The Buddhism in Japan

Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth century, but it had at first little influence on the native religion. Two centuries later a process of pacific penetration began which had some curious and important results. The missionaries of Buddhism applied to the Shinto gods a principle which had been already adopted in China. They discovered that whether Nature-gods or Man-gods they were nothing more than avatars or incarnations of the various Buddhas...

It is quite possible that to some of the readers of these pages, the very name of Shintoism was unknown; whereas all will have heard and read at least something of Buddhism, one of the four most prevalent religions of the world, and claiming at the present day considerably more than four hundred millions of adherents. At the same time, our inquiry into Buddhism cannot be comprised within such narrow limits as sufficed for our examination of the indigenous religion of Japan; the subject being one of the vastest dimensions.