Codifying the Worship of the Kami

The ritsuryo state of classical Japan governed by written codes, and the shiki were the procedural supplements that made the codes workable. The Engishiki, commissioned in 905 under Emperor Daigo and completed in 927 by a commission headed by Fujiwara no Tadahira, gathered and superseded earlier compilations, and its arrangement honoured the state's own priorities: the opening ten volumes belong to the Jingikan, the Department of Divinities, which stood formally beside the Council of State at the government's summit. These volumes regulate the liturgical year in exact detail, the prayers for good harvest in spring, the Kanname and Niiname harvest offerings, the June and December great purifications, the fire-pacifying and gate-blessing rites, and the tsukinami monthly offerings, specifying for each the offerings of cloth, sake, rice and weapons down to counted lengths and measures. They set the rules of the Saigu, the imperial princess sent as priestess to Ise, and of the Kamo priestess in the capital; they prescribe the Daijosai, the once-in-a-reign Great Food Offering by which a new emperor communes with the deities; and they administer the personnel, lands and taboo-words of the shrine system. The ambition throughout is completeness: worship of the kami rendered as procedure, so that the court's relationship with the divine order could be performed correctly forever.