Kami in japanese portable#

Shinto also bequeathed a rich mythology to the Japanese people, with stories of gods and goddesses who possessed various magical powers. Values common to most Japanese today that originated in part through early religious practices include a love of bathing and deep reverence for nature. Then aВ monetary offering is presented to the kami, followed by the prayer or request.

Before entering the shrine, the purification act involves the use of water to wash one's hands or wash out one's mouth. Individuals or groups who visit shrines to worship complete, often in a short period of time, three processes: purification, making an offering, and praying or making a request of the local kami. It is not uncommon for large companies to have small shrines honoring particular kami.

Kami in japanese portable#

A number of Shinto shrines hold annual matsuri, or festivals, where revelers carry large portable shrines that figuratively transport the local kami all around the immediate area of the home shrine. Some shrines do a brisk business throughout the year selling good-luck charms for marriage, fertility, examination success, and even auto safety. Millions of Japanese observe the custom of visiting Shinto shrines on New Year's Day. Shinto-related festivities take place during rice planting and harvesting cycles. As noted, many couples have Shinto weddings. Children are christened at shrines and taken there during special festivals during their third, fifth, and seventh years. Japanese consider Shinto, in contrast to the more somber Buddhism, to be an optimistic and happy religion. Many of the sites of the older shrines were considered to be sacred spaces long before the erection of any structure. Shrines, considered to be the homes of kami, are often located in such beautiful natural surroundings as the mouths of rivers or at the foot of a mountain. Large, medium, and small Shinto shrines with their torii gates are pervasive throughout Japan. Shinto has been described as a religion of shrines, festivals, and rituals.

In many ways, ''spirits'' serve as a better equivalent Western term for kami than gods, although a precise translation is impossible. Kami may be mountains, rocks, trees, streams, and even people. Kami are any animate, mythological, or inanimate entities that promote awe, fear,В and reverence. Although Shinto is often translated as ''the Way of the Gods,'' Shinto deities are dissimilar from Western conceptualizations of ''God'' in enough ways that thinking of the two terms as largely synonymous is to quite likely promote misunderstanding.

The definition of what Shinto precisely means is still controversial. In the early eighth century, the term is mentioned in the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, two of the earliest official chronicles of Japan, as part of a more general governmentsponsored effort to both contrast and reconcile Japanese beliefs with such newly imported foreign spiritual traditions as Buddhism and Confucianism. The early daily and seasonal practices that came to be known as Shinto, although an integral part of life as was the case in other preliterate societies, were not rigidly compartmentalized as ''religion.'' In fact, the term ''Shinto'' did not appear in written records until well after Buddhism reached Japan. Like many other earth religions, Shinto has no historical founders such as Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed, no sacred scriptures and moral injunctions, no martyrs, and no saints. The bundle of spiritual rites and practices that we know today as Shinto began in Japanese antiquity and shares many characteristics of ancient early preliterate forms of Western and non-Western religions that were rooted in the earth, nature, and fertility.