Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
The Grand Shrine of Ise
What Is a Kami?
Even more archaic is the Miwa shrine, not far from Nara.
The shrines of prehistory seemed not to have had a struc-
The streams, trees, and stones of nature are pure. Above all
so are the hilltops and mountaintops from which, anciently,
the gods descended. The human realm is less pure, which
is why ideally shrines were on high ground, across a stream
from the village. Particularity polluting are blood, sickness,
and death, which should not be brought into a Shinto shrine;
for this reason funerals are usually a Buddhist preserve,
rarely Shinto. The Shinto feeling is instead the joy of happy
love and marriage, of children, of green open spaces, of joy-
ous dancing, laughing, colorful festivals, of the clean, clear
peaks of sacred mountains.
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Notes