Читать книгу Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series - Lafcadio Hearn - Страница 4

Sec. 1

IN Japan there are two forms of the Religion of the Dead—that which belongs to Shinto; and that which belongs to Buddhism. The first is the primitive cult, commonly called ancestor-worship. But the term ancestor- worship seems to me much too confined for the religion which pays reverence not only to those ancient gods believed to be the fathers of the Japanese race, but likewise to a host of deified sovereigns, heroes, princes, and illustrious men. Within comparatively recent times, the great Daimyo of Izumo, for example, were apotheosised; and the peasants of Shimane still pray before the shrines of the Matsudaira. Moreover Shinto, like the faiths of Hellas and of Rome, has its deities of the elements and special deities who preside over all the various affairs of life. Therefore ancestor-worship, though still a striking feature of Shinto, does not alone constitute the State Religion: neither does the term fully describe the Shinto cult of the dead—a cult which in Izumo retains its primitive character more than in other parts of Japan.

And here I may presume, though no Sinologue, to say something about that State Religion of Japan—that ancient faith of Izumo—which, although even more deeply rooted in national life than Buddhism, is far less known to the Western world. Except in special works by such men of erudition as Chamberlain and Satow—works with which the Occidental reader, unless himself a specialist, is not likely to become familiar outside of Japan—little has been written in English about Shinto which gives the least idea of what Shinto is. Of its ancient traditions and rites much of rarest interest may be learned from the works of the philologists just mentioned; but, as Mr. Satow himself acknowledges, a definite answer to the question, 'What is the nature of Shinto?' is still difficult to give. How define the common element in the six kinds of Shinto which are known to exist, and some of which no foreign scholar has yet been able to examine for lack of time or of authorities or of opportunity? Even in its modern external forms, Shinto is sufficiently complex to task the united powers of the historian, philologist, and anthropologist, merely to trace out the multitudinous lines of its evolution, and to determine the sources of its various elements: primeval polytheisms and fetishisms, traditions of dubious origin, philosophical concepts from China, Korea, and elsewhere—all mingled with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The so-called 'Revival of Pure Shinto'—an effort, aided by Government, to restore the cult to its archaic simplicity, by divesting it of foreign characteristics, and especially of every sign or token of Buddhist origin—resulted only, so far as the avowed purpose was concerned, in the destruction of priceless art, and in leaving the enigma of origins as complicated as before. Shinto had been too profoundly modified in the course of fifteen centuries of change to be thus remodelled by a fiat. For the like reason scholarly efforts to define its relation to national ethics by mere historical and philological analysis must fail: as well seek to define the ultimate secret of Life by the elements of the body which it animates. Yet when the result of such efforts shall have been closely combined with a deep knowledge of Japanese thought and feeling—the thought and sentiment, not of a special class, but of the people at large—then indeed all that Shinto was and is may be fully comprehended. And this may be accomplished, I fancy, through the united labour of European and Japanese scholars.

Yet something of what Shinto signifies—in the simple poetry of its beliefs—in the home training of the child—in the worship of filial piety before the tablets of the ancestors—may be learned during a residence of some years among the people, by one who lives their life and adopts their manners and customs. With such experience he can at least claim the right to express his own conception of Shinto.

Sec. 2

Those far-seeing rulers of the Meiji era, who disestablished Buddhism to strengthen Shinto, doubtless knew they were giving new force not only to a faith in perfect harmony with their own state policy, but likewise to one possessing in itself a far more profound vitality than the alien creed, which although omnipotent as an art-influence, had never found deep root in the intellectual soil of Japan. Buddhism was already in decrepitude, though transplanted from China scarcely more than thirteen centuries before; while Shinto, though doubtless older by many a thousand years, seems rather to have gained than to have lost force through all the periods of change. Eclectic like the genius of the race, it had appropriated and assimilated all forms of foreign thought which could aid its material manifestation or fortify its ethics. Buddhism had attempted to absorb its gods, even as it had adopted previously the ancient deities of Brahmanism; but Shinto, while seeming to yield, was really only borrowing strength from its rival. And this marvellous vitality of Shinto is due to the fact that in the course of its long development out of unrecorded beginnings, it became at a very ancient epoch, and below the surface still remains, a religion of the heart. Whatever be the origin of its rites and traditions, its ethical spirit has become identified with all the deepest and best emotions of the race. Hence, in Izumo especially, the attempt to create a Buddhist Shintoism resulted only in the formation of a Shinto-Buddhism.

And the secret living force of Shinto to-day—that force which repels missionary efforts at proselytising—means something much more profound than tradition or worship or ceremonialism. Shinto may yet, without loss of real power, survive all these. Certainly the expansion of the popular mind through education, the influences of modern science, must compel modification or abandonment of many ancient Shinto conceptions; but the ethics of Shinto will surely endure. For Shinto signifies character in the higher sense—courage, courtesy, honour, and above all things, loyalty. The spirit of Shinto is the spirit of filial piety, the zest of duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle without a thought of wherefore. It is the docility of the child; it is the sweetness of the Japanese woman. It is conservatism likewise; the wholesome check upon the national tendency to cast away the worth of the entire past in rash eagerness to assimilate too much of the foreign present. It is religion—but religion transformed into hereditary moral impulse— religion transmuted into ethical instinct. It is the whole emotional life of the race—the Soul of Japan.

The child is born Shinto. Home teaching and school training only give expression to what is innate: they do not plant new seed; they do but quicken the ethical sense transmitted as a trait ancestral. Even as a Japanese infant inherits such ability to handle a writing-brush as never can be acquired by Western fingers, so does it inherit ethical sympathies totally different from our own. Ask a class of Japanese students—young students of fourteen to sixteen—to tell their dearest wishes; and if they have confidence in the questioner, perhaps nine out of ten will answer: 'To die for His Majesty Our Emperor.' And the wish soars from the heart pure as any wish for martyrdom ever born. How much this sense of loyalty may or may not have been weakened in such great centres as Tokyo by the new agnosticism and by the rapid growth of other nineteenth-century ideas among the student class, I do not know; but in the country it remains as natural to boyhood as joy. Unreasoning it also is—unlike those loyal sentiments with us, the results of maturer knowledge and settled conviction. Never does the Japanese youth ask himself why; the beauty of self-sacrifice alone is the all-sufficing motive. Such ecstatic loyalty is a part of the national life; it is in the blood—inherent as the impulse of the ant to perish for its little republic—unconscious as the loyalty of bees to their queen. It is Shinto.

That readiness to sacrifice one's own life for loyalty's sake, for the sake of a superior, for the sake of honour, which has distinguished the race in modern times, would seem also to have been a national characteristic from the earliest period of its independent existence. Long before the epoch of established feudalism, when honourable suicide became a matter of rigid etiquette, not for warriors only, but even for women and little children, the giving one's life for one's prince, even when the sacrifice could avail nothing, was held a sacred duty. Among various instances which might be cited from the ancient Kojiki, the following is not the least impressive:

Prince Mayowa, at the age of only seven years, having killed his father's slayer, fled into the house of the Grandee (Omi) Tsubura. 'Then Prince Oho-hatsuse raised an army, and besieged that house. And the arrows that were shot were for multitude like the ears of the reeds. And the Grandee Tsubura came forth himself, and having taken off the weapons with which he was girded, did obeisance eight times, and said: "The maiden-princess Kara, my daughter whom thou deignedst anon to woo, is at thy service. Again I will present to thee five granaries. Though a vile slave of a Grandee exerting his utmost strength in the fight can scarcely hope to conquer, yet must he die rather than desert a prince who, trusting in him, has entered into his house." Having thus spoken, he again took his weapons, and went in once more to fight. Then, their strength being exhausted, and their arrows finished, he said to the Prince: "My hands are wounded, and our arrows are finished. We cannot now fight: what shall be done?" The Prince replied, saying: "There is nothing more to do. Do thou now slay me." So the Grandee Tsubura thrust the Prince to death with his sword, and forthwith killed himself by cutting off his own head.'