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A New History of Shinto

A New History of Shinto

John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 264 pages including index and list of references, $31.95, ISBN 978-1-4051-5516-8 (soft back)

Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

The first two chapters of A New History of Shinto provide a perspective of the development of Shinto in Japan.  The book then has a full account of the Hie shrine near Kyoto. This is followed by a description of the myth of the Sun-Goddess and the Rock-cave and by a discussion of The Daijōsai [大嘗祭]: A “Shinto” Rite of Imperial Accession.  The final chapter before some concluding remarks deals with “Issues in Contemporary Shinto.”

The authors start from the premise that Shinto is a construct which came into being at some time in the past. This means that there must have been a ‘pre-Shinto’ time.  In present-day Japan they note that Shinto is the religion of shrines which are distinguished from Buddhist temples by their characteristic architecture but “Seen through the eyes of the average patron of shrines, Shinto remains a very vague concept (page 1).” Shinto shrines, they point out, perform three categories of rituals.  One is personal prayers for individuals or families. Another category “is of an imperial nature. These rituals which are standardized across the land” include the niinamesai [新嘗祭], a form of harvest festival. A third category is that of shrine festivals.

In Pre-Meiji Japan Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines had not been clearly divided.  This changed under the post-Restoration regime but it was then argued by some that Shinto was not a ‘religion.’ Participation in Shinto rituals “could not be anything more than a simple expression of respect for the Great Men who had built the nation.”  The Meiji period, however, “also saw the emergence of a number of ‘Shinto sects’ that were officially recognized and administered as religious groups (page 17).” In post-war Japan three different roles for Shinto have been postulated. One of these “stressed Shinto’s role in uniting the Japanese people under the spiritual guidance of the emperor. Another emphasised ‘the spiritual value of local traditions of worshipping local kami.’ A third called for Shinto to develop ‘from an ethnic religion into a universal one’ (Page 6).”

The second chapter covers “Kami Shrines, Myths, and Rituals in Premodern Times.” The authors argue (page 45) that “the category of kami as opposed to other higher beings, ranging from buddhas to devas, star deities, and powerful animals such as foxes and snakes, was…fluid.”   They note that the word Shinto first used in the Nihon shoki (circa 720) had Buddhist connotations. The term was used by Yoshida Kanetomo in the late fifteenth century who conceived of kami, shrines, and their priests as “constituting a new religion called one-and-only Shinto, distinct from, superior to, and the very source of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, even as it accommodated these creeds (pages 51/52).” The religious nature of Shinto shrines was underlined by the large number of pilgrims attracted to shines especially those at Ise.

Visitors to Japan often ask about the origin of torii at the entrance to Japanese shrines.  The authors note that in one document of 1513 all torii represent “the entrance to ‘the palace of the rock-cave’” in the Sun-Goddess myth (page 147).

The chapter on the Daijōsai describes the ritual as “an exercise in power,” and notes that “its function is to produce and reproduce a particular emperor-centred order (page 175).”  Some influential Japanese see “the purpose of the daijōsai” as “none other than to unify the state, the imperial court and the people (page 198).”

John Breen has done much research on the Yasukuni shrine [see our review of Breen’s Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past in Issue 26] and the authors conclude that Yasukuni rites have come to “consign much of war’s reality to oblivion and leave no scope to reflect on its brutality and cruelty (page 217).”

In their conclusion the authors stress that Shinto “appears not as the unchanging core of Japan’s national essence but rather as the unpredictable outcome of an erratic history (page 228).”

In a brief review it is not possible to do more than highlight a few points such as those which I have cited above but I hope that I have shown that this book contains many interesting and thought provoking insights in its account of Shinto. I think, however, that a better title would have been “Some new perspectives on Shinto.”  It is not a comprehensive history. Nor does it attempt to describe the various modern Shinto sects and their teachings. It is not the ideal introduction to Shinto for anyone without prior knowledge of Japanese religion and history.  The authors rightly do not describe kami as gods but it might have been helpful if a definition of kami had been attempted.