Chapter Eight

Japanese Worldview Expressions

We have learned how part of what it means to be human is to have formed a worldview, an ability to shape our own structure of meaning through association and imagination, education and effort. Each culture undergoes various phases of growth and development. We have seen several examples of ancient and Eastern worldviews. Our worldview stems in large part from what has been handed on to us and reflects consciously or unconsciously our individual and collective stories.

For the Japanese worldview, we can imagine it having multiple layers. At the bottom layer is the memory of an ancient tradition with a strong cosmological outlook. Japan is a small island archipelago, whose total land mass is less than that of the state of California. To the ancient Japanese people, however, this small group of islands was the only world they knew. Its natural beauty was enhanced by seasonal change and encouraged belief in its being filled with kami or divine spirits. The Japanese did not consider this a fallen world. It was the original world.

In Japan there evolved the school of narrative scroll paintings called Yamato-e, or Japanese painting, in contrast to the Chinese. Combining the narative with the decorative, these paintings expressed the qualities which throughout the centuries were to characterize the indigenous Japanese pictorial tradition. Works like the Genji scroll, illustrating Lady Murasaki's famous novel, The Tale of Genji, reflect this style, with its marvelous sense of decorative design and its elegance and sophistication tinged with melancholy. The same sense of beauty is found in the type of scroll where the golden figure of the Buddha appears in the sky over the green mountain landscape of Japan. These works express typical Japanese worldviews of the period.

Ceramics continued to be important expressions. In China and Korea, Sung and Koryo ceramics are considered the finest ever produced. For excellence of workmanship, beauty of design, and subtlety of color, Sung and Koryo porcealins are unsurpassed.

Zen inspired ink painting became predominant during the fifteenth century C.E. in Japan. Not only in painting but also in landscape gardens, in architecture, and in the tea ceremony, Zen Buddhism inspired Japanese art.

The oldest of the Neolithic cultures is the Jomon of prehistoric Japan. Among the works of art of this period are the clay figures that represent female fertility deities. These date from the second and first mellennia B.C.E. Like the Stone Age idols of prehistoric Europe, they emphasize the pubic region, the breasts, and the thighs, suggesting that these figures had a magical purpose. Another typical feture is the large eyes which give these images a strange and mysterious quality.

The most important religious figure was the poet. Many poets wrote verses that resonated with human feelings about life and nature. These poets expressed the tender passions of love and the sorrow of grief. Life for the ancient Japanese had elements of suffering, tragedy, grief. But they affirmed life in this phenomenal existence as essentially good (yoshi) and beautiful (uruwashi).1 For them Japan was the religious universe in which living itself was a religious act. The primary myth nurtured such a religious world and poetic verses taught the meaning of existence and formed a sense of identity. In this section we shall try to give examples of this poetic construction of Japanese worldview.

Langdon Warner observed that from its earliest days Japan's worldview, Shinto, had been the artist's way of life. "Natural forces are the very subject matter for those who produce artifacts from raw materials or who hunt and fish and farm. Shinto taught how such forces are controlled and these formulas have been embedded into Shinto liturgies."2

This initial worldview underwent a series of changes under the onslaught of visitations by people who had different worldviews, especially Buddhist and Confucian. As each new religion reached Japan it was initially welcomed; then there was a period of assimilation; and finally it was either rejected or transformed

Monistic World of Meaning

The early Japanese probably took it for granted that the "world" was the world they knew and experienced in the Japanese archipelago. No doubt they were vaguely aware of the existence of other lands, but these other lands were beyond their horizon. They also took it for granted that the natural world was the original world; i.e., they did not look for another order of meaning beyond the phenomenal natural world, at least prior to coming under the influence of Sino-Korean civilization and Buddhism. This view of the cosmos is implicit in the term kami -- the root mi plus the prefix ka.

Mi may be interpreted as a material thing or an embodied spirit possessing some kind of divine potency, or as a non-corporeal spirit, in either case believed to have intrinsic magic power, or established as an object of worship. Among corporeal objects of this nature may be numbered such physical elements as fire, water, wood, and stone; certain animals; celestial bodies such as the sun and the moon; man-made objects such as swords and mirrors; agriculatural products such as grain; and other objects of a similar nature. As for non-corporeal spirits, these include any non-visible elements or attributes having the power to exert some form of strong or violent influence on Nature or to affect man's existence.3

Usually the term kami refers to all beings that are awesome and worthy of reverence, including both good and evil beings. It would be missleading to consider early Japanese worldview, which eventually came to be called Shinto, the way of the kami, nature worship. While it accepted the plurality of kami as separate beings, its basic affirmation was the sacrality of the total cosmos that was permeated by kami. The kami dwelt, for example in mountains and mountains were kami themselves.

Mount Futagami, round which flow

The waters of Imizu,

When I come out and gaze upon it

In the rich and blossomed spring,

Or in the glorious leaf of autumn --

How sublime it soars

Because of its divinity,

And how beautiful it stands,

With its shapely peaks.4

Another poem praises snow-covered Mount Tachi:

Lofty beyond the mountains,

Bright in the rising sun

Mount Tachi, a (kami) standing,

As tells its sacred name,

Soars in majesty to heaven

Through thousandfold white clouds.

.....

The snow on Mount Tachi lies

Unmelted all through summer,

Thanks, indeed, to its divinity.5

Fuji was the paradigm of sacred mountains.

Lo! There towers the lofty peak of Fuji

from between Kai and the wave-washed Suruga.

The clouds of heaven dare not cross it,

Nor the birds of the air soar above it.

The snows quench the burning fires,

The fires consume the falling snow.

It baffles the tongue, it cannot be named,

It is a (kamim) mysterious.

.....

In the Land of Yamato, the Land of the Rising Sun,

It is our treasure, our tutelary (kami).

It never tires our eyes to look up

To the lofty peak of Fuji!6

On the one had we see here the acceptance of the participation of the kami in the being of a mountain, and the mountain was the divine reality in itself. At the same time, the poets had a sharp sense of nature's participation in their own lives as well as their participation in the life of nature. "Driven by my signs of grief, the fog is rising." So early Japanese worldview expressed a mutual participation, a continuity and correspondence between the capriciousness of human life and the change of the seasons.

When we look up to the plains of heaven

The bright moon waxes and wanes;

On the tree-tops of the mountains,

Flowers bloom with spring.

In autumn, with dew and frost,

The coloured leaves are scattered in the blast.

So it is with the life of a man:

The rosy colour fades from the cheek,

The black hair turns white,

The morning smile is nowere found at eve.7

The unified cosmology is evident in the myths concerning the three-dimensional universe: the plain of high heaven, the manifest world, and the nether world. These three realms are represented as almost interchangeable, in that certain kami and heroes move back and forth freely among them. The chasm between the realm of the living and the dead was also ambiguous, given the frequent movements of spirits and ghosts, fortune telling, and divination.

So the world of Shinto was a world hallowed by the participation and the presence of the kami. Scholars generally agree that the apearance of certain pottery marks from around the fourth milleniuim B.C.E. might be the earliest evidence of Japan's prehistory . This period endured until the second or third century C.E.

With the arrival of Sino-Korean civilization and Buddhism from the fifth century onward, Japan underwent a series of social, political, and cultural changes. In addition to the cosmological theories of the Yin-Yang school, two unversal principles, Tao and Dharma were intntroduced by Confucianism and Buddhism. The Japanese borrowed two Chinese characters to describe their traditional worldview: shin for kami, and to or do for the "way."

Near the turn of the seventh century C.E. the Japanese court tried to exalt the throne and developed a constitution that encouraged veneration of Buddhism "as the final resort of all beings," and also invoked the Confucian principle of "propriety" as the basis of government administration. At the same time, the court issued the folowing edict to promote veneration of the kami:

...our imperial ancestors, in governing the nation, bent humbly under heaven and walked softly on earth. They venerated the kami of heaven and earth, and established shrines on the mountains and by the rivers, whereby they were in constant touch with the power of nature. Hence the winter (yin, negative cosmic force) and summer (yang, positive cosmic force) elements were kept in harmony.... May all the ministers from the bottom of their hearts pay homage to the kami of heaven and earth.8

Basic Primary Myth

The basic motif of Japanese myths was the divine origin of the Imperial clan. From this perspective myths which had previously been handed on orally were gathered together in two eighth-century texts, the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) and Nihon-shoki or Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan).

As noted, ancient Japanese mythology envisioned a three-tiered universe. The Plain of High Heaven, dwelling of male and female kami; the Phenomenal world, where human beings and other creatures live; and the Nether World, home of unclean spirits.

According to the Kojiki account, when the primordial stuff had congealed but breath and form had yet to appear, there emerged on the Plain of High Heaven the three self-created kami, Ame-no-minakanushi (Heavenly Center Lord), Takamimusubi (August Producing Kami) and Kamimusubi (Divine Generative Force Kami). Next when the land had not hardened there emerged reed shoots, from which came more self-created kami. Next there arose the seven generations of kami, most of whom are paired as couples, including Izanagi-no-kami (male kami who invites) and his spouse, Izanami-no-kami (female kami who is invited). These two were ordered by heavenly kami to solidify land out of the watery chaos in which it was suspended. The two kami stood on the heavenly floating bridge and churned the waters with their jewelled spear. When they lifted the spear, the brine dripping down from the spear became an island. The two then came down to the island and were married.

The two proceeded to give birth to other kami such as the kami of the wind, the trees, of the mountain and plains. But Izanami died after giving birth to the kami of fire. Izanagi, hoping to meeet his spouse, pursued her to the Nether World but found maggots squirming around her body. Terrified, Izanagi ran away and decided to cleanse himself at a river. When he washed his left eye, there came forth the Sun Goddess (Amaterasu), and when he washed his right eye, there emerged the Moon kami (Tsukiyomi). Finally, as he washed his nose, Valiant-male-kami (Susanoo) came forth. Izanagi gave his neckless to Amaterasu and commissioned her to rule the Plain of High Heaven. He entrusted to the Moon kami to rule the realm of the night. He gave Susanoo control over the ocean.

At one time Amaterasu was upset by the behavior of her brother Susanoo, so she concealed herself behind the rock-cave. Immediately the Plain of High Heaven was bathed in darkness. The eight hundred myriads of kami gathered in front of the rock-cave and decided to make merry to attract her attention. The Female-kami-of-heavenly-headgear became kami-possessed, exposed her breasts and genitals, and danced madly, whereupon the other kami roared with laughter. Amaterasu was curious and opened the door slightly. At that moment one of the strong kami pulled her out. With her reappearance, the Plain of HIgh Heaven was illuminated once more.

When the pacification of the Japanese islands wwas announced, Amaterasu determined to send her grandson, Ningi, to rule the land. She told him: "This Land-of-the-plentiful-reed-plains-and-of-the-fresh-rice-ears (Japan) has been entrusted to you as the land to be governed by you. Therefore you must descend from heaven in accordance with the divine command." As Ninigi was ready to leave the Plain of High Heaven, Amaterasu gave him the myriad carved beads, the mirror, and the "grass-mower" sword, which were to become the sacred regalia of imperial authority. Among kami who accompanied Ninigi were: Kami-of-the-little-roof-in-heaven, the ancestor of the Nakatomi priestly clam; Kami-of-grand-bead, the ancestor of the Imbe abstainers clan; Female-kami-of-heavenly-headgear, the ancestress of the Sarume performers clan; Kami-of-stonecutter, ancestor of the mirror-maker clan.

The compilers of the Kojiki and the Nihongi gathered together in addition to myths, many legends of the kami and the heroes. The first legendary emperor was Jimmu. When Ninigi came to Japan, he married a daughter of a local kami in Kyushu and they had three children. One of them married a daughter of the kami of the ocean, and they had four children, including the Emperor Jimmu.

Another source of expressions of early Japanese worldviews is an anthology of poems, Manyoshu (Collection of Myriad Leaves) that was compiled in the latter half of the eighth century.

Mount Tachi (XVII: 4000-4001)

Many are the mountains and rivers

In the land of Etchu (Koshi)

But only on Mount Tachi above River Nii

do imperial kami dwell.

No wonder it is white with snow

even on summer days.

....

As I look at Mount Tachi every year

I am determined to tell others

That one will never tire of viewing

the snow on Sacred Tachi in the summer.

Prayer (III: 379)

O Noble Kami

who have descended from the Heavenly Plain,

I pray with the offering of the evergreen branch

tied with mulberry cloth and perfume

Together with a wine-jar placed on the earth

and bamboo rings hanging around my neck;

I bend my knees with a scarf over me

and pray from the bottom of my heart;

And yet, why is it not possible

for me to meet my beloved?

Nether World (V: 905)

O messenger from the Nether World

here is some money for you;

Please carry on your back my son

who is so young and does not know the way.

Snow (XVII: 3923)

How noble is the reflection of falling snow

that covers all corners under heaven.

Autumn (II: 209)

As I see the messenger walking on the fallen leaves

I think of the time when I first met my beloved.9

Under Chinese influence, Japan became a nation governed by laws in the seventh century. These laws were promulgated as imperial edicts. One was the Edict Concerning Shinto, and among other commands were prescriptions for national rituals:

Toskiigoi festival: to be performed in the second month of every year. Prayers offered for the harvest.

Hanashizume festival: to be performed at the end of the third month. Prayers offered for freedom from sickness.

Kamu-miso festival: to be performed in the middle of the fourth month. Offerings of summer garments made at the Grand Shrine of Ise.

Saigusa festival: the festival of the Isakawa shrine in the Yamato province.

Omi festival: to be performed on the fourth day of the fourth month. The festival of the food goddess of Hirose and Tatsuta

Kaze no kami festival: to be performed on the fourth day of the fourth month to the male and female kami of the wind associated with the shrine of Tatsuta. Prayers offered for protection of the crops from storm.

Tsukinami festival: to be performed on the eleventh day of the sixth month. Originally meant to be the monthly service of thanksgiving.

Michiaye festival: to be performed on the last day of the sixth month. Celebrated at the crossroads outside the capital; the kami of the crossroads entreated to keep out evil spirits.

Hishizume festival: to follow directly the above. Prayers to keep fire away from the palace,

Kamuniye festival: to be performed in the ninth and tenth months at Ise.

Ainube festival: to be performed during the eleventh month.10

The edict ordered that upon the accession of an emperor, all the kami were to be worshipped and that one month of partial abstinence and three days of complete abstinence were to be observed. Meat-eating and sex were prohibited during these periods. On the day of a new emperor's accession, the chief of the hereditary Shinto priestly family of Nakatomi was to recite the ritual prayers (Norito), while the chief of the heriditary Shinto priestly family of Imbe was to present the sacred regalia of the mirror and the sword to the emperor.

The Institutes of the Engi Era classify festivals into three grades of importance with provisions for rituals and offerings. All the regular and occasional festivals are minutely described . For example, on the early spring festival which happens during the second month every year, prayers for the harvest are to be offered to 3,132 kami, 737 of whom are to be worshipped by the officials of the Ministry of Shinto Affairs and 2,395 of whom are to be attended to by provinical officials. The Engishki also gives a comprehensive list of the 2,132 heavenly and earthly kami and the names and locations of their shrines throughout the nation. Especially significant are regulations pertaining to running the Grand Shrine of Ise. Shrine buildings are to be rebuilt every twenty years. Persons below the rank of imperial prince are not to present offerings to Amaterasu.

Shinto prayers are based on the belief in spiritual potency residing in spoken words. The Norito usually consist of words praising the kami, lists of offerings presented, words identifying the persons on whose behalf the prayer is recited and the persons who are reciting it, and petitions.

Shinto has little iconography in its artistic foundation. The focus of Shinto practice in general and Shinto art specifically, is ritual. The core of this is the dance and music called kagura, dance and music designed to summon the kami, to entertain the kami, and to ensure the benefits of the kami presence. The myth explains the form. Young girls called miko --reflecting ancient female shamanism -- dance while carrying sacred symbols and the kami is honored and made present. Some ancient forms of kagura are even performed at night before a fire placed in front of a shrine in imitation of Uzume's dance. Through such ritual performance the intrinsic purity, goodness, and creativity of life are ensured.

Buddhist Expressions in Japan

When we look at the Buddhist tradition in Japan, it is important to remember that Japanese Buddhism is made up of many sects, schools, divisions, and subdivisions. "Their practices range from the quiet meditation of Zen to the fanatic drum-beating of the Nichirenites and from the sophisticated Tendai discussions of reality to the Shingon performances of elaborate rituals. Their tenets are no less diverse than their practices while their adherents comprise philosophical minds of high standing as well as the most superstitious of the populace."11

The Nara period was a landmark in the literary history of Japan. Official histories, the Kojiki, Nihongi, Shoku-Nihongi, and the compilation of some 4,500 poems, the Manyoshu were compiled by utilizing Chinese script. The court encouraged the introduction of Buddhist writings from China and Korea. In the Heian period Buddhist ideas entered literary works, e.g., The Tale of the Genji. It was in this period that religion became an art and art a religion.

The Art of Shinto

Symbol of the kinship between humans and the kami is the shrine. Structures of various sizes, often vermillion in color, are approached by winding paths marked by stone lanterns and one or more pillared gates called torii. The shrine is a place of worship but also of spiritual refreshment.

We have seen how the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, part of Shinto primary myth constitutes both a cosmology and a dramatic personification of the forces of nature. Buddhism gradually became the dominant worldview of Japan by pairing with Shintoism. So Shinto painting and sculpture, tinged by Buddhist stylistic and theological traits, is primarily comprised of works illustrating the correspondences of, for example, the deified Nachi waterfall and the Buddhist form of Kannon, a compassionate deity believed to help man attain salvation. There is a small body of sculptures which convey a sense of spirituality distinct from Buddhist imagery. The massive, austere statues in the Matsuno-o Taisha in Kyoto seem to hold on to the natural strength and solidity inherent in the tree trunk from which they were carved and thus express a more native sensibility.12

The possibility of using wooden images of Shinto deities as objects of devotion first arose when shrines were established in places where previously natural phenomena had been worshiped. The development of these statues, especially in the early Heian period (794-897 C.E.) was conditioned by esoteric Buddhism, whose doctines provided for the easy assimilation of new gods into its pantheon. The Tendai and Shingon schools were the two principal schools in Japan, and their art was the strongest stimulus in the ninth and tenth centuries. They fostered the systemization of the relationship between Shinto and Buddhism.

The oldest recorded Shinto sculpture is probably the one mentioned in the Legends of Tado Jingu-ji in 763 C.E. The god named in this document in the Tado Shrine in Mie Prefecture was originally the tutelary god of Mount Tado but came to be worshiped as a Bodhisattva. The earliest examples of Shinto sculpture, however, date only from the Jogan era (859-77 C.E.), when there was a predilection for massive, solid images of wood with deeply carved waves of drapery and solemn facial expressions. This style and technique are expressed in the Matsuno-o Shrine in Kyoto.

The attemt to express the characteristics of Shinto gave birth to a unique and independent sculptural form that reached its peak in the Late Heian or Jufiwara era (897-1185 C.E.). The sculpture gradually broke away from the iconographically complex and ferocious deities and produced a more appealing and understandable imagery reflecting the concepts of a mass-oriented worldview promising salvation to all. Shinto sculpture of this period came to be influenced by the pomp and splendor of the imperial court. Shrines were modeled after palaces; gods were regarded as princes and princesses; religious ceremonies were permeated by court practices. Images of male deities were clothed in formal court dress, and female deities in the five layer T'ang style robes then popular among ladies. The origins of the present-day mikoshi or portable shrine, used in festival processions to transport the deities, can be traced to the use of imperial carriages as vehicles of the gods.

Shinto sculpture tends to be conservative. In early Heian times, both Shinto and Buddhist sculptors used the single-woodblock technique, but later abandoned it for the joined-woodblock technique, since figures made in this manner were less likely to crack and were easier to produce in large numbers.

Portraits of kami, with or without their Buddhist counterparts, hold a key position in Shinto painting. Through them one can obtain some understanding of Shinto iconography and thus better determine the role of a deity in a particular cult and his identity in another context or medium. Images are often arranged in the form of a mandala, a systematic diagram in which the position of each deity in the universe and his relationship to others is established. But paintings of a single deity or even scenes of shrine activities came to be called mandalas in Japan.

The long picture scroll was used by Shinto artists to illustrate legends or miracle stories of kami shrines, or to depict the adventures of Buddhist monks who fostered Shinto beliefs and ideas. One of the best examples is the illustration of the legends of the god of the Kitano Shrine in Kyoto, the Kitano Tenjin Engi. Many devout Buddhist monks were drawn by the appeal of the native deities, whose worship formed a strong undercurrent in religious worship. Ippen Shonin (1239-89 C.E.), for example, was a mendicant concerned with the spiritual welfare of the masses. He was a devotee of Amida, the Buddha of the West, who would descend to welcome the souls of believers and carry them back to his paradise. Ippen's pictorial biography, painted in a twelve-scroll emaki in 1299, includes many realistic illustrations of the Shinto establishments he visited.

The requirement that shrines be rebuilt or repaired without any modifications over the years influenced the production of another type of Shinto painting, sometimes described as landscape, but closer to architectural sketches. They represent with utmost accuracy the shrine structures, their layout, and the boundaries of the shrine compound. Many have an appealing simplicity and charm.

Fine calligraphy was always prized in Japan. Examples by emperors or monks or even the names of gods written in a good hand were considered objects of veneration. Reverence for the titles of deities may derive from the Buddhist practice of meditating on single letters of symbolic value. In the Kamakura period, the titles of the deities Amaterasu Omikami, Hachiman Okami, and Kasuga Daimyojin were especially popular. The Riron sect of Shinto in the Muromachi period (1336-1568 C.E.) promoted such devotional calligraphy.

Shinto art also includes votive paintings called ema, which most commonly depict horses. It was an ancient Shinto custom to present the gods, especially rain gods, with a black horse when rain was desired and with a white horse when there was too much rain. Offering a horse meant giving a highly prized possession. In time live horses were replaced as offerings by paintings of black or white horses on wooden tablets. Themes of such votive offerings were expanded to include images of desired objects or of shrine structures and festival scenes.

Zen Aesthetics

The favorite subjects of Zen artists are the natural, obvious sorts of things. Even when they turn to the Buddha and to Zen masters, they represent them in a human way. The arts of Zen are not primarily representational. Even in painting, the art work is thought not simply as representing nature but as being itself a work of nature. The tecqnique involves the art of artlessness, so that paintings are created as naturally as the rocks and grasses they depict. Creative powers of the mind are no more artificial than the growing actions of plants or trees, so that from the Zen viewpoint it is not paradoxical to say that artistic technique is discipline in spontaneity and spontaneity in discipline.

Malraux speaks of the artist "conquering" his medium like explorers or scientists conquer mountains or space. To Chinese and Japanese these metaphors sound strange. For when you climb it is the mountain as much as your legs which carries you upwards. When you paint it is paper, the brush, and the colors that determine the picture as much as the artist's hand and eye.

Because the world is not going anywhere there is no hurry. One may spend a lifetime learning to draw a straight line. Speed is fatal, for there is no goal to be attained.

Closest to the feeling of Zen was a calligraphic style of painting carried out with black ink on paper or silk, usually a painting and poem in one. Sumix-e, the Japanese term for this style of painting, may have been developed as early as the T'ang dynasty by the legendary masters Wu Tao-tzu (700-760 C.E.) and Wang-wei (698-759 C.E.). Works ascribed to these masters cannot be authenticated for the most part, and some may be as early as the ninth century. The great formative age of this style was the Sung dynasty (959-1279 C.E.) and is represented by such painters as Hsia-kuei, May-yuan, Mu-chi'i, and Liang-k'ai. These Sung masters were landscape painters, creators of a tradition of "nature painting" scarcely surpassed anywhere. It displays the life of nature: mountains, waters, mists, rocks, birds, trees as experienced by Taoism and Zen. Man belongs in the world but does not dominate it.

Inspired by the Sung masters, many Japanese painters produced work which ranks among the most prized treasures: Muso Kokushi (1275-1351), Cho Densu (d. 1431), Shubun (1414-1465), Soga Jasoka (d. 1483), Sesshu (1421-1506), Miyamoto Musashi (1582-1645). Also the great Zen monks Hakuin and Sengai (1750-1837). Sengai produced abstract paintings which anticipate twentieth century work.

Toward the start of the seventeenth century, Japanese painters produced a more suggestive style of sumi-e called haiga as an illustration for haiku poems. These derived from zenga, the informal paintings of the Zen monks accompanying verses from the Zenrin Kushu and sayings from the mondo aand sutras.

The development of haiku was the work, among others, of Basho (1634-1694), whose feeling for Zen expressed itself in a type of poetry in the spirit of "nothing special." He said, "To write haiku, get a three-foot child." The poems have the child's expression of wonder, the astonishment that comes from seeing something for the first time. The following verses illustrate the Buddhist expression.

The whitebait

Opens its black eyes

In the net of the Law

The octopuses in the jars:

Transient drams

Under the summer moon.

Yield to the willow

All the loathing, all the desire

Of your heart.13

One of Basho's pupils, Sonojo, composed the following:

Who can see it?

Who can have knowledge of it?

It is not in "that which is",

Nor "that which is not",

This Light of the Law!

The skies seen in the dawn of spring,

Seen with the moon of autumn,

Were they real? Were they a dream?

Namuamidabutstu!14

The great Zen master, Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) said:

To study the way of the Buddha is to study your own self. To study your own self is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to have the objective (phenomenal) world prevail in you. To have the objective world prevail in you is to let go of your "own" body and mind as well as the body and mind of "others." The enlightenment thus attained may seem to come to an end, but.... (it) should be prolonged and prolonged.

The exertion [of constantly "letting go" or "forgetting"] that brings the exertion of others into realization is our exertion right at this moment. This exertion of the moment is not innate or inherent in us, nor does it come and go, visiting or departing. What we call the "moment" does not precede exertion. The "moment" is when exertion is actually being performed. That is to say, the exertion of a day is the seed of all Buddhas, it is the exertion of all Buddhas. By this exertion Buddahood is realized [and lived]....At this moment a flower blossoms, a leaf falls -- it is the manifestation of sustained exertion. A mirror is brightened, a mirror is broken -- it is the manifestation of sustained exertion. Everything is exertion.15

Reality is the "suchness:" of the moment. William LaFleur suggested that a Buddhist sense of reality took on an aesthetic character very early in Japan. In discussing the Buddhists critique of symbols, he wrote:

This critique of symbols brought it [Buddhismm] into a very specific aesthetic mode -- one we customarily associate with Zen; but it appeared in Japan even prior to the great growth of Zen in the thirteenth century and is in many ways the consequence of hongaku. It requires the return of a poet's perceptions and mind to the simplee recognition of phenomena. This recognition is powerful because it represents a renewed simplicity rather than a naive simplicity. This aesthetic mode lives off the way it redirects our focused attention to phenomena for their own sake. It does so with stunning effect by reversing the symbolizing habit of the mind. The poetry that results from and expresses this aesthetic mode invites us to see things in and for themselves; it deliberately rejects the attempt to discover "meaning" implications hidden or coded into a poem.16

This illustrates not only the intrinsic connection between Buddhist ontology and aesthetics, poetic reality, but also suggests a foundation for an important Japanese artistic tradition that gave expression to nonsymbolic, nonnarative, immediately apprehended reality. This tradition has understood itself as constituted by distinctive "ways" of spirituial meaning. The haiku poet Basho noted in his travel journal:

In the demesne of Yamagata the mountain temple called Ryushakuji. Founded by Jikaku Daishi, unusually well-kept quiet place. "You must go and see it," people urged; from here, off back towards Obanazawa, about seven li. Sun not yet down. Reserved space at dormitory at bottom, then climbed to temple on ridge. This mountain, one of rocky steeps, ancient pines and cypresses, old earth and stone and smooth moss, and on the rocks temple-doors locked, no sound. Climbed along edges of and crept over boulders, worshiped at temples, penetrating scene, profound quietness, heart/mind open clear.

quiet

into rock absorbing

cicada sounds.17

Buddhist Iconography

Japanese worldviews have all had art as an important element. One of the most important roles played by art is the iconography of Buddhism, especially within Tendai and Shingon schools. The founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kobo Daishi (774-835 C.E.) argued:

The Dharma is beyond speech, but without speech it cannot be revealed. Suchness transcends forms, but without depending on forms cannot be realized. Though one may at times err by making the finger pointing to the moon to be the moon itself, the Buddha's teachings which guide people are limitless.... Since the Esoteric Buddhist teachings are so profound as to defy expression in writing, they are revealed through the mediium of painting to those who are yet to be enlightened. The various postures and mudras (depicted in mandalas) are products of the great compassion of the Buddha; the sight of them may well enable one to attain Buddhahood. The secrets of the sutras and commentaries are for the most part depicted in the paintings, and all the essentials of the Esoteric Buddhist doctrines are, in reality, set forth therein.19

The art of Zen BUddhism is very different. Iconography can be found in Zen, but it serves a less central function. Other kinds of arts serve: Calligraphy, gardens, tea ceremony, martial arts. The use and function of these arts differ. In Zen, art is less a symbol with obvious religious content designed to teach than a natural expression of and adjunct help for meditation.

An important work of Zen art is the famous rock garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. It is made of scattered large rocks on a raked sand base. The garden forms a Zen religio-aesthetic atmosphere of quietude and stillness and expresses the ideal that "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." The emptiness itself carries more than a hint of tranquility amidst its aesthetic surroundings and expresses itself naturally in artistic form.

Heian poetry originated the sense of the "way" of the religious quest. Brower and Miner observed:

To succeed in expressing the essential quality of a topic it was not enough merely to handle it according to the decorum of conventional treatment. It was necessary in their view that the poet undergo the most rigorous preparation -- that he achieve a kind of mythical identification with the topic by means of intense concentration and meditation.... The adaptation of a religious ideal [here, meditation influenced by Tendai Buddhism] to poetic practice may seem remarkable, yet it is hardly surprising in this strongly religious age when the art of poetry was regarded as a Way of life and just as surely a means to ultimate truth as the sermons of the Buddha.19

This Heian poetic way became a paradigm for other Japanese arts, even though not all had a religious ideal nor were understood religiously in the way of the Heian poets. Tradition is full of such things as the way of painting (gado), the way of calligraphy (shodo), the way of tea (chado), the way of the sword (kendo). Many of the great artists of Japan represented these ways in their ideal form; Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350) in literature; Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443) in Noh drama; Sogi (1421-1502) in linked verse; Soami (d. 1525) in gardens and painting.

Gardens as Expressions

In a Zen garden the object is not to make a realistic illusion of landscape, but rather to indicate the atmosphere of mountains and water in a small space by the design. The Zen gardener does not impose his intention on natural forms but is careful to follow the "intentionless intention" of the forms themselves, and though this involves extreme care and skill, it is "artless." In fact the gardener never stops pruning, clipping, weeding. He does so in the spirit of being part of the garden himself rather than a worker standing outside. He does not interefere with nature, because he is nature. he cultivates as if not cultivating.

Because Zen does not involve an ultimate dualism between cultivator and the cultivated, the mind and the body, the spiritual and the material, there is always a certain physiological element. Whether Zen is practiced as za-zen or kendo, great importance is attached to the way of breathing. Not only is breathing one of the fundamental rhythms of the body. It is also the process in which control and spontaneity, voluntary and involuntary action, find their identitiy.

The Zen inspired arts give expression to the instantaneous quality of its worldview. The transitoriness of sumi paintings and haiku, the total presence of mind required in breathing exercises and the multiple forms of Zen activity, illustrate why Zen is

the way of instantaneous awakening. "It is not just that satori comes quickly and unexpectedly, all of a sudden, for mere speed has nothing to do with it. The reason is that Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality."20

Professor Edwin Reischauer observed that "when the Europeans first arrived in Japan in the sixteenth century, they found political and social conditions which were completely understandable to them in terms of the sixteenth-century Europe they knew."22 Most writers on Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were motivated by missionary zeal for spreading Christianity and not by understanding Japanese culture. So the relationship between Europe and Japan was regarded by Europeans as a one-way street, whereby the former was to be the giver and the latter the receiver. Missionaries and merchants came from the Latin, Catholic parts of Europe and tried to present Europe to the Japanese in terms of their worldview. Just as they did not want the Europeans to learn too much about the reality of Japan, so they did not want the Japanese to learn too much about the arts and cultures of Europe. But after 1640 even this limited and distorted contact was broken and between 1640 and 1853 only a limited number of Chinese and Dutchmen were allowed to visit Japan.

The illumination, the moment of grace that produces the haiku is heavy with the sense of the sublime, with elegant simplicity and sensitivity to the fragility in things.

Only a one-foot waterfall,

But in the sounds it makes,--

Cooling in the evening.

A flash of lightning;

Between the trees of teh forest,

Water appears.

A flash of lightning!

The sound of the dew

Dripping down the bamboos.21

This reflects an influence on Zeami of the ideals of the Heian poets and of Zen. Zeami wrote:

The universe is a vessel producing the various things, each in its own season; the flowers and leaves, the snow and the moon, the mountains and seas, the seedlings and trees, the animate and the inanimate. By making these things the essence of your artistic vision, by becoming one with the universal vessel, and in securing your vessel in the great mu (Nothingness) style of the Way of Emptiness [kudo], you will attain the ineffable flowers of this art.23

Noh Drama

The noh drama of medieval and later Japan was developed in the fourteenth century out of a mixture of dance, drama, and music of the period. The noh came into its own as a genre of drama and music with the advent of the great noh master Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443 C.E). Subsequently it became a form of drama integral to the elite culture of the Japanese ruling class and continues today as a highly developed art form representing ideals, stories and tastes of the medieval period.

An important element is its religious meaning, because it is connected historically both to the Japanese ritual tradition of sacred music and dance and to the literary aesthetics of the Heian period. The ritual roots are tied to kagura but also to forms such as dengaku (folk ritual; field dance) and other types of popular entertainment. Particularly sacred plays such as "Okina" are performed on festival or ritual occasions at shrines and temples or in noh theaters.

The sources of noh drama reflect the carefully refined and increasingly Zen-influenced medieval culture. Aside from the plots, the nature of acting was considered spiritual. The ideal actor did not simply play the character but used his "spiritual strength." This was to point, icon-like, beyond the noh's external appearance to reveal its essence and depth. It points beyond external beauty to the beauty of sublimity, mystery, and stillness. Zeami explained that "the essence of noh is to be seen with the mind, while the performance is seen with the eyes.... Before the yugen of a master actor, all praise fails, admiration transcends the comprehension of the mind, and all attempts at classification and grading are made impossible. The art which excites such a reaction on the part of the audience may be called the art of the miraculous."24

This aesthetic viewpoint relates to Japanese religion even today. Noh drama is performed in pursuit of the "ineffable flowers" that reflect spiritual depths. But the relation to worldview is not simply the religious origin of Noh or its expression of the ideals of an artistic way. It is itself religious in that its plots are filled with religious characters, themes, etc. These plays, most written during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, represent the worldview of the times. One finds in every play kami, buddhas, bodhisattvas, ghosts, demons, priests, monks, and animal spirits, as well as motifs of spirit possession, demon exorcism, pilgrimages, Amida pietism, and thoughts on reincarnation. The drama re-presents the mythos and the ethos of the spiritual world.

In a typical plot a troubled ghost haunts some place in the first act of a two act play. The reason is remaining attachments to the world or passions left over from life. As the drama unfolds, the ghost is led to retell the story of her or his life as it relates to these attachments and passions. This narration is accompanied by a reenactment of the crucial parts of the life story. In and through the retelleng and reenactment, catharsis and release from the attachments and passions holding the ghost from "salvation" occurs. Thus the structure is that of a confession and ritual exorcism.

The Kukai Legend

Kukai transmitted the Buddhist esoteric tradition to Japan in 806 C.E. after returning from China. It was customary in the Shingon (True Word) tradition to transmit mysteries orally from master to pupil and so the relation between master and disciple was very significant. During his lifetime, Kukai made great contributions to the life and culture of Heian Japan. Among the legends eventually attributed to him was that he introduced male homosexual love to Japan.25

Kyokai in his stories that were collected around 800 C.E. tells about a rich woman who

lacked faith and was so greedy tht she would never give away anything. She used to make a great profit by selling rice wine diluted with water. On the day when she made a loan, she used a small measuring cup, while on the day she collected, she used a big measuring cup. Or, when she lent rice, she used a lightweight scale, but when whe collected it, she used a heavyweight scale. She did not show any mercy in forcibly collecting interest, sometimes ten times and sometimes a hundred times as much as the original loan. She was strict in collecting debts, never being generous. Because of this, many people worried a grerat deal and abandoned their homes to escape from her, wandering in other provinces. There has never been anybody so greedy.

After the woman died, her relatives did not cremate her body, but

called thirty-two monks and lay brothers to pray to Buddha for her for nine days. On the evening of the seventh day she was restored to life and opened the lid of the coffin. When they came to look in it, the stench was indescribable. Her body above the waist had already turned into an ox with four inch horns on teh forehad; her two hands had become ox hooves, with the nails cracked like the insteps of an ox hoof. The lower body below the waist was human in form. She did not like rice but grass, and after eating, ruminated. She did not wear any clothes, lying in her filth.

Kyokai finishes the tale with a Buddhist moral:

She did not know the law of karmic retribution, being unreasonable and unrighteous.... If you make a loan, don't use excessive force to collect the debt, for, if you are unreasonable, you will be reborn as a horse or an ox and made to work by your debtor.26

This expression of disapproval of a business ethic should be countered by noticing the respect for the need for a stable economic condition. In the Admonition to Singala found in the Digha Nikaya (3. 180ff.) we read:

The wise and moral man

Shines like a fire on a hilltop,

Making money like the bee,

Who does not hurt the flower.

Such a man makes his pile

As an anthill, gradually.

The man grown wealthy thus

Can help his family

And firmly bind his friends

To himself. He should divide

His money in four parts;

On one part he should live,

With two expand his trade,

And the fourth he should save

Against a rainy day.27

Nichiren (1222-1282 C.E.) was one of a remarkable group of creative Buddhist leaders who strove to make Mahayana Buddhism more readily available to the people by simplifying its practices and by stressing its message of universal salvation. To assist him in this task, Nichiren produced a large body of writings in both Chinese and Japanese, known collectively as the Gosho. The following letter from that body of writings was sent by Nichiren from his exile on Sado to Shijo Kingo, a samurai, to thank him for a visit. The subject of the letter, "earthly desires are enlightenment" is a fundamental of Mahayana Buddhism.

I deeply appreciate your recent visit here and your constant concern over the numerous persecutions which have befallen me. I have met these great persecutions as the votary of the Lotus Sutra and do not regret them in the slightest. No life could be more fortunate than mine, no matter how many times one might repeat the cycle of birth and death. [Were it not for these troubles] I might have remained in the three or four evil paths. But now, to my great joy, I am sure to sever the cycle of sufferings and attain the fruit of Buddhahood.

T'ien-t'ai and Dengyo suffered persecutions arising out of hate and jealousy merely because they propagated theoretical ichinen sanzen of shakumon (the theoretical teaching). In Japan this teaching was propagated and handed down successively by Dengyo, Gishin, Encho, Jikaku, and others. Among the many disciples who followed the great teacher Jie, the eighteenth chief priest of the Tendai sect, were Danna, Eshin, Soga, and Zen'yu. At that time the sect's teachings were divided in two: Danna, the Administrator of Monks, transmitted the doctrinal teachings, while Eshin, the Supervisor of Monks, devoted himself to the meditative practices. Doctrine is comparable to the moon and practice to the sun. Doctrinal practices are shallow, while meditative practices are deep. ...

The teaching that I, Nichiren, am now propagating may seem limited, but it is actually most profound. This is because it goes deeper than the teachings expounded by T'ien't'ai and Dengyo. It reveals the three important matters contained in the Juryo chapter of the essential teaching. To practice only the seven characters of Nammyoho-renge-kyo may appear limited, yet since this Law is the master of all Buddhas of the past, present, and future, the teacher of all bodhisattvas in the ten directions, and the guide that enables all beings to attain Buddhahood, its practice is incomparably profound.

The sutra states, "The wisdom of all Buddhas is infinitely profound and immeasurable." "All Buddhas" means every Buddha throughout the ten directions in every age of the past, present, and future. It represents every single Buddha and bodhisattva of any sutra or sect whatsoever, including both Dainichi Buddha of the Shingon sect and Amida Buddha of the Jodo sect, every Buddha of the past, the future, or the present, including even Shakyamuni Buddha himself.

Next, what is meant by the "wisdom" of all Buddhas? It is the true aspect of all phenomena, the Dharma entity of the ten factors that leads all beings to Buddhahood. What then is the dharma entity? It is nothing other than Nam-myoho-renge-kyo....

These teachings are of prime imortance. They mean that earthly desires are enlightenment and that the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana. When one chants Nam-myoho-renge-kyo even during the sexual union of man and woman, then earthly desires are enlightenment and the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana. Sufferings are nirvana only when one realizes that life throughout its cycle of birth and death is neither born nor destroyed. ...

It was this most august and precious Lotus Sutra which in the past I trampled underfoot, scowled upon in disgust and refused to believe in. In one way or another, I maliciously ridiculed people who studied the Lotus Sutra and who taught it to at least one other person, thereby passing on the Law for the future. In addition, I did everything I could to hinder them from embracing the sutra by asserting that they could practice it in the next life but it would not benefit them in this life. Countless slanderous acts such as these have now brought on the many severe persecutions I have suffered in my lifetime. Because I once disparaged the highest of all sutras, I am now looked down upon and my words go unheeded....

As a votary of the Lotus Sutra, you suffered severe persecutions, yet you still came to my assistance. In the Hosshi chapter the Buddha states, "I will send monks and nuns and laymen and laywomen [to make offerings to the teacher of the Lotus Sutra and hear his preaching of the Law]" If you are not one of these laymen, then to whom else could the passage possibly refer? You have not only heard the Law, but have taken faith in it and since then have followed it without turning aside. How wondrous! How extraordinary! Then how can there be any doubt that I, Nichiren, am the teacher of the Lotus Sutra? I have fulfilled the words of the Buddha: "He is the envoy of the Buddha, sent to carry out the Buddha's work." ....

Carry through with your faith in the Lotus Sutra. You cannot strike fire from flint if you stop halfway. Bring forth the great power of faith and establish your reputation among all the people of Kamakura and the rest of Japan as "Shijo Kingo of the Hokke sect." Even a bad reputation will spread far and wide. A good reputation will spread even further, particularly if it is a reputation for devotion to the Lotus Sutra.

Explain all this to your wife, and work together like the sun and moon, a pair of eyes, or the two wings of a bird. With the sun and the moon, how can you fall into the paths of darkness? With a pair of eyes how can you fail to behold the faces of Shakyamuni, Taho, and all the other Buddhas of the ten directions? With a pair of wings, you will surely be able to fly in an instant to the treasure land of Tranquil Light. I will write in more detail on another occasion.28

Contemporary architecture reflects interest in ma (intervals in space and time) as a criterion for design. This term carries the freight of Shinto and Buddhism combined. As a feature of design it makes prominent use of space and bridges across space. As carrying religious meaning it suggests a recurring motif: the sacred is perhaps better experienced and expressed in the emptiness or space between things than in the existence or thingness of things. In Shinto conceptualization, it suggests the dynamic coming and going of invisible kami energy as it moves into and out of the interstices of being, slipping in and out but never captured by things.

This again reflects the Japanese relation between the aesthetic and the religious. Aesthetics can stand for Japan's unique worldview expression. Although art, as we have seen and will see, serves religion in every culture, only in Japan has worldview expression been so overtly related to experience, and artistic pursuits themselves thought of as religious "ways." The changing perspectives on time that have entered the vocabulary of aesthetics and have changed the way we view art in ways that seem to be different from any in the past. We are more aware of the field of man-universe and of the inadequacy of representations that would set man apart from nature. The disposition to see man as a creature of the universe is famous in Japanese literature and perhaps it should be regarded as central to Japanese aesthetics. Given this aspect of the Japanese world view, it is not surprising to find this at the center of Japanese literature of the past. The Tale of the Genji, for example, is filled with such discoveries.

Contemporary literature also reflects the Japanese worldview. Explicit and implicit religious themes run through the works of Mishima Yukio and other contemporary novelists. The influential modern Japanese author Takuboku was influenced by the all-pervasive aspect of Shinto. His father was dismissed from a position as priest of the Hotoku Temple. A letter from Abe Taikan, head of the Iwate Prefecture Administration Office of the Soto Sect, to Aoyama Busugai, director of the Office of General Affairs of the Administration of the Soto Sect in Tokyo clarifies the circumstances of the removal of the priest. The letter indicates that Ittei was dismissed because he failed to pay the fees to the head temple. Later there was a bitter quarrel among petitioners about whether or not Ittei should be reappointed after apologizing and paying the fees. The machinations of the substitute priest succeeded in blocking reappointment. When the news of his father's dismissal reached Takuboku in Tokyo, he was about to publish his first collection of poems. The news devastated the young author. The reduction of his family to poverty further influenced his writing. He eventually left his home village.

The sorrow of almost being

chased out of my hometown by stones

has never been erased.

Japanese morality had traditionally been measured by the degree of honor or shame the individual brought upon the ancestors of his family. By spreading the worship of the imperial ancestors of all Japanese, the obligations individuals owed to their families and the local Shinto gods were sublimated and transformed into loyalty to the state. A splendid example of the creation of civil-religious obligations is an episode in a novel by Murayama Tomoyoshi, a writer originally active in the antigovernment, proletarian art movement. Arrested in 1932, Murayama underwent tenko (ideological conversion to the imperial ideology) and devoted himself to writing "conversion novels." In his The White Night, he describes the psychology of tenko. The following passage expresses the role of ancestors as symbols and agents of conscience.

After his second summer there [in prison], absolutely shut away from fresh air, his mind was eroded by something undefined and invincible. He felt as though his flesh and blood, or rather something mysteriously a part of his own father and mother, and of their forebearers from time immemorial, whose faces, names and lives had long since perished was eating away his existence, which was after all an infinitesimally small particle of their posterity. However hard he tried to cry out at them, to push them aside, and to drive them out, it was of no avail. In his struggle with his invisible foes, day in and night out, he groaned, struck his head with his fists, and scratched the wall with his nails.29

In this way the nationalistic civil religion promoted by the government transformed the will of the ancestors, kami, and buddhas into the mandates of the government itself. Obligations to the emperor were limitless. Under the American occupation, leaders did their best to destroy the obligatory nature of the Shinto parish and make the religion voluntaristic.

Endnotes

1 See Tsungetsugu Muraoka, Studies in Shinto Thought trans., D.M. Brown and J.T. Araki (Tokyo: Ministry of Education, 1964), p. 58.

2 Langdon Warner, The Enduring Art of Japan (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 18.

3 Tsuda Sokichi, "The Idea of Kami in Ancient Japanese Classics," T'oung Pao 52 (1966), 294.

4 The Manyoshu, trans. Nippon Gakujutus Shinkokai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940; New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 144-45.

5 Ibid. p. 183.

6 Ibid. p. 215.

7 Ibid. p. 163.

8 See J. M. Kitagawa, "Religions of Japan," in W-T Chan, et al., The Great Asian Religions: An Anthology (New York, 1969), p. 241.

9 From The Manyoshu: One Thousand Poems (Tokyo: 1940).

10 See George B. Sansom,"Early Japanese Law and Administration, Part II," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 2nd. ser., vol. ll (December, 1934), 122-127.

11 Masahuru Anesaki, Religious Life of the Japanese People (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, 1961), p. 45.

12 See Haruki Kageyama, The Arts of Shinto (New York: Weatherhill, 1967), pp. 10 ff.

13 R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1949) pp. 7-8.

14. Ibid., p. 9.

15 Tsunoda, Sources, vol. 1, pp. 2245-46.

16 William LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 23-24.

17 From Basho's Back Roads to Far Towns , trans. Cid. Carman and Kamalka Susumu (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968), p. 99.

18 Yoshita Hakeda, trans. Kukai: Major Works (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 145.

19 Robert Brower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 257.

20 Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York: Pantheon, 1957), p. 199

22 Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, East Asia: The Great Tradition (Boston, 1958), p. 578.

21 R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Vol. III (Tokyo: Hokuseido, n.d.), pp. 68-69.

23 Richard Pilgrim, Buddhism and the Arts (Chambersburg, Penn.: Anima, 1981), pp. 48-49.

24 Williiam DeBary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 286-97.

25 See Paul Gordon Schalow, "Kukai and the Tradition of Male Love in Japanese Buddhism," in Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp.215ff.)

26 (Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 257-59.

27 Sources of Indian Tradition, ed. Wm. Theodore De Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, Vol. 1, p. 122.

28 Selected Writings of Nichiren, trans. Burton Watson, ed. Philip B. Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 344-46.

29 Selections from Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 59ff.