parishes stems from the Tokugawa government’s anti-
Christian (Kirishitan) campaigns and ordinances of
1613 and 1614. Christianity, which had achieved a
foothold in certain regions during the sixteenth cen-
tury through the efforts of Portuguese and Spanish
missionaries, was increasingly seen by the new Toku-
gawa regime as a subversive force and a threat to their
hegemony. The threat of Christianity, as seen from the
perspective of government officials, lay less with its
biblical teachings and doctrines, than with the issue of
Christian loyalty to God and the pope rather than to
the Tokugawa government’s secular authority. This led
to a ban on Christianity in 1614.
To ensure that no Japanese person remained a
Christian, the government ordered “Investigations of
Christians” (Kirishitan aratame) to be conducted in
each domain. Former Christians were certified by the
local Buddhist temple and village officials as no longer
Christians but as parish members of a Buddhist tem-
ple. The first surveys of Christians, begun in 1614, were
followed by more extensive surveys ordered by the gov-
ernment in 1659 in which not only the parish temple,
but the village goningumi(a unit of five households
sharing mutual responsibility) were required to attest
that no one in their group was a Christian. By 1670
the practice of temple investigation and registration
(tera-uke seido) had become almost universal when
a standardized temple registration certificate was
adopted by Buddhist temples across all regions of
Japan. This document certified that parishioners were
neither Christians nor Nichirenfuju fuse members (a
sect of Nichiren Buddhism banned by the government
in 1669). Although the Buddhist temple held primary
responsibility for monitoring and reporting on its
parishioners to the village head, each village head had
to gather these certificates in order to compile reports
called shumon aratamecho (Registry of Religious Af-
filiation), also known as shumon ninbetsuchoor shushi
aratamecho.
These registries helped authorities monitor and
control the populace by using Buddhist temples and
local authorities to maintain detailed records, weeding
out any persons who might be a potential threat to the
government. From the perspective of the average
parishioner, the practice of temple registration legally
obligated them ritually and economically to their
parish temple under the threat of being branded a
“heretic,” which continued to have meaning even as
the possibility of Christian subversion of the govern-
ment disappeared.
Temple membership was not an individual affair;
rather, the unit of religious affiliation was the emer-
gent unit of social organization, the “household” (ie).
Thus, from the mid-Tokugawa period onward, the
term danka(used interchangeably with danna), which
includes the Chinese character for household,became
the dominant term for parish households. For each
household, the main benefit of membership was the
funerary and ongoing memorial services that temples
provided for all household members. Temple grounds
also served as the location for the family gravestones.
Thus, once a family registered as a member of a par-
ticular temple, that affiliation continued for successive
generations during which sect changes were virtually
impossible.
Parish temples emphasized parishioners’ obligation
toward the temple in terms of financial support and
attendance of funerals and ancestral rites. Whether it
be to pay for rituals or temple construction, it is clear
that parishioners were not simply asked to support
their parish temple, they were obligated to do so. The
consequences of not doing so resulted in parishioners
being branded heretics.
In ritual terms, the parish temple also became vir-
tually synonymous with “funerary Buddhism,” where
DEATHrituals, as opposed to meditation, sutra study,
or prayers for worldly benefits, became the main rit-
ual practice. Beyond the funeral proper, Buddhist
parish priests performed death rites throughout the
year. Memorial services were routinely performed for
thirty-three years following a death. Services were also
performed for various classes of deceased people, such
as hungry ghosts (Sanskrit, preta), ANCESTORS, and
women and children who had died during childbirth.
Large festivals for the dead, such as the summer Obon
festival for ancestors or the Segaki festival for hungry
ghosts, marked important moments in each temple’s
annual ritual calendar. This preoccupation with ritu-
alizing death was intimately tied to the emergence of
the Buddhist parish temples during the Tokugawa pe-
riod. Hereditary parishioners, who associated the
parish temple with the proper maintenance of funer-
ary rites and family customs, provided the ritual and
economic backbone of Buddhist temples. The parish
system in Japan, originally established as a method to
monitor Christians, eventually became the basic orga-
nizational structure for Japanese Buddhism into the
modern period.See also:Nationalism and Buddhism; Temple System
in JapanPARISH(DANKA, TERAUKE) SYSTEM INJAPAN