is a term which originally indicated the head of an institution serving temporarily as the head of another one, but which came to mean also the full-time head of some institution.
[Iwanami Japanese dictionary][Encyclopedia of Shinto, Bettō] The
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 ...
samurai
were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...
Wada Yoshimori
was an early Kamakura period military commander. A ''gokenin'' (retainer) of the Kamakura shogunate, he was the first director (''bettō'') of the Samurai-dokoro.
Life
Wada Yoshimori was born as the son of Miura Yoshiaki and grandson of Sugi ...
, for example, was the first ''bettō'' of the shogunate's
Samurai-dokoro The ''Samurai-dokoro'' (侍所 - Board of Retainers) was an office of the Kamakura and Muromachi shogunates. The role of the ''Samurai-dokoro'' was to take the leadership of ''gokenin'', the shogun's retainers, and to be in charge of the imprisonme ...
.
Religious use of the term
A ''bettō'' was a monk who performed Buddhist rites at
shrines
A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy sacred space, space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor worship, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, Daemon (mythology), daem ...
and jingūji (shrines part of a temple) before the ''
shinbutsu bunri
The Japanese term indicates the separation of Shinto from Buddhism, introduced after the Meiji Restoration which separated Shinto ''kami'' from buddhas, and also Buddhist temples from Shinto shrines, which were originally amalgamated. It is a ...
'', the
Meiji period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
law that forbade the mixing of Shinto and Buddhism.
A shrine had various ''bettō'', from the ''seibettō'' (head monk) to the ''shūri bettō'' (monk in charge of repairs). Those not associated with religious duties were called ''zoku bettō''. Among the shrines that appointed ''bettō'' are
Iwashimizu Hachiman-gū,
Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, and Hakone Jinja.
They were particularly common at Hachiman and
gongen
A , literally "incarnation", was believed to be the manifestation of a buddha in the form of an indigenous kami, an entity who had come to guide the people to salvation, during the era of shinbutsu-shūgō in premodern Japan.Encyclopedia of Shint ...
shrines, and their mandate lasted three or six years.
Notes
References
* Encyclopedia of Shinto
Bettō retrieved on October 29, 2008
* Iwanami Japanese dictionary 5th Edition (2000), CD version
{{DEFAULTSORT:Betto
Japanese historical terms