Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm

Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli edited this RoutledgeCurzon volume, an academic collection examining honji suijaku, the medieval Japanese religious framework that understood Shinto kami as local manifestations of Buddhist buddhas and bodhisattvas. Its strength is genuine specialist scholarship from contributors working directly with the medieval Japanese textual and ritual sources that developed this combinatory framework, showing it as an actively theorized system rather than an incidental blending of two separate religions. Its limit, as with any edited volume, is that specific chapters vary in period and regional focus depending on each contributor's own specialization, so a claim about honji suijaku at one particular shrine or in one specific period is best checked against the chapter addressing that case directly.