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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the effects of Mito's religious policies in the late 17th century on the local level. Examining the case of the village Noguchi-mura, it aims to shed some light reforms' impact on the population's religious practice and identity.

Paper long abstract:

Mito's religious reforms consisted of mainly Shintō-friendly policies including the - formal - separation of Buddhist and Shintō institutions and the implementation of a system of one shrine per village. Parallel to strengthening Shintō, Mito's lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni clamped down on temples that did not fit the concept of Buddhism in Japan devised by the ruling Tokugawa shogun, according to which temples should be led by an erudite monk of irreproachable character and fulfil the administrative task of religious control assigned to them by the Tokugawa government. This led to the abolishment of over 1.400 temples in Mito. While the domain's leaders followed their own agenda when conceiving the policies to re-create Mito's religious landscape, they did take into account the population's wishes, at least in some cases.

This talk will examine the impacts these policies had on the population by presenting the case of the village Noguchi. Noguchi's tutelary shrine was Saeki Jinja, which traces its origins back to the early Heian period. Even after the reforms in 1666, Saeki Jinja remained affiliated to the Shingon temple Renkakuji, which acted as its bettō-ji. The fact that the domain administration did not indiscriminately make decisions over the population's heads leads to the questions whether Saeki Jinja's ongoing affiliation with Renkakkuji was due to the residents' refusal to accept the separation of temple and tutelary shrine in their community or to more pragmatic reasons, such as the lack of a proper Shintō priest. The paper will therefor look not only into how the reforms affected religious practice in Noguchi but also investigate its residents' agency.