The Zokushōsai Ritual: Chinese Origins and Its Development in Japanese Onmyōdō Practices

This article explores the Japanese zokushōsai ritual, tracing its Chinese origins and historical development. Zokushō, which means assigned star, refers to the correspondence between an individual’s birth year and one of the seven stars in the Big Dipper. Although its Chinese origins are acknowledged, this study argues that the tradition in China was a complex of beliefs and practices built from several historical layers, including early concepts from apocryphal texts, popular ritual in Dunhuang manuscripts, institutionalized Daoist liturgies, and apocryphal sutras shaped by Buddhist and Daoist interactions. This article uses a layered approach to show how different elements of the Chinese tradition were selectively transmitted to Japan and then transformed within the contexts of Onmyōdō and Sukuyōdō. The zokushōsai ritual performed in Japan is not a simple reception, but a process of local adaptation, shaped by both its Chinese roots and specific Japanese religious factors.