Shinto, Japan’s Spiritual Roots, Stuart D.B. Picken (Kodansha 1980 ) "Alongside kami and nature in Shinto mythology is a third important concept. It is man, who appears not as a creature of the gods, but as a child born of the kami. In contrast to the myths of the Garden of Eden, from which man emerges corrupted and radically evil, in Japanese mythology human nature remains innocent, although people may perform actions unworthy of themselves."

Zen and Shinto, A History of Japanese Philosophy, Dr. Chikao Fujisawa (Philosophical Library 1959) "Shinto is the root and stem and Confucianism the leaves and branches, while Buddhism is the flowers and fruits."

Shinto, The Kami Way, Sokyo Ono (Charles E. Tuttle 1962) "Actually there are very few people, Japanese or foreign, who unserstand Shinto thoroughly and are able to explain it in detail…In its general aspects Shinto is more than a religious faith. It is an amalgam of attitudes, ideas, and ways of doing things that through two milleniums and more have become an integral part of the way of the Japanese people."

The Looking-Glass God, Shinto, Yin-Yan, and a Cosmology for Today, Nahum Stiskin (Autumn Press 1972) "In the opening passages of the Kojiki it is written that within the Plain of High Heaven (Taka-ama-ga-hara)—at the beginning of heaven and earth—three deities came into being. They were the August Lord of the Center of Heaven (Ame-no-minakanushi-no-kami), the Centripetal Deity of Dialectical Unification (Kami-musubi-no-kami), and the Centrifugal Deity of Dialectical Unification (Takami-musubi-nno-kami). We may understand the Plain of High Heaven to be the dark, endless expanse of Infinity that proceeds the emergence of individualized forms. Heaven and earth need not be taken literally but are symbolic of the ultimate polarity of the created world. What is meant here is that deities do not emerge as individualized entities until the original Oneness splits and begins its descent into the world of the many. It is only then that the origin can be discerned as something different from its emergent creations. In a state of undifferentiation the Oneness itself goes undiscerned. Or we may say that Infinity does not know itself completely until it becomes known to itself through the activities of human consciousness."

Shinto, the Unconquered Enemy, Robert O. Lallou (Viking 1945) "In the war against Japan the United Nations were fighting not only against an army, a navy, and an air force, but also against an ideological force which was more than a thousand years old when Pan-Germanism was born, which, through many vicissitudes, has never been supplanted in Japan by vigorously opposing ideas, and which is more powerful in conditioning a people than Nazism could ever be, because it has behind it the strength of an ancient and undying religious reverence. Victory over the armed forces of Japan does not mean that we have conquered the aggressive, war-making, power of Shinto which gave them their life, their strength, and their purpose of world domination. Indeed, in view of the hatred which our bombings—and especially the use of the atomic bomb—has instilled in the Japanese, it may well be that we have only strengthened, through our military victory, some of the concepts which have grown out of Shinto."


The Arts of Shinto, Haruki Kageyama (Weatherhill/Shibundo 1973) "One fundamental point to be kept in mind when considering Shinto sculpture is that, unlike Buddhist imagery, it was not made to be seen by devotees…Shinto sculptures were placed in portable shrine boxes behind curtains in special parts of a shrine. Intentionally hidden from view, images came to be revered symbolically in the minds of devotees. This means of intensifying the sense of religious awe and mystery is similar to the effect achieved by the ‘secret images’ of Esoteric Buddhist sects…"

The Kojiki, Records of Ancient Matters, Basil Hall Chamberlain (Charles E. Tuttle 1981) "The Kojiki was taken down by one Yasumaro from the lips of Hiyeda no Are, a man of extraordinary memory, and presented to the imperial court in A.D. 712, making it the oldest surviving Japanese book. A more factual history called the Nihongi or Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) was completed in A.D. 720, but the Kojiki remains the better known, perhaps because of its special concern with the legends of the gods, with the divine descent of the imperial family, and with native Shinto."

Japan Religion, A Survey by the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Kodansha 1972) "Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, did not originate as a self-conscious tradition. Even the term shinto (‘the way of the kami’) was adopted only after the introduction and spread of Chinese culture and religions in order to distinguish the ancient Japanese customs, rites, and beliefs from Buddhism (the Way of the Buddha) and from Confucianism (the Way of Confucius). Consequently, Shinto was not originally a system of moral principles or philosophical doctrines. When Shinto expressed itself as a system of thought, it had to borrow Chinese terms and concepts, both Confucian and Buddhist. Yet in ancient Shinto we can descry the primordial, native expression of a value system which has maintained itself to the present day as a basic ingredient of Japanese culture and religion, and which has functioned as a cultural matrix, as it were, for the acceptance and assimilation of foreign elements."

Blue Sky Dream, A Memoir of America’s Fall from Grace, David Beers (Doubleday 1996)

The Nuclear Age, Tim O’Brien (Dell 1979)

The Cold War, A History, Martin Walker ( Henry Holt 1993)

Life Under a Cloud, Allan M. Winkler (Oxford University Press 1993)

Nuclear Fear, A History of Images, Spencer R. Weart (Harvard University Press 1988)

Baby Boomers, Paul C. Light (W.W. Norton 1988)

Hiroshima in America, A Half Century of Denial, Robert Jay Lfton & Greg Mitchell (Avon Books 1995)