八百万の神 8 Million Gods of Japan

2 weekends ago, I visited Arashiyama in Kyoto. It was one of the few opportunities to put my mind off of the trivial things that I face every day and simply escape from my busy student life.

While I was going through the mountains on the Arashiyama Trocco Train, I was astonished by the nature surrounding me. I could not help but think about how such a beautiful landscape came to be, and who - if anyone - had created it.

If you are interested in Japan, you may already be familiar with the country’s influence from Shinto (神道), literally, "the way of Gods". In Japan, there are all sorts of Gods; God of Prospericty, God of Education, God of Agriculture, God of Sun...according to Shinto tradition, it is said that there are 8 million Gods. While I was walking through the bamboo forest in Arashiyama, I even came across a Shrine of "縁結び(en-musubi)", or good relationship.

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/hodaka57/m/200609

Unlike in a monotheistic culture, there are so many forms of "kami-sama" in Japanese that people have a hard time pin-pointing what specifically they mean when they use the word "kami-sama (god)". Sokyo Ono, in her book, "Shinto: The Kami Way" (1962) writes that "[t]he Japanese people themselves do not have a clear idea regarding the kami ("God" in Japanese)....They are aware of the kami intuitively at the depth of their consciousness and communicate with the kami directly without having formed the kami-idea conceptually or theologically."

Interestingly enough, even though I don't have a clear understanding of the concept of the Gods myself, I experienced what Japanese call "kami-sama" in the great nature of Arashiyama. It was certainly a presence of somekind of a grand and divine being.

I would like to think that it this kind of breathtaking experiene that takes to understand the concept of God in the Shinto context. Perhaps I may be wrong, but for now, that was as close to my idea of "kami-sama" as it can get...