Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods
Monday, May 30th, 2005Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods : The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573-1912
By Sarah Thal
University of Chicago Press, 2005, 344 pages
Thal’s book is a study of the Kotohira Shrine in Shikoku, which was also known as the Konpira Temple before the Meiji Restoration. She seeks to explain how it and the gods enshrined there have changed over the years. By understanding how the gods at Kotohira shrine have changed we can better understand the history of Japan and how the structures of the nation have changed in response to various events: whether political, social or cultural. As Thal notes, almost nothing about these sacred sites has stayed the same. The gods of Mt. ZÅzu and Kotohira have undergone many changes, not only in name, but also in what we would consider religion. For pre-Meiji Japan, the syncretistic Buddhist-Shinto-folk mixture of faith at Kotohira would not have been considered unusual. These old beliefs would never completely die on the mountain, though they could be forgotten about for a long period. When it came to the most important priority of all, money, the old gods could be dusted off and reintroduced.
In response to the Mongol hordes threatening Japan, a Buddhist temple was built on Mt. ZÅzu in the 1200s that celebrated the Thirty Deities. Three hundred years later the temple was dedicated to the Lotus Sutra. In the face of an invasion from a Tosa warlord named ChÅsokabe, Konpira, the Indian protector of Buddhism, was enshrined in 1573. ChÅsokabe invaded and Konpira was momentarily displaced, but was re-enshrined after Toyotomi took control of Shikoku. In Edo period Japan, Konpira became more compatible with the Tokugawa political structure by becoming a center for miraculous godly intervention. Konpira also became a center for pilgrimage as a pleasure town-shrine complex based on Asakusa in Edo, complete with houses of prostitution and gambling. Konpira priests also explored the mystical origins of the shrine, divining that Konpira was the home of not only Konpira, but the Emperor Sutoku, in order to curry favor with the Imperial house, and the head priest Yusei, who had turned into a tengu. Because of the great efficacy of Konpira many people came to visit and purchase amulets.
Before the Meiji Restoration the gods of Konpira were again reinterpreted by Shinto nativists. Konpira was actually the manifestation of Ookuninushi, the Shinto kami that created the seen and unseen world. In the hierarchy of the kami, this kami outranks Amaterasu, the progenitor of the Imperial line. After Meiji Restoration, the Meiji government made Shinto the official national religion. For a while there was an unleashing of violence against Buddhist temples and priests; a once syncretistic religious landscape was being violently reshaped. The Buddhist aspects of Konpira and the tengu of Mt. ZÅzu were pushed aside, and the shrine put forward the Shinto interpretation of their gods in an effort to preserve their independence. This was both a good thing and bad thing. The now renamed Kotohira became an important government shrine, but at the same time, it was stripped of its lands and made to have a relatively unimportant status. During the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Kotohira became associated with the military partly because worshippers came to the shrine to demand amulets for their loved ones fighting in the war. Throughout these various political upheavals, the biggest concern of the priests on Mt. ZÅzu was always money, and how to get people to the shrine so they could spend their money on amulets. In this respect the Reverence Association was important for getting people to the shrine, along with its scheme of licensing the Kotohira name to hotels and ships. In order to attract more people, older gods like Yusei the tengu were eventually brought back, however, in a way so that it would not conflict with the Shinto character of the shrine. For Kotohira, its most important mission was to survive during dramatic political changes and to prosper financially.
I highly recommend this book. If you have a serious interest in Japanese history, religion, or tourism, this book will expertly show how all of these pieces fit together. It’s also a very good study that shows how the so-called timeless and unchanging elements of a society evolve. I recommend that before you read this book you at least have a basic knowledge of the history of Japan, and know something of the religion of Japan, otherwise you may have a hard time plodding through some of the sections. For an idea of what an Edo period pilgrimage would have been like, I highly recommend reading chapter 1.