PARISH (DANKA, TERAUKE) SYSTEM IN JAPAN

Parish temples (alternately dannadera, dankadera, or bodaiji) constitute over 90 percent of Buddhist temples in contemporary Japan. These terms have their etymology in the Sanskrit word dĀna (giving) and were used during the medieval period to refer to major temple patrons. The broader concept of a "parish" in Japan, however, emerged during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868) as the predominant Buddhist temple affiliation method for ordinary lay members. The practice of organizing Buddhist adherents into parishes stems from the Tokugawa government's anti-Christian (Kirishitan) campaigns and ordinances of 1613 and 1614. Christianity, which had achieved a foothold in certain regions during the sixteenth century through the efforts of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries, was increasingly seen by the new Tokugawa regime as a subversive force and a threat to their hegemony. The threat of Christianity, as seen from the perspective of government officials, lay less with its biblical teachings and doctrines, than with the issue of Christian loyalty to God and the pope rather than to the Tokugawa government's secular authority. This led to a ban on Christianity in 1614.

To ensure that no Japanese person remained a Christian, the government ordered "Investigations of Christians" (Kirishitan aratame) to be conducted in each domain. Former Christians were certified by the local Buddhist temple and village officials as no longer Christians but as parish members of a Buddhist temple. The first surveys of Christians, begun in 1614, were followed by more extensive surveys ordered by the government in 1659 in which not only the parish temple, but the village goningumi (a unit of five households sharing mutual responsibility) were required to attest that no one in their group was a Christian. By 1670 the practice of temple investigation and registration (tera-uke seido) had become almost universal when a standardized temple registration certificate was adopted by Buddhist temples across all regions of Japan. This document certified that parishioners were neither Christians nor Nichirenfuju fuse members (a sect of Nichiren Buddhism banned by the government in 1669). Although the Buddhist temple held primary responsibility for monitoring and reporting on its parishioners to the village head, each village head had to gather these certificates in order to compile reports called shūmon aratamechō (Registry of Religious Affiliation), also known as shūmon ninbetsuchō or shūshi aratamechō.

These registries helped authorities monitor and control the populace by using Buddhist temples and local authorities to maintain detailed records, weeding out any persons who might be a potential threat to the government. From the perspective of the average parishioner, the practice of temple registration legally obligated them ritually and economically to their parish temple under the threat of being branded a "heretic," which continued to have meaning even as the possibility of Christian subversion of the government disappeared.

Temple membership was not an individual affair; rather, the unit of religious affiliation was the emergent unit of social organization, the "household" (ie). Thus, from the mid-Tokugawa period onward, the term danka (used interchangeably with danna), which includes the Chinese character for household, became the dominant term for parish households. For each household, the main benefit of membership was the funerary and ongoing memorial services that temples provided for all household members. Temple grounds also served as the location for the family gravestones. Thus, once a family registered as a member of a particular temple, that affiliation continued for successive generations during which sect changes were virtually impossible.

Parish temples emphasized parishioners' obligation toward the temple in terms of financial support and attendance of funerals and ancestral rites. Whether it be to pay for rituals or temple construction, it is clear that parishioners were not simply asked to support their parish temple, they were obligated to do so. The consequences of not doing so resulted in parishioners being branded heretics.

In ritual terms, the parish temple also became virtually synonymous with "funerary Buddhism," where death rituals, as opposed to meditation, sūtra study, or prayers for worldly benefits, became the main ritual practice. Beyond the funeral proper, Buddhist parish priests performed death rites throughout the year. Memorial services were routinely performed for thirty-three years following a death. Services were also performed for various classes of deceased people, such as hungry ghosts (Sanskrit, preta), ancestors, and women and children who had died during childbirth. Large festivals for the dead, such as the summer Obon festival for ancestors or the Segaki festival for hungry ghosts, marked important moments in each temple's annual ritual calendar. This preoccupation with ritualizing death was intimately tied to the emergence of the Buddhist parish temples during the Tokugawa period. Hereditary parishioners, who associated the parish temple with the proper maintenance of funerary rites and family customs, provided the ritual and economic backbone of Buddhist temples. The parish system in Japan, originally established as a method to monitor Christians, eventually became the basic organizational structure for Japanese Buddhism into the modern period.

See also:Nationalism and Buddhism; Temple System in Japan

Bibliography

Marcure, Kenneth. "The Danka System." Monumenta Nipponica 40, no. 1: 39–67.

Tamamuro Fumio. "Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu's Governance Structure." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28, nos. 3–4 (2001): 260–292.

Williams, Duncan. "Representation of Zen: A Social and Institutional History of Sōtō Zen Buddhism in Edo Japan." Ph.D. diss. Harvard University, 2000.

Duncan Williams