M. Bauer
Daoism or Shinto ̄?
Connected to the questions concerning the application of the term Daoism, is the relationship
between Daoism and “Shintō,” or kami worship, a discussion that harks back to the work of the
famed historian Kuroda Toshio. In 1981, Kuroda authored the article “Shinto in the History of
Japanese Religion,” in which he argued that Shintō was “another term for Taoism,” as exempli-
fied by the veneration of swords and mirrors or the application of titles such as mahito or shinjin.^28
He formulated this theory in the context of his view that Shintō did not exist as an independent
religion in premodern Japan but rather was one part of a more general religious framework that
evolved into kenmitsu (exoteric- esoteric) Buddhism during the Heian period.
In their comments on Kuroda’s article, and more specifically on the significance of the word
Shintō as it occurs in the Nihon shoki, James Dobbins and Suzanne Gay stated that it is indeed pos-
sible that the early Japanese regarded their rituals and beliefs as Daoist, even though these rituals
might have been different from their counterparts in Tang China. As did Robson, they acknow-
ledge that there was no “systematic form of Daoism” in archaic Japan, although they also suggest
the possibility that Daoism gradually entered the Japanese religious landscape in the course of the
classical and medieval periods.^29
In arguing that the connection between Chinese religion and Shintō has not yet received suf-
ficient scholarly attention, Timothy Barrett takes issue with Kuroda and Seidel’s conclusions that
Daoism’s influence on early Japan was pervasive, and sides with Livia Kohn in doubting “its
appropriateness” when speaking of Japan. Barrett does include the very relevant suggestion that
the connection between the Japanese formulation of sovereignty and continental “state Taoism”
should be further investigated, showing the profound relevance of the questions regarding the
symbolic representation of sovereignty presented by Gina Barnes and Herman Ooms.^30 It seems
that a viable route to take in investigating the connection between “Daoist elements,” kami
worship, and sovereignty in the early Heian period, is to consider the first through the introduc-
tion of mikkyō, esoteric Buddhism, and the role of these traces of Daoism within the interaction
between esoteric Buddhism and kami worship. A very fruitful example of this interaction would
be the topic of medicine and healing rituals at the imperial court.
The alleged connection between continental Daoist elements and “Shintō” does, however,
also raise the question of the latter’s identity. On the one hand one can certainly argue that
“Daoism” does not apply to Nara or earlier periods in Japan, but what about “Shintō” itself? Fol-
lowing the publication of Kuroda’s article, scholars have come to reject Shintō’s “official history”
by problematizing the application of the term to the premodern period. Instead, designations
such as “kami worship” are widely used and it is argued that what is called “Shintō” today is sig-
nificantly different from its pre- Meiji (1868) counterpart. Nevertheless, as Breen and Teeuwen
argue, while today’s “Shintō” is a post- Meiji product, kami, shrines, their myths, and many rituals
are “a great deal older than their conceptualization as components of Shinto.”^31
Rather than focusing on the connection between the abstractions Buddhism and Shintō,
recent research primarily explores the connection between particular temples and shrines, cultic
sites or local forms of praxis involving kami, and Buddhist concepts. Here, scholars follow Kuro-
da’s assertion that the rigid categorizations “Buddhism and Shintō” do not correspond to pre-
modern Japanese religiosity.
One of the earliest to examine the relation between a “Shintō” shrine and a Buddhist temple
during the Nara and the Heian periods was Allan Grapard, in 1992, with his groundbreaking The
Protocol of the Gods. Inspired by Kuroda’s earlier insights, Grapard approached the Kōfukuji-
Kasuga temple complex as a “combinativist” example.^32 Thus, rather than placing the combina-
tion “temple- shrine” in a comparative framework, he described it from the perspectives of locale