Shinto: a Celebration of Life

This is a clear and comprehensive introduction to Shinto, with which I imagine that few readers are familiar. The overall argument is that Shinto has an important message for the contemporary world in terms of making us more aware of our social and ecological connections with other people and the natural world. The book revolves around an explanation of three key terms, namely Kami as divine presence and life force pervading and connecting everything. Kannagara enables us to tune into Kami and live in harmony with Nature, while Musubi is the principle of organic growth and the cycles of life, representing the continuous process of death and rebirth. In this sense, the current green awakening can be interpreted as an awareness of Musubi. The book helps the reader understand our situation by means of a different set of cultural concepts that further enrich our understanding. I was particularly struck by a poem about trees and their significance, referring to the flow of life as growth and not as completion we sometimes forget that we are part of a vast process in both space and time.