y live and fight, eat and drink, and give
vent to their appetites and passions, and then they die; but exactly
what becomes of them after they die, the record does not state. Some are
in heaven, some on the earth, some in Hades. The underworld of the first
cycle of tradition is by no means that of the second.[16] Some of the
kami are in the water, or on the water, or in the air. As for man, there
is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or
what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with
the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and
the Iroquois believed in.

It would task the keenest and ablest Shint[=o]ist to deduce or construct
a system of theology, or of ethics, or of anthropology from the mass of
tradition so full of gaps and discord as that found in the Kojiki, and
none has done it. Nor do the inaccurate, distorted, and often almost
wholly factitious translations, so-called, of French and other writers,
who make versions which hit the taste of their occidental readers far
better than they express the truth, yield the desired information. Like
the end strands of a new spider's web, the lines of information on most
vital points are still "in the air."

The Ethics of the God-way.

There are no codes of morals inculcated in the god-way, for even its
modern revivalists and exponents consider that morals are the invention
of wicked people like the Chinese; while the ancient Japanese were pure
in thought and act. They revered the gods and obeyed the Mikado, and
that was the chief end of man, in those ancient times when Japan was the
world and Heaven was just above the earth. Not exactly on Paul's
principle of "where there is no law there is no transgression," but
utterly scouting the idea that formulated ethics were necessary for
these pure-minded people, the modern revivalists of Shint[=o] teach that
all that is "of faith" now is to revere the gods, keep the heart pure,
and follow its dictates.[17] The naivete of the representatives of
Shint[=o] at Chicago in A.D. 1893, was almost as great as that of the
revivalists who wrote when Japan was a hermit nation.

The very fact that there was no moral commandments, not even of loyalty
or obedience such as Confucianism afterward promulgated and formulated,
is proof to the modern Shint[=o]ist that the primeval Japanese were pure
and holy; they did right, naturally, and hence he does not hesitate to