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Comptes rendus / Book Reviews

Itô Satoshi Chûsei Tenshô Daijin shinkô no kenkyû

(Medieval worship of Tenshô Daijin [Amaterasu Omikami]), Kyoto, Hôzôkan 2011, 716 p., hard cover, ISBN 978-4-8318-60286.

Since the 1990s, the history of Shinto has attracted growing attention among the Japanese and, increasingly, Western scholars of pre-modern Japan, and with spectacular results. In the past two decades, a wealth of new historical manuscripts has been unearthed from Buddhist temple archives (shôgyô M&c), bringing to atten¬ tion previously unknown processes involved in Shintô's historical conceptualization and development. As a result of these investigations it is becoming abundantly clear that Shinto is a far more complex entity than previously thought. Moreover, the new approaches to the study of Shinto (as it is now known) have prompted a far-reaching reconsideration of the term itself. One can no longer speak of Shinto as a monolithic tradition, especially in the way it was politically configured during the first half of the twentieth century, when Shintô's position as a state religion and increasingly toughening ideological stance of the Meiji through Shôwa governments underpinned the atrocities committed by Japan's military forces in East Asia dur¬ ing the second world war. Instead, and in sharp contrast to that, modern research on the diverse historic formulations of kami # worship has brought the very idea of Shintô as 'a coherent, indigenous, truly authentic and unique religion of Japan' under an increasing scrutiny.

Among many other things, the recent research continues to reveal to what ex¬ tent the worship of Japanese deities, kami, had been intertwined with the concepts, teachings, rituals, and icons of Buddhism, before the dawn of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The range of the newly found documents suggests that such processes of mutual intertwining, cross-fertilization and development were particularly prolific, in a decidedly experimental way, during the span between the late Heian (905-1185) and late Muromachi IHT (1392-1573) periods, and continued long afterwards. More specifically, such historical interactions appear to be at their most intense between the worship of kami at specific sacred sites and Japan's numerous Buddhist temple lineages, including those specializing in the Hossô (Ch. Faxiang), Shingon y! If, Tendai �o, Zen P, and Nichiren 051 traditions as well as mountain asceticism, Shugendô Esoteric Buddhism, mikkyô as it

was conceptualized, developed and practiced in medieval Japan, has acted as a nexus for these interactions.

Mapping out this new narrative further, Itô Satoshi's 201 1 book entitled Chûsei Tenshô Daijin shinkô no kenkyû (Medieval worship of Tenshô

Daijin [Amaterasu Omikami]) is a major installment on the history of Shintô. Published by the Hôzôkan îèiitl (Kyoto), a long-term supporter of such research, this study is a great addition to other recent seminal volumes on Japan's medieval cultural and religious history. The divine progenitor of Japan's imperial lineage and one of the country's most important deities, Amaterasu (or, Tenshô Daijin, as it was more commonly known in the Buddhist circles) was undoubtedly at the

Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie zi (2013) : 635-641