Shinto is often conflated with Buddhism, and this leads to a lot of confusion, misinformation, outright lies, finger-pointing and more. To simply set the record straight: Shinto is not a Buddhist belief, never has been, never will be, and borrows only due to historical reasons that will be gotten into in the post.
Shinto most definitely predates the existence of Buddhism, though the label of Shinto itself is thought to be a Chinese invention, as the "to" in Shinto is the same etymology as "dao", as in the Dao/Tao, the religion from China. Whether or not it is, or that "Kami no Michi" or whatever is a better name is beyond the scope of this post. Shinto, as described in the FAQ page, is a belief descended from Jomon-era beliefs.
Whether or not Jomon, Yayoi, Sino, or Buddhist beliefs make up a majority of modern Shinto is a question of Theseus' Ship, and the approach we're going to utilize is based on the same approach by western academia around Judaism vs Christianity. Judaism as we see it today would be unrecognizable, the closest religion to ancient Judaism may very well be the closely related Samaritans who reject specific things. Shinto has no such thing. Ko-Shinto (Ancient Shinto) is not really a "historical" invention. But a proposed/sectarian construct of what it "may" have been. It's based on archaeology, conjecture, and a lot of "filling in the blanks". We are not here to invalidate it. Rather, call a spade a spade.
So, yes, Shinto predates Buddhism, and the Jomon period goes back 7,000 years. But some academics like Kuroda Toshio, a critic of independent Shinto, noted Marxist, secularist and someone who spent more of his academic career studying Buddhism, not Shinto, really argues that pre-Chinese contact beliefs are distinct enough that we cannot call modern Shinto "historical". His view is that the modern day viewpoint of Shinto is projected backwards into history. Here's the problem with this:
While the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki do not use the word Shinto, and neither do they specifically reference their writings as a religious system, we know the term Shinto comes about since the 8th century AD. This is about as far back as written records on Japan go. We also know there was a separation of Shinto from this time period, as a religion of peasants and common men, from that of the political elite. Certainly, this makes sense when one considers the elite of post-contact Japan were often of partial Sinitic origins, where Buddhism was one of the more popular and prominent beliefs (alongside the Dao, and arguably Confucianism, if we wish to consider it a religion.)
Many beliefs of even early Shinto are more in common with the Dao, and Confucian beliefs, than Buddhism. Ancestral veneration, which has been practiced in Shinto in some form (The modern veneration form resembles superficially Confucian-styles of veneration.) was recorded amongst the peasantry, something Buddhism never has fully tolerated. While the folk of China and Japan have always venerated their ancestry, the elite of Japan and China often preferred the structure of Buddhism, as it validated castes and classes, as does Confucianism. We also know that the Kami of Shinto are unique. While there are parallels of some Kami who are of a foreign origin with Shen in China (e.g. Huxian Niangniang from the three Northeastern Chinese provinces) there exists no such link between the Kami who are very obviously "native" to Japan with various Chinese Shen.
With this in mind, Kuroda's viewpoints are intellectually dishonest. We also know that at the end of the Edo era, the Shinbutsu-bunri had the violent movement Haibutsu, Kishaku (Abolish Buddhism, Kill Shakyamuni) in which people rose up against Buddhism and forcibly retook the grounds that are historical shrines from Buddhist temples who had encroached. The elite had solidified their control of the masses, and indeed, the Royal Family, through Buddhism, and now that all needed to come crashing down.
Another prominent argument in the Anglophonic Shinto community is one of "Well, Shinbutsu Shugo and Yoshida Shinto are more 'authentic' to the viewpoints of themselves." The first argument one can make, from a religious standpoint is "If that's so, then why did they die out?" This may seem oddly "Christian" to some of the audience of this page, but I can assure you this is not a solely Western viewpoint, and the same arguments are used by Hindu, Muslim, and indeed, Buddhist, apologists.
The second is, how do you know what you're claiming to be these things is "correct"? With modern forms of Shinto, we have a blueprint, rules, priests and more. With this Shinbutsu or Yoshida revivalism, we have often secondary academic sources from people who barely speak Japanese, a few blogposts by multi-religious syncretists, and the subjective experiences of mostly an under-30 crowd of milennials and zoomers who claim this based on their own personal practices.
In conclusion, there's little room for debate here. They're not the same. We cannot treat them as the same.
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