On Tuesday, May 5, BYU-Hawaii was honored to host a visit from Moriyasu Ito and Masahiro Sato of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, Japan.
Ito, a priest at the famous shrine, gave an hour-long presentation on Shinto—the traditional, indigenous religion of Japan—to students and faculty from the Honors Society, Japanese Student Association, the McKay Center for Intercultural Peacebuilding, the university Concert Choir, and others. His presentation focused on improving students’ understanding of Shinto and, by association, of Japanese culture and the Japanese people.
According to Ito, Shinto can be difficult for many foreigners to understand because it is not organized in the same way as Western religions; it does not have initiation rituals or even a specific membership. Shinto focuses on the worship of kami, numerous divinities who live in nature.
Ito also highlighted many similarities between Shinto and LDS beliefs. One important commonality is the emphasis on personal purity. Shinto priests wear white robes for the same symbolic reason Church members wear white clothes for baptismal and temple ordinances. They also believe that water can wash away the “impurities” that accumulate throughout people’s lives, and so they regularly participate in ritual washings.
Ito’s presentation also discussed the history of the Meiji Shrine, one of Shinto’s most important sites. The shrine was built in Tokyo in 1920 in honor of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, revered leaders in Japanese history who began Japan’s modernization and established a constitutional monarchy in the late 1800s.
The shrine also has a special connection with BYU-Hawaii: in 2005, while on tour in Japan and South Korea, the BYU-Hawaii Concert Choir was invited to sing in the inner courtyard of the shrine—the first Christian group ever to receive that honor.
Ito actually visited BYU-Hawaii in that same year after completing a short study at BYU (Provo) and touring LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was in light of this previous trip to BYU-Hawaii that he requested to return to campus while on a stopover on Oahu on his way home to Japan once again.
The history of the relationship between Shinto priests and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints goes back to the 1880s, when a delegation of Japanese leaders was snowed in at Salt Lake City while traveling across the United States by train. They were studying Western industrialized countries, and the unexpected week-long stay in Utah gave them an opportunity to meet with Church and state leaders.
