Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Shinto |
ShintoAdjective1. Relating to or characteristic of Shintoism; "Shinto temples". Noun1. The native religion and former ethnic cult of Japan. 2. The indigenous polytheistic religion of Japan lacking organized teachings; primarily nature and ancestor worship including a chief deity from whom the emperor is believed to be descended. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Shinto (神道, pronounced shintō) is the native religion of Japan. It involves the worship of kami, or nature spirits. Some kami are very local and can be regarded as the spirit or genius of a particular place, but others represent major natural objects and processes, for example, Amaterasu, the Sun goddess.
Shinto is one of those religions that defy classification. As a highly sophisticated form of animism, deeply embedded in Japanese society, it could be regarded as a primal religion. One could discuss its use as a legitimising ideology in the militaristic phase of recent Japanese history. To the extent that most of the Japanese "New religions" since the end of the second world war have shown Shinto influence, it is a contemporary phenomenon. And one could even make a case for discussing it under the heading of Buddhism, for these two have exercised a profound influence on each other in Japanese religiosity.
The most immediately striking theme in the Shinto religion is a great love and reverence for nature. Thus, a waterfall, the moon, or just an oddly shaped rock might come to be regarded as a kami; so might charismatic persons or more abstract entities like growth and fertility. As time went by, the original nature-worshipping roots of the religion, while never lost entirely, became attenuated and the kami took on more reified and anthropomorphic forms, with a formidable corpus of myth attached to them. The kami, though, are not transcendent deities in the usual Western and Indian sense of the word - although divine, they are close to us; they inhabit the same world as we do. Thus, Shinto, from a combination of two Chinese words (神道) meaning "the way of the spirits" came into being.
The principal worship of kami is at a public shrine, although home worship at small private shrines (sometimes only a high shelf with a few ritual objects) is also common. While a few of the public shrines are elaborate structures, most are small buildings in the characteristic Japanese architectural style. Shrines are commonly fronted by a distinctive Japanese gate (torii) made of two uprights and two crossbars. There are well over 100 000 of these shrines in operation today, each with its retinue of Shinto priests. Kami are invoked at such important ceremonies as the construction of a new building, weddings and entry into university. The kami are commonly petitioned for quite earthly benefits; a child, a promotion, a happier life. Funerals, on the other hand, tend to be monopolised by the Buddhist side of Japanese spirituality (the same is true in China). Worship intensifies during the many Shinto festivals.
The most widely worshipped of all kami is the sun-goddess Amaterasu. Her main shrine is at Ise, but many lesser shrines are dedicated to her. Within the shrine, she is often symbolised by a mirror. Alternatively, the inner sanctum may be empty. Until the end of World War II, the emperor was believed to have been descended from Amaterasu, and was therefore a kami himself (an ikigami or "living kami"); this divine status was popularized during the Meiji restoration. This did not prevent military governors (Shogun) from usurping power, but the emperor was always seen as the true ruler of Japan, even when his rule was only nominal. Although emperor Hirohito renounced his divine status in 1946 under American pressure, the imperial family remains deeply involved in the Shinto ritual that unifies the Japanese nation symbolically.
Purification rites are a vital part of Shinto. These may serve to placate any restive kami, for instance when their shrine had to be relocated. Such ceremonies have been adapted to modern life: a ceremony was held in 1969 to hallow the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. A more personal purification rite is the purification by water. This may involve standing beneath a waterfall or performing ritual ablutions in a river-mouth or in the sea. A third form of purification is avoidance, that is, the taboo placed on certain persons or acts. For example, women were not allowed to climb Mount Fuji until 1868. Although this aspect has decreased in recent years, religious Japanese will not use an inauspicious word like "cut" at a wedding, nor will they attend a wedding if they have recently been bereaved.
The influence of Shinto on Japanese culture can hardly be overestimated. Although it is now near-impossible to disentangle its influence from that of Buddhism, it is clear that the spirit of being one with nature that gave rise to this religion underlie such typically Japanese arts as flower-arranging (ikebana) and traditional Japanese architecture and garden design. A more explicit link to Shinto is seen in sumo wrestling: the purification of the wrestling arena by the sprinkling of salt and the many other ceremonies that must be performed before a bout can begin are definitely Shinto in origin.
See also: Culture of Japan, History of Japan, Oomoto, Yasukuni Shrine
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Shinto."
Synonyms: ShintoSynonyms: Shintoist (adj), Shintoistic (adj), Shintoism (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Shinto |
| English words defined with "Shinto": Amaterasu, Amaterasu Omikami ♦ Hachiman ♦ Kami, Kokka, Kokka Shinto ♦ Shua, Shuha, Shuha Shinto, Sintoist. (references) |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Honoring their ancestral heroes - beautiful Shinto priestess prepares the sacred carp for offering to shrine, Tokyo. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Japan | Religions: Shinto and Buddhist; Christian (about 1%). (references) |
Japan | Many homes have "god shelves" where offerings can be made to Shinto deities. (references) | |
Japan | Since it was unconcerned with problems of afterlife which dominate Buddhist thought, and since Buddhism easily accommodated itself to local faiths, the two religions comfortably coexisted, and Shinto shrines and Buddhist monasteries often became administratively linked. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Shinto" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 72.73% of the time. "Shinto" is used about 11 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 72.73% | 8 | 124,375 |
| Noun (proper) | 27.27% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Total | 100.00% | 11 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Country | Name |
| Japan | Shinto Paint Company, Limited |
| (more examples...) |
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
Expressions using "Shinto": Kokka Shinto ♦ Shuha Shinto. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "Shinto"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Chinese | 神" . (various references) | |
German | schintoistisch, schintoismus (shintoism). (various references) | |
Hungarian | sinto. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 随神の" , 神" , 神" , 惟神の" . (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | し"とう (concussion, degree of kinship, heart, impact, mind, newly forged sword, newparty, osmosis, penetration, permeation, sacred light, shock, sword made after the year 1615), か"ながらのみち. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | intoshay.(various references) | |
Russian | синтоизм (shintoism), синто. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | šinto vera. (various references) | |
Spanish | sintoísmo (shintoism). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | сінто. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | đạo thần Nhật bản. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Shinto" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Hsinchu, Ishitu, Oshenko, Scinto, Shante, Shantu, Shantz, Shentou, Shiant, Shinro, Shinshu, Shiongo, Shito, Shiton. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: tonish. | |
| Words within the letters "h-i-n-o-s-t" | |
-1 letter: hints, hoist, thins. | |
-2 letters: hins, hint, hisn, hist, hits, hons, host, hots, into, ions, nits, nosh, shin, shot, sinh, sith, snit, snot, soth, thin, thio, this, tins, tons, tosh. | |
-3 letters: hin, his, hit, hon, hot, ins, ion, its, nit, noh, nos, not, nth, ohs, ons, sin, sit, son, sot, tho, tin, tis, ton. | |
| Words containing the letters "h-i-n-o-s-t" | |
+1 letter: chitons, ethions, histone, hornist, hosting, stonish, tonnish, townish. | |
+2 letters: astonish, chitosan, ghosting, hedonist, hindmost, histogen, histones, hoatzins, hoisting, holstein, horniest, hornists, hornitos, hotlines, manihots, neoliths, nothings, ornithes, outshine, phoniest, schizont, shooting, shorting, shotting, shouting, snoutish, soothing, southing, thionins, thionyls, thymosin, tinhorns, tonights, tonishly, township. | |
+3 letters: antiphons, antishock, biathlons, chitinous, chitosans, clothings, cohosting, dishonest, downshift, fenthions, ghostings, gnathions, hailstone, halations, hedonists, hessonite, himations, histogens, historian, hoactzins, hoatzines, holsteins, honesties, horntails, horsemint, hosteling, hypnotics, hypnotism, hypnotist, ingrowths, inthrones, loathings, macintosh, midmonths, misthrown, monoliths, monteiths, monthlies, nightspot, nontheist, nonwhites, northings, orthicons, outshined, outshines, outthinks, phonetics, photonics, sainthood, schizonts, scotching, senhorita, shootings, slingshot, smoothing, something, songsmith, southings, stanchion, stinkhorn, stonefish, stonished, stonishes, strongish, thermions, thindowns, thionates, thionines, thiophens, tholepins, thorniest, thrombins, thymosins, thyroxins, tithonias, townships, unholiest, whinstone, whodunits, xenoliths. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Names: Company Usage 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
