A serious study of Japanese morality should not fail to notice the respective parts taken by Buddhism and Confucianism.  The contrast is so marked.  While Confucianism devoted its energies to the inculcation of proper conduct, to morality as contrasted to religion, Buddhism devoted its energies to the development of a cultus, paying little attention to morality.  A recent Japanese critic of Buddhism remarks that “though Buddhism has a name in the world for the excellence of its ethical system, yet there exists no treatise in Japanese which sets forth the distinctive features of Buddhist ethics.”  Buddhist literature is chiefly occupied with mythology, metaphysics, and eschatology, ethical precepts being interwoven incidentally.  The critic just quoted states that the pressing need of the times is that Buddhist ethics should be disentangled from Buddhist mythology.  The great moralists of Japan have been Confucianists.  Distinctively Japanese morality has derived its impulse from Confucian classics.  A new spirit, however, is abroad among the Buddhist priesthood.  Their preaching is increasingly ethical.  The common people are saying that the sermons heard in certain temples are identical with those of Christians.  How widely this imitation of Christian preaching has spread I cannot say; but that Christianity has in any degree been imitated is significant, both ethically and sociologically.

Buddhism is not alone, however, in imitating Christianity.  A few years ago Dr. D.C.  Greene attended the preaching services of a modern Shinto sect, the “Ten-Ri-Kyo,” the Heaven-Reason-Teaching, and was surprised to hear almost literal quotations from the “Sermon on the Mount”; the source of the sentiment and doctrine was not stated and very likely was not known to the speaker.  Dr. Greene, who has given this sect considerable study, is satisfied that the insistence of its teachers on moral conduct is general and genuine.  When I visited their headquarters, not far from Nara, in 1895, and inquired of one of the priests as to the chief points of importance in their teaching, I was told that the necessity of leading an honorable and correct life was most emphasized.  There are reasons for thinking that the Kurozumi sect of Shintoism, with its emphasis on morality, is considerably indebted to Christianity both for its origin and its doctrine.

It is evident that Christianity is having an influence in Japan, far beyond the ranks of its professed believers.  It is proving a stimulus to the older faiths, stirring them up to an earnestness in moral teaching that they never knew in the olden times.  It is interesting to note that this widespread emphasis on ethical truth comes at a time when morality is suffering a wide collapse.