A harmful aspect of the Westerners in the Shinto community is the insistence that Shinto is somehow apart from Daoism/Chinese Polytheism; or the native religions of Europe and somehow it's similar to Native American and African animistic beliefs. I feel this simply misses the point of animism, and of its origins in and of itself.
The history of animism, as an attempt to segregate the disparate forms of polytheist worship, came about in 1871 with Sir Edward Tylor. An avowed atheist, he was interested in using animism as a tool to further xenophobia and also disprove religion as a concept in general. Unfortunately over time, the xenophobic history of the term was muddled, and people began using it in good faith. My problem with this is obvious: it's an attempt to divide and conquer the "primitives" from the "less primitives", playing into tropes such as primitive and noble savages. It's a flawed argument to put animism as a separate class of religion.
“the general doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general. … Animism is, in fact, the groundwork of the philosophy of religion, from that of savages up to that of civilized men.” - Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871
In light of its continued non-xenophobic use, though, my compromise isn't to throw it out entirely. Rather, we use it as a classifier of polytheism, indicative of a feature. So Shinto is a polytheist belief with animistic characteristics. This is hardly an exclusive ideal. The Romans had objects that were considered bewitched by the gods, and could talk thus. The Greeks had dryads, water nymphs, lampads and other minor deities.
As for proving Shinto falls under the category of polytheism, that much is easy. Polytheism is the worship and belief in multiple gods. While Kami are not all necessarily "gods", with many being closer to daimons, nature spirits or even fae/sprite creatures, the existence of the Amatsukami such as Izanagi-no-Mikoto, the father of Amaterasu and creator of humans, Amaterasu-Oomikami herself, and her brother Susanoo-no-Mikoto clearly draws what would be clear, recognizable understanding that it's a polytheist belief.
A common counter is the idea that not all Kami are capable of being gods, but Shinto does in fact make this sort of distinction to a degree The Amatsukami, the kami of the skies/heavens, are almost universally godlike, whereas Kunitsukami were more minor/marginal in many cases. The Greeks, Romans and Celtics all had nature spirits and minor gods alongside greater deities as well, so this distinction is utterly pointless.
In conclusion, it's unconstructive to argue that animism is a unique category. This is a way for Christians, atheists and others to simply disarm us, divide us, and further their attempts to dampen and weaken our beliefs - because we are a threat to their worldview. Even good-faith use of the term still reinforces this misinformation - it classifies the two as too distinct to have overlap; when in truth the overlap is so broad that it can hardly be two separate categories.
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