Shinto

The Meiji Orthodoxization of Shinto Kagura

In the late 19th century, Meiji reformers, impressed with the social cohesive effect of monotheism in the West, and under the banner of the Japanese emperor, took the more chaotic, polytheistic, syncretistic living Shinto tradition and tried to make it structured, based upon the ancient (Chinese import) Ritsuryo system, the Kojiki and the rites of the imperial family.

<a href="http://www.britannica.com/eb/print?tocId=23133">The Ritsuryo system</a> was basically the same sort of thing: Meiji part one. Or perhaps the Meiji reformation was Ritsuryo # 2. The Japanese government had been fiddling with Shinto throughout its history.The Shinto-Buddhist syncretism was as much a result of government interference as was the post Meiji Split. And no one knows what "Shinto" was like before the Ritsuryo.

With the introduction of the resultant Meiji State Shinto, there was then created a profession of centrally funded priests that had not existed for a thousand years. I am sure that many large shrines had their own priests and that some families were shrine owners and traditionally priests by profession from before the Meiji restoration, but it is my impression that the Meiji Restoration allowed only religion that was given the government seal of approval (chucking out all Buddhist effigies and monks from Shinto shrines - a process known as haibutsukishaku - and outlawing some forms of Japanese worship such as Shukendou for instance.

Prior to Meiji there were all sorts of religious practitioners but after Meiji, clergy were either a Kanushi with a particular rank or they were a propagator of "meishin" - superstition.

I think that Koujin (Aragami) Kagura, such as is
found in the Chuugoku (Okayama, Tottori, Shimane) region, was not allowed as one of the accepted expressions of Shinto (in the same way that Shukendo was not accepted either). So in the same way that Shukendou practitioners suddenly found themselves out of a job, labeled as 'lay persons', or worse, charlatans, there were also perhaps Kagura performers that also lost their job, that become suddenly classified as merely "villagers." There were many more semi-religious and religious practitioners, of healing, foretunetelling, exorcism, and perhaps traveling kagura troops, that would were outlawed in the great orthodoxization of Shinto that the Meiji Reformation brought about.

Koujin Kagura was performed in some rural villages partly with the purpose of deciding would be the next priest, since the role of priest in
the village was taken in turns, decided by lots drawn at the time of the
Kagura.

I have theorised (lamely, in vain) that the multitude of coloured paper strips festooned from the tengai (the crown) of the Kagura stage, that people seem to want to take home after the event may have something to do
with this drawing of lots and various rituals seen in totemic religions.

While there may have been some Kagura groups disbanded as a result of Meiji, there are too many roles in the average Kagura for all of them to have been performed by "priests". It seems to me that Koujin Kagura was very much a village event. But perhaps I have been biased by the events that I have seen in Shimane Prefecture. Events in which the whole community participates, which I would recommend to anyone. 

Originally posted to the Shinto Mailing List