Shinto: The Way of the Kami

Shinto, 'the way of the kami', is the indigenous religious tradition of Japan. Kami are sacred powers or spirits found in nature, such as mountains, waterfalls, trees and rocks, as well as in ancestors and remarkable people. Shinto has no founder and no single scripture; its earliest written mythology appears in the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), compiled at the imperial court.

These texts tell how the kami Izanagi and Izanami created the Japanese islands, and how the sun goddess Amaterasu became ancestor of the imperial line, an idea later used to support imperial authority. Shinto emphasizes purity, gratitude and harmony with nature, and treats impurity, not sin, as the main problem to be cleansed through ritual. Many Japanese people participate in Shinto rituals without considering themselves members of a religion, which makes counting followers difficult and shows that practice can matter more than doctrine.