History & overview · every faith gets one
The kami are everywhere — Japan's way of the spirits.
Japan's indigenous tradition: countless kami — spirits of places, forces, and ancestors — honored at shrines with purification, offering, and festival. No founder, no creed, and famously little interest in the afterlife: the rites face this world.
The founding
No one founded it: village rites, imperial myth, and shrine practice braided over centuries, first written down in the Kojiki of 712 CE.
No single founder — Shinto accreted rather than began.
What it holds
Reality. A world dense with kami — the sacred is local and plural.
The divine. Yaoyorozu no kami — eight million kami, a number that means uncountable rather than eight million. There is no supreme being who commands the rest. Amaterasu is the highest in the imperial line's account and is not omnipotent; Inari has more shrines. Most people address the kami of the place they live and the kami of whatever they need this month..
Death and after. Vague by design — the rites face this world.
The line
descent is public here — where it came from, what left itBranches:
Tenrikyo — Sweep the dust from the heart, and live the Joyous Life.