The Prominent religions in Japan are Shintoism with 79.2% of the population practicing this religion, Buddhism with 66.8%, and Christianity with 1.5%. The total adherents exceed 100% because many people practice both Shintoism and Buddhism (World Factbook, 2015).
Shinto, or the “way of the spirits or deities,” began to take form in Japan’s early period before the sixth century C. E. Shinto deities, or kami, were seen as infusing the natural world. Uniquely shaped trees, mountains, rivers, and rocks were all considered kami, but human beings could be viewed as kami as well. Since early Shinto did not have a founder or produce sacred texts, it was through common rituals that the religion was transmitted. The goal of the rituals was to maintain …show more content…
As initially presented by the historical Buddha, Buddhism was a path of practice that an individual could take to liberate him/herself from suffering. The Buddha taught that, despite the relative degree of happiness that one might achieve in life, all living beings eventually become sick, grow old and die. The Buddha recognized that to be free from suffering one had to reach a new understanding of reality. In particular, one had to see that people and things do not exist autonomously, on the basis of individual “selves,” but rather that all things are linked in a system of interdependency. To defeat the self-centeredness of the ignorant, one had to alter one’s way of thinking and acting through the practice of Buddhist morality, meditation and wisdom. When Buddhism reached Japan in the sixth century from Korea and China, its complicated philosophical message was complex for most Japanese to comprehend. A small group was then learning Chinese (Japan’s first written language) and some of them began to study Chinese Buddhist texts. However, most Japanese were first fascinated with Buddhist art, Buddhist magic, or to the possibility of closer ties with the highly developed society of China, where Buddhism had already spread. Whatever the attraction, by the eighth century, when the Japanese established their first stable capital in the city