Relationship Between Shinto And Buddhism

Amalgamation of Shinto and Buddhism Japan, just east of Korea and China, is an island rich in religion and culture. During ancient Japan, the indigenous people of Japan believed in the Shinto religion, and worshipped kami, or spirits that inhabited many parts of nature. However, in the mid-sixth century, Buddhism started to appear in Japan. As Buddhism started to become more popular in Japan, it started to intermingle with Shinto and created a relationship between the two religions. I believe the integration and combination of Buddhism with Shinto created a unique and distinct culture and customs in classical and medieval Japan. The Shinto religion has existed and spanned since ancient Japan. Shinto followers believed in kami, which
One of the signs of a relationship between the two started when Buddhist temples started to be built beside Shinto shrines known as jingū-ji (Satoshi, 70; Teeuwen, 9). The proximity between the two would encourage the worshipping of both the kami who resided in the shrine and the Buddha deity that lived in the temple. They were built close to each other to encourage offering the kami Buddhist rituals (Teeuwen, 9). The building of Jingū-ji created a unique way to worship both Shinto and Buddhist deities without feeling immoral or contradictory due to the two different religions, and helped change the worshipping customs in
honji suijaku can be defined by splitting the two words apart, with honji meaning “original ground”, and suijaku meaning “traces” (Teeuwen, 15). This meant that the kami were traces of the original Buddha or bodhisattva, that the Buddhist deities were the first to exist. Buddha deities and bodhisattvas were to manifest themselves as kami, in order to communicate with their people (Satoshi, 69). With the creation of the Tendai school and Esoteric Buddhism in ninth century Japan, honji suijaku became started to become prominent and kami started to become integrated into Esoteric Buddhism (Teeuwen, 16; Andreeva, 681). For example, in documents regarding the Hakozaki Hachimangū shrine, one that worships the kami Hachiman, a pagoda was to be built to hold a set of sutras, but these sutras were originally for the Usa shrine (Teeuwen, 17). It was then argued that even though the Hakozaki and Usa shrine, both dedicated to Hachiman, were located in different places, both of them were the same in which their spirit, bodhisattvas, and suijaku were identical (Teeuwen, 17). This tells us that Hachiman was seen as a bodhisattva, a trace of an original Buddha. With honji suijaku becoming more accepted as a concept, it shifted Japanese culture from the worship of two different religions and blended them together almost as if they were