Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/140

 said with unfailing regularity and devoutness. Many Western critics have alleged that Shintō is not a religion; that it provides no system of morals, offers no ethical code, has no ritual, and does not concern itself about a future state. Nevertheless, creed or cult, Shintō may certainly claim to have established a strong hold upon the heart of the people. The annual pilgrimages to the Shrines of Ise, where the Goddess of the Sun and the Goddess of Abundance are worshipped, attract tens of thousands of devotees each spring, and the renovation of the buildings every twentieth year rouses the whole nation to a fervour of faith. Not a peasant believes that his farm can be productive, not a merchant that his business can thrive, unless he pays, or honestly resolves to pay, at least one visit to Ise during his lifetime, and no household believes itself purged of sin unless its members clasp hands and bow heads regularly before the ''Kami-dana. Shintō,'' in truth, is essentially a family creed. Its roots are entwined around the principle of the household's integrity and perpetuity. Nothing that concerns the welfare of the family or the peace and prosperity of the household is too small or too humble for apotheosis. There is a deity of the caldron in which the rice is boiled, as there is a deity of thunder; there is a god of the saucepan, as there is a divinity of the harvest; there is a spirit of the "long-rope well," as there is a spirit of phys-