Phallic Symbols.
To form one's impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic
liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the
worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather
our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the
scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way
was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the
Japanese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the
Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this
reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so
that today the altars of both religions exist in the same house, the
dead ancestors becoming both kami and buddhas.
Modern taste has removed from sight what were once the common people's
symbols of the god-way, that is of ancestor worship. The extent of the
phallus cult and its close and even vital connection with the god-way,
and the general and innocent use of the now prohibited emblems, tax
severely the credulity of the Occidental reader. The processes of the
ancient mind can hardly be understood except by vigorous power of the
imagination and by sympathy with the primeval man.
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