Gods, Deities, and Saints
From the beginning of my time in Japan, I had no particular difficulty accepting the idea that there are spirits in all things. The word most often used is kami, usually translated as "gods." I accepted that easily enough: sacred trees, sacred mountains, power spots, the gathering of the gods at Izumo Shrine each November, their arrival heralded by stormy seas and a purple sky. None of it felt especially strange to me.
Probably because I was raised Catholic, which is also, in its own way, a deeply mystical religion. I grew up with the Virgin Birth, the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, borne aloft on a fleecy cloud during a sunny August day, saints who appeared in visions, statues that wept, relics that healed, and prayers directed to holy figures who remained active, albeit invisible, in the world. The supernatural was never very far away.
Yet in Japan, I unconsciously placed kami in a different category. I thought of them as part of animism, or nature worship, or simply a nice, if exotic, way of connecting to something outside myself. I accepted them, but perhaps kept them at a distance. They belonged to Japan's world, not quite to mine.
Recently, though, I began noticing how much more often the English words "deity" and "deities" are used when speaking about kami. At first the words felt awkward. Then they opened something up for me.
"Gods" had sent me down the wrong path. It made me think of the pantheon of ancient Greece: Zeus, Hera, Apollo, each mythically ruling over some portion of the universe. Japan has kami like that too. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, presides over the heavens. But she’s only one kind of kami.
"Deity" feels broader, less fixed, less bound to mythology. It allows for a presence, a force, a spirit, a sacred personality. It also avoids immediately colliding with Western ideas of one supreme God. The word "deity" opened the door. Thinking through saints helped me walk through it.
I began trying it out in my mind. Saint Ebisu, patron of fishermen, commerce, and good luck. Saint Matsuo, patron of sake and fermentation. Saint Fuji, the sacred mountain of purification. The comparison is imperfect, but helpful.
As a child, saints were never abstractions. They were presences. Before sleep there were prayers to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to bless the bed I lay upon. Saint Theresa, the Little Flower, whom I asked to show me her power whenever I was sick. Even now I turn to Saint Christopher for safety when I travel. Saint Anthony whenever something is lost—these days, more often my memory than something that fell behind the couch.
Saints had personalities. They had feast days. They had places, stories, specialties, and powers. You honored them, remembered them, prayed to them, and sometimes asked them for help. In that sense, they're not so far from kami.
But the differences are even more revealing. Catholic saints are almost always individuals: holy men and women with biographies, virtues, wounds, and miracles. Japan's kami can be individuals too, but they can also be mountains, trees, waterfalls, rice fields, ancestors, forces of purification, fertility, protection, or disorder. They’re not only holy persons. They are the sacred qualities of the world made present.
That’s where the comparison begins to fail. There is no Saint Purity in Catholicism in quite the way there can be a kami of purification. There is no Saint Mountain who is also the mountain itself. A Catholic may say that a mountain reveals God's creation. Shinto goes further and says that the mountain is kami.
Still, thinking through saints brought the kami closer. It reminded me that prayer, petition, gratitude, feast days, processions, offerings, and sacred places weren't foreign to me at all. I already knew something like this world.
What felt more unfamiliar was the relationship. In Catholicism, I prayed to saints. I asked for help. I lit candles, burned incense, and presented flowers. But I rarely thought of myself as doing something for them.
In Japan, the relationship often feels more mutual. People make offerings of sake, rice, and whatever is in season. They carry portable shrines through town to give the kami an airing. Kagura performances entertain the kami with music, chanting, and vibrant dance. In villages on the Noto Peninsula, families ceremonially invite the kami of the rice fields into their homes for the winter, prepare a bath, serve a meal, and offer a place to sleep before accompanying them back to the fields in spring. They do not simply ask for favors. They care for the kami in return.
That, I think, is one of the great differences. Kami are not only believed in. They are welcomed into everyday life.
Many things in Japan are difficult to grasp because the English words point in the wrong direction. "Gods" is too grand and too separate. "Nature spirits" is too small. "Deities" may be the best place to begin. "Spirits" may come closer, though even that misses the sense of presence, place, force, and relationship.
Even now, I still find it helpful to think through saints. Not because kami are saints. They're not. But because saints taught me that a sacred presence can be personal, local, helpful, temperamental, beloved, and woven into the fabric of ordinary life. They were simply the bridge that allowed me to begin understanding the kami on their own terms.
From there, the Japanese world of kami begins to feel less like an exotic belief system and more like a way of making the invisible visible—honoring the powers that sustain life through a living relationship with them.