A Family of Clerics: Temple Wives, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Jodo Shinshu Temples

This dissertation seeks to understand the position of the priest's wife or bomori (literally, "temple guardian") in the contemporary Jodo Shinshu by weaving together historical, doctrinal, and ethnographic sources. I argue that temple wives occupy an ambiguous position: as women whose existence straddles the domestic and religious realms, they must negotiate their embodiment of the secular norms for wives and mothers with their special responsibilities as residents in a religious household and propagators of the Buddhist teachings. This ambiguity is evident in both the normative discourse regarding bomori, authored by male priests dating back to Rennyo (1415--1499), and in the narratives of women themselves.;Chapter One surveys the historical and doctrinal sources concerning bomori until the prewar period. Chapter Two moves to a ground level view, profiling three contemporary temple wives in order to show how the daily and yearly life of the bomori is inextricable from the life of the temple itself, and thus how integral this domestic figure is to the livelihood of the temple community and the propagation of Buddhism at the local level. Chapter Three turns to the sacerdotal dimension of the temple wife's role. While ordination for women was not officially permitted in the Jodo Shinsh u until the early Showa period (1926--1989), by integrating first-hand accounts of temple wives and daughters, I shed light on the de facto religious authority of bomori, particularly in cases when their temple lacks a male heir. Chapter Four examines the intense debate beginning in the 1980's surrounding the proper definition and status of bomori, as roles within in the temple family were viewed through the lenses of gender equality for the first time. Chapter Five returns to an ethnographic perspective to address the complicated question of how one becomes a temple wife. Through the detailed stories of several young temple wives, I explore various dimensions of their training, including mentorship and cohabitation with their in-laws, temple wife networks and workshops, initiation ceremonies, and in some cases full priestly ordination.