did exactly what the
state churches of Europe, both pagan and Christian, have done before and
since the Christian era.

Further, in studying the "Kojiki," we must remember that the sacred
writings sprang out of the religion, and that the system was not an
evolution from the book. Customs, ritual, faith and prayer existed long
before they were written about or recorded in ink. Moreover, the
philosophy came later than the practice, the deeds before the myths, and
the joy and terror of the visible universe before the cosmogony or
theogony, while the book-preface was probably written last of all.

The sun was first, and then came the wonder, admiration and worship of
men. The personification and pedigree of the sun were late figments. To
connect their ancestors with the sun-goddess and the heavenly gods, was
a still later enterprise of the "Mikado reverencers" of this earlier
time. Both the god-way in its early forms and Shint[=o] in its later
development, were to them political as well as ecclesiastical institutes
of dogma. Both the religion which they themselves brought and cultivated
and the aboriginal religion which the Yamato men found, were used as
engines in the making of Mikadoism, which is the heart of Shint[=o].

Not until two centuries after the coming of Buddhism and of Asiatic
civilization did it occur to the Japanese to reduce to writing the
floating legends and various cycles of tradition which had grown up
luxuriantly in different parts of "the empire," or to express in the
Chinese character the prayers and thanksgivings which had been handed
down orally through many generations. These norito had already assumed
elegant literary form, rich in poetic merit, long before Chinese writing
was known. They, far more than the less certain philosophy of the
"Kojiki," are of undoubted native origin. It is nearly certain that the
prehistoric Japanese did not borrow the literary forms of the god-way
from China, as any one familiar with the short, evenly balanced and
antithetical sentences of Chinese style can see at once. The norito are
expressions, in the rhythmical and rhetorical form of worship, of the
articles of faith set forth in the historic summary which we have given.
We propose to illustrate the dogmas by quoting from the rituals in Mr.
Satow's masterly translation. The following was addressed to the
sun-goddess (Amateras[)u] no Mikami, or the
From-Heaven-Shining-Great-Deity) by the priest-envoy of the pries