Paper short abstract:

This paper identifies common elements in the early modern development of Shugendō and Shinto. Through the case of Mount Togakushi (Nagano ken), it takes a comparative approach that challenges past misconceptions of either tradition while highlighting intersecting lines of growth in the Edo period.

Paper long abstract:

Scholars today generally agree that Shinto is not simply an ancient tradition that predates Japanese Buddhism, just as Shugendō did not originate in the Nara period as a folk religion, despite the currency of such ideas throughout most of the twentieth century. Indeed, recent advances in the historical study of Japanese religions have posited later time periods of emergence for both through approaches that emphasize regional over national (and anachronistic) modes of formation. By doing so, scholars have begun dismantling longstanding ideologies (e.g., Shinto as Japan's timeless form of nature worship or Shugendō as an ancient folk religion) that have tended to obscure, rather than clarify, their historical stages of development. That said, disagreement continues over the timing of emergence in either case, the various stages of their respective development, and the criteria for determining them as established religious systems.

This paper aims to advance the discussion by taking a comparative approach to the study of early modern Shugendō and Shinto through the case of Mount Togakushi. Both systems were incorporated into the site's religious culture by its practitioners and administrators through similar modes of transmission and historical narrative. Shugendō entered the region in the early sixteenth century, whereas mythological kami and a new Shintō lineage (Reisō Shintō) arrived in the late seventeenth century. In order to domesticate each new system of thought, ritual, and lineage, pracititioners rewrote the history of their mountain, giving each tradition a central place in its origins. They also painted, sculpted, and showcased new icons to accomodate the increasing pantheon of gods and founders. Apparent in recorded events, origin accounts (engi), and iconography, these elements reveal similar trajectories in the gradual incorporation of either system into the site's religious culture. Through this evidence, I will remark on two points: first, the overlooked historical growth of Shugendō and Shinto in the Edo period; and second, while weighed down by differing forms of ideological abstractions in modern discourse, the two traditions share more in common historically than is often apparent in their modern manefestations.