With The Exception Of The Hill Shrines Of
Japanese Construction Dedicated To Yoshitsune, They Have No
Temples, And They Have
Neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship.
Apparently through all traditional time their cultus has been the
rudest and most primitive form
Of nature-worship, the attaching of
a vague sacredness to trees, rivers, rocks, and mountains, and of
vague notions of power for good or evil to the sea, the forest, the
fire, and the sun and moon. I cannot make out that they possess a
trace of the deification of ancestors, though their rude nature
worship may well have been the primitive form of Japanese Shinto.
The solitary exception to their adoration of animate and inanimate
nature appears to be the reverence paid to Yoshitsune, to whom they
believe they are greatly indebted, and who, it is supposed by some,
will yet interfere on their behalf. {21} Their gods - that is, the
outward symbols of their religion, corresponding most likely with
the Shinto gohei - are wands and posts of peeled wood, whittled
nearly to the top, from which the pendent shavings fall down in
white curls. These are not only set up in their houses, sometimes
to the number of twenty, but on precipices, banks of rivers and
streams, and mountain-passes, and such wands are thrown into the
rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and dangerous places. Since
my baggage horse fell over an acclivity on the trail from Sarufuto,
four such wands have been placed there. It is nonsense to write of
the religious ideas of a people who have none, and of beliefs among
people who are merely adult children.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 343 of 417
Words from 94076 to 94348
of 115002
