Shint[=o], who were known to have existed before the
days of K[=o]b[=o]. In some cases these gods have lost much of the
esteem in which they were held for centuries. Especially is this true of
the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance
into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its
shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots. His place as a deity (Kanda
Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Illustrious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by
another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-god who, in the
ages of the Kami, "resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado's
ancestors when they descended from Heaven." The apotheosis of the rebel
Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the
unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people. This method of
laying a ghost by making a god of him, was for centuries a favorite one
in Japanese Buddhism. Indeed, a large part of the practical and
parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits
of the departed.

All Japanese popular religion of the past has been intensely local and
patriotic. The ancient idea that Nippon was the first country created
and the centre of the world, has persisted through the ages, modifying
every imported religion. Hence the noticeable fact in Japanese Buddhism,
of the comparative degradation of the Hindu deities and the exaltation
of those which were native to the soil.

The normal Japanese, be he priest or lay brother, theologian or
statesman, is nothing if not patriotic. Even the Chinese gods and
goddesses which, clothed in Indian drapery and still preserving their
Aryan features, were imported to Japan, could not hold their own in
competition with the popularity of the indigenous inhabitants of the
Japanese pantheon. The normal Japanese eye does not see the ideals of
beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision.
Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties
of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of
the Japanese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols
imported from India. So also, the worshipper to whom the lovely scenery
of Japan was fresh from the hands of the kami who were so much like
himself, turned naturally in preference, to the "gods many" of his own
land.

Succeeding centuries only made it worse for the imported devas or gods,
while the kami, or the gods sprung from t