One to whom the boundary line between the Creator and his world is perfectly clear, one who knows the eternal difference between mind and matter, one born amid the triumphs of science can but faintly realize the mental condition of the millions of Japan to whom there is no unifying thought of the Creator-Father.  Faith in the unity of law is the foundation of all science, but the average Asiatic has not this thought or faith.  Appalled at his own insignificance amid the sublime mysteries and awful immensities of nature, the shadows of his own mind become to him real existences.  As it is affirmed that the human skin, sensitive to the effects of light, takes the photograph of the tree riven by lightning, so, on the pagan mind lie in ineffaceable and exaggerated grotesqueness the scars of impressions left by hereditary teaching, by natural phenomena and by the memory of events and of landmarks.  Out of the soil of diseased imagination has sprung up a growth as terrible as the drunkard’s phantasies.  The earthquake, flood, tidal wave, famine, withering or devastating wind and poisonous gases, the geological monsters and ravening bird, beast and fish, have their representatives or supposed incarnations in mythical phantasms.

Frightful as these shadows of the mind appear, they are both very real and, in a sense, very necessary to the ignorant man.  He must have some theory by which to explain the phenomena of nature and soothe his own terrors.  Hence he peoples the earth and water, not only with invisible spirits more or less malevolent, but also with bodily presences usually in terrific bestial form.  To those who believe in one Spirit pervading, ordering, governing all things, there is unity amid all phenomena, and the universe is all order and beauty.  To the mind which has not reached this height of simplicity, instead of one cause there are many.  The diverse phenomena of nature are brought about by spirits innumerable, warring and discordant.  Instead of a unity to the mind, as of sun and solar system, there is nothing but planets, asteroids and a constant rain of shooting-stars.

Shamanism.

Glancing at some phases of the actual unwritten religions of Japan we name Shamanism, Mythical Zooelogy, Fetichism, Phallicism, and Tree and Serpent Worship.

In actual Shamanism or Animism there may or there may not be a belief in or conception of a single all-powerful Creator above and beyond all.[12] Usually there is not such a belief, though, even if there be, the actual government of the physical world and its surroundings is believed to lie in the hands of many spirits or gods benevolent and malevolent.  Earth, air, water, all things teem with beings that are malevolent and constantly active.  In time of disaster, famine, epidemic the universe seems as overcrowded with them as stagnant water seems to be when the solar microscope throw its contents into apparition upon the screen.  It is absolutely necessary to propitiate these spirits by magic rites and incantations.