Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
seem to include some of them. Many entered into homosexual relationships with temple
acolytes, and the boy prostitutes that flourished at the time counted them among their re-
liable clients. At the same time, the priest who kept a female companion in some hidden
room in his temple was a constantly recurring theme in popular literature.
The professional priest in his temple carrying out religious ceremonial for himself and
his parishioners had been trained since boyhood. There were also many who entered reli-
gion as a means of retreat from the world. These were most often older people, heads of
familiesandtheirwives,evenhigh-rankingwarriors,whowishedtogiveupadministration
orbusinessandtoliveaquietlifeofretirementorperhapstobecomepoetsandartists.Wo-
men might become nuns and live in cells in monasteries. There were also other nuns, or at
leastfeignedones,whoroamedthehighways,ostensiblysingingBuddhisthymns,butwill-
ing to replace them by songs of less elevated content, as well as performing other services.
These formed part of a multitude of people on the periphery of Buddhism whose activities
overlapped those of street-performers and beggars. They would dance, work themselves
into a frenzy of chest-beating or bell-ringing, and even deliver sermons at street corners;
at a time when some forms of madness were considered an amusing sight, people afflicted
with them would be asked to give a performance for the benefit of spectators. These semi-
beggars, who entertained with their antics, merged into the outcast population. Buddhist
priests themselves were outside the class system, and in the scale of punishment they were
in a category by themselves, being treated much like warriors (without, of course, the right
of self-killing), but with appropriate penalties, such as banishment from their temples or
confinement to them.
Inadditiontothepriesthoods,therewerethe
onmyoshi,
whowereskilledintheChinese
science
of ying and yang,
the negative and positive principles in life. Their concern was
with the calendar and the stars, with the compass directions and with physiognomy, and
they gave advice about myriad human activities. The date of a marriage was chosen with
due regard to the horoscopes of the participants; the date when building a house should
commence, the direction in which it should face, the disposition of its rooms, all depen-
ded upon their instructions. The choice of the site of Kyoto in the eighth century was de-
cideduponbysuchconsiderations,includingtheprotectionaffordedagainstdemonsbythe
mountains which enclose it on all sides except the south—with the unfortunate result that
Kyoto is cold in winter and hot in summer. The practitioners of this lore numbered several
tensofthousandsintheTokugawaperiod,andwieldedconsiderablepower.SomeBuddhist
and
shintō
priests were also skilful astrologers, so that the profession of
onmyoshi
was not
always separate from the two priesthoods.
Another group of professional people who were also outside the class system were
the doctors. They were allowed the use of long swords, and also had family names. They
commonly wore their hair cropped short, but with no shaven area, and so were easily dis-
