Shotoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, And Violence In The Japanese Buddhist Tradition

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Prince Shotoku (573?-622?), the purported founder of Japanese Buddhism, is widely referred to as Japan's first national hero. The cult that grew up around his memory is recognized as one of the most important phenomena in early Japanese religion. This book examines the creation and evolution of the Shotoku cult over the roughly 200 years following his deatha period that saw a series of revolutionary developments in the history of Japanese religion. Michael Como highlights the activities of a cluster of kinship groups who claimed descent from ancestors from the Korean kingdom of Silla. He skillfully places these groups in their socio-cultural context and convincingly demonstrates their pivotal role in bringing continental influences to almost every aspect of government and community ideology in Japan. He argues that these immigrant kinship groups were not only responsible for the construction of the Shotoku cult, but were also associated with the introduction of the continental systems of writing, ritual, and governance. By comparing the ancestral legends of these groups to the Shotoku legend corpus and Imperial chronicles, Como shows that these kinship groups not only played a major role in the formation of the Japanese Buddhist tradition, they also to a large degree shaped the paradigms in terms of which the Japanese Imperial cult and the nation of Japan were conceptualized and created. Offering a radically new picture of the Asuko and Nara period (551794), this innovative work will stimulate new approaches to the study of early Japanese religion focusing on the complex interactions among ideas of ethnicity, lineage, textuality, and ritual.

E-Book Content

Shotoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition MICHAEL COMO OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Sho¯toku This page intentionally left blank Sho¯toku Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition michael como 1 2008 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright # 2008 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Como, Michael I. Sho¯toku : ethnicity, ritual, and violence in the Japanese Buddhist tradition / Michael I. Como. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-19-518861-5 1. Sho¯toku Taishi, 574?–622?—Cult. 2. Buddhism—Japan—History—To 1185. BQ986.O857C66 2006 294.3'095209021—dc22 2005050855 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Bethel and Ilio Como This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Although the number of people who have assisted with this project has been far greater than could ever be acknowledged, I would like to offer my special thanks to Professor Carl Bielefeldt of Stanford University and Professor Bernard Faure of Columbia University. With each passing year I realize more and more that these were two of the best a
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