Emma O (Yama-raja, ruler of Buddhist hells), Fudo (Achala, the “immovable,” “unchangeable"), and many others.  Popular Buddhism also worships every man dead or living who has become a “hotoke,” that is, has attained Buddhahood and has entered Nirvana.  The gods of Japan are innumerable in theory and multitudinous in practice.  Not only are there gods of goodness but also gods of lust and of evil, to whom robbers and harlots may pray for success and blessing.

In the Japanese pantheon there is no supreme god, such, for instance, as the Roman Jupiter, or the Greek Chronos, nor is there a thoroughgoing divine hierarchy.

According to the common view (although there is no definite thought about it), the idea seems to be that the universe with its laws and nature were already existent before the gods appeared on the scene; they created specific places, such as Japan, out of already existing material.  Neither in Shinto nor in popular Buddhism is the conception formed of a primal fount of all being with its nature and laws.  In this respect Japanese thought is like all primitive religious thought.  There is no word in the Japanese language corresponding to the English term “God.”  The nearest approach to it are the Confucian terms “Jo-tei,” “Supreme Emperor,” “Ten,” “Heaven,” and “Ten-tei,” “Heavenly Emperor”; but all of these terms are Chinese, they are therefore of late appearance in Japan, and represent rather conceptions of educated and Confucian classes than the ideas of the masses.  These terms approach closely to the idea of monotheism; but though the doctrine may be discovered lying implicit in these words and ideas it was never developed.  Whether “Heaven” was to be conceived as a person, or merely as fate, was not clearly thought out; some expressions point in one direction while others point in the other.

I may here call attention to a significant fact in the history of recent Christian work in Japan.  Although the serious-minded Japanese is first attracted to Christianity by the character of its ethical thought—­so much resembling, also so much surpassing that of Confucius, it is none the less true that monotheism is another powerful source of attraction.  I have been repeatedly told by Christians that the first religious satisfaction they ever experienced was upon their discovery of monotheism.  How it affected Dr. Neesima, readers of his life cannot have overlooked.  He is a type of multitudes.  In the earlier days of Christian work many felt that they had become Christians upon rejection of polytheism and acceptance of monotheism.  And in truth they were so far forth Christian, although they knew little of Christ, and felt little need of His help as a personal Saviour.  The weakness of the Church in recent years is due in part, I doubt not, to the acceptance into its membership of numbers who were, properly speaking, monotheistic, but not in the complete sense of the term Christian.  Their discovery later that more was needed than the