Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/136

 as such interpretations prove to the historian, they must not be allowed to exclude other considerations; for whatever secular facts may be embodied in these ancient cosmographies, they enshrine also the germs of Japan's primitive religion, Shintō, or "the Way of the Gods," as it came to be called when the presence of other creeds made a distinctive appellation necessary. Before passing to a brief examination of the creed, a word may be said as to how its supernatural elements presented themselves to the national mind.

Among foreign observers it is commonly said that destructive criticism has never been permitted to invade the cosmogonal realm in Japan; that the basis of the national polity being the divine origin of the Emperor, any doubts thrown upon the traditions by which that genealogy is established would be counted treasonable. There is a large measure of truth in the supposition, but it is not the whole truth. If anti-Christian persecutions be excepted — and these were altogether political — men did not suffer any penalty for their opinions in Japan. The celebrated scholar Arai Hakuseki published a work of strongly rationalistic tendencies in the beginning of the eighteenth century; and some sixty years later, Ichikawa Tatsumaro wrote a brochure containing many of the criticisms that have been given to the world with such telling effect by modern European sinologues. It would not have been pos-