ABSTRACT
The term ‘Shinto’ is notoriously vague and difficult to define. A brief look at the term’s history confuses more than it enlightens. Its first occurrence is in the Nihon shoki (720), which writes of Emperor Yo¯mei (r. 585-7) that he ‘had faith in the Buddhist Dharma and revered Shinto.’ Here, as in most early usages of the word, it seems to serve as a synonym for Japan’s native deities, in Japanese called kami, in contrast to the new ‘foreign kami’ that entered Japan with the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century. Only during the medieval and early modern periods was the term applied to specific theological and ritual systems. In modern scholarship, the term is often used with reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals and practices. In these contexts, ‘Shinto’ takes on the meaning of ‘Japan’s traditional religion’, as opposed to foreign religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and so forth.
