Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan

335 Pages·2000·6.007 MB·English

by  John K. Nelson

ENDURING
IDENTITIES

ENDURING
IDENTITIES
The Guise of Shinto in
Contemporary Japan
JOHN K. NELSON
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS
honolulu
© 2000 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
00 01 02 03 04 05 5 4 3 2 1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Nelson, John K.
Enduring identities : the guise of Shinto in contemporary Japan /
John K. Nelson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn isbn
0–8248–2120–3 (cloth) — 0–8248–2259–5 (paper)
1. Shinto. 2. Shinto shrines. I. Title.
bl n
2220. 45 2000
299'.561—dc21 99–044520
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the
guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Ellen McKie
Printed by Versa Press, Inc.
CONTENTS
acknowledgments
vii
conventions
ix
chapter 1
OPENING ORIENTATIONS
1
chapter 2
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The Very Modern Practice of Visiting a Shinto Shrine
22
chapter 3
TOWARD AN IDEOLOGY OF SACRED PLACE
53
v
CONTENTS
chapter 4
KAMO MEMORIES AND HISTORIES
87
chapter 5
WARDEN(cid:1)VIRTUOSO(cid:1)SALARYMAN(cid:2)PRIEST
The Roles of Religious Specialists in Institutional Perspective
123
chapter 6
PERFORMING RITUAL
164
chapter 7
KAMIGAMO’S YEARLY RITUAL CYCLE
185
conclusion
243
appendix 1
SYMBOLS, PAVILIONS, AND SIGNS
AT KAMIGAMO SHRINE
249
appendix 2
KAMO-AFFILIATED SHRINES IN JAPAN
256
notes
257
select character glossary
289
works cited
295
index
319
vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work would not have been possible without the assistance of others.
My heartfelt gratitude goes to Mr. Makoto Abe, the former head priest
of Kamigamo Shrine, whose permission and tolerance permitted this
study. I would also like to thank the current head priest, Mr. Mitsuyoshi
Takeuchi, as well as senior priest Mr. Yasumasa Fujiki for their time and
valuable assistance. The other priests at the shrine also helped me in ways
small and large that are too numerous to mention. I also enjoyed my con-
versations with Mr. Masanao Fujiki of the Kamo Parishioners’ Group and
amsincerelygratefulforhisunderstandingofthewiderscopeof thisproj-
ect. The study was funded by the Fulbright Commission, whose admin-
istrators were most helpful and responsive in providing me with long-
distance support in Tokyo, especially when I needed to return to the
United States for family matters. Professor Toshinao Yoneyama of Kyoto
University provided institutional support, and I am grateful to Professor
Minoru Sonoda (also of Kyoto University) for much encouragement and
guidance. Additional funding from the Yanagawa Foundation is gratefully
acknowledged.
Closer to home, Professor Delmer Brown, Professor George De Vos,
and Professor Nelson Graburn, all of the University of California at
Berkeley, provided me with the kind of intellectual environment as well
as support and encouragement that nurtured the growth of this study. I
am very grateful to all of them for their friendship, knowledge, and wide-
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ranging experience. Many colleagues have also helped shape my thinking
and approach, in particular Jennifer Beer, Pedro Lewin, David Boggett,
Shigeru Hayashi, Bill Kats, and Shigeru Handa, all of whom provided
input in important ways in the early stages, with Karen Smyers, Patrick
Olivelle, Norman Havens, and Gregory Schopen assisting me in various
ways down the home stretch.
Thanks also to Miko Omura for her faithfully accurate illustrations
of the aoiflower and to Victoria Zaldua for the maps. My deep thanks to
Susan Stone for her copyediting professionalism when faced with an un-
ruly manuscript and to Patricia Crosby and Masako Ikeda at the Univer-
sity of Hawai‘i Press for their encouragement and support.
Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank my parents for having raised
me to appreciate the joys of discovering new places and people, and for
instilling in me an optimism that seems resilient enough to weather vast
extremes of situation and circumstance. Though I lost both of them dur-
ing the course of this study, I think of the final book as a tribute to their
intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness, not always easy in a small
town in the center of Kansas. Saving the most important for last, I owe a
tremendous amount of thanks to my constant partners and assistants
Miko Omura and Junet Nelson, whose good humor, patience, research
support, and sympathetic understanding accompanied this project at
every stage.
viii
CONVENTIONS
As is the custom in books employing Japanese terms and names, I will in-
dicate Japanese terms by italicizing them except when they are used as
proper nouns or have become common in English contexts. Japanese
names appear with the family name followed by the given name. “Shinto”
appears without the macron over the final “o” when used by itself in the
text, as is the practice for other words that are familiar to Western read-
ers (Tokyo, Kyoto, sumo). I use Wade-Giles romanization for Chinese.
ix