Use named temples and shrines to compare buildings, beliefs and visits.
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Shinto encompasses kami worship, shrine practices and several traditions of thought. It has no single founder, and its institutions have changed through encounters with Buddhism, political authorities and modern religious law.
Shinbutsu-shūgō describes historical combinations of kami worship and Buddhism in Japan. These took institutional, ritual and doctrinal forms, with different relationships at different sites.
Horyuji is a Buddhist temple complex at Ikaruga in Nara. The main hall and five-storey pagoda stand in its western precinct; the octagonal Yumedono hall is the centre of the eastern precinct. Its buildings preserve different stages of construction and rebuilding.
Kiyomizudera is a Kyoto temple centred on devotion to Kannon. Its main hall, projecting stage, gates, pagoda and Otowa waterfall form a religious landscape on the slope of Mount Otowa.
Kami are beings and presences venerated in Shinto. They include deities known from classical narratives, powers associated with places or natural phenomena, and people worshipped after death. Their identities and rites vary with the particular tradition.
Kannon is the Japanese name for Avalokiteshvara, the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with responding to suffering. Texts and local traditions support several forms, including eleven-headed and thousand-armed images, as well as practices of worship and pilgrimage.
Inari worship connects agricultural abundance with later prayers for commerce, industry and other concerns. Foxes are prominent in its imagery, but Fushimi Inari Taisha distinguishes the fox messenger from Inari Ōkami.
For centuries, a deity could belong to a shrine and a Buddhist world at the same time. Understanding how requires more than calling Japan tolerant—or its religions confused.
The sea is not simply the setting for this shrine. It changes how the buildings stand, how people approach, and even how a performance sounds.
