The One and Only Way is a scholarly study of Yoshida Kanetomo (1435–1511) and the late-medieval remaking of Shintō into a comprehensive framework of truth, ritual authority, and institutional governance. Set against the instability of the late Muromachi period and the devastation of Kyoto during the Ōnin War (1467–1477), the book argues that Kanetomo responded to a collapsing political center by constructing a new sacred center—doctrinally, ritually, and administratively.
Kanetomo’s innovation begins with a naming act: he styles his tradition Yuiitsu (“only-one”) Shintō, also called Sōgen / Genpon Sōgen (“original / fundamental and original”) Shintō, asserting primacy beneath the era’s plural religious ecology. At the heart of his metaphysics is a triadic ontology—kami, rei, and shin—described as a unified existence “prior to heaven and earth,” in which the “myriads of kami” are ultimately one.
Yoshida Kanetomo ReIncarnation …
Shintō is thereby reframed as a Way of Truth (reisei): not merely devotion to kami, but a disciplined method for discerning the “unadulterated, true kami” within a spiritually mixed world.
Yoshida Kanetomo ReIncarnation …
The book shows how these ideas became power through initiation, secret transmission, and especially licensing. Kanetomo’s establishment of the Taigengū Saijōsho (1484) as a ceremonial hub claimed pan-Japanese centrality. His key texts—Yuiitsushintō myōbō yōshū (c.1484) and Shintō taii (1486, requested by Ashikaga Yoshimasa)—made Yoshida doctrine systematic and patron-legible. Finally, Yoshida rank certificates and priestly licenses enabled a practical “Shintō administration” that spread nationwide and endured into the Tokugawa era until Meiji reorganization and category “purification” reframed medieval syntheses as suspect.