With a few exceptions, of no great importance in Shinto, the outward forms of the worship of the gods have been previously made use of as tokens of respect to living men. Whether I take off my hat to a lady or on entering a church, the act is the same, it is the ideas associated with it that make the difference. The word worship must therefore be used with caution. We ought not, for example, to assume that ancestor-worship is necessarily divine worship. It may only mean acts indicating affection and reverence for the dead, common to ourselves with non-Christian peoples, and need not involve any superstitious belief in a supernatural power exercised by dead forefathers or heroes. In modern Japan, ancestor-worship is a comparatively rational cult, and it is surely undesirable that missionaries should create for themselves great and needless difficulties by condemning it indiscriminately.
=Gestures of Worship.=—In Shinto, as in other religions, bowing is a common form of respect to the gods. It is the custom to bow twice before and after making an offering. Kneeling is also known, but is less usual. I have not met with any case of prostration as an act of adoration. Clapping hands was in ancient Japan a general token of respect, now confined to religious worship. Sometimes a silent hand-clapping is prescribed in the rituals. Offerings and other objects used in worship were raised to the forehead as a mark of reverence.
=Offerings= were in the older Shinto regarded as tokens of respect, and were not supposed to be eaten, worn, or otherwise enjoyed by the deity. There is, however, a more vulgar current of opinion according to which the god actually benefits in some obscure physical way by the offerings made to him.
The general object of making offerings is to propitiate the god or to expiate offences against him. Sometimes it is very plainly intimated that a _quid pro quo_ is expected.
The original and most important form of offering was food and drink of various kinds. The cardinal feature of the great ceremony by which the Mikado inaugurated his reign was an offering of rice and sake to the Sun-goddess. Other food-offerings were cakes, fruit, vegetables, edible seaweed, salt, water, and the flesh of deer, pigs, hare, wild boar, and birds. There were no burnt-offerings or incense. Next to food, clothing took the most important place. Hemp and mulberry-bark fibre, with the stuffs woven from them, are frequently mentioned. They are now represented by the Gohei. These are wands to which scollops of paper are attached, and are to be seen in every shrine and at every Shinto ceremony. Sometimes the god is supposed to come down and take up his temporary abode in the Gohei.