![]() ![]() It is likely that the religion came into being as a blend of different elements, including the following: We cannot even say if there was a set of beliefs and rituals sufficiently unified that we could call them Shintō. There are no records to show what it was like in ancient times, and many details are unclear. Japan’s traditional faith, based on worship of kami, is known as Shintō. According to Motoori, anything that inspired awe and sensitivity to ephemeral beauty ( aware) was a kami.įor Japanese people who believe this, their country is a rich natural landscape with kami to be found wherever they turn-in short a kami no kuni or “country of kami.” If this phrase is translated into English as “God’s country,” it can be misunderstood as a fanatically nationalistic expression, but this is not what the phrase actually means. This is how they were defined by the eighteenth-century scholar of Japanese classics Motoori Norinaga. ![]() They included the kami that appear in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan), Japan’s ancient records of myth and history, kami that were worshiped in shrines, and everything possessing extraordinary qualities, including the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, the sea, large rocks and trees, and even some smaller plants, animals, and people. Japan’s kami were traditionally thought of as anthropomorphized natural phenomena. ![]() Pronounced shen in Chinese, the character 神 carries some divine attributes, but they are of a decidedly low rank and far below those of the highest power in Chinese theology, termed 天 ( tian) or 上帝 ( shangdi) in Chinese. Common words in both languages using this character, such as 精神 (pronounced seishin in Japanese), meaning “spirit” or “mind,” and 神経 ( shinkei), meaning “nerves,” are related to human mental qualities. The written Japanese form, 神, is influenced by the Chinese meaning of the character. “God” is the supreme being of monotheism and is customarily capitalized to indicate the unique nature of the deity and draw a distinction with the multiple gods of polytheism. However, to avoid misunderstanding, it would be better to think of God, 神, and kami as three separate concepts. When the English word God is translated into Japanese, it is generally represented by the kanji (Chinese character) 神 and pronounced kami. ![]()
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