Shōtoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition (review)

In the last year or so, early Japanese history has seen a substantial increase in the number of books published in English. In addition to the work under review here, we have Herman Ooms's Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650–800 (2009) and my The Four Great Temples: Buddhist Archaeology, Architecture, and Icons of Seventh-Century Japan (2009). Following Joan Piggott's The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (1997), these three volumes, appearing about a decade later, together provide a more nuanced conceptualization of the initial phases of ancient Japanese history, especially of the seventh century, and one hopes for a continued flourishing of study of this crucial period. Although I have thought about the Shōtoku Taishi problem for many years, I approach it as an art historian very much focused on material remains; I apologize if I seem to neglect other key elements of the book.

Shōtoku Taishi is perhaps unique in world history; a sort of combination of the roles of Constantine the Great and King Asoka (about both of whom more reliable data exist), Shōtoku has a towering status in Japanese culture built on an extremely weak foundation. What is the actual name of the putative hero of this narrative? This is, indeed, a rather odd question to pose and yet its very asking sheds a good deal of light on some of the key problems. Establishing an appropriate image of Shōtoku Taishi is perhaps the most intractable problem of early Japanese history. These images range along a spectrum, with two equally implausible extremes—that he did not exist or that the mythological tales are essentially correct. My personal viewpoint is slightly more skeptical than that of Como since while I believe that there was a figure behind the later construction of the prince, I think there is little we can learn about the actual person. Our differences begin with nomenclature for the prince, with Como adopting Kamitsumiya, while I prefer to use what I suspect was a real name, Umayado; in this regard, I do not believe that Kamitsumiya was a contemporaneous designation but rather one that was devised by later writers to provide a suitably dignified title for the prince. (I have adopted the translation of Umayado, calling him "Prince Stable Door" as a strategy to defamiliarize an individual whose image is overdetermined to an extraordinary degree.¹) Naturally, Como is very conscious of the difficulties in understanding the historical career of the prince and he devotes enormous energy in an effort to differentiate the historical figure, Kamitsumiya (Umayado), and the constructed image of Shōtoku Taishi ("Crown Prince Saintly Virtue"). Nevertheless, there are still times when Como is apparently willing to give more credence to events recorded in the life of the prince than I think defensible.

Como's focus on immigrant lineages is to be applauded and yet I wonder if he completely avoids one of the main traps set for the unwary. Standard Japanese historiography accepts without much thought the idea that there was an indigenous elite in the islands that eagerly accepted the technical and other skills of "immigrants" from the peninsula and continent, graciously putting these "immigrants" to work furthering the elite's interests. I would suggest that some caution is in order when making statements concerning the relative status of "immigrants" versus "native inhabitants." I believe that a strong argument can be made that some at least of the "immigrant lineages" that Como deals with were actually themselves members of the elite, and it was only later that efforts were made to differentiate their status in order to enhance that of the so-called imperial line.

Much attention is given to immigrant lineages from Silla in this book, and it is certainly the case that Silla was extremely influential in the development of early Japanese religious and political institutions. In this context, the author pays...