Who was Yoshida Shinto?

Answer 1

Yui-itsu Shinto (means 'Unique, peerless Shinto' ) was a monastic lineage which emerged within the Yoshida family, who had an important and influential role as advisors to the imperial family from the Heian period (794-1185CE) onwards. The ideas of Yui-itsu Shinto were mainly formulated by the scholar-priest Yoshida Kanetomo (1435-1511) and incorporated Shingon and Tendai Buddhist ideas about kami, Chinese Yin-Yang and Five Elements cosmology drawn from Taoism and Confucianism, and Shingon-style esoteric rituals. The most significant of Kanetomo's achievements was to secure for the Yoshida clan the right to award ranks to the deities of local shrines, to regulate their rituals and to confer priestly status on applicants.

The lineage was successfully developed at the Yoshida shrine in Kyoto, a powerful shrine dedicated to the ancestors of the courtly Fujiwara family, by Kanetomo's able successor Yoshida Kanemigi (1516-1573). Yui-itsu Shinto ideas continued to be influential until the early nineteenth century when they began to be overtaken by various strands of the kokugaku (national learning) and fukko Shinto (restoration Shinto) movements. The Yoshida's right to confer shrine ranks, which made them the single most powerful influence in the development of shrine Shinto during the Tokugawa period, lasted until the Meiji restoration in 1868 when a centralised government shrine-ranking system was inaugurated.