A society at is core is a group of people who are capable of living together with a least a small sense of some order. Likewise, religion at its base level contains a group of people who, through one circumstance or another, share a particular system of faith. When you look at the two they begin to look, in a way, like partners. A society is easier to build if the people in it have a similar goal, or faith, to follow. Once the goal has been established, people begin to create order and live in symbiosis with nature and one another. The Japanese society happens to have formed around two major religions: Shinto and Mahayana Buddhism. While there are some traces of other religions in Japan, it is Shinto and Buddhism that have taken the major roles in developing the country as a whole. Of course it is in our western nature to compare these religions to those of which are popular in this country but it is simply not that easy. With Shintoism and Buddhism the ideas are very different from those of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. In order to better understand both the country and the religions we cannot compare them to what is familiar but rather learn about their history, their traditions, and to what effect they have helped to create modern Japan.
An Overview
In Japan, religion is a rather diverse subject to cover as many Japanese can
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Even though it has been around for this long, the two major texts that make up the basis of this religion werent created until ce 712 when the Kojiki was established. This was later replaced by the Nihonshoki, originally titled the Nohongi, in ce 720 (Partridge, 2005, p. 411). These works are, to this day, revered as important works by the Japanese but are neither studied or recited as a Jew would recite a verse from the Torah. Starting with the Yamato period Shinto has been an official relgion. It is even stated that the Emperor Ninigi was the grandson of