Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System. By Nam-lin Hur. Harvard East Asian Monographs 282. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. xvi + 566 pp. $55.00 cloth.

摘要

In Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868), Buddhism held an anomalous position. Itnwas not formally a state religion, it played no part in government rituals, and the Tokugawa government seems to have been little influenced by Buddhistnprinciples. Yet all families were required by law to be registered in anBuddhist temple, and everyone was buried in a Buddhist funeral. Fees fornthese services, institutionalized in the danka system of “the funerary patronnhousehold or individual who supports a temple,” were in fact the mainnsource of income for Buddhist temples. This practice directly resulted fromnthe anti-Christian policies of the Tokugawa regime, which required Japanesento be certified by a temple to prove they were not secret Christians. As Nam-nlin Hur demonstrates in Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, thendanka system’s “economy of death” met the needs of both the governmentnand the Buddhist establishment.