What Was the Shrine? Before "a Sanctuary Where the Gods Are Enshrined"
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis: change the question from "What is a shrine?" to "What was a shrine?" and almost no one can answer. "A sanctuary where the gods are enshrined" says nothing of the origin; anciently, whoever took on a land's soul was the god.
A question almost no one can answer
Change the question from "What is a shrine?" to "What was a shrine?" and, curiously, everyone is suddenly lost for an answer. The hesitation suggests that almost no one has an answer beyond the interpretations of the early modern and modern periods, when the image of the shrine we know took shape.
Visit a shrine and ask a priest "What is a shrine?" and you will usually get the stock reply: "a sanctuary where the gods are enshrined." That is the correct answer for "Shinto." It says nothing about the origin of the shrine itself.
Taking on the soul of a land
In ancient Japan there really were groups of specialists who moved souls, and they had the power to bring on possession and to release it at will. This skill was prized because the one who took on the soul of a land was, as such, the god.
What happened in ancient Japan was that the being who took on the tama of a place was estranged in a "realm of illusion," and from this the being called a god was generated. It was not that a particular individual with a subject took on the tama of the place and ruled over it.
Where shrine architecture came from
At the root of Shinto lies a nature faith that reveres natural things themselves, mountains, forests, rocks, and great trees, as gods. Countless old traditions remain in many places, and from the view that a god sits there, a mountain is called "kannabi" and a rock "iwakura (磐座)," but anciently there was no such distinction and the whole was taken as a sacred place. From ancient times, before shrine architecture was in order, particular mountains and forests were revered as "sacred space," and people kept away from them and cared for them as sacred ground. The origin of shrine architecture itself is unknown, but its relation to the shrines and raised-floor storehouses of the Yayoi period in particular has been pointed out from archaeology, and I think that, under the influence of the arrival of Buddhism, as the new forms of faith, temples and Buddhist statues, spread, clans of the Shinto side all began to build them.
Essays to read
- A shrine's origin is not the stock answer — What was a shrine before modern Shinto? Takahiro Mitsui says everyone gives one answer and none explains the origin: specialists who took on a land's soul — tama, which no individual with a subject took on, behind the stock answer.
- A boundary that lets you cross — What is a boundary for? Takahiro Mitsui explains a shrine's barrier joins as well as divides, letting people cross from daily life to the sacred — Omiwa Shrine, where Mount Miwa is the divine body and there is no main hall.
- A faith rebuilt to serve a state — Is Shinto a religion? Takahiro Mitsui writes the modern state rebuilt countless local faiths into a hierarchy to venerate itself, with Ise at the summit: the first of his series on Shinto, from regional surveys begun in earnest around 2020.