Thursday 12 July, 2001
Shinto: Nurturing Nature
Britain is currently celebrating the culture and lifestyle of Japan.
Throughout the year over two million people are expected to directly participate in Japan 2001, a series of festivals and performances taking place around the country.
As the UK marinates in the flavour of the country, In Praise Of God looks at the Japanese belief of Shinto.
Japan is a country renowned for its love of speed and gadgetry. Through Japanese cars, hi-fi equipment and computer products the country was once propelled into the world market and ranked alongside America and China as one of the world's greatest economies.
For a country famous for its advanced technologies and with obvious materialistic values, it is perhaps therefore surprising that underpinning this way of life, is a very pure and innocent belief system.
Shinto
Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan and throughout history, it has provided the backbone of Japanese culture.
Little is known about the Shinto faith in the West, despite being a rigidly enforced state religion until the 1950s. Up until that point the Emperor was worshipped as a God, but during World War II the believer's faith in worshipping ancestors was severely manipulated and Shinto teachings fell from the national curriculum.
In its purist form the Shinto faith reveres nature. Central to the belief is the assertion that somewhere between Gods and spirits there are Kami. These have the power to change different aspects of life and can be invoked by ritual acts.
However the Shinto faith greatly differs from other religions in that there are no sacred icons or texts and there isn't any congregational worship.
Instead followers draw their deities from nature - worshipping the rocks, trees, wind and sun.
Shinto Shrines
Dwarfed by nature, Shinto shrines provide a sense of calm. Set within beautiful gardens, these sacred places venerate the spirits of the natural world.
Before entering a Shinto shrine, visitors are asked to ritually wash themselves. This is to symbolically purify the being before entering into the presence of the deities.
Once the mind is refreshed, the believer is in a position to learn from the Kami present in the shrines. As the 18th century Confucion scholar Ekken Kaibara wrote:
‘Whoever would serve the Kami in worship must cast off his polluted mind and stand with pure, bright mind before the deity both morning and evening…’
| ‘The utmost truth, without a single falsehood, correct and rectified without a single error, pure and without a spot of pollution, without selfish desires, and thus not greedy of personal gain, full of love and affection: such is the mind of the Kami.’ | |
Believers in the sacredness of the universe offer simple gifts of food, water and incense at the altar. For them, Shinto is a spiritual way of life, not simply a religion.
Can Shinto Survive?
Every 20 years Shinto temples are completely rebuilt. The wood from the entry gates, or Tori, is recycled and every part of the building is reconstructed.
By beginning again new generations of Shinto followers can make their own mark whilst learning the trades involved in temple building.
But whilst there are in roads for new believers, in an ever changing world the future of the Shinto faith is uncertain.
With mounting fears for the morality of Japanese youth there has been some talk of reintroducing Shinto teachings to the national curriculum.
For now at least, many young Japanese may go to the shrines to pray for luck in their exams, but much of the teaching is considered to be little more than folk superstition.
However, if the author Ian Buruma is to be believed, the youth of Japan will have little say in whether they believe or not. He writes:
'A person is Shinto in the same way that he is born Japanese. It is a collection of forms and ceremonies that give form to a way of life. It is a celebration not a belief. There is no such thing as Shintoist, for there is no such thing as Shintoism.’
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| Shin Tao |
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| The word Shinto derives from the Chinese characters Shin and Tao, meaning the way of spirits. |
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