Shinto, or the 'Path of the Gods,' is the name by which we distinguish the body of our national belief from Buddhism, Christianity, or any other form of religion. It is remarkable that this appellation, like Nippon (which corresponds to your word Japan), is no purely Japanese term. Buddhism is called Buppô (from _Butsu_, Buddha, and _hô_, doctrine) or Bukkyô (_kyô_, teaching); Confucianism is known as Jukyô (_Ju_, literati); and both terms are taken from the Chinese. In keeping with these we have Shinto (_Shin_, deity, and _to_, way). This state of things in some measure explains the rather unstable condition in which Buddhism on its first arrival found our national cult. It has ever since remained in its main aspects nothing more than a form of ancestor-worship based on the central belief in the divine origin of the imperial line. A systematised creed it never was and has never become, even if we take into consideration the attempts at its consolidation made by such scholars as Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the middle of the seventeenth century tried to formalise it in accordance with Chu-Hsi's philosophy, or, later still, by such eager revivalists as Hirata-Atsutane (1776-1843), etc. At the time when Shintoism had to meet its mighty foe from India, its whole mechanism was very simple. It consisted in a number of primitive rites, such as the recital of the liturgy, the offering of eatables to the departed spirits of deified ancestors, patriarchal, tribal, or national. This naïve cult was as innocent of the cunning ideas and subtle formalisms of the rival creed as its shrines were free from the decorations and equipments of an Indian temple. So, although at the start Buddhism met with some obstinate resistance at the hand of the Shintoists, who attributed the visitations of pestilence that followed the introduction of the foreign belief to the anger of the native gods, its superiority in organisation soon overcame these difficulties; especially from the time when the great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious but mischievous idea of solving the dilemma by the establishment of what is generally known in our history as Ryôbu-Shinto, or double-faced Shinto. According to this doctrine, a Shinto god was to be regarded as an incarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, who made his appearance in Japan through metamorphosis for Japan's better salvation--a doctrine which is no more than a clever application of the notion known in India as Nirmanakâya. This incarnation theory opened a new era in the history of the expansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending over a period of eleven centuries, during which Shintoism was placed in a very awkward position. It was at last restored to its original purity at the beginning of the present Meiji period, and that only after a century of determined endeavour on the part of native Shintoist scholars.