Note (return) — Chapter II · - SHINTŌ: MYTHS AND RITUAL

The story of the conquest of the land, in its many phases, recalls that of the Aryans in India, of the Hebrews in Canaan, of the Romans in Europe and of the Germanic races in North America. The Yamato men gradually advanced to conquest under the impulse, as they believed, of a divine command.9 They were sent from Takama-no-hara, the High Plain of Heaven. Theirs was the war, of men with a nobler creed, having agriculture and a feudal system of organization which furnished resources for long campaigns, against hunters and fishermen. They had improved artillery and used iron against stone. Yet they conquered and pacified not only by superior strategy, tactics, weapons and valor, but also by advanced fetiches and dogma. They captured the religion of their enemies as well as their bodies, lands and resources. They claimed that their ancestors were from Heaven, that the Sun was their kinswoman and that their chief, or Mikado, was vicegerent of the Heavenly gods, but that those whom they conquered were earth-born or sprung from the terrestrial divinities.