. tzanha shugend in the early modern period 1021
southwestern Sagami province participated in rituals for Hakone
Gongen , the divinity of Mt. Hakone (Ashigarashimo dis-
trict, Sagami province) (Hayashi 1972, 1: 225, 1: 260). Many early
modern shugenja were peasant cultivators whose ritual activities were
essentially side work. They did not gain a status independent of the
peasantry until 1794, when they were treated as religious professionals
akin to Buddhist clerics (Hardacre 2002, 44; Kiyohara 1932, 524).
The dissociation of kami and buddhas affected both Shingon and
Tōzanha Shugendō temples, many of which had administered village
shrines and combinative cultic sites during the Edo period. Between the
third and fifth months of 1868, the new Meiji regime issued orders that
forced Buddhist clerics serving at shrines to either leave their shrines
or become laicized if they wished to continue as shrine priests. More-
over, shrine priests and their families were required to hold Shintō
instead of Buddhist funerals. The new legislation also demanded the
removal of Buddhist images, Buddhist implements such as bells and
gongs, and combinative titles or names for deities at Shintō shrines
(such as gongen , Gozu Tennō , and bosatsu ).
These had to be replaced by more orthodox Shintō names and ritual
objects (Tamamuro 1977, 120–25).
The dissociation of kami and buddhas decimated Tōzanha because
of the combinative nature of their tradition. According to Tamamuro
Fumio’s analysis of a head-branch temple registry included in the early
Meiji Shaji torishirabe ruisan, only 241 Tōzanha temples remained in
Japan by 1870. Of those, most were located in the Tōhoku (29 per-
cent), Chūgoku (26 percent), and Shikoku (17 percent) regions. Only
eight temples (3 percent) were documented for the entire Kantō
region. Tamamuro suggests that this represents a drastic decline from
the early modern period due to the dissociation of kami and buddhas
(Tamamuro 2006, 8).
To the Meiji authorities, inherently combinative religious practices
such as that of Shugendō were considered heterodox and were singled
out as the primary objects of the dissociation of kami and buddhas.
In the ninth month of 1872, Shugendō was outlawed, and shugenja
were forced to join the Buddhist Tendai and Shingon orders. At the
same time, the kinds of rituals and activities that commonly sustained
shugenja were prohibited. In the eleventh month of 1872, collecting
donations on almsrounds was banned. In 1873, various rites involv-
ing divination and spirit possession were prohibited, soon followed by