SHINTOISM. Shinto or "Kami-no-Michi" (the Divine Way), the religion of Japan, still living among the Japanese people, is a designation given to the early religious belief of the Japanese soon after their first contacts with China. The first documentary appearance of the term Shinto is in the Book of the Emperor Yomei in the Nihongi (Aston, Eng. trans., vol. i., p. 106).
Shinto has two main stages in the course of its development : one is naturalistic, the other cultural. In the two phases of its development, the one gives us an aspect of nature religion, while the other presents that of ethico-intellectualistic (or spiritual istic) religion, greatly influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism.
In Shinto as a lower nature religion we find nature worship, fetishism, spiritism, totemism and primitive monotheism. The primitive Japanese worshipped the sun, the moon, the rainstorm, thunder, wind and fire; earth, the sea, the mountain, the deity of the earthquake, volcanoes, wells, hot springs and stones or rocks; the serpent, the tiger, the wolf, the wild boar, the hare, even the silkworm and the louse, trees, herbs and cereals.
Individual personages are also worshipped as Kami or deities in their lifetime as well as after their death, and we have Shinto shrines dedicated to special divine personages while living. The emperor is regarded as a "Visible Deity" (Arahitogami or Akitsukami), and some brave warriors or mighty heroes are also deities in human form. Later on the Ryobu or Dual Shinto made good use of this form of religious syncretism.
There is quite a number of examples of necrolatry and ancestor worship in ShintO. The sacred imperial regalia (or heirlooms), consisting of the mirror, sword and jewels, had originally a fetishistic virtue.
etc.—Particularly in Japan, sacred stones are regarded as fetishes (litholatry). Different phallic emblems of stone or wood, both male and female in shape, are not very uncom mon (phallicism). There is some evidence of totemism in primi tive Shinto e.g., Kamo-Taketsunumi-no-Mikoto, the remote ancestor of the ShintO priests of the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto, was once believed to be a large divine crow, afterwards worshipped at a separate shrine. The father of the Emperor Jimmu was traditionally recorded to have sprung from the crocodile or dragon Sea-Goddess Toyotama-Hime, the consort of Hikohohodemi-no Mikoto.
There is something like primitive monotheism in Ame-no Minakanushi-no-Kami, or the Divine Lord of the Very Centre of Heaven, amalgamated with another supreme deity, Kunitoko tachi-no-Kami, in later Shinto.
Primitive Shinto appears as a higher nature religion in the heavenly drama of the rich mythology of the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), the Niliongi (Chronicles of Japan) and the Kogoshui (Gleanings from Ancient Stories). A conflict between the sun and the rainstorm was graphically delineated in Japanese mythology as a momentous event in the Divine Age. Then a divine council was held to entreat the Sun-Goddess to restore peace and order to the world and to reilluminate it by emerging from the heavenly rock-cave in which she had taken refuge from the violence committed by the impetuous brother Susano-O-no-Kami. Then follows the banishment of the divine culprit Susano-O from heaven to earth.
Then according to tradition, half myth ical, half historical, the Japanese imperial lineage has continued unbroken from the Ancestral Sun-Goddess to the present emperor, who, like his predecessors, enjoys a divine right to the throne, representing in himself both Caesar and pope—as a divinity in humanity. Even nowadays, in the hierarchy of his theocratic as well as constitutional government, he is often phrased "saisei itchi," or the complete unity of political governance and religious observances. Thus Shinto as a national or state religion culminates in the form of emperor worship, not only in its naturalistic but also in its ethico-intellectualistic stage. Therefore Japanese patriotism or loyalty has been suffused with religious zeal. Herein lies one of the peculiar characteristics of the life or essence of Shinto.
As to the course of development of Shinto in its cultural stage, it is polydemonistic (animistic) at the beginning, then poly theistic, and at last pantheistic, with a tinge of monotheism.
Such a naturalistic pantheism of Shinto is deepened and en nobled by a further idealistic or spiritualistic grasp of the ShintO Deity. Hayashi-Razan, an eminent scholar of Chinese classics of the 17th century says: "The Deity is the Spirit of Heaven and Earth. The humai, mind partaking of divinity is an abode of the Deity, which is the Spiritual Essence. There exists no highest deity Ame-no-Minakanushi-no-Kami outside the human mind" (Shinto-Denju).