It is to be remembered, of course, that the Japanese word for gods, Kami, does not imply, any more than did the old Latin term, dii-manes, ideas like those which have become associated with the modern notion of divinity.
The Japanese term might be more closely rendered by some such expression as "the Superiors, " the Higher Ones";
and it was formerly applied to living rulers as well as to deities and ghosts. But it implies considerably more than the idea of a disembodied spirit; for, according to old Shinto teaching the dead became world-rulers.
They were the cause of all natural events, of winds, rains, and tides, of buddings and ripenings, of growth and decay, of everything desirable or dreadful. They formed a kind of subtler element, an ancestral aether, universally extending and unceasingly operating.
─Lafcadio Hearn《Japan: An Atteempt at interpretation》
日本的「神」這個字，用「尊長」(The Superiors)、「高貴的人們」(The Higher Ones)等語來表現，也許更恰當。
事實上，這字過去既用來代表鬼神，但同樣也用來代表現實的統治者。不過，這字含有的意義，還遠在「離開了肉體的靈」這個觀念以上，因為根據古神道的教，人死則變成世界的統治者。
所有死人都是自然界的事件的原因。風雨、潮流、發芽、成熟、發育、衰減，使人快樂的事情，可怕的事情，以及其他一切原因，都在於死人。他們死人成為一種精妙的元素─從祖先傳得的精氣─遍存於宇宙之中，不斷的活動著。
─小泉八雲《神國日本》
言葉
Reli
and it was formerly applied to living rulers as well as to deities and ghosts. But it implies considerably more than the idea of a disembodied spirit; for, according to old Shinto teaching the dead became world-rulers.
─Lafcadio Hearn《Japan: An Atteempt at interpretation》