Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T22:02:36.355Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Religion in the Tokugawa Period

from Part III - Social Practices and Cultures of Early Modern Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

David L. Howell
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

This chapter sketches the main features of the landscape of “faith” in Tokugawa-period Japan. This was a time when every person in Japan was legally obliged to register with a Buddhist temple, while simultaneously most people were actively engaged in numerous other faith-related activities, from membership in pilgrimage groups to making donations to roaming troupes of pseudo-religious street performers. The multifarious purveyors of faith-related services competed for custom, and the authorities were obliged to arbitrate in a never-ending stream of lawsuits and conflicts. Temple affiliation was rendered compulsory because faith needed to be policed, so as to ensure that “pernicious creeds” (notably foreign Christianity) would not corrupt the populace. Yet warrior administrators consistently refused to become a party in disputes about doctrinal matters, preferring to grant people a free choice in matters of faith and limit temples’ hold over their parishioners.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambros, Barbara. Emplacing a Pilgrimage: The Ōyama Cult and Regional Religion in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008.Google Scholar
Ambros, Barbara. “Local Religious Specialists in Early Modern Japan: The Development of the Ōyama Oshi System.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28, no. 3/4 (2001): 329–72.Google Scholar
Arimoto, Masao. Kinsei Nihon no shūkyō shakaishi. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2002.Google Scholar
Chilson, Clark. Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Drixler, Fabian. “Imagined Communities of the Living and the Dead: The Spread of the Ancestor-Venerating Stem Family in Tokugawa Japan.” In What Is a Family? Answers from Early Modern Japan, edited by Berry, Mary Elizabeth and Yonemoto, Marcia, 68108. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Elison, George. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Farris, William Wayne. Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Goodman, Janet R. Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Groemer, Gerald. “The Arts of the Gannin.” Asian Folklore Studies 58, no. 2 (1999): 275320.Google Scholar
Groemer, Gerald. “A Short History of the Gannin: Popular Religious Performers in Tokugawa Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27, no. 1/2 (2000): 4172.Google Scholar
Groemer, Gerald. Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600–1900: The Beggar’s Gift. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Hardacre, Helen. Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.Google Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto. “Kinsei tenkanki ni okeru shūkyō hendō.” In Kinsei, kindai to bukkyō, edited by Nihon Bukkyō Kenkyūkai, 228. Vol. 4 of Nihon no bukkyō. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1995.Google Scholar
Hirai, Atsuko. Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1603–1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014.Google Scholar
Hōzawa, Naohide. “Jidan seido to sōsai bukkyō.” In Sei to shi, edited by Shimazono, Susumu, Takano, Toshihiko, Hayashi, Makoto, and Wakao, Masaki, 2552. Vol. 3 of Shiriizu Nihonjin to shūkyō: Kinsei kara kindai e. Shunjūsha 2015.Google Scholar
Hur, Nam-lin. Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.Google Scholar
Hur, Nam-lin.Invitation to the Secret Buddha of Zenkōji: Kaichō and Religious Culture in Early Modern Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, no. 1 (2009): 4563.Google Scholar
Hur, Nam-lin. Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Sensōji and Edo Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.Google Scholar
Itō, Jun. “Kinsei Kawachi-ōsaka chiiki ni okeru Zenkōji no fukyō katsudō.” ōsaka Rekishi Hakubutsukan kenkyū kiyō 14 (2016): 4352.Google Scholar
Josephson, Jason Ānanda. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Kanda, Hideo. Nyoraikyō no shisō to shinkō. Tenri: Tenri Daigaku Oyasato Kenkyūjo, 1990.Google Scholar
Köck, Stefan, Pickl-Kolaczia, Brigitte, and Scheid, Bernhard, eds. Religion, Power, and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.Google Scholar
Kouamé, Nathalie. “Shikoku’s Local Authorities and Henro during the Golden Age of Pilgrimage.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24, no. 3/4 (1997): 413–25.Google Scholar
Maruyama, Masao. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Translated by Hane, Mikiso. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Maxey, Trent E. The “Greatest Problem”: Religion and State Formation in Meiji Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014.Google Scholar
McCallum, Donald F. Zenkōji and Its Icon: A Study in Medieval Japanese Religious Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
McMullin, Neil. Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Miyazaki, Fumiko, Nakai, Kate Wildman, and Teeuwen, Mark, eds. Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Nakagawa, Sugane. “Inari Worship in Early Modern Osaka.” In Osaka: The Merchants’ Capital of Early Modern Japan, edited by McClain, James L. and Wakita, Osamu, 180212. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Nakai, Kate Wildman. Shogunal Politics: Arai Hakusei and the Premises of Tokugawa Rule. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1988.Google Scholar
Nakano, Mitsuharu. Shokoku Tōshōgū no shiteki kenkyū. Meicho Kankōkai, 2008.Google Scholar
Naramoto, Tatsuya. Kinsei seidōron. Vol. 38 of Nihon shisō taikei. Iwanami Shoten, 1976.Google Scholar
Nosco, Peter. Individuality in Early Modern Japan: Thinking for Oneself. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
Ōhashi, Yukihiro. “Kinsei chitsujo ni okeru ‘ja’ no yuragi: ‘Kakushi/kakure nenbutsu’ to ‘kirishitan.’” In Tasha to kyōkai, edited by Shimazono, Susumu, Takano, Toshihiko, Hayashi, Makoto, and Wakao, Masaki, 2150. Vol. 6 of Shiriizu Nihonjin to shūkyō: Kinsei kara kindai e. Shunjūsha, 2015.Google Scholar
Ōhashi, Yukihiro. Senpuku kirishitan: Edo jidai no kinkyō seisaku to minshū. Kōdansha Sensho Mechie, 2014.Google Scholar
Ōkuwa, Hitoshi. “Kinsei kokka no shūkyōsei.” Nihonshi kenkyū 600 (August 2012): 111–37.Google Scholar
Ōkuwa, Hitoshi. “Tokugawa shōgun kenryoku to shūkyō.” In Shūkyō to ken’i, edited by Amino, Yoshihiko, Kabayama, Kōichi, Miyata, Noboru, Yasumaru, Yoshio, and Yamamoto, Kōji, 135–60. Vol. 4 of Iwanami kōza Tennō to Ōken o kangaeru. Iwanami Shoten, 2002.Google Scholar
Onodera, Atsushi. “Higashi Harima ni okeru kinsei no Ise sangū: Akashi-shi Higashi Futami o jirei ni.” Kōtsūshi kenkyū 35 (1995): 8595.Google Scholar
Paramore, Kiri. Ideology and Christianity in Japan. London: Routledge, 2009.Google Scholar
Ruch, Barbara. “Woman to Woman: Kumano Bikuni Proselytizers in Medieval and Early Modern Japan.” In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, edited by Ruch, Barbara, 537–80. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.Google Scholar
Sawa, Hirokatsu. Kinsei shūkyō shakairon. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2008.Google Scholar
Sonehara, Satoshi. “Ise Jingū to Tōshōgū.” In Shōgun to tennō, edited by Shimazono, Susumu, Takano, Toshihiko, Hayashi, Makoto, and Wakao, Masaki, 5580. Vol. 1 of Shiriizu Nihonjin to shūkyō: Kinsei kara kindai e. Shunjūsha, 2014.Google Scholar
Tamamuro, Fumio. Edo bakufu no shūkyō tōsei. Vol. 16 of Nihonjin no kōdō to shisō. Hyōronsha, 1980.Google Scholar
Tamamuro, Fumio. “Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s Governance Structure.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28, no. 3/4 (2001): 261–92.Google Scholar
Teeuwen, Mark. “Clashing Models: Ritual Unity vs Religious Diversity.” Formations of the Secular in Japan, edited by Rots, Aike P. and Teeuwen, Mark. Special issue, Japan Review 30 (2017): 3962.Google Scholar
Teeuwen, Mark, and Breen, John. A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.Google Scholar
Teeuwen, Mark, and Nakai, Kate Wildman, eds. Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard by an Edo Samurai. Translated by Teeuwen, Mark, Nakai, Kate Wildman, Miyazaki, Fumiko, Walthall, Anne, and Breen, John. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Thal, Sarah. Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573–1912. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2005.Google Scholar
Tsang, Carol Richmond. War and Faith: Ikkō Ikki in Late Muromachi Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.Google Scholar
Ukiyo no arisama. In Sesō, Pt. 1, edited by Harada, Tomohiko and Asakura, Haruhiko. Vol. 11 of Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryō shūsei. San’ichi Shobō, 1970.Google Scholar
Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi. Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986.Google Scholar
Zhong, Yijiang. The Origin of Modern Shinto in Japan: The Vanquished Gods of Izumo. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×