ABSTRACT
The twenty-two shrines, first shrines and provincial shrines that were the object of official worship lost their private land holdings in the anarchy at the end of the medieval period. This process was halted by the land surveys which Toyotomi Hideyoshi instigated. The land surveys ended once and for all the complex system of private land holdings (sho¯en), but for shrines Hideyoshi issued licences (shuinjo¯) which recognised and guaranteed their land. With the subsequent establishment of the bakufu in Edo, the Tokugawa military rulers first confiscated the licensed lands from the twenty-two shrines but then issued their own licences in certain limited cases; they also set aside funding for shrine buildings. At the same time, it became the practice in some domains for daimyo¯ to donate land anew to the first shrines and provincial shrines in the area. We have seen how government began to dispatch emissaries bearing offerings to the Ise shrines but to none other. In 1645, it then dispatched imperial emissaries to the To¯sho¯gu¯ shrine which coincided with the emperor granting miya status to the To¯sho¯gu¯. All this was part and parcel of bakufu efforts to enhance the legitimacy of the To¯sho¯gu¯; it was not a general resumption of the medieval court’s practice of dispatching emissaries. In this way, the twenty-two shrines and the various first and provincial shrines, too, lost the social autonomy they had retained throughout the medieval period, and were placed instead under the supervision and protection of the bakufu and the various domains.
