Compare and Contrast Kami and Shen, the Japanese and Chinese Words for

Compare and Contrast Kami and Shen, the Nipponese and Chinese Words for God The words kami in Nipponese and shen in Chinese both are translated into English as the word god. Although they both refer to somewhat similar supernatural elements, they are by no means identical to each other. Chinese shen is an defraud term referring to spirits and relating to abstract thoughts such as the heavens and the afterlife. In contrast, kami are very much related directly to a person or actual object and are worshiped in a hope for to a greater extent day-to-day help or this worldly benefits. In order to help explain the relationship between kami and shen, I will first explore the similarities between the two terms, then dispute the unique characteristics which define both shen and kami.Motori Norinaga, an eighteenth century Japanese intellectual, said that the meanings of shen and kami coincide seventy or eight per cent of cases Ever since ancient times, their meanings collect both been exp ressed in a single character with no difference being paid to the difference between the two (qtd. in Xiaolin 1). When the Japanese first borrowed the Chinese writing system to use as their own, they used the Chinese character for shen to express both kami and shin (another Japanese word for spirits, more closely associated with shen.) In all of the Chinese texts that the Japanese imported, shen was translated as either kami or shin, using kami when the spirit was well defined and shin when it was more of an abstract thought. It was not until the Japanese later differentiated their writing from Chinese that the characters for shen and kami became different. The non-differentiation between the two words helps to show their close similarity to each other.Chine... .... Practically Religious. capital of Hawaii Univ. of Hawaii Press 1998. Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body. Berkeley Univ. of California Press, 1993.Tanabe, George J. Jr. Introduction Japan. Religions of Asia in Practice . Ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 591-612.Teeuwen, Mark. Motoori Norinaga on the Two Shrines at Ise. Religions of Asia in Practice. Ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 678-693.Teiser, Stephen F. Introduction Chinese Religion. Religions of Asia in Practice. Ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 295-329.Xiaolin, Wang. Cultural Differentiation On shen and Xin in Chinese and Japanese. Trans. Robert Neather. City Univ. of Hong Kong. 17 Apr. 2003. <http//www.cityu.edu.hk/ccs/Newsletter/newsletter3/HomePage/CulturalDiff/CulturalDiff.html.