Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on shintō uke, religious certification by shintō shrines, in Okayama domain. Motives for implementing shintō uke, e.g., anti-Buddhist sentiments will be discussed, but also the question by which kind of concept of Shintō these measures were provoked will be considered.

Paper long abstract:

Shintō uke, religious certification by shintō shrines, was practiced for a rather brief period in the second half of the 17th century in Okayama domain. When discussing reasons for taking up shintō uke factors like anti-Buddhist sentiments, political rivalries and preconditions but also the spread of an understanding of Shintō as a separate religion have to be taken into account.

In the middle of the 16th century the Edo bakufu intensified its measures of religious control of the population and most temples turned into quasi-governmental institutions through tera uke, the system of certification by Buddhist temples.

A couple of daimyō, however, took in the 1660ies a critical stance against Buddhism and digressed from the prescribed pattern of tera uke. They could not ignore the bakufus orders, but the daimyō of Aizu, Mito and Okayama domains did choose an alternative. They had religious control conducted by shintō shrines, a phenomenon in scholarly literature now generally termed shintō uke, shintō certification.

Foremost among them was Ikeda Mitsumasa (1609-1682), the daimyo of Okayama domain, who in less then a decade changed the religious landscape of his domain completely by shintō uke measures. In this context anti-Buddhist phenomena can be observed, such as an institutional separation of temples and shrines or forced laicization and even the closure of Buddhist temples. Towards the late 17th century, Okayama, Aizu and Mito finally had to comply with the bakufus requests and tera uke became standard even in these domains.

Shintō uke promises insights for a number of discourses on Japanese religions in the early modern period. Although scholars like Kuroda Toshio have argued for the non-existence of shintō as a separate religion prior to the Meiji period, shintō uke is indicative of an emerging opposition between Buddhism and Shintō, regardless of how the second term was actually understood. It touches on topics like orthodoxy (正) and heresy (邪), a new conception of Shintō, and may have served as a precursor or precedent of the religious politics in the early Meiji period.