Nevertheless, to understand it better has become a matter of
importance. Japan has entered into the world's competitive struggle;
and the worth of any people in that struggle depends upon character
quite as much as upon force. We can learn something about Japanese
character if we are able to ascertain the nature of the conditions
which shaped it,--the great general facts of the moral experience of
the race. And these facts we should find expressed or suggested in
the history of the national beliefs, and in the history of those
social institutions derived from and developed by religion.



[20]

[21]

THE ANCIENT CULT

The real religion of Japan, the religion still professed in one form
or other, by the entire nation, is that cult which has been the
foundation of all civilized religion, and of all civilized
society,--Ancestor-worship. In the course of thousands of years this
original cult has undergone modifications, and has assumed various
shapes; but everywhere in Japan its fundamental character remains
unchanged. Without including the different Buddhist forms of
ancestor-worship, we find three distinct rites of purely Japanese
origin, subsequently modified to some degree by Chinese influence and
ceremonial. These Japanese forms of the cult are all classed together
under the name of "Shinto," which signifies, "The Way of the Gods."