Authentic history before the Christian era is unknown. At some point of
time, probably later than A.D. 200, a conquering tribe, one of many from
the Asian mainland, began to be paramount on the main island. About the
fourth century something like historic events and personages begin to be
visible, but no Japanese writings are older than the early part of the
eighth century, though almanacs and means of measuring time are found in
the sixth century. Whatever Japan may be in legend and mythology, she is
in fact and in history younger than Christianity. Her line of rulers, as
alleged in old official documents and ostentatiously reaffirmed in the
first article of the constitution of 1889, to be "unbroken for ages
eternal," is no older than that of the popes. Let us not think of Aryan
or Chinese antiquity when we talk of Japan. Her history as a state began
when the Roman empire fell. The Germanic nations emerged into history
long before the Japanese.

Roughly outlining the political and religious life of the ancient
Japanese, we note that their first system of government was a rude sort
of feudalism imposed by the conquerors and was synchronous with
aboriginal fetichism, nature worship, ancestral sacrifices, sun-worship
and possibly but not probably, a very rude sort of monotheism akin to
the primitive Chinese cultus.[9] Almost contemporary with Buddhism, its
introduction and missionary development, was the struggle for
centralized imperialism borrowed from the Chinese and consolidated in
the period from the seventh to the twelfth century. During most of this
time Shint[=o], or the primitive religion, was overshadowed while the
Confucian ethics were taught. From the twelfth to this nineteenth
century feudalism in politics and Buddhism in religion prevailed, though
Confucianism furnished the social laws or rules of daily conduct. Since
the epochal year of 1868, with imperialism reestablished and the feudal
system abolished, Shint[=o] has had a visible revival, being kept alive