Japan - 1904 Author:Lafcadio Hearn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Ancient Cult The Ancient Cult f I HE real religion of Japan, the religion still I professed in one form or other, by the entire nation, is that cult wh... more »ich has been the foundation of all civilized religion, and of all civilized society,—Ancestor-worship. In the course of thousands of years this original cult has undergone modifications, and has assumed various shapes; but everywhere in Japan its fundamental character remains unchanged. Without including the different Buddhist forms of ancestor-worship, we find three distinct rites of purely Japanese origin, subsequently modified to some degree by Chinese influence and ceremonial. These Japanese forms of the cult are all classed together under the name of " Shinto," which signifies, " The Way of the Gods." It is not an ancient term; and it was first adopted only to distinguish the native religion, or " Way " from the foreign religion of Buddhism called " Butsudo," or " The Way of the Buddha." The three forms of the Shint5 worship of ancestors are the Domestic Cult, the Communal Cult, and the State Cult; — or, in other words, the worship of family ancestors, the worship of clan or tribal ancestors,and the worship of imperial ancestors. The first is the religion of the home; the second is the religion of the local divinity, or tutelar god; the third is the national religion. There are various other forms of Shinto worship; but they need not be considered for the present. Of the three forms of ancestor-worship above mentioned, the family-cult is the first in evolutional order, — the others being later developments. But, in speaking of the family-cult as the oldest, I do not mean the home-religion as it exists to-day; — neither do I mean by " family" anything corresponding to the term " household." The Japanese family in ea...« less