“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 [[340]]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,[43] “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.[44] 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 [[341]]the water and food which would be offered him.[45] 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.[46]
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.[47]
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.[48] 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 [[342]]infinite, omnipotent, or omniscient. Most of them had a father and mother, and of some the death is recorded.”[49] 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 [[343]]of Memphis. Egypt, too, had its local gods like Japan; so had Babylonia.