Note 35 — NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Footnote 35:

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The native literature illustrating Riyōbuism is not extensive. Mr. Ernest Satow in the American Cyclopædia (Japan: Literature) mentions several volumes. The Tenchi Réiki Noko, in eighteen books contains a mixture of Buddhism and Shintō, and is ascribed by some to Shōtoku and by others to Kōbō, but now literary critics ascribe these, as well as the books Jimbetsuki and Tenshoki, to be modern forgeries by Buddhist priests. The Kogoshiui, written in A.D. 807, professes to preserve fragments of ancient tradition not recorded in the earlier books, but the main object is that which lies at the basis of a vast mass of Japanese literature, namely, to prove the author's own descent from the gods. The Yuiitsu Shintō Miyoho Yoshiu, in two volumes, is designed to prove that Shintō and Buddhism are identical in their essence. Indeed, almost all the treatises on Shintō before the seventeenth century maintained this view. Certain books like the Shintō Shu, for centuries popular, and well received even by scholars, are now condemned on account of their confusion of the two religions. One of the most interesting works which we have found is the San Kai Ri, to which reference has been made.