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The Protocol of the Gods: A Study of the Kasuga Cult in Japanese History

University of California Press

The Kasuga Shrine (Kasuga taisha ) is the main ancestral and tutelary shrine of the Fujiwara house, which was the leading aristocratic lineage in Japan during the Heian period (794-1185), and as such it is one of the most important Shinto shrines in Japanese history. It is located in the city of Nara at the foot of Mount Mikasa, which has been its symbol for centuries, and next to the Kofukuji, a Buddhist temple with which it has been closely associated ever since its establishment in the eighth century. Even though the Kasuga Shrine and the Kofukuji are separate institutions today, for most of their history they formed what will be called in this study a shrine-temple multiplex, i.e., a unified Shinto-Buddhist cultic center.1

What came to be known as the Kasuga belief system (Kasuga shinko ) is a combinative cult, which means that the elements of Shinto and Buddhist creeds and practices that compose it were conceived of as forming a single cohesive system. In the shrine component of the Kasuga-Kofukuji multiplex, that cult is dedicated to the "ancestral and tutelary kami " (ujigami ) of the Fujiwara house, and in the temple component, to the spirits of deceased Fujiwara leaders.2 It is impossible to understand this cult until one appreciates the nature and history of the systematic relations that evolved between the shrines and temples that are the core of the Japanese tradition. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the essential features of those relations in the case of the Kasuga cult from its inception up to 1868, when by order of the Meiji government (1868-1912) the kami of the shrines were dissociated from the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the temples with which they had been identified over the centuries. These dissociations imposed on the shrines and the temples a new, thoroughly artificial, and theretofore unknown segregation. Before that government action, the Kasuga-Kofukuji multiplex and its belief system were ex-

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Map 1.
Japan and Yamato Province.

tremely important aspens of the classical and medieval ideology of the Japanese state. Furthermore, the multiplex gave birth to the city of Nara and governed the province of Yamato, all the while developing a unique culture.

Although Nara is touted as the cradle of Japanese culture, there is little material in foreign languages on its shrines and temples, their rituals and art, and their history and belief systems. The reasons for this scarcity have

to do with the way in which Western scholarship on Japan has evolved, and they bear directly on the issues raised in this study.

Most modern studies of Japanese religious history are characterized by disciplinary categories invented by certain Western cultural systems. The concepts used in those studies, however familiar they may appear to us, are dangerous in that they prevent us from acquiring an adequate understanding of Japanese society.3 It is commonly asserted, for instance, that there are several religions in Japan: Shinto, Buddhism, popular religion, and more recently, the new religions. Accordingly, scholars and students specialize either in Shinto or in Buddhism; often (there are sound exceptions) they emphasize the elite and scriptural traditions to the detriment of the popular traditions, and they also fail to analyze the interactions between the various currents that compose the Japanese religious tradition. As a result of such attitudes and practices, Shinto has been treated as though it were a single and universally shared body of ideas, practices, and institutions in premodern Japan. Moreover, although scholars have studied the sects of Buddhism, analyzed the teachings of their founders, provided exegesis of their major scriptures, and researched the lives of their great masters, there is no comprehensive study of any of those sects. Thanks to the studies undertaken so far much has been revealed about Japan, but it is becoming increasingly clear that if we continue on the same trajectory our understanding of Japanese religiosity and history will be limited and flawed.

Most Western-language studies of Japanese Buddhism present expositions of the various sects by way of accounts of the teachings of their founders in India, China, or Japan. Unfortunately, scholars have produced virtually no studies of the history of those sects in Japan and no studies of their institutions (which is considered to be institutional, not religious, history). The interactions among these sects or between them and other liturgical and ritual systems have not been studied, such as the still poorly understood Confucian tradition and the mélange of magical-religious practices that were derived from shamanism and Taoism and to which the name of Shinto has been affixed. A few modern studies deal with "medieval syncretism," but they generally treat that phenomenon as odd and fleeting, hardly worth serious investigation. Recent work in other fields, especially art and literature, provides abundant proof that the categories drawn from Western cultures are painfully inadequate and that new hypotheses need to be formed, tested, and discussed.

The present study is based on the three following hypotheses:

First, Japanese religiosity is grounded in specific sites at which beliefs and practices were combined and transmitted exclusively within specific lineages before they were opened to the general public.

Second, Japanese religiosity is neither Shinto nor Buddhist nor sectarian but is essentially combinative. The few exceptions appear to prove the rule.

Third, those combinative systems, which evolved in specific sites, were indissolubly linked, in their genesis as in their evolution, to social and economic structures and practices as well as to concepts of legitimacy and power, all of which were interrelated and embodied in rituals and institutions marking those sites.

These three propositions need to be developed and refined.

Grounded in Specific Sites

The Japanese term that was adopted in the Meiji period to indicate the Western concept of religion is shukyo , a compound word meaning, etymologically, "lineage [shu ] teachings [kyo ]." Two points must be made with regard to that term. First, although the term shu is usually translated "sect" (as in Shingon-shu , meaning "Shingon sect"; Rinzai-shu , meaning "Rinzai sect," and the like), it is much more appropriate to preserve its literal meaning of "lineage," because in Japanese temples, attention was always paid to master-disciple relationships and to transmissions within lineages, and in the shrines there were sacerdotal lineages that specialized in the transmission of specific notions and in the performance of specific rituals. This tendency prevails even in modern Japan, especially in the so-called new religions. The Japanese have rarely been sectarian in the European sense of the word, although the term is definitely appropriate for today's situation—either in religion or academia. Second, the term kyo does denote a teaching, but because the Japanese have always favored ritual practice over doctrinal inquiry, the term kyo might better be translated as...