Japan and the Japanese

60 JAPAN. A. D. 1550.
(two dynasties which, as in the similar mythology of the Egyptians
and Hindoos, were imagined to have extended through immense
and incomprehensible ages preceding the era of Syn-Hu), but in-
cluding also the whole series of the Dairi, who traced their descent
from the first of the demigods, and who, though regarded during
their lives as mere men, yet at their deaths underwent, as in the
case of the Roman Caesars, a regular apotheosis, by which they
were added to the number of the Kami, or Sin, words both of
which had the same signification, namely, inhabitants of heaven.*
A like apotheosis was also extended to all who had seemed to
deserve it by their sanctity, their miracles, or their great bene-
factions.
The Kami of the first dynasty, the seven superior gods, being
regarded as too elevated above the earth to concern themselves in
what is passing on it, the chief object of the worship of the adhe-
rents of this ancient system was the goddess Tensio Dai-Dsin,
already mentioned as the first of the demigods, and the supposed
progenitor of the Dairi, and of the whole order of the Kuge. Of
this Tensio Dai-Dsin, and of h,er heroic and miraculous deeds, a
vast many fables were in circulation. Even those who had quitted
the ancient religion to embrace the new sects paid a sort of wor-
ship to the pretended mother of the Japanese nation ; and there
was not a considerable city in the empire in which there was not
a temple to her honor. On the other hand, the religion of the
Kami, by its doctrine of the apotheosis of all great
saints and
great heroes, gave, like the old pagan religions, a hospitable reception
to all new gods, so that even the rival demigod, Buddha, came
to be regarded by many as identical with Tensio Dai-D.sin, a
circumstance which will serve to explain the great intermixture of
religious ideas found in Japan, and the alleged fact, very remark-
able, if true, that, till after the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries,
religious persecution had never been known there.
Each of these numerous demigods was supposed by the adherents
of the religion of Sinto to preside over a special paradise of his
* The word Kami is also doubly used as a title of honor conferred with the
sanction of the Dairi, somewhat equivalent, says Kampfer, in one case, to
the European title of chevalier, and in the other, to that of count. Golow-
nin insists that it implies something spiritual.