ISE SHINTO

also called Watarai Shinto, school of Shinto established by priests of the Watarai family who served at the Outer Shrine of the Ise Shrine (Ise-jingu). Ise Shinto establishes purity and honesty as the highest virtues, realizable through religious experience. The school began in the Kamakura period (11921333) as an attempt to emancipate Shinto from the domination of Buddhist thought (for example, it reversed the Buddhist teaching of the period and declared that the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, or Buddhas-to-be, were manifestations of Shinto kami). Later, Confucian elements were added. The theology of Ise Shint o was summarized in a five-volume apologia, the Shinto gobusho, which appeared in the 13th century.