CHAPTER V
Political and Religious Condition of Japan, as found by the Portuguese—The Yakatas, or Kings, and their Vassals—Revenues—Money—Distinction of Ranks—The Kubō-Sama—The Dairi—Shintō—Buddhism—Judō—A.D. 1550.
Japan, as found by the Portuguese, embraced three large islands, besides many smaller ones. Shimo (or Kiūshiū), the most southern and western of the group, and the one with which the Portuguese first became acquainted, is separated at the north, by a narrow strait, from the much larger island of Nippon,[25] forming with its western portion a right angle, within which the third and much smaller island of Sikoku is included. These islands were found to be divided into sixty-six separate governments or kingdoms, of which Nippon contained fifty-three, Shimo (or Kiūshiū) nine, and Sikoku four—the numerous smaller islands being reckoned as appurtenant to one or another of the three larger ones. These kingdoms, grouped into eight, or rather nine, larger divisions, and subdivided into principalities, of which, in all, there were not less than six hundred, had originally (at least such was the Japanese tradition) been provinces of a consolidated empire; but by degrees and by dint of civil wars, by which the islands had been, and still were, very much distracted, they had reached at the period of the Portuguese discovery a state of almost complete independence. Indeed, several of the kingdoms, like that of Hizen, in the west part of Shimo, had still further disintegrated into independent principalities.
It still frequently happened, however, that several provinces were united under one ruler; and such was especially the case with five central provinces of Nippon, including the great cities of Miyako, Ōsaka and Sakai, which five provinces formed the patrimony of a prince who bore the title of Kubō-Sama—Sama meaning lord, and Kubō general or commander. This title the Portuguese rendered into Emperor, and it was almost precisely equivalent to the original sense of the Imperator of the Romans, though still more exactly corresponding to Cromwell’s title of Lord-general.
This Kubō or Shōgun, as he was otherwise called, was acknowledged by all the other princes as in some respect their superior and head. The other rulers of provinces bore the title of Shugo, or Yakata, which the Portuguese rendered by the term King. Reserving to themselves, as their personal domain, a good half of the whole extent of their territories, these chiefs divided the rest among certain great vassals, called Tono, Kunishū, or Kunidaimiō, who were bound to military service in proportion to the extent of the lands which they held; which lands, after reserving a portion for their private domain, these nobles distributed in their turn to other inferior lords, called Yoriki, who held of them upon similar conditions of military service, and who had still beneath them, upon the same footing, a class of military vassals and tenants, called Dōshin, and corresponding to the men-at-arms of the feudal times of Europe. The actual cultivators of the lands—as had also been, and still to a considerable extent was, the case in feudal Europe—were in the condition of serfs.
Thus it happened, that, as in feudal Europe, so in Japan, great armies might be very suddenly raised; and war being the chief employment of the superior classes, and the only occupation, that of the priesthood excepted, esteemed honorable, the whole country was in a constant state of turbulence and commotion.
All the classes above enumerated except the last enjoyed the highly prized honor of wearing two swords. One sword was worn by certain inferior officials; but merchants, traders, and artisans, were confounded, as to this matter, with the peasants, not being permitted to wear any. The revenue of the princes and other proprietors was, and still is, reckoned in koku of rice, each of three sacks or bales, each bale containing (according to Titsingh) thirty-three and one-third gantings [shō],—the universal Japanese measure for all articles, liquid or dry,—and weighing from eighty-two to eighty-three katties, or somewhat more than a hundred of our pounds.[26] Ten thousand koku make a mankoku, in which the revenues of the great princes are reckoned. The distinction of rank was very strictly observed, being even ingrained into the language. Inferiors being seated on their heels, according to the Japanese fashion, testified their respect for their superiors by laying the palms of their hands on the floor, and bending their bodies so low that their foreheads almost touched the ground, in which position they remained for some seconds. This is called the kitō. The superior responded by laying the palms of his hands upon his knees, and nodding or bowing, more or less low, according to the rank of the other party.
As to everything that required powers of analysis, or the capacity of taking general views, the Portuguese missionaries were but poor observers; yet they could not but perceive in the Dairi the surviving shadow, and indeed, in the earlier days of the missions, something more than a mere shadow, of a still more ancient form of government, in which the civil and ecclesiastical authority had both been united under one head.
The Dairi,[27] Ō, or Mikado, as he was otherwise designated, had for his residence the northeast quarter of Miyako (a great city not far from the centre of Nippon, but nearest the southern shore). This quarter was of vast extent, surrounded by a wall, with a ditch and rampart, by which it was separated from the rest of the city. In the midst of this fortified place, in a vast palace, easily distinguished from a distance by the height of its tower, the Dairi dwelt, with his empress or chief wife; his other eleven wives had adjoining palaces in a circle around, outside of which were the dwellings of his chamberlains and other officers. These Dairi claimed to be descended from Jimmu, who, it was said, had, A. D. 660, introduced civilization into Japan, and first established a regular government, and commencing with whom, the Japanese annals show a regular series of Dairi, who are represented as having been for many ages the sole lords and imperial rulers of Japan, till at length they had been insensibly set aside, as to the actual exercise of authority, by the Kubō-Sama, or commanders of the armies. Yet these gradually eclipsed and finally superseded emperors—equivalents of the “idle kings” of the Carlovingian race of France, or to the present nominal sovereign of the British empire—were, and still are, treated (as Queen Victoria is) with all the ceremonial of substantial power, and even with the respect and reverence due to the spiritual head of the national church, descended from a race of divinities, and destined at death to pass by a regular apotheosis into the list of the national gods.
All the revenue drawn from the city of Miyako and its dependencies was appropriated to their support, to which the Kubō-Sama added a further sum from his treasury. He himself treated the Dairi with as much ceremonious respect and semi-worship as the British prime minister bestows upon the British queen. He paid an annual visit to the court of the Dairi in great state, and, withal, the carriage of an inferior; but took care to maintain a garrison at Miyako, or its neighborhood, sufficient to repress any attempt on the part of the Dairi or his partisans to reëstablish the old order of things,—an idea which, when the islands first became known to the Portuguese, seems not yet to have been entirely abandoned.
We may trace a still further resemblance between the position of the Dairi of Japan and the Queen of England, in the circumstance that all public acts are dated by the years of his reign, and that all titles of honor nominally emanate from him, though of course obliged, as to this matter, to follow the suggestions of the Kubō-Sama. Even the Kubō-Sama himself condescends, like a British prime minister, to accept such decorations at the hands of the Dairi, affecting to feel extremely honored and flattered at titles which had been, in fact, dictated by himself.
The whole court of the Dairi, and all the inhabitants of the quarter of Miyako in which he dwelt, consisted of persons who plumed themselves upon the idea of being, like the Dairi himself, descended from Tenshō-daijin, the first of the demigods, and who in consequence looked down, like the Indian Brahmins, upon all the rest of the nation as an inferior race, distinguishing themselves as Kuge, and all the rest of the nation as Gege. These Kuge, who may be conjectured to have once formed a class resembling the old Roman patricians, all wore a particular dress, by which was indicated, not only their character as members of that order, but, by the length of their sashes, the particular rank which they held in it; a distinction the more necessary, since, as generally happens with these aristocracies of birth, many of the members were in a state of poverty, and obliged to support themselves by various handicrafts.[28]
Of the magnificence of the court of the Dairi, and of the ceremonials of it, the missionaries reported many stories, chiefly, of course, on the credit of hearsay. It was said that the Dairi was never allowed to breathe the common air, nor his foot to touch the ground; that he never wore the same garment twice, nor ate a second time from the same dishes, which, after each meal, were carefully broken,—for, should any other person attempt to dine from them, he would infallibly perish by an inflammation of the throat. Nor could any one who attempted to wear the Dairi’s cast-off garments, without his permission, escape a similar punishment. The Dairi, as we are told, was, in ancient times, obliged to seat himself every morning on his throne, with the crown on his head, and there to hold himself immovable for several hours like a statue. This immobility, it was imagined, was an augury of the tranquillity of the empire; and if he happened to move ever so little, or even to turn his eyes, war, famine, fire, or pestilence was expected soon to afflict the unhappy province toward which he had squinted. But as the country was thus kept in a state of perpetual agitation, the happy substitute was finally hit upon of placing the crown upon the throne without the Dairi—a more fixed immobility being thus assured; and, as Kämpfer dryly observes, one doubtless producing much the same good effects.
At the time of the arrival of Xavier in Japan the throne of the Dairi was filled by Go-Nara, the hundred and sixth, according to the Japanese chronicles, in the order of succession; while the throne of the Kubō-Sama was occupied by Yoshiharu, who was succeeded the next year by his son Yoshiteru, the twenty-fourth of these officers, according to the Japanese, since their assumption of sovereign power in the person of Yoritomo, A. D. 1185.
The Japanese annals, which are scarcely more than a chronological table of successions, cast little light upon the causes and progress of this revolution;[29] but, from the analogy of similar cases, we may conjecture that it was occasioned, at least in part, by the introduction into Japan, and the spread there, of a new religion, gradually superseding, to a great extent, the old system, of which the Dairi was the head.
Image of Yoritomo From Official History of Japan
One might have expected from the Portuguese missionaries a pretty exact account of the various creeds and sects of Japan, or, at least, of the two leading religions, between which the great bulk of the people were divided; instead of which they confound perpetually the ministers of the two religions under the common name of bonzes, taking very little pains to distinguish between the two systems, both of which they regarded as equally false and pernicious. Their attention, indeed, seems to have been principally fixed on the new religion, that of Buddha, or Ho, of which the adherents were by far the most numerous, and the hierarchy the most compact and formidable, presenting, in its organization and practices (with, however, on some points a very different set of doctrines), a most singular counterpart to the Catholic Church,—a similarity which the missionaries could only explain by the theory of a diabolical imitation; and which some subsequent Catholic writers have been inclined to ascribe, upon very unsatisfactory grounds, to the ancient labors of Armenian and Nestorian missionaries, being extremely unwilling to admit what seems, however, very probable, if not, indeed, certain,—little attention has as yet been given to this interesting inquiry,—that some leading ideas of the Catholic Church have been derived from Buddhist sources, whose missionaries, while penetrating, as we know they did, to the East, and converting entire nations, may well be supposed not to have been without their influence also on the West.
Notwithstanding, however, the general prevalence, at the time when Japan first became known to Europeans, of the doctrine of Buddha,—of which there would seem to have been quite a number of distinct observances, not unlike the different orders of monks and friars in the Catholic Church,—it appears, as well from the memoirs of the Jesuit missionaries, as from more exact and subsequent observations made by residents in the Dutch service, that there also existed another and more ancient religious system, with which the person and authority of the Dairi had been and still were closely identified. This system[30] was known as the religion of Shintō, or of the Kami,—a name given not only to the seven mythological personages, or celestial gods, who compose the first Japanese dynasty, and to the five demigods, or terrestrial gods, who compose the second (two dynasties which, as in the similar mythology of the Egyptians and Hindus, were imagined to have extended through immense and incomprehensible ages preceding the era of Jimmu), but including also the whole series of the Dairi, who traced their descent from the first of the demigods, and who, though regarded during their lives as mere men, yet at their deaths underwent, as in the case of the Roman Cæsars, a regular apotheosis, by which they were added to the number of the Kami, or Shin,—words both of which had the same signification, namely, inhabitants of heaven.[31] A like apotheosis was also extended to all who had seemed to deserve it by their sanctity, their miracles, or their great benefactions.
The Kami of the first dynasty, the seven superior gods, being regarded as too elevated above the earth to concern themselves in what is passing on it, the chief object of the worship of the adherents of this ancient system was the goddess Tenshō-daijin,[32] already mentioned as the first of the demigods, and the supposed progenitor of the Dairi, and of the whole order of the Kuge. Of this Tenshō-daijin, and of her heroic and miraculous deeds, a vast many fables were in circulation. Even those who had quitted the ancient religion to embrace the new sects paid a sort of worship to the pretended mother of the Japanese nation; and there was not a considerable city in the empire in which there was not a temple to her honor. On the other hand, the religion of the Kami, by its doctrine of the apotheosis of all great saints and great heroes, gave, like the old pagan religions, a hospitable reception to all new gods, so that even the rival demigod, Buddha, came to be regarded by many as identical with Tenshō-daijin,—a circumstance which will serve to explain the great intermixture of religious ideas found in Japan, and the alleged fact, very remarkable, if true, that, till after the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries, religious persecution had never been known there.
Each of these numerous demigods was supposed by the adherents of the religion of Shintō to preside over a special paradise of his own; this one in the air, that one at the bottom of the sea, one in the moon and another in the sun, and so on; and each devotee, choosing his god according to the paradise that pleased him best, spared no pains to gain admission into it. For what St. Paul had said of the Athenians, might, according to the missionaries, be applied with equal truth to the Japanese,—they were excessively superstitious, and this superstition had so multiplied temples, that there was scarcely a city in which, counting all the smaller chapels, the number did not seem at least equal to that of the most pious Catholic countries.
The temples of the Shintō religion, called Miya, were and are—for in this respect no change has taken place—ordinarily built upon eminences, in retired spots, at a distance from bustle and business, surrounded by groves and approached by a great avenue having a gate of stone or wood, and bearing a tablet or door-plate of a foot and a half square, which announces, in gilded letters, the name of the Kami to whom the temple is consecrated. These exterior appendages would seem to foretell a considerable structure; but within there is usually found only a wretched little building of wood, half hid among trees and shrubbery, about eighteen feet in length, breadth, and height, all its dimensions being equal, and with only a single grated window, through which the interior may be seen, empty, or containing merely a mirror of polished metal, set in a frame of braided straw, or hung about with fringes of white paper. Just within the entrance of the enclosure stands a basin of water, by washing in which the worshippers may purify themselves. Beside the temple is a great chest for the reception of alms, partly by which, and partly by an allowance from the Dairi, the guardians of the temples are supported, while at the gate hangs a gong, on which the visitant announces his arrival. Most of these temples have also an antechamber, in which sit those who have the charge, clothed in rich garments. There are commonly also in the enclosure a number of little chapels, or miniature temples, portable so as to be carried in religious processions. All of these temples are built after one model, the famous one of Ise, near the centre of the island of Nippon, and which within the enclosure is equally humble with all the rest.
Ise Temple
The worship consists in prayers and prostrations. Works of religious merit are, casting a contribution into the alms-chest, and avoiding or expiating the impurities supposed to be the consequence of being touched by blood, of eating of the flesh of any quadruped except the deer, and to a less extent even that of any bird, of killing any animal, of coming in contact with a dead person, or even, among the more scrupulous, of seeing, hearing of, or speaking of any such impurities. To these may be added, as works of religious merit, the celebration of festivals, of which there are two principal ones in each month, being the first and fifteenth day of it, besides five greater ones distributed through the year, and lasting, some of them, for several days, in which concerts, spectacles, and theatrical exhibitions form a leading part. We must add the going on pilgrimages, to which, indeed, all the religious of Japan are greatly addicted. The pilgrimage esteemed by the adherents of Shintō as the most meritorious, and which all are bound to make once a year, or, at least, once in their life, is that of Ise, the name of a central province on the south coast of Nippon, in which Tenshō-daijin was reported to have been born and to have died, and which contains a Miya, exceedingly venerated, and already mentioned as the model after which all the others are built.
Though it is not at all easy to distinguish what, either of ceremony or doctrine, was peculiar or original in the system of Shintō,[33] yet in general that system seems to have been much less austere than the rival doctrine of Buddha, which teaches that sorrow is inseparable from existence, the only escape from it being in annihilation. The adherents of Shintō were, on the other hand, much more disposed to look upon the bright side of things, turning their religious festivals into holidays, and regarding people in sorrow and distress as unfit for the worship of the gods, whose felicity ought not to be disturbed by the sight of pain and misery. And this, perhaps, was one of the causes that enabled the religion of Buddha, which addresses itself more to the sorrowing hearts of which the world is so full, to obtain that predominance of which the Portuguese missionaries found it in possession.
A Shintō Priest
Of this religion of Buddha, by no means peculiar to Japan, but prevailing through the whole of central and southeastern Asia, and having probably more adherents than any other religious creed, it is not necessary here to speak at any length. A much more correct idea of it is to be obtained from the recorded observations of our modern missionaries, and from the elaborate investigations of Abel Rémusat, and several other learned Orientalists, who have shed a flood of light upon this interesting subject, than can be gathered from the letters of the Portuguese missionaries, whose comprehension of the Buddhist doctrine was, on many important points, especially as to the cardinal one of annihilation, exceedingly confused, contradictory, and erroneous; and, indeed, the same confusion and error exists in almost all European travellers in the East, down to a very recent period. Suffice it to say, that in the austerities and contempt for the world and its pleasures, practised and professed by the bonzes of the Buddhists, even Xavier and his brother Jesuits found their match; while, in the hierarchy into which those bonzes were arranged; the foreign language, imperfectly known even to themselves, of their sacred books and their liturgy, and which recent investigations have detected to be, with the bonzes of China and Japan, not Pali alone, but also pure Sanscrit; their doctrine of celibacy; the establishment of monasteries and nunneries; their orders of begging devotees; their exterior of purity and self-denial, but supposed secret licentiousness;[34] their fasts; their garbs; the tinkling of bells; the sign of the cross; the rosaries on which they counted their prayers; the large number of persons of noble birth who entered upon the clerical life; their manner of preaching; their religious processions; their pilgrimages; the size, splendor, and magnificence of their temples, known as Tera, the roofs supported by tall pillars of cedar; the altar within, and the lamps and incense burning there; the right of asylum possessed by the Tera; and even the practice of confession, prayers for the dead, and the sale of merit;—in all these respects, this system presented a complete counterpart at least to the show and forms and priestly devices of that very scheme of Roman Catholic worship which Xavier and his brother missionaries sought to introduce into Japan. The only striking difference was in the images, often of gigantic size, to be found in the Tera, but which, after all, were no more than a set-off against the pictures of the Catholic churches.
At the head of the Buddhist hierarchy was a high priest called Shaku, resident at Miyako, and having much the same spiritual prerogative with the Pope of Rome, including the canonization of saints. With him rested the consecration of the Jūji, corresponding to the bishops, or rather to the abbots, of the Catholic Church—all the Buddhist clergy being, in the language of Rome, regulars (similar, that is, to the monks and friars), and living together in monasteries of which the Jūji were the heads. These Jūji, however, could not enter upon their offices, to which great revenues were attached, except by the consent of the temporal authorities, which took care to limit the interference of the Shaku and the Jūji strictly to spiritual matters.[35]
Pilgrims returning from a Temple
There was this further resemblance also to the regular orders of the Romish church, that the Buddhist clergy were divided into a number of observances, hardly less hostile to each other than the Dominicans to the Franciscans, or both to the Jesuits. But as the church and state were kept in Japan perfectly distinct,—as now in the United States,—and as the bonzes possessed no direct temporal power, there was no appeal to the secular arm, no civil punishments for heresy, and no religious vows perpetually binding, all being at liberty, so far as the civil law was concerned, to enter or leave the monasteries at pleasure. It was also another result of this separation of state and church—as here in the United States—that there was only needed a Jo Smith, a man hardy or self-deceived enough to pretend to inspiration, to set up a new observance; an occurrence by which the theology of Japan had become from time to time more and more diversified.
There were also, besides the more regular clergy, enthusiasts, or impostors, religious vagabonds who lived by beggary, and by pretending to drive away evil spirits, to find things lost, to discover robbers, to determine guilt or innocence of accused parties, to interpret dreams, to predict the future, to cure desperate maladies, and other similar feats, which they performed chiefly through the medium, not of a table, but of a child, into whom they pretended to make a spirit enter, able to answer all their questions. Such, in particular, were the Yamabushi, or mountain priests, an order of the religion of Shintō.
Yet, exceedingly superstitious as the Japanese were, there was not wanting among them a sect of Rationalists, the natural result of freedom of opinion, who regarded all these practices and doctrines, and all the various creeds of the country, with secret incredulity, and even contempt. These Rationalists, known as Jiudōshiu, and their doctrine as Judō, and found chiefly among the upper classes, looked up to the Chinese Confucius as their master and teacher. They treated the system of Buddha with open hostility, as mere imposture and falsehood; but, in order to avoid the odium of being destitute of all religion, conformed, at least so far as external observances were concerned, to the old national system of Shintō.[36]
A Buddhist Sermon