The Japanese consider a worldview as
any path or way (do,
Buddhism is butsudo,
the "way of the buddhas;"
Taoism is onmyodo,
the "way of yin and yang;"
Confucianism is judo,
"the way of the
gentleman."
Other practices or
paths are called "way",
for
instance, bushido,
"way of
the warrior;"
karatedo, "way of the empty hand."
Shinto, or at least the cult of
the gods later important
in developed Shinto, was the
early religion of Japan. It forms a
substratum of belief and practice
that remains up to today. Unlike
the worldviews of the ancient Romans
and Celts, Shinto survived to
this day. The name "Shinto" came
into use in the sixth century to
distinguish the indigenous worldview
from Buddhism.
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One feature of
Japan today which surprises visitors
is that Shinto, shorn of its
state control and ultranationalistic
overtones but retaining its
shrines under local, democratic
administration, has not withered
away but prospers.
To be sure,
most visitors to the
shrines would
scarcely call themselves
exclusively
Shinto.
Most are also
Buddhist, at least nominally, or
members of one of the "new
religions" of Japan. One need not wait
long before seeing an
individual or family pass through the
toril (entrance) wash hands
and mouth in a basin, approach the shrine,
clap twice, bow, murmur
a prayer, and leave a small
offering in a grill.
In Shinto shrines and also in
Chinese and Japanese Buddhist
and other temples, one senses a close
harmony of the human and
natural orders. The gods and guides
of mankind dwell in virtual
symbiosis with woods, streams, and
mountains, suggesting that in a
larger sense society is a part of nature,
and kami, immortals,
Buddhas, and humans are all parts of
a greater cosmic unity.
Shinto has been called "the
way of the gods" and "the
indigenous religion of the Japanese
people." At the same time it
has been said to be nonreligious in
character, or a suprareligious
entity expressing the very essence of
Japanese cultural identity.
Prior to 1900 the worship of the
kami was carried out on a
localized basis. Shinto priests were
organized, not in a national
priesthood with hierarchical organization
conferred by ordination,
but in independent sacerdotal lineages
managed by the largest
shrines. Sometimes it was managed by
local arrangement among the
male members of a community. Before
1868 Shinto's ties to the state
were limited to the imperial or shogunal
courts. After 1868 and
the Meiji Restoration Buddhism lost
its state patronage and Shinto
was patronized.
At the Meiji Restoration it is
estimated that there were 74,642
shrines and 87, 558 temples in Japan.
The shrines were
administered under the jurisdiction
of the Councillor of
Divinities, and most were small
without a full-time priest and
performed worship of local tutelary kami.
The great majority
existed as one component within a
temple-shrine complex, in which
temple and shrine functioned together
as a single cultic center.
Buddhist clergy usually controlled the complex.
The relation between the cults of
Buddhas and kami was
expressed in the theory that kami
were the protectors and
phenomenal appearances of Buddhist
divinities, who represented the
purest, original form of divinity.
The implication was that kami
were somehow beings of lower spiritual
attainments than the
Buddhas. The fusion in the nation
of Buddhism and Shinto was
pervasive and included the large and
venerable shrines such as
those at Ise and Izumo. Although
there was a nominal ban on
Buddhism at Ise, this was ignored.
In 1868 there were nearly three
hundred temples at Ise. Recitation of
Buddhist sutras before the
altars of the kami was common, based
on the belief that the kami
needed these rites in order to obtain salvation.
Ise pilgrimages, especially during
the later Tokugawa period
(1600-1868,) involved vast numbers
of people in the worship of the
kami. No other ritual rivaled these
pilgrimages in scale and extent
of influence. They were managed by an
informal order of the Ise
priesthood, oshi, who controlled
networks of confraternities
nationwide.
In pre-Meiji Japan, scholars argue that
there was no concept of
religion as a general phenomenon, of
which there could be variants
like Christianity, Buddhism, and Shinto.
People had faith (shinko)
in particular kami and Buddhas, but no
word designated a separate
worldview as opposed to the rest of
one's life. Religious themes
and concerns were integrated in popular
consciousness and social
life in a way at odds with
Western notions of belief as a private
matter of an individual's relation to deity.
There are nearly five hundred religious
organizations in
Japan. They can be ordered into
four major categories: 155 Shinto,
174 Buddhist, 61 Christian, and the rest
miscellaneous. Shrine
Shinto is the largest with some 80,000
local communities and over
60 million practitioners. But frequently
individuals claim
membership in both Shinto and Buddhism.
In shrine Shinto the
enshrined deities are believed to protect
the community, and so all
residents of the community are regarded
as parishoners of the
shrine. But at the same time virtually
all the residents are
affiliated with a particular Buddhist
temple. These temples are not
necessarily located within the comunity.
A Buddhist temple has no
territory, whereas a Shinto shrine does.
Temple affiliation
contains an element of choice.
Although both are tradition-bound,
and membershisp unit is the household
rather than the individual,
they differ in group structure.
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