Shinto Studies

Places and roles of women in modern Japanese religion: a case study from Tenrikyo

by Sarah Morrigan

Originally submitted as part of course requirement; for possible future publication upon improvement.

Tenrikyo, one of the oldest and most well-known of so-called “new religious movements” (NRMs) in Japan, emerged from a... more Tenrikyo, one of the oldest and most well-known of so-called “new religious movements” (NRMs) in Japan, emerged from a rural village of Nara, Japan, founded by a woman of an agricultural household, Nakayama Miki. With a peasant woman as the foundress and the chief medium of the God the Parent, and its doctrinal emphasis on social justice, it is tempting to make an assumption that Tenrikyo is not unlike some liberal Protestant churches in North America where feminist theology wields a significant influence and women are working in all levels of church leadership. As with Christianity, it is likely that a more patriarchal elements crept into Tenrikyo as it established itself as an officially recognized Sect Shinto denomination and surviving the trying periods of the early 20th century.

The Question of the Separate Identities of Buddhism and Shinto in Japan

by Nolan Bensen

This is pretty straightforward. It rehashes an argument out of Buddhology in the 80's and early 90's, over whether... more This is pretty straightforward. It rehashes an argument out of Buddhology in the 80's and early 90's, over whether it's right to faithfully accept the word of the Meiji state of over a century ago by parsing Buddism and Shinto as they did, and considering the latter to be a genuinely "Japanese" belief system. It also addresses the question of to what extent European concepts of distinct and implicitly competitive religions can be exported to premodern Japan.

Festival change and continuity in a Japanese town

by Michael Ashkenazi

Guest shrines and folk Shinto

by Michael Ashkenazi

MATSURI, FESTIVALS OF A JAPANESE TOWN

by Michael Ashkenazi

Mottainai: A Philosophy of Waste from Japan

by Kevin Taylor

Presented at the Building Bridges Graduate Conference 2011 - Philosophy and Waste. November 4th and 5th.

http://philosophyandwaste.wordpress.com/

Forthcoming publication:
Taylor, Kevin. Mottainai: A Philosophy of Waste from Japan." Kinesis: Graduate Journal In Philosophy 38, no. 2 (November 4, 2011). Philosopher's Index, EBSCOhost (accessed month date, year).

This paper presents a Japanese approach to the concept of waste through an analysis of the Japanese word mottainai... more This paper presents a Japanese approach to the concept of waste through an analysis of the Japanese word mottainai (“what a waste!” and “don’t be wasteful”). The paper begins by outlining Buddhist origins of the word and religious veneration of objects in Shinto. From there, the paper then presents the popularization of the term as a culturally unique phrase that has been promulgated by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment as part of its own environmental pedagogy. The cultural applications have attracted the notice of Kenyan environmental and political activist Wangari Maathai, adding the word to the three R’s as ‘respect’. The use of mottainai as a form of ontological humility in the face of our own increasingly polluted world is the focus of the conclusion. I argue here that Tanaka Shozo’s conservationist environmental philosophy itself amicable to Leopold’s Land Ethic and Carson’s critique of anthropocentricism.

Review of Herman Ooms, Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty 650-800

by Ross Bender

Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650-800

by Herman Ooms
more Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650-800

by Herman Ooms

University of Hawai'i Press

2009

Book Review by Ross Bender





To say that Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan is a pleasure to read  is not merely a hackneyed accolade but a monstrous understatement. Herman Ooms writes with a verve, intensity, sparkle and oomph that, to use another cliché, make the book hard to put down. The structure of the book, if it can be said to have a structure, is a sort of whirling Piagetian assemblage rather than a stodgy old-fashioned linear history – there’s no chapter titled “Conclusion” in which to find a coherent summary, which necessitates the sometimes exasperating task of reading the whole thing cover to cover, a thing which I accomplished in about three sittings, taking time out only to dance in the streets on election night.

Research Note -- A Japanese Curriculum of 757

by Ross Bender

Ross Bender and Zhao Lu

PMJS Papers

www.pmjs.org/pmjs-papers/papers-index/bender-zhao-j-curriculum

In an edict (choku) of 757, the Empress Kōken ordered a curriculum for the students at the National Academy. It listed... more In an edict (choku) of 757, the Empress Kōken ordered a curriculum for the students at the National Academy. It listed seven fields of study and the Chinese works to be studied in each field. These include well-known classics and some that are much more obscure. This list provides perhaps the most detailed view available of the official curriculum of study in mid-Nara Japan.

Performative Loci in Shoku Nihongi Edicts, 749-770

by Ross Bender

Online 2007

http://rossbender.org/perfloci.pdf

Nara’s hackneyed image as Japan’s “first permanent capital” in the minds of Western historians has been steadily... more Nara’s hackneyed image as Japan’s “first permanent capital” in the minds of Western historians has been steadily undermined by the realization that in fact Nara was anything but. Shomu Tenno’s mid-century capital shuffling was described in 1991 by William Coaldrake as a reversion to the “peripatetic palace syndrome”, and a “brief revival of the indigenous notion of a capital as impermanent.” Joan Piggott discussed Shomu’s attempts to build capitals at Kuni and Shigaraki in terms of both factional struggles at court as well as religious pilgrimage, and recounted the sovereign’s “frequent royal progresses around the extended core.” Wayne Farris’ analysis of the archaeological record emphasized the portability of the Nara court and capital, detailing the remarkable way in which the major structures were packed up like monumental tents and transferred to new locations.

Similar attention has not been given to the following reign, that of the “Last Empress” Koken / Shotoku Tenno . My study will argue that this sovereign was on the road to perhaps a greater degree than even her predecessor. I will demonstrate this by analyzing the imperial edicts recorded in the eighth century chronicle Shoku Nihongi for her reign. By comparing the contexts, contents, and text-types of the various edicts, I will illuminate the performative loci of imperial rule in this critical segment of late Nara history. The picture that emerges is that of a peregrinating monarch ruling by edict from not only the Heijo palace in Nara, but also from the grand Buddhist temples, mansions of the upper nobility, and temporary palaces in the course of magnificent royal progresses.

Performative Loci of the Imperial Edicts in Nara Japan, 749-70

by Ross Bender

Oral Tradition 24/1 (2009): 249-268

http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/24i/bender

The Japanese Empress Koken/Shotoku (r. 749-70) governed not merely from a static setting, a throne in the palace at... more The Japanese Empress Koken/Shotoku (r. 749-70) governed not merely from a static setting, a throne in the palace at Nara, but by delivering her edicts in a wide variety of performative loci: in Buddhist temples, mansions of the nobility, and temporary palaces during royal progresses around the realm. This paper analyzes the texts, settings, and audiences of edicts, arguing that eighth-century Japan is an important venue for the study of transitions from orality to literacy.

Review of Michael Como, Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan

by Ross Bender

PMJS Papers, December 2009

http://www.pmjs.org/pmjs-papers/papers-index/review-como-weaving-binding

Changing the Calendar: Royal Political Theology and the Suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro Conspiracy of 757

by Ross Bender

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 37/2: 223-245 (2010)

http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/jjrs/pdf/846.pdf

In the aftermath of the suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro conspiracy of 757, the Empress Kōken issued two edicts... more In the aftermath of the suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro conspiracy of 757, the Empress Kōken issued two edicts articulating the royal political theology of the time. The first edict was a senmyō, inscribed in the Shoku Nihongi in Old Japanese; the second was a choku in Chinese. A miraculous omen, the apparition of a silkworm cocoon with a message woven into its surface, was interpreted as the occasion for a change in the calendrical
era name, or nengō. This article argues that the imperial edicts express a coherent ideology combining ideas from a cultic matrix in which may be discerned proto-Shinto, Buddhist, and Confucian elements.

Metamorphosis of a Deity: The Image of Hachiman in Yumi Yawata

by Ross Bender

Monumenta Nipponica (1978) 33:2 pp 165-178

From the beginning, ours has been a land
Where the gods protect the emperor.
The vow of this god in... more From the beginning, ours has been a land
Where the gods protect the emperor.
The vow of this god in particular
Illumines the night
Like the light of the moon.
The waters of Iwashimizu flow ceaselessly,
And as long as the stream runs on
Living beings are released.
How glorious is the god's compassion!
Truly this is an auspicious time.


These lines express the true theme of the play. The work presents an image of Hachiman in his tutelary aspect; this is the Heian conception of the god, and that most closely associated with the Iwashimizu shrine and the protection of the emperor. Near the end of the play Hachiman is revealed as a Bodhisattva, the symbol of profound and eternal compassion. But the Bodhisattva is seen as having a political function: not only does he release living beings, but he protects the emperor as well.

The Hachiman Cult and the Dokyo Incident

by Ross Bender

Monumenta Nipponica (1979) 34:2 pp 125-153

One of the gravest assaults ever made on the Japanese imperial institution was launched by the Buddhist priest Dokyo... more One of the gravest assaults ever made on the Japanese imperial institution was launched by the Buddhist priest Dokyo in the 760s. Dokyo, who came from a clan of the low-ranking provincial aristocracy, gained the affection of the retired Empress Koken in 761 and proceeded to gather political power to himself; by the end of the decade he stood as the paramount figure in the court bureaucracy and had already begun to usurp imperial prerogatives. It was in 769 that an oracle from the shrine of Hachiman in Kyushu was reported to Nara: the god prophesied peace in the realm if Dokyo were proclaimed emperor. Koken (who had reascended the throne as Empress Shotoku), upon the advice of the god given her in a dream, dispatched Wake no Kiyomaro to Kyushu to ascertain Hachiman's true will. Kiyomaro returned to the capital with the famous oracle:

Since the establishment of our state, the distinction between lord and subject has been fixed.
Never has there been an occasion when a subject was made lord.
The throne of Heavenly Sun Succession shall be given to one of the imperial lineage;
wicked persons should immediately be swept away.

Although the priest took his vengeance upon Kiyomaro by exiling him to Osumi, Dokyo's own power soon dissolved, for the empress died in the following year and Dokyo was banished from the capital. He died three years later while serving in a lowly post at a temple in Shimotsuke.

The Political Meaning of the Hachiman Cult in Ancient and Early Medieval Japan

by Ross Bender

Dissertation Columbia University 1980

THE POLITICAL MEANING OF THE HACHIMAN CULT

IN ANCIENT AND EARLY MEDIEVAL JAPAN



ROSS... more THE POLITICAL MEANING OF THE HACHIMAN CULT

IN ANCIENT AND EARLY MEDIEVAL JAPAN



ROSS LYNN BENDER


This is a study of the state cult of the Shinto deity Hachiman from the eighth century through early medieval times. During this period there flourished three major state shrines to Hachiman: Usa, an ancient shrine in Kyushu of uncertain origin which gained the patronage of the Nara court; Iwashimizu, founded near Kyoto in the ninth century, and supported by the Heian emperors; and Tsurugaoka, sponsored by the military government at Kamakura. The entries in official historical chronicles describing the worship of Hachiman at these shrines form the basic source material for this study. My purpose in analyzing these fragmentary accounts of the body of beliefs which I term the state cult of Hachiman is to identify political ideas embodied in the Hachiman faith.

The first chapter describes the rise of the Usa Shrine from obscurity to national prominence, and emphasizes that the Hachiman oracles given through a medium at Usa were an important reason for that development. The role of the Hachiman belief in the crisis of 769, when the Buddhist priest Dokyo attempted to usurp the throne by claiming Hachiman's support, is the subject of Chapter Two. In this crisis of legitimacy, the deity Hachiman was looked to as an arbiter to decide who should rule Japan.

Chapter Three is a study of the new identities, those of Great Bodhisattva and Imperial Ancestor, which Hachiman acquired in the early Heian period, and of the imperial tutelary cult which developed at Iwashimizu on the basis of these identities. Hachiman, bot in his role as imperial ancestor and as bodhisattva, was viewed as a divine guardian of the state and of the emperor.

The development of the association of the warrior clan of the Minamoto with Hachiman at Tsurugaoka Shrine is analyzed in Chapter Four. This chapter emphasizes that the Minamoto worshipped Hachiman as a tutelary deity and as a source of legitimacy for their new military government, and not just as a god of war.

The fifth chapter examines the images of Hachiman in selected medieval literary works. Three historical aspects, or stages, of the cult described in the previous chapters -- the oracular, tutelary, and martial -- are used as classifications of the Hachiman material in those works.

In the conclusion I argue that the political meaning of the Hachiman cult throughout the five and a half centuries studied was that the body of beliefs about Hachiman comprised ideas concerning legitimacy -- the right to exercise political power. This body of beliefs was a consistent and coherent system of thought, even though it was not fully articulated as political philosophy.

Correspondence With A. N. Meshcheryakov

by Ross Bender

Monumenta Nipponica (1983) 38:1 pp 85-89

I was greatly impressed by Dr. Ross Bender's valuable article, 'The Hachiman Cult and the Dokyo Incident', in... more I was greatly impressed by Dr. Ross Bender's valuable article, 'The Hachiman Cult and the Dokyo Incident', in Monumenta Nipponica, XXXIV:2, but I would like to discuss one major issue which is of much significance as regards the cultural and political history of eighth-century Japan.

We can sum up one of the most important conclusions of this article by quoting Dr. Bender's own words:'...during the Nara period there was a crisis in the emperor's relations with the gods; since the gods were appealed to as an ultimate sanction for human reign, this meant a crisis of legitimacy' (p.146).

Nobody can deny the growing power of Buddhism in the Nara period and its influence over political issues in Japan was quite significant. But at the same time, one should not overestimate this power, and this may be proved by a qualitative and quantitative analysis of Nihon Shoki and Shoku Nihongi.

"Hachiman River" -- Religious Meanings of the Hachiman Cult: Releasing Living Beings in Hojogawa

by Ross Bender

translation of the Noh play Hojogawa (1989)

Hōjōgawa is a god play by Zeami which is in the currently performed repertoire. It describes the autumn festival... more Hōjōgawa is a god play by Zeami which is in the currently performed repertoire. It describes the autumn festival (Hōjōe) of Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine at which birds and fish are released. Like its counterpart, Yumi Yawata ["The Bow of Hachiman"], which describes the spring festival at Iwashimizu, Hōjōgawa portrays a god who protects the emperor and brings peace to the realm. Like the spring festival, the Hōjōe connects the present time with the Age of the Gods, the divine time of origins with the temporal cycle. Although Hachiman in Yumi Yawata is depicted as a Bodhisattva, Hōjōgawa more explicitly stresses the religious mission of the Bodhisattva. The Hōjōe is a Buddhist rite that makes tangible the vow of the Bodhisattva to release all living beings. The action of releasing birds and fish in the shrine precincts is a salvific gesture that mimes the cosmic deliverance.