Manuscript on fine paper, with manuscript title label on upper cover: "Sōgen gyōbō shidai" 宗源行法次第 ["Order of the Ritual of the Original Source"]

Ruled paper, 8 columns per page (or panel). Manuscript in orihon (accordion) format. One full-page diagram. Small 4to (179 x 160 mm.), orig. silk brocade over limp boards, gold front endpaper. [Japan]: on final leaf: 1615, but this is probably a slightly later copy.




Manuscript album with incantations and instructions for the Shinto "ritual of the original source" (sōgen gyōbō 宗源行法) by Shinryūin Bonshun (1553-1632), a major religious figure at a pivotal moment in Japanese history. The "ritual of the original source" was one of the major ritual cycles of so-called Yoshida Shinto, a religious movement named after its founder, Yoshida Kanemoto 吉田兼倶 (1435-1511). Yoshida contributed to establishing Shinto as a religious system on a par with other intellectual currents then present in Japan. However, in the Shinto rituals of his school, as exhibited in our manuscript, the Japanese belief in kami remained intertwined with Chinese yin and yang cosmology as well as Buddhism.


Shinryūin Bonshun was trained as a Buddhist monk. The temple that he directed, "the kami shrine temple of Toyo Province" (Toyokuni jingūji 豊国神宮寺) - today's Toyokuni Shrine in Kyoto - reflected this syncretism ("temple" being a Buddhist institution). Our album was written at a critical moment in the history of this temple and, indeed, of Japan. After the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in 1598, Bonshun was involved in enshrining him in the new temple. However, after the destruction of the Toyotomi clan at the hands of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1615, the temple was ordered destroyed, and its buildings were left to dilapidate. Ieyasu's siege of the Toyotomis' Osaka Castle began on the 26th day of the fourth month of 1615. The Preface to our manuscript is dated just two days later, on the 28th. Osaka fell early in the following month, and the days of Bonshun's temple were numbered. This ritual manual promises to give insight into religious practice at this important temple on the eve of its demise.


The classical Chinese text contains Japanese reading marks and glosses in red.


Final two leaves with dampstaining.



References


Scheid, Bernhard. Der Eine und Einzige Weg der Götter: Yoshida Kanetomo und die Erfindung des Shinto. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001.