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I agree with Sol Falling.
My understanding of Shintoism is that similar to the Chinese's religion (or Korean). It is a really messy system where almost every element or object to even past heroes were consider to have it's own deity. Simply put, one area's youkai could very well be another area's kami and one area's villain is another area's protector.
In China this leads to creation of Taoism as a religion when originally it was a dominant school of thought similar to Confucianism, except compare to numerous Taoist thinkers being deified, Confucious was the only one from Confucianism. That leads to more Taoist temples and many non-related temples being associated with it and eventually merged.
In any case, the act has become more of a tradition then an actual, consensual believe system that people practices.
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