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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
special tendencies bequeathed to us. In such a sense the dead are indeed our Kami and all our actions are
truly influenced by them. Figuratively we may say that every mind is a world of ghosts, - ghosts
incomparably more numerous than the acknowledged millions of the higher Shinto Kami and that the
spectral population of one grain of brain-matter more than realizes the wildest fancies of the medieval
schoolmen about the number of angels able to stand on the point of a needle. Scientifically we know that
within one tiny living cell may be stored up the whole life of a race, - the sum of all the past sensation of
millions of years; perhaps even (who knows?) of millions of dead planets.
But devils would not be inferior to angels in the mere power of congregating upon the point of a needle.
What, of bad men and of bad acts in this theory of Shinto? Motowori made answer; "Whenever anything
goes wrong in the world, it is to be attributed to the action of the evil gods called the Gods of
Crookedness, whose power is so great that the Sun-Goddess and the Creator-God are sometimes
powerless to restrain them; much less are human beings always able to resist their influence. The
prosperity of the wicked, and the misfortunes of the good, which seem opposed to ordinary justice, are
thus explained." All bad acts are due to the influence of evil deities; and evil men may become evil
Kami. There are no self-contradictions in this simplest of cults(1), - nothing complicated or hard to be
understood. It is not certain that all men guilty of bad actions necessarily become "gods of crookedness,"
for reasons hereafter to be seen; but all men, good or bad, become Kami, or influences. And all evil acts
are the results of evil influences.
Now this teaching is in accord with certain facts of heredity. Our best faculties are certainly bequests
from the best of our ancestors; our evil qualities are inherited from natures in which evil, or that which
we now call evil, once predominated. The ethical knowledge evolved within us by civilization demands
that we strengthen the high powers bequeathed us by the best experience of our dead, and diminish the
force of the baser tendencies we inherit. We are under obligation to reverence and to obey our good
Kami, and to strive against our gods of crookedness. The knowledge of the existence of both is old as
human reason. In some form or other, the doctrine of evil and of good spirits in personal attendance upon
every soul is common to most of the great religions. Our own mediaeval faith developed the idea to a
degree which must leave an impress on our language for all time; yet the faith in guardian angels and
tempting demons evolutionarily represents only the development of a cult once simple as the religion of
the Kami. And this theory of mediaeval faith is likewise pregnant with truth. The white-winged form that
whispered good into the right ear, the black shape that murmured evil into the left, do not indeed walk
beside the man of the nineteenth century, but they dwell within his brain; and he knows their voices and
feels their urging as well and as often as did his ancestors of the Middle Ages.
The modern ethical objection to Shinto is that both good and evil Kami are to be respected. "Just as the
Mikado worshiped the gods of heaven and of earth, so his people prayed to the good gods in order to
obtain blessings, and performed rites in honor of the bad gods to avert their displeasure.... As there are
bad as well as good gods, it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings of agreeable food, with the
playing of harps and the blowing of flutes, with singing and dancing, and with whatever else is likely to
put them in good-humor(2)." As a matter of fact, in modern Japan, the evil Kami appear to receive few
offerings or honors, notwithstanding this express declaration that they are to be propitiated. But it will
now be obvious why the early missionaries characterized such a cult as devil-worship, - although, to
Shinto imagination, the idea of a devil, in the Western meaning of the word, never took shape. The
seeming weakness of the doctrine is in the teaching that evil spirits are not to be warred upon, - a
teaching essentially repellent to Roman Catholic feeling. But between the evil spirits of Christian and of
Shinto belief there is a vast difference. The evil Kami is only the ghost of a dead man, and is not believed
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