Motoöri's principal work is the Kojiki den, a commentary on the Kojiki, in which he loses no opportunity of attacking everything Chinese and of exalting the old Japanese customs, language, and religion in a spirit of ardent and undiscriminating patriotism. He seems to have been wholly blind to the fact that the exotic faiths and philosophies, whose intrusion into Shinto he so bitterly resented, contain elements far otherwise valuable to mankind than the ritual of the Yengishiki and the old-world myths of the Kojiki.
His pupil Hirata (1776-1843) was less of a literary man and more of a theologian than his master. In a long life he wrote numbers of books, amounting to hundreds of volumes, and delivered innumerable lectures urging the claims of the old Shinto. His teaching was so successful that it at last drew upon him the attention of the Shōgun's Government, who, finding that their own authority was being undermined by the prominence given to the de jure sovereign rights of the Sun-Goddess's descendants, forbade his lectures and banished him to his native province of Dewa. Hirata's anti-foreign prejudices did not prevent him from believing in the immortality of the soul--a doctrine of Buddhist origin--or from borrowing from China a worship of ancestors quite different from anything in the old Shinto. He adopts the Chinese duty of "filial piety," and makes strenuous but unavailing efforts to find countenance for it in the Kojiki and Nihongi. Though he says that the Kami detest Buddhism because it teaches us to abandon lord and parent, wife and child, and is therefore destructive of morality, and because its adherents are filthy beggars, who boast of wearing cast-off rags and eating food given in charity, in another place he goes so far as to admit Buddha to his Shinto Pantheon, on condition that he shall be content with an inferior position. He tacitly accepts the moral code of China, while protesting that such things are unnecessary, as we are endowed by nature with an intuitive knowledge of right and wrong.
The agitation for the revival of Pure Shinto was a retrograde movement, which could only end in failure. It contributed substantially, however, to the success of the political revolution which in 1868 brought about the restoration of the Mikado to the sovereign position which was the logical outcome of Motoöri's and Hirata's teachings. The Shinto reformation of the same date, when the Buddhist priests were removed from the Ryōbu shrines, and a certain purification of ritual and ornaments was effected, was also due to their influence.[344]
Shingaku.--A school of preachers who called their doctrine shingaku or "heart-learning," and professed to combine Shinto with Buddhism and Confucianism, had some vogue in the first half of the nineteenth century. These men were in reality rationalists, who took the maxims of Confucius and Mencius as the basis of their doctrines. Any Shinto element which they may contain is quite inappreciable. Their sermons, of which a good number have been printed, are in the colloquial dialect. They are very entertaining and, despite an occasional bit of indecency, not unedifying.
Tenrikyô,[345] or the "teaching of the Heavenly Reason," is a modern sect. The founder was a woman named Omiki, who was born in the province of Yamato in 1798, and died in 1887. Her religion owes much to the Shingaku and Ryōbu doctrines. While professing to worship Kunitokotachi, Izanagi, Izanami, and seven other Shinto deities, practically Izanagi and Izanami are her only Gods. The former (identified with the sun) is taken to represent the male, and the latter the female principle, corresponding in nature to Heaven and Earth, and in human society to husband and wife. These Gods are spiritual beings, chiefly revealed in the heart of man, and are endowed with personal attributes. Tenrikyô has high moral aims, and has made rapid progress. In 1894 there were claimed for it 10,000 priests and preachers, and 1,400,000 adherents.
Remmonkyô.[346] --The name of this sect implies that, like the spotless lotus-flower, which has its roots in the mud, it attains to purity in the midst of a wicked world. It is stated to have originated with a certain Yanagita Ichibeimon, but its real founder was his disciple, a woman named Shimamura Mitsuko, who was still alive and preaching in 1901.
The Remmonkyô professes to be a reformed Shinto, but in reality it owes little to this source beyond the names of the Gods Ame no minaka nushi, Taka-musubi, and Kami-musubi, who are termed the three Creator Deities. They are considered, however, to be only manifestations of the Ji no Myôhô, or "Wonderful Law of Things," and the real God of the sect is the personified Myôhô (wonderful law) a conception borrowed from the Buddhist Nichiren sect. The followers of Shimamura call her an ikigami (live God), and regard her as identical with the Myôhô. How often in Japanese religious history do we meet with this idea of the incarnation of the God in his priest or prophet!
The shintai, or material representative of the Myôhô, is a slip of paper bearing the words "Ji no Myôhô," written by the founder herself. It is sold as a charm against disease and danger. Faith-healing is a practice of this sect, as it is of the Tenrikyô. Their moral code is of the ordinary Confucian type.
The last-named two sects are not likely to play an important part in religious history. The founders of both were ignorant women, and their doctrines are a mere jumble of conflicting ideas borrowed from various sources, and inspired by no great central thought. We may, perhaps, compare their position in Japan to that of the Salvation Army or the Plymouth Brethren in this country.
Official Shinto.--The official cult of the present day is substantially the "Pure Shinto" of Motoöri and Hirata. But it has little vitality. A rudimentary religion of this kind is quite inadequate for the spiritual sustenance of a nation which in these latter days has raised itself to so high a pitch of enlightenment and civilization. No doubt some religious enthusiasm is excited by the great festivals of Ise, Idzumo, and a few other shrines, and by the annual pilgrimages--which, however, have other raisons d'être. The reverence paid to the Mikado is not devoid of a religious quality which has its source in Shinto. But the main stream of Japanese piety has cut out for itself new channels. It has turned to Buddhism, which, at the time of the Restoration in a languishing state, is now showing signs of renewed life and activity. Another and still more formidable rival has appeared, to whose progress, daily increasing in momentum, what limit shall be prescribed?