Page:Kojiki by Chamberlain.djvu/65

Rh relative to the early religious and political state of the Japanese can be gleaned from the pages of the “Records” and of the “Chronicles.” There are fragments of information,—fragments of two sorts,—some namely of clear import, others which are rather a matter for inference and for argument. Let us take the positive fragments first—the notices as to cosmological ideas, dreams, prayers, etc.

The first thing that strikes the student is that what, for want of a more appropriate name, we must call the religion of the Early Japanese, was not an organized religion. We can discover in it nothing corresponding to the body of dogma, the code of morals, and the sacred book authoritatively enforcing both, with which we are familiar in civilized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. What we find is a bundle of miscellaneous superstitions rather than a coordinated system. Dreams evidently were credited with great importance, the future being supposed to be foretold in them, and the will of the gods made known. Sometimes even an actual object, such as a wonderful sword, was sent down in a dream, thus to our ideas mixing the material with the spiritual. The subject did not, however, present itself in that light to the Early Japanese, to whom there was evidently but one order of phenomena,—what we should call the natural order. Heaven, or rather the Sky, was an actual place,—not more ethereal than earth, nor thought of as the abode of the blessed after death,—but simply a “high plain” situated above Japan and communicating with Japan by a bridge or ladder, and forming the residence of some of those powerful personages called kami,—a word, which we must make shift to translate by “god” or “goddess,” or “deity.” An arrow shot from earth could reach Heaven, and make a hole in it. There was at least one mountain in Heaven, and one river with a broad stony bed like those with which the traveller in Japan becomes familiar, one or two caves, one or more wells, and animals, and trees. There is, however, some confusion as to the mountain,—the celebrated Mount Kagu,—for there is one of that name in the province of Yamato.

Some of the gods dwelt here on earth, or descended hither from Heaven, and had children by human women. Such, for instance, was the emperor Jim-mu’s great-grandfather. Some few gods had tails or