What Is Shinto? Why Japan Takes Such an Open-Minded Approach to Religion

A Religion Without Enforced Belief

Shinto is Japan’s native belief system, but it works quite differently from many other religions. There’s no set of enforced doctrines or commandments along the lines of “you must believe this” or “failing to follow this teaching is a sin.”

There’s no fixed scripture, and no requirement to devote yourself absolutely to a specific deity. Visiting a shrine, honoring the seasonal festivals, feeling gratitude toward nature and everyday things in daily life: Shinto is closer to an accumulation of these natural feelings and customs than it is to “belief” in the conventional sense. It has more in common with culture, or a way of living, than with religion as it’s typically understood elsewhere.

Yaoyorozu no Kami: The Idea That a Spirit Dwells in Everything

Central to understanding Shinto is the concept of yaoyorozu no kami, literally “eight million gods.” This is the idea that a spirit dwells in everything: mountains, rivers, trees, and stones, fire and water, and extending even to the home, the kitchen, farm work, and one’s job.

The number “eight million” isn’t meant literally; it’s used to convey “countless” or “innumerable.” In other words, within Shinto, kami (spirits or deities) aren’t a single absolute being. They exist in countless numbers, in every place and in every thing.

This concept of yaoyorozu no kami is fundamentally rooted in animism, the belief that not just living creatures but natural objects and phenomena themselves are inhabited by spiritual presences. Shinto can be understood as one particularly Japanese expression of that broader animist worldview.

This animist sensibility carries through vividly into contemporary Japanese pop culture as well. The forest spirits in Studio Ghibli’s “Princess Mononoke,” or a being like Totoro in “My Neighbor Totoro,” both reflect a version of this deeply rooted Japanese animist worldview, in which spiritual presence isn’t confined to a single deity but can be found in nature itself.

Christmas as Just Another Enjoyable Event

This open-minded religious sensibility carries through into modern life as well. A clear example of this is Christmas. In Japan, Christmas is widely embraced not so much as a Christian religious observance, but as one enjoyable event among many, spent with family, partners, or friends.

Many people enjoy Christmas at year’s end, visit a shrine for hatsumode (the first shrine visit of the new year) just days later, and honor their ancestors at a butsudan or family grave during Obon or the equinox holidays. This yearly cycle isn’t seen as contradictory at all by most Japanese people. There’s a deeply ingrained sense of embracing each event on its own terms, with its own meaning and its own way of being enjoyed.

A Note on Religious Freedom and Shared Heritage

In Japan, Shinto, Buddhism, and a wide range of other beliefs and values have coexisted for centuries. That said, plenty of people feel uncomfortable being actively encouraged to adopt a new religion. What anyone chooses to believe, or not believe, is a matter of personal freedom, and that freedom deserves to be respected. At the same time, it’s worth extending that same understanding and consideration toward the religious sensibilities and culture that have developed in Japan over such a long history.

The shrines, temples, historic buildings, and works of art that communities across Japan have carefully preserved over generations are, beyond any particular religion, part of a shared cultural heritage belonging to humanity as a whole. The hope is that people can respect one another’s beliefs and cultures, and pass these things on intact to future generations.

The sense of comfort and security that people experience when traveling in Japan, for example, the politeness of the Japanese people, a society where lost belongings are properly returned to their owners, the low level of theft and overall sense of safety, quiet streets and neighborhoods, cities free of litter, towns without graffiti, clean public restrooms, trains that run on schedule, historic buildings that have been carefully preserved, beautiful natural surroundings, and unmanned roadside stands selling fresh vegetables, is by no means something that has happened by chance.

These are all signs of an orderly society that the Japanese people have built over many years. From an early age, people are taught through education and upbringing the importance of following rules and avoiding inconveniencing others. Over generations, each individual has valued honesty and integrity, contributing to the development of the orderly society we see today.

I believe that one of the major influences underlying these ways of thinking among the Japanese is Shinto, whose roots can be traced in part to the animistic beliefs in nature that have existed in Japan since the Jōmon period. Shinto has deeply permeated Japanese culture and everyday ways of life over the course of thousands of years.

Final Thoughts

Shinto has no enforced requirement to believe in any particular way, and at its core lies the idea of yaoyorozu no kami: the belief that a spirit dwells in everything. This animist sensibility, in which spiritual presence isn’t limited to a single being, connects directly to the kind of open, easygoing religious outlook that allows something like Christmas to be naturally embraced as just another enjoyable seasonal event, a distinctly Japanese way of holding religion and culture together.

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