Crossing the borders

While the lack of Japanese Daoist institutions and a definitive set of Japanese Daoist practices has made it problematic to ascertain the degree to which Daoism has taken root in Japan as an organized religion, there is still value to be found in analyzing the way in which Daoist elements were infused into Japanese religiosity and thus contributed to the enrichment of Japanese culture. Other than a lack of institutions and practitioners who identified themselves as Daoist in nature, even Japanese scholarship concerning onmyōdō 陰陽道 (the Way of yīn 陰 and yáng 陽), one of the few religions in Japan that shares the greatest relation to Daoism in terms of its practices and rituals, mostly prefers to emphasize the distinct localized nature of this religious practice and declines to differentiate onmyōdō from Daoism. ¹ While it might be the case that onmyōdō later developed its own system of rituals and interpretations of Hàn 漢 dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) Chinese cosmology, its early formation originated, and benefited greatly, from Daoist techniques and lore.