Part one of term paper
The Shinto religion was started in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) of Japanese history. The Tokugawa “Enlightenment” inspired a group of people who studied kokugaku, which roughly translated means “nativism,” “Japanese Studies,” or “Native Studies.” Kokugaku's intent was to recover “Japanese character” to what it was bef ...

Part two of term paper
... from fragments of texts and popular religious practices. However, Shintoism is probably not a native religion of Japan (since the Japanese were not the original “natives” of Japan). There really is no one thing that can be called “Shinto,” The name itself is a bit misleading because it is made up of two Chinese words meaning “the way of the gods”(Shen : “ spiritual power, divinity”; Tao : “the way or path”). The word for this in Japanese is kannagara : "the way of the kam ...