Mutual Relationships between Buddhist Facilities and Social Groups and Their Changes in the Northern Part of Fukui Prefecture

Abstract

With the rise of the “new” cultural geography since the late 1980s, human geographers have recently focused on the processes by which religious facilities and sacred places have been produced by social groups. However, few have studied the mutual relationships between such facilities/places and social groups dynamically. In this paper, the author analyzes a series of mutual relationships through which Buddhist facilities are constructed and given deep significance by social groups, and their influence on groups of villages in Japan. Then, the common structure of and differences in the mutual relationships are examined, based on the influences of the specific contexts of the villages and those of the general trends beyond them. Few geographers have paid attention to the “unofficially sacred” spaces utilizing secular ones rather than “officially sacred” spaces like churches and temples. Therefore the author focuses not only on official temples but also on unofficial Buddhist facilities called dojos. Three villages, Kanamata, Kuratsukuri, and Shigedate, in the northern part of Fukui Prefecture were selected as cases. Generally, this area is regarded as part of the “Shin Buddhism region.” In Kanamata there are three temples, in Kuratsukuri there is one temple, and in Shigedate there are no official temples but a dojo.
The mutual relationships between Buddhist facilities and social groups in the three villages have a common structure. First, social groups such as local communities and supporters' groups construct and give deep significance to these facilities. Second, the existence of these facilities strengthens the ties among the members of those groups. Then, interdependent relations between the facilities and groups become fixed. However, when internal changes within the villages and external trends such as secularization and propagation policies decided by the head offices of denominations influence the groups supporting the facilities, transformed groups often reconstruct these facilities and reevaluate them. Then the existence of such new facilities strengthens the ties among the members of new groups. Thus the forms and significance of Buddhist facilities have changed frequently.
Comparing the changes in Buddhist facilities in the three villages, the dojo in Shigedate has been transformed more drastically than the temples in Kanamata and Kuratsukuri. This results partly from the unofficial nature of the dojo. The forms and significance of unofficial religious facilities like dojos are more changeable than those of official facilities like temples. The status of caretakers and managers of functions of the dojo in Shigedate are insufficiently institutionalized and unstable. Thus, when one analyzes the transforming processes of religious facilities in relation to social groups, it is effective to focus on unofficial facilities such as dojos.