Shinto. Aston William George

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СКАЧАТЬ Ojin, visibly owing to Chinese and Buddhist influences, became an important deity in later Shinto. The same may be said of the Empress Jingo. The Kojiki and Nihongi treat both as mere mortals.

      The honours paid to deceased Mikados were much neglected before the Restoration of 1868. At present they consist in four solemn mourning services held in the Palace, one on the anniversary of the death of the late Emperor, the second on that of the death of Jimmu Tennō, the third and fourth in spring and autumn, in memory of all the Imperial ancestors.23 Embassies are also despatched to the Imperial tombs (misasagi), which now have toriwi (the distinctive Shinto honorary gateway) erected in front of them. Two of the Mikados, namely, Ojin and Kwammu, have special State shrines dedicated to them. Concurrent with the enhancement of the political prestige of the Crown there has been a strong tendency in the present reign to increase the respect paid to the Imperial House, so that it now amounts to something like religious worship. The ceremony of the naishi dokoro,24 which in ancient times was in honour of the sacred sun-mirror, now includes the tablets of the deceased Mikados.

       Other Deifications. – Even in the case of the deification of living and dead Mikados there is much room for suspicion of foreign influence. Of the deification of other men I find no clear evidence in the older records. It is probable, however, that some of the numerous obscure deities mentioned in the Kojiki and Nihongi are deified men. A number of the legendary and historical personages named in these works were deified at a subsequent period. Others have been added from time to time. The case of the God of Suha has a special interest. Here the God's living descendant, real or supposed, is regarded as a God, and a cave (probably a tomb) occupies the place of the shrine. A fuller account of this cult is given below.25 The high-priest of the Great Shrine of Idzumo is called an iki-gami, or living deity. Not only good but bad men might be deified or canonized, as in the case of the archrebel Masakado, the robber Kumasaka Chohan, and in our own day, Nishitaro Buntarō, the murderer of Mori, the Minister for Education.

      Lafcadio Hearn, in his 'Gleanings in Buddha Fields,' tells a typical story of the deification of a living man. A certain Hamaguchi Gohei, head man of his village, saved the lives of his fellow villagers from destruction by a tidal wave, at the sacrifice of his crop of rice, which he set fire to in order to attract them away from the sea-shore to the higher ground. "So they declared him a God, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi Daimyōjin, and when they rebuilt their village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshipped him there, with prayer and with offerings… He continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, while his soul was being worshipped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble."

       Ancestor-Worship. – If we restrict this term to the religious cult of one's own ancestors, as in China, this form of religion has hardly any place in Shinto. The only case of it, except in modern times and under foreign influences, is that of the Mikados, and even then there is no evidence of its existence before the sixth century. The term ancestor-worship is often used more generally of the worship of dead men of former generations. There is no good reason, however, for distinguishing between the cult of dead and that of living men. If the former is the more common, it is because absence and lapse of time are usually necessary to allow their obviously human character to be forgotten and to raise the popular imagination to the height of attributing to them superhuman powers. Deification is the result of an exaggerated appreciation of what the man was during life, though there is often associated with this primary reason the ascription of imaginary powers to his corpse or ghost.

      It is often assumed by English writers that Shinto is substantially, or at least is based on, ancestor-worship. The modern Japanese, imbued with Chinese ideas, throw them back into the old Shinto, and have persuaded themselves that it contains a far more important element of this kind than is actually the case. A recent Japanese writer says: "Ancestor-worship was the basis of Shinto. The divinities, whether celestial or terrestrial, were the progenitors of the nation, from the sovereign and the princes surrounding the throne to the nobles who discharged the services of the State and the soldiers who fought its battles." Hirata, notwithstanding his anti-Chinese prejudices, was unable to resist the influence of Chinese ideas as regards ancestor-worship. He devotes vol. x. of his 'Tamadasuki' to the inculcation of an ancestor-worship which is plainly nothing but the well-known Chinese cult. His tama-ya (spirit-house, or domestic ancestral shrine) is a Chinese institution under a Japanese name, and the tama-shiro, or spirit-token, is the Chinese ihai (ancestral tablet). He would have his followers address their prayers, as in China, to their ancestors of every generation, from the parents of the worshipper up to the "Great Ancestor," the founder of the family. Their spirits (mitama) are to be adjured to avert evil from their descendants, to keep watch over them by night and day, and to grant them prosperity and long life. This is genuine ancestor-worship, but it is not Shinto. It was to meet the case of a failure of direct heirs to continue such ancestor-worship that the practice of adoption, unknown in ancient Japan, was introduced from China. The truth is that only a very small part of the Japanese nation knew, or pretended to know, anything about their ancestors. Even of those who had genealogies, many traced their descent from mere undeified mortals, some being Koreans or Chinese. There remain in the Shōjiroku and elsewhere a good number of genealogies in which the descent of noble families from Shinto deities is recorded. To what class do these deities belong? It is impossible to assert that some may not be genuine deified ancestors, though I cannot point to any undoubted case of this kind. Many are nature-deities. The descent of the imperial family from the Sun-Goddess is a typical example. The God of Growth, Kuni-toko-tachi, the Yatagarasu or Sun-Crow, the sword Futsunushi, and many other nature-deities appear among the ancestors of the Shōjiroku. In the 'Ideals of the East,' a work recently published in English by Mr. Takakura Okasu, the author speaks of the "immaculate ancestrism of Ise and Idzumo." The so-called ancestral Gods worshipped at these places are the Sun-Goddess, the Food-Goddess, Ohonamochi (an Earth-God) and Susa no wo (the Rainstorm). Dr. E. Caird's observation that "in the majority of cases it is not that the being worshipped is conceived of by his worshipper as a God because he is an ancestor, but rather that he is conceived as an ancestor because he is believed to be their God,"26 obviously applies to this feature of Shinto.

      Other nobles traced their lineage from, and paid a special worship to, personages who never existed as individual human beings. Such is Koyane, the reputed ancestor, but really only a personified type of the Nakatomi priestly corporation.

      If we have any regard for correct terminology we must call this recognition of nature-deities and class-types as ancestors not ancestor-worship, but pseudo-ancestor-worship. When Britain's sons declare, as they do with sufficient emphasis, that "Britannia rules the waves," is this ancestor-worship? Or supposing that Macaulay's New Zealander found a remnant of the English people worshipping John Bull as their reputed ancestor, would he be right to conclude that ancestor-worship was an English institution?

      Uji-Gami. – These pseudo-ancestors are called in Japanese uji-gami, or surname gods. The uji were originally official designations, whether of Court officials or of local officials or chieftains, which, as these offices became hereditary, took the character of hereditary titles, and eventually became mere surnames. They may be compared with such titles as Duke of Wellington or with surnames like Chamberlain, Constable, or Baillie. In ancient times the common people had no surnames, and therefore no ancestor-worship, pseudo or real.

      The word uji is also used collectively of the noble house of persons bearing the same surname. It does not seem a very ancient institution, and must date from a time when an organized Government had already been established. Of the cult of the Uji-gami as such we know very little. The Kojiki mentions the fact of various deities being worshipped by certain СКАЧАТЬ