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Above them, by the lantern glow, I can see a marvellous frieze of dragons and water, carved in some rich wood by the hand of a master. Within I can see the symbols of Shinto, in a side shrine on the left; and directly before us the lanterns reveal a surface of matted floor vaster than anything I had expected to find. Therefrom I can divine the scale of the edifice which I suppose to be the temple.
It would therefore be desirable from this point of view to render regular worship to deities who can send disaster; and thus to induce them to abstain from sending it. In the fourth Shinto ritual the gods of the Winds are represented as initiating the contract and prescribing its terms.
At the foot of the steps, and repeated at several stages up the slope, are the peculiar torii, or "bird-perches," that form the distinctive mark of a Shinto temple. Numerous shrines occupy the court-yard of the temple; the shrines are built of wood mostly, and contain representations of the various gods to whose particular worship they are dedicated.
The traditional rules of the household, the traditional laws of the commune these were the morals of Shinto: to obey them was religion; to disobey them, impiety .... And, after all, the true significance of any religious code, written or unwritten, lies in its expression of social duty, its doctrine of the right and wrong of conduct, its embodiment of a people's moral experience.
"Obey the Emperor and follow your own instincts," is the gist of the Shinto religion, in so far as it may be called a religion at all: the tendency is to consider it only a form of patriotism and not a religion.
Phallic forms abound in the land, in spite of repressive measures on the part of the government, but the cult partakes of the general looseness of the Shinto organization of supernatural Powers. It is said to have been adopted in some cases by Buddhists. +396+. It is among the great ancient civilized peoples that the most definite organization of phallic cults is found.
It was reserved for four other men to lay bare the facts of the Mikado's divine right and to rehabilitate the Shinto cult. Associated with them were other scholars of less note, but these are overshadowed by the four great masters. Kada, indeed, did not achieve much more than the restoration of pure Japanese literature to the pedestal upon which it deserved to stand.
The Buddhist religion was disestablished and disendowed during the years 1871-74, a step taken in consequence of the temporary ascendency of Shinto." Although Confucianism took a strong hold on the people in the early part of the seventeenth century, yet its influence was limited to the educated and ruling classes. The vast multitude still remained Shinto-Buddhists.
Otherwise the books are dull reading, in spite of the light which they shed upon ancient customs and beliefs; and, generally speaking, Japanese mythology is unattractive. But to dwell here upon the mythology, at any length, is unnecessary; for its relation to Shinto can be summed up in the space of a single brief paragraph
They are thus summarized by the Kamakura Jidaishi: "The conditions of the time called two parties into existence: the Kyoto party and the military party. To the former belonged not only many officials of Shinto shrines, priests of Buddhist temples, and managers of private manors, but also a few nominal retainers of the Bakufu.
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