EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 Tokugawa Religious History: Studies the majority of less-privileged people. in Western Languages∗ Biographical material is extant, but consists mostly of official hagiographies and legendary anecdotes; personal testimonies by ordinary ©Janine Tasca Sawada, University of practitioners, particularly women and less- Iowa educated groups, are rarer. Second, Western scholars of religion, particularly students of the The study of religious history in secular mainstream Buddhist and Confucian systems of academic institutions in the West is this period, have only recently begun to shake off interdisciplinary--depending on the scholar or a long-standing preference for doctrinal and topic, it takes the form of intellectual, social, classical textual studies, a tendency that allegedly literary, or art history, and draws on the methods dates to the nineteenth-century Christian or insights of philology, anthropology, sociology, theological milieu in which European and cultural studies, among others. European and investigation of Asian religions originated.1 American scholarship on the religious These two factors may not be completely phenomena of Tokugawa Japan in particular unrelated. After the Meiji period began, new represents an increasingly wide range of concepts of “religion” (shūkyō) and “doctrine” approaches and themes. However, various factors (kyōhō) emerged, partly in response to perceived have worked against balance within that diversity. Western assumptions that systematic belief was a First, accessible historical evidence of religious defining element of religion; in the ensuing life during this period has been limited to genres decades, curators of certain Japanese religious produced by certain social groups. The most institutions invested more in the preservation (in readily available material is documents written by some cases, reconstruction) of Edo-period educated elites--particularly records of formal doctrinal statements than in the archiving of doctrines and institutions--rather than first-hand manuals of practice, oral lore, or informal first- accounts of the everyday practices and rituals of person accounts.2 On the other hand, a close ∗ Many people have assisted me during the various stages of completing this essay and the 1 accompany-ing bibliography. The participants in See esp. Gregory Schopen, “Archaeology the “Early Modern Japanese Studies: The State of and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of the Field” symposium held at Ohio State Indian Buddhism,” History of Religions 31 University in April 21-23, 2000, offered (1991): 1-23, rept. in Schopen’s Bones, Stones, stimulating responses to the first draft of this and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the work; I am particularly grateful to the editor, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Philip Brown, and to my colleague, James Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of McMullen, for their comments, suggestions, and Hawai’i Press, 1997), 1-22; and Bernard Faure, affirmation throughout this project. Stephen Chan Insights and Oversights: An Vlastos’ and Jacqueline Stone’s comments on an Epistemological Critique o the Chan Tradition early draft of the essay helped me make it more (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), lucid and accurate. Michel Mohr, Paul B. Watt, 35. and Samuel Hideo Yamashita have also extended 2 Several new religions were compelled to their support and assistance. Numerous scholars create “Shinto”-based doctrinal identities under in the field helped me identify and/or correct the auspices of the nativist/Shinto ideological references in the bibliography and notes. I am campaign of the early Meiji; later, in the postwar especially indebted in this regard to W. J. Boot, period, some attempted to recreate their purported Antony Boussemart, Herman Ooms, and Duncan preMeiji systems of belief. Re the Western R. Williams. Needless to say, I am fully origins of the notion that religion requires belief, responsible for all remaining errors and see W.C. Smith, The Meaning and End of omissions from the bibliography. Religion (New York: Mentor, 1964), e.g., 164; or 39 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 look at the primary records of many Tokugawa Japanese scholars. The latter in turn may religious groups reveals a keen interest in represent sectarian or other interests that are not intellectual formulation that well predates the necessarily conducive to broad-based studies of nineteenth-century encounter with Western Tokugawa religious history. philosophies of religion. Not only the established In any event, the Western study of Edo- Buddhist and Confucian schools, but lesser- period religions during the last twenty years has known, heterodox groups carefully preserved remained dominated by an infatuation with ideas, written statements of belief from long before the and consequently has overlapped considerably Restoration--not necessarily systematic doctrinal with the study of Tokugawa intellectual history. treatises, but sermons, dialogues between masters The latter, as Yamashita notes, has become an and disciples, popular tracts, and not infrequently, invigorating and even controversial field during didactic letters. recent years.4 He posits a rather evolutionary The dimension of religious life about which scheme according to which authors of books even these documents often remain silent, published between 1979 and 1992 advanced however, is religious praxis, especially personal, through a series of preoccupations with individual practices (as opposed to official “modernization,” “tradition,” the “new ceremonies and rites). Documentation of the intellectual history,” and “postmodern” theory, practices of ordinary people as well as of the and depicts each of these interpretive waves as broader social functions of religion in this period arising partly in reaction to its predecessors.5 In is extant. However, in addition to the reasons the final analysis, however, Tokugawa intellectual cited above, scholars tend to neglect these history as a field is not really being redefined by documents because they are mostly manuscripts these disputes. Works produced during the last written in cursive style (komonjo) that require two decades are still concerned with discrete 3 significant training in order to read. Western “schools of thought” and articulate individual scholars who do not use these manuscripts must thinkers, even though this scholarship adopts a limit their research to works that have already growing number of novel configurations been selected, edited, and published by modern 5 I will not rehearse Yamashita’s his Faith and Belief (Princeton: Princeton fascinating discussion and the subsequent debate University Press), 13-14. See also the 1980-90s over it here, but recommend to the reader his series of debates about the definition and relative succinct synopses and historiographical importance of doctrine in the study of Japanese interpretations of the major monographs in the religions, published in the Japanese Journal of field, on the one hand, and the critical responses Religious Studies: Neil McMullin, “Historical and it provoked, on the other: see Yamashita, Historiographical Issues in the Study of Pre- “Reading Tokugawa;” The Neo-Confucian Modern Japanese Religion,” 16, no.1 (1989): 3- Seminar, Columbia University, “Minutes of the 40; Jamie Hubbard, “Premodern, Modern, and Meeting of 1 November 1996;” John Allen Postmodern: Doctrine and the Study of Japanese Tucker, “A Response to Sam Yamashita’s Religion,” 19, no.1 (1992): 3-27; and Neil ‘Reading the New Tokugawa Intellectual McMullin, “Which Doctrine? Whose Histories,’” Journal of Japanese Studies 23, no. 2 ‘Religion?--A Rejoinder,’” 19, no.1 (1992): 29-39. (1997): 525-536; Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Here I use “doctrine” to refer in the narrower “Response to John Tucker's Response,” Journal sense to systematic theoretical representation of of Japanese Studies 23, no. 2 (1997): 536-541; religious belief; but I view this as only one and Harold Bolitho, “Tokugawa Japan: The among many possible expressions of “thought.” 3 Return of the Other?,” in Helen Hardacre, ed., On this point, see Barbara Ambros and The Postwar Developments of Japanese Studies Duncan Williams, “Local Religion in Tokugawa in the United States, Brill’s Japanese Studies History: Editors’ Introduction,” Japanese Journal Library no. 8 (Leiden, Boston, and Koln: Brill, of Religious Studies 28, nos. 3-4 (2001): 217. 1998), 85-114. 40 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 informed by recent theoretical trends. Many resources to learn how to read difficult Chinese writers enjoy elucidating ideas in terms of and/or arcane Japanese texts. These thinkers and diachronic “developments” or “traditions,” while teachers in fact spoke for elites, mostly rural others explicitly argue against the coherence of notables and well-endowed merchants, who such a project. The degree of attention to wielded their own kind of power. Koschmann “context” (intellectual, social, or other) is also comes closer to treating a broad range of the presented as a conscious decision, even a matter populace, though the Tengu insurrection about of principle, and differs radically depending on which he writes was also dominated by agrarian the author’s predilections. elites.7 Bolitho comments that Tokugawa The efforts of the so-called new intellectual intellectual history “since the mid-1980s has been historians to broaden the scope and methodology in the process of splitting into two separate and of Tokugawa studies