Shinto: The Ancient Religion of Japan

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  Spiritism.—The gods o of ancient Shinto are, on the whole, as unspiritual beings as the gods of Olympus. Their doings are mo­delled on those of living men and women, not on those of ghosts. When Izanagi followed his wife Izanami to the land of the dead he found there not a spirit, but a putrefying corpse. Ghosts are as absent from the Kojiki and Nihongi as they are from the Old Testament Scriptures. Herbert Spencer‟s ghost-theor y of the ori­gin of religion derives no support from the Japanese evidence. There is, however, a spiritual element in Shinto which demands notice. Some of the gods are represented as having mitama (au­gust jewels or souls) which reside invisibly in their temples and are the means of communication between Heaven and this world. The Earth or Kosmos deity Ohonamochi had a mitama (double) which appeared to him in a divine radiance illuminating the sea, and obtained from him a promise that, in consideration of the as­sistance the latter had rendered in reducing the world to order, he should have a shrine consecrated to him at Mimoro. Susa no wo‟s mitama was „settled‟ at Susa in Idzumo. The element tama (soul) enters into the names of several deities. This implies a more or less spiritual conception of their nature. Sometimes we hear of two mitama, one of a gentle, the other of a violent nature.