A Mountain Where Buddhas and Kami Share the Ground

Kurama sits north of Kyoto and carries the arrangement that governed Japanese religion for most of its history. Kurama-dera is a Buddhist temple, and Yuki Shrine stands on the same slope and enshrines kami. For more than a thousand years that was not a contradiction but the normal state of affairs, described by the honji suijaku framework in which kami were understood as local manifestations of Buddhist figures, and in which shrines and temples were built, funded and staffed together.

Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli have shown how thoroughly that combination shaped both traditions, and how much of what is now presented as purely Shinto or purely Buddhist was in fact produced by the forced separation of the two in the Meiji period. Kurama-dera's own object of worship is unusual even by these standards. The temple identifies it as a single cosmic power expressed in three figures, a formulation the temple set out in the twentieth century, and it sits at some distance from ordinary sectarian categories. The mountain is also thick with tengu legend, and the best known story holds that the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune was taught swordsmanship there. The fire festival held at Yuki Shrine each October, in which very large pine torches are carried through the village street at night by teams of men, is among the best known festivals in the Kyoto region and draws crowds that the narrow valley can barely hold.