Question #1 passport #3
             What essential roles did the ubasoku play in the assimilation of the Buddhist religion into the folk culture?
             Of the most influential people in early Buddhism the ubasoku were the main driving forces in the integration of rural Japan. These traditional shamanistic, Buddhists had come over from China and Korea. In their own country states they had supported the wrong group of politicians or they were just run out of their homelands for other various reasons. They had brought over the ways of Buddhism and superiour technology to help the native Japanese. The ubasoku were exiles, but with their superior technology they had no problem gaining acceptance in the upper class of Japanese society.
             The ubasoku had many unusual magical powers that intrigued both the upper and rural classes. Many of the ubasoku dwelled in the mountains and relied on the mountins to provide them with shelter and hard to come by land. On occasion a powerful member of the upper class would come to need the services of a shaman, and make the journey out to the mountains. The powerful person and their entourage would usually draw the attention of the rural people. This would provide the obasoku with sort of a commercial endorsement. This was probably one of the reasons that the peasants first elected to make the difficult journey into the mountains to observe the powers of the ubasoku. The peasants may have also needed guides on their pilgrimages to pray in the mountains. The style of ubasoku that they would encounter in the mountains would have been the yama-bushi, or holy men who sleep in the mountains. The only way that these men would have been discovered or sought out would have been with the reputation that the their cousins the junrei, known as pilgrims who traveled the country side with the intention of helping remove evil sprits or just helping people on their way to nirvana. Most of the ubasoku had strange mystical powers. Ma...