W.E. Deal
evidence available for interpreting ritual practices and beliefs—in our case, both extensive
material artifacts and limited texts—and the nature of assumptions made when interpreting the
evidence.
“Japanese religion”
Any discussion of religion in archaic Japan needs to be mindful of addressing two interrelated
issues implied by the terms “religion” and “Japan.” The Japanese word for “religion” is shūkyō,
but this term only became current in Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was bor-
rowed from the Western word and was focused on the notion of religion as doctrinal beliefs
rather than on ritual practices.^2 In our study here, doctrine—however framed or derived from
material culture and early texts—is significantly less important than ritual practices and the
beliefs that both fueled and were fueled by these ritual actions.
Similarly, for the period under study here, we need to be extremely careful of assuming too
much about the terms we are using to describe our object of study. The notion of “Japanese reli-
gion,” which tends to suggest some fixed or clearly delineated set of ritual practices and beliefs,
is especially problematic. Further, we also need to be careful not to read contemporary interpre-
tive sensibilities into the Japanese religious past. Thus, we cannot speak of Japanese religion at
this point because that suggests the notion of a continuous nation and a discernible continuity of
religious rituals and beliefs.
There are good reasons, too, to be dubious of even the term “Japan.” If by “Japan” we mean a
national identity, then the term is misused because, arguably, the notion of a country of Japan does
not begin to emerge until the end of the period under study here. Instead, the term “Japanese archi-
pelago” is a better way of describing the location of our study rather than assuming that “Japan”
refers to a unified political entity. Ancient Japanese religion, then, is best viewed as the practices and
beliefs of people inhabiting the Japanese archipelago at various places and times. We will refer to
Japan and Japanese religion in this chapter, but only as shorthand and being mindful not to assume
more than we can reliably mean by terms such as “archaic Japan” and “religion.”
Archaeological and textual evidence for religion in archaic Japan
The archaeological record, particularly material culture and spatial arrangements, provide
insights into the ritual worlds of early inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago.^3 Interpreting the
archaeological record, however, raises a significant question: What aspects of the archaeological
record can be interpreted as expressing religious ideas or ritual practices? Put differently, in the
absence of any textual record with explicit religious references, what aspects of material culture
constitute “religion?” How do archaeological artifacts map onto rituals and beliefs?
Our assumptions about how to read the archaeological record will have a great influence on
what it is we think we are seeing. For instance, when aspects of the material record suggest
some kind of ritual practice, on what basis do we make assumptions about whether a ritual
complex is communal, family- oriented, or more personal? Further, what assumptions do we
make—and on what basis—about the extent to which the ritual might have been practiced
across a cultural region or the extent to which the ritual was organized or subject to some sort
of sacerdotal control? In general, scholars have tried to apply larger religious categories to the
archaeological evidence. For instance, Kaner identifies several themes derived from the evid-
ence, such as cosmological views, the notion of ritual specialists, the monumentality of the
spatial evidence, the spiritual and ritual relationship between human beings and animals, and
life- cycle rituals, among others.^4