Hence their interpretation in detail is still largely a matter of
conjecture.
Yet the Japanese Archipelago was inhabited long before the dawn of
history. The concurrent testimony of the earliest literary monuments, of
the indigenous mythology, of folk-lore, of shell-heaps and of
kitchen-middens shows that the occupation by human beings of the main
islands must be ascribed to times long before the Christian era. Before
written records or ritual of worship, religion existed on its active or
devotional side, and there were mature growths of thought preserved and
expressed orally. Poems, songs, chants and _norito_ or liturgies were
kept alive in the human memory, and there was a system of worship, the
_name_ of which was given long after the introduction of Buddhism. This
descriptive term, Kami no Michi in Japanese, and Shin-t[=o] in the
Chinese as pronounced by Japanese, means the Way of the Gods, the t[=o]
or final syllable being the same as tao in Taoism. We may say that
Shint[=o] means, literally, theoslogos, theology. The customs and
practices existed centuries before contact with Chinese letters, and
long previous to the Shint[=o] literature which is now extant.
Whether Kami no Michi is wholly the product of Japanese soil, or whether
its rudimentary ideas were imported from the neighboring Asian continent
and more or less allied to the primitive Chinese religion, is still an
open question.
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