Japanese Mythology
...r in 660 B.C. (the date is mythical), thus establishing the line from which all of Japan’s emperors are said to derive. However mysterious the origin of this imperial dynasty, it is acknowledged as the longest-reigning such family in the world. Legend begins to give way to fact only in the 4th century A.D., when a family by the name of Yamato succeeded in expanding its kingdom throughout the country. At the core of the unification achieved by the Yamato family was the Shinto religion. Indigenous to Japan, Shintoism is marked by the worship of natural things—mountains, trees, the moon, stars, rivers, seas, fire, animals, rocks, even vegetables—as the embodiment of gods (called kami), the spirits of ancestors, and by the belief in the divinity of the emperor. Along with Buddhism (see below), Shintoism is still a driving belief in Japanese life. ...