Occult Japan/The Gohei

by Percival Lowell

 

THE GOHEI.

I.

N the beginning of this account of Japanese divine possession I stated that it was of Shintō origin, and I promised later to justify the assertion. The time has come to fulfill that promise. Having seen that esoteric Shintō is esoteric, it becomes pertinent now to show that it is Shintō.

To prove this initially was anything but the forthright matter it may seem. For the establishing of the genuineness of the act of possession was child's play beside establishing the genuineness of the possession of the act. At first glance the latter was as prettily mixed up an intellectual lawsuit as one could buy into. Nobody really knew anything about the case, and those who confidently ventured a verdict did so in suspicious accordance with their special interest; while as for general principles, so far as they proved anything, they turned out to prove what was not true.

Two claimants presented themselves for possession of the cult, Shintō and Buddhism. That the cult was chiefly practiced by neither, but by a third party well known to be illegitimate, called, with a certain pious duplicity of meaning, Both,—such being the literal rendering of the term Ryōbu,—did not simplify matters. For the hybrid Ryōbu, having candidly confessed its illegitimacy, dumbly refused to confess further on the subject.

The importance of the inquiry quite transcends the question of creed. Did it not do so, we might safely leave it to the zeal of church polemics. But it is not simply a question of religion; it is a question of race. For if the thing be Shintō, it is purely Japanese; if Buddhist, it is but another bit of foreign importation. In the one case it possesses the importance that attaches to being of the soil, in the other merely such superficial interest as attaches to soiling,—matter of much less archaeologic account. The point thus possesses ethnic consequence.

Direct inquiry elicited worse than ignorance; it evolved a peculiarly mystifying doubt. For the priestly evidence was bitterly baffling. No sooner had one man convincingly told his tale than another came along with an upsettingly opposite story. The sole point in which the tellers substantially agreed lay in ascribing it pretty unanimously each to his own particular faith. The Shintōists asserted that it was Shintō; the Buddhists that it was Buddhist; while the Ryōbuists ascribed it at times to the one, but more commonly to the other. A few humble brethren modestly admitted that they did not know.

The only fact that emerged tolerably self-evident from this bundle of contradiction was that somebody had stolen the cult from somebody else, but as to which of these reputable parties was the reprehensible robber, and which his unfortunate victim, the poor investigator was left sadly at a loss to discover.

Where doctors of divinity disagreed in this alarming manner, it seemed hopeless to try to decide between them. Under such weighty counter-assertions one's own opinion swung balance-wise to settle at last to the lowest level of equi-doubt. And there, so far as mere human help could go, it might have stayed forever in indeterminate suspension.

At this critical dead-point in the investigation, when any advance toward conviction seemed an impossibility, a bit of circumstantial evidence suddenly presented itself to turn the scale. I say presented itself, for it was not through the deposition of either contending party that it came into court. It wandered in one day unexpectedly, and proceeded quietly to give most damaging testimony in the case. Indeed its evidence was crucial. Oddly enough, this circumstantial witness appeared in the shape of what stands to Shintō for crucifix—the gohei.

The acquaintance of the gohei is among the first that one makes in Japan. The startling zigzags of that strange strip of white paper, pendent at intervals from a straw rope lining the lintel of some temple-front, instantly catch the eye with the realistic suggestion of lightning. Indeed, so far as looks go, the thing might very well be a flash of that hasty but undecided visitant of the skies, caught unawares by some chance, and miraculously paper-fied. For striking enough it still is. And that its discontinuities of direction can all be fashioned out of one continuous sheet remains one of those hopeless mysteries of construction kin to the introduction of the apple into the dumpling, till one has actually seen the sheet cut and folded into shape before his eyes.

Specimens enough, however, he is sure to see, first without and then within the temple building. As it drapes the entrance, so it hangs in holy frieze around the holiest rooms, appearing at every possible opportunity, till, finally, at the very heart of the shrine, it stands upright upon a wand, the central object of regard upon the altar.

But it is by no means confined to the temples, the miya and the jinja, plentifully as these are dotted over the land. Almost every house has its kami-dana or Shintō-god's shelf, a tiny household shrine, the glorification of some cupboard or recess. And there in the half-light stands the gohei again, there in the heart of each Japanese home.

It is no more confined to an indoor life than man himself. You shall meet it abroad all over the land, in the most unexpected nooks and corners. The paths that lead so prettily over Japanese hill and valley are set with wayside oratories and before many of them stands a gohei on its stick, sometimes quite humanly housed under a tiny shed, sometimes canopied only by the sky and the stars. Thoroughfare, field, and forest know it alike. Now it marks a quiet eddy in the tide of traffic of a bustling town, and now, the long year through, it points the bleak summit of some lonely peak that only in midsummer knows the foot of man.

Welcoming anchorite to the mountaineer, it is no less the farmer's friend. In fact it is peculiarly addicted to agriculture. When the growing rice begins to dream of the ear, it makes its appearance in the paddy-fields, stationed here and there among the crops, keeping an overseer eye upon them from the top of a tall stick.

But strangest post of all, you shall chance upon it some fine day riding in festival procession, perched in solitary grandeur upon the saddle of a richly caparisoned horse.

In short, it is omnipresent, this Shintō symbol.

Its religious significance it would be hard to overestimate. It is to Shintō what the crucifix is to Christianity and a great deal more; one of those symbols which modern defenders of the faith take much pains to assure you is only a symbol, and no pains whatever to prevent the people from worshiping as a god. As Shintōists are not so much distressed to harmonize their beliefs with science, being as yet unfired by the burning desire to know the reasons of things, they make small distinction between the gohei and the god. In many cases they make none at all.

For there are two kinds of gohei; the one, the harai-bei or purification present, and the other, the shintai or god's body. The first has for analogue in Christianity the crucifix. It is the universal Shintō symbol of consecration. Wherever you meet it you may know the spot at once for holy ground dedicate to the god; and specimens of it may be seen in profusion about any Shintō temple. They are the gohei that first greet the devotee, pendent from the sacred straw rope upon the lintel of the temple door; and they are the gohei that festoon the building's eaves and make frieze to the holier rooms within. It is they also that in the possession act inclose the place of the god's descent and sanctify it to his brief habiting. In short, wherever a gohei is hung up you may know it for one of the purification kind.

To the second or the god's body variety belong all such as are stood upright upon a wand. The gohei that makes cynosure upon the temple altar is of this kind and so is the one so daintily domesticated in the family cupboard at home. So also are those met with in the mart, on the mountain-top, and amid the paddy-fields. Last but most important of all these vicarious emblems of deity is that which is clenched in the hands of the possessed during the possession trance.

They are called the god's body, not because they are permanently god, but because they may become his embodiment at any moment. The little that we know of the evolution of the gohei will help explain what is supposed to take place. Its name signifies cloth, gohei meaning august cloth or present; the former meaning having in course of time developed through a whole gamut of gifts in the concrete into the latter meaning in the abstract. For the gohei is the direct descendant of the hempen cloth hung on the sacred sakaki (the Cleyera Japonica) in present to the gods. A relative of this its ancestor may still be seen in Korea in the shreds of colored cloth attached there to the devil trees; a shift of devotion which need distress no one, since devils and gods are always first cousins in any faith.

From hemp its material constitution changed successively first to cotton, then to silk, and finally to its present modest paper, a transformation of substance quite in step economically with the progress of the arts. As to its color, the earliest mention of it—in the Kojiki, recorded therefore as early as anything in Japan—tells of two kinds, one dark blue, the other white, used together. Nowadays it is almost always the plain white of ordinary paper. But occasionally gohei of the far-oriental elemental colors, yellow, red, black, white, and blue, may be seen in a row, a cosmic quinquenity of the five elements, wood, fire, earth, water, and metal.

Cloth it was, clothes it has become. For in form it now symbolizes the vesture of the god. Falling in spotless folds that spread out on either side about the wand, it suggests, even to the undevout, the starched flounces of some ceremonial dress. In the Ryōbu variety the central connecting link is raised upright in the midst, clothes-pinned upon the stick; owing to its cut, it flanges out a little toward the top, which does for the divine neck and head. In the purer Shintō form the top piece is bent down over the rest, symbolic of a more perfect pose.

On occasion the god deigns to inhabit this habit of his. Such embodiment, indeed, is graciously taking place every day at any Shintō temple. To say that it takes place at the god's pleasure, however, is to put it flatteringly to the god; for it really happens at the will of the worshiper. Every prayer, even the merest momentary mumble, involves incarnation of the gohei by the god, and at a moment's call. For before he begins his prayer the worshiper claps his hands. This is a summons to the god to descend; a like signal bids him depart. At any popular shrine there is thus a continual coming and going on the part of the god; which seems understandable enough until one attempts to understand it. For what happens when two persons call at overlapping times upon one and the same god, so that one worshiper bids him be gone while the other would still have him stay, is not strictly clear. But such complications confront the too curious in all theories of anthropomorphic gods, especially when their worshipers are on intimate terms with them. I merely suggest it here as a problem in higher esoterics.

Cases of incarnation where the god may be supposed more nearly to suit his own convenience are those of the gohei of the paddy-fields. These are divine scarecrows, or rather scare-locusts, those pests of the paddy-field farmer. They are scarecrows, however, in an occult sense, for in spite of resembling gods as monstrously as the more secular monstrosities do man, it is not their looks which the locusts do not like, but their disposition. And, to judge from their general employment, they appear to do as effective police duty in frightening off insects as those about the temple do in frightening off imps.

Another instance of the gohei incarnated of the god is where it is borne in festival procession sitting upon the sacred horse. This animal, usually an albino, is the god's steed of state, kept for the divine use in the sacred stable, an adjunct to all well-appointed shrines. For in these festivals it is no stick that rides; the god himself sits in the saddle. It is the god's chosen way of appearing in public. In no other way, indeed, does the god ever leave the temple. The prurient may possibly detect some inconsistency between this statement and the one made above to the effect that the god is always coming and going; but it should be remembered that in no cosmogony is consistency expected of spirits. Besides, to go out in state and to go out incognito are two very different things, even in the case of royalty.

All these are examples of quite invisible possessions. Though the god be there, the undevout would never know it. But there are sensible possessions of the gohei; cases where the incarnation of the god may be both seen and felt. It will be remembered that the first sign of the coming on of the possession in the possession trance is the shaking of the gohei-wand. So spontaneous does this shaking seem, that it is no wonder it should be thought so in fact. The gohei shakes, believers say, because the god descends into it, and it quivers yet as passing through it he slips on into the body of the man. Without its mediation possession would not take place. The gohei is thus a sort of spirit lightning-rod to conduct the divine spirit into the human one. It is not, therefore, without a certain poetic fitness that it should look so like lightning.

Another case of its visible possessions, one where it plays a more autonomous part, is its christening power. A very curious custom this, and so far as I know one quite unknown to foreigners; so much so that more than one of my acquaintance who has had children by a Japanese wife have stoutly maintained that no such custom exists. It is a fact, nevertheless.

There are three methods of naming children in vogue among Shintōists. One, the most obvious and the least devout, is for the father to name the child himself. The next in an ascending scale of piety is for the father to select several suitable names and then submit the choice among them to the god. The way the god shows his choice is as follows: The father brings the child to the temple, and with him slips of paper described with possible names. Three or five is the usual number. The priest rolls them up separately, puts them into a bowl, and after due incarnation angles for them with a gohei upon a wand. Whichever the gohei fishes out first is the god-given name the child is to bear; a convenient custom when a father is in doubt between the far-eastern equivalents of Tom, Dick, or Harry. This ceremony takes place when the infant is a week old. It is not to be confounded with the miya mairi, which takes place a month after birth and is not our christening at all, but akin to the Hebraic presentation of the child at the temple. For at the miya mairi the child, named some weeks before, is presented to its guardian god and formally put under his protection. This style of christening is also largely performed by the pilgrim clubs.

The third method of getting the babe a name is by possession pure and simple. The nakaza goes into his trance, the god descending through the gohei, and the maeza asks the god what he will have the baby called, to which the god makes reply. This method of christening one's child is reputed the most holy of the three, and is duly practiced by the ultra devout. Of the population of Japan, about twenty per cent., it is estimated, are named thus by the gohei or the god,—about ten per cent, by each.

From such many and various capacities inherent in the gohei may be gathered the part it plays in the thoughts of the Japanese people. Indeed, it is all that is most Shintō, and reversely Shintō is mostly all gohei.

It is, therefore, not surprising that in the wholesale Buddhist spoliation of Shintō the gohei should have been one of the few possessions which Shintō was able to retain. Not that some of the Buddhist sects did not flatteringly adopt it. The Shingon and Nichiren sects have both been pleased to find it useful, and have adapted it to suit themselves, transforming it, for example, from unpretentious paper into solid brass. Nevertheless, its ownership is quite unquestioned. It is not only of Shintō creation, but admittedly so.

II.

Now it was this gohei-wand that in conjuring up the god conjured up unexpectedly one day the spirit of the rite. Its exorcism was sorely needed, for in spite of boring the priests and even bothering the god on the subject, nothing but perplexity had come of the investigation, when one day it suddenly occurred to me that the gohei was always present at a possession; that in every instance this wand had been put into the hands of the man to be possessed preparatory to the possession, and that he had then held it through the trance. Other details had varied, but the wand was always there. I could recollect no exception to this rule. Having once been struck by the coincidence, I observed more closely, and to complete confirmation of my conjecture. At every function, whether at the hands of Ryōbuists, Shintōists, or Buddhists, there was the wand, constant as the trance itself.

Upon which I asked and got innocent admission from the Buddhists that it was a necessary detail of the rite, while from Shintō I learned the explanation of its presence. The fact and its reason may be formulated together thus: The gohei-wand is used in every divine possession in Japan, without exception, as a necessary vehicle for the god's descent. Whether the possession take place by Shintō, Ryōbu, or Buddhist rite, in every instance the gohei-wand is put into the hands of the man to be possessed at the time the invitation to the god to descend begins, and through it is the god believed to come. It is post hoc because propter hoc. The gohei is thus the very soul of the rite.

To add argument to this fact savors of supererogation, for the crucial character of its circumstantial evidence is patent. As if, however, gratuitously to emphasize its importance, both faiths festoon the place where the descent is to be made with other gohei, pendent overhead, for purification. Both haraibei and shintai are thus present at the function.

Before the waving of this little wand, all the Buddhist pretensions to the cult pale to impalpable phantoms. Further discussion becomes suddenly vain. One cannot argue with a wraith; and if one think to strike insubstantiality, he is aware only of the void. But as some good souls will still persist in believing in spooks, in spite of the failure of the not over-incredulous Society for Psychical Research to find a single really trustworthy specimen, it may be well to lay this ghost by a funeral logical rite or two.

To begin with, then, it is important to remember that to believers the means to a mystery is the mystery itself. For those addicted to such things do not follow them as sciences, but as arts. They have inherited the act embodied in certain actions, and the symbols in which it stands enshrined are to them essentials to its performance. From being so in act, they become so in fact. For so potent is faith, that to believe in a means as essential to an end is, by virtue of that belief alone, to make it so.

Now a mystery is not a thing a faith is in the habit of naïvely imparting to the first man it may chance to buttonhole for pious purposes, especially when it is a mystery of the utmost significance to itself. Every well-organized hierarchy has to keep up a certain amount of celestial exclusiveness for purposes of self-preservation. Just because by prolonged devotion it has secured a distant divine recognition is no reason why it should minimize this intimacy to others. Anteroom admission to the favor of the gods is surely as valuable a privilege as a like reception at the hands of the great ones of the earth; and we all know what lustre in their own eyes such threshold intimacy casts upon the favored few, even to the extent of pretending to make light of it to others. Now this divine intimacy is imposing enough in all conscience when it rests simply on the word of the admitted. How infinitely more so when confirmed by visible action on the part of the gods themselves. An introduction to such peculiar privilege is not thoughtlessly to be given to everybody. It will not do to present profane outsiders to one's gods; still less thus to present one's bosom foe. Such an act is nothing short of sacerdotal suicide.

Yet something still more improbable the Buddhists would have us believe. For they admit getting the gohei from Shintō, and at the same time they assert that they taught that faith the possession cult. If so, then they took three steps to their own destruction, each more trance-like, to say the least, than its predecessor. First, they parted for no consideration whatever with a most valuable possession—simply inestimably so for purposes of conversion—to the very folk whom they were at the moment doing their utmost to convert. Next, they permitted these people, once taught, to substitute their own sacred symbol as conjurer in the supreme act, a concession which must speedily have induced complete oblivion that the cult itself had ever been a gift; and then, to cap the climax to their kind self-effacement, they actually adopted this, their proselytes' symbol, for exclusive use themselves. And then they ask the world to credit the account. One does not know whether to be the more astounded at the colossal coolness which can put forth such a tale, or at the amazing simplicity which can suppose others capable of believing it.

Were I merely making an argument in the matter I should here rest my case, the convincing character of this bit of evidence alone rendering any other superfluous. But as it is an exposition on which I am engaged, I go on to some more facts, all in the same line.

To a pro-Buddhist prejudice in the matter, the first of these must prove a revelation second only in surprise to the last. It is this: the very gods the gohei-wand summons turn in its hands state's evidence against it. For it is the Shintō gods that descend. Not only is it its own gods alone that Shintō summons, but the Buddhists also call Shintō deities, and of their own pantheon only the lower, never the higher, members. To explain this unusual fancy for their neighbors' gods, combined with a relative disregard for the company of their own, the Buddhists allege the, to them, comparative unimportance of the cult. Such indifferentism is perilously near abandonment of their previous claims. People are not given to detecting flatness of flavor in their own fruit. If the practice be to them so unimportant an affair, why indulge in it at all? Besides, even this lame admission halts at summoning the Shintō gods. Doubtless it is most flattering to the Shintō deities thus to be called on for their opinion by professing outsiders, but it would seem quite an inexplicable credulity on the part of the Buddhists to do so, even among the politest people in the world.

III.

So much shall suffice here for the mute evidence of acts. But language has a word or two to say on the subject which, as a matter of courtesy, it may be well to admit. And first in the way of records.

The Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, known also as the Nihongi, are the oldest written records of the Japanese people. Compiled, the one in A.D. 712, the other in A.D. 720, they together constitute the Shintō bible, being different gospels, as it were, of much the same facts and fictions about the national past. Many of the fictions are doubtless founded on fact, though exactly how and even inexactly when, it would outwit mythology itself to state. There is at the beginning the usual attempt to make something out of nothing in order to account for the cosmos, much of which is probably Chinese. Then having got primeval chaos into something approaching order, the account gradually assumes consistency, till at last it becomes substantially history, of a far-oriental kind. As it begins with gods and ends with men, the evolution is not of the strictly scientific kind, but rather a general devolution in keeping with the doctrine of original sin. During this abnormal development various improbable events occur, some necessary to it, some irrelevant. Of course the gods are the dei ex machina in the matter; and it takes a long time before the universe gets into fairly passable running order, and their presence can generally be dispensed with. This dispensation, indeed, never wholly takes place, and even after the world is going along well enough of itself, and the gods have formally left the field to their descendants, they are continually popping in and out, just to be sure no mistakes are made. One of their favorite methods of appearing on the scene is to possess people. Such manifestations of themselves were not, if we are to trust the histories, very uncommon. There are at least three recorded instances, and, what is peculiarly to the point, these are described with almost the exact detail which distinguishes the possessions of today; which makes the accounts peculiarly interesting ethnologically. We seem to be looking down that long vista of the past to trances similar to any taking place about us at the present time.

The first incarnation of which mention is made took place in the purely heavenly half of the history, at the time when the gods alone lived in the land. The occasion was the unfortunate withdrawal of the Sun-Goddess into a cave in consequence of the unseemly conduct of her brother, Susunao, or the Impetuous Male. This rude individual is the first recorded instance of the enfant terrible, and is not unhappily named, I think, to express the fact. He was subsequently banished to the moon for his improprieties. The displeasure of the Sun-Goddess was peculiarly distressing to the company of heaven, because her withdrawal of itself plunged them into utter darkness. They accordingly set about concocting a scheme to lure her out, the execution of which, as given in the Kojiki, reads as follows:—

"They hung all manner of things upon the tree: five hundred jewel-strings of brilliant bent beads to the top branches, an eight-sided looking-glass to the middle ones, and dark blue and white gohei to the lowest. Then his Augustness Jewel August Thing took an august gohei in his hand, and Heavenly Small Roof August Thing made repetition of some august (i. e. Shintō) prayers, while Heavenly Hand Power Male God was sent to hide beside the august door. Thereupon Heavenly Ugly Face August Thing, using a heavenly vine from the Heavenly Incense Mountain as shoulder-cord to tuck up her sleeves, and making herself a wig of the heavenly masa-tree and tying up a bunch of bamboo-grass from the Heavenly Incense Mountain to hold in her hand, turned a cask bottom up before the door of the heavenly rock-house, and treading and stamping upon it with her feet became possessed (kamu-ga-kari shite). And clutching the clothes from about her breast, and pushing down the girdle of her skirt, she let her dress fall down to her hips. And the Plain of High Heaven resounded as the eight hundred myriad deities with one accord laughed. Thereupon the Heavenly Shining Great August Goddess, hearing the sound, cried out"—what is now immaterial, since her curosity once caught, she herself soon followed.

The next mention of divine possession occurs in the Nihonshoki. It is recorded in the reign of the Emperor Sujin, a most unlucky monarch, with whom everything went wrong. He naturally attributed this to the gods, and determined finally to question them on the subject. So going out into a certain plain he collected the eight hundred myriad deities, immaterially speaking, doubtless, and asked to have his fortune told. Upon which:

"At this time a god descended upon the princess Yamato-tōtōhi-momoso-hime-no-mikoto, and said (kami-gakarite-iwaku): 'Why is the Emperor troubled in spirit because the country is vexed and there is no law in the land? If he diligently worship me and follow my commandments the land shall rest in peace.' Then the Emperor inquired and said, 'What god is it that thus instructs me?' And the god answered, 'I am the god that dwelleth within the boundaries of this land, the land of Yamato, and my name is Omono-nushi-no-kami.' Then receiving reverently the instructions of the god, the Emperor worshiped diligently according to his commandments."

A little after this, in the next reign, the reign of the Emperor Suinin, we are told of an image that was suddenly possessed by the god whose image it was. This also is out of the Nihonshoki:—

"In the third month, in the second year of the boar, on the first day, being the day of the monkey, the Emperor, taking an image of the Heavenly Shining Great August Goddess from the Princess Toyosuki-hime-no-mikoto, gave it to the Princess Yamato-hime-no-mikoto, and charged her, saying, 'Search me out a place where I may set up this image.' So the princess took the image and carried it first to Totanosasahata. And from thence she journeyed to the land of Omi, and, turning eastward, went by way of the land of Mino, till she came to the country of Ise. Then the Heavenly Shining Great August Goddess spake, and instructed the Princess Yamato-hime-no-mikoto, saying, 'This land of Ise, this land of heavenly breezes, this land of ever-curling waves, this sea-girt shore, is a delectable land. In this land will I dwell.' So, according to the words of the goddess, was a shrine built there to her in the land of Ise." In this way were founded the famous shrines of Ise.

But perhaps the most interesting of all the possessions mentioned in either of these books are the possessions of the Empress Jingō, recorded more or less in both.

The Empress Jingō was a good deal of a man. She was a great deal more of a man than her husband, though she was only his second wife. She was simply Empress-consort at first, eventually succeeding her husband, who died from want of faith, as will appear later. Masculine in character, she was most feminine in looks. The Nihonshoki speaks of her as exceedingly pretty and her father's pet, which latter fact proves to my mind that she was a woman of will, for I have observed that fathers are usually proud of daughters of decision. She it was who conquered Korea, in the histories at least, and did many other manly acts, besides giving birth to the Emperor Ojin, afterwards canonized as Hachiman, the God of War.

Apparently she was prone to being possessed, and ended by being quite intimate with deity. Her chronicle is a curious patchwork, pieced out, however, fairly complete between the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki. The Nihonshoki, after some Almanack de Gotha work introducing a few rather dry domesticities, simply kills her husband, without offering us any excuse for the deed except the apparent unimportance of his life. The Kojiki, however, condescends to tell us how it happened:—

"Before that (referring to a digression about a certain posthumous name of her son) the Empress was divinely possessed (kami-yori tamaeriki lit. got-god-approached). At the time when the Emperor, dwelling in the Oak Temple in Kyūshiū, was about to make war upon the land of Kumaso, the Emperor played upon the august harp, and Take-no-uchi-no-sukune went into the place of inquiring of the gods (saniwa lit. sand-court), and inquired of them. Then the Empress, being divinely possessed (kan-gakari shite), informed and instructed him, saying, 'To the west lieth a land full of all manner of precious things from gold and silver upward,' etc., etc. This glowing description, of which it were needless here to quote more, referred of all places in the world to Korea. It is perhaps not matter for wonder that the Emperor proved skeptical on the subject, and made light of the divine information; upon which he was promptly killed by the gods for contempt of court. After which the Nihonshoki takes up the narrative, and tells us that the Empress, who seems to have been a pious person, was much grieved at the Emperor's sudden taking off for doubting the divine word, and resolved, woman-like, to know about those jewels, a resolve she carried out as follows: "Choosing a lucky day, she went into the purification shrine and became possessed (kannushi to naritamo). And this was the manner of it: Giving orders to Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, she caused him to play upon the august harp, and calling Nakatomi-on-ikatsu, the August Attendant, she made him the inquirer of the god (saniwa to su). Whereupon he placed a thousand cloths and rich cloths upon the top and bottom of the harp, and besought the god, saying: 'The god that spake on a former day to the Emperor, instructing him; what god was it? I would fain know his name.' Then when seven days and seven nights had passed the god answered, saying"—first what his abode was, and then what was his name, and then, in reply to further questionings of the saniwa, Nakatomi, gave instructions for conquering Korea, which had been his object from the beginning. The Empress being a very devout body, and possibly being influenced slightly by the glitter of the prospective jewels, acted on his instructions, and with complete success.

Here, then, we have accounts of possessions long pre-Buddhist; their very accounts being practically pre-Buddhist themselves. For the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki were written less than one hundred and forty years after Buddhism came to Japan, too short a time for it to have draped old legends with its own detail. Besides, there is not the slightest suspicion that it ever tried to do so. The accounts read as realistically Shintō as one could have them do. What is more, they read, barring a few archaisms, as if recorded of to-day. In skeleton the modern procedure is all there. In these old Shintō biblical narratives you see the same features that you mark in the Ryōbu-Shintō trances now. The conservatism is quite far-orientally complete, which is another proof, not only that the thing is Shintō, but that the Buddhists brought with them from China nothing akin to it. For we may be sure the gods would not have been behind their people in the great national trick of imitation, and had there been any foreigners to copy they would assuredly have copied them, and not have stayed starchedly Shintō to the present day.

In addition to the interest of the records themselves, the verbal evidence of these records is interesting. The words describing the possessions are all pure Japanese. Many of them are yet comprehensible, being in a way grandfathers to the modern terms. Kami-gakari of which kamu-gakari and kan-gakari are euphonic forms, means godfixed-on. An intransitive verb, it shows the spontaneity of the act. This spontaneity of deity is further dwelt on by tradition. In the good old days the gods descended, it is piously taught, of their own initiative, and not as now because importuned of man. Such seems a true mirror of the fact. For at first the act must have been fortuitive and sporadic. It could only have been later that men learned to lassoo deity at will. The modern term kami-oroshi causing the god to descend, marks the subsequent business stage of the practice. Indeed, this domestication of deity, this taming of once wild trances, is not the least peculiar attribute of the far-eastern branch of the subject. Among every people divine trances have taken place, but to make of the accidental and fortuitous the certain and the regular, to develop the casual communion into a systematic cult, shows a degree of familiarity with the subject peculiarly Japanese.

The word kami, which appears both in the ancient and modern expressions, is highly suggestive. For kami refers exclusively to Shintō gods; Buddhist gods being always known as hotoke. Kami originally meant, and in certain uses still means, "top," or "above," and therefore was applied to the supreme beings. It is the same kami that figures in kami the hair of the head or topknot, and that appears in the expression o kami san, your wife, lit. Mrs. Upper, used when addressing the middle classes. Even its sinico-Japanese equivalent shin shows the same significance. For it never referred in China to the Buddhist gods. The two characteristics of which it is composed mean "declare, say;" whereas the character for hotoke a Buddhist god, means simply "not man." Whether trance-revelation lies hidden in this "declare, say," is another matter.

Another word in the bibles is worth a note, the word saniwa. The characters with which it is written mean "sand-court." What that means has nonplused the commentators, as Mr. Chamberlain tells us. It has not foiled the priests. They explain it satisfactorily, if perhaps ex-post-factorily, as the god-interviewer, what is now commonly called the maeza. The explanation of the priests is at least explicable. For "sand-court" has the same impersonality about it, the designation of the place in lieu of the person, which is so curiously conspicuous in maeza, the seat-in-front. That it appears to make nonsense in personal English does not imply that it makes nonsense in impersonal Japanese.

I will now give, from the Nihonshoki, two or three accounts of Kugadachi or the Ordeal by Boiling Water, which will show that the miracles are as old as the incarnations, and as purely Shintō. The first of these ordeals was undergone in the reign of the Emperor Ōjin, son to the Empress Jingō.

"In the ninth year (of his reign), in the spring, in the fourth month, the Emperor sent Take-no-uchi-no-sukune to Kyūshiū to take account of the people. Now at that time Umashi-uchi-no-sukune, the younger brother of Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, wishing to rid himself of his brother, laid charge against him before the Emperor, saying: 'It has come to our ears, O Emperor, that Take-no-uchi-no-sukune is desirous of possessing Japan, and goeth about secretly to stir up the people of Kyūshiū against the Emperor. Then, when he shall have estranged the land of Kyūshiū and called in the Three States (Korea), he purposeth to seize upon Japan.' Hearing these words, the Emperor sent a messenger to Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, to put him to death. Then Take-no-uchi-no-sukune made answer to the messenger, saying: 'I am not double-minded, but true to the Emperor whom I serve. What is, then, the crime of which I am accused, And if guiltless, why should I suffer death?'

"Now there was living in Iki a certain man named Atae-no-maneko. This man greatly resembled Take-no-uchi-no-sukune. And being troubled in spirit that Take-no-uchi-no-sukune should be put to death without just cause, he said unto him: 'All Japan knoweth thee to be a true man and a faithful one to our Lord the Emperor. Now, therefore, fleeing hence secretly, get thee to our Lord the Emperor and justify thyself before him. And furthermore men say that I greatly resemble thee. So, therefore, in place of thee, will I die, and thus show all men that thy heart is pure before our Lord the Emperor.' Whereupon he slew himself with his sword.

"Then Take-no-uchi-no-sukune was sad at heart, and, secretly leaving Kyūshiū, took ship and came round by the southern ocean to the port of Kii, and landed there. And from thence he came, after much trouble, to the court of the Emperor, and told the Emperor concerning his innocence. Then the Emperor, perceiving some evil thing had been done, called both Take-no-uchi-no-sukune and Umashi-uchi-no-sukune before him. Thereupon each told his own story, and there was no way to tell the true from the false. Then the Emperor commanded that prayer should be offered to the Heavenly Gods and to the Earthly Gods, and an ordeal by boiling water made (kugada-chi seshimu). Whereupon Take-no-uchi-no-tukune and Umashi-uchi-no-sukune went together to the banks of the river Shiki and performed the ordeal (kugadachi su); and Take-no-uchi-no-sukune was justified by the gods. Then Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, taking his sword, struck down Umashi-uchi-no-sukune, and would have slain him, but the Emperor commanded that he should be pardoned and handed over to the Arae family in Kii."

The next example occurred in the reign of the Emperor Inkyō. "In the fourth year, in the autumn, in the ninth month, being the year of the snake, on the first day of the month, being the day of the bull, the Emperor gave instructions and commanded, saying: 'Anciently were the people ruled in peace, and family names were never confounded, but now in this, the fourth year of our reign, do the lower and the higher among the people contend with one another in the matter, and the people know no peace; either, peradventure, making mistake, have they lost their proper family names, or else, taking of forethought names above their station, they have turned them to their own use; and there is no law in the land. Now, perchance, it is we who are lacking in wisdom. How, then, may we correct our mistake? Do you, attendants, taking counsel together, advise us in the matter.' Then the attendants, with one voice, answered: 'O Emperor! if pointing out the mistakes and correcting the wrong, the Emperor settles this matter of family names, we, even risking death, will tell the Emperor the truth.' So, in the year of the monkey, the Emperor gave instructions, saying: 'The Lords, High Dignitaries, and other officers, down to the governors, have together made answer, and said: Verily the generations of the Emperor and the generations of his people are both likewise descended from heaven. Yet, since the day when the three bodies [heaven, earth, and humanity] were one, many years have passed, and from one name now many descendants have spread abroad and taken many family names, and it is not easy to tell the true from the false. Therefore, let all the people bathe and purify themselves, and let each take oath before the gods to perform the ordeal by boiling water (kuagadachi su).' So the priest gave orders, saying, 'At the end of the hill called the Amakashi hill, let an iron pot (kugae) be placed, and let all the people be collected and gathered together there. Then shall they that speak the truth pass through the ordeal unharmed, but they that speak lies shall surely suffer.'

"Thereupon all the people tying up their clothes by shoulder-cords and going to the iron pot performed the ordeal by boiling water (kugadachi su). And those that spake the truth were by virtue of their verity unharmed; but those that spake lies suffered. Therefore did the rest of the liars greatly fear and run away before ever they came to the hill. And from that time family names settled themselves of their own accord, and there was not one liar left in the land." A result which doubtless satisfactorily accounts for the present almost painful veracity of the Japanese people.

At the dawn of history, then, we find both possession of things and possession of persons already a part of the nation's mythologic heritage. Almost as soon as the gods were they began thus to visit one another. Then so soon as their earthly descendants appeared upon the scene they proceeded to visit them. Deity and humanity have continued on calling terms ever since.

Thus we see, first, how crucial, and then how exhaustive, is the proof that this divine possession cult is purely Shintō, and that all the Buddhists have done is to set upon it in the most conclusive way the seal of their appreciation. It pains me to prick this Buddhist bubble, blown of filching other people's soap. But I feel the less compunction about doing so for the fact that Buddhism has enough beautiful ones of its own fashioning, round and perfect philosophic films that catch and reflect the eternal light in iridescent hues sufficient to charm many millions of men. Emotionally its tenets do not at bottom satisfy us occidentals, flirt with them as we may. Passivity is not our passion, preach it as we are prone to do each to his neighbor. Scientifically pessimism is foolishness and impersonality a stage in development from which we are emerging, not one into which we shall ever relapse. As a dogma it is unfortunate, doing its devotee in the deeper sense no good, but it becomes positively faulty when it leads to practical ignoring of the mine and thine, and does other people harm.