The Japanese Spiritual Worldview

Prologue

Nature, Where the Gods Dwell

序章 — 源流・神を宿す自然

Introduction — Following the Current to Its Source

Anyone who has encountered Japanese culture has likely met a certain shared sensibility. In the appointments of a tea room, in a garden of raked gravel, in a single bowl of matcha, in a brewery where fermentation is left to mature for two hundred years — something runs beneath them all: a reverence for simplicity, a deference to nature, a tenderness toward what passes, and a quieting of the mind before what cannot be seen.

Where does this sensibility come from?

This essay is a journey toward its source. The Japanese spiritual worldview was born of no single religion and no single thinker. Over some two thousand years, several currents converged and settled into layers. In its deepest stratum lies a simple sensibility that holds nature itself to be divine. Into this, in the sixth century, Buddhism flowed in from the continent; in time, Zen, the way of the warrior, and the way of tea grew from it. Mingling with one another, they crystallised into the singular spirituality we call "Japanese."

In this prologue, we wish to enter the source of it all — the sensibility toward nature that the people of these islands carried even before it was set down in writing. It is the basso continuo that goes on flowing beneath every spiritual culture that follows.

We should note that this essay neither expounds religious doctrine nor commends any particular faith. Its aim is to describe, purely as culture, the current that runs through the Japanese sense of beauty, of nature, and of life and death.

I. The Myriad Gods

There is a phrase that captures the Japanese view of nature better than any other: yaoyorozu no kami, "the eight million gods."

"Eight million" does not mean that there are literally eight million deities. The eighteenth-century scholar Motoori Norinaga, in his Kojiki-den, read it as "an expression of multitude carried to its extreme"1 — that is, numberless. "Eight million," then, means countless beyond reckoning.

And where are these countless gods? The answer is: everywhere.

In the old Japanese view of nature, the kami dwell in mountains and rivers, in ancient trees and great rocks, in the sea, the wind, the sun.2 The sacred trees one often finds at shrines, girdled with a shimenawa (a rope of sacred straw), are a trace of this.2 The belief that a spirit abides in all things of nature is what anthropology calls animism.23 Something dwells in the mountain, the tree, the stone — and this very sense forms the deepest and oldest stratum of Japanese spiritual culture.

Here lies the heart of the Japanese view of nature. The kami is not a single, absolute being enthroned above humanity. The kami is, rather, omnipresent within nature, close at hand — a kind of neighbour who shapes the world alongside us.

II. A Contrast with Monotheism — Outside Nature, or Within

The singularity of this sensibility comes into sharp relief when set beside the monotheistic worldview.

In the monotheistic faiths — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — God is one and absolute, all-knowing and all-powerful, a transcendent being far beyond the reach of man.3 God creates the world from "outside" it and stands above nature.

The myriad kami of Japan are the opposite. They are not one but countless; less transcendent than immanent, dwelling "within" nature.3 A god or a spirit is held to reside in what can be seen, in what is near at hand, even in an unseen presence — and to each of these, people have prayed and given thanks.3

This difference is decisive. In the monotheistic world, the human being may stand as a steward to whom nature has been entrusted by God. But in the old Japanese worldview, the human being is part of nature, living among the countless kami who dwell within it. Not to master nature but to live held within it — this sense becomes the distant source of Zen's "oneness with nature," of the "drawing-in of nature" in the way of tea, and of the posture, in fermentation, of "entrusting oneself to the work of nature."

III. From Before Writing, into Writing — What the Kojiki Recorded

How far back does this reverence for nature reach?

Its origins are said to lie far earlier than any written record, back to the Jōmon and Yayoi eras.4 The farming people of antiquity worshipped the powers of nature — the sun, the mountains, the rivers — as gods; here begins the animistic reverence for nature.4 At first it was a simple faith, without system, in which different gods were believed in from place to place.5

That old sensibility was set down in writing for the first time in the eighth century. The Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), compiled by Ō no Yasumaro and presented to Empress Genmei in 712, is regarded as the oldest surviving book in Japan.67 In this work, which depicts the appearance of the gods from the beginning of heaven and earth, the "eight million gods" already appear8 — in that famous scene where, after Amaterasu Ōmikami hides herself in the heavenly rock cave and the world is plunged into darkness, the myriad gods gather to take counsel.8

So within this oldest of books, set down thirteen hundred years ago, the worldview of countless gods abiding within nature was already alive. Even before writing, the people of these islands had lived looking up to nature as divine.

Curiously, even the name "Shintō" did not exist at first. This simple reverence for nature came to be called Shintō only after Buddhism arrived from the continent in the sixth century and the need arose to distinguish the two.5 It was, in other words, only on meeting a thought from outside — Buddhism — that Japan's ancient sensibility came to think of itself as "Shintō."

Conclusion — What Flows Beneath It All

What we have seen in this prologue is the deepest and oldest stratum of the Japanese spiritual worldview.

A sensibility in which a god dwells in every thing of nature. A worldview that sees the divine not "outside" nature but "within" it. A posture that holds the human being to be not nature's master but its part. These form what one might call the underground water of the Japanese sensibility — a current with no fixed doctrine and no institution.5 Unwritten and unsystematised, it has gone on flowing through these islands for two thousand years.

And upon this underground water, every spiritual culture we are about to follow will be built. In the next chapter, we depict the moment when, in the sixth century, a great body of thought flows in from the continent upon this ancient sensibility: the arrival of Buddhism. It will bring to the Japanese spiritual world a new sense of time — "impermanence" — and become the soil that nurtures the three axes of this essay: Zen, the way of the warrior, and the way of tea.

But let us not forget: whatever may flow in hereafter, beneath it all the sensibility seen in this prologue — toward nature, where the gods dwell — goes on flowing quietly. It is the basso continuo that runs, unfading, through the whole of Japanese spiritual culture.

Notes & Sources

This is the prologue of the white paper "The Japanese Spiritual Worldview." The facts stated rest on the sources cited. The dating of Shintō's origins (Jōmon, Yayoi) is contested and difficult to fix on both archaeological and textual grounds. This essay treats Shintō not as religion or faith but from the side of spiritual culture — the Japanese sense of nature and of beauty — and does not enter into particular devotional practice or into the State Shintō of the modern era. The accounts of "the eight million gods" and "animism" rest on a general cultural understanding; primary sources (the text of the Kojiki, Motoori Norinaga's Kojiki-den, etc.) will be reinforced in future revisions.

Footnotes

  1. "Yaoyorozu no kami," Wikipedia (on the eighteenth-century scholar Motoori Norinaga, who in his Kojiki-den read the phrase as "an expression of multitude carried to its extreme," i.e. an expression of countless number). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/八百万の神 ↩

  2. "Animism and Shintō in Ancient Japan," Irohabook (high-school ethics) (on the belief that something dwells in mountains, trees and stones; that sacred trees and the shimenawa are traces of animism; that the eight million gods are held to dwell in all things of nature). https://www.irohabook.com/japan-shinto ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. "What is Animism?," Japanese Mythology and History (on animism as the belief that a spirit dwells in natural and inanimate things; on the Japanese worldview in which the divine is immanent within nature and close to man; and on the contrast with monotheism, which holds God to be one, absolute, and all-powerful). https://rekishinoeki.org/animism/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. "The World of Japan's Gods and the Myriad Deities" (on nature-worship from the Yayoi era [c. 300 BCE] as the origin of the myths, and on animism — the worship of the sun, mountains and rivers as gods — as its foundation). https://12so-kumanojinja.jp/japanese-gods-complete-guide/ ↩ ↩2

  5. "What is 'Shintō,' Rooted in the Japanese Spirit and Daily Life?," GOOD LUCK TRIP (on Shintō's origins reaching back to the Jōmon period; on the ancient animistic faith being unsystematised; on the name "Shintō" being coined only to distinguish it from the Buddhism transmitted in 538; and on its having, unlike monotheism, no systematic doctrine or institution). https://www.gltjp.com/ja/article/item/20747/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. "Kojiki," Wikipedia (on the Kojiki as the oldest surviving book in Japan, said to have been compiled by Ō no Yasumaro and presented to Empress Genmei in 712). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/古事記 ↩

  7. "For Whom Was the Kojiki Made?," Kokugakuin University (on the Kojiki as the oldest surviving book, begun by the will of Emperor Tenmu and completed by Ō no Yasumaro in 712). https://www.kokugakuin.ac.jp/article/82153 ↩

  8. "Yaoyorozu no kami," Wikipedia (on the passage in the Kojiki in which, when Amaterasu Ōmikami hid in the heavenly rock cave and light was lost to the world, the eight million gods gathered to take counsel). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/八百万の神 ↩ ↩2