B. Tylor and James Frazer would call animism. That becomes completely understandable when one looks at the surrounding isles of Japan and their immense beauty. Denise Lardner describes the way this natural settings beauty has overflowed into the religious tradition in her description of the Shinto tradition when she writes: "Shinto has been the aboriginal native tradition responsible for the Japanese tendency to locate divinity in a nature populated with 800,000 kami and to equate ethics with acting so as to honor one's family (Lardner 125)."" The Shinto tradition has a story of creation that states two kami (the Japanese equivalent to gods) descended from the heavens and stirred the ocean and created the land and the kami of the sun, Amaterasu, who later gives birth to the first emperor (117). It is from this first emperor that all later emperors descend. The most amazing part of the tradition's creation story is that it is so engrained in the people of Japan that to the current day the imperial line has not changed and the people trace their imperial family directly to the kami. Shinto is also mainly seen in the country as something anyone, even a person who is not from Japan, can understand and participate in. This may explain why women have always played a larger role in the Shinto traditions than in most of the greater religious traditions of the land. It is a tradition that has often stressed that women have special access to the kami. Even though most of the young women in a village are considered strangers, because they usually marry outside of their own village, they first become part of the village through the Shinto traditions and rituals that take place both in and outside the home. The majority of rituals that take place inside the home, such as daily prayers and offerings to the kami are performed by women and mainly acted out in the kitchen (Martinez 189).
