ABSTRACT
Geologically speaking, Japan is new land. It and many of the other island groups exist because of the subduction of ocean plates in the western Pacific. Western travelers are often surprised to discover how strong a role Shinto plays in the life of modern Japan. One of the first Europeans to write about Japan was the German traveler Engelbert Kaempfer, who visited the islands of Japan in the late seventeenth century and was greatly impressed by most of what he found there. Due to the close association of kami with natural phenomena, Shinto is sometimes described as a "nature religion". There's more than a little truth in that suggestion. It was this origin myth that provided the Japanese people with the story of their own beginning. The most visible expression of Shinto is the shrine, jinja in Japanese.
