Table Of ContentFOLK RE L I GI ON
I N J A P A N
Continuity and Change
HASKELL
LECTURES
ON
HISTORY
OF
RELIGIONS
NEW SERIES
No. 1
G^G^
JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA, General Editor
FOLK
R E L I G I O N
I N
J A P A N
Continuity and Change
I C H I R O H O R I
EDITED BY
Joseph M. Kitagawa and Alan L. Miller
G ^ G ^
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago and London
The woodcuts in this book are from: Thomas W. Knox,
Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan and China
(Harper and Brothers), 1880.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-30128
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London W.C. 1
© 1968 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved
Published 1968. Printed in the United States of America
foreword
t&VHß k. Jome time ago, H. I. H. Prince Takahito Mi-
kasa characterized Japan as a “living laboratory and a liv
ing museum to those who are interested in the study of
history of religions/' Visitors to Japan will find the
countryside dotted with Shinto shrines and Buddhist
temples. In the big cities, too, one finds various kinds of
Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian establishments, as well
as those of the so-called new religions, which have mush
roomed since the end of World War II. Indeed, even in
the modem industrialized Japan, colorful religious festi
vals and pilgrimages play important parts in the life of
the people.
Historically, the Japanese archipelago, being situated
off the Asiatic continent, was destined to be influenced
by a number of religious and semi-religious traditions
from abroad, such as Confucianism, Taoism, Yin-yang
school, Neo-Confucianism, various forms of Buddhism
and Christianity, as well as all kinds of magical beliefs
and practices. This does not imply, however, that these
traditions have been preserved intact in juxtaposition. In
this respect, James B. Pratt once stated that the Japanese
people have accepted Buddhism “simply, humbly, in sin
cere and almost childlike fashion, and they have laid the
stamp of their transforming genius upon it." Similarly,
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Foreword
they have interpreted and appropriated other religious
and semi-religious systems in terms of their particular
religious outlooks and experiences.
The complexity of the religious heritage of Japan is
such that it can be viewed, as indeed it has been, from
different perspectives and with different assessments.
Thus, some hold that Shinto is the Japanese religion par
excellence, while others would argue that Buddhism is at
least the 'half-creed of Japan." Those who are impressed
by Zen woûld stress the decisive, though nebulous, influ
ence exerted by Zen on all aspects of Japanese culture.
Still others would assert that Confucian tradition, despite
its reluctance to be classified as a religious system in the
usual sense of the term, has nevertheless provided the
most enduring framework for the Japanese world view.
These opinions have been advocated and affirmed by
many both Western and Japanese scholars, and be it
noted that each one has a great deal of truth. On the
other hand, few attempts have been made thus far by
scholars, Japanese or Western, to delineate the nature of
the total pattern of religious development in Japan. In
this sense, the present volume by Professor Hori is an im
portant contribution to the study of Japanese religion be
cause of his serious endeavor to portray significant char
acteristics which have been shared by different religious
traditions on the folk level throughout the history of Ja
pan. For this task, the author is enviably equipped by his
training in Buddhology, history of religions, and folklore
studies—all of which are essential for the understanding
of Japanese religion.
We may recall in this connection that scholarly in
quiry into Japanese religion and culture was pioneered in
the latter part of the nineteenth century by a number of
vi
Foreword
talented Western scholars. Some of them—for example,
Basil Hall Chamberlain, Karl Florenz, and Ernest Fenol-
losa—were academicians by profession, while others were
what George B. Sansom called “scholarly amateurs'—for
example, William G. Aston, Ernest M. Satow, Charles
Eliot, John Batchelor, and Sansom himself. These men,
undaunted by linguistic jungles, worked out the chronol-
ogy of Japanese history, translated texts, and analyzed
unfamiliar concepts, beliefs, and practices of the Japanese
according to the canon of Western humanistic disci
plines. Meanwhile, many able Japanese scholars studied
abroad and were trained in modem scholarly disciplines
and methodologies. For instance, as early as 1873, Bunyü
Nanjö studied Sanskrit under Friedrich Max Müller at
Oxford, and published in 1883 A Catalogue of the Chi
nese Translations of the Buddhist Tripitaka. Following
him, other Japanese scholars studied Indology, Buddhol-
ogy, Sinology, philology, philosophy, ethnology, and his
tory of religions in Europe, England, and America. In a
real sense, it was the combined effects of the dedicated
labors of the Western Japanologists and of the Western-
trained Japanese scholars which established in Japan dur
ing the first three decades of the present century the
various scholarly disciplines dealing with Japanese reli
gion and culture, as exemplified by the works of Masa-
haru Anesaki in the science (history) of religions, Ka-
kuzö Okakura in Japanese art, Junjirö Takakusu in
Buddhology, D. T. Suzuki in Zen study, Genchi Katö
and Tsunetsugu Muraoka in Shinto study, and Kunio
Yanagita in folklore study, to name only the most obvi
ous. Thanks to the research of these men and their disci
ples, the study of Japanese art and culture, philosophy
and religion attained a high standard before World War
vit
Foreword
II. Owing largely to historic factors, however, Japanese
scholars of different disciplines tended to work more or
less independently of each other without much cross-
fertilization. Also, most of their works were almost un
available to Western scholars, except a small number of
specialists, because of the barriers of language and
thought pattem.
Happily, the picture has changed considerably since
the end of World War II. Not only have scholars of vari
ous disciplines in Japan begun to develop methods of
cooperative inquiries, but also Western and Japanese
scholars have begun to be engaged in meaningful dia
logue and collaboration on various levels. In this atmos
phere, the culture and religion of Japan, for example,
have come to be reexamined and reassessed from broader
perspectives. While experts in specialized areas continue
their researches, they too are aware of the necessity of re
lating their findings to those of others, including those of
Western scholars. I might add that this sentiment is
warmly reciprocated by many Western scholars who are
concerned with the significance of Japanese culture and
religion.
It is therefore most appropriate and timely that the
present volume be published by the University of Chi
cago Press at this time. Hori was Visiting Professor of the
History of Religions at the University of Chicago, 1957-
58. At that time we explored the possibility of his return
ing to Chicago at a later date. In the fall of 1965, he was
invited to deliver the six lectures sponsored by the Has
kell Lectureship on Comparative Religions. It is through
this lectureship, which was established in 1895, that many
distinguished scholars on the history of religions have
been invited from abroad to the campus of the Univer-
vm
Foreword
sity, including J. J. M. DeGroot of Berlin, Franz Cumont
of Brussels, Carl Bezold of Heidelberg, Christian Snouck
Hurgronie of Leiden, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan of India,
A. R. Gibb of Oxford, Louis Massignon and Mircea
Eliade of Paris, and Friedrich Heiler of Marburg, as well
as Masaharu Anesaki and Hideo Kishimoto of Tokyo.
Hori’s manuscript was gone over initially by H. Byron
Earhart, who was then engaged in research under Hori at
Sendai, and Robert S. Ellwood, who later spent a year in
Tokyo to work with Hori. After delivering the Haskell
Lectures, Hori entrusted his manuscript to me and to
Alan L. Miller, and we took the responsibility of prepar
ing it for publication. We are grateful to the Committee
on Far Eastern Civilizations at the University of Chicago
for its financial assistance toward the preparation of the
manuscript. In our editorial work, we have shifted, with
the consent of the author, some of the texts into the notes
and changed some of the phrases and expressions. We
sincerely hope that our efforts did not unduly distort the
original intent of the author.
Joseph M. Kitagawa
For the Committee on Haskell Lectures
