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

Comp ar and Contrast Kami and Shen, the Nipponese and Chinese lyric poem for God The lyric poem kami in Japanese and shen in Chinese twain are translated into English as the word god. Although they two refer to sanely similar supernatural elements, they are by no means indistinguishable to each other. Chinese shen is an abstract term referring to philias and relating to abstract thoughts such as the heavens and the afterlife. In contrast, kami are very often think directly to a person or actual object and are worshiped in a hope for more day-to-day help or this worldly benefits. In order to help explain the relationship amid kami and shen, I will first explore the similarities mingled with the two terms, whence discuss 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 incessantly since ancient times, their meanings ha ve both been expressed in a ace character with no difference being paid to the difference between the two (qtd. in Xiaolin 1). When the Japanese first borrowed the Chinese writing dodge 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 either 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. Honolulu Univ. of Hawaii iron out 1998. Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body. Berkeley Univ. of California Press, 1993.Tanabe, George J. Jr. Introduction Japan. Religions of Asi a 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.