| Transcript |
- Introduction
What is Shinto?
The religion of the early Japanese was basically a naive nature worship, which later came to be called Shinto, a name of Chinese origin meaning �The Way of the Gods.� Shinto is a native Japanese faith, the oldest of the major religions in Japan. It has been said that the indigenous Shinto religion is the soul of Japan. Shinto is difficult to define and comprehend since it has no organized philoso�phy or sacred scriptures. It regards human beings as virtuous by nature and teaches that each person should be guided by his or her own conscience. Since Shinto includes no concepts of heaven or hell, nor of guilt or sin, it is quite a cheerful and optimistic religion. For a time, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was considered a national faith rather than a religion, and its values were labelled as moral instruction rather than as religious teaching.
Shinto shows a love and appreciation of the beauty and bountifulness of nature rather than a fear of its destructive powers. Of prime importance to early Shinto believers was to be in harmony with the forces of nature and to preserve the natural order of things.
Shinto has no founder or prophet, and no absolute deity who is the creator of all. It is simply centred upon the concept of kami, which is usually translated as �god� or �deity,� but which literally means �above� or �superior.� From time immemorial, the Japanese have worshipped a multitude of natural deities (kami) represented by such noteworthy phenomena as waterfalls, mountains, trees and rocks. Anything which was extraordinary or awe-inspiring, or suggestive of a divine presence, was singled out for special veneration and called a kami. Birds and animals as well as human beings (such as emperors, heroes, priests or ancestors) could be kami. Shinto is a personal faith showing reverence and gratitude to these various kami for their all-encompassing love.
According to legends in early chronicles, namely the eighth-century Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, the islands of Japan were created and populated by kami or gods. Early Shinto appears to have been a conglomeration of local cults which were deeply imbued with a reverence for nature. Local clans had their own protective kami, but these were gradually integrated into one hierarchy by the ruling clan of Yamato in order to substantiate their supremacy. These early rulers claimed descent from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu. When the Yamato clan achieved ascendency over the other rival tribes in Japan, in the third or fourth century, the Sun Goddess became the supreme deity of the Shinto pantheon and the symbol of the spiritual and political unity of the State. She is the most important first ancestor of the Japanese ruling family and the emperor claimed his descent from her. According to tradition, her three holy relics�a mirror, a sword and a magatama (a curved jewel), symbolizing wisdom, courage and love respectively�were handed down to the Yamato clan by Amaterasu and thus became the emblems of the state. After the Yamato rulers established their sovereignty over Japan, the emperor came to be regarded as a living kami.
The introduction of continental religions into Japan�of Confuciansim around 400 A.D. and Buddhism in the sixth century�influenced Shinto beliefs
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