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SHINTO IN HISTORY: Ways of the Kami. Edited byJohn Breen and Mark Teeuwen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 2000. xi, 368 pp. (Diagrams.) US$27.95, paper ISBN 0-8248-2363-X
The Japanese notion of kami is different from that of Judaism and Christianity Kami included natural things and human beings. Kami are within the forces of nature and within the lives of people, thus embrace both religious and socio-cultural dimensions. The notion of "ways" reflects the influence of Daoism for which dao (way) was central.
First, four essays deal with the formative stage of shinto. Tim Barrett (ch. 2) discusses the profound formative influence of Daoism on shinto in early Japan and provides abundant historical examples, with the adoption of the imperial title tenno clearly indicating such close relation. Mark Teeuwen (ch. 6) explores the functions that kami performed in esoteric Buddhist rituals which formed the dominant religious paradigm of the age, how the Buddhist kami discourse directly caused the subsequent development of shinto into an independent religion. Sonoda Minoru...