Shinto is often conflated with Buddhism, and this has led to a great deal of confusion, misinformation, and even deliberate distortion. To set the record straight: Shinto is not a Buddhist belief system, never has been, and never will be. While some Buddhist influences appear in Japanese history, these are historical borrowings and political overlays, not foundational to Shinto itself.
Shinto clearly predates the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. The very word “Shinto” may be of Chinese origin—“to” being related to the same etymology as dao (道, “the Way”). Whether we use the Chinese-derived “Shinto” or the native “Kami no Michi” is ultimately less important than the reality: Shinto descends from the religious traditions of the Jomon period, stretching back some 7,000 years.
Some argue that the shifting influences of Jomon, Yayoi, Sino, and Buddhist thought on modern Shinto make it a “Ship of Theseus.” But we should remember that religions evolve. Judaism today looks nothing like its ancient form, yet no one disputes its continuity. The Samaritans, who preserved an alternative trajectory, are considered a related religion, not “the true Judaism.” Similarly, “Ko-Shinto” (Ancient Shinto) is not a literal reconstruction of a lost faith, but rather a scholarly and sectarian effort to imagine what earlier practices may have been. That does not invalidate Shinto’s legitimacy as a continuous tradition.
Critics like Kuroda Toshio—an avowed Marxist, secularist, and scholar of Buddhism more than Shinto—argued that modern Shinto is merely a projection backward, and that it did not exist independently before Buddhism. This claim is misleading.
It is true that neither the Kojiki nor the Nihon Shoki explicitly use the word “Shinto.” Yet the term appears in the 8th century, which is as far back as written records in Japan go. By that time, Shinto was already distinct from elite Buddhism, surviving as the religion of the common people. The political class, many of whom had Sinitic heritage, preferred imported systems like Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. But the folk traditions of kami veneration, rooted in the land and people of Japan, remained their own thing.
Even early Shinto shared more in common with Daoist and Confucian practices than with Buddhism. Ancestral veneration, for instance, has always been central to Shinto—though over time it took on forms influenced by Confucian ritual. Buddhism, by contrast, has often been ambivalent or hostile toward ancestor worship. The Kami themselves are also distinct from Chinese shen. While some foreign deities were adopted, the core of the kami pantheon remains unmistakably indigenous.
Japanese history itself demonstrates Shinto’s independence. By the Edo period’s end, the Shinbutsu bunri (separation of kami and Buddhas) culminated in the violent Haibutsu Kishaku movement—“Abolish Buddhism, Destroy Shakyamuni.” Buddhist institutions had overstepped, seizing shrine grounds and consolidating elite power. The people’s backlash forcibly reclaimed Shinto spaces from Buddhist control. This alone shows that Shinto was not Buddhism, and never accepted subsumption into it.
Some today argue that Shinbutsu shūgō (Kami-Buddha syncretism) or Yoshida Shinto represent more “authentic” forms of the tradition. Two points must be made:
In humble conclusion: Shinto and Buddhism are not the same. They never were. While they have interacted, borrowed, and overlapped in Japan’s long history, the core of Shinto is independent, ancient, and rooted in the veneration of the kami. To treat Shinto as a mere branch of Buddhism is not only historically inaccurate but also dismissive of the lived faith of countless generations.
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