan as the beautiful fulfilling of their ancient
dreams. Not so many gods, not a multitude of unfriendly spirits that
need propitiation by our gifts of food and clothing, but ONE Heavenly
Father, immanent in every plant that grows and in every dewdrop on the
flowers, forever working for our good, caring for every birdling, and
numbering the very hairs of our head.
With such a monotheistic conception of the world all mythologic and
polytheistic notions of deity and the rule of the spirits of the dead
must sooner or later disappear. Japanese scholars of high rank are
telling their people and others that the modern Western learning has
already destroyed the cosmogony of the Shinto cult. What is now most
needed is a class of teachers straightforward and broad enough to
show these people a nobler and truer concept of the world. The new
conception need have no conflict with the belief that the spirits of
the dead are all about us, and are deeply interested in us still. The
family cult may adjust itself to the new and higher doctrines, and lose
none of the beauty and tenderness and sanctity which old affection
connects with the domestic tablets of the honored and beloved dead.
Herein the new faith is to fulfill rather than destroy the ancient
rites of love. Such a monotheistic cult will find no reason or occasion
to commit the blunder of the Jesuit missionaries, and seek interference
with the government of the land. The Mikado may still command the
reverence and the love of the people and be rationally honored as
a child of heaven. Loyal Christians do that under every form of
government. "Fear God; honor the king; for there is no power but God,
and the powers that be are ordained of God; for they are the ministers
of God's service;"--these are the precepts of the earliest apostolic
gospel, and the modern missionary of Christ is bound to observe and
teach them. He should exhibit common sense and discretion in foreign
politics, recognize and honor the legitimate power, and like the Great
Teacher, "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God
the things that are God's."
The Shinto cult is essentially a religion of race and national
patriotism. It is the secret of Japanese heroism and sacrifice in the
day of battle. He counts it sweet and glorious to die for his country.
He is not his own; he belongs to the State. We are told that the three
principal commandments of the public and official Shinto faith are
these:
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."
Surely these principles and precepts are capable of easy adjustment to
any form of national government, and the ethics of Christianity are in
fundamental accord with their essential claims.
But how can the Christian religion, with its monotheistic worship,
adjust itself without antagonism to the ancestor worship of Japan?
Many seem to think that in this particular there must needs be an
irrepressible conflict, for the worship of ancestors is central and
fundamental in the Shinto faith, and the most precious and hallowed
bond that holds the family, the community, and the State together.
In this matter we do well to observe a number of relevant facts.
Ancestor worship has existed in a variety of forms among many peoples.
It has undergone various modifications in different countries, and it
appears to have ceased among some peoples and given place to other
ideas and forms of worship. The Japanese conception is that their
Mikado and all his people are offspring of the gods, and each one,
when he dies, becomes a deity, but does not cease to have interest in
the relatives and companions of his earthly life. During the siege of
Port Arthur, Togo sent the Mikado a message in which he expressed the
thought that the patriotic _manes_ of the fallen heroes might hover
over the battlefield for a long time and give unseen protection to the
Imperial forces. Such a faith and such inspiration from the dead are
things which a proud nation does not easily let die.
But may we not approach the devotees of such a faith with the words of
the old Hebrew prophet: "Have we not all one father? Hath not one God
created us?" Ye think your honored ancestors still live, and love to
think of you and aid you from their higher sphere; is it not also just
as true of the ancestors and heroes of other lands and peoples? You
have learned that your beautiful "land of the reed-plains and the fresh
rice-ears" is only a very small portion of the world of men. Have these
broader lands and more numerous peoples sprung from other and greater
gods than yours? May it not rather be that, as there is only one sun to
shine on all this habitable world, so there is one Heavenly Father of
us all? Then we are all offspring of one Supreme God and we should all
be brethren. Our ancestors and dear kindred who have passed out of our
sight should lose no place in our affection by this larger thought.[44]
By some such suggestions, and by such friendly and persuasive appeal to
larger truths, it would seem that a higher and purer faith may commend
itself to the adherents of Shinto, without provoking their hostility,
and without the compromise of any essential Christian truth. As surely
as self-evidencing science wins her onward way among the nations, so
surely will self-evidencing truths of religion win the hearts of men.
We are familiar with the Christian congregations singing:
"Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death."
But Christian and Shintoist should note the fact that the fathers and
the sons are greater than the faith. As "the Sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath," so the faith, the forms of worship,
the æsthetic arts, the culture, the learning, and all the ennobling
elements of the highest civilization are made for man, not man for
them. Being, therefore, not an end in themselves, but a means to the
attainment of some higher boon, they must all be judged according to
the broad and noble proverb: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, take
account of these things" (Phil. 4:8).
It may be that ancestral shrines will become more sacred and more
heavenly when lighted with the glimmer of immortal hopes of blessed
reunion in the unseen world, and our forms and manner of honoring
father and mother and friends that pass out from our homes may be
safely left to adjust themselves to an uplifting faith that lives in
the heart and ever longs for all that is holiest and best.
The whole world looks with admiration upon that island-empire of the
Orient that has shown within thirty years such marvelous capacities
of adaptation and improvement. If she thus go on to "prove all things
and hold fast to that which is good," who knows but her brilliant
rising to great power and influence among the nations may mark the
beginning of world-wide reforms? Her tremendous, bloody battles should
say to all mankind: "Let us have no more of this. Let us establish
great, trustworthy tribunals of arbitration, and settle our rights
and differences there. Let us beat our swords into plowshares and our
spears into pruning-hooks." Such triumphs of peace and righteousness
might well bring to pass the old Shinto ideal of a code of morals
so deeply written in the hearts of men and of rulers that they
spontaneously do that which is obviously right. For is not this lofty
ideal in accord with that of the Hebrew prophet who descried a coming
golden age when "they should teach no more every man his neighbor, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know
the Lord, from the least of them unto the greatest" (Jer. 31:34)?