Religion Compass 7/8 (2013): 284–293, 10.1111/rec3.

12054

Religion and Politics in Heian-Period Japan1

Heather Blair*
Indiana University

Abstract
The religious culture of Japan’s Heian period (794–1185), like that of other times and places, was
structured by power differentials; it can therefore fruitfully be understood as political. Combining
kami worship (popularly known as Shinto), esoteric and exoteric Buddhism, spirit possession, and
local traditions, as well as moral and ritual practices derived from Confucianism and Daoism, Heian
religious life was characterized by multiple religious affiliations and a syncretic outlook. From the
era of the statutory (ritsuryō) state, through the court-centered polity (ōchō kokka), to the Fujiwara
regency (sekkan seiji) and rule by retired emperors (insei), religion proved indispensible to sovereignty,
political authority, and power relations. Rhetoric of the ideal Buddhist monarch shaped political
ideology, while rites of kami worship portrayed the emperor as a sacral king. Gender politics
structured differences in men and women’s religious practice and expression at the same time that
patronage and pilgrimage served as important means for lay people to legitimate themselves and
compete politically. By amassing landholdings in the form of manorial estates (shōen), religious
institutions came to exercise juridical and economic control of extensive natural and human resources.
Known as “power blocs,” institutions of this type shared in rights and functions conventionally viewed
as being proper to the state.

Contemporary public discourse may distinguish “politics” from “religion,” but for the men
and women of Heian-period (794–1185) Japan, matters of governance and authority
necessarily involved gods, spirits, buddhas, and bodhisattvas. Members of the educated elite
claimed, for instance, that the kingly law and the Buddhist Dharma were interdependent,
like two wheels on the same carriage (Kuroda 1996b). Peasants and princes alike called
upon indigenous deities (kami) and locally enshrined buddhas to punish oath breakers
(Satō 2003). Meanwhile, sex-based proscriptions starkly enacted gender politics by banning
women from many of Japan’s most sacred sites (Nishiguchi 2002; Ushiyama 2009).
Because the terms “religion” and “politics” are so loaded in contemporary Anglophone
culture, narrow definitions can only skew our understanding of Heian society. Debates about
the relative importance of religious doctrine in premodern Japanese culture underscore the
need to keep our definitions broad (McMullin 1989a, 1992; Hubbard 1992). In this essay,
by religion, I mean a porous domain of ritual and doctrine, ranging from court ceremonial
to temple rites to domestic observances, and extending from erudite treatises written by
educated clerics to vernacular lore about the doings of gods and buddhas. By “politics,”
I refer not only to the execution of governance but also to the broader question of how
men and women negotiated and contested power relations.
Although both the extant historical record and past research emphasize the official,
notionally male business of the court and the activities of privileged monks, if we are to
account for the political ramifications of religious thought and practice, we need to investigate
provincial affairs, life on manorial estates (shōen), and the full range of shrine and temple society.
We need to attend to questions of gender, women’s activities, “Chinese learning” (kangaku),
and interactions with the continent. This essay is intended primarily for an Anglophone

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audience, but readers should be aware that the Japanese language literature on relations
between the state, sovereignty, and religion is especially rich (e.g., Endō 2008; Ihara 1995;
Okada 1994; Uejima 2010). Most Japanese historians working in this vein are trained in
political and economic history; as a result, they often focus on administrative management,
fiscal relationships, and institutional structures. They also tend to view the study of religion
as a methodological tool rather than an end in itself. For instance, Endō Moto’o has
commented that “rituals existed as mirrors of power relations” (Endō 2008, p. 186); in other
words, in his view ritual is of interest for what it reflects rather than for what it is or how it
works. A smaller number of researchers who take religion as their primary subject are working
to elucidate political aspects of religious activity (e.g., Abe 2001; Kamikawa 2007; Satō 2003).
It is by expanding in this area, theorizing the relationship between religious and political
authority, and examining issues not directly related to the state that authors writing in Western
languages stand to make the most important contributions.
In English, the second volume of the monumental Cambridge History of Japan has set the
standard for Anglophone Heian studies; it contains several chapters on religious matters
and remains a valuable reference (Shively & McCullough 1999). Essays in Adolphson et al.
(2007) provide an interdisciplinary update especially useful to those interested in the 9th
through 11th centuries. Readers wishing a familiarity with research in religious studies should
consult Swanson and Chilson (2006), which includes excellent research reviews
complemented by robust bibliographies. A brief, accessible survey of Heian history suitable
for classroom use can be found in Hurst (2007).

Conceptualizing Heian Religion

Since the mid-1970s, virtually any investigation into the political significance of premodern
Japanese religiosity has been shaped in some way by the work of Kuroda Toshio
(Dobbins 1996; Kuroda 1994). Like many post-war historians, Kuroda’s interpretive outlook
was decidedly Marxian. He tended to view religion as a technology of control, maintaining,
for instance, that premodern peasants were caught “in the thrall of thaumaturgy and
polytheism” (Kuroda 1996c, pp. 288–89). At the same time, his work has provided a matrix
for creative re-conceptualizations of the relationship between religion and politics. From
within Kuroda’s wide-ranging body of research, two contributions have been particularly
important to religious history: the “theory of the power-bloc system” (kenmon taisei ron)
and the “theory of the exoteric-esoteric system” (kenmitsu taisei ron).
With his kenmon taisei ron, Kuroda argued that the middle ages began in the mid-to-late
Heian period and were characterized by a form of rulership in which three types of power blocs
shared in state rights and functions (Kuroda 1994, vol. 1). These blocs, he maintained,
comprised the court, the military houses, and shrine-temple complexes, with no bloc able fully
to dominate the others. In relativizing the importance of the emperor – and in fact, the entire
court – Kuroda’s work served as a corrective to the imperialist historiography of the first half of
the 20th century. It also drew attention to the overtly political activities of religious institutions,
including “forceful protests” (gōso), in which monks and shrine workers took up arms and
marched to the capital to voice their complaints – and sometimes run riot. Through such
protests, religious institutions were able to negotiate with, and sometimes even coerce, the court
(Adolphson 2000). As they became increasingly militarized, shrines and temples also entered
into violent conflict with each other (Adolphson 2000, 2007; McMullin 1987).
With his kenmitsu taisei ron, Kuroda argued that from the 9th through 16th centuries, a
mixture of exoteric and esoteric (kenmitsu) Buddhism functioned as a totalizing ideology
(Kuroda 1994, vol. 2; 1996a). This kenmitsu Buddhism, he maintained, formed during the

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early Heian. And subsumed kami worship to such a degree that no independent tradition
recognizable as “Shintō” can be said to have existed prior to the Kamakura and Muromachi
periods (Kuroda 1981). Furthermore, he characterized the so-called “new Buddhism” of the
Kamakura period – the Pure Land, True Pure Land, Sōtō Zen, Rinzai Zen, and Nichiren
schools – as heterodox movements that were of little consequence during the middle ages,
especially in comparison to the kenmitsu establishment (Taira 1996). These arguments have
not gone unchallenged, but they have spurred a thorough revision of historiographical
models that neatly partitioned “Heian” from “Nara” and “Kamakura” Buddhism
(Abé 1999; Payne 1998). They have also encouraged sweeping re-assessments of premodern
kami worship (Teeuwen & Scheid 2002; Teeuwen & Breen 2002).
A related line of research critiques the application of modern conceptual categories, such as
independent “religions” and “schools,” to premodern circumstances. During the early Meiji
period (1868–1912) the government-mandated separation of kami and buddhas (shinbutsu
bunri) enacted a categorical distinction between Buddhism and Shintō that continues to shape
contemporary perceptions of the Heian past (Ketelaar 1990; Blair 2011). And yet, in decided
contrast to modern preconceptions, Heian religiosity was characterized by multiple religious
affiliations and a deeply synthetic outlook. In his influential work on institutional history and
sacred space, Allan Grapard referred to these tendencies as “combinatory” (Grapard 1992, pp.
1–13). Foremost among the elements available for combination were esoteric and exoteric
Buddhism (Abé 1999; Bauer 2011b), kami worship (Andreeva 2010; Stone 2006–2007),
and spirit possession (Meeks 2011). Confucian morality and learning, rituals imported from
the continent, and local traditions, as well as Daoist-inflected concerns with longevity, the
dynamics of yin and yang, astronomy, astrology, and divination also made important
contributions to religious culture (Como 2009; Buhrman 2012). Far from creating an
undifferentiated amalgam, the combinatory practices of Heian men and women produced
a complex religious landscape shaped by identity politics, institutional constraints, and many
other factors.
In examining this landscape, two zones of inquiry are of particular note: the association of
kami and buddhas (shinbutsu shūgō) and the religious culture of particular sites. The Heian
period was a watershed for the development of a range of interpretive practices – ritual, visual,
and linguistic – that identified kami as secondary manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Known as honji suijaku, these practices were integral to Buddhism’s assimilation of
non-Buddhist beliefs and practices and thus were fraught with political significance (e.g.,
Teeuwen & Rambelli 2003; Kawane 2010). Because cults tended to be strongly localized,
institutional history has also proven very important to our understanding of Heian religiosity
(e.g., Hiraoka 1981; Nishiguchi 2004). As Kuroda pointed out, some temples and shrines
developed into power-bloc institutions in command of extensive natural and human
resources, as well as trade and production networks. For instance, during the 12th and
13th centuries, the complex formed by Kōfukuji and the Kasuga Shrine gradually extended
political and economic control over the entire province of Yamato (Yasuda 2001; Kawabata
2000), growing so powerful that it was able to manipulate the court into supporting its
interests (Adolphson 2000). Not surprisingly, Kōfukuji and Kasuga boasted a distinctive
religious culture (Grapard 1992), including sophisticated iconography (Tyler 1992), narrative
traditions (Tyler 1990), and close ritual ties to the court (Bauer 2011a).

Religion and the Political Scene

During the Heian period, the royal court presided over governance, as it had in the Nara
period (710–784); however, state organization changed significantly between the 9th and

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12th centuries. In the 600s, members of the elite had drawn on Chinese precedent to found a
statutory state. Based on civil and criminal law codes known as the ritsuryō (Piggott 1997, ch.
6), this polity continued to operate through the first quarter of the Heian period, while many
of its organizational forms survived for considerably longer. The Council of State, which was
staffed by high-ranking noblemen, presided over a central bureaucracy, which was in turn
augmented by a systematic provincial administration. (For more detailed outlines of Heian
governmental structures, see Shively & McCullough 1999 and appendices in McCullough
& McCullough 1980). The emperor was the head of state, but the Council – and the
aristocracy, more generally – was of such importance that royal control of public affairs
was far from total, even when the monarch was of age, mentally competent, and politically
assertive (Hashimoto 1976; see also discussion of Kuroda’s kenmon taisei ron above).
Beginning in the Heian, only men acceded to the throne; the ninth century also saw a
general erosion of women’s social standing.
As conceived through the codes, the ritsuryō state was both patron and arbiter of religious
culture, which fell into three discrete spheres, each with its own administrative body. The
Council for Kami Affairs (Jingikan) technically enjoyed status equal to the Council of State.
Its charge was the creation and maintenance of a centralized network for kami worship that
would extend the state cult across the realm, bringing local practices under central influence
(Mori 2003). Through the Bureau of Yin and Yang (Onmyōryō), the government sought to
monopolize continental learning in the fields of astronomy, divination, prognostication, and
time-keeping (Bock 1985; Ooms 2008, ch. 4). Finally, the state-sponsored Office for
Monastic Affairs (Sōgō), which was staffed by eminent monks from major temples, was to
oversee the activities of ordained Buddhists in cooperation with the Bureau for Foreign
and Buddhist Affairs (Genbaryō) (Abé 1999, pp. 20–34). The Code for Monks and Nuns
(sōniryō), promulgated as part of the civil code, laid out rules for proper behavior by ordained
Buddhists (for a translation, see Piggott 1987, pp. 269–70).
Clearly, the ritsuryō state was deeply invested in channeling and controlling religious
practice; just as clearly, reality did not necessarily match up with ideology. The exhaustive
prescriptions for the practice of kami worship and the way of yin and yang (onmyōdō) given
in the Engi shiki (Procedures of the Engi Era), a regulatory manual compiled in the first quarter
of the tenth century, show just how extensive ritsuryō ambitions were (Bock 1970–72, 1985).
On the other hand, the Procedures were promulgated in 967, at a time when governmental
controls had already begun to fail. For instance, although the Office for Monastic Affairs
retained prestige throughout the Heian period, its actual authority as a governing body
attenuated dramatically (Ushiyama 1990). Similarly, control of Daoist-inflected practices
lagged far behind rhetoric: from the mid-Heian on, Buddhist monks and others successfully
marketed their services as ritualists, astrologers, and diviners to a populace eager to protect
themselves from natural or supernatural disaster (Shigeta 2004; Buhrman 2012).
A new order, generally known as the royal court state (ōchō kokka), began to emerge in the
900s. Although the Council of State continued to play a role in the creation and enforcement
of policy throughout the Heian period, the court’s direct involvement in local governance,
taxation, and military operations decreased sharply (Adolphson et al. 2007, ch. 2–4; Friday
1992; Katō 2002). Around the same time, aristocrats and royals, as well as religious
institutions, began to develop manorial estates (shōen) over which they held sovereign rights; these
became a matrix for a new economic and social order at the local level (Hall & Mass 1974,
ch. 4–5; Kawabata 2000). Even though the emperor continued to be the source of utmost
authority, other figures – first the Fujiwara regents and then the retired emperors – achieved
political ascendancy in the mid-to-late Heian period. Accordingly, the period from the
mid-900s to the late 11th century is known as the Fujiwara regency (sekkan seiji) (Piggott

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& Yoshida 2008; Katō 2002; Yamamoto 2003), while that from circa 1086 to 1221 is
known as the insei, literally “rule by retired emperors” (Hurst 1976; Inseiki bunka
kenkyūkai 2001–2005; Motoki 1996; Mikawa 1996). In the wake of Kuroda’s
interventions, the insei has come to be seen as the beginning of the middle ages (chūsei)
(Motoki 2002; Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai & Nihonshi Kenkyūkai 2004).
No matter who the most powerful parties were at court, the religious establishment
provided ritual and ideological protection to the Heian state (chingo kokka). Kingship was
framed in Buddhist terms when, for instance, the emperor symbolically presided over an
exoteric dispatch of relics in conjunction with his rites of accession (Ruppert 2000, ch. 3),
or when he received esoteric Buddhist empowerments by proxy during the Latter
Seven-Day Rite (goshichinichi mishuhō), which was held at the palace in the new year
(Abé 1999, pp. 345–55). Importantly, both these rites illustrate the combinatory nature
of Heian religious practice. Buddhist accession rites complemented but in no way obviated
rites of investiture that focused on the kami. Similarly, the esoteric Latter Seven-Day Rite
formed a pair with the exoteric Palace New Year’s Assembly (misai-e) (Sango 2007), and
both observances included components devoted to the kami.
At the same time that kingship was expressed and legitimated in religious terms, the court
sought to influence and control the activities of religious specialists. For instance, with respect
to Buddhism, the early Heian court required the submission of doctrinal resumés; this
prompted the articulation of discrete Buddhist schools and a surge in doctrinal production
(Sone 2000). Around the same time, the court contributed to a reconfiguration of the
Buddhist power structure by approving an independent ordination platform for the Tendai
(Ch: Tiantai) school, thereby making it symbolically independent of influential temples in
Nara (Groner 2000). Meanwhile, Kūkai’s (774–835) promulgation of “the esoteric
teachings” (mikkyō) as a ritual technology subsuming and surpassing exoteric Buddhism
ensured the pervasive influence of esoteric ritual and the Shingon (Ch: Zhenyan) school
(Abé 1999; Stone 2006–2007).
Elaborating upon Nara-period precedents, the court designated certain Buddhist lecture
assemblies held at court and at major temples as official rites; service at these events qualified
clerics for promotion and appointment to the Office for Monks and Nuns (Uejima 2010;
Sango 2007; Bauer 2011a). Debate featured prominently in these rites, making the ability
to expound doctrine an indispensible tool for advancement within the increasingly politicized
world of the major monasteries (Sango 2011). Doctrinal erudition also made individual monks
attractive to powerful – and wealthy – patrons, enhancing their ability to render effective ritual
service (Groner 2002). Doctrine, then, was not reducible to “mere” scholasticism; rather, the
study and interpretation of scripture went hand in hand with ritual mastery and “served as the
coinage by which . . . monks purchased power” (McMullin 1989b, p. 119).
Political concerns shaped developments in the sphere of kami worship, as well. Having
abandoned the burdensome system outlined in the Engi shiki, the mid-Heian court granted
special status to a limited number of shrines, first 16, and eventually 22 (Okada 1994). All
of these institutions lay in the Kinai region, near the capital; many were also associated with
the royal and Fujiwara families. Thus, they defined the court’s home territory, dramatized
the emperor’s sacral status, and instantiated the power of eminent aristocratic families
(Grapard 1988). Meanwhile, the person of the emperor became the axis for a new mode
of kami worship: the reigning monarch began to dispatch royal envoys to shrines directly
from the palace; he also began to make progresses to a limited number of shrines in person
(Okada 1994; Ruppert 2006–2007). The regents and retired emperors vied with each other
to dictate which shrines the king would visit; they also took to making progresses themselves,
thereby inaugurating a new custom of pilgrimage among the lay elite (Mitsuhashi 2000).

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Male and female members of the Heian court were immersed in a constant round of
annual observances (nenjū gyōji), featuring Buddhist assemblies, rites of kami worship, dance
performances, sporting events, and banquets. The ceremonial calendar is vividly depicted
in the Handscroll of Annual Observances (Nenjū gyōji emaki), currently extant as a 17th century
copy of a Heian-period original (Komatsu 1987). Because knowledge of ceremonial was a
form of cultural capital, courtiers kept diaries in which they carefully noted the details of
the rites they attended (Piggott & Yoshida 2008). Despite differences of gender and genre,
men and women’s diaries provide invaluable information on the religious lifestyles of the
elite. A limited number of these texts have been translated (e.g., Hérail 1987–1991 and
2001–2004; Piggott & Yoshida 2008; Arntzen 1997; Brewster 1977), but journals are only
slowly entering the repertoire of scholars of religious studies (Ruppert 2000). Similarly,
although it has been noted that overtly religious themes were integral to elite poetry and
narrative (Morrell 1973; Marra 1991), research on religion has yet to capitalize fully upon
the multivalent representations of religious life in Heian literature.
Because of notionally secular literary achievements, the Heian period is renowned as a
feminine age in which vernacular Japanese fiction and poetry – much of it written by women
– reached their apogee (Yoda 2004). In fact, the Heian period saw a considerable reduction
in women’s standing (see essays in Ruch 2002), though women with close ties to the throne
continued to wield significant political influence. Discourses of female impurity burgeoned
(Goodwin 2007, ch. 3), and despite the ongoing importance of female mediums and shamans
(Meeks 2011), the ordination tradition for Buddhist nuns attenuated. Thus, even though
dedicated Buddhist practice was a respected avenue for women, it became a comparatively
private matter, especially among the nobility (Meeks 2006, 2010). Heian women’s writing
has been examined with an eye to religious issues and what might be called the politics of
expression (Kamens 1990; Bargen 1997); however, further work in this area and focused
studies of the activities of particular individuals remain major desiderata.
The founding of temples provided both men and women with a highly visible means to
express their piety; conversely, some religious institutions found it necessary to cultivate new
constituencies. Temples and shrines that had been supported by the state or lineage groups faced
major reorganization in the early to mid-Heian and later came to rely increasingly upon
fundraising campaigns (Nishiguchi 2004; Goodwin 1994). On the other hand, in the late
10th and early 11th centuries, the regents took to building temples on a grand scale, and the
retired emperors followed suit, founding institutions known as royal vow temples (goganji). These
functioned not as monasteries charged with the training of a resident religious community
but rather as ritual stages and quasi-private facilities for their sponsors (Yamagishi 1998;
Endō 2008, ch. 6), who amplified their own political authority through spectacular rites and
patronage (Uejima 2010; Hiraoka 1981). This type of activity was not limited to the capital:
regional lords strove to legitimate themselves through their temple-building projects at the same
time that they worked to differentiate themselves from their rivals at the center (Yiengpruksawan
1995, 1998). In a similar vein, when members of warrior houses and the class of provincial
governors managed to make their way into the upper elite, they built their authority through
conspicuous displays of piety and patronage (Blair 2013).
Pilgrimage, too, served as a stage for political-cum-devotional competition. In addition to
visiting sites near the capital, like the Kamo Shrine or Enryakuji, the regents and retired
emperors embarked upon more challenging pilgrimages to the “southern mountains” (nanzan)
of the Kii Peninsula during the mid-to-late Heian. Whereas the regents favored pilgrimages to
the sacred mountain Kinpusen, where a mood of abstinence prevailed (Blair forthcoming), the
retired emperors made ostentatious journeys to Kumano; these have been characterized as
performances in a Geertzian “theater of state” (Moerman 2006). Meanwhile, both groups were

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active at Mt. Kōya, where their patronage reconfigured the mountainscape and linked it to secular
and monastic politics (Londo 2002; Drummond 2007; Lindsay 2012). Gender-based bans at
Kinpusen and Mt. Kōya notwithstanding, women participated actively in pilgrimage; in many cases,
their journeys were connected with domestic power relations (Ambros 1997, esp. pp. 331–37).
Although studies of major religious complexes like that of Kōfukuji and Kasuga
(see above) or particular deities like Hachiman (Tsuji 2003) are helping to shed light on
regional religious culture, we know comparatively little about religious life in the provinces
and/or among commoners. Lack of sources is a major issue, but since the mid-1990s
breakthroughs in Japanese-language research have begun to remedy this situation. At the
regional level, religion served the interest of the central elites by binding the provinces to
the center. Sources indicate that by the late Heian, each province had designated one primary
regional shrine (ichinomiya), and that it had become common practice to enshrine all the local
deities in a collective shrine (sōsha). Both types of shrine were closely tied to the governor’s
offices (Okada 1994). Liturgical integration capitalized not only upon place but also time:
the nenjū gyōji held on shōen mirrored those at court, with the same rites held on the same
days at court and in the provinces (Ihara 1995; Uejima 2010).
Not surprisingly, Heian men and women were quite explicit about the interpenetration of
religion and politics. For instance, they referred to the executive functions of government as
matsurigoto, and to the regularly scheduled festivals that feted the kami as matsuri. Retired
emperors who took the tonsure were known as Dharma kings (hōō), while their ordained
sons became Dharma princes (hosshinnō) (Hiraoka 1981, pp. 633–55; Yokoyama 2005;
Kamei 2006). Royal princesses were selected by divination to serve at the Kamo and Ise
Shrines (Kamens 1990). And ritual was an important means for redressing political violence.
One of the most dramatic examples of this is the apotheosis of the literatus and statesman
Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). Exiled by his political rivals, Michizane died in disgrace;
however, when disasters in the capital were attributed to his angry spirit, the court lent its
support to efforts to pacify him (Borgen 1986; Kawane 2010). Enshrined as the deity Tenjin,
Michizane continues to be revered today as a god of learning. At the same time that his cult
epitomizes the worship – and pacification – of angry spirits (onryō, goryō) (McMullin 1988),
it also exemplifies the combination of elements from notionally discrete religious traditions
and the mutuality of religion and politics.

Short Biography
Heather Blair’s research focuses on the religious history of Japan, especially the Heian period.
She is interested in sacred landscapes, the political dimensions of religious practice, lay religiosity,
and modern constructions of premodern religious culture. Her articles on these topics have
appeared in Monumenta Nipponica and the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies; her monograph Tracing
Kinpusen, the Peak of Gold: Place and Pilgrimage in Heian Japan is forthcoming from the Harvard
University Asia Center. At present, she is conducting research on the religious lifestyles of lay
people in order to examine how retired monarchs, court ladies, and literati shaped religious
practice during the late Heian. Blair earned her PhD in religious studies from Harvard
University, as well as an MPhil in the same field from Columbia University, an MA in
comparative religion from the University of Washington, and a BA in Asian studies from
Swarthmore College. Following a post-doctoral appointment at Stanford University, she joined
the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. She has received research
fellowships from the Fulbright Commission and the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science and has been a visiting researcher at Tokyo University, Kyoto Prefectural
University, and Kyoto University.

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Notes
* Correspondence address: Heather Blair, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, 230 Sycamore Hall,
Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

1
The author gratefully acknowledges support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science during the research
and writing of this article.

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