So I reblogged @kamipriestess ’ response to the Shinto section of this but I wanted to make my own response as well.
For context: I am a queer, non-Japanese woman of color formerly resident in Japan. I am a year away from finishing a Ph.D. in Japanese history. I speak Japanese. I am a Shintoist. See @kamipriestess’ response to your post for the answer (with citations) of an ordained person regarding whether or not Shinto, especially shrine Shinto, is closed (short answer: no it is not closed). This question comes up a lot, and we keep trying to lay it to rest, but it may never be laid to rest.
OP, your claim is that Shinto comes from a list of “Closed Religions and Culture.” You define this as “a belief system that is still alive and well in the world among the cultures that practice them, and have practiced them for hundreds or thousands of years. These systems are closed to outsiders in order to protect the cultures and religions from further colonization and cultural theft. Unless one is born into this culture or religion, they are not able or welcome to practice said religion or cultural traditions.”
You list Shinto under this definition, but I don’t see any citation for this. More importantly, Shinto, and Japanese culture, do not fit your definition here. I do not dispute that other religions you list here may well fit the definition, but Shinto and Japanese culture do not.
Please note that I do not dispute the importance of fighting the exoticisation of East Asian culture in general and Japanese culture in particular. This is something I deal with all the time in my working life. But I do not believe that Shinto and Japanese culture fit the bill of “colonized,” here. Japan was not colonized. We can debate whether the American occupation counts, and it certainly left a lingering impact, but you cannot say that Japan was colonized in the same way that Africa or North America or southeast Asia or so many other places were. Point to a period you would characterize as colonization and let’s talk about it– but right now, I’m telling you, you’re comparing the metaphorical apples and oranges on this issue.
As a matter of fact, Shinto, in its State Shinto guise, was part of an imperialist, expansionist campaign which culminated in the Japanese Empire at its furthest extent during World War II. Shinto shrines were built in Korea, Manchuria, the Pacific Islands, and elsewhere, and locals were forced to take part in shrine rituals. Even before the Japanese Empire, ethnic Japanese in the Edo period (1600-1868) built shrines in what are now Hokkaido and Okinawa, respectively, despite the fact that those places and peoples have their own religious traditions which are not the same as Shinto. (link follows) Please look at this rather well-done post on the Green Shinto blog (with lots of pictures) for more on the history of Shinto (esp. State Shinto) as part of Japanese colonialism and imperialism in East Asia and the Pacific.
Furthermore, to speak at all of a single entity called Shinto, prior to the foundation of the Meiji government (and its 1868-onwards religious edicts divesting what we now call Shinto from Buddhism), is, as the popular Tumblr expression goes “problematic.” We’re talking about a diverse collection of traditions, shrine networks, and practices here, albeit yes, with some measure of common language and practices. But you can’t really talk about it as a single entity, even in the sense that you’d say “Christianity” as an umbrella term.
You list “Koshinto, Shugendo, Yoshida Shinto, etc.” Where did you get this list? I’m curious. You don’t even include Shrine Shinto (Jinja Shinto) in this list, which honestly ought to be at the top of any such list, as it’s the most common form of Shinto today. And as @kamipriestess and many other ordained persons have said, both on and off this website, it is not closed. But let’s talk about your list.
Koshinto is a term developed in the 19th century by people who were trying to recover the Japanese archipelago’s original Jomon-era (ca. 14,500-300 BCE) animism. Ōmoto, Izumo-taishakyō, and Shinrikyō claim to have rediscovered this. Beyond this, I refer you to @kamipriestess’s reply on Koshinto.
Your inclusion of Shugendō confuses me. Shugendō is a syncretic, ascetic folk religion which nearly died when the Meiji government issued its edict forcibly divesting Buddhism from what we now call Shinto shrines. For historical context, click here for an article by Gaynor Sekimori about how that governnment-ordered divestment played out at Haguro, in northern Japan. Shugendo had thrived in the “spaces between,” as it drew from so many sources. Today it survives because its practicioners aligned themselves with either Buddhism or some sectarian form of Shinto (Fusōkyō, Jikkōkyō, Mitakekyō). (source) Here I cite the Kokugakuin Encyclopedia of Shinto– Kokugakuin being the institution which retains a near-stranglehold on the path to shrine Shinto ordination even for native Japanese. If this institution’s own encyclopedia also has an article *comparing* Shinto to Shugendō, and pretty much treating Shugendō as a separate entity, I don’t believe it really belongs in your list, here. For whether or not Shugendō is open, again, see @kamipriestess’s response.
You totally lost me with Yoshida Shinto. Yoshida Shinto doesn’t really exist anymore. It was syncretic between Buddhism, Onmyōdō (yin-yang divination), and Daoism, and it was overseen by the Yoshida family, courtiers who had hereditary purview, or at least significant influence, over shrine affairs at the imperial court. Yoshida Shinto also took as its main deity the primordial kami (the original kami of all kami), Kunitokotachi no Mikoto. But the details are a moot point: while the old Yoshida Shrine still survives, Yoshida Shinto hasn’t really existed since the Meiji government abolished the old system of shrine supervision in 1868. (source) Again, I cite the Kokugakuin Encyclopedia of Shinto, and as stated above, Kokugakuin ought to have the clout to be offering the final word on this matter. I hate to use it s a source, but the Wikipedia entry’s words bear quoting here: “In terms of institutional history, Yoshida Shintō was dominant until the late Edo period but decreased rapidly during the 19th century and has left hardly any trace in contemporary Japanese shrine worship.“
Finally, I invite you to also to visit the website of Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America, at http://tsubakishrine.org/ , and read what they’ve got to say there as a legitimate, accredited Shinto shrine on the continental US– and please do bear in mind, their chief priest, Reverend Barrish, is a white person.
I can most definitely respect what I read as your intent in making this post– a helpful, basic guide to steer people in the right direction vis-a-vis different traditions, in a way that helps them avoid being complicit in imperialism. I can also respect that you’re probably not well-read in Shinto or Japanese history, and per your website, you’re not a Shintoist yourself. But I believe your assumptions and mistakes– from “non-Japanese can’t be Shinto,” to your description of Japan as a colonized country rather than a colonizer (again, just ask Korean or Chinese people about this), to your inclusion of traditions that are either dead or mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand, to your lack of any citations at all to support your claims– detract from this otherwise laudable goal.
I’ll leave my response at this, but I’ll be glad to continue the conversation if you so wish.
