The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji. William Elliot Griffis
drying poles or paddles, the ships which continuously crowd on the great sea plain, and the road which men travel by land, as far as the limit whither come the horses' hoofs, with the baggage-cords tied tightly, treading the uneven rocks and tree-roots and standing up continuously in a long path without a break—making the narrow countries wide and the hilly countries plain, and as it were drawing together the distant countries by throwing many tons of ropes over them—he will pile up the first-fruits like a range of hills in the great presence of the sovran great GODDESS, and will peacefully enjoy the remainder.
Phallic Symbols.
To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the Japanese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so that today the altars of both religions exist in the same house, the dead ancestors becoming both kami and buddhas.
Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's symbols of the god-way, that is of ancestor worship. The extent of the phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god-way, and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems, tax severely the credulity of the Occidental reader. The processes of the ancient mind can hardly be understood except by vigorous power of the imagination and by sympathy with the primeval man. To the critical student, however, who has lived among the people and the temples devoted to this worship, who knows how innocent and how truly sincere and even reverent and devout in the use of these symbols the worshippers are, the matter is measurably clear. He can understand the soil, root and flower even while the most strange specimen is abhorrent to his taste, and while he is most active in destroying that mental climate in which such worship, whether native or exotic, can exist and flourish.
In none of the instances in which I have been eyewitness of the cult, of the person officiating or of the emblem, have I had any reason to doubt the sincerity of the worshipper. I have never had reason to look upon the implements or the system as anything else than the endeavor of man to solve the mystery of Being and Power. In making use of these emblems, the Japanese worshipper simply professes his faith in such solution as has seemed to him attainable.
That this cultus was quite general in pre-Buddhistic Japan, as in many other ancient countries, is certain from the proofs of language, literature, external monuments and relics which are sufficiently numerous. Its organic connection with the god-way may be clearly shown.
To go farther back in point of time than the "Kojiki," we find that even before the development of art in very ancient Japan, the male gods were represented by a symbol which thus became an image of the deity himself. This token was usually made of stone, though often of wood, and in later times of terra-cotta, of cast and wrought iron and even of gold.12
Under the direct influence of such a cult, other objects appealed to the imagination or served the temporary purpose of the worshipper as ex-voto to hang up in the shrines, such as the mushroom, awabi, various other shells and possibly the fire-drill. It is only in the decay of the cultus, in the change of view and centre of thought compelled by another religion, that representations of the old emblems ally themselves with sensualism or immorality. It is that natural degradation of one man's god into another man's devil, which conversion must almost of necessity bring, that makes the once revered symbol "obscene," and talk about it become, in a descending scale, dirty, foul, filthy, nasty. That the Japanese suffer from the moral effluvia of a decayed cult which was once as the very vertebral column of the national body of religion, is evident to every one who acquaints himself with their popular speech and literature.
How closely and directly phallicism is connected with the god-way, and why there were so many Shint[=o] temples devoted to this latter cult and furnished with symbols, is shown by study of the "Kojiki." The two opening sections of this book treat of kami that were in the minds even of the makers of the myths little more than mud and water13—the mere bioplasm of deity. The seven divine generations are "born," but do nothing except that they give Izanagi and Izanami a jewelled spear. With this pair come differentiation of sex. It is immediately on the apparition of the consciousness of sex that motion, action and creation begin, and the progress of things visible ensues. The details cannot be put into English, but it is enough, besides noting the conversation and union of the pair, to say that the term meaning giving birth to, refers to inanimate as well as animate things. It is used in reference to the islands which compose the archipelago as well as to the various kami which seem, in many cases, to be nothing more than the names of things or places.
Fire-myths and Ritual.
Fire is, in a sense, the foundation and first necessity of civilization, and it is interesting to study the myths as to the origin of fire, and possibly even more interesting to compare the Greek and Japanese stories. As we know, old-time popular etymology makes Prometheus the fore-thinker and brother of Epimetheus the after-thinker. He is the stealer of the fire from heaven, in order to make men share the secret of the gods. Comparative philology tells us, however, that the Sanskrit Pramantha is a stick that produces fire. The "Kojiki" does indeed contain what is probably the later form of the fire-myth about two brothers, Prince Fire-Shine and Fire-Fade, which suggests both the later Greek myth of the fore- and after-thinker and a tradition of a flood. The first, and most probably older, myth in giving the origin of fire does it in true Japanese style, with details of parturition. After numerous other deities had been born of Izanagi and Izanami, it is said "that they gave birth to the Fire-Burning-Swift-Male-Deity, another name for whom is the Deity-Fire-Shining-Prince, and another name is the Deity-Fire-Shining-Elder." In the other ancient literature this fire-god is called Ho-musubi, the Fire-Producer.
Izanami yielded up her life upon the birth of her son, the fire-god; or, as the sacred text declares, she "divinely retired"14 into Hades. From her corpse sprang up the pairs of gods of clay, of metal, and other kami that possessed the potency of calming or subduing fire, for clay resists and water extinguishes. Between the mythical and the liturgical forms of the original narrative there is considerable variation.
The Norito entitled the "Quieting of Fire" gives the ritual form of the myth. It contains, like so many Norito, less the form of prayer to the Fire-Producer than a promise of offerings. Not so much by petitions as by the inducements of gifts did the ancient worshippers hope to save the palace of the Mikado from the fire-god's wrath. We omit from the text those details which are offensive to modern and western taste.
I declare with the great ritual, the heavenly ritual, which was bestowed on him at the time when, by the WORD of the Sovran's dear progenitor and progenitrix, who divinely remain in the plain of high heaven, they bestowed on him the region under heaven, saying:
"Let the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness tranquilly rule over the country of fresh spikes which flourishes in the midst of the reed-moor as a peaceful region."
When … Izanami … had deigned to bear the many hundred myriads of gods, she also deigned to bear her dear youngest child of all, the Fire-producer god, … and said:
"My dear elder brother's augustness shall rule the upper country; I will rule the lower country," she deigned to hide in the rocks; and having come to the flat hills of darkness, she thought and said: "I have come hither, having borne and left a bad-hearted child in the upper country, ruled over by my illustrious elder brother's augustness," and going back she bore other children. Having borne the water-goddess, the gourd, the river-weed, and the clay-hill maiden, four