Robyn Lebron The period between eighth and ninth centuries hosted many changes to the country, government, and religion There emerged tendencies to interpret Shintō from a Buddhist viewpoint The process of blending Buddhism with Shintō progressed uninterrupted One notable example is a syncretic movement that combined Shintō with the teachings of Shingon Buddhism This school believed that Shintō deities were manifestations of the Buddhist divinities The Shintō Sun Goddess ǡfor example, was identified with (the Great Sun Buddha).12 Bodhisattva names were given to kami, and Buddhist statues were placed even in the inner sanctuaries of Shintō shrines In some cases, Buddhist priests were in charge of the management of Shintō shrines By the ninth century ad, the distinctions between Shintō and the foreign religions began to fade into something of a syncretistic union Along with other foreign influences and cultural forms, they were, in a sense, Japanized The Japanese began to see the normal activities of day-to-day life as being the domain of Shintō, while the concerns of the afterlife were served by Buddhism During the Kamakura Period (1185–1333), power shifted from the isolated centrality of the royal court to the military-based government ruled over by a shogun (military leader) This is also the period of the (meaning “to serve”), the elite warrior class who pledged themselves to the service of a (“great name,”) a regional feudal landholder who served beneath a ) “Shintō was emancipated to some degree from Buddhist domination by Japan’s new military dictators (the Kamakura shogunate), and Shintō groups themselves proclaimed that Shintō divinities were not incarnations of the Buddha, but rather that Buddha himself was a manifestation of the Shintō deities.”13 A significant event in this historical period was the (“divine wind”): the storms that repelled the Mongol invaders from the western coast of Japan in 1274 and 1281 These miraculous events added credence to the assertion that divine spirits were indeed protecting the Japanese land and were Shintō kami and not Buddhist spirits In 1603, the Tokugawa shogunate was founded in Edo (Tokyo), and contact between Shintō and Confucianism was resumed after almost ~ 288 ~