The very simplicity of Shintōism, as already pointed out, has rendered it so utterly unlike any other faith, that it never has, nor ever will, prove hostile to a religion introduced into its own field, so long as no resistance 's offered to the filial and loyal piety and the national virtues of the Land of the Rising Sun. Even when Buddhism had found its way into the State, the Emperor and Empress, in other words, the great Head of Shintō, were actually the first to take an active part in its ceremonies, and became officiating members, at the same time putting administrative power into the hands of Buddhist priests. On the other hand, the Buddhists, from purely diplomatic motives however, adopted the system of ancestorworship, thereby avoiding friction, inevitable otherwise, with the governmental powers, and making easy converts to their own religion. By these means Buddhism in Japan flourished for a time. Confucianism, however, offered a philosophy more suitable perhaps to Japanese tradition and feeling; for that faith taught in a general way filial and loyal piety as the chief virtue of humanity, and among the higher and more educated classes the doctrine of Confucius was firmly held.

Again, when the Portuguese introduced Christianity, about 300 years ago, they found no difficulty in establishing their Church and carrying on their propaganda. It was not until later, when the preaching of the Jesuits was thought to be directed against the devotion paid to royalty, that the Government prohibited the dissemination of Christian principles. This step of the Japanese authorities led to the outbreak at Shimabara, and hence the Christian religion was interdicted in Japan, and continued to be illegal up to about twenty years ago.

It is my opinion, therefore, that any religion may be established in Japan, provided it does not interfere with the practice of that filial and loyal piety which the State demands.

In September, 1890, the Society of Science held its meeting at Tokyo, and on that occasion one of its members, Mr. H. Kato, President of the Imperial University of that town, spoke upon the subject of Shintōism, saying that it should by no means be regarded as a religion, although it was the most important element in our national thought and feeling. These views took the form of a resolution, which was carried by a majority, consisting of many of the leading men of science. This fact clearly shows the tendency of present thought regarding Shintoism, and points to its future condition as a strong national, but not religious faith.

The subject of Shintōism, or mythology of ancient Japan, and the history of Shintōism, will be found adequately treated by many English authors, notably by Mr. Satow, in the following works: "Shinto," "Handbook to Japan," "The Revival of Pure Shinto," "The Shintō Temple of Ise," "Ancient Japanese Ritual," and also in vols. vii., ix., and x of "The Asiatic Transactions."

SHINTOISM (2).

BY MRS. BISHOP (ISABELLA BIRD), F.R.S.G.S.

Or the "spiritual centres" of which these lectures treat, Shinto, which has fallen to my lot, is certainly among the feeblest; and, never a religion in the highest sense of the word, it has come to be a superstition "ready to vanish away," and deserves our notice chiefly as being, up till to-day, the national religion of the Japanese, one of the most acute, progressive, and materialistic peoples on the face of the earth.

Scholars hesitate to decide whether Shintô is or is not "a genuine product of Japanese soil." The Japanese call their ancient religion Kami no michi ("The way of the gods "); foreigners adopt the Chinese form of the same, and call it Shintô. By Shintô is meant the religion which was found spread over Japan when the Buddhist propagandists arrived in the sixth century A.D., and which at the restoration of the Mikado (the so-called Spiritual Emperor) to power in 1868, became the State religion, or, to use our own phraseology, the Established Church. By the term pure Shintó, as exhibited in the shrines of Isé and elsewhere, is meant the ancient faith as distinguished from that mixture of it with Buddhism and Confucianism known as Reigobu Shinto, which encounters the traveller everywhere in the shape of gaily decorated lacquer temples, swarming with highly coloured and grotesque divinities carved in wood.

Japanese Shintô cosmogony and mythology are one, and in both Japan is the universe. Shintô has three legendary mythical periods, during which the islands of Japan and many gods came into being. In the third period Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, was supreme. This "heaven-lighting" divinity, finding that Japan was disturbed by the unending feuds of the earthly gods, among whom Okuniushi, their ruler, could not keep order, despatched Ninigi, a heavenly god, to Higa in central Japan, and compelled the former incompetent divinity to resign his disorderly rule into his hands, permitting him, however, the easier task of ruling the Invisible, while Ninigi and his successors, the Mikados, have continued to rule the Visible. The struggles for supremacy between the gods and their offspring continued to afflict the Visible till 660 B.C., when Jimmu Tenno, the fifth in descent from the sun-goddess, overthrew the Kiushiu rebels, subjugated a large portion of the main island, and settled there with his warriors. This legendary event is the dawn of Japanese history, and the startingpoint of Japanese chronology. The 7th of April is fixed as the anniversary of Jimmu Tenno's accession to the throne; he is deified and worshipped in a thousand shrines, and from him the present Mikado claims direct

descent through one hundred and twenty Mikados who have preceded him, the "divine right extending yet farther back through five generation: of terrestrial gods, and seven of celestial to the great sun-goddess, from whom he inherits the Japanese regalia-the Mirror, the Sword, and the Stone. The Mikado is the lineal descendant of the gods-nay, he is him self a god, and his palace is a temple. His heavenly origin has been through all historic days the foundation of Japanese government, and it, and the duty of unquestioning obedience to his commands, have been the highest of Shintô dogmas.

Between 97 and 30 B.C., Sugin, the reigning Mikado, and of course a demi-god, appeared as a reformer, called on the people to worship the gods, performed a symbolic purification for the nation, built special shrines for the worship of some of the divinities, removed the mirror, sword and stone from the palace to a shrine built for their custody, and appointed his daughter their priestess. This mirror rested, at least till 1871, in the shrines of Isé, of which I shall speak presently.

In the middle of the sixth century B.C., as is supposed, a great tide of religious change passed over Japan, which has never wholly ebbed, for Buddhist missionaries from Korea proselytized so successfully in high quarters that a decree was issued in the eighth century ordering the erection of two Buddhist temples and a seven-storied pagoda in every province. The singular supremacy of Buddhism, however, is due to a master-stroke of religious policy achieved by a Buddhist priest now known as Kôbôdaishi, who, in the ninth century, in order to gain and retain a hold for his creed over the mass of the people, taught that the Shintô gods were but Japanese manifestations of Buddha, a dogma which reconciled the foreign and native religions, and gave Buddhism several centuries of ascendency over both Shintô and Confucianism, till it was supplanted about two centuries ago in the intellects of the educated by the Chinese philosophical system of Choo He, which in its turn is being displaced by what is known in Japan as the "English Philosophy," represented by Mill, Herbert Spencer, and others.

The Buddha-izing the old gods, and incorporating the ancient traditions of the divine ancestors and early heroes of the Japanese with the ethical code and dogmas of Buddhism much watered down, produced that jumble before referred to, on which the reigning Mikado bestowed the name of Reigobu Shinto, or "two-fold religious doctrine." From that time Buddhist and Shintô priests frequently celebrated their ceremonies in the same temples, the distinctive feature of Shintô, the absence of idols, effigies, and other visible objects of worship disappeared, and the temples became crowded with wooden images of the Shinto hero-gods, alongside of those of Buddha and his disciples, only a very few shrines retaining the simplicity of the ancient faith. In the eighteenth century an attempt was made by a few learned and able men to revive "pure Shintô," and adapt it to those cravings of humanity which Buddhism had partially met, but it

failed, and has resulted mainly in affording materials for the researches of Mr. Satow, Mr. Kemperman, and other European scholars.

At the restoration of the Mikado to temporal power in 1868, Buddhism was practically "disestablished," and Shinto reinstated as the State religion owing to its value as a political engine, but it was impossible to re-introduce many of its long-abandoned usages alongside of Western civilization, and the number of those who regard its divinities with anything like religious reverence is very small.

Since that year the images and the gaudy and sensuous paraphernalia a corrupted Buddhism have been swept out of many of the temples, but the splendour of the lacquer and arabesques remains, as in the temples of Shiba at Yedo and the shrines of Nikko; and the primitive simplicity of the plain wooden structure with the thatched tent-roof and perfectly bare interior, is only seen in the Isé shrines and in some other places.

Three thousand seven hundred gods are known to have shrines. Each hamlet has its special god as well as each shrine, and each god has his annual festival or merry-making, while many have particular days in each month on which people visit their shrines. Every child is taken a month after birth to the shrine of the district in which he is born, and the divinity of the shrine is thenceforward his patron.

On certain occasions the priests assemble in the larger temples and chant certain words to an excruciating musical accompaniment, but this is in no sense "public worship"; and indeed worshippers are seldom if ever admitted within Shintô temples. The god is supposed to be present in the temple dedicated to him, and the worshipper standing outside attracts his attention by pulling the cord of a metal globe, half bell, half rattle, which hangs at the open entrance. The act of worship usually consists in clapping the hands twice and making one or more hasty genuflexions, and people make pilgrimages of several hundred miles to the most celebrated shrines to do no more than this, to cast a few of the smallest of bronze coins down upon the temple threshold, and to buy a relic or charm. The festival days of the gods of the larger temples are occasions of much gaiety and splendour. They are celebrated by music, dancing, and processions, in which huge and highly decorated cars take part, on and in which are borne certain sacred emblems covered with gorgeous antique embroideries, which at other times are kept in the temple storehouses. Ancient classical dancings or posturings are also given on covered platforms within the temple grounds, and in these a maiden invariably appears dressed in white, and bearing a wand in her hand. The modern Japanese are ignorant of the meaning and history of nearly all the public Shintô ceremonies.

In travels extending for several months in the interior of northern Japan, during which time I lived altogether among the people, I had many opportunities for learning what Shintô is as a household religion. Easy and unexacting as it is in public, it is not less so in private.

It has no

penances, no deprivations, and no frequent and difficult observances. Certain ceremonies, however, are invariably attended to. In every Shintô house, there is a Kami-dana or god shelf, on which is a miniature temple in wood, which contains tablets covered with paper, on which are written the names of the gods in which the household places its trust; and monumental tablets, with the posthumous names of the ancestors and deceased members of the family. Fresh flowers, and specially the leafy twigs of the cleyera japonica are offered there, together with saké (or rice beer), water, and a minute portion of the rice boiled for the food of the household. The glow-worm glimmer of the small lamps which are lit at sunset in front of these shrines, is one of the evening features of the cities of Japan.

Forms of prayer have been published even as late as 1873, but it is regarded as enough to frame a wish without uttering it, and most Shintôists content themselves with turning to the sun in the early morning, rubbing the hands slowly together, and bowing. The directory for prayer is, "Rising early in the morning, wash your face and hands, rinse out the mouth, and cleanse the body. Then turn to the province of Yamato (which contains the shrines of Isé), strike the palms of the hands together, and worship," i.e. bow to the ground. It may interest this audience to hear a specimen of one of the most enlightened of the old Shintô prayers, translated by Mr. Satow from a book put forward by the Mikado Jimtôku in the thirteenth century, and which is still used on rare occasions by a few more earnest Shintôists. "From a distance I reverently worship with awe before Ameno Mi-hashira, and Kuni no Mi-hashira (the god and goddess of wind), to whom is consecrated the palace built with stout pillars at Tatsuta no Tachinu in the department of Heguri, in the province of Yamato. I say with awe, Deign to bless me by correcting the unwilling faults which, heard and seen by you, I have committed, by blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods might inflict, by causing me to live long like the hard and lasting rock, and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin and the gods of earthly origin the petitions which I present every day along with your breath, that they may hear with the sharp-earedness of the forth-galloping colt." It may be remarked that Shintô, unlike most systems, does not inculcate the practice of any form of bribery with the view of securing the good-will of the gods.

Shintô has four distinctive emblems, familiar to every traveller in Japanthe torii, the gohei, the mirror, and the rope. The torii, though sometimes made of stone, properly consists of two barked, but unpainted tree-trunks planted in the ground, on the top of which rests another tree-trunk, with a horizontal beam below. The name means "birds' rest," for on it the fowls offered, but not sacrificed, to the gods were accustomed to rest. This emblem stands at the entrance of temple grounds, in front of shrines and sacred trees, and in every place specially associated with the native divinities. In the persecution which was waged against the Romish