Shinto. Aston William George
would be fit only for an imbecile asylum. The child is well aware that his mud pies are not fit to eat. The savage woman who pretends to herself that a stone is her lost baby, knows in her heart that this is nothing more than make-believe. Even a dog appreciates the distinction between a real rat and the object which it pleases him to fancy one, and worries accordingly. The seer is conscious that his anthropomorphic language is only metaphorical. Dante felt this when he said: -
Per questo la Scrittura condescende
A nostra facultate e piedi e mano
Attribuisce a Dio ed altro intende.
Metaphor is of the very essence of myth. But the literal-minded vulgar are at all times prone to confound the altro which is clothed in myth and metaphor with its outward husk, and the literal-minded scholar or scientific man is often little better. Hirata says that "what we call kami are all men. Even among men those who are excellent are called kami. The natural difference between men and Gods is that the Gods are high and men are low, owing to the greater care taken by the creator deities in producing the former." He thinks that the Shinto deities are about ten feet high.
The humanization of the nature deities is reflected in the vocabulary of Shinto. The term mioya, or "august parent," is frequently used of them. Tsuchi or tsutsu, old forms of chichi, father, occurs in the names of several. It is primarily by no means physical fatherhood which is meant in such cases, although there are no doubt vulgar minds who are unable to rise above this conception and have thereby done much to corrupt religion.
In Western religions a God must be either male or female. The grammatical structure of their languages compels Europeans to say either he or she in speaking of deities. In Japan this necessity does not exist. The forms of Japanese speech take little account of sex. Many Shinto deities have no sex at all. In others sex is indicated by the incidents of the myth or by the additions of such terminations as wo male, me female. There are several pairs of married deities. In art, sex is comparatively little distinguished in Japan.
The reason for attributing one sex to a deity rather than the other is not always evident. Provinces and mountains are sometimes male and sometimes female. The Food Goddess is naturally feminine, as representing the productive principle of nature, and perhaps also because cooking is the business of women. The male sex is more suitable to Susa no wo's violent character as the Rain-storm. Warlike gods like Hachiman are naturally masculine.
The "chieftain" conception of divinity is represented by the use of the word wo, male, i. e., virile or valiant one, in many of the names of deities, and by the ascription to some of warlike qualities. There is nothing to show that these are deified chieftains. On the contrary, the term wo is applied, like tsuchi, father, to what are unmistakably nature deities, such as the Sea-Gods Soko-tsutsu-wo (bottom-father-male) Naka-tsutsu-wo (middle-father-male), and Uwa-tsutsu-wo (upper-father-male), produced by the lustrations of Izanagi in the sea after his return from Yomi.
Tohe, another word for chieftain, occurs in the name of the Wind-God, Shina tsu tohe.
Nushi, master, is found in the names of several deities.
The application to the Shinto deities of words implying sovereignty is illustrated by sube or sume, which enters into a number of compounds relating to the Gods or Mikados. This word means "to collect together into one," and hence "to hold general rule over." Sumera or sumeragi no mikoto is the Mikado. Several deities enjoy the honorary epithet of Sume-gami, or Subera-gami.
Mi-koto, august thing, is also applied equally to Gods and Mikados, and in ancient times even to parents. It is nearly equivalent to our "majesty."
Wake, a branch, that is to say, a branch of the imperial family, a prince, is applied to deities.
Hiko and hime occur frequently in the names of gods. These words mean literally sun-child and sun-female, but in practice they are equivalent to prince and princess, or lord and lady. In the history of these words one may observe the operation of both of the great currents of deity-forming thought. Hi, sun, is used as an epithet for the glorification of human personages, and the compounds hiko and hime are in turn applied to nature powers as a personifying term. The Wind-God is a hiko.
The rhetorical impulse to realize in its various phases the human character of the nature deities of Shinto has produced a number of subsidiary personages, who are attached to them as wives, children, ministers, or attendants. Some of these are also nature deities. In others we find a union of the two deity-making tendencies. Thus Koyane, by the circumstance of his descent from Musubi, the God of Growth, and by his position of high-priest to the Sun-Goddess, belongs to the category of nature deities, while as an embodiment of the collective humanity of the Nakatomi sacerdotal corporation, whose ancestor he is feigned to be, he belongs to the class of deified human beings.
In Japan, the myth and metaphor-making faculty-in other words the imagination-though prolific enough, is comparatively feeble. The ancient Japanese especially were appreciably more neglectful than Western races of the distinction between the animate and the inanimate, and there was therefore less scope for the play of fancy in which religious personification consists. Like other Far-Eastern peoples, they realized the personal conception of deity with less intensity than the Aryan or Semitic nations. In this respect Homer and the Bible stand at the opposite pole from Confucius, whose Tien has as little about it of humanity as is possible for a being who is said to know, to command, to reward, and to punish. Shinto approaches Confucianism in this respect. There is, no doubt, a profuse creation of personified nature-deities, but we find on examination that they are shadowy personages with ill-defined functions and characters wanting in consistency. Moreover, owing to the neglect by the Japanese of grammatical forms indicating number, it is frequently hard to tell whether a given name is that of one deity or of several. Musubi, the God of Growth, is sometimes one God, sometimes two, while at a later period he became split up into five or more deities. The Wind-God is at one time a single deity, at another a married couple. Susa no wo has in recent times been made into a trinity. Such fissiparous reproduction of deities is characteristic of a low degree of organization.7 To meet the difficulties arising from this state of things Motoöri, in the eighteenth century, propounded his theory of bun-shin, or "fractional bodies," which may remind us of the "three persons and one substance" of Christian theology. Hirata, his pupil, speaking of the three Sea-deities, Uha tsutsu no wo, Naka tsutsu no wo, and Soko tsutsu no wo, says: "This deity, although, strictly speaking, born as three deities, is described as though one deity were present. This is to be understood of the God dividing his person and again uniting it. The descent of the Adzumi no Muraji (a noble family) from him shows that in this respect he is to be regarded as one."
The circumstance that many of the Gods, like the Japanese themselves, have numerous aliases, adds to the uncertainty. The nomina and the numina do not invariably go together. There is sometimes reason to suspect that it is the same God who appears under different names, while, on the other hand, the same name may cover what are in reality two or more different deities.
There were no arts of sculpture or painting in Japan before their introduction from China in historical times, and the consequent want of images and pictures for which Shinto has been commended must have contributed materially to prevent the Gods from acquiring distinct personalities like those of ancient Greece.
The feeble grasp of personality indicated by the above facts is profoundly characteristic of the Japanese genius. It is illustrated by their unimaginative literature, which makes but sparing use of personification, allegory, and metaphor, by their drama, with its late and imperfect development, and by their art, which has produced little monumental sculpture or portrait painting of importance. It may also be traced in the grammar, which has practically no gender, thus showing that the Japanese mind is comparatively careless of marking the distinction between animate and inanimate and male and female. The law takes far less cognizance of the individual and more of the family than with us. Another fact of the same order is the neglect of distinctions of person shown by the sparing use of personal and other pronouns. In a passage translated from Japanese into English, without any intention of illustrating this fact, there
It was not unknown in ancient Greece and Rome. Zeus, Hercules, and other deities became divided up in this way.