Shinto

In Japan the process of spiritualizing the Gods has not gone very far. Like the Gods of the Homeric Olympus,9 the Shinto deities are, on the whole, unspiritual beings.

The doctrine of spiritism is associated in Shinto with the word Mitama, for which "spirit" is the nearest English equivalent. Strictly speaking, the Mitama is not the God, but an emanation or effluence from him, which inhabits his temple, and is the vehicle of his action at a distance from the place where he himself resides. It therefore corresponds to the Shekinah (that which dwells) of the Jews, and, though in a less marked degree, to the Roman numen. The Shekinah, like the Mitama, is a later development. Where Habakkuk, ii. 20, says, "The Lord is in his holy temple," the Targums have, "Jehovah was pleased to cause his Shekinah to dwell in his holy temple." I cannot see that the Shekinah and Mitama owe anything to the analogous doctrine of the separability of the human soul and body. The ghost is not the parent of either.10

The unavoidable assumption that an anthropomorphic God can act at a distance from his own abode in Heaven or elsewhere really involves the doctrine of spiritism, though time and thought are required for its development. It is clearly not the Sun-Goddess herself who lives in Ise. Her true place is in Heaven; but she is present in some way on earth, as is proved by her answering the prayers which are addressed to her at her shrine. The explanation which is ultimately forthcoming is that it is the Mitama, or spirit, of the Goddess which resides there. We have here a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the omnipresence of deity.

The etymology of the word Mitama will repay examination. Mi is simply a honorific prefix. Tama contains the root of the verb tabu, to give, more often met with in its lengthened form tamafu. Tama retains its original signification in tama-mono, a gift thing, and toshi-dama, a new year's present. Tama next means something valuable, as a jewel. Then, as jewels are mostly globular in shape, it has come to mean anything round. At the same time, owing to its precious quality, it is used symbolically for the sacred emanation from the God which dwells in his shrine, and also for that most precious thing, the human life or soul.11

The meaning of tama is illustrated by the following story, which is related in the Nihongi of Ohonamochi, the Creator or Kosmos-deity of Idzumo myth: -

"Coming at last to the province of Idzumo, he spake and said; 'This Central Land of Reed-plains had been always waste and wild. The very rocks, trees, and herbs were all given to violence. But I have now reduced them to submission, and there is none that is not compliant!' Therefore he said finally: 'It is I, and I alone, who now govern this land. Is there perchance any one who could join with me in governing the world?' Upon this a divine radiance12 illuminated the sea, and of a sudden there was something which floated towards him and said: 'Were I not here, how couldst thou subdue this land? It is because of my presence that thou hast been able to accomplish this mighty task! 'Who art thou?' asked Ohonamochi. It replied and said: 'I am thy spirit (tama) of good luck, the wondrous spirit.' Then said Ohonamochi: 'True; I know, therefore, that thou art my spirit (tama) of good luck, the wondrous spirit. Where dost thou now wish to dwell?' The spirit answered and said: 'I wish to dwell on Mount Mimoro, in the province of Yamato.' Accordingly he built a shrine in that place and made the spirit to go and dwell there. This is the God of Oho-miwa."

The distinction between the God and his spiritual double so clearly indicated in this extract is often neglected and the deity of Miwa spoken of simply as Ohonamochi. The same uncertainty as to the spiritual character of the God is reflected in his names Oho-kuni-nushi (great-country-master) and Oho-kuni-dama (great-country-spirit), and in a legend told of him in the Kojiki, where he is corporeal enough to have a child by a mortal woman and yet sufficiently spiritual to pass through a keyhole.

In the Idzumo Fudoki, Susa no wo speaks of the village of Susa as the place where his mitama was settled, that is to say, where a shrine was dedicated to him. The Nihongi states that Izanami's mitama was worshipped at Kumano with music and offerings of flowers. In a modern book the Hi no mitama (spirit of the Sun) is not the Sun-Goddess, but a separate deity of a lower class.

The element tama enters into the names of several deities. The Food-Goddess is called either Ukemochi no Kami or Uka no mitama.13 But the meaning "spirit" is not applicable in every case in which a God's name contains this element. Futo-dama, for example, the name of the supposed ancestor of the Imbe priestly corporation, probably means "great gift or offering." Yorodzu-dama no Kami is not the God of ten thousand spirits, but the God of ten thousand offerings.

It is a curious circumstance that in later times the mitama par excellence were the phallic Sahe no Kami. Their festival was formerly called the mitama matsuri. It is now known by the Chinese equivalent Goriōye.

In a few cases the mitama is in duplicate, a nigi-mitama, or gentle spirit, and an ara-mitama, or rough spirit.14 In the Idzumo Fudoki a man who is praying for revenge calls upon the nigi-tama of the Oho-kami (great deity) to remain quiet, and asks the ara-tama to attend to his petition. The legendary Empress Jingo was attended on her expedition to Korea by two such sea-god mitama, one to guard her person, the other to lead the van of her army. But we hear little of this distinction in the older records. The aragami-matsuri (rough-God-festival) of later days was a sort of saturnalia when license was permitted to servants.

The Kojiki and Nihongi do not theorize about the mitama. Hirata's statement that they do not distinguish between the utsushi-mi-mi (real-august-body)15 and the mitama of the Gods is, as the case of Ohonamochi shows, not quite correct. But there is much foundation for it. In one myth, for example, the Sun-Goddess in handing over the divine mirror to Ninigi, enjoins on him to regard it as her mitama, and in another version of the story to look upon it as herself.

Another indication of an advance towards spirituality in the older Shinto literature is the distinction which is made between araha-goto (public things) and kakure-goto (hidden things), the former term being applied to temporal and the latter to spiritual matters, namely, the service of the unseen Gods. Mystery is not the vital element of religion. It depends on what we know, not on what we do not know. Still, there perhaps never was a religion which did not betray some feeling that what we know is only an infinitesimal portion of that infinite sum of knowledge for which mankind is possessed with an eternal yearning. Religion, though not based in mystery, must always proceed, like other knowledge, from the known towards the unknown. A good deal, however, that is mysterious in religion is of our own making. Hirata, when he can find no way out of the difficulties arising from his crude, literal-minded anthropomorphism, constantly resorts to the time-honoured expedient of declaring his problems mysteries which transcend human intelligence, exclaiming, "Oh! how wonderful! Oh! how strange! Oh! how strange! Oh! how wonderful!"

Motoöri and Hirata account for the invisibility of such Gods as Musubi, the God of Growth, by the theory that since the Age of the Gods they have removed further from the earth, so that they are now beyond the scope of human vision. In other respects, however, they have, under unacknowledged Chinese influence, greatly developed the hints of the spiritual nature of the Gods which are found in the Kojiki and Nihongi. Of the mitama, Motoöri says16: -

"In general, when such or such a God is mentioned in the old scriptures, we must distinguish between the real God and his mitama. The real God is his actual body; the mitama is his divine spirit: the mitama-shiro (spirit-token) is the thing, be it a mirror or aught else, to which the divine spirit attaches itself. It is commonly called the Shintai (God-body). Now both the real body and the spirit are spoken of simply as the God. Thus when we are told that Ama-terasu no Ohokami was entrusted to Toyo-suki-iri-bime and Yamato no Oho-kuni-dama to Nunaki-iri-bime, it is not to be supposed that the real bodies of these two deities were in the Imperial Palace. It is unquestionably their mitama-shiro which are spoken of as if they were the real bodies… Again, when we are told in the history of the same reign that the Mikado assembled the eighty myriads of Gods on the plain of Kami-asachi and inquired of them by divination, this is not like the assembly in the divine age of the real Gods in the Plain of High Heaven. The invitation is to their mitama."

The same writer says that of the attendant deities who came down from Heaven with Ninigi, some came in their real bodies, some as mitama. Among the former he naturally classes all those who are represented as having human descendants. Hirata regards this as a discovery which will endure to all ages.

The following quotation from Hirata's Koshiden (vi. 9) illustrates further the ideas of this school of theology regarding the spiritual nature of the Gods: -

"Both this God(Chigaheshi) and Kunado 17 were produced by the great mitama of the great God Izanagi applying itself earnestly to preventing the entrance into this world of the things coming furiously from the Land of Yomi, and which accordingly became separated from him and adhered to a staff and a stone. Remaining there, it (the mitama) did good service in both cases. These Gods, moreover, sometimes reveal their real bodies and dispense blessings. This may not be doubted. We find below that Kunado no Kami acted as a guide to Futsunushi; and that Chigaheshi no Oho-Kami was two deities distinguished as hiko and hime (prince and princess)."

Hirata thinks that Gods (and men too) have two doubles, the nigi-tama and an ara-tama mentioned above. These he distinguishes from the Zentai no mitama, or "spirit of the entire body." But he admits that these distinctions are not recognized in the old Shinto. There is no limit to the subdivision of the mitama. Hirata explains that the deity is like a fire, which may be communicated to a lamp or to firewood while the original fire remains the same. "But the world knows not this." In other words, this is a philosophic refinement too subtle for the popular taste.

While the old records rarely distinguish between the God's real body and his mitama, in later times the mitama is often confounded with the mitama-shiro (spirit-token), or shintai (god-body) as the concrete representative of the God is called. Even in the Nihongi there is a case in which a sword is called Futsu no mitama. The Kiujiki calls the mirror of the Sun-Goddess her mitama. The Shinto Miōmoku (1699) says that Futsu no mitama is the sword of the great deity of Kashima, and speaks of the Toyo-uka no mitama (the Food-spirit) as being, or residing in, a stone. Hirata himself calls a stone idol the mitama of the God, and speaks of the Sun-Goddess's mitama as going backward and forward between Ise and the sky. The unspiritual vulgar naturally find it hard to distinguish between the spirit of the God and its concrete representative.

The doctrine of the separability of the human body and soul, and of the continued existence of the latter after death, whether in a material or semi-material form, or as a pure spirit, may have been a factor in the spiritualizing of the cruder anthropomorphic conceptions of deity. But there is little or no evidence to this effect in the old Shinto scriptures, and the above pages show that other important influences were at work in producing this result. Whether the idea of God had its origin in the doctrine of separable human souls is a question which may be left to the discerning reader's judgment.

Gods of Classes and Qualities. – No language is possible without some exercise of the powers of generalization and abstraction. In Japanese, however, we miss many of the more general, and especially of the more abstract, conceptions embodied in European languages, a circumstance which limits the scope of the personifying faculty, none too vigorous in itself. Supposing that we take the series of conceptions beginning with the concrete individual tree, and passing through evergreen oak, oak, tree, and vegetable, to the definitive generalization of the universe. The Japanese language has no word for vegetable except sōmoku, a recent compound of Chinese origin. The word for universe is Ame-tsuchi (Heaven + earth) which is almost certainly a translation of the Chinese ten-chi. The consequence is that neither the class of vegetables nor the universe is recognized in the Japanese scheme of nature-deities. Individual trees are deified, and there is a God of trees, but that is all. The neglect of grammatical number in the Japanese language often obscures the distinction between the Gods of individual objects and of classes. Ki no Kami means equally the God of the tree and the God of trees.18

There is a marked poverty of abstract terms in the Japanese language, and the personification of abstract qualities is correspondingly restricted. There is scarcely anything in Shinto to compare with the numerous personified abstractions of Greek and Roman mythology. Izanagi and Izanami, embodiments of the creative or generative powers of nature, are probably not originally Japanese, but an echo of the Yin and Yang of Chinese philosophy. I have a suspicion that Musubi, the God of Growth, may yet be traced to a Chinese source.

CHAPTER III.

DEIFICATION OF MEN

The importance of the deification of human beings in Shinto has been grossly exaggerated both by European scholars and by modern Japanese writers. Grant Allen, for example, says, in his 'Evolution of the Idea of God': "We know that some whole great national creeds, like the Shinto of Japan, recognize no deities at all, save living kings and dead ancestral spirits." He was probably misled by the old writer Kaempfer, whose ignorance of the subject is stupendous. The truth is that Shinto is derived in a much less degree from the second of the two great currents of religious thought than from the first. It has comparatively little worship of human beings. In the Kojiki, Nihongi, and Yengishiki we meet with hardly anything of this element. None of their great Gods are individual human beings, though at a later period a few deities of this class attained to considerable eminence and popularity. An analysis of a list of "Greater Shrines," prepared in the tenth century, yields the following results: Of the Gods comprised in it, seventeen are nature deities, one is a sword, which probably represented a nature deity, two are more or less legendary deceased Mikados, one is the deified type and supposed ancestor of a priestly corporation, one is the ancestor of an empress, and one a deceased statesman.

Deified Individual Men. – Like Nature-Gods, Man-Gods may be divided into three classes-namely, deified individual men, deified classes of men, and deified human qualities. The first of these classes comprises the Mikados, living or dead, and numerous heroes, of whom Yamato-dake, the legendary conqueror of the eastern part of Japan, and Sugahara (Tenjin), the god of learning, may be quoted as examples.

Phases of Conception. – They are variously conceived of, as follow: -

I. X, alive or dead, is a great man, worthy of our love, reverence, gratitude, or fear.

II. X, sometimes when alive, more frequently when dead, is possessed of superhuman powers, usually borrowed from those of nature, such as the control of the weather and the seasons, and of diseases.

III. X's powers reside not in his body but in a more or less spiritual emanation from it.

In the first of these three phases, man-worship is not religion. So long as a man is honoured for those qualities only which he really possesses or possessed, he cannot be called a God. But although rational man-worship is not in itself religion, it is a necessary factor in its development. Our sentiments of gratitude and awe towards the great nature-powers spring up in hearts already prepared by the feelings which we entertain towards our parents, superiors, and other fellow-men. Whether individually or collectively, a man loves his parents before he loves God. The outward signs of divine worship are almost exclusively in the first place acts of reverence towards men. A man bows his head or makes presents to his superiors before he worships or sacrifices to a deity.

There is a tendency to restrict the word worship to the adoration of deity. Thus, when we speak of ancestor-worship, we are apt to think of it as implying deification. But there is much worship of living and dead men which is perfectly rational, and implies no ascription to them of superhuman powers.

The second, or religious, phase of man-worship involves the assumption that some men are possessed of powers of a kind different from those of ordinary mortals. The mere exaggeration of the human faculties may produce an inferior sort of deity, but no really great man-God can be produced without borrowing some of the transcendent powers of Nature, or in some way identifying him with that increasing cosmic purpose, which from one point of view is tendency and evolution, and from another is a loving Providence. Until this is done a deified king, ancestor, or ghost (if there be such a thing) is a poor specimen of a God. To become a deity of any consequence, the man-God must make rain, avert floods, control the seasons, send and stay plagues, wield thunderbolts, ride upon the storm, or even act as Creator of the world.19 When the practice of deifying men was once established it was enough to entitle them Gods, the term itself implying the possession of those powers which we call supernatural, but which are only so when predicated of men.

Deification of Mikados. – The misunderstanding of metaphorical language is a fertile source of apotheosis. The deification of the Mikados is a case in point. The Mikado is called "the Heavenly Grandchild," his courtiers are "men above the clouds," rural districts are spoken of as "distant from Heaven," that is, from the Imperial Palace. The heir to the throne was styled hi no miko, or "august child of the Sun," and his residence hi no miya, "the august house of the Sun." The native names of many of the Mikados contain the element hiko, or "Sun-child." The appearance in Court of the Empress Suiko (a. d. 612) is compared to the sun issuing from the clouds. Tenshi, or "Son of Heaven," a Chinese term freely applied to the Mikado in later times, is a variant of the same idea, which, it need hardly be said, is known in other countries besides Japan. The Chinese Emperor is said to call the sun his elder brother, and the moon his sister. Images of the sun and moon were depicted on the banners which were borne before him on State occasions. The same practice had been adopted in Japan as early as a. d. 700, and there is a relic of it at the present day in the Japanese national flag, which is a red sun on a white ground.20 The ancient kings of Egypt called themselves earthly suns. Our own poet Waller, addressing James II., says: -

To your great merrit given,A title to be called the sonne of Heaven.

Let us not pass by these metaphors with a disdainful smile, as mere unsubstantial poetic fancies. They are more or less rude attempts to give expression to the very important truth that the benefits which a nation derives from the rule of a wise and good sovereign are comparable to the blessings of the sun's warmth and light. As Browning, in 'Saul,' has well said: -

Each deed thou hast doneDies, revives, goes to work in the world, and is as the sunLooking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface,Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere traceThe results of his past summer prime-so each ray of thy will,Every flash of thy passion and prowess long over, shall thrillThy whole people, the countless, with ardour till they too give forthA like cheer to their sons, who in turn fill the south and the northWith the radiance thy deed was the germ of-.

It may be objected that it is contrary to the general law of human development to make the higher metaphorical conception precede the lower physical one. It is no doubt true that the physical idea of fatherhood must come before the metaphorical use of this relationship. But it does not follow that when once the metaphor is arrived at, it may not relapse into its original physical acceptation. The forces which produce religious progress act by waves, with intervals of stagnation or retrogression. Even when the general religious condition of a country is advancing it will be found that the lower popular stratum of thought consists less of undeveloped germs of future progress than of a breccia of the debased or imperfectly assimilated ideas of the wise men of preceding generations. In this retrograde movement a large part is played by the invincible tendency of the vulgar to give metaphors their literal signification. This, I take it, is the source of the numerous actual children or descendants of the Sun and other deities who are found all over the world, in Greece, Peru, Japan, and elsewhere. The sequence of ideas may be thus represented: -

I. The King or sage is like the Sun.

II. He is (rhetorically) a Sun, or the Sun's brother or offspring.

III. He is actually descended from the Sun in the nth generation, the intermediate links of the genealogy being a, b, c, d, &c., and he is therefore himself a divinity.

Herbert Spencer, in his 'Sociology,' says: -

"There are proofs that like confusion of metaphor with fact leads to Sun-worship. Complimentary naming after the sun occurs everywhere, and where it is associated with power, becomes inherited. The chiefs of the Hurons bore the name of the Sun; and Humboldt remarks that 'the "Sun-Kings" among the Natches recall to mind the Heliades of the first eastern colony of Rhodes.' Out of numerous illustrations from Egypt may be quoted an inscription from Silsilis-'Hail to thee! King of Egypt! Sun of the foreign peoples … Life, salvation, health to him! he is a shining Sun.' In such cases, then, worship of the ancestor readily becomes worship of the Sun… Personalization of the wind had an origin of this kind."

"Nature-worship, then, is but an aberrant form of ghost-worship."

Surely this is an inversion of the true order of things. Why do kings bear the name of Sun, or child of the Sun? Is it not because the Sun is already looked upon as a glorious being (a God?) with whom it is an honour to be associated? Herbert Spencer himself speaks of "complimentary naming after the Sun." The Chinese call deification hai-ten, or "matching with Heaven," showing that with them at least it is the man who acquires his divinity by being placed on a level with Heaven, not vice versâ. Worship of the Sun must be anterior to the very existence of Mikados, and there are certainly more substantial reasons for it than the transfer to him, suggested by metaphorical language, of the reverence paid to human sovereigns or ancestors.

The deification of living Mikados was titular rather than real. I am not aware that any specific so-called miraculous powers21 were authoritatively claimed for them. In 645 a Japanese minister, addressing some envoys from Korea, described his sovereign as "the Emperor of Japan, who rules the world as a manifest deity." The same official recognized the Korean princes as "Sons of the Gods." The Mikado Keikō, admiring the strength and courage of his son Yamatodake, says to him: "Whereas in outward form thou art our child, in reality thou art a God." The Mikados called themselves, in notifications and elsewhere, Akitsu Kami, that is, manifest or incarnate deities, and claimed a general authority over the Gods of Japan. Yūriaku conversed on equal terms with the God Hito-koto-nushi. He expected obedience from the Thunder-God, but speedily had cause to repent his audacity.22