(Avelokitesvara, gods and
goddesses of mercy), Amida (Amitabha, the ideal of boundless light),
Jizo (Kshitigarbha, the helper of those in trouble, lost children, and
pregnant women), Emma O (Yama-raja, ruler of Buddhist hells), Fudo
(Achala, the "immovable," "unchangeable"), and many others. Popular
Buddhism also worships every man dead or living who has become a
"hotoke," that is, has attained Buddhahood and has entered Nirvana.
The gods of Japan are innumerable in theory and multitudinous in
practice. Not only are there gods of goodness but also gods of lust
and of evil, to whom robbers and harlots may pray for success and
blessing.

In the Japanese pantheon there is no supreme god, such, for instance,
as the Roman Jupiter, or the Greek Chronos, nor is there a
thoroughgoing divine hierarchy.

According to the common view (although there is no definite thought
about it), the idea seems to be that the universe with its laws and
nature were already existent before the gods appeared on the scene;
they created specific places, such as Japan, out of already existing
material. Neither in Shinto nor in popular Buddhism is the conception
formed of a primal fount of all being with its nature and laws. In
this respect Japanese thought is like all primitive religious thought.
There is no word in the Japanese language corresponding to the English
term "God." The nearest approach to it are the Confucian terms
"Jo-tei," "Supreme Emperor," "Ten," "Heaven," and "Ten-tei," "Heavenly
Emperor"; but all of these terms are Chinese, they are therefore of
late appearance in Japan, and represent rather conceptions of educated
and Confucian classes than the ideas of the masses. These terms
approach closely to the idea of monotheism; but though the doctrine
may be discovered lying implicit in these words and ideas it was never
developed. Whether "Heaven" was to be conceived as a person, or merely
as fate, was not clearly thought out; some expressions point in one
direction while others point in the other.

I may here call attention to a significant fact in the history of
recent Christian work in Japan. Although the serious-minded Japanese
is first attracted to Christianity by the character of its ethical
thought--so much resembling, also so much surpassing that of
Confucius, it is none the less true that monotheism is another
powerful source of attraction. I have been repeatedly told by
Christians that the first religious satisfaction they