Shinto: A History by Helen Hardacre, and: A Social History

of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital by Mark Teeuwen and John

Breen (review)

Yijiang Zhong

Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 73, Number 2, 2018, pp. 245-250 (Review)

Published by Sophia University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2081.0003

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/718459

Access provided at 4 Jan 2020 12:53 GMT from UZH Hauptbibliothek / Zentralbibliothek Zürich
 Book Reviews

Shinto: A History. By Helen Hardacre. Oxford University Press, 2017. 720

pages. Hardcover, £29.99/$39.95.
A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital. By Mark Teeuwen and
John Breen. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 320 pages. Hardcover,
£85.00/ $114.00; softcover, £28.99/$39.95.

Yijiang Zhong
University of Tokyo

The past decade or so has seen steady growth in the number of works on Shinto, in
particular those dealing with its history. This trend continues the agenda of earlier
scholarship in challenging the conventional notions of Shinto as the ethnic or na-
tional religion of Japan and as the ideological apparatus of the modern (pre-1945)
Japanese state. Asking what Shinto was and is, then, has become the starting point
for research and writing on this subject. Furthermore, inspired by recent Western-
language critical scholarship that has called into question the very idea of religion, it
has become necessary for authors to engage the methodological issues concerning
how to reconceive Shinto in relation to religion and how to devise narratives to re-
capture the histories of that which can be identified as Shinto. The expanding litera-
ture has diversified and enriched the field of Shinto studies and contributed new per-
spectives for understanding more broadly the history and society of Japan. The two
books under review, both by established scholars, are the most recent contributions
to this maturing field. They represent the latest attempts to “find” Shinto, to recover
its past, and to think about how such inquiries are best conducted.
Helen Hardacre’s Shinto: A History, comprising sixteen main chapters, is magiste-
rial in its narrative scale. Covering Shinto from the Yayoi period (400 BCE–300 CE)
to the present, it is the first comprehensive history of the subject in English. Scholars
have generally sought to avoid essentializing Shinto and have thus been wary of rep-
resenting it as a transhistorical entity; they have also decried application of the term
“Shinto” in reference to the period before that term came into use. Nevertheless, the
author justifies her narrative of long-term continuity by posing an “ideal of Shinto”
that consists of the following elements: “concepts of imperial rule associating it with
ritual, a government unit devoted to coordinating ritual throughout the nation’s
shrines, a code of law mandating an annual calendar of kami ritual, the claim that
rituals for the kami are public in character, and the assertion that this complex of

Monumenta Nipponica 73/2: 245–324

© 2018 Sophia University
246 Monumenta Nipponica 73:2 (2018)
ideas and institutions devoted to the kami embodies Japan’s ‘indigenous’ tradition.”
The book recounts the “emergence and development of these elements and debate
concerning them” (p. 2) in Japanese history, using specifically the key terms “pub-
lic” in contrast to “private” and “indigenous” in contrast to “foreign” to identify his-
torical continuity. It is quite clear that the ideal, so identified, assumes a transhistor-
ical coherence and is centered on the state. Despite the book’s impressively long
time span and encyclopedic content, this state-centered approach means that certain
pasts, such as those of local shrines, and certain perspectives, such as that of eco-
nomic history, are deemphasized if not excluded.
The first four chapters of the book take up Shinto in ancient Japan. Chapter 1 traces
the flow of knowledge, including Buddhist teachings, from the Asian continent and its
influence on ancient kami worship and political rulership. The arrival of Buddhism
gave rise to the notions of foreignness and indigeneity, with the latter symbolized by
local deities—the kami. The author further identifies Shinto’s institutional origin in the
Jingikan (Ministry of Divinities), the governmental body created sometime in the late
seventh or early eighth century to oversee kami-related affairs at court and at provin-
cial shrines. In fact, the author understands the Jingikan as providing institutional and
ritual continuity for the history of Shinto. Chapter 2 examines two eighth-century
mytho-historic texts, Kojiki and Nihon shoki, compiled respectively in 712 and 720,
and argues convincingly that whereas Nihon shoki was meant to impress continental
rulers with Yamato mastery of Chinese statecraft, Kojiki served to underscore the sov-
ereign’s support for “indigenous” kami worship. Chapter 3 introduces in detail major
imperial rituals that were coordinated by the Jingikan and performed at court and in
the provinces from the seventh through the ninth centuries. This is also the period
when Buddhist divinities came to be connected with kami and temples were combined
with shrines. The relationship, however, was not always peaceful. The Jingikan played
a major role in ousting the Buddhist monk Dōkyō, who harbored the ambition to as-
sume the post of heavenly sovereign (tennō). Chapter 4 looks at Shinto during the mid-
to late Heian period (tenth through twelfth centuries). This was a period when the
Jingikan weakened and many “private” elements became part of Shinto. Together
with a breakdown in the systematic character of public rituals for the kami, we see a
privatizing and individualizing tendency in attitudes toward the kami, manifested by
new anxieties regarding goryō (vengeful spirits), illness, pollution, and tatari (divine
retaliation) as well as Buddhist ideas of the mappō (Latter Days of the Dharma).
The next three chapters deal with the medieval period. Chapter 5 examines the de-
velopment of thought concerning the kami within the philosophical framework of
esoteric Buddhism, or what the author calls the “esotericization of Shinto” (p. 7), in
the medieval period (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries). The Jingikan continued to
weaken, unable to resist the encroachment of esoteric Buddhism, which valorized
privatized understanding of knowledge over public exposition. Esotericism’s stance
placing the ultimate identities of the kami and buddhas within the framework of
honji suijaku (fundamental essence vs. local manifestation) further impaired claims
to superiority for the indigenous kami. Chapter 6 introduces Shinto art, literature,
 Book Reviews 247

dance drama, and architecture, uncovering the devotional patterns of medieval

Shinto. New architectural spaces were devised to domesticate “foreign” supernatu-
rals that were seen as threatening and transform them into beneficent kami. Shrine
mandalas adopted the primacy of Buddhism, but they depicted the shrine as an
earthly paradise, affirming Japan as a space of salvation. Chapter 7 explores the work
of Yoshida Kanetomo, who served in the Jingikan in the late medieval period. While
other scholars have identified Kanetomo as the first to use the term “Shinto” to the-
orize about the kami, Hardacre calls our attention to why Kanetomo wanted to do
that: he desired to revive the Jingikan.
Chapters 8–11 cover Shinto in the early modern period (seventeenth through
mid-nineteenth centuries). Chapter 8 investigates Confucianism’s influence on
Shinto in the seventeenth century by tracing the new Shinto theories that were for-
mulated by Hayashi Razan, Yoshikawa Koretaru and Yamazaki Ansai. According to
Hardacre, their theories stressed Shinto as an essential element of governance and a
precious embodiment of indigenous tradition. Chapter 9 explores the devotional and
popular character of early modern kami worship by introducing the kami Inari and
the pilgrimage to Ise. Chapter 10 introduces three early modern Shinto religious
movements (the Kurozumikyō, Misogikyō, and Uden Shinto) that transformed ear-
lier public ritual into a means of self-cultivation for all. Chapter 11 examines
Kokugaku (nativist thought), which called for a wholesale rejection of foreign teach-
ings, primarily Buddhism and Confucianism, and a return to the time before Japa-
nese life had been corrupted by these influences. In the face of Western gunboats
during the final years of the early modern period, Nativism transformed into the po-
litical ideology of Restoration Shinto, whose aims notably included the restoration
of the Jingikan as a central unit of government.
Chapters 12 and 13 deal with modern Shinto in the period leading up to World War
II. Chapter 12 introduces the emergence of “a powerful ideal of Shinto providing
state ritual through which the populace would unite to glorify the nation and its sov-
ereign” (p. 12). Embodying this ideal was the revived Jingikan, which soon, however,
gave way to rituals performed by the emperor in the imperial palace. Hardacre pro-
poses the phrase “state management” in place of the unsatisfactory paradigm of
“State Shinto” to describe the nationalized, public Shinto of the pre-1945 period.
Chapter 13 looks at Shinto in the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1930s
Shinto scholars openly disputed the government’s position that Shinto was not a re-
ligion. One position that emerged around this time was “a distinctive concept of
Kami and of Shinto as a religion, which embodies the essence of Japan’s ‘national
polity’ (kokutai) and epitomizes Japan’s indigenous tradition” (p. 13). The need to
mobilize the populace for war, however, gave rise to the expansion of Shinto rituals
into society and led to massive shrine construction projects. For the author, these
moves show that “the hope of uniting the empire through common Shinto worship
had become an essential element of imperial rule” (p. 13).
Chapters 14, 15, and 16 cover the postwar period. Chapter 14 traces how under the
pressure of the SCAP Occupation authority state-sponsored Shinto was reorganized
248 Monumenta Nipponica 73:2 (2018)
into privatized religious entities, which, however, regrouped into the conservative Jinja
Honchō (National Association of Shinto Shrines; NASS). The association continues to
push for the resumption of state support of Shinto, while citizens in postwar Japan
enjoy a flourishing Shinto festival culture, as introduced in chapter 15. Chapter 16
maps present-day Shinto, with introductions to the priesthood, the locally anchored
feature of Shinto; people’s attitudes toward Shinto; and Shinto in popular culture.
In contrast to Hardacre’s volume, the second book under review makes no refer-
ence to Shinto in its title despite its being part of the Bloomsbury Shinto Studies se-
ries. This omission in Mark Teeuwen and John Breen’s A Social History of the Ise
Shrines: Divine Capital is both deliberate and liberating: the book gives a fascinat-
ing and informative account of how Ise “was not always an imperial institution” and
did not “become a site of ‘Shinto’ until late in its history” (p. 8). Quite likely this
social history would not have been written if it had been conceived narrowly as a
work on Shinto per se. The book offers not just a new history but demonstrated new
and effective methodologies for expanding studies of Shinto. Starting with the as-
sumption of Ise as a floating signifier open to circumstance-dependent reconfigura-
tions, it traces how these reconfigurations of meaning worked in practice and how
the question of Ise’s signification was closely tied up with the “economic and politi-
cal models of the agents who dominated Ise in different periods” (p. 8). The Ise
Shrines in this story were not primarily a site of imperial ancestral worship—though
they were in some periods—but a “treasure trove of ‘divine capital’ ” (p. 8) that his-
torical agents could draw upon for political and economic benefits.
The first of the book’s ten main chapters traces the origin of the Ise Shrines—not
an easy task, as no records except for mythical accounts exist. The authors go beyond
the stories to investigate the intentions of the seventh-century Yamato rulers who
compiled these narratives. Their intriguing finding is that Emperor Tenmu (r. 673–
686) instituted the worship at Ise of Amaterasu, a male deity considered both a threat
to the realm and a supreme figure at the apex of a new system of imperial kami wor-
ship. It is Tenmu’s widow, Empress Jitō, who transformed Amaterasu into a female
deity and an imperial ancestor as justification for her authority.
The book next turns to the codification of Ise ritual by the imperial court in the
ninth century. Chapter 2 describes how this move was intended to contain Amaterasu’s
power to cause the emperor fall ill, along with other calamities, and to contain the
power of Buddhist temples. Ritual codification transformed Ise into an explicitly im-
perial place. During the period 1000–1200, however, the imperial monopoly of Ise
broke down as the court itself weakened, as discussed in chapter 3. Ise priests pre-
sented themselves to new, warrior sponsors and performed rites praying for success
in this life, longevity, and salvation after death in exchange for landholdings in the
Kanto region. The Buddhist monks of Tōdaiji in Nara brought the Ise Shrines into
the new discourse of esoteric Buddhism, in which Ise gained new meaning as the
mandalic center of Japan.
Chapter 4 looks into the continuing process of esotericization of Ise and how temple
constructions there transformed the shrines’ setting. In response to economic decline,
 Book Reviews 249

Ise priests actually embraced the site’s esoteric identity and created their own secret
transmissions. They furthermore marked these transmissions as Shinto—their first
conscious use of the term—despite their goal having been to differentiate themselves
from other esoteric practices rather than to create a religion in distinction to Bud-
dhism. Their use of the term “Shinto,” in other words, served to designate Ise as the
medieval capital of secrets and land rights.
The book then turns to Ise in the Muromachi period, a time that can be character-
ized as one of war and pilgrimage. The Ise Shrines’ involvement in the struggles be-
tween the southern and northern courts in the 1330s–1390s gave rise to the discourse
of the three imperial regalia as sources of the virtues of the imperial line, a discourse
that would in later periods bring Ise to the center of Japan as a “divine land.” The
Kamakura bakufu’s sponsoring of Ise took the forms of both land grants and pilgrim-
ages. Warriors followed the example of the bakufu by visiting Ise in large number. As
Ise developed into a pilgrimage center visited increasingly by the general populace
as well, a new class of entrepreneurs began to derive income from performing rituals
for pilgrims independently of the Ise Shrines. In the fifteenth century, which was
marked by ongoing nationwide warfare, the shrines became dilapidated while the
wealth of the towns of Ise grew.
This discussion is followed by two chapters on the early modern period. Chapter 6
traces the restoration of the Ise Shrines by the Tokugawa bakufu, which, as the price
of its support, put the shrines under its ideological control in order to justify its au-
thority. The most significant change in the seventeenth century was the transforma-
tion of Ise into a site dedicated to Shinto at a time when this teaching was in the pro-
cess of being differentiated from Buddhism and Confucianism. Marking the
Shintoization of Ise was the banning of Buddhist priests and temples. Chapter 7 fo-
cuses on pilgrimage to Ise, exploring the activities of pilgrimage entrepreneurs and
their agents in the provinces; local cultivation of Ise belief and practice; and imagin-
ings of Ise by pilgrims, priests, intellectuals, and political activists. It is not until the
end of the Tokugawa period, when the country was faced with the danger of coloni-
zation, that Ise was politicized as a symbol of imperial authority.
The next chapter examines reforms of the Ise Shrines in the Meiji period (1868–
1912) as part of modern nation-state building, which caused popular alienation and
a decline in pilgrimages to Ise; subsequently, entrepreneurship focused on the devel-
opment of the city of Ujiyamada, where the Ise Shrines were located, with the aim of
enticing pilgrims to return. The chapter is fascinating in its demonstration of how
local development plans were ill-matched with the Meiji government’s imagining of
Ise as a site of state ritual.
Chapter 9 focuses on the recurring ritual of shikinen sengū, in particular the event
that took place in 1929. This ritual involves the building of a new shrine every
twenty years (with some exceptions) alongside the old one in Ise’s inner shrine com-
pound and then the transfer of Amaterasu from the old to the new structure. The
1929 sengū was national in its scope, simultaneously creating and resulting from a
newly intense relationship between the Ise Shrines and the country as a whole. With
250 Monumenta Nipponica 73:2 (2018)
participation by shrine priests as well as Japan’s most powerful men, including the
prime minister, the imperial household minister, the president of the Privy Council,
and the speakers of the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet, the ritual that year
foregrounded Amaterasu to stage a “dramatic, public demonstration of the nature of
state power as centered on the emperor, a sovereign of divine descent” (p. 191).
Also participating were school pupils, university students, and members of youth
groups from across Japan. Accompanying the sengū ritual was the emergence of a
popular Ise discourse that tied the Japanese nation and the state to the divine impe-
rial institution.
The book’s final chapter continues to explore the history of sengū, now in the post-
war period. The sengū of 1953, 1973, and 1993, the authors argue, each “proved a
periodic opportunity for reimagining the shrines and their place in Japanese society.
The fashioning of Ise’s relations with the common people, with the imperial institu-
tion and, indeed, with the state during the post-war has been intimately linked to the
physical fact of shrine rebuilding” (p. 211). In the postwar context of Ise becoming
a private religious corporation separated from the state, the sengū ritual performance
propelled the creation of an extraordinary alliance between the secular, public world
of big business and the private religious realm of the Ise Shrines.
Both Shinto: A History and A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital
make important contributions to the historical study of Shinto, and they do so from
different perspectives. The first provides a comprehensive reference for all students
of Shinto and Japanese religions, while the second offers a rich, multifaceted account
and analysis of the Ise Shrines. These two additions to the literature offer new ap-
proaches that enhance and further round out our understanding of that elusive phe-
nomenon called Shinto.

Fabricating the “Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara” and Prince Shōtoku’s After-

lives. By Chari Pradel. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 300 pages. Hardcover,
€103.00/$124.00.

Hillary Pedersen
Doshisha University

Reconstructing the history of an ancient object is no easy task, and the challenges are
compounded when that object has been reduced to a few damaged remnants that
were physically reworked and conceptually repurposed over several centuries. How-
ever, that is precisely what Chari Pradel has done in her meticulous study of the Ten-
jukoku shūchō mandara, an assemblage of embroidered textile fragments that have
been housed—in one form or another, in whole or in part—at Chūgūji, Shōsōin,
Hōryūji, Nara National Museum, and Tokyo National Museum. Pradel argues that
the original artifact, known as the Shūchō, was first created in the seventh century as
a set of curtains with primarily non-Buddhist funerary imagery for use in memorial