196 BULLETIN 148, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



VIII 



OBJECTS OP RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL OF SHINTO 



INTRODUCTION 



Shinto is the old indigenous religion of Japan, It is in the main a 

 worship of nature, the personification of natural objects and phe- 

 nomena. According to the ancient records a divine couple, Izanagi 

 and Izanami, before the gods themselves were born, brought forth the 

 Japanese Islands, the gods, and all things. Two of the offspring, 

 Amaterasu and Susa-no-wo, produced eight children. From one of 

 them was decended Ninigi, who came down from heaven to rule the 

 world; that is, Japan, and became the ancestor of Jimmu Tenno, 

 the first human Mikado, from whom the imperial house of Japan 



derives its descent. ^^ 



SHINTO PANTHEON 



Shinto means the "way of the gods" — that is, the doctrine of the 

 gods — and was coined in the sixth century A. D., when Buddhism 

 was introduced into Japan from Korea, in contrast to Butsuto — the 

 way of the Buddhas. The Japanese word for god is Kami. It 

 means "above," "superior," and suggests the theory that celestial 

 beings were the first deities. (Compare Latin, superi, or coelicoli, as 

 designations of the gods.) As is always the case in nature worship, 

 Shinto has "godsman}^" and "lords many," and the term " kami " is 

 applied not only to the gods who reside in heaven, but also to men, 

 animals, and inanimate things — any being that is strange, wondrous, 

 and for the extraordinary and preeminent powers or qualities which 

 it possesses, inspires awe, reverence, or dread. The number of gods 

 is fluctuating. So is also their character vague and ill-defined, and 

 their functions much confused. A god may have originally some 

 special function or department, but in course of time he acquires the 

 functions of a general providence that watches over human aft'airs. 

 Besides the functions of a god vary in different places of worship, and 

 ver}^ often a god is worshiped simply as the deity of a particular local 

 shrine, nothing more being known of him. The Pantheon of Shinto 

 is thus formed of two main groups — deified nature and deified men. 



Shinto has no supreme being, nor is the sky deified as in China. 

 It is the region where the gods reside. Theie has been, however, a 

 tendency to exalt some of the gods to an eminent position. The 



'» The oldest Japanese mythological and quasi-historical narratives are the Kojiki, ' ' Records of ancient 

 matters," compiled by imperial order in 712 A. D., and the Nihongi,"Chronielo of Japan," also an official 

 compilation made in 720 A. D. The former was translated by B. H. Chamberlain in Transactions of the 

 Asiatic Society of Japan in 1882; the latter by G. W. Aston in Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan 

 Society, 2 volumes, London, 1896. A German translation, under the title' Die historischen Quellen der 

 Shinto-Religion, of both the Kojikj and Nihongi was made by Karl Florenz, Gottingen and Leipzig, 1919. 

 Numerous extracts from these works are given by G. W. Aston in Shinto, the way of the gods, {passim), 

 Longmans, Green and Co., London, New York, and Bombay, 1905. 



