Keep Kami & Carry On

In this episode, we discuss Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan. It doesn't have one central figure or doctrine that is based on, but rather the worship of spirits or kami. Our first records of Shinto as a religion date back to 4CE, but because it is so integral to the formation of the nation of Japan, we believe that these beliefs developed even earlier. 

Kami can be almost anything including ancestors, or natural elements like rivers and mountains, which means Shinto is rooted in nature worship. 

Shinto is not an exclusionary religion. Like Buddhism, you can be a Shintoist and something else. Many people who practice Shinto are also practicing Buddhists and Confucianists. On the Japanese census, 70% of the population said they were Buddhist and 60% said they were Shinto!

The emperor was considered a great Kami until after WWII when the Allied forces forced Japan to separate religion and state. 

A big concept in Shintoism is cleanliness and pollution. Cleanliness is godliness and physical purity relates directly to spiritual purity. 

There are about 80,000 shrines in Japan. People leave flowers, food and monetary donations to the Kami at their shrines. Big public Shinto shrines are run by priests, these shrines are very welcoming to the public. They will show you how to make an offering to the Kami!

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Katie Dooley  00:12

Hello. 

Preston Meyer  00:14

Welcome 

Both Hosts  00:15

to the Holy Watermelon Podcast. 

Preston Meyer  00:20

Man, that was terrible.

Katie Dooley  00:21

That was that was one of our worst last week. I was like, Oh, we're getting so much better. But not all weeks can be winners. I'm Katie.

Preston Meyer  00:29

I'm Preston.

Katie Dooley  00:30

And we're your hosts. And today we are wrapping up, I guess a mini series on the largest organized religions around the globe.

Preston Meyer  00:44

So you say organized, Hinduism is not very well organized. And the same can be said of, well, okay, the same can be said less reliably, of Shintoism.

Katie Dooley  00:57

Which is our topic today, what would you call these, then the ones with the stamp of approval, major religions?

Preston Meyer  01:04

People like to call them the world religions, because they're huge in population and have spread over pretty much the entirety of the earth. And Shintoism, as didn't used to have a centralized authority until this idea of state Shintoism showed up. 

Katie Dooley  01:23

Which we'll get into. Yeah, jumping ahead a bit. 

Preston Meyer  01:26

Yeah. But it's better if we start a little closer to the beginning on this one.

Katie Dooley  01:31

That's my rewind noise. That's not a very good one. But I always like to start with the numbers for these religions. So I'm just looking at the notes. Shintoism started in the fourth century. So it's quite old. You're giving me a look.

Preston Meyer  01:49

I mean, the way that Shintoism is visible today, it seems to have started around that time, yeah.

Katie Dooley  01:57

But being an indigenous religion to Japan, and a nature worship religion, it's probably fair to say it started even before then.

Preston Meyer  02:07

Absolutely. In fact, we've talked a lot about labels in the past. And Shintoism is so vast that one label, while it might seem really good in the moment that we'll use it, there is going to be part of this whole ball of wax, where that label just doesn't stick.

Katie Dooley  02:34

Well, we don't like labels in religion, because exactly, they don't always fit. And I think that's fair for Shintoism because I had trouble wrapping my head around it, I got there. But it was a lot of digging and research, whereas something like Buddhism, where it's all numbered, it was way easier to figure out their beliefs and practices.

Preston Meyer  02:56

Yeah, so when you say it's a nature, religion, that's true in a lot of ways. But also, you do have Shintoists who don't really worry about the river god, or the mountain god or the sky god of their area, and only really pray to their ancestors. And then you have some that will do the occasional prayer to their ancestors. And we'll be a lot more worried about their own agricultural profitability, let's say, and they'll pray to the god of rice, or the god of the rain, and spectrum.

Katie Dooley  03:32

Spectrum! The basis I guess, of Shintoism is the worship of the kami and the closest English translation we have for kami is spirits. And as Preston was saying, spirits can live in the rivers and the mountains. They can also live in manmade objects or as people, and that's where we'll get into state Shintoism. But the emperor was considered a great Kami not to be confused with the communist as I was saying it, I was like, that sounds really bad.

Preston Meyer  04:05

Yeah, the emperor was a great kami.

Katie Dooley  04:08

That's what clued my mind, there are about 100 million Shintoists in the world, because it's a religion of Japanese origin, their predominantly in Japan or of Japanese descent.

Preston Meyer  04:23

So you'll find a lot more on the east coast of Canada and United States. No that's not true, west. It's not even that hard. They're on the west coast of Asia and the east coast of North America. And also a lot of Japanese people. 

Katie Dooley  04:38

You literally said that backwards today. Yeah, it's the east coast of Asia. Yeah. And the west coast of Canada. I can't even

Preston Meyer  04:47

Words aren't even that hard, but here we are. 

Katie Dooley  04:51

Some words are hard.

Preston Meyer  04:52

And there's also a huge Japanese population in Brazil, which is not on the west coast of South Africa. 

Katie Dooley  05:00

It's on the East Coast, yeah. Geography lesson for you today as well.

Preston Meyer  05:05

I'll get there.

Katie Dooley  05:06

So Shinto. Shintoism is not an exclusatory religion, you can be Shinto and something else. I think it's almost borderline encouraged.

Preston Meyer  05:16

Yeah, we talked about a couple episodes ago, in our discussion of Buddhism, that an awful lot, probably even most Shintoists are also Buddhists and Confucianists, which is kind of cool. This amalgamation of ideas. And as we get into Shintoism, a little bit more, you'll see how that's actually really easy to come across.

Katie Dooley  05:43

I think it's a good way to be too because you can really utilize the different beliefs and practices for certain points in your life. And there's a very specific reason that most people die Buddhist. But to be able to actually use religion to find guidance and comfort and shift that religion as necessary in your life, I think is probably a healthy thing.

Preston Meyer  06:12

Yeah, I think so. 

Katie Dooley  06:14

Do you want to go more into Shinto and Buddhism being best friends?

Preston Meyer  06:18

Yeah, for sure. So in the early seventh century, Buddhism had spread all the way across from the top of the Indian subcontinent, all the way east, through China, up into Japanese borders. And it became so popular, that Prince Sku, but we spell it S-K-U I, 

Katie Dooley  06:46

Oh, like the barcode. 

Preston Meyer  06:49

It is spelt like that in the way we typically transliterated. I assume that my pronunciation is acceptable, if it's not correct, Prince Sku or Sku, I don't know, he sponsored Buddhism as the state religion of Japan, which sounds really weird when Shintoism was already wildly popular as the native indigenous religion. And I think this illustrates how Shintoism wasn't seen as a religion, in the same way that they saw Buddhism, or Christianity as a religion, that Shintoism was just a fact of life, that it was a thing that you did, you would pray to your ancestors, you would pray for things. And it wasn't... saying prayer makes it feel like it would have been a religious action. But they would simply... you go to a place where you can communicate with the spirits. And that's it. That's all it was. Or that's the way it was seen anyway. So there was no real conflict in making Buddhism a state religion. And so over the next 150 years, it became more popular and more kind of forced by the government as it being the state religion, this Buddhism. And so Buddhist monasteries and temples can be found in every province by about the middle of the eighth century. So they kind of, well, they didn't kind of they did coexist. And Confucianism, about the same time arrived in Japan, and became very popular as a good way of guiding people to be good neighbors, which was kind of addressed in Buddhism, pretty well, and not actually explicitly laid out in any rigorous religious form in Shintoism. And so it kind of became part of that triune religion of the state, which is kind of nifty. This Confucianism was brought into Japan, basically attached to Taoism, which of course is the Chinese understanding of spirits and because that's what Taoism basically is they it was never really adopted by the Japanese people because Shintoism already filled that role. And so they've, those three, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism have coexisted and have been tightly attached to each other firmly for more than 1000 years in Japan.

Katie Dooley  09:31

I saw a stat in my research, and it was, I guess, was the Japanese census and I was saying that 70% of the population is Buddhist, and 60% of the population is Shinto. And if anyone here is good at numbers, you know that is grossly over 100%.

Preston Meyer  09:49

It sure is. And that's because people are comfortable being both of those things. And it's I don't think you're allowed to check off more than one religion box in the Canadian census.

Katie Dooley  10:05

It's been a long time since I've done a census. But what if you're a multi-religious household? You must be allowed to.

Preston Meyer  10:13

Honestly, it's been a long time since I've looked at the census. I don't remember if they asked about the household or individual members for that. I could be wrong. You totally probably could check off multiple boxes in the Canadian census.

Katie Dooley  10:26

I'm curious.

Preston Meyer  10:27

Rght? I mean, we've got a census coming around soon. Yeah, I've applied for that job. So hopefully, they don't listen to this episode of our podcast and write me off as somebody who does not care enough. We'll see

Katie Dooley  10:42

You're going to be the person I avoid when "ah census worker I'll just do it online."

Preston Meyer  10:46

Right. Everybody should be doing it online.

Katie Dooley  10:51

I want to make an inappropriate joke about how you're probably used to that, though

Preston Meyer  10:55

Right? I've spent years of my life trying to bug people don't want to

Katie Dooley  11:02

Not that guy again.

Preston Meyer  11:04

Right? So it's kind of nifty that these religions coexist. And things did get kind of complicated. More recently, in history, the imperial power has always been tied tightly to Shinto theology, the Emperor being the highest ranking priest, and also the newest of the gods, which is also, as we discussed what a god is, in one of our earlier episodes. It's, I think it's perfectly fair to say that anything that is worshipped is a God. And all of the Kamis seem to have worship directed to them. So even though the word is pretty faithfully translated to the word spirit, they're also gods.

Katie Dooley  11:54

Yep. Fair. Yeah. I think when we, in my mind, jump in if I'm wrong, when we use the term spirit, I feel like that's the manifestation of the god. Am I making sense?

Preston Meyer  12:08

Yeah, I follow you. I think that's pretty fair.

Katie Dooley  12:12

That we have a different idea of how other gods show up or don't show up. And I think in Shinto, they show up as spirits in things.

Preston Meyer  12:26

Yeah. So even the mountain being a powerful figure in that theology of this divine created land, having a mountain show up to you, doesn't work, but having the spirit of the mountain showed up to you, that is a lot more reasonable. In whatever form that might take, it's probably not going to be a billion tonne rock.

Katie Dooley  12:59

Do you... and this is off topic. Do you think that the idea of spirits and Kami in the sense that they speak to their ancestor spirits... Do you think that influences Western cultures idea of like ghosts, and this idea of an afterlife, or an after that your spirit can hang out on the ground? And haunt things?

Preston Meyer  13:24

It might. I think it does for some people? 

Katie Dooley  13:27

Or was there enough in like... did we have that idea in the West? Before we had Japanese influence?

Preston Meyer  13:33

We've definitely had the idea of ghosts in our cultural mind before we had strong connections with the Far East. So yeah, more recent history of Shintoism. Things got a little hairy, we mentioned right at the very beginning. We mentioned at the very beginning, this idea of state Shintoism. That, well, what year was that? Did I write it down? 

Katie Dooley  14:03

1945? So the year, late 18th century. 

Preston Meyer  14:06

Now, that's the end of that problem, or, yeah, more or less the end of that problem? So in the late 19th century, there was this nationalist effort to separate Buddhism from Shinto Kami worship, a lot of people just trying to get rid of outside influences and really shore up what was the Japanese identity. Christianity also lost a little bit of popularity there too. So they tried to push out Buddhist influence, which I don't think was a great move. As a personal opinion, seeing what Buddhism brought to the table. I just I don't agree with that move and it seems like a lot of people agreed at the time. There was a lot of public shrines that came under government control, and people were encouraged to worship the Emperor. Encouraged, often by force. Things got really very... nearly 80,000 shrines shut down with the persecution of traditional religious Shintoism, which is, I mean, also a hard enough thing to define. But anything that incorporated anything that wasn't strictly approved by the State became a big problem for people's lives. And that lasted for not really a long time, because the middle of the 20th century came around. And Japan joined the Second World War, and lost the Second World War. And the peace treaty that really cut them out of the war, forced them to separate religion from the state. And this, of course, included a clause that required the Emperor to no longer claim a divine status, which seems perfectly reasonable to any secularist, was a huge problem for Japan. 

Katie Dooley  16:13

Yeah, and right, we talked about the separation of church and state and the Emperor giving up his divinity, but we still think Queen Elizabeth is divine has the divine right to the throne. So that's doesn't sound you know, we, this isn't so backwards, I guess. Right. So thinking that you're a leader is somehow divine, because we still in Western culture, think that.

Preston Meyer  16:38

Yeah, the Allies forced Japan to build a line between church and state to the point where they couldn't have a state religion anymore. England still has a state religion. The queen is head of the Church of England. Yeah. So it's kind of funky. There's actually a lot of religions that enjoy a special state status on this planet.

Katie Dooley  17:01

I mean, even the US though it's off the books. We've had this conversation before, you cannot get elected President of the United States and not be a Christian. It'll be a long time before we see that happen.

Preston Meyer  17:13

Yeah, even though America is officially a state with no state religion. There's a de facto status for Christianity that everybody seems to agree. At least well, I can't say everybody because there's an awful lot of far more reasonable voices that say no, there's no state religion. An awful lot of Christians say this is a Christian country. And the fact is that even though it's not that way on paper it is.

Katie Dooley  17:47

What does the $1 bill say? One Nation under God. I thought it said and God We Trust 

Preston Meyer  17:52

Oh, isn't there another one though?

Katie Dooley  17:58

But there's like

Preston Meyer  18:00

There's Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase one nation under God

Katie Dooley  18:05

I was like why is that in my head but you're right In God We Trust is on the dollar bill. So clearly, there's not much separation there either

Preston Meyer  18:13

Well and see even that was the product of the fight against the communists.

Katie Dooley  18:21

Not the Kamis. The commies. Oh, hilarious today. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Preston Meyer  18:32

It was thrown on to American money. Because money is the thing that people see every day, because the wonderful pleasures of capitalism is that you will be spending money. And so the fight against communism was fought on the money itself, by pointing out that we are better than those godless communists because we have God on our money. And I think we talked about this a few episodes ago and in our discussion of what Gods are, that in America, money is God.

Katie Dooley  19:09

Let's dive into what Shintoists is actually believe. And I have written down their creation myth. There's two books, neither of these are considered divine. There's no divine, one divine being or godlike because it's all around Kamis. And these books, the Kojiki and the Nihon-gi are from the late 18th century and they explain the origin story of Japan. So their creation myth is how Japan came into being.

Preston Meyer  19:47

I think it's interesting that they don't agree exactly. They tell more or less the same stories, but there are some details that are different. And also, I mean, you can go ahead and buy these books and read them but they don't actually really figure into the religious life of most Shintoists.

Katie Dooley  20:08

Yeah, what this origin story is not like a day to day thing like you'd hear the Garden of Eden or what have you.

Preston Meyer  20:16

I mean, it's weird how much evangelical Christians put so much emphasis on Genesis, especially just the first three chapters. It's like, That's how far they got in their book before they got bored.

Katie Dooley  20:35

Oh, that was bad. Katie, the probably. So yeah, like Preston said, this doesn't really play into day to day life, but it is the how Wolverine became Wolverine. How Japan showed up, right. The first couple Izanagi and Izanami descended from heaven to the island of Japan. And they produced the sun goddess or Kami, Amaterasu.

Preston Meyer  21:06

I'm not going to correct your pronunciation. I just, I don't think I can do better than that looks pretty good. 

Katie Dooley  21:13

I think that's a compliment. And that's about it. You know, there are a few more Kami more came from that.

Preston Meyer  21:25

Well, they're not the first Kami. But they're the first with a personal attachment to the whole land of Japan. Yeah, it's their cosmology is kind of vast. And it's, there's a lot of dealing with creators, but there's no real prophecy to it at all. It's just this is where we come from.

Katie Dooley  21:50

And that's why I can't really expand on it. Because basically, all I could find is that this is where the country of Japan comes from. And yeah, that's about it. And they were, I don't wanna say we're ruled by spirits. But that spirits play a part of our world.

Preston Meyer  22:17

And there are spirits everywhere. The rivers, the trees, the forests, the mountains, you've also got your ancestors. If you've gotten into genealogy very much, you'll find that a lot of families in Japan have got decently far back records of their families. So they can track their genealogy is the word I've said and then lost. They can track their genealogy and see how they're connected to the Kamis that they have shrines for in their ancestral homes, which is pretty nifty. Of course, there's a lot of those that have been lost over time as well. And, of course, the greatest of those human Kamis are your your conquerors and your emperors, your big people who did so much in their life that you could expect that they can help you in your own life. And, of course, you've got you've got Kamis that find their origin in idealogical myths, like the God of the thunder. He explains the story around him explains why there is thunder, lightning, rains, rice, all kinds of things.

Katie Dooley  23:34

Did you know there's a Kami in Mount Fuji?

Preston Meyer  23:38

I fully expected that there was my brief survey couldn't actually find his name as I was just going through random lists of things. I didn't actually specifically search for what is the Kami of Mount Fuji, though that thought actually had entered my mind what is his name? Or her name? Is it a he or a she?

Katie Dooley  23:56

The Kamiah Fuji is a princess named Konohanasakuya.

Preston Meyer  24:07

The longer the name the harder it is to pronounce

Katie Dooley  24:10

Vecause you gotta like string it all together. Konohanasakuya. Konohanasakuya. Use that one.

Preston Meyer  24:17

I like it. I won't try and say it but I like it. So Mount Fuji is a girl

Katie Dooley  24:25

Mount Fuji's a girl. A girl mountain. It kind of makes sense.

Preston Meyer  24:30

Sure. I mean, that's just one as opposed to what your miming. It's a huge mountain. I mean, it looks that way, anyway.

Katie Dooley  24:41

I think it's quite a big deal.

Preston Meyer  24:43

I have no idea how it compares to the other mountains of the world.

Katie Dooley  24:49

And the symbol of this princess is a cherry blossom.

Preston Meyer  24:59

There's a shrine set up at the base of it specifically to ward off eruptions.

Katie Dooley  25:05

Gotta keep her happy, right?

Preston Meyer  25:06

Right? Last thing is that Princess having a freakout.

Katie Dooley  25:11

So bad.

Preston Meyer  25:13

But true. Right?

Katie Dooley  25:16

I mean, yeah, I wouldn't want Mount Fuji to erupt just because she's angry, right?

Preston Meyer  25:21

Which is definitely the the narrative that goes along with interruption is the mountains are angry everywhere in the world. That's the way it goes.

Katie Dooley  25:30

Yeah, so I would say she's definitely probably one of the bigger Kamis along with the sun goddess. And I think you have a few more in mind to talk about?

Preston Meyer  25:40

None whose names I can pronounce.

Katie Dooley  25:42

That's fine Tell me about some.

Preston Meyer  25:45

There's almost triune set of creators who are responsible for the creation of the world as a whole, rather than just Japan that separated the earth from the heavens. Their names are long and complicated, and I just can't pronounce them. And they're kind of cool. And then there's another, well, before I get on to the next two these three, just kind of came into existence. There's, there is a time before them, but they are not the product of procreation. And they don't seem to procreate, either. But they just create. And then there's two more Gods whose names are also that I can't pronounce them that are more specifically associated with the heaven and the earth as a whole, the whole of the skies the whole of the Earth, one being a lot bigger than the other, I guess.

Katie Dooley  26:50

Yeah, well, one had his work cut out for him.

Preston Meyer  26:53

And then after that, there's a series of male/female pairs. And the two that you had mentioned as being the creators of Japan, are one of those male/female pairs.

Katie Dooley  27:09

They just kept going, because there's a ton of them.

Preston Meyer  27:11

And then then each of those created all of the features of the land that have kami associated with them. Or they created the Kamis, who created those features of the land. It's all about the storytelling on how the world came to be the way it is.

Katie Dooley  27:35

I'm really excited about this next part, Preston, go for it. Oscar winning film, Spirited Away, is all Shintoism. All of it. It's so exciting to my brain. Spirited Away. It's right in the name. There's tons of spirits if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And we have the radish spirit. And there you take all these different forms. And this is the idea that kamis can, you know, be nature, inanimate objects or people.

Preston Meyer  28:09

And where does the story take place? 

Katie Dooley  28:11

Japan 

Preston Meyer  28:12

No but like, where in Japan? What... what is?

Katie Dooley  28:14

Oh, in a bath house! Is that what you mean? Yeah, I was gonna get to that. When I posted in our Discord, which you should hop on to that I was researching Shintoism I sent the GIF of no face stuffing his face. That's my personal spirit..

Preston Meyer  28:34

It's a little off putting but adorable the same time No Face is hard to digest.

Katie Dooley  28:42

Sometimes when I'm hungry, I'll text Bryant that gift just gorging himself. Spirited Away takes place in a bath house because cleanliness and pollution are big themes in Shintoism. So there's no moral code like we see in the Abrahamic religions where you don't eat certain food or you have to dress a certain way or...

Preston Meyer  29:10

Your regular behaviors have no real effect on Shintoism at all.

Katie Dooley  29:16

Except for this concept of clean and dirty and polluted so there's a lot of themes in Spirited Away. Well, it's literally in a bath house. And then there's the river spirit that comes in it's filthy and Shen like helps clean them up and Haku, her little friend is a river spirit that sorry, spoiler alert. He's trapped because his river was paved over. So the director Hayao Miyazaki is like big on the environment, but this is also like, hugely important in Shintoism as well, and in my research, Hayao Miyazaki, Shintoism is important to him personally. So we say in North America that cleanliness is next to godliness in Shintoism, it is literally godliness. To the point where physical pure purity correlates directly with spiritual purity. The this is part of the reason Japan is like a super clean country. I mean, there's other reasons in their cultural values.

Preston Meyer  30:28

Cultural superiority. They're just better than us because we're trash. 

Katie Dooley  30:33

Wow, Preston, 

Preston Meyer  30:34

You walk out on our streets right now and see how much garbage that our people throw on the streets.

Katie Dooley  30:40

Oh, yeah. But I don't. I don't think they go day to day being like those North American pigs.

Preston Meyer  30:46

I mean, you don't need to say it when it's so easy to see.

Katie Dooley  30:50

I know honor is a big value in Japan. and I think that plays into... I'm digressing from the topic of religion but the term kegare means unclean or defilement. And there's a couple that makes sense and then a couple I was personally offended by. So death, disease, and rape are all kegare. They're all unclean defilements. Death, I'm like, and we'll get into death more as like, eh you don't really have a choice, but it's considered unclean. Also, childbirth adminstration are kegare. They're impure, dirty, pretty things. 

Preston Meyer  31:33

That's pretty standard, well in fact, this whole list is pretty standard for what we're familiar with in the Abrahamic faiths. That if you're going to go to the place of worship, typically the temple rather than the synagogue, there is a need to be physically clean. And our hygiene standards have evolved a lot since then. If you were menstruating 3000 years ago, you were going to be physically dirty.

Katie Dooley  32:05

That's true and you'd be locked up from basically everyone.

Preston Meyer  32:08

Yeah, so I understand where it's coming from. But as our hygiene practices have evolved, so should our outlook.

Katie Dooley  32:20

Being in the state of kegare is, I mean, the way that it is bad for you, but it also pollutes the community around you, so it's important that you remedy that by purification rituals. And that is sort of the big piece of Shinto worship is this idea of purifying your space. I didn't make any notes on it, because I couldn't find can find a ton of stuff on it. But even when you're moving into a home, you purify it, so that the Kami that from your home or your ancestral economy that are coming with you in their little shrines feel comfortable in your new home.

Preston Meyer  33:00

Makes sense. I like to be comfortable in my home,

Katie Dooley  33:02

Right? I cleaned my new home when I moved in so I can see why my dead grandma would feel the same.

Preston Meyer  33:11

Seems perfectly natural and reasonable to me.

Katie Dooley  33:14

So on, the topic of kegare death, like I said, death is kegare and so Shintoists don't deal with it. Because it'sthe state of impurity, which is where...

Preston Meyer  33:30

It's fair to say Shintoism doesn't deal with it.

Katie Dooley  33:34

Shintoism doesn't deal with it. So this is where Buddhism just like swaggers in and they say that you're married Shinto and you die, Buddhists. And I, it really bothered me I couldn't I googled it and couldn't find it. But I remember in religious studies class, they said, there's a reason people marry Shinto. And I think it's like some economical reason. Like, I think there's some gifting there's some benefit to being married Shinto, and then you die Buddhists, because worst case scenario, you get reincarnated, best case scenario, you reach Nirvana instead of being in kegare instead of being dirty.

Preston Meyer  34:13

It's interesting that for Shintoism, there is the sense of heaven, and, and the netherworld, on either side of the mortal realm. But the heaven of Shintoism is just the plane where the kami live, and it's not an expected destination for the departed dead. And the netherworld when it shows up in Shinto myth is the place for unclean kami, and occasionally the unclean dead. When a kami dies, that's part of the story is they go to this netherworld, but it's not promised thing that when you die, you're gonna go to either place. They don't address that at all and so Buddhism absolutely fills in that blank space in the story.

Katie Dooley  35:13

And so because of that Shinto cemeteries basically don't exist. They're all Buddhist cemeteries.

Preston Meyer  35:27

You're gonna hold on to this vessel, and the guy that was in it, is gonna go make another one. It's an interesting way to see the world that you're able to kind of fence off the two different ideas and still adopt both. I don't know, it's not something you see a whole lot among people who grew up in a Christian tradition.

Katie Dooley  35:56

No, I think this is. I don't want to say it's the only example but it's the best example of two religions coexisting? In a symbiotic way.

Preston Meyer  36:10

Yeah, it's weird that it's not like one really absorbed the other. There's not a whole lot of obvious syncretism, where one just changes and adopts values to the other. It's being both 

Katie Dooley  36:24

Yeah, no, they're two very different and separate things. That just happen to live together. Like you and me! Awe we just had a moment. Day to day, what does it look like to be Shinto?

Preston Meyer  36:48

The weird thing about day to day Shintoism, is that there's things that are, what you would expect from anybody, that the way that it got away with being almost secular, is really interesting. And so somebody who's just a Shintoist, who maybe doesn't adopt Buddhism, for the sake of this example, wouldn't look really any different from an atheist, apart from the occasional visit to a shrine, which could happen once a year, once every decade, once a month, once a week. Who knows?

Katie Dooley  37:36

My, in my research and my understanding is that most people... so the note I have is that you know, we talk about Buddhism is this way of life is i a religion? We had this conversation. I would actually say Shinto is more of a air quotes "way of life". Because most people in Japan don't even consider themselves religious. And I think that's because being Shinto is so interesting. In...

Preston Meyer  38:07

Intrinsically?

Katie Dooley  38:09

I wanted to say intricately and then my brain... Intricately connected to being Japanese, you don't even like I don't even think they see the line between religion and being Japanese. 

Preston Meyer  38:23

It's just a thing you do.

Katie Dooley  38:24

Like, liking poutine as a Canadian, you can separate that as a food, eh? It's just part of the culture.

Preston Meyer  38:30

But you know that it's food?

Katie Dooley  38:32

No, it's my heart and soul, eh.

Preston Meyer  38:36

You live in breathes poutine.

Katie Dooley  38:38

I live and breathe poutine. I don't think you understand. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just when you ask, apparently, when you ask a Japanese person, if they think they're religious the answer is no. 

Preston Meyer  38:54

Even if they're actively pressed into on a regular basis. It's, it's interesting. It's... religion is complicated. We've said this before, I'll say it again, that's just our reality./

Katie Dooley  39:08

That's why we have content to the rest of our lives.

Preston Meyer  39:13

It's interesting that just like there's no singular way to be Shintoist. There's no monolithic historical founder. That's not a thing we've, the ancient history of Shintoism is lost. It's, we understand that these things are worshipped. We know they've been worshipped for as long as history records and that's it. In fact, I tried looking up the etymology of the names of a lot of kami and found nothing at all their names are so old that we don't even mean anymore. Some of them we do, or some of them we have guesses, but for a lot of them, we just don't know what they mean anymore. There's no solid scripture that is the canon by which worship is measured or anything like that. There's, like you mentioned those two books and that's kind of it, you've got a handful of family stories, and different families will tell the same story different ways. But there's no set of Scripture that unifies them at all.

Katie Dooley  40:19

Yeah, it's just like this inherent belief that you know, kami exist. Yeah. And that you need to keep them happy.

Preston Meyer  40:25

Yeah. In fact, there's a lot of argument on how to define Shintoism. And the most popular scholarly definition for Shintoism. is the belief in kami.

Katie Dooley  40:43

Yeah, and this makes me feel better about my struggle to wrap my head around Shintoism this week.

Preston Meyer  40:51

Yeah, it's we're trying really hard to make it a thing that is an approachable discussion topic. Because it's a very complex thing.

Katie Dooley  40:59

I might argue that this might be one of the most complex maybe next to Christianity.

Preston Meyer  41:05

It's weird that it feels more complicated than Hinduism.

Katie Dooley  41:11

But Hinduism has its like set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods. That you can pick and choose, whereas this doesn't have a set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods.

Preston Meyer  41:20

Right. And with Hinduism there was a foundational scripture that came in with this religion as it moved into the Indus Valley. We don't have that for Shintoism. It's just the idea that there are kami.

Katie Dooley  41:35

Part of kami worship is, of course shrines. And this is, like I said, you can even see in Spirited Away when they're driving to their new home, there's little spirit shrines on the road that they point out. And shrines can be like a tiny home shrine, or a tiny side of the road shrie or they can be massive community shrines, there's about 80,000 shrines in Japan. And this is where it comes to worship takes place. There is a... kami hang out in a shin tae. So this is the specific object within the shrine where they're residing. And this can be basically anything and they can they're often manmade as well. So you have your shrine, this little house, and then there's something in the shrine where the kamis like, "Hi, here I am!"

Preston Meyer  42:31

So is there any sort of preparation that person has to undertake before they visit one of these shrine?

Katie Dooley  42:35

Tthank you for the lead in Preston. So back to the cleanliness and the purity/impurity, you have to wash your mouth and wash your hands, which feels very common that happens in Islam as well, for sure.

Preston Meyer  42:50

Realistically if you're going to visit anywhere, it's polite to not be dirty.

Katie Dooley  42:55

But ritual cleansing is a little different than just not being dirty. And spiritual cleansing. So people pray at shrine, they make monetary donations, they leave food, they leave, I think they leave flowers as well. Yeah, you're just leaving small tokens of your appreciation for the kami.

Preston Meyer  43:17

Sounds pretty all right.

Katie Dooley  43:19

Oh, this one, in fact, was fun. And I made a note because like, literally as I was researching, so you can tell the difference between a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist shrine by the torii gate. So these are, there can be really simple Torii gates that are like two posts and a beam. But there's definitely like a look, 

Preston Meyer  43:39

There's a stereotypical look that you'll recognize them. 

Katie Dooley  43:41

And as I was studying this, I saw someone with a torii gate in their yard. And I was like, do you know what that is? Do you know what that is?

Preston Meyer  43:51

It's hard to say if you don't know the person 

Katie Dooley  43:53

No and I didn't, but I was like hmmmm.

Preston Meyer  43:56

You could have just a dude who's way into Japanese tradition and you know, hang a set of swords on his wall, and we'll never get married. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you'll have somebody who's really into their religion.

Katie Dooley  44:13

Yeah. Or it could just be somebody thought it was a nice yarn? I want to say yard and lawn ornament. So I'm curious who lives there but right.

Preston Meyer  44:26

It could be a family that genuinely opens their home to anybody who wants to worship the kami.

Katie Dooley  44:31

Maybe I'd be curious what kami lives there. The largest and most important shine, Google it, guys. It's really cool. It's called the Ise Grand, which is dedicated to that first sun goddess Amaterasu. And my note says, and I'm going to read it, it's really fucking old. It was originally built in the fourth century, which is where we start having this record that Shinto is a thing but it's obviously it's been rebuilt several times since. But it's pretty remarkable that there's been a shrine there for 16... 1700 years. And it's massive. And you can go as a tourist, Shintoists are very welcoming. And they'll teach you how to, like, say a prayer and leave a thing for our a kami. And because they're, you know, open to other religions coming like you can just go in and check one out. So, if you're in Japan, check out the Ise Grand.

Preston Meyer  45:30

On that point, I think it's really interesting that Shintoists follow the model that we're familiar with in Western Asian henotheism, where when you go to a city that has a shrine to the local god of the city or the city state, that you're expected to give a sacrifice in those situations. And you're absolutely welcome to do the same at a Shinto shrine that anybody can is pretty cool. That's how you show that you are respectful of the community.

Katie Dooley  46:06

I will definitely visit Ise Grand when I go to Japan, I don't know when not going to Japan, but I will visit when I go. One story I remember from my religious studies class is apparently there's a Shinto shrine in the Toyota factory. Makes sense. And my religious studies teacher came from a very devoutly Christian family. And he like told his in laws that there was a Shinto shrine in the Toyota effect, and they sold their Toyota. They couldn't handle that there was another god mucking around with their car.

Preston Meyer  46:43

See, I understand from a Western perspective, the idea of having even a Christian shrine in the workplace is problematic for a lot of people. I mean, it would be annoying for most atheists, I think, but we've actually made it so much part of our culture that you must be separating your work from your religious life, that maybe that's part of the feelings there.

Katie Dooley  47:16

I mean, I don't know. Because I, and I don't know if we want to say it's more maybe it's just a it's probably just ignorance. Can you hear me thinking while I'm talking? It's probably just ignorance, because I remember we went for Vietnamese pickup not that long ago. And they had Old Buddha on the counter, and there was coins and things on it. Like obviously they...

Preston Meyer  47:38

if you go to East Asian restaurant, doesn't have to be Chinese could be Laotian or whatever. Not seeing a shrine would be actually kind of weird.

Katie Dooley  47:49

Well, yeah, but this is where I'm saying like, I mean, I don't know if incredibly devout Christians wouldn't eat at a Vietnamese place, because Buddhist. But I think we ignore that. And then you hear a story about Toyota, and you're like "ah my pearls!"

Preston Meyer  48:06

Right? Some of my family, who are pretty Christian, but not like, real hardcore Christian, go for Chinese food on Christmas, because they're the only one's that are open and they like to eat out. And it's funny that... and I think an awful lot of Jews eat out Chinese food in the winter season as well. I've observed it more in the winter than the summer, but I doubt there's actually much difference timewise, to be honest. And both Christians and Jews and Muslims have this idea that you have to stay away from idols of other gods. And yet, we all love Chinese food, and almost all of them have these shrines.

Katie Dooley  48:54

Well, and that's what I mean, where I think it just comes back to ignorance.

Preston Meyer  48:57

They just don't know that it's a shrine.

Katie Dooley  48:59

They just right or you wouldn't even clue in to, you know, especially in again, this is more with Buddha, because it's a we have a physical manifestation of what Buddha looks like, or Buddai.

Preston Meyer  49:17

You notice very few places have both apart from retailers.

Katie Dooley  49:20

I was gonna say with retailers. We've commercialized this idea of Buddha, and Zen Buddhism and so much that I honestly don't think people claiming that it's a religious. Oh, even before we hopped on, and when we're like, yoga is not just a sport. It's like a thing, but we've commercialized it so much in the West that we don't realize how spiritual and religious it actually is. 

Preston Meyer  49:44

Yoga is incredibly religiously charged.

Katie Dooley  49:47

Yeah, so it's funny. I read the Bhagavad Gita after our Hinduism episode, which, not great for timing, but yeah, it's mentioned a whole bunch in the Bhagavad Gita. Anyway, we went on a bit of a tangent, but I hope you learned something in that tangent. The last piece, I don't have a ton of notes on it. But Shinto shrines are run by priests and the priests Oh, yeah, big public, obviously a home train or a small roadside train wouldn't but the big public shrines. The term is Kannushi, not to be confused with Tanuki. Like Mario, I'm kidding. And they'll conduct rituals. They're a little bit of a customer service piece they'll talk the guests through who are not Shinto practitioners through the ringing of the bells, and the prayers and the monetary or whatever sacrifices, and they can communicate with the Kami. You can be a man or a woman priest. There's no restriction on that, like there is in the West, certain Western practices, and you can marry as well as a Shinto priests. They're pretty chill.

Preston Meyer  51:01

Yeah, it's it's not so hard to be a Shintoist as it is to be, say, a Catholic priest, which is not the life for me.

Katie Dooley  51:13

Not the life for a lot of people. They're leaving in droves.

Preston Meyer  51:16

It's true. All right. So I found a a couple of nifty ideas. I have them attached to the name Hawaii.

Katie Dooley  51:26

I'm gonna let you talk about this because I saw this

Preston Meyer  51:29

And decided not..

Katie Dooley  51:31

Not to go down that route.

Preston Meyer  51:34

So I feel like an awful lot of people when they hear the word kami, there is the instinctive response to add another portion to that word. In the English language, especially, say seventy years ago, kami was always attached to the word kaze. Kamikaze means the spirit wind. And it's attached to the Bushido principle of honor until death, which, as we've seen in many religions, occasionally means violence. And so when you have airplanes flying into aircraft carriers, kamikaze is the motivation for that action and came to be the name of that portion of the air force that has made that word become popular. What's interesting is that Shintoism actually had a presence in Hawaii long before the Second World War. And there's a really cool place called the Daijingu temple in Honolulu. It houses shrines to Amaterasu

Katie Dooley  52:50

Oh, you did and you did it  better than I did both times.

Preston Meyer  52:54

I can't say it's better, but I did it smoothly.

Katie Dooley  52:59

Fair. I'll give you that Amaterasu. Fuck you!

Preston Meyer  53:04

Nice and smooth. I like it. So there's there's shrines to Amaterasu, there's shrines to other traditional economy, as well as shrines to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, they are worshipped as kami because of their status as the founder of the Union and the repairer of the Union, which is pretty cool. I think. There's also other Shrines to other heroes, and also one to all who have died in war, which I think is a part of the reason why it's still a popular shrine to visit. It's moved around a few times, as the American government has seized their lands for one reason or another during the Second World War. But they're in Honolulu, and it's a pretty hot tourist spot. So that's the cool notes I have for Hawaii and Shintoism. But Shintoism is pretty much anywhere where you have a large population of Japanese migrants.

Katie Dooley  54:08

I didn't do any research on it. And now I'm curious, are there non-Japanese Shintoists?

Preston Meyer  54:15

I fully expect that there are but I don't think there's any real big, scholarly work done on them. I think if you were to look through a census, you'd probably find a handful of people who identified as non-Japanese and Shinto, but I don't think there's lots.

Katie Dooley  54:37

It's definitely not an evangelical religion. And then with that, it's really hard to explain. Even if you did get into a position where you could.

Preston Meyer  54:47

Realistically it's easy enough to say, you know what, I'm going to become a Shinto. All you have to do is clean myself and pray to whichever God I select in In a manner that matches what I Google, and then I could say to my own satisfaction (maybe not everyone else's) yeah, I'm a Shinto now. But there's there's nobody asking anybody to do that, which is interesting.

Katie Dooley  55:16

Yeah. Any final thoughts as we wrap up the last episode in this world religions mini-series?

Preston Meyer  55:24

I've pointed out a couple of similarities, I guess. And also contrasting points with Hinduism. That Hinduism was a name that I don't love for the religion because it's a name thrown on them by white people. And the name Shinto has a similar trickiness to it. It's from what I've been reading, it seems like Shintoism isn't a word that's used a lot by practitioners of Shintoism. We've talked about how it's like a lot of Shinto us don't see themselves as religious. That's part of the reason. But also, the word Shinto, which when you look it up, it was it said that it means the way of the kami. The Japanese way to say the way of the kami is kaminomici or something close to that. Very smooth, I try. And the name Shinto is hardly a Japanese word. It's derived from the Chinese words, Shen Tao, which does mean the way of the spirit or the spirit way. And Tao being also visible in the word Taoism, which we've mentioned briefly earlier as the Chinese religion around the spirits. So Shinto comes from that Chinese Shen Tao, which got transliterated into Japanese as Jindo initially, which basically denoted non Buddhist deities, and popular belief. So Shinto is another problematic title that we've just accepted as this is the title that gets used for this thing all the time.

Katie Dooley  57:26

Yep. All right.

Preston Meyer  57:30

Naming things is important. Before you can really study them, you have to be able to identify what you're talking about. But sometimes the way we name things is just nonsense.

Katie Dooley  57:41

No, this is, I mean, definitely an instance of imperialism. Even if it's Chinese imperialism.  And it's we, you know, in the example you give is Germany, right? We just call them Germany. And they're like, No, it's Deutschland. Like, no, it's Germany. So, Germany, 

Preston Meyer  58:00

Oh those dirty Romans. Imperialism does terrible things for Anthropology.

Katie Dooley  58:10

Yeah, that privilege. So I hope that made some sense. Shinto.

Preston Meyer  58:21

If you followed along, as well, as we were able to present what we know. You've learned a lot, I hope. I know I did.

Katie Dooley  58:32

Do we want to give a little preview about what we can expect next, since we're shifting gears again.

Preston Meyer  58:38

Yeah, now that we're done this mini series on religion, we're gonna get back into the, the tougher conversations. So what do we have first on our list?

Katie Dooley  58:48

Oh, next, I guess two weeks from now. We are covering belief, the concept of belief. And I'm really excited about that one. That was a big topic. It's a big topic 

Preston Meyer  59:00

It's huge and complicated. We cover epistemology, we cover the nature of knowledge. For those of you who don't know it, epistemology is... We cover. 

Katie Dooley  59:13

Yeah, it's definitely not recorded already.

Preston Meyer  59:18

I don't think I use the past tense. I think I use the... 

Katie Dooley  59:21

No, you said we covered. 

Preston Meyer  59:23

I thought I just said we cover 

Katie Dooley  59:24

Okay, well carry on.

Preston Meyer  59:25

Oh, well, okay. What I said doesn't matter what

Katie Dooley  59:28

I said when I said!

Preston Meyer  59:31

And then we're going to talk a little bit about the weird

Katie Dooley  59:36

The C word. Cults.

Preston Meyer  59:41

And that'll be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to that too.

Katie Dooley  59:44

I started the research on it and we're gonna have a conversation when I stoprecording.

Preston Meyer  59:49

Absolutely. And then after cults, we're going to talk a little bit about a satirical religion 

Katie Dooley  59:55

This is a fan request. So please know that we do check our social media and our Discord if there's something you want to hear the satirical religions episode is brought to us by Mr. Tim. Thanks, Tim.

Preston Meyer  1:00:08

And then we're going to look into what it means to be an atheist or an agnostic, both of them 

Katie Dooley  1:00:13

The lack of religion. I kind of well read it when we get to the episode, but I love my notes for this.

Preston Meyer  1:00:23

Yeah, it'll be good. And then you'll see where we go after that. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:26

Well, yeah, we will all see. where we go after that If you like what you're hearing if you can drop us a review on Apple podcasts. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram and we do have a Discord available for you to join and check out. The link is on our social media. If you have any requests, concerns or hate mail, please email us at [email protected]

Preston Meyer  1:00:57

Peace be with you. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:59

I was like, Are you gonna say something else? 

Both Hosts  1:01:04

Peace be with you.