242 CHAPTER TENThus ritual and political administration were viewed as two facets of a single
process. Because the kami were numerous and essentially amoral, with no es-
tablished order among them, this system was inherently unstable and fractious.
One of the principal problems in unifying Japan as a country thus lay in estab-
lishing a fixed narrative cycle to explain the hierarchy among the kami so that
the various clans could be brought into a hierarchical relationship as well. The
truth of these narratives was tested in the battlefield, and a shift in the balance
of power would be reflected in a retelling of the relevant narrative.
In the sixth century, as Japan became exposed to the religions of Korea
and China, the imperial uji began to look to Buddhism and Confucianism to
shore up its ideological credentials. This seems to have been due both to the
success the Sui dynasty had in using these two religions to unify China, and to
the claims made by both religions that they were based on universal principles
rather than uncertain narratives. At any rate, Buddhism functioned primarily
as a state religion for its first six centuries in Japan, and-until the rise of the
Tokugawa shogunate in the seventeenth century-it predominated over Con-
fucianism in the syncretic state ideology. Buddha-images were worshiped as
the highest kami, monks served largely as ritual experts for the court, and-
because of their close political connections-monasteries soon rivaled the
court in their reputation for financial, political, and sexual intrigue. Unlike
the rulers of Southeast Asia and Tibet, however, the imperial clan took little
interest in enforcing the Vinaya among the monks it sponsored, and thus a
tradition of lax monastic discipline developed in Japan that eventually led
Japanese society to accept the practice of monks' taking wives.
One problem to which the ruling establishment did become very sensitive,
however, was that by the time Buddhism reached Japan it had split into several
sects-in some cases worshiping different Buddhas-and thus could function
as a force for disunity as well as unity. The court tended to favor syncretic, all-
inclusive forms of Buddhism, especially those that had room for kami wor-
ship-which, to distinguish it from Buddhism, was given now the name
Shinto. However, the corruption in state Buddhism, as well as its indifference
to the religious needs of the general populace, led to the development of more
independent popular Buddhist and folk-Buddhist sects that gathered around
charismatic individuals. Some of these sects, such as S6t6 Zen, retired from
the political scene entirely by going into the wilderness, whereas others, such
as Nichiren-sho-shu, were more confrontational. The possibility that these
breakaway sects could function as rebellious uji and thus threaten political sta-
bility explains the vehemence with which the establishment has from time to
time suppressed such movements. Again, this pattern of breakaway sects in
opposition to established sects has been a recurrent theme in the history of
Japanese Buddhism up to the present, especially during times of social tur-
moil. One of the great ironies of the history ofBuddhism in Japan is that al-
though the Japanese originally imported Buddhism as a means of fostering
national unity, what they made of it proved so divisive that the political estab-
lishment eventually saw the need to suppress it.
On the aesthetic side, early Japanese poetry addressed to the kami of nat-
ural objects fostered the idea that religious sensitivity and aesthetic sensitivity