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  • Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan
  • Lori Meeks (bio)
Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan. By Michael Como . University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2009. xxi, 306 pages. $48.00.

Over the last several decades, scholars both in Japan and in the West have been deconstructing the myth of Shintō as a timeless and uniquely Japanese tradition. Today it is widely recognized that continental influence played some role in shaping the tradition or traditions now known as Shintō, but the nature and extent of that influence remains contested. In his recently published book, Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan, Michael Como brings important new perspectives-and long overlooked data-into the discussion. He does this primarily by changing our vantage point. Instead of viewing the development of religious life in late sixth- through early ninth-century Japan from the perspective of the emerging royal court (as most historians have done, both in Japan and in the West), he challenges us to approach the religious life of this period from the perspective of immigrant kinship groups, local religious practices, and regional cultic centers.

The results are groundbreaking. As Como explains in his introduction, most scholarship on ancient Japan, including that undertaken by Western scholars, has unwittingly transmitted the biases of Meiji nationalism. Thanks to the many critical studies of Shintō that have been published since the 1980s, the field has gained appreciation for the complex issues surrounding the history of various kami cults, including that of the royal lineage, and we know that the idea of a unified, "native" tradition known as Shintō was an invention of Meiji ideologues. This progress notwithstanding, contemporary scholarship on the history of Japanese religions still tends to accept (1) the idea that the royal lineage constructed the Amaterasu legend on its [End Page 397] own, and that this legend represents a "native" tradition; (2) that Buddhism was the primary conduit through which cultic and ritual practices from the continent were transmitted to the Japanese islands; and (3) that the spread of continental culture radiated outward, from the Yamato court to the provinces, rather than from the provinces toward the center.

Weaving and Binding offers a series of in-depth case studies, each of which works to dismantle these longstanding assumptions. By the end of the book Como has made a strong case for a new understanding of ancient Japanese religious life. In this vision, continental religious rites and narratives did not gain currency in the Japanese islands through official embassies or through the efforts of Buddhist monks who emigrated from the continent. Instead, the diffusion of tropes and practices associated with continental religiosity took place early and in tandem with the political and economic successes of immigrant kinship groups and their affiliates, groups that tended to build communities in coastal regions and other areas conducive to trade. Under the influence of these groups, he argues, centers of trade throughout the Japanese islands began to absorb and contribute to a "cultic vocabulary" (p. xvii) rooted in the rites and ideas of continental traditions. Along these lines, he details the degree to which ancient sources display interest in following what he calls "the Chinese festival calendar," in complying with the laws of yin and yang, and in ensuring that the spirits of the dead had been placated, even if placation required blood sacrifice. These observations-many of which recent archaeological discoveries have corroborated-work against the long entrenched (and usually nativist) insistence that animal sacrifice was not practiced in Japan and that mentions of yin-yang rites and Chinese festivals reflect little more than the literary play of scholarly courtiers. In Como's view, these continental rites and tropes (which are not Daoist except in the most imprecise, catch-all use of the term) had taken root in many regions of Japan by the late sixth century, well before the construction of the Shōtoku legend and the compilations of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki.

The cultic vocabulary that Como describes is not a timeless one; rather, it is a fluid language that evolves in response to changes in social...

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