Such is, in brief, the story about my country before it was brought under the rule of one central governing body. Subjected to scientific scrutiny the whole tale presents many gaps in logical sequence. It betrays, besides, traces of an intermingling of the early beliefs of other nations. Still, it must be said that the divine origin of our emperors has invested their throne with the double halo of temporal and of spiritual power from the earliest days of their ascendancy; and the people, themselves the descendants of those patriarchs who served under the banners of Emperor Jimmu, or else of those who early learned to bow themselves down before the divine conqueror, have looked up to this throne with an ever-growing reverence and pride.
In primitive Japan, as in every other primitive human society, ancestor-worship was the first form of belief. Each family had its own departed spirits of forefathers to whom was dedicated a daily homage of simple words and offerings in kind. The guardian ghosts demanded of their living descendants that they should be good and brave in their own way. As these families of the same race and language gathered themselves around the strongest of them all, imbued with a firm belief in its divine origin, they contributed in their turn their own myths to the imperial ones, thus eventually forming and consolidating a national cult; and it was but natural that the people's heart should come in course of time to re-echo in harmony with the keynote struck by the one through whom the gods breathe eternal life. The whole nation is bound by that sacred tie of common belief and common thought. Here lies the great gap that separates, for example, the Chinese cult of fatalism from our Path of Gods as a moral force. The Chinese have believed from the earliest times in one supreme god whom they called the Divine Presider (_Shang-ti_) or the August Heaven (_Hwang-t'ien_ or simply _T'ien_), who, according to their notion, carefully selects a fit person from among swarming mankind to be the temporary ruler of his fellow-countrymen, but only for so long as it pleases the god to let him occupy the throne. At the expiration of a certain period, the heavenly mission (_T'ien-ming_) is transferred through bloodshed and national disaster to another mortal, who exercises the earthly rule until he or his descendants incur the disfavour of the 'Heaven above.' To this day the Chinese word for revolution means the 'renovation of missions' (_kweh-ming_). This fatalistic idea, which is but a natural outcome of the almost too democratic nature of the people of the Celestial Empire and of the frequent changes of dynasties it has had to go through, is almost unknown in our island home in its gravest aspects; more than that, ever since its introduction into Japan, this idea, along with the Indian doctrine of pitiless fate, has gradually taught us to offer a more resigned and determined service to our respective superiors who culminate in the divine person of the Emperor himself. This is well illustrated by the fact that no attempt at the formal occupation of the throne has ever been made, even on the part of those powerful Shoguns who were the real rulers of our country; they knew full well how dangerous and fatal for themselves it would be to tamper with that hinge on which the nation's religious life turns. Only once in our long history is there an example of an unsuccessful attempt (and it is the highest treason a Japanese subject can think of), when a Buddhist monk named Dôkyô, encouraged by the undue devotion of the ruling empress, tried to ascend the throne by means of the recognition of the higher temporal rank of the Buddhist priesthood over the imperial ministry of the native cult. This imminent danger was averted by the bold and resolute patriotism of a Shinto priest, Wake-no-Kiyomaro, who, in Luther-like defiance of all peril and personal risks, declared fearlessly, in the very presence of the haughty and menacing head of the Buddhist Church, the divine will, 'Japan is to know no emperor except in the person of the divine descendants of the Sun-Goddess!'