Shugendo: Japanese Mountain Religion - State of the Field and Bibliographic Review

© 2009 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Religion Compass 3/1 (2009): 31–57, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00124.x

Shugendo: Japanese Mountain Religion – State of the Field and Bibliographic Review

Gaynor Sekimori*Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies

AbstractShugendo is a fascinating subject that crosses conceptual and scholarly boundaries.This is a cause of its richness, but also has led to a great deal of misunderstanding.A major concern remains its definition; if this article brings readers to a greaterawareness of its parameters, the author will be well-satisfied. My purpose here isnot so much a description of Shugendo history and rituals, important as they are,as to introduce contemporary scholarship regarding them, primarily in English,but also to a lesser extent in French and German, to an English readership. It hasbeen impossible to do this without reference to the Japanese scholarship uponwhich much of that work is indebted, since knowledge of this scholarship iscrucial in dispelling Western misconceptions about Shugendo. Therefore, at therisk of excluding scholars of religion who cannot access the work directly becauseof the linguistic limitations, I have attempted to draw the attention of readers tothe most significant works written in Japanese on the subject as well. At the sametime, bearing in mind that this article is not intended simply for historians ofreligion already in the Japanese field, I have felt it to be important to providethe broadest possible selection of works in English that relate to the theme, toallow English language readers a wide access to monographs and articles aboutShugendo or Shugendo-related subjects. Space considerations have circumscribeddetailed discussion of the research history, but every effort has been made to referto the main issues involved.

Introduction

Shugendo, the tradition of beliefs and practices associated with sacredmountains, has in the last decade or so seen a resurgence of research interestamong scholars both in Japan and abroad, and its practices have also beenattracting growing participatory interest among ordinary, non-priestly people.Good general works on the subject, personal narratives of practitioners(yamabushi or shugenja), site guides and recurrent media attention havebrought Shugendo to a surprisingly broad audience in Japan, and even tosome extent abroad (as a trawl through websites reveals). Traditional secrecyabout sacred places and practices has given way to exposure by print andlens. In all this, though, there is considerable room for misinformation

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© 2009 The Author Religion Compass 3/1 (2009): 31–57, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00124.xJournal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

and misunderstanding, especially when there is limited exposure to Japaneselanguage sources, and it is important that Shugendo be more accuratelyunderstood in western academia, particularly given the current interest inthe hitherto largely undefined influence of ‘mountain religion’ on suchareas of present research concern as pilgrimage, histories of sacred sites,ritual practices, funerary practices, popular religion and many others.

Shugendo has long been a neglected topic in the field of Japanesehistorical and religious studies in the west, which is in turn a reflectionof Japanese academic attitudes. In his History of Japanese Religion, based ona series of lectures given in 1913–1915, the scholar Anesaki Masaharu(1873–1949) treated it cursorily, describing the yamabushi as ‘men of lowercaste representing the crude side of religion,’ who nevertheless ‘exerciseda great influence upon the people by appealing directly to vulgar ideasand superstitions’ and because yamabushi took young men into sacredmountains at adolescence, he designated Shugendo as ‘a system ofreligious Boy Scouts’ (Anesaki 1930, pp. 139–40). In depicting yamabushias ‘the chief agents in sustaining questionable religions’ and ‘extend[ing]their evil influence in various ways’ (Anesaki 1930, p. 233), he both echoedthe disdain of superstitious practices voiced in the reports of sixteenth-centuryChristian missionaries and typified late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury intellectuals living at a period when Shugendo, having been bannedby government decree in 1872, subsisted at sufferance under the umbrellaof established Buddhist sects (see below). The neglect of Edo (Tokugawa)-period Buddhism, which Tsuji Zennoksuke (1877–1955) and othersfamously denigrated as ‘degenerate’ (daraku; used as a Buddhist term, itmeans fallen into an evil path or realm where the aspiration for the Wayhas been lost), also contributed to this lack of interest and knowledge. Ithas been only comparatively recently that western scholars have turnedtheir attention, following the lead of their Japanese peers, to the long ignoredfield of early modern religion, as an examination of recent publicationsreveals. This though is the subject of a separate article.

As scholars of Japanese religion, both in Japan and abroad, move beyondwhat have been the conventional parameters of religious studies and specificdoctrinal or denominational confines, and begin to look at what actually‘is’ (or ‘was’), a world not bound by traditional denominational limits hasopened up. Practice rather than doctrine has defined Japanese religion,and even today, when most Japanese profess not to think ‘religion’ necessary(Kisala 2006), a very high percentage undertake what Western scholarswould consider religious acts, whether visiting temples and shrines at theNew Year, attending festivals, praying for worldly benefits such as examsuccess, taking part in Zen meditation, or roaming sacred sites in themountains. In the past two decades or so, an increasing number of scholarshave become more aware of the ‘religious’ underpinnings of many socialpractices (e.g. Averbuch 1995) and are also exploring the actuality ofreligious life in the past and present, such as the importance of pilgrimage


Shugendo: Japanese Mountain Religion 33

and the centrality of sacred mountains (e.g. Blacker 1984; Reader &Swanson 1997; Moerman 2004; Thal 2005; Reader 2005; Ambros 2008).Such changing interests have been spurred as a result principally of twodevelopments in Japanese scholarship.

The first development consists of studies in combinatory religion (shin-butsu shûgô) and the associated honji suijaku theory, which pointed out thefluidity of concept between kami and buddhas. Early pioneering studiesbased on historical documentation by Tsuji Zennosuke (1907) proposeda framework for understanding the kami-buddha relationship, based onthe idea that the kami who protected Buddhism looked to it for salvation,and having received salvation became bodhisttvas/buddhas (honji), butremained in the world as avatars (suijaku) to bring all beings to enlight-enment. Later scholars such as Hori Ichiró (Hori 1954) and MurayamaShUichi (Murayama 1974) finessed this concept (e.g. providing moreinstances and variations of amalgamation) but did not really go beyond it.For a useful summary of the scholarship, see Hayashi 1984 (in Japanese).Although prewar western scholars such as Charles Eliot (1862–1931) hadmentioned ‘the process of amalgamation’ in their discussion of the absorptionof Shinto elements by the esoteric sects (see Eliot 1935), the first dedicatedstudy in English was by Alicia Matsunaga (Matsunaga 1969). SusanTyler’s article provides a good, brief introduction to the topic (S. Tyler1989).

However, it was probably the impact of the publication in English in1981 of Kuroda Toshio’s seminal article about Shinto (Kuroda 1993) thatreally brought the attention of a broad spectrum of Western scholars to anew understanding of the relationship between kami and buddhas and therole Shinto has played in Japanese religious history (to the extent manyhesitate to employ ‘Shinto’ to refer to that phenomenon/entity before themid-eighteenth century or so) and the workings of the combinatoryparadigm. Kuroda’s article deconstructed the term ‘Shinto’ and insistedthat it did not exist as an independent religion until the rise of ‘modernnationalism’ in the early Meiji period, specifically as the result of govern-ment policy to ‘separate’ native beliefs from Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri).Until that time, the ‘religion and thought’ of the Japanese people wascharacterized by orthodox Buddhist institutions [‘kenmitsu (exoteric-esoteric)Buddhism’] that included Chinese-derived Yin-yang ideas and kami tradi-tions. This, he insisted, was the ‘comprehensive, unified, and self-definedsystem’ that prevailed in the premodern era (Kuroda 1993, pp. 26–8). Bypresenting a paradigm that saw medieval religion as more than a collectionof sects and schools, and moreover as a working model of combination,Kuroda gave scholars the remit to investigate pluralities, as typified byShugendo.

The concepts of shinbutsu shUgó and honji suijaku have since becomeincreasingly sophisticated, and representative recent studies include Nihonno Bukkyó 1995 (in Japanese), Sató 2000 (in Japanese) and 2002 and

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Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003b. The latter contains a useful introductionto the development of the concepts by Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli(pp. 1–53). A recent issue of the organ of the Nihon ShUkyó Gakkaidevoted a special issue to the topic (Shûkyô kenkyû 2007; in Japanese, withAbstracts in English), presenting some of the most up-to-date Japanesescholarship on the subject. Furthermore, an important exhibition entitled‘Shinbutsu shUgó’ was held at the Nara National Museum in April andMay 2007 (see Exhibition catalogue, with four essays, in Japanese, which,though written by Museum researchers, show a pleasing concern by arthistorians with the religious context and significance of their theme). Theexhibits were divided into ten thematic sections, tracing kami-buddhacombination through protector deities (e.g. Hachiman at Tódaiji in Nara),the development of JingUji (where Buddhist rituals were conducted onbehalf of the kami), the appearance of plastic representations of the kami(shinzô), mountains and mountain deities (such as Zaó Gongen), theemergence of the cult of the angry spirits (goryô), shrine pilgrimage byBuddhist priests, honji suijaku and its artistic manifestations (e.g. mishôtaiand mandara), popular pilgrimage and shrines paintings (miya mandara),medieval Shinto and the Ise Shrine, the kami and the veneration ofBuddha relics, and sacred dance. The presence of Shugendo can no longerbe ignored once traditional religion becomes contextualized in this way.

The second development that encouraged the study of Shugendo wasthe explosion of an interest in local studies from around the late 1960s, asa result of which a great amount of archival material, dating mainly fromthe premodern and modern periods (post-seventeenth century) has (andcontinues to) come to light to fuel ongoing research (e.g. Mori 1984;Kanda 2003). Some of this has been published in local histories, whichabound, or has been used by scholars to throw light on ‘religion at themicro-level’ (Hardacre 2002, p. xvi). The existence of such documenta-tion has focused interest on the religious life of the populace and providedthe means to study how religious institutions and personnel operated atthe local level and to examine the role of religion (and Shugendo inparticular) in social life (confraternities, pilgrimage, healing and counselling).Textual studies have thus not abated, but scholars of religion, both Japaneseand western, rather than simply analysing doctrinal texts, are looking at avariety of materials, ranging from medieval ritual manuals, pictorial maps,and travel guides and records, to commercial and land documents, licenses,and parishioner lists (kitôchô) to describe the actualities of religious life onthe ground. Tanaka 1997 (in Japanese), Hardacre (2002) and Williams(2005) represent the diverse ways in which such material can be used. Inaddition, there has been in the last decade a growing appreciation of howpictorial, graphic and material sources can elucidate what people wereactually doing. The medieval historian Kuroda Hideo in particular has donemuch to popularize their use [e.g. Kuroda 2000, 2005 (in Japanese), 2004],while Kanagawa University (Yokohama) has recently (March 2008) completed



a wide-ranging 5-year project concerning systematizing non-writtenmaterials for the study of human societies (see www.himoji.jp/en/index.html).

Shugendo Studies in Japan

These developments have encouraged a growing interest in the study ofShugendo. On one hand, work on the combinatory, assimilative tendenciesof traditional religion has in effect given scholars ‘permission’ to moveaway from the twin fulcri of doctrinal and sectarian studies, to look atJapanese religiosity and religious history directly, at ‘what is/was’ ratherthan ‘what should be’. Shugendo was perceived as being a prime exampleof the combinatory paradigm and so drew increasing academic attention.On the other hand, Shugendo benefited immeasurably from the develop-ment of local studies in two ways; first, because it is site-specific, itsparameters have been clarified through on-the-ground descriptions, andsecond, the appearance of Shugendo archives provides documentaryevidence for a variety of scholarly approaches, such as institutionalization,networks, community roles, and so on. Tellingly, perhaps, the sixth (and final)volume of the Zusetsu Nihon no Bukkyô (Illustrated Japanese Buddhism),published in 1989 by Shinchôsha, was entitled ‘Shinbutsu shûgô toShugen’ (Kami-buddha combination and Shugendo).

However, as we shall see below, Shugendo is notoriously difficult todefine and there is a continual seepage of topics between it and other areas,such as divinity cults, female exclusion from sacred sites (nyonin kinsei),pilgrimage practices, magico-religious rituals, and in recent years, ecologicalconcerns. Shugendo was not studied extensively even in Japan until thepost-war period, and despite what has been written above, still lingerstoday under a cloud in some parts of academia, where certain scholarscontinue to share Anesaki’s opinion that it is superstitious, syncretic, andsomehow disreputable, and so not worth serious attention. This is due inpart to the fact that Shugendo was banned in 1872 for its eclecticism bya reformist government anxious to be perceived as having shed the shacklesof a ‘feudal’ or benighted past. Shugendo priests were given the choiceof becoming (Shinto) shrine priests or fully ordained priests within thetradition (Tendai or Shingon) to which their institutions had been affiliated,or giving up their religious role completely (see Sekimori 2000, 2005b).The very small number (less then ten per cent) who joined Buddhistinstitutions found themselves ranked inferior to regular priests andencouraged to integrate with their new sects rather than try to maintaintheir Shugendo traditions: initially, they were forbidden to wear theirdistinctive robes, to perform Shugendo-style rituals and to conductShugendo-related activities.

There were nevertheless some priests and scholars who worked for theindependence of the Shugen sects and promoted Shugendo scholarship;

www.himoji.jp/en/index.html

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these included the Buddhist scholar and educator Shimada Bankon(1827–1907) from Tokuyama (Yamaguchi prefecture) and Umiura Gikanof Engakuji in Aomori (1858–1921; Shingon Daigo-ha, formerly Tozan-ha).In the final years of the nineteenth century, sectarian politics had madeconditions more conducive to the outward expression of Shugendo traditions,and Shugendo-specific rites began to be performed with official sanction.A Shingon-affiliated Shugen group began publishing a journal called Jinbenin 1909; and Shógoin, the head temple for Tendai-affiliated shugenja beganits own publication, Shugen, in 1923. This set the stage for Shugendostudies by a number of scholar-priests, such as Miyagi Shinga of Shógoin,Hattori Nyojitsu of Sanbóin, and Shimazu Dendó of Haguro. Trainingschools were opened and doctrinal works, such as the Shugen shôten (Daigoji1927) were published (Miyake 2005, pp. 91–4). Taken in conjunctionwith the publication of three volumes of Shugendo texts (Shugendô shôso)between 1917 and 1920 in the Nihon daizôkyô ( Japanese Buddhist Canon),a foundation had been built for the first wave of modern academic studiesof Shugendo.

Uno EnkU’s history of Shugendo (Uno 1929) paved the way for laterscholarship. Uno stressed that Shugendo doctrine was secondary to practiceand emphasized its debt to Shingon [Sekimori 2002, pp. 218–19; Miyake1985b (1999, 32), in Japanese]. His successors were Murakami Toshio andWakamori Taró, who both published studies in 1943. The former developedpremodern concerns with doctrine, ritual, clothing and implements, pointingout the strong Shingon influence on medieval symbolic interpretations, whilethe latter took an historical approach. Wakamori’s analysis, that Shugendowas essentially a mountain-based ascetic practice undertaken by individuals,that had been corrupted by growing institutionalization, particularly inthe Edo period, has retained a grip on scholarly interpretation down tothe present, a viewpoint that has only recently begun to be challenged.

As Carmen Blacker has noted, the situation changed in the postwarperiod, as scholars such as Hori Ichiró (1910–74) following in thefootsteps of Yanagida Kunio (1875–1962), the pioneer of folklore studies(minzokugaku) in Japan and champion of the ordinary people (termedjômin by Yanagida), ‘emphasized . . . the need for understanding Japanesereligion as a living whole, rather than isolating the “higher” Buddhistdoctrine and Shinto myth from the old and more popular strata ofbelief ’ (Blacker 1967, p. 607). Shugendo too was resuscitated followingthe religious reforms of 1945 (Miyake 2006), and several independent sectsemerged, most importantly those associated with the pre-Meiji Honzan-ha(Tendai Jimon-shU, Honzan Shugen-shU, Kinbusen Shugen HonshU) andTózan-ha (Shingon-shU Daigo-ha) and with Haguro Shugendo (HaguroShugen HonshU). Significantly, traditions of secrecy were set aside in aneffort both to retrieve sectarian teachings and transmissions that hadbeen lost in the 70-year hiatus and to make those teachings available tonon-professional followers, who were now the mainstay of the revived



Shugendo. During the 1950s, a number of scholars from priestly back-grounds, such as Miyake Hitoshi (Kurashiki), Gakkó Yoshihiro (Sagae),Miyagi Tainen (Kyoto), Togawa Anshó (Haguro) and Nakagawa Kóki(Nikko), took up Shugendo-related topics for their university studies orresearch interest, and their work, joined together with that of folkloristsand local historians, contributed to the 18 volume Sangaku shûkyôshikenkyû sôsho (1975–84), which still remains an essential source forShugendo study.

There is now a large corpus of studies available in Japanese aboutindividual sacred mountains and local Shugen groupings, such as thehistorico-geographical studies of Nagano Tadashi on Hikosan and IwahanaMichiaki on Dewa Sanzan and the ritual and historical studies of TogawaAnshó (Haguro Shugendo) and Nakagawa Kóki (Nikko). Underpinningthese studies is a considerable body of on-site investigations, including archivalsources, and surveys of mountains associated with Shugendo undertakenby local bodies in increasing numbers from the 1970s (e.g. Togawa 1975).Such surveys of sites in the Kumano-Yoshino-Koya region were stimulatedby the application for World Heritage status for sacred sites and pilgrimageroutes in the area before 2004 (e.g. the survey undertaken by Nara Pre-fecture on the yamabushi trail from Yoshino to Kumano, report published2000). Local studies, which have long played a part in Japanese intellectuallife, boomed as a result of receiving fresh impetus in the 1980s fromgovernment initiatives to sustain rural communities. The collection oflocal lore by individuals also plays an important part in Shugendo research.For example, Tyler and Swanson have reported that Niko Ryoei of Nachihas collected over a hundred handwritten volumes concerning KumanoShugendo (1989a, p. 96). The unique work of Anne-Marie Bouchy shouldalso be mentioned here; this French scholar, who was then studying underGorai Shigeru, resurrected the career of a late nineteenth-century yamabushicalled Jitsukaga from mouldering documents she discovered in a storehouseat Zenki in the ºmine mountains, restored them and wrote a monographon the subject [Bouchy 1977 (in Japanese); see also Blacker 1979].

As Tyler and Swanson observed, ‘Much of the recent [sic] interest inShugendo is due to the labors of Miyake Hitoshi and Gorai Shigeru. Themajor enterprises of these two scholars stand out like twin mountains,each as different from the other, and as complementary, as the Kongôkaiand Taizókai mandalas which Shugendo thought so often projects ontosacred peaks. To Miyake’s set of mighty tomes, written by a single scholarthoroughly conscious of religious studies as a contemporary research field,corresponds the still more massive, collective enterprise presided over byGorai, who has sought to explore through Shugendo the fundamentalgenius of the Japanese people’ (Tyler and Swanson 1989a, p. 97).

Byron Earhart has rightly pointed out that ‘all future scholarship willhave to take into account Miyake’s work’ (Miyake 2001, p. 5). Miyake’sstudies are indebted to Uno, Murakami and Wakamori, but also to western

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scholars such as Mircea Eliade, Victor Turner and Clause Lévi-Strauss, andas these suggest, his research has consistently followed two lines of interest,which emerge from and reinforce each other: Japanese folk religion andShugendo. Like Uno, he regards Shugendo as a composite religion incor-porating elements of folk religion, mountain beliefs, shamanism and magic,kami beliefs, esoteric Buddhism and Chinese divinatory traditions derivedfrom Daoism. His three major studies have been on the rituals, thoughtand institutional history of Shugendo [Miyake 1971 (1985a, 1999), 1985b(1999), 1999], but his work has been prolific and far-reaching: he has editedthe influential dictionary Shugendô jiten (1986), studied the biographicalhistory of En no Gyója, legendary founder of Shugendo (2000a), compileda volume of commentary for the reissued Shugendô shôso (Nihon Daizókyó2000), looked at Shugendo’s place within the main streams of Japanesereligion (Miyake 1996a) and written about the significance of sacredmountains to the Japanese (Miyake 2004). As a result of his appointmentto Kokugakuin University after his retirement from Keio University, hehas in recent years produced a number of articles, reports, edited volumesand a monograph concerning Shinto and Shugendo (e.g. Miyake 2006b,2007b,c). For a detailed description and bibliography of Miyake’s work,see Sekimori 2005d.

Gorai Shigeru (1908–93) pioneered the field of Buddhist folklore(Bukkyó minzokugaku), intent on understanding how Buddhism hadactually worked within the lives of ordinary people. He was therefore veryinfluential in moving academic study of this and related topics more intothe field, looking to see how religion was actually practiced, in the pastas well as the present. Not surprisingly then he saw Shugendo as a religionof practice rather than theory, and one of miracles and faith. It was onlyafter it had lost its spiritual power to work miracles that it acquired theoryand doctrine (Gorai 1989, p. 117). Rejecting theory, he seeks to defineShugendo through its lore rather than its doctrinal works. By ‘lore’(denshô) he means not simply oral traditions, but also rituals, the performingarts, physical evidence on site, and such like. ‘One must gather the dispersedfragments of a tradition which has already shifted, broken up and, so tospeak, weathered away. One must then patiently reassemble these fragmentsagain into the whole, not rejecting the least shard of evidence. Such an effortwill eventually make it possible to describe the lost past of Shugendo’,he wrote. Only then can Shugendo texts be understood. To understandShugendo properly is to be able to understand ‘the fundamental spirit ofthe Japanese people (Gorai 1989, pp. 119–20). Nostalgia for a pre-industrial,pre-western age is evident here, as is the regret, shared by many researchers,of the ‘lost past’ destroyed in the early years of Meiji, yet there is a dangerhere of over-romanticizing Shugendo. Nevertheless, his emphasis on theneed for personal experience, on-site investigation, information fromparticipants and those who collect local lore in order to understand aShugendo tradition, practice or site is very apt. Sekimori’s research into



the Autumn Peak ritual at Mt Haguro, for example, could not have beenundertaken without personal participation in practice, knowledge of thephysical site and expert information providing a background to a diachronictextual study (Sekimori 1995, 2005a).

Inevitably, it was as part of folk religion studies, rather than religiousstudies or history, that the study of Shugendo developed academically inJapan. Yet, if Shugendo studies are to develop, there and abroad, they mustbe considered within the broader area of Religious Studies and the Historyof Religion. Indeed, some of the most interesting recent work has ahistorian’s perspective. Works by Fujita Sadaoki (Fujita 1996), TanakaHidekazu (Tanaka 1997) and Itó Kiyoo (Itó 1997) take up Shugendo-relatedtopics to discuss the nature of political authority; Fujita studying theexpansion of Honzan-ha in the Aizu-Wakamatsu area in the Edo perios,Tanaka the transformation of nineteenth-century institutions in NorthernJapan, and Itó the links between sacred mountains and the extension ofimperial Japan in the north.

With the ongoing discovery of archival material, dating in the mainfrom after the seventeenth century, much more is becoming known aboutShugendo networks, lifestyles and organization in the early modern period,and it can no longer be sustained that there is nothing of interest to studyin Shugendo after the ‘itinerant yamabushi’ idealized by Wakamori was nolonger the paradigm of a shugenja (if it ever was). The work of KandaYoriko and her team in the villages around Mt Chókai (on the Yamagata-Akita border) has already been referred to (Kanda 2003); a great wealthof material for understanding the life of the yamabushi in the area and theiractivities have been uncovered. Family and temple records such as theArayama, Nanshóji and Daisen’in archives are being used to trace suchthings as the activities of sendatsu (pilgrim guides) and the involvement ofyamabushi in village ritual. New collections are being discovered regularlyand await scholarly attention. One example is the Koshikidake archive(Higashine, Yamagata), some 600 documents belonging to the descendentsof the priests of the Tózan-ha temple, Kannonji, which disappeared in theearly Meiji period to become a Shinto shrine (see Sekimori 2008).Besides ritual texts, which are being used to reconstruct the lost traditionsof the temple (which was restored 3 years ago), there is a wealth ofdocumentation concerning the life of a Shugendo priest in the earlymodern period – exchanges with the civil authorities, land registers, taxationdocuments, communications with the head temple, trading papers, religiouslicenses, and so on (Sekimori 2005c). An exemplary study of a villageshugenja using similar types of documents is Yamamoto 1995 (in Japanese).

Recent Japanese scholarship remains interested in institutional history,where the detailed studies of Sekiguchi Makiko are particularly important,given that Tôzan-ha, her field of interest, has received less scholarly atten-tion than the other main Shugendo lineages of the early-modern period.She emphasizes the important point that the Edo period matrix, which

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makes a clear sectarian distinction between the Tendai affiliation ofHonzan-ha Shugendo and the Shingon affiliation of Tôzan-ha Shugendo,does not necessarily reflect the situation in the medieval period, and it ismisleading to discuss pre-Edo Tôzan-ha simply in terms of Shingondoctrine [Sekiguchi 2008b (in English), see also Sekiguchi 2000, 2002,2004, 2005, 2006]. At the same time, there is also a strong interest in thesociology of religion and historico-geography. Sociological studies tend todeal with mountain religion in the broadest sense, and at the moment MtOntake (not strictly a ‘Shugendo’ mountain) is receiving a great deal ofattention, particularly the confraternities (kô) associated with it and relatedbeliefs concerning the oza séance and reijin veneration [Sangaku Shugen2007; Nakayama 2007 (in Japanese)]. Other related topics include femaleparticipation and exclusion (see below), and ritual performance and theperforming arts (e.g. the work of Kanda Yoriko). Articles in SangakuShugen, the journal of the Sangaku Shugen Gakkai, are indicative ofcurrent interests (see cumulative index, Sangaku Shugen 2007.11, pp.139–47, in Japanese). Historico-geographic studies are related to recon-structing the mountain-entry ritual routes and identifying the topology offormer Shugendo practice sites. Related to this are attempts to tracepatterns of mountain pilgrimage, both geographically and statistically,based on sources such as travel records (dôchûki), lodging registers, stele,and architectural remains. There is also a trend towards comparative studies,such as relationships between Zenkóji and Haguro, Pure Land faith andthe Kumano cult, and shugenja and ‘hidden’ nenbutsu practitioners.

In conclusion, it should be mentioned that the growing number ofimportant exhibitions in major museums over the past decade is stimulatingboth public interest and academic attention. Two of these exhibitionswere put together as commemorative events, ‘En no Gyója and the Worldof Shugendo’, at the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in 1999, on theoccasion of the 1300th anniversary of En no Gyója, and ‘Inori no Michi’,held in Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo in 2004, to celebrate World Heritagestatus being given the religious sites of the Kii region. Local exhibitions,both large scale, such as ‘Kumano Shinkó to Tóhoku’ (Miyagi and Akita,2006), and small, such as ‘Tengu to Yamabushi’ (Tottori 1998) have madematerial more widely available for research purposes. Special exhibitionsabout local sites, such as Yoneyama (1998), Tateyama (1991, 1994, 1996,1997, 1998, 2005) and Fuji Yoshida (1996, 2002), have also added to thewealth of Shugendo-related artifacts now being made public, and areproviding a great deal of information about mountains and religious lifein the early modern period. Exhibitions about related topics too areinvaluable to the researcher [e.g. documents and pictorial material relatedto legendary histories of shrines and temples (Kanazawa Bunkó 2003–2004)and talismans and amulets (Kokugakuin University standing collection;Machida Municipal Museum 2006)]. The wealth of documentary sourcesabout Shugendo held by large temples such as Daigoji (Kyoto) is displayed



in exhibitions such as ‘Shugendo and Daigoji’ (2006), and archival workis currently being undertaken to make them more generally available.

Shugendo Studies Abroad

As H. O. Rotermund has noted, knowledge about Shugendo amongEuropeans was derived initially from sporadic notices in reports bysixteenth-century European missionaries, principally Portuguese Jesuits(Rotermund 2007). The information contained in these reports was madeavailable to a wider audience in Europe in the vernaculars by RenwardCysat (1545–1614), the municipal secretary of Lucerne, in his WarhafftigerBericht von den Newerfundnen Japponischen Inseln und Königreichen . . . (1586),‘compiled from numerous writings about things Japanese’ (Cysat 1586, p.27, quoted in Lach 1965, pp. 703–5), and by Luis de Guzman (1544–1605)in his Historia de las missiones (1601), which Lach evaluates as a ‘readable,factual narrative, with relatively few digressions devoted to preaching ormoralizing’ (Lach 1965, p. 711). Cysat made a number of references to‘jamabur’ (yamabushi), mentioning their mountain-entry practices, duringwhich they ‘voluntarily underwent sixty-days of severe penance consistingof physical mortifications on a very high mountain’, allowed only onesmall vegetarian meal a day; their ‘commerce with the Devil’; their use ofsorcery to locate what was lost or stolen; and their custom of ritual suicide(Rotermund 2007, pp. 31–6). Guzman also mentioned the ‘xamabugis’ asbeing ‘entirely devoted to the service of Satan’. Most, he said, lived in themountains but others ‘traveled from town to town practicing deceits andsorceries’ and ‘encouraged believers to visit certain temples to worship thedevil’ (Lach 1993, p. 1832). He gives what he said was a first-handdescription of the annual mountain-entry ritual in the ómine mountains,which is quite recognizable today. Despite the Christian-tinted lens throughwhich the yamabushi were viewed and the numerous misunderstandingsthat arose from linguistic and cultural problems, certain key elements ofShugendo made their first appearance to a European audience throughsuch publications. The fullest coverage (in German) of the appearance ofShugendo in the missionary reports was made by Georg SchurhammerS. J. (1882–1971), the biographer of Francis Xavier, as part of his workon the sources for Xavier’s career (Schurhammer 1922).

While Arnoldus Montanus mentioned, in his Gedenkwaerdige gesant-schappen (1669) concerning the Blokovius-Frisius Embassy of 1649–50 toEdo, the annual ascent by yamabushi of Mt Fuji (Lach and Van Kley 1993,p. 1876), the most extensive premodern description of the yamabushi comesfrom the hand of Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716), who wrote The Historyof Japan (published in English posthumously in 1727) based on his stay inthat country between 1690 and 1692. He describes the ‘jammabos’ as‘hermits . . . who disdain worldly pleasures to reach the everlasting and arecommitted to castigating their bodies by climbing sacred mountains and

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frequent washing in cold water’ (Bodart-Bailey 1999, p. 122) and it issignificant that he describes the breadth of social class (and so the pre-sumed function) they occupied, from rich priests living in their own homesto poor shrine custodians and mendicants. He also mentions En no Gyójaas founder, the existence of the Honzan and Tózan lineages, the specialitems of yamabushi dress, the combinatory nature of their rituals, and theirpractice of magic (through which they ‘pretend’ to ‘chase away evil spirits’and ‘search out hidden matter’) (Bodart-Bailey 1999, pp. 123–5). Hedescribes too an initiatory regime consisting of dietary restrictions, coldwater ablutions and multiple full prostrations that is instantly recognizableto modern gyôja (ascetics). Although he is not always accurate (e.g. heconfuses suzukake, the surcoat, with yuigesa, the surplice with pompoms)and reflects the prejudice that Shugendo represents a degradation of thepure practices of ‘Shinto hermits’ through the contamination of ‘theforeign religion’, his description is fairly reliable as far as it goes, and certainlyrepresents the fullest treatment of Shugendo before the modern period.

Writing in 1967, Carmen Blacker noted that ‘scant attention has beenpaid by western scholars to the order of mountain ascetics known as theShugendó. Histories of Japanese Buddhism have ignored it on the scorethat it is not strictly a Buddhist sect. Studies on Shinto have likewise passedit by because of its large accretion of Buddhist doctrine’ (Blacker 1967,p. 606). A further reason for the neglect, she suggested, was Shugendo’s‘preoccupation with spells and magic,’ which ‘western writers on Japanesereligion have until recently tended to relegate . . . to a disreputablenailpatch labeled “superstition”, there to abandon them as unworthy ofserious attention’ (Blacker 1967, p. 607). Although Lowell 1895 touchedon such matters, and Shugendo-related topics, in fascinating detail inOccult Japan, the first ‘modern’ treatment of Shugendo was the above-mentioned Schurhammer 1922, and Eliot 1935 made passing reference toit (pp. 242–3). However, it was not until the 1960s that a small numberof Western scholars started treating Shugendo as a discrete subject, whenthree works appeared: Le Shugendô by Gaston Renondeau (1965), DieYamabushi by Hartmut O. Rotermund (1968) and A Religious Study of theMount Haguro Sect of Shugendo by H. Byron Earhart (1970). Nelly Naumann(1963–1964) and Carmen Blacker (1975, based on field work conductedin the early 1960s), in studies of mountain religion and shamanism respec-tively, also touched on the topic.

Renondeau’s study (Renondeau 1965) is in two parts, the first concerningthe history of Shugendo down to the Meiji period, and the secondShugendo doctrine. His paradigm follows Uno’s in that it looks at thesignificance of mountains, the place of magic, the role of Daoist practicesand the legend of En no Gyója, considered the founder of Shugendo, asforming the background to its doctrinal and institutional growth underesoteric Buddhist influence. His attention is given particularly to medievaldevelopments, and inevitably tends to be more text- than practice-based.



It means too that he essentially places Shugendo within Tendai and Shingon(as did Eliot [1935]) rather than seeing it as a separate sect.

Rotermund (1968) incorporates the missionary reports described aboveas well as Japanese primary and secondary sources. He sees the magico-religious practitioners (diviners, healers, magicians, etc.) who went intothe mountains to undertake ascetic training from around the seventh-centuryon as personified by En no Gyója as being the progenitors of the latershugenja (for contemporary descriptions of such figures, see Nakamura 1973;Dykstra 1983; Tyler 1987; Keenan 1999). He agrees with Renondeau thatShugendo itself is a medieval phenomenon and represents the institution-alization of assorted mountain practices, and he seems to echo Wakamoriin understanding the gradual subordination of individual practices to thoseof the group, and their move from a wandering to a settled life, as beinga degeneration of the original ideal. Like many Japanese scholars of thetime, he does not seem to value Edo-period developments highly, and sawthat time as a period of stagnation and degeneration for Shugendo, as forBuddhism as a whole. However, he devoted much of his later work toEdo-period religion, so this was a bias that was not sustained (see, forexample, in relation to Shugendo history, Rotermund 1983). The strengthof his 1968 work is its depiction of Shugendo practice, and his stress onaction over doctrine.

The third work, by Byron Earhart, was the first work in English to lookdeeply at one Shugendo tradition, that of Mt Haguro. Earhart, whostudied under Mircea Eliade and Joseph Kitagawa at the University ofChicago, did his fieldwork in Japan under the supervision of Hori Ichiro,and the influence of the latter can be seen in his concern to look at ‘thetotal religious context’ of Japan. Writing in 1970, he acknowledged thathis approach ‘represents a fairly new approach to Japanese religion in termsof understanding its overall unity by analyzing its historical developmentand religious structure.’ Although western scholarship tended to compart-mentalize Japanese religion, his concern was with how ‘the various religiousheritages interacted’ and how ‘people participated without any sense ofpassing from one religious division to another.’ He thus found Shugendoto be ‘an excellent choice for exploring the nature of Japanese religionbecause it has drawn deeply from all of the religious elements found inJapan’ (Earhart 1970, p. ix). Earhart’s discussion of the historical developmentof Shugendo as a whole reflects that of his Japanese contemporaries, suchas Mitake Hitoshi, in that he understands Shugendo to have arisen out ofthe religious activities associated with sacred mountains, which by theseventh century had become ‘overlaid with the symbolism and belief ofespecially Buddhism and religious Taoism [sic]’ (Earhart 1970, p. 5).Shugendo took shape between the ninth and twelfth centuries ‘whenesoteric Buddhism was dominant’, and became ‘a more highly organizedreligious movement’ from the twelfth century onwards (Earhart 1970, p. 6).He admits that Shugendo did not escape decay and corruption after the

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sixteenth century, but at the same time recognizes the penetration by‘lower-ranking yamabushi’ into folk life and religion. The bulk of Earhart’sstudy concerns the religious history and ritual of Haguro Shugendo. Con-sidering the limited sources available to him (e.g. Uno 1929; Murakami1943; Wakamori 1943; Hori 1961; Togawa 1950), his work was solid aswell as being ground-breaking. Inevitably, he draws extensively on theinterpretations of Shimazu Dendó (1885–1947; Shimazu 1937), formerchief priest of the revived Haguro Shugendo located at the temple ofShózen’in, and so there tends to be a strong sectarian flavour at times, as,for example, his treatment of the legendary founder of Haguro Shugendoand his doctrinal interpretations. He also uses the research of Shimazu’sson Togawa Anshó for his historical analyses, apparently without access tothe documentation itself. Thus, he unconsciously echoes Togawa’s emphasisthat the traditions of Haguro Shugendo ended in the early Meiji period,though he ascribes this to the abolition of Shugendo in 1872 rather thanthe consequence of the policy separating kami and Buddha worship (shin-butsu bunri) that was enforced at Haguro 1870–1873. The second part ofEarhart’s study concerns the ritual year of Haguro Shugendo, and isparticularly important for a detailed description of the Aki no Mine(Autumn Peak), in which he participated in 1963 [with Carmen Blackerand Miyake Hitoshi, both of whom also wrote descriptions of it (Blacker1975, pp. 218–34; Miyake 2000b, Ch. 8; in Japanese)]. Again, his inter-pretations rely on Shimazu and Togawa, and generally lack historicalcontextualization. This however was inevitable given the fact he does notappear to have had access to the ritual manuals known as tebumi that allowthe developmental process to be analysed, and moreover approached thetopic more as an anthropologist that an historian (for a recent historicalanalysis of the Autumn Peak, see Sekimori 1995, 2005b; for an ethno-graphic film, see Shugen 2005 [English version 2008]). Despite this, Earhart’swork was at the time, and even to some extent remains, one of the fullesttreatments of Shugendo available in English.

Earhart’s study of Japanese religion (Earhart 1969) had already paved theway for a new approach to the study of Japanese religion in the west, sinceit dealt with the subject not only on a sectarian basis, but in terms ofJapanese religiosity as a whole. Although his treatment of Shugendo therewas not extensive, he acknowledged its ‘unique relationship’ between thevarious elements making up Japanese religion. In his entry on Shugendoin the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987), he discussed Shugendo as ‘a majorchannel for unifying and continuing’ diverse practices derived fromBuddhist, Daoist and Onmyódó techniques to gain religious power andevaluated it as ‘significant as a good example of the emergence of Japanesereligion from the interaction of indigenous and imported traditions’ (seeSekimori 2005c, pp. 14–15).

The next major development in western Shugendo studies came in1989, when the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies published a special issue



titled ‘Shugendo and Mountain Religion in Japan’, edited by Royall Tylerand Paul L. Swanson. Writing in the introduction, the editors stated thatthat their purpose was ‘partly to acknowledge previous work on the subject,and partly to help stimulate further inquiry’, while acknowledging that‘never an easy topic, Shugendo studies are particularly difficult for thenon-Japanese researcher to pursue from abroad’ (Tyler & Swanson 1989a,p. 95); this seems to be borne out by the fact that there were no substantialnew additions to the list of works in western languages cited above.Shugendo, they admitted, could be ‘approached in a great many ways, butthere is a particular need to evaluate more discerningly [its] significance,in a broad sense, in Japanese religion and history. The complexity andelusiveness of the subject does not make this an easy project’ (Tyler &Swanson 1989a, p. 96). Important articles by Miyake Hitoshi (Miyake 1989)on Shugendo ritual, Gorai Shigeru on Shugendo lore (Gorai 1989), WakamoriTaró on the hashiramatsu ritual of Togakushi (Wakamori 1989) and SawaRyUken on Shugendo art (Sawa 1989) are translated here, and there arealso original articles by Royall Tyler on Kófukuji and Shugendo (Tyler 1989),Byron Earhart on Mt Fuji (Earhart 1989) and Susan Tyler on honji suijaku(S. Tyler 1989). Royall Tyler’s article is particularly interesting for itshistorical approach, indicating an important direction in which westernstudies would move in the next few years, away from a focus on Shugendoas a folk religion towards a firmer place in the field of religious history.

A number of monographs and articles have appeared in English in thecourse of the last decade dealing with sacred mountains from a variety ofresearch interests such as political, institutional, economic and art history,pilgrimage, practices, women and sociology. Although they touch onShugendo, they do not necessarily deal with it directly. Representativeworks concern Fuji (Collcutt 1988; Earhart 1989; Miyazaki 1990, 2005;Tyler 1984), Haguro (ºuchi 2008; Sekimori 1995, 2000, 2005b, 2007b),Hiei (Rhodes 1987; Stevens 1988; Ludvik 2006), Hikosan and Kunisaki(Grapard 1986, 1993, 1998, forthcoming), Iwakisan (Liscutin 2000;Schattschneider 2003), Konpira [Thal 2002 (reviewed Sekimori 2004)],Kumano (Moerman 2004), Muro (Fowler 1997, 2005), Nikko (Sekimori2006b, 2008), Osorezan (Miyazaki and Williams 2005), ºyama (Ambros2008) and Tateyama (Formanek 1998; Hirasawa 2005). The historicalstudies of Hirasawa, Sekimori, Thal and Ambros in particular, togetherwith that of Formanek, are gradually revealing a common institutionalparadigm related to organized pilgrimage and mountain institutions thattranscend a ‘Shugendo’ matrix, forcing us to continue to question howwe should define Shugendo. Another pleasing feature is that their studiesdo not necessarily conclude with the end of the Edo period, but areclosely concerned with the Meiji period and later as well. This is not socommon in Japanese-language studies of Shugendo, taken overall.

Although these works mill around the periphery of Shugendo, there isstill a relative lack of secondary literature in European languages directly

46 Gaynor Sekimori


on the subject, an exception being the valuable corpus of work appearingin French, particularly that of Anne Bouchy, which touches directly onthe historical and current significance of Shugendo (Bouchy 2000, 2001,2003, 2005, 2008). However, no general survey of Shugendo as a wholeexists in English. The broadest picture of it presently available in Englishis probably Miyake (2005). There is an urgent need for translation of bothprimary sources and secondary studies, which might encourage specialistsin related fields to consider it more closely (see Sekimori 2008). However,no general survey of Shugendo as a whole exists in English; the broadestpicture of it presently available in English is probably Miyake 2005. Thereis an urgent need for translation of both primary sources and secondarystudies, which might encourage specialists in related fields to consider itmore closely (see Sekimori 2005c for a fuller discussion of the future ofShugendo scholarship).

Conclusion

In April 2008, a symposium entitled ‘Shugendó, the History and Cultureof a Japanese Religion’ was held at Barnard College, Columbia University,New York, sponsored by the Columbia Center for Japanese Religion,bringing together Japanese and American/European scholars in the field.It was the first time a large-scale conference had been devoted to Shugendooutside Japan. Both established scholarship and new approaches werereported, and it is hoped that the forthcoming conference volume will bea valuable addition to the field. One of the stated aims of the symposiumwas to try and attain a working definition of Shugendo. Miyake Hitoshiconfirmed his contention that Shugendo is a ‘typical folk religion’ becauseby understanding it ‘we can gain insight into the common thread thatruns through Japan’s folk religious history.’ He sees in its historical devel-opment the veneration of the deities of sacred mountains that is centralto Japanese religion and this goes back to prehistoric times. This essentiallyahistorical approach is descriptive rather than analytical and belongs to theidealistic view that we find in the works of Uno, Wakamori and Horicited above, among others.

Sacred mountains have a long research history (e.g. Hori 1968, pp.141–80; Rotermund 1991b; Sató 2008), often in association withShamanism (e.g. Naumann 1963–64; Blacker 1975; Hori 1975; Rotermund1991g), but Shugendo cannot simply be equated with mountain beliefsand practices in general. This imprecision of definition has resulted in‘Shugendo’ being used (particularly in non-Japanese scholarship) out ofhistorical context. Thus, Gaynor Sekimori stated in her paper (Sekimori2008): ‘By comparing the historical context and modern manifestation [oftwo specific examples of Shugendo practice that have undergone revivi-fication in recent years], I hope that I will be able to clarify to some extentwhat Shugendo has meant at a specific time and place in the past, and



what it means today. This is particularly important, not just for scholar-ship, but for Shugendo itself in view of the resurgence of interest in it incontemporary Japan.’ By having a clear understanding about what Shu-gendo was and who its practitioners were at various points in history mayhelp mitigate against the very fluidity and indeed imprecision to whichShugendo is subject.

Before concluding I would like to introduce two related themes thatare beginning to attract research attention in the English medium, theearly Meiji Buddha-Kami Separation (or Clarification) policy and itseffect on Shugendó, and women and Shugendó. The former topic is stillsomewhat contentious in Japan, but has been seen by foreign scholars asa cornerstone of religious developments in and since the Meiji period.Introductory studies include Grapard 1984; Collcutt 1986 and Ketelaar 1990(in English) and Tamamuro 1977 and Yasumaru 1979 (in Japanese), andEnglish-language site-specific studies have been made on Mt Miwa(Antoni 1995), Konpira (Thal 2002), the Ina Valley (Inoue 2007), MtAkiba (Scarangello 2007), Kinbusen (Blair 2007) and ºyama (Ambros2008, ch. 7). The fullest study of the direct effect on Shugendo has beenmade concerning Mt Haguro (Sekimori 2000, 2005b,b,c; Togawa 1986;Gotó 1999 in Japanese). Recent Japanese studies either look at how thepolicy was pursued at particular cultic sites, or use official documents totrace patterns of resistance and change (e.g. Murata 1999; Miyake 2006a).One problem with the Japanese scholarship though is that there is a broadtendency to conflate shinbutsu bunri (kami-buddha separation) with haibutsukishaku (anti-Buddhist persecution). More detailed discussion though mustbe left to another occasion.

The issue of women in Shugendo has aroused participant as well asscholarly interest, and centrrs not only on the subject of the prohibitionof women from sacred sites as an historical phenomenon (e.g. Fowler 1998;Kódate 2004; Moerman 2004, Chapter 5; Hirasawa 2005; Miyazaki 2005;Sekimori 2006a) but also as a contemporary issue regarding the continuingban on women from climbing Sanjógatake in the ºmine Range (a WorldHeritage site). Representative works in English on this latter topic includeHardacre 1983, Suzuki 2007 and Sekimori 2007b. There is a large amountof scholarship in Japanese on female exclusion from sacred sites; for anexcellent historical coverage, see Nishiguchi 1987; for an attempt toreconceptualize it, see Ushiyama 1996; and for a general introduction, seeSuzuki 2002. The issue is a serious concern for some Shugendo groupsassociated with the Yoshino area, which fear that ºmine Shugendo maybe defined solely in gender terms (see Tanaka 2006, pp. 94–100). This toois a theme that merits much fuller treatment, and I have only attemptedto introduce the bare bones of the concerns here.

Finally, we should be aware of the work of a number of youngerscholars who are working either directly with Shugendo-related topics, orwith broader themes that include Shugendo as an important element.

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Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Yoshino-Kumano Shugendo of the ºminemountains has attracted much recent attention. Heather Blair and CarinaRoth usefully employ engi texts to elucidate the establishment of politicaland ritual authority in the region (Blair 2008; Roth 2008), while GeorgeClonos (Clonos forthcoming) and Claudio Caniglia are working onaspects of Shugendo practice (sacred landscape and ten realms practice,respectively) there. Other research incorporating aspects of Shugendopractice and ritual in particular is being undertaken by Tullio Lobetti atSOAS (Gyó, Japanese ascetic practice) and Andrea Castigliano at ColumbiaUniversity (self-immolation and self-mortification practices in Japan). Ieagerly look forward to the emergence of a new generation of westernShugendo scholarship.

Short Biography

Gaynor Sekimori is currently a Research Associate in the Centre for theStudy of Japanese Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies,University of London, and concurrently Visiting Professor at KokugakuinUniversity, Tokyo. She was Managing Editor of the International Journal ofAsian Studies and member of the Institute of Oriental Culture at theUniversity of Tokyo 2001–2007. Her research interests centre on topicswithin Japanese religious history, notably Shugendo (history, ritual practice,and contemporary resurgence), the post-1868 policy separating Buddhaand kami worship (shinbutsu bunri) in Japan, and the prohibition of femaleentry to sacred sites (nyonin kinsei). She presented a paper on the lattertopic in Canberra at the Japanese Studies conference in July 2007, andorganized a panel on shinbutsu bunri at the AAR conference in San Diego,November 2008. She translated and edited Mandala of the Mountain (2005)and her main publications include ‘Paper Fowl and Wooden Fish: TheSeparation of Kami and Buddha Worship in Haguro Shugendó, 1869–1875’,Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 32/2, 2005, ‘Sacralizing the Border,The Engendering of Liminal Space’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society ofJapan, 20, 2006 and ‘Star Beliefs and Practices in Nikko Shugendo’,Culture and Cosmos 10/1–2, 2006.

Note

* Correspondence address: Gaynor Sekimori, Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions,School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H0XG, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

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Shugendo: Japanese Mountain Religion - State of the Field and Bibliographic Review