Renouncing Renunciation: The Danka System and the Decline of Buddhist Monasticism in Early Modern Japan

Abstract

Following the legalisation of clerical marriage in 1872, the Japanese Buddhist clergy of the so-called monastic sects have gone from being celibate monastics to (mostly) married householder priests, akin to Protestant pastors and Hindu brahmins. While this development may to a large extent be explained by the circumstances of the Japanese modernization efforts in the late nineteenth century and by influences from Western nations, there were also domestic, historical causes. In this paper, I argue that one such cause was the danka system together with the system of state control of the clergy which existed during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). Under this system, the clergy were put in charge of surveilling the populace on behalf of the government. It was, furthermore, obligatory for all people to attach themselves to a temple and employ its clergy to perform elaborate funerals and death rites for deceased family members. Because the system required a very large number of clerics, it is reasonable to assume that a large number were not sufficiently motivated to uphold monastic standards and stay celibate. This was further exacerbated by the mixing together under one umbrella of monastic and non-monastic clergy. Among additional factors that may have weakened the monastic paradigm were the death rites for lay patrons. While providing the clergy with most of its income, the promise of salvation by way of ritual contradicted the monastic emphasis on the soteriological efficacy of individual effort.