Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/135

 to lighten and vivify; a long era of preparation, divided into six epochs by the inspired writers of the Old Testament, but of indefinite length in the Japanese cosmogony; finally, the subjugation of the rebellious angels, the appearance of man upon the scene, and his acquisition of dominion.

It has been said that whoever the earliest invaders of the Far-Eastern islands were, there is no more reason to suppose that they came to Japan without a religion than that they arrived there without a language. It has been further said by a learned sinologue that Amaterasu is identical with the Persian Mithras. A slightly increased strain upon the imaginative faculty might extend the line of Jimmu's ancestors to the city of Ur and the thirty-million-bricked temple of the Sun God; for if it be once conceded that the Japanese cosmogony is not indigenous but exotic, and if ingenuity applies itself to trace analogies between the outlines of Shintō and those of some continental "revelation," or likenesses between the nomenclatures of the two, startling results are soon reached. Such speculations are beside the business of showing what the Japanese believed, and how their beliefs influenced their lives.

Touching briefly upon these topics in a previous chapter, note was taken of the possibility of translating Japan's semi-mythical traditions into a vulgar record of aggressive invasions and defensive struggles; conflicts between the lust of conquest and the love of altar and hearth. Interesting