Word: shinto
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Thus Japan's primitive folk religion of nature gods and divine ancestors is linked in its beginnings with the Japanese throne. The result was Shinto, the Way of the Gods-a lockstep of temporal rule and religion, more efficient perhaps than any since ancient Sparta. After World...
...Shinto seemed headed for extinction. Yet one of the most important facts about Japan today is Shinto's surprising rebirth...
Abdominal Heroism. At the beginning of World War II, Shinto was both a doctrine and a patriotic duty. Its symbol was the Emperor, who was not actually worshiped (though his ancestors were), but revered for his divine descent and the heavenly sanction of his rule. The Emperor's picture in government buildings was an object of veneration; a classic tradition tells of a schoolboy who, when his school caught fire, rolled up the picture, slashed open his belly, thrust it inside and struggled through the flames to die a hero's death outside. Even as late...
When other faiths in Japan, chiefly Buddhism and Christianity, objected to compulsory Shinto observances, the government responded by separating private, strictly religious Shinto from "shrine" Shinto, the patriotic ritual required of all Japanese. Some 110,000 shrines got partial state support, and forced contributions supplied the rest of the money needed. Priests were government officials (the Shinto priesthood was sometimes used as a handy niche for overage army officers). In shrine Shinto, the loyal citizen could even hope for his own apotheosis. By 1939, Tokyo's majestic military shrine, Yasukuni, had been dedicated to 10,000 mitama, or glorified...
...Priest!" After World War II, by occupation order, shrine Shinto was disestablished. "The sponsorship, support, perpetuation, control and dissemination of Shinto by Japanese . . . will cease immediately," decreed General MacArthur. And on New Year's Day of 1946, the 124th Emperor of Japan, descended from the Sun Goddess, broadcast to his shocked people that his divine ancestry was "mere myth and legend...