Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/212

JAPAN and in spite of the fact that it had apparently absorbed Shintô the latter retained its hold on the heart of the nation, and its ceremonials continued to be scrupulously observed in the Imperial Court. Buddhist priests were strictly excluded from the great rites of the indigenous creed. More extravagant than ever were the restrictions imposed by the canon of purity, which, with ancestor-worship, may be called the basis of Shintô. Defilement, originally attributed only to uncleanliness or to the commission of sin, was extended in this age of superstition to many inevitable incidents of daily life—such as deaths, births, burials, in memoriam ceremonies, the eating of flesh, the tasting of anything acid, the application of the moxa, contact with disease and so on. To have been contaminated in any of these ways disqualified a man for association with his friends and for the discharge of his official duties, during a period of varying duration. There was an elaborate chain of vicarious defilement. If, A being defiled, B happened to sit where A had sat, then B and all his family incurred defilement; and if, thereafter, C went into B's residence, then C too became defiled, but not the members of his family. If, however, the process were reversed by B going into Cs house, then the taint fell upon the whole of Cs family. At C the chain ended: D might enter C's house with impunity. In the observance of these rules most unnatural violence was done 186