I don't know if this question is best suited for here, /jp/, or /a/, but who is "Kami-sama?" When I hear it mentioned in a Chinese cartoon (Please, Kami-sama, help me; maybe Kami-sama told me to do that; I think Kami-sama is watching over us), is it an anachronism referring to the Christian God or a more complicated idiom that's always been part of Japanese rhetoric?
I don't know if this question is best suited for here, /jp/, or /a/, but who is "Kami-sama...
Evan Miller
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Parker Campbell
You know. There is soul in everything yada yada eastern shamanism
Nicholas Watson
it refers to a Namekian living in the sky that watches over the earth and gives power to the dragon balls
Kayden Kelly
It's the Christian God
Carson Williams
It's not Christian god nor any god from monotheism. It's one of Japanese Shinto gods who is supposed to govern the heavenly world.
Luis Watson
God
Nicholas Allen
I'm pretty sure kami-sama is used as a respectful way to refer to almost any god, and it can be used in a monotheistic context.
The Japanese in general are not very religious today, A typical Japanese person would be perfectly fine with having a Christian wedding and a Buddhist funeral.
Jack Thompson
Reminder that DBZ is pure kino.
Henry Brooks
Shinto doesn't really have "gods" the way western religions have "gods". Shinto has "Kami". Now, I suppose, if you want to go out on a limb, you could argue Shinto is polytheist with over 8 million "gods", but at some point the god concept loses it's meaning and waters-down to something along the lines of "spirits". Most practitioners of Shinto do not believe they are worshiping deified beings, but instead participating in observance of this Kami force.
So from the outside looking in, one might argue Shinto is polytheistic, but it's actually an atheistic spirituality.
Josiah Cooper
Some shinto kami are clearly deities in something close to the western sense of the word, but others are more like spirits or even something more esoteric
Owen Baker
Some have individual identity, but all Kami are Kami, they combine to form what one might consider "supreme being", so by that argument, then, they are monotheist to a power with many facets, but that, also, is incorrect. It simply doesn't translate appropriately to conventional monotheism or polytheism. It's more akin to animism, which is also atheistic.
Jaxon Walker
I am not well versed in the intricasies of esoteric shinto, but I do know the basics pretty well.
a kami can be a tree, an object, etc. each one has a special force or spirit behind it, but its worship is centered on the object in question.
As an agnostic neither shinto or animism, nor early western pagan traditions which are similar strike me as atheistic, and to say there is no cross over between a shinto kami and a western deity is to stretch credulity
Gabriel Moore
It's important, I think, to add that not all atheistic contention is the stock, internet variety of anti-metaphysical contention. There are many types of atheism and it's not some bad word, it's simply a way to view the world. Atheism comes in many forms, from the very spiritual to the not-spiritual-at-all. It doesn't ever mean "anti-religious", although a given atheist might, indeed, be anti-religious, or even anti-metaphysical. It literally means "no deities", or not "gods in the western sense of the concept".
Adrian Johnson
Atheists can still be very spiritual. Shinto practitioners are very spiritual. They simply do not hold the concept "gods" as western religions do. Shinto, as animism, is spiritual atheistic contention, and it's fine to call it that.
Evan Rivera
also, to samefag, quint for truth.
Adam Hughes
It depends. In traditional Japanese religion, it's most likely Amaterasu and Izanami, the sun and moon gods.
However, in Shinto and Zen, it's also what they called the Emperor because he was a living God.
Asher Morgan
Well but if you read the konjiki the kami literally created the heavens, created japan from the primordial foam, came down from the heavens to give law and order to the land, and bred with mortals to create the imperial family and several other groups.
This is very similar behavior to European deities, Indian deities, ect. Now" kami" does have a broader definition than "god" but a "god" can certainly be categorized as a kami
Cooper Murphy
Kami (神) means Shén (神)
James Torres
Kami is soul or spirit. Ghosts are sometimes called kami
Blake Sanchez
It's pretty silly to call them atheists just because the line between weak gods and powerful spirits is blurry.
Lincoln Evans
Academia is neither silly nor non-silly. It simply is what it is by a process of semantics. If it hurts your feelings to call Shinto an atheistic contention, you have my full permission to call it "snorkel".