Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

The native Japanese religion ("Shinto") was historically the religion of the Japanese until mid-6th century, when Buddhism got introduced into Japan with a regent converted to Buddhism. He made it a national religion, patronised it greatly and promoted it. It was about this time when the name "Shinto" was coined for the old native religion - from Mandarin(?) "Shen" (Chinese word for their 'Devas') + "Tao" (The Way), i.e. Shinto=The Religion of the Gods/Kamis - to delineate the native religion from the imports. Within a century, another Japanese emperor, who similarly embraced Buddhism fully, went a step further: gave Shinto the boot and replaced it with Buddhism as the official religion.



I suppose I may well be getting countries and rulers mixed up again, but *IIRC*, it was one of the two above emperors (I thought it was the first, but not sure) who made it compulsory for majority non-Buddhist Japan to become uniformly vegetarian after his adopting Buddhism upon Korean and Chinese Buddhist influence. (When certain Indian religions impose such things on even unrelated people, I've heard it actually described as being another example of their "egalitarian compassion". Meanwhile, when Hindus of various Hindu communities refuse to eat beaf of their own choice - because *they* consider it unHindu - Indian history re-writing speaks of this as "owing to brahminical fascism" and/or as being "backward/unprogressive".)



Buddhism, being in charge in Japan now, initially embarked on a process of official delineation of the newly introduced religion from the native Shinto: Shinto was specifically rejected by the converted government in favour of Buddhism. But after first attempting to replace Shinto in the nation wholesale (that's also what the naming of Shinto was for), Buddhists eventually discovered that it was impossible to do away with the native religion, since the laity remained loyally attached. So as always, the Bauddhification of the native religion started: by claiming Shinto and its Gods were "Buddhist" all along. Throughout the centuries there were many attempts by Shintoists to free their religion/Gods from Buddhist usurpation and subordination into Buddhism's worldview and hierarchy. (Shinto and its Gods were being misused to promote Buddhism among the population: to acclimatise Shinto laity to Buddhism, which was the only reason for Buddhism's compromise. The syncretism was one-way: the government, being Buddhist, had approved of the syncretism. Not the Shintoists themselves.)



Until the 12th century, Buddhism promoted the Kamis of Shinto (even the ancestral Shinto Matriarch of the Japanese, their famous Sun Goddess) as "bodhisattvas", as the many "Buddhas" (of Mahayana obviously) and - equally impossibly - as variants of Shakyamuni Buddha himself.



But then Shinto regained ascendancy in the ruling houses of Japan for a century or two thereafter, at which stage the Shintoists were at last able to pry their Gods loose from Buddhist usurpation again. Though at this stage, some Shintoists were so tired of their Gods having been forced into the lower rungs of the Buddhist hierarchy (Shinto Gods as "upholders of Buddhism", who could "look forward" to a future incarnation as a Buddha as their ... uh prize) instead of their religion having been left alone as the entirely independent Shinto religion, that there was even some reactionary tit-for-tat, with some Shintos claiming that it must be the other way around: Buddha must be a Shinto God - of Shinto religion - not Shinto Gods being Buddhists. (Some other Asian populations also went through the same reactionary process, while others by-passed it and avoided mis-identifying their Gods with the Buddha in reaction.)



But Buddhism returned to its one-way "syncretism" attempts in Japan (also what happened in Chinese regions, because it's a method of proselytisation). And traditional Shinto society continued wanting to free their religion (Gods and temples) from Buddhist imposition on their religion.



So the 19th century Meiji Era's "nationalism" (when Samurai took charge of the government and Shinto was *officially* delineated from Buddhism by the now-Shinto government itself, even if non-syncretist Shinto society had been keeping the 2 religions separate for longer) was only the much later instance of an officially-sanctioned attempt at separating Buddhism and Shinto. And while this government certainly had political motives ("nationalism"), Shinto society's traditional leadership had genuine reasons/interests as did the laity in having religious separation restored. Because, while the government of Japan had been Buddhist for significant periods of time, not all of the Japanese population was ever converted even to the syncretist Buddhist religion. But, since they weren't in charge when many successive Buddhist governments had been pursuing a policy of deliberate enforced syncretism on Shinto religion, adherents of Shinto had had little say in the matter for a long time.



Next time some neo-"Buddhist" tries to claim that all of the rest of Asia wanted to be Buddhist ("Ra-Ra"): nah, they didn't.

If the *government* hadn't been repeatedly converted to Buddhism, the latter wouldn't have had the power to convert many people at all. And even so, Buddhism had to use Shinto (one-way "syncretism") to get at the laity at all: underlining that Shinto is what they were still attracted in.