The Religions of Japan | Page 2

in penetrating to the reasons behind the phenomena, I fear I often made myself troublesome to both priests and lay folk. While at work in T[=o]ki[=o], though under obligation to teach only physical science, I voluntarily gave instruction in ethics to classes in the University. I richly enjoyed this work, which, by questioning and discussion, gave me much insight into the minds of young men whose homes were in every province of the Empire. In my own house I felt free to teach to all comers the religion of Jesus, his revelation of the fatherhood of God and the ethics based on his life and words. While, therefore, in studying the subject, I have great indebtedness to acknowledge to foreigners, I feel that first of all I must thank the natives who taught me so much both by precept and practice. Among the influences that have helped to shape my own creed and inspire my own life, have been the beautiful lives and noble characters of Japanese officers, students and common people who were around and before me. Though freely confessing obligation to books, writings, and artistic and scholastic influences, I hasten first to thank the people of Japan, whether servants, superior officers, neighbors or friends. He who seeks to learn what religion is from books only, will learn but half.
Gladly thanking those, who, directly or indirectly, have helped me with light from the written or printed page, I must first of all gratefully express my especial obligations to those native scholars who have read to me, read for me, or read with me their native literature.
The first foreign students of Japanese religions were the Dutch, and the German physicians who lived with them, at Déshima. Kaempfer makes frequent references, with test and picture, in his Beschryving van Japan. Von Siebold, who was an indefatigable collector rather than a critical student, in Vol. V. of his invaluable Archiv (Pantheon von Nippon), devoted over forty pages to the religions of Japan. Dr. J.J. Hoffman translated into Dutch, with notes and explanations, the Butsu-z[=o]-dzu-i, which, besides its 163 figures of Buddhist holy men, gives a bibliography of the works mentioned by the native author. In visiting the Japanese museum on the Rapenburg, Leyden, one of the oldest, best and most intelligently arranged in Europe, I have been interested with the great work done by the Dutchmen, during two centuries, in leavening the old lump for that transformation which in our day as New Japan, surprises the world. It requires the shock of battle to awaken the western nations to that appreciation of the racial and other differences between the Japanese and Chinese, which the student has already learned.
The first praises, however, are to be awarded to the English scholars, Messrs. Satow, Aston, Chamberlain, and others, whose profound researches in Japanese history, language and literature have cleared the path for others to tread in. I have tried to acknowledge my debt to them in both text and appendix.
To several American missionaries, who despite their trying labors have had the time and the taste to study critically the religions of Japan, I owe thanks and appreciation. With rare acuteness and learning, Rev. Dr. George Wm. Knox has opened on its philosophical, and Rev. Dr. J.H. DeForest on its practical side, the subject of Japanese Confucianism. By his lexicographical work, Dr. J.C. Hepburn has made debtors to him both the native and the alien. To our knowledge of Buddhism in Japan, Dr. J.C. Berry and Rev. J.L. Atkinson have made noteworthy contributions. I have been content to quote as authorities and illustrations, the names of those who have thus wrought on the soil, rather than of those, who, even though world-famous, have been but slightly familiar with the ethnic and the imported faith of Japan. The profound misunderstandings of Buddhism, which some very eminent men of Europe have shown in their writings, form one of the literary curiosities of the world.
In setting forth these Morse lectures, I have purposely robbed my pages of all appearance of erudition, by using as few uncouth words as possible, by breaking up the matter into paragraphs of moderate length, by liberally introducing subject-headings in italics, and by relegating all notes to the appendix. Since writing the lectures, and even while reading the final proofs, I have ransacked my library to find as many references, notes, illustrations and authorities as possible, for the benefit of the general student. I have purposely avoided recondite and inaccessible books and have named those easily obtainable from American or European publishers, or from Messrs. Kelly & Walsh, of Yokohama, Japan. In using oriental words I have followed, in the main, the spelling of the Century Dictionary. The Japanese names are expressed according to that uniform system of transliteration used by Hepburn, Satow and other