SHINTO

Shinto, is the indigenous religion of Japan. It's origin predates history and was so named to distinguish it from Buddhism (Butsudo) in the sixth century. The name Shinto is a Chinese derivative of the Japanese term Kami-no-michi - the way of the gods.

While the early Japanese believed every object possesses a spirit, it is the unusual objects of nature that warrants some form of worship. The forces of nature deserved special attention as they reproduce life and hold life-giving qualities, hence, the many festivals celebrating the fertility of nature in rural Japan. The most significant gods among the "eighty myriads" are the goddess of the sun (Amaterasu) and the rice-god (Inari). Amaterasu is also known as the ruler of heaven and the chief deity of food. The early Yamato tribe subsequently extended the worship of the wonderful in nature to that of the Mikado, the chieftain. The chieftain became the focal point of their religion and their policy. This worship of the Mikado as a descendant of heaven, gave new significance to the Imperial Throne. Reverence for the Mikado unified the tribes, which ultimately resulted in a cohesive society that we see today.

Ceremonial purity forms the crux of the Shinto liturgies. Moral responsibility falls on the conscience of the Shintoists, as they believe in their own generic morality. There are no fundamental distinction between right and wrong based on divine order. The Christian concepts of the righteousness of God and the sinfulness of mankind seemed redundant to Shintoists as they perceive the innate capacity and the moral responsibility of humankind to attain godliness. The purification ceremonies are processes through which one attains godliness. They help purify and uncloud the spirit to form the soul. All things are composed of body (gotai), mind/spirit (shinki) and soul (tamashii). Objects, plants, animals and even some people are made up of only body and mind - devoid of soul. Gods are all spirit and soul whilst the supreme god is pure soul. Spirit never dies. It circulates either on its own or it returns to the spiritual reserviours; Takami-musubi-no-kami and Kami-musubi-no-kami. There are good gods and also bad ones. The bad ones are harmful. However, the way has it that the good is always mightier than the bad as they evolved in continued clarification ending in the ultimate clarification of the spirit, to become the soul. Shinto shrines are distinguished by an arch called the torii, which is a gateway composed of two upright and two horizontal beams of wood. If the torii is dyed red, it signifies that the shrine is dedicated to the rice god Inari. There are no idols in the Shinto shrine. Instead, there is a box which contains a token called a shintai (god-body) which could be just an inscribed tablet or either a stone, a sword or a mirror. Petitions are occasionally written onto paper and deposited in the shrine. The paper flags found around the shrine or even on the trees around the shrine are posted by petitioners as testaments that their prayers have been answered.

Like many religions, there are a number of sects that made up the Shinto church. They differ by their worship of different gods within the system. Some of them practice the charismatic art of "god transformation" (kami-utsuri). Put simply, "god-transformation" takes place when a spirit enters into another spirit's body whilst simultaneous subjugating the spirit already there. This possession could occur in objects (miracles) or people (incarnations). The Shinto we see today in Japan are products of the centuries of struggle and evolution brought upon by the introduction of Buddhism from Korea in the 5th Century A.D., and subsequently from neighbouring China. The artistic richness of the Buddhist temples with their seductive imagery of the gods were soon favoured by the Mikado who eventually became a Buddhist monk. In the ninth century, Kobo Daishi, a Japanese who traveled in China to learn Buddhism from the great masters, returned to Japan to form Ryobu-Shinto ("the two-fold way of the gods"). Kobo Daishi claimed to have been enlightened by the sun-goddess and food-goddess that all Shinto deities are incarnations of the Buddha and he formed an elaborate calendar which identified well known Buddhist deities with Shinto deities. This combination of religions gained immediate acceptance in Japan and consequently arrested the livelihood of orthodox Shinto. This continued for hundreds of years until the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns in the seventeenth century.. During the Tokugawa dynasty, scholars began to revive the old Japan, through the reintroduction of traditional literature, language, philosophy and religion, and the abandonment of anything foreign. Shinto gained greatly from all this. This revival of Japanese sentiments culminated in the Great Revolution of 1868. Shinto was once again restored to the position of state religion with a following of more than 90 million in modern Japan today.