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Updated: May 23, 2025
Doubtless the difficulty of explaining Shinto has been due simply to the fact that the sinologists have sought for the source of it in books: in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, which are its histories; in the Norito, which are its prayers; in the commentaries of Motowori and Hirata, who were its greatest scholars.
Indeed, the word ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity, means 'family God, and in its present form is a corruption or contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the god of the house. Shinto expounders have, it is true, attempted to interpret the term otherwise; and Hirata, as quoted by Mr.
"All the dead become gods," wrote the great Shinto commentator, Hirata. So likewise, in the thought of the early Greeks and even of the late Romans, all the dead became gods.
Satow has found in Hirata a belief to which this seems to some extent akin the curious Shinto doctrine according to which a divine being throws off portions of itself by a process of fissure, thus producing what are called waki-mi-tama parted spirits, with separate functions. 21 Perhaps the most impressive of all the Buddhist temples in Kyoto.
'Every human action, says Hirata, 'is the work of a god. And Motowori, scarcely less famous an exponent of pure Shinto doctrine, writes: 'All the moral ideas which a man requires are implanted in his bosom by the gods, and are of the same nature with those instincts which impel him to eat when he is hungry or to drink when he is thirsty. With this doctrine of Intuition no Decalogue is required, no fixed code of ethics; and the human conscience is declared to be the only necessary guide.
To primitive Shinto conception the universe was filled with ghosts; to later Shinto conception the ghostly condition was not limited by place or time, even in the case of individual spirits. "Although," wrote Hirata, "the home of the spirits is in the Spirit-house, they are equally present wherever they are worshipped, being gods, and therefore ubiquitous."
A great Japanese scholar has contended that the centralization which prevailed in later ages was wholly an imitation of Chinese bureaucracy, and that organized feudalism was the original form of government in Japan. The annals appear to support that view to a limited extent, but the subject will presently be discussed at greater length. *B. H. Chamberlain. Hirata Atsutane.
Above these are the gentile gods or Ujigami, ghosts of old rulers now worshipped as tutelar gods. All Ujigami, Hirata tells us, are under the control of the Great God of Izumo, Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, and, "acting as his agents, they rule the fortunes of human beings before their birth, during their life, and after their death."
Gods and men were supposed to have also a Rough Spirit and a Gentle Spirit; and Hirata remarks that the Rough Spirit of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami was worshipped at one temple, and his Gentle Spirit at another.*... Also we have to remember that great numbers of Ujigami temples are dedicated to the same divinity.
More than any other Japanese writer, Hirata has enabled us to understand the hierarchy of Shinto mythology, corresponding closely, as we might have expected, to the ancient ordination of Japanese society. In the lowermost ranks are the spirits of common people, worshipped only at the household shrine or at graves.
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