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Considering that this code which inculcated humanity, repressed moral laxity, prohibited celibacy, and rigorously maintained the family-cult, was drawn up in the time of the extirpation of the Jesuit missions, the position assumed in regard to religious freedom appears to us one of singular liberality.
Rigidly as the family-cult dictated behaviour in the home, strictly as the commune enforced its standards of communal duty, just so rigidly and strictly did the rulers of the nation dictate how the individual man, woman, or child should dress, walk, sit, speak, work, eat, drink. Amusements were not less unmercifully regulated than were labours.
There are various other forms of Shinto worship; but they need not be considered for the present. Of the three forms of ancestor-worship above mentioned, the family-cult is the first in evolutional order, the others being later developments.
As early as the eighth century, ancestor-worship appears to have developed the three principal forms under which it still exists; and thereafter the family-cult began to assume a character which offers many resemblances to the domestic religion of the old European civilizations. Let us now glance at the existing forms of this domestic cult, the universal religion of Japan.
But, in speaking of the family-cult as the oldest, I do not mean the home-religion as it exists to-day; neither do I mean by "family" anything corresponding to the term "household." In prehistoric Japan the domestic cult of the house-ancestor probably did not exist; the family-rites would appear to have been performed only at the burial-place.
Although concubinage was tolerated in the Samurai class, for reasons relating to the continuance of the family-cult, Iyeyasu denounces the indulgence of the privilege for merely selfish reasons: "Silly and ignorant men neglect their true wives for the sake of a loved mistress, and thus disturb the most important relation.... Men so far sunk as this may always be known as Samurai without fidelity or sincerity."
As the patriarchal families, later on, become grouped into tribal clans, there grows up the custom of tribal sacrifice to the spirits of the clan-rulers; this cult being superadded to the family-cult, and marking the second stage of ancestor-worship.
No persistent form of ancestor-worship is primitive; and every established domestic cult has been developed out of some irregular and non-domestic family-cult, which, again, must have grown out of still more ancient funeral-rites. Our knowledge of ancestor-worship, as regards the early European civilizations, cannot be said to extend to the primitive form of the cult.
No legal presumptive heir to the headship of a family can enter into another family as adopted son or husband; nor can he abandon the paternal house to establish an independent family of his own.* Provision has been made to meet extraordinary cases; but no individual is allowed, without good and sufficient reason, to free himself from those traditional obligations which the family-cult imposes.
Then, under Chinese influence, the domestic form of ancestor-worship was established in lieu of the primitive family-cult: thereafter offerings and prayers were made regularly in the home, where the ancestral tablets represented the tombs of the family dead.
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