Foreign gods were also accepted as kami, notable amongst these are the Hindu gods Brahma and Indra, and the Buddhist bodhisattva Kannon. There are also individuals deified after death - several other former emperors, the scholar Sugawara Michizane, aka Tenman Tenjin, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunal dynasty (1603-1868 CE). Phenomena such as the sunshine, rain, and wind can be a kami, most famously the kamikaze or divine wind which blew against the invading Mongol fleet in the 13th century CE. The reigning Japanese emperor was also considered a living kami. 270-310 CE) who is a god of war and culture, and the rice and commerce god Inari. Here we have Hachiman, the deified Emperor Ojin (r. The second group of kami is those which were officially recognised after the early texts had already been composed, which is not to say they were not worshipped earlier. In this group are also two kami from across the sea: Sukunabikona and Sarutahiko.
Many important rivers, mountains, caves, and rocks have their own kami too. All of the kami occasionally, in times of great crisis, assemble for conference on the dry riverbed of the Heavenly River. The first gods who remained in the heavens are often referred to as amatsukami (heavenly kami) while those next generation gods who ruled first on earth are called kunitsukami (earthly kami). Others include her brother Susanoo, the wind and sea god, Takamimusubi, Okuninushi, and the creator gods Izanami and Izanagi. Here we have the gods, supreme amongst them being Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Here the 'classical' kami are those which appear in the oldest Shinto texts including the Kojikiand Nihon Shoki. Ashkenazi's approach.Īll of the kami occasionally, in times of great crisis, assemble for conference on the dry riverbed of the Heavenly River. For simplicity, and as those methods mentioned tend to create a lot of overlap, we will here adopt historian M. There are different approaches to categorization, some scholars use the function of the kami, others their nature (water, fire, field, etc.). Despite their great number, kami can be classified into various categories.
This division emphasises that kami can be capable of both good and bad. Common to all kami are their four mitama (spirits or natures) one of which may predominate depending on circumstances: aramitama (wild or rough), nigimitama (gentle, life-supporting), kushimatama (wonderous), and sakimitama (nurturing). Add to these the group of Shinto gods, heroes, and family ancestors, as wells as bodhisattvas assimilated from Buddhism, and one has an almost limitless number of kami. The reverence for spirits thought to reside in places of great natural beauty, meteorological phenomena, and certain animals goes back to at least the 1st millennium BCE in ancient Japan. Many kami are known nationally, but a great many more belong only to small rural communities, and each family has its own ancestral kami. For this reason, there are said to be 8 million kami, a number referred to as yaoyorozu -no- kamigami. Kami are particularly associated with nature and may be present at sites such as mountains, waterfalls, trees, and unusually shaped rocks. Kami are attracted by purity - both physical and spiritual - and repelled by the lack of it, including disharmony. All of these kami can influence people's everyday lives and so they are worshipped, given offerings, solicited for aid and, in some cases, appealed to for their skills in divination. In the Shinto religion kami is an all-embracing term which signifies gods, spirits, deified mortals, ancestors, natural phenomena, and supernatural powers.
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