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Updated: June 1, 2025
They perceived the worth of the new ideas to their own policy; they encouraged the new Shintoism; they felt that a time was coming when they could hope to shake off the domination of the Tokugawa. And their opportunity came at last with the advent to Japan of Commodore Perry's fleet. The events of that time are well known, and need not here be dwelt upon at any length.
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.
All have felt and recognized that loftiest of all truths, the communion of the living and the dead, and have given it various names designating the same mysterious verity: the Christians know it as revival of merit, the Buddhists as reincarnation, or transmigration of souls, and the Japanese as Shintoism, or ancestor-worship.
Only then did Confucianism begin to develop into the imposing system that dominated China almost down to the present day. Confucianism did not become a religion. It was comparable to the later Japanese Shintoism, or to a group of customs among us which we all observe, if we do not want to find ourselves excluded from our community, but which we should never describe as religion.
Thus while the people in the West, who worshipped the Prince of Peace, in his abused name were cutting each other's throat, destroying each other's property, torturing and proselyting by rack and flames, the islanders on the West Pacific coast were enjoying complete religious toleration. Three religions Shintoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism lived together in peace.
When Xavier and his successors reached Japan, it was to find the people of that country in a state of the greatest misery, the result of a long era of anarchy and misrule. Of the native religions, Shintoism had in great measure vanished, while Buddhism, though affecting the imaginations of the people by the gorgeousness of its service, had little with which to reach their hearts.
For a century and a half subsequently Shintoism held up its head, and eventually, as the outcome of the Revolution of 1868, which marked a turning-point in the history of Japan, Buddhism was disestablished and disendowed and Shinto was installed as the State religion.
As to the origin of this religion there is very much the same uncertainty and quite as large an amount of theorising as is the case in reference to the Japanese race and language. The most generally received opinion is that Shintoism is closely allied with, if not an offshoot of, the old religion of the Chinese people prior to the days of Confucius.
In this matter, Buddhism and Shintoism have got rather mixed, and, as I have elsewhere said, if the founder of Buddhism were reincarnated in Japan to-day, he would find it difficult to recognise his religion in some of the developments of Buddhism as it exists in Japan.
Not only is the primitive religion, Shintoism, systematic hero-worship, but every hero known to history is deified, and has a shrine or temple. These heroes, too, are all men of conspicuous valor or strength, famed for mighty deeds of daring. They are men of passion.
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