The Rise of Mikadoism.

Nevertheless we must not forget that the men of the early age of the Kami no Michi conquered the aborigines by superior dogmas and fetiches, as well as by superior weapons.  The entrance of these heroes, invaders from the highlands of the Asian continent, by way of Korea, was relatively a very influential factor of progress, though not so important as was the Aryan descent upon India, or the Norman invasion of England, for the aboriginal tribes were vastly lower in the scale of humanity than their subduers.  Where they found savagery they introduced barbarism, which, though unlettered and based on the sword, was a vast improvement over what may be called the geological state of man, in which he is but slightly raised above the brutes.

For the proofs from the shell heaps, combined with the reflected evidences of folk-lore, show, that cannibalism[22] was common in the early ages, and that among the aboriginal hill tribes it lingered after the inhabitants of the plain and shore had been subdued.  The conquerors, who made themselves paramount over the other tribes and who developed the Kami religion, abolished this relic of savagery, and gave order where there had been chronic war.  Another thing that impresses us because of its abundant illustrations, is the prevalence of human sacrifices.  The very ancient folk-lore shows that beautiful maidens were demanded by the “sea-gods” in propitiation, or were devoured by the “dragons.”  These human victims were either chosen or voluntarily offered, and in some instances were rescued from their fate by chivalrous heroes[23] from among the invaders.

These gods of the sea, who anciently were propitiated by the sacrifice of human beings, are the same to whom Japanese sailors still pray, despite their Buddhism.  The title of the efficient victims was hitoga-shira, or human pillars.  Instances of this ceremony, where men were lowered into the water and drowned in order to make the sure foundation for bridges, piers or sea-walls, or where they were buried alive in the earth in order to lay the right bases for walls or castles, are quite numerous, and most of the local histories contain specific traditions.[24] These traditions, now transfigured, still survive in customs that are as beautiful as they are harmless.  To reformers of pre-Buddhistic days, belongs the credit of the abolition of jun-shi, or dying with the master by burial alive, as well as of the sacrifice to dragons and sea-gods.

Strange as it may seem, before Buddhism captured and made use of Shint[=o] for its own purposes (just as it stands ready to-day to absorb Christianity by making Jesus one of the Palestinian avatars of the Buddha), the house or tribe of Yamato, with its claim to descent from the heavenly gods, and with its Mikado or god-ruler, had given to the Buddhists a precedent and potent example.  Shint[=o], as a state religion or union of politics and piety, with its system of shrines and festivals, and in short the whole Kami no Michi, or Shint[=o] as we know it, from the sixth to the eighth century, was in itself (in part at least), a case of the absorption of one religion by another.