page_title: Northeast China folk religion
section_title: Japanese scholarship and Shinto similarities
hierarchical_section_title: Northeast China folk religion / History / Japanese scholarship and Shinto similarities
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an old picture photographed by a unit of the garrison in Zhangjiakou on 1950s. 中文: 这是一幅拍摄于中华人民共和国河北省张家口市胜利公园的图片
context_page_description: Northeast China folk religion is the variety of Chinese folk religion of northeast China, characterised by distinctive cults original to Hebei and Shandong, transplanted and adapted by the Han Chinese settlers of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang since the Qing dynasty. It is characterised by terminology, deities and practices that are different from those of central and southern Chinese folk religion. Many of these patterns derive from the interaction of Han religion with Manchu shamanism.
  Prominence is given to the worship of zoomorphic deities, of a "totemic" significance. In the region the terms shen 神 and xian 仙 are synonymous. Figures of ritual specialists or shamans perform various ritual functions for groups of believers and local communities, including chūmǎxiān, dances, healing, exorcism, divination, and communication with ancestors.
context_section_description: The study of northeast China's folk religion owes much to the scholarly enterprise that the Japanese conducted on the subject during the period of Manchukuo (1932–1945) that they established after they occupied Manchuria. Unlike Japanese-occupied Korea and occupied Taiwan, Manchuria was conceived as an autonomous nation, not to be assimilated into Japan, but rather to be modeled after the latter's social and religious structure keeping an independent identity.
  Ōmachi Tokuzo (1909-1970), a pupil of Yanagita Kunio (the founder of academic ethnography in Japan), conducted field research on local religion in Manchuria through the war years. He later acted as the head of the Society for the Study of Manchurian Customs, producing an impressive body of research on local religion in Manchuria and north China. Ōmachi identified the rural village, each with a Tudishen shrine, as the fundamental unit of northeast China's local religion and of the religious character of the Han Chinese race. He also studies local Chinese goddess worship and the great similarity and integration of the Han and the Manchus. Ōmachi does not appear to have supported the institution of Shinto shrines in Manchurian villages, which in Korea and Taiwan were intended for the spiritual transformation of the locals into Japanese citizens by their integration into Shinto communities.
  Another scholar, Tokunaga Takeshi, sought to demonstrate the spiritual unity of Japan, Manchuria and China by highlighting the similarities between ancient religious structures of the three nations:
  Japanese ancient shrines are of the kannabi (popularly known as Mt. Fuji-style) shape. There are many of these in Manchuria, as well ... [The artifacts] develop from the same agrarian culture and philosophy as Japanese Shinto (kannagara no michi) ... Modern [Chinese] matron temples have these elements, as well. Therefore, since the temples were built later, it is thought that matron worship was grafted onto this earlier pattern of belief.
  Other scholars studied the similarities between local and Japanese shamanisms. The Manchukuo generally promoted a racially centered spiritual revival, that is an ethnic religion for each of the races inhabiting Manchuria. For example, under the suggestions of Ogasawara Shozo that the Mongols "need(ed) a new religion, specifically a new god" they promoted the worship of Genghis Khan that continues today in northern China. The Shinto shrine of Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou, Hebei) incorporated Genghis Khan worship and was opened to local Mongols.
caption: Shinto shrine in Zhangjiakou, Hebei, China, in the 1950s, when it was already abandoned. The shrine was founded by the Japanese during World War II, and incorporated Mongol Genghis Khan worship.
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