Not Stuck in the Past: Archaeology and Ritual in Japan’s Buddhist Hinterland

Ritual is about time. Ritual marks the passage of time – and its ruptures – at the same time that it draws connections between times past and the present. It is surprising then to learn that archaeology, which takes as its object of study actual objects, and as a primary goal the understanding of social change through time has often been seen as the scholarly discipline least suited to the interpretation of religion and ritual in the past. But with the gradual movement towards practice – rather than just belief – as an analytic in the study of religion, so too have archaeologists found an understanding of religion on the basis of practice as a feasible pursuit in the study of the human past through its material worlds.

This paper takes up the archaeology of ritual by rooting it in the context of early medieval Japan. In addition to boasting what is likely the most extensively studied archaeological record in the world today, Japan is fertile ground for considering the relationship between archaeology, ritual, and time because of the ways in which archaeology – as a way of knowing – is rooted in contemporary society. From television dramas and local historical societies to the participation of locals alongside scholarly and commercial contract archaeologists in survey, excavation, and the promotion of new discoveries, archaeology in Japan is public. Any work on the past invariably involves interaction with the present.

The work that I share in this presentation is the result of five years of archival and archaeological fieldwork in the mountains north of Kyoto. Historically, this was Japan’s hinterland – the border region of the capital – which existed simultaneously as a region of rhetorical distance – often seen as a dark and distant wilderness – at the same time that it enjoyed an influx of the capital’s cultural and economic exports. Host to agricultural communities from the time of the capital’s inception in the late 8th century, the eleventh century saw a significant movement of people to this area with the rise of reclusion among the Buddhist priesthood. Buddhist recluses moved to the mountains, caves, and forests near existing villages and established dwellings where they could read, write, and practice in autonomy, relative at least to their highly regimented lives in the urban monasteries. In their new lives in the hinterland, these monks consistently engaged with local workers living nearby. Along with relying on these groups for their subsistence, many of these hinterland monks also shared the fruits of their religious training, incorporating their own ritual practices with those of the people living nearby. It was through these interactions – and negotiations between the interests of these monks and the locals – that the capital’s hinterland became a florid landscape of new Buddhist and religious practices and ideas. These were influential for many of the developments that we associate with religion and its relationship with society in medieval Japan.

By way of example, I discuss recent evidence for some of the new practices – and forms of material culture – that arose at the hinterland temple Katsuragawa myōōin and nearby shrines on agricultural estates in the 12th century. As a result of the collaboration between hinterland monks, peoples, and existing local cults, there developed a series of ritual practices involving the creation and consolidation of portable, wooden pagodas as dedicatory objects. These developments were the result of a series of negotiations between these groups and were influential in the later transformation of the wooden pagoda as an essential part of the materiality of death, agriculture, and fertility.

This example of research on ritual in the medieval hinterland not only suggests the utility of archaeology for the study of premodern Japanese religion, but also the ways in which archaeological research programs inevitably place the researcher in conversation with contexts in the present. A significant component of my own research in this area has involved not only the results of archival research, survey, and material data but also collaborations with the existing community of stakeholders. Today, these regions boast small but vocal village communities with established village associations and local heritage societies actively involved in the maintenance, communication, and revitalization of their local histories. Inspired in part by my ongoing work in community-collaborative archaeology at Amache National Historic Site in Granada, CO, a former World War II Japanese American incarceration center that has become a center for community-based archaeology, my work on Japan’s hinterland has come to draw from these interactions in the present to develop a collaborative research program with area scholars and stakeholders.

Even if the rituals that we study were enacted in the past, there remain those for whom this past is critical for identity, heritage, and self-understanding. An archaeology or ritual in the past invariably incorporates encounters with those for whom this past matters in the present. By sharing ongoing conversations about the archaeology of ritual and community-collaborative research as they have taken form in the discipline of archaeology with those working in the study of Japanese religions, I hope to contribute to a discussion of how methodologies for studying ritual in the past and present can both be brought into dialogue as well as accommodated for the benefit of our research programs and the existing communities for whom our work matters. In the same way that ritual joins the past to the present, its interrogation in archaeological contexts – and as a source of heritage - reveals the ways in which the study of the past always involves the present.