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The Shinto present
The place of Shinto in the religious scene of contemporary Japan as a vibrant,
independent and coherent religion would seem self-evident. Shrines, the
concrete symbols of Shinto, dot the landscape of urban and rural japan.!
Shinto shrines, with their distinctive torii gates and shimenawa ropes can be
discreet, nestled in wooded precincts, or tucked away behind rows of shops;
they can also be more imposing, defining the landscape in which they are set.
The ancient shrines at Ise and Izumo and more modern creations like the Meiji
and Yasukuni shrines in Tokyo are examples of the latter type. The material
symbols which such shrines have in common, and which distinguish them
from other religious structures, like those of Buddhism, say, attest to a shared
heritage. Shrine priests across Japan are distinguished from Buddhist monks,
other religious figures and the laity, by black eboshi hats, garments of white silk,
and the shaku, a wooden implement priests carryon ceremonial occasions. It is
evident, then, to even the most casual observer that Japan's }OO,OOO or so
;>hriI1~~~ and their a!!~lld@.!..ri~i?1J.._do indeed belong to one and the same
tradition. The organisaeional structure one would expect of an independent
and coherent religion is apparent, too. Some 75% of the nation's shr0~.sand
priests belong tolinja Honc~~,.~_~~Cl:r:~~a~l~organisation based in T~yo. The
majority of the remainder of shrines are dedicated to the rice delty,Inari, and
are affiliated to the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto. There are also two
institutions that train men and women from all over Japan for the shrine
priesthood: Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and Kogakkan University in Ise.
Again, there is manifest the uniformity of practice to be expected of a
coherent and distinct religious tradition: from participants' \VClshi~~L~Lh_ands
~~_()f.mo~t~son passing under the torii, through the casting of coins
and ringing of the deity-summoning bell (suzu), to the clapping of hands and
bowing of heads as greeting to the kami deities. Events in the annual and life
cycles provide the main structures for such shrine practice. Shrines have their
own special 'feast days' to mark founding and other unique events, but there is,
for the rest, a striking synchronicity amongst shrines throughout Japan: New
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Map of Japan
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Year, the Dolls' festival in March (hinamatsuri), children's day in May (tango no
sekku), the tanabata and bon festivals in July and the autumn harvest festival,
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hand, 2 and local shrines and the practices and beliefs of ordinary Japanese who
venerate there, on the other.
There is further, striking evidence of a dislocation between image and
reality, between what are central and local agendas. The Shinto establishment
lays claim to some 110 million Shinto practitioners, a figure which corresponds
to some ninety percent of the population of Japan. This statistic is reproduced
annually in government surveys on religious affiliation. Yet all the indications
are that 'Shinto' - as opposed to, say, jinja or kami - has no meaning at all for
the vast majority of Japanese, regardless of generation. Japanese attend shrines
and beseech kami at festivals and on other occasions, too, but they have no
awareness that their practice constitutes something called 'Shinto,' or that they
themselves are 'Shintoist.' They certainly do not, themselves, profess affiliation
to the Shinto religion. The stri~!!1g,Jlt!.ti1ic. it turns out, is 9.btai!1~.9Jrrihe
~vernI!1~Ilt's Office for. Ci.tli:;:;;al Affairs. (Bun.k.acho) asking shrine priests to
su1?mit.paJishioner numbers; these figures themselves are obtained from local
~!2111ent population registers.
These slippages suggest that there is an obvious case for deploying the term
'Shinto' with very considerable caution in discussions of contemporary
Japanese religiosity. We argue that it is vital to distinguish between shrine
cults - the reality of those multifarious activities and beliefs that are manifest
in shrines both local and central - and 'Shinto' - the ideological agenda of the
establishment, rooted especially though certainly not uniquely, in reverence
for, or at least identification with, the imperial institution. There is, of course,
no denying the continuities across shrines, from the smallest rural shrine to
that of the imperial ancestress in Ise, in terms of symbols, practices and,
indeed, beliefs - at least at a basic level. And yet it remains that these
continuities fail conspicuously to converge with the establishment's articula
tion of Shinto. We clearly overlook this slippage, these tensions and,
contradictions, at our peril. 'Shinto' is not, then, in any obvious sense, what
contemporary Japanese 'do at shrines,' nor what they think before the kami,
since it is not what they themselves understand that they do and think; Shinto
is, rather, what the contemporary establishment and its spokesmen would have
them think and do.
The main focus of our concern in this book is Shinto in history, not in the
present, but any historical exploration might usefully begin with an awareness
that the contemporary dislocation between centre and periphery, image and
reality, is not a new phenomenon; it is a contemporary manifestation of an age
old dimension to the problem of Shinto present and past.
all of which draw many contemporary Japanese to shrines. Likewise, the birth
of a child, special (November) ceremonies in a child's third, fifth and seventh
years, coming-of-age ceremonies (on 15 January), and weddings, too, provide
opportunities for shrines, their priests and parishioners all over Japan to engage
in the practice of what we now know as 'Shinto.'
To the extent that such practice is sustained by any sort of 'theology' at all,
and not simply by a need to confirm and strengthen family, communal or even
national ties, it is apparently a straightforward and simple one: the kami,
whatever their identity and provenance, will, when addressed with correct
etiquette, appropriate prayers and adequate offerings, deign to confer blessings
on the supplicant. l~\,ariably.the blessings sought and won are of a this
worldly variety: success in exams, recovery from sickness, longevity, the
flourishing of a business, a happy marriage or an easy birth are typical
examples.
Yet anotherdimension of Shi!!!o is s1.!ggested by the typical location of
shrines -rnthe hea~t'of the natu~~l environment, at the feet, or on the summits
of mountains, backed up ag~;~st~ed'~~pses, in the vicinity of waterfalls.
Shrine practice invests inmountains, trees, rocks and other natural phenomena
~ sa~~ed q~~lity~~d'i4~~ti~~~jherrias-th~d~eiirrigplaces of kami deities.
These facts point up a defining relationship between Shinto and nature;'wn"lch
is everywhere underscored and articulated in the available literature on Shinto
in Western languages. The same literature points to still another dimension of
Shinto thought and ritual, much l~ss~yid~Jlt!()_ thecasual observer: the
c~!1!L'!lity,oJ th~jrp."peri,~Unstitutio!l~ We are told that;rnperi~l~yths,s~--;;-ha-;
those articulated in the eighth century Kojiki and Nihon shoki, rites, such as the
Daijosai enthronement, and imperial deities, foremost among whom is
Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, and imperial shrines, like that of Amaterasu
in Ise, constitute Shinto's most holy texts and practices, its central deities and
most sacred places. A cursory exploration of imperial ritual in contemporary
Japan - the enthronement rituals for the present emperor, Akihito, say - is
sufficient to confirm that it does indeed share key symbols with local shrine
cults. From the involvement of ritualists clad in eboshi and white silk garb, to
the emperor's veneration of Amaterasu both in the palace and subsequently,
too, at Ise, the symbolic commonality is evident.
It is here, in the literature on the centrality of the imperial institution in
Shinto, that we stumble upon a suggestive anomaly. For, despite the evident,
and significant,..'<:.?E1~~ality _on the.Emboli~J~:-:el, there i-;-noe~T.4~~~~~t_~l
that such shrine pra<:ticeE'_~nd kami beliefs as ar~_comE:?-r:..~r:2~r::~_theJa.pan_e~e
today are dominated by, or even <:onsCi9!!1)C related to, imperial themes. Still
less are l()faLpH.<:ti<;;~Lilnc!.~liefssustailledh belief. in, or eve~_0flmate
acquaintance with, im'peri~L pra<:tices and beliefs. The slippage here is that
between ~ ;el{.c~~-ci~usly 'Shinto' establishment and the national, not to say
nationalistic, agenda professed by the majority of its members on the one
Contrary to the claims of some, then, the state formalisation of kami rituals
and the state ranking of shrines during the Heian period (794-1185) did not
mark Shinto's emergence as an 'independent' indigenous religion; indeed, these
developments coincided precisely with new theological formulations that
sought to explain kami in Buddhist terms, defining the kami as 'transforma
tions .of the Buddhas manifested in Japan to save all sentient beings.U!
Kuroda's crit~of the religious _sjtuation.jI!.----l2IT~1i~~'illJill2_an i~.}!lQre
Er-~;~ative still. ,'hiIl!Q.'JIlits .earli~st uS,age ill' s<lY,.!.he_~i~on S~?~i"y.'as, he
insists. a ref~I!~io.!_~ome indigenous creed at allbut, rather, (or Taoism.
The characters read as 'Shinto' in Japanese were used in eighth century China
to mean Taoism, and it would have been natural for Japanese to use the same
term in the same way. 'Teachings, rituals and even the concepts of imperial
authority' __ -everything from the veneration of swords and mirrors to ~elig~~~s
titles'an,l th~ physical structure of the most sac~ed' shrliieonse'~
s'pring
from T~ois'~; so, too, were local beliefs defin~d by Ta-;;ist infi~~~~~.ITTa(;lsm
~tally--p~r~aded early Japan's religious milieu, obliterating what indigenous
practices may have existed prior to that foreign creed's advent. 'Shinto,' in its
earliest known usage, was then nothing but a Chinese cultural import.J''
The new enthusiasm for the study of Shinto in academic circles outside
Japan is due, in no small degree, to Kuroda's ground-breaking contribution.!"
For all its incisiveness, however, Kuroda's approach is itself not problem-free.
It leaves us with a portrayal of Japanese religious history potentially as devoid
of dynamism as that of Hirai and the Shinto establishment. Hirai posits Shin..!o
~sthe.s.E::~le.~..u~~:~1.igj()U~jlLst:9.ric~!jJack<i~_<lg?-inst which all religiCl~s
pbenomena including Buddhism are subtly transformed even as they were
~ffortl~~sry--;;,~commodated. Kuroda, in his turn,'accords-f()1)uaaIilsIil'a
function not altogether dissimilar: Buddhism is the over-arching, defining
influence within which all other religious phenomena were transformed in
time, even 'to the point of obliteration.t-f Kuroda disassembles the construct of
a continuous Shinto tradition, stating that it is 'no more than a ghost image
produced by a word linking together unrelated phenomena.T'' but in the
process he comes very close to writing out of Japanese history not only 'Shinto,'
but shrines, their priests, kami and distinctive religious practices as well. Pace
Kuroda, it is vital that we remember that many shrines, priestly lineages, kami
beliefs and rites do display a remarkable degree of continuity over very long
periods of time. There is similarly a striking degree of continuity over time in
the imperial institution: its symbols, myths, and some of its rites. It is
incumbent on us to explore these continuities and their inter-relationship
further.
With regard to the former, the symbols of torii .~!lcl ..shimena.!Y.r!,2E~f
verifiably ancient pedigree; so!__~gain, is 10<:a.L~h~i!l~""p!.acti~~
belief
unquestionably ancient, at least i-;;--such basic terms as the supplicant's
recognition of the need for purification before supplication, say, or the
summoning of kami by hand-clapping, and the propitiation of the kami,
whatever their provenance, for benefits of a this-worldly nature. The
an.
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The classical period is covered by four essays. Tim Barrett discusses the
profound formative influence of Taoism on Shinto in early Japan. Barrett
provides abundant historical examples of the relationship between Shinto and
Taoism during this early period, and gives special attention to the adoption in
Japan of the imperial title of tenn6 (Ch. tianhuang), its background, and its
religious and political implications. Sonoda Minoru focuses on the relationship
between shrine cults and nature mentioned above as one of the enduring traits
of kami cults. His essay explores the ritual means by which early Japanese
transformed their natural surroundings into a cultural landscape, infused with
imperial ritual, and continue to do so to this day; they have penetrated deeply
into the ritual and theology of Japanese Buddhism; and finally, they have
inspired a range of theological constructs, which are generally brought together
under the term 'Shinto.' The ideological agenda of the modern Shinto
establishment, that we define as 'rooted ... in reverence for, or at least
identification with, the imperial institution,' is but one in a long succession of
such theologies. Already in the fifteenth century, Yoshida Kanetomo identified
three different categories of 'Shinto,' each with a radically different agenda.
This 'establishment view,' which, as demonstrated by the essays of Isomae
jun'ichi, Nitta Hitoshi, and others in this volume, was itself the product of
very specific historical circumstances, imposes on all kami cults an hierarchical
blueprint which categorises all kami-related phenomena (in order of
diminishing importance) as constituting, leading to, or branching off from a
single 'Way of the Kami.' It is as an alternative to this view that we propose a
multiplicity of 'Ways of the Kami,' each grown out of different historical and
social circumstances, and each wIth its~~n -;i-t-~i and theological agenda. Such
an approach promises not -;-r;ryto(;p~ our eyes to aspects ofkaffiicults and
Shinto traditions that have previously been ignored, but also to throw new light
on the rituals, beliefs and ideas of such cults and traditions that have been
studied only through the lens of the above-mentioned notion that they,
ultimately, formed part of a single 'Way of the Kami.'
It is only recently (and largely under the influence of Kuroda's work), that
scholars have begun to look beyond the'establishment view' of Shinto and the
kami. For the most part, moreover, their studies are confined to specialist
journals, and have yet to leave their imprint on the general understanding,
inside Japan and out, of Japanese religions. The aim of this volume is to bring
together in an accessible fashion a number of essays on Shinto and the kami
that explore some of the issues raised above. The essays included in this book
deal with kami and Shinto-related subjects ranging from the beginning of the
historical period (the seventh century), until, roughly, 1945. Regrettably, lack
of space precludes us from doing justice to two important themes: the growth
and development of so-called 'sect Shinto' in pre-war Japan; and the complex
dynamics of Shinto issues in the post-war period. We hope that there will be an
opportunity to address these themes in separate volumes.