ABSTRACT
A common view of Shinto is that it is a primitive religion native to Japan which has endured to the present day. According to this view, after Buddhism was introduced, Shinto was gradually assimilated into a Buddhist framework. This chapter utilizes the cult of Kasuga Shrine, in Nara, as an example to highlight that kenmitsu bukkyo including Shinto was Japan’s indigenous religious tradition. Tsuji Zennosuke argues that the beginning of honji suijaku thinking, in mid-Heian, shows that Japanese thought and culture are becoming independent. He dates Koshaki, a Kasuga Shrine document which gives a list of honji and suijaku, as post-1234 rather than the 940 it purports to because of the date in a calendar on the back of the manuscript he examined. Conflict between what was proper behaviour towards the kami and towards the buddhas did not go away when the kami were seen as the manifestations of the buddhas.
