ABSTRACT
This book discusses a central issue in the history of pre-modern Japanese religion, namely the idea that local, native deities (kami) are emanations of universal, Buddhist divinities — a notion known in Japanese as honji suijaku (“original forms of deities and their local traces”). It was this idea that lay at the basis of Buddhist cults of kami, of the incorporation of kami shrines in Buddhist temples, and of the development of Buddhist-inspired kami cults which at a later stage developed into an independent religion, namely Shinto. “Originals” refers to the Buddhist divinities that show their compassion for the Japanese by appearing in their distant land, in the periphery of the Buddhist world, as “temporary emanations” — in the guise of kami who are now understood to be “traces” of Buddhist “originals.”
