What does shinto mean?

mew and my friend were looking on Microsoft word, and it said Shinto was a word.

Shinto is the native religion of Japan and was once its state religion.

It's a Japanese religion.

Shinto is a general term for the activities of the Japanese people to worship all the deities of heaven and earth, and its origin is as old as the history of the Japanese. It was towards the end of the 6Th century when the Japanese were conscious of these activities and called them 'Way of Kami(the deity or the deities)'. It coincides the time when the 31st Emperor Yomei prayed before an image of Buddha for the first time as an emperor for recovery of his illness. Thus accepting Buddhism, a foreign religion, the Japanese realized existence of a tradition of their own faith.

a Japanese religion.

Shinto (A, Shinto?) is the native religion of Japan and was once its state religion. It involves the worship of Jami (?, Jami?), spirits. Some Jami are local and can be regarded as the spiritual being/spirit or genius of a particular place, but other ones represent major natural objects and processes: for example, Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, or Mount Fuji. Shinto is an animistic belief system. The word Shinto was created by combining two ganja: "shin" (?, "shin"?)(loan words usually retain their Chinese pronunciation, hence shin not Jami), meaning gods or spirits ; and "t?" (?, "t?"?), meaning a philosophical way or path (originally from the Chinese word DOA). As such, Shinto is commonly translated as "The Way of the Gods".


A tor ii at Itsukushima Shrine.
Typical Shinto Shrine with paper streamers made out of unprocessed hemp fib re.After World War II, Shinto lost its status as the state religion of Japan. Some Shinto practices and teachings, once given a great deal of prominence during the war, are no longer taught or practiced today, while others still exist as commonplace activities such as omikuji (a form of fortune-telling) and the Japanese New Year to which few people give religious connotations. Important national ceremonies such as coronations and royal marriages are conducted at the Three Palace Sanctuaries in Tokyo, and many Japanese still travel at least once in their lives to the Grand Shrine of Ise in Mie Prefecture.