Japan Flashcards
What is Shintoism?
A Japanese religion dating from the early 8th century and incorporating the worship of ancestors and nature spirits and a belief in sacred power (kami) in both animate and inanimate things.
What were the Kami?
Gods in the Shinto religion.
Who was Prince Shotoku?
a semilegendary prince who from the earliest stages of Japanese history has been revered as a cultural hero, as a Buddhist patron, as a civilizing ruler, and as a Japanese incarnation either of the Chinese Tiantai school monk Huisi (Japanese, Eshi; 515–577) or of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.
What is Confucianism?
A system of philosophical and ethical teachings founded by Confucius.
What was a Shogun?
A military ruler of Japan.
What was a Samurai?
Japanese warrior.
What was the Bushido?
A moral code concerning samurai attitudes, behavior and lifestyle.
What was the Daimyo?
Powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings.
What was the Heian Period?
A period of Japanese history spanning roughly 390 years, from 794 when Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Heian Kyo (ancient Kyoto) to the establishment of the Kamakura Bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun) in 1185. It was a time of flourishing art and culture.
What is a Torii?
A traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred and a spot where kami are welcomed and thought to travel through.
What is Animism?
The belief that everything has a soul and anything can be a god.
