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After World War II, Shinto lost its status of national religion; most Shinto practices and teachings, once given a great deal of prominence during the war, are no longer taught nor practiced today and some remain largely as everyday activities like omikuji.
The earliest origins of Shinto are lost to history, but it seems to have been established by the late Jomon period. Most likely, after the arrival of the earliest ancestors of today's Japanese, each tribe and area had its own collection of gods and rituals with no formal relationship between each of the areas. Following the ascendency of the ancestors of today's Imperial family to a position of power among the other groups, their ancestral deities were given prominence over the deities of other groups, though different systems continued to coexist.
The introductions of writing in the 5th century and Buddhism in the 6th century had a profound impact on the development of a unified system of Shinto beliefs. In a brief period of time, the Kojiki (The Record of Ancient Things, 712) and the Nihonshoki (The Chronicles of Japan, 720) were written by compiling existing myths and legends into a unified account (see: Japanese mythologyJapanese mythology is an extremely complex system of religion and beliefs. The Shinto pantheon alone boasts a collection of more than 8000 kami (Japanese for "god" or "spirit"). Despite the influence of the ancient Chinese civilization, much of Japanese m). These accounts were written with two purposes in mind. First, the sophistication of the narratives and the introduction of TaoAlternative meanings: Tao (chess), Dao (sword Tao ( literally the Way or the Path , often translated as The Principle is a basic element in the Chinese philosophy. It is the ever-lasting essential and fundamental force that run through all matters in theist, ConfucianConfucianism ( Pinyin: ruji "The School of the Scholars"), sometimes translated as the School of Literati is an East Asian ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of Confucius. Debated during the Warring States Period and, and BuddhistTian Tan Buddha statue in Hong Kong, remind followers to practice right living. Buddhism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Siddhrtha Gautama ( Sanskrit; in Pli, Siddhattha Gotama , who lived between approximately 563 and 483 BCE. themes into the narratives were meant to impress the Chinese with the sophistication of the Japanese. The Japanese felt intimidated by the clearly advanced culture of the Chinese and so hoped to produce a work rivaling it. Second, the narratives were meant to shore up support for the legitimacy of the Imperial house, based on its lineage from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Much of the area of modern Japan was under only fragmentary control by the Imperial family, and rival ethnic groups (including, perhaps, the ancestors of the AinuFor "Ainu" in J. Tolkien's fictional universe of Arda, see Ainur . The Ainu (a word meaning "human" in the Ainu language; Ezo or Yezo in old Japanese; Utari now preferred by some members) are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaido, the northern part of Ho) continued to war against the encroachment of the Japanese. The mythological anthologies, along with other poetry anthologies like the ManyoshuMan'yoshu or Anthology of a Myriad Leaves is the first great Japanese poetry anthology, compiled by the poet Otomo no Yakamochi around 759. The most important poetic forms in the anthology are the choka (long poem), consisting of alternate lines of five a and others, were all meant to impress others with the worthiness of the Imperial family and their divine mandate to rule.
With the introduction of Buddhism and its rapid adoption by the court, it was necessary to explain the apparent differences between native Japanese beliefs and Buddhist teachings. One explanation saw the Japanese kami as supernatural beings still caught in the cycle of birth and rebirth. The kami are born, live, die, and are reborn like all other beings in the karmic cycle. However, the kami played a special role in protecting Buddhism and allowing its compassionate teachings to flourish. This explanation was later challenged by KukaiKukai or Kobo-Daishi , 774— 835 CE: Japanese monk, scholar, and artist, founder of the Shingon or True Word school of Buddhism. Kukai is famous as a calligrapher, engineer and is said to have invented kana, the syllabary in which, in combination with Chin, who saw the kami as different embodiments of the Buddhas themselves. For example, he famously linked Amaterasu, Sun Goddess and ancestor of the Imperial family, with Dainichi Nyorai, a central manifestation of the Buddha, whose name is literally "Great Sun Buddha". In his view, the kami were just Buddhas by another name.
Kukai's syncretic view held wide sway up until the end of the Edo period. At that time, there was a renewed interest in "Japanese studies," perhaps as a result of the closed country policy. In the 18th century, various Japanese scholars, in particular Motoori Norinaga ( 1730– 1801), tried to tease apart the "real" Shinto from various foreign influences. The attempt was largely unsuccessful, since as early as the Nihonshoki, parts of the mythology were explicitly borrowed from Chinese doctrines. (For example, the co-creator deities Izanami and Izanagi are explicitly compared to yin and yang.) However, the attempt did set the stage for the arrival of state Shinto, following the Meiji Restoration.
Following the Meiji Restoration, Shinto was made the official religion of Japan, and its combination with Buddhism was outlawed. During this period, it was felt that Shinto was needed in order to unify the country around the Emperor as the process of modernization was undertaken with all possible speed. The arrival of large Western gunships and the collapse of the shogunate convinced many that the nation needed to band together if it was going to resist being conquered by outside forces. As a result, Shinto was used as a tool for promoting Emperor (and Empire) worship, and Shinto was exported into conquered territories like Hokkaido and Korea.
The era of state Shinto came to an abrupt close with the end of World War II. It appeared that the kami had failed to provide a Divine Wind (kamikaze) to turn back the foreign invaders. Soon after the war, the Emperor even issued a statement renouncing his claims to the status of "living god." In the aftermath of the war, most Japanese came to believe that the hubris of Empire had led to their downfall. Lust for foreign territory blinded their leaders to the importance of their homeland. In the post-war period, numerous "new religions" cropped up, many of them ostensibly based on Shinto, but on the whole Japanese religiosity decreased.
Following the war, Shinto has for the most part persisted without the focus on mythology or the divine mandate of the Imperial family. Instead, shrines tend to focus on helping ordinary people gain better fortunes for themselves through maintaining good relations with their ancestors and other kami. Shinto ways of thinking continue to be an important part of the Japanese mindset, though the number of people who identify themselves as religious has suffered a sharp decline.