Shinbutsu-shugo ("syncretism of kami and buddhas"), also called Shinbutsu shu ("god buddha school"), Shinbutsu-konko ("jumbling up" or "contamination of kami and buddhas"), is the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism that was Japan's main organized religion up until the Meiji period. Beginning in 1868, the new Meiji government approved a series of laws that separated Japanese native kami worship, on one side, from Buddhism which had assimilated it, on the other.
When Buddhism was introduced from China in the Asuka period (6th century) the Japanese tried to reconcile the new beliefs with the older Shinto beliefs, assuming both were true. As a consequence, Buddhist temples (tera) were attached to local Shinto shrines (jinja) and vice versa and devoted to both kami and buddhas. The local religion and foreign Buddhism never quite fused, but remained inextricably linked to the present day through interaction. The depth of the influence from Buddhism on local religious beliefs can be seen in much of Shinto's conceptual vocabulary and even the types of Shinto shrines seen today. The large worship halls and religious images, are themselves of Buddhist origin. The formal separation of Buddhism from Shinto took place only as recently as the end of the 19th century; however, in many ways, the blending of the two still continues.
Assimilation process
The fusion of Buddhism with the local kami worship started as soon as the first arrived in Japan. Mononobe no Okoshi wrote, "The kami of our land will be offended if we worship a foreign kami." Mononobe saw Gautama Buddha as just another kami. Foreign kami were called banshin ("barbarian gods") or busshin ("Buddhist gods"), and understood to be more or less like local ones. Initially, therefore, the conflict between the two religions was political, and not religious, in nature, a struggle between the progressive Soga clan, that wanted a more international outlook for the country, and the conservative Mononobe clan, that wanted the contrary.
Buddhism was not passive in the assimilation process, but was itself ready to assimilate and be assimilated. By the time it entered Japan it was already syncretic, having adapted to and amalgamated with other religions and cultures in India, China, and the Korean Peninsula. For example, already while in India, it had absorbed Hindu divinities like Brahma (Bonten in Japanese) and Indra (Taishakuten). When it arrived in Japan, it already had a disposition towards producing the combinatory gods that the Japanese would call shugoshin (syncretic gods). Searching for the origins of a kami in Buddhist scriptures was felt to be nothing out of the ordinary.
However, if monks didn't doubt the existence of kami, they certainly saw them as inferior to their buddhas. Hindu gods had already been treated analogously: they had been thought of as un-illuminated and prisoners of samsara. Buddhist claims of superiority encountered resistance, and monks tried to overcome them by deliberately integrating kami into their system. Several strategies to do this were developed and deployed.
The process of amalgamation is usually divided into three stages.
The first stage of the difference between Japanese religious ideas and Buddhism, and the first effort to reconcile the two is attributed to Prince Shotoku (574–622), and the first signs that the differences between the two world views were beginning to become manifest to the Japanese in general appear at the time of Emperor Tenmu (673–686). Accordingly, one of the first efforts to reconcile Shinto and Buddhism was made in the 8th century during the Nara period founding so-called jingu-ji, that is shrine-temples, complexes comprising both a shrine and a temple.
Behind the inclusion in a Shinto shrine of Buddhist religious objects was the idea that the kami were lost beings in need of liberation through Buddhism like any other sentient beings. Kami were thought to be subject to karma and reincarnation like human beings, and early Buddhist stories tell how the task of helping suffering kami was assumed by wandering monks. A local kami would appear in a dream to the monk, telling him about his suffering. To improve the kami's karma through rites and the reading of sutras, Buddhist monks would build temples next to kami shrines. Such groupings had been created by the 7th century, for example at Usa Jingu in Kyushu, where Hachiman was worshiped together with Maitreya. The building of temples at shrines produced shrine-temple complexes, which in turn accelerated the amalgamation process. As a result of the creation of shrine-temple complexes, many shrines that had until then been just an open-air site became Buddhist style groupings of buildings.
At the end of the same century, in what is considered the second stage of the amalgamation, the kami Hachiman was declared a dharmapala and, later, a bodhisattva. Shrines for him started to be built at temples (the so-called "temple-shrines"), marking an important step ahead in the process of amalgamation of kami and Buddhism. When the great buddha at Todai-ji in Nara was built, there was also erected within the temple grounds a shrine for Hachiman – according to the legend because of a wish expressed by the kami himself. Hachiman considered this his reward for having helped the temple find the gold and copper mines from which the metal for the great statue had come. After this, temples in the entire country adopted tutelary kami (chinju).
The third and final stage of the fusion took place in the 9th century with the development of the honji suijaku theory according to which Japanese kami are emanations of buddhas, bodhisattvas or devas who mingle with human beings to lead them to the Buddhist Way. This theory was the keystone of the whole shinbutsu shugo edifice and therefore the foundation of Japanese religion for many centuries. Because of it, most kami changed from potentially dangerous spirits to be improved through contact with the Buddhist law to local emanations of buddhas and bodhisattvas which possess wisdom of their own. Buddhas and kami were now indivisible twins.
Main Hall (Kondo) of Todai-ji Temple in Nara.
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