Yengishiki

Impact

The Yengishiki was completed and presented to the emperor in 927. However, its immediate impact was nil, for revisions continued to be made in the decades that followed, and the provisions of the text were not implemented until 967. At the time, there was no hurry, for many of the provisions of the Yengishiki were already contained in earlier books, notably the Konin-shiki of 820 and the Jogan-shiki of 871. Further, in the decades that followed, Japan continued to experience a degree of political turmoil. Suzaku became the titular emperor in 930, with Fujiwara Tadahira serving as regent (one who rules for a monarch who is a minor) until 949, after Murakami became the hereditary emperor in 946. In the meantime, the power of landed and wealthy clans in the provinces continued to grow. The central government continued to lose power and influence outside the capital, giving rise to rebellions. One example was the rebellion led by Taira Masakado, who created a kingdom in the Kanto area and proclaimed himself emperor. Thus, the release of the Yengishiki did not occur until 967, with the ascension of Emperor Reizai to the throne.

One concrete impact of the Yengishiki has to do with its list of official Shinto shrines—2,861 of them. The Yengishiki also enshrines 3,132 “heavenly and earthly deities,” allocating them to provinces and districts. Throughout the country, people took pride in the fact that their shrine was a shikinaisha, or “shrine listed in the shiki.” In the centuries that followed, a class of national scholars called kokugaku devoted considerable study to the portions of the Yengishiki having to do with the norito (prayers) as well as to the list of deities. They wrote commentaries, including Norito ko (“On Norito”) by Kamo no Mabuchi, Engishiki norito kogi (“Lectures on Engishiki Norito”) by Suzuki Shigetane, and Jinmyocho kosho (“Studies of Jinmyocho”) by Ban Nobutomo. At the same time, aristocrats venerated the Yengishiki and transmitted it to their descendants, for they regarded it as a primary source for annual rites and court protocols.

Together with the Kojiki, the Yengishiki continues to define Shinto. In the nineteenth century, Shinto became a way of marshalling the support of the people and fostering a sense of intense patriotism in the face of Western expansionism. Into the twentieth century, Shinto and emperor worship—of the kind fostered in the early texts—justified the aggressive expansion of the Japanese empire throughout the Pacific in the 1930s and after the outbreak of World War II. This period of “State Shinto” ended abruptly in 1945 with the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, and the Japanese emperor then abandoned his claim that he ruled by divine authority or that he was a living god. Because Shinto had been used to justify the excesses of Japanese nationalism and the desire for territory before and during the war, many Japanese people became disillusioned with Shinto, and the number of people who identified themselves as followers of Shinto fell sharply. Still, many Japanese continued to practice Shinto rituals. After World War II, Shinto reverted to a kind of folk religion. People visit Shinto shrines, for example, to improve their lot in life by remaining on good terms with their ancestors and the kami. New religions have emerged in Japan, many of them incorporating Shinto beliefs. Shinto has become not a state-sponsored religion but a set of cultural values that in large part define Japanese culture, a culture that, in turn, was defined in part by the Yengishiki.