motive as that which induced the Mikado in the eighth century to build
the great monasteries on Hiyéizan, northeast of Ki[=o]to, this being the
quarter in which Buddhist superstition locates the path of advancing
evil, to ward off malevolence by litanies and incense. Or, the _inao_ is
a sort of lightning-rod conductor by which impending mischief may be led
harmlessly away.

Yet, besides the Ainos,[14] there are millions of Japanese who are
Shamanists, even though they know not the name or organized cult. And if
we make use of the term Shamanism instead of the more exact one of
Animism, it is for the very purpose of illustrating our contention that
the underlying paganisms of the Japanese archipelago, unwritten and
unformulated, are older than the religions founded on books; and that
these paganisms, still vital and persistent, constantly modify and
corrupt the recognized religious. The term Shaman, a Pali word, was
originally a pure Buddhist term meaning one who has separated from his
family and his passions. One of the designations of the Buddha was
Shamana-Gautama. The same word, Shamon, in Japanese still means a bonze,
or Buddhist priest. Its appropriation by the sorcerers, medicine-men,
and lords of the misrule of superstition in Mongolia and Manchuria shows
decisively how indigenous paganism has corrupted the Buddhism of
northern Asia even as it has caused its decay in Japan.

As out of Animism or Shamanism grows Fetichism in which a visible object
is found for the abode or medium of the spirit, so also, out of the same
soil arises what we may call Imaginary Zoölogy. In this mental growth,
the nightmare of the diseased imagination or of the mind unable to draw
the line between the real and the unreal, Chinese Asia differs notably
from the Aryan world. With the mythical monsters of India and Iran we
are acquainted, and with those of the Semitic and ancient European cycle