A Study of Shinto

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             Within the Shinto priest hood, there is little or no gender bias. Most of the jobs of men and woman are understood as equal. Anyone who is from a family of Shinto priests or anyone who just wants to be a priest can study to be a Shinto priest. The only gender bias that is seen in this study of Shinto is the Miko, and the Saishu, these positions are seemingly for females only. It is very interesting that the two head positions in the temple are female. This goes against most if not all-western, and most eastern religions as well. The possible reason for this is the kami in the Shinto religion. Many of the kami are female. They gave birth to the earth and the Emperor was supposedly descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami. The kami and Japanese people are connected in many ways that will be discussed in the next section. .
             The deities of Shinto to be described in this section come from the Shinto story of creation. In the beginning there were five kami (Picken, 61). A kami is the object of worship in Shinto; they are a kind of deity (Picken, Glossary). The head kami was named Ame-no-minakushi; this kami was the first and absolute Supreme Being. This kami has no gender and Picken describes it as neither male nor female. This is very interesting because in other religions such as Christianity the head being, God is described as a male, also in Buddhism that is so very much a part of the Japanese culture as well. Gender is first introduced into the kami with the two kamis, Izangi-no-mikoto, (the male who invites), and Izanami-no-mikoto, (the female who invites), (Picken, 71). These two kami went to earth and they made love, she ends up dying and then Izangi follows her to the underworld because he loved her so much (Picken, 62). As this story progresses many kami are born from the two lovers. From here gender becomes more and more present, although none of the male or female kami are over another.