Month 9, Day 28: The Shinto View of Death

What happens to us after death? If you ask a Christian, he’ll tell you that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. A Hindu will say that our soul comes back, in another body, to take another crack at life—over and over again, until we get it right. An atheist will tell you that nothing happens after death. We’re nothing, just worm food. (That is so comforting!)

So what does Shinto say happens after death?

Shinto tells us that the purpose of human life is to work toward self-purification and wisdom, doing our best to become bright and shiny—just like the kami, or spirits/deities. And the effort to emulate the kami doesn’t stop when we die.

After death, we go to one of the various realms of the dead. There are a few:

The land of root or the eternal land (nenokuni or tokoyonokuni)

This is the place where the soul obtains eternal life—the realm from which all new human lives originate. Sometimes referred to as the “land of mother,” the land of root or eternal land was often viewed in ancient Shinto as a place located far away, across the ocean. Somehow, you cross the ocean and end up in eternity.

The land of root lies somewhere across the ocean.

Ugh. That stinks. I really hate getting my hair wet.

The hidden or astral world (kakuriyo)

Although most of my research says that the hidden world is not mentioned in any ancient Shinto texts, the idea is still supposed to be very old. The hidden world is depicted as a place that is a lot like our own world—except it’s invisible. Many Shinto followers say that the spirits of our ancestors live in the hidden world, and that it overlaps with our own, which lets them maintain some connection to us and, perhaps, help us out in our daily lives.

The land of the dead or Hades (yominokuni)

Now we’re getting into more familiar territory. This realm, believed to exist deep below ground, is a lot like the underworld we know from other cultures, like ancient Greek mythology. In Shinto, death is considered unclean, so the idea of the dead making their home far below the surface of the Earth, deep in the filth, seems pretty appropriate.

The mountain

This realm is where the kami hang out. It’s also the place where the dead, after completing their spiritual education successfully, finally get the chance to become guardian kami themselves—ancestral spirits who will watch over and protect their descendants for generations.

I hope the mountain of the kami has trees with pretty orange leaves like this. I really like orange.

Okay, so we’ve got all these realms for the dead to “enjoy,” but what exactly does Shinto say happens after death?

When we die, the spirits of our dead friends or relatives come to greet our soul and give us instructions for handling the next stage in our journey. The ancestral spirits protect our souls from danger (apparently, the newly dead soul is especially vulnerable, although none of the books I’ve read spell out exactly what the danger really is—which is weird, because to me, it’s kind of like, once you’re dead, the danger’s pretty much over).

Anyway, our dead friends serve as guides for our souls as we prepare to enter the realms of the dead, or the other world (referred to in Japanese as yukai).

Where we end up depends on how pure and clean and spiritually aware we already are. The better our soul is prepared, the higher the realm we get to start off in.

People who were rotten, evil jerks in life (you know the kind of person I mean) have a lengthy process of purification to undergo before they can even join the lowest of the realm of the dead. It’s not hell, since they aren’t there to be punished and they aren’t there for all eternity. Bad souls just take longer to reach the higher realms than good ones. But even a really good soul still has work to do.

After we die, we receive intensive training from higher-level souls. And Shinto says it’s not easy. We have to put in a lot of time and effort to keep advancing from one level to the next—kind of like getting through school (yuck). With enough hard work, we eventually become kami ourselves, ancestral spirits.

I don’t know. The Shinto view of death sounds like an awful lot of work to me. And for what? So I can eventually have the power to make miniscule interventions in the lives of my descendants, sending signs they might not even notice? That just sounds pointless—and really, really boring.

I just hope there’s some other stuff to do, up there on the mountain of the kami, because, at this point, I’m definitely NOT looking forward to it.