著者

高木 昭作

出版者

公益財団法人史学会

雑誌

史学雑誌 (ISSN:00182478)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.101, no.10, pp.p1717-1742, 1992-10

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In 1613 Tokugawa Ieyasu had Konchiin Suden draft the Decree Banishing Christians. This decree, which stated that Christianity was to be prohibited because Japan is the land of buddhas and kami, has long been quoted by historians as evidence of the existence in that period of the view of Japan as a "divine land". Particularly, in recent years this decree has been cited as an expression of the ideology of the Tokugawa state promulgated domestically and abroad by Ieyasu himself. However, when examined more closely the text of the decree is not at all easy to understand. Some scholars, in fact, have described it as "gibberish," or "having no coherent logic to it". Though the individual words of the text may be clear, they seem to make little sense when put together into sentences. Especially the initial section, in which the author seemingly argues that Japan is the land of buddhas as well as kami, is incomprehensible without knowledge of the Shinto-Buddhist literature of the preceding period. By examining the language of the decree in the light of medieval Shinto writings, the present article demonstrates that it was written according to the theory of "kami as essence, buddha as trace" held by the Yoshida school. This theory is famous in the history of Shinto as the doctrine that the "three teachings [Confucianism, Buddhism and Shinto] are the branches, leaves, flowers, fruits and the root". This article further discusses the shinto view of Japan expressed in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 1591 letter to the viceroy of Goa, and shows that it, too, was based on the ideas of Yoshida Shinto. According to the belief of the Yoshida school, Mahavairocana (Dainichi Nyorai) appeared at the time of the origin of the universe and the creation of the Japanese islands as described in the Nihonshoki. The tenno was thus held to be the descendent of Dainichi, who is identical to a kami. The present article argues that Hideyoshi and Ieyasu likely shared this view of the tenno.