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Japanese syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism

Shinbutsu shūgō (神佛習合, "syncretism of kami and buddhas"), also called Shinbutsu shū (神佛宗, "god buddha school") Shinbutsu konkō (神佛混淆, "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 (寺, tera) were attached to local Shinto shrines (神社, jinja) and vice versa and devoted to both kami and Buddhist figures. The local religion and foreign Buddhism never fused into a single, unified religion, 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. The term may have a negative connotation of bastardization and randomness. It is a yojijukugo phrase.

There is no agreement among specialists as to the exact extent of fusion between the two religions. The opposing view of Japanese historian Toshio Kuroda and his supporters is that Shinto as an independent religion was born only in the modern period after emerging in the Middle Ages as an offshoot of Buddhism, and that Shinto as a distinct religion is a Meiji era invention of Japanese nationalist ideologues. During the same era, Kokugaku theorists like Motoori Norinaga tried to separate it intellectually from Buddhism, preparing the ground for the final schism of the Meiji Restoration. According to the first view, then, the two religions were at the time of their first meeting already formed and independent and thereafter just coexisted with non essential exchanges. According to the second, Buddhism, meeting local kami beliefs in Japan, actually produced today's Shinto.

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. For example, already while in India, it had absorbed Hindu divinities like Brahma (Bonten in Japanese) and Indra (Taishakuten). Hindu gods had already been treated analogously: they had been thought of as unenlightened and prisoners of saṃsāra. The first articulation of the difference between Japanese religious ideas and Buddhism, and the first effort to reconcile the two is attributed to Prince Shōtoku (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 (673–86). 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. 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. However, not all kami were emanations of some buddha. Some, often called jitsu no kami (実神), usually dangerous and angry, had no Buddhist counterpart. Among them were the tengu, or animals possessing magic, as the fox (kitsune) or Japanese raccoon dog#In folklore and tradition (Japanese raccoon dog). Even these unholy and inferior "true kami" however attracted the attention of Ryōbu Shinto thinkers, which resulted in theories which declared them to be manifestations of Vairocana and Amaterasu.

The two religions however never fused completely and, while overlapping here and there, kept their particular identity within a difficult, largely un systematized and tense relationship. This relationship existed, rather than between two systems, between particular kami and particular buddhas. While some kami were integrated into Buddhism, others (or at times, even the same kami in a different context) were kept systematically away from Buddhism. During the Meiji period, in order to help the spread of Shinto, shrines with temples (jingū ji) were destroyed while temples with shrines (chinjusha) were tolerated. As a result, shrines with temples within them are now rare (an extant example is Seiganto ji), but shrines contained within temples are common, and most temples still have at least a small one. Prominent religious institutions in both camps still give evidence of integration of the two religions. The great Kenchō ji temple, number one of the Kamakura's great Zen temples (the Five Mountain System) includes two shrines. One of the islands in the right side pond of Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in Kamakura hosts a sub shrine dedicated to goddess Benzaiten, a form of Saraswati. Shinto and Buddhism still have a symbiotic relationship of interdependence, particularly concerning funeral rites (entrusted to Buddhism) and weddings (usually left to Shinto or sometimes Christianity). The separation of the two religions is therefore considered only superficial, and shinbutsu shūgō is still an accepted practice. Still, the separation of the two religions is felt to be real by the public. Scholar Karen Smyers comments, "The surprise of many of my informants regarding the existence of Buddhist Inari temples shows the success of the government's attempt to create separate conceptual categories regarding sites and certain identities, although practice remains multiple and nonexclusive".