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カテゴリー1： 5. Rites and Festivals
カテゴリー2： Rituals in Daily Life
Title
Shinsōsai (Shinto Funeral Rites)
Text
The term Shinsōsai refers to funeral rites in a Shintō as opposed to Buddhist style. During the Edo Period, the Tokugawa bakufu instituted a temple registration system (terauke seido) in order to suppress Christianity. All Japanese were required to register as the parishoner of a particular Buddhist temple and funerals were to be held in the Buddhist style. However, there were priests among the Shintō clergy who perceived theirs to be the indigenous faith; they petitioned the government for permission to conduct Shintō funerary rites, basing their appeal on the bakufu's own rules pertaining to the Shintō priesthood (Shosha negi kannushi shohatto). With the modern period, Shintō rites have also generally come to be among the types of funeral service one may see.

The origin and development of Shinsōsai

The vestiges of uniquely Shintō funeral customs can faintly be seen in the mythological account of the rites performed for Amewakahiko, as recorded in the Kojiki: "They built a funeral house and had a river goose act as the bearer of the burial offerings, a heron the broom-bearer, a kingfisher the bearer of the food offerings, a sparrow the grinding woman, and a pheasant the weeping woman. Having done all of this, they sang and danced for eight days and eight nights." (34:3-4) Buddhist clergy may be seen becoming involved with funeral rites as early as those for Emperor Temmu, in which monks and nuns participated in the wailing and eulogizing ceremony at the transitional resting place (arakinomiya) for the body. Moreover, his consort and successor, Empress Jitō, chose cremation for his remains. One also strongly senses the impact of Buddhism from a passage in the Shoku-nihongi (Continued Record of Japan) that notes: "Cremations in the realm began with the priest Dōshō," assuming it reflects contemporary sensibilities. Thus, the Buddhist clergy's involvement in Japanese funerals begins at the end of the seventh century, though the mode of their participation can be seen taking its archetypal form in the Heian Period with the funeral of Emperor Go-ichijō (1008-36). Yin-Yang masters divined an auspicious date and time for the funeral and conducted ground-purification ceremonies at the site, while Buddhist monks made prayers and read sutras over and over. The emperor's attendants, meanwhile, carried out such rites as the hinden-igyo no gi (ceremony at the transitional resting place of the imperial remains) and the gusen no gi (ceremonial offerings of food) conducted at the funeral house) that are the essence of the funeral ceremony. While the concurrent expansion of the Pure Land faith may leave one with the impression that around that time that Buddhist priests presided over funerary rites in their entirety, their involvement was in fact only partial. This pattern is thought to have extended its reach thereafter and gradually become entrenched in the funerary customs of the masses. Buddhist involvement in funerals peaked under the temple registration system imposed by the Tokugawa bakufu. Thus, the structure of Japanese funerals as seen to this day is one formed through retaining indigenous practices while layering Buddhist rites on top.
Amid these trends in Japanese funeral practices, the project of trying to establish a "pure" form of Shintō (Yuiitsu Shintō) completely independent of the Buddhist rites began with Yoshida Kanetomo. Funerals conducted after Kanemoto's day would sometimes be conducted without the participation of Buddhist clergy in the Yoshida style. Shintō priests began demanding such rites in earnest during the mid-Edo Period, when Buddhist temples became deeply involved in funerals. The late Edo period saw Shintō priests organizing into groups to demand their being exempted from the temple registration requirement. The bakufu eventually allowed priests and their legitimate offspring to be exempted from temple registration and condoned the conducting of jisō ("autonomous funerals," at the time referring to shinsōsai), limited to those individuals who had received permission from the Yoshida family. Generally, a priest's family was not exempted from temple registration, but in some domains they were recognized as shrine officiates and therefore exempted. One noteworthy example of the anti-registration movement was that which arose in the Tsuwano domain of Iwami Province (in present-day Shimane Prefecture). The movement was led by Oka Kumaomi, a priest of the shrine Tominagayama Hachimangu. The exemption was granted in 1847, and in 1867 the domain's government implemented a policy for funerals to be held as Shintō services. Kamei Koremi, the daimyō of Tsuwano, and his retainer Fukuba Yoshishizu were later appointed to the new Meiji government's Bureau of Divinities (Jingi Jimukyoku) due to their successes with religious policy in the domain. They made a considerable mark on bureau policy. In 1868, the first year of the Meiji Period and era, the bureau issued directive number 320, stating: "It is hereby proclaimed that funerals for Shintō clergy and their family members shall henceforth be conducted in accordance with shinsōsai rites." In 1872, the government issued legislation prohibiting autonomous funerals (jisō) and requiring that rites be performed by either Shintō (shinkan) or Buddhist priests. That same year, the Grand Council of State (Dajōkan) issued Proclamation Number 192, allowing shinkan Shintō priests to conduct funerals if so requested by their shrine parishioners (ujiko). In 1882, shinkan priests designated to perform official state rites were barred from involvement in funerary rites. However, the status quo was maintained with respect to the shinkan of shrines at the prefectural and local levels. Furthermore, because the schools of sectarian Shintō were permitted to hold funerals, the practice spread quite broadly among their adherents. The system continued until Japan's defeat in 1945, after which these various laws were abolished and Shintō funerals could freely take place. Though Budhist rites continue to account for the great majority of Japanese funerals, there is a growing demand for Shintō services.

Shintō Funeral Procedures

The late Edo Period in particular saw publication of numerous personally compiled manuals for Shintō funerals. Noted examples include Furukawa Mitsura's Sōgiryaku [Funeral rite outline] and the Tsuwano Clan's Sōgi-yōroku [Funeral rite essentials] and Reisai-yōroku [(Shintō) Funeral rite essentials]. Zhu Xi's Family Rituals (Ch. Jiali, J. Karei), a source text for Confucian funeral rituals, had considerable influence in the process of drafting these manuals. In the fifth month of 1872, the Ministry of Religious Education (Kyōbushō) enacted the Sōsai-ryakushiki [Summary of funeral customs], which established an official Shintō ceremonial procedure. The various Shintō sects also developed their own forms. The procedures in present-day Shrine Shintō are laid out in two publications, the Sho-saishiki-yōkō [Essentials of All Festivals and Ceremonies] and the Shinsōsai no Shiori [Guide to Shintō Funerals], published by the Association of Shintō Shrines (Jinja-Honchō). The main rituals that according to Shinsōsai no Shiori comprise the service are: (1) makura-naoshi no gi (pillow-adjustment rite); (2) nōkan no gi (coffin rite); (3) kyūzen-nikku no gi (rite of providing daily food offerings to the deceased); (4) ubusuna-jinja ni kiyū-hōkoku (rite of reporting to the deities the return of the spirit to their natal shrine); (5) bosho-jichinsai or batsujo no gi (gravesite ground-breaking or purification rite); (6) tsūyasai no gi (a ritual wake); (7) senrei no gi (rite for transferring the deceased spirit); (8) hakkyūsai no gi (rite to send the coffin off from the room); (9) hakkyū- go-batsujo no gi (room purification rite after sending off the coffin); (10) sōjōsai no gi (grave-side rites); (11) maisōsai or kasōsai no gi (interment or crematory rite); (12) the kikasai no gi (the rite of the family's return home). Rites are also commonly repeated for the deceased's spirit later before the temporary altar (mitamaya, lit. "spiritual abode") erected within the family house (yokujitsusai) on the following day, every tenth day after the death (maitōkasai i.e. on the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth, fiftieth days after the date of death), on the one-hundredth day, and on the one-year anniversary. The one-year rite is followed by the gōshisai, a rite marking the deceased's joining with ancestral spirits at the family shrine. (This is sometimes held after the 50th or 100th day observances).
Needless to say, the worldview (sekaikan) underlying these rites differs from that preached in Buddhism, reflecting traditional Shintō conceptions of the afterlife. The contrast can be most clearly seen in the practice of kuzen, whereby the deceased is offered a portion of regular family meals, reflecting the belief that the spirit of the loved one continues to be near the home, living as before. The kuzen of the Shintō funeral ritual thus holds deep meaning; in contrast, no particular significance is attached to the food offerings of the Buddhist service. Normally, the senrei no gi—in which the spirit of the deceased is transferred to and placed in repose within a reiji (spirit vessel)—will be performed at the time of the ritual wake; the remains will be interred at a graveyard (in an okutsuki, the Shintō term for "grave"). The reiji is placed in its temporary abode until the end of the mourning period, when it is joined with those of the family's ancestors, thereby assuming the role of an eternal household-protecting deity. For this reason, both the temporary abode and the grave may continue to serve as sites for commemoration after interment. After the rites for sending off the coffin and burial are performed, the family returns home for the kikasai and the performance of the seibatsu no gi (purification rite), the latter symbolized by the salt sprinkled about after funerals in Japan. This, too, is a tradition that derives from the "broom bearer" tale found in Japanese mythology. The kuzen food offerings and seibatsu purification rites have now passed into Japanese Buddhist rituals as well, testifying to the tenaciousness of traditional rituals. In one respect, this signals a rejection of the Buddhist vision of the afterlife; the shinsōsai funeral rites may be said to incorporate Japan's pre-Buddhist worldview.
— Motegi Sadazumi

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