was a Japanese

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintois ...

priest of the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

. He was a seminal figure in the evolution of a coherent descriptive and interpretive

schema The word schema comes from the Greek word ('), which means ''shape'', or more generally, ''plan''. The plural is ('). In English, both ''schemas'' and ''schemata'' are used as plural forms. Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA ...

of Shinto ritual and

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

.Itō Satoshi
"Yoshida Kanetomo,"
''Encyclopedia of Shinto.'' April 15, 2006.

Career

Kanetomo progressed gradually through the ranks of the Imperial offices in the

Jingi-kan The , also known as the Department of Shinto Affairs, Department of Rites, Department of Worship, as well as Council of Divinities, was a Japanese Imperial bureaucracy established in the 8th century, as part of the ''ritsuryō'' reforms. It was fi ...

(Department of Shinto Affairs), which was one of the Imperial bureaucracies which were set up under the

ritsuryō , , is the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei" (律令制). ''Kyaku'' (格) are amendments of Ritsuryō, ''Shiki'' (� ...

system in the 8th century. Kanetomo's eventually became an . Other positions he held at different times were and . *1511 ('' Eishō 8, 2nd month''): When Kanetomo died at the age of 77, his passing was considered a significant event in the chronicles of the Imperial

history of Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inven ...

.Titsingh, Isaac. (1834) ; aka Ourabe no Kane tomo

Yoshida Shinto

The early period Shinto school founded by Kanetomo was called ''Genpon-Sōgen Shinto'' ("Shinto of the Original Founder"), also known as Yuiitsu Shintō ("Only one Shintō"). Prior to Kanetomo, the understanding and practice of Shinto was intermingled with Buddhism. Sanetomo invested a lifetime in a process of disentangling what were thereafter construed as the two distinct entities.

Inverted ''honji suijaku''

The term ''

honji suijaku The term in Japanese religious terminology refers to a theory widely accepted until the Meiji period according to which Indian Buddhist deities choose to appear in Japan as native ''kami'' to more easily convert and save the Japanese.Breen and Te ...

'' expresses a Japanese

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

theory according to which a perceived Shinto ''

kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the sp ...

'' is the manifestation of a Buddhist god. This theory proposed and presumed that the resulting dual entity would necessarily have a fundamental Buddhist core, and that any Shinto aspect was secondary. In the late

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

, a counter-theory arose which also began with the notion of such dual entities; however, the counter-theorists construed that the ''kami'' side was primary and the Buddhist one was secondary. This came to be known as the ''Inverted honji suijaku ''. Kanetomo was influenced by these ideas and brought them further. He proposed to set aside the conceptual theories of such entities. Up through the end of the Edo period, Kanetomo's followers and the

Yoshida Shrine is a Shinto shrine located in Sakyō-ku in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded in 859 by the Fujiwara clan. History The shrine became the object of Imperial patronage during the early Heian period. In 965, Emperor Murakami ordered that Imperial ...

were granted the right to award ranks to all shrines and priests except for those associated with the Imperial family.Breen, John et al. (2000).

Notes

References

* Breen, John and

Mark Teeuwen Mark J. Teeuwen (Marcus Jacobus Teeuwen, born 9 February 1966, Eindhoven) is a Dutch academic and Japanologist. He is an expert in Japanese religious practices, and he is a professor at the University of Oslo.University of Oslo faculty CV/ref> In a ...

. (2000)
''Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami.''
Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. ; * Scheid, Bernhard. (2001). ''Der eine und einzige Weg der Götter: Yoshida Kanetomo und die Erfindung des Shinto.'' Vienna: ''Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften''. ; * Titsingh, Isaac. (1834)
''Annales des empereurs du Japon''
(''

Nihon Odai Ichiran Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

''). Paris: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland.

External links

Kokugakuin University Kokugakuin University (國學院大學; ''Kokugakuin Daigaku'', abbreviated as 國學大 ''Kokugakudai'' or 國大 ''Kokudai'') is a private university, whose main office is in Tokyo's Shibuya district. The academic programs and research include ...