In modern scholarship, the term is often used with reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals and practices. Shinto has 81,000 shrines and 85,000 priests in the country. This is because 'Shinto' has different meanings in Japan: most of the Japanese attend Shinto shrines and beseech kami without belonging to an institutional 'Shinto' religion, and since there are no formal rituals to become a member of 'folk Shinto', 'Shinto membership' is often estimated counting those who join organised Shinto sects. Shinto is the largest religion in Japan, practiced by nearly 80% of the population, yet only a small percentage of these identify themselves as 'Shintoists' in surveys. Kami and people are not separate they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity. Since the Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami are defined in English as 'spirits', 'essences' or 'gods', referring to the energy generating the phenomena. The oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century. The word Shinto ('way of the gods') was adopted, originally as Jindō or Shindō, from the written Chinese Shendao ( 神道, pinyin: shén dào ), combining two kanji : ' shin ' ( 神 ? ), meaning 'spirit' or kami and ' tō ' ( 道 ? ), meaning a philosophical path or study (from the Chinese word dào ).

Practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods (8th to 12th centuries AD). Shinto today is a term that applies to the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of gods ( kami ), suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals, and applies as well to various sectarian organizations. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified 'Shinto religion', but rather to a collection of native beliefs and mythology. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. It focuses on ritual practices to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto 6 Shintō ? ), also called kami-no-michi, is a Japanese ethnic religion.

Kami definition shinto