Shinbutsu shūgō

nihongo|Shinbutsu shūgō|神仏習合 literally "fusion of "kami" and buddhas" (also called nihongo|"Shinbutsu konkō"|神仏混淆, term which however has a negative connotation) is the Japanese syncretism of Buddhism and local religious beliefs. When Buddhism was introduced through China in the late Yamato period (6th century), rather than discard the old belief system the Japanese tried to reconcile it with the new, assuming both were true. As a consequence, Buddhist temples (寺, tera) were attached to local deity shrines (神社, jinja) and viceversa and devoted to both kami and Buddha. The depth of the resulting influence of Buddhism on the local religion can be seen for example in the fact that the type of shrine we see today, with a large worship hall and images, is itself of Buddhist originTamura, page 21] .

The assimilation of Buddhism

The relationship between Buddhism and Shinto in Japan is so deep and complex that at least two distinct and mutually exclusive views exist on the subject, and this is the root of a discussion that hasn't yet come to a conclusion.

*On the one hand, the Shinto establishment states that Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan and that it has existed as such continuously since pre-history. Shinto consists of all the peculiarly Japanese rituals and beliefs shaped by Japanese history from prehistory to the present. The term "Shinto" itself was coined in the 6th century to differentiate the loosely organized local religion from imported BuddhismKitagawa (1987:139)] . This is the concept normally accepted by both society and traditional historians.

*On the other one finds the position of Japanese specialist Toshio Kuroda (and his supporters) who, in a famous article ("Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion," published in English in 1981) has argued that Shinto as an independent religion was born only in the modern period after emerging in the Middle Ages as an offshoot of BuddhismBreen and Teuween in "Breen and Teuween" (2000:4-5)] [Rambelli (2001)] . Kuroda's main argument is that Shinto as a distinct religion is a Meiji era invention of Japanese nationalist ideologues (see the next section). He points out how the state formalization of kami rituals and the state ranking of shrines during the Heian period were not the emergence of Shinto as an independent religion, but an effort to explain local beliefs in Buddhist terms. He also says that, if it's true that the two characters for "Shinto" appear very early in the historical record, for example in the Nihon Shoki, this doesn't mean today's Shinto already existed as a religion because they were originally used as a name for Taoism or even for religion in general. Indeed, according to Kuroda many features of Shinto, for example the worshiping of mirrors and swords or the very structure of Ise Shrine (Shinto's holiest and most important site) are typical of Taoism. The term Shinto in old texts therefore does not necessarily indicate something uniquely JapaneseKuroda (1981:7)]

According to the first view, then, the two religions were at the time of their first meeting already formed and independent and thereafter just coexisted with non-essential exchanges while, according to the second, Buddhism, meeting local beliefs in Japan, actually produced today's Shinto.

In either case, it can be said that the fusion of Buddhism with the local kami started as soon as the first arrived in Japan, as proven by Mononobe no Okoshi's statement that:

The kami of our land will be offended if we worship a foreign "kami" Tamura, pages 26 to 33.]

In other words, Mononobe saw Buddha as just another "kami", and not as a different kind of God possibly different in nature from his own. Other documents of the period refer to Buddha as "the Buddha "kami". Initially therefore the conflict between the two religions was political, and not religious, in nature, a struggle between the progressive Soga clan, that wanted a more international outlook for the country, and the conservative Mononobe clan, that wanted the contrary. The first articulation of the difference between Japanese religious ideas and Buddhism, and the first effort to reconcile the two is attributed to Prince Shōtoku (574 - 622).

The process of amalgamation is usually divided in three stagesMark Teuween in "Breen and Teuween" (2000:95-96)] .

The first signs that the differences between the two world views were beginning to become manifest to the Japanese in general appear at the time of Emperor Temmu (673 - 86). Accordingly, one of the first efforts to reconcile Shinto and Buddhism was made in the eight century during the Nara period founding so-called nihongo|"junguji"|神宮寺, that is "shrine-temples"Satō Makoto] . Behind the inclusion in a Shinto shrine of Buddhist religious objects was the idea that the "kami" were lost beings in need of liberation through the power of Buddha. The building of temples at shrines produced temple-shrine complexes, which in turn accelerated the amalgamation process.

At the end of the same century, in what is considered the second stage of the amalgamation, the "kami" Hachiman was declared to be protector-deity of the Buddhist Law and a little bit later a bodhisattva. After this, temples in the entire country adopted tutelary kami (nihongo|chinju|鎮守/鎮主. Shrines for them started to be built at temples, marking an important step ahead in the process of amalgamation of "kami" and buddhist cults.

The third and final stage of the fusion took place in the ninth century with the development of the nihongo|"honji suijaku"|本地垂迹 theory according to which Japanese "kami" are emanations of buddhas, bodhisattvas or devas who mingle with us to lead us to the Buddhist Way. Many "kami" changed then from potentially dangerous spirits to be improved through contact with the Buddhist law to local emanations of buddhas and bodhisattvas which possess their wisdom. The buddhas and the kami were now indivisible.

The two religions after the Separation Order

In 1868 with the Shinbutsu Bunri (the attempt for a separation of Shinto and Buddhism during the Meiji period), temples and shrines were separated by law with the nihongo|Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order|神仏判然令, the former functioning for Buddhism, the latter for Shinto.

In spite of more than a century of formal separation of the two religions, temples or shrines that do not separate them are still common, as proven for example by the existence of some important Buddhist Inari temples [Smyers, pag. 219] [ [http://www.toyokawa-map.net/eng/inari.html Toyokawa Inari] accessed on June 6, 2008] . Shinto scholar Karen Smyers comments:

The surprise of many of my informants regarding the existence of Buddhist Inari temples shows the success of the government's attempt to create separate conceptual categories regarding sites and certain identities, although practice remains multiple and nonexclusive. [Smyers, pag. 219]

Most temples still have at least one small shrineBreen and Teuween in "Breen and Teuween" (2000:7)] . Even prominent religious institutions in both camps still give evidence of integration of the two religions. The great Kenchō-ji temple, number one of Kamakura's great Zen temples (the Kamakura Gozan) includes two shrines. One of the islands in the right-side pond of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū shrine in Kamakura hosts a sub-shrine dedicated to goddess Benzaiten, a Buddhist deity. For this reason, the sub-shrine was removed in 1868 at the time of the "Shinbutsu Bunri", but rebuilt in 1956Kamiya (2008: 18 - 19)] . The separation of the two religions must therefore be considered superficial, and "shinbutsu shūgō" still an accepted practice.

Notes

References

* cite book
last=Kitagawa
first=Joseph
title=On Understanding Japanese Religion
publisher=Princeton University Press
date=1987
isbn=978-0691102290
language=English
* cite book
last=Kuroda
first=Toshio
coauthors=James Dobbins, Suzanne Gray
title=Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion
publisher=Society for Japanese Studies
date=1981
edition=Journal of Japanese Studies
volume=7, No. 1
url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/132163|language=English
* cite book
last = Kamiya
first = Michinori
coauthors =
title = Fukaku Aruku - Kamakura Shiseki Sansaku Vol. 1
publisher = Kamakura Shunshūsha
date = 2000/08
location = Kamakura
language = Japanese
id = ISBN 4774003409
*A history of Japan, R. H. P. Mason, J. G. Caiger, Tuttle Publishing; Revised edition (November 1, 1997), ISBN 0-8048-2097-X
*cite book
last=Tamura
first=Yoshiro
title=Japanese Buddhism - A Cultural History
publisher=Kosei Publishing Company
location=Tokyo|date=2000
edition=First Edition
pages=232 pages
chapter=The Birth of the Japanese nation
isbn=4-333-01684-3|language=English
* cite web
url=http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=826
title=Shinto and Buddhism —Development of Shinbutsu Shūgō (Combinatory Religion of Kami and Buddhas)—
last=Satō
first=Makoto
date=2006/ 12/ 9
language=English
accessdate=2008-05-12
* cite book
last = John Breen
first = Mark Teuween (editors)
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title = Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami
publisher = University of Hawaii Press
date = July 2000
location = Honolulu
language = English
id = ISBN 978-0824823634
*cite book
last = Smyers
first = Karen Ann
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title = The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship
publisher = University of Hawaii Press
date = 1999
location = Honolulu
language = English
id = ISBN 0-8248-2102-5
* [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20010715a2.html Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan's sacred entities] by Fabio Rambelli, Japan Times, July 15, 2001 excerpted from Monumenta Nipponica, 56:2