Shinboku
Go to visit a Shinto shrine and you’ll surely find a shinboku – a sacred tree favoured by the kami. But what makes some trees sacred and others not? It’s a question I’ve often asked priests about, and the … Read the rest
Category: Animism (Page 19 of 19)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120421cc.html
A small article in the Japan Times yesterday caught my attention. it was an odd item about a man who had climbed mountains for 9,738 consecutive days. That’s a staggering 27 years!! Every single day, come rain or come … Read the rest
In an article today in the Daily Yomiuri, Kevin Short writes of rice paddies and the ta no kami (kami of the rice fields). Surprisingly it was sparked by a chance encounter in a park in Ikebukuro in downtown Tokyo … Read the rest
Early Shinto showed a marked shift from animism to ancestral deities, according to Mori Mizue in ‘Ancient and Classical Japan: The Dawn of Shinto’ (in Shinto – A Short History, 1998).
The background concerns the eighth century, following the … Read the rest
In an inspirational article in the Japan Times, Welsh-born C.W. Nicol, now a leading Japanese conservationist, talks of the spiritual strength he derives from the country’s woodlands. Below is an extract… (the full article can be seen here
Animism versus ancestors
Is Shinto a nature religion? It’s often referred to that way, but the truth is that it’s much more complicated. Animism is married to ancestor worship and tribalism. If you look at the major shrines, nature spirits … Read the rest