The first three beliefs survive from the dawn of civilization, or
before it,--from the time in which [32] the dead were the only gods,
without distinctions of power. The latter two would seem rather of
the period in which a true mythology--an enormous polytheism--had
been developed out of the primitive ghost-worship. There is nothing
simple in these beliefs: they are awful, tremendous beliefs; and
before Buddhism helped to dissipate them, their pressure upon the
mind of a people dwelling in a land of cataclysms, must have been
like an endless weight of nightmare. But the elder beliefs, in
softened form, are yet a fundamental part of the existing cult.
Though Japanese ancestor-worship has undergone many modifications in
the past two thousand years, these modifications have not transformed
its essential character in relation to conduct; and the whole
framework of society rests upon it, as on a moral foundation. The
history of Japan is really the history of her religion. No single
fact in this connection is more significant than the fact that the
ancient Japanese term for government--matsuri-goto--signifies
liberally "matters of worship." Later on we shall find that not only
government, but almost everything in Japanese society, derives
directly or indirectly from this ancestor-cult; and that in all
matters the dead, rather than the living, have been the rulers of the
nation and--the shapers of its destinies.



[33]

THE RELIGION OF THE HOME