Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation | Page 7

Greek (Greek genos); or the Roman gens,--the patriarchal family in the
largest sense of the term. In prehistoric Japan the domestic cult of the
house-ancestor probably did not exist;--the family-rites would appear to
have been performed only at the burial-place. But the later domestic
cult, having been developed out of the primal family-rite, indirectly
represents the most ancient form of the religion, and should therefore
be considered first in any study of Japanese social evolution.
The evolutional history of ancestor-worship has been very much the
same in all countries; and that [23] of the Japanese cult offers
remarkable evidence in support of Herbert Spencer's exposition of the

law of religious development. To comprehend this general law, we
must, however, go back to the origin of religious beliefs. One should
bear in mind that, from a sociological point of view, it is no more
correct to speak of the existing ancestor-cult in Japan as "primitive,"
than it would be to speak of the domestic cult of the Athenians in the
time of Pericles as "primitive." No persistent form of ancestor-worship
is primitive; and every established domestic cult has been developed
out of some irregular and non-domestic family-cult, which, again, must
have grown out of still more ancient funeral-rites.
Our knowledge of ancestor-worship, as regards the early European
civilizations, cannot be said to extend to the primitive form of the cult.
In the case of the Greeks and the Romans, our knowledge of the subject
dates from a period at which a domestic religion had long been
established; and we have documentary evidence as to the character of
that religion. But of the earlier cult that must have preceded the
home-worship, we have little testimony; and we can surmise its nature
only by study of the natural history of ancestor-worship among peoples
not yet arrived at a state of civilization. The true domestic cult begins
with a settled civilization. Now when the Japanese race first established
itself in Japan, it does not appear to have [24] brought with it any
civilization of the kind which we would call settled, nor any
well-developed ancestor-cult. The cult certainly existed; but its
ceremonies would seem to have been irregularly performed at graves
only. The domestic cult proper may not have been established until
about the eighth century, when the spirit-tablet is supposed to have
been introduced from China. The earliest ancestor-cult, as we shall
presently see, was developed out of the primitive funeral-rites and
propitiatory ceremonies.
The existing family religion is therefore a comparatively modern
development; but it is at least as old as the true civilization of the
country, and it conserves beliefs and ideas which are indubitably
primitive, as well as ideas and beliefs derived from these. Before
treating further of the cult itself, it will be necessary to consider some
of these older beliefs.

The earliest ancestor-worship,--"the root of all religions," as Herbert
Spencer calls it,--was probably coeval with the earliest definite belief in
ghosts. As soon as men were able to conceive the idea of a shadowy
inner self, or double, so soon, doubtless, the propitiatory cult of spirits
began. But this earliest ghost-worship must have long preceded that
period of mental development in which men first became capable of
forming abstract ideas. The [25] primitive ancestor-worshippers could
not have formed the notion of a supreme deity; and all evidence
existing as to the first forms of their worship tends to show that there
primarily existed no difference whatever between the conception of
ghosts and the conception of gods. There were, consequently, no
definite beliefs in any future state of reward or of punishment,--no
ideas of any heaven or hell. Even the notion of a shadowy underworld,
or Hades, was of much later evolution. At first the dead were thought of
only as dwelling in the tombs provided for them,--whence they could
issue, from time to time, to visit their former habitations, or to make
apparition in the dreams of the living. Their real world was the place of
burial,--the grave, the tumulus. Afterwards there slowly developed the
idea of an underworld, connected in some mysterious way with the
place of sepulture. Only at a much later time did this dim underworld of
imagination expand and divide into regions of ghostly bliss and woe ....
It is a noteworthy fact that Japanese mythology never evolved the ideas
of an Elysium or a Tartarus,--never developed the notion of a heaven or
a hell. Even to this day Shinto belief represents the pre-Homeric stage
of imagination as regards the supernatural.
Among the Indo-European races likewise there appeared to have been
at first no difference between gods and ghosts, nor any ranking of gods
as greater [26] and lesser. These distinctions were gradually developed.
"The spirits of the dead," says Mr. Spencer, "forming, in a primitive