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Shinto
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Like China, Japan has amalgamated three distinct yet interrelated religious traditions. Confucianism entered the country from the mainland in 405 C.E. through the Korean scholar Wani, and served mainly as a guide to ethics and filial relationships. Buddhism came from China by way of Korea during the 6th century. And Shinto, the native folk religion of the islands which dates from before the Christian Era, still survives in a variety of formats. One reason Shinto has proved of so little interest to Westerners is that it is viewed as essentially a state religion based on ancestor worship related to the Japanese Imperial Family. (Try to imagine a state religion in Great Britain based on ancient Celtic or Druidic rituals but serving as a vehicle for the worship of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles.)
But the image of Shinto as ceremonial state religion is inaccurate. Its name is actually derived from the Chinese terms shen and tao, meaning "Way of the Gods," and was coined retroactively in the 6th century to distinguish the native religion from the new import, Butsudo, or "Way of the Buddha." The practices and beliefs of Shinto are ancient, combining nature-worship and animism (the belief that personal, intelligent spirits inhabit almost all natural objects, from stones and rivers to animals, trees, and hills) with ancestor worship (which, as in the Chinese and Aryan traditions, often included the glorification of tribal heroes) and a great emphasis on ritual cleanliness. All these features are still part of modern Shinto, and of Japanese cultural life in general. Ritual ablution, for instance, is not performed only before worshipping at a shrine, but also in purifying restaurants and other public places with cones of salt (reflecting the salt water with which Japan is surrounded and which was used in the earliest purification rites).
Shinto was the national religion of Japan until about the 9th century, when Buddhism became dominant for much of the next millennium. But Shinto developed its own distinctive theology during the 15th and 16th centuries and re-emerged as the official state religion following the Imperial Restoration of 1868. That revolution ended the successive dynasties of shoguns, or military governors of Japan, and ushered in the modern era. During the Meiji period (1868-1912), Shinto was elevated above all other religions, which were forced into virtual seclusion for a time, and was used as a tool of government to advance various Japanese war efforts. In effect, Shinto and the concept of the emperor's divinity became a shield for the Japanese militarists who had transformed Japan from an isolated society to a military and industrial power capable of defeating China and Russia. The militarists succeeded; until World War II, Japan had never lost a war. But the cost was terrible, not least for Shinto, which changed from a naturalistic peasant religion to a cult of blind patriotism.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the aboriginal inhabitants of the Japanese islands, the Stone Age Ainu, were gradually pushed out by waves of invasion from the mainland via Korea some 2,000 years ago. The story of the Neolithic invaders is told in mythological form in the earliest written chronicles of Japan, the Kojiki ("Ancient Records"), completed in 712 C.E. and the Nihongi ("Chronicles of Japan"), compiled in 720. Both books recount the legends of the Divine founding of Japan and detail many of the deities of the Yamato people who gradually occupied the islands, plus a number of historical figures through the 7th century.
Shinto boasts "eight hundred myriads of gods," only a fraction of whom are listed in the Kojiki, many with evocative compound names such as Princess Blossoming Brilliantly Like the Flowers of the Trees, the Heavenly Alarming Female, or Prince Wave Limit Brave Cormorant Thatch Meeting Incompletely. Shinto deities are generally called kami, a word of mysterious origin and meaning which can refer to any awe-inspiring spirit: the personification of natural forces (rain, wind, earthquakes), animate or inanimate objects, deified souls of the dead (especially emperors, heroes, and sages), or the human qualities of mercy, courage, or fear. A better translation of kami might be "sacred" -- anything that appears strange, powerful, uncontrolled, or incomprehensible, whether advantageous or disruptive. The current pantheon incorporates ancient Yamato kami with the spirits worshipped by the Ainu before they were pushed out.
The Shinto understanding of kami does not incorporate any sense of an Absolute, omniscient Supreme Being. And yet the polytheism of Shinto is the kind "where all the kami are thought of as working together harmoniously, so that in effect the universe is just as unified as in the religions claiming to be monotheistic."1
Among the chief Shinto kami are Amaterasu Omikami ("Heaven Shining Great August Deity," or Sun goddess), Tsukiyomi (Moon god), and Susanu ("Impetuous Male," or Storm Cloud god). All three were created by the sky father Izanagi ("Male Who Invites") after the death of his sister-wife, the Earth mother Izanami ("Female Who Invites"). This primeval pair, still popular in modern Japan, with the help of certain phallic rites, also begot the Japanese islands and the kami, until the fire kami burned his mother's birth canal, killing her. From earliest times, phallicism was even more prominent in Japan than in India, and stone and wooden phalluses as tall as seven or eight feet were common sights in the countryside until 1868, when the Meiji government decided they were bad for tourism.
According to the Kojiki, Amaterasu magically produced a son, Ho Mimi, whose son Ninigi no Mikoto ("Prince Rice-ear Ruddy Plenty," or God of the Ripened Rice Plant) descended to Earth with a whole entourage of priests and nobility and founded the Imperial Dynasty. (In all likelihood, the Heaven from which Ninigi and company descended referred to Korea to the north and west.) His great-grandson, Jimmu Tenno, became the first ruler of the Yamato, the powerful clan that dominated central and south Japan. Jimmu may have been a historical figure who lived c.40 BC; Tenno ("Heavenly Sovereign") is the title attached to all subsequent Japanese emperors, who are more commonly referred to by Westerners as the Mikado. The Yamatos became both rulers and the chief priests of the nature religion, and legends about them formed the basis for popular belief in the divine origin and superiority of the Japanese race.
The emperors were endowed with the Three Sacred Treasures, symbols of power which were given to Ninigi when he descended to earth: a mirror, a sword, and the jewels. The mirror was a symbol of Amaterasu, the sword was won by her brother Susanu, and the jewels were said to number 500. The Treasures were passed on from ruler to ruler, and without them the emperor or empress could not occupy the throne. The same dynasty has ruled Japan continuously for 2,000 years, probably the oldest active dynasty in the world; their claim of descent from the Sun goddess was a major part of the Japanese war effort in the 1930s and '40s, right down to the image of the sun on the national flag. Implicit in this Japanese nationalism was the ancient belief that Japan is the center of the world, and that it was the Japanese mandate to spread its religion to all mankind.
Shinto's detractors point to the disastrous role the state religion played in herding the Japanese people toward a blind allegiance to the emperor and the Japanese war machine, forgetting that Christianity and Islam have served much the same function in the past, and that the divine right of kings was essentially a Christian concept. Meanwhile, Shinto's supporters claim that it is "the natural religion of humanity," unencumbered by assertions of divine revelation or theologically convoluted concepts of the nature of God. They point with regret to the Meiji period, when Shinto was seized upon by government advisers as a device for promoting nationalist fervor, and disavow the excesses committed under that delusion.
1. Floyd Hyatt Ross, Shinto: The Way of Japan, Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.
The major place of Shinto worship is the shrine called a jinja or miya, a simple, austere wooden structure. The most famous is probably the shrine of Amaterasu at Ise, built around the 3rd century and consisting of 16 shrines and other structures covering an expanse of land. Government-approved shrines alone number over 100,000. The kami are believed either to dwell there or to arrive when summoned by the proper rites. The shrine to the war god Hachiman in Kamakura, for instance, was a center of feverish worship in the late 13th century when Kublai Khan, the founder of the Mongol dynasty in China, twice attempted to invade Japan. After storms lashed his fleet and caused him to give up both times, the myth that Japan was protected by the gods was greatly enhanced. The unique Japanese form of drama called Noh, perfected by a Shinto priest and his son in the 14th-15th centuries, developed out of religious dances performed in front of such shrines.
Buddhism, arriving in the 6th century with its doctrines about the after-death worlds, succeeded in absorbing much of the ancestor and hero worship of Shinto. Kukai, the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, preached that the Buddha reincarnates when and wherever necessary to help humanity (a variation on the Hindu avatar), and that the national gods and goddesses of Shinto were actually ancient incarnations of various buddhas and bodhisattvas. Beginning with the historical Buddha as the reincarnation of Amaterasu, Kukai taught that there was essentially no difference between worshiping Buddhist or Shinto figures. This came to be called Ryobu ("Two Faced") Shinto, and allowed the common folk to consider themselves at once Buddhists and Shintoists.
But Buddhism also brought to Japan literature, medicine, the arts and sciences, and a deeper sense of compassion and tolerance, along with improvements in skilled occupations from canal- and bridge-building to weaving and brewing. Buddhist monks served much the same function as did Christian monks during the Dark Ages of Europe (with whom they were roughly contemporaneous), preserving learning while improving living conditions.
The principal configurations of Shinto in the modern world are Koshitsu (State Shinto), Jinja (Shrine Shinto), Kyoha (Sect Shinto), and Minkan (Popular Shinto). Following the Imperial Restoration of 1868, Buddhism was denounced, Shinto was made the official state religion, and the emperor was worshiped as a god. After Japan surrendered in 1945, Shinto lost its role as state religion, and the emperor was forced to forgo (for a time, at least) any claim to personal divinity. However, Shrine Shinto continued to be practiced on a private level under the so-called "Shinto Directive" imposed by the victorious Allies, which returned freedom of religion to the Japanese people. Buddhism and Christianity could again be practiced openly, alongside Shinto, and that situation prevails today. Although Shrine Shinto did not exist as a religious organization until after 1868, it is associated with the ancient forms of nature worship that took shape around shrines devoted to particular kami, local or national. Following the war, shrines were removed from government control, and became dependent on support by the people.
Sect Shinto consists of a wide range of sects with very different philosophies and practices. Thirteen are officially recognized, from the so-called "pure" sects of Shinto Honkyoku, Shinri Kyo, and Taisha Kyo, to the overtly Confucian-influenced sects Shusei Ha and Teisei Kyo. Hundreds of sub-sects were either subsumed by these or thrive quietly alongside them. Some sects focus on worship of mountains, which make up 80 percent of the land mass of Japan yet are almost uninhabited. The remaining sects, only marginally Shinto, focus mainly on faith-healing and were founded within the last century and a half through the work of charismatic individuals. All three sects tend to extreme emotionalism and the use of magic in healing. "
Festivals called matsuri form a large part of Popular Shinto practice today. Many of them have to do with food, although they also serve as vehicles for requests for anything from a successful crop to the birth of sons, for thanks, to pacify destructive kami, or for divination. The Kagura, for instance, is a popular peace offering of food, music-making, and dancing that can be held at any time the worshipers request it of the temple attendants. The imperial household conducts 64 separate rituals in the course of a year, although the emperor participates in only a portion of them. The most important is the Nii Name Sai or Festival of New Food, during which the first-fruits of the harvest are offered in thanksgiving. Celebrated by the emperor on November 23-4, it focuses on the all-important grain harvest, and reaches back to the point of transition in Japanese culture from hunting and fishing to agriculture.
Just as Shinto has no single founder akin to the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad, so it has no body of sacred scriptures on a parallel with the Tripitaka, Bible, or Quran. What it does have are historical accounts of the formation of the world and the coming of the kami to Japan, providing both an historical and spiritual basis for Shinto. The first and still the most important major accounts of Shinto cosmogony are the Kojiki, committed to writing in 712 C.E., and the Nihongi, compiled in 720. The Kojiki provide the oldest written record of the Imperial Family and the clans that created the Japanese nation, constituting the basis on which Japanese society is built. The Engi Shiki (Ceremonial Law of the Engi Period), written in 927, contains 27 Shinto rituals, laying down the ground rules for offerings. The absence of an elaborate Shinto canon of sacred writings is a direct reflection of the role of the shrine as the focal point of the religion, taking the place that written doctrine assumes in other traditions.