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Updated: June 7, 2025
And so on ad infinitum, the same central purpose running thru it all, whether Hindu or Parsee, Buddist or Janist, Confucian or Shintoist, Jew or Gentile, Mohammedan or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, Methodist or Baptist, Presbyterian or Lutheran, Calvinist or Arminian, Unitarian or Trinitarian, one and all, have one and the same ultimate object: To get into right relations with God, each according to his own conception of God, and what he understands to be his will concerning him.
There were 304 of the first rank, and 2828 of the second rank. But multitudes of temples were not included in this official classification, and depended upon local support. The recorded total of Shinto shrines to-day is upwards of 195,000. All these cults are now linked together by tradition; and the devout Shintoist worships the divinities of all, collectively, in his daily morning prayer.
The gauze hanging over them throws reflections as of the sea upon them; one might suppose them victims drowned in an aquarium. And withal the sacred lamps, the altar crowded with strange Shintoist symbols, give a mock religious air to this family tableau. 'Honi soit qui mal y pense', but why is not that maidservant rather laid by the side of her mistresses?
The gauze hanging over them throws reflections as of the sea upon them; one might suppose them victims drowned in an aquarium. And withal the sacred lamps, the altar crowded with strange Shintoist symbols, give a mock religious air to this family tableau. 'Honi soit qui mal y pense', but why is not that maidservant rather laid by the side of her mistresses?
Accepting the Shinto theory of origins, this ascription of divinity to human nature proves less inconsistent than it appears at first sight; and the modern Shintoist may discover a germ of scientific truth in the doctrine which traces back the beginnings of life to the Sun.
To the enlightened Buddhist, Confucian, and even the modern Shintoist the phallus-worshipper is a "heathen," a "pagan," and yet he still practises his faith and rites. It is for us to hint at the powerful influence such persistent ideas have upon Japanese morals and civilization.
There is even a little Shintoist altar, before which Madame Prune has not been able to restrain her feelings, and before which she has fallen down and chanted her prayers in her bleating, goat-like voice: "Wash me clean from all my impurity, O Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami! as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo."
Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted beneath me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer mornings while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha, while the eternal sun, hardly risen, already sends through the cracks of our wooden panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through our darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.
The gauze hanging over them throws reflections as of the sea upon them; one might suppose them victims drowned in an aquarium. And withal the sacred lamps, the altar crowded with strange Shintoist symbols, give a mock religious air to this family picture. Honi soit qui mal y pense, but why is not that servant-girl rather laid by the side of her mistresses?
Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted beneath me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer mornings while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha, while the eternal sun, hardly risen, already sends through the cracks of our wooden panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through our darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.
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