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| | Immanent Legitimation: Reflections on the Kami Concept |
 | | While it is not difficult to understand the Shinto claim of an immanent (non-transcendent) kami-nature, that quality alone may not explain the devotion which Shinto apologists pay to it --- particularly in the context of their criticisms of the association of kami with words like deity and god. |
 | | Instead, legitimation would appear to be immanent in the hierarchy of the Japanese social system itself, namely, a function of one's "proximity" to the line of descent linked most intimately to the original ground of being from which kami and all other existence derives. |
 | | In short, while neither omnipotent nor equivalent to the "original essence" from which the world emerged, Amaterasu remains the kami closest to that essence, and thus the highest and most noble of all, model for all other kami, and for her descendants, the historical emperors, who, in turn, serve as exemplars for their subjects. |
| www.kokugakuin.ac.jp /ijcc/wp/cpjr/kami/havens.html (4998 words) |
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