32 



THE REV. PREBENDARY H. E. FOX^ M.A.^ ON 



instances, with any other people, and only since the great 

 reaction in the present generation has she extended her posses- 

 sions to Formosa, Corea and Saghalien. A feudal system, not 

 unlike that which held rule in Western Europe in the middle 

 ages, came to an end in Japan within the memory of old men 

 still living. And, though she can build her own Dreadnoughts 

 antl has shown a military genius ^vhicli startled the world, her 

 representatiA^e government is still in its elementary stages. AVe 

 are all familiar with the term " Bushido," or the spirit of Japan, 

 more literally, the way of the Bushi or kniglit. But as it is a 

 key to many of the problems, social and religious, which modern 

 Japan presents, a brief reference to its origin and development 

 may be useful. It has grown out of an earlier genius. About 

 the seventh century of the Christian era, a warrior clan, 

 inhabiting the central portion of the main Island, named 

 Yamato, gained supremacy over its neighbour tribes, driving 

 some to the North, and welding the rest into one kingdom 

 under the rule of its own chief. 



Dr. GrJFFis, referring to this, says : " The spirit and prowess 

 of these early conquerors have left an indelible impress upon 

 the language and the mind of the nation in the phrase- 

 Yamato-Damashii — the spirit of (Divine and Unconcj^uerable) 

 Japan . . . The Yamato men gradually advanced to conquest 

 under the impulse, as they believed, of a divine command. . . . 

 They claimed that their ancestors were from Heaven, that the 

 Sun was their kinswoman, and that their chief, or Mikado, was 

 vice-regent of the heavenly gods, but that those whom they 

 conquered were earth-born or sprung from the terrestrial 

 divinities.* 



In successive generations this elementary spirit of race 

 superiority crystallized into the narrower features of a feudal 

 system, and the original religion which had been more or less 

 animistic, or a worslii]) of the wonderful in nature, added to it 

 by degrees new worslii]) in the reverence shown to the departed 

 spirits of tribal chiefs, and this afterwards grew into an actual 

 worship of their Lord, tlie Mikado, the living representative of 

 his deified ancestors. This religion, if it can be so called as 

 recognizing some link between the higher and lower world, has 

 had little influence in the direction of morals. It has no ethical 

 code and supplies no motive for the control of natural instincts. 

 Naturally, any sense of a divine righteousness, and the need of 

 salvation, is wholly absent from the purely Shinto mind. The 



* licligions of Ja^mn^ p. 44. 



