Kanetomo Yoshida was a Shinto leader of the Muromachi period.
Background
Kanetomo Yoshida was born in 1435. The Yoshida family originally bore the name Urabe and served the court as diviners and advisors on the on'yo, or yin-yang, system of thought. Their position at court was rather low, but after they became priests of the Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto, which was dedicated to the patron deity of the Fujiwara family, their status improved, and by Kanetomo’s time they occupied a place of considerable importance at court.
Career
With the decline in the power of the court nobility that had taken place at this period, however, it was no easy matter to provide for the operation and upkeep of a religious establishment such as the Yoshida Shrine, and Kanetomo accordingly took steps to improve the shrine’s position. Shinto beliefs at this time were closely interwoven with those of Buddhism, while the Shinto pantheon, with its yaoyorozu no kami, “myriads of gods,” lacked any form or hierarchical organization. Kanetomo set out to create a new type of Shinto, known as Yuitsu (Unitarian) Shinto, in which the earlier Shinto and Buddhist beliefs were combined with elements borrowed from the Yin-yang and Five Elements cosmological systems of ancient Chinese philosophy, and stress was placed upon the unity rather than the diversity of the pantheon. Kanetomo’s ambition was to gather all of the gods of Japan into a single shrine on the top of Mt. Yoshida, but when he announced in 1489 that the deity of the Ise Shrine, one of the most sacred in all Japan, had transferred its presence to the Yoshida Shrine, he was vigorously attacked by the priests of the Ise Shrine, and his efforts ended in failure.
He did succeed, however, in winning recognition of the right of the Yoshida Shrine to assign ranks to the deities of the various local shrines.
Personality
Kanetomo was a thinker as well as a religious leader and wrote several works on Shinto beliefs and practices, attempting to organize the religion on a nationwide scale. The school of Shinto that he founded is also called Yoshida Shinto in recognition of Kanetomo’s role in its creation.