Sites significant to Shinto, the indigenous religious tradition of Japan, most often shrines dedicated to a kami, a spirit or deity associated with a natural feature, an ancestor or a locality. Shinto and Buddhism have coexisted and blended in Japan for centuries, and a number of sites carry significance to both traditions at once.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingShrines at which kami are enshrined, together with the mountains, forests, rocks and waterfalls treated as their dwelling-places. What counts as a Shinto site is not stable across time: the Meiji state's separation of kami from buddhas in 1868 broke apart institutions that had been combined for roughly a thousand years, and many places now classed as Shinto were not so classed before it. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested. Whether "Shinto" names a continuous religion or a category assembled in the modern period out of older and more various kami worship is disputed; on the second reading, a number of the places in this group were not Shinto sites before the nineteenth century. 3 Learn More
The sacred sites of Shinto
This group holds the sacred sites of Shinto, the shrines (jinja) where the kami are enshrined and worshipped, together with sacred mountains, forests and natural features held to be dwelling-places of the divine. The shrine, marked by its torii gate, is the characteristic Shinto sacred place.
The browser will find the great shrines of Japan and the sacred natural sites of the tradition. The entries describe each site's enshrined kami and its place in Japanese religious life.
All Shinto Sites
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Shinto: A History
3. A New History of Shinto
John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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