/lounge/ - sushi social

yum

I think Shinto shrines are pretty neat

Comfy aesthetic but the ideology is disturbing

I don't know much about shinto, sadly. I've wanted to read about it but I haven't found any book that looks quite like what I am looking for.
I do lean towards animism in my own philosophy, though, it would be really nice to know more about it.

I've visited a few shrines on vacations to Japan, but don't know much about the core tenants of the religion itself other than venerating the kami that reside in all things.

>>19511
What do you find disturbing about it? To me it seems like one of the more chill religions out there.

>>19523
Shinto has a bit of a dark history. In its modern form it was created by the Japanese state by centralizing all local shrines and forcing an ideology on them designed to brainwash people into being blindly pro-government. Local priestly lineages were wiped out and replaced by government appointees. There was also a campaign against Buddhism where Buddhist temples were attacked, books burned, priests kicked out of temples or excrement smeared on them to create a pure nationalist Shintoism. After the war, the National Association of Shrines (defacto Shinto ruling body) was dominated by ethnonationalists who kept many of the features of government State Shinto although some people pushed back against it. Thankfully, that's not all there is to Shinto but that's the dark side.

I have other theological disagreements with Shinto but that's a seperate issue. The aesthetics are really comfy though. Their shrines are so quiet and serene.

>>19525
That is like saying Hinduism is dark because of Hindutvaism. It’s the abuse of the religion that’s the problem not the religion itself. And what religion doesn’t have skeletons in its closet?

united-with-nature paganism feels very different from the abstract truth of the abrahamic monotheism
i am not particularly religious and neither am i knowledgeable about them but i feel like the notion of the god(s) being immanent and kinda with you (perhaps in you) is different and more appealing to me than the idea of the transcendent god
though from the looks of it, the mass-oriented religion just wins as the strong uniting power which knows no bounds really

>>19549
eliminating local priest lineages is kinda a big deal (i didn't know that) imo
basically one could say that today's shinto isn't real shinto to some extent, and there has been a real disruption in the tradition
politically, it also means that local religious practices have likely been replaced or hijacked, depriving people of their cultural autonomy to an extent

overall i think it's kinda a good and a bad thing. on one hand, it is some nasty imperialism (japan is an empire officially btw) and a lot of peoples within japan have likely suffered a bit of an identity loss to the tokyo's dominance. on the other hand, japan is united and whatever they have done seems to work well or at least decent - probably beats warring feudal states each protecting their own gods in any case