Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth century, but it had at first little influence on the native religion. Two centuries later a process of pacific penetration began which had some curious and important results. The missionaries of Buddhism applied to the Shinto gods a principle which had been already adopted in China. They discovered that whether Nature-gods or Man-gods they were nothing more than avatars or incarnations of the various Buddhas. The Sun-goddess, for example, was made out to be Vairochana, the Buddhist personification of essential bodhi (enlightenment) and absolute purity; and deified men received the Buddhist titles of Gongen (avatar) or Bosatsu (saint). Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns, is the Gongen-sama par excellence.

RyÔbu Shinto, which was in practice little more than a form of Buddhism, was the result of this process. Its principal founder was the famous Kobo Daishi. At a later time other similar schools or sects were originated which drew their inspiration from Chinese philosophy or from Buddhism. Under these influences the true Shinto was much neglected. The Mikados themselves, after a few years of reign, shaved their heads and became Buddhist monks. One of them called himself a slave of Buddha. The greater Shinto ceremonies were omitted, or worse still, were performed by Buddhist monks, who also took possession of many of the Shinto shrines and celebrated Buddhist rites there.

It should not be forgotten that the foreign religion contained valuable elements unknown to the older Shinto, and that the latter had much to gain by their absorption. The Ryobu Shinto inculcated uprightness, purity of heart, charity to the poor, humanity, and the vanity of mere outward forms of worship; of all which there is little trace in the older cult.

Chinese Learning.—The civilisation of Japan during the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns (1603-1868) was modelled on Chinese originals. Its moral ideals were drawn from the writings of the ancient sages Confucius and Mencius, and the sceptical philosophy of the Sung dynasty (960-1278). But in the eighteenth century a patriotic reaction set in, which strove to establish more purely national standards of ethics and principles of government and religion. This movement, known as the ‘Revival of Pure Shinto,’ was first revealed to Europeans by a paper contributed by Sir E. Satow to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1875. The principal promoters were MotoÖri and his pupil Hirata, two earnest, able, and stupendously learned writers who devoted their lives to an endeavour by oral teaching and in a series of voluminous works to the dethronement of the established Chinese ethics and philosophy in favour of a Shinto purified from Buddhist and other foreign adulterations of later times. They succeeded to some extent in this object. It was no doubt partially owing to their teachings that the Mikado was restored in 1868 to his sovereign position as the descendant of the Sun-goddess, the Shinto shrines purified from Buddhist ornaments and practices, and the monks expelled from them. In reality MotoÖri and Hirata’s movement was a retrograde one. The old Shinto, which they wished to restore, could not possibly hold its own as the national faith of a people familiar with the far higher religious and moral ideas of India and China, not to speak of civilised Europe. Without a code of morals, or an efficient ecclesiastical organisation, with little aid from the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and with a sacred literature scanty and feeble compared with those of its foreign rivals, Shinto is doomed to extinction. Whatever the religious future of Japan may be, Shinto will assuredly have little place in it. Such meat for babes is quite inadequate as the spiritual food of a nation which in these latter days has reached a full and vigorous manhood.