Shrines Registered in Ancient Japanese Law: Shinto or Not?
The Procedures of the Engi Era (Engi shiki) contain registers of 2,862 shrines to which the imperial government made offerings during the Nara and Heian periods. An analysis of these shrines is conducted on the basis of three working hypotheses. First, the possibility that the location of these shri...
| Published in: | Japanese journal of religious studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Nanzan Institute
[2002]
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| In: |
Japanese journal of religious studies
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| Further subjects: | B
Emperors
B Geography B Descendants B Heian period B Shrine Shinto B Buddhism B Ritual offerings B Religious Studies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | The Procedures of the Engi Era (Engi shiki) contain registers of 2,862 shrines to which the imperial government made offerings during the Nara and Heian periods. An analysis of these shrines is conducted on the basis of three working hypotheses. First, the possibility that the location of these shrines may have been of strategic importance in the political and military campaigns of Yamato, Nara, and Heian Japan. Second, the possibility that these shrines may be related to social and economic competition between the leading sacerdotal houses at the time. And third, the possibility that Buddhism may have been part of the equation. None of these possibilities alone explain the shrines' unequal geographic distribution, or the nature of the cults that were given therein. But the linkage of the three hypotheses reveals the fact that the central government took control of these shrines and their cults in a strategy of territorial and social control, and suggests that the court's appropriation of these shrines and cults must have profoundly transformed pre-existing practices and notions. The shrine registers then are not representative and block our perspective on the nature of kami cults. Whether this imperial cultic system should be called Shinto or not is debatable, and this important issue is treated in the context of a brief discussion of Kuroda Toshio's views. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Japanese journal of religious studies
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