The cultus has been known in the Japanese archipelago from Riu Kin to Yezo.  Despite official edicts of abolition it is still secretly practised by the “heathen,” the inaka of Japan.  “Government law lasts three days,” is an ancient proverb in Nippon.  Sharp eyes have, within three months of the writing of this line, unearthed a phallic shrine within a stone’s-throw of Shint[=o]’s most sacred temples at Ise.  Formerly, however, these implements of worship were seen numerously—­in the cornucopia distributed in the temples, in the matsuris or religious processions and in representation by various plastic material—­and all this until 1872, to an extent that is absolutely incredible to all except the eye-witnesses, some of whose written testimonies we possess.  What seems to our mind shocking and revolting was once a part of our own ancestors’ faith, and until very recently was the perfectly natural and innocent creed of many millions of Japanese and is yet the same for tens of thousands of them.

We may easily see why and how that which to us is a degrading cult was not only closely allied to Shint[=o], but directly fostered by and properly a part of it, as soon as we read the account of the creation of the world, an contained in the national “Book of Ancient Traditions,” the “Kojiki.”  Several of the opening paragraphs of this sacred book of Shint[=o] are phallic myths explaining cosmogony.  Yet the myths and the cult are older than the writing and are phases of primitive Japanese faith.  The mystery of fatherhood is to the primitive man the mystery of creation also.  To him neither the thought nor the word was at hand to put difference and transcendental separation between him and what he worshipped as a god.

Into the details of the former display and carriage of these now obscene symbols in the popular celebrations; of the behavior of even respectable citizens during the excitement and frenzy of the festivals; of their presence in the wayside shrines; of the philosophy, hideousness or pathos of the subject, we cannot here enter.  We simply call attention to their existence, and to a form of thought, if not of religion, properly so-called, which has survived all imported systems of faith and which shows what the native or indigenous idea of divinity really is—­an idea that profoundly affects the organization of society.  To the enlightened Buddhist, Confucian, and even the modern Shintoist the phallus-worshipper is a “heathen,” a “pagan,” and yet he still practises his faith and rites.  It is for us to hint at the powerful influence such persistent ideas have upon Japanese morals and civilization.  Still further, we illustrate the basic fact which all foreign religions and all missionaries, Confucian, Buddhist, Mahometan or Christian must deal with, viz.:  That the Eastern Asiatic mind runs to pantheism as surely as the body of flesh and blood seeks food.

Tree and Serpent Worship.