Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/78

 son, as was natural, so that a man was spoken of as "Hierarch Kasumi" (Nakatomi no Kasumi), or "Guardsman Moriya" (Monobe Moriya), or "Purveyor Kujira" (Kashiwade no Kujira).

Eminent as was the position assigned to religion in the polity of the ancient Japanese, no trace of a doctrinal creed, as creeds are understood in the Occident, is found in their lives. Their burial customs show that they believed in an existence beyond the grave, but they seem to have troubled themselves little about the nature of that existence, or about transcendental speculations of any kind. The chief denizen of celestial space, according to their creed, was a tutelary deity, the Goddess of Light, and since her worship, or the worship of some lesser spirit, had to preface every administrative act of importance, religious rites were placed, as has been already stated, at the head of all official functions. Yet special buildings for ceremonial purposes did not originally exist. The Emperor, as the nation's high-priest, worshipped in the palace, where were kept the insignia of sovereignty,—the sword, the mirror, and the jewel of divine origin. Not until the first century before Christ were shrines erected apart from the palace, and the immediate cause of the innovation was a pestilence which the soothsayers interpreted as a heavenly protest against the method of worship then pursued. The creed was not exclusive. Its pantheon,