Japanese Buddhism and Inheritance of Branch Families of the Imperial House: A Case Study of Fushimi-no-Miya in 18 Century

Miyake are the branch families of Japan’s Imperial House. They are expected to produce a successor to the throne when the emperor has no sons. During the pre-modern, the practice was that the majority of royals, other than the crown prince or miyake heirs, had to be Buddhist monks known as monzeki, and in the Edo period, the number of miyake was fixed at four: Fushimi-no-Miya; Katsura-no-Miya; Arisugawa-no-Miya; and Kan’in-no-Miya, princes who left descendants without becoming priests were limited. The importance of the emperor’s control of Buddhist temples and cost savings in the Imperial Family were the main reasons. The retirement of Prince Kuniyori, a younger brother of 16th Fushimi-no-Miya head Prince Kunitada, from the priesthood to become the 18th head of Fushimi-no-Miya, with the support of the Fushimi-no-Miya vassals, was a highly unusual event in the pre-modern era. It was the first case for a former Buddhist monk to become head of miyake, so there was a lot of opposition at the Imperial Court. Conventional research has used the figure that the relationship between the Fushimi-no-Miya and the main family of the Imperial House was conflicted. However, it has been ignored that the point of view of the Buddhist policy of the Shogunate and the complex dual structure of the pre-modern Japanese family concept of uji [clan] and ie [household] elements. This case is extremely important for Japanese religious history because it can be positioned as a precedent of many priest-princes’ leaving monzeki temples and establishing new miyake as part of the separation between Shinto and Buddhism during the early modern and modern transition. Using unpublished primary archives and anthropological methods, this presentation discusses the power relations between Buddhist temples, the Imperial Court and the Shogunate in early modern Japan in the case study of Prince Kuniyori.