Shinto (the Way of the Gods)

by W. G. Aston

The history of the mitama suggests that the material, or partially material, conceptions of the soul are a comparatively recent development. Though religion is on the whole progressive, it by no means follows that all movements of religious thought are in a forward direction. The spiritual edifice which poets and seers build up is being constantly reduced to ruin by the inept handling of the material-minded vulgar, to be reared anew by others more splendid than before. But let us not mistake the ruin for the first courses of a new building, the dead husk for the living germ. Ghosts and ball-souls are aberrant conceptions which belong to the former category. The dullards to whom such notions are due are quite incapable of originating the pregnant, though artificial, conception of body and soul as two distinct entities.

Let me add a few more etymological facts which bear on the question of spirituality.

Mi-kage, or "august shadow," is an ancient synonym for mi-tama. It is unnecessary to suppose that anything but a metaphorical meaning was originally intended. There is, however, a modern superstition that when a man is near his death his shadow becomes thinner.

The ordinary Japanese word for "to die" is shinuru, that is to say, "breath-depart." Death is also called concealment, long concealment, body-concealment, rock-concealment (in allusion to the practice of burial in dolmens), change, and ending. In the case of the Gods, death is called divine departure or divine ascent.

Iki, "breath," one of the vital functions, is put by metonymy for their sum, that is, life. It has not, like our word "spirit" and the Greek "psyche," taken the further step of coming to mean the human soul, except we identify it with the ke of hotoke, which has been plausibly derived from hito, "man," and ke, "spirit." It is now the common Buddhist term for Buddha and his saints, and also for the spirits of the sainted dead. The material-minded man, as usual, drags it down to his own level. To him the corpse at a funeral is the hotoke. It is not certain, however, that the element ke of this word is not of Chinese origin, China, always far in advance of Japan in spirituality, has exercised a profound influence on the development of Japanese ideas regarding spiritual matters.

Another material conception of the life or soul is contained in a poem of the Manyôshiu, in which a fisherman named Urashima is related to have found his way to the Toko yo no kuni, or "Eternal Land." When about to return to earth he received from his wife a casket, with the injunction that he must not open it. He does open it, upon which his life or soul comes out and flies away like a white cloud to the "Eternal Land." He dies soon after. But this is a poetic fancy, open to strong suspicions of Chinese inspiration.

There is a ceremony called iki-mitama (living soul), which consists in paying respect to an absent parent, &c., as if he were present. Another similar practice is that of kage-zen (shadow-food), in which a meal is set out for an absent member of the family, especially when it is not known whether he is dead or alive. The term iki-su-dama (living spirit) is applied to the angry spirit (double?) of a living person, which is supposed to work a curse, sometimes unknown even to himself. Su-dama are defined as the essences of woods or mountains, which assume a metamorphosed form--elves, as we should say. All these are comparatively modern ideas.

The Shinto Do-itsu, a modern Shinto manual, frankly adopts the Chinese views of the soul. A manual of this sect has the following: "The kom-paku are in China the animal and rational souls. When a man dies, his kon goes up to Heaven and his haku returns to Earth. Man at birth derives his breath (or life) from Heaven and Earth. Therefore when he dies it returns to Heaven and Earth. The kon is the yang or male, positive spirit; the haku is the yin or female, negative spirit (tama). In everything there is the yin and the yang heart. All men have ki (breath), kei (form), and sei (life). The kon rules the ki and the sei. The haku rules the form and the body. Ki means literally breath, on which man's life depends. From the Buddhist point of view there are two functions of the material body, namely, life and death, each of which has its soul. The saki-dama (spirit of luck) is the kon; the kushi-dama (wondrous spirit) is the haku.[32] Again the five viscera have each a God in shape like a man."

State of the Dead.--Like the Old Testament, the ancient Japanese records afford but few and uncertain glimpses of the condition of the dead. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is nowhere taught explicitly. There are no prayers for the dead or for happiness in a future life. There is a land of yomi (darkness) which corresponds to the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheöl. It is also termed Ne no kuni (root-land), Soko no kuni (bottom-land), Shita-tsu-kuni (lower-land), or the Yaso-kumade, that is to say, the eighty road-windings, a euphemistic phrase resembling our "going on a long journey." Yomi, however, does not seem to be peopled by human beings or ghosts. Nor do we find any actual cases of their descending thither at death, although the conception was no doubt originally a metaphor for the grave. In the Nihongi myth we find that where one version speaks of Izanami in Yomi, another uses the expression "temporary burying-place." The same work mentions an opinion that the "Even Pass of Yomi" is not any place in particular, but means only the space of time when the breath fails on the approach of death. The Kojiki, after relating the death and burial of Izanami on Mount Hiba, at the boundary of the Land of Idzumo, goes on to speak of her descent to Yomi as if it were the same thing. From this it would appear that to many persons, even in these early times, Yomi was a tolerably transparent metaphor for the state of the dead. How difficult it is for even learned and intelligent men to rise above the literal interpretation of metaphor is illustrated by the fact that Motoöri treats this suggestion with great scorn, pointing out that there is an actual entrance to Yomi in the province of Idzumo.

Izanami went to Yomi when she died. She is called the Great Deity of Yomi. It is also spoken of as the abode of Susa no wo, who, according to one myth, was appointed to rule this region. We also hear of the deities of Yomi, the armies of Yomi, the ugly females of Yomi, and the Road-Wardens of Yomi. Thunder-Gods are said to have been generated there from the dead body of Izanami. All these are probably various personifications of death and disease.