*His nails were extracted and his beard was plucked out.
"Unsought in prayer, "The gods will guard "The pure of heart."
*Kokoro dani Makoto no michi ni Kanai naba Inorazu tote mo Kami ya mamoran.
It is plain, however, that Shinto cannot be included in the category of ethical religions; it belongs essentially to the family of nature religions.
The acts which constituted crimes in ancient Japan were divided into two classes: namely, sins against heaven and sins against the State. At the head of the former list stood injuries to agricultural pursuits, as breaking down the ridges of rice-fields, filling up drains, destroying aqueducts, sowing seeds twice in the same place, putting spits in rice-fields, flaying an animal alive or against the grain, etc. The crimes against the State were cutting and wounding (whether the living or the dead), defilement on account of leprosy or cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods of expiating crime were recognized, but, as was the universal custom in remote times, very cruel punishments were employed against evil-doers and enemies. Death was inflicted for comparatively trivial offences, and such tortures were resorted to as cutting the sinews, extracting the nails and the hair, burying alive, roasting, etc. Branding or tattooing seems to have been occasionally practised, but essentially as a penalty or a mark of ignominy.
As is usually the case in a nation where a nature religion is followed, divination and augury were practised largely in ancient Japan. The earliest method of divination was by roasting the shoulder-blade of a stag and comparing the cracks with a set of diagrams. The Records and the Chronicles alike represent Izanagi and Izanami as resorting to this method of presaging the future, and the practice derives interest from the fact that a precisely similar custom has prevailed in Mongolia from time immemorial. Subsequently this device was abandoned in favour of the Chinese method, heating a tortoise-shell; and ultimately the latter, in turn, gave way to the Eight Trigrams of Fuhi. The use of auguries seems to have come at a later date. They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street and watching the passers, by manipulating stones, and by counting footsteps.