Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/421

Rh On more than one occasion we have heard a Japanese asked by a European traveller what his religion was,—whether Buddhist or Shintō,—and have been amused at his look of blank perplexity. He could not, for the life of him, make out what the enquirer was driving at. It is the established custom to present infants at the Shintō family temple one month after birth. It is equally customary to be buried by the Buddhist parish priest. The inhabitants of each district contribute to the festivals of both religions alike, without being aware of any inconsistency. They do not draw the hard and fast distinctions with which we are familiar.

Lest such laxity and the use of the epithet "undevotional," which we have employed above, should mislead the reader, he must remember that devotion and ethics, theology and conduct, are separate things. Because the Japanese seem irreligious, we would by no means be understood to accuse them of being specially immoral. Even the word "irreligious" will be considered by some of those who know them best scarcely to suit the case. The family shrine in every household, the numerous temples, the multitudes who still make pilgrimages,—all these things will be appealed to as proofs that the masses are believers, whatever the intellectual classes may say. In any case, Japanese irreligion differs favourably from the utterly blank irreligion that is flaunted in the modern West. Though they pray little and make light of supernatural dogma, the religion of the family—filial piety—binds them down in truly sacred bonds. The most materialistic Japanese would shrink with horror from neglect of his father's grave, and of the rites prescribed by usage for the anniversaries of a father's or other near kinsman's death. Though unmindful of any future for himself, he nevertheless, by a happy inconsistency, acts as if the dead needed his care. This state of things is not confined to Japan, but characterises the whole Far East, the whole Chinese world. Furthermore—for we have no pet theory to prove, but are inclined rather to view contradiction as of the very essence of the facts of life—it may be