nearly five hundred years ago, had the honor of sending the first ships and crews to explore the coasts of Africa and Asia, and her sailors by this word, now Englished as fetich, described the native charms or talismans. The word "fetichism" came into the European languages through the work of Charles de Brosses, who, in 1760, wrote on "Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches." In Fetichism, the "object is treated as having personal consciousness and power, is talked with, worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, petted or ill-treated with reference to its past or future behavior to its votaries."
Let me draw a picture from actual observation. I look out of the windows of my house in Fukui. Here is a peasant who comes back after the winter to prepare his field for cultivation. The man's horizon of ideas, like his vocabulary, is very limited. His view of actual life is bounded by a few rice-fields, a range of hills, and the village near by. Possibly one visit to a city or large town has enriched his experience. More probably, however, the wind and clouds, the weather, the soil, crops and taxes, his family and food and how to provide for them, are the main thoughts that occupy his mind. Before he will strike mattock or spade in the soil, lay axe to a tree, collect or burn underbrush, he will select a stone, a slab of rock or a stick of wood, set it upon hill side or mud field-boundary, and to this he will bow, prostrate himself or pray. To him, this stone or stick is consecrated. It has power to placate the spirits and ward off their evil. It is the medium of communication between him and them. Now, having attended, as he thinks, to the proprieties in the case, he proceeds to dig, plough, drain, put in order and treat soil or water, tree or other growth as is most convenient for his purpose. His fetich is erected to "the honorable spirits." Were this not attended to, some known or unknown bad luck, sinister fortune, or calamity would befall him. Here, then, is a fetich-worshipper. The stick or stone is the medium of communication between the man and the spirits who can bless or harm him, and which to his mind are as countlessly numerous as the swarms of mosquitoes which he drives out of and away from his summer cottage by smudge fires in August.
One need not travel in Yezo or Saghalin to see practical Fetichism. Go where you will in Japan, there are fetich worshippers. Among the country folk, the "inaka" of Japanese parlance, Fetichism is seen in its grossest forms. Yet among probably millions of Buddhists, especially of certain sects, the Nichiren for example, and even among the rationalistic Confucians, there are fetich-worshippers. Rare is the Japanese farmer, laborer, mechanic, ward-man, or hei-min of any trade who does not wear amulet, charm or other object which he regards with more or less of reverence as having relation to the powers that help or harm.17 In most of the Buddhist temples these amulets are sold for the benefit of the priests or of the shrine or monastery. Not a few even of the gentry consider it best to be on the safe side and wear in pouch or purse these protectors against evil.
Of the 7,817,570 houses in the empire, enumerated in the census of 1892, it is probable that seven millions of them are subjects of insurance by fetich.18 They are guaranteed against fire, thieves, lightning, plague and pestilence. It is because of money paid to the priests that the wooden policies are duly nailed on the walls, and not on account of the wise application of mathematical, financial or medical science. Examine also the paper packages carefully tied and affixed above the transom, decipher the writing in ink or the brand left by the hot iron on the little slabs of pine-wood—there may be one or a score of them—and what will you read? Names of the temples with date of issue and seal of certificate from the priests, mottoes or titles from sacred books, often only a Sanskrit letter or monogram, of which the priest-pedler may long since have forgotten the meaning. To build a house, select a cemetery or proceed to any of the ordinary events of life without making use of some sort of material fetich, is unusual, extraordinary and is voted heterodox.
Long after the brutish stage of thought is past the fetichistic instinct remains in the sacredness attached to the mere letter or paper or parchment of the sacred book or writing, when used as amulet, plaster or medicine. The survivals, even in Buddhism, of ancient and prehistoric Fetichism are many and often with undenied approval of the religious authorities, especially in those sects which are themselves reversions to primitive and lower types of religion.
Among the Ainos of Yezo and Saghalin the medicine-man or shaman is decorated with fetichistic bric-à-brac of all sorts, and these bits of shells, metals, and other clinking substances are believed to be media of communication with mysterious influences and forces. In Korea thousands of trees bedecked with fluttering rags, clinking scraps of tin, metal or stone signify the same thing. In Japan these primitive tinkling scraps and clinking bunches of glass have long since become the suzu or wind-bells seen on the pagoda which tintinabulate with every passing breeze. The whittled sticks of the Aino, non-conductors of evil and protectors of those who make and rear them, stuck up in every place of awe or supposed danger, have in the slow evolution of centuries become the innumerable flag-poles, banners and streamers which one sees at their matsuris or temple festivals. Millions of towels and handkerchiefs still flutter over wells and on sacred trees. In old Japan the banners of an army almost outnumbered the men who fought beneath them. Today, at times they nearly conceal the temples from view.
The civilized Japanese, having passed far beyond the Aino's stage of religion, still show their fetichistic instincts in the veneration accorded to priestly inventions for raising revenue.19 This instinct lingers in the faith accorded to medicine in the form of decoction, pill, bolus or poultice made from the sacred writing and piously swallowed; in the reverence paid to the idol for its own sake, and in the charm or amulet worn by the soldier in his cap or by the gentleman in his pill-box, tobacco-pouch or purse.
As the will of the worshipper who selects the fetich makes it what it is, so also, by the exercise of that will he imagines he can in a certain measure be the equal or superior of his god. Like the Italian peasant who beats or scolds his bambino when his prayers are not answered or his wishes gratified, so the fetich is punished or not allowed to know what is going on, by being covered up or hidden away. Instances of such rough handling of their fetiches by the people are far from unknown in the Land of Great Peace. At such childishness we may wonder and imagine that fetich-worship is the very antipodes of religion; and yet it requires but little study of the lower orders of mind and conduct in Christendom to see how fetich-worship still lingers among people called Christians, whether the fetich be the image of a saint or the Virgin, or a verse of the Bible found at random and used much as is a penny-toss to decide minor actions. Or, to look farther south, what means the rabbit's foot carried in the pocket or the various articles of faith now hanging in the limbo between religion and folk-lore in various parts of our own country?
Phallicism.
Further illustrations of far Eastern Animism and Fetichism are seen in forms once vastly more prevalent in Japan than now. Indeed, so far improved off the face of the earth are they, that some are already matters of memory or archæology, and their very existence even in former days is nearly or wholly incredible to the generation born since 1868—when Old Japan began to vanish in dissolving views and New Japan to emerge. What the author has seen with his own eyes, would amaze many Japanese born since 1868 and the readers of the rhapsodies of tourists who study Japan from the jin-riki-sha. Phases of tree and serpent worship are still quite common, and will be probably for generations to come; but the phallic shrines and emblems abolished by the government in 1872 have been so far invisible to most living travellers and natives, that their once general existence and use are now scarcely suspected. Even profound scholars of the Japanese language and literature whose work dates from after the year 1872 have scarcely suspected the universality of phallic worship. Yet what we could say of this cult and its emblems, especially in treating of Shint[=o], the special ethnic faith of Japan, would be from sight of our own eyes besides the testimony of many witnesses.20
The cultus has been known in the Japanese archipelago from Riu Kin to Yezo. Despite official edicts of abolition it is still secretly practised by the "heathen," the inaka
