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"You cannot hope," Hirata says, "to live more than a hundred years, under the most favourable circumstances; but as you will go to the Unseen Realm of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami after death, and be subject to him, learn betimes to bow down before him." ... That weird fancy expressed in the wonderful fragment by Coleridge, "The Wanderings of Cain," would therefore seem to have actually formed an article of ancient Shinto faith: "The Lord is God of the living only: the dead have another God." ...
I think so but we must remember that there existed in feudal times large classes of people, outside of the classes officially recognized as forming the nation, who were not counted as Japanese, nor even as human beings: these were pariahs, and reckoned as little better than animals. Hirata probably referred to the four great classes only samurai, farmers, artizans, and merchants.
Of course this position involved the doctrine of a divine descent for the whole race, inasmuch as, according to the old mythology, the first Japanese were all descendants of gods, and that doctrine Hirata boldly accepted. All the Japanese, he averred, were of divine origin, and for that reason superior to the people of all other countries.
No one, says Hirata, who constantly discharges that duty, will ever be disrespectful to the gods or to his living parents. "Such a man will also be loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle with his wife and children; for the essence of this devotion is in truth filial piety." And it is in this sentiment that the secret of much strange feeling in Japanese character must be sought.
"Every one," declares Hirata, "is certain to commit accidental offences, however careful he may be... Evil acts and words are of two kinds: those of which we are conscious, and those of which we are not conscious .... It is better to assume that we have committed such unconscious offences."
The Ko-ji-ki is said to have been written from the dictation of an old man of marvellous memory; and the Shinto theologian Hirata would have us believe that traditions thus preserved are especially trustworthy.
Indeed, it has been frequently so expounded by its own greatest scholars and theologians. Its divinities are ghosts; all the dead become deities. In the Tama-no-mihashira the great commentator Hirata says 'the spirits of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about us, and they all become gods of varying character and degrees of influence.
Such a man also will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle to his wife and children. For the essence of this devotion is indeed filial piety." From the sociologist's point of view, Hirata is right: it is unquestionably true that the whole system of Far-Eastern ethics derives from the religion of the household.
The following extract from Hirata will be found of interest, not only as showing the supposed relation of the individual to the Ujigami, but also as suggesting how the act of abandoning one's birthplace was formerly judged by common opinion: "When a person removes his residence, his original Ujigami has to make arrangements with the Ujigami of the place whither he transfers his abode.
Hirata therefore declared that all virtues derived from the worship of ancestors; and his words, as translated by Sir Ernest Satow, deserve particular attention: "It is the duty of a subject to be diligent in worshipping his ancestors, whose minister he should consider himself to be.
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