Explaining Shinto

It is very difficult to explain Shinto in English, for two fundamental reasons. The first is that Shinto does not have a clear essence that can be put into words. The second is that many of the things and concepts in Shinto have no close equivalent in English-speaking cultures, making it hard to express the ideas in English. The two essays collected here discuss these issues, and how they can be addressed. In the process of doing that, they do go some way towards explaining Shinto. Note that this book is a compilation of two essays, each about 5,000 words long, and is thus very short.