Read Ebook: The Religions of Japan from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by Griffis William Elliot

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 889 lines and 112019 words, and 18 pages

PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS, PAGE 1

Salutatory.--The Morse Lectureship and its provisions.--The Science of Comparative Religion is Christianity's own child.--The Parliament of Religions.--The Study of Religion most appropriate in a Theological Seminary.--Shortening weapons and lengthening boundaries.--The right missionary spirit that of the Master, who "came not to destroy but to fulfil."--Characteristics of Japan.--Bird's-eye view of Japanese history and religion.--Popularly, not three religions but one religion.--Superstitions which are not organically parts of the "book-religions."--The boundary line between the Creator and his creation not visible to the pagan.--Shamanism: Fetichism.--Mythical monsters, Kirin, Phoenix, Tortoise, Dragon.--Japanese mythical zo?logy.--The erection of the stone fetich.--Insurance by amulets upon house and person.--Phallicism.--Tree-worship.--Serpent-worship.--These unwritten superstitions condition the "book-religions."--Removable by science and a higher religion.

SHINTO: MYTHS AND RITUAL, PAGE 35

THE KOJIKI AND ITS TEACHINGS, PAGE 59

Origin of the Kojiki. Analysis of its opening lines--Norito.--Indecency of the myths of the Kojiki.--Modern rationalistic interpretations--Life in prehistoric Japan.--Character and temperament of the people then and now.--Character of the kami or gods.--Hades.--Ethics.--The Land of the Gods.--The barbarism of the Yamato conquerors an improvement upon the savagery of the aborigines.--Cannibalism and human sacrifices.--The makers of the God-way captured and absorbed the religion of the aborigines.--A case of syncretism.--Origin of evil in bad gods.--Pollution was sin.--Class of offences enumerated in the norito.--Professor Kumi's contention that Mikadoism usurped a simple worship of Heaven.--Difference between the ancient Chinese and ancient Japanese cultus.--Development of Shint arrested by Buddhism.--Temples and offerings.--The tori-i.--Pollution and purification.--Prayer.--Hirata's ordinal and specimen prayers.--To the common people the sun is a god.--Prayers to myriads of gods.--Summary of Shint.--Swallowed up in the Riybu system.--Its modern revival.--K?ichin.--Kada Adzumar.--Mabuchi, Moto?ri.--Hirata.--In 1870, Shint is again made the state religion.--Purification of Riybu temples.--Politico-religious lectures.--Imperial rescript.--Reverence to the Emperor's photograph.--Judgment upon Shint.--The Christian's ideal of Yamato-damashii.

THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN, PAGE 99

In what respects Confucius was unique as a teacher.--Outline of his life.--The canon.--Primitive Chinese faith a sort of monotheism.--How the sage modified it.--History of Confucianism until its entrance into Japan.--Outline of the intellectual and political history of the Japanese.--Rise of the Samurai class.--Shifting of emphasis from filial piety to loyalty.--Prevalence of suicide in Japan.--Confucianism has deeply tinged the ideas of the Japanese.--Great care necessary in seeking equivalents in English for the terms used in the Chino-Japanese ethics; e.g., the emperor, "the father of the people."--Impersonality of Japanese speech.--Christ and Confucius.--"Love" and "reverence."--Exemplars of loyalty.--The Forty-seven Rnins.--The second relation.--The family in Chinese Asia and in Christendom.--The law of filial piety and the daughter.--The third relation.--Theory of courtship and marriage.--Chastity.--Jealousy.--Divorce.--Instability of the marriage bond.--The fourth relation.--The elder and the younger brother.--The house or family everything, the individual nothing.--The fifth relation.--The ideas of Christ and those of Confucius.--The Golden and the Gilded rule.--Lao Tsze and Kung.--Old Japan and the alien.--Commodore Perry and Professor Hayashi.

CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM, PAGE 131

Harmony of the systems of Confucius and Buddha in Japan during a thousand years.--Revival of learning in the seventeenth century.--Exodus of the Chinese scholars on the fall of the Ming dynasty.--Their dispersion and work in Japan.--Founding of schools of the new Chinese learning.--For two and a half centuries the Japanese mind has been moulded by the new Confucianism.--Survey of its rise and developments.--Four stages in the intellectual history of China.--The populist movement in the eleventh century.--The literary controversy.--The philosophy of the Cheng brothers and of Chu Hi, called in Japan Tei-Shu system.--In Buddhism the Japanese were startling innovators, in philosophy they were docile pupils.--Paucity of Confucian or speculative literature in Japan.--A Chinese wall built around the Japanese intellect.--Yelo orthodoxy.--Features of the T?i-Shu system.--Not agnostic but pantheistic.--Its influence upon historiography.--Ki Ri and Ten .--The writings of Ohashi Junzo.--Confucianism obsolescent in New Japan.--A study of Confucianism in the interest of comparative religion.--Man's place in the universe.--The Samurai's ideal, obedience.--His fearlessness in the face of death.--Critique of the system.--The ruler and the ruled.--What has Confucianism done for woman?--Improvement and revision of the fourth and fifth relations.--The new view of the universe and the new mind in New Japan. The ideal of Yamato-damashii revised and improved.

THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA, PAGE 153

Buddha--sun myth or historic personage?--Buddhism one of the protestantisms of the world.--Characteristics of new religions.--Survey of the history of Indian thought.--The age of the Vedas.--The epic age.--The rationalistic age.--Our fellow-Aryans and the story of their conquests.--Their intellectual energy and inventions.--Systems of philosophy.--Condition of religion at the birth of Gautama.--Outline of his life.--He attains enlightenment or buddhahood.--In what respects Buddhism was an old, and in what a new religion.--Did Gautama intend to found a new religion, or return to simpler and older faith?--Monasticism, Kharma and Nirvana,--Enthusiasm of the disciples of the new faith.--The great schism.--The Northern Buddhists.--The canon.--The two Yana or vehicles.--Simplicity of Southern and luxuriance of Northern Buddhism.--Summary of the process of thought in Nepal.--The old gods of India come back again.--Maitreya, Manjusri and Avalokitesvara.--The Legend of Manjusri.--Separation of attributes and creation of new Buddhas or gods.--The Dhyani Buddhas.--Amida.--Adi-Buddhas.--Abstractions become gods.--The Tantra system.--Outbursts of doctrine and art.--Prayer-mills.--The noble eight-fold path of self-denial and benevolence forgotten.--Entrance of Buddhism from Korea into Japan.--Condition of the country at that time.--Dates and first experiences.--Soga no Inam?.--Shtoku.--Japanese pilgrims to China.--Changes wrought by the new creed and cult.--Temples, monasteries and images.--Influence upon the Mikado's name, rank and person, and upon Shint.--Relative influence of Buddhism in Asia and of Christianity in Europe.--The three great characteristics of Buddhism.--How the clouds returned after the rain.--Buddhism and Christianity confronting the problem of life.

The experience of two centuries and a half of Buddhism in Japan.--Necessity of using more powerful means for the conversion of the Japanese.--Popular customs nearly ineradicable.--Analogy from European history.--Syncretism in Christian history.--In the Arabian Nights.--How far is the process of Syncretism honest?--Examples not to be recommended for imitation.--The problem of reconciling the Kami and the Buddhas.--Northern Buddhism ready for the task.--The Tantra or Yoga-chara system.--Art and its influence on the imagination.--The sketch replaced by the illumination and monochrome by colors.--Japanese art.--Mixed Buddhism rather than mixed Shint.--Kb the wonder-worker who made all Japanese history a transfiguration of Buddhism.--Legends about his extraordinary abilities and industry.--His life, and studies in China.--The kata-kana syllabary.--Kbo's revelation from the Shint goddess Toyo-Uk?-Bim?.--The gods of Japan were avatars of Buddha.--Kb's plan of propaganda.--Details of the scheme.--A clearing-house of gods and Buddhas.--Relative rise and fall of the native and the foreign deities.--Legend of Daruma. "Riybu Shint."--Impulse to art and art industry.--The Kami no Michi falls into shadow.--Which religion suffered most?--Phenomenally the victory belonged to Buddhism.--The leavening power was that of Shint.--Buddhism's fresh chapter of decay.--Influence of Riybu upon the Chinese ethical system in Japan.--Influence on the Mikado.--Abdication all along the lines of Japanese life.--Ultimate paralysis of the national intellect.--Comparison with Chinese Buddhism.--Miracle-mongering.--No self-reforming power in Buddhism.--The Seven Happy Gods of Fortune.--Pantheism's destruction of boundaries.--The author's study of the popular processions in Japan.--Masaka Do.--Swamping of history in legend.--The jewel in the lotus.

NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS, PAGE 225

Four stages of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in Japan.--Reasons for the formation of sects.--The Saddharma Pundarika.--Shastras and Sutras.--The Ku-sha sect.--Book of the Treasury of Metaphysics.--The J-jitsu sect, its founder and its doctrines.--The Ris-shu or Viyana sect.--Japanese pilgrims to China.--The Hos-s sect and its doctrines.--The three grades of disciples.--The San-ron or Three-shastra sect and its tenets.--The Middle Path.--The K?gon sect.--The Unconditioned, or realistic pantheism.--The Chinese or Tendai sect.--Its scriptures and dogmas.--Buddhahood attainable in the present body.--Vagradrodhi.--The Yoga-chara system.--The "old sects."--Reaction against excessive idol-making.--The Zen sect.--Labor-saving devices in Buddhism.--Making truth apparent by one's own thought.--Transmission of the Zen doctrine.--History of Zen Shu.

THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE, PAGE 257

JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT, PAGE 287

ROMAN CHRISTIANITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, PAGE 323

The many-sided story of Japanese Christianity.--One hundred years of intercourse between Japan and Europe.--State of Japan at the introduction of Portuguese Christianity.--Xavier and Anjiro.--Xavier at Kito and in Bungo.--Nobunaga and the Buddhists.--High-water mark of Christianity.--Hideyoshi and the invasion of Korea.--Kato and Konishi.--Persecutions.--Arrival of the Spanish friars.--Their violation of good faith.--Spirit of the Jesuits and Franciscans.--Crucifixion on the bamboo cross.--Hid?yori.--Kato Kiyomasa.--The Dutch in the Eastern seas.--Will Adams.--Iy?yas suspects designs against the sovereignty of Japan.--The Christian religion outlawed.--Hid?tada follows up the policy of Iy?yas, excludes aliens, and shuts up the country.--The uprising of the Christians at Shimabara in 1637.--Christianity buried from sight.--Character of the missionaries and the form of the faith introduced by them.--Noble lives and ideals.--The spirit of the Inquisition in Japan.--Political animus and complexion.

TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE, PAGE 351

INDEX, PAGE 451

"The investigation of the beginnings of a religion is never the work of infidels, but of the most reverent and conscientious minds."

"We, the forty million souls of Japan, standing firmly and persistently upon the basis of international justice, await still further manifestations as to the morality of Christianity,"--Hiraii, of Japan.

"When the Creator had finished treating this world of men, the good and the bad Gods were all mixed together promiscuously, and began disputing for the possession of this world."--The Aino Story of the Creation.

"I asked the earth, and it answered, 'I am not He;' and whatsoever are therein made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deep and the creeping things that lived, and they replied, 'We are not thy God; seek higher than we.' ... And I answered unto all things which stand about the door of my flesh, 'Ye have told me concerning my God, that ye are not he; tell me something about him.' And with a loud voice they explained, 'It is He who hath made us!'"--Augustine's Confessions.

"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name."--Amos.

"That which hath been made was life in Him."--John.

The Morse Lectureship and the Study of Comparative Religion.

As a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, in the Class of 1877, your servant received and accepted with pleasure the invitation of the President and Board of Trustees to deliver a course of lectures upon the religions of Japan. In that country and in several parts of it, I lived from 1870 to 1874. I was in the service first of the feudal daimi of Echizen and then of the national government of Japan, helping to introduce that system of public schools which is now the glory of the country. Those four years gave me opportunities for close and constant observation of the outward side of the religions of Japan, and facilities for the study of the ideas out of which worship springs. Since 1867, however, when first as a student in Rutgers College at New Brunswick, N.J., I met and instructed those students from the far East, who, at risk of imprisonment and death had come to America for the culture of Christendom, I have been deeply interested in the study of the Japanese people and their thoughts.

To attempt a just and impartial survey of the religions of Japan may seem a task that might well appall even a life-long Oriental scholar. Yet it may be that an honest purpose, a deep sympathy and a gladly avowed desire to help the East and the West, the Japanese and the English-speaking people, to understand each other, are not wholly useless in a study of religion, but for our purpose of real value. These lectures are upon the Morse foundation which has these specifications written out by the founder:

The general subject of the lectures I desire to be: "The Relation of the Bible to any of the Sciences, as Geography, Geology, History, and Ethnology, ... and the relation of the facts and truths contained in the Word of God, to the principles, methods, and aims of any of the sciences."

Now, among the sciences which we must call to our aid are those of geography and geology, by which are conditioned history and ethnology of which we must largely treat; and, most of all, the science of Comparative Religion.

This last is Christianity's own child. Other sciences, such as geography and astronomy, may have been born among lands and nations outside of and even before Christendom. Other sciences, such as geology, may have had their rise in Christian time and in Christian lands, their foundation lines laid and their main processes illustrated by Christian men, which yet cannot be claimed by Christianity as her children bearing her own likeness and image; but the science of Comparative Religion is the direct offspring of the religion of Jesus. It is a distinctively Christian science. "It is so because it is a product of Christian civilization, and because it finds its impulse in that freedom of inquiry which Christianity fosters." Christian scholars began the investigations, formulated the principles, collected the materials and reared the already splendid fabric of the science of Comparative Religion, because the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify this. Jesus bade his disciples search, inquire, discern and compare. Paul, the greatest of the apostolic Christian college, taught: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." In our day one of Christ's loving followers expressed the spirit of her Master in her favorite motto, "Truth for authority, not authority for truth." Well says Dr. James Legge, a prince among scholars, and translator of the Chinese classics, who has added several portly volumes to Professor Max M?ller's series of the "Sacred Books of the East," whose face to-day is bronzed and whose hair is whitened by fifty years of service in southern China where with his own hands he baptized six hundred Chinamen:

The more that a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is governed by Christian principle, the more anxious will he be to do justice to every other system of religion, and to hold his own without taint or fetter of bigotry.

It was Christianity that, in a country where the religion of Jesus has fullest liberty, called the Parliament of Religions, and this for reasons clearly manifest. Only Christians had and have the requisites of success, viz.: sufficient interest in other men and religions; the necessary unity of faith and purpose; and above all, the brave and bold disregard of the consequences. Christianity calls the Parliament of Religions, following out the Divine audacity of Him who, so often, confronting worldly wisdom and priestly cunning, said to his disciples, "Think not, be not anxious, take no heed, be careful for nothing--only for love and truth. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

Of all places therefore, the study of comparative religion is most appropriate in a Christian theological seminary. We must know how our fellow-men think and believe, in order to help them. It is our duty to discover the pathways of approach to their minds and hearts. We must show them, as our brethren and children of the same Heavenly Father, the common ground on which we all stand. We must point them to the greater truth in the Bible and in Christ Jesus, and demonstrate wherein both the divinely inspired library and the truth written in a divine-human life fulfil that which is lacking in their books and masters.

To know just how to do this is knowledge to be coveted as a most excellent gift. An understanding of the religion of our fellow-men is good, both for him who goes as a missionary and for him who at home prays, "Thy kingdom come."

The theological seminary, which begins the systematic and sympathetic study of Comparative Religion and fills the chair with a professor who has a vital as well as academic interest in the welfare of his fellow-men who as yet know not Jesus as Christ and Lord, is sure to lead in effective missionary work. The students thus equipped will be furnished as none others are, to begin at once the campaign of help and warfare of love.

It may be that insight into and sympathy with the struggles of men who are groping after God, if haply they may find him, will shorten the polemic sword of the professional converter whose only purpose is destructive hostility without tactics or strategy, or whose chief idea of missionary success is in statistics, in blackening the character of "the heathen," in sensational letters for home consumption and reports properly cooked and served for the secretarial and sectarian palates. Yet, if true in history, Greek, Roman, Japanese, it is also true in the missionary wars, that "the race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries."

To know exactly the defects of the religion we seek to abolish, modify, supplement, supplant or fulfil, means wise economy of force. To get at the secrets of its hold upon the people we hope to convert leads to a right use of power. In a word, knowledge of the opposing religion, and especially of alien language, literature and ways of feeling and thinking, lengthens missionary life. A man who does not know the moulds of thought of his hearers is like a swordsman trying to fight at long range but only beating the air. Armed with knowledge and sympathy, the missionary smites with effect at close quarters. He knows the vital spots.

Let me fortify my own convictions and conclude this preliminary part of my lectures by quoting again, not from academic authorities, but from active missionaries who are or have been at the front and in the field.

The Rev. Samuel Beal, author of "Buddhism in China," said that "it was plain to him that no real work could be done among the people by missionaries until the system of their belief was understood."

The Rev. James MacDonald, a veteran missionary in Africa, in the concluding chapter of his very able work on "Religion and Myth," says:

The Church that first adopts for her intending missionaries the study of Comparative Religion as a substitute for subjects now taught will lead the van in the path of true progress.

The People of Japan.

In this faith then, in the spirit of Him who said, "I come not to destroy but to fulfil," let us cast our eyes upon that part of the world where lies the empire of Japan with its forty-one millions of souls. Here we have not a country like India--a vast conglomeration of nations, languages and religions occupying a peninsula itself like a continent, whose history consists of a stratification of many civilizations. Nor have we here a seemingly inert mass of humanity in a political structure blending democracy and imperialism, as in China, so great in age, area and numbers as to weary the imagination that strives to grasp the details. On the contrary, in Dai Nippon, or Great Land of the Sun's Origin, we have a little country easy of study. In geology it is one of the youngest of lands. Its known history is comparatively modern. Its area roughly reckoned as 150,000 square miles, is about that of our Dakotas or of Great Britain and Ireland. The census completed December 31, 1892, illustrates here, as all over the world, nature's argument against polygamy. It tells us that the relation between the sexes is, numerically at least, normal. There were 20,752,366 males and 20,337,574 females, making a population of 41,089,940 souls. All these people are subjects of the one emperor, and excepting fewer than twenty thousand savages in the northern islands called Ainos, speak one language and form substantially one race. Even the Riu Kiu islanders are Japanese in language, customs and religion. In a word, except in minor differences appreciable or at least important only to the special student, the modern Japanese are a homogeneous people.

In origin and formation, this people is a composite of many tribes. Roughly outlining the ethnology of Japan, we should say that the aborigines were immigrants from the continent with Malay reinforcement in the south, Koreans in the centre, and Ainos in the east and north, with occasional strains of blood at different periods from various parts of the Asian mainland. In brief, the Japanese are a very mixed race. Authentic history before the Christian era is unknown. At some point of time, probably later than A.D. 200, a conquering tribe, one of many from the Asian mainland, began to be paramount on the main island. About the fourth century something like historic events and personages begin to be visible, but no Japanese writings are older than the early part of the eighth century, though almanacs and means of measuring time are found in the sixth century. Whatever Japan may be in legend and mythology, she is in fact and in history younger than Christianity. Her line of rulers, as alleged in old official documents and ostentatiously reaffirmed in the first article of the constitution of 1889, to be "unbroken for ages eternal," is no older than that of the popes. Let us not think of Aryan or Chinese antiquity when we talk of Japan. Her history as a state began when the Roman empire fell. The Germanic nations emerged into history long before the Japanese.

Roughly outlining the political and religious life of the ancient Japanese, we note that their first system of government was a rude sort of feudalism imposed by the conquerors and was synchronous with aboriginal fetichism, nature worship, ancestral sacrifices, sun-worship and possibly but not probably, a very rude sort of monotheism akin to the primitive Chinese cultus. Almost contemporary with Buddhism, its introduction and missionary development, was the struggle for centralized imperialism borrowed from the Chinese and consolidated in the period from the seventh to the twelfth century. During most of this time Shint, or the primitive religion, was overshadowed while the Confucian ethics were taught. From the twelfth to this nineteenth century feudalism in politics and Buddhism in religion prevailed, though Confucianism furnished the social laws or rules of daily conduct. Since the epochal year of 1868, with imperialism reestablished and the feudal system abolished, Shint has had a visible revival, being kept alive by government patronage. Buddhism, though politically disestablished, is still the popular religion with recent increase of life, while Confucianism is decidedly losing force. Christianity has begun its promising career.

The Amalgam of Religions.

Yet in the imperial and constitutional Japan of our day it is still true of probably at least thirty-eight millions of Japanese that their religion is not one, Shint, Confucianism or Buddhism, but an amalgam of all three. There is not in every-day life that sharp distinction between these religions which the native or foreign scholar makes, and which both history and philosophy demand shall be made for the student at least. Using the technical language of Christian theologians, Shint furnishes theology, Confucianism anthropology and Buddhism soteriology. The average Japanese learns about the gods and draws inspiration for his patriotism from Shint, maxims for his ethical and social life from Confucius, and his hope of what he regards as salvation from Buddhism. Or, as a native scholar, Nobuta Kishimoto, expresses it,

In Japan these three different systems of religion and morality are not only living together on friendly terms with one another, but, in fact, they are blended together in the minds of the people, who draw necessary nourishment from all of these sources. One and the same Japanese is both a Shintist, a Confucianist, and a Buddhist. He plays a triple part, so to speak ... Our religion may be likened to a triangle.... Shintism furnishes the object, Confucianism offers the rules of life, while Buddhism supplies the way of salvation; so you see we Japanese are eclectic in everything, even in religion.

These three religious systems as at present constituted, are "book religions." They rest, respectively, upon the Kojiki and other ancient Japanese literature and the modern commentators; upon the Chinese classics edited and commented on by Confucius and upon Chu Hi and other mediaeval scholastics who commented upon Confucius; and upon the shastras and sutras with which Gautama, the Buddha, had something to do. Yet in primeval and prehistoric Nippon neither these books nor the religions growing out of the books were extant. Furthermore, strictly speaking, it is not with any or all of these three religions that the Christian missionary comes first, oftenest or longest in contact. In ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times the student notices a great undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality. It is as omnipresent, as persistent, as hard to kill as the scrub bamboo which both efficiently and sufficiently takes the place of thorns and thistles as the curse of Japanese ground.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet