Organizer: Matthew E. Keith, Saitama University, Japan
Chair: Philip C. Brown, Ohio State University
Discussant: George M. Wilson, Indiana University
Scholars have long been aware of the growing popularity of pilgrimages in Tokugawa society. Especially as commoners participated more frequently, religious pilgrimages have been seen as creating significant links helping to form a national culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although Western scholars tend to focus on the religious and cultural dimensions of pilgrimages, increasingly they have joined their many Japanese colleagues in stressing the political implications of pilgrimage. The three papers in this panel extend these perspectives into new intellectual territory, adding more sensitive nuances to what has been an overly unified and static image of pilgrimages.
Based on extensive fieldwork, Professor Jane Marie Law (Cornell University) addresses the diversity of religious sources and objects of pilgrimage, the increased localization-"miniaturization" of pilgrimages, and the social-political implications of these changes. Matthew Keith analyzes manuscript documents to assess the political implications of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune's pilgrimage to the "family" shrine at Nikko. Reinhard Zoellner assesses the degree to which late Tokugawa Ejanaika demonstrations were rooted in previous traditions of pilgrimage and concludes that significant new elements in Ejanaika indicate a cultural collapse that parallels the political crumbling of the Bakufu. As a set, these three papers help us reassess the changing significance of pilgrimages across the status boundaries of early modern Japan.
Expansion and Contraction: The Implications of Miniature Pilgrimage Routes for an
Understanding of Religious Praxis in Late Tokugawa
Jane Marie Law, Cornell University
Until recently, scholars writing on Japanese pilgrimage have tended to posit a unified (and sometimes assumed) notion of praxis undergirding this religious activity. Because many of the main theoretical works on pilgrimage are grounded in non-Japanese case studies, often the theories of religious practice scholars draw upon to interpret Japanese pilgrimage do not adequately illuminate Japanese case materials. Further, there is a tendency to assume that pilgrimage constitutes a unified form of religious practice in Japan. However, the variety of pilgrimage routes and the means by which they are duplicated and popularized indicates that theories of praxis in Japanese pilgrimage are complex indeed.
In this paper, I will argue against these two tendencies in scholarship on Japanese pilgrimage. Through an examination of the various forms of miniature pilgrimages (mame-junrei) that developed adjacent to two main routes, the Saikoku and the Shikoku Junrei, I will demonstrate how various new interpretations of religious praxis were arising in the latter half of the Tokugawa period, at the time when miniature pilgrimages were expanding at a rapid rate. The paper will address the following issues: (1) new notions of the religious subject represented by the rise in miniature pilgrimages; (2) the religious and textual sources (particularly Shingon) for understandings of ritual efficacy in these new pilgrimage routes; (3) the localization of pilgrimage through transforming larger pilgrimages onto local landscapes; (4) the social and political implications of restricting pilgrimage to small scale and manageable units close to home for most participants while claiming that the miniature pilgrimage had the same efficacy of the larger route.
The paper will include discussions of these routes and their uses as seen by the author in fieldwork over the last decade in the Kansai area.
Marching Through the Kanto: Yoshimune's Pilgrimage to Nikko
Matthew E. Keith, Saitama University, Japan
In 1728, the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Yoshimune, revived a shogunal practice of pilgrimage to the tomb of the first Shogun Ieyasu in Nikko. After a 65 year lapse in this custom, Yoshimune's pilgrimage to Nikko was of unprecedented flamboyance and scale. The symbolism of Yoshimune's journey combined with a unique use of corvée labor and military service represent a profound exercise of shogunal and bakufu authority.
Highlighting the inherent symbolism of Yoshimune's grand procession to Nikko was the large scale corvée labor (sukego) exacted directly from the peasants of the Kanto provinces (kuniyaku) to provide the men and horses necessary for the journey. The most notable feature of the corvée levy was that men and horses were levied to suit Yoshimune's goals without regard to political boundaries and leap-frogging the regional authority of the daimyo and hatamoto.
Further asserting Tokugawa authority, vassal daimyo and hatamoto (including those serving as bakufu officials) were required to provide extensive military services (gunyaku) in direct support of Yoshimune's pilgrimage. This military service confirmed both the personal feudal bond of the Tokugawa vassals to Yoshimune, and Tokugawa authority over the bakufu.
In comparing the symbolism of Yoshimune's pilgrimage to the nature of authority exercised by previous and succeeding shogunal administrations, I emphasize the significance of the corvée labor and military service. This paper concludes that his pilgrimage to Nikko represents a significant display of shogunal and bakufu authority by Yoshimune, and a re-invigoration of shogunal power.
Okage Mairi and Ejanaika
Reinhard Zoellner, Duesseldorf University
From summer 1867 to summer 1868, while the Meiji restoration was in full swing, commoners of many parts of Japan participated in activities including the worship of amulets allegedly descended from heaven, dancing festivals, and pilgrimages. After a popular song, this is called "Ejanaika." Until the 1930s mostly denounced as "nonsense" or premodern "superstitions," Ejanaika has since come to be regarded as an expression of popular opinion and attitudes on the eve of modernization. Its several components were not new in themselves, but put together, they formed a new ensemble of popular culture. It is the relationship between these components which is at issue.
Some scholars have claimed Ejanaika to be much the same as the former Okage mairi ("Thanksgiving pilgrimages"). E. H. Norman classified them as "similar instances of mass hysteria" (1975). Winston Davis disagreed since Ejanaika "consisted largely of ecstatic dancing in situ" (1983). George Wilson also wrote, "okagemairi . . . were carefully orchestrated manifestations . . . Ee ja nai ka was spontaneous orgiastic and sometimes destructive behavior" (1992).
Among Japanese scholars, Fujitani Toshio claimed Ejanaika as an extension of Okage mairi (1968). Nishigaki Seiji produced a genealogy of related phenomena (1973). Takagi Shunsuke (1975) and Tamura Sadao (1986) stressed still different traditions.
Using data from hundreds of original sources, I want to re-think the character of these events by analysis of the function pilgrimages played for participants. My conclusion is that the destruction of the old political order was paralleled by a destruction of the cultural order causing changes in religious behavior.