in this lecture we're looking at a religion that is indigenous to Japan known as Shinto or kagara okay very similar to what you have in China there is a Sy christic which is a mixing of religious Traditions within Japan in China you saw confucious teachings along with the Dao and Buddha Dharma all combined and uh here in Japan Buddhism and confucious teachings also have great deal of influence on the religious culture of Japan but because of nationalistic Pride that emerged in the 17th century Japanese Scholars did some Ardent work to try to discover what part of their spirituality what part of their religion was indigenous and unique to Japan and so what these Scholars were able to extract from the religious practices as being unique to Japan is what we refer to as Shinto which means the way of the Divine very similar to Chinese religions like the da Shinto does have a strong Focus or emphasis upon veneration of and respect for ancestors and of all the religions we study this semester Shinto is the most pantheistic uh if pantheism is a new word for you Theos means gods or the Divine pan means every or all and so uh a pantheistic religion is a religion that believes the Divine the deity has Port itself out completely into nature and into the creation so everything is divine and uh so what you're going to see in just a moment on the next slide is the view of the deity or deities within Shinto as actually spilling their own Essence into the nature uh and pictured here is a Tory gate which is your primary symbol of Shinto and pass under a Tory gate whether in the water or on land is to understand yourself as having traveled to an especially Divine or sacred place a cosmogeny is a story within any religion that describes how the cosmos or the universe all of creation came about and Shinto does have a very unique cosmogeny the Divine beings or Spirits within Shinto are referred to as Kami and the cosmogeny of Shinto begins with two of these Kami together called the amatsu standing on a floating bridge and standing over an enormous body of water uh it turns out later that we discover that this body of water is the ocean and it's just one enormous ocean because there is no such thing as land yet the amatsu have two Beed Spears and they dip these Spears into the water and stir the water and as they're lifting the spears out of the water water from the spears begins to drip back into the ocean and as soon as those drops of of water hit the ocean land masses either the islands of Japan or all land masses over everywhere in the Earth are created the amatsu then create another Kami in their own image a sun goddess named Amaterasu and she will be the one in the sky who looks over this new creation that has now been divided into land and water and then as a final Act holding true to the pantheistic nature of Shinto The amatu Pour their very own Essence in to the land becoming plants and animals and people and mountains and Forest now the term Kami can be confusing because it can relate to personal beings like the amatsu in the story that we just heard but similar uh to Buddha Dharma Kami can also refer to an impersonal Divine reality so Kami is a very flexible term that can be used either way and the religion Shinto is often referred to as kagara and kagara is a teaching similar to the Dao of Daoism in which you recognize within nature that there is a particular uh Harmony that is to be achieved such as the in the da the balance between the yin and the Yang well to be uh in touch with the Kami and to understand the essence of the commi and to live content and at peace with that is to achieve a state of balance known as kagara and kagara becomes synonymous with Shinto as a name for this religion as we move on to uh places of worship we do have shrines or sanctuaries that uh the Shinto will visit uh but you're not allowed to go to the most Central holy place in the shrine unless you are a priest or Priestess isn't a galarian religion and so we do have priests and priestesses who serve the Ley when they come to the shrine uh the primary uh way of knowing that you have passed into a Shinto Shrine is that you walk under a gate known as a Tor and so here you have pictured a couple of different Tories and of course you had the symbolic Tor on the previous uh slide but this is to enter into an especially sacred place and Shinto is well known for being an iconoclastic religion which means that to have a picture or statue or a relic that you worship as the actual deity as the actual Kami is considered a distraction from true worship so you can certainly have a painting that would represent a story from Shinto but you would never call that painting or picture the actual Kami the actual God that would be considered idolatry and something very much against the spirit of Shinto I mean why would you worship a picture when all of the creation all of nature is divine already there uh before you now even though Shinto is a galarian today and has been a galarian in its history you will hear in just a moment that there was a a span of several decades in the late 19th and early 20th century where this religion lost its way for a bit and became extremely patriarchal the two primary ceremonies or rituals that you're responsible for with the Shinto religion are misoji and the ohar ceremony misoji is pictured at the top right in which a Shinto gentleman is standing under a waterfall and the idea is that the water as it cleanses his physical body uh that physical body is so in tuned with the spirit that he is cleansed spiritually also uh the word for wickedness or evil with in Shinto is sui and it's believed that sui Like A Parasite clings to the soul and that misoji is a way of washing that sui parasite away I did have a student mentioned last week that he could not help but notice the similarity of the misoji ceremony uh to uh the ceremony or sacrament of baptism within the Christian tradition of water uh physically being present but a deeper spiritual understanding of what is taking place and though a harai ceremony involves a broom that sweeps away sui or impurity uh here we have a group of businessmen gathering for a convention or a meeting and the broom is sweeping away anything that would uh bring about a lack of a spirit of compromise at the meeting or anything that would be a distraction from the purpose of their convention and if you make a big purchase like a new home or a car you would have a Shinto priest or Priestess come by with oh harai broom to sweep it over the car and to sweep throughout the house uh to avoid engine trouble or a transmission going out on the car uh to bless the foundation of a home so that it won't crack and lead to expensive repairs so the aora ceremony is is used for very practical reasons in everyday life now as mentioned to you earlier there was a a span of a few decades in which Shinto did become quite patriarchal this began happening in the late 19th century when the miji dynasty sought to make use of the religion Shinto as a way of granting themselves greater power just with the con just as you had the concept of a Heavenly mandate in Chinese religions that tion or Heaven chooses who the emperor is the miji dynasty began arguing that the the Kami are the ones who actually select them to rule and so it would be wrong of anyone to question their political and Military leadership and not only had the Kami selected the mai Dynasty but the mai Emperors began demanding that they be worshiped as Kami or as deities and the people of Japan began doing that and this is what we refer to as state Shinto because the religion of Shinto and the political Empire become merged together they become one un reality and the state Shinto is the expression of Shinto that is very patriarchal that loses its egalitarian Roots now with Japan's defeat in World War II we see the complete destruction of State Shinto because as part of the treaty to end that war the emperor must confess that he is not Divine that he is not a deity and of course with the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima the Japanese people feel that the Kami have abandoned them and that the Divine reality no longer protects them and looks over them and so Shinto falls out of favor after World War II and is instead of being a religion that is treasured because something that the Japanese despise and even ridicule but within the past few decades we've seen the reemergence of Shinto in Japan certainly not State Shinto but smaller schools of Shinto that we referred to as sectarian or sect Shinto and to return back to the the egalitarian Roots the two primary schools of SE Shinto that you're responsible for on your exam were both begun uh by female leaders tenryo and umoto Shinto or thriving traditions of this religion in Japan today tenio focuses upon how the body and the spirit are connected especially in uh the need for healing from an injury or a cure from a disease that the physical body can undergo particular rituals or practices that will affect the spirit and again bring about a healing or a cure and then umoto Shinto pictured at the bottom right focuses heavily on the Arts most especially music that music creates a particular Harmony that the ear can take in but also the spirit is always looking for harmony with nature and harmony with the Kami and so music and other forms of art become pivotal in umoto Shinto as an aid to finding kagara finding that balance with the Kami and with all of creation