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1.) Originally Shinto was a polytheistic, tribal religion that originated somewhere among the peoples of Korea and Mongolia brought to Japan during the Yayoi period by migrants from the mainland and combined, possibly, with aspects of the religion of the indigenous peoples living there. Since writing doesn't appear in Japan until Chinese culture is imported into Japan, we know very little about this original form of Shinto.
2.) Shinto during most of Japanese history was combined with other religions and world views. When Chinese culture is imported, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and the Yin-Yang or Five Agents school were all embraced by the Japanese while still holding onto their indigenous religion. Gradually Japanese Buddhists began to incorporate Shinto rituals and festivals into their practices. In 768, the greatest and most sacred Shinto shrine at Ise also became a Buddhist temple; eventually most Shinto shrines would be overseen by Buddhist monks or priests. Buddhism and Shinto would come to be regarded as equivalent religions, so each one took on aspects of the other. This union was called Ryobu Shinto , or "Dual Shinto, and was made possible by a doctrine called honji suijaku , which means "original substance manifests traces." The gods of Shinto were regarded as "traces" of Buddha, that is, they were avatars of the various bodhisattvas, or previous incarnations of the Buddha. From that point onwards, Shinto would incorporate many of the ceremonies, spells, and teachings of Shingon, or True Words, Buddhism.
3.) During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), when Japan enjoyed a long and unprecedented respite from civil war, a group of scholars began to study what they called kokugaku, which roughly translated means something like "Native Studies," or "Nativism," or, less accurately, "Japanese Studies." The kokugakushu set about the task of recovering what they thought to be original Japanese culture from all the foreign accretions—Chinese and European—that had built up over that original Japanese culture. The central object of their study was Shinto as the original religion of Japan. These scholars methodically chipped away the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian elements from Shinto to arrive at what they believed to be the central element of Japanese culture. This Shinto is unquestionably different from the original, mainly because the kokugakushu were trying to invent a national religion out of what was originally a tribal one, trying to unify what was originally fragmented.
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Shinto, has three distinct historical forms:
