The political influence of temples in pre-modern Japan, most
clearly manifested in divine demonstrations, has traditionally been
condemned and is poorly understood. In an impressive examination of
this intriguing aspect of medieval Japan, Mikael Adolphson employs
a wide range of previously neglected sources (court diaries, abbot
appointment records, war chronicles, narrative picture scrolls) to
argue that religious protest was a symptom of political
factionalism in the capital rather than its cause. It is his
contention that religious violence can be traced primarily to
attempts by secular leaders to re-arrange religious and political
hierarchies to their own advantage, thereby leaving disfavored
religious institutions to fend for their accustomed rights and
status. In this context, divine demonstrations became the preferred
negotiating tool for monastic complexes. For almost three
centuries, such strategies allowed a handful of elite temples to
maintain enough of an equilibrium to sustain and defend the old
style of rulership even against the efforts of the Ashikaga
Shogunate in the mid-fourteenth century.
By acknowledging temples and monks as legitimate co-rulers, The
Gates of Power provides a new synthesis of Japanese rulership from
the late Heian (794-1185) to the early Muromachi (1336-1573) eras,
offering a unique and comprehensive analysis that brings together
the spheres of art, religion, ideas, and politics in medieval
Japan.
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