Shinto the Kami Way

I admit that i thought this was going to talk more about the kami themselves. But i still love the information they give of the temples as well

Good introduction to the concepts, or rather the seeming unclarity (?"ambiguity") that surrounds the concepts of Shinto (practitioners would dispute this interpretation of unclarity....such is the nature of 'faith') I came away thinking Kami means many different things to many different Japanese, and at multiple levels of of private and public life. Apparently there isn't a monolithic interpretation, or even notional/national orthodoxy that can apply to all. My initial and misconstrued past conception was that it was animism, but the system is unique to Japanese thinking.Apparently, there is no ancient codex (bible) to base on, its evolutionary past is complicated, But through reading this , I think I discern at play are the the underlying universal human motivations and needs.....that of community (of belief), native tribal identity, belief in a transcendent other world and need to subordinate oneself/appease/respect/worship/acknowledge dependence on ..... something/someone more spiritual in nature. In that sense it is no different to other religions. The manifestations as enunciated in the book, however, make an interesting read.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn about Shinto, whether that be the faith in the Kami or the way of living that is still seen in Japan to this day. It gives lots of good, basic information on anything you might want to know. It is laid out all together in very plain and simple terms, one’s that are easy to understand. This is definitely a good book for beginners. It also gives you titles for other texts that are important to Shinto if you are interested in expanding your knowledge more.

I found this to be a handy little book which provided for me a good launch point into the practices and beliefs of Shinto. It does not delve deeply into any particular topic but is rather a surface-level primer, and it does that well. There are good sketch illustrations and photos throughout and I found it to read quickly and easily. I would recommend this as an intro to Shinto.

Received it yesterday (?): 2022-11-17. YEAH ! Thank you.

Dr. Sokyo Ono's "Shinto: The Kami Way" is the best overview of Shinto I have ever read, and I've read a LOT of books on the religions of Japan over the past thirty years! William Woodard's translation is very readable. Perhaps most helpful is Ono Sensei's comparison-contrast between Japanese understanding of seven-fold nature of Kami and Western understandings of God. I also found especially interesting the focus on purification. I have recommended and given copies of this book to many people through the years. The Kindle version I recently purchased is helpful because it won't disappear from my office library!

A fantastic work, Dr. Ono does a brilliant job explaining a topic that is anything but clear and concise, yet Dr. Ono does a graceful and beautiful job.

This book does have a lot of information on Shintoism, but the writing is kind of inaccessible and the presentation of material is not always logical. I had to go back through it a second time and take notes to really figure out what I had learned. While it is pretty comprehensive - or seems so to someone with no background in Shintoism - it is simply presented in a very academic way as though the author was mostly addressing an audience of his peers, instead of someone looking for an interesting way to learn more about another religion. I found it very precise, but dry and uninteresting, which is probably why the information did not stick in my brain until I took notes - it is rather like reading a textbook on Shintoism.

My product arrived on time. It was in a nice quality. It was a very informative book with a lot of exciting info about shinto. I would highly recommend it to others who are also interested in reading about what shinto is about and what cultural history it is shaped by.

An excellent easily read introduction to what the west often misleadingly calls a religion, but to what the Japanese think of as just another aspect of everyday life.

interesting and comprehensive of all the aspects in the Shinto's faith

Gives a practical description of the origins and development of the Japanese religion with good explanations of the beliefs throughout the ages

This book is a careful investigation about the history and traditions on Shinto in Japan. It enables the reader to know not only the history of Japan's indigenous spiritual traditions but how they aproach to the spiritual. The reader enter a world quite different from the spirtual western world. In Japan there is no preocupation for setting an integral view of the Creation and how the western God interects over His people. All that is non existent, the Shrine in were the Kami resides and life goes by pacefully whenever people pay their respects to the Kami, at home, at the Shrine and at the numerous festivals. A wonderful experience for the reader, besides, it's written in international English, and therefore of easy reading.