Distillation of Shinto — Decision Record

Per-tradition entry point for Plan 010. This README fixes which texts and which translations are distilled, who reviewed the choices, and — most importantly — the non-doctrinal-tradition caveat that governs everything downstream. See the Atlas architecture for the cross-tradition layer and the Theravāda pilot for the exemplar format.

The non-doctrinal caveat (read this first)

Shinto (神道, "the way of the kami") has no founder, no creed, no scripture in the Abrahamic sense, and no systematic ethical code. It is primarily a tradition of narrative myth, ritual practice, and lived observance — matsuri (festival/worship), shrine rites, purification, seasonal and life-cycle ceremonies, and reverence for kami and ancestors. Its "texts" are imperial mytho-histories, not doctrinal treatises; they were compiled (712 and 720 CE) to legitimate the imperial line, not to teach a philosophy.

Consequently this distillation deliberately under-claims:

• It extracts values implicit in the narratives and rites (the sacredness of kami-presence in nature, purity vs pollution, sincerity, reverence for ancestors, communal ritual), not a systematic ethics that the tradition itself does not assert.
• Where the other Plan 010 traditions yield 10–15 principles, Shinto honestly yields fewer (8). Fewer is the correct result, not a defect.
• We do not read later (medieval/State Shinto, Confucian, or Buddhist-syncretic) systematic doctrine back into the eighth-century myths. Distinctions like "purity as moral virtue" are flagged as later interpretive readings, not text-internal claims.
• The single most important thing about Shinto for a cross-tradition atlas may be precisely that it is not propositional — its center of gravity is practice and presence, not belief. That structural fact is itself a finding (see structural-analysis.md).

This honest under-claiming is a deliberate methodological stance, restated in 00-methodology.md.

Tradition

• Slug: shinto
• Tradition / family: Shinto — the indigenous kami-veneration of Japan. Here distilled from its two classical (Nara-period) imperial mytho-histories; not the later medieval, sectarian (Kyōha), or State Shinto developments, which would be separate concerns.
• Primary frame in one sentence: a non-doctrinal way of reverence for kami — the sacred presences pervading nature, ancestors, and place — sustained through purity and sincerity in communal ritual, rather than through creed.

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

Text	Included?	Rationale
Kojiki (古事記, "Records of Ancient Matters," 712 CE)	yes (primary)	The oldest extant Japanese narrative; the foundational kami-myth cycle (creation, Izanagi/Izanami, misogi purification, Amaterasu, the Rock-Dwelling). Bounded, narrative, highest mytho-ritual centrality.
Nihongi / Nihon Shoki (日本書紀, "Chronicles of Japan," 720 CE)	yes (cross-attestation)	The parallel imperial chronicle; its first two books cover the same Age-of-the-Gods myths, often with multiple variant ("in one writing it is said…") tellings. Used to cross-confirm values present in both (an internal N=2 attestation check).
Norito (liturgical prayers, e.g. Engishiki)	noted, not distilled	The clearest ritual (not narrative) layer; would sharpen the purity/sincerity principles but is out of scope for this pass (no fully satisfactory public-domain raw text sourced here). Flagged for a future stage.
Manyōshū, later sectarian/State Shinto texts	excluded	Out of period and scope.

• Full-canon commitment: Shinto has no closed canon. This pass distils the key Age-of-the-Gods sections of the Kojiki (Preface + Sections 1–18: creation through the Eight-Forked Serpent) with Nihongi cross-attestation. Later regnal chronicle sections are largely genealogical/annalistic and principle-thin; they are noted, not exhaustively distilled.

Translation policy

• Kojiki: Basil Hall Chamberlain, Ko-ji-ki, or Records of Ancient Matters, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. X supplement (Yokohama, 1882). Public domain. Text via English Wikisource — Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882) (Preface; Sections 1–18), itself transcribed from the 1882 edition.
• Nihongi: W. G. Aston, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, Japan Society of London (1896). Public domain. Text via archive.org nihongi1asto (Book I, the Age of the Gods).
• Why these translations: both are the standard scholarly public-domain English translations, complete and unambiguously out of copyright. Caveat: Chamberlain's 1882 diction renders kami uniformly as "Deity" and renders the long descriptive god-names literally (e.g. Amaterasu → "the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity"); his rendering can over-translate a kami into a Western "deity." Aston's parallel renderings preserve the Japanese names (Izanagi, Ama-terasu). Where the translation carries interpretive weight, the Japanese term is noted.
• Untranslatable terms to preserve: kami, makoto, kegare, tsumi, harae / misogi, musubi, matsuri, Takama-no-hara, Yomi. (See 00-methodology.md.)
• Quote accuracy: working quotes are from the Wikisource/archive.org plain text and OCR (Nihongi); final character-for-character verification against the printed 1882/1896 editions is a Phase 7 audit task. All quotes herein are marked pending Phase 7 audit.

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" — doubly so given the non-doctrinal caveat: imposing any propositional principle structure on a practice-centred tradition is already an outsider's move, owned here explicitly. The reviewer gap is flagged; the tradition stays in scope per the Plan 010 policy.

Structure for this tradition

• N=1 unit ("books/"): a myth-cycle segment of the Kojiki (one or more contiguous Sections), files books/NN-<title>.md; verses cited as Kojiki Sect. <n> and cross-attested as Nihongi I (Aston).
• Internal N=2 layer?: handled informally — Kojiki and Nihongi are treated as two attestations of the same myth, and a value present in both is noted as cross-attested (a within-tradition robustness signal, not the Atlas's cross-tradition D-diversity).
• Sensitivity boundaries: the myths contain a gendered marriage-ordering motif (the male kami must speak first) and graphic birth/death imagery. These are reported faithfully and flagged as culturally-situated narrative, not extracted as normative family principles.

Files

File	Status
00-methodology.md	done
books/00-index.md	done
books/01..05 (N=1)	done — Kojiki Preface + Sects. 1–18, Nihongi I cross-attestation
principles-distillation.md (N=3)	done — 8 core principles (honestly fewer)
structural-analysis.md	done
compass-shinto.md	done

References

• Plan 010 · Atlas architecture · Methodology v2 · Distillation guides · Theravāda exemplar