Shinto Shrines In The Japanese Colonial Empire

Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintoists'', although adherents rarely use that term themselves. There is no central authority in control of Shinto, with much diversity of belief and practice evident among practitioners.

A polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto revolves around supernatural entities called the . The are believed to inhabit all things, including forces of nature and prominent landscape locations. The are worshiped at household shrines, family shrines, and ''jinja'' public shrines. The latter are staffed by priests, known as , who oversee offerings of food and drink to the specific enshrined at that location. This is done to cultivate harmony between humans and and to solicit the latter's blessing. Other common rituals include the dances, rites of passage, and seasonal 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 . 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, veneration has been traced back to Japan's Yayoi period (300 BCE to 300 CE). Buddhism entered Japan at the end of the Kofun period (300 to 538 CE) and spread rapidly. Religious syncretization made worship and Buddhism functionally inseparable, a process called ''shinbutsu-shūgō''. The came to be viewed as part of Buddhist cosmology and were increasingly depicted anthropomorphically. The earliest written tradition regarding worship was recorded in the 8th-century ''Kojiki'' and '' Nihon Shoki''. In ensuing centuries, was adopted by Japan's Imperial household. During the Meiji era (1868 to 1912), Japan's nationalist leadership expelled Buddhist influence from 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 . With the formation of the Japanese Empire 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 need not be exclusive. Aspects of Shinto have been incorporated into various Japanese new religious movements.

Definition

There is no universally agreed definition of Shinto. However, the authors Joseph Cali and John Dougill stated that if there was "one single, broad definition of Shinto" that could be put forward, it would be that "Shinto is a belief in ", the supernatural entities at the centre of the religion. The Japanologist Helen Hardacre stated that "Shinto encompasses doctrines, institutions, ritual, and communal life based on worship", while the scholar of religion Inoue Nobutaka observed the term "Shinto" was "often used" in "reference to worship and related theologies, rituals and practices". 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 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".

Categorisation

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, religion as a concept arose in Europe and many of the connotations that the term has 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 religious traditions 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 transcending the cosmos, which it regards as being replete with 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.

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 also 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 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 s anindigenous 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 that has a single center and system all its own". Different types of Shinto have been identified. "Shrine Shinto" refers to the practices centred around shrines, and "Domestic Shinto" to the ways in which are venerated 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 eras of the past, 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.

Etymology

The term ''Shinto'' is often translated into English as "the way of the ", although its meaning has varied throughout Japanese history. Other terms are sometimes used synonymously with "Shinto"; these include ' (, "the way of the "), ' (, also written or , "the way of the from time immemorial"), ' (, "the ancient way"), ' (, "the great way"), and ' (, "the imperial way").

The term ''Shinto'' derives from the combination of two Chinese characters: '' shen'' (), which means "spirit," and ''dao'' (), which means "way", "road" or "path". "Shendao" ( zh, t=神道, p=shéndào, l=the Way of the Gods) was a term already used in the ''Yijing'' referring to the divine order of nature. Around the time of the spread of Buddhism in the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), it was used to distinguish indigenous Chinese religions from the imported religion. Ge Hong used it in his ''Baopuzi'' as a synonym for Taoism.

The Chinese term ''Shendao'' was originally adopted into Japanese as ''Jindō''; this was possibly first used as a Buddhist term to refer to non-Buddhist deities. Among the earliest known appearances of the term ''Shinto'' in Japan is in the 8th-century text, '' Nihon Shoki''. Here, it may be a generic term for popular belief, or alternatively reference Taoism, as many Taoist practices had recently been imported from mainland Asia. In these early Japanese uses, the word ''Shinto'' did not apply to a distinct religious tradition nor to anything uniquely Japanese; the 11th century '' Konjaku monogatarishui'' for instance refers to a woman in China practicing ''Shinto'', and also to people in India worshipping , indicating these terms were being used to describe religions outside Japan itself.

In medieval Japan, -worship was generally seen as being part of Japanese Buddhism, with the themselves often interpreted as Buddhas. At this point, the term ''Shinto'' increasingly referred to "the authority, power, or activity of a , being a , or, in short, the state or attributes of a ." It appears in this form in texts such as ' and ''Shintōshū