A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

"It has been asked whether the Kami no michi is not the same as the Taoism of Laotzu. Laotzu hated the vain conceits of the Chinese scholars, and honoured naturalness, from which a resemblance may be argued; but as he was born in a dirty country not under special protection of the Sun goddess, he had heard only the theories of the succession of so-called 'holy men,' and what he believed to be naturalness was simply what they called natural. He did not know that the gods are the authors of every human action, and this ignorance constituted a cause of radical difference. To have acquired the knowledge that there is no michi (ethics) to be learned and practised is really to have learned to practise the 'way of the gods.' . . . Many miracles occurred in the Age of the Gods, the truth of which was not disputed until men were taught by the Chinese philosophy to analyse the acts of the gods by the aid of their own feeble intelligence. The reason assigned for disbelieving in miracles is that they cannot be explained; but in fact, although the Age of the Gods has passed away, wondrous miracles surround us on all sides. For instance, is the earth suspended in space or does it rest upon something else? If it be said that the earth rests upon something else, then what is it that supports that something else? According to one Chinese theory, the earth is a globe suspended in space with the heavens revolving round it. But even if we suppose the heavens to be full of air, no ordinary principles will account for the land and sea being suspended in space without moving. The explanation offered is as miraculous as the supposition previously made. It seems plausible enough to say that the heavens are merely air and are without any definite form. If this be true, there is nothing but air outside the earth, and this air must be infinite or finite in extent. If it is infinite in extent, we cannot fix any point as its centre, so that it is impossible to understand why the earth should be at rest; for if it be not in the centre it cannot be at rest. If it be finite, what causes the air to condense in one particular spot, and what position shall we assign to it?

"In any case all these things are miraculous and strange. How absurd to take these miracles for granted, and at the same time to disbelieve in the wonders of the Divine Age! Think again of the human body. Seeing with the eyes, hearing With the ears, speaking with the mouth, walking on the feet, and performing all manner of acts with the hands are strange things; so also the flight of birds and insects through the air, the blossoming of plants and trees, the ripening of their fruits and seeds are strange; and the strangest of all is the transformation of the fox and the badger into human form. If rats, weasels, and certain birds see in the dark, why should not the gods have been endowed with a similar faculty?…. The facts that many of the gods are invisible now and have never been visible furnish no argument against their existence. Existence can be made known to us by other senses than those of sight, such as odour or sound, while the wind, which is neither seen, heard, nor smelt is recognized by the impression which it makes upon our bodies. [Motoori Norinaga].

"Although numbers of Japanese cannot state with any certainty from what gods they are descended, all of them have tribal names (kabane) which were originally bestowed by the Mikado, and those who make it their province to study genealogies can tell from a man's ordinary surname who his remotest ancestor must have been. From the fact of the divine descent of the Japanese people proceeds their immeasurable superiority to the natives of other countries in courage and intelligence.*

*Although Hirata claims the superiority for his own countrymen, he frankly acknowledges the achievements of the Dutch in natural science.

". . . The accounts given in other countries, whether by Buddhism or by Chinese philosophy, of the form of the heavens and earth and the manner in which they came into existence, are all inventions of men who exercised all their ingenuity over the problem, and inferred that such things must actually be the case. As for the Indian account, it is nonsense fit only to deceive women and children, and I do not think it worthy of reflection. The Chinese theories, on the other hand, are based upon profound philosophical speculations and sound extremely plausible, but what they call the absolute and the finite, the positive and negative essences, the eight diagrams, and the five elements, are not real existences, but are fictitious names invented by the philosophers and freely applied in every direction. They say that the whole universe was produced by agencies, and that nothing exists which is independent of them. But all these statements are nonsense. The principles which animate the universe are beyond the power of analysis, nor can they be fathomed by human intelligence, and all statements founded upon pretended explanations of them are to be rejected. All that man can think and know is limited by the powers of sight, feeling, and calculation, and what goes beyond these powers, cannot be known by any amount of thinking. . . .

"The Chinese accounts sound as if based upon profound principles, and one fancies that they must be right, while the Japanese accounts sound shallow and utterly unfounded in reason. But the former are lies while the latter are the truth, so that as time goes on and thought attains greater accuracy, the erroneous nature of these falsehoods becomes even more apparent whale the true tradition remains intact. In modern times, men from countries lying far off in the West have voyaged all round the seas as their inclinations prompted them, and have ascertained the actual shape of the earth. They have discovered that the earth is round and that the sun and the moon revolve round it in a vertical direction, and it may thus be conjectured how full of errors are all the ancient Chinese accounts, and how impossible it is to believe anything that professes to be determined a priori. But when we come to compare our ancient traditions as to the origin of a thing in the midst of space and its subsequent development, with what has been ascertained to be the actual shape of the earth, we find that there is not the slightest error, and this result confirms the truth of our ancient traditions. But although accurate discoveries made by the men of the Far West as to the actual shape of the earth and its position in space infinitely surpass the theories of the Chinese, still that is only a matter of calculation. There are many other things actually known to exist which cannot be solved by that means; and still less is it possible to solve the question of how the earth, sun, and moon came to assume their form. Probably those countries possess theories of their own, but whatever they may be, they can but be guesses after the event, and probably resemble the Indian and the Chinese theories.

"The most fearful crimes which a man commits go unpunished by society so long as they are undiscovered, but they draw down on him the hatred of the invisible gods. The attainment of happiness by performing good acts is regulated by the same law. Even if the gods do not punish secret sins by the usual penalties of law, they inflict diseases, misfortunes, short life, and extermination of the race. Never mind the praise or blame of fellow men, but act so that you need not be ashamed before the gods of the Unseen. If you desire to practise true virtue, learn to stand in awe of the Unseen, and that will prevent you from doing wrong. Make a vow to the god who rules over the Unseen and cultivate the conscience implanted in you, and then you will never wander from the way. You cannot hope to live more than one hundred years in the most favourable circumstances, but as you will go to the unseen realm of Okuninushi after death and be subject to his rule, learn betimes to bow down before heaven. The spirits of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about us, and they all become gods of varying character and degrees of influence. Some reside in temples built in their honour; others hover near their tombs, and they continue to render service to their princes, parents, wives, and children as when in their body. [Hirata Atsutane.]"*

*The above extracts are all taken from Sir Ernest Satow's Revival of
Pure Shinto in the appendix to Vol. III. of the "Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan."

The great loyalist of the eleventh century, Kitabatake Chikafusa, had fully demonstrated the divine title of the sovereigns of Japan, but his work reached only a narrow circle of readers, and his arguments were not re-enforced by the sentiment of the era. Very different was the case in the days of the four literati quoted above. The arrogant and intolerant demeanour of Japanese students of Chinese philosophy who elevated the Middle Kingdom on a pedestal far above the head of their own country, gradually provoked bitter resentment among patriotic Japanese, thus lending collateral strength to the movement which took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in favour of reversion to the customs and canons of old times.

As soon as attention was intelligently concentrated on the history of the past, it was clearly perceived that, in remote antiquity, the empire had always been administered from the Throne, and, further, that the functions arrogated to themselves by the Hojo, the Oda, the Toyotomi, and the Tokugawa were pure usurpations, which deprived the Imperial Court of the place properly belonging to it in the State polity. Just when this reaction was developing strength, the dispute about the title of the ex-Emperor occurred in Kyoto, and furnished an object lesson more eloquent than any written thesis. The situation was complicated by the question of foreign intercourse, but this will be treated separately.