M. Bauer
relic veneration during the Heian era.^3 Thus, from literary production to ritual performance and
patronage, both in and outside court, women played significant roles in Nara and Heian Japan’s
religious sphere. As exemplified by research on female shamans, or miko, an examination of
women’s religious roles has the potential of improving our understanding of the relation between
the center and the periphery, or the overlap between Buddhism and folk religion.^4 An overview
of these periods therefore requires great subtlety in treating religious differentiation and gender
roles. As Barbara Ruch notes, in commenting on the little progress in our understanding of the
history of Buddhist women, “ ‘Women and Buddhism’ is a theme as old as the sacred texts of
Buddhism itself.”^5
Japanese and Western scholarship dealing with Nara and Heian period religious developments
has undergone tremendous changes over the past decade. While new areas of interest have been
introduced, such as an increased interest in gender studies or ritual, the biggest change has prob-
ably been the interdisciplinary character of recent research by both established and younger
scholars. As always, however, new developments come with advantages and disadvantages.
On the one hand, the interdisciplinary approach has prompted the study of religious develop-
ments within their social and historical contexts, clarifying why certain developments took place
at a given time. Especially in case of gender studies, much effort has been made to fill the lacuna
in Buddhist Studies mentioned by Ruch.
Nevertheless, while this approach initially improved our comprehension of larger develop-
ments, one could argue that in- depth studies of texts and commentaries have been pushed to the
background. Although Japanese researchers such as Nagamura Makoto have made tremendous
progress regarding the reading and analysis of hitherto unknown or overlooked temple archives,
Western scholars initially did not pay enough attention to these Japanese developments.^6 It is,
however, encouraging to see that recent Western scholarship on ritual debates, female patronage,
or Buddhist manuscripts combines interdisciplinary aspects with textual analysis, an evolution
supported by an increase in Japanese publicly available digitized archives.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the major themes addressed by
scholars specializing in Nara and Heian period religiosity. In general terms, this means that I will
discuss the study of religious developments following the Asuka period (c.538–710) that were
part of what historians have called the ritsuryō state, rule by regents (sekkan seiji) and rule by
retired emperors (insei seiji).^7 In terms of historical divisions, these categories belong to the period
from the classical (kōdai) to the early medieval (chūsei) era. Given the interdisciplinary character of
premodern Japanese studies in general, I will include works from both History and Religious
Studies and address the rigid divisions imposed on its traditions, discuss the relation between reli-
gion and state, and address scholarship on gender.
Premodern Japan’s religious traditions
The Japanese premodern landscape was an inherently diverse, dynamic whole consisting of
several traditions that influenced one another continuously. The official introduction of Bud-
dhism in 538 is correctly seen as a watershed moment in Japan’s early religious history, but one
should not lose sight of the plurality of continental influences that encountered several forms of
religiosity already present on the Japanese islands. One of the main problems running through-
out scholarship dealing with Nara- Heian period religiosity and history is one of categorization
and the application of modern concepts to a premodern context. On the one hand, scholars came
to address “Buddhist,” “Shintō,” “Confucian,” and “Daoist” topics; while on the other hand, the
viability of certain of these categories has rightly been questioned. In addition, we have to be
careful not to apply modern (post- Meiji) conceptualizations of independent traditions and schools