The Shinto Cult: A Christian Study of the Ancient Religion of Japan

by Milton Spenser Terry

(4) The offerings presented consist of cups of water and small vessels filled with rice, vegetables, fruits, salt, fish, birds, and other simplest products of the land and of the sea. It is noteworthy that we find no bloody sacrificial rites in Shinto worship, in which one life, animal or human, was made a vicarious substitute for a guilty soul.

(5) The sacred mirror, which figures in the mythology of the Sun-Goddess, and is said to have been once used to entice her from a cave into which she had hid herself in a spell of anger, is carefully guarded in one of these temples, and also many copies of the mirror. "Each mirror is contained in a box which is furnished with eight handles, four on the box itself and four on the lid. The box rests on a low stand and is covered with a piece of cloth said to be white silk. The mirror itself is wrapped in a brocade bag, which is never opened or renewed, but when it begins to fall to pieces from age, another bag is put on, so that the actual covering consists of numerous layers. Over the whole is placed a sort of cage of unpainted wood with ornaments said to be of pure gold, and over this again is thrown a sort of curtain of coarse silk, descending to the floor on all sides."[22] One can not read this description of the sacred mirror thus secretly guarded in a costly box without being reminded of the sacred ark of the Levitical sanctuary, and its enclosed "tables of testimony."

[11. The Ancestor Worship.] We have already observed that ancestor worship is the basis of the Shinto cult. This kind of worship is also conspicuous among the Chinese, and is held by many writers to have been the original cult of all civilized races and peoples. It began, they tell us, with a belief in ghosts, and at the first there was no clear distinction between ghosts and gods. The departed spirit was thought of as abiding near the place where the dead body was deposited, and the earliest shrines would therefore be the graves or tombs of the dead. Later thought would beget the idea that the invisible spirits were present to witness the acts, and share the joys and sorrows of the living. And this fundamental idea would, of course, develop into many diverse conceptions and practices among the different tribes.

Without here discussing this theory of aboriginal religious thought and practice, as applicable to all peoples, we may note that it accords with the facts of Japanese history and civilization so far as we can now trace them back into the mists of prehistoric time.[23] We have seen that Japanese history and mythology run together and blend in remarkable artlessness as they stand recorded in the oldest literature (e. g., the Ko-ji-ki and the Nihongi). Unthinkable monstrosities of the origin of gods and lands and men are told with the same simplicity as the unquestionable facts of historic times. But taking the one leading thought which runs through all these records and appears to be fundamental in the Japanese civilization—namely, that all their islands and emperors and chiefs and people are offspring of the gods, the very first of whom were somehow self-evolved from the primordial elements of the universe—we look upon the Shinto worship as it exists in its purest form to-day, and note the most apparent facts.

Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, in his "attempt at an interpretation" of Japan, has, more clearly than any other writer I have consulted, described the Shinto ancestor-worship under its three forms of Domestic, Communal, and State cults. In every case it is a worship of the dead, but the individual, whether he be the most obscure servant, the influential citizen, the commanding chieftain, or even the Mikado, is but a part and parcel of the body politic. There is a most remarkable unity of popular and national life. Government and religion are virtually identical, and there is no distinction between religion and morality. Obedience and conformity to the rules of family life, and to the customs of society and the requirements of the State—these are the simple sum-total of Shinto law and gospel. The individual must always stand ready to be sacrificed for the good of the community or of the State. Everything is to be regarded as public, and must serve the public weal. There is no such thing as privacy, and oddities have no respectable standing. Tradition and custom seem to constitute the essence of religion as well as of family, communal, and more public life. There is no code of moral law; there is nothing in the worship that is fairly comparable to what we understand by dogma, creed, or Church. Strictly speaking, this system has no heaven or hell, no deep sense of sin, and no concept of mediatorial redemption from sin and evil. The dead—all the dead of all the ages—are conceived as somehow living in the unseen vacancy around, above, below; they are present at the worship; they haunt the tombs; they are interested in the life and works of their descendants; they visit their former homes and attend the family worship there; their happiness, in fact, depends upon the honor and worship which their living descendants pay them; and also the happiness and prosperity of the living is believed to depend upon their sense of filial duty and proper reverence toward the dead. Furthermore, all the dead are supposed to become gods and attain to supernatural power. But there is no one Supreme Deity; no central throne of God; no paradise of heavenly blessedness. So far as any ideas of this kind obtain among the people, they may be regarded as later conceptions introduced by missionaries or adherents of other religious systems. But the cult implies beyond question a belief in some kind of future life. The Yomi, or Hades, of Shinto mythology, into which Izanagi went to seek his lost sister, was conceived as "a hideous and polluted land," and even the realm of the unseen heavenly deities was never longed for by the devotees of Shinto. Dooman observes that "to the Japanese mind and imagination Japan, as a place of residence, was far superior to heaven, and its inhabitants a far more desirable society than those living in the transcendent regions. We see that every god who is sent from heaven to Japan on some important business by the divine assembly marries, and is utterly unwilling to go back once more to the place from which he descended."[24]

[12. Elements of Animism.] The ancestor-worship of Shinto can not be disassociated altogether from the elements of Animism which appear in the names and titles of certain deities, and also in the fact that there are "evil gods" and demons who are capable of working mischief and calamity in the family, the community, and the State. How these evil deities originated is matter of myth, legend, and speculation. Bad men would naturally be supposed to carry their evil character with them into the unseen world of the dead, and to have the same power to work harm among the living as the good spirits have to bestow benefits. But human spirits would hardly be supposed to become deities of the wind, and the thunder, and the waves, and the mountains; of the trees, and the fire, and the sun, and the moon, and the autumn, and the food of men. Here the old mythology of the Ko-ji-ki comes in to tell us of a prehistoric and cosmical origin of evils. When Izanagi went to find his sister Izanami in the hideous and polluted underworld, and found her body swarming with maggots and eight thunder deities dwelling in the different parts of her decaying form, he fled back in astonishment and awe, and she in a rage of shame pursued him with all the horrid forces of that nether sphere. He escaped, but not without contracting much pollution on his august person, and when he sought to wash and cleanse himself in the waters of a certain river, there were born from the filth of his person two deities, named "the wondrous deity of eighty evils," and "the wondrous deity of great evils." These evil gods afterwards multiplied, and may be supposed to be the authors of all the demons, goblins, and mischievous spirits of evil that disturb the world and its inhabitants. But there are also good spirits innumerable that animate all moving things. The winds and the waters, the songs of birds and the hum of the bees, the growing plants and trees, are all instinct with a sort of conscious life, and the spirits that live and move in them are to be recognized and reverenced by prayers and offerings.

The spirits of dead ancestors and the powerful spirits of the winds and the storms and the growths of nature may or may not have been supposed to have concert of action understood between them. The Japanese mind seems never to have elaborated any formal philosophy of this life or any specific theories of the life to come.

[13. The Domestic Cult.] The simplest and most original form of the Shinto worship is that of the family. In the inner chamber of every home there is a high shelf against the wall called the "Shelf of the August Spirits." Upon it is placed a miniature temple, in which are deposited little tablets of white wood bearing the names of the deceased members of the household. These are often spoken of as "spirit sticks" and "spirit substitutes." Before these household shrines simple offerings are offered daily and a few words of prayer are spoken. The ceremony is a very short one, but as regular as the coming of the day. It is usually performed by the head of the family, but it frequently devolves upon the woman, the mother or the grandmother, rather than the father. "No religion," says Hearn, "is more sincere, no faith more touching than this domestic worship, which regards the dead as continuing to form a part of the household life and needing still the affection and the respect of their children and kindred. Originating in those dim ages when fear was stronger than love, ... the cult at last developed into a religion of affection; and this it yet remains. The belief that the dead need affection, that to neglect them is a cruelty, that their happiness depends upon duty, is a belief that has almost cast out the primitive fear of their displeasure. They are not thought of as dead: they are believed to remain among those who loved them. Unseen, they guard the home and watch over the welfare of its inmates; they hover nightly in the glow of the shrine-lamp, and the stirring of its flame is the motion of them.... From their shrine they observe and hear what happens in the house; they share the family joys and sorrows. They were the givers of life; they represent the past of the race, and all its sacrifices.... Yet, how little do they require in return! Scarcely more than to be thanked, as founders and guardians of the home, in simple words like these: 'For aid received, by day and by night, accept, august ones, our reverential gratitude.'"[25]