Banner Image: Copyright by Takahashi Shirō, photo by Minato Chihiro.

ONLINE lecture series

JAPAN AND KAMI
1. KAMI WOrship in early japan

date & time

wednesday, April 9, 2025
7PM-8:15PM (PST)

ADMISSion is Free, registration required 

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Kami is a generic name for the various divinities (or metahuman entities) venerated in the Shinto tradition. Shinto is typically defined as the indigenous and ancestral religion of the Japanese and the unchanging basis of Japanese cultural identity and value system; today, it is often understood as a benign tradition based on an animistic love for nature striving for world peace. In fact, what we now call "Shinto" has gone through many important changes during the centuries, and these changes have also affected the ways in which the Japanese understand and relate to their kami. For example, kami include figures from ancient Japanese mythology, features of the natural landscape, deified historical figures, gods brought to Japan from China, Korea, and India, and spirits from folkloric beliefs. In this talk, after presenting the most important aspects of Shinto by placing them in historical context, I will discuss the main features of the ancient kami with special reference to their cosmology. 

This is the first lecture in a four-part series that will explore the various relationships that exist between Japanese culture, Shinto, and its deities. 

About Lecturer:

Fabio Rambelli   

Fabio Rambelli is Distinguished Professor of Japanese Religions and Cultural History and International Shinto Foundation Chair in Shinto Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

His publications include: Buddhas and Kami in Japan (with Mark Teeuwen, 2000), Buddhist Materiality (2007), The Sea and the Sacred in Japan (2018), Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan (2019), and Gagaku: The Cultural Impact of Japanese Ceremonial Music (2025). He is also a musician and plays the shō, the ancient Japanese mouthorgan, and other instruments, and has released three CDs of original music (ambient, contemporary, jazz) with various formations: Pearls (by Neo Archē, 2023), New Heritage (with Thomas Piercy and Lish Lindsey, 2023), and The Turning Point (with Dirk Wachtelaer, 2024).

His research interests span several cultural dimensions of religious discourses in Japan, such as theories and practices of representation, materiality and the cultural meanings of objects, political thought, economics, and geopolitical components of constructs about cultural identity. He is currently working on an intellectual history of Gagaku, the ancient ceremonial music of Japan.  

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