Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan

by Michael Como

Among the most exciting developments in the study of Japanese religion over the past two decades has been the discovery of tens of thousands of ritual vessels, implements, and scapegoat dolls (hitogata) from the Nara (710-784) and early Heian (794-1185) periods. Because inscriptions on many of the items are clearly derived from Chinese rites of spirit pacification, it is now evident that previous scholarship has mischaracterized the role of Buddhism in early Japanese religion. Weaving and Binding makes a compelling argument that both the Japanese royal system and the Japanese Buddhist tradition owe much to continental rituals centered on the manipulation of yin and yang, animal sacrifice, and spirit quelling. Building on these recent archaeological discoveries, Michael Como charts an epochal transformation in the religious culture of the Japanese islands, tracing the transmission and development of fundamental paradigms of religious practice to immigrant lineages and deities from the Korean peninsula. In addition to archaeological materials, Como makes extensive use of a wide range of textual sources from across Asia, including court chronicles, poetry collections, gazetteers, temple records, and divinatory texts. As he investigates the influence of myths, legends, and rites of the ancient Chinese festival calendar on religious practice across the Japanese islands, Como shows how the ability of immigrant lineages to propitiate hostile deities led to the creation of elaborate networks of temple-shrine complexes that shaped later sectarian Shinto as well as popular understandings of the relationship between the buddhas and the gods of Japan. For much of the book, this process is examined through rites and legends from the Chinese calendar that were related to weaving, sericulture, and medicine―technologies that to a large degree were controlled by lineages with roots in the Korean peninsula and that claimed female deities and weaving maidens as founding ancestors. Como’s examination of a series of ancient Japanese legends of female immortals, weaving maidens, and shamanesses reveals that female deities played a key role in the moving of technologies and ritual practices from peripheral regions in Kyushu and elsewhere into central Japan and the heart of the imperial cult. As a result, some of the most important building blocks of the purportedly native Shinto tradition were to a remarkable degree shaped by the ancestral cults of immigrant lineages and popular Korean and Chinese religious practices. This is a provocative and innovative work that upsets the standard interpretation of early historical religion in Japan, revealing a complex picture of continental cultic practice both at court and in the countryside.

Genres: Japan, History, Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2009

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great argument that the foundations of the royal cult, Buddhism, and popular religion in Japan are all related to each other and were strongly influenced by religious beliefs and rites from the continent. Como does a great job thoroughly breaking down the false dichotomy of Japanese (Shinto) and foreign (Buddhism, Chinese religion), showing how they were all wrapped up in each other from the beginning.

Basically, immigrant lineages from the Korean peninsula spread these beliefs along with the social structures and technologies (especially sericulture) adopted by commoners, noble clans, and the court itself.

The book does get a bit repetitive in the later chapters, but it is very much the case of having a large amount of evidence in favor of his argument.

Suitable for grad students, specialists in Japanese religion, and generalists in East Asian history.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally love this book! And we can see his first book on Shotoku became the jumping off point for this book:) But this book is dealing with a much more complex question, the emergence of 'shinto' & 'buddhism' in the dynamic totality of the religious landscape on these islands. Como uses the term "horizon of reception" to indicate this dynamic totality without falling into the know binaries of buddhism/shinto, foreign/native, ideology/technology. he is also very careful in choosing effective categories of analysis: continental influence, chinese calendar, immigrant lineages. in and by themselves these terms are hopeless vague, but no one can deny that those are the major and identifiably independent (enough) forces that shaped what we know today as buddhism and the royal cult. As such, they are meaningful categories of analysis for the questions Como want to engage with.
The vagueness comes from different focus, if Como were asking the transformation and migration of the immigrate lineages, then he'd have to include a map showing their migration, a chart of all the important events in these lineages in different locales, how and when and whether they travel back & forth from the continent to the japanese island, etc ... but that would be a completely different book. and it won't tell us anything about how the royal cult and buddhism came into being on this particular place and period.