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Interpreting Religion In Japan's Rich History And Culture

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Japan is a country filled with rich history and culture, and it has a completely different sense of history than any other country that we have seen so far. Archaeologists where surprised to find out that the world’s first property was in Japan dating 10,000 B.C.E which is before other cultures developed their ceramic traditions. Japan was known for following Chinese traditions, which is why that discovery was hard to believe. For a big time of Japan’s history, it was called as Nippon or Nihon (日本), which is the origin of the name Japan. Moreover, Japan’s culture mostly revolves around religion and most of their traditions involve religious rituals. Therefore, this paper will be covering religion in Japan.
Buddhism is the most common religion …show more content…

Shinto started from the 8th century and it is a very unique religion, because it does not have a founder, or specific rules. Shinto is simply very traditional with the Japanese people. It includes the worship of nature (rain, wind, lightening, fertility…etc) which they believe that Shinto gods, that are called Kami, take these forms. However, the sun goddess is seen as the most important god in Shintoism. Shintoism is considered a very optimistic religion, because there is no believe in absolute right and wrong, and they believe that no human is perfect. They believe that evil is caused by evil spirits and they do rituals to keep evil spirits away any purify themselves. Moreover, Shinto priests are the ones that perform the rituals in Shinto shrines, and they live in the shrines. A priest could be a man or a woman, and they are allowed to marry and reproduce unlike Christian priests …show more content…

Most misconceptions are that samurais are basically swordsmen but they were well equipped with spears and bows and arrow; although, their main weapon is the sword which was also their symbol as a samurai. The samurai were brought up to be loyal warriors by Confucian ethics where they would live their lives by the ethic code of bushido. ‘Bushi’ translates to ‘swordsman’ and ‘do’, meaning ‘the way of’. Other than Confucianism, they also took practices and teachings of Zen Buddhism to better their flow of chakra or life-flow during battle. Samurais were probably the most loyal warriors in military history; giving their life to their bushido, they would more than eagerly give their life for their master, have respect for common people. They would not rob anyone postwar even if they were starving to death but would rather work for food

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