Customer Reviews

Shinto Norito: A Book of Prayers

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a wonderful find! I bought the book wanting to understand more about Shinto beliefs, and I got even more than I expected. The introduction explained the basics. The translation of the prayers is really beautiful. And I also found I could pronounce the Japanese (I can't read or speak any Japanese!) by reading the "romaji"--the Japanese pronunciation written in English letters.

I've started chanting a couple of the prayers every morning--it is really calming and starts my day out great.

This book is a "must" for anyone interested in Shinto.

It's rare that I find my questions fully answered in one book. This is the book that tells me more than I knew to ask about how to practice Shinto. I speak with humility and respect when I say, thank you, Ann Llewelyn Evans. With a profound bow.

My opinion is that this book is not an empty academic book that show the Shinto as in religion's history book. In this book we have an idea of the heart of Shinto, of the practice of Shinto, of the Shinto as felt by who practice it. This book contain also very important translations of Norito

I picked up a copy of this book while visiting the Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America in Granite Falls, WA. I was incredibly impressed with how the author explained the various terminologies, the Shinto appreciation of Nature and the Kami offering a greater understanding to the beautiful ritual we had witnessed by Reverend Barrish. The lovely translations of the beloved Shinto prayers were an added and unexpected bonus.

A good compilation of the prayers of Shinto with transliteration however, with no pronouncing guide (and Japanese can be a bit tricky...)
There is a web site listed for those who want to hear the prayers however, it is now run by a por site and it is not reccommended that you go to that site.
The supposed cd that one can purchase seems to be no longer available...
So much for Shinto in the US and Canada...

This book is exactly what the title says. It is a book of Shinto norito, or prayers.

The book begins by giving some basic understanding of the practice of Shinto. My favorite section is actually the Appendices, which give some descriptions of how to pray, the bowing and the clapping, etc. Also, describes how offerings are set out.

One thing I wish the book did was to describe or show diagrammatically, voice inflections in the prayers. Given that the sound of the words are so important in Shinto prayers, I would think that inflection would be important too, and I saw no discussion of this. If it's pronounced in a monotone manner, I'd like to at least know that. But, that's my personal feeling. Maybe I should see if I can find some audio clips to get a better idea of how Shinto prayers are chanted.

Back to the review, this is very much a non-academic book and the discussion of Shinto itself is pretty minimal. I don't feel I learned a tremendous amout about Shinto here. But then, as the title says, this is a book of prayers, which is exactly what I wanted and was expecting, and I'm glad I found it.

I got the Kindle edition of this book. The section with the prayers were very difficult to readon the Kindle. Looks like someone scanned the pages--the print of the prayers was much smaller than the print of the introduction. Because this is not the fault of the book itself, I still gave it 4 stars because the readable content was educational--gave me more information on the Shinto religion than I could get elsewhere.

The author was correct, at least in my experience, that a lot of the information on Shintoism is still in Japanese form of writing (kanji/hiragana) and would be daunting for a regular person like myself to tackle. Shintoism is the belief that everything has a spirit and we need to live in harmony with everything. Rocks, trees, etc all have spirits and are important to life. Each of us has part of the god (kami). The Shinto prayers and rituals are one way of connecting to the Divine spirit within.

I will re-read this book on my laptop, using Kindle for PC. Hopefully, the content of the prayers will be legible and then I will update this review.