The study of the sources from which a great people derive the inspiration of their major ideals and loyalties must ever be of importance to the rest of the world. The appropriateness and even the necessity of such study become especially clear in the case of the relationship of Shintō to the Japanese national life. For, whether or not we regard Shintō as a religion, the fact remains that no other great nation of the present shows a more vital dependence on priestly rituals and their concomitant beliefs than does modern Japan. To find really pertinent parallels in the historical stream that has fed directly the culture of the West one must go back beyond the church-state liaison of the middle ages of Christendom to the hierarchies of classical Rome and Greece, or even farther back into the past to the sacerdotal communities of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
It is an extraordinary fact of contemporary civilization that among the great powers of the world one can find a nation which is attempting to secure social and political cohesion through the strength of a ceremonial nexus that was normal in occidental culture between two and four thousand years ago. If, as has been said recently, scientific study, by using its own methods and speaking in its own terms, has discovered that the reality of religion lies in “the celebration, dramatization, and artistic representation of the felt values of any society”,1 then it is to Japan that the world must turn for the most comprehensive of all modern efforts to utilize such ritualistic agencies for vivifying and achieving the chief ends of the national life. It is this situation that lends particular fascination to the study of Shintō.
To understand Japan and the inner forces that shape her and the problems with which she wrestles within her own borders it is essential to know something of the ramifications of Shintō in the thought and practice of the people. Support for such a statement can be found in the fact that from childhood the Japanese are taught that attitudes and usages connected with the shrines of Shintō are vitally related to good citizenship. To be a worthy subject of the realm requires loyalty to certain great interests for which the shrines are made to stand. These attitudes are deliberately fostered on a large scale by the government. The shrines and their ceremonies are magnified in the state educational system as foremost among recognized agencies for the promotion of what is commonly designated kokumin dōtoku, or national morality. They are thus accorded a place of chief distinction among the approved means for representing to the people the values of good citizenship and for firmly uniting the nation about the Imperial Throne.
The following citation of a typical modern Japanese interpretation of the significance of Shintō may perhaps suffice to give cogency to the assertions just made.
“Students of this religion have been struck with the simplicity of its doctrine. It enforces no especial moral code, embraces no philosophical ideas, and, moreover, it has no authoritative books to guide believers. Its one peculiar feature is the relation it holds towards the Imperial Family of Japan, whose ancestors are made the chief object of worship. This religion, if indeed it can rightly be called a religion at all, amounts to ancestor-worship—the apotheosis of the Japanese Imperial Family. This fact naturally brings about two results: one is that Shintō can never be propagated beyond the realms of the Japanese Emperor; the other, that it has helped to a very great extent the growth of the spirit of loyalty of Japanese subjects toward their head, and has enshrined the Imperial Family with such a degree of sacredness and reverence that it would be difficult to name another ruling family which is looked up to by its subjects with the same amount of loyal homage and submissive veneration. It is, indeed, a unique circumstance in the history of the nations that, during the two thousand five hundred years of its sway, the position of the Japanese Imperial Family as head of the whole nation has never once been disputed, nor even questioned, by the people. Of course, it is true that the dynasty has experienced many vicissitudes, but, although the actual government has at times been in the hands of powerful nobles and Shōguns, the throne has, nevertheless, been always kept sacred for the descendants of Jimmu, the first Emperor.”2
All of the statements in the above quotation require careful examination and it is to such a study that the following pages are dedicated.
Buddhism has been called the creed of half Japan. There is a very real sense in which Shintō may be called the creed of all Japan, coloring deeply, as it does, the mind of her sixtynine million people and affecting profoundly the primary aspects of the national life. The history of Shintō is an important part of the history of Japan as a whole and a knowledge thereof is necessary to the attainment of an adequate appreciation of the genesis of Japanese thought, institutions, manners and customs, and religion.
We turn to a preliminary study of the nature of Shintō as revealed in its history. It is possible to make an introductory delimination of the subject by means of a definition. In so doing it is recognized that a definition is hardly more than an epitomized description in terms of significant features and that the sense of what is significant varies with the investigator. In explaining the manifold sociological and psychological data which we find in Shintō it is very difficult to avoid the introduction of a personal equation. There are ten or a dozen good definitions of Shintō in existence, all varying more or less according to the individual viewpoints of those attempting the elucidation. For example: Shintō is the indigenous religion of the Japanese people; it is the Way of the Gods; it is “kami-cult,” a form of definition in which kami signifies the deities of Japan as distinct from those brought into the country through foreign contacts; it is pan-psychism or hylozoism; it is the racial spirit of the Japanese people (Yamato Damashii); it is the sacred ceremonies conducted before the kami; it is the essence of the principles of imperial rule; it is a system of correct social and political etiquette; it is the ideal national morality; it is a system of patriotism and loyalty centering in emperor worship (“Mikadoism”); it is, in its pure and original form, a nature worship; or, over against chis, Shintō, correctly understood, is ancestor worship; or, again, it is an intermixture of the worship of nature and of ancestors; and, lastly, it is, in its earliest stages, a lower nature religion in which are merged elements of animism, naturism, and anthropolatry, evolving later into an advanced form of nature religion, and, finally, under the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, achieving speculative and ethical components of a high order.
We have noted a number of definitions that have been advanced by different Japanese scholars. Manifestly, they are not all reconcilable one with another, although they can be harmonized to a large extent. Perhaps the chief value of such brief descriptions lies in the fact that they state fields of interest and indicate points of view from which data may be collected and lines of a study developed. If we go back to the statement of the nature of religion noted at the opening of our discussion, we may find a unifying point of view in a definition of Shintō as the characteristic ritualistic arrangements and their underlying beliefs by which the Japanese people have celebrated, dramatized, interpreted, and supported the chief values of their national life.
In dealing, with material that has been submitted to the many different interpretations that have been noted above it is necessary to predetermine in some way the limits of the field of investigation. For purposes of critical study it is best to take the data which the national government itself has included in the so-called Shintō classification. When we approach the matter from this direction we find four main fields of activity in Shintō: first. the ceremonies of the Imperial Household; second, Domestic Shintō, centering in the kami-dana, or god-shelves of the private homes; third, Shrine Shintō, also called State Shintō, embodied in the ceremonies of the public shrines; and, fourth, Sect Shintō, also called Religious Shintō, expressed in the activities of the many churches of the various Shintō denominations.
A Sketch of the Inner Shrine of Ise
Dedicated to the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-Ōmikami.
A Birďs-Eye View of the Sacred Precincts of the Inner Shrine of Ise
By courtesy of the Meiji-Japan Society of Tōkyō.
As a matter of fact, it affords a more rigorous classification if we distinguish only three kinds, namely, Domestic Shintō, Shrine or State Shintō, and Sect Shintō, since the ceremonies of the Imperial Household may be classified under either the first or the second of the forms just enumerated. As far as public aspects are concerned, then, we have only two types, namely, Shrine Shintō (Jinja Shintō) and Sect Shintō (Shūha Shintō). The elucidation of the characteristics of these two great branches of Shintō and the distinctions to be made between them constitute the subject matter of the ensuing discussion.
We turn first to the consideration of the nature of the Shintō places of worship. In contemporary Japanese law the institutions which are called “shrines” are generally designated jinja, from shin or jin, meaning “deity”(kami in pure Japanese) and sha, or ja, which in this connection is best rendered “house” or “dwelling place.” The shrine, or jinja, then, is a house or dwelling place in which the deity or deities, worshipped in the local rites, are supposed to live, or where they are believed to take up residence when summoned by appropriate ceremonies. They are the holy places where the kami may be found and communicated with. Japanese law permits the use of the term jinja only in connection with the traditional institutions of original Shintō wherein the kami are enshrined. The institutions of Buddhism and of the existing Shintō sects are denied the right to use the designation. We can preserve the distinction if we speak of the local foundations of State Shintō as shrines, of those of Buddhism as temples (tera) and of those of the Shintō sects as churches or chapels (kyōkai).
Jinja is thus a modern Sino-Japanese legal designation and does not represent the earliest known usage. Older and more widely used terms employed in the literature to indicate the abodes of Shintō deities are miya or omiya, yashiro or miyashiro, hokora, hokura, and mimuro. Miya (mi, honorific prefix, ya, “house”) and omiya (o-mi, double honorific) are the designations most commonly met with. It is not necessary to venture on an extended explanation of this varied terminology here. Suffice it to say that all the terms just listed may properly be taken to mean dwelling place or superior dwelling place in one form or another.3
The Shintō shrine may be a small god-house of wood or stone casually met with by the wayside. It may be a Grand Imperial Shrine of Ise or a Great Meiji Shrine of Tōkyō, including in its appointments extensive landed holdings and numerous costly buildings along with various objects of ceremony and art, with a total valuation of millions of yen.
The ordinary shrine includes a definite enclosure of land, usually rectangular in shape, surrounded by a sacred fence or wall, one or more buildings where the deities are enshrined and, generally, certain auxiliary structures where special ceremonies are conducted, business transacted, or properties stored. The immediate entrance to the shrine is generally guarded by two stone lions arranged one on either side of the approach. In the case of shrines to the grain-goddess, Inari, the lions give place to the images of foxes, animals to which popular belief attributes the functions of messengers to this deity. Encompassing the shrine proper or adjacent thereto may lie more or less extended areas devoted to landscape gardening and parkland or utilized as a source of revenue. Associated with the great Meiji Shrine of Tōkyō is a magnificent equipment providing for all sorts of athletic sports. The shrines, in their diversity of history, of ceremony and of architectual style, present a complicated and almost endless field of study. The most archaic type of shrine is simply a replica of the primitive house of ancient times, consisting of a small structure of natural wood, thatched with reeds or straw, the principal rafters in front and rear projecting through the roof, the total building elevated on piles in a manner that suggests the Swiss lake-dwellings or some of the Indonesian types of house architecture built above water.
Access to the shrine is gained through an opening in the fence or wall at the front, placed exactly in the middle between the left and right extremities, sometimes through similar apertures on either side, rarely, also, at the rear. Openings are guarded by the distinctive Shintō gateway, called the torii, a word whose correct etymology is unknown. The literal interpretation of the ideograms with which the term is written, in the sense of “bird-dwelling,” offers no help toward the understanding of the proper function of the device. The torii, in its most characteristic form, consists of a single, elongated cylinder of wood, ordinarily made from a solid tree trunk, mounted horizontally on two upright posts set one on either side of the approach. A cross-brace is generally attached between the heads of the uprights. Torii made of stone or metal, preferably bronze, are not uncommon. The use of curved lines in the design of the horizontal cap-piece, as well as other elaborations, shows a Buddhist influence which orthodox Shintō is attempting to eliminate.
Rural Wayside Shrines
In its original significance the torii was not merely a decorative gateway. It was a magical, protective device which guarded the opening in the shrine fence against the entrance of evil and contamination of all sorts. Sometimes the approach to the shrine is made through a first, or outer, torii, then through a second, and finally a third. Occasionally one meets with an extended series of torii set so close together as to make a veritable tunnel.
On advancing through the torii one generally finds immediately before him in the center of the enclosure a building called the haiden, meaning the “worship-sanctuary.” The name indicates its main use. Before it the people clap their hands and ring a suspended bell to attract the attention of the gods, bow their heads, and occasionally kneel, in brief reverence or prayer, and deposit their offerings in a money chest or on a cloth conveniently placed for the purpose. Within the haiden rituals are carried out on stated occasions by the priests in charge. These are for the most part official ceremonies on behalf of the local community or the state, but sometimes, also, purely private rites on behalf of individuals or small groups. Ordinary worshippers do not enter the shrines.
Just beyond the worship-sanctuary is usually placed an inner building called the honden or “chief-sanctuary.” This is the holy of holies of the shrine where the deities dwell and to which the laity have no access. Two or more deities are sometimes enshrined in a single edifice; sometimes a special sanctum is provided for each deity. The principal function of the honden is to shelter a sacred object called the shintai or “god-body.” This is sometimes also designated mitama-shiro (“spirit-substitute”). An older name is kamusane, or kamuzane, meaning” god-seed,” or perhaps, better, “sacred kernel.” The shintai is sometimes explained as a symbolic representation of the deity. It is more generally regarded by priests and people alike as the object in which the enshrined deity takes up residence. The shintai, which in and of itself is generally of small intrinsic value, is regarded with such awe and reverence that the members of the priesthood, themselves, are prohibited under law from viewing or handling it except by special permit. The popular attitude is well indicated in the numerous stories of local folklore which tell how those curious and profane people who have dared to steal a peep at the shintai have been struck dead or smitten with blindness for life. Japanese attitudes toward the shintai suggest the relic worship of the European middle ages.
In spite of its sacredness and all the sentiments of awe with which it is hedged about, it not infrequently happens that judicious questioning of priests and pilgrims will elucidate the nature of the god-body. Stones, sacred texts, old scrolls, ancient swords, phallic emblems, strips of consecrated paper cut in forms that possibly represent the sacred tree, locks of human hair, balls of crystal, jewels (magatama), pictures and numerous other like objects appear among the shintai. Under Buddhist influence images of men and deities have found their way into the holy of holies of Shintō. It has sometimes happened in the past that when loyal subjects have been deified, objects intimately associated with their lives, such as head-wear, batons, weapons, writing implements and clothing have been made into shintai. Occasionally an unhoused natural object is worshipped as the shintai, in which case concealment is impossible, of course. Living trees are most common in this connection. The shintai of the Ōmiwa shrine of Yamato is a mountain; that of the Yudono shrine on the slopes of Gassan in Yamagata Prefecture in the north-central part of Hondo is a hot-spring.
In most of the cases where enshrinement has been made since the Restoration of 1868 the shintai are mirrors. This is possibly due to the influence of the great sacred mirror about which the Grand Imperial Shrine of Ise is built. The reverence accorded these mirror shintai may be measured by the elaborateness of the ceremonial wrappings in which they are protected. The mirror, which is always made of metal, is first tied with red silk cord and tassels and placed in a bag of gold brocade, fastened with a red cord. The whole is then enclosed in a box of willow wood which is, in turn, wrapped in plain white silk. Final placement is made in a white box made of unstained cypress wood, ornamented with gilt metal work and tied again with red cord and tassels. Over all is drawn a cover of Yamato brocade. The mirrors commonly seen on open display at Shintō shrines are, of course, not shintai. They are either ornamental, symbolical or magical. In this last sense they are to be accounted for under an ancient belief that any disguised evil spirit which approaches the shrine is reflected in its true form.
Shrines are to be met with occasionally which have no haiden. One building serves both as worship-sanctuary and as site of enshrinement for the “god-body.” At some shrines the buildings of the haiden and honden are separated, in certain cases widely so, as, for example, at Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture where the haiden stands on a mountain side and the double honden on two peaks a mile and more away. At the largest shrines the honden may be partially concealed within a special enclosure and separated from the haiden by a central gateway. Ordinarily, however, the haiden and the honden stand one immediately behind the other and are often connected by a central corridor or an intervening room, sometimes by an open space.
Other buildings commonly found among the shrine properties are a business office, a place for water-purification, a hall for sacred dances, storehouses for ceremonial objects, a music pavilion, a storehouse for treasures and art objects, a pavilion for votive pictures, a place for the preparation of food offerings, and a stable for the sacred horse.
The architectural forms used in the construction of the shrines are of many different kinds. The modern period has witnessed a pleasing trend toward the revival of the simple style of the classical age. The principal building material is wood, preferably the Japanese cypress, although other woods are sometimes used. The lines must be plain and straight and the wood left in its natural color. Variations from these standards show a Buddhist mixture which strict Shintō practice repudiates.
Shrines which are recognized and counted by the government in its classification are divided into twelve groups. At the head stands the Ise Dai Jingū, or the Grand Imperial Shrine of Ise, listed in the official statistics as one great shrine, but really consisting of a group of sixteen shrines, large and small. Below these are arranged eleven grades which vary from the large government shrines (kampeisha) and national shrines (koku-heisha)4 and their sub-classes down through those of prefecture (kensha), district (gōsha), and village (sonsha) to a large group of more than sixty-one thousand shrines which are designated as being without grade, the so-called mukakusha, or “unranked shrines.” Outside of these again lie tens of thousands of little shrines that are not officially counted or recognized in any way. The total number of shrines in Shintō, large and small, is unknown. The number is legion. Shrines which are recognized and counted by the government, as given in the latest statistics available total 110,967. Attached to these are 15,696 priests.5 No statistics of adherents of the state shrines are kept by the national government, the assumption evidently being that all Japanese by virtue of nationality are naturally included within the sphere of shrine fealty.
Attention must be directed at this point to a brief statement concerning the meaning and the history of the term Shintō. The phonetic elements, shin-tō, or shin-dō, are the rendering according to the Sino-Japanese reading of two ideograms which are usually translated into pure Japanese by the phrase, Kami no Michi, meaning “The Way of the Kami,” or “The Way of the Gods,” namely, the ceremonies and teachings relating to the indigenous Japanese deities. As a succinct definition of Shintō this is probably as good as any. The term Shintō first appears in Japanese literature in the Nihongi under the chronicle for the reign of Yōmei Tennō (585–587 A.D.). The text in its paragraph of introduction to the account of the deeds of this ruler, dated the latter part of the year 585 A.D., says, “The Emperor believed in the Law of Buddha and revered Shintō.” It is evident that by this time a distinction was being made between the Japanese Way of the Gods and the teachings of the Buddha.
In its earliest stages Shintō, as a system, appears to have been nameless. The term matsurigoto (“the affairs of religious festivals”) was used from very ancient times to designate the ceremonies of the shrines as well as matters of government. Philological evidence here lends support to a conclusion that is abundantly substantiated by more direct data, to the effect that the ceremonies of Old Shintō constituted the major interest of the early Japanese state and that all the important affairs of the social and political life were once made the occasions of prayer and thanksgiving to the kami. The student of history will recognize in this intimate association of government and religion a world-wide characteristic of primitive social organization.
Attempts have been made by various Japanese scholars to find in the term kamu-nagara, which occurs in the Nikongi in a certain passage of the chronicle for the reign of the Emperor Kōtoku (645–654 A.D.), an archaic name for the indigenous religion. The passage in question may be translated: “We have commanded Our son to rule according to the will of the kami (kamu-nagara mo). Hereby the land has been ruled by an Emperor since the beginning of Heaven and Earth.”6 A note to the text, added probably by the eighth century editors, reads: “Kamu-nagara means to follow Shintō and of oneself to possess Shintō.” This constitutes the authority for the use of the term on the part of later writers. The correct interpretation of nagara is a matter of some difficulty. It probably means “as such” or “as it is,” in other words, implicitly. Kamu-nagara should thus be taken to signify “following the will of the gods without question.” The reference is thus to an attitude of absolute obedience toward the kami and affords no warrant for the conclusion that it represents a very early name for Shintō itself. The expression “The way of the Kami As Such” (Kamu-nagara no Michi), as used by later writers, should be taken to mean “following implicitly the will of the gods with no introduction of one’s personal will whatsoever.” It should be noted, however, that the term, Kamu-nagara no Michi (written, also, Kan-nagara and Kami-nagara) is used constantly by modern Japanese Shintoists as a comprehensive designation for their faith and in the outline of representative views of contemporary Shintō to be presented later in the discussion frequent occasion will be had for employing the term.
Sketch of a Primitive Shrine
From Shinshoku Hōkan (“Handbook for Shintō Priests”), Vol. I, p. 8.
As a matter of fact attention was not drawn to Shintō either to name it or to study it until after the problem of adjustment with Buddhism and Confucianism had arisen. The first studies of Shintō to be found in Japanese literature were made by priests of Buddhism.
Other names which may be found applied to Shintō in Japanese sources are Yuishin no Michi (“The way of Pure Kami,” or “The Way of Kami Only”), Jingidō (“The Way of the Deities of Heaven and Earth”), Kōchō no Michi (“The Way of the Empire of Japan”), Yamato no Michi (“The Yamato Way”), Kodō (“The Ancient Way”), Kōdō (“The Royal Way”), Taidō (“The Great Way”), and Teidō (“The Imperial Way”). This list could be extended. It should be taken as representative of phases of emphasis in Shintō interpretation.
All of the above designations are comparatively late. They tell us little or nothing regarding Shintō in its early form, although they do assist us somewhat in reaching an understanding of how certain Shintoists have regarded various aspects of their national faith. In this sense they may be taken as brief definitions to be noted along with those already reviewed.
The periods of Shintō history may be outlined in various ways, depending on the purposes of the discussion. In the case of a national development which shows such intimate connection with political and cultural history, on the one hand, and religion, on the other, as does that of Japan, the most apparent method is undoubtedly to follow the epochs of ordinary political history. Although it is recognized that there is a need for a study of the genesis of Shintō institutions written from this point of view, all that can be attempted here is a general statement in terms of large areas, regarded mainly from the standpoint of relationship to Buddhism. When we take the field in this manner three natural phases of Shintō history immediately emerge: the period of pure Shintō prior to intermixture with Buddhism and other continental systems, the long medieval period of amalgamation with Buddhism, and the period of the modern Shintō revival, beginning, on the institutional side, with the Restoration of 1868 and marked by a zealous effort to repudiate everything Buddhist.
The earliest phase of Shintō history is bounded on the farther side by an indefinite mythological age in which the fixing of dates is a very precarious undertaking—in spite of the misleading exactness with which the early chronology is established today by no less authority than that of the Department of Education of the Japanese Government—and on the nearer side by the rise of Buddhism in the latter half of the sixth century of the Christian era. This is the period of Old Shintō. To the ordinary Japanese Shintoist of the present it is the classical age of pure Shintō.
It is impossible to assign any exact date, then, to the beginning of the Old Shintō period, nor is it possible to determine, on the basis of the available data, what elements were brought into Japan from the outside by the various tribal and racial components of the ancient Japanese peoples, or what elements were achieved through ordinary acculturation, or what were developed independently within the geographical limits of Old Japan proper. Undoubtedly all three of these factors—direct importation by conquerors and immigrants, borrowings, and independent growth—operated in varying measure to produce the particular system of belief and practice which we know as Old Shintō. If we follow recent scholarship, and date the beginning of Japanese culture roughly at the opening of the Christian era, we can, with a degree of safety, do the same for Shintō and say that it is approximately as old as organized Christianity.
The chief literary sources for the study of Old Shintō are the Kojiki, the Nihongi, the Kujiki, the Kogoshūi, and the twenty-six norito, or rituals, of the Engi Shiki. The Kojiki, or “Chronicle of Ancient Events,” is the oldest extant Japanese historical record. It was compiled, according to its own introductory statements, by Ō-no-Yasumaro from the oral tradition of an old woman of excellent memory, named Hieda-no-Are. The compilation was completed in three volumes in A.D. 712. The narrative of the Kojiki begins with the creation myths and ends with the close of the reign of Empress Suiko in A.D. 628.7
The Nihon gi (Nihon ki) is also known by the fuller title of Nihon Shoki, or “The Chronicles of Japan.” It was compiled, mainly from earlier written documents, in A.D. 720 by Toneri-Shinnō and Ō-no-Yasumaro. The original consists of thirty books. The narrative tells the story of Old Japan from the creation of the world down to A.D. 697, thus covering the same ground as the Kojiki with the addition of some seventy years.8
The compilation of the Kujiki, or “Chronicle of Old Events,” is customarily referred by Japanese scholars to the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628 A.D.).9 The date generally accepted is A.D. 620. The authors are believed to be Shōtoku Taishi and Sogano-Umako. The extant text of the Kujiki was plainly edited at a later date than either the Kojiki or the Nihongi. The existing Kujiki narrative in the portions that deal with the Emperors from Jimmu Tennō onwards is almost word for word included in the Nihongi. The problem of the precise textual relationship of these two documents is not yet settled. The former contains valuable, independent sections dealing with the early myths.
These three writings are the most important of the existing records bearing on the study of Old Shintō. Later Shintōists have called them “the three sacred texts” and, again, “the three foundation writings.” The first book of the Kojiki and first two of the Nihongi deal with the “Age of the Gods.” Together with the mythological portions of the Kujiki they are indispensable as source material for the study of the religious ideas and institutions of the ancient Japanese.
To these three writings should be added the Kogoshūi, or “Gleanings from Ancient Stories,” a document which was prepared and presented to the Emperor Heijō by Imibe-no-Hironari probably in the year 806 A.D. It is written in defence of the rights of one of the ancient priestly guilds (called the Imibe, or Abstainers), and is of considerable importance as an abridged statement of the ancient mythology and religion.10
The norito are ritualistic prayers used in services before the deities of the Shintō shrines. Twenty-six of the norito formerly employed in the ceremonies of Old Shintō have survived, along with much other material relating to ancient court life, in a collection of fifty books, known as the Engi Shiki, or “Ceremonies of Engi,” so-called because of origin in the Engi era (901–922 A.D.).11 The preferred date of the actual publication of the Engi Shiki is A.D. 927. Some of the norito which are included in its pages undoubtedly date from a much earlier period. No one who desires to obtain first hand knowledge of early Japanese religious life can afford to neglect them.
An examination of the source material just introduced12 will suffice to show that although the respective documents were not given their present literary shape until after the process of assimilation with Buddhism and with Chinese philosophy had already set in, yet the mythology and characteristic form of the ancient Japanese rituals are identifiable to a degree that makes possible at least a tentative reconstruction of the main outlines of Old Shintō.
A point of caution must be urged regarding the use of the literature just mentioned. Critical investigation shows that the material that has gone into the compilation of the Kojiki and the Nihongi was probably first committed to writing just before and just after the Great Reform of Taika (645–701 A.D.) and, as already stated, edited into existing form in the early part of the eighth century. As might be expected, these literary sources are deeply colored by the political movements of the period in which the compilations were made. In particular they reflect the interests of the dynastic centralization of the Taika Reform, based, as it was, on the political affirmation of the doctrine of Divine Imperial sovereignty and patterned, on the institutional side, after Chinese administrative models. In the literary fruition of this reform that appeared in the first half of the eighth century, a reflex influence of Chinese civilization may be discerned in the commitment of the editors and sponsors of the Nihongi and Kojiki to establish for their country an historical antiquity and a national dignity that would be the equal, if not the superior, of their great continental neighbor. This apologetic interest has been a major motive of Shintō right down to the present. It happens as a result of all this, that in order to reach the real inner body of the early Japanese social life that is wrapped up in the ancient literature, various external decorative garments of Chinese fashion must be detected and stripped away, and, at the same time, the local nationalistic bias must be allowed for. This is no easy task. In spite of all difficulties, however, it is possible to lay bare some of the important characteristics of the original situation.
Diagram Of Large ShintŌ Shrine
The outline shows the arrangements of the various parts of the so-called Government and National Shrines (Kankoku Heisha). The total area enclosed in the precincts of a major shrine in these classes is 1,728 tsubo (one tsubo equals approximately thirty-six square feet).
Key:
1. Chief-sanctuary (Honden)
2. Worship-sanctuary (Haiden)
3. Central portals (Chūmon)
4. Torii (Characteristic Shintō gateway)
5. Torii
6. Inner enclosure
7. Second enclosure—“Jewel-hedge” (Tamagaki)
8. First enclosure—“Jewel-hedge” (Tamagaki)
9. Place of preparation of food and drink offerings
10. Water purification place
11. Storehouse for ceremonial objects
12. Shrine business office
13. Storehouse
14. Well
15. Well
From Shinshoku Hōkan: (“Handbook for Shintō Priests”) Vol. I, p. 3.
1. Ames, Edward Scribner, Art. in Modern Trends in World-Religions (Ed., E. A. Haydon), p. 28.
2. Yamashita, Yoshitarō (Formerly chancellor, Imperial Japanese Consulate, London), “The Influence of Shintō and Buddhism in Japan,” Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol. IV, p. 257.
3. The designation jingū (jin, or shin, “deity,” and gū, “dwelling place”— kami no miya in pure Japanese) may be found applied to shrines of special size and importance.
4. This terminology, especially the use of the designation, “national shrines,” as a translation of kokuheisha, is not satisfactory, although it is difficult to suggest a better. I here follow Japanese writers who have attempted to render kampeisha and kokuheisha into English. “Imperial shrines” has been suggested for the former. koku in the latter term is not strictly understood in the sense of “national,” but rather in the ancient sense of “provincial,” that is, administered by a provincial government. This was the original meaning, but it is not that of the present. The classification into kampeisha and kokuheisha appears in the Engi Shiki as characteristic of early Shintō. The former class was made up of shrines situated in the capital and the immediately surrounding country—the so-called Kinai District—that were administered directly by the Department of Shintō (Jingi Kwan) of the central government; the latter comprised the shrines outside of the Kinai District that were served by the provincial governors. At the beginning of the Meiji era the ancient Department of Shintō (Jingi Kwan) was revived and the old division of shrines into kampei and kokuhei classes was again set up. Later, with the abolition of the Jingi Kwan and other subsequent changes, including the passing of the administration of the shrines to the Department of Home Affairs, the old distinction between these two classes of shrines disappeared, although the names and formal divisions persisted. Today it is difficult to draw vital distinctions between the kampei and the kokuhei shrines. The principal existing difference lies in the fact that the kampeisha receive offerings for presentation to the enshrined deities at the time of important festivals directly from the Imperial Household Department, while the kokuheisha receive similar offerings, on similar occasions, from the national treasury. Both classes contain large and important shrines of national significance. A distinction between the present-day kampeisha and kokuheisha has been attempted on the basis of the character of the deities worshipped, but careful examination of the facts will produce no consistent differentia, except in the case of the class of shrines known as Government Shrines of Special Grade (Bekkaku Kampeisha), wherein the enshrined deities are without exception the spirits of loyalists who have been outstanding in their devotion to the Emperor and the State. This special class of government shrine was created in 1871.
5. From Nihon Teikpku Tōkei Nenkan (“Statistical Yearbook of the Japanese Empire”), 1936, p. 303.
The grand total of shrines reported by the government from year to year reveals a steady decrease since 1900, the year in which the figure reached the highest point shown in the records, namely 196,357 shrines. This makes a decrease during the twentieth century of 85,390 institutions. It should be noted very carefully, however, that this remarkable shrinkage has occurred entirely within the fields of relatively small and unimportant village and ungraded shrines. For all other shrines there has been a steady increase. The total for all shrines above the village and ungraded classes stood in 1900 at 4,026. In 1932 it was 4,912, thus indicating clearly the attention which the government has given to the expansion of Shintō in its larger and more representative institutions. Reduction in the smallest classes has been effected partly by the elimination of certain unimportant shrines, but more commonly by administrative reorganization which counts several small rural shrines as a single unit.
The fact that the latest statistics show only some 15,700 priests as compared with approximately 111,000 shrines has its explanation in the practice of assigning a number of small shrines, grouped in an administrative unit, to the oversight of a single priest. Thousands of rural shrines have no resident priests. Over against this, a large shrine usually calls for the services of a relatively large staff.
6. Iida, Teiji, Shinyaku Nihon Shoki (“A New Translation of the Nihon Shoki;” Tōkyō, 1912), p. 482.
7. English translation by B.H. Chamberlain under title of Kojiki in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. X, Supplement (1882). Reprinted in 1906 and 1932. Indispensable but in great need of re-editing in the light of recent historical and philological knowledge.
8. Translations—English: W.G. Aston, Nihongi, Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 607, 2 Vols., Supplement I of Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London, 1896. Republished in one volume, London, 1924. German: Florenz, Karl, Japanische Mythologie, Nihongi, Zeitalter der Götter, Tōkyō, 1901.
9. Not yet translated.
10. English translation by Katō and Hoshino. The Kogoshūi or Gleanings from Ancient Stories, Tōkyō, 1924. Translated into German by Karl Florenz.
11. For translations of norito contained in the Engi Shiki see Satow, Ernest, “Ancient Japanese Rituals,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vols. VII (1879), IX (1881), and Florenz, Karl, id. Vol. XXVII (1899). Reprinted in one volume in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1927, Reprints, Vol. II.
12. To a certain extent this may be supplemented by the records of the oldest of the shrines. Such records, while requiring great care in interpretation owing to the tendency to exaggeration and fabrication in favor of the enhancement of local prestige, nevertheless sometimes furnish valuable data for the determination of the original characteristics of Shintō. Such material is utilized later in the present discussion in the attempt to reconstruct the main outlines of the oldest Japanese mythology.
In this same connection may be mentioned the so-called Fudoki (lit. “Records of Winds and Earth”), compiled in the early part of the eighth century, under orders of the Empress Gemmyō issued in 713 A.D. These are descriptions of the conditions in local areas, containing reports on manners and customs, production, village communities, geographical features, etc. Four such reports have survived to the present day, namely, those for the districts of Hitachi, Harima, Bungo and Izumo. The last named is in the best state of preservation.