Shinto-Buddhism in Japan Japan\'s Main Religious Tradition

Shinto-Buddhism in Japan

Japan's main religious tradition is a combination of the conventional Shinto beliefs integrated with the imported Buddhist practices. Long been considered the land of several million gods, Japanese base their traditional Shinto beliefs on this pantheon. But the introduction of Buddhism in the mid 500's A.D. forced an amalgamation of the two belief systems. Over time these two very different religious traditions blended together into a unique system practiced throughout Japan.

Shinto, also known as the "way of the deities," arose during Japan's earliest period and focused on what the early Japanese believed as gods, or kami, which inhabited the natural world. Kami were usually some extraordinary aspect of nature and could be anything including trees, rocks, mountains, rivers and even people. The introduction of agriculture began the association of Shinto rituals with the agricultural cycle and festivals and other religious events often coincided with times of planting or harvesting. "Major rituals contained four parts: purification, offerings, recitations or prayers, and a concluding meal." (Watt, 2003) Originally the Shinto religion was a naturalistic religious tradition and thus the Japanese built no religious buildings or structures, but by the year 600 A.D., the Japanese began to built shrines that represented the kami and offered a permanent place for religious practices.

Sometime in the mid 500's A.D. Buddhism made its way to Japan from China and Korea but it had it's origins close to a thousand years earlier in India. Based on the teachings of the Buddha, this religious belief system taught that all people were trapped in a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Life was considered to be a time filled with suffering, but it could also be the means of escape. "The Buddha held that to gain release from suffering one had to attain a new understanding of reality." (Watt, 2003) The Buddha lived sometime in the 500's B.C. And in the thousand years from his death, what he taught spread from India to China and Korea and eventually into Japan. But the Buddhism that was introduced to Japan was a form that had evolved as it made its way across Asia and had been influenced by the lands where it was adopted, primarily China.

Like many religions, Buddhism was first adopted by the Japanese ruling class before it spread downward throughout society. It was adopted by the royal family, primarily Prince Shotoku who lived from the late 500's into the early 600's A.D., and whose name meant "sacred virtue." He was awarded this name because, as the Nihon ryoiki stated, "he not only behaved like a monk but was so well versed in Buddhist teachings that he could write commentaries…" (Nakamura,1997, p.107) But even though Buddhism was the religious practice of the royal court, it could not be fully imposed on the common people. They simply retained their original Shinto beliefs and merged the new Buddhist ones with their old ones. In response the royal court promoted the idea that the kami were deities in need of spiritual salvation from Buddhism; and by the late 700's A.D., the concept of shinbutso shugo, or the idea that the Shinto kami and the Buddhas were associated with each other, had firmly taken hold in Japan. For instance, the Nihon ryoiki describes how, in the seventh century, the governor of the Japanese county of Mitani in Bingo Province built a Buddhist temple for all kami. At this time the royal court also began to promote the idea that kami were the "guardian deities" of Buddhist tradition.

Once the merging of traditional Shinto and the new Buddhist beliefs began it quickly transferred to the rituals associated with the religions. For instance, the Goryo-e was originally a ritual for suppressing evil spirits but was transformed into ritual performed at Buddhist temples. And soon after began a process by which Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were combined in a system known as miyadera or "temple-shrine complex." This process continued over the centuries as new versions of Buddhism made their way into Japanese society, above all Zen Buddhism which has become a major aspect of Japanese religious practice.