The Religions of Japan | Page 8

more than its weight.[7]
The Christian entering upon his Master's campaigns with as little
impediments of sectarian dogma as possible, should select a weapon
that is short, sure and divinely tempered.
To know exactly the defects of the religion we seek to abolish, modify,
supplement, supplant or fulfil, means wise economy of force. To get at
the secrets of its hold upon the people we hope to convert leads to a
right use of power. In a word, knowledge of the opposing religion, and
especially of alien language, literature and ways of feeling and thinking,
lengthens missionary life. A man who does not know the moulds of
thought of his hearers is like a swordsman trying to fight at long range
but only beating the air. Armed with knowledge and sympathy, the
missionary smites with effect at close quarters. He knows the vital
spots.
Let me fortify my own convictions and conclude this preliminary part
of my lectures by quoting again, not from academic authorities, but

from active missionaries who are or have been at the front and in the
field.[8]
The Rev. Samuel Beal, author of "Buddhism in China," said (p. 19) that
"it was plain to him that no real work could be done among the people
[of China and Japan] by missionaries until the system of their belief
was understood."
The Rev. James MacDonald, a veteran missionary in Africa, in the
concluding chapter of his very able work on "Religion and Myth," says:
The Church that first adopts for her intending missionaries the study of
Comparative Religion as a substitute for subjects now taught will lead
the van in the path of true progress.
The People of Japan.
In this faith then, in the spirit of Him who said, "I come not to destroy
but to fulfil," let us cast our eyes upon that part of the world where lies
the empire of Japan with its forty-one millions of souls. Here we have
not a country like India--a vast conglomeration of nations, languages
and religions occupying a peninsula itself like a continent, whose
history consists of a stratification of many civilizations. Nor have we
here a seemingly inert mass of humanity in a political structure
blending democracy and imperialism, as in China, so great in age, area
and numbers as to weary the imagination that strives to grasp the
details. On the contrary, in Dai Nippon, or Great Land of the Sun's
Origin, we have a little country easy of study. In geology it is one of
the youngest of lands. Its known history is comparatively modern. Its
area roughly reckoned as 150,000 square miles, is about that of our
Dakotas or of Great Britain and Ireland. The census completed
December 31, 1892, illustrates here, as all over the world, nature's
argument against polygamy. It tells us that the relation between the
sexes is, numerically at least, normal. There were 20,752,366 males and
20,337,574 females, making a population of 41,089,940 souls. All
these people are subjects of the one emperor, and excepting fewer than
twenty thousand savages in the northern islands called Ainos, speak
one language and form substantially one race. Even the Riu Kiu

islanders are Japanese in language, customs and religion. In a word,
except in minor differences appreciable or at least important only to the
special student, the modern Japanese are a homogeneous people.
In origin and formation, this people is a composite of many tribes.
Roughly outlining the ethnology of Japan, we should say that the
aborigines were immigrants from the continent with Malay
reinforcement in the south, Koreans in the centre, and Ainos in the east
and north, with occasional strains of blood at different periods from
various parts of the Asian mainland. In brief, the Japanese are a very
mixed race. Authentic history before the Christian era is unknown. At
some point of time, probably later than A.D. 200, a conquering tribe,
one of many from the Asian mainland, began to be paramount on the
main island. About the fourth century something like historic events
and personages begin to be visible, but no Japanese writings are older
than the early part of the eighth century, though almanacs and means of
measuring time are found in the sixth century. Whatever Japan may be
in legend and mythology, she is in fact and in history younger than
Christianity. Her line of rulers, as alleged in old official documents and
ostentatiously reaffirmed in the first article of the constitution of 1889,
to be "unbroken for ages eternal," is no older than that of the popes. Let
us not think of Aryan or Chinese antiquity when we talk of Japan. Her
history as a state began when the Roman empire fell. The Germanic
nations emerged into history long before the Japanese.
Roughly outlining the political and religious