Shintai | Japanese Religion, Rituals & Beliefs (2024)

FAQs

Shintai | Japanese Religion, Rituals & Beliefs? ›

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 kami.

Consequently, the purpose of most Shinto rituals is to keep away evil spirits by purification, prayers and offerings to the kami. Shinto shrines are the places of worship and the homes of kami. Most shrines celebrate festivals (matsuri) regularly in order to show the kami the outside world.

The main beliefs of Shinto are the importance of purity, harmony, respect for nature, family respect, and subordination of the individual before the group.

Things which are usually regarded as bad in Shinto are: things which disturb kami. things which disturb the worship of kami. things which disrupt the harmony of the world.

Today, Shinto is the largest religion in Japan, and the majority of Japanese people practice a combination of Shintoism and Buddhism. Some people may not consider themselves to be religious, but will still take part in Shinto rituals and follow a Shinto way of life.

Approximately one month after birth (31 days for boys and 33 days for girls), parents and grandparents bring the child to a Shinto shrine, to express gratitude to the deities for the birth of a baby and have a shrine priest pray for their health and happiness.

In China and the Korean peninsula, the Buddhist clergy were not allowed to eat meat or fish, but in Japan even ordinary people did not eat meat. This was partly because of Buddhism, and partly because even the indigenous religion, Shinto, considered that eating the flesh of animals was unclean.

Sake or rice wine has always had a religious function in the Shinto religion and even Japanese Buddhism has few strictures against alcohol; only some forms of Christianity attempt to eliminate consumption.

Tsumi. In ordinary usage, essentially the same meaning as the English "sin." In old Shinto, however, sickness, disaster, and error were also called tsumi, which thus formed a most comprehensive concept. In antiquity a distinction was made between amatsu-tsumi (heavenly sins) and kunitsu-tsumi (terrestrial sins).

Why do people choose Shinto? While Shinto is often characterized as the “indigenous” religion of Japan, it is not limited by geography, nationality or ethnicity.

Which religion is Shinto closest to? ›

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.

These three alleged doctrines were specifically banned: (1) that the Emperor is superior to other rulers because he is descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu; (2) that the Japanese people are inherently superior to other peoples because of their special ancestry or heritage, or (3) that the Japanese islands are ...

According to Shinto faith, a human spirit is believed to remain forever like the spirit of kami (deity). The places where the spirit dwells are often mentioned as the otherworld in the classics such as the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), the Nihonshoki (Chronicles of Japan), the Manyoshu (Anthology of Poems), etc.

Although the vast majority of Japanese citizens follow Shinto, only some 3% identify as Shinto in surveys, because the term is understood to imply membership of organized Shinto sects. Some identify as "without religion" (無宗教, mushūkyō), yet this does not signify rejection or apathy towards faith.

The holy books of Shinto are the Kojiki or 'Records of Ancient Matters' (712 CE) and the Nihon-gi or 'Chronicles of Japan' (720 CE). These books are compilations of ancient myths and traditional teachings that had previously been passed down orally.

The word Shintō, which literally means “the way of kami” (generally sacred or divine power, specifically the various gods or deities), came into use in order to distinguish indigenous Japanese beliefs from Buddhism, which had been introduced into Japan in the 6th century ce.