 Atsutane championed the pleasures of the here-and-now—good food and wine, love and sexual passion—even querying why some long for the afterlife when the present is so blissful. Like Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, Atsutane’s Kokugaku included the belief that persons in Japan are endowed as a birthright with True Hearts (magokoro) that make possible spontaneous conformity to the Way of the kami and restoration of an ancient social perfection in the present. Through prayer to specific deities, one could “learn from the kami” (kaminarai) in a manner that did not even require literacy. 