Shinto: kami worship, shrines and changing institutions

Kami and places of worship

Kami may be associated with natural features, mythological figures or enshrined people. Particular shrines have their own deities and traditions: Ise Jingū’s Inner Shrine is dedicated to Amaterasu-Ōmikami and its Outer Shrine to Toyouke-no-Ōmikami.

The Kojiki tells Amaterasu’s birth through a purification story. Returning from Yomi, the underworld, Izanagi washes away its pollution; Amaterasu is born when he washes his left eye. The Nihon shoki preserves other versions of the myth in its main text and variant accounts.

The object of worship and the halls

Functions of shrine halls, illustrated through their objects and activities. Hall arrangements vary by shrine.

A shintai is an object regarded in shrine tradition as a dwelling or focus of the kami. It can be a mirror, a sword or a natural feature such as a mountain. Where present, a honden houses the shintai; a haiden accommodates worship and ceremonies. Some shrines also have a heiden for presenting offerings. Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara has a haiden but no honden. Mount Miwa itself is the shintai, and worship is directed through the hall towards the mountain.

Practices at a shrine

Meiji Jingū’s running-water instructions: wash hands, rinse the mouth with cupped water, then wash hands again.

Priests conduct rites while visitors pray or join festivals. Temizu prepares worshippers by washing with water. Harae uses rites and recitations to remove tsumi, transgression, and kegare, ritual pollution, from mind and body. Contact with death can cause kegare; this religious condition differs from ordinary dirt or personal moral guilt. Whole-body ablution is called misogi, a practice originally distinct from harae but often linked with it. Food offerings are called shinsen; Ise lists rice, sake, seafood and vegetables among them. Practices of purification and offering vary among shrines.

Hishida’s first-arrow rite

Kasuga Shrine in Hishida, Seika, Kyoto Prefecture, holds its first-arrow rite on January 10. Two white-robed attendants pray for a good harvest and shoot at targets before the offerings. Pieces of the target paper and bamboo are later placed at rice-field water inlets. At the naorai meal, participants share rice, mackerel and taro from the offerings.

Who sustains a local shrine?

Illustrations of objects and activities, not historical originals or named people.

At Ōsaki Hachimangū, ujiko are worshippers affiliated with the shrine’s local area, while sūkeisha revere it from outside that area. Their representatives, called sōdai, help the chief priest sustain rites and traditions. Priests lead the ceremonies, and these worshippers help maintain the shrine and its activities.

Worship at home

Household offerings, illustrated; the order here does not prescribe their placement.

A kamidana is a household altar for shrine amulets, offerings and worship. Kokugakuin’s Encyclopedia of Shinto links its wider household adoption to the spread of Ise devotion around the mid-Edo period. Its form and dedicated kami vary among households, trades and local traditions. Ōsaki Hachimangū describes rice, salt and water as everyday offerings. The rice may be washed grain or cooked rice; the water vessel is left uncovered.

From worship to organised court rites

From the late seventh century, the ritsuryō state increasingly organised kami rituals and their administration. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki recorded myths, ritual traditions and accounts of institutions. The Jingikan administered state rites and kept records of shrines, ritual personnel and supporting households. Annual observances such as Kinensai, prayers for the harvest, drew on this organisation of people and resources. Earlier kami worship had varied local beginnings.

How kami and Buddhism combined

From the Nara period, temples were established at some shrines, where Buddhist clerics recited sutras and participated in worship. Medieval honji-suijaku thought explained kami as local manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Court and warrior patronage helped spread shrine networks. The Minamoto’s Kantō vassals had to participate in animal-release and mounted-archery rites at Tsurugaoka Hachiman. When granted estates elsewhere, they often established Hachiman worship there, carrying the cult through their ritual duties and landholding.

Yoshida Shinto and priestly authorisation

In the late Muromachi period, Yoshida Kanetomo presented his teaching as an original, fundamental Shinto centred on the primordial deity Kunitokotachi. His rituals also incorporated esoteric Buddhism and Onmyōdō. The Yoshida family issued authorisation documents and built ties with provincial priests, extending the school’s institutional influence.

Hayashi Razan and Motoori Norinaga

The Tokugawa authorities regulated temples, shrines and priestly lineages. Ritual revivals, Confucian interpretations and Kokugaku scholarship developed alongside older combinations with Buddhism.

Hayashi Razan’s Shintō denju interprets Shinto through the Confucian ideal of kingly government. Motoori Norinaga turned instead to the Kojiki and other Japanese classics. In Naobi no mitama, he rejected Confucian and Buddhist categories as explanations of divine action. These thinkers differed over which texts and concepts should guide interpretation.

State administration and its postwar end

From 1868, policies separating kami worship and Buddhism disrupted older combinations. Meiji officials reorganised shrine ranks and priestly offices, making shrines foundations of state ritual tied to imperial rule. Anti-Buddhist destruction accompanied the separation policies, although it was a distinct set of actions.

The 1945 Shinto Directive ended state support and administration of Shrine Shinto. Jinja Honchō was founded in 1946 as a private religious organisation; some Shinto groups remain outside it.

Religious sects and local traditions

Shinto includes shrine institutions, religious sects, court rites, local customs and schools of thought, often with overlapping histories. “Sect Shinto” became an administrative category in Meiji; many of its groups developed in the late Edo and Meiji eras. Konkōkyō practises toritsugi: a minister listens to visitors’ concerns and offers religious guidance, mediating between people and the deity.