Forces of Nature
Even in famously irreligious modern Japan, Shinto remains woven into much of the culture.
Standing before one of the thick pillars of Meiji Jingu shrine’s main prayer hall, Moriyasu Ito fingers the nicks and notches visible in the century-old cypress wood.
Sword strikes from historic battles? A pest infestation? Not exactly.
“In the past, there were so many people coming to pray around New Year’s that the shrine had to set up barriers,” Ito, clad in traditional, white vestments, explains of the crowd control measures around the huge donation box at the famous Tokyo shrine. “So people just threw their coins toward the shrine instead.”
As a Shinto priest and head of the international section at Meiji Jingu’s Intercultural Research Institute, Ito often delivers lectures on Japan’s indigenous faith to foreign audiences with more systematized conceptions of religion.
“Shinto doesn’t have any [holy book] or scriptures or dogma,” notes Ito, who leads a Club tour this month of the 100-year-old Meiji Jingu (built as a memorial to Emperor Meiji and the Empress Shoken) and its verdant grounds. “We merely feel that we are following the Shinto way.”
Despite the ambiguity, Shinto adherents abound in modern Japan, a society with a somewhat flexible relationship with organized religion. The country is regularly cited as one of the world’s most secular nations, though an infamous 2018 government study revealed that 69 percent of Japanese qualified as followers of Shinto while around 67 percent identified as Buddhist (Christianity and other minor religions comprise less than 8 percent of the population).
Such figures may seem nonsensical to followers of Western faiths with strict mandates on religious affiliation, but Ito explains that Shinto’s origins as a collection of folk rituals mean that the lines between culture, tradition and codified religion are often blurred.
“We didn’t have any category of Shinto before [Japan] received Buddhism in the sixth century,” Ito says. “Our ancestors thought, ‘Well, we just have a different way of life or philosophy.’”
The unadorned name that those ancestors came up with for their animistic beliefs literally translates as “the way of the gods.”
Unlike most major religions, Shinto shows little concern for the afterlife. The millions of kami gods promise nothing in the way of eternal salvation. While Japanese usually perform funerary rites at Buddhist temples, Ito explains, visits to Shinto shrines are usually reserved for rituals that reinforce the here and now: the health and happiness of a newborn, luck for an upcoming exam or success in one’s professional or romantic life.
Perhaps it’s that offer of comfort in uncertain moments that has helped Shinto survive from prehistory to today.
“After the state of emergency ended [last March], quite a lot of people came back to visit Meiji Jingu,” Ito says. “I was relieved. I thought this place…must be regarded as an important place for the Japanese mind.”
Words: Owen Ziegler
Meiji Jingu Tour
June 19 | 12:30–2:30pm
