Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/356

296 their old hereditary traditions, the Tartar-Corean stock having the Shamanism and beast-idealizing and worship, together with all the repertoire of ideas and imaginings of Chinese Asia; the Southern element carrying over to the islands a wonderful mass of mythology that has close connection with the sea and the waters under the earth; the Buddhists conveying fresh elements of myth and story from both the cold and warm parts of the mainland, have all had their share in making Japan's folk-lore.

Furthermore, the early prehistoric and indigenous tales recited through centuries to admiring listeners, and forming an integral part of the Kojiki or national Bible of the Japanese, have been mightily reacted upon by Buddhism. Professor Basil H. Chamberlain well says, that Buddhism has shaped and colored the folk-lore of Japan.

Of that great mass of fairy and folk tales found in the Kojiki, the chief literary basis of the Shintō religion, three distinct strata or cycles may be distinguished. One group of stories illustrates events or ideals from the extreme south, the Riu Kiu islands and Kiushiu; another, from Idzumo and the southwest; and the third from Yamato or central Japan. Evidently, also, as has been proved by Professor Kumii of the Historical Society in the Imperial University of Tokyo, the early religion of the aboriginal inhabitants whom the conquerors from the mainland of Asia found on the soil when they made conquest of the country and set up their tribe-chief as Mikado, was something quite different from the Kami-no-michi (that is, the Way, or Doctrine of the Gods,) or Shintō religion. This Shintō cultus, in which the Mikado is reckoned the descendant of the heavenly gods and their vicar on the earth, and therefore the one to whom all allegiance and obedience is due, is really a composite of two religions, made by over-laying the ancient aboriginal cult by a usurpation of both politics and dogmatics. In a word, the conquerors from the mainland of Asia captured the indigenous religion, which was probably the simple worship of Heaven, with liturgy and bloodless sacrifices, and made it the engine of their political power, giving it a head and front in the person of the august Emperor, the Mikado. The superior weapons, abilities, and higher culture of the conquerors,