Abstract

t can be said that Japanese culture is informed by both Buddhism, which made its way into the Japanese islands in the sixth century of the Common Era, and Shinto, the ancient indigenous tradition of Japan. Yet this facile distinction has only been made possible since the end of the nineteenth century when the new Western-style “progressive” Japanese government ordered an unnatural and violent separation of Shinto from Buddhism. The fact of the matter was that Shinto, Buddhism, Confucian and Daoism had been using each others ideas for so long in Japan that each tradition could make a serious claim on the beliefs and practices of the Japanese people. However, despite the fact that Buddhist and Chinese ideas have shared the religious landscape of Japan for a millennium and a half—indeed, some might even say dominated that landscape—and while Western ideas have been the most powerful influence for the last century or more, the origins of what was later to become organized Shinto can be found in the ancient indigenous religious characteristics of the Japanese followers of the kami cults.