Shinto (Japanese: 神道, Hepburn: Shintō; Japanese pronunciation: [ɕiꜜn.toː]), also called Shintoism, is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by the academic field of religious studies, Shinto is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners Shintoists, although adherents rarely use that term themselves. With no central authority in control of Shinto, beliefs and practices are diverse among practitioners.
A polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto revolves around supernatural entities called the kami (神), who are believed to inhabit all things, including forces of nature and prominent landscape locations. The kami are worshipped at kamidana household shrines, family shrines, and jinja public shrines. The last are staffed by priests, known as kannushi, who oversee offerings of food and drink to the specific kami enshrined at that location. This is done to cultivate harmony between humans and kami and to solicit the latter's blessing. Other common rituals include the kagura dances, rites of passage, and kami festivals. Public shrines facilitate forms of divination and supply religious objects, such as amulets, to the religion's adherents. Shinto places a major conceptual focus on ensuring purity, largely by cleaning practices such as ritual washing and bathing, especially before worship. Little emphasis is placed on specific moral codes or particular afterlife beliefs, although the dead are deemed capable of becoming kami. The religion has no single creator or specific doctrine, and instead exists in a diverse range of local and regional forms.
Although historians debate at what point it is suitable to refer to Shinto as a distinct religion, kami veneration has been traced back to Japan's Yayoi period (300 BCE to 250 CE). Buddhism entered Japan at the end of the Kofun period (300 to 538 CE) and spread rapidly. Religious syncretization made kami worship and Buddhism functionally inseparable, a process called shinbutsu-shūgō. The kami came to be viewed as part of Buddhist cosmology and were increasingly depicted anthropomorphically. The earliest written tradition regarding kami worship was recorded in the 8th-century Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. In ensuing centuries, shinbutsu-shūgō was adopted by Japan's Imperial household. During the Meiji era (1868 to 1912), Japan's nationalist leadership expelled Buddhist influence from kami worship and formed State Shinto, which some historians regard as the origin of Shinto as a distinct religion. Shrines came under growing government influence, and citizens were encouraged to worship the emperor as a kami. With the formation of the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century, Shinto was exported to other areas of East Asia. Following Japan's defeat in World War II, Shinto was formally separated from the state.
Shinto is primarily found in Japan, where there are around 100,000 public shrines, although practitioners are also found abroad. Numerically, it is Japan's largest religion, the second being Buddhism. Most of the country's population takes part in both Shinto and Buddhist activities, especially festivals, reflecting a common view in Japanese culture that the beliefs and practices of different religions do not need to be exclusive. Aspects of Shinto have been incorporated into various Japanese new religious movements.
Definition
There is no universally agreed definition of Shinto. According to Joseph Cali and John Dougill, if there was "one single, broad definition of Shinto" that could be proposed, it would be that "Shinto is a belief in kami", the supernatural entities at the centre of the religion. The Japanologist Helen Hardacre wrote that "Shinto encompasses doctrines, institutions, ritual, and communal life based on kami worship", while the scholar of religion Inoue Nobutaka observed that the term "Shinto" was "often used" in "reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals and practices".
The term Shinto is often broadly translated into English as "the way of the kami", although its meaning has varied throughout Japanese history. In English, the religion is also called "Shintoism", although some scholars have argued against the inclusion of the suffix -ism due to Shinto's lack of codified doctrine. Various scholars have referred to practitioners of Shinto as Shintoists, although this term has no direct translation in the Japanese language.
Scholars have debated at what point in history it is legitimate to start talking about Shinto as a specific phenomenon. The scholar of religion Ninian Smart suggested that one could "speak of the kami religion of Japan, which lived symbiotically with organized Buddhism, and only later was institutionalized as Shinto." While several institutions and practices now associated with Shinto existed in Japan by the 8th century, various scholars have argued that Shinto as a distinct religion was essentially "invented" during the 19th century, in Japan's Meiji era. The scholar of religion Brian Bocking stressed that, especially when dealing with periods before the Meiji era, the term Shinto should "be approached with caution". Inoue Nobutaka stated that "Shinto cannot be considered as a single religious system that existed from the ancient to the modern period", while the historian Kuroda Toshio noted that "before modern times Shinto did not exist as an independent religion".
Categorization
Many scholars describe Shinto as a religion, a term first translated into Japanese as shūkyō around the time of the Meiji Restoration. Some practitioners instead view Shinto as a "way", thus characterising it more as custom or tradition, partly as an attempt to circumvent the modern separation of religion and state and restore Shinto's historical links with the Japanese state. Moreover, many of the categories of religion developed in Western culture "do not readily apply" to Shinto. Unlike religions familiar in Western countries, such as Christianity and Islam, Shinto has no single founder, nor any single canonical text. Western religions tend to stress exclusivity, but in Japan, it has long been considered acceptable to practice different religions simultaneously. Japanese religion is therefore highly pluralistic. Shinto is often cited alongside Buddhism as one of Japan's two main religions, and the two often differ in focus, with Buddhism emphasising the idea of the cessation of suffering, while Shinto focuses on adapting to life's pragmatic requirements. Shinto has integrated elements from religions imported from mainland Asia, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese divination practices, and shares features like its polytheism with other East Asian religions.
Some scholars suggest we talk about types of Shintō such as popular Shintō, folk Shintō, domestic Shintō, sectarian Shintō, imperial house Shintō, shrine Shintō, state Shintō, new Shintō religions, etc. rather than regard Shintō as a single entity. This approach can be helpful but … what is meant by 'Shintō' in each case, particularly since each category incorporates or has incorporated Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, folk religious and other elements.
— Scholar of religion Brian Bocking
Scholars of religion have debated how to classify Shinto. Inoue considered it part of "the family of East-Asian religions". The philosopher Stuart D. B. Picken suggested that Shinto be classed as a world religion, while the historian H. Byron Earhart called it a "major religion". Shinto is often described as an indigenous religion, although this generates debates over the different definitions of "indigenous" in the Japanese context. The notion of Shinto as Japan's "indigenous religion" stemmed from the growth of modern nationalism between the Edo and Meiji periods; this view promoted the idea that Shinto's origins were prehistoric and that it represented something like the "underlying will of Japanese culture". The prominent Shinto theologian Sokyo Ono, for instance, said kami worship was "an expression" of the Japanese "native racial faith which arose in the mystic days of remote antiquity" and that it was "as indigenous as the people that brought the Japanese nation into existence". Many scholars regard this classification as inaccurate. Earhart noted that Shinto, in having absorbed much Chinese and Buddhist influence, was "too complex to be labelled simply [as an] indigenous religion". In the early 21st century it became increasingly common for practitioners to call Shinto a nature religion, which critics saw as a strategy to disassociate the tradition from controversial issues surrounding militarism and imperialism.
Shinto displays substantial local variation; the anthropologist John K. Nelson noted it was "not a unified, monolithic entity". Different types of Shinto have been identified. "Shrine Shinto" refers to practices centred around shrines, and "Domestic Shinto" to the veneration of kami in the home. Some scholars have used the term "Folk Shinto" to designate localised Shinto practices, or practices outside of an institutionalised setting. In various past eras, there was also a "State Shinto", in which Shinto beliefs and practices were closely interlinked with the Japanese state. In representing "a portmanteau term" for many varied traditions across Japan, the term "Shinto" is similar to the term "Hinduism", used to describe varied traditions across South Asia.
Beliefs
Kami
Shinto is polytheistic, involving the veneration of deities known as kami, or sometimes as jingi (神祇). In Japanese, the term kami refers both to individual kami and the collective group of kami. Although lacking a direct English translation, the term kami has sometimes been rendered as "god" or "spirit". The historian of religion Joseph Kitagawa deemed these English translations "quite unsatisfactory and misleading", and various scholars urge against translating kami into English. In Japanese, it is often said that there are eight million kami, a term which connotes an infinite number, and Shinto practitioners believe that they are present everywhere. They are not regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, or necessarily immortal.
The term kami is "conceptually fluid", and in Japanese it also applies to the power of phenomena that inspire a sense of wonder and awe. Kitagawa referred to this as "the kami nature", suggesting it was "somewhat analogous" to the Western concepts of the numinous and the sacred. Kami are seen to inhabit both the living and the dead, organic and inorganic matter, and natural disasters like earthquakes, droughts, and plagues; their presence is seen in natural forces such as the wind, rain, fire, and sunshine. Accordingly, Nelson commented that Shinto regards "the actual phenomena of the world itself" as being "divine". This perspective has been characterised as animistic.
Kami have been venerated since prehistory. During the Yayoi period they were deemed formless and invisible, but came to be depicted anthropomorphically under Buddhist influence. Modern statues of the kami are known as shinzo. Kami are usually associated with a specific place, often a prominent landscape feature such as a waterfall, mountain, large rock, or tree. Physical objects or places in which the kami have a presence are termed shintai; objects inhabited by the kami that are placed in the shrine are known as go-shintai. Objects commonly chosen for this purpose include mirrors, swords, stones, beads, and inscribed tablets. These go-shintai are concealed from the view of visitors, and may be hidden inside boxes so that even the priests do not know what they look like.
Kami are capable of both benevolent and destructive deeds; if warnings about good conduct are ignored, the kami can mete out punishment, often illness or sudden death, called shinbatsu. Some kami, referred to as the magatsuhi-no-kami or araburu kami, are regarded as malevolent and destructive. Offerings and prayers are given to the kami to gain their blessings and to dissuade them from destructive actions. Shinto seeks to cultivate and ensure a harmonious relationship between humans and the kami and thus with the natural world. More localised kami may be subject to feelings of intimacy and familiarity from members of the local community that are not directed towards more widespread kami like Amaterasu. The kami of a particular community is referred to it as their ujigami, while that of a particular house is the yashikigami.
Kami are not considered metaphysically different from humanity, with it being possible for humans to become kami. Ancestors and other dead humans are sometimes venerated as kami, being regarded as protectors. For example, Emperor Ōjin was posthumously enshrined as the kami Hachiman, believed to be a protector of Japan and a kami of war. In Western Japan, the term jigami is used to describe the enshrined kami of a village founder. In some cases, living human beings were also viewed as kami; these were called akitsumi kami or arahito-gami. In the State Shinto system of the Meiji era, the emperor of Japan was declared to be a kami, while several Shinto sects have also viewed their leaders as living kami.
Although some kami are venerated only in a single location, others have shrines across many areas. Hachiman for instance has around 25,000 shrines dedicated to him, while Inari has 40,000. The act of establishing a new shrine to a kami who already has one is called bunrei ("dividing the spirit"). As part of this, the kami is invited to enter a new place, with the instalment ceremony known as a kanjo. The new, subsidiary shrine is known as a bunsha. Individual kami are not believed to have their power diminished by their residence in multiple locations, and there is no limit on the number of places a kami can be enshrined. In some periods, fees were charged for the right to enshrine a particular kami in a new place. Shrines are not necessarily always designed as permanent structures.
Many kami have messengers, known as kami no tsukai or tsuka washime, that generally take animal forms. Inari's messenger, for example, is a fox (kitsune), while Hachiman's is a dove.
Shinto cosmology also includes spirits who cause malevolent acts, bakemono, a category including oni, tengu, kappa, mononoke, and yamanba. Japanese folklore also incorporates belief in the goryō or onryō, unquiet or vengeful spirits, particularly of those who died violently and without appropriate funerary rites. These are believed to inflict suffering on the living, meaning that they must be pacified, usually through Buddhist rites but sometimes through enshrining them as a kami. Other Japanese supernatural figures include the tanuki, animal-like creatures who can take human form.
Cosmogony
Although the narratives differ in detail, the origin of the kami and of Japan itself are recounted in two 8th-century texts, Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Drawing heavily on Chinese influence, these texts were commissioned by ruling elites to legitimize and consolidate their rule. Although never of great importance to Japanese religious life, in the early 20th century the government proclaimed that their accounts were factual.