Within Shinto, the narratives and cosmology preserved in the Nihon Shoki quietly undergird many of the most important rites, even when the text itself is not named. Imperial ceremonies such as the Daijōsai and the Niinamesai are framed by the chronicle’s presentation of the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu and by its accounts of imperial succession and the heavenly descent. These rites of enthronement and first-fruits offering thus function as ritual affirmations of a sacred genealogy and a divinely ordered political cosmos, rather than as mere court protocol. At Ise Grand Shrine, dedicated to Amaterasu, rituals like the offering of new rice and the periodic rebuilding of the shrine resonate with the Nihon Shoki’s portrayal of Amaterasu as the imperial ancestress and central solar deity. In this way, the chronicle’s mythic history becomes a kind of invisible script that gives these ceremonies their theological depth and symbolic coherence.

The same pattern appears in shrine festivals and sacred performances. Major shrines associated with deities prominent in the Nihon Shoki—such as those linked to Amaterasu, Ōkuninushi, or the Sumiyoshi deities—shape their ritual calendars and matsuri around episodes the chronicle preserves most clearly. Kagura and other sacred dances often evoke mythic scenes like the gathering of the kami at the heavenly rock cave, allowing participants to step into the narrative space described in the text. Norito, the formal ritual prayers, frequently invoke kami and allude to mythological events as ordered in the chronicle, so that spoken liturgy and written myth mirror one another. In many local and seasonal festivals, offerings, processions, and performances subtly echo the divine genealogies and sacred precedents that the Nihon Shoki systematizes.

Purification rites reveal another dimension of this relationship between text and practice. Misogi, purification by water, and broader harae ceremonies draw on the creation myths and the account of Izanagi’s cleansing after his return from Yomi, as narrated in the chronicle. Concepts of pollution, restoration, and the re-establishment of harmony with the kami are thus not abstract doctrines but lived re-enactments of primordial acts. Some rites explicitly invoke deities named in the Nihon Shoki, seeking to realign human communities with the divine order established in the mythic age. Even ancestor veneration and the honoring of ujigami, or clan deities, rest upon genealogical frameworks that the chronicle articulates, allowing families, clans, and the imperial house alike to situate their rituals within a shared sacred history.

Taken together, these practices suggest that the Nihon Shoki functions less as a book to be quoted and more as a deep narrative reservoir from which Shinto ritual life continually draws. Imperial enthronements, harvest festivals, shrine consecrations, seasonal observances, and daily acts of purification all gain a particular color and contour from its cosmology. The chronicle offers a map of relationships—between heaven and earth, kami and humans, ruler and land—that ritual action then traces and retraces over time. In this sense, Shinto practice can be seen as an ongoing, embodied commentary on the Nihon Shoki, giving flesh and movement to stories that might otherwise remain only ink on a page.