A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

RYOBU SHINTO

THE reader is aware that early in the ninth century the celebrated Buddhist priest, Kukai (Kobo Daishi), compounded out of Buddhism and Shinto a system of doctrine called Ryobu Shinto. The salient feature of this mixed creed was the theory that the Shinto deities were transmigrations of Buddhist divinities. Thereafter, Buddhism became the national religion, which position it held until the days of the Tokugawa shoguns, when it was supplanted among educated Japanese by the moral philosophy of Confucius, as interpreted by Chutsz, Wang Yang-ming, and others.

REVIVAL OF PURE SHINTO

The enthusiasm and the intolerance showed by the disciples of Chinese philosophy produced a reaction in Japan, and this culminated in the revival of Shinto, during which process the anomalous position occupied by the shogun towards the sovereign was clearly demonstrated, and the fact contributed materially to the downfall of the Tokugawa. It was by Ieyasu himself that national thought was turned into the new channel, though it need scarcely be said that the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate had no premonition of any results injurious to the sway of his own house.

After the battle of Sekigahara had established his administrative supremacy, and after he had retired from the shogunate in favour of Hidetada, Ieyasu applied himself during his residence at Sumpu to collecting old manuscripts, and shortly before his death he directed that the Japanese section of the library thus formed should be handed over to his eighth son, the baron of Owari, and the Chinese portion to his ninth son, the baron of Kii. Another great library was subsequently brought together by a grandson of Ieyasu, the celebrated Mitsukuni (1628-1700), baron of Mito, who, from his youthful days, devoted attention to Japanese learning, and, assembling a number of eminent scholars, composed the Dai Nihon-shi (History of Great Japan), which consisted of 240 volumes and became thenceforth the standard history of the country. It is stated that the expenditures involved in producing this history, together with a five-hundred-volume work on the ceremonies of the Imperial Court, amounted to one-third of the Mito revenues, a sum of about 700,000 ryo. There can be little doubt that Mitsukuni's proximate purpose in undertaking the colossal work was to controvert a theory advanced by Hayashi Razan that the Emperor of Japan was descended from the Chinese prince, Tai Peh, of Wu, of the Yin dynasty.

Chiefly concerned in the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi were Asaka Kaku, Kuriyama Gen, and Miyake Atsuaki. They excluded the Empress Jingo from the successive dynasties; they included the Emperor Kobun in the history proper, and they declared the legitimacy of the Southern Court as against the Northern. But in the volume devoted to enumeration of the constituents of the empire, they omitted the islands of Ezo and Ryukyu. This profound study of ancient history could not fail to expose the fact that the shogunate usurped powers which properly belonged to the sovereign and to the sovereign alone. But Mitsukuni and his collaborators did not give prominence to this feature. They confined themselves rather to historical details.

ENGRAVING: KAMO MABUCHI

ENGRAVING: MOTOORI NOBINAGA

It was reserved for four other men to lay bare the facts of the Mikado's divine right and to rehabilitate the Shinto cult. These men were Kada Azumamaro (1668-1736), Kamo Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), and Hirata Atsutane (1776-1834). Associated with them were other scholars of less note, but these are overshadowed by the four great masters. Kada, indeed, did not achieve much more than the restoration of pure Japanese literature to the pedestal upon which it deserved to stand. That in itself was no insignificant task, for during the five centuries that separated the Gen-Hei struggle from the establishment of the Tokugawa family, Japanese books had shared the destruction that overtook everything in this period of wasting warfare, and the Japanese language itself had undergone such change that to read and understand ancient books, like the Kojiki and the Manyo-shu, demanded a special course of study. To make that study and to prepare the path for others was Kada's task, and he performed it so conscientiously that his successors were at once able to obtain access to the treasures of ancient literature. It was reserved for Mabuchi to take the lead in championing Japanese ethical systems as against Chinese. By his writings we are taught the nature of the struggle waged throughout the Tokugawa period between Chinese philosophy and Japanese ethics, and we are enabled, also, to reach a lucid understanding of the Shinto cult as understood by the Japanese themselves. The simplest route to that understanding is to let the four masters speak briefly, each for himself:

"Learning is a matter in which the highest interests of the empire are involved, and no man ought to be vain enough to imagine that he is able by himself to develop it thoroughly. Nor should the student blindly adhere to the opinions of his teacher. Anyone who desires to study Japanese literature should first acquire a good knowledge of Chinese, and then pass over to the Manyo-shu, from which he may discover the ancient principles of the divine age. If he resolve bravely to love and admire antiquity, there is no reason why he should fail to acquire the ancient style in poetry as well as in other things. In ancient times, as the poet expressed only the genuine sentiments of his heart, his style was naturally direct, but since the practice of writing upon subjects chosen by lot came into vogue, the language of poetry has become ornate and the ideas forced. The expression of fictitious sentiment about the relations of the sexes and miscellaneous subjects is not genuine poetry. [Kada Azumamaro.]