-Intimacy of Human, Devine, and Nature

-Significance of Family

-Dichotomy of Purity and Defilement

-Popular Religiosity

Bond of Religion and Nation

Kofun are megalithic tombs or tumuli in Japan, constructed between the early 3rd century and the early 7th century AD. They gave their name to the Kofun period.

They are the Mound Graves

The brother and sister Gods whos union created Amaterasu-the SUN GODDESS

IZANAMI AND IZANAGI ARE CREDITED WITH CREATING THE EIGHT PRINCIPAL ISLANDS OF JAPAN.

What is Shinto?

 ("the way of the Kami") 

The world's oldest Wooden Building

Buddhist temple with frescoes, statues & the world's oldest wooden buildings on its grounds

Buddhist temple originally built in the mid-700s, with Japan's largest bronze Buddha statue.

Is the Largest Wooden Building/Temple

In the Shintō religion of Japan, the place where the spirit of a deity is enshrined or to which it is summoned. 

  they generally consist of three units: (1) thehonden (also called shinden), the main sanctuary, where the spirit of the deity is enshrined, normally approached only by the priests; (2) the heiden (hall of offerings), or norito-den (hall for reciting prayers), where religious rites are performed by the priests; here are offered the prayers which “call down” the kami(deity, or sacred power) and subsequently send it away; and (3) the haiden (hall of worship), where the devotees worship and offer prayers.

1. Kamidana (神棚, kami-dana ^?, lit. "god-shelf") are miniature household altars provided to enshrine a Shinto kami. They are most commonly found in Japan, the home of kami worship.

 military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan.

Jōdo Buddhism, is a branch of Pure Land Buddhism derived from the teachings of the Japanese ex-Tendai monk Hōnen. It was established in 1175 and is the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan, along with Jōdo Shinshū.

Shonin (1133-1212) established Pure Land Buddhism as an independent sect in Japan, known as Jodo Shu. Today Pure Land is the dominant form of Buddhism in Japan.

it is the True Pure Land Buddhism

 Jōdo Shinshū ("True Pure Land School"), also known as Shin or Shin-shu Buddhism, is a branch of Pure Land Buddhism which was founded in Japan by the monk Shinran (1173-1262) and organized by Rennyo (1414-99). It is a lay movement with no monks or monasteries and is based on simple but absolute devotion to Amida. 

What is ZAZEN?

How are the two Sects of Rinzai and Soto Different

1. In Zen Buddhism, zazen (literally "seated meditation") 
2. Koan Introspection
3. 1. Shikantaza (just sitting)

   Koan practice is usually associated with the Rinzai school Shikantaza with the Sōtō school. 

The DANCING SAINT

brought Buddhisim to the common people and sang in the street songs about devotuion to the Amida Buddha

Who was Genshin? 

and

What did he do?

The most influential of a number of Tendai scholars active during the tenth and eleventh centuries in Japan.

He wrote "Essentials of Birth in the Pure Land"^?), which in later copies of the text came complete with graphic depictions of the joy of the blessed and the suffering of those doomed to chaos.

Literally "Go to Hell"

But in this case it is refering to the Hell Scrolls that describe visually what hell is like.

provided a heavenly sanction for the existing social order. In the Neo-Confucian view, harmony was maintained by a reciprocal relationship of justice between a superior, who was urged to be benevolent, and a subordinate, who was urged to be obedient and to observe propriety.

Here are the four main elements of Neo-Confucianism which influenced Japan:

1) Fundamental rationalism

a. stressed objective reason as the basis of learning and conduct
b. pursued the "investigation of thing" as described in The Great
Learning.
c. studied the constant laws of nature and human society (as opposed
to the ceaseless change and Law of Impermanence stressed by
Buddhism).

2) Essential humanism

a. focus on man and his relationships, not the supernatural world
The stress on social order (warrior, farmer, artisans, merchants) was
supported by these ideas.
b. also stressed were the five Confucian relationships
c. clearly rejected Buddhism and Taoism, as Hayashi Razan does on p. 357.

3) Historicism

a. like Confucius in the Analects, scholars hearkened to the past for precedents.
b. in the Japanese case, scholars looked not to Chinese history but to
Japanese history.

 

While Eisai embrace Both Koan along with Meditation the Dogon focus only on Meditation with out the Koan (Koan= question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and test a student's progress in Zen practice.)

A Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding".

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō,^[2] "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence."^[2]

Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood.

A Writer who started the focus of restoration of the emperor. 

sugested thet we should embrace both the good and the bad. 

we are all in the opera of life we should embrace it. 

Norinaga also named the concept of mono no aware, the sorrow that results from the passage of things. He saw it as a distinctive characteristic of Japanese people, revealed in classical Japanese literature. He found the essence of human nature, not in rational capacity (rationality), but in emotional sensitivity of heart. In Norinaga’s view, emotional sensitivity exists at a pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic level and is the source of human creativity. One can find it by stripping away all presuppositions imposed by concepts and existing thoughts. Japanese poetry is an attempt to express intricate and delicate emotions, which conceptual discourse cannot grasp. Norinaga’s identification of human nature with the emotional dimension shows a sharp contrast with the mainstream philosophical traditions of the West, which tended to identify human nature with rationality, or ability to think.

Coined by Motoori Norinaga

 Literally "the pathos of things", and also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō^?), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

Sect Shinto is religious Shinto

as Opposed to Shrine Shinto Which is governmental. 

Shrine Shinto was used by the government for management of the people ie: registration of people and also more of a bureaucracy

1. The code of honor and morals developed by the Japanese samurai.
2. Literally "the way of the warrior", is a Japanese word for the way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry.

the US policy towards post-surrender Japan; its purport was to abolish State Shintō (Kokka Shintō), and so secure freedom of religion and eliminate militarism and ultra-nationalism.

ie no person in official capacity could attend a shinto place but could as a private individual

It is a Privately owned Shrine to those who have died serving the Emperor.

It has some contraversy as it is a place of spiritual comemeration. that has honored the souls of some who were involved with heinous war crimes and atrocities. it is also counter intuitive to the shinto belief about the dead.