During my first week in Japan 26 years ago, one of the first things I did was visit Miyajima in Hiroshima Prefecture. I knew little about Shinto and nothing about Miyajima, except that the whole island was sacred and that a big torii rose out of the sea in front of its main shrine, Itsukushima.
As my ferry drew close to the island, that towering torii loomed like a portal to another world. Behind it lay the vermillion corridors of the floating shrine, against the backdrop of forest-covered Mount Misen. I realized I was in the presence of something completely beyond my experience hitherto, something at once mystifying and exciting.
Now, I know a little more about Shinto. After all, it’s such an integral part of everyday life in Japan, from its ubiquitous shrines to its marvelous matsuri (festivals) and daily rituals. Then there are all the video games, films and manga based on Shinto characters and myths. Nevertheless, my knowledge remains fragmented and woefully incomplete.
Shinto: The Kami Spirit World of Japan, by Sokyo Ono. 144 pages, TUTTLE PUBLISHING, Fiction.
Pity I didn’t have access to Sokyo Ono’s “Shinto: The Kami Spirit World of Japan” until now. The book provides a concise but excellent introduction to all the fundamental elements of Shinto: the layout of the shrines (residences of the near 8 million deities, known as kami), ways of worship through music, dancing and sumo (entertainment for the kami), and the processions (parading the kami through the parish). Plus, its symbols, beliefs and deities.
Ono was a professor at Kokugakuin, a Shinto university in Tokyo, and lectured for the Association of Shinto Shrines. His collaborator and editor for the book, William Woodard, directed the research unit of the Religious and Cultural Resources Division, Civil Information & Education Section under SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) from 1946 to 1952.
“Shinto” first appeared in 1960 as Bulletin No. 8 of Tokyo’s International Institute for the Study of Religions, where Ono served as executive director. His aim was to provide a modern presentation of the meaning of Shinto. This updated version of Ono’s original text contains new color and black-and-white images.
In his preface, Woodward argues that “to equate the word kami with the word god is to create a serious misunderstanding.” This is particularly true when it comes to natural phenomena such as mountains and trees or thunder and lightning, which are also considered kami, unlike the Western understanding of “God.” Woodward, therefore, argues that “kami” should be incorporated into the English language like the names of gods of many other cultures.
The book reveals how through more than two millennia, this religion with no scriptures has become an integral part of Japanese life, with over 80,000 shrines throughout the country today. At its heart, according to Ono, lies a mystic sense of nature. “Ideally shrines should be located where the human mind can be brought close to nature,” he writes, adding that nature “plays an important part in leading humankind from the mundane to the higher and deeper world of the divine and in transforming daily life into an experience of living with the kami.”
Ono succeeds in bringing you closer, not just to Shinto, but to Japan itself.
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