3: Temple life in traditional Japan
Who lived at a temple and what were their roles?
The English historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell piqued my interest because it follows a woman who is forcibly sent to live at a monastery at Mount Shiranui Shrine. Lodgers are systematically abused and prevented from leaving. The killing of lodgers is hidden from their families, who believe they remain alive. Things like this happened to people sent to live in Indian residential schools in North America and in German camps for the disabled during the Nazi era. This certainly cast a very different light on what the Japenese Geel might have been like.
However, details of abuse from the novel come from global events, not Edo Japan specifically. While there was doubtless abuse at secluded temple communities, there’s not evidence that this was widespread and systematic. Folklore includes stories of corrupt Buddhist temples, sorcerous mountain monasteries, and hidden cults. Temples and Shrines were tightly regulated by the Shogun’s representatives, who had the authority to cut off their income.
Edo-period religious institutions sometimes operated in secluded, hierarchical, and insular ways. Some had strict internal rules and regulated movement, similar to monasteries in Europe. Religious institutions often had significant economic and political power. Wealthy temples and shrines might run agricultural estates, commercial ventures, pilgrim hostels, and training centers for monks or ascetics.
Shrine communities were led by priests (kannushi), shrine maidens (miko), and their servants. Shrines also hosted itinerant ascetics (yamabushi). Like in Europe, families sometimes sent children, usually boys, to Buddhist temples to receive education, religious training, and discipline or moral reform. This was also the fate of orphans and children whose families could not care for them, but had the means to pay for their care. These children might return home and lead secular lives or might join the clergy. Other members of the clergy were older people who had retired from another life and brought their families with them. Clergy were outside of the caste system and were generally exempt from pollution concerns, since they conducted purification rituals.
Lay lodgers came to temple communities for spiritual reasons, personal reasons, and even seasonal work. Pilgrims (junrei) often stayed in temple or shrine hostels (shukubō), with local families (o-settai) as guests. These were paying guests, although they may pay for their stay partly by performing labor. Lay lodgers might include courtiers who were currently out of favor and were either trying to lay low or had actually been exiled from court.
Families sometimes sent sick relatives, troubled relatives, disabled individuals, and elderly dependents to live at or near shrines/temples for care, convalescence, or religious benefit. This did not change their status. Being disabled did not automatically change one’s caste. If someone could not be economically supported by their family or disrupted social hierarchy, they would become eta. Staying at a shrine or temple did not change one’s caste, either. Status restoration (mibun kaifuku) was granted only by authorities. Religious institutions did not have the authority to adjust caste.
Pilgrim hostels were run by temples, shrines, and town guilds (machi-shū) and were open to people of all castes, including hinin. Life as a pilgrim offered opportunities for hinin and eta to blend in and avoid discrimination, since many pilgrims wore standardized pilgrim attire. Individual hostels had their own policies for who to accept. It was common to require beggars and itinerants to be licenced and for pilgrims to have papers (fuda). Shrine hostels were the most restrictive in who was allowed to stay.
This suggests that areas which became known for hosting the mad were simply those which accepted them as lodgers, as opposed to establishments and towns which were more selective. Some temples did specialize in specific social issues. Tokeiji temple in Kamakura was the most famous of several temples that took in women who had fled their husbands. Tokeiji was a nunnery where no man could enter the temple grounds. Temple authorites would negotiate divorces and could even grant a divorce without the cooperation of the husband.
In the Edo period, temple communities and outcaste communities were both connected and separate. Eta lived in eta-mura and worked in specific, hereditary trades. Hinin lived in hinin-goya, often near temple gates. Hinin included beggars, people being punished by status demotion, some entertainers, and sick or disabled individuals who had been abandoned by their families.
Temples and shrines existed in every settlement. The shrine or temple would be in the center or in a special location in the settlement. The authorities either encouraged or explicitly required the grouping of craftsmen and merchant by kind in order to facilitate control.
The eta-mura would be at the edge or just outside, in an area assigned to them and regulated by authorities. Eta-mura often had substantial, multi-generation houses. The eta-mura could be likened to pariah villages of premodern India and legally segregated artisan castes in premodern Korea. I make sense of them by thinking of the restriction of groups to ghettos, but eta status is not an ethnicity or race.
Hinin-goya were near bridges, gates, riverbanks, and the outer grounds of temples because these were associated with cleansing. Hinin often lived in huts or shacks, lacking the homes and land eta might have. Hinin-goya could be compared to beggar colonies, leper houses, penal poorhouses, and tiny house villages for the homeless.
In larger temple complexes there were hospitals (Hōjō), poor houses (kōsha or yōkō), and pharmacies, just like the European monastaries. The first officially administered Buddhist temple in Japan – Shitenno-ji, established in Osaka in 593 – had all three. Like in Europe, hospitals did not focus on acute care and often housed patients long-term. These charitable institutions primarily cared for hinin, eta, and travelers.
The eta and hinin had designated roles that only they could perform. Only the hinin could perform the tasks of policing, sanitation, and regulated begging. While only eta could handle dead bodies, women and servants of different castes regularly performed care work. Eta would be hired to care for seriously ill people whose care involved significant contact with blood or pus. Hinin could serve as midwives and in other caregiving roles. Generally, though, care work was not caste restricted.
Shrines generally avoided interacting with outcaste groups in order to maintain their purity. Temples did not have the same concerns and provided charity to outcastes. Hinin would assist at temples, including performing unclean tasks and begging on behalf of temples. Eta were essential to temples, as they fulfilled specific roles for funerals.
The eta and hinin could serve as host families for pilgrims, as could temple attendants from other castes, local farmers, and merchants. Hosts were motivated by both income and religious merit (kō). Temple staff would assign pilgrims to specific households. Caste and economic means were important aspects of placement.
Farmers faced economic difficulties and uncertainties, so the stable income provided by a paid boarder, particularly one who could also contribute labor, was an attractive prospect. Farm families sometimes sold their daughters and wives into a sort of indentured servitude. While this was motivated by financial necessity, it was a way for women and girls to serve their parents. This suggests the financial precarity of farm life and the expectations filial piety placed on females. Sons would run away to find work and relieve their parents of the necessity of feeding them, although this was illegal without authorization and these refugees from rural areas faced forced repatriation to their home villages. They also reduced the size of families, and thus the number of people to support, by infanticide and abortion.
Certain pilgrims were more likely to be placed with host families rather than housed in the temples or at inns. Pilgrims who needed extra care were placed with families in order to access higher levels of support, unless they were accompanied by family members or wealthy enough to be traveling with their own servants. The poor were more likely to be placed with host families, as they were less likely to be able to afford temple lodgings. Even today, temple lodgings are more expensive than hotels, even when the hotels provide more amenities.
