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Shintoism
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Shintoism
Shintoism The Shinto religion was started in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) of Japanese history. The Tokugawa “Enlightenment” inspired a group of people who studied kokugaku, which roughly translated means “nativism,” “Japanese Studies,” or “Native Studies.” Kokugaku's intent was to recover “Japanese character” to what it was before the early influences of foreigners, especially the Chinese. Some of these influences include Confucianism (Chinese), Taoism (Chinese), Buddhism (Indian and Chinese), and Christianity (Western European). The kokugakushu (“nativist”) focused most of their efforts on recovering the Shinto religion, the native Japanese religion, from fragments of texts and popular religious practices. However, Shintoism is probably not a native religion of Japan (since the Japanese were not the original “natives” of Japan). There really is no one thing that can be called “Shinto,” The name itself is a bit misleading because it is made up of two Chinese words meaning “the way of the gods”(Shen : “ spiritual power, divinity”; Tao : “the way or path”). The word for this in Japanese is kannagara : "the way of the kami ." Many things can be said about Shinto. First, it was a tribal religion, not a state one. However, even when the tribes were organized into coherent states, they still retained their Shinto beliefs. Second, all Shinto cults believe in Kami (“the divine”) Individual clans worshipped a single Kami which was regarded as the principal a...
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