Back in 2019, I was teaching a writing class. These were first year university students. We were doing a comparison activity and one of the topics was for them to compare Amatarasu and Susanoo. To my surprise, many of them were not familiar with these two very prominent gods. Some haven’t even heard of them before.
Now, fast forward to today…the unit was on describing Japanese things to foreigners. Things were going well until I threw in the topic: Amatarasu. My students (senior HS students) literally have never heard of this god before. I even showed them the kanji and images. One student, however, did reference Sasuke from Naruto lol. I’m wondering if I should’ve known better in choosing that topic.
In any case, I’m a bit perplexed because I’m reading articles saying how Shinto is such an intergral part of Japanese people as a whole. And even if Shinto is observed moreso as a tradition rather than a religion, how do they not know Amatarasu? I’m guessing they know more of their local gods? I really don’t know.
Edit: Amaterasu is spelt incorrectly in my post. I want to clarify that I had the romaji spelling correct + showed them the kanji with images.