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trine in Japan, there were no popular disturbances, and the empire was peacefully ruled. It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice that they required no theory of morals, and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity in practice. It is not wonderful that students of Chinese literature should despise their own country for being without a system of morals, but that Japanese who were acquainted with their own ancient literature should have pretended that Japan also had such a system, simply out of a feeling of envy, is ridiculous.
When Chinese literature was imported into Japan, the people adopted many Chinese ideas, laws, customs and practices, which they so mixed up with their own that it became necessary to adopt a special name for the ancient native customs, which were in consequence called Kami no michi or Shintô, the word michi being applied in the same sense as the Chinese tô (tao), and kami because of their divine origin. These native customs only survived in the ceremonies with which the native gods are worshipped.
Every event in the universe is the act of the gods. They direct the changes of the seasons, the wind and the rain, the good and bad fortune of states and individual men. Some of the gods are good, other had, and their acts partake of their own natures. Buddhists attribute events to “retribution” (ingua), while the Chinese ascribe them to the “decree of heaven” (temmei, or tien-ming). This latter is a phrase invented by the so-called “Holy Men” to justify murdering sovereigns and seizing their dominions. As neither heaven nor earth have minds, they cannot issue decrees. If heaven really could issue decrees it would certainly protect the good rulers and take care to prevent bad men from seizing the power, and in general, while the good would prosper, the bad would suffer misfortune. But in reality we find many instances of the reverse.
Whenever anything goes wrong in the world it is to be attributed to the action of the evil gods called Magutsubi no kami (gods of crookedness) whose power is so great
