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Shinto and Ecology:
Practice and Orientations to Nature
Rosemarie Bernard
Harvard University
Shinto (or kannagara no michi, literally “the
way of the deities”) is Japan’s indigenous
religion. Shinto refers to diverse and localized religious
beliefs, ritual practices, and institutions. On the
one hand, Shinto encompasses local community practices,
while on the other it also includes the elaborate and
highly structured ceremonial practices of the imperial
institution and, in earlier historical periods, of the
state. From its beginnings in early Japanese history,
Shinto has been profoundly influenced by Buddhism, Taoism,
and Confucianism. Syncretic interaction with Buddhism,
in particular, has been strong historically. Yet, at
the beginning of Japan’s modernization Shinto would
be officially separated from Buddhism at the level of
divinities worshiped, ritual practices, and institutional
structures. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868,
Shinto ritual practices were centralized and reorganized
according to a hierarchy that brought even the smallest
outlying Shinto shrines within the fold of state administration,
with the emperor and his rituals at the center. The
effects of those modern transformations were profound
as regards ceremonial practices and institutional structure,
but less so upon the most fundamental beliefs that are
characteristic of the Shinto orientation to the world.
Today, there are more than 80,000 Shinto shrines that
are scattered all over the Japanese archipelago. There
deities are worshiped and rituals are still performed
according to the general patterns established by the
state for all shrines in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Yet this is carried out in keeping
with localized tradition and regional or community preferences.
Regionality of Shinto religious practice accounts for
great diversity in Shinto, while those different instances
share certain basic beliefs and values.
It is impossible to consider the topic of Shinto and
ecology without making reference to the broader issue
of Japanese cultural attitudes to the natural environment.
This is because what one might describe as Shinto beliefs
are often values that are entrenched in Japanese folk
culture in general, and which find expression in other
areas beyond religion, from sociopolitical organization
to aesthetics, and so on. Yet, as Conrad Totman has
noted in his work on the history of forestry in Japan,1
the destruction of the natural environment gradually
increased to such proportions that the archipelago came
to stages of severe environmental degradation several
times, only to be barely saved by systematic, usually
centrally managed, programs of reforestation. Indeed,
it is an irony that a country in which the boundaries
between culture and nature are so fluid should have
undergone such a degree of environmental degradation.
However, such historical developments must also be understood
against the background of Japanese culture, according
to which nature is valued not as “wild nature,”
but instead as “humanized” or “culturalized”
nature. In Japan, nature is “cultivated” by
culture. Nature is idealized in its “cultured”
forms. Some would argue that historically religions,
including Shinto, have played a part in the wanton exploitation
of forest resources. On the other hand, Japanese indigenous
religion and its orientation to the world, which are
interconnected with nature and aesthetics, have a great
deal to offer in the struggle to conserve the environment.
The Shinto beliefs and attitudes toward nature which
are relevant to the problem of environmental preservation
include three key points. First, great value is accorded
sacred space and time, generally as shrines in groves,
the boundaries of which are demarcated as distinct from
the secular world. The location of Shinto shrines in
local landscapes is an important dimension of their
sacredness. As Japanese folklorists have often emphasized,
the traditional Japanese village, in close proximity
to a community shrine, is focused on agriculture, with
seasonal worship of deities offered the fruits of production.
The agricultural cycle provides the rhythms of ritual
activities that punctuate the year. Cyclical time, periodic
time repeats itself as an eternal process.
The second point notes a close relation between nature,
deities (kami), and human beings. The interactivity
of those three is such that human beings also act upon
the world they inhabit with nature and deities. Preventing
the natural world from devolving into a state of chaos
is the goal of certain ritual action. Discretion towards
nature and the kami is essential, since they
nurture human life. In Shinto, and in Japanese folk
beliefs more generally, the natural and social environments
are interrelated. In spatial and topographical terms,
this is manifested in the arrangement of traditional
residences in relation to fields, mountains, and rivers.
The community shrine, situated in a forested grove,
is the very expression of the community itself (in a
Durkheimian sense) that sacralizes itself in the demarcated
domain of sacred space.
Finally, the idea of purification is a key aspect of
all ritual activity in Shinto. Purification (harae)
is performed to reestablish order and balance between
nature, humans, and deities. Regularly performed as
part of all ritual, as well as on special occasions
during the year, purification ceremonies counteract
pollution (kegare). Harm done or accreted pollution
can be neutralized by means of ritual purification.
The latter, in particular, is a key dimension of the
relationship between the Japanese and nature, which
warrants “cultivation” and exploitation of
the environment on the one hand, yet which on the other
emphasizes the need to rectify imbalances between nature,
humans, and deities. Religious belief is not only a
matter of thought, but equally of practice. While many
Japanese are likely to believe that by virtue of their
cultural identity they live in harmony with nature,
one cannot help but recognize the ecological devastation
of many parts of Japan. Shinto is a diverse set of beliefs
and practices which have been deeply embeded in Japanese
cultural history. Shinto ritual, in particular, has
had a role to play in Japan’s modernization, and
continues to be affected, as is all of Japanese society,
by the impact of technological and economic change.
At present, the only significant green spaces in crowded
Japanese urban centers are the groves that surround
Shinto shrines. Even the simple preservation of those
shrine groves is a difficult task to achieve given the
onslaught of pollution as well as pressures to make
spatial concessions to further urban growth. The Shinto
community is aware of the importance of its special
position as guarantor of groves of urban and outlying
greenery. Moreover, they are aware of the crucial challenges
of translating tradition into modern relevance, so as
to transform belief systems into environmental practice.
Rosemarie Bernard is an anthropologist who has done
research on Shinto ritual, specifically on the rites
of renewal at the Grand Shrines of Ise, and on Japanese
imperial ritual. From April 1993 to March 1994 she was
an Information Officer in the Public Relations Section
of Jingu Shicho (the bureaucracy that manages The Grand
Shrines of Ise). She is currently a Junior Fellow in
the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. She is
editing the forthcoming volume, Shinto and Ecology,
in the CSWR/Harvard University Press World Religion
and Ecology book series.
1
Conrad Totman, The Green Archipelago (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).
Return to text
This article was originally
published in Earth Ethics 10, no.1 (Fall 1998).
Copyright © 2004 Rosemarie Bernard.
Reprinted with permission.
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