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Reviewed by:
  • Shinto: The Way Home
  • Mark Teeuwen (bio)
Shinto: The Way Home. By Thomas P. Kasulis. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2004. xx, 184 pages. $45.00, cloth; $15.00, paper.

To explain the nature of the book under review here, I must begin by referring to another book by the same author: Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (University of Hawai'i Press, 2002). In that work, Kasulis uses the concepts of intimacy and integrity to characterize two basic "orientations," which he regards as major recursive patterns that shape cultures. Central characteristics of intimacy-oriented cultures will no doubt sound familiar to most students of Asian societies: situational responsiveness (built on a discourse of compassion rather than one of responsibility); an emphasis on consensus between people holding an "inherently shared viewpoint" rather than on compromise between opponents; and a view of the state as "holographically present" in each individual rather than as a social contract (p. 132). [End Page 268]

When I bring up Kasulis's philosophical work here, it is because his book on Shintō draws heavily on the concepts discussed in Intimacy or Integrity. It is my impression that Kasulis is interested in Shintō first and foremost because he regards it as the essence and the source of Japan's intimacy-oriented culture. He does not use the term intimacy to describe Shintō, but he does employ many other key concepts (as well as a few figures) that describe the intimacy orientation in Intimacy or Integrity. Those that occur most frequently are "holographic entry point" and "overlap," both expressing an idea that is central to intimacy-dominant cultures, namely, that in both a social and a cosmological sense, the whole and its parts interpenetrate. Shinto: The Way Home is perhaps best described as a philosophical interpretation of Shintō as the matrix of Japan's ancient orientation toward intimacy.

When used with the sophistication Kasulis displays in his philosophical work, the concepts of intimacy and integrity are no doubt effective and enlightening tools for analyzing and explaining important aspects of cultural difference. Nevertheless, Kasulis's treatment of Shintō strikes me as problematic, both as a synchronous analysis of "Shinto spirituality" and as a diachronic analysis of Shintō's history. In order to stage Shintō as the foundation of Japan's cultural orientation, Kasulis has to stress two points: first, that Shintō is a major force in modern Japan, and, second, that it has been a constant and dominant presence in Japan's culture throughout its history. I fail to be convinced by Kasulis on both of these accounts.

Let me first address Kasulis's analysis of contemporary Shintō. To underscore the importance of Shintō in today's Japan, Kasulis claims that "when asked in polls or a census, . . . almost all Japanese (over 90 per cent) identify with Shintō" (p. 4; also p. 69 and elsewhere). If the word census here refers to the Japan Statistical Yearbook, the exaggeration is slight (the latest numbers claim that just under 85 per cent of Japanese are "adherents" of Shintō); however, this figure merely gives the number of Japanese who live within a shrine's ujiko parish as it is defined by the shrines themselves. That 85 per cent of Japanese live near a shrine does not mean that 90 per cent identify with Shintō. The reference to polls is even more difficult to understand. Even in a poll conducted by the Shintō organization Jinja Honchō, the number of people who identify with Shintō hovers just below 4 per cent.1 The same poll reveals that the most popular shrine practice is the New Year shrine visit (hatsumōde), which is a customary practice in just over 70 per cent of Japanese families. Needless to say, such a New Year visit does not [End Page 269] necessarily imply that all participants identify with Shintō. Clearly, Shintō is not as large a phenomenon as Kasulis claims.

Kasulis uses his 90 per cent claim to add substance to his analysis of Shintō spirituality. He describes this spirituality as a sense of connectedness. At the core of Shintō, Kasulis finds a search for "holographic entry points," places, objects, or persons that give...

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