ABSTRACT
Purity, in terms of both one's spiritual condition and physical status, plays a very important role in Shinto. Although Shinto has no canon of holy scriptures, in their place ancient Japanese mythological episodes in Kojiki and Nihon shoki, together with other classics and fragments of folk tales, have been used as materials for interpreting the divinity of the 'eight hundred myriads of kami'. In extreme cases, Shinto has been described as a hodgepodge of folk traditions somehow related to undeveloped superstitious customs in Japan. The state also advocated certain Shinto-derived moral values in public education as a means of inculcating Japanese national identity, using ancient Japanese mythology to emphasize the divine origins of the Japanese emperor, the Japanese people and even the very land of Japan. The occupation authorities' goal was to stamp out State Shinto, which they perceived as lying at the root of Nazi-like Japanese racism.
