JAPANESE CULTURE, EXPLAINED
仏壇
A butsudan provides a household setting for a Buddhist object of devotion, worship and offerings. Its cabinet may hold an image or scroll and ritual furnishings. Schools differ in arrangement and in how remembrance of the dead relates to that setting.
The honzon may take the form of a sculpture, picture or another form appropriate to the school. Remembering deceased relatives can occur in the same setting, without defining every altar as a cabinet of ancestral tablets. Tokyo’s Asakusa Higashi Honganji-ha explains its altar through Amida Buddha and the representation of the Pure Land. This is that institution’s religious account.
Asakusa’s Higashi Honganji-ha and Kyoto’s Shinshū Ōtani-ha must be identified separately. The Kyoto school calls a household altar an onaibutsu, centres it on Amida and does not use memorial tablets. Its Osaka district describes recording the deceased’s religious names on a scroll or in a memorial register. These examples show why tablets are not a universal requirement.
Horinji, a Shinshū Ōtani-ha temple, describes an everyday set of three furnishings: a candlestick, an earthenware incense burner and a flower vase. Its daily practice lights the hanging lamps rather than the candle; incense is broken to fit and laid inside the burner. Memorial services and Hōonkō use further arrangements. Even within one school, everyday and ceremonial settings differ.
The industry’s fair-trade council places the spread of household altars within Edo-period temple affiliation and family memorial practices. Developments in building and craft techniques also contributed to elaborate cabinets. Factory mass production joined craft production after the war, followed by overseas manufacture from the 1990s. Present cabinet forms should not be projected unchanged back to Buddhism’s first arrival.
Gold-finished altars use surfaces including lacquer and gold leaf; karaki forms make more of the wood’s appearance. Furniture-like forms provide further options. Kyoto’s Ōtani-ha also describes folded or framed devotional images for smaller spaces. Size and physical form can change, while their religious significance remains tied to the relevant school’s explanation.
No. Shinshū Ōtani-ha does not use them and describes other ways to record the deceased’s religious names.
No. Worship centred on the honzon should be distinguished from, while related to, family remembrance.
The former emphasise surfaces including lacquer and gold leaf; the latter make more of the wood’s appearance. Individual materials and workmanship still vary.