Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/219

Rh Some writers spell the name Shintō, as it is spelled here, and others spell it without h and write Sintō. Either form is practically good, but strictly speaking neither is correct, for the Japanese tongue does not distinguish the two syllables shi and si, its corresponding sound being something halfway between the two. By some writers this word is written also Shintōism. The addition of the suffix ism has this practical advantage—it gives a clew to the category to which the thing denoted by the word belongs. On the other hand, it makes the word tautological, and hence is not used here. One may ask. Then, is the name Taouism tautological? Certainly not, for there the word taóu or tō is used in that particular sense which is well known to those who are familiar with the teaching of the founder of that system.

I have just said that the name Shintō consists of two Chinese—not Japanese—words, and hence the origin of this name can not be regarded as native to Japan. But here let me emphasize—because I know there are some foreign scholars who have made the mistake—the fact that the Chinese origin of the name Shintō by no means implies the Chinese origin of the thing indicated by it. Buddhism had already existed for some time before it received its name. Christianity existed before it began to be called by its name. So, after these analogies, we might just as well say that there was the thing Shintō existing before its name was applied to it. The earliest mention of the name Shintō, so far as I know, is found in the Nihongi, the Chronicles of Japan, which was completed in the year 720 Before the introduction of Confucianism and Buddhism the religion of Japan had no need of being called by any name. But when these foreign systems made their appearance and began to spread, there came, it seems, the necessity of calling the native faith by a particular name by way of distinction. In Japan, Buddhism was called Butsu-dō, the "way of the Buddhas," and Confucianism, Ju-dō, the "way of the sages." To contrast with these, the native religion probably began to be called Shin-tō, the "way of the gods," the dō of the two former names being the same word with the tō of the last, only differently pronounced for euphony. At what particular time this happened we have no means of knowing. The name is not found in the oldest extant book of the Japanese language, called Kojiki, the Records of Ancient Matters, which was completed eight years before the Nihongi—that is, 712 but as we have already in the Constitution of Prince Shōtoku a passage where Shintō, Confucianism, and Buddhism are called the "three systems," by their respective names, "Shin, Ju, Butsu," and as this Constitution was drawn up by the prince in the reign of the Empress Suiko ( 593-628), we may suppose that the name Shintō was already known toward the close of the sixth century, although