神仏習合という試練Shinbutsu Shugo as a Trial for Shinto
Shinbutsu shugo (神仏習合) advanced over a long stretch of time after the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century. It was not a simple mixture of faiths. For Shinto to acquire the qualities of a religion, this was an unavoidable trial. The peculiar phenomenon of shinbutsu shugo was the very turning point at which "Shinto" was established. Yet to read it is exceedingly difficult. I want to recapture this phenomenon as "the marriage of gods and buddhas in the realm of illusion" and look at its essence. In this article I will describe the confusion of the moment when gods and buddhas began to merge.
The first thing to recognize is that the common belief that Japan possessed an indigenous Shinto before the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism does not speak the truth. It is more reasonable to see that Shinto acquired its religious quality over a span of more than a thousand years through the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, both of which had been completed as religions on the Chinese side. In other words, for Shinto to acquire the aspect of standing in opposition to foreign religions like Buddhism and Confucianism, it required strong pressure from Buddhism and Confucianism. Yet no matter how strong the external pressure, faith never disappears entirely. This is the essence of faith and is not limited to Shinto.
Through the On Dogen series I have presented from various angles the transition from the aristocratic government of the Heian period to the warrior government, and an understanding of this era connects directly to shinbutsu shugo. From the early period of Buddhism's arrival, shinbutsu shugo had been gradually advancing, but it cannot be said that the "relationship between gods and buddhas" was clearly conscious at that point. It would be more accurate to say that this consciousness emerged gradually over the course of several centuries. The greatest turning point was the appearance of honji suijaku (本地垂迹説).
But this honji suijaku doctrine is a difficult problem. Stated simply, it is "the thought of regarding gods as incarnations of buddhas." Yet through the process of its understanding, propagation, and reception, problems arose one after another, and the situation can rightly be called a period of confusion in faith. Within this confusion of faith, however, lay the seeds of what was to come. These seeds are not limited to Shinto and Buddhism. They are a wellspring that flowed even into cultural-spiritual currents like the way of tea, and they require very careful examination. They are, in a sense, the source of "the heart of Japan."
The character of the conception of the gods from the Heian into the Kamakura period reveals this confusion vividly. To put it plainly, the incarnation of buddhas as gods was thought to be the ultimate expression of the buddhas' salvation of sentient beings. Put differently, while holding up the fundamental Buddhist idea of the benefit of sentient beings as the underlying logic, the visible signboard set up not the buddhas but the gods. As you may already sense, the natural question arises of where the superiority of the buddhas lies in such a structure.
In fact this was the most serious problem of the time. The teaching was developed with Buddhist doctrine as its skeleton, and yet what stood at the front was not the buddhas revered by Buddhism but, somehow, the gods of the Shinto side. If one could simply link Buddhist doctrine with the buddhas through faith, that would suffice. But this was not possible. Conversely, this shows how deeply the faith in the gods was rooted in place. For the monks, resolving this problem became the first priority, and from here a complex and convoluted history begins. The honji suijaku doctrine within shinbutsu shugo was not a goal but the beginning of confusion.
From the Buddhist side of the time, the buddhas and bodhisattvas had already appeared before sentient beings in their own forms and were in fact bestowing various benefits upon them. Yet the monks of the Buddhist side were facing an essential problem that this alone could not solve, and they devised the honji suijaku doctrine in an attempt to break through. What were the monks treating as a problem? Honestly, the truth is that they themselves did not know.
What must not be overlooked here is that the honji suijaku doctrine, beyond bringing benefit to the Buddhist side, in fact opened a direct opportunity for the Shinto side to take the path of independence. As the name shinbutsu shugo suggests, this was actually a complex phenomenon that produced benefit on both sides. It was the greatest occasion through which Shinto in particular acquired doctrine and theology. Without this process, modern Shrine Shinto and State Shinto could never have been born.
Where then is the origin of shinbutsu shugo placed? In general, it is placed in the Nara period (710–794). The capital at that time was Nara, which had entered the golden age of Buddhism. Temples were built one after another and Buddhist statues were produced in great quantity. In the midst of this, an interesting phenomenon called shinshin ridatsu (神身離脱) was occurring.
Shinshin ridatsu is the thought that the gods themselves had given an oracle declaring that "we suffer in our state of being gods and wish to be saved by the Buddhist Dharma." It is the doctrine of gods seeking salvation from the buddhas, and it is the key to understanding the later honji suijaku doctrine. At this point, however, just as the phrase "gods seek salvation from the buddhas" indicates, the gods were clearly placed as beings inferior to the buddhas. The gods were also placed as one type of sentient being suffering within Buddhist samsara, where they were depicted as beings who heard the Dharma and wished through practice to escape their state of being gods. It is fascinating, but a great many problems are visible. It expresses the early confusion of shinbutsu shugo.
The thought of shinshin ridatsu exerted its strongest influence not in the capital of Nara but at Kehi Jingu in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, and at Tado Jingu in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture. What matters is that these were not held up as ideologies generated by human beings. They were backed by the oracle of the gods themselves. They were transformed from human opinion into "the opinion of the gods" and then deployed politically through that oracular authority.
A complication is that almost without exception the priests of shrines at the time were personally Buddhist believers. When they received an oracle from the gods, they built temples in the form of jingu-ji within the shrine precincts or in the immediate vicinity. This phenomenon spread on a nationwide scale from the late Nara into the early Heian period. Representative examples include Tado Jinguji (Mie), Kehi Jinguji (Fukui), Kashima Jinguji (Ibaraki), Usa Jinguji (Oita), and Wakasahiko Jinguji (Fukui). All of these are ancient shrines and represent the highest divine status in their regions. In other words, the first occasion on which the relationship between gods and buddhas began to be reexamined rapidly arose not only in the capital but on a nationwide scale. What matters is that this movement began from shrines positioned at the upper layer of regional faith. The method was first to replace the upper layer from gods to buddhas, and from there to bring the lower layer under control.
But this is a strange occurrence. The Nara period saw a state Buddhism system imposed under court leadership, and within this system the Buddhist Dharma was positioned as universal truth. It is more accurate to see that just as the Edo shogunate adopted Confucianism as its philosophy of regime, the regime of that time adopted Buddhism. This cannot be dismissed as a matter of faith alone. In the midst of this, even though it could not yet be called Shinto, the indigenous gods needed to be reinterpreted within that framework. Shinshin ridatsu was entangled with the troublesome problem of how to link the gods with Buddhism within the Nara-period regime. At this point Buddhist supremacy was the premise.
What also must not be overlooked is that the conception of the gods had begun to transform. Under the Buddhist influence of the Nara period, the gods of Japan were positioned as objects of fear who brought down curses, and from there as beings who possessed the same emotions as human beings and therefore at times suffered. This way of thinking suited Buddhist samsara doctrine, and inevitably the interpretation that "the gods too exist within samsara" was generated. Centered on samsara as understood in the Buddhist doctrine of the time, this was an attempt to position the transcendent buddhas and bodhisattvas as a special category of being. What is fascinating is that simultaneously the treatment of the gods began to become a serious problem. The further the celebration of Buddhism advanced, the less those celebrating it could grasp "what the gods were." Put differently, in the long Japanese history before this, the question "what is a god?" had not become a problem.
The regional powerful clans that existed across the country at this time also need to be considered. Since Japan was not a unified state, the powerful clans of each region governed their territories with their own strong forces. They almost invariably derived their authority from the gods of the Shinto side. From this it becomes clear that for them, linking the gods of their own land directly with the buddhas was a political problem unrelated to faith. Because so long as the central court in Nara revered Buddhism on a state level, in order to maintain close relations with the court, an eclectic adoption of Buddhism was outwardly important even diplomatically. For the regional clans Buddhism was not an object of faith but a practical decision aimed at elevating their own religious and political authority and securing the favor of the court. The great majority of people at the time saw Buddhism as a political instrument. Those who genuinely believed were likely few.
In general, this shinshin ridatsu is positioned as the first step of shinbutsu shugo, with its later development into the honji suijaku doctrine in the late Heian period. But faith does not transform as easily as scholars suggest.
In fact, even after the Kamakura period when the honji suijaku doctrine is generally considered to have spread nationwide, not all gods were regarded as incarnations of buddhas and bodhisattvas. The categories that emerge at this point as a thorny problem are the conceptions of gonshin (権神) and jisshin (実神) within the honji suijaku doctrine.
The honji (本地) of honji suijaku is “the original form, namely the buddhas and bodhisattvas such as the Tathagatas and Kannon.” On the other hand suijaku (垂迹) is "the appearance of buddhas in transformed form for the sake of salvation," and in this case they appear as gods. From this broad criterion, the categories can be organized as follows.
Gonshin are gods as suijaku, possessing a honji.
Jisshin are gods without a honji, existing as one type of sentient being.
The multilayering of the gods is complex, but gonshin were the targets of the honji suijaku doctrine, while jisshin were positioned as their external counterpart. What I emphasize from the standpoint of thought is that within the essential grasp of Shinto and Buddhism, an "outside" was beginning to be born. In the dimensions of Japanese faith before this, no such dualistic thinking existed, and faith was certainly not practiced through the conception of an outside. When gonshin and jisshin emerged, what were the people involved presupposing?
It may come as a surprise, but I see this as the intervention of Chinese thought unrelated to Buddhism. I view shinbutsu shugo as something born from an intellectual background almost entirely unrelated to Buddhist India. This context demands re-examination from the unusual position of "the intellectual problem between China and Japan." When I say Chinese thought, Confucianism and Daoism are intertwined within it, and further, it was not the Chinese themselves who established this. It was the Japanese side under the influence of Chinese thought who established it. Confucianism had not been systematized in Japan at the time, so if one looks at this from the same vantage point as China, what actually occurred becomes incomprehensible.
What lies hidden within the difficult movements of shinbutsu shugo is not Buddhism. It lies within the older relationship between Japan and China. To read it is therefore not merely difficult but effectively impossible. Because the great many people involved in shinbutsu shugo treated it as a problem of gods and buddhas and did not perceive the influence from China. This remains the case today. Shinbutsu shugo is not a problem of Shinto and Buddhism. It is in fact a problem of the intellectual relationship between Japan and China.
The key here is held by jisshin.
Although jisshin were considered one type of sentient being without a honji, they are not the gods bearing high divine status that appear in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. This is critically important. The gods given high divine status in mythology, for example, were almost without exception subjected to the influence of honji suijaku and were interpreted as incarnations of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Yet an outside was being born. Its central pillar was the kishin (鬼神), the demon-gods, ryujin (龍神), the dragon-gods, and jashin (蛇神), the snake-gods. For reference, the ryujin and jashin had merged at this point, with the jashin belonging to the indigenous old stratum of Japan and the ryujin having arrived from China. Their origins predate even the arrival of Buddhism.
Kishin, ryushin, and jashin were positioned as gods without a honji, but in fact these gods had already been externalized before Buddhism through the influence of ancient Chinese thought. More precisely, it was Japanese monks influenced not by Buddhist thought but by Chinese thought who held it as common knowledge that there existed not only the gods of honji suijaku but also gods that had been disparaged in ancient China. This common knowledge was acquired through Chinese books, so it must be noted that it had no relation to the actual sites of faith on the Japanese side. They were the marginal gods without names, but these are the indigenous gods. The gods rooted in place could not be excluded even by honji suijaku. The problem is that this is not something that began in this era.
This tendency is already visible in the Kojiki of 712 and the Nihon Shoki of 720, before the honji suijaku doctrine. Strong awareness is required that this was occurring independently of Buddhism. Many animal gods such as snakes, boars, birds, and rabbits appear in Japanese mythology. These are not actual animals but indigenous Kunitsukami, representing the origins of regional powerful clans who at the time of mythological compilation had not formed ties with the imperial line of the court. They can also be called the tribes that were in opposition. The Nihon Shoki in particular involved direct participation by Chinese compilers, and its externalization is blatant. What matters is the fact that the indigenous gods could not be eliminated by the gods of the court line.
A symbolic event was the incident in which the imperial ancestral Amatsukami Amaterasu was driven out of Yamato. The key is held by the 10th Emperor Sujin, the first emperor whose actual existence has been confirmed. Until the era of Sujin, Amaterasu and Yamato-Ookunitama (大和大国魂) were enshrined together within the great hall of the imperial palace. I will write about Yamato-Ookunitama separately, but this deity is essentially the soul of Yamato itself, the strongest god of place. The rulers needed the technique of letting the soul of the land based in this place possess them, of adjusting that possession, and of controlling it so as to bring prosperity. Here too the oracle of the gods enters the story.
In the era of Emperor Sujin, Yamato was collapsing under epidemic and famine. Half of the people Sujin governed died. Many people left Yamato in search of new land, and rebellions arose in succession. Sujin came to see the cause of the collapse of his governance as the divine power of the gods, and concluded that the cause lay in enshrining two distinct deities, Amaterasu and Yamato-Ookunitama, within the palace. As a result, the two deities were moved outside the palace. What matters is that Yamato-Ookunitama remained within Yamato, while Amaterasu was banished from Yamato despite being the imperial ancestral deity of the emperor and ultimately came to rest at the site of present-day Ise Jingu.
Another factor must not be overlooked. The collapse of governance could not be resolved simply by moving the two deities outside the palace. How then did Sujin overcome the crisis? Through the oracle of a certain Kunitsukami. The deity's name is Omononushi.
Omononushi is the principal deity of Omiwa Shrine and a Kunitsukami of the highest divine status. Omiwa Shrine is the oldest great shrine in Japan. It stands near present-day Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture and is thought to have stood near Sujin's palace, suggesting that the one who effectively drove out the Amatsukami Amaterasu was the Kunitsukami Omononushi. The Kunitsukami Omononushi who governed the Yamato-Ookunitama of the place was more powerful than the foreign Amaterasu. Without resolving this problem, Sujin's governance in Yamato would not stabilize. What matters is that he had to borrow the help of Omononushi.
Omononushi possessed a princess of an indigenous Yamato tribe named Yamato-Totohi-Momosohime (倭迹迹日百襲姫命) and through her granted an oracle. Yamato-Totohi-Momosohime is the mythological expression of Queen Himiko. She was a shaman, and following her oracle Sujin executed the solution and Yamato was once again brought to peace. After this, Amaterasu never returned to Yamato, and a story is told of priestesses traveling in search of a land worthy of enshrining her. Behind her enshrinement at the site of present-day Ise Jingu lay this kind of upheaval.
Why is this episode of mythology important to the history of the honji suijaku doctrine? Because Omononushi is a snake-god. The deity of Omiwa Shrine, where Omononushi is still enshrined today, is a snake, with a particular faith in white snakes. Within the precincts there is a place prepared for offerings to the snake, and worshipers have a custom of offering eggs, the snake's favorite. Snake-god faith is extremely widespread across Japan, and its highest divine status is thought to lie with Omononushi.
What this episode of mythology speaks of is the ancient memory that even Emperor Sujin in the imperial line and the Amatsukami Amaterasu could not remove the snake-god of Yamato. That even the Nihon Shoki, a historical text emphasizing the legitimacy of imperial rule, had no choice but to insert this anecdote is itself an expression of how strong Omononushi's power was. At the same time, because it is a snake-god, much is left unsaid, and an intent to externalize is present.
I have written before that the concept of "matsurowanu" the old word meaning "those who do not submit," appears in mythology. These gods, under the influence of Chinese thought, were transformed into kishin and similar categories. The jisshin who became a problem for the monks advocating the honji suijaku doctrine were beings carrying a considerably ancient historical context.
How then did the monks, having reached an impasse in the treatment of the gods, respond? The thought that becomes entangled here is Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land). I ask the reader to recall the movements of the On Dogen series as you read on.
Before the rise of the honji suijaku doctrine within shinbutsu shugo, Honen (1133–1212) appeared like a comet in Heian-kyo and proposed a certain thought. That was senju nenbutsu (専修念仏), the exclusive recitation of Amida Buddha's name.
Its starting point was his work Senchaku Hongan Nenbutsu Shu (選択本願念仏集). There, Honen argued that the "practice" chosen by the original vow of Amida Buddha was the single act of "vocal recitation of the nenbutsu," and he taught the abandonment of all other practices in favor of exclusive devotion to the nenbutsu. The one who extracted this core and pushed it further was Shinran (1173–1263).
As a disciple of Honen who became the founder of Jodo Shinshu, Shinran eliminated all of the softness in Honen's doctrine of exclusive practice. Specifically, while Honen's doctrine of exclusive practice retained the softness of "choosing the practice of the nenbutsu" as a subjective choice, Shinran relativized even the subjectivity that does the choosing. As a result, all is fulfilled by the original vow-power of Amida Buddha as tariki (他力), other power, and human beings do not even possess the capacity to choose. This is the position of absolute other power, the culmination of Shinran's exclusive practice.
By reaching this horizon, Shinran necessarily drew one conclusion. That was jingi fuhai (神祇不拝). Stated simply, he rejected the worship of the gods. What must not be misunderstood is that this was not exclusivism but the logical necessity of the thought of exclusive practice of the nenbutsu.
To organize Shinran's distinctive thought, the structure runs as follows. First, the original vow of Amida Buddha is the working of absolute salvation directed at sentient beings. Second, for one who receives this absolute salvation in faith, praying to other objects of salvation signifies a lack of faith in the original vow. Third, therefore the practitioner of exclusive nenbutsu does not pray to the gods.
In Kyogyoshinsho (教行信証), Shinran rigorously argued against the harm of pursuing heterodox paths and various practices, and rejected praying to the gods as a wasted act. This emerged from the logic that such practice damages the purity of the original vow, and the thoroughness of this position is the core of Shinran. Naturally this thoroughness was treated as a social problem unrelated to Shinran's own thought, and he was sentenced to exile while his thought was suppressed and prohibited. This shows that the problem surrounding gods and buddhas continued in solid form even in an era when state Buddhism had been elevated to its highest reach. In Japan the gods absolutely cannot be excluded. Here lies the fundamental element behind the later beautification of Shinto by shrine priests.
Thoroughness like Shinran's cannot be sustained. How then should one proceed? After Shinran's death, this was the problem confronting all monks. Solving this problem would mean grasping the religious power that holds political hegemony.
The one who responded to this problem most fully was a descendant of Shinran born after his death. He was a monk named Zonkaku (1290–1373). A monk of Jodo Shinshu, Zonkaku continued to consider how, while building on the thought of his ancestor Shinran, one should realistically take an attitude toward the gods. As a result he produced one work titled Shojin Honkai Shu (諸神本懐集).
Zonkaku's intent lay in the following. Since the appearance of the Jodo (Pure Land) founder Honen and the Jodo Shinshu founder Shinran, the prohibition against worshiping the gods had been strongly asserted from the standpoint of exclusive practice. Yet at the actual sites of propagation it was not realistic. From his sense of the field, Zonkaku came to suspect that the binary choice between gods and buddhas itself was the problem. No matter how state-protected Buddhism might be, at the level of the field the faith in the gods of the place was deep and could not be excluded. Zonkaku therefore wrote this work to explain how to face the gods from the standpoint of Jodo Shinshu. What matters is that it was written from the standpoint of Jodo Shinshu and does not represent Buddhism in general. It also diverges from the intent of the founder Shinran, and at this point ideology enters shinbutsu shugo.
What Zonkaku undertook was the clear separation and ordering of gonshin and jisshin in order to distinguish how one should face the gods. He separated and organized, from his own perspective, the objects that should be worshiped and the objects that must not be worshiped. He distinguished gonshin as venerable spiritual beings and jisshin as lesser deities that bring calamity, and reinforced his logic by further dividing gonshin into two layers. Under his framework, the highest level of gonshin became the buddhas who had attained enlightenment in the past, beginning with Shakyamuni, and the next level became bodhisattvas like Kannon and Jizo who are infinitely close to buddhas.
Further, from the perspective of honji suijaku, since these buddhas and bodhisattvas had taken the provisional form of gods in order to benefit sentient beings, worshiping them is acceptable. But, he argued, gods other than these must not be worshiped. The other gods are the jisshin and the lesser deities. Zonkaku declared sharply that these gods are living spirits, dead spirits, and the like, and are not suijaku of Tathagatas. Their identities range from human beings to animals and others, but all are low-grade beings who afflict people with curses, and people worship these lesser deities only to pacify their curses.
This was an extremely clear and well-organized logic and thus acquired a certain influence. But are the gods, as he intended, beings that can be simplified to such a degree?
The gods of Japan still remain shrouded in mystery. My own view is that the arrival of clearly defined buddhas as objects did not make the existence of the gods any clearer. Rather, it made them all the more enigmatic. Looking at the actions of the people of the shinbutsu shugo era and looking through the entire history to the present, the gods continue to be beings of an unknown nature. They are something one can only say is god. They are not beings that possess substance.
After the Meiji Restoration, the Shinbutsu Bunri Edict separated gods and buddhas from their long history of fusion. This essential problem still has not reached a horizon at which it can be said to be resolved.