passages show traces of Chinese influence, and he blames Motowori’s uncompromising championship of every iota of the existing text of the “Records of Ancient Matters.” As belonging to this same school of what may perhaps be termed “rationalistic believers” in Japanese mythology, a contemporary Christian writer, Mr. Takahashi Gorō, must also be mentioned. Treading in the foot-steps of Arawi Hakuseki, but bringing to bear on the legends of his own country some knowledge of the mythology of other lands, he for instance explains the traditions of the Sun-Goddess and of the Eight-Forked Serpent of Yamada by postulating the existence of an ancient queen called Sun, whose brother, after having been banished from her realm for his improper behaviour, killed an enemy whose name was Serpent, etc., while such statements as that the microscopic deity who came over the waves to share the sovereignty of Idzumo would not tell his name, are explained by the assertion that, being a foreigner, he was unintelligible for some time until he had learnt the language. It is certainly strange that such theorists should not see that they are undermining with one hand that which they endeavour to prop up with the other, and that their own individual fancy is made by them the sole standard of historic truth. Yet Mr. Takahashi confidently asserts that “his explanations have nothing forced or fanciful” in them, and that “they cannot fail to solve the doubts even of the greatest of doubters.”[1]
The general habit of the more sceptical Japanese of the present day,—i.e. of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the educated,—seems to be to reject, or at least to ignore, the history of the gods, while implicitly accepting the history of the emperors from Jim-mu downwards; and in so doing they have been followed with but little reserve by most Europeans,—almanacs, histories and cyclopædias all continuing to repeat on the antiquated authority of such writers as Kaempfer and Titsingh, that Japan possesses an authentic history covering more than two thousand years, while Siebold and Hoffmann even go the length of discussing the hour of Jim-mu’s accession in the year 660 B.C! This is the attitude of mind now sanctioned by the governing class. Thus, in the historical compilations used as text-books in the schools, the
- ↑ Mr. Takahashi Gorō’s book here alluded to is his “Shintō Discussed Afresh.”
