the place of Shinto in contemporary japan

ftony "crews are for boats"
Posts: 3617 Joined: 26-05-04 Location: East London
Submitted by ftony on 14 December, 2007 - 11:25.

a relatively non-political question for our japanese posters: what role, if any, does Shinto play in today's Japan? i'm genuinely interested - is there a strong sense of tradition about the old religion and all the old traditions that came with it? is it like in the UK, where it tends to be the right-wing who appeal to such traditions?

cheers smile

fnbrill "Mocking In the Fee World"
Posts: 682 Joined: 13-01-07
14 December, 2007 - 15:47

From what i can tell, true Shinto - the old animist traditions - is dying out. Although you can see the reminants of it in Miyazaki's movies. Its rural folkways as subversive as the maintaining of the Cearne Abbas Giant.

State Shinto - the ideology behind the Military/Nationalists of the 1920s-30s is dead. Crushed w/ the end of WW2.

kaiman
Posts: 3 Joined: 05-01-08
5 January, 2008 - 04:46

It exists in the store for miscellaneous charms you can put in your car, a place to have weddings, and a place to have birthday celebrations for 3, 7 and 5 year old childrens.

In other words, it is an empty formality like buddhism.

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9872 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
5 January, 2008 - 09:58

Yep. The other thing with Shinto is that most visits to temples involve walking 'round grounds for a few minutes then clapping your hands once, so it's even more of an empty formality than say geting drunk and going to midnight mass once a year.