ABSTRACT
As we have seen above, Shintō-particularly State Shintō-through all the stages of its development from the beginning, is a national religion. Therefore, Shintō, as a national religion, never dies, it still is, and ever will be. The national religion of ancient Greece, that of early Rome, that of ancient Babylonia and Assyria, that of ancient Egypt, etc., all are no more. As Milton, in his famous ode, happily sings of the fate of national religions in the ancient lands:—
Shintō, on the contrary, has never passed away. Today it is, as it was yesterday, closely bound up with the Japanese nation, inseparably interwoven in the national life of one and the same Japanese people. It is no doubt true that Judaism and Brahmanism-Taoism may not be an exception-which are all national religions, still exist among their own respective peoples, but the Jews of today nowhere exist as a nation, while the Hindoos now are not the Hindoos of the age of Brahmanism before the rise of Buddhism, and Taoism is not the national religion of one and the same ruling House of China. We may say there is no other religion that, in the same sense of the term as Shintō, still exists as a national religion in close connection with one and the same nationality as well as the same ruling House from the beginning. This is owing to the permanence of the national life of the Japanese people, continually under the sovereignty of the same lineage.
