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''Shinbutsu-shūgō'' (, "syncretism of
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
and buddhas"), also called ''Shinbutsu-konkō'' (, "jumbling up" or "contamination of kami and buddhas"), is the
syncretism Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various school of thought, schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or religious assimilation, assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the ...
of
Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...
and
Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
that was Japan's main organized religion up until the
Meiji period The was 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 colonizatio ...
. Beginning in 1868, the new
Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...
approved a series of laws that separated Japanese native
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
worship, on one side, from Buddhism which had assimilated it, on the other. When Buddhism was introduced from
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
in the
Asuka period The was a period in the history of Japan lasting from 538 to 710, although its beginning could be said to overlap with the preceding Kofun period. The Yamato period, Yamato polity evolved greatly during the Asuka period, which is named after the ...
(6th century), the Japanese tried to reconcile the new beliefs with the older
Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...
beliefs, assuming both were true. As a consequence, Buddhist temples (, ''tera'') were attached to local
Shinto shrine A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion. The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...
s (, ''jinja'') and vice versa and devoted to both
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
and Buddhist figures. The local religion and foreign Buddhism never fused into a single, unified religion, but remained inextricably linked to the present day through interaction. The depth of the influence from Buddhism on local religious beliefs can be seen in much of Shinto's conceptual vocabulary and even the types of Shinto shrines seen today. The large worship halls and religious images are themselves of Buddhist origin.Tamura, page 21 The formal separation of Buddhism from Shinto took place only as recently as the end of the 19th century; however, in many ways, the blending of the two still continues. The term ''shinbutsu shūgō'' itself was coined during the early modern era (17th century) to refer to the amalgamation of kami and buddhas in general, as opposed to specific currents within Buddhism which did the same, e.g. Ryōbu Shintō and Sannō Shintō.Inoue (2004:67-68) The term may have a negative connotation of bastardization and randomness. It is a
yojijukugo A is a Japanese lexeme consisting of four ''kanji'' (Chinese characters). English translations of include "four-character compound", "four-character idiom", "four-character idiomatic phrase", and "four-character idiomatic compound". It is equi ...
phrase.


Assimilation of Buddhism


Debate over the nature of Shinto

There is no agreement among specialists as to the exact extent of fusion between the two religions. According to some scholars (such as Hirai Naofusa in Japan and Joseph Kitagawa in the US), Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan, has existed as such continuously since its prehistory, and consists of all the uniquely Japanese rituals and beliefs shaped by Japanese history from prehistory to the present. The term "Shinto" itself was coined in the 6th century to differentiate the previously disparate local religious practices from imported Buddhism.Kitagawa (1987:139) The opposing view of Japanese historian Toshio Kuroda and his supporters is that Shinto as an independent religion was born only in the modern period after emerging in the Middle Ages as an offshoot of Buddhism,Breen and Teeuwen in ''Breen and Teeuwen'' (2000:4-5)Rambelli (2001) and that Shinto as a distinct religion is a Meiji era invention of Japanese nationalist ideologues. Kuroda points out how the state formalization of ''
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
'' rituals and the state ranking of shrines during the
Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...
were not the emergence of Shinto as an independent religion, but an effort to explain local beliefs in Buddhist terms. He also says that, while it is true that the two characters for "Shinto" appear very early in the historical record (for example in the
Nihon Shoki The or , sometimes translated as ''The Chronicles of Japan'', is the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the , the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeol ...
), this does not mean today's Shinto already existed as a religion because the same word was originally used for
Taoism Taoism or Daoism (, ) is a diverse philosophical and religious tradition indigenous to China, emphasizing harmony with the Tao ( zh, p=dào, w=tao4). With a range of meaning in Chinese philosophy, translations of Tao include 'way', 'road', ' ...
or even for religion in general. Indeed, according to Kuroda, many features of Shinto (for example the worshiping of mirrors and swords or the very structure of the
Ise Grand Shrine The , located in Ise, Mie Prefecture of Japan, is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the solar goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami and the grain goddess Toyouke-hime (Toyouke Omikami). Also known simply as , Ise Shrine is a shrine complex composed of many Shi ...
, Shinto's holiest and most important site) are typical of Taoism. The term "Shinto" in old texts, therefore, does not necessarily indicate something uniquely Japanese. Still, according to this view, Shinto's rise as an autonomous religion was gradual and started to become evident with the emergence of
Yoshida Kanetomo was a Japanese Shinto priest of the Sengoku period. He was a seminal figure in the evolution of a coherent descriptive and interpretive schema of Shinto ritual and mythology.Itō Satoshi "Yoshida Kanetomo,"''Encyclopedia of Shinto.'' April 15, 20 ...
's sect,
Yoshida Shintō (), also frequently referred to as (, "One-and-only Shintō"), was a prominent sect of Shintō that arose during the Sengoku period through the teachings and work of Yoshida Kanetomo. The sect was originally an effort to organize Shintō teachi ...
. The term Shinto started to be used with today's meaning of ''kami'' worship only later during the
Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...
. During the same era,
Kokugaku was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Edo period. scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of ...
theorists like
Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese people, Japanese scholar of active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka, Mie, Matsusaka in Ise Province ...
tried to separate it intellectually from Buddhism, preparing the ground for the final schism of the
Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...
. According to the first view, then, the two religions were at the time of their first meeting already formed and independent and thereafter just coexisted with non-essential exchanges. According to the second, Buddhism, meeting local kami beliefs in Japan, actually produced today's Shinto.Sueki (2007:2)Kuroda (1981:7)


Assimilation process

The fusion of Buddhism with the local kami worship started as soon as the first arrived in Japan. Mononobe no Okoshi wrote, "The kami of our land will be offended if we worship a foreign kami."Tamura, pages 26 to 33. Mononobe saw
Gautama Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist lege ...
as just another kami. Foreign kami were called or , and understood to be more or less like local ones. Initially, therefore, the conflict between the two religions was political, and not religious, in nature, a struggle between the progressive
Soga clan The was one of the most powerful aristocratic kin groups Uji (clan), (''uji'') of the Asuka period of the early Japanese state—the Yamato period, Yamato polity—and played a major role in the spread of Buddhism in Japan. Through the 5th and ...
, that wanted a more international outlook for the country, and the conservative Mononobe clan, that wanted the contrary. Buddhism was not passive in the assimilation process, but was itself ready to assimilate and be assimilated. By the time it entered Japan, it was already syncretic, having adapted to and amalgamated with other religions and cultures in India, China, and the
Korean Peninsula Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel between North Korea (Dem ...
.Encyclopedia of Shinto
Combinatory Kami
accessed on October 13, 2008. Quotation: "Buddhism was already product of a complex process of adaptation and amalgamation with other belief systems in India, China, and the Korean peninsula."
For example, already while in India, it had absorbed Hindu divinities like
Brahma Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the triple deity, trinity of Para Brahman, supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity, Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 212– ...
(''Bonten'' in Japanese) and
Indra Indra (; ) is the Hindu god of weather, considered the king of the Deva (Hinduism), Devas and Svarga in Hinduism. He is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war.  volumes Indra is the m ...
(''Taishakuten''). When it arrived in Japan, it already had a disposition towards producing the combinatory gods that the Japanese would call . Searching for the origins of a kami in Buddhist scriptures was felt to be nothing out of the ordinary. However, if monks didn't doubt the existence of kami, they certainly saw them as inferior to their buddhas. Hindu gods had already been treated analogously: they had been thought of as unenlightened and prisoners of ''
saṃsāra ''Saṃsāra'' (Devanagari: संसार) is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." ''Saṃsāra'' is referred to with terms or p ...
''. Buddhist claims of superiority encountered resistance, and monks tried to overcome them by deliberately integrating kami into their belief system. Several strategies to do this were developed and deployed. The process of amalgamation is usually divided into three stages.Mark Teeuwen in ''Breen and Teeuwen'' (2000:95-96) The first articulation of the difference between Japanese religious ideas and Buddhism, and the first effort to reconcile the two is attributed to
Prince Shōtoku , also known as or , was a semi-legendary regent and a politician of the Asuka period in Japan who served under Empress Suiko. He was the son of Emperor Yōmei and his consort, Princess Anahobe no Hashihito, who was also Yōmei's younger half ...
(574–622), and the first signs that the differences between the two world views were beginning to become manifest to the Japanese in general appear at the time of
Emperor Tenmu was the 40th Emperor of Japan,Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 天武天皇 (40) retrieved 2013-8-22. according to the traditional order of succession. Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1959). ''The Imperial House of Japan'', p. 53. He ascended ...
(673–86). Accordingly, one of the first efforts to reconcile Shinto and Buddhism was made in the 8th century during the
Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capita ...
founding so-called , that is ''shrine-temples'', complexes comprising both a shrine and a temple.Satō Makoto Behind the inclusion in a
Shinto shrine A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion. The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...
of Buddhist religious objects was the idea that the kami were lost beings in need of liberation through Buddhism like any other
sentient beings Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. It may not necessarily imply higher cognitive functions such as awareness, reasoning, or complex thought processes. Some writers define sentience exclusively as the capacity for ''v ...
. Kami were thought to be subject to
karma Karma (, from , ; ) is an ancient Indian concept that refers to an action, work, or deed, and its effect or consequences. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called ...
and
reincarnation Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the Philosophy, philosophical or Religion, religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan (disambiguation), lifespan in a different physical ...
like human beings, and early Buddhist stories tell how the task of helping suffering kami was assumed by wandering monks. A local kami would appear in a dream to the monk, telling him about his suffering. To improve the kami's karma through
rites RITES Ltd, formerly known as Rail India Technical and Economic Service Limited, is an Indian public sector undertaking and engineering consultancy corporation, specializing in the field of transport infrastructure. Established in 1974 by the In ...
and the recitation of sutras, Buddhist monks would build Buddhist temples next to kami shrines. Such groupings had been created by the 7th century, for example at Usa Jingū in
Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa and the other Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regio ...
, where
Hachiman In Japanese religion, ''Yahata'' (八幡神, ancient Shinto pronunciation) formerly in Shinto and later commonly known as Hachiman (八幡神, Japanese Buddhist pronunciation) is the syncretic divinity of archery and war, incorporating elements f ...
was worshiped together with
Maitreya Maitreya (Sanskrit) or Metteyya (Pali), is a bodhisattva who is regarded as the future Buddhahood, Buddha of this world in all schools of Buddhism, prophesied to become Maitreya Buddha or Metteyya Buddha.Williams, Paul. ''Mahayana Buddhism: Th ...
. The building of temples at shrines produced shrine-temple complexes, which in turn accelerated the amalgamation process. As a result of the creation of shrine-temple complexes, many shrines that had until then been just an open-air site became Buddhist style groupings of buildings. At the end of the same century, in what is considered the second stage of the amalgamation, the kami Hachiman was declared a
dharmapala A ''dharmapāla'' is a type of wrathful god in Buddhism. The name means "''dharma'' protector" in Sanskrit, and the ''dharmapālas'' are also known as the Defenders of the Justice (Dharma), or the Guardians of the Law. There are two kinds of ...
and, later, a
bodhisattva In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has attained, or is striving towards, '' bodhi'' ('awakening', 'enlightenment') or Buddhahood. Often, the term specifically refers to a person who forgoes or delays personal nirvana or ''bodhi'' in ...
. Shrines for him started to be built at temples (the so-called " temple-shrines"), marking an important step ahead in the process of amalgamation of kami and Buddhism. When the great buddha at
Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Nanto Shichi Daiji, Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Nara, Nara, Japan. The construction of the temple was an attempt to imitate Chinese temples from the much-admir ...
in
Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch, charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also task ...
was built, there was also erected within the temple grounds a shrine for Hachiman – according to the legend because of a wish expressed by the kami himself. Hachiman considered this his reward for having helped the temple find the gold and copper mines from which the metal for the great statue had come. After this, temples in the entire country adopted tutelary
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
(.


''Honji suijaku'' theory

The third and final stage of the fusion took place in the 9th century with the development of the theory according to which Japanese kami are emanations of
buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...
s, ''bodhisattvas'' or
deva Deva may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Deva, List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters, an ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' 2nd edition monster * Deva, in the 2023 Indian film ''Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefir ...
s who mingle with human beings to lead them to the Buddhist Way. This theory was the keystone of the whole ''shinbutsu shūgō'' edifice and therefore the foundation of Japanese religion for many centuries. Because of it, most kami changed from potentially dangerous spirits to be improved through contact with the Buddhist law to local emanations of buddhas and bodhisattvas which possess wisdom of their own. Buddhas and kami were now indivisible twins. The status of kami however changed dramatically according to the sect. At one extreme one was
Shingon Buddhism is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō-j ...
's
Ryōbu Shintō The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...
thinkers, who considered kami and buddhas equivalent in power and dignity. However, not all kami were emanations of some buddha. Some, often called , usually dangerous and angry, had no Buddhist counterpart. Among them were the ''
tengu ''Tengu'' ( ; , , ) are a type of legendary creature found in Shinto belief. They are considered a type of ''yōkai'' (supernatural beings) or Shinto ''kami'' (gods or spirits). The ''Tengu'' were originally thought to take the forms of bird of ...
'', or animals possessing magic, as the fox ('' kitsune'') or . Even these unholy and inferior "true kami" however attracted the attention of Ryōbu Shinto thinkers, which resulted in theories which declared them to be manifestations of Vairocana and
Amaterasu , often called Amaterasu () for short, also known as and , is the goddess of the sun in Japanese mythology. Often considered the chief deity (''kami'') of the Shinto pantheon, she is also portrayed in Japan's earliest literary texts, the () ...
. On the other hand,
Jōdo Shinshū , also known as Shin Buddhism or True Pure Land Buddhism, is a school of Pure Land Buddhism founded by the former Tendai Japanese monk Shinran. Shin Buddhism is the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan. History Shinran (founder) S ...
, the primary Pure Land sect in Japan, was somewhat different because it at first renounced kami-worship due to the notion that kami were inferior to the buddhas. However, the two other
Pure Land Pure Land is a Mahayana, Mahayana Buddhist concept referring to a transcendent realm emanated by a buddhahood, buddha or bodhisattva which has been purified by their activity and Other power, sustaining power. Pure lands are said to be places ...
schools of
Jōdo-shū Jōdo-shū (浄土宗, "The Pure Land School"), is a Japanese branch of Pure Land Buddhism derived from the teachings of the Kamakura era monk Hōnen (1133–1212). The school is traditionally considered as having been established in 1175 and i ...
and Ji-shu still encouraged the worship of kami despite the fact that the
nembutsu file:玉里華山寺 (21)南無阿彌陀佛古碑.jpg, 250px, Chinese Nianfo carving The Nianfo ( zh, t=wikt:念佛, 念佛, p=niànfó, alternatively in Japanese language, Japanese ; ; or ) is a Buddhist practice central to East Asian Buddhism. ...
and trust in Amida Buddha should be the primary practices. Furthermore, under the influence of Rennyo and other leaders, Jōdo Shinshū would later accept the mainstream honji suijaku beliefs and the spiritual relationship between kami and the buddhas and bodhisattvas.


Shinbutsu kakuri

The two religions however never fused completely and, while overlapping here and there, kept their particular identity within a difficult, largely un-systematized and tense relationship.Sueki (2007:7-8) This relationship existed, rather than between two systems, between particular kami and particular buddhas. The two were always perceived as parallel but separate entities. Besides ''shinbutsu shūgō'' there was always the other side of the coin of continued separation. In fact, the term in Japanese Buddhist terminology refers to the tendency that existed in Japan to keep some kami separate from Buddhism.Rambelli and Teeuwen (2002:21-22) While some kami were integrated into Buddhism, others (or at times, even the same kami in a different context) were kept systematically away from Buddhism. This phenomenon had significant consequences for Japanese culture as a whole. It must not be confused with ''
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 ...
'' ("separation of kami and buddhas") or with '' haibutsu kishaku'' ("abolish buddhas and destroy Shākyamuni"), which are phenomena recurrent in Japanese history and usually due to political causes. While the first assumes the acceptance of Buddhism, the second and third actually oppose it. The practice had in any case important consequences, among them the prevention of the complete assimilation of kami practices into Buddhism. Also, the prohibition of Buddhism at the Ise and Kamo Shrines allowed them to freely develop their theories about the nature of kami.


Buddhism and Shinto after the Separation Order

During the ''Shinbutsu bunri'', the attempt to separate Shinto from Buddhism, temples, and shrines were forcefully separated by law with the of 1868. However, despite more than a century of formal separation of the two religions, temples or shrines that do not separate them are still common, as proven for example by the existence of some important Buddhist Inari shrines. During the Meiji period, in order to help the spread of Shinto, shrines with temples ('' jingū-ji'') were destroyed while temples with shrines (''
chinjusha In Japan, a is a Shinto shrine which enshrines a ; that is, a patron spirit that protects a given area, village, building or a Buddhist temple. The Imperial Palace has its own tutelary shrine dedicated to the 21 guardian gods of Ise Shrine. Tut ...
'') were tolerated. As a result, shrines with temples within them are now rare (an extant example is Seiganto-ji), but shrines contained within temples are common, and most temples still have at least a small one.Breen and Teeuwen in ''Breen and Teeuwen'' (2000:7) Prominent religious institutions in both camps still give evidence of integration of the two religions. The great
Kenchō-ji Kenchō-ji (建長寺) is a Rinzai Zen temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, which ranks first among Kamakura's so-called Five Great Zen Temples (the ''Kamakura Gozan'') and is the oldest Zen training monastery in Jap ...
temple, number one of the
Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...
's great
Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...
temples (the
Five Mountain System The system, more commonly called simply ''Five Mountain System'', was a network of state-sponsored Chan (Zen) Buddhist temples created in China during the Southern Song (1127–1279). The term "mountain" in this context means "temple" or "mona ...
) includes two shrines. One of the islands in the right-side pond of
Tsurugaoka Hachimangū is the most important Shinto shrine in the city of Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The shrine is a cultural center of the city of Kamakura and serves as the venue of many of its most important festivals with two museum ...
in Kamakura hosts a sub shrine dedicated to goddess
Benzaiten is an East Asian Buddhism, East Asian Buddhist Dharmapala, goddess who originated from the Hindu Saraswati, the patroness of speech, the arts, and learning. Worship of Benzaiten arrived in Japan during the sixth through eighth centuries, mai ...
, a form of
Saraswati Saraswati (, ), also spelled as Sarasvati, is one of the principal Devi, goddesses in Hinduism, revered as the goddess of knowledge, education, learning, arts, speech, poetry, music, purification, language and culture. Together with the godde ...
. For this reason, the sub-shrine was removed in 1868 at the time of the ''Shinbutsu Bunri'', but rebuilt in 1956.Kamiya (2008: 18 - 19) Shinto and Buddhism still have a symbiotic relationship of interdependence, particularly concerning funeral rites (entrusted to Buddhism) and weddings (usually left to Shinto or sometimes Christianity). The separation of the two religions is therefore considered only superficial, and ''shinbutsu shūgō'' is still an accepted practice. Still, the separation of the two religions is felt to be real by the public. Scholar Karen Smyers comments, "The surprise of many of my informants regarding the existence of Buddhist Inari temples shows the success of the government's attempt to create separate conceptual categories regarding sites and certain identities, although practice remains multiple and nonexclusive".Smyers, pag. 219


See also

* Confucian Shinto * Haibutsu kishaku *
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 ...
*
Shinbutsu kakuri The term in Japanese Buddhist terminogy refers to the tendency in medieval and early modern Japan to keep some ''kami'' separate from Buddhism.Rambelli and Teeuwen (2002:21-22) While some ''kami'' were integrated in Buddhism, others (or at times ...
*
Three teachings In Chinese philosophy, the ''three teachings'' (; , Chữ Hán: 三教) are Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The learning and the understanding of the three teachings are traditionally considered to be a harmonious aggregate within Chinese ...


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan's sacred entities
by Fabio Rambelli, Japan Times, July 15, 2001, excerpted from Monumenta Nipponica, 56:2 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shinbutsu Shugo Buddhism in the Edo period Buddhism in the Heian period Buddhism in the Kamakura period Buddhism in the Nara period History of Shinto Japanese historical terms Religious syncretism in Japan Shinto in Japan