JAPAN AND HER GODS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 2677, 13 January 1921, Page 2

JAPAN AND HER GODS

THE KING OF HELL,

The Japanese are a people who try to get as much fun out of the inevitable as they can, writes the Tokyo correspondent of the “Morning Post. As religion is a slii-kata ngamai koro, a thing that cannot be lielped, they* all unite in making the best of it and having as much, amusement as possible. They not only joke with each other about the demands and doings of the gods, but joke with the gods themselves, and there is a versicle in one of their liturgies where, instead of saying, “Let us pray,” the priest turns to the people and solemnly says: “Ldt us all laugh!” Recently a remarkable festival has been going cn, which may be called the feast of the King of Hell EmmnO, as he ns known in the Japanese pantheon. In occidental lands we frequently hear the remark: “Give rhe Devil his due” ; but few people do it; at least, not in the Japanese -sense, for lieTe the King of Hell commands considerable respect especially on or about the time of the Bon Matsuri, when all the departed spirits come back to tlieir former habitations to be welcomed by their loved ones ; but how can they come—at least, that -portion of them less fortunate than those who got to hea-ven-—(if the Master of the Underworld does not let them out for the visit home ? So the folk of Japan devote particular attention to the gatekeeper of the netlier regions at tlie period of Bon. And by what means do the religious people of Japan seek to please the King of Hell so that lie may favour then* long lost ones in allowing them 'to pay their annual visit to the old homestead? They decorate the temple walls with great pictures of Emma-O, some of thorn priceless kakemono, hundreds of years old, and from, the brush of ancicn't masters. Some of these paintings depict the dire experiences of .spirits in the underworld; for not only is Km-ina-O the King of Hell, bitt the judge thereof too, and one never knows when one may lin.ve to reckon with lvim, so it is well to keep on the right side of him at any rate 1 . Having done their best to play up to the vanity of the Rider of the abnormally vain, the folk of Japan take down their En:maO pictures and put -them away carefully in fireproof vaults for another year.

■ Japan has n considerable degree of what one Japanese aptly called the “scarecrow” attitude towards rolig:on. When the riee is coming out in head the Japanese farmer sets up , here and there in the field a. bamboo pole with a cross piece on which he places a ragged kinaono surmonnred by a cast-off straw ha’D to scale off ‘ birds. 'lliis is the part which the i evil gods and devils play in the nni tion's theology ; and most or the people are about as much influenced by this demonolgy as the birds are by ! the scarecrows in tile rice plots. Yet j tlie.v keep up the joke just as they have done for centuries. Tt does show, how ever, that in the Japanese niiind as in the consciousness of the human mind elsewhere, tlicre is a sense of sin, or some violation of right that one should be afraid of; and as all moral responsibility must associate itself with personality, a judge, there should be to deal with it. And just os the sinnerdn Japan is not dealt with by the Emperor hut by officials much lower down, the unseen world must be provided with a similar system. Japanese gods and Japanese religion are simply a. transfiguration o ftlie people themselves—anthropomorphism with a vengeance. And yet as has been suggested, it floes s'tand for a degree of moral truth. It means at least that the folk of this country, no less ‘than those of England and America, somehow agree that man must not do what lie likes, but what he ought. The categorical imperative is universal.