s the rise of
individualistic religions.

In the present chapter we propose to study Japanese religious history
from the communal standpoint. This will lead us to study her present
religious problem and the nature of the religion required to solve it.

The real nature of the religious life of Japan has been and still is
predominantly communal. Individualism has had a place, but, as we have
repeatedly seen, only a minor place in forming the nation. From the
communo-individualistic standpoint, in the study of Japan's religious
and social evolution, not only can we see clearly that the three
religions of Japan are real religions, but we can also understand the
nature of the relations of these three religions to each other and the
reasons why they have had such relations. Japanese religious history
and its main phenomena become luminous in the light of
communo-individualistic social principles.

Shinto, the primitive religion of Japan, corresponded well with the
needs of primitive times, when the development of strong communal life
was the prime problem and necessity. It furnished the religious
sanctions for the social order in its customs of worshiping not only
the gods, but also the Emperor and ancestors. It gave the highest
possible justification of the national social order in its deification
of the supreme ruler. Shinto was so completely communal in its nature
that the individual aspect of religion was utterly ignored. It
developed no specific moral code, no eschatological and soteriological
systems, no comprehensive view of nature or of the gods. These
deficiencies, however, are no proofs that it was not a religion in the
proper sense of the term. The real question is, did it furnish any
supra-mundane, supra-legal, supra-communal sanctions both for the
conduct of the individual in his social relations and for the fact and
the right of the social order. Of this there can be no doubt. Those
who deny it the name of a religion do so because they judge religion
only from the point of view of a highly developed individualistic
religion.

In view of this undoubted fact, it is a strange commentary on the
failure of Shinto leaders to realize the real function of the faith
they profess that they have sought and obtained from the government
the right to be considered and classified no longer as a religion, but
only as a society for preserving the memories and shrines of the
ancestors of the race. Thus has modern Shinto, so