The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji — Context and Discussion

A Scholar’s Vantage Point

Griffis repeatedly signals his position as both observer and participant. He describes his first walk in Japan, taken with a former marine who invented the jin-riki-sha, to study a hill-temple and wayside shrines. This anecdote reveals his method: concrete detail anchors broad inquiry. He values “contemporaneous human testimony” alongside books. The preface insists the book is “antiquated” by design, refusing to predict Japan’s religious future. Instead, he traces Buddhism’s doctrinal evolutions through four epochs, from Nara’s first six sects to the “new Buddhism” of his day. His voice is that of a guide who has walked the ground.

Buddhism as a Living System

Griffis presents Buddhism not as a static creed but as a system in flux. He notes that by 552 A.D. it was already a millennium old, “greatly corrupted from its original simplicity.” He charts later imports from China in the seventeenth century, which took root only as “curiosities in the garden.” His language is often blunt: “the water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass.” Yet he also quotes a Tendai priest, Zitsuzen Ashitsu, who describes the Sutra as “micrographic photographs” of the mind—a striking image that Griffis lets stand without comment. He juxtaposes such idealism with a Japanese proverb: “Swallowing the device of the priests, the people well satisfied, dance their prayers.”

The Rhetoric of Contrast

Throughout the excerpts, Griffis sets Eastern and Western thought in explicit opposition. He cites J.H. De Forest: “To the millions of China, Corea, and Japan, creator and creation are new and strange terms.” He quotes George William Knox on Buddhism’s denunciation of desire and its offer of salvation through “the murder of our affections.” Then he counters with biblical verses—James on wisdom “without hypocrisy” and Paul on “the mystery of God, even Christ.” This dialectical structure is deliberate: Griffis writes from a Christian perspective but lets Buddhist voices speak. His own judgments are clear, yet he preserves the texture of debate.

Structure as Argument

Griffis organizes his material into chronological epochs, but he also uses paratexts to frame his argument. The title page bears the motto “I came not to destroy, but to fulfil,” attributed to “The Son of Man.” The dedication honors both Union Theological Seminary faculty and English scholars who “laid the foundations of critical scholarship in Japan.” The preface explicitly rejects a “snap-shot photograph” in favor of a developmental picture. This scaffolding—motto, dedication, preface, chronological outline—shapes how readers encounter the doctrinal chapters. Griffis is not merely describing; he is positioning his work within a tradition of critical, sympathetic study.

Readers should attend to Griffis’s habit of juxtaposing personal narrative with doctrinal analysis. His voice is that of a participant-scholar who walked the streets of Yedo and later lectured at Union Theological Seminary. The book rewards those who follow its chronological structure while noting the recurring tension between Buddhist idealism and Christian theism. The excerpts offer only fragments of a long work; the full text likely deepens these contrasts and enriches the historical panorama.

Griffis walking through old shrines made me think how faith leaves its layers like sediment—Shintō, then Buddha, then the Meiji sun reasserting itself. I felt that same quiet ache reading how Rome’s household gods gave way to Augustus, each ceremony a whispered goodbye. The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus — A Closer Reading holds that same hush of things passing.