Bernhard Scheid, 2004, “Overcoming Taboos on Death:

The Limited Possibilities of Discourse on the Afterlife in

Shinto.” In: Susanne Formanek, William LaFleur (ed.),
Practicing the Afterlife: Perspectives from Japan. Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, pp. 205–230.
 Contents
Introduction • SUSANNE FORMANEK and WILLIAM R. LAFLEUR 7

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS ............................................................... 49

Death and Afterlife in Early Japan •NELLY NAUMANN .................... 51
Rebirth and Immortality, Paradise and Hell - Conflicting Views
of the Afterlife in Ancient Japan. CHRISTOPH KLEINE················ 63

BUDDHIST TRANSFORMATIONS ................................................ 99

The Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara and the Lives of the People
in Early Modem Japan • KURODA HIDEO ..................................... 10 l
Aspects of Ketsubonkyi5 Belief• KODA TE NAOMI... ........................... 121
Chinese Concepts of Afterlife According to the Djin Ping Meh •
FRIEDRICH A. BISCHOFF ................................................................ 145
Steadied Ambiguity: The Afterlife in "Popular" Shin Buddhism •
GALEN AMSTUTZ .......................................................................... 157
Kuchiyose: Enacting the Encounter of This World with the Other
World • PETER KNECHT ................................................................ 179

SHINTO, NATIVIST AND CONFUCIAN

INTERPRETA TIONS ....................................................................... 203
Overcoming Taboos on Death: The Limited Possibilities of
Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto • BERNHARD SCHEID .......... 205
\
The Proof is Out There: Hirata Atsutane, Evidential Leaming,
and the Afterlife • MARK McNALLy ............................................ 231
Tidings from the Twilight Zone• HAROLD BOLITHO ........................ 261

THE AFTERLIFE AS METAPHOR ................................................. 283

Hell Illustrated: A Visual Image of Ikai that Came from Ikoku •
WAKABAYASHI HARUKO .............................................................. 285
6

Paradise-and-Hell-Metaphors in Edo Gesaku Literature•

SUSANNE FORMANEK .................................................................... 319
Hell and its Inhabitants in Ukiyoe Caricatures of the Late Toku-
gawa and the Early Meiji Period • SEPP LINHART ....................... 345

MODERNIZING THE AFTERLIFE ................................................. 363

The Afterlife in Meiji-Period Sermons • HARTMUT 0.
ROTERMUND .................................................................................. 365
The "Other World" in the Light of a New Science: Spiritism in
Modern Japan. LISETTE GEBHARDT ............................................ 383
Other World Beliefs in Ryilkyilan Religion• JOSEF KREINER .......... 397

MODERN OUTLOOKS TRADITIONAL CONCERNS? ............. 415

Raise as a Mirror of Gense: From Legally Sanctioned Ancestor
Worship to Modern Mortuary Rituals in Japan• YOHKO TSUJI . 417
Japanese and French Students' Images of the Soul and its Passage
after Death• YAMADA YOKO and KATO YOSHINOBU ................. 437
Solving Everyday Problems with the Help of Ancestors: Repre-
sentations of Spirits in the New Religions Agonshli and
World Mate • INKEN PROHL ......................................................... 461
The Afterlife of the Corpse: How Popular Concerns Impact upon
Bioethical Debates in Japan• WILLIAM R. LAFLEUR ................. 485

COLOR PLATES

INDEX .............................................................................................. 505

Author Index .. ... .. ... .. ... .. ... .. ... .. ... ..... .. ... ... .. ..... .. ... .. .. ..... .. ..... .. .. ... .. 505
Subject Index ............................................................................... 511

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ....................................................... 531

 Overcoming Taboos on Death: The Limited
Possibilities of Discourse on the Afterlife in
Shinto
BERNHARD SCHEID

The period under consideration in this paper - mainly the Japanese

medieval period, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century is gener-
ally regarded as the apex of Japanese Buddhism. Shintoist conceptions
of the afterlife are therefore unlikely to be found in the mainstream of
medieval theological discourse. Moreover, even if it were possible to
identify any specifically "Shintoist" views of the afterlife, they could
hardly be called "popular." Thus, the discourse on death, the soul, or the
other world in medieval Shinto seems insignificant in a discussion about
popular views of the afterlife in Japan. This argument notwithstanding, I
believe that there are in any case two reasons for paying some attention
to the Shinto of this period. First, the general paucity of Shintoist after-
life conceptions is in itself a fact that provokes discussion. Second,
there are a number of non-Buddhist conceptions of the human soul and
the human afterlife even in the Buddhist-dominated medieval world-
view. Many of them can be traced back to China, but were nevertheless
associated with the Japanese kami. In the medieval period a small group
of Shinto priests as well as Buddhists with a particularly strong affec-
tion for the kami kept up and further developed such conceptions. At
that time, they may not have been very influential, but they initiated
intellectual developments that also involved the popular level in later
centuries. In the following I will deal with these non-Buddhist ideas
regarding the afterlife. I will first sketch a hypothetical historical ex-
planation of the lack of afterlife conceptions in Shinto; secondly, I will
trace certain notions of the human soul that became fully evident in ear-
ly modem Shinto, but are - as I see it - already present in the medieval
period.
206 B. SCHEID

The Term "Shinto"

Due to its ideological connotations, the term "Shinto" became some-

what controversial after the Second World War. This is not only true for
the role Shintoism played in modern nationalistic ideologies. Regarding
its self-proclaimed antiquity, Shinto has also come under scrutiny of
historical reconsideration. While the term itself seems to have been
taken from the Chinese classics, its original meanings differed signifi-
cantly from its usage in the modern sense. As has been shown among
others by Kuroda Toshio (1981), it was not before the late fifteenth cen-
tury that shinti5 began to signify something like an autonomous, purely
Japanese religious system. Before, shinti5 (lit. "kami-way") had been
rather a synonym of kami, or "power of the kami."
My personal understanding and usage of the term "Shinto" is influ-
enced by scholars such as Takatori Masao, Yoshino Hiroko, or Kuroda
Toshio, and last, but not least - Nelly Naumann. First of all I would
suggest a differentiation between vernacular forms of kami worship and
the system of courtly kami cults surrounding the Tenno. While I prefer
the more open term "indigenous religion" or "folk beliefs" .for the
former, I use "court Shinto" for the latter. In my view, the two differ
strongly in respect of their internal organizational structures and their
religious claims, although they could be regarded as quite similar in
terms of theological sophistication. That is to say, neither indigenous
beliefs nor court Shinto are very explicit concerning the nature of their
gods, their relationship to man and the reasons why one should venerate
them, let alone metaphysical questions of time and space, death and
afterlife. In spite of this lack of doctrines, in the ancient period court
Shinto is probably the only religious group apart from the Buddhist
clergy that can be regarded as a homogeneous organizational body. In
theory, this court Shinto clergy supervised every form of kami worship
in the realm of the Tenno. In practice, their influence seems even more
fragile than the political centralism of the ancient Japanese state. After
the decline of that political system in the Heian period, only a few
priestly families who were in direct contact with the court or who were
themselves members of the court nobility maintained their ritual duties
that served in the first place to legitimize the sacred authority of the
Tenno. Since this sacred authority proved useful for the various later
forms of political authority, neither the institution of the Tenno itself,
nor the cornily Shinto traditions were ever completely abolished.
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 207

Folk beliefs, on the other hand, are by their nature polymorph,

regionalist and prone to syncretism. Even so they may have retained
more from the pre-Buddhist religious conceptions than any court tradi-
tion, as a comparison of Japanese mythology and contemporary ethno-
graphic material suggests.
As mentioned in other contributions (Bolitho, McNally), it was not
before the eighteenth century that "nativist" intellectuals like Motoori
Norinaga or Hirata Atsutane began to strive for a unification of courtly
and folk traditions under the name of Shinto. While courtly priests had
always tried to keep their "Shinto" aloof from what they considered folk
superstitions, the nativists put these beliefs in the center of their dis-
course, but also conferred the political claims of court Shinto (Tenno-
centrism) on that kind of kami worship. This set the scene for the later
emergence of state Shinto. Today the nationalist ideology of state Shin-
to has lost its credibility, at least in academic circles. However, the re-
consideration of its theoretical foundations is still in its infancy. As a
first step, I am attempting to avoid the ideological traps inherent in the
usage of "Shinto" as an all-comprehensive term for all kinds of beliefs
in the Japanese kami. I therefore restrict myself to those forms of kami
worship that are unified by an organizational and/or theological struc-
ture that pertains to more than just a local community and thus has
either a nation-wide or universal appeal befitting a "state-religion."

Shinto Taboos on Buddhism and Death

Its political connotations are not the only features that distinguish
court Shinto from indigenous beliefs. Since courtly ritual was partly
formed on the analogy of Chinese precedents, Chinese forms of religion
heavily influenced court Shinto from its inception. 1 Yet Chinese influ-
ence on the court was in itself neither a continuous development, nor
free from internal contradictions. After an early high point in the mid-
seventh century with the introduction of the Tang code, it also led to the
development of Buddhist institutions that assumed the function of cul-
tural innovation and performed not only religious, but also political or
bureaucratic tasks. Non-Buddhist Chinese influence declined in the
Nara period. After the D6ky6 incident, however, the nobility seems to
have felt that the hereditary system, by which the Tenno and the court
transmitted their privileges within the family, was compatible rather

1
See for instance Yoshino ( 1992).
208 B. SCHEID

with a modified version of the Chinese legal code than with Buddhist
doctrine. 2
According to Takatori (1979), it was precisely this situation that
gave birth to what he calls "shinti5 no seiritsu" (the formation of Shin-
to). In other words, (court) Shinto became a distinctive religious body
as a reaction against the overly political claims of Buddhism. It was sus-
tained by a comparatively new, non-Buddhist consciousness among
some factions of the court nobility. This "formation of Shinto" more or
less came to a conclusion in the early tenth century. The "Regulations
from the Engi era" (Engishiki), notably the chapters on religious cere-
mony (books 1-10), represent the outcome of this process. Thus, in Ta-
katori' s perspective, the Engishiki are far more representative of "Shin-
to" than the ancient mythology. 3 On the other hand, the Engishiki con-
tain very few texts that we would call religious. They are a collection of
prescripts concerning matters of the court: some spiritual, some profane,
some essential, some trivial. Formal accuracy seems to be the guiding
principle, not theological revelation. Apart from a number of prayers
there is no ethical instrnction or any trace of mysticism.
In spite of its dry, bureaucratic attitude, the Engishiki formulated
several regulations that had an enormous impact on the history of Japa-
nese religions. In the present context let me just refer to the famous list
of taboo words that should be used by the imperial princess (saigfi) who
resided at the Ise Shrine as a representative of the Tenno:
The inner seven words are: the Buddha is the 'Central One', the sutras are
'dyed paper,' a pagoda is a 'yew-tree,' a temple is a 'tiled roof,' a monk is
'long-hair,' a nun is a 'female long-hair,' a Buddhist meal is 'short ra-
tions.' Besides these there are the outer seven words: death is called 'get-
ting well,' illness is 'slumber,' weeping is 'shedding brine,' blood is
'sweat,' to strike is 'to caress,' meat is 'mushrooms,' a tomb is a 'clod of
earth' (Engishiki V; cited after Bock 1970: 152-153).
Obviously, this list treats Buddhism in a similar way to death and ill-
ness, as if it were some kind of infectious disease. Buddhism was thus

2
Under the reign of empress Shotoku (r. 764-70), the Buddhist monk Dokyo
(-772) gained her favor to such an extent that she endowed him with the title of hi5i5
(Dharma-king). Only massive opposition from among the kuge prevented him from
advancing to the rank of a Tenno. After the death of the empress he was degraded to
a minor position in the province where he died soon afterwards. A few decades later,
the so-called Kanmu restoration was aimed at reinforcing the rule of the Tenno.
3
This explanation was recently taken up by Inoue Nobutaka (1998).
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 209

not denied, but it was regarded as a wellspring of danger in the realm of

imperial kami ritual. The argument for doing so was not an ethics of
good and bad, or right and wrong, but of "pure" and "impure."4
The above-mentioned list is not the only passage in the Engishiki
that puts a kind of taboo avoidance on Buddhism on the one hand, and
death, disease and other extraordinary bodily conditions on the other.
Similar examples can be found notably in Book III, as for instance:
At all times during the days of partial abstinence before and after the festi-
vals of Toshigoi, Kama, Tsukinami, Kanname and Niiname, monks, nuns
and persons in mourning, as well as bands of robbers, may not enter the
Imperial Palace (Engishiki III; Bock 1970: 117).
The obvious intention in these examples is to establish a close con-
nection between Buddhism, mourning and death pollution. This may
lead us to various conclusions: On the one hand, associating Buddhism
with the polluted realm of death may well be meant to attach a stigma of
impurity to it and to limit its political influence. On the other hand, we
can also infer that there was something like a division of labor in the
field of religious activity at the court: While Buddhism tended to occu-
py the realm of metaphysics and the beyond and to care for the individ-
ual believer in the moment of death, the most exalted public - that is
stately - rituals were kept apart from its influence. Instead, the Engi-
shiki listed individual families from among the nobility who were in
charge of such ceremonies. Even if the reasons for keeping their reli-
gious tasks free from Buddhist intervention were forgotten in later
periods, these families preserved their traditions for many centuries to
come and continued to represent the core of non-Buddhist religious
knowledge in Japan.
In the course of the Heian period, the Shinto taboos against Bud-
dhism seem to have lost a good deal of their significance. As the Genji
monogatari indicates, the saigu, the priestly princesses in the shrines of
Ise and Kamo, considered it a sin to neglect Buddhism during their
service at the shrine. This kind of disregard was at the same time pre-
cisely what they were expected to do, according to the Engishiki (Tyler
1989:243). Thus, the need to separate Tenno worship from Buddhism
was not even understood within the very agencies that performed such
worship. The Shinto taboos concerning death, on the other hand, re-
mained strong. They affected not only the individual behavior of court

4
The difference of "inner" and "outer" words in the list of taboos seems to re-
flect a differentiation of physically and mentally polluting (impure) influences.
210 B. SCHEID

Shinto priests, but excluded all ritual service for the dead as weJl. In the
medieval period there are no traces of any kind of Shinto funeral, for
example. Only in the sengoku period, in the sixteenth century, do we
find a prototype of those funeral ceremonies that were further developed
in the Edo period among various other forms of developments in Shinto.

Honji Suijaku
The Dokyo incident at the end of the Nara period meant that the first
Buddhist attempt to merge completely with the sacred realm of the Ten-
no failed. Despite this, Buddhist knowledge continued to spread among
common lay believers. Regarding the native deities, the so-called honji
suijaku theory provided a perfect inclusivist explanation of the kami in
tenns of Buddhism. Kami were seen as hOben (Skt. upaya), as "skilful
means" to lead sentient beings on the path of Buddhist enlightenment.
Due to their infinite compassion, the "original Buddhas" (honji) who
are inconceivable to the unenlightened leave "traits" (suijaku) of them-
selves on earth. These traits, although somewhat imperfect, are repre-
sentations of the Buddhas fit to the imperfect sensibility of the unen-
lightened. In other words, the unenlightened perceive a Buddha in the
form of a kami. As Kuroda Toshio (1981) argues, the honji suijaku con-
ception managed to integrate the entire kami worship into its religious
worldview. Buddhist temples and kami shrines merged also at the insti-
tutional level into so-called jing[i,ji, "shrine-temples" or "shrine-
temple multiplexes" to borrow an expression from Allan Grapard.
Medieval Shinto, in Kuroda's view, is therefore nothing but a faction of
medieval Buddhism.
No wonder that Buddhism also swallowed most non-Buddhist views
of the afterlife. We may look, for example, at the setsuwa collection
with the promising title Shintoshu ("Collected tales of the way of the
kami"). As Nelly Naumann (1994:83-96) has demonstrated, Shintoshu
is perhaps the best illustration of the domination of honji suijaku in the
medieval kami worship: Rather than the kami, many tales emphasize the
honji Buddha and discuss their specific relations with a given shrine. As
regards the afterlife, there are some vague ideas of spiritual realms in
the mountains or below the sea, similar to the mythical accounts in Ko-
jiki and Nihon shoki. However, these places seem to be intermediary
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 211

locations between the Buddhist pantheon and the visible world. There is
hardly any notion of conflict with entirely Buddhist conceptions. 5

Death in a Medieval Shinto Priest Family

Judging from literary sources it becomes quite obvious that in the

medieval period even an ardent follower of the kami could hardly
imagine a spiritual realm without any trace of Buddhist iconography.
Commoners and Shinto priests usually prayed for their salvation in a
Buddhist afterlife. Some of them would even take Buddhist orders
(shukke) when they felt their end approaching. 6 To give just one exam-
ple, let us take a closer look at the death of the head priest of the
Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto, Yoshida Kanehiro (1347-1402), 7 as described
in the diary Yoshida-ke hinamiki by his son and successor Kaneatsu
(1368-1408).
When Kanehiro fell seriously ill in early 1402, he intended to take
orders as a Buddhist lay-monk to facilitate his rebirth in Amida's Pure
Land. In doing so, he followed a tradition that went back at least three
generations in his family. Even so, it was necessary to obtain formal
permission from the Shogun. He was finally ordained on the 26th day of
the 4th month in 1402, the 56th year of his life. A couple of days later
he died after constantly reciting Amida's name (nenbutsu). His son
reported that "there was no bad omen and the expression on his face
remained unchanged," which indicated that he had "attained rebirth
(i5ji5) [in Amida's paradise]." In spite of that pious description, Kaneatsu
was not at all happy with the circumstances of his father's death. Being
a kami priest himself, he and his relatives could not remain under the
same roof together with a dying person. They had to leave their father in
charge of the Buddhist monks who also arranged the funeral. Thus, in
order to maintain ritual purity in front of the kami, Shinto priests were

5
For the range of possibilities of including non-Buddhist items in the Buddhist
pantheon see also the article by Christoph Kleine in this volume.
6
Ordination on the deathbed became increasingly "popular" among lay Bud-
dhists of the medieval period. Even so it involved some official permission and a
substantial amount of money and was therefore probably restricted to the educated,
literate classes (Scheid 1996:230-240).
7
The Yoshida were originally a line of diviners of comparatively low status. At
the time of Kanehiro, however, they were probably the most influential family of
religious specialists in the Jingikan, the Office of Shrine Deities at court (Scheid
1999, chap. 3).
212 B. SCHEID

obliged to observe the avoidance of things impure in a much stricter

way than ordinary people. "The state of a Shinto priest is indeed power-
less!" comments our author moumfully. 8
Interestingly, Kaneatsu himself did not follow the tradition of
"deathbed shukke" when he died at the young age of 40. This fact may
hint at a tum in the Yoshidas' treatment of the death taboo. Later, they
reduced the role of Buddhist ritual in their own funerary rites still
further and finally, at the beginning of the early modem period, seem to
have developed a kind of Shinto funeral rite of their own. This Yoshida
funeral, at first developed for private needs of the Yoshida lineage only,
is probably the prototype of all later Shinto ceremonies for the dead. 9
Below we will discuss the intellectual aspects implied by this new
orientation towards the matter of death.
To conclude our hypothetical sketch of the reasons why afterlife is
rarely a topic of medieval Shinto, we find that the above-mentioned
taboos of the Engishiki - inexplicable, but firmly established by a
sacred tradition - did not lose their strictness concerning matters of
death pollution. Buddhism, on the other hand, gained acceptance even
among courtly kami priests. Concerning death and afterlife, "Shintoists"
of the medieval period were therefore restricted by a kind of double-
bind situation: On the one hand, Buddhism had a perfect inclusivist
model in which the kami were reduced as it were to "tourist guides" to
the Buddhist pantheon. To die meant to enter the realm of the Buddhas.
On the other hand, even if they turned away from Buddhism, they found
nothing but taboo regulations that hardly allowed them even to pro-
nounce the word "death." 10 To talk about polluting influences like death
meant becoming contaminated by these polluting influences.

8
Yoshida-ke hinamiki, Oei 9 (1402).4.26 and 5.3, cited after Okada (1982:2-3).
The first to draw scholarly attention to the death of Yoshida Kanehiro was Emi
Kiyokaze in 1907, see Emi (1942:235-240).
9
Still rather scarce in the Edo period, such Shinto funerals increased notably in
the nineteenth century, but were restricted by state Shinto (Kato 1997: 11-13). Today,
the vast majority of the Japanese still adhere to the Buddhist funeral tradition.
10
The question is whether this is really true for all kind of kami priests even at
the level of rural shrines and cults. I suspect that it is not. These priests, on the other
hand, hardly considered their cults at variance with Buddhism. This is another reason
why I prefer a narrow definition of the term Shinto, in order not to obscure the vari-
ous levels of assimilation and dissimilation of indigenous forms of religion and
Buddhism.
r

Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 213

Dualistic Patterns of the Soul

As we have seen, it is safe to say that Japanese religious discourse

was already dominated by Buddhism in the ancient period and all the
more so in the medieval period. Nevertheless, non-Buddhist concep-
tions coexisted with Buddhist ones also in the field of our present
interest. One of the most obvious cases seems to be again an import
from the continent, namely the concept of Yin-soul and Yang-soul (po
and hun, in Chinese, haku and kon in Japanese). These are, according to
the Chinese, the specific forms of Yin and Yang in the human body.
Both are necessary to keep man alive. However, they tend to disin-
tegrate which means that man will die. The Yang-soul is endowed with
Yang-qualities: it is light and expansive and thus goes up to heaven.
The Yin-soul on the other hand is ponderous and lumpy, and thus re-
mains on earth. Since these concepts are mentioned quite a few times in
this volume, let me just add a few examples to outline the range of their
distribution.
The characters of Yin ~i and Yang ~~ can already be found in the
Nihon shold. Consequently, the early compilers of Japanese mythology
must have had some idea about this Chinese concept. With regard to
this supposition, the mythological expressions aramitama and nigimita-
ma (translated as "rough spirit" and "gentle spirit" by Aston) have been
interpreted as an early attempt to adapt the expressions hun and po. 1I
While ara- and nigimitama hardly ever occur in later texts, however,
hun and po, or kon and haku, can be encountered in subsequent times. 12
An interesting example is cited by Nelly Naumann (1988:184-185):
shortly before his death in 840, Junna Tenno reportedly expressed his
conviction that his Yang-soul would return to Heaven while his bodily

I I "Tama ist zuniichst gottliche Kraft, die auch getrennt von der Gottheit auftre-
ten kann. In ara- und niki mitama offenbart sich ein Versuch, den vemichtenden und
giitigen Charakter der Gottheiten analog zu Yin Yang Vorstellungen begrifflich zu
fassen, allerdings setzte sich dieses Konzept nicht wirklich <lurch" (Naumann 1988:
111).
12
Aramitama and nigimitama are worshipped in certain shrine-complexes, most
notably in the auxiliary shrines of Sumiyoshi and Ise Shrines, as a kind of sub-deities
of the respective tutelary kami. In medieval Ryobu Shinto there are some attempts to
assimilate the aramitama and nigimitama of Amaterasu and Toyouke oflse to Enma,
the king of the underworld, and some related deities (Teeuwen and van der Veere
1998:76-77). In this case, there seems to be no structural analogy to kon and haku,
however.
 214 B. SCHEID

remains would be inhabited by a death-spirit (the Yin-soul). According

to Junna, even the Yin-soul of an emperor will eventually cause all sorts
of troubles. To avoid these troubles he ordered that in contrast to
precedent - his bodily remains should be cremated, pulverized, and
scattered in the mountains. This extreme cautiousness about the nega-
tive effects of one's own Yin-soul may have been peculiar to Junna
Tenno. The idea of associating the Yin-soul with the widespread belief
in the vengeful spirits of the deceased, on the other hand, was probably
quite logical.
In subsequent times, there are even examples of Buddhist texts that
refer to kon and haku, such as the "Sutra on Jizo and the Ten Kings." 13
It is an adaptation of an apocryphal Chinese sutra that is in itself an
example of Buddhist-Daoist syncretism. 14 The Japanese version proba-
bly dates from the twelfth century. It is regarded as one of the classics
of popular Buddhist afterworld depictions, describing the journey of the
dead to the court of Enma-ten and the other "kings" or judges of the
underworld. Right at the beginning of this "sutra,'' the Buddha explains
the concept of kon and haku. He declares that the Yang-soul (kon) is
made up of three "senses" that are in their essence identical to the three
bodies or forms of existence (Skt. trikaya) of the Buddha. The Yin-soul
(haku), on the other hand, is composed of seven senses that are the basis
for the physical senses of man. 15 It would take us too far from our
subject to discuss the names of these senses, which are composed of
Buddhist and Daoist terms. On a most general level, however, we can
say that kon and haku are distinguished by their relationship with "this
world" (Yin-soul) and the "other world" (Yang-soul).
In the next section of the sutra, we find a much more visual descrip-
tion of the Yin-soul and Yang-soul. We learn that upon entering the
realm of King Enma, the deceased person encounters three demons.
What they do is indicated by their names: Demon-who-rips-off-the-

13
Jizi5 jzii5kyi5. The full name is Bussetsu Jizi5 Bosatsu hosshin innen jzli5kyi5
("Sutra expounded by the Buddha on the awaking of enlightemnent of Jiz6 Bosatsu
and its relation with the Ten Kings [of the underworld]").
14
On the Chinese version from about the ninth century see the monograph by
Stephen Teiser (1994).
15
Bussetsu Jizi5 Bosatsu hosshin innenjzii5lcyi5 3 (Ishida 1986:191-196). Accord-
ing to Teiser (1994:60), this theory existed in China, but was for the first time linked
explicitly with the Ten Kings of the underworld by the Japanese author of the Jizo
jiii5kyi5.
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 215

Yang-soul (Datsukon-ki), Demon-who-rips-off-life-energy (Datsush6-

ki), and Demon-who-gambles-for-the-Yin-soul (Bakuhaku-ki). After
passing these demons and a couple of other horrifying creatures, the de-
ceased approaches the Mountain of Death (shisen). To climb this moun-
tain he is in need of a stick and straw sandals. As the sutra explains:
This is the reason why men and women place a stick of three shaku to-
gether with a written message for Jiz6 and a pair of sandals with the Zuigu
darani written on them in the vicinity of the Yin-soul spirit <this is the
grave> (Bussetsu Jizo Bosatsu hosshin innen jiiokyo 4; Ishida 1986: 197).
When the sutra explains the journey of the dead through the under-
world, it is not entirely clear what kind of identity should be attributed
to the "dead person." Is it the Yang-soul? Or is it a kind of leftover-soul
after the Yin-soul and the Yang-soul have been ripped off? Buddhist
texts tend to be particularly ambiguous in this respect, since there is
always the risk of coming into conflict with the dogma of non-self (Jap.
muga, or Skt. anatman). At any event, there is obviously some kind of
communication between the different spiritual agencies that were for-
merly united in one living being. Therefore, sandals and a stick in the
vicinity of the Yin-soul are communicated to the agencies in the be-
yond.
Regardless of the particular roles attributed to kon and haku in dif-
ferent depictions of the afterlife, there is a structural identity that can be
found in almost all examples in ancient and medieval Japan:
Yin-soul - body- remaining on earth (fearful)
Yang-soul - mind going up to heaven Goyful)
Free from any particular religious or philosophical affiliation, this
dualistic pattern seems to have become a most convenient way to ex-
press the fundamental ambivalence of the living towards the dead:
idealization, probably fostered by ancestor worship, and repulsion at the
physical decay of mortal remains.

Chinese Ontology and Shinto

Despite the general lack of afterlife depictions in Shinto, kon and
haku are also mentioned in some medieval Shinto texts. There is, for
instance, a passage in the Jinno keizu, a Watarai Shinto text from the
Kamakura period. This text shows a tendency to explain kon in a
broader Daoist context:
216 B. SCHEID

Yang is substance (ki, Chin. qi) and it is light. Therefore we call it kon.
Transformed into the One Substance (ikki), we call it divine spirit (rei-
shin ). It is the kon-spirit of all living beings. If this Yang-substance scat-
ters and gets lost, they die. 16
In contrast to our previous examples, the notion of kon in this
explanation is clearly related to the concept of Yin and Yang, and of
ikki, the original substance where Yin and Yang and all phenomena of
the visible world come from. Usually attributed to Daoism, this ontolo-
gy is also referred to by many Confucian and Neo-Confucian philo-
sophers in China as well as in Japan. In the Japanese context, this theory
is often rendered as in yo (or onmyo) gogyo setsu - the theory of Yin
Yang and the Five Phases - rather than "Daoism." Yoshino Hiroko
(1992:48) even suggests the tenn taiitsu onmyo gogyo setsu, the "theory
of the Great One, Yin-Yang, and Five Phases." This refers to a compre-
hensive ontological conception that puts a monistic entity, the Great
One (taiitsu in Japanese) or Great Pole (taikyoku) or One Substance
(ikki) at the beginning of the universe. This monistic entity divides into
a dualistic pair: Heaven and Earth or Yin and Yang, respectively. It
further transforms itself into five material elements that constantly
change into one another: the Five Phases - Water, Fire, Wood, Metal,
and Earth.
Although traces of this Chinese ontology can be found in the entire
intellectual history of Japan, and also in related fields such as the calen-
dar and astronomy, there is no convincing evidence that intellectuals
referred to it exclusively before the early modem period. However,
Shintoist authors of the medieval period used the in yo gogyo setsu in-
creasingly to find a theoretical framework that could explain the mytho-
logical accounts about the creation of the universe in Kojiki and Nihon
shoki. Even if they did not openly challenge the Buddhist worldview,
they gradually substituted Buddhist ontology by Daoist explanations.
Since Daoism had already influenced the compilers of Nihon shoki and
Kojiki, it was indeed well suited to the exegetical needs of medieval
Shinto.

16
I took this quotation from Jihen's Kuji hongi gengi (NST 19:138). The
original text can be found in ST-R 5.
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 217

Jihen's View of Life and Death

The intellectuals who actively took part in this exegetical endeavor
constituted a very small group. They consisted mostly of Shinto priests
from the Outer Shrine of Ise (Watarai Shinto) and a number of anony-
mous monks from the esoteric Shingon tradition. The latter constituted
what is known today as Ryobu Shinto. However, in the context of after-
life, the most interesting author is Jihen (dates unknown), a Buddhist
monk who had no formal affiliations to either of these traditions. 17
Jihen was born into a collateral line of the Urabe, a famous lineage
of Shinto priests at the court. It is questionable, however, whether his
father actually performed any religious duties. His brother was a certain
Urabe Kaneyoshi, better known under his posthumous name Yoshida
Kenko. In spite of his Shintoist family background, Jihen became a
fully-fledged Buddhist monk of the Tendai sect and spent many years at
the Enryaku Monastery on Mt. Hiei. He specialized in Tendai esoteri-
cism (taimitsu) and published several writings on that subject. Thus, he
must have already been of mature age, when around 1329 his interests
shifted towards the kami, allegedly inspired by a revelation in a dream.
His friendship with Watarai Tsuneyoshi (1263-1339), a priest at the
Outer Shrine of Ise, may have been another factor. In 1332, when his
brother drafted the Tsurezuregusa, he issued the Kuji hongi gengi and in
1340 another of his major Shinto works, the Toyoashihara jinpu waki.
Both deal with the origins of Japanese history, or rather the universe, as
recorded in the chapters about the "age of gods" in the national chroni-
cles. Among these, Jihen considered the Sendai kuji hongi the most
authoritative text. 18 Jihen's writings as an intellectual or theologian of
Shinto may not differ too much from the kind of mythological exegesis
the Watarai employed. He also read the mythological accounts with
Daoist "spectacles" in order to proof that Chinese (and Indian) wisdom
was ultimately derived from the Japanese kami. In doing so, however,
he went even further than the Watarai, transgressing two traditional bar-

17
On Jihen see Kubota (1959:139-159) and Tamakake (1992).
18
The Sendai kuji hongi is now regarded as apocryphal. In the medieval period,
however, it was considered - together with Kojiki and Nihon shoki - as one of the
three oldest and most authoritative historical texts of Japan. It covers roughly the
same topics as the other two national histories, but is much more influenced by
Chinese concepts. The section on the creator deities Izanagi and Izanami, for
instance, is entitled In 'yo hongi, "The original account of Yin and Yang."
218 B. SCHEID

riers. First he was quite explicit in putting the kami above the Buddhas,
advocating the so-called "inverted honji suijaku theory." In other words,
he argued consistently that the kami were the original f01m of the Bud-
dhas, and not the other way round. Secondly and here we come back
to our topic - Jihen also talked about death in the context of Shinto
theology.
Specifically, he tried to explain life and death in tenns of Yin and
Yang. Yang is bright, and hence visible, and manifest, and living. Yin is
dark, and hence hidden, and dying. The problem he encountered was
that Earth, the realm of the visible beings, is clearly Yin (invisible,
dark), while Heaven, the realm of invisible beings is Yang (visible,
bright). He solved this problem by applying quite Buddhist dialectical
arguments: As Yin and Yang constantly change into one another, so do
life and death. Living beings in this visible world (visible = Yang state)
are therefore accumulating Yin until they eventually die. "To die" is to
say that they tum into a Yin state and begin to accumulate Yang until
they are born again in the visible world.
Heaven and Earth had already separated, when there was the dark and
the apparent fillJL Dark is death. It transforms Yang, leading it back to Yin.
Apparent is life. It transforms Yin, leading it back to Yang (Kuji hongi
gengi 3; NST 19:138).
Note that according to this conception, life on earth is a constant
transformation from Yang (life/birth) to Yin (death), while in the other
world a reverse process takes place. Living on earth is thus a long pro-
cess of dying, while the existence in the realm of death is a process pre-
ceding rebirth. In any event, neither Yin and Yang, nor life and death
are separate, independent entities. Ultimately they are just modes of one
and the same substance. This substance is the ki/qi, or the One Sub-
stance (ikki) of Daoism. Considered from this point of view, there is
neither an absolute antagonism of Yin and Yang, nor of life and death.
They are expressed in Buddhist terms - "not two" (juni). This leads
Jihen to the conclusion that:
. . . it is wrong to grieve about life and death. Yin and Yang change into
one another, randomly we call them this or that (Kuji hongi gengi 3; NST
19:139).
In his Kuji hongi gengi, theoretical remarks like these serve as an
introduction to Jihen' s exegesis of the mythical encounter of Izanagi
and Izanami in the realm of the dead. The story in the Sendai kuji hongi
is quite similar to the mythological accounts in Kojiki and Nihon shoki:
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 219

Izanagi is searching for his departed wife Izanami, who has died giving
bi1ih to the fire god. He encounters her in the dark realm of Yomi 19
where he is not allowed to look at her. When he breaks this taboo,
lighting a torch, Izanami appears as a corpse in a disgusting state of
decay. Izanagi flees in panic, while the offended Izanami and her
entourage chase him out of the underworld. When he arrives again in
the realm of the living, Izanagi blocks the way back with a huge rock.
Jihen recounts this story to conclude that the border between plainly
visible and hidden dark, or life and death (Yang and Yin), is not ab-
solute in the way it appears to us. According to him, Izanagi's trip to the
underworld was a kind of dream journey that was achieved through a
special state of consciousness (kokoro ). He concludes:
We must know that to see the other [world] only depends on one's own
heart/mind. If it is possible to reach both, the dark as well as the apparent,
who should be afraid of life and death (seishi)? (Kuji hongi gengi 3; NST
19:141).
Thus Jihen draws a quite unexpected conclusion: while from a
modern point of view the myth is obviously a depiction of the final, ir-
reversible separation of the realm of the living and the realm of the
dead, Jihen saw it as confinnation that in theory the contact between the
living and the dead is possible, that is, in his words, that they are "not
two."
Consequently, life and death cannot be something horrifying,
according to Jihen. On the surface, statements like these seem quite
compatible with the ubiquitous medieval notion of impennanence (fujo-
kan ). They evoke the familiar Buddhist admonitions not to cling to
existence in this world and to take the prospect of dying lightly. For
instance, in the Tsurezuregusa we encounter statements such as:
The foolish man, for his part, grieves [when old age and death approach]
because he desires everlasting life and is ignorant of the law of universal
change (Keene 1967:66).
We should notice, however, that Jihen does not mention "death"
alone as something not to grieve at, but speaks of "life and death"
(seishi). Seishi, however, is a common synonym of rinne, the technical
Buddhist term for the cycle of rebirth, sarrzsara. Jihen's conclusions are
therefore different from the typical Buddhist insight into the law of im-

19
The Sendai kztji hongi gives the Chinese characters J!ilt5Rlli!, lit. "Land of the
Yellow Springs," but adds the reading yomotsu kuni (ST-K 8: 19), which is also to be
found in Kojiki and Nihon shoki (cf. SJ:396, sub voce yomi).
220 B. SCHEID

permanence. Rather, he is aiming at a refutation that sarrisara is some-

thing to grieve at, or in other words, the Buddhist dogma that "all exist-
ence is suffering." It seems to me that this central axiomatic contention
of Buddhism had become questionable to Jihen. This may well have
been one factor leading to his conversion to the way of the kami. To
express his doubts, Jihen had to look for another religious conception,
which he found in a combination of Japanese myth and Daoist ontology.
Considering the Buddhist concept of sarrisara too pessimistic, he con-
structed in his exegesis of the mythological underworld descriptions a
positive counter-image (even if it is not easy for us to follow his conclu-
sions).
Thus, Jihen was probably the first to cut through the above-men-
tioned double bind of medieval Shinto discourse on the afterlife, but it
was rather an inner-Buddhist intellectual conflict that led him enter this
new realm of discourse. While his "scholastic" training made it possible
to free himself from the conventional conceptions of the kami, the Bud-
dhas, the soul, and the afterlife, the problems he addressed may have
been too scholastic as well. Even if he must be considered one of the
severest critics of the Buddhist dogma of his time, his refutation of this
dogma remained intellectually within a Buddhist episteme. Perhaps this
is the reason why we find hardly any traces of his ideas about the after-
life in the Shinto writings of the later medieval period.

The Mind Is the Divine

While other authors of "Shinto theology" did not address the realm
of death and the afterlife in the medieval period, there was a broad
range of speculations on the identity of the human mind or "heart" and
the kami. They all started from the axiomatic contention that at a most
basic level human consciousness is supported by a divine entity. More-
over, this divine mental source is somehow "the same" as the creator
deity of the universe that pervades all fonns of life. Certainly, such
speculations were influenced by similar conceptions in Buddhism that
are commonly referred to as hongaku shisi5, theories of the "original
enlightenment." Shintoists, however, used a different terminology and
usually confined themselves to the question of how to address the
divine in ritual. Thus they did not touch on the question of what hap-
pens to the divine part of the human mind in the afterlife. Yet it was
precisely this question that came up in the early modern period. It
would therefore seem worthwhile taking a look at the medieval theories
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 221

of the divine in order to understand how they shaped views of the after-
life in subsequent periods.
The locus classicus of the medieval Shinto conception of the "heart"
or mind is probably the famous oracle of Amaterasu, cited in different
versions in several of the so-called "Five books of Shinto" (Shinto
gobusho) of Watarai Shinto. In the version of Yamato hime no mikoto
seiki this divine revelation reads as follows:
The mind-god [(shity'in)] is the fundamental basis of heaven and earth.
[... ] You must therefore make the origin the origin and rest in the original
beginning; you must make the basis the basis, and depend upon your basic
mind (honshin) (cited from Teeuwen 1996: 111 ).
It was probably due to its paradoxical (or rather tautological) contents
that this oracle suited a broad range of exegetes. In any event, it was cited
in numerous later writings of medieval Shinto. Moreover, it appears in all
kinds of variations. In its shortest fonn, the message of the oracle was
coined into the slogan shin soku shin (the heart/mind is kami/divine).
In his Shinto taii ("Outline of Shinto"), Yoshida Kanetomo (1435-
1511 ), the founder of Yoshida Shinto, gave the following definition:
In Heaven and Earth we call it kami, in the ten thousand phenomena (ban-
butsu) we call it spirit (rei), in Man we call it mind/heart (shin), [for] the
mind is the divine (shin soku shin) (ST-R 8:26). 20
Kanetomo went on to explain that the acts of seeing, of hearing, of
feeling, etc., in short all mental activities of the Six Senses of man are
also due to divine agencies (kami) within the human body. In Kane-
tomo's understanding kami were therefore not only magic/religious
phenomena, but were also responsible for most ordinary psycho-physi-
cal activities. His point was that the mental energies, which he called
divine, are in constant interrelation with divine phenomena outside the
human body:
... Shinto is the way to control the heart/mind (kokoro o mamoru michi).
When the heart moves, the Yin-soul (haku) and the Yang-soul (kon) of
Man are disturbed, when it is quiet, they are peaceful too. As long as one
controls the heart/mind, the demon-gods (kishin) keep quiet, but if one
loses control, the demon-gods become restless, which leads to disaster.
Nothing exceeds the worship of the heart-god (ST-R 8:26-27).

20
This definition combines the heart=kami theorem with the concept of Heaven,
Earth, and Man, a very basic triad in Daoism that developed from Yin and Yang.
222 B. SCHEID

The admonition to control the heart/mind seems to refer primarily to the

priest who addresses the kami. In general, I think, the main focus of the
"heart-theory" was the functioning of ritual in medieval Shinto. It is in-
tended to define the mental state of the priest while performing a ritual
act, and to help to explain the powers the priest acquires by communi-
cating with the deity. Despite the fundamental, metaphysical nature of
the "heart-god" that was referred to frequently, the powers that could be
acquired through it quite often serve very mundane ends. Reading
Yoshida Kanetomo's Yuiitsu shinto myobO yoshu, for instance, we en-
counter the prospects of long life, health, wealth, or of peaceful govern-
ment (NST 19:220, 227), 21 but we find no references to a form of after-
life that can be achieved or influenced by ritual. However, the whole
theory of how to acquire mundane merits was based on the idea of spir-
itual purity. Therefore it should have been easy to apply that theory to
the achievement of spiritual ends as well. To clarify that contention, let
me sum up the "heart-theory" once again in the following way:
The human mind contains a most basic level, which is regarded as
sacred and divine. It is immensely pure and clean and is thus hidden
from the defilements of everyday life. By cleansing oneself ritually,
however, one can activate this inner divine part of the mind that is also
referred to as honshin, the "original heart or mind", or shinjin, "mind-
god" or "heart-god". If one achieves "inner purity" by ritual purifica-
tion, one can communicate with the divine, since this original heart is
basically the same, or of the same substance, or part of the "original
divine" (genshin ). The original divine is further identical with all sorts
of monistic conceptions like the One Substance, the Great One and so
on, that entered Shinto through the Yin/Yang-Five-Phases concept.
Since Man is in possession of this original heart, which is often simply
referred to as "the heart," he can communicate I unite I return to the
original divine entity.
There is, in other words, a notion of a metaphysical realm that com-
municates with the visible world. The model that explains this com-
munication is based on the notion of a fundamental identity between
kami and men, which are both derived from a supreme form of divine
existence. Therefo,re, it also contains a kind of spiritual/teleological

21
A less convenient, but all the more accurate edition (in different versions) of
this main doctrinal writing of Yoshida Shinto is included in ST-R 8; for an English
translation see Grapard (1992:144, 148-149); a translation and textual analysis in
German is also included in Scheid ( 1999).
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 223

promise for the believers in Shinto, namely to unite or reunite with this
supreme divine existence at some point. The problem is that this point is
never mentioned in theoretical writings. It was only in the early modem
period, when the dominance of Buddhism had been weakened and new
concepts from China reached Japan in the form of "Neo-Confucianism,"
that this union of heart and divine was also addressed with regard to the
afterlife.

Koretari

Yoshikawa Koretari (or Koretaru, 1616-1694), a "successor" of

Yoshida Shinto in the early Edo period, wrote a work entitled ShOji
denpi ("Secret transmission on life and death") and was thus one of the
first to overcome the self-imposed restraint on talking about matters in
connection with death in Shinto. This work has been given special
attention by Asoya Masahiko (1985)2 2 on whose work I have drawn for
the following description. Koretari centers his view of the afterlife on a
conception of the heart/mind (shin), or heart-principle (shinri), similar
to that mentioned above. Heart-principle does not refer to the human
mind as a whole, but to a basic layer of consciousness. This basic layer
is immortal. After death it re-unites with the original Substance of
Heaven and Earth from which it derives. Koretari calls this "to hide in
Heaven and Earth." In accordance with the mythological language of
the national chronicles, "hide" is equivalent to "die." In order to explain
the specific nature of that kind of soul or spirit, Koretari compares the
heart/mind that hides in the One Substance with ordinary thoughts that
hide in the mind:
The thousand things of everyday life hide day after day in the heart. [... ]
Normally we forget about them. However, once they hide in our heart,
they instantly appear in our breast, as soon as they are touched upon. If we
die, and our visible appearance (sugata) hides in Heaven and Earth, it is
the same as with these everyday things that appear in our breast: What
hides in Heaven and Earth always is endowed with a heart. If relatives or
friends worship [the deceased person], he will certainly appear, take his
seat and receive the worship. To touch [this person] accords to the same
principle as to remember something (Shoji denpi, cited from Asoya 1985:
14).

22
The article is reprinted in Asoya (1996: 11-75).
224 B. SCHEID

In this explanation we find a similar continuum of existence in this

world and in the beyond of human mind and spiritual being. The indi-
vidual human mind is more or less a microcosmic image of the uni-
verse, individual thoughts are comparable to the spirits of the deceased:
they are normally lumped together fonning what is known as the heart
or mind, but they can still be activated individually by the act of remem-
bering. The minds or hearts or spirits of the deceased, on the other hand,
are lumped together in the "Original Substance" (the monistic principle
encountered in Chinese philosophy). They can be individually activated
by the act of ancestor worship.
To this still rather abstract conception Koretari adds a more visual
picture: the spirits of the deceased reside in the "subsidiary Sun-Palace"
(hi no wakamiya) or in the High Plain of Heaven (Takamagahara), re-
spectively (Asoya 1985:15). Both terms are taken from the Nihon shoki
and indicate a very positive place in the realm of the kami. In short,
Koretari's conceptions are distinguished by a remarkably positive, opti-
mistic view of death and afterlife.
This is, however, not the only destiny of the human soul in Kore-
tari' s conception. It is the destiny of those who have lived in accordance
with their specific "mandate of Heaven" (tenmei) - a Confucian term of
proper moral conduct. Those who have not fulfilled this mandate will
roam between Heaven and Earth in a deplorable state. Koretari com-
pares them to ri5nin, samurai expelled by their lords. Usually these
miserable human spirits stay in the mountains, but from time to time
they may also come to the cities. This is dangerous, since they may be-
come the source of diseases (Asoya 1985: 16).
In another passage Koretari mentions Ne no kuni and compares it to
the Buddhist hell. It is the place where people who have committed
crimes or sins "fall down." Further, these sinful spirits are characterized
by a condition that "has not yet dissolved." Even if not mentioned in
this connection, we find a similar conception to the Yin-soul here. The
Yin-soul also goes down to Earth, as we know. In contrast to Chinese
conceptions, however, the notions of going up to Heaven and going
down to Earth are connected with a moral code, embodied in the notion
of "fulfilling the mandate of Heaven."
It has been pointed out by Asoya and others that the new Shinto con-
ceptions of the Edo period are heavily influenced by Neo-Confucian:
ism, in particular by the writings of the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi.
Koretari is thus an early representative of "Shinto-Confucian syncre-
tism" (shinju shiigi5). In the same period, authors such as Deguchi
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 225

Nobuyoshi (1615-1690), or Nakanishi Naokata (1634-1709) developed

similar conceptions of the afterlife, combining Yin-soul and Yang-soul,
Ne no kuni and Takamagahara, good and bad moral conduct. At the end
of the Edo period, even anti-Confucianist Shinto scholars like Oka
Kumaomi (1783-1851) or Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843) believed in a
double soul conception. Others, like Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801 ),
rejected it, however (Kato 1997).
What has been neglected so far is the importance of medieval tradi-
tions in the formation of Shinto-Confucian syncretism. When Koretari
compares the functioning of memory in the mind of an individual with
the collective memory in form of ancestor worship, this presupposes a
certain identity between psychological and transcendental agencies or
energies. This conception has much in common with the kind of com-
munication between mind and kami that Kanetomo envisaged in his
Shinto taii. Moreover, it seems safe to call these theories specific elabo-
rations of the almost mythological slogan "The mind is the divine."
Thus, Koretari did not do much more than extend the religious dis-
course on the identity of kami and mind explicitly into the realm of the
beyond and the thereafter. In my view, this step did not really presup-
pose a break with medieval conceptions, or rely on a hitherto unknown
(Neo-Confucian) philosophy. However, Koretari overcame the notion
that talking about death entailed death pollution. Thus, he took a final
step away from the ritual code of pure and impure that pertained to
ritual action as well as to language. In this way, he was the first to
actively practice kami ritual on the one hand and to propound a theory
of the afterlife on the other.

Conclusion
Why did it take so much time to take this step, if the theoretical set-
ting for doing so was already present much earlier? This question leads
us back to the above-mentioned functions of the death taboo. If our
hypothetical sketch of the reasons for this taboo is correct, we can say
that it was constitutive for the relationship of court Shinto and Bud-
dhism. Maintaining the death taboo was a kind of marker defining the
border between a clergy that adhered to a moral code (Buddhist monks),
and a clergy that adhered to the pattern of pure and impure (Shinto
priests). For the latter, this division of labor was of the utmost impor-
tance as long as they relied exclusively on the institution of the court.
Only when this institution ceased to provide sufficient support (as with
226 B. SCHEID

the Watarai at Ise in the Kamakura period) and finally collapsed (during
the Onin War, when Yoshida Kanetomo began to expound his teach-
ings), did the limitations of the Engishiki become counterproductive.
Thus, the vitality of the ancient Tenno system seems to stand in direct
relation to the degree by which priests became active in transgressing
traditional taboo restrictions. So far I have demonstrated such a tenden-
cy on the level of written language. In the same way, I think, it is true
for the level of religious practice, or ritual.
Let us now glance at the changes on the more popular level of
funeral ceremonies that occurred at about the same period as the shift in
language with regard to the afterlife. As we have already mentioned,
after Kanetomo the Yoshida seem to have buried their relatives accord-
ing to their own rites. This resulted in a more or less syncretistic prac-
tice. For example, they endowed their dead - in addition to the post-
mortal names of Buddhism (hi5myi5) - with so-called "spirit-god names"
(reishingo). They also began to build small "spirit-shrines" (reisha),
which they built immediately above the buried remains, and dedicated
to the respective reishin. 23 Thus, they seem to have worshipped their
dead in form of a kami, even if there is hardly any written material testi-
fying to such a kind of Shinto deification. 24 However, it would seem no
coincidence that in 1599 the Yoshida priests were in charge of the deifi-
cation of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was turned into the god Toyokuni
Daimyojin. 25 This ceremony was unique at that time. It occurred alleg-
edly as a result of Hideyoshi's personal wish to become a guardian deity
of his descendants. Similar rites were also applied when Tokugawa
Ieyasu died in 1616. Here the Yoshida were involved in the funeral
ceremonies, but were eventually discharged from the final rites of deifi-
cation. 26 These examples of deifying the spirit of a national leader were
soon imitated by other political figures of the Edo period. One of the
first was Hoshina Masayuki (1611-1672, regent of Shogun Ietsuna) who
was buried and deified by his religious tutor Yoshikawa Koretari (Aso-
ya 1985:2, 9).

. i
23
The most important of these little shrines, the Shinryiisha dedicated to the rei-
shin ofKanetomo, is still visible in the compounds of the Yoshida shrine in Kyoto. "·
24
On this subject see Okada (1982:5-17).
25
The immediate funeral, however, was conducted by the Shingon monk Ogo
(1537-1608) according to Buddhist rites (Miyachi 1926:312).
26
For details see Boot (1989).
 Discourse on the Afterlife in Shinto 227

Thus, we can observe a shift in Shinto ritual as well as in Shinto

discourse concerning matters of death and the soul from the Sengoku
period onwards. Our limited knowledge of ritualistic details does not
allow us to recount the chronological order of these changes, but it is
hardly plausible that these processes were not interrelated. Underlying
such developments we can suppose a significant change regarding the
death taboo in the intellectual leadership of the Shinto clergy. The
notion of death may not have lost its horrifying, repellant aspects asso-
ciated with ritual pollution. But purity and impurity were probably no
longer the only values of importance in communicating with the kami.
Or rather, they were not separated from good and bad. Moral standards
were thus introduced and allowed for more intellectual freedom, since
talking about bad/impure things did not mean doing bad/impure things.
In this way, Shintoists began to overcome the death taboo. They thereby
opened up not only possibilities of an extra- or non-Buddhist vision of
the afterlife, but also of a self-sufficient theology of Shinto. However
neither of these ends were ever properly achieved. Neither on the level
of "orthodoxy," nor on the level of "popular" discourse, are we there-
fore able to find a definite "Shintoist" view of the afterlife.
228 B. SCHEID

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