ABSTRACT
Religion figured prominently in all the developments that characterized medieval Japanese society. The people of medieval Japan thus experienced a greater range of religious diversity than during any other period of Japanese history prior to contemporary times. Within this complexity, three sets of developments stand out as especially noteworthy: the birth of religious historiography; the maturation and nationwide diffusion of the aristocratic Buddhist organizations of central Japan; and the appearance of new Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian religious movements. Renewed cultural exchanges with the continent, the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, and the threat of foreign invasion seems to have awakened in medieval Japanese a need to explain their own unique historical circumstances. The exoteric-esoteric Buddhism of medieval Japan generally advocated the one-vehicle doctrine of universal salvation and universal Buddha nature. The emergence of Shinto out of its original Buddhist context (as Buddhist Shinto or "jindo") and its development as a separate religion occurred after the end of the medieval period.
