The Transformations of a Deity: Tracing the Impact of Transcultural Exchanges on Enoshima Island in Japan through the Prism of the Deity Benzaiten[*]

Alexander Vesey

Introduction

Prior to the border closings imposed by the Japanese government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, famous temples and shrines in Kyoto, Kamakura, Tokyo, and elsewhere received millions of domestic and foreign visitors each year. While every site has its own particular attractions (gardens, architecture, artwork, history, events, rituals, etc.), generally speaking, visitors seek encounters with expressions of tradition and culture that are assumed to be distinctly Japanese. This modern sense of cultural uniqueness evolved among the Japanese over the centuries from various discourses of self-identification, some of which were reified and codified from the late-nineteenth century onwards as the Meiji government sought to establish the identity of the Japanese nation-state. The concept of State Shinto—a topic briefly discussed below—was one such product of, and a tool for, culture and state building. Japan’s subsequent defeat in World War II disestablished some of these modern constructions (for example, the ending of State Shinto as the national cult), but in the post-war period, other claims regarding Japanese cultural distinctions have been bolstered by forms of international recognition. For example, in 1994, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) bestowed the designation “World Heritage Site” upon seventeen temples, three shrines, and one castle in Kyoto, as exemplars of Japanese wooden architecture and garden culture (designating this group the “Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto”).[1]

This paper neither seeks to deny perspectives that foreground claims of distinctive Japanese attributes at such sites, nor does it want to disenfranchise those who wish to make them. However, as Nicolas Zenzen notes in his transcultural study of ancient city planning, “… cultural phenomena do not originate in one closed container and are transferred afterwards as a whole to another, but … they emerge in permanent exchange within a wider geographical framework, ignoring the imagined cultural boundaries.”[2] Zenzen’s point rests on the perception that all culture, even the most steadfast tradition, is mutable. Furthermore, any supposedly clear boundary between cultural spheres (however they may be defined by an individual, community, or the nation-state) is permeable. Such fluidity may destabilize ideals of cultural continuities from the past, but it creates opportunities to form or reconfigure personal or group identity through the adaptation of practices and objects that flow through matrices of cultural exchange. Indeed, even the concept of culture being firmly bounded to a particular ethnic community or nation-state is itself a construction that emerged in response to economic, political, and social changes from the seventeenth century onwards.

There is certainly value in studying Japan’s temples and shrines within the context of a cultural geography that localizes the meaning and value of such sites. However, this study will draw upon Zenzen and insights from other works of transcultural studies to argue that it is also necessary to simultaneously study ostensibly traditional Japanese sites as fluidly changing entities. These fluid entities are set amid trans-regional cultural currents, which flow through time and space, impelled by information exchange and the movement of people and objects that bear the imprint of other cultural backgrounds. The impact of such flows is evident in certain phases of pre-modern history, but it has become dramatically more evident in the present age of worldwide travel, tourism, and web-based mass media. From a local angle, these new elements may still be seen as accretions to a Japanese cultural continuum, but from a broader vantage point, interactions between newer in-bound concepts, practices, and objects, and the legacies of previous exchanges generate new ways of (re-)envisioning and (re-)invigorating sites that are often taken for granted as reflections of cultural continuities by both Japanese and non-Japanese visitors. Furthermore, it is equally important to study how these new adaptations are then interjected back into the same global flows, and thereby stimulate further instances of cultural production and identity creation both in Japan and outside it.

I will examine the impact of transcultural dynamics on Japan’s traditional religious sites through a short study of Enoshima 江の島, an island just off the coast of Fujisawa City 藤沢市 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. For centuries, its fame had rested on a complex of Buddhist-managed shrines dedicated to Benzaiten 弁才天, a deity of Indian origin that was transmitted into Japan via Central Asia and China. This association abruptly changed when the Meiji government’s religious policies for the creation of a “pure” native religion (State Shinto) removed Buddhism and the cult of Benzaiten from Enoshima during the 1870s. In the post-World War II period, however, the island’s residents, Shinto shrine administrators, city officials, and local business executives instigated yet another phase of transformation, through their efforts to promote Enoshima and nearby seaside areas as alluring destinations for the global and domestic tourist markets. Through their efforts to combine faith with the commodification of religious symbols and sites, Benzaiten has once again become a symbol of Enoshima, but the stakeholders have given the deity new attributes that reflect the interests of a younger generation of travelers and consumers. The revitalization of the old-yet-new Benzaiten legacy now also bolsters the efforts of the Enoshima Shrine 江島神社 to attract worshippers from around Japan.

Compared to sites in Tokyo, Kyoto, or other major cities, Enoshima may not appear to be an obvious choice for such a study, but it has several advantages. As per the short historical overview above, its location in eastern Japan made it a terminus of the pre-modern Silk Road, while its proximity to Yokohama made it an accessible destination for early western residents when Japan eased its border restrictions in the 1860s. Secondly, despite its small physical size, the island’s space has been occupied by Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, hotels, shopping districts, residential areas, a British horticulturalist’s private home and greenhouse, commercial spaces managed by off-island enterprises, an Olympic facility (the harbor which hosted the yachting events during the Olympic games in 1964 and 2020), and lands belonging to Kanagawa Prefecture. Enoshima’s richly diverse community is thus a microcosm of Japanese society, and each element has contributed to one or more of Enoshima’s many transformations. As such, the island presents an interesting opportunity to examine the agency of local communities in processes of trans-regional cultural exchange and adaptation over time. Thirdly, and most significantly for this study, given Benzaiten’s close identification with Enoshima, the alterations to her cult and her role on the island offer a focused means for gauging the island’s cultural transformation and identifying the actors who have instigated these transformations.

I have compiled data through a combination of different research methods. To trace the evolution of Benzaiten’s significance within the Buddhist pantheon as her cult was imported into China, and then Japan, the first section will draw upon recent secondary scholarship on early textual descriptions of Benzaiten. Documents created by residents on the island date back to the late sixteenth century, and my discussion of transformations between 1600 and the 1950s will be based on these primary sources and scholarly studies held at the Fujisawa City Archives (Fujisawa shiritsu monjokan 藤沢市文書館). Since more recent changes fall within the range of living memory, I used an ethnographic approach to interview present community leaders and a shrine priest on the island. The information gathered through these methods has been combined with data gained through onsite surveys of the shrines and the island’s facilities, as well as with studies on tourism in modern Fujisawa produced by local researchers. Finally, I will also present a brief survey of the web-based media outreach activities of the Enoshima Shrine and the Fujisawa Tourism Association (Fujisawashi kankō kyōkai 藤沢市観光協会), which strive to project information about Enoshima into the growing sphere of global tourism.

The utility of a transcultural perspective on Enoshima

This study draws upon and benefits from conceptualizations of transculturality that have evolved since the 1990s.[3] Scholars often cite Fernando Ortiz’s 1940 study of Cuba’s complex cultural landscape as the locus classicus of the term “transculturation,”[4] but current research on transcultural exchanges builds rather upon the work of Wolfgang Welsch, which aims to define a global perspective on cultural flows in the post-Cold War era.[5] Working against modernist nation-state-centered conceptualizations of culture that rest upon ethnic, racial, or ideological biases, Welsch argued that globalization was creating forms of “interconnected and entangled” cultural interactions in which cultures were undergoing hybridization. For individuals who exist in this fluid milieu, “work on one’s identity is becoming more and more work on the integration of components of differing cultural origin. And only the ability to cross over transculturally will guarantee us identity and competence in the long run.”[6] Welsch thus employed the concept of transculturality to foreground a postmodernist vision of a “multi-meshed and inclusive, not separatist and exclusive, understanding of culture.”[7] Furthermore, an individual with access to these flows can continue to fashion identities that allow them to maneuver around the limitations imposed by a specific national community or cultural sphere.[8] At the same time, Welsch’s concept did not envision transculturation as a vehicle for global cultural uniformity. Instead, Welsch argued for a constant process of diversification as various groups and individuals drew upon global networks of options to create new cultural forms and identities.[9]

Subsequent refinement of transcultural analytical models has enhanced their applicability to Japanese religious sites. In her 2013 interview with Christian Kravagna, Monica Juneja noted three inherent weaknesses of Welsch’s initial formulation of transcultural movements: he perceived them to be a modern phenomenon, a stance that would exclude earlier flows; his transcultural model could have placed greater emphasis on understanding the processes that drive exchanges; and there was insufficient attention to the ideological ramifications of cultural production. In response, Heidelberg University’s Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” expanded upon Welsch to define transcultural studies as a model for analyzing processes of cultural change that occur across space (regions, borders, etc.) and time (past and present). A culture does not possess any immutable identity that is passed along, but rather, this identity emerges through reconfigurations produced by the processes of exchange themselves. These processes can be inflected by ideological tensions and dissonances that arise from prior asymmetries of social-political-economic power, as well as from the products of new transcultural interactions. Therefore, transcultural studies can also provide insights on reactions against processes of global exchange.[10]

The concept of “flow” is key to discussions of transculturality and other perspectives on globalization, and its ramifications, too, have been refined. Arjun Appadurai’s five “scapes” are often cited as a model for tracking global flows that are eroding nation-state and center-periphery mechanisms for constructing human communities,[11] but the term “flow” appears in many disciplines in reference to movements of culture and other elements of human activity across space and time. However, as Ulf Hannerz notes, we must recognize that not all currents flow smoothly, and due to asymmetries, misperceptions, and the conditions of a specific time or place, a flow can stagnate or generate opposing movements.[12] Therefore, flow-centered cultural studies must be sensitive to tensions and resistances that arise through global exchanges. Furthermore, he argues that in addition to currents between cultural spheres, dynamic processes within a cultural sphere also constitute an important kind of flow that requires attention.

According to Stuart Rockefeller’s survey of “flow” as a concept, academic discussions of movements within a global framework have generated dualistic analytic models that may overlook other facets of the same processes. Drawing upon Victoria Bernal’s critique of Appadurai, Rockefeller argues that with the usage of the metaphor of “flow,” scholars tended to focus on perceived similarities between continual global-level movements of people and goods, even though this perspective can displace or downplay considerations of the particular dynamics or tensions that may arise in specific locations or contexts.[13] Rockefeller believes further that Hannerz’s abovementioned research made the important point that cross-border flows should be understood as an integral aspect of (rather than merely different from) internal flows that animate a culture’s development. However, whereas Hannerz’s studies tended to foreground a wide, macro-level perspective, Rockefeller saw the need to study the role of localized agency exerted by individuals and local communities on these engagements, and to consider how the products of such exchanges perpetuate the transmission of global flows.[14]

The potential of these insights to deepen our understanding of modern Japanese religious sites is suggested by Yamada Shōji’s 2009 study of the rock garden at Ryōanji 龍安寺, a famous temple in Kyoto that is often cited in both domestic and non-Japanese literature as the epitome of an enduring Japanese aesthetic.[15] Yamada is a scholar of informatics and his work illuminated the following points: the history of changes in the garden’s physical appearance; the impact of the modern garden’s structure on the perceptions of twentieth-century visitors like the German architect Bruno Taut; Japanese responses to those European observations; and the influence of these exchanges on post-war perceptions of Japanese traditional culture. Although Yamada did not frame his analysis as a transcultural study per se, he nonetheless showed how supposedly domestic (local) evaluations of the garden were informed through dialogues between observers from different cultural backgrounds. The impact of those exchanges continues to this day as can be seen in the fact that Ryōanji’s garden was an important element in the designation of Kyoto as a World Heritage Site.

More recently, articles in the anthology Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality have examined how boundary-crossing cultural flows facilitated the diffusion of Buddhist concepts, practices, objects, and identities across different regions of Asia.[16] Whereas Welsch’s model of transculturality was grounded on the dramatic growth of modern globalization during the post-World War II/Cold War period, the focus on pre-nineteenth-century examples of Buddhist cultural flows in this volume argues for the existence of transcultural processes prior to the rise of modern mass-transportation and communication systems. Of equal importance is the fact that the various studies highlight the impact of local agency in the exchange and adaptation of Buddhist principles to suit specific intellectual milieux and social contexts. Anna Andreeva’s study of Mount Asama is noteworthy in this regard, as it illustrates the role of cultic sites in pre-modern Japanese processes of incorporating, synthesizing, and transforming ritual practices and astronomical-astrological knowledge. Furthermore, Fabio Rambelli focuses on the complications that may arise from transcultural engagements by looking at Japanese in the Edo-period (1600–1868) who struggled to correlate nineteenth-century knowledge of ancient India produced in the West with information gleaned from their older Buddhist textual traditions.[17]

In their recent anthology on Buddhist tourism, Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck raise the following questions: “How, and why, have certain routes, groups, sites, and practices associated with Buddhism been constructed and what are the effects? In what ways do travelers derive meaning from Buddhist places? How do Buddhist sites fortify national, cultural, or religious identities?”[18] Although Enoshima is still relatively unknown outside Japan, it is a multi-faceted space in which religious objects, popular faith, tourism, modern commercialism, advertising and transportation technology, and Japanese and non-Japanese cultural practices are interwoven and shaped by local responses to domestic as well as pan-Asian historical memories and modern globalization. Within this milieu, local stakeholders are now striving to project their vision of Enoshima and its heritage beyond Japan, to reach potential travelers from other parts of the world. It thus offers an interesting case for studying the processes that create and perpetuate transcultural interactions. Furthermore, it provides a perspective on how these processes have contributed to the continual transformation of Japanese cultural identity.

The premodern evolution of a deity

Although a deity might originate within a specific socio-cultural sphere, flows of icons, sacred texts, and practitioners between cultures reveal the fluidity of religious practices and ideals. As Joachim Quack notes in his study of ancient Egyptian gods, receptive cultures were quite willing to draw parallels between earlier deities and newly introduced entities, and the adaption of the latter was facilitated by
re-identifying them with familiar names. In the case of ancient Japan, the process of integration proceeded somewhat differently because the kami (神, local gods and spirits) were instead re-identified and assimilated into the pan-Asian Buddhist pantheon. From the ninth century onwards, prominent state-supported Buddhist clerics identified buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other pan-Asian deities as “original essences” (honji 本地), and the local kami as the avatars or “traces” (suijaku 垂迹) of these imported deities. This malleable integration of continental and local deities was key to the establishment of Benzaiten worship on Enoshima.[19]

In many respects, the history of Benzaiten’s transmission across Asia via the Silk Road epitomizes the processes of exchange, adaption, and transformation that are encapsulated by the term transculturality. Always depicted as female, her origins go back to an ancient Indian river-deity named Sarasvatī. Initially worshiped as a representation of the power of water, the connection with the fluidity of that medium led to her association with speech/chanting, and ultimately with a broader notion of “culture.”[20] Indian Buddhists later incorporated Sarasvatī into the growing pantheon of spirits and deities that propounded and protected the Buddha’s teachings, and descriptions of her eventually appeared in five versions of the Sutra of Golden Light (Suvarṇabhāsottama-sūtra 金光明經) that were translated into Chinese.[21] The Chinese rendering of Sarasvatī as “the heavenly female deity of eloquence” (Biancai tiannü 辯才天女; Jp. Benzaiten tennyo 弁才天天女) reflects a continuation of one dimension of the cultural meaning of the deity from the Indian context, but her association with a specific Indian river was gradually displaced, and counterbalanced by a growing emphasis on her protective powers. This shift in meaning and function was related to a version of the Sutra of Golden Light that praised Sarasvatī’s qualities by adapting a hymn dedicated to the eight-armed mountain deity Vindhyavāsinī (a female warrior with the power to defeat demons) from the Harivaṃśa.[22] The Chinese translation of this version by Yijing 義淨 (635–713) (in his Jin guangming zuisheng wang jing 金光明最勝王經 T665) then influenced the subsequent diffusion of the cult of Benzaiten in East Asia. Iconographic changes also appeared—whereas earlier Indian art often depicted her as a two-armed deity playing a lute or lyre (vīṇā), an eight-armed version based on the textual associations with Vindhyavāsinī developed with the spread of her cult. In this version, her hands not only held the wheel of the Dharma (a common Buddhist icon) instead of a lute, but also weapons (bows, arrows, swords, etc.) that symbolized her power to protect faithful rulers who financially and politically supported the Buddhist clergy.

The import of Biancai tiannü into Japan as Benzaiten in the seventh century led to further transformations of this Sino-Indian deity. The propagation of her cult by Buddhist clerics found favor with political and military elites who legitimated their authority by sponsoring prayer rituals and building projects, and major sites for the Benzaiten cult emerged at Itsukushima 厳島 near Hiroshima, Chikubushima 竹生島 to the east of Kyoto, and Enoshima in eastern Japan. Many small Benzaiten shrines for Benzaiten worship reaffirmed the deity’s association with water by incorporating ponds into their precincts. Each of these three major complexes took this association to another level by occupying large islands in coastal waters, which allowed their patrons to enhance Benzaiten’s eminence by geographically separating her sacred precincts from other communities.[23] During the process of localization at each site, Buddhists linked Benzaiten to other deities through syncretic processes. For example, the Itsukushima shrine venerated Ichikishima hime no mikoto 市杵嶋姫命, one of three female deities created following a vow of reconciliation between the kami associated with the sun, Amaterasu 天照 (also known as Tenshōkō taijin 天照皇大神) and her obstreperous brother Susanoo no mikoto 須佐之男命/素戔嗚尊. Seafarers who traveled between Japan and the Korean peninsula sought protection from Ichikishima and her sisters by praying to them at the three main precincts of the Munakata Shrine 宗像大社 (in current-day Fukuoka Prefecture). The Buddhist administrators of Itsukushima identified Ichikishima as Benzaiten’s avatar. In other words, they associated a pan-Asian deity of water, culture, and power with local deities that protected overseas cultural and economic exchange. Associations with water also led to the combination of Benzaiten with an agricultural god named Ugajin 宇賀神. This latter kami took the form of a snake, and some iconographic representations of Benzaiten placed her head on a serpentine body.[24]

Different kinds of combinatory relationships in the form of a dragon story were particularly important to the formation of Enoshima’s unique identity. The shrine’s treasury has two versions of the tale: the “Enoshima’s Origins (Chinese character version)” [Enoshima engi manabon 江嶋縁起真名本] manuscript (1531), from the Edo period and the “Picture Scroll of Enoshima’s Origins” [Enoshima engi emaki 江嶋縁起絵巻] from the seventeenth century (five scrolls). Whereas the 1531 version only consists of passages written in literary Chinese, the second text is written in the vernacular Japanese hiragana script and embellished with colorful illustrations of important moments of the story—a mode of presentation that made the contents more available to wider readership.[25]

According to the narrative, the residents of Tsu Village 津村 of the Kamakura 鎌倉 district in Sagami Province 相模国 were regularly terrorized by a five-headed dragon that lived in a marshy area to the north. Travelling along a river that flowed from his abode to Tsu, the dragon periodically killed some of its residents. Then, one day in 552 CE, the ground shook and the clouds and seas parted as a heavenly female deity (Benzaiten) and her attendants (dōji 童子) created a rocky island (Enoshima) just off the coast. The dragon was besotted, but the deity was solely interested in alleviating the suffering of all creatures, and she thus rejected his attentions. Now repenting his previous violence, the dragon pledged to follow her teachings of compassion[26] by transforming himself into a hill (the present Kataseyama 片瀬山 area of Fujisawa City) that faces southwards, towards Benzaiten’s abode on Enoshima.[27]

With the dragon pacified and Benzaiten ensconced on Enoshima, the sacrality of the island, according to the origin tale, attracted the attention of prominent Buddhist clerics such as the legendary ascetic En no Ozunu 役小角 (seventh century), Kūkai 空海 (774–835), the founder of the Japanese Shingon School, and Ennin 円仁 (794–864), the third patriarch of the Tendai School. The origin tales’ accounts of their visits to train and pray on the island mirror sections of a travel record compiled by the Tendai cleric Kōkei 皇慶 (d. 1049). A 1323 copy of Kōkei’s “Origin of Enoshima in Tsu Village, Sagami Prefecture” (Sōshū Tsu mura Enoshima engi 相州津村江之島縁起), is now at the Kanazawa Bunkō, an archive that was established in the thirteenth century by the warrior Hōjō Sanetoki 北条実時 (1224–1276). It is not known if the creators of the Enoshima Shrine’s later manuscripts referred to this very copy, but they clearly adapted and edited parts of Kōkei’s text and added the dragon story to complete their own narratives.[28] Aside from such origin tales and Buddhist clerical records, the epic Mirror of the East (Azuma kagami 吾妻鏡) notes instances of warriors who venerated the eight-armed Benzaiten to request her protection. Along the same lines, the Enoshima Shrine treasury has yet another illustrated text from the Edo period, entitled the “Picture Scroll of Enoshima Benzaiten’s Origins” [Enoshima Benzaiten engi emaki 江島弁才天縁起絵巻) (two scrolls), which is mainly an account of the famous twelfth-century warrior Minamoto Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159–1189) and the aid that he received from an avatar of Benzaiten.[29]

These early tales provide a window on the cult of Benzaiten, but extant documents only provide a clear picture of Enoshima’s institutional structure from the sixteenth century onwards. These documents show that the original shrine (hongū 本宮; iwaya 岩屋) was in a cave on the island’s southern (seaward) side (see Table 1 and Figure 1 for a list of shrine precincts and their locations). Given the threat posed by typhoons during summer and fall, for six months every year, the clerics moved Benzaiten to a temporary shrine (the otabisho 御旅所) situated on top of the island’s west side. This building is located approximately above the cave. Iwamotoin 岩本院, a temple of the Shingi Shingon 新義真言 esoteric Buddhist tradition, administered the whole island and exercised exclusive control over the original and temporary shrines. Two other precincts—the Upper Shrine (Kami no miya 上之宮) and the Lower Shrine (Shimo no miya 下之宮) — occupied places on the eastern end of Enoshima’s highlands. The Upper Shrine was the oldest of these two precincts (853 CE), and images of Benzaiten occupied the highest places in their worship halls. Both shrines were managed by Buddhist temples with similar sounding names. The Upper Cloister (Kami no bō 上之坊) was near the Upper Shrine and its abbot conducted that shrine’s rituals.

Pre-1868 Enoshima Precincts		Post-1868 Changes
Shrine	Administering Buddhist temple	New adapted precinct names (from Munakata Shrine 宗像大社)	Adopted deities from the Munakata Shrine[30]	Fate of the temple in charge of administration
Original Shrine Hongū 本宮, Iwaya 岩屋[31]	Iwamotoin 岩本院	No name change	Amaterasu 天照 Susanoo no mikoto 須佐之男命	Iwamotorō 岩本楼 (presently operating as a private hotel)
Temporary Shrine Otabisho 御旅所		Back Shrine Okutsu no miya奥津宮[32]	Tagiri hime no mikoto 多紀理毘売命
Upper Shrine (est. 853) Kami no miya 上之宮	Upper Cloister[33] Kami no bō 上之坊	Middle Shrine Nakatsu no miya 中津宮	Ichikishima hime no mikoto 市杵嶋姫命	Kinkirō 金亀楼 (formerly a hotel; now a park)
Lower Shrine (est. 1206) Shimo no miya 上之宮	Lower Cloister Shimo no bō 下之坊	Outer Shrine Hetsu no miya 辺津宮	Tagitsu hime no mikoto 多岐都比売命	Turned into a travelers’ lodge, later replaced by businesses

Visitors approached the hilltop precincts through a path leading from the beach on the northern side. This road fronted on to the Iwamotoin, another Buddhist temple called the Lower Cloister (Shimo no bō 下之坊) that controlled the Lower Shrine, and some commoner-owned shops that catered to visitors. This area fronted by the road was called the “Inn Ward” (shukuchō or yadomachi 宿町). A residential area on the island’s east side was largely occupied by families who had received exclusive fishing rights around the island from successive warrior regimes, and their catches were the main staple of the island’s food economy.

As the oldest Buddhist institution on Enoshima, the Upper Cloister’s authority originally extended over Iwamotoin, all the shrine precincts, and the Lower Cloister. However, due to shifts in political power among abbots that occurred during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Iwamotoin gained the upper hand over the Upper Cloister and then over the island as a whole. Only the abbot of the Upper Cloister maintained the Buddhist monastic vow of celibacy, while resident clerics at Iwamotoin and the Lower Cloister openly dwelt with wives. This was highly unusual, however, Iwamotoin and the Lower Cloister traditionally offered extensive hostel facilities to lay visitors, including women. The Tokugawa shogunate (military regime) and the Shingon School permitted this exception to monastic codes against clerical marriage, because the presence of the wives allowed Iwamotoin and the Lower Cloister to set aside secular and clerical rules against women staying overnight in Buddhist temples.[35]

Following Tokugawa Ieyasu’s 徳川家康 (1543–1616) assumption of the Kanto plain as his main fief in 1590, and the subsequent establishment of his family’s shogunate in 1603, the Tokugawa house followed earlier precedents by providing a tax-free land grant to Enoshima’s shrines. This munificence directly benefited the Iwamotoin, but in the long run, the Benzaiten cult and Enoshima were indirectly but strongly affected by the Tokugawa policies of isolation (sakoku 鎖国). Earlier warrior regimes supported trade and engagement with the continent, and the sixteenth-century hegemon Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582) allowed Roman Catholic priests to establish missions in Japan. Even with Nobunaga’s assassination in 1582, the Japanese Catholic community continued to expand up to the early seventeenth century, but the Tokugawa house increasingly feared the impact of external ideologies and unfettered trade on their regime’s domestic stability. Although the Tokugawa political lexicon did not have any equivalent for the concept of “globalization,” their policies nevertheless reflected great concern with the possible impact of emerging global trading systems that slowly but increasingly linked Asia with Europe from the sixteenth century onwards. This resulted in the persecution of Christians from the 1620s onwards, and the limitation of foreign trade to a few select ports on the Tokugawa state’s peripheries. Due to such restrictions, domestic flows of culture predominated from the 1630s until the mid-nineteenth century, a period when urban merchants and rich peasants began to build a market-based economy. Like their warrior superiors who used displays of wealth to signify their monopolization of political power,[36] wealthy commoners patronized both new cultural forms (for example, the Kabuki theater) and older religious sites to express their socio-economic clout and their own interests, as they petitioned the deities for “worldly benefits” (genze riyaku 現世利益) such as a successful business transaction or recovery from illness.

Interest in prayer practices also stimulated increasing lay participation in trans-regional pilgrimages to prominent temples and shrines—jaunts that became the basis of the early modern Japanese tourist trade.[37] Since Enoshima was only a two-day walk from Edo, and women were welcome to enter the island’s precincts,[38] merchants, sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, and other residents of eastern Japan purchased guidebooks from the burgeoning publishing market at Edo and flowed into the island’s hostels in search of Benzaiten, good seafood, and quiet relaxation. To borrow the title of Nam-lin Hur’s study of Asakusa’s Sensōji 浅草寺 temple during the Edo period, Enoshima was very much a place for “prayer and play.”[39] The rising influence of affluent commoners was reflected by their donations of votive stone steles and lanterns, but perhaps the most dramatic expression of their faith was the construction of a large gate (torii 鳥居) that straddled the opening of the island’s central pathway. In 1821, a large bronze version replaced an earlier wooden one, and according to the inscriptions at the base, the benefactors included Edo-based merchants and an elite prostitute (oiran 花魁) of the Shin Yoshiwara 新吉原 district.

For those who could not make it to the coast, temples and shrines in Edo sponsored periodic displays of statues and other artifacts borrowed from Enoshima.[40] Here again new iconographic representations of Benzaiten reflected the shifts in popular interest in her cult. While the eight-armed statues of Benzaiten the Protector continued to be the main objects of veneration at every shrine on Enoshima, growing faith in Benzaiten’s role as a sacred patron of culture revitalized interest in her two-armed, lute (biwa 琵琶)-playing form. In this mode, she is generally known as the “Wondrous Sound Benzaiten” (myōon Benzaiten 妙音弁財天). This shift generated the production of new statues and depictions of her as one of seven highly popular deities of good fortune (shichi fukujin 七福神).[41] This shift was further reflected by a play on words. The original middle character of her name (zai 才) means “skills,” “talents,” but this was increasingly replaced with a homophone meaning “wealth” (zai 財).

Ironically, whereas Japanese policies for limiting the impact of seventeenth-century globalization indirectly bolstered the Benzaiten cult on Enoshima, later responses to nineteenth-century global trends led to the sudden removal of her public presence from the island. By the 1800s, Japan’s ruling elite could no longer ignore the rising threat of western imperialist aggression that was bolstered by rapid technological advances and the ideology of nationalism. Following years of confusion and domestic strife, in 1868, supporters of the imperial house overthrew the Tokugawa military regime and initiated a program of dramatic westernization and reform. In response to their perceptions of Christianity as a key element of western societies, the new leaders drew upon a growing body of domestically produced ideology that rejected older Buddhist combinatory cosmologies in favor of a kami-centric faith system to create a purified sense of Japanese national identity. For temples and shrines in all regions, the new Meiji state mandated the “separation of kami from the Buddhas” (shinbutsu bunri 神仏分離) through the removal of all Buddhist influences from sites of kami worship, and the elevation of the nation-state-oriented cult of State Shinto (kokka shintō 国家神道) that stressed the veneration of the imperial house’s deities and the emperor. Implementation of these policies resulted in the downsizing of Buddhist organizations through temple closures and the forced laicization of many priests.[42]

These policies immediately affected the temple-shrine symbiosis that had informed Enoshima’s sacred identity for hundreds of years. The abbots of the three administrative temples faced the stark choice of becoming common citizens or converting into Shinto clerics—all three opted for the latter. The Buddhist buildings were transformed into secular hotels or removed, and Buddhist objects including the Benzaiten statues were sold, donated to off-island temples, or shut away in storehouses. Since the new policy made Benzaiten a dea non grata, the freshly minted Shinto priests, in response, initiated a new trans-regional flow of culture in which they drew upon other formulations of Benzaiten-kami syncretism in western Japanese shrines to install Amaterasu, Susanoo, and the three Munakata female deities mentioned above in Enoshima’s major sites of worship. Concurrent with this process of importing domestic deities across regions, they replaced the names of the former Buddhist sites on Enoshima with nomenclature taken from northern Kyushu’s Munakata shrines, and the whole complex was reconstituted as the “Enoshima Shrine” (see Table 1).[43] Even the “Benzaiten” plate on the bronze gate was replaced with a new one bearing the inscription “The Great Illuminous Deity of Enoshima” (Enoshima daimyōjin 江嶋大明神).[44]

Given the Meiji state’s advocacy of emperor veneration and a nationwide cult dedicated to the sun deity Amaterasu (the sacred ancestor of the imperial house), the appropriation of the Munakata legacy was a particularly apt response to the government’s policies. Furthermore, in hindsight, an ironic nuance emerges from this choice: the decision to replace Benzaiten (a symbol of pre-modern infusions of continental culture into Japan) with the Munakata trio not only reflected the displacement of an older politico-religious model by a newer one, but it can also be interpreted as a sign of the emerging Meiji government’s desire to project the new model outwards to the continent as it pursued its imperial objectives. The associations between Enoshima and Japanese imperialism based on nationalist/State Shinto ideologies were further reinforced in 1918 when a group dedicated to preserving the memory of the Meiji-era colonial administrator General Kodama Gentarō 児玉源太郎 (1852–1906) built the small Kodama shrine (this structure was independent from the Enoshima Shrine) on the island to venerate his spirit.

At the national level, Buddhist organizations initially struggled with their responses to Meiji policies. Once past the initial shock, however, clerical leaders and patriotic Buddhist intellectuals began to reconfigure past traditions to create new interpretations of Buddhist teachings and practices as they integrated their schools of thought into the rising projects for the construction of the of modern nation-state. Eventually, some clerics even became prominent advocates of Japan’s imperial ambitions in Korea, China, and South Asia. As for Enoshima, once the transfer of the shrines to Shinto control was complete, the only remaining vestiges of Buddhism on the island were a small temple on the east side that handled islander funerals, scattered stone steles, abbatial grave in a secluded spot, and the lingering memories of the past.

The creation of “Shōnan” as a modern tourist destination

In connection with the relationship between Buddhist ritual practices, sacred sites, and the processes of identity formation, Bruntz and Schedneck discuss the nature of Buddhist “imaginaries,” in which belief systems (including images, texts, and buildings), individual perceptions, and cultural practices—all coalesce to create ideas and visions of a particular site. The faithful may take for granted the sacrality of such spaces and their resident clerics, but studies of temple tourism show that “Buddhist sacred places are continually being molded and altered by monastic and lay communities, managing individuals and companies, commercial operators who market symbols and meanings associated with the location, as well as domestic and international visitors.”[45] Although Japanese responses to western imperialism might have abruptly altered the relationships between the agents (warrior rulers, clerics, islanders, and pilgrims) who created Enoshima’s pre-1868 imaginary, new configurations of local businesses, government officials, and residents pushed forward Japanese adaptations of western culture, transportation technology, new models for commercializing tourism, and broader social transformations. These confluences of commercial, government, and local interests dramatically reconfigured the region around Enoshima, and, by extension, the island itself into a new imaginary for modernizing Japan. The result of these new flows was called Shōnan 湘南, a geographic label which referred to the central coastal areas of modern Kanagawa Prefecture. The name involves a play on words based on the similarity between the first Chinese character in the old provincial name of Sagami 相模 and another Chinese character shō 湘 that means the confluence of two rivers. In classical Chinese literature, the latter character alluded to spots of scenic beauty. The second character in Shōnan means “south” (nan 南); thus, the visual punning in the new nomenclature Shōnan suggested the allure of “beautiful southern Sagami.” The name made its first appearance in the context of Kanagawa Prefecture in 1889, and over the decades, the “Shōnan” imaginary evolved to reflect an idyllic coastal lifestyle in contrast with the tumult of Tokyo and its environs.[46]

One major catalyst for this transformation was a growing interest in swimming in the sea, as the Japanese increasingly engaged in foreign concepts of leisure and sport following the Meiji recension of Tokugawa isolationism. Japanese histories of the 1880s credit Dr. Matsumoto Jun 松本順 (Surgeon General of the Japanese Imperial Army) with promoting sea-swimming in Osio 大磯 (a coastal village far to the west of Enoshima). Yokohama’s foreign residents were bathing at the beaches south of the city by the late 1870s, but records indicate that non-Japanese (mostly residents of European and North American origins) were visiting the beaches near Enoshima as early as 1872.[47] With the support of the national and prefectural governments, local business leaders began constructing hotels and other facilities that gradually evolved into famous beachside resorts by the 1920s, and in 1935–1936 communities in Fujisawa and other coastal areas coordinated their resources with the Kanagawa prefectural government to open up beachfront parks.

These local projects greatly benefited from the development of Japan’s rail systems from the 1880s onwards. At the national level, the state’s railway company opened the first section of its Tōkaidō Trunk Line 東海道本線 along the coast in 1887. This link allowed visitors to make the journey between Enoshima and Tokyo in hours rather than two days, and it would eventually take travelers to the western metropolises of Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka. The 1889 opening of the Yokosuka Line into the Miura Peninsula to the east further enhanced the region’s appeal. Taking advantage of the business opportunities offered by booming railroad development, entrepreneurs from the Fujisawa area established the Enoshima Electric Train Company 江之島電気鉄道 in 1900, which started service between Fujisawa Station and Katase 片瀬 Village just across from Enoshima. By 1910, this private system expanded eastwards to a new terminus in Kamakura that linked up with the Yokosuka Line 横須賀線.[48] Additional rail access became available when the Odakyū Express Rail Company 小田原急行鉄道 established its own private line between Shinjuku in Tokyo’s western suburbs and Enoshima. To draw in more customers, Odakyū also stimulated coastal tourism by sponsoring summertime “sea houses” (umi no ie 海の家) that provided food and amenities to beachgoers.[49]

Aside from short-stay tourists, the allure of Shōnan drew the attention of business and government elites in Tokyo who sought properties in the seaside to escape the heat of urban summers. Their interest transformed Kugenuma 鵠沼 (an area comprising sand dunes, pine barrens, and small fields near Enoshima) into a highly regarded district of villas, and even the Imperial Household established a secondary imperial residence in Hayama 葉山 (a village on the eastern shore of Sagami Bay 相模湾).

While not on the same scale, continued patronage of the beaches and business establishments by Japan’s Euro-American foreign communities further enhanced the luster of Shōnan’s popular image. Taking advantage of the shifting conditions at the Enoshima Shrine, in 1883, Samuel Cocking (a British citizen living in Yokohama) purchased one hectare of open area atop the island from the son of a newly minted shrine priest and replaced the old temple-shrine’s vegetable patches with a western-style botanical garden. This property later included a house and a brick greenhouse with steam boilers, which attracted much interest from horticulturalists around Japan.[50] Foreign influence also came to Shōnan and Enoshima through a steady stream of middle and upper-middle-class tourists who followed the suggestions of English language guidebooks prepared by government agencies and individual authors and boarded at Enoshima’s temple-turned-hotels. Thanks to these publications, Enoshima became a regular stop on the itineraries of many foreign travelers in the pre-World War II period.[51]

Wartime conditions greatly disrupted the evolution of Shōnan as a tourist destination, but only temporarily so. Coastal areas were not heavily bombed in World War II and as early as 1949, the Enoden Train Company, the municipal government, and local groups began to refurbish the tourism infrastructure of Fujisawa. The 1950s were marked by the rapid rebuilding of Tokyo and Yokohama, and the equally dramatic growth of urban populations, as people moved in from other regions to seek employment. The Shōnan beachfronts offered relatively accessible venues for leisure to these workers and their families: In 1951, Kamakura attracted 3,000,000 visitations and the Enoshima-Katase region registered 2,000,00 more.[52] Over the next two decades, the city supported the creation of an aquarium, and the Enoden Company built parking areas to take advantage of growing car ownerships and erected a viewing tower/light house near the old Cocking Garden in Enoshima, which offered panoramic views of the entire Sagami region. To heighten its competitive edge in the domestic tourist market, Fujisawa formed a sister-city relationship with Miami Beach in Florida, and by adopting the moniker of “Miami of the East,” the city and local businesses set the image of a “modern” Enoshima and Katase against the “old capital” of Kamakura.[53] This emphasis on Fujisawa’s unique place within Shōnan was strengthened by the construction of facilities for the yachting events of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics on Enoshima’s eastern side, and by the surfing boom in the 1970s and 1980s, which drew a new generation of youth to the beaches of Katase and Kugenuma.[54]

Post-war revitalization of Benzaiten as a symbol of Enoshima

In his discussion of the processes at work in the creation of UN World Heritage sites, Robert Shepherd notes the potential negative impact of non-local actors who define and create such spaces on the lives of the residents. While perhaps not intentional, the constant influx of external authorities may hinder the ability of residents to control the newly designated space that appears amidst their own imaginary, and this in turn may limit their opportunities to benefit from the new creation. As a result, the goal of site preservation may ironically impose an ideal that in fact, disrupts the very cultural and social practices it is supposed to protect.[55] In Enoshima’s case, the external agents have been national, prefectural, and municipal governments rather than an international organization. Nevertheless, similar processes of beneficial actions/policies leading to disruptions appeared during the evolution of Shōnan. The resurging post-war tourist trade created overcrowded bathing areas, which then generated environmental damage along the coast. Dissatisfied beachgoers began to seek their leisure in new mountain resorts or other venues closer to their suburban neighborhoods, and by the 1960s, the initial post-war bathing boom had subsided.[56]

For Enoshima, the sudden disassociation of Benzaiten with the island in the early Meiji period precipitated a drop in income, because it caused pilgrimage to decline.[57] In yet another ironic twist, the three “pure and native Japanese” Munakata deities imported from western Japan were actually more foreign to the older imaginary of Enoshima than the ostensibly “foreign” Benzaiten. Increasing tourism before World War II countered this dilution of public interest in Enoshima’s shrines, but in the post-war period, a new problem emerged as the Olympic yacht harbor, combined with rising benefits from tourism, altered long-standing economic relationships between the islanders. Whereas year-round income from fishing had once allowed families in the eastern ward to claim a position of higher stature over west-side residents who were dependent upon seasonal tourism, increasing flows of visitors from the 1950s onwards tipped the balance in favor of the shop owners and hoteliers. This shift in power dynamics generated tensions among the communities that has eased only in recent years, as generational changes and the depopulation of the older fishing families of the island altered Enoshima’s demographic makeup.[58] Since a livelihood from the sea is now no longer an option for most families on the eastside, its younger residents are increasingly exploring ways to bring in tourist money.[59]

Enoshima’s subsumption into a greater Shōnan sphere also caused some residents to worry about the possible loss of the island’s identity. Whereas Benzaiten and Enoshima were the only focus of pre-1868 travel into the area, the gradual but consistent support of the political and business classes for the Shōnan “fun-in-the-sun beach culture” imaginary resulted in the island’s relative displacement to one among several attractions along the Kanagawa coastline. As a result, even though the Enoshima Shrine itself continued to attract visitors, and pre-modern pilgrimage practices had always integrated secular activities (for example, enjoying seafood while patronizing one of the geishas who lived in the hostel district directly below the Lower Shrine) into the process of worship, from the early 1900s onwards, the imaginary of Enoshima as a sacred space diminished somewhat, amidst the rising tide of commercialization and secularization.[60]

For those who are open to change, such challenges can afford new opportunities. In South Asia, for example, some Buddhist clerics have embraced tourism as a source of vital income and a means for interjecting their world views and traditions into global cultural flows.[61] This opportunistic response may require negotiations with governments and business concerns, but adroit clerics exercise their authority to create imaginaries of Buddhism that appeal to modern travelers who seek stimulating new experiences. Matthew Trew’s fieldwork among clerics at Cambodian Buddhist temples brings out both concerns about tourism-oriented activities among the resident clerics and appreciation of those same activities. As one of his informants succinctly noted: “I don’t know if foreigners come just to see the dead or to learn more about Cambodian culture, but I am glad they come. The money they bring helps us keep our temples beautiful. I want more tourists to come here!”[62]

Fifty years ago, the aloof stance of the clerics of the Enoshima shrine separated them from the other islanders,[63] but at present, city officials, the shrine administration, the train companies, the city’s tourism association, and Enoshima’s community of residents and shop owners coordinate their efforts to promote Enoshima as a unique space within Shōnan. This unity is evident in a particular point that the shrine, the tourist association, and the city representatives all expressed in their interviews: regardless of the past expurgation of Benzaiten from public spaces of worship, this deity remains a key element in their efforts to define Enoshima’s identity and appeal.

However, rather than merely resurrecting traditional images of Benzaiten (as the protector of the state, benefactor of artists, and fulfiller of wishes), modern leaders in Fujisawa have taken advantage of the fluidity inherent to cultural practices to emphasize Enoshima’s unique creation legend, namely the Benzaiten-dragon relationship, in their re-establishment of her presence on the island. Furthermore, some of these characterizations present the pair as a symbol of love between individuals. This interpretation contrasts with the original legend, in which the main point was that Benzaiten’s compassion for suffering beings ultimately shamed the rapacious dragon into submission, but it appeals to younger couples who have been exposed to images of romantic love found in popular western media such as Disney movies. Therefore, while the addition of a love angle to the tale of the deity and dragon is locally produced, it is informed by post-war flows of western culture into Japan. If Iwamotoin had remained intact on Enoshima, competing interpretations of Benzaiten’s meaning promoted by Buddhist and Shinto organizations could have generated tensions, but the temple’s removal gives the present shrine free rein to use the deity’s image as it sees fit.[64] Looking beyond Enoshima, the love angle now resonates with an emerging role of Japanese shrines as sites for dating, matchmaking, and praying for good karmic connections (en 縁) to find a compatible mate. Even some temples have adapted to this trend. While such activities are counter to the ideals of traditional Buddhist monasticism, clerics of many schools now struggle to define their identities in a rapidly changing Japan where younger generations have little interest in older systems of religious practice and patronage. For an abbot facing the economic challenge posed by declining income from patrons, participation in the matchmaking industry provides a new justification for his temple’s existence.[65]

This new interpretation of the tale is evident at various precincts within the Enoshima Shrine. The imported Munakata deities of the Meiji period remain in place as the primary kami of each hall of worship, but images of Benzaiten and the dragon now appear across the island. This renewed acceptance is reflected in the following list of representations and their functions in Enoshima’s modernized imaginary:

• Beside the front and rear gates of the Outer Shrine are large lute-shaped plaques bearing the shrine’s name. This instrument symbolizes the two-armed “wondrous sound” aspect of Benzaiten.
• In 1970, the shrine erected the octagonal Hōanden 奉安殿 [Enshrinement Hall] next to the main worship hall for the veneration of two Benzaiten statues that had been in storage. One is in the form of the deity as an eight-armed protector and dates from the sixteenth century; the national government recognized it as an Important Cultural Property in 2019. The second depicts the deity in the two-armed “wondrous sound” version playing a lute. Once clothed in actual garments, the unadorned statue is now known as the “Nude Benzaiten.” Other artifacts include stone statues of the Benzaiten-Ugajin combination, plaques bearing her name that were removed from buildings, figurines of Benzaiten’s attendants, and miscellaneous objects related to pre-modern Benzaiten worship.[66]
• The shrine’s kiosks sell a variety of Benzaiten (and sometimes dragon) talismans (omamori お守り) that protect or support the bearer in their daily endeavors (for example, cramming for school entrance exams, maintaining one’s health, safety while driving, and safe childbirth). The prices range from ¥300 (about $2.00 in 2025) to over ¥1000 (approx. USD $6.50).[67]
• The kiosks also sell pentagon-shaped wooden “horse-picture” plaques (ema 絵馬) bearing images of Benzaiten for ¥500 ($3.20). Horses are thought to be messengers to the gods, and believers will petition deities by writing their wishes on the reverse side and placing the plaque on racks in any of the shrine’s precincts. This is a highly popular activity among visitors at all major temples and shrines in Japan, and many sites now sell plaques with particular designs and shapes as a means for branding their institutions. The Enoshima Shrine sells a unique pink-colored “tying a karmic connection” (enmusubi 縁結び) plaque. This is specifically aimed at visitors in search of a partner, or for those who want Benzaiten’s support for an extant relationship. The recto lists the kinds of connections or conditions covered by the petition and a statement encouraging prayers to Benzaiten; the verso has a heart-shaped area in the center for couples to write their names, or for a single petitioner to express their desires. There is extra space for writing additional comments or sentiments. The Middle Shrine sells a yet another unique circle-shaped petition plaque for love. According to a marker next to the placement rack, the circle motif symbolizes Benzaiten’s robe, and both Benzaiten and Ichikishima receive petitions from women who wish to experience “beautiful love” (utsukushii koi shitai 美しい恋したい).
• Kiosks at the Middle and Back Shrines sell the same range of Benzaiten and dragon talismans found at the Outer Shrine. Consequently, these material representations are distributed across the island.
• The Outer Shrine also designated a two-trunked gingko as a sacred “karmic connections” tree, where the pink plaques are to be placed.[68] Many non-Japanese visitors also participate in this practice, so that during tourist season in Japan, it is common to find many plaques written in a wide array of Asian and European languages. Provided one can read them, the racks around the tree become a space in which all petitioners, regardless of their cultural identity, can share their experiences and sentiments.
• Adjacent to the Back Shrine’s precincts, the Enoshima Shrine established a new site for dragon veneration, known as the “Dragon Shrine” (Wadatsu no miya 龍宮). Whereas other worship halls follow traditional architectural patterns, the Dragon Shrine is a modern aboveground stone grotto with a bronze statue of the dragon placed above the door mantel. The interior contains another small dragon statue and places to offer votive candles.
• Public access to the original Iwaya cave on the island’s southside continued until 1971, during which time a shrine attendant (miko 巫女) sold entrance tickets. However, structural problems with the natural roof and the growing threat of falling rock necessitated its closure.[69] Since the shrine did not have sufficient resources to rectify these dangerous conditions, it asked Fujisawa City to assume the managerial responsibilities, and in 1992 the cave reopened thanks to municipal funding, which provided for new steel bracing and improved access paths. The city and shrine then handed daily operations over to the Fujisawa Tourism Association, and Association members now maintain the facilities, sell tickets, and pass out small candles to visitors as they enter the inner sections of the original cave.[70] The cave’s anterior forks into two branches, one leading back to tunnel that according to local lore, extends to Mount Fuji. Old statues of buddhas, bodhisattvas, Kūkai, and various depictions of Benzaiten line the path. Some or perhaps all were brought in from other places during the refurbishment of the precincts. However, regardless of their provenance, their presence signifies the shrine administration’s implicit acceptance of Enoshima’s long association with Buddhism and Buddhist-kami syncretism. At the end of the second, deeper branch, are several small shrines guarded by two lion-dogs (komainu 狛犬). Although the Meiji-period alterations installed Amaterasu in the cave, the present signboard merely states “The Birthplace of the Enoshima Shrine” (Enoshima jinja no tanjōchi 江島神社の誕生地) and hence, it does not explicitly reject the traditional links of the cave with Benzaiten.

Fujisawa City and Kanagawa Prefecture have made their own contributions to the re-establishment of Benzaiten’s public presence on Enoshima.

• For centuries, visitors accessed the island via a sandbar at low tide or by boat. Since 1891, the city has built a series of bridges to Enoshima, and the present one for car traffic dates from 1957. In 1959, Fujisawa City added the Benten Bridge (Bentenbashi 弁天橋) for pedestrians.[71] The entrance to this second bridge is demarcated by two large stone lanterns decorated with dragons, which were installed in 2001.
• Restaurants, curio shops, and small houses line the paths behind the Outer and Middle Shrine precincts in the hilltop area of Enoshima. Enoshima Shrine owns most of these properties, just as it owns the Iwaya cave; meanwhile, Fujisawa City exercises municipal authority over their tenants. This area was once known as the “mountain” (yama 山), but the city administration has now changed its name to the Benten Group (Bentenkai 弁天会).[72]
• Near the original Iwaya shrine, another cave system extends into the island’s interior from the seaward side. This underground network and the plateau above it are Kanagawa prefectural property that is now under Fujisawa City management. A steel and concrete walkway connects the two systems, and an imposing metal dragon statue sits in the deepest recess. In contrast to the rather subdued tone of the original shrine cave, this dragon is bathed in blue and pink light, and it emits a roaring sound effect whenever visitors clap their hands.
• On the bluff above the second cave, the Fujisawa Tourism Association built a belfry that overlooks the Pacific Ocean in 1996. A store at the entrance sells locks in several sizes for ¥400–¥1000 ($2.50–$6.40), and couples are encouraged to ring the Dragon’s Love Bell 龍恋の鐘 (Ryūren no kane) and symbolize their commitment by fixing the lock with a heart-shaped name card to nearby metal fences. Some will also place plaques decorated with hearts obtained from one of the shrine’s kiosks. The bell is of western design, with an internal clapper, and the ritual of fixing locks resembles the practice of leaving love locks at the Pont des Art in Paris, although at present, I cannot confirm if the practice at the Enoshima site was directly influenced by the Parisian example. In addition to promotional signs on the island, younger visitors know of the site from the 2013 romantic movie Hidamari no kanojo (陽だまりの彼女, “Girl in a Sunny Place”),[73] which featured this bell.

Although staff members of the Association might visit the worship halls on a regular basis as individuals and the Association coordinates its activities with the Enoshima Shrine’s clergy, as an organization for boosting tourism operating under the aegis of a municipal authority, the Association is not involved in the recreation or expansion of the Benzaiten cult. Even the shrine is not interested in promoting Benzaiten veneration inside its various worship halls, lest a resurgent belief in the former main deity destabilize the present system of worship centered on the three Munakata deities. Since the relationship between faith and economic considerations has always been balanced by clerics and lay people alike to maximize the benefits reaped from a popular site like Enoshima, the Association’s recent implementations of Benzaiten iconography should be understood as a program of commercialization and commodification of traditions for the sake of profitable place-making. The resulting traditional-yet-modern “Enoshima in the Shōnan” imaginary bolsters islander identity and creates an appealing destination for modern tourists.

Projecting Enoshima and Benzaiten to a wider global audience

Thus far, I have focused on inbound flows of culture from other parts of Asia (mostly before the 1650s) and the West (in course of the post-1868 modernization and westernization of Japan), and the ways in which various local stakeholders on or near Enoshima have engaged with these influences to shape their imaginaries of the island. Influx, of course, is only one half of transcultural processes, because outward flows of localized (re)framings and (re-)productions are also fundamental contributions to the very continuity of global cultural currents. Japan’s geographical location as an island on the eastern side of Asia and its periods of politically imposed isolation have created conditions that limited continual engagement with other societies, and in this sense, its experiences differ somewhat from continental cultures. As an island within an island state, Enoshima’s trajectory of development mirrors the dynamics and the limitations that have been at play in larger cultural flows to and from Japan. Nevertheless, as per the main thrust of Zenzen’s observation mentioned at the beginning of this study, outward projections of Enoshima’s deities as objects of Japanese culture have factored into the island’s engagement with global as well as domestic processes of cultural negotiation, production, and exchange.[74]

Prior to 1868, mediums for cultural export like the abovementioned Mirror of the East (Azuma kagami) and off-island displays of artwork from Enoshima were supplemented by the activities of lay proselytizers (oshi 御師) who propagated the Enoshima Benzaiten cult by traveling through villages in eastern Japan. During these journeys, they disseminated paper talismans (ofuda お札) in exchange for donations, and thereby generated interest in a shrine that could seem quite distant to the people they met. Regular visitations could lead to the creation of areas with substantial numbers of registered patrons (dannaba 旦那場), and successful promoters would lead groups of believers back to Enoshima and provide them with lodging during their stay.[75] Meiji policies and social changes ended the role of these proselytizers, but tourist associations, authors who produced travel guides in Japanese and European languages, and mass-media (such as newspapers, and later, television, radio, and film) took their place as promoters of Enoshima to a larger audience across Japan. The main difference between these pre- and post-1868 activities was the increasing importance of secularized tourism as a motivator for visits to the island and the coast.

Since the 1990s, the growth of the internet and SNS (Social Networking Service) systems has greatly enhanced the ability of Enoshima’s promoters to directly engage with domestic and global audiences, and images of Benzaiten continue to figure in these outreach programs. On the Enoshima Shrine’s main website, the top bar clearly states that it is one of the three major Benzaiten shrines in Japan, and the website integrates images and descriptions of Benzaiten with other content on its annual rituals, halls and facilities, and talismans available for sale.[76] In order to take advantage of popular mass media formats, the shrine commissioned the author and illustrator Kishimoto Keiko to produce a sixteen-panel manga version of the legend of Benzaiten and the dragon for easy consumption via computers or smartphones.[77] The shrine’s decision to rely upon Kishimoto’s talents reflects the motivations that informed the adaption of the angle of love involving the dragon, which has been noted earlier. To counter the problem of declining income from patronage as the national population ages and shrinks, some Japanese temples and shrines have adopted popular characters and motifs from pop-culture in the hope of making their teachings and practices more appealing to contemporary Japanese society, and to generating more income from visitors or new adherents. Buddhist abbots and Shinto clerics can purchase talismans, wooden petition plaques, and other items with the image of the character of their choice from a vendor of religious goods, and then resell them to visitors. The plaques with heart designs and the Benzaiten items in the kiosks are examples of such items sold at Enoshima. According to Elisabetta Porcu’s study of Buddhist reliance upon pop-cultural branding, the choice of a well-known character like Hello Kitty signifies a temple’s decision to enhance its identity by drawing associations with familiar icons that flow through networks of mass cultural consumption.[78] Other places might decide to represent their deities, historical episodes, and traditions through character motifs popularized by manga or anime. Porcu illustrates this point with a discussion of Ryōhōji 了法寺, a Nichiren School temple in Tokyo, and its moe 萌え version of Benzaiten. Moe “… refers to cute-sexy, young, and innocent anime and manga maidens, and the passion for them by otaku.”[79] The priest originally ordered just a signboard that depicted Benzaiten in the form of a young woman dressed in somewhat western-style clothing with a dark pink and white color scheme. The growing popularity of the board eventually attracted the attention of NHK, Japan’s semi-national broadcast corporation, and a prominent figurine maker named Miyagawa Takeshi 宮川武 presented a sculpted version of this image of Benzaiten to the temple. The abbot’s decision to place it in the main hall (but not on the central altar) makes it accessible to anime fans and Buddhist believers alike.

Kishimoto’s version of Benzaiten on the website of the Enoshima Shrine does not undergo a similar level of extreme transformation, and to some extent, the illustrator has followed the clothing styles found in the medieval texts for her depiction of the deity. Furthermore, her manga emphasizes Benzaiten’s moral strength, authority, and compassion; hence, the more conservative tone differs greatly from the “cute” moe style of Ryōhōji’s Benzaiten. Kishimoto’s plotline follows the main points of the Benzaiten-dragon relationship as described in the origin tales, but it omits references to later visits by prominent Buddhist clerics that can be found in these older texts. Furthermore, compared to the shrine’s heart-decked plaques, the aspect of love is toned down in the online manga. Aside from these different strategies for interpreting Benzaiten, like Ryōhōji, Enoshima Shrine has thus decided to attract visitors via a medium (anime/manga) that maintains the unique identity of Enoshima and Benzaiten, while simultaneously rendering her story in a familiar format for consumption by the Japanese-reading public.[80]

As the main advocate for all sightseeing venues in Fujisawa, the website of the Tourist Association provides a broader perspective that situates Enoshima among other places of interest within the city. Nevertheless, the top navigation page includes links for accessing information on Enoshima’s caves and the Benzaiten–dragon legend.[81] The cave link brings up a subpage replete with a short account of the cave shrine’s origins and its significance to Enoshima, slides of images of various spots on the island, and two YouTube movies that provide further insights on how Fujisawa City and the Enoshima Shrine wish to present this part of the island to viewers. One is a thirty-minute clip of water quietly dropping from the ceiling of the main tunnel. While a seemingly quixotic choice, this content reflects a genre of YouTube movies with ambient sounds from natural settings and soft music that are supposedly beneficial to one’s mental health and well-being. When filled with tourists, the Enoshima cave systems are anything but quiet, but the movie suggests a sense of serenity that one might experience if visiting the site individually or with a small group. The second clip, an eighteen-minute virtual tour of both the cave systems, strengthens the impression of Enoshima’s unique qualities by characterizing the original shrine and the secondary dragon caves as “a power spot of history and nature.” By evoking the term “power spot,” the Association engages a thread of popular discourse on spirituality to situate Enoshima within a Japan-wide matrix of sites that are supposedly imbued with spiritual energy.[82] However, the “power spot” reference is limited to this movie, and the “history and nature” wording projects a different sense from the mystical or supernatural undertones that are sometimes implied when the phrase is associated with other locations. The Enoshima Shrine’s own website itself does not identify the shrine as a “power spot,” and the Association’s evocation of this phrase, in combination with the clip presenting natural sounds, should be understood as a product of the Association’s promotion strategy, rather than a reflection of a claim made by the shrine.

Clicking on the second major Enoshima link takes the reader to another subpage with a summary of the Benzaiten legend and the worship halls.[83] The text includes a link to the Enoshima Shrine’s online manga discussed above, but further down, the Association offers its own five-minute anime version of the legend in the form of a YouTube movie. This production was created with support from the Nippon Foundation’s “The Sea and Japan” [Umi to Nihon 海と日本] and “Towns with Tales of the Sea” [Umi no minwa no machi 海の民話の町] projects.[84] Compared to the shrine’s manga, the anime includes more details in the narrative and some historical background about the area, which appears during the final credits. That being said, the two versions share the same plotline, and the Association’s production, too, focuses on Benzaiten’s moral qualities rather than the theme of love and cuteness.

To reach a larger audience of potential visitors, the Association staff also runs a Facebook page for the caves, an Instagram feed, and a dedicated Twitter (X) account.[85] This network of supplemental access points reinforces the information provided on the main website and enhances the positive depictions of the island with additional images and other contents posted periodically.[86]

Prospective foreign visitors who cannot read Japanese are forced by the Japanese-language-only format of the Enoshima Shrine’s website to rely upon an external translation system, but since 2015, the Fujisawa City Tourism Association has compensated for this problem by offering additional versions of its main website in English, French, Spanish, Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, and Thai. The contents of these respective “Discover Fujisawa” pages do not completely mirror the Association’s main Japanese-language site (for example, the anime has not been ported into the webpages in other languages), but they do provide their own introductory movies and information about Enoshima’s history, including advertisements of items on the Benzaiten cult, sites to visit, and other services.[87] There is also a Facebook version of the “Discover Fujisawa” page in English.[88]

These investments in web-based resources have the added value of providing data to digital content creators and travel promoters outside the Enoshima Shrine-Association nexus. Viral marketing (the spreading of advertising material by parties not directly related to the creator) offers a viable means for reaching potentially receptive audiences, and entities like prominent temples and shrines benefit from other public and private pages with an interest in promoting the Shōnan region, Japanese traditional culture, the history of Kamakura, etc. Although a full discussion of these third-party resources is too large and complex for this study, a simple web search for “Enoshima” will bring up sites like the English-language “Japan-guide.com” and “livejapan.com” that usually place information on the shrines and/or the caves near the top of the sight-seeing activities they list.[89] The specifics of their coverage of Enoshima will vary, but there is usually at least a brief introduction to Benzaiten, the dragon, and perhaps to places like the “Dragon Love Bell.” Looking beyond the web selections by such tourism-oriented businesses, individual Japanese and non-Japanese bloggers, Instagram posters, and Twitter users further spread information about the island as they share their personal experiences, photos, and video clips. Since each site’s content reflects the creator’s personal interests, such coverage will be spottier when compared to online resources created by people with closer ties to the island, but these active webpages nevertheless carry the potential to introduce Enoshima and its Benzaiten legacy to those with no prior knowledge of them. Once alerted to the island’s existence, further searches may draw newer audiences into the matrix of Enoshima-related webpages created by stakeholders in Fujisawa.

Some of these sites offer interpretations of the island that differ from those proffered by the Enoshima Shrine and the Tourism Association. For example, a Japanese language search combining Enoshima with “power spot” (pawā supotto パワースポット) or similar terms such as “spiritual” (supirichuaru スピリチュアル) yields a list of personal blogs and webpages advocating New Age discourses, and travel sites that promote such perspectives. Their focus on spiritual energy and other aspects associated with “power spots” drag Enoshima into topics of discussion and content that fall outside the scope of the Enoshima Shrine’s official line of discourse; yet these appropriations of the Enoshima imaginary also contribute to the continuing evolution of popular perceptions of the island as a community, its legacies, and its value in modern Japan.

Conclusion: Enoshima as a fluctuating node of cultural exchange

Situated in an ocean environment, Enoshima has always been affected by the constant ebb and flow of global climatic and water currents as they approach Japan. These forces have contributed to its distinctive physical shape, its biosphere, and its relationship with the nearby beaches. At the same time, the island’s presence exerts its own influence on passing ocean waves and their impact on nearby coastal areas. Enoshima is thus both a product and producer of the natural world in which it exists.

The same may be said of Enoshima’s place in trans-Asian and global flows of culture. Though the prism of Benzaiten, it is possible to refract its historical and present practices to see the many flows of culture, politics, faith, and economics that have informed the transformations in the deity’s physical form, and its shifting meaning within simultaneously evolving religious, social, and political systems. These flows have gone through different mediums of transmission such as human, material objects like artwork, and documents, including digital content. Some may have traced a simple vector (from India across the Asian mainland to Japan), while some of these transmissions may be multi-directional and diffuse (for example, web searches and response contents that crisscross between servers in different time frames and locations). The rate of flow, and thus, the rate of change, has also varied greatly over time. It took centuries for the ancient Indian Sarasvatī to evolve into the different interpretations of Benzaiten that appeared at Enoshima, such as the eight-armed protector, the two-armed culture deity, and the synthesis with the snake form of Ugajin. These gradual transformations were limited by the speed of pre-modern foot-, hoof- or sail-borne exchange. While flows are always continual, there were periods of relative stasis (Tokugawa isolation, for example) in which ideas and modes of representation coalesced into seemingly stable forms that would appear to support assumptions of distinct national-cultural identities. Conversely, as we see with Appadurai’s model of the five “scapes,” the rise of modern transportation and communications systems have created conditions for increasingly rapid and more expansive changes. Before World War II traveling to Japan from abroad took days or weeks, as did sending a postcard memento of Enoshima back home. Now, potential visitors can cross the Pacific Ocean in hours and send an SNS message and photo back home in a few seconds. Moreover, a web user who has never visited Japan can take a virtual tour of the cave or download and synthesize images of the Enoshima Shrine’s dragon statue and Ryōhōji’s moe Benzaiten, to form a new interpretation of these deities. With a few clicks in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other SNS apps, they can share their creation with their followers. If the creator is popular, then it is technically possible to simultaneously reach thousands of other accounts around the world in a matter of seconds or minutes. One recipient of such a creation could even be sitting in a shop on Enoshima drinking coffee (yet another kind of flow into the island) as they are about to take and share via SNS their own photo of a Benzaiten talisman that they had just purchased from a shrine kiosk. Enoshima’s visitors who take away and then share their personal impressions have always had the potential to be producers of, or at least, be additional contributors to the meaning of the island and its deities. Indeed, the island has benefited from such interactivity, as favorable reports carried away by an impressed worshiper or traveler generated interest among other potential visitors.

That being said, hypothetical examples in the previous paragraph also suggest new challenges for the Enoshima Shrine and the residents of Fujisawa. As the island increasingly becomes a tourist node in the global flows of people and culture, the stability of local control over its meaning will change further, as others create and propagate their own views. The island thus is a node with increasingly fluid boundaries. The shrine and the city’s general acceptance of the new dragon/love interpretation, and their welcoming stance towards tourists from other cultures, show that the clergy and the residents are agreeable to the transformation of Benzaiten from an object of veneration in a specific cult to an object of commercial and tourist interest. It remains to be seen, however, whether they will accept the increasing fluidity of their imaginary as the processes of globalization continue to facilitate the intervention of many new voices in their daily lives.

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[*] I wish to thank Okumura Hitomi 奥村裕美, a former member of the Fujisawa City Office staff, for arranging interviews with Fujisawa City officials, a priest of the Enoshima Shrine, and residents on Enoshima Island.

[1] For a discussion of the role of the UNESCO World Heritage program in the creation of a Japanese religious identity, see Mark Teeuwen and Aike P. Rots, ed., Sacred Heritage in Japan (London: Routledge, 2020).

[2] Nicolas Zenzen, “Hippodamos and Phoenicia: On City Planning and Social Order in a Transcultural Context,” in The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and Institutions in Motion, ed. Antje Flüchter and Jivanta Schöttli (Heidelberg: Springer, 2015), 77–97; 79.

[3] For a brief analysis of the origins of transculturality, see Christian Kravagna, “Transcultural Beginnings: Decolonization, Transculturalism, and the Overcoming of Race,” in Transcultural Modernisms: Model House Research Group, ed. Fahim Amir, Eva Egermann, Moira Hille, Jakob Krameritsch, Christian Kravagna, Christina Linortner, Marion von Osten, and Peter Spillmann (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013), 34–47.

[4] Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet De Onis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995).

[5] Wolfgang Welsch, “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today,” in Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, ed. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (London: Sage, 1999), 194–213.

[6] Welsch, “Transculturality,” 199.

[7] Welsch, “Transculturality,” 200.

[8] Thor-André Skrefsrud illustrates the potential of such fluid identity construction with a discussion on immigrant children in Norway. See Thor-André Skrefsrud, “A Transcultural Approach to Cross-cultural Studies: Towards an Alternative to a National Culture Model,” The Journal of Transcultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2021): 81–100; 97–99.

[9] Welsch, “Transculturality,” 203.

[10] The Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” set the foundations for the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. See Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna, “Understanding Transculturalism: Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation,” in Transcultural Modernisms, 22–33. Also see Antje Flüchter and Jivanta Schöttli, “Introduction,” in The Dynamics of Transculturality, 1–23.

[11] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 33–37. The five parts of his model are ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes.

[12] Ulf Hannerz, “Flows, Boundaries and Hybrids: Keywords in Transnational Anthropology,” in Ulf Hannerz, World Watching: Streetcorners and Newsbeats on a Journey through Anthropology (London: Routledge, 2019), 135–158. First published in Portuguese as “Fluxos, fronteiras, híbridos: palavras-chave da antropologia transnacional,” Mana 3, no. 1 (1997): 7–39.

[13] Stuart A. Rockefeller, “Flow,” Current Anthropology 52, no. 4 (August 2011): 557–578; 559–560, https://doi.org/10.1086/660912.

[14] Rockefeller, “Flow,” 568.

[15] Shōji Yamada, Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West, trans. Earl Hartman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 105–215. This text was first published in Japanese as Zen to iu na no Nihonmaru 禅という名の日本丸 (Tokyo: Kodokawa shoten, 2002).

[16] Birgit Kellner, “Introduction,” in Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality: New Approaches, ed. Birgit Kellner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 1–13; 2.

[17] See Anna Andreeva, “‘To Overcome the Tyranny of Time’: Stars, Buddhas, and the Arts of Perfect Memory at Mt. Asama,” in Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality, 119–150; Fabio Rambelli, “In the Footprints of the Buddha: Ceylon and the Quest for the Origin of Buddhism in Early Modern Japan—A Minor Episode in the History of the Japanese Imagination of India,” in Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality, 151–168.

[18] Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck, “Introduction: Theoretical Landscapes of Buddhist Tourism in Asia,” in Buddhist Tourism in Asia, ed. Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020), 1–24; 3.

[19] Joachim Friedrich Quack, “Importing and Exporting Gods? On the Flow of Deities between Egypt and Its Neighboring Countries,” in The Dynamics of Transculturality, 255–277; 258. For representative surveys of this syncretic process in Japanese religious history, see William E. Deal and Brian Ruppert, A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015); Richard Bowring, The Religious Traditions of Japan, 500–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Fabio Rambelli and Mark Teeuwen, ed., Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm (London: Routledge, 2015).

[20] Catherine Ludvik, Sarasvatī Riverine Goddess of Knowledge: From the Manuscript-carrying Vīṇā-player to the Weapon-wielding Defender of the Dharma (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 11–12.

[21] Ludvik, Sarasvatī, 146–159.

[22] The Harivaṃśa describes Sarasvatī’s relationship with the Hindu deity Kṛṣṇa, but this association was elided from the adaptation included in the Sutra of Golden Light as translated by Yijing. For a detailed analysis of the Harivaṃśa within the Golden Light Sutra, see Catherine Ludvik, Recontextualizing the Praises of a Goddess: From the Harivaṃśa to Yijing’s Chinese Translation of the Sutra of Golden Light, Italian School of East Asian Studies Occasional Papers 10 (Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull’Asia Orientale, 2006). For Ludvik’s analysis of the relationship between these texts, see Sarasvatī, 182–221. Ludvik also compares iconographic representations of Vindhyavāsinī and Sarasvatī on pages 226–269.

[23] Andrew M. Watsky, Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 39. In the early Edo period (seventeenth century), the Tokugawa shoguns followed earlier examples of warrior patronage of the Benzaiten cult by placing shrines dedicated to her in ponds near their family’s mortuary temples of Zōjōji 増上寺 and Kan’eiji 寛永寺 in Edo. All the sites remain, but Zōjōji’s pond and shrine were heavily damaged in World War II.

[24] Sasama Yoshihiko 笹間良彦, Benzaiten shinkō to zokushin 弁才天信仰と俗信 [Benzaiten worship and popular faith] (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 2017), 201–204. Ugajin was an earth deity, and hence was associated with snakes, but under the influence of Indian lore brought in along with Buddhism, the snake symbol was also related to water. This interpretation dovetails with original riverine meanings associated with Benzaiten in India.

[25] Photographic reproductions of these texts from the Enoshima shrine are in a curated museum catalogue sponsored by Yūgyōji 遊行寺 temple in Fujisawa. See Yūgyōji hōmotsukan 遊行寺宝物館 [Yūgyōji Temple Treasury], comp., Enoshima 江の島 (Fujisawa: Yūgyōji hōmotsukan, 2021).

[26] Like Indian nāgas, dragons in Chinese legend are also associated with the power of water. Thus, in this Enoshima tale, one can argue that a beneficial form of water, symbolized by Benzaiten, overcomes the destructive power of the same element, as represented by the dragon.

[27] The southern end of the hill branches out into two small ridges, with an open area in between. This area is known as the Dragon’s Mouth (Tatsu no kuchi 龍口), and at present, there is a temple of the Nichiren 日蓮 school with a Sinicized version of the same name: Ryūkōji 龍口寺 (Dragon Mouth Temple). Benzaiten’s benevolent taming of the dragon is but one variety of Japanese legends involving the trope of a relationship between a man, a woman, and this mythical creature. In other examples such as the story of Urashimatarō 浦島太郎, the daughter of the dragon king invites a fisherman to her father’s palace under the sea, but he loses track of human time, and like Rip Van Winkle, he cannot return to his own time and place. On a darker note, in the tale of Dōjōji 道成寺, a woman named Kiyohime 清姫 falls in love with the cleric Anchin 安珍. He spurns her attention, and she responds by transforming into a dragon and burning him to death within a large temple bell.

[28] For discussions of Kōkei’s work and a comparison with the manuscripts at the Enoshima Shrine, see Itō Kazumi 伊藤一美, Enoshima, kami no shima kara hito no shima e 江の島、神の島から人の島へ [Enoshima: From a sacred island to a human island] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa monjokan [Fujisawa City Archives], 2019), 2–29. Itō also discusses discrepancies between the accounts, but they do not have a bearing on this article’s arguments. For other summaries, also see Suzuki Yoshiaki 鈴木良明, Enoshima mōde: Benzaiten shinkō no katachi 江島詣: 弁財天信仰のかたち [Worshiping at Enoshima: The form of Benzaiten faith] (Yokohama: Yūrindō, 2019), 11–28; Sasama, Benzaiten, 76–89.

[29] For references to Enoshima in early medieval tales and records, see Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 30–49; Itō, Enoshima, 2–12. For a transcription and brief translation of this Edo-period illustrated scroll, see Yūgyōji hōmotsukan, Enoshima, 38–63.

[30] Although the Enoshima shrine adopted the Munakata system of deities and names of the shrines, it did so with modifications. As the main Munakata deity, Ichikishima is worshipped at the main shrine of Hetsu no miya in Fukuoka, but the priests at Enoshima placed her in the newly renamed Nakatsu no miya (the former Kami no miya) shrine. There is no documentation for this choice, but it probably reflects the clerics’ appreciation of the Upper Cloister’s age and prominence among Enoshima’s votive sites. Enoshima’s own Hetsu no miya has one of the sister deities, Tagitsu hime no mikoto 湍津姫命.

[31] Iwaya literally means “cave.”

[32] The renaming process at Enoshima includes a play on words: The original shrine in Fukuoka is the Okitsu no miya 沖津宮, or “Shrine in the Distant Sea,” but this has been modified to Okutsu no miya 奥津宮 “Back Shrine” to reflect that its location is farthest from the entrance to the shrine precincts on Enoshima.

[33] Prior to the dominance of Iwamotoin, the Upper Cloister was known by its own temple name: Kinkisan Yoganji 金亀山与願寺. I have opted to use the Upper Cloister name to simplify the identification of this temple in my discussion.

[34] Dates of establishment have been provided when known. The Table has been compiled from the following sources: Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, iv; Fujisawa-shi kyōikuiinkai hakubutsukan kensetsu junbi tanto [Administrator for Museum Construction Preparations, Fujisawa City Board of Education], ed., Enoshima no minzoku 江の島の民族 [The people of Enoshima] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai [Fujisawa Board of Education], 1995), 52–60.

[35] Iwamotoin was once known as the Middle Cloister (Naka no bō 中之坊), and its dominance was recognized by the Tokugawa shogunate following a series of legal suits between its abbots and those of the Upper Cloister. Details of the Iwamotoin–Upper Cloister litigation can be found in Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 82–87. Regarding clerical marriage, clerics of the Buddhist Ikkō School
一向宗 were allowed to marry, but the Tokugawa shogunal laws mandated harsh punishments for the abbots of other traditions (including those of the Shingi Shingon School) who broke their vows of celibacy. On some occasions, however, the Tokugawa regime did grant exceptions in recognition of pre-Tokugawa precedents. Such was the case at Enoshima.

[36] Watsky’s Chikubushima discusses at length the political and social implications of warrior support for the Benzaiten shrine on that island. For a chronological survey of architecture as a medium for expressing power, see William H. Coaldrake, Architecture and Authority in Japan (London: Routledge, 1996).

[37] Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 152–176. For broader descriptions of temple/shrine tourism in the Edo period that include discussions of Enoshima, see Hara Jun’ichirō 原淳一郎, Edo no jisha meguri: Kamakura, Enoshima, Oisesan 江戸の寺社めぐり：鎌倉江ノ島お伊勢さん [Making the rounds of Edo temples and shrines: Kamakura, Enoshima, Ise] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2011); see also Hara Jun’ichirō 原淳一郎, Kinsei jisha sankei no kenkyū 近世寺社参詣の研究 [Research on pilgrimages to early modern temples and shrines] (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2007).

[38] Due to gender biases derived from strict interpretations of Buddhist clerical precepts and widespread assumptions regarding the impurity of women, many well-known temple-shrine complexes on sacred mountains and islands prohibited women from entering their precincts. For example, even though the Munakata deities were female, the ban on women visitors applied to its Okitsu no miya 沖津宮 shrine. One appeal of Enoshima was its open-door policy to all visitors.

[39] Nam-lin Hur, Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Sensōji and Edo Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000).

[40] Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 140–152.

[41] These are described in Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr., Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 156–163. Benzaiten was the only female deity among them.

[42] For representative studies of early Meiji policies and their implementation, see James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 323–354. The Meiji government initially appointed Shinto shrine clerics as state functionaries charged with proselytizing the new system among the general populace, but it later rescinded this designation, as the modern educational system and other means for propagating the state’s ideology evolved. The national government used emperor-veneration as a means for fostering patriotism and bolstering colonialist objectives abroad.

[43] Sadly, only 400 Iwamotoin documents from the Edo and early Meiji periods remain, hence there are no detailed records of the discussions that led to the import of deities with little direct connection with earlier Benzaiten cultic practices in Enoshima. For transcriptions of the records that remain, see Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai shōgai gakushūka hakubutsukan junbi tantō 藤沢市教育委員会生涯学習課博物館準備担当 [Administrator for Museum Preparations, Life Studies Department of the Fujisawa Board of Education], ed., Enoshima Iwamotoin no kinsei monjo 江の島岩本院近世文書 [The early modern archives of Enoshima’s Iwamotoin] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai [Fujisawa Board of Education], 2003). For a general discussion of the transition, see Koresawa Kyōzō 是澤恭三, Enoshima Benzaiten shinkōshi 江島辨財天信仰史 [History of Enoshima Benzaiten faith] (Fujisawa: Enoshima jinja shamusho [Enoshima Shrine Office], 2019). Information on displaced statues and other Buddhist objects is available in Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai kyōiku bunkazai tantō 藤沢市教育委員会文化財担当 [Official in Charge of Educational Cultural Properties, Fujisawa Board of Education], ed., Fujisawa-shi bunkazai chōsa hōkokusho 藤沢市文化財調査報告書 [Survey report on Fujisawa City cultural properties] 20 (Fujisawa: Fujisawa kyōiku iinkai [Fujisawa Board of Education], 1985), 9–39.

[44] Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 193–202. The appellation “Illuminous Deity of Enoshima” does appear in early accounts of the island. Therefore, the new clerics of the shrine used an off-island element of Benzaiten’s legacy to erase her name from the Enoshima’s gate.

[45] Bruntz and Schedneck, “Theoretical Landscapes of Buddhist Tourism,” 9.

[46] Kokaze Hidemasa 小風秀雅, “Shōnan no naka no ichiiki imēji” 湘南の中の地域イメージ [Regional images in history], in Shōnan no tanjō 湘南の誕生 [The birth of Shōnan], ed. Shōnan no tanjō no kenkyūkai [Research Group for Shōnan no tanjō] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai [Fujisawa Board of Education], 2005), 1–4; 1–2.

[47] Ōya Yumiko 大矢悠三子, “Kaisuiyoku no hasshō to hatten” 海水浴の発想と発展 [The emergence and development of sea swimming], in Shōnan no tanjō, 28–46.

[48] Enoshima dentetsu kabushiki kaisha 江ノ島電鉄株式会社 [Enoshima Electric Railway Corp.], ed., Enoden no 100 nen 江ノ電の100年 [100 years of the Enoden] (Fujisawa: Enoshima dentetsu kabushiki kaisha, 2002), 42–71; Ōya Yumiko 大矢悠三子, Enoden ensen no kin-gendaishi 江ノ電沿線の近現代史 [The recent history of the Enoshima rail line] (Tokyo: Kurosu karuchā shuppan, 2018).

[49] Miyamoto Kazuo 本宮一男, “Sengo tetsudō shihon no kankō senryaku to Katase-Enoshima: ‘Kaisuiyoku no jidai’ to sono shūen” 戦後鉄道の観光戦略と片瀬江の島―「海水浴の時代」とその終焉 [The post-war tourism strategies of the railroads and Katase-Enoshima: ‘The Age of Sea Bathing’ and its end], in Shōnan no tanjō, 176–199; 176–177.

[50] Uchida Teruhiko 内田輝彦, Enoshima shokubutsuen to Samueru Kokkingu 江の島植物園サムエル コッキング [The Enoshima Botanical Garden and Samuel Cocking] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai jimu kyoku [Office of the Fujisawa Board of Education], 1961), 28–44. When completed in 1885, the hothouses were the largest of their kind in Japan. They were destroyed during the 1923 earthquake.”

[51] Iikubo Hideki 飯窪秀樹, “Gaikokujin kankōkyaku to Kamakura-Enoshima” 外国人観光客と鎌倉江の島 [Foreign tourists and Kamakura-Enoshima], in Shōnan no tanjō, 152–174. Among the examples of the guidebooks cited in Iikubo’s article is An Official Guide to Japan (1933), which was produced by the Japanese Government Railways office.

[52] Miyamoto Kazuo, “Sengo tetsudō no kankō,” 178–179. I use “visitations” since one worker or family might make multiple trips to both places in one year.

[53] Miyamoto Kazuo, “Sengo tetsudō no kankō,” 181–189.

[54] Katō Atsuko 加藤厚子, “Shuppan bunka to wakamono” 出版文化と若者 [Print culture and youth], in Shōnan no tanjō, 222–238.

[55] Robert Shepherd, Faith in Heritage: Displacement, Development and Religious Tourism in Contemporary China (London: Routledge, 2013.), 26–27, 40.

[56] Miyamoto Kazuo, “Sengo tetsudō no kankō,” 184, 192–199.

[57] Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 202. This income loss would also explain the shrine’s decision to sell its vegetable patch to Cocking. Note that it was only pilgrimage from elsewhere in Japan that declined. Visiting Enoshima’s shrines remained a constant element in the daily lives of islanders and the residents of Fujisawa and Kamakura.

[58] Depopulation has affected the eastside as well. During the pre-war and post-war heyday, there were over seventy shops on Enoshima. Many eventually closed, but new owners renovated the vacant spaces. This kind of renovation was not possible with the fishing industry. Information regarding such matters on Enoshima was obtained from interviews with the following people: Yuasa Hirokazu 湯浅裕一, Chairperson, Fujisawa Tourism Association, and Chairperson, Enoshima Promotion Liaison Council, interviewed by the author, August 18, 2022; Kimura Yoshifumi 木村嘉文 (Staff Member of the Tourism Division, Economic Affairs Department, Fujisawa City Office), interviewed by the author, August 8, 2022.

[59] Horisaki Sō 堀嵜壮, Junior Priest (gonnegi 権禰宜) of the Enoshima shrine, interviewed by the author, August 14, 2022.

[60] This shift reflects a point made by Bruntz and Schedneck that the sacred-secular relationship is a fluid dynamic that can be shaped and reformed as different constituents (for example, priests, politicians, pilgrims, and business owners) exert their respective influence over a specific site. See Bruntz and Schedneck, “Theoretical Landscapes of Buddhist Tourism,” 9–10.

[61] Bruntz and Schedneck, “Theoretical Landscapes of Buddhist Tourism,” 10.

[62] Matthew J. Trew, “Buddhists, Bones, and Bats: Thematic Tourism and the Symbolic Economy of Phnom Sampeau, Cambodia,” in Buddhist Tourism in Asia, 125–143; 139.

[63] The comment regarding the shrine’s earlier distance comes from Yuasa. Yuasa, Horisaki, and Kimura—all stressed the high value placed on Benzaiten’s legacy now. Yuasa, interviewed by the author, August 18, 2022; Horisaki, interviewed by the author, August 14, 2022; Kimura, interviewed by the author, August 8, 2022.

[64] For an example of tensions over authority that continue long after the promulgation of the Meiji edicts for the separation of Buddhism and Shinto, see Andreas Riessland, “A Mountain of Problems: Ethnography among Mount Haguro’s Feuding Yamabushi,” in Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, ed. J. S. Eades, Tom Gill, and Harumi Befu (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000), 180–202.

[65] Matthew Mitchell, “How I Meditated with Your Mother: Speed Dating at Temples and Shrines in Contemporary Japan,” in Buddhist Tourism in Asia, 206–226; 215–218.

[66] The Iwamotorō Hotel displays another premodern eight-armed statue, several of Benzaiten’s attendants, and other artifacts that were preserved after the dissolution of Iwamotoin. These are open for viewing to anyone who enters the lobby of the hotel. There is no charge for this, but the hotel does not advertise the display to visitors passing by the entrance.

[67] Reader and Tanabe also describe talismans and other articles related to prayers for various benefits. See Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious, 37–70.

[68] Several years ago, the upper trunks and branches were removed due to disease, but the main section of the trunks and the roots remain.

[69] Details concerning the cave’s issues and the sharing of managerial responsibilities were obtained from the interviews with Yuasa and Horisaki. Yuasa, interviewed by the author, August 18, 2022; Horisaki, interviewed by the author, August 14, 2022.

[70] The candles are not necessary for light, but they confer a degree of solemnity and exoticism to the experience.

[71] Benten is a common abbreviation for Benzaiten.

[72] For descriptions of the “mountain” or Benten Group area, see Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai 藤沢市教育委員会 [Fujisawa Board of Education], ed., Enoshima no minzoku 江の島の民族 [The people of Enoshima] (Fujisawa: Fujisawa-shi kyōiku iinkai [Fujisawa Board of Education], 1995), 141–142, 155–156. For a 2009 account of the island’s municipal structure, see Katase chiku jichi chōnaikai renraku kyōgikai 片瀬地区自治町内会連絡協議会 [Liaison Support Council for the Autonomous Katase Neighborhood Association], Enoshima burokku 江の島ブロック [The Enoshima Block], accessed November 15, 2022, https://chiiki-bosai.jp/index.php?module=blog&aid=28471&eid=28465 .

[73] This movie is based on a 2011 love story by the author Koshigaya Osamu 越谷オサム. Miki Takahiro 三木孝浩, Hidamari no kanojo 陽だまりの彼女 (Tokyo: Tōhō, 2013).

[74] Joachim Quack’s study also notes the importance of outward projection of deities and belief systems in the processes of exchange between ancient Egypt and neighboring cultures. See Quack, “Importing and Exporting Gods,” 255–277.

[75] The oshi from Enoshima are described in Suzuki, Enoshima mōde, 118–134. Many temples and shrines in pre-modern Japan benefited from the income generated by these promoters. For a description of oshi activities at Ōyama, a major Buddhist shrine complex to the west of Enoshima, see Barbara Ambros, Emplacing a Pilgrimage: The Ōyama Cult and Regional Religion in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008).

[76] Enoshima Shrine, “Enoshima jinja,” accessed December 10, 2022, http://enoshimajinja.or.jp.

[77] Kishimoto Keiko 岸本景子, “Gotōryū to tennyosama (Bentensama): Enoshima engi yori” 五頭龍と天女様（弁天様）：江島縁起より [The Five-headed Dragon and the Heavenly Woman (Benten): From the Tale of Enoshima’s Origins], accessed December 20, 2022, http://enoshimajinja.or.jp/manga01/.

[78] Elisabetta Porcu, “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons, and Branding,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 26, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 157–172; 158–160, https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.26.2.157. Other examples of modern Buddhist groups using the Internet for proselytization and community building purposes can be found in Gregory Price Grieve and Daniel Veidlinger, ed., Buddhism, the Internet, and Digital Media: The Pixel in the Lotus (London: Routledge, 2015).

[79] Porcu, “Pop Religion in Japan,” 161. The meaning of otaku おたく is too complex to properly cover here, but it generally refers to younger men and sometimes women who are strongly interested in computer/mass media technology, particularly the contents that are shared via such devices (for example, characters in an anime) and representations of those contents in other activities such as cosplay, etc. Otaku were once stereotyped as highly introverted young men (like the “computer nerd” in Hollywood movies), but now a greater range of men and women self-identify as otaku.

[80] I have chosen to say “Japanese-reading public” instead of “Japanese public” here because language competence is not necessarily tied to ethnic identity, and anyone who is competent in written Japanese can easily handle this manga’s text.

[81] Fujisawa-shi kankō kyōkai 藤沢市観光協会 [Fujisawa Tourism Association], “Fujisawa-shi, Shōnan, Enoshima” 藤沢市湘南江の島, accessed December 10, 2022, https://www.fujisawa-kanko.jp.

[82] For a discussion of power spots and their meanings at Shinto shrines, see Caleb Carter, “Power Spots and the Charged Landscape of Shinto,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45, no. 1 (2018): 145–173, http://dx.doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.45.1.2018.145-173.

[83] Fujisawa-shi kankō kyōkai 藤沢市観光協会 [Fujisawa Tourism Association], “Tennyo to gozuryū” 天女と五頭龍 [The legend of the Goddess and the Five-Headed Dragon], accessed December 10, 2022, https://www.fujisawa-kanko.jp/feature/tennyotogozuryu-tunen.html.

[84] Nippon Foundation, “Umi to Nippon,” accessed December 12, 2022, https://uminohi.jp; Nippon Foundation, “Umi no minwa no machi,” accessed December 12, 2022, https://uminominwa.jp.

[85] The links for these pages as follows: Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/discoverfujisawa?ref=embed_page), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/discoverfujisawa/), and Twitter (X) (https://x.com/discover_fuji).

[86] “Enoshima iwaya/Enoshima Iwaya Cave,” Facebook Page, accessed December 10, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/enoshimaiwaya.

[87] Fujisawa Tourism Association, “Discover Fujisawa,” accessed December 10, 2022, https://discover-fujisawa.jp.

[88] Fujisawa Tourism Association, “Discover Fujisawa,” Facebook Page, accessed December 10, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/discoverfujisawa.

[89] “Enoshima: Pleasantly Touristy Island near Kamakura,” Japan-Guide.com, accessed November 15, 2022, https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3117.html; “Visiting Enoshima: The Must-See Spots on Japan’s Famous Day-Trip Island!,” livejapan.com, accessed November 15, 2022, https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-kanagawa/in-kamakura/article-a0002023/.