Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the transmission of the "Three Mountains" (sanzan) paradigm from Kumano Sanzan in Kii peninsula to Dewa Sanzan in Tōhoku region during the medieval period. This analysis sheds light on the peculiarities of Shugendō formative mechanisms and devotional networks.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the religious activities performed by the associations of Kumano leaders (Kumano sendatsu shū) to transmit the cult of the Three Mountains of Kumano (Kumano Sanzan) from the Kii peninsula to the Tōhoku region starting from the end of the twelfth century. Thanks to this analysis it is possible to problematize the concepts of Shugendō and shugenja in their early stages of formation. Kumano sendatsu shū were self-administered groups of spurious shugen practitioners who developed horizontal networks of alliances in various domains and were linked together by shared devotional discourses, which were centered on the veneration of three sacred sites (Hongū, Shingū, Nachi) at Kumano. None of these Kumano leaders can be considered as institutionalized Shugendō practitioners although most of them derived their religious authority from the performance of ascetic practices, which took place on mountains and were dedicated to the veneration of mountains as geophysical manifestations of Buddhas. These Kumano leaders created the devotional and conceptual background, which paved the way for the future development of Shugendō institutions in the Tōhoku area starting from the Muromachi period. They ritually transferred and enshrined (kanjō) the original Buddhas (honjibutsu) and provisional traces (suijakujin) of the Kumano Sanzan pantheon into the sacred landscape of the Dewa domain. The Three Mountains of Dewa (Dewa Sanzan) worked as virtual manifestations or authentic copies of the Three Mountains of Kumano, which were supposed to be simultaneously present in the Kii peninsula as well as in the Tōhoku area. The kanjō rituals made by the Kumano sendatsu were based on what Jonathan Z. Smith defined as the logic of "transposition" according which a ritual element can, at the same time, signify one thing as well as a different one. Adopting Smith's notion of transposition to interpret the transmission mechanisms of Shugendō discourses from central Japan to the northeastern regions I aim to clarify the ritual and devotional phenomena, which led to the formation of the Shugendō institutions, parishioners (dannaba), and religious confraternities of lay devotees (kō) in the Tōhoku area, in general, and at Dewa Sanzan in particular.