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- Convenor:
-
W.J. Boot
(Leiden University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Intellectual History and Philosophy
- Location:
- Lokaal 0.3
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Although Sendai kuji hongi taisei-kyō 先代旧事本紀大成経 (pr. 1679) was a huge text, was written in Kanbun, and was banned as a forgery, it was quite popular during the Edo Period. In our papers, we will address various examples of the influence it exerted in the fields of religion, literature, and thought.
Long Abstract:
This panel is a sequel to the panel we presented at the EAJS Conference of 2021. This time, we will address three concrete examples showing how the influence of Taisei-kyō manifested itself.
Although Taisei-kyō was banned, it was not banned because it threatened the stability of the state. On the contrary, it was pro-emperor and, in the seventeenth century, by implication, pro-bakufu. It was neither against Buddhism nor against Confucianism, as long as these teachings acknowledged the superiority of Shinto. This meant that both the Buddhists and the Confucians had to accept the original existence of the Japanese gods. Neither the Buddhist idea that the gods were temporary manifestations of Buddha's and Bodhisattva's (honji suijaku), nor the Confucian idea that the gods were temporary coagulations of Qi, was acceptable. The Japanese gods were substantial, living entities that existed in their own right. If they accepted this, then both Buddhism and Confucianism had their own place in the state and in society.
Taisei-kyō thus presented a Japanese view of the world - not antagonistic towards the other teachings, but one in which Japan, Shinto, and the imperial house stood clearly at the top. Another attraction of Taisei-kyō was its scope: it not only told the history from the first gods until the reign of Empress Suiko, but it also contained chapters on thought and religion.
The text appealed to many intellectuals and Buddhist priests. In fact, the only ones who took exception to Taisei-kyō were the Shinto priests in Ise, who did not accept that according to Taisei-kyō Amaterasu had descended in the Izawa no Miya and not in the Naigū. Their protests were the reason why Taisei-kyō was banned. However, this did not stop others from reading it. One of these was the Ōbaku monk Chōon, who was responsible for the printing of Taisei-kyō and continued to study and propagate it also after it was forbidden. Another example if the monk Jōin - a Tendai monk who developed a new kind of Shugendō with help of Taisei-kyō. Also in popular literature, influence of Taisei-kyō can frequently be ascertained.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 August, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The Ōbaku monk Chōon was responsible for the printing of Taisei-kyō in 1679. Although the text had been forbidden by the bakufu in 1681, he still promoted it. In my presentation, I will discuss why he did this, and which aspects of the text he stressed.
Paper long abstract:
The Ōbaku monk Chōon Dōkai 潮音道海 (1628-1695) was involved in the printing of Sendai kuji hongi taisei-kyō in 1679. For this involvement, he was punished, albeit lightly, when the bakufu prohibited the book in 1681 and again in 1683. Nevertheless, he continued to study and promote Taisei-kyō until his death.
In my presentation, I will analyse two texts Chōon composed after the prohibition of Taisei-kyō, namely Fusō gobusshin-ron 扶桑護仏神論 (3 fasc.; pref. 1687) and Fusō sandō ken'yo roku 扶桑三道権輿録 (2 fasc.; pref. 1694). Like Taisei-kyō itself, both texts are written in Kanbun, which implies that they were addressed to an audience of educated intellectuals. To judge by the number of surviving copies, both texts did not spread widely: Gobusshin-ron survives in the form of three manuscripts, and Ken'yo-roku, of two manuscripts and two printed copies.
Gobusshin-ron is a polemic against Honchō jinja-kō 本朝神社考 and other writings by the Confucian scholar Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583-1657). In every section, a passage from Razan's works is quoted and criticised. In his comments, Chōon routinely quotes passages from Taisei-kyō that, he claims, contain the truth that Razan had wilfully ignored. Ken'yo-roku consists of long quotations from Taisei-kyō, followed by "assessments" (評) by Chōon. It seems to be intended as an introduction to Taisei-kyō, for those who could not spare the time to read the complete work.
The question I will try to answer in my presentation is, which aspects of Taisei-kyō Chōon thought that he could successfully bring to the attention of his fellow-intellectuals within the Buddhist, Shinto, and Confucian communities. Evidently, he was a believer himself, and he wanted to impress on his contemporaries that Taisei-kyō contained knowledge that was true, important, and useful. The question is, what kind of knowledge he selected.
Paper short abstract:
In the new kind of Shugendō created by the monk Jōin, there is clear evidence of the influence of Taisei-kyō. This becomes apparent when we compare the different ways in which Taisei-kyō's division of Shinto in Sōgen, Saigen, and Reisō was recepted in the Zen Sect and by Jōin.
Paper long abstract:
In Taisei-kyō three strands of Shinto are distinguished: Sōgen 宗源, Saigen 斎元, and Reisō 霊宗. Sōgen is another name of the well-known Yoshida 吉田 Shinto. The other two are original creations, designed to show the superiority of Buddhist Shinto.
The appearance of Taisei-kyō in the 1670s coincided with attempts that were being made in Buddhist circles to formulate a new kind of Buddhism that stressed Japan's national identity and allied itself with Shinto: the so-called Shinbutsu shūgō shintō 神仏習合神道.
Zen priests accepted the Taisei-kyo's systematisation of Shinto and paired off the three sects it distinguished with respectively exoteric Buddhism (Kengyō 顕教), esoteric Buddhism (Mikkyō 密教), and Zen. The monk Jōin 乗因（1682-1739), however, combined the Shugendō of the area of Togakushi with the Ichijitsu 一実 Shinto that was handed down in the Tendai Sect, and in this way created an original version of Shugendō, in which the Taisei-kyō's division of Shinto was received quite differently.
In recent scholarship, two interpretations exist. The first claims that the god worshipped in the Togakushi Shrine was an avatara (gongen), which would be in line with Reisō Shinto (Kobayashi Kenzō). The second interpretation is that Jōin had been influenced by the relation between state and emperor as expounded in Taisei-kyō (Sonehara Satoshi). As a study of Jōin's writings (Shugen Ichijitsu Reisō Shintō mikki 修験一実霊宗神道密記 and the recently discovered Shugendō seishū 修験道正宗) from this point of view is still lacking, I will attempt to do this in my presentation.
Next, I will contrast the different receptions of Taisei-kyō by the Zen monks and in Jōin's new Shugendō. In this way, I will attempt to show how great the influence of Taisei-kyō was in the religious thought of early-modern Japan, and how widely it had spread.
Paper short abstract:
The authors of Taisei-kyō could not acknowledge the existence of the Tokugawa shōgun, for the text allegedly dates from the early seventh century. Instead, they stressed the military exploits of ancient commanders. The same approach was adopted in popular literature of the seventeenth century.
Paper long abstract:
Fundamentally, Sendai kuji hongi taisei-kyō explains what the ideal political order of the Japanese state should be. The main point is that the emperor must be regarded as the descendant of the gods and as the apex of the state. One of the three fundamental strands of Shinto beliefs that Taisei-kyō preaches, Saigen 斎元, is defined as the Way that is unique to the divine country Japan. Its ideal is the continuity of the absolute, vertical relations between high and low, in which a subject shall never offend against his lord, the emperor.
At the time when Taisei-kyō was printed, the de facto ruler of Japan was the Tokugawa shōgun. In his study of Taisei-kyō, Kōno Seizō 河野省三 points out that "Taisei-kyō in several ways contributed to the administrative and ideological stability of the Tokugawa regime." (See his Kuji taisei-kyō ni kan-suru kenkyū (1952), p. 43.) As Taisei-kyō was deemed to have been written in the early seventh century, the question naturally becomes, how Taisei-kyō contributed to the "stability of the Tokugawa regime."
My provisional answer is: In the "Annals of the August Grandchild" (Kōson hongi) and the "Annals of the Divine Emperors (Shinkō hongi), which are chapters that treat the history of the emperors, Taisei-kyō describes the military exploits of such commanders as Michi no Omi no Mikoto 道臣命 and Takeshiuchi no Sukune 武内宿禰, who with their military skills protected the emperors and protected the peace of the state.
The identical personalities also appear as famous generals in such collective biographies of military leaders as Honchō yūzō hyakushō-den 本朝有像百将伝 and Honchō buke kongen 本朝武家根元, first printed in 1656 and 1657 respectively. Here, the historical importance of the Tokugawa shōgun, who also were military leaders, is most certainly implied.
In my presentation, I will examine the way in which the military leaders of ancient times are described in Taisei-kyō and books linked to it, and try to find out the position of the Tokugawa shōgun in Taisei-kyō.