Japan

Japan. The earliest official account of Buddhism in Japan states that it arrived at the imperial court in 552 (or 538 according to some authorities), when a delegation from the kingdom of Paekche on the Korean peninsula brought a Buddha image and some scriptures as gifts for the emperor. It is likely, however, that Buddhism was already known in Japan through other non-official channels. After this initial contact, the court had to decide whether allowing the practice and study of this new religion would anger the local deities or kami, whose protection the imperial family needed in consolidating their rule over the newly centralized kingdom. During this earliest period, Buddhist texts and clergy came to Japan along with a wave of Chinese cultural imports that also included writing, political thought, urban planning, and other innovative ideas. It seems clear that the court and aristocrats understood Buddhism as a variant of their native religion, and used it primarily as a way to cure illnesses and gain supernatural support for their political and military efforts. Prince Shōtoku (572–621), who ruled Japan as regent after the death of his father, is credited with being among the first to see Buddhist teachings as distinct from the native cults. He is thought to have composed commentaries to several scriptures, and he fostered a programme of rapid temple construction.

Scholars generally divide the subsequent history of Japanese Buddhism into periods defined by the location of the capital city. The Nara (710–94), Heian (794–1185), and Kamakura (1185–1392) periods are the most important, since these are the periods in which the main schools of Buddhism were established and took shape.

The Nara Period

During the Nara period, Buddhist activity went in two primary directions: the clergy were busy trying to understand the doctrines found in newly imported texts, and the government put Buddhist rituals and organizations to work for the welfare of the state. As to the first of these tasks, the so-called ‘Six Schools of Nara Buddhism’ comprised groups of clergy who concentrated on the texts and thought of six different Chinese schools. Almost all of the scholar-monks who engaged in these studies lived in the capital under government auspices and were housed in the main temple there, the Tōji. Outside of this government-sponsored establishment, a few self-ordained practitioners left society and lived in the mountains performing austeries and magical services for ordinary citizens. In addition to the scholarly activity in the capital, the primary activity of clergy was to perform rituals on behalf of a paid clientele that came almost entirely from the imperial family and the aristocracy.

The Heian Period

This saw a movement of Buddhism away from government centres and out among the people, although this movement fell far short of a full-scale popularization of the religion. During this time both Saichō (767–822) and Kūkai (774–835) journeyed to China to deepen their knowledge of Buddhism. Saichō went to Mt. T'ien-t'ai to study T'ien-t'ai doctrines, but while waiting for a ship to take him home, he encountered a monk who practised esoteric rituals. After a short period of training and the conferral of the proper initiation, he returned to Japan and settled on Mt. Hiei, where he established the Tendai school to be a successor to the Chinese T'ien-t'ai school. However, because the real patronage came from the performance of esoteric rituals (see esoteric Buddhism), he divided this new school's focus between the exoteric doctrines of T'ien-t'ai and esoteric ritual performance. In addition, he made a crucial move to establish the Tendai school independently from the government-controlled monastic establishment in Nara when he asked for permission to ordain his own monks on Mt. Hiei using only the Mahāyāna precepts of the Brahmajāla Sūtra (Jap., Bonmōkyō). Permission was granted after his death, and the Tendai school was thus freed from the necessity of submitting its monks to the Ritsu school in the capital for ordination. Meanwhile, Kūkai went to China exclusively to receive training in esoteric texts and rituals, and the Shingon school that he established on Mt. Kōya upon his return concentrated solely on esoteric Buddhism, and for a time outshone the Tendai school in patronage and popularity.

The relationship between Buddhism and its assembly of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and the Shintō pantheon, continued to concern many in Japan, and during the Heian period the theory known as honji-suijaku, or ‘original nature and provisional manifestation’, came to dominate. According to this theory, the local kami of Shintō were manifestations of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that appeared in Japan to teach the people and protect the nation. Thus, for example, the Sun goddess Amaterasu was in fact a local manifestation of the great Sun Buddha Vairocana. In this way, both religions could be accommodated in a single institution that incorporated both Buddhist and Shintō personnel and practices (known as the jingūji, or ‘shrine-temple’).

The Kamakura Period

By the opening years of the Kamakura period the Tendai school was the largest and most powerful of the eight schools in existence at that time, and its broad focus on both doctrinal and esoteric study and practice, as well as its laxity, corruption, and militance (as seen in its infamous ‘monk-soldiers’, or sōhei), made it the breeding ground for subsequent reform movements and schools. Out of the Tendai matrix, the following figures emerged to establish new schools under the following broad categories: (1) Pure Land: Hōnen (1133–1212) founded the Jōdo Shū; Shinran (1173–1262) the Jōdo Shinshū; and Ippen (1239–89) the Jishū. (2) Zen: Eisai (or Yōsai, 1141–1215) founded the Rinzai school, which took its lineage of Dharma-transmission from the Chinese Lin-chi school; and Dōgen (1200–53) the Sōtō school, derived from the Chinese Ts'ao-tung lineage. (3) Nichiren (1222–82) founded the Nichiren school, which proclaimed the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra (Myōhō renge kyō) over all other scriptures and recommended the constant repetition and praise of its title as the sole means of salvation. In addition to the formal establishment of these schools and their institutions, the tradition of mountain asceticism continued under the name shugendō, or ‘the way of experiential cultivation’. Drawn primarily from the ranks of Tendai and Shingon esoteric clergy, practitioners lived in the mountains and practised by fasting, repentance, esoteric rituals, and long, arduous journeys through the mountains that covered as much as 50 miles in a single day.

Ashikaga and Tokugawa Periods (1392–1868)

By the end of the Kamakura period, Buddhism was a significant presence at all levels of Japanese society. At times, this was a source of concern for the feudal government. In the 15th century, Jōdo Shinshū adherents formed popular leagues called ikkō ikki, which rose up in rebellion against local aristocratic rule in Kaga and in 1488 took control of the province themselves. In 1571 the shōgun Oda Nobunaga, distrustful of the enormous landholdings and secular power of Buddhist monasteries, attacked and razed the Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei, dispersing its sōhei once and for all, and he suppressed many other Buddhist establishments. On the other hand, the pervasive presence of Buddhist institutions could be a source of strength for the government. For instance, after the ban on Christianity in 1612 and the subsequent expulsion of Christian missionaries, the government required all citizens to register with local Buddhist temples beginning in 1640, effectively co-opting these institutions as a census bureau. Buddhism's close cooperation with and support by the government in this way led to an inevitable decline, although a few notable figures stand out as exemplars: Takuan Sōhō (1573–1645), Bankei Eitaku (1622–93), and Hakuin Zenji (1685–1768) in the zen school, and Rennyo (1415–99) and Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911) of the Pure Land school, to name a few. However, as the Tokugawa period drew to a close in the early 19th century, the real locus of religious vitality was in Confucianism and various intellectual and spiritual renewal movements within Shintō. In addition, the first appearance of the so-called ‘New Religions’ such as Tenrikyō offered real competition for the loyalty of the peasants and the middle classes.

The Meiji and Modern Periods

When the Meiji emperor succeeded in restoring real political and executive power to the imperial family in 1868, one of his first acts was to abrogate the honji-suijaku understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and Shintō, and declared the two put asunder in a move called shimbutsu bunri, or ‘separation of kami and Buddhas’. Buddhism itself came under persecution during the first decade or so of the Meiji period, but the attack galvanized Buddhists into action, and they successfully demanded recognition and toleration under the new constitution. At the same time, Buddhist chaplains who accompanied Japanese troops on military adventures in China, Korea, Taiwan, and south-east Asia, as well as missionaries who travelled to America and Europe to participate in the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions and to settle abroad, gave Japanese Buddhism an international presence. While all schools of Japanese Buddhism came to Hawaii and the American mainland with the large numbers of immigrants at that period, Zen had the most success in making an impression on Euro-American culture. The westward expansion of Japanese Buddhism accelerated after the Second World War. At the same time, social changes taking place in modern Japan have fostered the development of many Buddhist-derived ‘New Religions’, most of which sprang from offshoots of the Nichiren school and its devotion to the Lotus Sūtra. Prominent among these are the Nichiren Shōshū and its lay branch, the Sōka Gakkai (which broke away from its parent organization in 1992), and Risshō Kōseikai. Today, Japanese Buddhism is a combination of the old and the new: even the most ancient of the Nara schools continues to coexist alongside the newest of the ‘New Religions’. The Sōtō and Jōdo Shinshū schools are the largest of the traditional schools, and Buddhism remains completely integrated as a vital part of Japanese life and culture.