Taoism Beneath Shinto

Historians have spilled vast ink tracing the arrival and absorption of Buddhism and Confucianism in Japan, yet Taoism itself is rarely afforded serious consideration. A principal reason is that, unlike the organized sects of Buddhism or the formal schools of Confucianism, Taoism never established an independent, institutional presence on Japanese soil. Yet rather than hunting for institutional footprints, one must look at how the philosophical currents of Laozi and Zhuangzi, having fused with yin-yang theory and the five elements, filtered into Japan as a diffuse, composite influence. Japan has historically cherished what might be called a "Taoist worldview" rather than Taoism as a formal creed. Seen through this lens, Japanese Taoism is best understood not from the vantage point of the continent, but as a unique, syncretic hybridization. Because these Taoist motifs arrived deeply intertwined with other philosophical and religious streams, undergoing subtle native metamorphoses, their presence has become nearly invisible to the untrained eye. Its quintessential monument in Japanese culture is onmyodo (陰陽道) — the way of yin and yang.

Yet the simple fact that the word Shinto carries the character michi strongly suggests that the cosmological principle of the Tao has animated Japan since deep antiquity. I believe Taoist thought entered Japan long before the formal transmission of Buddhism — an influence that also antedated state Confucianism — making it an indispensable ingredient in the crucible of primal Shinto. While modern Japanese rarely speak of Taoism, its living traces permeate daily existence: from the astrological and geometric emblems displayed in Shinto shrine precincts, to the ritual star festivals, customary taboos governing compass directions, the casting of astrological almanacs, feng shui, and the enduring cult of immortal mountain sages. Only when we recognize this subtle, pervasive presence as the authentic genius of Taoism can we begin to decipher this hidden chapter of Japanese intellectual history. Unlike Confucianism, which stiffened into a statecraft ideology for governing elites, Taoism took root quietly within the habits and rhythms of ordinary daily life. That unassuming presence was the very essence of what Laozi taught, which is precisely why the ancient Japanese absorbed it so naturally.

In broad terms, Taoist influence in Japan branched into two historic streams: one flowed into the urban, aristocratic onmyodo of Heian-kyo, safeguarding the imperial court; the other diffused outward into the mountain valleys as shugendo, a popular folk religion that carried a Taoist cosmos into the lives of ordinary people. While conventional history credits Abe no Seimei with the former and En no Ozunu with the latter, it was En no Ozunu who stood at the wellspring of both. Given that En no Ozunu was revered as a spiritual power broker by the emperors of his day, I suspect that Emperor Tenmu’s decision to establish the onmyoryo was made under his direct counsel.

The doctrine of the five elements also transformed Shinto theology. In Shinto, native kami are frequently understood as manifestations of dynamic natural forces — a conception that scholars recognize as an internalization of yin-yang and five-elements cosmology. Ancient theologians routinely explained the attributes of the kami through the interaction of these five elemental phases. This is evident in the Nihon Shoki, where mastery of the Wuxing Dayi, compiled by Xiao Ji during the Sui dynasty, is widely acknowledged as essential for deciphering the text's deeper mythological structure.

As this brief overview demonstrates, Taoism was never established in Japan as an institutional church. Instead, its underlying worldview merged with yin-yang and five-elements cosmology, exerting a multifaceted influence that dissolved into native philosophy, folk belief, and aesthetic sensibilities until it became thoroughly Japanized. Its most enduring emblem is onmyodo, a tradition far more native than it is Chinese. The phenomenon is intricate, resisting tidy categorization, but the crucial insight is that Taoism and onmyodo cannot be separated.

The idea of immortals in particular tells of a legendary mountain, Penglai, said to lie "on the sea to the east." The man who actually sought it was Qin Shi Huang, who first unified China. To obtain an elixir of immortality on Mount Penglai, he sent his retainer Xu Fu on imperial orders, and Xu Fu set out for "the sea to the east" with some 3,000 people. This is no mere legend. A village of Xu Fu has been found on the Chinese side, and in Japan too, legends of Xu Fu's arrival remain in several regions.

If we suppose Xu Fu was born around 255 BCE and lived a fair length of time, there is a high likelihood that Daoist thought reached Japan, carried by Xu Fu's group, at least by the third century BCE. The Qin dynasty is thought to have lasted from about 221 to 206 BCE, so within that span some 3,000 people with roots in Qin came to Japan. I have investigated this legend in several regions. My thought is that the 3,000 did not land in one place: they came in about a hundred boats of some thirty people each, scattered by storms on the sea route to the archipelago and reaching different regions. The likely places are Shingu in the south of Wakayama Prefecture, and Iwami in the west of Shimane Prefecture.

What matters is that the Qin dynasty was short-lived. The reason I look for the origin of Japanese Shinto in Qin is that Qin had the character of "burning books and burying scholars." Put simply, burning books and driving out Confucians. It was the suppression of Confucianism, which had grown into a philosophy that enshrined books and ordered discipline systematically. Seen another way, Qin saw in Confucianism the sign of institutions becoming a system, and moved at once to drive it out. The same reaction arose later in China when Buddhism came from India (a system with books, images, and temples), which shows it.

Qin fell in 206 BCE and ancient China moved on toward the Han dynasty. This suggests a history in which the people who had lived under Qin's protection lost their place and began to move in search of new land. Looked at from a slightly different angle, a more interesting history emerges if we take the truth of the legend that 3,000 people including Xu Fu came to Japan to lie not in an imperial order from Qin Shi Huang but in people who, seeking new land after Qin's collapse, aimed for a Daoist utopia already strongly in their minds and crossed the sea via the Shandong Peninsula to "Mount Penglai on the sea to the east," the Japanese archipelago.

The important element at the origin of the systematization of Japanese "Shinto," that is, began when refugees of the Qin dynasty, thought to have had their base near Xi'an in Shaanxi, moved to the nearby Shandong Peninsula and crossed the sea to the Japanese archipelago. And it is deeply tied to political upheaval on the ancient Chinese side.

All this is only my hypothesis at present, but as I continue my research in Japan, I have often felt, strangely, in the old layers, that "Shinto = Daoism" shares one foundation. The Daoist thought that came from Qin has an anti-Confucian character, which can also be read as "anti-systemization," and it has cultivated, at the level of daily life, a rebellious character against Confucianism, with its strong systematizing, and against the Buddhism of later ages.

Such myths and traditions connect with dragon-god legends in many places, and at times a raging dragon is subdued by a shugenja (an ascetic of Shugendo) and reborn as a guardian, a peculiar offshoot. In the Nara period, for example, a legend remains that the "nine-headed poison dragon" living in Lake Ashi at Hakone and tormenting villagers was calmed by the monk Mankan (萬巻上人, around the eighth century), who held the thought of the merging of gods and buddhas, and was worshiped as Kuzuryu Okami, the guardian god of Lake Ashi. This Kuzuryu is simply a dragon with nine heads, which suggests it may have come from a different line than Yamata no Orochi, a serpent with eight heads. Kuzuryu in particular is called "Ryujin-sama" and worshiped by common people, and at Lake Ashi stands Hakone Kuzuryu Shrine, which enshrines Kuzuryu Okami.