Chapter 98. The Way of the Kami: Shinto, the Imperial Myth and State Shinto

Shinto has no founder and no fixed creed, and for most of its history it had no name. Yet from its earliest records it was bound up with the legitimacy of a ruling house. The Yamato claim of descent from the sun goddess survived the Buddhist millennium and the shogunates. Under Meiji it became the core of a state cult with the emperor as a living god, and the occupation dismantled that cult in 1945–46. This chapter follows the tradition from prehistory and myth, through the fusion with Buddhism and the creation of State Shinto, to Japan’s postwar “non-religious” religiosity.

Kami, Clans and the Unnamed Native Religion

Nicholas Pearson writes that “prior to the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century (C.E.), the native religion had no formal name,” and that it was afterwards called “Shinto or kami no michi… ‘way of the kami'” [Pearson, Foundations of Reiki Ryōhō, #71701, ch. 19]. John Clark Archer adds that the term was borrowed from Chinese shen-tao. It was coined after the Butsu-do, the “Buddha way,” arrived, “to distinguish it from Buddhism.” In his view Shinto “is scarcely yet a system; it never had a founder” [Archer, Faiths Men Live By, #55131, ch. 7].

Jeremy Roberts dates the Jomon culture to about 10,000 BC. He places the rice-growing, metal-using Yayoi, who probably came from or traded with China and Korea, by the fourth century BC. By AD 250–350, kofun mounds marked the spread of the Yamato clan. Many anthropologists outside Japan, he notes, accept Egami Namio’s “horse rider theory” of mainland conquerors [Roberts, Japanese Mythology A to Z, #78726, Introduction]. He describes the political order: “The Yamato kings or emperors gradually and steadily extended their rule over the Japanese islands through warfare and diplomacy. Rival states… were organized according to clans… called uji, and an important function of each clan was to honor or venerate ancestral gods. The religion of Japan’s emperor and people is SHINTO” [#78726, Introduction].

Roberts divides kami into nature spirits and uji-kami, ancestral clan deities. In his account, “those in charge of the local government were also in charge of maintaining shrines… Religion and government were, therefore, intertwined” [#78726, Introduction]. Carmen Blacker calls the Shinto miko “the oldest shamanic figure of which we have any record.” She dates the miko’s decline to Chinese influence and the Taika Reform of 645, after which “the appearance of mantic queens such as Pimiko and the Empress Jingo became impossible” [Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, #50912, ch. 6].

The Myths: Kojiki and Nihon Shoki

According to Matt Clayton, the Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters,” 711–712) was commissioned by Emperor Temmu in 681. It is “one of the founding texts of both the Shinto religion and the origin of Japanese national identity,” and “most scholars agree that much of the text is cribbed from Chinese mythology” [Clayton, Asian Mythology: A Captivating Guide, #79267, Part 2 ch. 1]. Izanagi and Izanami form the first island with a jewelled spear. Izanami dies giving birth to fire. Izanagi follows her to Yomi, breaks her prohibition and finds her “rotting… crawling with maggots,” then seals the underworld with a boulder. “Izanami pronounced a curse: Everyday she would kill one thousand people… Izanagi replied that in return, he would ‘people the earth’ with five thousand.” As he purifies himself, Amaterasu is born from his left eye, Tsukuyomi from his right, and Susanoo from his nose [#79267, Part 2 ch. 1]. In the Nihon Shoki variant, the couple’s earlier offspring is the Leech-Child, who “even as he reached the age of three, his legs would not allow him to stand” [#79267, Part 2 ch. 2].

The sources disagree on one point. Clayton states that “it is from Susano-o that the Emperors dynasties are traced” [#79267, Part 2 ch. 1]. Roberts lists Amaterasu as the goddess “whose grandson became the first emperor of Japan, according to tradition,” through Ninigi [Roberts, #78726, Introduction]. Archer’s account of the Ise regalia follows the Amaterasu line [#55131, ch. 7].

Roberts treats the myths as political charters. “To justify their control, the Yamato rulers associated their clan with a story about the beginning of the world that linked them to the gods.” Jimmu’s accession in 660 BC is “almost certainly far too early to be believed,” and “historians point out that the claim of divinity would have added to the early emperor’s power” [#78726, Introduction and “JIMMU”]. The History of East Asia adds that around 270 CE Ojin was “renamed Hachiman, the Shinto god of war. This deification of emperors continued all the way until 1946” [History of East Asia: A Captivating Guide, #71236, Part 2 ch. 1, “Children of the Sun”].

O. Corazza argues that the myth matters for near-death research because “the floating bridge of heaven… is, in fact, a common vision during Japanese NDE.” She also links Izanagi’s being halted at the burial-hall door to modern accounts in which dead relatives say “do not cross the river” [Corazza, Near-Death Experiences, #29924, “The river of no return”].

The Buddhist Millennium

Archer describes the long eclipse of Shinto: “the ‘way of Buddha’ dominated conscious religious devotion for a thousand years (from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries A.D.), but Shinto endured subconsciously during the entire millennium, subtly forceful, and ultimately triumphant once again” [Archer, #55131, ch. 7]. Roberts dates Buddhism’s arrival to 552 “(or 538; there are conflicting records).” Kōbō Daishi’s Ryōbu (“two-faced”) Shinto made “Amaterasu… the Japanese version of Vairocana.” The war god Hachiman was declared a bodhisattva, and “being a Buddhist did not mean giving up Shinto.” Through the shogunates, the emperor’s “direct connection to the most important gods” meant that rivals “could usurp his authority… but they could not replace him” [Roberts, #78726, Introduction]. Emperor Kammu moved the capital to Kyoto in 794 [#78726, “KAMMU”].

Mountain religion was the clearest product of this fusion. Bronwen and Frans Stiene cite Miyake Hitoshi to the effect that Shugendō, practised by yamabushi or shugenja, was a mixture “influenced by shamanism, Shintoism, Taoism and Buddhism.” They add that “the Meiji regime outlawed Shugendô in 1872 because of Shugendô’s mix of Buddhism and Shintoism” [Stiene & Stiene, The Japanese Art of Reiki, #73976, “Influence of Shintoism”]. The Ueshiba biography Invincible Warrior calls “the grand shrines of Kumano and the sacred waterfall of Nachi… the meccas of Shinto” [Invincible Warrior, #85726, Part One].

Restoration and the Making of State Shinto

Archer traces the revival to “Old Shinto” scholars such as Motoori. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they “scorned the view that Japanese life was dependent upon Chinese culture” and promoted “the divine origin of the Japanese ruling house by edict of the goddess” [Archer, #55131, ch. 6]. The 1868 Restoration, the History of East Asia explains, “restored” the emperor “to a supreme position in the country rather than a shogun” [#71236, Part 2 ch. 6]. Pearson describes the religious effect: “Reasserting the belief that the emperor was a direct descendant of the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami resulted in a fierce rise in nationalism. This nationalism was now spiritual as well as social. The people were not merely believing in a political leader but in someone thought to literally be descended from the sun goddess” [Pearson, #71701, ch. 19].

Archer states the purpose plainly. State Shinto, with “one hundred thousand shrines under the supervision of the Home Ministry, was chiefly political rather than religious.” In the words of a Japanese author he quotes, “its function was to enhance the glory of the state and foster worship of the Emperor.” Sect Shinto, by contrast, “was placed in the same category with Buddhism and Christianity.” Archer singles out the Kudan Hill sanctuary (Yasukuni), where the souls of the war dead are “raised to the place of divinity.” He calls it “a possible source of danger in case the spirit of nationalism in Japan again overruns its bounds” [#55131, ch. 6]. Wikipedia’s account adds the legal device behind the system: shrines were defined as “patriotic, not religious,” and Shinto as “a unity of government and teaching… not a religion.” The emperor’s divine origin was “taught in classrooms not as myth, but as historical fact.” Scholars such as Sakamoto Koremaru dispute that a coherent “State Shinto” ever existed [Wikipedia: State Shinto]. The cult was also exported. Of the 204 shrines built in colonial Taiwan, most enshrined Prince Yoshihisa, who died during the 1895 conquest [Wikipedia: List of Shinto shrines in Taiwan].

Ise and the state cult. For Archer, Ise shows “what Shinto has meant as Yamato damashii, or kokutai, or the national spirit and cult.” The Outer Shrine (Geku) honours the food goddess Toyo-uke, and the Inner Shrine (Naiku) honours Amaterasu and “the divine ancestors of the Emperor.” The innermost sanctuary holds the mirror, which “symbolizes the unbroken succession of divine rulers.” War trophies in the park are “suggestive of the nationalistic quality of Shinto” [Archer, #55131, ch. 7]. Archer defines kokutai as “the solidarity of the nation persisting through the centuries… the genius of the country” [#55131, ch. 6]. The emperor was addressed as “Tenshi Sama, Son of Heaven” [#55131, ch. 6, n. 6].

The Sects

Shinto, Archer writes, “never was exclusively a patriotic spirit.” Its sects arose “during the latter days of Shinto’s long subservience to Buddhism,” and “while they have been despised by Buddhists and national Shintoists alike, they have numbered their adherents by the millions.” Kurozumi-kyō “gained great influence mainly through its ‘healing’ of the sick by faith and illumination,” and its founder performed “the ‘great incantation'” [#55131, ch. 7]. Of the foundress Omiki, Archer writes that she made “Tsuki-hi, ‘moon-sun,'” her formula for God, “a naive dualism, with neither theology nor philosophy” [#55131, ch. 7]. Before 1945 there were “thirteen officially registered sects… eighteen million adherents.” After disestablishment “over six hundred” new religions arose [#55131, ch. 7]. Pearson calls the shinshūkyō a reaction to thinking “that gave no room for the miraculous” [Pearson, #71701, ch. 19].

Defeat and the Postwar Paradox

According to Archer, kokutai “still persists, even after the disastrous defeat… the disestablishment of the national Shinto cult by Allied directive on December 15, 1945, and the words of the emperor himself on January 1, 1946 when he… disavowed his own divinity” [Archer, #55131, ch. 6]. Wikipedia notes a point of wording. The “Humanity Declaration” denied that the emperor was akitsumikami (“manifest kami”) but did not use the word arahitogami (“living god”). Dower and Bix therefore argue the renunciation was narrower than it appeared [Wikipedia: Arahitogami].

Census figures show a paradox. Ministry of Education statistics for 1953 count about 70 million Shintoists and 43.6 million Buddhists, totalling twenty million more than the population. Archer explains that “Buddhist totals usually represent the number of households whose ancestral graves or tablets are in a temple’s custody, multiplied by five,” and that Shinto shrines count “charms and amulets sold.” He concludes that “all Japanese are Shintoists” [#55131, ch. 6]. Kaki Okumura gives the modern version. In 2013 “about 72 per cent of Japanese adults answered that they did not identify as religious,” yet “66 per cent” thought “it was important to have a religious spirit” [Okumura, Wa: The Art of Balance, #68163, “Lean into Spirituality”].

Key points

• Shinto had no name before Buddhism arrived in the sixth century. The term was borrowed from Chinese shen-tao to tell the native cult apart from Buddhism (Pearson, #71701; Archer, #55131).
• Clan (uji) worship of ancestral kami fused religion and local government. The Yamato rulers’ creation myth worked, in Roberts’ account, “to justify their control” (#78726).
• The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki give the Izanagi–Izanami cycle and imperial genealogies. Clayton traces the dynasty through Susanoo, while Roberts and Archer trace it through Amaterasu (#79267, #78726, #55131).
• Archer says Buddhism dominated devotion for a thousand years while Shinto “endured subconsciously.” Ryōbu Shinto merged kami and buddhas (#55131, #78726).
• The Meiji state separated kami from buddhas, restored saisei itchi, and built State Shinto as a “non-religious” cult of 100,000 shrines. Pearson calls the resulting nationalism “spiritual as well as social” (#71701, #55131).
• Shinto sects such as Kurozumi-kyō and Omiki’s sect were despised by both Buddhists and state Shintoists but drew millions. More than 600 new religions followed 1945 (#55131).
• The 1945 directive and the 1946 declaration ended State Shinto. Their exact theological meaning is disputed, and most Japanese now practise Shinto and Buddhist rites without calling themselves religious (#55131, #68163).