![]() Some of the objects or phenomena designated as kami are qualities of growth, fertility, and production natural phenomena like wind and thunder natural objects like the sun, mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks some animals and ancestral spirits. As a result, the nature of what can be called kami is very broad and encompasses many different concepts and phenomena. Shinto began as the various ancient animistic traditional spirituality of Japan, and only became an institutionalized spirituality much later as a result of efforts to separate out influences of other religions brought into Japan from abroad. Kami are the central objects of worship for the Shinto faith. The word "megami" ( 女神 ?), meaning female kami is a relatively recent addition to the language and is rarely, if ever, used in traditional sources. Similarly, gender is also not implied in the word kami, which can be used to refer to either male or female kami. This is because "八百万" can be read in two different ways, often meaning "countless" ( 八百万 ya-o-yorozu ?) instead. It is often said jokingly that there are "eight million kami" ( 八百万の神 happyakuman no kami ?) in Japan. When a singular concept is needed, "-kami" ( 神 ?) or "-kamisama" ( 神様 ?) is used as a suffix. ![]() Shinto kami are located within the world and not above it.īecause Japanese does not normally distinguish singular and plural in nouns, it is sometimes unclear whether kami refers to a single or multiple entities. Following the discovery of the Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai it is now known that the medieval word kami (上) meaning "above" is a false cognate with the modern kami (神), and the etymology of "heavenly beings" is therefore incorrect. ![]() An apparently cognate form, perhaps a loanword, occurs in the Ainu language as kamui and refers to an animistic concept very similar to Japanese kami. It is written with the kanji " 神", Sino-Japanese reading shin or jin in Chinese, the character is used to refer to various nature spirits of traditional Chinese religion, but not to the Taoist deities or the Supreme Being. Kami may, at its root, simply mean "spirit", or an aspect of spirituality. In this respect it is more similar to the Roman concept of the numen or spirit. In other cases, such as those concerning the phenomenon of natural emanation, the spirits dwelling in trees, or forces of nature, translating "kami" exclusively as "god" or "deity" would be a gross mischaracterization. In some instances, such as Izanagi-no-Mikoto and Izanami-no-Mikoto, kami are personified deities, similar to the gods of ancient Greece or Rome. Kami's wide variety of usage can be compared to the Sanskrit Deva and the Hebrew Elohim, which also refer to God, gods, angels and spirits. Although the word is sometimes translated as "god" or "deity," some Shinto scholars argue that such a translation can cause a misunderstanding of the term (Ono, 1962). Kami ( 神 ?) is the Japanese word for the spirits, natural forces, or essence in the Shinto faith. For other uses of "Kami", see Kami (disambiguation).Īmaterasu, one of the central kami in the Shinto faith For other uses, see Megami (disambiguation).
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