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Updated: June 23, 2025
He even held that their divine descent could be proved without difficulty. All the Japanese were gods in this sense; and their country was properly called the Land of the Gods, Shinkoku or Kami-no-kuni. Are we to understand Hirata literally?
Its cause found worthy defenders in Motoori and Hirata. They are among the greatest Shintoists Japan has ever seen. Now, according to Shintoism, Japan is a holy land. It was made by the gods, whose lineal descendant is the Emperor. Hence he must be revered and worshipped as a god. This is the substance of Shintoism.
The son of Ninigi-no-Mikoto is said to have lived five hundred and eighty years at his palace of Takachiho; but that, remarks Hirata, "was a short life compared with the lives of those who lived before him." Thereafter men's bodies declined in force; life gradually became shorter and shorter; yet in spite of all degeneration the Japanese still show traces of their divine origin.
Yet it was not until the year 1841 that the Shogunate took alarm, and proclaimed its disquiet by banishing from the capital the great scholar Hirata, and forbidding him to write anything more. Not long afterwards he died.
Hirata wrote: "As the number of the gods who possess different functions is very great, it will be convenient to worship by name the most important only, and to include the rest in a general petition."
From the fact of the divine descent of the Japanese people proceeds their immeasurable superiority to the natives of other countries in courage and intelligence.* *Although Hirata claims the superiority for his own countrymen, he frankly acknowledges the achievements of the Dutch in natural science.
Yoshida was the forerunner of Motoori, Hirata, and other comparatively modern philosophers who contended for the revival of "Pure Shinto." Many Japanese annalists allege that Shinto owes its religious character solely to the suggestions of Buddhism, and point to the fact that the Shinto cult has never been able to inspire a great exponent.
The whole Imperial line, the "Sun's Succession," represented one unbroken descent from the Goddess of the Sun. Hirata wrote: "There exists no hard and fast line between the Age of the Gods and the present age and there exists no justification whatever for drawing one, as the Nihongi does."
These were not exactly the ideas of Kinjuro. But I remembered something Hirata wrote which reminded me of Kinjuro's words about a possible separation of souls. Hirata's teaching was that the ara-tama of a man may leave his body, assume his shape, and without his knowledge destroy a hated enemy. So I asked Kinjuro about it.
But even then they were thought to be particularly attached to their tombs, shrines, and homesteads. Hirata wrote, in the early part of the nineteenth century: "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.
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