LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET WEEK 16

Subject: Introduction to World Religion and Belief System Grade 12

Marigold (HUMSS)
LEARNING CONTENT: Shintoism

Reference(s):
Quebral, Villamor S., Ed.D, Pathways of Devotion, An Introduction to World
Great Religions, Lorimar Publishing, 2018
LEARNING TARGET
1. Explain why it is important for Japanese people to worship gods
2. Evaluate the core teaching of Shintoism
3. Interpret the Kojiki Story creatively
LEARNING CONCEPT
I. Taoism at a Glance
• Shinto is the indigenous religious belief system of Japan.
• The word Shinto which literally means the way of Kami. Kami means mystical, superior or divine.
• Shinto has no specific founder, no official sacred scriptures, in the strict sense of word, and no fixed
dogmas.
II. Shinto Influence to Japanese Way of Life
• Shinto consists of the traditional Japanese religious practices as well as the beliefs and life attitudes
that are in accord with these practices.
• It remains closely connected with the Japanese value system and the Japanese way of thinking and
acting.

III. Three Major Types of Shinto

1. Shinto Shrine (Jinjo Shinto)
• It has been in existence from the beginning of Japanese history to the present day.
• It constitutes a main current of Shinto traditions and it includes within its structure the now defunct
State Shinto based on the total identity of religion and state, and has close relations with the Japanese
Imperial Family.
2. Sect Shinto (Kyoka Shinto)
• It is a relatively new movement consisting of 13 major sects that originated in Japan around the 19th
century and of several others that emerged after World War II.
• Each sect was organized into a religious body by either a founder or a systematizer.
3. Folk Shinto (Miuzoku Shinto)
• It is an aspect of a Japanese folk belief that is closely connected with the other types of Shinto.
• It is centered on the veneration of small roadside images and in the agricultural rites of small
families.
• Folk Shinto exists as the substructure of Shinto faith, and a Sect Shinto follower is usually also a
parishioner (ujiko) of a particular Shinto Shrine.
IV. Two Worldviews of Shinto
1. Three-dimensional View
• It is in which the Plain of High Heaven (Takama no Hara, the Kami’s world), the Middle Land
(Nakatsukumi, the present world), and the Hades (Yomi no Kuni, the world after death) were
arranged in vertical order.
2. Two-dimensional View
• It is one in which this world and the perpetual country (Tokoyo, a Utopian place far beyond the sea)
existed in horizontal order.

V. Sacred Books of Shinto

Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan)
 These are regarded in a sense as sacred books of Shinto.
• They were written in 712 and 720 C.E., respectively.
 • These two sacred books are not only compilations of ancient traditions of ancient Shinto but they are
also books about the history, topography and literature of ancient Japan.
• By interpreting the myths and religious practices these books describe, it is possible to construct
Shinto doctrines from them.
VI. The Importance of Worshipping gods or Kamis
• At the core of Shinto are beliefs in the mysterious creating and harmonizing power (musubi) of Kami
and the truthful way or will (mokoto) of Kami.
• The nature of kami cannot be fully explained in words, because kami transcends the cognitive faculty
of man.
• Devoted followers are able to understand Kami through faith and usually recognize various Kamis in
polytheistic forms.
• Parishioners of a Shrine belive in the tutelary Kami as the source of human life and existence.
• Each Kami has a divine personality and responds to truthful prayers.
• The Kami also reveals mokoto to people and guides them to live in accordance with it.
• Mokoto is not an abstract ideology. It can be recognized every moment in every individual thing in
the encounter between man and kami.
VII. The Core Teaching of Shintoism
“Worship the ancestors and forces of nature to achieve harmony in all dimensions.”
 In Shinto, all the deities are said to cooperate with one another.
• A life lived in accordance with a Kami’s will is believed to produce a mystical power that gains the
protection, cooperation, and approval of all the particular Kamis.
• Shinto is also described as a religion of “tsunagari” (continuity or communion).
• The Japanese, while recognizing each man as an individual or personality he/she does not take him
as a solitary being separated from others.
• On the contrary, he is regarded as the bearer of long continuous history that comes down from his
ancestors and continues in his descendants.
• It is imperative to Shinto believers to worship their ancestors to perpetuate their relationships with
them, and pay respect to the forces of nature as perceived manifestations of the mystical powers of
the different Kamis in order to achieve harmony in all life dimensions.