Localized Religious Specialists in Early Modern Japan: The Development of the Ōyama Oshi System

Abstract

This paper discusses the emergence of oshi, lay religious specialists who contributed to the spread of regional pilgrimage cults in the Tokugawa period, by focusing on the example of Oyama, Sagami Province. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Oyama's oshi developed gradually as successors of shugenja and shrine priests who had lost much of their authority to the Shingon temples on the mountain in the first decade of the seventeenth century. In the second half of the seventeenth century the tradition of mountain asceticism largely disappeared from Oyama. The former mountain ascetics of Oyama needed new means of income, forcing them to run inns and develop parishes throughout the KantŌ region. These parishes, from which most of Oyama's pilgrims came, became the single most important source of income for Oyama. The system spread from areas near Oyama across the entire KantŌ region. It was these oshi who sustained the bonds between parishioners and the mountain by making annual visits to their parishes and providing accommodations for pilgrims. Despite their conflict-laden genesis, the oshi were not in constant opposition to Oyama's Shingon temples. They developed customary networks with temples to handle pilgrims and received licenses from the head Shingon temple of the mountain, Hachidai-bo, which helped them to distinguish themselves from their competitors in neighboring villages. Another reason why the oshi did not voice a united opposition to the temples was that they were a fairly diverse group with different lineages and levels of wealth. Some oshi were in the employ of Hachidai-bŌ and therefore shared the Shingon temples' interests. It was only in the late Edo period that several wealthy oshi began to seek affiliation with external sources of authority such as the Shirakawa house and to engage in anti-Buddhist rhetoric culled from the nativist Hirata School. This led to friction between the Shingon temples and the oshi and provided the basis for the