Kitabı oku: «Shinto», sayfa 3

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.
DEIFICATION OF MEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I. The King or sage is like the Sun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The honours paid to deceased Mikados stand on a somewhat different footing. There is little, however, in the earlier period of Shinto to distinguish the respect shown to deceased Mikados from the customary observances towards the undeified dead. The Kojiki and Nihongi have hardly a trace of any practical recognition of their divinity. We are told in the Nihongi (a. d. 679) that the Mikado Temmu did reverence to the tomb of his mother who had died eighteen years before. In 681 worship was paid (no doubt by the Mikado) to the august spirit of the Mikado's grandfather (or ancestor). There is nothing in these notices to show that divine worship is intended. An oath made by Yemishi or Ainus, when tendering their submission in 581, is more to the point. They pray that "if we break this oath, may all the Gods of Heaven and Earth, and also the spirits of the Mikados destroy our race." Still it must be remembered that the author of the Nihongi was a profound Chinese scholar, and that his work is deeply tinctured with Chinese ideas. I should not be surprised to find that the above oath was simply copied from some Chinese book.

In the time of the Yengishiki (tenth century) the honours paid to deceased Mikados had become regularized, and offerings similar to those made to nature-deities were tendered to them periodically. It is, however, a significant circumstance that of the twenty-seven norito contained in that work not one relates to their worship, and that the care of their tombs did not belong to the Department of Shinto. Hirata protests vigorously against a modern practice of using a Chinese word meaning Imperial Mausoleum for the shrines of Ise and Kamo.

As early as the ninth century there are several cases of prayers addressed to deceased Mikados for rain, to stay a curse sent by them for disrespect to their tombs, for the restoration of the Mikado's health, for preservation from calamity, &c. In more recent times shrines were erected to them, and prayers put up for blessings which it is far beyond the power of man to grant. Under the name of Hachiman, the Mikado 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 noble families. A modern authority says: "All descendants of deities had uji. Every uji consisted of members called ukara. The chief of the uji was termed the uji no kami (the superior of the uji). It was his duty, on festival occasions, to convene the ukara for the worship of the ancestral God." In later times the Uji-gami became simply the tutelary deity of one's birthplace, and was also called ubusuna (birth-sand). Infants born in his jurisdiction are presented to him soon after birth, and parturient women pray to him for relief. They also procure earth from the site of his shrine, in the belief that it has a magical power to assist their delivery. The same earth is credited with the property of relaxing the rigidity of a corpse.

The modern Uji-gami are taken indiscriminately from all classes of deities, perhaps including even a few genuine ancestors. One or two Indian deities have been made Uji-gami. The Nakatomi had three Uji-gami-namely, Take-mika-dzuchi, Futsunushi, and Koyane. Noble families have been known to change their Uji-gami,

The Uji-gami correspond in some respects to the Greek άρχηγός.

Biso. – Analogous to the Uji-gami are the trades-deities of modern times. They are called biso (author or inventor), and may be either nature-deities, deceased men, or merely the deified type of the particular trade or profession. Wrestlers worship Nomi no Sukune, who was probably a real person, and Chinese doctors the legendary Chinese Emperor Shinnung. Confucian pundits worship Confucius, poets honour Hitomaro, and Haikwai poets Bashô. Professors of the art of tea-drinking show reverence to the founder of that particular branch of it which they practise. Soothsayers, miko, football players, flower-arrangers, and actors worship the so-called ancestral gods of their several professions. There is a Kaji-so-sha, or blacksmith-ancestor-shrine. Carpenters, for some reason, have adopted Shōtoku Daishi, an Imperial Prince who lived in the seventh century, as their patron. Merchants worship Yebisu. They also pay some sort of respect to Fukusuke,²⁷ a dwarfish figure with a large head, attired in the ceremonial kami-shimo, and seated in a squatting position, which may often be seen in the larger shops. A figure of a cat with uplifted paw, called the maneki-neko, or "beckoning cat," and a recumbent cow covered with rugs are also objects of respect with them. It is in many cases a question whether the honour shown amounts really to divine worship.

Spirits. – The older Shinto scriptures afford but scanty evidence of the spiritualization of deified human beings. In the Nihongi there is one reference to the worship of a Mikado's mitama (spirit). In another case the mitama of the Mikados are called upon to punish oath-breakers. Yamato-dake's mitama is in one place said to have been changed into a white bird. Of the mitama of ordinary undeified human beings there is no mention in the Kojiki or Nihongi; but, of course, this may be owing to the imperfection of the record. Tamashiï, a derivative of tama, is the ordinary word for soul at the present day, and is undoubtedly of considerable antiquity. Still there are cases where we should expect to find mitama spoken of, but where a more material conception-namely, that of metamorphosis-takes its place. Among several instances of this kind may be quoted that of Yamato-dake. He died, and was buried, upon which he took the form of a white bird, which flew away leaving the tomb empty. The modern name for ghost testifies to the prevalence of this conception in Japan. It is bake-mono, or "transformation," and is applied to foxes which change into human form as well as to the ghosts of the dead and to hobgoblins of uncertain origin. Bake-mono are not worshipped in Japan, any more than ghosts are with ourselves, but there is a beginning of reverence to them in the honorific particle o which is frequently prefixed to the word, especially by women. There are no proper ghosts in the Kojiki or Nihongi, although the writers of these works were fond of recording strange and miraculous occurrences. The metamorphosed appearances mentioned in them are never phantoms with a resemblance to the human form, and possess no spiritual qualities. Even now the bakemono, though differing little from our ghost, is quite distinct from the human mitama or tamashiï (soul).

Tama, as we have seen above,²⁸ may mean either a jewel, a round object, or the effluence of a deity or a spirit. Here literal-minded Dullness, with whom the Gods themselves contend in vain, leaps to the conclusion that the physical globular tama is not merely a symbol of the soul, but the soul itself. By the ignorant in modern times it is conceived of as a small round black object, which has the power of leaving the body during sleep. The popular name for the will-of-the-wisp, namely, hito-dama (man-ball-soul) enshrines a like superstition.²⁹ It is asserted that the souls of the newly dead have been seen to float away over the eaves and roof as a transparent globe of impalpable essence.

We may compare with these Japanese notions the following cases, which I quote from Herbert Spencer's 'Sociology': "According to Ximenes, when a lord died in Vera Cruz, the first thing they did after his death was to put a precious stone in his mouth. The object of it was that the stone should receive his soul. The Mexicans along with a man's remains put a gem of more or less value, which they said would serve him in place of a heart in the other world." Such material conceptions of the soul are to be found everywhere. Mr. Hartland, in his 'Legend of Perseus,' observes: "To the savage, as to our own forefathers, and to the folk of all civilized countries still, the idea of an incorporeal soul is incomprehensible. It is everywhere in the lower culture conceived of as material, though capable of changing its form and appearance without losing its identity."³⁰ Hirata, after pointing out correctly that the mitama (jewel or spirit) is so called because there is nothing in the body so precious as the soul, immediately relapses into a more material conception when he proceeds to explain that, although we cannot discern its shape, seen from the Gods it must have the shape of a jewel (that is, spherical).³¹