Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/253

Rh while as for general principles, so far as they proved anything, they turned out to prove what was not true.

Two claimants presented themselves for possession of the cult, Shintō and Buddhism. That the cult was chiefly practiced by neither, but by a third party well known to be illegitimate, called, with a certain pious duplicity of meaning, Both,—such being the literal rendering of the term Ryōbu,—did not simplify matters. For the hybrid Ryōbu, having candidly confessed its illegitimacy, dumbly refused to confess further on the subject.

The importance of the inquiry quite transcends the question of creed. Did it not do so, we might safely leave it to the zeal of church polemics. But it is not simply a question of religion; it is a question of race. For if the thing be Shintō, it is purely Japanese; if Buddhist, it is but another bit of foreign importation. In the one case it possesses the importance that attaches to being of the soil, in the other merely such superficial interest as attaches to soiling,—matter of much less archaeologic account. The point thus possesses ethnic consequence.

Direct inquiry elicited worse than