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” Moto6éri’s anti-foreign and patriotic prejudices go far to explain his antipathy for the Kangakusha with their extravagant admiration for everything Chinese. But there was a deeper cause for his dislike to their philo- sophy. As already stated, the Chinese nation has a strong bias against the conception of the power which rules the universe as a personal being. The Zez (Heaven) of Confucius and Mencius, and the Zao (Way) of Laotze,} not to speak of the Zazkh¢ and other metaphysical con- ceptions of the Sung schoolmen, all fall short of this idea. The main bent of the Japanese mind is in the same direc- tion. But there is evidence in both countries of a con- trary current of thought. Here, too, there are men born with a craving which refuses to be satisfied with abstrac- tions in the place of a personal God (or gods) to whom they can look up as the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and as exercising a providential care over mankind. Motodri was one of these. He professed not even to understand what the Sung schoolmen meant by their Zazkhi and their Yew and Yang, and stoutly maintained that these were mere fictions. But whatever may be the case with philosophical notions, no man can evolve a God from his own inner consciousness. He must accept the God or gods which he finds already acknowledged, whether by his own or by other people’s fathers. Motoori’s intensely patriotic temper compelled him to seek at home for the satisfaction of his inborn religious instincts. He turned naturally to Shinto. But in his time Shinto had fallen on evil days. It had suffered 1 The late General Alexander, in his work on Zaofze, translates Zao by ‘*God.” He explains his reasons for doing so in the preface. MOTOORI 327 grievously from the encroachments of Buddhism. Bud- dhist priests had assumed the guardianship of the great majority of the shrines of the national cult, and had adulterated its ceremonies and doctrines with much that was alien. The native gods were not abolished—they had still some hold on the popular mind; but they were degraded to the position of temporary manifesta- tions of Buddha. As one of Motodri’s pupils said, they were made domestics in the Buddhist household. This state of things was a great grief to Motodéri. It drove him back from the present to the old unadulterated Shinto taught in the Kajzkz, Nihong?, and Norito. Here he found the satisfaction to his mind and heart which he had failed to find elsewhere. Himself convinced of the excellence of the old national religion, he made it the business of his life to propagate it among his fellow- countrymen, and to denounce the abominable depravity of those who neglected it in favour of sophistical heresies imported from abroad. Hence arose a controversy which is not without in- terest to ourselves as an episode in the unending con- flict between science and religion. Both parties to the struggle fought under grievous difficulties. Not only could the Kangakusha offer nothing to satisfy the heart- need of a personal Deity, but they were sorely hampered by the imperfections of their philosophy, and by a belief in divination, ghosts, and spiritual beings, which they did not perceive to be inconsistent with it. Motoori and his followers, on the other hand, were weighted by an antiquated mythology which presented many glaring absurdities even when viewed in the dim light of Chinese philosophy. The Wagakusha were also embarrassed by the absence from Shinto of anything like a code of 328 JAPANESE LITERATURE morals. They were therefore driven either to deny the necessity of anything of the kind, or to put forward as derived from Shinto a system of ethical teaching which was really borrowed from China. It may not be out of place here to describe in as few words as possible the old Shinto of the seventh and eighth centuries, which Motoori aimed at restoring. It was essentially a nature-worship, upon which was grafted a cult of ancestors. It tells us nothing of a future state of rewards and punishments, and contains the merest traces of moral teaching. The Morzto, quoted in an earlier chapter, in enumerating the offences from which the nation was purged twice a year by the Mikado or his representatives, makes no mention of any one of the sins of the decalogue. What then remains? A mythical history of the creation of the world, and of the doings of a number of gods and goddesses, the chief of whom, namely, the Sun Goddess, was the ancestress of the human rulers of Japan, while from the subordinate deities were sprung the principal noble families who formed their court. Add to this a ceremonial comprising liturgies in honour of these deities and we have the Shinto religion. The mythological record begins with the bare names of a number of gods who seem to have been provided merely in order to form a genealogy for Izanagi and Izanami, the male and female creator deities of Japan. The creation is thus described :— Izanagi and Izanami, at the bidding of the other deities, took into their hands the “ Jewel-spear of Heaven,” and standing on the “Floating-bridge of Heaven,” stirred with it the chaotic mass below. The brine which dripped from its point curdled and became an island. The divine pair descended thither and proceeded to procreate the MOTOORI 329 islands of Japan. They also became the parents of a multitude of other deities, such as the Mountain Gods, the Wind God, the Goddess of Food, the Gods of the Sea, Rivers, and Moors, with many others whose attri- butes. are obscure and whose worship is forgotten. The last god to be produced was the Fire God, in giving birth to whom Izanami died. She went to the Land of Yomi or Hades, whither Izanagi followed her, but was obliged to retreat hastily to the upper world hotly pursued by the thunder gods and the Ugly Female of Hades. In his flight he made use of various expe- dients to delay his pursuers, which recall similar devices in European folk-lore. After his return to earth, Izanagi bathed in the sea in order to wash away the pollutions which he had contracted during his stay in Hades, and in doing so generated various deities, among which were the Sun Goddess, produced from his left eye, and the Moon God, produced from his right eye. A third deity, named Susa no wo, was at the same time born from his nose. Izanagi conferred on these three the dominion of the Plain of Heaven, of Night, and of the Sea respectively. Susa no wo was a boisterous and rowdy deity, whose mischievous and unseemly pranks so disgusted the Sun Goddess that she hid herself in the rock-cave of heaven and left the world to darkness. The other gods had much ado to persuade her to emerge from her seclusion, inventing for the purpose dances and other expedients which are evidently meant to represent the ceremonies in use at Shinto shrines in the times of the Kak? and Nihongt. Susa no wo was then tried by a council of gods, and sentenced to a fine, and banishment to this lower world. ; A grandson of the Sun Goddess became the first ruler 330 JAPANESE LITERATURE of Japan. From him was descended, after a few genera- tions, Jimmu Tenné, the first human sovereign of Japan, and the founder, according to tradition, of the present dynasty of Mikados. There is food for reflection in the fact that it was possible for a man of high intelligence and vast learning like Motoéri, not unacquainted with the philosophy and religions of India and China, to accept these childish fables as the basis of his faith. Yet not only was he himself a sincere believer. He had a large and zealous body of followers, drawn from the highest and most enlightened classes of his fellow-countrymen. Truly it would almost seem as if, in the words of the Japanese proverb, ‘“Iwashi no atama mo shinjin-gara,” that is to say, “It is the quality of faith that is important, were its object only the head of a sardine.” The following passage from the Tamagatsuma will help us to define more precisely Motoori’s attitude to- wards the Chinese school of thinkers. It is headed “CHINESE OPINION “Tn China all good and bad fortune of men, all order and disorder in the State—everything, in short, which happens in this world—is ascribed to the action of Ten (Heaven). Using such terms as the Way of Ten, the Command of Ten, and the Principle of Ten, they regard it as a thing to be honoured and feared above all. China, however, is a country where the true way generally has not been handed down. There they do not know that all things are the doing of the gods, and therefore resort rashly to such inventions. Now Heaven is nothing more than the region where the gods of Heaven dwell. It is a thing destitute of sense, and it is unreasonable to talk MOTOORI 331 of its ‘command’ and the like. To fear and honour Ten, and not fear and honour the gods, is like yielding an idle honour and awe to the Imperial Palace, and showing no reverence or honour to its sovereign. Foreign countries, however, not having attained to the knowledge that everything is the doing of the gods, may be pardoned for believing this Doctrine of the Way of Ten or the Principle of Ten. But what is to be thought of those who, in this imperial country, where a knowledge of the true way has been handed down, do not take the trouble to examine it, but, simply accepting the erroneous doc- trines of foreign lands, imagine that that which they call Ten is a thing of peerless excellence, and in all matters can talk of nothing but its principle?