Religion in archaic Japan645, King Kōtoku issued an imperial edict creating a more formal and structured set of monastic
rules, and, in the process, made clear the court’s control over Buddhism and its practices.^62 At the
same time as the court was taking measures to secure its Buddhist interests, Buddhist practices
were gradually spreading beyond the Yamato region to more remote parts of the Japanese archi-
pelago. As one example, Yoshida Kazuhiko discusses a monk named Hōrin, who, in the late
seventh century, gathered lay Buddhists together to copy sūtras in Kawachi province.^63 The
question of how widespread Buddhism had become in the Japanese archipelago and the extent to
which the government was able to direct its spread on its own terms are matters needing addi-
tional research.
Prospects
This review of scholarship on religion in archaic Japan has focused on the need to integrate
research on the archaeological record—including material culture and site spatial arrangements—
with the textual record. This is necessary in order to craft the most accurate historical narrative
of ancient religious practices on the Japanese archipelago. To this end, it is clear that both the
historical record and scholarly perspectives are subject to prevailing ideological and methodo-
logical perspectives, views that necessarily inform how the past is understood. As scholars of
archaic Japanese religion, we must not only concern ourselves with the motivations that
undergird historical narratives like those found in the Nihon shoki, both also with our own
assumptions about what the archaeological and textual records reveal about the past. Failure to
attend to these assumptions and motivations will result in our inability to proffer critical, rig-
orous histories of religion in archaic Japan. We can never put forth value- free interpretations
of the past, but we can be mindful of impediments to understanding ideological structures that
are deeply embedded in the construction of historical narratives whether in the past or in con-
temporary scholarship.
Notes
1 On periodization issues, see Gina L. Barnes, China, Korea, and Japan: The Rise of Civilization in East Asia;
Imamura Keiji, Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia; Tsuboi Kiyotari, “Issues in Japanese
Archaeology”; and Mizoguchi Koji, “Self- Identification in the Modern and Post- Modern World and
Archaeological Research: A Case Study from Japan.”
2 Sarah Thal, Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 8. For an extended
discussion of the concept “religion” in Japan, see Jason Ānanda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in
Japan.
3 Japanese archaeology surveys with discussions of rituals and beliefs include C. Melvin Aikens and Taka-
yasu Higuchi, Prehistory of Japan; Richard Pearson, Ancient Japan; Imamura, Prehistoric Japan: New Per-
spectives on Insular East Asia; and Mizoguchi Kōji, An Archaeological History of Japan: 30,000 BC to
AD 700.
4 Simon Kaner, “The Archaeology of Religion and Ritual in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago,” 457.
5 For a general discussion of the archaeology of religion and of interpreting archaeological material in
terms of ritual, see Mark J. Hudson and Simon Kaner, “Editors’ Introduction: Towards an Archaeology
of Japanese Ritual and Religion,” 114–119.
6 See, for instance, Umehara Takeshi, Nihonjin no tamashii, 24–36; Victor Harris, Shinto: The Sacred Art of
Ancient Japan; Kasahara Kazuo, A History of Japanese Religion, 27–46; Mori Mizue, “Ancient and Classical
Japan: The Dawn of Shinto,” 12–14; Byron Earhart, Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity, 22–28;
Robert Ellwood, Introducing Japanese Religion, 75–78.
7 See Harris, Shinto; Mori, “Ancient and Classical Japan.”
8 Mori, “Ancient and Classical Japan,” 12.
9 Mori, “Ancient and Classical Japan,” 14.
10 Hudson and Kaner, “Editors’ Introduction,” 119.