Shōtoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition by Michael I.ComoReview by: James L. FordJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 128, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2008), pp. 755-757Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25608459 .

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Reviews of Books 755

Sh?toku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition. By Michael I. Como.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 240. $45.

The received image of Prince Sh?toku (Sh?toku Taishi, 5737-622?) is familiar to any student of

early Japanese history. A member of the powerful Soga family that had purported links to the Korean

peninsula, he is widely viewed as the father of Japanese Buddhism. Credited with initiating the con

struction of many temples including H?ry?ji, Sh?toku became the model sage-king because of his

penetrating knowledge of the Dharma and patronage of Buddhism. He is also acclaimed for playing a crucial role in the importation of Chinese models of governance and culture into Japan.

All of these dimensions (and more) of Sh?toku's hagiography are meticulously explored in this short but rich volume. Como begins by making an important distinction between the historical Prince

Kamitsumiya and the legendary figure of Sh?toku. He is far less interested in settling debates sur

rounding the historical details of Prince Kamitsumiya's life, but rather in the social, political, and re

ligious significance of the constructed Sh?toku image and legend. Most significantly, Como teases

out, through meticulous textual and cultural analysis, clues that point to the extraordinary influence

of a cluster of immigrant kinship groups. The irony is that Sh?toku, the paradigmatic sage-king who embodies in so many ways the ideals of Japanese culture, was a literary construction through which

these immigrant groups secured their status and inscribed their influence on a variety of critical di

mensions of Japanese culture including Buddhism, popular religion, and the importation of Chinese

ethics, models of kingship, and political structure. Sh?toku was, in many respects, the ultimate symbol

through which these influences were inscribed.

The book is divided into seven chapters, an introduction, and conclusion. Each chapter explores various dimensions of the Sh?toku legend and cult as they relate to various social, religious, and

political developments in early Japanese history. The first chapter examines the founding legend of

Japanese Buddhism and the integral role of competing immigrant kinship groups from the Korean

kingdoms of Silla and Paekche in depicting Sh?toku as a paradigm of the tradition. The Nihon shoki account of Buddhism's establishment is based primarily on the founding legend of the head temple of the Silla state temple network. Sh?toku became the symbol of Japanese rulership as culture giver,

guardian deity, and priest-king; ironically, all of these are based on models from abroad transmitted and interpreted by immigrant groups interested in securing their own legitimacy and authority. "Sh?toku

was transformed into a state deity," Como concludes, "only after the Paekche and Silla immigrants had recreated him in their own image of sacred kingship" (p. 27).

Chapter two establishes that immigrant kinship groups from the Koshi region (around Yamashiro

province) with strong connections to Kogury? in Korea played a major role in the popular rise of Pure

Land devotion. Moreover, the early conceptions of "pure lands" had strong connections to native beliefs

about tenjukoku (heavenly land of long life) and tokoyo (land of the ancestors/gods), which were deeply rooted in popular millennial movements devoted to immigrant deities that would arrive from across

the sea. Prince Kamitsumiya was believed to be the first figure in the Japanese islands to have attained

birth in "a Buddhist Pure Land," a belief that was instrumental in the spread and popularity of the

Sh?toku cult (p. 54). Chapter three details the role of these same immigrant kinship groups in the construction of the

ancestral cults and legends of the emerging royal house, particularly Qjin and Jing?. The centralization

and expansion of Yamato power involved numerous complex strategies that were in many ways de

pendent on immigrant groups. For example, after conquering immigrant kinship groups in northern

Ky?sh?, the Yamato leaders feared the retribution of the ancestors and gods of those groups. As a

result, they sponsored the construction of temples and periodic rituals to placate those deities who eventually became part of the central pantheon. "The picture that emerges," Como writes, "reveals the

substantial degree to which these kinship groups influenced the development not only of the Japanese Buddhist tradition but also popular religious movements and even the construction of the royal house's

lineal and cultic identity" (p. 11). Sh?toku is well known for reopening channels of communication and exchange with China during

the latter years of the Sui dynasty (589-618). He is purported to have dispatched three missions, which inaugurated a new wave of continental influence on all dimensions of Japanese culture. In chapter four,

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756 Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.4 (2008)

Como details the narrative structures and tropes of Chinese historical and divinatory texts that played an instrumental role in revisioning Yamato kingship and authority. In essence, the Yamato court adopted the Chinese system of power and knowledge, but this made them dependent upon the immigrant groups already familiar with these traditions. In the Nihon shoki, Como points out, it is foreign envoys, immi

grant gods, and immigrant monks that declare the Yamato rulers sages. "By establishing their own

ancestral legends as the basis of the court's understanding of sage kingship," Como observes, "these

[immigrant] kinship groups also ensured that the cultic centers and practices associated with their an

cestral cults became basic elements in royal myth and ritual" (p. 91).

Chapter five examines themes of violence, vengeance, and purification in the early Sh?toku cult.

By means of a detailed analysis of chimata (crossroads/highways) purification rites and resurrection, evident in the well-known legend of Sh?toku's encounter with a beggar on the road to Kataoka, Como

reveals links between the ideal sage and powers over death and retributive violence. According to the

Nihon shoki account, Sh?toku was able to recognize the dying beggar as an immortal (hijiri), a fact confirmed later by the beggar's resurrection. The people marveled, the narrative tells us, and said "It

is true that a sage knows a sage!" (p. 102). Como contends that the reinvention of Prince Kamitsumiya as a Buddhist sage may relate to his association with political violence. More specifically, he details

the links between the Prince's rise to prominence after the destruction of the main lineage of the

Mononobe clan that included the appropriation of their landholdings and slaves. Over half of the

spoils, the Nihon shoki reports, were given to Prince Kamitsumiya "who used them to build... a

temple in Naniwa that later came to be known as Shitenn?ji." Shitenn?ji eventually became the center

of the Sh?toku cult. Como concludes: "Sh?toku's ascendancy, as well as the cult that was created in

his name, were thus deeply rooted in violence and bloodshed" (p. 109). In the context of prevailing beliefs in ancestor cults that included the possible retribution of the angry ancestral deities and spirits, such violence foreshadowed fearful consequences requiring propitiatory ritual actions. The new re

ligious ideal type?hijiri?correlated sagehood with the ability to overcome death and even achieve

resurrection as exemplified in Sh?toku's encounter with the beggar at Kataoka.

Chapters six and seven examine connections between Sh?toku and various prominent figures within

early Buddhism such as Gy?ki, D?ji, Ganjin, and Saich?. Como notes that the immigrant kinship groups at the forefront of the Sh?toku cult, vital to the construction of temples, roadways, and water

ways, were essential to the expansion of Buddhism and Gy?ki's popular mendicant movement. Gy?ki and Sh?toku are often connected in popular Buddhist legends such as those found in the Nihon ry?iki collection. Indeed, Como argues that the preoccupation with spirit pacification among the cultic fol

lowers of Sh?toku influenced critical aspects of Gy?ki's movement that emphasized begging and

mendicancy. Chapter seven highlights the efforts of monks like D?ji, Ganjin, and Saich? in fostering Sh?toku's image as Dharma King. D?ji, for example, played an instrumental role in promoting Sh?

toku as the paradigm for sacred kingship and as a protecting spirit for the court. The power struggle between the Fujiwara and Prince Nagaya resulted in the latter committing suicide in 729. Shortly there

after, four Fujiwara members on the court succumbed to the plague compelling Fujiwara Emperor

K?my?, at the behest of D?ji, to turn to the spirit of Sh?toku for protection. In 739 D?ji encouraged the court to sponsor reconstruction of H?ry?ji including a building that served as the mausoleum for

Sh?toku. Sh?toku thus became the guardian deity for the troubled Fujiwara and the court. Each of these chapters offers a meticulous and methodologically sophisticated analysis of the critical

role of a cluster of immigrant groups in the hagiographic creation of Sh?toku, the most revered figure in early Japanese history. More importantly, Como unveils the broader influence of these groups, who

formed the core of the early Sh?toku cult, on dimensions of Japanese culture well beyond the domain

of Buddhism. "In so doing," Como writes, "they played an extraordinary role in fashioning the con

ceptual vocabulary with which the Japanese imagined themselves and their world for centuries to come" (p. 12). This is perhaps no better exemplified than in the critical role these groups played in the spread and adoption of Chinese cultural paradigms.

The extraordinary influence of Chinese culture?political, religious, textual, and technological?on

the formation of the early Japanese state is hardly a novel insight. It is also not difficult to see how

Sh?toku served as an authorizing symbol for this process. He is well known for sending, after a lengthy hiatus in contact, emissaries to China, which inaugurated an intense period of cultural exchange. Sh?

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Reviews of Books 757

toku's Seventeen-Article Constitution incorporated Confucian ethics and Chinese bureaucratic ideals.

He is also credited with adopting the Chinese calendar and is frequently depicted as an expert in the Chinese literary tradition that became the basis for cultural and political advancement. All of this is well known. What is less obvious is the critical role played by immigrant groups in this emerging Chinese cultural hegemony. The fact is that these groups were already well versed in the Chinese

classical tradition. Indeed, the degree to which these classics defined cultural authority was directly pro

portional to the degree of influence and cultural capital held by those same groups. As Como points out, it is not a coincidence that Sh?toku, whose cult and legendary tradition emanated from the very

temples patronized by the immigrant groups, became the symbol for Chinese cultural knowledge.

This, in short, is a study that exemplifies the highest ideals in scholarship. Pushing beyond the well-worn debates over the historicity of a figure like Sh?toku, Como unveils the critical contextual factors and competing interests out of and for which Sh?toku's hagiography was constructed. The ex

traordinary influence of a relatively small collection of immigrant groups from the Korean peninsula on the social, political, and religious world of early Japan?influences still evident in contemporary

Japan?is astonishing. Some of Como's bold assertions will no doubt inspire heated debates, but the

various disciplines invoked will only benefit from the deliberations to follow. Overall, this is a beautifully constructed volume with a helpful glossary. The only obvious short

coming is the lack of a few much needed maps. It is quite frustrating, particularly in the early chapters that make frequent reference to obscure provinces and cultic sites, not to have a contemporary pro vincial map of Japan for reference. In addition, a map indicating the general location of various

immigrant groups, their cultic sites, and geographic spheres of influence, would also be extremely beneficial. If this volume is ever published in paperback, these would be helpful additions. All in all, these are minor shortcomings. Indeed, this study will be a critical read for all students of early Japanese history and culture for decades to come.

James L. Ford

Wake Forest University

The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History of Interpretations. By Mariana Giovino. Orbis Biblicus et

Orientalis, vol. 230. Freiburg: Academic Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 242, illus. FS 98.

While the art of the ancient Near East is well known, one could argue that its visual culture remains

poorly understood. Central to such an argument might be the strange tree-like motif that appears in the Syro-Mesopotamian area in the second millennium b.c.e. and reaches its high point of use in the

Late Assyrian period. Researchers have yet to fully explain this clearly important artistic element. Mariana Giovino has undertaken the task of tracing the various interpretations of this "Assyrian Sacred Tree" since its discovery over 150 years ago, highlighting both well-known and obscure scholarly works that still influence analysis today.

The resulting book is divided into four main parts. The first deals with nineteenth-century ideas about the Tree (as I refer to Giovino's "Assyrian Sacred Tree" henceforth). As Giovino shows, the

main lines of interpretation, all biblically based to some extent, appear in this period: the Tree as rep

resenting a "tree of life"; the Tree as a straightforward, iconic depiction of a cultic object; and what became the dominant idea, the Tree as a stylized rendering of a tree, often a date palm, and sometimes "fertilized" or "purified" by attendant genies. The second part follows these proposals and others, which ascribe a wider range of symbolic meanings to the Tree, through the twentieth and into the twenty first centuries. The third and fourth parts focus on the proposal that the Tree represents an actual cultic

object, Giovino's preferred interpretation. In these sections, she reviews archaeological evidence of both artificial trees and furniture fittings that are similar to elements of the Tree.

For the specialist scholar interested in the intellectual development of ancient Near Eastern art his

tory, Giovino's exhaustive research will provide many stimulating details and occasional insights into

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