 Japan is the land of the kami. Therefore in both our histories and our government administration, we have always given priority to the kami and always placed humans second. In high antiquity, our rulers governed this land exclusively by means of Shinto…, and there was no philosophizing of the sort one finds in Confucian classics and Buddhist writings. (c. 1690, Man’yō daishōki: zassetsu, adapted from SJTa: 395) 