Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/189

 monuments of Japanese literature and history, and to disprove the accusation that before the introduction of Chinese philosophy the Japanese were a nation of savages without any rule of conduct. But we shall see that the real goal to which his efforts were directed was the establishment of a religion on a Shintô basis, before which both Buddhism and Confucianism should disappear. It is this endeavour which has caused him to be regarded in a certain as sense the founder of a new school, although on a close examination of his system it would no doubt be found that he was actually indebted to the Chinese philosophy for the moral code which he attempted to derive from Shintô, and that the latter possesses only those characteristics of a religion which belong to theological dogma.

The Tama-dasuki has already been mentioned as one of the works which Hirata wrote in the year 1811. It appears to have been originally composed in a very colloquial style, but in 1824 he completely rewrote the first nine volumes, and gave to them a shape more worthy of the subject. It is a commentary on certain prayers which he had drawn up for the use of his pupils and contains, half buried in a mass of irrelevant matter, his views of Shintô as a religion and the biographies of Kada, Mabnchi and MotoriMotoöri [sic] which have been utilized in the foregoing part of this paper. The first five volumes were printed in 1829, the next four some time after his death, and the tenth, which contains his teaching as to the worship of ancestors and his life by his adopted son Kanetane, was published in 1874.

As Hirata observes, the celebration of rites in honour of the gods was considered in ancient times to be the chief function of the Mikados. When Ninigi no mikoto descended from heaven his divine progenitors taught him how he was to rule the country, and their teaching consisted in this: ‘Everything in the world depends on the spirit of the gods of heaven and earth, and therefore the worship of the gods is a matter of primary importance. The gods who do harm are to be appeased, so that they may not punish those who have offended them,