The Religions of Japan eBook

William Elliot Griffis
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 432 pages of information about The Religions of Japan.

The Religions of Japan eBook

William Elliot Griffis
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 432 pages of information about The Religions of Japan.
of the priest and saint were enshrined.[29] Yet, alas, to-day Daruma the Hindoo and foreigner, despite his avatar, his humility, his vigils and his self-mutilation, has been degraded to be the shop-sign of the tobacconists.  Besides being ruthlessly caricatured, he is usually pictured with a scowl, his lidless eyes as wide open as those upon a Chinese junk-prow or an Egyptian coffin-lid.  Often even, he has a pipe in his mouth—­a comical anachronism, suggestive to the smoker of the dark ages that knew no tobacco, before nicotine made the whole world of savage and of civilized kin.  Legless dolls and snow-men are named after this foreigner, whose name is associated almost entirely with what is ludicrous.

On K[=o]b[=o]’s expounding his scheme to the Mikado, the emperor was so pleased with his servant’s ingenuity, that he gave it the name of Riy[=o]bu[30] Shint[=o]; that is, the two-fold divine doctrine, double way of the gods, or amalgamated theology.  Henceforth the Japanese could enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate.  As for the people, they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings, and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[31] which are usually only other names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch.  The Yoga had become a kubiki, for Shint[=o] and Buddhism were now harnessed together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably as two oxen making the same furrow.

Many a miya now became a tera.  At first in many edifices, the rites of Shint[=o] and Buddhism were alternately performed.  The Buddhist symbols might be in the front, and the Shint[=o]ist in the rear of the sacred hall, or vice versa, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the two blended.  Instead of austere simplicity, the Shint[=o] interior contained a museum of idols.

Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or hinoki wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given places in the new and enlarged pantheon.  The multiplication was always on the side of Buddhism.  Soon, also, the architecture was altered from the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which, in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist paradise.  Many of these still remain even after the national purgation of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus or Constantinople.  The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood, but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished.  Sometimes it was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms, surmounted, it may be, with

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The Religions of Japan from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.