42 Buddhism in Japan

Bulcsu Siklds

The images of traditional Japan that spring to mind are almost all Buddhist inspired. Shinto, it is true, has its part to play, but the quiescence of the Tea Ceremony, the artistry of the swordsman or flower arranger, the skill of the N6 actor or the haiku poet all have their basis in Buddhist or more precisely Zen practice.

These images, so unlike the ones connected with Buddhism elsewhere in Asia, would also lead one to believe that Japanese Buddhism is somehow more Japanese than it is Buddhist, that it has been altered more than any other type. There is perhaps some validity in this view but, even though the Japanese initially adopted Buddhism as an aspect of Chinese culture rather than as an independent religion, in its fullest expression it remains as canonical and hence as Indian as any other type.

Probably in the year 552, the king of the Korean kingdom of Paekche, hard pressed by the expansionist desires of the two neighbouring kingdoms of Koguryd and Silla, decided to send a bronze image of the Buddha, accompanied by several volumes of scriptures in Chinese as well as a letter highlighting the beneficial effects of Buddhism, to the Japanese court. This hardly had much of an effect; in short it was presumably the loss of the Japanese outpost of Mimana on the Korean coast that led to a certain degree of realisation concerning the political, economic and indeed cultural backwardness of Japan when compared to the continent, and which rapidly led to a desire for all that their great neighbour China could offer. Resistance to Buddhism during this initial period was considerable, the traditionalists objecting to the worship of the Buddha on the grounds that it would offend the native deities who would (and, let it be said, did) respond by causing various epidemics and droughts throughout the land.

The responsibility for promoting the new religion fell to Prince Umayado, better known as Shotoku Taishi (Crown Prince Shotoku, 572-622), son of the Empress Suiko (593-628), whom Japanese Buddhists generally regard as the founder of their religion.

Doubtless Buddhism would have made little headway without imperial support from the earliest times; support which was generously provided since it enabled the court to present a unified front replete with continental sophistication to the traditionalists of the Mononobe and Nakatomi clans desperately trying to maintain the status quo. The doctrine was no longer proffered by Paekche but was imported by the Japanese court itself directly from the north Korean kingdom of Korai which maintained close contacts with the Chinese Sui dynasty.

The Buddhism of this period was of course nonsectarian and hardly considered inimical to the Japanese spirit as its native practitioners took due care in keeping to the required Shinto observances. Indeed Buddhism was thought of merely as a superior form of magic, its superiority obvious in view of its architectural, artistic and ritual complexity—certainly a provincial noble on his first visit to the imperial capital would have been left in no doubt as to the deficiencies of the autochthonous faith. This said, the commentaries attributed to Prince Shotoku suggest that at least some Japanese in this early period felt attracted to Buddhism because of its philosophical subtlety and vast range of meditative techniques, although such appreciation was limited to those with a good knowledge of Chinese since no Buddhist text had yet been translated into Japanese.

The first permanent capital at Nara, established in 710, rapidly became the nucleus from which Buddhism spread to the rest of the country. The forty-fifth emperor, Shomu (701-56, reigned 724-49), ordered the construction of two Provincial Temples (kokubunji) in each province, one for monks (kokubunsoji) and the other for nuns (kokubunniji) who were required to perform observances to ensure the continuity of the state and successful harvests. The kokubunji were regarded as branches of the Todaiji in Nara, founded in 745, the central hall of which is even today the largest wooden building in the world, housing an immense bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana (in Japanese, Dainichi nyorai or Biroshana), extremely popular because of the belief that the Shinto solar deity Amaterasu was no more than a local manifestation of this Buddhist divinity.

During this period, six separate schools of Buddhism managed to establish themselves at Nara, all of them equivalents of contemporary Chinese schools. Prior to the Nara period, the year 625 had seen the official establishment of two schools, the Jojitsu (Chinese, Ch’eng- shih) school based on Harivarman’s Hinayana treatise, the Satyasiddhisastra (Treatise on the Completion of Truth) much studied in China during the Liang Dynasty, and the Sanron (Chinese, San-lun or Madhyamaka) school. The Hosso (Fa-hsiang or Characteristics of the Dharma) school was introduced in 654, followed by the Kusha (Chinese, Chu-she or Treasury) school in 658. The eighth century saw the introduction of the Kegon (Chinese, Hua-yen or Flower Garland) school and the Ritsu (Chinese, Lii or Disciplinary) school.

As one might expect, corruption was rife in the Nara monasteries; unlike in China there was no Confucian bureaucracy imbued with anti-Buddhist sentiment ready to expose the most glaring abuses of monastic privilege. It was partly to escape the crowds of sycophantic monks that the Emperor Kanmu (782-805) decided to transfer his capital from Nara to Heian (present-day Kyoto) in 794 after a ten-year unsuccessful relocation to Nagaoka.

The Heian period (794—1185) saw the introduction of the Tendai (Chinese, T’ien-t’ai) and Shingon (Chinese, Chen-yen or Tantric) sects, with the word ‘sect’ being rather more appropriate here than ‘school’, as we shall see. The eclectic and universal approach of the former enabled it to gain rapid support soon after its official introduction by the Nara monk Saicho (Dengyd Daishi, 767-822), who had been sent to China by the Emperor Kanmu expressly for the purpose of finding the most suitable branch of Buddhism to propagate in the new capital. Saicho’s initially close relationship with the importer of Shingon, Kukai (Kobo Daishi, 744-835) led to Tendai assuming certain distinctly tantric characteristics, further emphasised by Ennin (Jikaku Daishi, 794—864), absent in the parent form, while the eclecticism of Tendai in time spawned the Lotus Sutra-based (and uniquely Japanese) Nichiren sect.

A dispute in 993 over the succession to the abbotship of the main Tendai monastery, the Enryakuji on Mount Hiei,_led to the establishment of an alternative branch of Tendai at the Miidera in Otsu. This was no mere scholarly dispute; in time both monasteries came to maintain large numbers of‘warrior monks’ (sdhei, also appropriately known zsakuso or ‘bad monks’), little more than mercenaries in priestly garb. The practice grew quickly, with most major monasteries realising the advantage of having a force of no mean military capability under their control which could—and frequently did—attack, loot and reduce to ashes the monasteries of opposing sects. In times of governmental instability successful attacks could also be launched on the imperial capital itself, if a particular claim, usually material, needed pressing.

The main Shingon monastery on Mount Koya, tranquilly located further from the capital near Osaka, was less prone to indulgence in such activities. The sect’s political influence was accordingly smaller, but its religious influence was considerable, and not merely on philosophically similar sects such as Tendai. In fact, no post-Nara sect is entirely free of Shingon influence, given that Kukai’s short two-year stay in China resulted in an inevitable simplification of tantric ritual (for example, Shingon recognises only two main mandalas, both presided over by Vairocana—one can compare this to the Lamaist situation with literally hundreds of mandalas and a far larger range of presiding deities). For other sects there was thus no great difficulty in adapting esoteric ideas to their own needs.

A short-lived and little-known twelfth-century sub-sect of Shingon, the Tachikawa, is of interest as numbered amongst its practices were activities such as ritualised sexual intercourse. One might think that this indicates that the Indo-Tibetan Highest Yoga Tantras (the Anuttarayogatantras), replete with sexual symbolism and methods for sublimating sexual energies, had secretly found their way to Japan, but it seems that Tachikawa sexual ritual was based on Taoist practices involving the unification of the male yang (in Japanese, yd) and female yin (in Japanese, in) principles.

The confusion, corruption and strife reigning at the end of the Heian period (eleventh to twelfth centuries) led to an outbreak of religious pessimism and an explanation in terms of the Buddhist concept of mappd (the End of the Doctrine) or mappdji (the Period of the End of the Doctrine), the last and most degenerate of the three eras into which Buddhists often divide the history of their religion after Sakyamuni (see for example the San-chieh school of sixth-century China). Certain Tendai monks felt that the time had come to begin the active proselytisation of the cowed and illiterate populace and for the emergence of a broad-based, popular form of Buddhism worlds apart from the scholasticism, elaborate ritual and political intrigues of the established sects. Drawing on the experiences of Chinese Pure Land prosely risers, the main method popularised was the nenbutsu (recitation of the Buddha Amitabha’s name) with the aim being rebirth in the Pure Land (Jodo). It took a while for these beliefs and practices to form the basis for a new sectsensu stricto, though even prior to the Kamakura period (1185-1333) when the capital was relocated to Kamakura by the first shogunal family, the Minamoto, certain individuals had widely and exclusively recommended the nenbutsu. The itinerant preacher Kuya (903—72) taught the invocation through the medium of popular songs, while the less unorthodox Chingai (1091-1152) saw it as an adjunct to standard Shingon practice (in other words, he still felt that meditation was of prime importance), though he encouraged simple recitation if there was no viable alternative given the circumstances of the practitioner.

The unwitting founder proper ofjapanese Pure Land Buddhism was Honen (Genku, 1133-1212). His dissatisfaction with Buddhism as it then was, along with a wide reading of the works of his visionary precursor Genshin (Eshin sozu, 942-1017) enabled him to come to the conclusion that the only worthwhile practice was the nenbutsu itself (meditation, always the corner-stone of Buddhist practice was, to him, pointless).

His emphasis on tariki (‘other power’), the power of Amitabha (in Japanese, Amida) to save, and his abandonment of another key concept, that of jiriki (‘self-power’ or ‘self-reliance’) brought him perilously close to monotheism and left him open to the various charges that were levelled against him by the other sects. For example, a petition presented in 1205 to the Retired Emperor Go-Toba asked for the movement to be halted on the grounds that it 1. was not an imperially recognised sect, 2. used uncanonical images which showed monks of other sects failing to reach illumination whilst even criminals were represented as illumined if they recited the nenbutsu correctly, 3. ignored Sakyamuni, 4. condemned practices other than the nenbutsu wholesale, 5. rejected the Shinto gods, 6. condemned practices other than the nenbutsu which did actually lead to the Pure Land, 7. used the nenbutsu without the accompanying meditation, 8. rejected the codes of monastic discipline and 9. was a threat to stable government due to its popular base. The Pure Land sect in time showed itself to be, quite clearly, guilty on all counts.

Honen was no intellectual match for individuals like Kukai or Saicho, yet he comes across as a far more reasonable—and indeed Buddhist—personage than his chief disciple Shinran (1173-1262), for whom one sincere invocation was enough to ensure rebirth in the Pure Land. The Pure Land sub-sect he founded, thejodo Shinshu (True Pure Land Sect, often known simply as the Shinshu or ‘True Sect’) abolished monasticism totally, permitted the marriage of its priests (thereby establishing a blood succession to the patriarchy) and became, perhaps predictably, increasingly militant. The eighth True Pure Land patriarch Rennyo (1415-99) did much to encourage intolerance and fanaticism amongst his followers, often disaffected peasants who, in the utterly chaotic political situation of the sixteenth century, frequently rebelled against local feudal lords or took to attacking the monasteries of other sects. When one of the most powerful of these daintyd, Oda Nobunaga (1534—82) attempted the military reunification of the country the armies and temples of the True Pure Land were obvious targets for annihilation.

A marginally more sophisticated and contemplative form of Pure Land Buddhism, the Ji (‘Time’) sect, founded by Ippen (1239-89), was also influential from the mid-fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, before losing much of its support to the True Pure Land. The tenets of the Ji sect betray Shingon influence; for example, the nenbutsu is regarded as complementary to visualisation with the end result being the identification of the practitioner with the physical form (and thus the mental state, so to speak) of Amitabha himself.

Zen (Chinese, Ch’an) ideas and methods were introduced into Japan in the seventh century by the Hosso monk Dosho (638-700) as part of Hosso practice, and certain Chinese masters, notably Tao-hsuan (in Japanese, Dosen, 596-667) visited the country to discuss Ch’an ideas with representatives of the Nara sects. The Tendai founder Saicho was instructed in Zen by a disciple of Tao-hsiian and was apparently impressed enough to include the techniques of this particular Chinese form of Buddhism among the wide-ranging practices of his new sect. Just as in the case of Pure Land, however, it was not until the Kamakura period (1185-1333) that Zen managed to establish itself as an independent sect.

The Rinzai (Chinese, Lin-ch’i) sub-sect of Zen was formally introduced into the country by the (originally) Tendai monk Eisai (Zenko kokushi, 1141-1215) after his return from China in 1191. Initial opposition from the Tendai sect disappeared once the Shogun Minamoto Yoriie (1182-1204) gave his approval and protection to Rinzai Zen. He also requested that Eisai found a new monastery (the Jufukuji) in the shogunal capital Kamakura, thereby initiating a fruitful and long-lasting relationship between Zen and the increasingly important military class (the samurai ).

The Soto (Ts’ao-tung) sub-sect of Zen was introduced by the (once again) Tendai monk Dogen (Buppo zenji/Shoyo daishi, 1200-53) after his study trip to the continent lasting from 1223-7. Eisai, under whom Dogen reportedly studied for a short period, had always been willing to compromise with the other sects (it is even reported that he regularly performed Shingon rites), but Dogen on the other hand was so convinced of the superiority of his zazen (‘seated Zen’) techniques that he felt no need to encourage any other practice and further expressed particular hostility to the koan (Chinese, k’ung-an) method of Rinzai Zen. The Sotò kòan is something entirely different. Dogen simply defined the term genjo koan (‘manifestation and achievement of koan’) as if it were a synonym for the ultimate present reality, the dharmakdy a (principle or ‘body’ of truth). Just as the bird flies in the air without being concerned with or understanding the air, so the practitioner should act naturally and limit himself to existing in the present without worrying about the ultimate. The present moment or in other words the practitioner’s present state is itself the ultimate and is therefore the basis of enlightenment. Dogen also avoided such Rinzai concepts as the bussho or ‘Buddha Nature’ to make his disciples realise that there was of course no actual abiding permanent essence to be sought out within one’s mind. The Buddha Nature is simply impermanence.

The wholesale adoption of Zen by the warrior class, a process initiated and promoted by Musò Soseki (Musò kokushi, 1275-1351), spiritual mentor of several shoguns and emperors, led to a widespread secularisation of Rinzai methods. The harmony of nature in miniature was expressed in landscape and rock gardening, the plastic equivalents of monochrome ink painting (su mie) and calligraphy, all of which were objects of contemplation for the practitioner. The samurai applied Zen to the martial arts and were responsible for the popularisation of the Tea Ceremony (tea itself had been reintroduced to Japan from China by Eisai). Literature also adopted specifically Zen forms. Haiku poetry attempted to capture the simplicity and harmony of the rock garden or ink painting in a mere seventeen syllables, with the best of these poems often being used as objects of contemplation much on the lines of the Rinzai koan. Probably the most original Zen-inspired cultural innovation of the Muromachi period (1336-1598) was the N6 drama. N6 developed from the sarugaku (‘monkey music’) of early feudal times into a highly stylised and unremittingly gloomy form of drama in which the actors wore elaborate costumes and masks and chanted their lines to the accompaniment of music on a bare stage.

Zen was to the samurai all that Pure Land was to the peasant. Each inspired new forms of art and literature, each provided a behavioural code moulded to the needs of its practitioners and each became thereby more purely Japanese.

The last majorjapanese Buddhist sect to develop, the Nichiren sect, is also the only one with no continental equivalent whatsoever and further is probably the only Buddhist school or sect anywhere to take its name from its founder. Nichiren (1222-82), a man of humble origins (as he himself always stressed), initially studied Pure Land doctrines at a small provincial Tendai temple until some unknown traumatic event (legend states it was the sight of his Pure Land master dying in agony) turned him against Pure Land and brought on his almost insane hatred for Honen. This, along with his increasing admiration for the Lotus Sutra, led to his pilgrimage in 1242 to Mount Hiei where he hoped to find ‘true’ Buddhism, true according to the criteria he devised. Any sect based not upon a canonical text but on an independent Indian treatise was ruled out as a repository of ‘true’ Buddhism—primarily the Sanron, Hosso, Kusha andjojitsu. Further, Zen was ruled out on account of its claim to have a separate transmission outside the scriptures. Pure Land was dismissed on personal grounds, while Kegon and Shingon he considered inferior to Tendai which he eventually chose as the nearest approximation to his ideal. According to Nichiren, it was the abandonment of the Lotus Sutra (the final expression of the Buddha’s teaching in the Tendai view) by the Japanese nation which had led to the state of political chaos, to the increasing Mongol threat and to the ruination of the imperial family following the exile of the Emperor Go-Toba (1180-1239) after his unsuccessful attempt to reassert imperial supremacy.

Nichiren’s feelings about the other sects are neatly summed up in his Essentials of the Honmon Sect (Honmon-shuydsho):

The followers oinenbutsu will fall into the lowest hell, Followers of Zen are devils, Shingon destroys the nation, The Ritsu are national enemies And Tendai is an outdated calendar.

According to Nichiren, only by relying on the Lotus Sutra can equal emphasis be laid upon each of the sanshin or Three Bodies (Sanskrit, trikdya) of the Buddha. The hosshin (Sanskrit, dharmakdya), the ‘body’ or state of ultimate reality manifests itself as, or rather is symbolised by Vairocana, the central object of worship in Shingon; the hdjin (Sanskrit, sambhogakdya), the ‘Enjoyment Body’, the ‘body’ or state enjoyed by an enlightened being in higher realms (e.g. the Pure Land) manifests as (among others) the Buddha Amitabha, stressed as we have seen to the exclusion of everything else by the Pure Land sects, and finally the dshin (Sanskrit, nirmdnakaya), the‘Emanation Body’, the intrusion of thedharmakdya into our realm has as its prime example the historical Buddha, much revered in Zen.

The method advocated by Nichiren to reach the state of Buddhahood was the daimoku (‘Great Title’—the title of the Lotus Sutra) recitation in the form пати mydhd renge kyd (‘homage to the wondrous Lotus Siitra’). This is less banal than it may at first sound, since title exegesis, on the premiss that the title of a canonical text should in itself be a summary of the text itself, had long been a concern of most of the Chinese schools of Buddhism, given that the range of meaning of the individual characters making up the title could be so large. Hence according to Nichiren the absolute manifests itself as the five-character title (mydhd meaning ‘wondrous’, descriptive of the absolute; renge meaning ‘lotus’, signifying the universal law of cause and effect; and kyd or ‘sutra’ signifying the text’s origin from the nirmdnakaya, Sakyamuni), while the subject (i.e. the practitioner) is present in the initial homage (пати).

Nichiren’s initial preaching activities hardly endeared him to the government or indeed to any of the other sects. His total intolerance led to the promulgation of views so extreme that they are almost without parallel in the Buddhist world. Just as an example, Nichiren seriously proposed on several occasions the physical eradication of his Buddhist opponents. Quite simply he did not consider the killing of Pure Land followers a sin.

With the breakdown in law and order particularly in the fifteenth century, Nichiren followers, perhaps predictably, also took up arms with as much enthusiasm as the followers of Pure Land. These hokke ikki (Lotus Rebellions) were especially frequent during the period 1532-6, when Nichiren armies dominated Kyoto until their annihilation by a huge force from Mount Hiei.

To the outside observer, the Nichiren sect seemed a well-disciplined, unified organisation but it was in fact far more prone to internal dissension than the Pure Land sects. Disagreements mainly centred around the question of exactly how tolerant the sect should be—less tolerant groups led by purists such as Nichijii (1314-92), Nichijin (1339-1419) and Nisshin (1407-88) adopted the principle offuju-fuse (‘no giving and no receiving’, in other words, no compromise whatsoever with anyone not a member of the sect) which gradually came to provide the name for a new sub-sect led by Nichio (1565-1630). The Fuju-fuse sect became an object of persecution during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867), remaining officially prohibited until 1876.

The popular view often portrays the six Nara schools along with Tendai and Shingon as having nothing more than reactionary and corrupt roles during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods; yet all of them responded, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to the new developments of Pure Land, Zen and Nichiren by introducing old practices to the population at large. To counter the worship of Amitabha, the worship of Shaka (Sanskrit, Sakyamuni) was encouraged; likewise the worship of Miroku (Sanskrit, Maitreya, the coming Buddha), of Monjushiri (Sanskrit, Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom), of Kannon (Sanskrit, Avalokitesvara, Bodhisattva of compassion) and of Jizo (Sanskrit, Ksitigarbha, the Bodhisattva of the earth, regarded as the protector of children). In the intellectual and doctrinal field, efforts were made to combine Sanron (Madhyamaka) concepts with those of Shingon, notably by Myohen (1142-1224), resulting in the disappearance of the Sanron as an independent school. A lot of work was also done on the monastic code (the Vinaya) to counter its wholesale rejection by the popular sects, while the esoteric sects, Shingon and Tendai, continued to flourish, the latter especially maintaining its political and military influence.

In 1600 the Tokugawa family managed to establish unified effective military rule over allJapan, and followed this by moving the capital to Edo (present-day Tokyo). The first Tokugawa shogun, leyasu (1603-10), was totally determined to ensure that Tokugawa rule could endure unopposed into the foreseeable future, and as a result decided to limit contact with the outside world, and especially with Christianity which was regarded as a social menace. Christianity was stamped out with military thoroughness by leyasu’s successors Hidetada (1616-23) and lemitsu (1623-51), much use being made of the ingenious fumie (‘treading picture’), usually a brass plaque with a representation of Christ engraved on it which the suspected Christian was required to defile by stepping on it. Refusal usually meant a slow death.

The Tokugawa government was of course fully aware of the divisive and rebellious nature of certain Buddhist sects, but since the military effectiveness of these sects had been severely curtailed by the weapon confiscation programme of leyasu’s predecessor Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), it decided that a system of temple registration along with the encouragement of learning was sufficient to maintain discipline and governmental control. The Tokugawa themselves were members of the Pure Land sect, so this sect flourished; the other sects kept themselves busy by rebuilding and refurbishing temples and monasteries damaged in the preceding era. Certain shoguns were in fact noted for their religious enthusiasm, the best-known of whom is the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi (1680-1709) who, amongst other things, issued various Buddhist-inspired edicts protecting animals in general and dogs in particular. His conception of Buddhist morality was perhaps unusual; on one occasion he had a man executed for injuring a dog.

The new-found peace and prosperity of the Tokugawa period was welcome, but in the long run the price Buddhism paid for the advantage of political stability was stagnation.

Zen was the exception, mainly as a result of the activities of Hakuin (1685-1768), a man perhaps more mindful of canonical literature than the Rinzai ideal demanded. Hakuin was particularly concerned with revitalising the koan but his fame also extends into the fields of calligraphy and poetry. The Huang-po (in Japanese, Obaku) branch of Chinese Zen also entered the country with the arrival of the Chinese priests Yin-yuan (in Japanese, Ingen, 1592-1673) and Mu-an (in Japanese, Mokuan, d. 1684) and was much respected by the Tokugawa authorities.

Confucianism and Shinto were both much studied during the later Tokugawa period with most men of letters expressing a strong nationalistic interest in the latter. Buddhism’s close association with the shogunate as well as its general deterioration left it in a vulnerable position when imperial power was restored and the country opened up to the West at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Shinto was established as the state religion in 1870 under the name of daikyd (‘Great Religion’), and the Shinto-inspired and fortunately short-lived haibutsu kishaku (‘destroy the Buddhas and discard the scriptures’) movement was initiated, resulting in considerable material destruction to Buddhist temples and monasteries and in the secularisation of many priests. An interest amongst the Japanese in all things modern and Western further resulted in an interest in Christianity, another threat to the Buddhist establishment.

Various sects sent representatives to Europe and America to study the methods and organisation of Christianity and also to study new developments in Western thought. Soon after, however, once the constitution of 1889 had assured Buddhism’s equality with all other religions found in the land, there was a certain degree of Buddhist-inspired realignment between Buddhism, Shinto and Confucianism against Christianity.

In modern times, at a popular level dissatisfaction with Buddhism became widespread and resulted in the proliferation of‘new religions’ drawing their often carelessly formulated ideas from Buddhism, Christianity and Shinto. Three of the better known new religions are recognisable as vaguely Buddhist: the Reiyukai (‘Society of Friendship with Souls’), based on simple morality and the Confucian concept of filial piety; the Rissho koseikai (‘Society for the Establishment of Correct and Friendly Relations’) founded in 1938 and concerned with repentance; and last but by no means least the somewhat cultish and intolerant Soka gakkai (‘ValueCreating Study Group’) which claims that happiness is dependent on ‘profit’, goodness and beauty, the three of which can only be understood through detailed study, recitation of the daimoku (the title of the Lotus Sutra) and the donation of large sums of money to the organisation.

42 Buddhism in Japan

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