This is the twenty-second installment of AJP's Spiritual Asia series, which explores the religious traditions, philosophical ideas and moral foundations that have shaped Asia's civilizations. In this concluding chapter of our three-part journey through Japanese Shinto, we examine how a faith rooted in reverence for nature was transformed into an instrument of the modern state, and how it later returned to everyday life.
We have reached the final chapter of our journey through Japanese Shinto.
In the previous essays, we explored how Shinto emerged from a profound reverence for nature and how that spirituality became embedded in shrines, festivals and the rhythms of community life. One question remains: How did a religion born from forests, rivers and mountains become an ideology of the modern nation-state?
The question is not uniquely Japanese. It belongs to the broader history of civilization. Again and again, religions that began as expressions of spiritual experience have found themselves intertwined with political authority. When faith becomes a servant of power, both religion and politics are transformed.
Originally, Shinto possessed neither a single founder nor an authoritative scripture. It developed organically from the Japanese people's encounter with the natural world. Mountains, forests, rivers, the sea, ancestral spirits and changing seasons were all understood as dwelling places of kami—not an omnipotent creator God, but sacred presences residing throughout life itself.
For centuries, Shinto functioned less as an organized religion than as a cultural worldview, nurturing humility before nature and reinforcing communal bonds.
The arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century introduced a new religious tradition, but rather than displacing Shinto, the two gradually blended. This process, known as shinbutsu-shūgō (the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism), reflected Japan's preference for coexistence over theological exclusivity.
Children were blessed at Shinto shrines. Funerals were conducted according to Buddhist rites. Shrines and temples often shared the same grounds. Religious consistency mattered less than harmony in daily life. That equilibrium changed dramatically during the Meiji Restoration.
As Japan sought to build a centralized modern state capable of competing with the Western powers, its leaders searched for an ideological foundation strong enough to unite the nation. Shinto, once a decentralized folk tradition, was reorganized under state control. The emperor was elevated from political sovereign to sacred national symbol, while shrines became institutions serving national unity rather than local communities.
Nature gradually yielded to nationalism.
Education, public ceremonies and civic rituals increasingly emphasized loyalty, sacrifice and obedience. The state's authority acquired a sacred dimension that discouraged dissent. What had once been spiritual reverence toward nature became political reverence toward the nation.
To acknowledge this transformation is not to deny the achievements of Meiji Japan. Within a remarkably short period, the country built modern institutions, industrialized its economy and established itself as a major power.
Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that when religion is enlisted to sanctify political authority, it becomes difficult to distinguish devotion from obedience or patriotism from unquestioning submission.
By the early twentieth century, State Shinto had become deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialism and militarism. Shrine worship increasingly symbolized loyalty to the empire, while reverence for the emperor acquired the force of sacred obligation.
The tragedy was not inherent in Shinto itself.
Rather, it arose from the political appropriation of a spiritual tradition whose original purpose had been to cultivate humility before nature rather than unquestioning allegiance to the state.
This distinction remains essential today. It would be historically inaccurate to equate Shinto itself with militarism. It would be equally mistaken to overlook how religious traditions can be reshaped by political power.
The Second World War fundamentally altered that relationship. Following Japan's defeat, State Shinto was dismantled under the postwar constitutional order. Religion was separated from government, and the emperor renounced his divine status to become the symbolic head of the nation.
Shinto returned, in large measure, to its earlier role within everyday life.
Modern Japanese continue to visit shrines at New Year, pray for children's health, celebrate marriages and mark important milestones there. These practices express less a political identity than a cultural vocabulary of gratitude, continuity and belonging.
In this sense, Shinto today resembles a living tradition more than a doctrinal religion.
Its story nevertheless offers a caution that reaches beyond Japan. Every civilization has witnessed moments when noble traditions were enlisted to legitimize political authority. Once spirituality begins demanding unquestioning loyalty to earthly power, it risks losing the very freedom that gives it moral authority.
At this point, the Korean philosopher Yu Young-mo offers an illuminating conversation partner.
Yu viewed human beings not as masters of nature but as participants within a larger living cosmos. Mountains, rivers, forests and winds were manifestations of divine life rather than objects for human exploitation. His thought resonates with Shinto's reverence for nature while extending it toward a more universal spiritual ethic—one that refuses to sanctify either the state or any earthly authority.
Some cultural historians have also drawn symbolic parallels between Kyushu—literally "nine provinces"—and the significance of the number nine throughout East Asian cosmology, including the 81 characters of the Cheonbugyeong.
Such interpretations remain speculative rather than academically established. Their value lies less in proving historical connections than in revealing a shared East Asian habit of expressing cosmic order through symbolic numbers and patterns.
Ultimately, the significance of Shinto today is not primarily religious but civilizational.
It asks a question that has become increasingly urgent in the twenty-first century: What kind of relationship should humanity have with nature?
Modern industrial civilization has largely viewed nature as something to master and exploit. That mindset has generated extraordinary prosperity, but also climate change, ecological degradation and an increasingly fragile planetary balance.
In this context, Shinto's reverence for nature deserves renewed attention—not as a model to imitate wholesale, nor as an idealized tradition free from historical flaws, but as a reminder that gratitude, restraint and coexistence once occupied the center of human civilization.
Korea possesses comparable traditions, from mountain worship and village guardian rituals to cooperative customs such as dure and pumasi. Industrialization weakened many of these practices, but the values they embodied need not disappear.
The challenge for contemporary Asia is not to recreate the past but to recover the wisdom embedded within it. The three-part journey through Japanese Shinto ultimately leaves us with three enduring lessons.
Nature is not merely a resource but the foundation of all life. Communities endure not through competition alone but through shared rituals, memory, gratitude and mutual responsibility.
And every spiritual tradition risks losing its integrity when it becomes an instrument of political power.
We should learn from Shinto's light while remaining vigilant against its shadows.
To honor nature without idolizing it. To cherish tradition without surrendering to nationalism. To strengthen community without sacrificing human freedom.
These may be among East Asia's oldest lessons. They may also be among its most necessary for the century ahead.
*The author is a senior columnist of AJP.
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