{"id":94,"date":"2022-03-15T15:10:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T03:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2024-03-22T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T03:22:55","slug":"what-ive-learned-about-shinto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve learned about Shinto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the 6852 islands of Japan, there are Kami. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kami are primordial nature spirits. They manifest as the sea, the wind and the rain. They\u2019re creeks, floods, and typhoons that dash Mongol ships against the Kyushu shoreline. They can even take the form of abstract nouns. Mountains make for especially important Kami (see Mount Fuji<\/a>), but no Kami is more important than the sun.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kami can reside within people, too. The emperor of Japan and his descendants are Kami. Sometimes, Kami manifest in culturally significant buildings. My town\u2019s martial arts gymnasium contains a white-panelled section of wall that is a Kami. Practitioners must kneel in reverence to the entity before every session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part, Kami are elements of nature that inspire awe. If a waterfall, tree, or even a particularly aesthetic rock ever gave you pause, then you\u2019ve felt a Kami\u2019s power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awareness of these beings comes from the primaeval sense that the natural world is both beautiful and terrifying. Accordingly, Kami have two souls: one benign, the other destructive. By appeasing a Kami, one hopes to encourage it\u2019s first soul and avoid the wrath of the latter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most Kami dwell inside the 100,000 shrines scattered throughout Japan. Hidden from view, Kami receive visitors who pay their respects and make offerings to the spirit, usually in the form of 5 yen coins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Acknowledgement of Kami and the veneration of these beings are what constitutes Shinto, something akin to a religious practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above sentence is just about all scholars can agree on when it comes to defining Shinto. The tradition has many qualities, or lack thereof, that make it hard to classify as a religion. It doesn\u2019t espouse a moral code, nor does it have a founder. Shinto lacks base texts like the Bible or the Koran; there isn\u2019t even a specific doctrine that outlines practices. Preaching and conversion are rare, and the faith isn\u2019t much concerned with the afterlife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ritual rather than belief lies at the heart of Shinto. In this regard, it\u2019s less a religion and more an inseparable part of Japanese culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Torii gates mark the paths to most shrines. It’s important guests bow under each one while taking care not to walk directly down the middle of the path. That route is reserved for spirits. Photo by Jen Roche.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many of these rituals take place at Shrines. A Shinto shrine requires a series of steps to ensure one’s visit is done properly. Visitors must first wash their hands and mouths with water from a trough at the entrance. When making an offering, bow twice, clap twice, ring the bell, and bow once more – in that order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japanese who observe rituals like these are unlikely to see them as religious practices, much like how everybody who says “bless you” isn’t a god-fearing Catholic. Rather, to many, going through the motions of visiting a local shrine is simply an aspect of daily life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An estimated 96 million Japanese regularly engage in Shinto rituals. Yet, two decades ago, when Pew surveyors asked Japanese whether religion was important, 75% answered no. That Japan should be home to the most devout, irreligious people on earth is just another incongruity in a land of mystifying incongruities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most neighbourhoods contain at least one shrine. Residents often visit their local shrines to ask for favours like good outcomes in surgery and schoolwork. Photo by Jen Roche.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned, Shinto is notably light on philosophy. Yet, what it does emphasise is a belief in universal impermanence. There\u2019s a reason why Japan\u2019s national symbol is the cherry blossom – a flower that blooms and disappears within the space of a week.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One seeking further examples of this philosophy can look no further than Ise Jingu – the holiest site in Shinto. Ise Jingu is so sacred that punters like me can only gaze upon the fence surrounding the main building. No one knows for certain how old the site is. It was already an ancient place of worship when the first histories of Japan were written, some 2,000 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, despite this level of prehistoric sanctity, the main buildings are dismantled and rebuilt with new materials every 20 years. The western equivalent would be tearing down the Sistine Chapel, scorching the rubble, and building it anew every two decades. Unthinkable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shinto\u2019s philosophy of impermanence could well be the product of a nation routinely humbled by nature\u2019s power. This is, after all, the most seismically active country on earth. A mediaeval European might well baulk at how frequently Japan\u2019s wooden castles catch fire<\/a>, but I\u2019d like to see Mont Saint Michel stand up to the 5,000 earthquakes that rattle these islands each year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That life is short and everything dies are truisms that permeate Shinto and therefore Japanese culture as a whole. This is Mono no aware, <\/em>meaning <\/em>\u201csensitivity to transience\u201d – the idea that true beauty is fleeting and that good people accept how everything they love will one day disappear. Heartwarming stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, Shinto is far from a pessimistic tradition. For one, that a Kami could wash one\u2019s life away in a tsunami on any given day tells us to savour the good stuff. In our brief pre-tsunami window, we should accept change and seek to live well in the face of new challenges. Moreover, Shinto says it might also be a good idea to acknowledge and respect the immortal supremacy of nature. In doing so we might, just maybe,<\/em> avert disaster. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nature spirits, scorched temples and accepting death – this is Shinto, Japan’s native belief system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ray","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}