CULTURE MIXING IN JAPAN
Races and Archæological Ages—The “Pit-dwellers”—Ainu Myths and
Legends—Mummification—Sacred Animals, Herbs, and Trees—Ainu
Cosmogony—Ainu Deluge Legend—Pearl-lore in Japan—Mandrake in Korea,
Japan, and China—The Japanese “Dragon-Pearl” as Soul—Links with
America—Medicinal Herbs and Jewels—The “God-Body”—Sanctity of
Beads—The Coral, Shells, Coins, Fruit, and Feathers of
Luck-gods—Jade in Japan—No Jade Necklaces in China—Japanese
Imperial Insignia the Mirror, Sword, and Jewel—Shinto Temples and
Artemis Gateways—Mikado as Osiris—The Shinto Faith—Yomi—Food of the
Dead—The Souls of Mikados and Pharaohs—The Kami as Gods, &c.—Gods
of the Cardinal Points.
There was not only “culture” mixing but also a mixing of races in
ancient times throughout the Japanese Archipelago. Distinct racial
types can be detected in the present-day population. “Of these,” says
the Japanese writer, Yei Ozaki, [515] “the two known as the patrician
and the plebeian are the most conspicuous. The delicate oval face of
the aristocrat or Mongoloid, with its aquiline nose, oblique eyes,
high-arched eyebrows, bud-like mouth, cream-coloured skin, and slender
frame, has been the favourite theme of artists for a thousand years,
and is still the ideal of beauty to-day. The Japanese plebeian has the
Malayan cast of countenance, high cheek-bones, large prognathic mouth,
full, straight eyes, a skin almost as dark as bronze, and a robust,
heavily-boned physique. The flat-faced, heavy-jawed, hirsute Ainu type,
with luxuriant hair and long beards, is also frequently met with among
the Japanese. Such are the diverse elements which go to comprise the
race of the present time.”
The oblique-eyed aristocrats—the Normans of Japan—appear to have come
from Korea, and to have achieved political ascendancy as a result of
conquest in the archæological “Iron Age”, when megalithic tombs of the
corridor type, covered with mounds, were introduced. [516] They brought
with them, in addition to distinctive burial customs, a heritage of
Korean religious beliefs and myths regarding serpent- or dragon-gods of
rivers and ocean, air and mountains. After coming into contact with
other peoples in Japan, their mythology grew more complex, and assumed
a local aspect. Chinese and Buddhist elements were subsequently added.
There was no distinct “Bronze Age” in Japan. “Ancient bronze objects
are,” says Laufer, “so scarce in Japan, that even granted they were
indigenous, the establishment of a Bronze Age would not be justified,
nor is there in the ancient records any positive evidence of the use of
bronze.” [517] Although stone implements have been found, it is
uncertain whether there ever was, in the strict Western European sense,
a “Neolithic Age”. The earliest inhabitants of the islands could not
have reached them until after ships came into use in the Far East, and
therefore after the culture of those who used metals had made its
influence felt over wide areas.
As we have seen (Chapter III), the most archaic ships in the Kamschatka
area in the north, and in the Malayan area in the south, were of
Egyptian type, having apparently been introduced by the early
prospectors who searched for pearls and precious stones and metals. In
the oldest Japanese writings, the records of ancient oral traditions,
gold and silver are referred to as “yellow” and “white” metals existing
in Korea, while bronze, when first mentioned, is called the “Chinese
metal” and the “Korean metal”. [518] “The bronze and iron objects found
in the ancient graves have simply,” says Laufer, “been imported from
the mainland, and plainly are, in the majority of cases, of Chinese
manufacture. Many of these, like metal mirrors, certain helmets, and
others, have been recognized as such; but through comparison with
corresponding Chinese material, the same can be proved for the rest.”
[519] At the beginning of our era, the Japanese, as the annals of the
Later Han Dynasty of China record, purchased iron in Korea. The Chinese
and Koreans derived the knowledge of how to work iron from the interior
of Siberia, the Turkish Yakut there being the older and better
iron-workers. [520]
The racial fusion in ancient Japan was not complete. Although the
Koreans, Chinese, and Malayans intermarried and became “Japanese”,
communities of the Ainu never suffered loss of identity, and lived
apart from the conquerors and those of their kinsmen who were absorbed
by them.
An outstanding feature of Japanese archæology is that Culture A appears
to have been a higher one than Culture B, which is represented by Ainu
artifacts. Culture A is that of a pre-Ainu people whom the Ainu found
inhabiting parts of the archipelago, and called the Koro-pok-guru. The
name signifies “the people having depressions”, and is usually rendered
by Western writers as “Pit-dwellers”. In the Japanese writings the
Koro-pok-guru are referred to as “the small people” and “earth
spiders”.
During the winter season the Koro-pok-guru lived in pit-houses, with
conical or beehive roofs. The depth of these earth houses was greater
on slopes and exposed heights than on low-lying ground. In summer they
occupied beehive houses erected on the level. Their “kitchen-midden”
deposits have yielded pottery, including well-shaped vases, and
arrowheads of flint, obsidian, reddish jasper or dark siliceous rock.
Like the “pit-dwellers” of Saghalin and Kamschatka, the Koro-pok-guru
were seafarers and fishers. Their houses were erected on river banks
and along the sea coast.
Culture B deposits are devoid of pottery. The Ainu have never been
potters; their bowls and spoons were in ancient times made of wood.
They claim to have exterminated the Koro-pok-guru, who appear to have
had affinities with the present inhabitants of the northern Kuriles, a
people of short stature, with roundish heads, the men having short,
thick beards, and being quite different in general appearance from the
“hairy Ainu” with long, flowing beards. Some communities of Ainu
present physical characteristics that suggest the blending in ancient
times of the “long beards” and “short beards”. The pure Ainu are the
hairiest people in the world. They are broad-headed and have brown eyes
and black beards, and are of sturdy build. Their tibia and humerus
bones are somewhat flat. In old age some resemble the inhabitants of
Great Russia.
The Ainu [521] are hunters and fishers. Their women cultivate millet
(their staple food) and vegetables, and gather herbs and roots among
the mountains. According to their own traditions, they came from Sara,
which means a “plain”. Their “culture hero”, Okikurumi, descended from
heaven to a mountain in Piratoru, [522] having been delegated by the
Creator to teach the Ainu religion and law. Before this hero returned
to heaven, he married Turesh Machi, [523] and he left his son,
Waruinekuru, to instruct the Ainu “how to make cloth, to hunt and fish,
how to make poison and set the spring-bow in the trail of animals”.
When Okikurumi first arrived among the Ainu, the crust of the earth was
still thin and “all was burning beneath”. It was impossible for people
to go a-hunting without scorching their feet. The celestial hero
arranged that his wife should distribute food, but made it a condition
that no human being would dare to look in her face. She went daily from
house to house thrusting in the food with her great hands.
An inquisitive Ainu, of the “Peeping Tom” order, resolved to satisfy
his curiosity regarding the mysterious food-distributor. One morning he
seized her and pulled her into his house, whereupon she was immediately
transformed into a wriggling serpent-dragon. A terrible thunderstorm
immediately broke out, and the house of “Peeping Tom” was destroyed by
lightning.
This is an interesting Far Eastern version of the Godiva legend [524]
of Coventry.
Greatly angered by the breaking of the taboo, Okikurumi returned to the
celestial regions. His dragon-wife is not only a Godiva, but another
Far Eastern Melusina. [525]
Okikurumi is said to have worn ear-rings. He had therefore a solar
connection. The Aryo-Indian hero, Karna, son of Surya, the sun-god, who
emerged from an ear of his human mother, Princess Pritha, was similarly
adorned at birth with ear-rings. The Ainu have from the earliest times
considered it essential that they should all wear ear-rings, and the
ears of males and females are bored in childhood. It was similarly a
ceremonial practice in ancient Peru to bore the ears of Inca princes.
Jacob objected to his wives wearing ear-rings, and buried those
so-called “ornaments” with the gods of Laban under an oak at Shechem.
[526] Bracelets and “ear-ornaments” were similarly favoured as
religious charms and symbols by the Ainu.
It is of special interest to note that mummification was practised by
some Ainu tribes or families. Whether or not they acquired this custom
from the Koro-pok-guru is uncertain. Women tattooed their arms, their
upper and lower lips, and sometimes their foreheads. Tattooing and
mummification similarly obtained among the Aleutian Islanders. The same
peculiar methods of preserving corpses obtained among the Ainu, the
Aleutians, and certain Red Indian tribes of North America. [527]
Another link between the Old and New Worlds is afforded by
American-Asiatic bone plate armour. [528]
Like the Ostiaks and other Siberian tribes, the Ainu worship the bear.
Their bear feasts are occasions for heavy drinking and much dancing and
singing. Drunkenness is to them “supreme bliss”.
The bear-goddess was the wife of the dragon-god. She had a human lover,
and that is why bears, her descendants, “are half like a human being”.
The salmon is divine, and its symbol is worshipped. Folk-tales are told
regarding salmon taking human shape, as do the seals in Scottish Gaelic
stories. As in China and Japan, the fox is the most subtle of all
beasts. It supplanted the tiger as chief god, according to an Ainu
folk-tale. There is a great tortoise-god in the sea and an owl-god on
the land, and their children have intermarried. The cock is of
celestial origin. It was, at the beginning, sent down from heaven by
the Creator to ascertain what the world looked like, but tarried for so
long a time, being well pleased with things, that it was forbidden to
return. Hares are mountain deities.
The oldest trees are the oak and pine, and they are therefore sacred,
and the oldest and most sacred herb is the mugwort. In Kamschatka the
pine is associated with the mugwort. The mugwort is connected with
goddesses of the Artemis order. [529] Sacred, too, was the willow, and
specially sacred the mistletoe that grew on a willow tree. An elixir
prepared from the mistletoe was supposed to renew youth, and therefore
to prolong life and cure diseases. Siberians venerate the herb willow.
[530] The drink prepared from it was a soporific for human beings, wild
animals, and deities. Far Eastern deities had apparently to be soothed
as well as invoked as, it may be recalled, was Hathor-Sekhet in the
Egyptian “flood myth”, when she was given beer poured out from jars, so
that she might cease from slaughtering mankind. [531]
When the Ainu performed religious ceremonies, shavings and whittled
sticks of willow were used, and libations of intoxicating liquors
provided. Deities were made drunk, as in Babylonia, [532] and then
provided with a soothing anti-intoxicant. The Ainu set up their willow
sticks at wells and around their dwellings. They had no temples, and
when they worshipped the sun, a shaven willow stick was placed at the
east end of a house.
The moon-god came next in order to the sun-god. The fire-god was
invoked to cure disease. There was a subtle connection between fire and
mistletoe, perhaps because fire was obtained by friction of soft and
hard wood, and an intoxicating elixir prepared from a tree or its
parasite was believed to be “fire water”—that is, “water of life”.
Offerings were made to gods of ocean, rivers, and mountains.
The world was supposed to be floating on and surrounded by water, and
to be resting on the spine of a gigantic fish which caused earthquakes
when it moved. There were two heavens—one above the clouds and another
in the Underworld. A hell, from which the volcanoes vomit fire, was
reserved for the wicked.
Like the Chinese, the Ainu tell stories of visits paid to Paradise. A
man, whose wife had been spirited away, appealed to the oak-god, who
provided him with a golden horse on which he rode to the sky. He
reached a beautiful city in which people went about singing constantly.
They smelled a stranger, and, the smell being offensive to them, they
appealed to the chief god to give him his wife. The god promised to do
so if the visitor would agree to go away at once. He consented readily,
and returned to the oak-god, who told him his wife was in hell, and
that the place was now in confusion because the chief god had ordered a
search to be made for her. Soon afterwards the lost woman was restored
to her husband. This man was given the golden horse to keep, and all
the horses in Ainu-land are descended from it.
Another man once chased a bear on a mountain side. The animal entered a
cave, and he followed it, passing through a long, dark tunnel. He
reached the beautiful land of the Underworld. Feeling hungry, he ate
grapes and mulberries, and, to his horror, was immediately transformed
into a serpent. He crawled back to the entrance and fell asleep below a
pine tree. In his dream the goddess of the tree appeared. She told him
he had been transformed into a serpent because he had eaten of the food
of Hades, and that, if he wished to be restored to human shape, he must
climb to the top of the tree and fling himself down. When he awoke, the
man-serpent did as the goddess advised. After leaping from the tree
top, he found himself standing below it, while near him lay the body of
a great serpent which had been split open. He then went through the
tunnel and emerged from the cave. But later he had another dream, in
which the goddess appeared and told him he must return to the
Underworld because a goddess there had fallen in love with him. He did
as he was commanded to do, and was never again seen on earth.
A story tells of another Ainu who reached this Paradise. He saw many
people he had known in the world, but they were unable to see him. Only
the dogs perceived him, and they growled and barked. Catching sight of
his father and mother he went forward to embrace them, but they
complained of being haunted by an evil spirit, and he had to leave
them.
The Ainu have a Deluge Myth which tells that when the waters rose the
vast majority of human beings were destroyed. Only a remnant escaped by
ascending to the summit of a high mountain. [533]
Although the Ainu claimed to have exterminated the Koro-pok-guru, it is
possible that they really intermixed with them and derived some of
their religious ideas and myths from them, and that, in turn, the
Japanese were influenced by both Ainu and Koro-pok-guru ideas and
myths. The aniconic pillars and the female goddess with fish
termination (the Dragon Mother) figure in Japanese as well as Ainu
religion. Both are found in Kamschatka, too. Dr. Rendel Harris,
commenting on the pillar and fish-goddess idols of the Kamschatdals,
[534] recalls “the various fish forms of Greek and Oriental religions,
the Dagon and Derceto of the Philistines, the Oannes of the Assyrians,
[535] Eurynome of the Greek legends, and the like”. The pillar,
sometimes shown to be clad with ivy, links with the symbols of Hermes
and Dionysos. He adds: “The Kamschatdals and other Siberian tribes
manufacture for themselves intoxicating and stupefying drinks which
have a religious value, and are employed by their Shamans in order to
produce prophetic states of inspiration”. The Japanese manufactured
sake from rice with precisely the same motive, and, like the Ainu,
offered their liquor to the gods.
What attracted the Koro-pok-guru and the Ainu to Japan? As we have seen
(Chapter III), the primary incentive for sea-trafficking and
prospecting by sea and land was the desire to obtain wealth in the form
of pearls, precious stones, and metals. Now, pearls are found round the
Japanese coasts. Marco Polo has recorded that in his day the people of
Japan practised the mortuary custom (obtaining also in China) of
placing pearls in the mouths of the dead. “In the Island of Zipangu
[536] (Japan),” he says, “rose-coloured pearls were abundant, and quite
as valuable as white ones.” Kaempfer, writing in the eighteenth
century, stated that the Japanese pearls were found in small varieties
of oysters (akoja) resembling the Persian pearl oyster, and also in
“the yellow snail-shell”, the taira gai (Placuna), and the awabi or
abalone (Haliotis). A pearl fishery formerly existed in the
neighbourhood of Saghalin Island. As pearls have from the earliest
times been fished from southern Manchurian rivers, in Kamschatka, and
on the south coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, it may be that the earliest
settlers in Japan were prehistoric pearl-fishers. It is of special
interest to note here that, according to G. A. Cooke, pearls and
ginseng (mandrake) were formerly Manchurian articles of commerce. [537]
The herbs and pearls were, as we have seen, regarded as “avatars” of
the mother-goddess.
In Korea ginseng is cultivated under Government supervision. “It is”,
Mrs. Bishop writes, [538] “one of the most valuable articles which
Korea exports, and one great source of its revenue.” A basket may
contain ginseng worth £4000. “But,” she adds, “valuable as the
cultivated root is, it is nothing to the value of the wild, which grows
in Northern Korea, a single specimen of which has been sold for £40! It
is chiefly found in the Kang-ge Mountains, but it is rare, and the
search so often ends in failure, that the common people credit it with
magical properties, and believe that only men of pure lives can find
it.” The dæmon who is “the tutelary spirit of ginseng ... is greatly
honoured” (p. 243). A ready market is found in China for Korean
ginseng. “It is a tonic, a febrifuge, a stomachic, the very elixir of
life, taken spasmodically or regularly in Chinese wine by most Chinese
who can afford it” (p. 95).
In Japan, ginseng, mushroom, and fungus are, like pearls, promoters of
longevity, and sometimes, says Joly, “masquerade as phalli”: they are
“Plants of Life” and “Plants of Birth”, like the plants searched for by
the Babylonian heroes Gilgamesh and Etana, and like the dragon-herbs of
China. [539]
In Shinto, the ancient religion of the Japanese, prominence is given to
pearls and other precious jewels, and even to ornaments like artificial
beads, which were not, of course, used merely for personal decoration
in the modern sense of the term; beads had a religious significance. A
sacred jewel is a tama, a name which has deep significance in Japan,
because mi-tama is a soul, or spirit, or double. Mi is usually referred
to as an “honorific prefix” or “honorific epithet”, but it appears to
have been originally something more than that. A Japanese commentator,
as De Visser notes, has pointed out in another connection [540] that mi
is “an old word for snake”, that is, for a snake-dragon. Mi-tama,
therefore, may as “soul” or “double” be all that is meant by
“snake-pearl” or “dragon-pearl”. [541] The pearl, as we have seen,
contained “soul substance”, the “vital principle”, the blood of the
Great Mother, like the “jasper of Isis” worn by women to promote birth,
and therefore to multiply and prolong life; in China and Japan the
pearl was placed in the mouth of the dead to preserve the corpse from
decay and ensure longevity or immortality. The connection between
jewels and medicine is found among the Maya of Central America. Cit
Bolon Tun (the “nine precious stones”) was a god of medicine. The
goddess Ix Tub Tun (“she who spits out precious stones”) was “the
goddess of the workers in jade and amethysts”. She links with Tlaloc’s
wife.
According to Dr. W. G. Aston [542] tama contains the root of the verb
tabu, “to give”, more often met with in its lengthened form tamafu.
“Tama retains its original significance 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, [543] 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 God
which dwells in his shrine, and also for that most precious thing, the
human life or soul.... The element tama enters into the names of
several deities. The food-goddess is called either Ukemochi no Kami or
Uka no mi-tama.” Phallic deities are also referred to as mi-tama. The
mi-tama is sometimes used in much the same sense as the Egyptian Ka: it
is the spirit or double of a deity which dwells in a shrine, where it
is provided with a shintai (“god body”)—a jewel, weapon, stone, mirror,
pillow, or some such object.
The jewels (tama) worn by gods and human beings were not, as already
insisted upon, merely ornaments, but objects possessing “soul
substance”. These are referred to in the oldest Shinto books. In
ancient Japanese graves archæologists have found round beads (tama),
“oblong perforated cylinders” or “tube-shaped beads” (kuda-tama), and
“curved” or “comma-shaped [544] beads” (maga-tama). According to W.
Gowland, “the stones of which maga-tama are made are rock-crystal,
steatite, jasper, agate, and chalcedony, and more rarely chrysoprase
and nephrite (jade)”. He notes that “the last two minerals are not
found in Japan”. [545]
Henri L. Joly, writing on the tama, says [546] it is also “represented
in the form of a pearl tapering to a pointed apex, and scored with
several rings. It receives amongst other names Nio-i-Hojiu, and more
rarely of Shinshi, the latter word being used for the spherical jewel,
one of the three relics left to Ninigi no Mikoto [547] by his
grandmother, Amaterâsu. [548] The necklace of Shinshi, mentioned in the
traditions, was lost, and in its place a large crystal ball, some three
or four inches in diameter, is kept and carried by an aide-de-camp of
the Emperor on State occasions.”
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The pearl (tama) is “one of the treasures of the Takaramono, a
collection of objects associated with the Japanese gods of luck, which
includes the hat of invisibility (Kakuregasa), a lion playing with a
jewel, a jar containing coral, coins, &c.; coral branches (sangoju),
the cowrie shell (kai), an orange-like fruit, the five-coloured feather
robe of the Tennins, the winged maidens of the Buddhist paradise,
copper cash, &c.” [549] But although the tama may correspond to the
mani of the Indian Buddhists, it was not of Buddhist origin in Japan;
the Buddhists simply added to the stock of Japanese “luck jewels”.
The tama of jade has raised an interesting problem. Nephrite is not
found in Japan. “It is difficult”, says Laufer, “to decide from what
source, how and when the nephrite or jadeite material was transmitted
to Japan.” Referring to jade objects found in the prehistoric Japanese
graves, he says: “The jewels may go back, after all, to an early period
when historical intercourse between Japan and China was not yet
established; they [550] represent two clearly distinct and
characteristic types, such as are not found in the jewelry of ancient
China. If the Japanese maga-tama and kuda-tama would correspond to any
known Chinese forms, it would be possible to give a plausible reason
for the presence of jade in the ancient Japanese tombs; but such a
coincidence of type cannot be brought forward. Nor is it likely that
similar pieces will be discovered in China, as necklaces were never
used there anciently or in modern times. We must therefore argue that
the two Japanese forms of ornamental stones were either indigenous
inventions or borrowed from some other non-Chinese culture sphere in
south-eastern Asia, the antiquities of which are unknown to us.” [551]
The tama is of great importance in Shinto religion. At Ise, [552] “the
Japanese Mecca”, which has long been visited by pious pilgrims, a
virgin daughter of the Mikado used to keep watch over the three
imperial insignia—the mirror, the sword, and the jewel (tama)—which had
been handed down from Mikado to Mikado. There were no idols in the
temples. The Shintai was carefully wrapped up and kept in a box in the
“holy of holies”, a screened-off part of the simple and unadorned
wooden and thatched little temple. The temple was entered through a
gateway—the tori wi, a word which means “bird-perch”, in the sense of a
hen-roost. “As an honorary gateway”, says Dr. Aston, “the tori-wi is a
continental institution identical in purpose and resembling in form the
toran of India, the pailoo of China, and the hong-sal-mun of Korea.”
[553] When this symbol of Artemis [554] was introduced into Japan is
uncertain. “Rock gates” were of great sanctity in old Japan. There is
one at Ise—the “twin-rocks of Ise”.
The mirror was the shintai (god-body) of the sun-goddess; the sword was
the shintai of the dragon; and the jewel (tama) was the shintai of the
Great Mother, who was the inexhaustible womb of nature. At sacred Ise,
the chief deities worshipped were Ama-terâsu, the goddess of the sun,
and Toyouke-hime, the goddess of food. [555] The high-priest was the
Mikado, who was a Kami (a god), and called “the Heavenly Grandchild”,
his heir being “august child of the sun”, and his residence “the august
house of the sun”. [556] After the Mikado had ascended the throne, the
Ohonihe (great food offering) ceremony was performed. It was “the most
solemn and important festival of the Shinto religion”, says Aston, who
quotes the following explanation of it by a modern Japanese writer:
“Anciently the Mikado received the auspicious grain from the Gods
of Heaven and therewithal nourished the people. In the Daijowe (or
Ohonihe) the Mikado, when the grain became ripe, joined unto him
the people in sincere veneration, and, as in duty bound, made
return to the Gods of Heaven. He thereafter partook of it along
with the nation. Thus the people learnt that the grain which they
eat is no other than the seed bestowed on them by the Gods of
Heaven.”
The Mikado was thus, in a sense, a Japanese Osiris.
Shinto religion was in pre-Buddhist days a system of ceremonies and
laws on which the whole social structure rested. The name is a Chinese
word meaning “the way of the gods”, the Japanese equivalent being Kami
no michi. But although the gods were numerous, only a small proportion
of them played an important part in the ritual (norito), which was
handed down orally by generations of priests until after the fifth
century of our era, when a native script, based on Chinese characters,
came into use.
Old Shinto was concerned chiefly with the food-supply, with
child-getting, with the preservation of health, and protection against
calamities caused by floods, droughts, fire, or earthquakes. It has
little or nothing to say regarding the doctrine of immortality. There
was no heaven and no hell. The spirits of some of these deities who
died like ordinary mortals went to the land of Yomi, as did also the
spirit of the Mikado, but little is told regarding the mysterious
Otherworld in which dwelt the spirits of disease and death. “In one
passage of the Nihon-gi,” says Aston, [557] “Yomi is clearly no more
than a metaphor for the grave.” It thus resembled the dark Otherworld
or Underworld of the Babylonians, from which Gilgamesh summoned the
spirit of his dead friend, Ea-bani. [558] No spirit of a god could
escape from Yomi after eating “the food of the dead”. When the
Babylonian god Adapa, son of Ea, was summoned to appear in the
Otherworld, his father warned him not to accept of the water and food
which would be offered him. [559] The goddess Ishtar was struck with
disease when she entered Hades in quest of her lover, the god Tammuz,
and it was not until she had been sprinkled with the “water of life”
that she was healed and liberated. [560]
The Mikado, being a god, had a spirit, and might be transferred to Yomi
or might ascend to heaven to the celestial realm of his ancestress, the
sun-goddess. Some distinguished men had spirits likewise. But there is
no clear evidence in the Ko-ji-ki or the Nihon-gi that the spirits of
the common people went anywhere after death, or indeed, that they were
supposed to have spirits. Some might become birds, or badgers, or
foxes, and live for a period in these forms, and then die, as did some
of the gods. There are no ghosts in the early Shinto books. [561]
The ancient Pharaohs of Egypt, like the ancient Mikados of Japan, were
assured of immortality. The mortuary Pyramid Texts “were all intended
for the king’s exclusive use, and as a whole contain beliefs which
apply only to the king”. There are vague references in these texts to
the dead “whose places are hidden”, and to those who remain in the
grave. [562] The fate of the masses did not greatly concern the solar
cult.
Before dealing with the myths of Japan, it is necessary to consider
what the term kami, usually translated “gods”, signified to the
devotees of “Old Shinto”. The kami were not spiritual beings, but many
of them had spirits or doubles that resided in the shintai (god body).
Dr. Aston reminds us that although kami “corresponds in a general way
to ‘god’, it has some important limitations. The kami are high, swift,
good, rich, living but not infinite, omnipotent, or omniscient. Most of
them had a father and mother, and of some the death is recorded.” [563]
It behoves us to exercise caution in applying the term “animistic” to
the numerous kami of Japan, or in assuming that they were worshipped,
or reverenced rather, simply because they were feared. Some of the kami
were feared, but the fear of the gods is not a particular feature of
Shinto religion with its ceremonial hand-clappings and happy laughter.
Dr. Aston quotes from Motöori, the great eighteenth century Shinto
theologian, the following illuminating statement regarding the kami:
“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 were 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, or
serviceableness alone. Malignant and uncanny beings are also called
kami if only they are objects of general dread. 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.”
In ancient Egypt the reigning monarch was similarly a god—a Horus while
he lived and an Osiris after he died, while a great scholar like
Imhotep (the Imuthes of the Greeks in Egypt who identified him with
Asklepois) might be deified and regarded as the son of Ptah, the god of
Memphis. Egypt, too, had its local gods like Japan; so had Babylonia.
The Japanese theologian proceeds to say:
“Amongst kami who are not human beings, I need hardly mention
Thunder (in Japanese Nuru kami or the sounding-god). There are also
the Dragon and 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 Nihon-gi and
Manjoshiu to the tiger and the wolf. Isanagi (the creator-god) gave
to the fruit of the peach and to the jewels round his neck names
which implied that they were kami.” [564]
Here we touch on beliefs similar to those that obtained in China where
the dragon and tiger figure so prominently as the gods of the East and
the West. The idea that the peach was a kami appears to be connected
with the Chinese conception of a peach world-tree, a form of the Mother
Goddess, the fruit of which contains her “life substance” or shen as do
the jewels like the pearl and jade objects; the peach is a goddess
symbol as the phallus is a symbol of a god.
Motöori adds:
“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 or mountains themselves as being very awful things.”
[565]
There were a beneficent class and an evil class of kami. Beneficent
deities provided what mankind required or sought for; they were
protectors and preservers. Four guardians of the world were called “Shi
Tenno”. They were posted at the cardinal points like the Chinese Black
Tortoise (north), the Red Bird (south), the White Tiger (west), and the
Blue or Green Dragon (east). The Japanese colour scheme, however, is
not the same as the Chinese. At the north is the blue god Bishamon or
Tamoten; at the south the white-faced warrior Zocho; at the west the
red-faced Komoku with book and brush or a spear; and at the east the
warrior with green face, named Jikoku, who is sometimes shown trampling
a demon under foot.
In India the north is white and the south black, and in Ceylon the
Buddhist colours of the cardinal points are yellow (north), blue
(south), red (west), and white (east).
Although it is customary to regard the coloured guardians of the
Japanese world as of Buddhist origin, it may well be that the original
Japanese guardians were substituted by the Hindu and Chinese divinities
imported by the Buddhists. The dragon-gods of China and Japan were
pre-Buddhistic, as De Visser has shown, [566] but were given, in
addition to their original attributes, those of the naga (serpent or
dragon) gods introduced by Buddhist priests.