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This study examines the history of the use of the Buddhist discourse of the four objects of indebtedness (shion) to establish that its introduction provided the basis for a novel taxonomy of social relationships in Japan. The discourse, introduced to Japan in the early ninth century, included the sovereign for the first time as one of the fundamental objects of obligation to which all beings are indebted, and thus represented the ruler as a basic component of the ideal Buddhist society. The discourse of the four debts came to be appropriated by not only clerics but also members of the government and was incorporated into wellknown historical tales and diaries of women of the imperial court. Although the discourse as originally presented in scripture did not measure the respective importance of any of the objects of indebtedness, a series of sources of the medieval era indicates that some Japanese experienced tensions with regard to the question of the highest object of obligation-for example, is one's higher obligation to one's mother or to Buddhism? Moreover, is the highest of obligations to the ruler? The fact that members of a wide variety of social strata appropriated the discourse from a very early period to interpret their situations suggests that it was disseminated to virtually every level of society; given such early dissemination, knowledge gained from the study of indebtedness discourse may help us to gain a clearer understanding of the impact of Buddhism on the lives of Japanese people of the early medieval era than that gained from analysis focused primarily on the discourse of Royal Law/Buddhist Law (obŌ buppo), which was appropriated most often by members of institutions of the cultural and political elite.

Sin or Crime? Buddhism, Indebtedness, and the Construction of Social Relations in Early Medieval Japan