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The second group those deified for
illustrious services during life--furnished the tutelary divinities
(uji-gami or ubusuna-Kami) of the localities where their families
lived and where their labours had been performed. Their protection
was specially solicited by the inhabitants of the regions where their
shrines stood, while the nation at large worshipped the Kami of the
first group. Out of this apotheosis of distinguished mortals there
grew, in logical sequence, the practice of ancestor worship. It was
merely a question of degrees of tutelary power. If the blessings of
prosperity and deliverance could be bestowed on the denizens of a
region by the deity enshrined there, the same benefits in a smaller
and more circumscribed measure might be conferred by the deceased
head of a family. As for the sovereign, standing to the whole nation
in the relation of priest and intercessor with the deities, he was
himself regarded as a sacred being, the direct descendant of the
heavenly ancestor (Tenson).

THERIANTHROPIC ELEMENTS

That the religion of ancient Japan--known as Shinto, or "the way of
the gods"--had not fully emerged from therianthropic polytheism is
proved by the fact that, though the deities were generally
represented in human shape, they were frequently conceived as
spiritual beings, embodying themselves in all kinds of things,
especially in animals, reptiles, or insects. Thus, tradition relates
that the Kami of Mimoro Mountain appeared to the Emperor Yuryaku
(A.D. 457-459) in the form of a snake; that during the reign of the
Emperor Keitai (A.D. 507-531), a local deity in the guise of a
serpent interfered with agricultural operations and could not be
placated until a shrine was built in its honour; that in the time of
the Emperor Kogyoku, the people of the eastern provinces devoted
themselves to the worship of an insect resembling a silkworm, which
they regarded as a manifestation of the Kami of the Moon; that the
Emperor Keiko (A.D. 71-130) declared a huge tree to be sacred; that
in the days of the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), religious rites were
performed before cutting down a tree supposed to be an incarnation of
the thunder Kami; that on the mountain Kannabi, in Izumo, there stood
a rock embodying the spirit of the Kami whose expulsion from Yamato
constituted the objective of Ninigi's expedition, and that prayer to
it was efficacious in terminating drought, that the deity
Koto-shiro-nushi became transformed into a crocodile, and that "the
hero Yamato-dake emerged from his tomb in the shape of a white swan."

Many other cognate instances might be quoted. A belief in amulets and
charms, in revelations by dreams and in the efficacy of ordeal,
belongs to this category of superstitions. The usual form of ordeal
was by thrusting the hand into boiling water. It has been alleged
that the Shinto religion took no account of a soul or made any
scrutiny into a life beyond the grave. Certainly no ideas as to
places of future reward or punishment seem to have engrossed
attention, but there is evidence that not only was the spirit (tama)
recognized as surviving the body, but also that the spirit itself was
believed to consist of a rough element (am) and a gentle element
(nigi), either of which predominated according to the nature of the
functions to be performed; as when a nigi-tama was believed to have
attached itself to the person of the Empress Jingo at the time of her
expedition to Korea, while an ara-tama formed the vanguard of her
forces.

Some Japanese philosophers, however--notably the renowned
Motoori--have maintained that this alleged duality had reference
solely to the nature of the influence exercised by a spirit on
particular occasions. Shinto has no sacred canon like the Bible, the
Koran, or the Sutras. Neither has it any code of morals or body of
dogma. Cleanliness may be called its most prominent feature.
Izanagi's lustrations to remove the pollution contracted during his
visit to the nether world became the prototype of a rite of
purification (misogi) which always prefaced acts of worship. A
cognate ceremony was the harai (atonement). By the misogi the body
was cleansed; by the harai all offences were expiated; the origin of
the latter rite having been the exaction of certain penalties from
Susanoo for his violent conduct towards the Sun goddess.* The two
ceremonies, physical cleansing and moral cleansing, prepared a
worshipper to approach the shrine of the Kami. In later times both
rites were compounded into one, the misogi-harai, or simply the
harai. When a calamity threatened the country or befell it, a grand
harai (o-harai) was performed in atonement for the sins supposed to
have invited the catastrophe. This principle 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.