Definition
Shinto is the native religious tradition of Japan, organized around reverence for kami — sacred spirits or presences understood to dwell in mountains, rivers, trees, ancestors, and exceptional people. The word means roughly the way of the kami.
Shinto has no single founder, no central scripture, and no fixed creed. It is expressed mainly through ritual, festival, and the maintenance of shrines, and it emphasizes purity, gratitude, and harmony with nature over doctrine.
Why it matters
How it works
Shinto practice centers on the shrine, where a kami is enshrined and approached through ritual purification, offering, and prayer. Festivals mark seasonal cycles and renew the bond between a community and its local spirits.
Because Shinto lacks doctrine, it readily coexisted with imported traditions, especially Buddhism, for over a millennium — many Japanese observed both without contradiction. Only in the modern period was Shinto deliberately separated out and, for a time, organized by the state into an instrument of national identity.