If we study the home of the laborer, or the instruments in common use, we shall find proof that much more than imitation has been involved.

Were the Japanese mere imitators, how could we explain their architecture, so different from that of China and Korea?  How explain the multiplied original ways in which bamboo and straw are used?

For a still closer view of the matter, let us consider the imported ethical and religious codes of the country.  In China the emphasis of Confucianism is laid on the duty of filial piety.  In Japan the primary emphasis is on loyalty.  This single change transformed the entire system and made the so-called Confucianism of Japan distinct from that of China.  In Buddhism, imported from India, we find greater changes than Occidental nations have imposed on their religion imported from Palestine.  Indeed, so distinct has Japanese Buddhism become that it is sometimes difficult to trace its connections in China and India.  And the Buddhistic sects that have sprung up in Japan are more radically diverse and antagonistic to each other and to primitive Buddhism than the denominations of Christianity are to each other and to primitive Christianity.

In illustration is the most popular of all the Buddhist sects to-day, Shinshu.  This has sometimes been called by foreigners “Reformed” Buddhism; and so similar are many of its doctrines to those of Christianity that some have supposed them to have been derived from it, but without the slightest evidence.  All its main doctrines and practices were clearly formulated by its founder, Shinrah, six hundred years ago.  The regular doctrines of Buddhism that salvation comes only through self-effort and self-victory are rejected, and salvation through the merits of another is taught.  “Ta-riki,” “another’s power,” not “Ji-riki,” “self-power,” is with them the orthodox doctrine.  Priests may marry and eat meat, practices utterly abhorrent to the older and more primitive Buddhism.  The sacred books are printed in the vernacular, in marked contrast to the customs of the other sects.  Women, too, are given a very different place in the social and religious scale and are allowed hopes of attaining salvation that are denied by all the older sects.  “Penance, fasting, prescribed diet, pilgrimages, isolation from society, whether as hermits or in the cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by this sect.  Monasteries imposing life vows are unknown within its pale.  Family life takes the place of monkish seclusion.  Devout prayer, purity, earnestness of life, and trust in Buddha himself as the only worker of perfect righteousness, are insisted on.  Morality is taught as more important than orthodoxy."[AC] It is amazing how far the Shin sect has broken away from regular Buddhistic doctrine and practice.  Who can say that no originality was required to develop such a system, so opposed at vital points to the prevalent Buddhism of the day?