Bettō
Bettō is a term which originally indicated the head of an institution serving temporarily as the head of another one, but which came to mean also the full-time head of some institution. The Kamakura period samurai Wada Yoshimori, for example, was the first bettō of the shogunate's Samurai-dokoro.Religious use of the term
A bettō was a monk who performed Buddhist rites at shrines and jingūji before the shinbutsu bunri, the Meiji period law that forbade the mixing of Shinto and Buddhism. A shrine had various bettō, from the seibettō to the shūri bettō. Those not associated with religious duties were called zoku bettō. Among the shrines that appointed bettō are Iwashimizu Hachiman-gū, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, and Hakone Jinja. They were particularly common at Hachiman and gongen shrines, and their mandate lasted three or six years.
