For more than four centuries, the history of Japanese religions has been dominated by secrecy. Secret texts circulated in every group regardless of their affiliation or social status, showing the porosity and pervasiveness of secrecy. Why and how did secrecy become such a central component of religious life? Although works on secrecy abound in the field of European and Tantra studies, the enormous body of Japanese secret works – many of which are recently discovered – has received relatively little attention, casting a shadow on a fundamental aspect of medieval and early modern Japanese...
