When I was little, I found the number oddly specific.

八百万の神 — yaoyorozu no kami — the eight million gods. I remember thinking: who counted them? It sounded both serious and a little funny. A census of the divine.

Only later did I understand that the number was never meant to be exact. 八百万 simply meant countless. It was the ancient Japanese way of saying: more than could ever be named. The gods were not a fixed list. They were everywhere.

A world alive with presence

The belief behind yaoyorozu is not quite what Westerners tend to mean by religion. It is less a system of worship and more a way of seeing — the sense that everything in the world carries a trace of life within it. Mountains, rivers, trees, wind, fire, the ocean. But also smaller things: a well-used tool, an old house, a road that people have walked for generations.

When you grow up surrounded by this way of thinking, it seeps into your habits without announcing itself. You say itadakimasu before eating — not just as a social nicety but as a genuine acknowledgment that something gave its life for this meal. You hesitate before throwing something away. You feel a faint reluctance to treat an old object carelessly, even when you can't quite explain why.

These small instincts are yaoyorozu in daily life. Not worship. Just awareness.

Walking beneath the pines at Izumo

Last autumn I visited Izumo Taisha — the grand shrine in Shimane Prefecture where, according to the old stories, Japan's gods gather each year for their annual meeting. I walked the long approach beneath pine trees that have been there for centuries, and heard the faint sound of waves from the coast nearby.

I thought about the phrase I grew up hearing. Eight million gods — in the trees, in the water, in the stones underfoot. Not as a theological statement. As a feeling. The sense that the world around you is not inert. That it has presence.

Standing at the shrine, that feeling was easy to access. But what I find interesting about yaoyorozu is that it doesn't require a sacred place to make sense. It belongs just as much in an ordinary kitchen, or in the hands of someone who has been using the same broom for thirty years.

Where you still see it

Yaoyorozu runs underneath a great deal of Japanese culture that might not look spiritual on the surface. It is there in mottainai — the reluctance to waste, the respect for the effort and materials in every object. It is there in mono no aware — the quiet feeling that arises when something beautiful passes, the awareness that nothing lasts and that this makes things more worth noticing, not less.

It is also there, very visibly, in the work of Studio Ghibli. The forest spirits in My Neighbor Totoro, the river god in Spirited Away, the ancient deities in Princess Mononoke — these are not invented for the films. They come directly from this older sensibility: the world is full of spirits, and they deserve to be treated with a little care.

Not eight million. Just countless.

What I carry from yaoyorozu is not a belief in literal spirits inhabiting every object. It is something quieter than that — the habit of noticing. Of treating things as if they matter. Of understanding that the tools we use, the food we eat, the spaces we inhabit are not neutral. They are part of a web of connections, most of which we will never fully see.

Eight million was never the point. The point was: more than you can count. More than you can ever fully know. And perhaps that is reason enough to pay attention.

→ If you haven't read the companion post: 神無月・神在月 — The Month the Gods Leave, and Where They Go