A History of the Japanese People. Kikuchi Dairoku
of cleanliness found expression in the architecture of Shinto shrines; plain white wood was everywhere employed and ornamentation of every kind eschewed. In view of the paramount importance thus attached to purity, a celebrated couplet of ancient times is often quoted as the unique and complete canon of Shinto morality,
*His nails were extracted and his beard was plucked out.
"Unsought in prayer,
"The gods will guard
"The pure of heart."*
*Kokoro dani
Makoto no michi ni
Kanai naba
Inorazu tote mo
Kami ya mamoran.
It is plain, however, that Shinto cannot be included in the category of ethical religions; it belongs essentially to the family of nature religions.
CRIMES
The acts which constituted crimes in ancient Japan were divided into two classes: namely, sins against heaven and sins against the State. At the head of the former list stood injuries to agricultural pursuits, as breaking down the ridges of rice-fields, filling up drains, destroying aqueducts, sowing seeds twice in the same place, putting spits in rice-fields, flaying an animal alive or against the grain, etc. The crimes against the State were cutting and wounding (whether the living or the dead), defilement on account of leprosy or cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods of expiating crime were recognized, but, as was the universal custom in remote times, very cruel punishments were employed against evil-doers and enemies. Death was inflicted for comparatively trivial offences, and such tortures were resorted to as cutting the sinews, extracting the nails and the hair, burying alive, roasting, etc. Branding or tattooing seems to have been occasionally practised, but essentially as a penalty or a mark of ignominy.
DIVINATION
As is usually the case in a nation where a nature religion is followed, divination and augury were practised largely in ancient Japan. The earliest method of divination was by roasting the shoulder-blade of a stag and comparing the cracks with a set of diagrams. The Records and the Chronicles alike represent Izanagi and Izanami as resorting to this method of presaging the future, and the practice derives interest from the fact that a precisely similar custom has prevailed in Mongolia from time immemorial. Subsequently this device was abandoned in favour of the Chinese method, heating a tortoise-shell; and ultimately the latter, in turn, gave way to the Eight Trigrams of Fuhi. The use of auguries seems to have come at a later date. They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street and watching the passers, by manipulating stones, and by counting footsteps.
MILITARY FORCES
It has been related that when the "heavenly grandson" undertook his expedition to Japan, the military duties were entrusted to two mikoto* who became the ancestors of the Otomo and the Kume families. There is some confusion about the subsequent differentiation of these families, but it is sufficient to know that, together with the Mononobe family, they, were the hereditary repositories of military authority. They wore armour, carried swords, spears and bows, and not only mounted guard at the palace but also asserted the Imperial authority throughout the provinces. No exact particulars of the organization of these forces are on record, but it would seem that the unit was a battalion divided into twenty-five companies, each company consisting of five sections of five men per section, a company being under the command of an officer whose rank was miyatsuko.
*"August being," a term of respect applied to the descendants of the
Kami.
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
No mention is made of such a thing as currency in prehistoric Japan. Commerce appears to have been conducted by barter only. In order to procure funds for administrative and religious purposes, officers in command of forces were despatched to various regions, and the inhabitants were required to contribute certain quantities of local produce. Steps were also taken to cultivate useful plants and cereals and to promote manufactures. The Kogo-shui states that a certain mikoto inaugurated the fashioning of gems in Izumo, and that his descendants continued the work from generation to generation, sending annual tribute of articles to the Court every year. Another mikoto was sent to plant paper-mulberry and hemp in the province of Awa (awa signifies "hemp"), and a similar record is found in the same book with regard to the provinces of Kazusa and Shimosa, which were then comprised in a region named Fusa-kuni. Other places owed their names to similar causes.
It is plain that, whatever may have been the case at the outset, this assignment of whole regions to the control of officials whose responsibility was limited to the collection of taxes for the uses of the Court, could not but tend to create a provincial nobility and thus lay the foundations of a feudal system. The mythological accounts of meetings of the Kami for purposes of consultation suggest a kind of commonwealth, and recall "the village assemblies of primitive times in many parts of the world, where the cleverness of one and the general willingness to follow his suggestions fill the place of the more definite organization of later times."* But though that may be true of the Yamato race in the region of its origin, the conditions found by it in Japan were not consistent with such a system, for Chinese history shows that at about the beginning of the Christian era the Island Empire was in a very uncentralized state and that the sway of the Yamato was still far from receiving general recognition. A great Japanese scholar** has contended that the centralization which prevailed in later ages was wholly an imitation of Chinese bureaucracy, and that organized feudalism was the original form of government in Japan. The annals appear to support that view to a limited extent, but the subject will presently be discussed at greater length.
*B. H. Chamberlain.
**Hirata Atsutane.
RAIMENT
In the use of clothing and the specialization of garments the early Japanese had reached a high level. We read in the ancient legends of upper garments, skirts, trousers, anklets, and head-ornaments of stones considered precious.* The principal material of wearing apparel was cloth woven from threads of hemp and mulberry bark. According to the annals, the arts of spinning, weaving, and dyeing were known and practised from the earliest age. The Sun goddess herself is depicted as seated in the hall of the sacred loom, reeling silk from cocoons held in her mouth, and at the ceremony of enticing her from her retirement, the weaving of blue-and-white stuffs constituted an important adjunct. Terms are used (akarurtae and teru-tae) which show that colour and lustre were esteemed as much as quality. Ara-tae and nigi-tae were the names used to designate coarse and fine cloth respectively; striped stuff was called shidori, and the name of a princess, Taku-hata-chiji, goes to show that corrugated cloth was woven from the bark of the taku. Silken fabrics were manufactured, but the device of boiling the cocoons had not yet been invented. They were held in the mouth for spinning purposes, and the threads thus obtained being coarse and uneven, the loom could not produce good results. Silk stuffs therefore did not find much favour: they were employed chiefly for making cushions, cloth woven from cotton, hemp, or mulberry bark being preferred for raiment. Pure white was the favourite colour; red, blue, and black being placed in a lower rank in that order. It has been conjectured that furs and skins were worn, but there is no explicit mention of anything of the kind. It would seem that their use was limited to making rugs and covering utensils.** Sewing is not explicitly referred to, but the needle is; and in spite of an assertion to the contrary made by the Chinese author of the Shan-hai-ching (written in the fourth century A.D.) there is no valid reason to doubt that the process of sewing was familiar.
*B. H. Chamberlain.
**In China the case was different. There, garments made of skins or covered with feathers were worn in remote antiquity before the art of weaving had become known. The Records recount that in the age of the Kami "there came" (to Japan) "riding on the crest of the waves, a kami dressed in skins of geese," and this passage has been quoted as showing