Research On Japanese Mythology And National Beliefs

Mythology and Shinto beliefs are important topics in the study of Japanese intellectual history,and Kojiki,as the original classic of Shinto,is one of the most important documents in this field.Kojiki is an official book compiled in ancient Japan to regulate the genealogy and hierarchy of the imperial power.It integrates a variety of contents such as myths and legends,historical records,literary works,folk songs,religious sacrifices and local customs,covering various aspects of the ancient Japanese society,which has played an extremely important role in the development of Japanese culture,especially in the formation of the Shinto theory and the maturity of the Japanese religious thought.The belief in gods in Japan involves many problems,whether in the early stage of its origin or in the later process of its religionization,which makes it difficult to use one main line to fully present a complete image of the Japanese belief in gods influenced by different foreign religions and cultures in different periods and regions.However,it can be clear that whether in the period of the formation of the belief in gods,when the history of the Age of the Gods in Kojiki was created with the integration of the culture of the immigrants and the help of the foreign religious theories,or in the development period of the god sacrifice,when the Japanese belief in gods pursued “practicality” and focused on strengthening its own system and perfecting internal structure,or in the mature period of the Shinto theory,in which the Shinto theory was obsessed with emphasizing the “nationality” of religion and one-sidedly exaggerating its own national superiority,there always implies a thinking logic,that is,after Japanese religion had completed the acceptance of foreign cultures and religious theories,it immediately began the process of“decentralization”,in which it diluted and denied the existence of foreign factors in the belief in gods,emphasized its national value,and constantly looked for or constructed the “root” of its own national spirit by tracing back to ancient myths.Taking this as a clue,this paper focused on the “Volume of the Age of the Gods”in Kojiki,and combined the research results in archeology,folklore,linguistics,etc.,to investigate the development process of the Japanese god belief from the following five aspects:The first chapter mainly sorted out the background and the motivation of the compilation of Kojiki,and the formation process of the history of the Age of the Gods.By systematically categorizing the structure of the “Volume of the Age of the Gods”in Kojiki,the author systematically summarized the mythological elements that had a greater impact on the belief in gods of later generations,and emphatically discussed the inner principle of the three-tier structure of the mythical world in the narrative of the history of the Age of the Gods and the implied characteristics of diversified thoughts of the Age of the Gods.The second chapter analyzed the relationship between the “immigrants” and Japanese power before the compilation of Kojiki,and found that Japan preserved the precious antique color of Chinese culture in the process of long-term mixing with foreign ethnic groups and mutual infiltration with foreign culture.At the same time,in order to catch up with the advanced countries,Japan began to frequently combine foreign words and mythological theories with its local beliefs to construct a unique religious and cultural system when confronted with the impact of foreign god worship and sacrificial rituals on Japan's inherent religious traditions.The third chapter discussed the profound thinking and systematic study that Japan had had on the philosophical theory behind the Chinese characters when it converted the oral narration into transcripts in the process of compiling Kojiki.With the help of Yin Yang and Taoist thought,the myth “Creation” in Kojiki put forward the knowledge and understanding of the concept of “Nature”.The myth “Creation”also concealed the religious law of taking “filthiness” as the taboo,“purification” as the means,and “crime” and “punishment” as the result.The ultimate exploration of the origin of the world and the issue of human life and death in the “Volume of the Age of the Gods” laid the theoretical foundation of the Japanese national religion.The fourth chapter analyzed the connotation of the sacrificial ceremony based on rice farming in the myths of Kojiki,and then restored the way of sacrificial ceremony in Kojiki,one that took the gods as the core and was the religious origin of Shinto.However,it is particularly important to note the fact that the construction of the Shinto theory was not achieved overnight.It has gone through the development stages of the primitive Shinto,the shrine Shinto,the theoretical Shinto,the state Shinto and the sect Shinto,and its relationship with Confucianism and Buddhism and other ideological doctrines and religious sects gradually moved from the initial opposition to compromise and reconciliation.Finally,Japan formed a national and religious ideological system with a complete theory and an extensive coverage.Chapter five focused on the interpretation of the formation of Japanese national sacrifices and the evolution of the Shinto thought in later generations.By clarifying the process of the introduction of sacrificial rituals from the folk to the court system and the transformation of local gods into the gods of the royal family,the author discovered that there is an implicit combination of “Shinto” and “kingly way”consciousness in the orthodox thought of “Shinkoku”(the Kingdom of God).And Japan devoted itself to the exploration and construction of national spirit after the Middle Ages.It carried out the practice of restoring the ancient ways of Shinto and made the academic discussion on the core concepts of the “primitive state”,the“ancient state” and the “ancient way” in the Shinto thought,which triggered Japanese pursuit of the values of the religious “nationality”,and stimulated their desire for independence from the Chinese system.Especially in modern times,the belief in gods was abused by the imperial politics and became an important part of the national core values under the guidance of the historical view of the imperial kingdom.The cause and influence of this ideology need to be deeply explored.