The Gates of Power

by Adolphson, Mikael S.

• ISBN13: 9780824823344
• ISBN10: 0824823346
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

The political influence of temples in pre-modern Japan, most clearly manifested in divine demonstrations, has traditionally been condemned and is poorly understood. In an impressive examination of this intriguing aspect of medieval Japan, Mikael Adolphson employs a wide range of previously neglected sources (court diaries, abbot appointment records, war chronicles, narrative picture scrolls) to argue that religious protest was a symptom of political factionalism in the capital rather than its cause. It is his contention that religious violence can be traced primarily to attempts by secular leaders to re-arrange religious and political hierarchies to their own advantage, thereby leaving disfavored religious institutions to fend for their accustomed rights and status. In this context, divine demonstrations became the preferred negotiating tool for monastic complexes. For almost three centuries, such strategies allowed a handful of elite temples to maintain enough of an equilibrium to sustain and defend the old style of rulership even against the efforts of the As

Author Biography

Mikael Adolphson is currently assistant professor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
A Note on Translation and Japanese Names	xv
Introduction	1	(20)
Monastic Developments in the Heian Age	21	(54)
Capital Politics and Religious Disturbances in the Shirakawa Era (1072-1129)	75	(50)
Temples as Allies or Divine Enemies during the Tumultuous Years of Go-Shirakawa (1155-1192)	125	(60)
Religious Conflicts and Shared Rulership in the Late Thirteenth Century	185	(55)
Protesting and Fighting in the Name of the Kami and the Buddhas	240	(48)
Religious Elites and the Ashikaga Bakufu: Collapsing the Gates of Power	288	(58)
Epilogue: Religious Power and the Power of Religion in Premodern Japan	346	(15)
Conflicts Involving Enryakuji and Kofukuji, 1061-1400
Appendixes
1 Conflicts Involving Enryakuji and Kofukuji, 1061-1400	357	(2)
Diagram of Conflicts Involving Enryakuji and Kofukuji, 1061-1400	359	(2)
Notes	361	(54)
Glossary of terms and Names	415	(10)
References	425	(20)
Index	445