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Updated: June 1, 2025
This belief, a compound of mythology and ancestral worship, was about the first century largely encrusted by Confucian doctrines or maxims, mostly ethical, imported from China. Of the precise doctrines of Shintoism but little is even now known. It has apparently no dogmas and no sacred book.
Shintoism literally translated, means "the way to God," and includes the belief that all persons ultimately reach the place where God dwells, and become "one with Him." In present day interpretations and descriptions of Shintoism, we read of the "heathen" belief that Kami himself dwells in person, in the "inner temple" or sacred place of Shinto temples.
Hence, in Izumo especially, the attempt to create a Buddhist Shintoism resulted only in the formation of a Shinto-Buddhism. And the secret living force of Shinto to-day that force which repels missionary efforts at proselytising means something much more profound than tradition or worship or ceremonialism. Shinto may yet, without loss of real power, survive all these.
The educated Japanese of to-day is, I believe, for the most part an agnostic, and he views Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity alike, except in so far as he regards the first two as more or less national and the last as an exotic. At the commencement of the seventeenth century the Japanese Christians are stated to have amounted in numbers to one million.
Outside the accretions which have undoubtedly come upon Buddhism and Shintoism in the many centuries they have existed in Japan, I desire once more to emphasise the fact, to which I have previously made reference, that both these religions have had, and I believe still have, a beneficial effect, from a moral point of view, on the Japanese people.
One real reason, beside its accommodation to Shintoism, why Buddhism was so popular was that it brought an indispensable element into the national life. For the first time emphasis began to be laid on the individual. Introspection and deliberate meditation were brought into play. Arts demanding individual skill were fostered.
To describe Buddhism as paganism merely shows a lamentable amount of ignorance; nor should I be inclined to include Shintoism in a term which, whatever its precise meaning, is invariably intended to be opprobrious!
In Japan, for example, Buddhism, in its various branches, or interpretations, is the religion of the vast majority and even where Shintoism is the method of worship, the influence of Buddhism may be seen.
I am considering only the pure Shinto belief as expounded by Shinto scholars. But it may be necessary to remind the reader that both Buddhism and Shintoism are blended in Japan, not only with each other, but with Chinese ideas of various kinds. It is doubtful whether the pure Shinto ideas now exist in their original form in popular belief.
It consists of the postulate that there was but one God, Kami, from him all things came, and to him all things shall return. As has been stated previously, the chief injunction of Shintoism is: "Keep your body and your mind clean, and trust Kami."
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