"My Shinto" 「マイ神道」

I would like to note that as part of the process of teaching the class, I utilized the tutorial series Writing HTML published online by the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. Unfortunately, the initial series was only partially translated into Japanese, and later disappeared from the original site, with the result that the lingering archived parts appear now to be available only on the Internet Wayback Machine of archives. In addition, those tutorial files that remain available require quite a bit of correction to make them usable by students today; I also translated a few additional pages where necessary. I would like to express my appreciation to the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction for the materials, but hope they would update them if possible.

I titled the page as I did in order to emphasize the "personal" side of this religious tradition. Although Shinto is often described as Japan's indigenous religion in ways that suggest a monolithic and determinate content, in fact the very definition of Shinto is widely contested, with scholars and adherents arguing from narrow definitions limited to modern Shinto, to broad definitions in which Shinto encompasses the entirety of Japanese culture. For an "indigenous" religion, modern Shinto continues to demonstrate numerous and pervasive foreign elements as well, originating in countries ranging from the Indian subcontinent to China and Korea.