Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism by Mark Michael Rowe (review)

Japanese Buddhism has long been closely tied to the care of the dead through funerals and successive memorial services. This so-called funerary Buddhism (sōshiki bukkyō) is often viewed negatively, but it is nevertheless important as an entrenched part of Japanese life. Historically, it arose from the parishioner system (danka seido), which was established by the Edo shogunate in the seventeenth century as a means of controlling the populace through the network of Buddhist temples. While that system was legally dismantled in the early decades of the Meiji period, it survived in a form that was supported by the general public and was related to the imperial nation-state policies of the Meiji government, and it tenaciously continued even under the new legal system established after World War II. Be­ginning in the 1980s, many in society began to question and reject the parishioner system, and this trend has continued to gather strength in the twenty-first century.

Bonds of the Dead examines the move away from funerary Buddhism that has occurred as part of the weakening of the parishioner system and, while taking into account histori­cal developments since the mid-nineteenth century, focuses mainly on the rapid changes that have taken place since the 1980s. Traditional research on Japanese Buddhism has tended to be divided into two areas: theoretical studies, which are concerned with the interpretation of scriptural texts and the thought of the Buddhist elite, and studies of actual practice, which examine popular customs while largely ignoring the state of Bud­dhist temples themselves. Recently, however, there has been much criticism of this divi­sion of scholarly labor. The present work builds on this critical perspective and attempts to understand changes in Japanese Buddhism in terms of both theory and practice by examining Buddhist temples that are exploring new ways to care for the dead and studies produced by various denominational research centers. The author, Mark Michael Rowe, conducted research at Kyoto University as a graduate student in the 1990s and, particu­larly in the first half of the next decade, engaged in intensive fieldwork in various parts of Japan. Drawing on this research, he has crafted an insightful analysis full of interesting observations.

Chapter 1, "The 'Death' of Japanese Buddhism," traces the links between Japanese Bud­dhism and funerary practices, providing the historical background for Rowe's study. While the author touches on the medieval and Edo periods, his main emphasis here is on develop­ments since the mid-nineteenth century. Rowe structures his argument around four topics: the appearance of funerary Buddhism in the mid-nineteenth century; the development of critiques of funerary practices and, by extension, of funerary Buddhism itself; the emer­gence of professional funeral specialists; and the influence of the encounter between the modern West and Japanese Buddhism.

He emphasizes that while the intimate link between Japanese Buddhism and funerals goes back to the parishioner system of the Edo period, its continuance was due to the fam­ily system (ie seido) that became a foundation of national morality particularly during the Meiji years. Moreover, he explains, temples came to depend on their involvement in funer­als as a source of income even after postwar legal reforms dismantled the family system. This dependence stemmed from the agricultural land reforms of 1946, which stripped many temples of one of their important sources of revenue. Rowe goes on to recount that prior to World War II, criticism by intellectuals and others of funerary practices in Japan focused on the elaborate nature of these rituals, while after the war some began to express doubts concerning their actual meaning in relation to Buddhist teaching and doctrine. He then discusses the development and influence of the funeral business, an industry that in recent years has generated annual revenue exceeding one trillion yen. Rowe argues that, through the encounter with modern Western culture, the...