Despite this optimism, Shinto is probably not a native religion of Japan (since the Japanese were not the original "natives" of Japan), and seems to be an agglomeration of a multitude of diverse and unrelated religions and mythologies. There really is no one thing that can be called "Shinto," since there are a multitude of religious cults that gather beneath this category. The name itself is a bit misleading, for "Shinto" is a combination of two Chinese words meaning "the way of the gods" (shen : "spiritual power, divinity"; tao : "the way or path") and was first used at the beginning of the early modern period. The Japanese word is kannagara: "the way of the kami ." Calling the religion of the early Japanese "Shinto" is a gross and unsupportable anachronism.