Yoshida Kanetomo, of the hereditary divination house that served the court, did something no one had done: he presented Shinto as a system with its own doctrines, lineage, and initiations, equal to Buddhism and Confucianism and prior to both. His One-and-Only Shinto inverted the old fusion, teaching that the kami are the original ground and the buddhas their traces. From his base at the Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto his house claimed authority over shrines across the country, licensing their priests for two centuries.
Tagged: Shinto Yoshida Shinto
The Event
- Date
- 1435-1511 (exact)
- Also called
- Yuiitsu Shinto
- Era
- Medieval Schools; Standard periodization of Shinto history
- Location
- Kyoto; today Kyoto, Japan
- Traditions
- Shinto
- Streams
- Yoshida Shinto
- Key figures
- Yoshida Kanetomo
- Key texts
- Essentials of the One-and-Only Shinto
How the Tradition Tells It
Yoshida's claim that his was the one true Shinto was his house's claim, contested in his own lifetime by the Ise priests and later by the Shirakawa house. His licensing empire is a fact of the record; his theology was one school's, and the tradition has never had a creed by which to settle it.
Primary Sources
- Yoshida Kanetomo, Essentials of the One-and-Only Shinto.
Secondary Sources
- Breen, John, and Mark Teeuwen. A New History of Shinto. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
- Hardacre, Helen. Shinto: A History. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Provenance: HIST-0907; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.
Related on This Site
Calendar Event
Sanja Matsuri
Tokyo's largest Shinto festival; Asakusa Shrine.
Devotion
Jinja Mairi; Visiting the Shrine
To visit a shrine is to call on the kami of the place: through the torii, up the gravel path, to the offering box, the bell, two bows, two claps, one bow.
Devotion
Misogi; Purification by Water
Standing under a waterfall, or in the sea or a river at dawn, the practitioner lets cold water carry away pollution: Shinto's most austere devotion.
Devotion
The Kamidana; Household Altar
High on a wall of the home sits a miniature shrine: each morning it receives fresh water, rice, salt, and a bowed head with two claps.
Language
Classical Japanese
The classical written language of Japan, in which the norito prayers and the early chronicles are composed.
Prayer or Creed
Norito
Formal ritual prayers in classical Japanese, recited by priests to the kami at shrine festivals and rites.
Technology
Nuclear power
The reactor judged apart from the bomb: prudence, waste, and descendants on one side of the ledger, decarbonization arithmetic on the other; and no magisterium with a binding word.
Tradition & Science
Shinto
A tradition without a creed for science to contradict: kami in the landscape, a shrine rebuilt on schedule for thirteen centuries as a living school of craft, and modern flashpoints in nuclear pollution and the definition of death.