From prehistoric times the Japanese have revered animistic spirits and deities called kami. Eventually the worship of kami developed into a religious system known as Shinto or “the kami way.” The two Chinese characters used in Japan for writing “Shinto” had been used for centuries in China to refer to the supernatural or the mysterious. Adopted in Japan at the end of the sixth century A.D., these characters were employed to distinguish native kami worship from Buddhism (the Buddha way), recently imported from the Asian continent. Early sources suggest that Shinto was then synonomous with the old word kamunagara, which denoted a “way” handed down by the kami themselves without human revision.

By the time that Japan's native religion was identified as Shinto, kami worship had moved beyond awe of natural forces to institutionalized rituals believed to ensure protection and prosperity for the clans (uji), and to provide religious sanction for the clan chieftains and territorial rulers. This chapter will therefore be devoted mainly to showing how kami beliefs and practices, while retaining their animistic core, moved from simple to complex forms.