medieval Japan, honji suijakuwas employed to mean
that Indian and Buddhist entities constitute the “orig-
inal ground” (honji) of their Japanese manifestations
as local kami,defined as “traces” (suijaku).
The expression wakodojin(literally, “to soften one’s
radiance and become the same as dust”) can originally
be found in the Chinese classic Daode jing(The Way
and Its Power), where it refers to the way in which the
Dao, the supreme principle, manifests itself in the
world. The idea here is that the supreme principles (in
this case, buddhas and bodhisattvas) cannot show their
true forms in this world, but require a “coarsening”
that makes them understandable to human beings. The
“coarse” forms of buddhas and bodhisattvas were, of
course, those of the Japanese kami.The underlying im-
plication of both these expressions, as explained by sev-
eral medieval texts, was that the Japanese people are
too difficult to convert and too ignorant to understand
buddhas and bodhisattvas in their “normal” forms.
Therefore, they require rough manifestations to guide
them to salvation. For example, according to honji sui-
jakulogic, the sun goddess Amaterasu was envisioned
as a manifestation of Mahavairocana, the universal
Buddha of esoteric Buddhism; Hachiman was a man-
ifestation of Amitabha; and so forth.
The idea that Japanese deities were local manifesta-
tions of translocal deities proved enormously produc-
tive. By the fifteenth century, some Buddhist authors
were arguing that the kamiwere in fact the primary,
original forms of divine beings, while buddhas and
bodhisattvas were Indian local manifestations of these
original Japanese models. This reversal of dominant
Buddhist ideas was at the basis of a new Shintomove-
ment, of a strong nativist character, that stressed the
superiority of all things Japanese against imported cul-
tural elements. The center of this nativist reversal of the
honji suijakuparadigm was the Yoshida shrine in Kyo-
to. Its priest, Yoshida Kanetomo (1435–1511), had col-
lected a number of doctrines and rituals about the kami,
mostly related to the then dominant esoteric Buddhism
(mikkyo), and tried to establish his own tradition by
getting rid of the most visible Buddhist features. Grad-
ually, the Yoshida tradition became the point of refer-
ence for nativist thinkers, anti-Buddhists, and kami
priests disgruntled with the Buddhist establishment still
dominating their shrines. These were the people and
the groups that contributed to the constitution of a
Shintodiscourse as distinct from Buddhism during the
Edo period in a process whose final stage was the early
Meiji separation of Shintofrom Buddhism.
However, in medieval Japan not all kamiwere con-
sidered manifestations of Indian sacred entities. In the
second half of the Kamakura period (1192–1333), the
kamiwere divided into three categories that were based
on ORIGINAL ENLIGHTENMENT(HONGAKU) thought: (1)
kami of original enlightenment, such as Amaterasu of
Ise; (2) kami of nonenlightenment (fukaku), such as
the violent kami of Izumo shrine; and (3) kami of ac-
quired enlightenment (shikaku), such as Hachiman.
Even though this classification was probably devised
to enhance the status of the Ise shrines and their deities,
it is interesting to note that the kamiare here thought
to embody modalities of Buddhist soteriology and that
some of them represent an obscure realm of ignorance
and violence untouched by Buddhism.
This latter point was further developed during the
Kamakura period when authors began to define a dis-
tinction between “provisional deities” (gonsha) and
“true deities” (jissha). Whereas provisional deities were
considered to be benevolent, true deities were de-
scribed as violent and dangerous entities that threat-
ened the peace and security of local people. This
distinction indicates that in medieval Japan divinities
still existed that had not been integrated within the
Buddhist system and that were described as chaotic
forces (much as local deities before the arrival of Bud-
dhism). The attitude of the Buddhists toward true
deities was complex. Some warned local people not to
worship them, since they were outside of Buddhism
and therefore were irrelevant to the process of salva-
tion; others suggested that these deities should be pro-
pitiated, while still others argued that human beings
could not easily tell the difference between one cate-
gory of deities and the other, and it was thus best to
worship them all.Esoteric Buddhism and kamicults
Honji suijakuand original enlightenment (hongaku)
were essential parts of premodern Japanese esoteric
Buddhism (mikkyo), especially in its configuration
known as EXOTERIC-ESOTERIC(KENMITSU) BUDDHISM.
In fact, esoteric Buddhism played a fundamental role
in the transformation of the kami and their inclusion
within the Buddhist cosmology and salvation process.
In particular, esoteric Buddhist MANDALAprovided an
important model for the systematization of the realm
of sacred beings in Japan. The external sector of the
Womb Mandala (taizokai mandara) contains a num-
ber of non-Buddhist divinities ranging from Brahma,
S ́iva, and INDRA, to more animistic entities such as the
gods of fire, water, and wind, and violent spirits andSHINTO (HONJISUIJAKU) ANDBUDDHISM