ABSTRACT
Ever since buddhism was officially introduced into Japan in 552, efforts have been made to combine it with native or preexisting cults later lumped together under the term ‘Shinto’. Fundamental differences between the two religions made the process difficult. Preexisting Shinto systems were more archaic, focusing on maintaining the order of this world, human harmony, and agricultural abundance. Despite the centralization of ‘imperial Shinto’, Shinto cults were often strictly local in character and scope and limited to a single or close group of communities. Buddhism, however, is a more eschatological and universal religion, encompassing all and everything: in Shinto, life is basically good and is, therefore, accepted; in Buddhism, life is suffering and hence is undesirable. The ultimate aim of Buddhist belief and practice is to gain enlightenment and thereby to be saved from a cycle of physical reincarnations, ranked from less painful existences to those unimaginable and excruciatingly painful.
