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.