Her line of rulers, as alleged in old official documents and ostentatiously reaffirmed in the first article of the constitution of 1889, to be "unbroken for ages eternal," is no older than that of the popes.

Let us not think of Aryan or Chinese antiquity when we talk of Japan.

Her history as a state began when the Roman empire fell.

The Germanic nations emerged into history long before the Japanese.
Roughly outlining the political and religious life of the ancient Japanese, we note that their first system of government was a rude sort of feudalism imposed by the conquerors and was synchronous with aboriginal fetichism, nature worship, ancestral sacrifices, sun-worship and possibly but not probably, a very rude sort of monotheism akin to the primitive Chinese cultus.[9] Almost contemporary with Buddhism, its introduction and missionary development, was the struggle for centralized imperialism borrowed from the Chinese and consolidated in the period from the seventh to the twelfth century.

During most of this time Shint[=o], or the primitive religion, was overshadowed while the Confucian ethics were taught.