cult could be used as a weapon whenever a major challenge to de facto
authority was mounted. The upsurges of Shinto ideology correspond to the
three main periods of struggle against the shogunate: Go-Daigo’s brief resto-
ration of imperial power in the 1330s, the cult of National Learning in the
mid-Tokugawa, and the Meiji restoration. It is a glib rhetoric which charac-
terizes Japanese cultural tradition as a harmonious syncretism of Shinto, Bud-
dhism, and Confucianism. The relative strengths of the three religions varied
considerably under different historical conditions; periods of intense conflict
among them were among the main dynamics of Japanese intellectual creativity.
Buddhist monasteries became the basis of intellectual life. By the mid-700s,
six philosophical schools had been introduced from China, some even by direct
pupils of the famous Hsüan-tsang (see 3–5 in Figure 7.1). But there was nothing
intellectually original in these first half-dozen generations. The prestige of
imports filled up the attention space. This is typical enough of idea importers,
as we see in Rome, Islamic Iraq, Spain, and Christian Europe (see Chapter 8,
Coda). Philosophical content was subordinated to sectarian identification; the
great temples at Nara came close to direct theocratic rule. The first great names
of Japanese Buddhism, Saicho and Kukai, appeared as a pair in the same circle
of court officials. The setting was the power vacuum that occurred when
government moved to Heian-kyo (Kyoto) in 794 to escape monastic power at
Nara. Saicho and Kukai went to China, where they acquired lineage connec-
tions as yet lacking in Japan, receiving ordination directly from Buddhist
masters superior in prestige to the Nara schools.^3 Saicho’s new monastery, on
Mount Hiei overlooking Kyoto, became the primary ordination hall for Japa-
nese monks. His new sect, Tendai (T’ien-t’ai), thereby became the organiza-
tional center of Japanese Buddhism; for the following 15 generations, down
to 1300, virtually every notable Buddhist, including the leaders of the Pure
Land and Zen sects, would be a pupil at Mount Hiei. Kukai made a different
selection from the network of Chinese masters, most impressively by secur-
ing ordination from the tantric lineage.^4 He returned to Japan to found the
Shingon school, with its great monastery on Mount Koya, beyond Nara.
Thereafter Shingon and Tendai between them become effectively the national
religions.^5
Both schools incorporated shamanastic orders. Magical Buddhism became
the card to trump Shinto; the indigenous gods (kami) became interpreted as
manifestations of the Buddha. Tendai developed its own esoteric branches, like
Shingon giving prominence to magic and ritual over meditation and philoso-
phy. Buddhist monasteries of the Heian period became so powerful in mundane
affairs that they fused with the outermost economic and political layer of
society. In the sociological three-level causal model, the inner organizational
level providing a base for intellectual specialists was largely eliminated, and
Innovation through Conservatism: Japan • 327