“The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a sure sign of the presence of divinity.  Near the spot where I live in Ko-ishi-kawa, T[=o]ki[=o], is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field.  The spot looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot of the old tree.” ...

“As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe, every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every part is in some measure the seat of the Deity.”—­Legendre’s Progressive Japan, p. 258.]

[Footnote 26:  De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.]

CHAPTER II

SHINT[=O]; MYTHS AND RITUAL

[Footnote 1:  The scholar who has made profound researches in all departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of Shint[=o], is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier.  He received the degree of B.A. from the London University.  After several years’ study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill under Rev. S.R.  Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese.  To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight.  Besides unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing.  His papers in the T.A.S.J., on The Shint[=o] Shrines at Ise, the Revival of Pure Shint[=o], and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the original and later forms of Shint[=o].]

[Footnote 2:  The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of Japan’s chronology and early history is Mr. W.G.  Aston of the British Civil Service.  He studied at the Queen’s University, Ireland, receiving the degree of M.A.  He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August 6, 1864.  He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language, and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years.  See his valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great Britain.  In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol.  XVI., pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, T[=o]ki[=o], 1880.  He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the Japanese annals.  We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol.  XVI., p. 73.