SHINBUTSU SHUGO

in Japan, amalgamation of Buddhism with the indigenous religion Shinto. The precedents for this amalgamation were laid down almost as soon as Buddhism entered Japan in the mid-6th century, and the process of blending Buddhism with Shinto has dominated the religious life of the people up to the present. Even today Japanese frequently retain in their homes both Shinto god shelves (kamidana) and Buddhist altars (butsudan) and observe Shinto rites for marriage and Buddhist rites for funerals. The pattern of coexistence first began to emerge in the Nara period (AD 710784). Before construction of the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) at Nara in AD 741, the proposal to build the statue was first reported to Amaterasu Omikami, the Shinto sun goddess, at the Ise Shrine, the chief shrine of Japan. Aid was also requested of the kami (god) Hachiman, and a branch of the (Shinto) Usa Hachiman Shrine on the island of Kyushu was built in the compound of the (Buddhist) Todai Temple to protect it. From that time a practice developed of building Shinto shrines in Buddhist temple compounds and temples or pagodas near Shinto shrines, and also of reciting Buddhist scriptures at Shinto shrines. In the Heian period (9th12th century), Shinto kami came to be identified as incarnations of the Buddha, and for a time Shinto priests were dominated by Buddhist ecclesiastics and were relegated to a secondary role even in Shinto rites. During the general spiritual awakening of the Kamakura period (AD 11921333), however, Shinto attempted to emancipate itself from Buddhist domination, and the Ise Shinto (q.v.) movement claimed that Shinto divinities were not incarnations of the Buddha but that buddhas and bodhisattvas (buddhas-to-be) were rather manifestations of Shinto kami. The separation of the two religions was one of the early reforms of the Meiji regime, which in 1868 issued an edict ordering Buddhist priests connected with Shinto shrines either to be reordained as Shinto priests or to return to lay life. Buddhist temple lands were confiscated and Buddhist ceremonies abolished in the imperial household. Shinto was proclaimed as the national religion; later it was reinterpreted as a suprareligious national cult (see State Shinto).