The Religions of Japan Part 14

K[=o]b[=o] Irenicon.

K[=o]b[=o] indeed was both the Philo and Euhemerus of j.a.pan, plus a large amount of priestly cunning and what his enemies insist was dishonesty and forgery. Soon after his return from China, he went to the temples of Ise,[18] the most holy place of Shint[=o].[19] Taking a reverent att.i.tude before the chief shrine, that of Toko Uke Bime no Kami or Abundant-Food-Lady-G.o.d, or the deified Earth as the producer of food and the upholder of all things upon its surface, the suppliant waited patiently while fasting and praying.

In this, K[=o]b[=o] did but follow out the ordinary Shint[=o] plan for securing G.o.d-possession and obtaining revelation; that is, by starving both the stomach and the brain.[20] After a week's waiting he obtained the vision. The Food-possessing G.o.ddess revealed to him the yoke (or Yoga) by which he could harness the native and the imported G.o.ds to the chariot of victorious Buddhism. She manifested herself to him and delivered the revelation on which his system is founded, and which, briefly stated, is as follows:

All the Shint[=o] deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They were manifestations to the j.a.panese, before Gautama had become the enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire.

Further more, provision was made for the future G.o.ds and deified holy ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other j.a.panese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus recorded in a j.a.panese popular work:

"Life has a limited span, and naught may avail to extend it.

This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings, but yet, whenever necessary, I will hereafter make my appearance from time to time as a G.o.d (Kami), a sage (Confucian teacher), or a Buddha (Hotoke)."[21]

In a word, the Shint[=o] G.o.ddess talked as orthodox (Yoga) Buddhism as the ancient characters of the Indian, Persian and pre-Islam-Arabic stories in the Arabian Nights now talk the purest Mohammedanism.[22]

According to the words put into Gautama's mouth at the time of his death, the Buddha was already to reappear in the particular form and in all the forms, acceptable to Shint[=o]ists, Confucianists, or Buddhists of whatever sect.

Descending from the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shint[=o] and Buddhist G.o.ds, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[=o]b[=o]

forthwith baptized each native Shint[=o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shint[=o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band of disciples, he sent them forth proclaiming the new irenicon.

The Hindu Yoga Becomes j.a.panese Riy[=o]bu.

It was just the time for this brilliant and able ecclesiastic to succeed. The power and personal influence of the Mikado were weakening, the court swarmed with monks, the rising military cla.s.ses were already safely under the control of the shavelings, and the pen of learning had everywhere proved itself mightier than the sword and muscle.

K[=o]b[=o]'s particular dialectic weapons were those of the Yoga-chara, or in j.a.panese, the Shingon Shu, or Sect of the True Word.[23] He, like his Chinese master, taught that we can attain the state of the Enlightened or Buddha, while in the present physical body which was born of our parents.

This branch of Buddhism is said to have been founded in India about A.D.

200, by a saint who made the discovery of an iron paG.o.da inhabited by the holy one, Vagrasattva, who communicated the exact doctrine to those who have handed it down through the Hindoo and Chinese patriarchs. The books or scriptures of this sect are in three sutras; yet the essential point in them is the Mandala or the circle of the Two Parts, or in j.a.panese Riy[=o]bu. Introduced into China, A.D. 720, it is known as the Yoga-chara school.

K[=o]b[=o] finding a Chinese worm, made a j.a.panese dragon, able to swallow a national religion. In the act of deglut.i.tion and the long process of the digestion of Shint[=o], j.a.panese Buddhism became something different from every other form of the faith in Asia. Noted above all previous developments of Buddhism for its pantheistic tendencies, the Shingon sect could recognize in any Shint[=o] G.o.d, demi-G.o.d, hero, or being, the avatar in a previous stage of existence of some Buddhist being of corresponding grade.

For example,[24] Amateras[)u] or Ten-Sh[=o]-Dai-Jin, the sun-G.o.ddess, becomes Dai Nichi Ni[=o]rai or Amida, whose colossal effigies stand in the bronze images Dai Butsu at Nara, Ki[=o]to and Kamakura. Ojin, the G.o.d of war, became Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, or the great Bodhisattva of the Eight Banners. Adopted as their patron by the fighting Genji or Minamoto warriors of mediaeval times, the Buddhists could not well afford to have this popular deity outside their pantheon.

For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in j.a.panese p.r.o.nunciation Bosatsu, was appointed. Each of these Bodhisattvas became a Dai Mi[=o] Jin or Great Enlightened Spirit, and was represented as an avatar in j.a.pan of Buddha in the previous ages, when the j.a.panese were not yet prepared to receive the holy law of Buddhism.

Where there were not enough Dai Mi[=o] Jin already existing in native traditions to fill out the number required by the new scheme, new t.i.tles were invented. One of these was Ten-jin, Heavenly being or spirit. The famous statesman and scholar of the tenth century, Sugawara Michizane, was posthumously named Tenjin, and is even to this day worshipped by many children of j.a.pan as he was formerly for a thousand years by nearly all of them, as the divine patron of letters. Kompira, Benten and other popular deities, often considered as properly belonging to Shint[=o], "are evidently the offspring of Buddhist priestly ingenuity."[25] Out of the eight millions or so of native G.o.ds, several hundred were catalogued under the general term Gon-gen, or temporary manifestations of Buddha.

In this list are to be found not only the heroes of local tradition, but even deified forces of nature, such as wind and fire. The custom of making G.o.ds of great men after their death, thus begun on a large scale by K[=o]b[=o], has gone on for centuries. Iyeyas[)u], the political unifier of j.a.pan, shines as a star of the first magnitude in the heavens of the Riy[=o]bu system, under the mime of T[=o]-sh[=o]-g[=u], or Great Light of the East. The common people speak of him as Gon-gen Sama, the latter word being an honorary form of address for all beings from a baby to a Bosatsu.

In this way, K[=o]b[=o] arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings, in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.

In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repet.i.tion in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and j.a.pan is Asanga, Hiuki[=o] and K[=o]b[=o].

The Happy Family of Riy[=o]bu.

Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an ox and a.s.s in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It will sometimes happen that one G.o.d escapes the cla.s.sification made by the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shint[=o], or _vice versa_; while again the label-makers and pasters--as numerous in scholastic Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom--have hard work to make the labels stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Mi[=o]-jin, whose name and renown has for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous Shint[=o]ists, savor of the smartness of New j.a.pan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shint[=o], to extricate the various G.o.ds out of the mixture and mess of Riy[=o]bu Shint[=o], and to keep them from jostling each other.

This reclaiming and kidnapping of G.o.ds and transferring them from one camp to another, has been especially active since 1870, when, under government auspices, the Riy[=o]bu temples were purged of all Buddhist idols, furniture and influences. The term Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Ill.u.s.trious Spirit, is no longer officially permitted to be used of the old kami or G.o.ds of Shint[=o], who were known to have existed before the days of K[=o]b[=o]. In some cases these G.o.ds have lost much of the esteem in which they were held for centuries. Especially is this true of the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots. His place as a deity (Kanda Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Ill.u.s.trious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-G.o.d who, in the ages of the Kami, "resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado's ancestors when they descended from Heaven." The apotheosis of the rebel Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people. This method of laying a ghost by making a G.o.d of him, was for centuries a favorite one in j.a.panese Buddhism. Indeed, a large part of the practical and parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits of the departed.

All j.a.panese popular religion of the past has been intensely local and patriotic. The ancient idea that Nippon was the first country created and the centre of the world, has persisted through the ages, modifying every imported religion. Hence the noticeable fact in j.a.panese Buddhism, of the comparative degradation of the Hindu deities and the exaltation of those which were native to the soil.

The normal j.a.panese, be he priest or lay brother, theologian or statesman, is nothing if not patriotic. Even the Chinese G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses which, clothed in Indian drapery and still preserving their Aryan features, were imported to j.a.pan, could not hold their own in compet.i.tion with the popularity of the indigenous inhabitants of the j.a.panese pantheon. The normal j.a.panese eye does not see the ideals of beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision.

Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of the j.a.panese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols imported from India. So also, the worshipper to whom the lovely scenery of j.a.pan was fresh from the hands of the kami who were so much like himself, turned naturally in preference, to the "G.o.ds many" of his own land.

Succeeding centuries only made it worse for the imported devas or G.o.ds, while the kami, or the G.o.ds sprung from the soil created by Izanami and Izanagi steadily rose in honor.

Degradation of the Foreign Deities.

For example, the Indian saint Dharma is reputed to have come to the Dragon-fly Country long before the advent of Buddhism, but the people were not ready for him or his teachings, and therefore he returned to India. So at least declares the book ent.i.tled San Kai Ri[27] (Mountain, Sea and Earth), which is a re-reading and explanation of j.a.panese mythology and tradition as recorded in the Kojiki, by a Ki[=o]t[=o]

priest of the Shin Shu Sect. Of this Dharma, it is said, that he outdid the Roman Regulus who suffered involuntary loss of his eyelids at the hands of the Carthaginians. Dharma cut off his own eyelids, because he could not keep awake.[28] Throwing the offending flesh upon the ground, he saw the tea-plant arise to help holy men to keep vigil. Daruma, as the j.a.panese spell his name, has a temple in central j.a.pan. It is related that when Sh[=o]toku, the first patron of Buddhism, was one day walking abroad he found a poor man dying of hunger, who refused to answer any questions or give his name. Sh[=o]toku ordered food to be given him, and wrapped his own mantle round him. Next day the beggar died, and the prince charitably had him buried on the spot. Shortly afterward it was observed that the mantle was lying neatly folded up, on the tomb, which on examination proved to be empty. The supposed dying beggar was no other than the Indian Saint Dharma, and a paG.o.da was built over the grave, in which images of the priest and saint were enshrined.[29] Yet, alas, to-day Daruma the Hindoo and foreigner, despite his avatar, his humility, his vigils and his self-mutilation, has been degraded to be the shop-sign of the tobacconists. Besides being ruthlessly caricatured, he is usually pictured with a scowl, his lidless eyes as wide open as those upon a Chinese junk-prow or an Egyptian coffin-lid. Often even, he has a pipe in his mouth--a comical anachronism, suggestive to the smoker of the dark ages that knew no tobacco, before nicotine made the whole world of savage and of civilized kin. Legless dolls and snow-men are named after this foreigner, whose name is a.s.sociated almost entirely with what is ludicrous.

On K[=o]b[=o]'s expounding his scheme to the Mikado, the emperor was so pleased with his servant's ingenuity, that he gave it the name of Riy[=o]bu[30] Shint[=o]; that is, the two-fold divine doctrine, double way of the G.o.ds, or amalgamated theology. Henceforth the j.a.panese could enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate. As for the people, they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings, and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[31] which are usually only other names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch. The Yoga had become a _kubiki_, for Shint[=o] and Buddhism were now harnessed together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably as two oxen making the same furrow.

Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of Shint[=o] and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols might be in the front, and the Shint[=o]ist in the rear of the sacred hall, or _vice versa_, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shint[=o] interior contained a museum of idols.

Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or _hinoki_ wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given places in the new and enlarged pantheon. The multiplication was always on the side of Buddhism. Soon, also, the architecture was altered from the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which, in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist paradise. Many of these still remain even after the national purgation of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus or Constantinople. The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood, but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished. Sometimes it was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms, surmounted, it may be, with tablets of painted or stained wood, on which were Chinese letters glittering with gold. This departure from the primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still more radical and even scandalous innovation.

Shint[=o] Buried in Buddhism.

So complete was the victory of Riy[=o]buism, that for nearly a thousand years Shint[=o] as a religion, except in a few isolated spots, ceased from sight and sank to a mere mythology or to the shadow of a mythology.

The very knowledge even of the ancient traditions was lost in the Buddhaized forms in which the old stories[33] were cast, or in the omnipresent ritual of the Buddhist tera.

Yet, after all, it is a question as to which suffered most, Buddhism or Shint[=o]. Who can tell which was the base and which was the true metal in the alloy that was formed? The San Kai Ri shows how superst.i.tious manifold became imbedded in Buddhism. It was not alone through the Shingon sect, which K[=o]b[=o] introduced, that this Yoga or union came.

In the other great sect called the Tendai, and in the later sects, more especially in that of Nichiren, the same principle of absorption was followed. These sects also adopted many elements derived from the G.o.d-way and thus became Shint[=o]ized. Indeed, it seems certain that that vast development of j.a.panese Buddhism, peculiar to j.a.pan and unknown to the rest of the Buddhist world, scouted by the Southern Buddhists as dreadful heresy, and rousing the indignation of students of early Buddhism, like Max Muller and Professor Whitney, is largely owing to this attempted digestion of j.a.panese mythology. The anaconda may indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit, subterranean or superficial growth, that we are eating. So in Riy[=o]bu, whether it be most _imo_ or _kabocha_ is a fair question. If the Buddhism in j.a.pan did but add a chapter of decay and degradation to the religion of the Light of Asia, is not this owing to the act of K[=o]b[=o]--justified indeed by those who imitated his example, yet hardly to be called honest? A stroke of ecclesiastical dexterity, it may have been, but scarcely a lawful example or an ill.u.s.trious and commendable specimen of syncretism in religion.

Many students have asked what is the peculiar, the characteristic difference between the Buddhism of j.a.pan and the other Buddhisms of the Asian continent. If there be one cause, leading all others, we incline to believe it is because j.a.panese Buddhism is not the Buddhism of Gautama, but is so largely Riy[=o]bu or Mixed. Yet in the alloy, which ingredient has preserved most of its qualities? Is j.a.panese Buddhism really Shint[=o]ized Buddhism, or Buddhaized Shint[=o]? Which is the parasite and which the parasitized? Is the hermit crab Shint[=o], and the sh.e.l.l Buddhism, or _vice versa_? About as many corrupt elements from Shint[=o] entered into the various Buddhist sects as Buddhism gave to Shint[=o].

This process of Shint[=o]izing Buddhism or of Buddhaizing Shint[=o]--that is, of combining Shint[=o] or purely j.a.panese ideas and practices with the systems imported from India, went on for five centuries. The old native habits and mental characteristics were not eradicated or profoundly modified; they were rather safely preserved in so-called Buddhism, not indeed as dead flies in amber but as live creatures, fattening on a body, which, every year, while keeping outward form and name, was being emptied of its normal and typical life. It is no gain to pure water to add either microbes or the food which nourishes them.

Buddhism Writes New Chapters of Decay.

Phenomenally, the victory was that of Buddhism. The mustard-seed has indeed become a great tree, lodging every fowl of heaven, clean and unclean; but potentially and in reality, the leavening power, as now seen, seems to have been that of Shint[=o]. Or, to change metaphor, since the hermit crab and the sh.e.l.l were separated by law only one generation ago, in 1870, we shall soon, before many generations, discern clearly which has the life and which has only the sh.e.l.l.[34]

There are but few literary monuments[35] of Riy[=o]buism, and it has left few or no marks in the native chronicles, misnamed history, which utterly omit or ignore so many things interesting to the student and humanist.[36] Yet to this mixture or amalgamation of Buddhism with Shint[=o], more probably than to any other direct influence, may also be ascribed that striking alteration in the system of Chinese ethics or Confucianism which differentiates the j.a.panese form from that prevalent in China. That is, instead of filial piety, the relation of parent and child, occupying the first place, loyalty, the relation of lord and retainer, master and servant, became supreme. Although Buddhism made the Mikado first a King (Tenn[=o]) or Son of Heaven (Ten-Shi), and then a monk (H[=o]-[=o]), and after his death a Hotoke or Buddhist deity, it caused him early to abdicate from actual life. Buddhism is thus directly responsible for the habitual j.a.panese resignation from active life almost as soon as it is entered, by men in all cla.s.ses. Buddhism started all along and down through the lines of j.a.panese society the idea of early retirement from duty; so that men were considered old at forty, and _hors concours_ before forty-five.[37] Life was condemned as vanity of vanities before it was mature, and old age a friend that n.o.body wished to meet,[38] although j.a.panese old age is but European prime. In a measure, Buddhism is thus responsible for the paralysis of j.a.panese civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone, Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a whole library of despondency and despair.

Nevertheless, the ethical element held its own in the j.a.panese mind; and against the pessimism and puerility of Buddhism and the religious emptiness of Shint[=o], the bond of j.a.panese society was sought in the idea of loyalty. While then, as we repeat, everything that comes to the j.a.panese mind suffers as it were "a sea change, into something new and strange," is it not fair to say that the change made by K[=o]b[=o] was at the expense of Buddhism as a system, and that the thing that suffered reversion was the exotic rather than the native plant? For, in the emergence of this new idea of loyalty as supreme, Shint[=o] and not Buddhism was the dictator.

Even more after K[=o]b[=o]'s death than during his life, j.a.pan improved upon her imported faith, and rapidly developed new sects of all degrees of reputableness and disreputableness. Had K[=o]b[=o] lived on through the centuries, as the boors still believe;[39] he could not have stopped, had he so desired, the workings of the leaven he had brought from China. From the sixth to the twelfth century, was the missionary age of j.a.panese Buddhism. Then followed two centuries of amazing development of doctrine. Novelties in religion blossomed, fruited and became monuments as permanent as the age-enduring forests Hakone, or Nikk[=o]. Gautama himself, were he to return to "red earth" again, could not recognize his own cult in j.a.pan.

In China to-day Buddhism is in a bad state. One writer calls it, "The emasculated descendant that now occupies the land with its drone of priests and its temples, in which scarce a worthy disciple of the learned patriarchs of ancient days is to be found. Received with open arms, persecuted, patronized, smiled upon, tolerated, it with the last phase of its existence, has reached, not the halcyon days of peace and rest, but its final stage, foreshadowing its decay from rottenness and corruption."[40] So also, in a like report, agree many witnesses. The common people of China are to-day Taoists rather than Buddhists.[41]

If this be the position in China, something not very far from it is found in j.a.pan to-day. Whatever may be the Buddhism of the few learned scholars, who have imbibed the critical and scientific spirit of Christendom, and whatever be the professions and representations of its earnest adherents and partisans, it is certain that popular Buddhism is both ethically and vitally in a low state. In outward array the system is still imposing. There are yet, it may be, millions of stone statues and whole forests of wayside effigies, outdoors and unroofed--irreverently called by the j.a.panese themselves, "wet G.o.ds."

Hosts upon hosts of lacquered and gilded images in wood, sheltered under the temple tiles or shingles, still attract worshippers. Despite shiploads of copper Buddhas exported as old metal to Europe and America, and thousands of tons of G.o.ds and imps melted into coin or cannon, there are myriads of metal reminders of those fruits of a religion that once educated and satisfied; but these are, in the main, no longer to the natives instruments of inspiration or compellers to enthusiasm. In this time of practical charity, they are poor subst.i.tutes for those hospitals and orphan asylums which were practically unknown in j.a.pan until the advent of Christianity.