Part 4

Of the sects which have exercised great influence on Japanese mentality, the following are specially to be mentioned: the Tendai, the Shingon, the Zen, the Hokke, and the Jodo, with its offspring the Ikkô sect. Each of these chose its own means of reaching enlightenment from among those indicated by Shâkya-muni, but did not on that account entirely reject the means of salvation preferred by the others. Some give long lists of categories and antitheses, and seek to define the truth with a more than Aristotelian precision of detail, while others think it advisable to realise it by dint of faith alone. But among these means of salvation the practice advocated by the Zen sect is worthy of special consideration in this place, as it has exercised great influence in the formation of the Japanese spirit. _Zen_ means 'abstraction,' standing for the Sanskrit Dhyâna. It is one of the six means of arriving at Nirvâna, namely, (1) charity; (2) morality; (3) patience; (4) energy; (5) contemplation; and (6) wisdom. This practice, which dates from a time anterior to Shâkya himself, consists of an 'abstract contemplation,' intended to destroy all attachment to existence in thought and wish. From the earliest time Buddhists taught four different degrees of abstract contemplation by which the mind frees itself from all subjective and objective trammels, until it reaches a state of absolute indifference or self-annihilation of thought, perception, and will.[14]

[14] E. J. Eitel's _Handbook of Chinese Buddhism_, p. 49.

You might perhaps wonder how a method so utterly unpractical and speculative as that of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by pure contemplation could ever have taken root in Japan, among a people who, generally speaking, have never troubled themselves much about things apart from their actual and immediate use. An explanation of this is not far to seek. Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai school, the branch of the Contemplative sect first established on our soil, came back to Japan from his second visit to China in 1192 A.D.[15] This was the time when the short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan (1186-1219) was nearing the end of its real supremacy. Only fifteen years before that the world had seen the downfall of another mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put an end to the Heike ascendancy after an incessant series of desperate battles extending over a century, giving our soldier-like qualities enough occasion for an excellent schooling. The whole country during this period had been under the raging sway of Mars, who swept with his fiery breath the blossoms of human prosperity, and the people high and low were obliged to recognise the folly of clinging to shadowy desires and to learn the urgent necessity for facing every emergency with something akin to indifference. To pass from glowing life into the cold grasp of death with a smile, to meet the hardest decrees of fate with the resolute calm of stoic fortitude, was the quality demanded of every man and woman in that stormy age. In the meanwhile, different military clans had been forming themselves in different parts of Japan and preparing to wage an endless series of furious battles against one another. In half a century too came the one solitary invasion of our whole history when a foreign power dared to threaten us with destruction. The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great Genghis Khan, haughty with his resistless army, whose devastating intrepidity taught even Europe to tremble at the mention of his name, despatched an embassy to the Japanese court to demand the subjection of the country. The message was referred to Kamakura, then the seat of the Hôjô regency, and was of course indignantly dismissed. Enraged at this, Kublei equipped a large number of vessels with the choicest soldiers China could furnish. The invading force was successful at first, and committed massacres in Iki and Tsushima, islands lying between Corea and Japan. The position was menacing; even the steel nerves of the trained Samurai felt that strange thrill a patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist monks were equally busy at their prayers. A new embassy came from the threatening Mongol leader. The imperious ambassadors were taken to Kamakura, to be put to death as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous refusal. A tremendous Chinese fleet gathered in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the summer of 1281. At last the evening came with the ominous glow on the horizon that foretells an approaching storm. It was the plan of the conquering army victoriously to land the next morning on the holy soil of Kyûshû. But during this critical night a fearful typhoon, known to this day as the 'Divine Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky with its tremendous roar of thunder and bathing the glittering armour of our soldiers guarding the coastline in white flashes of dazzling light. The very heaven and earth shook before the mighty anger of nature. The result was that the dawn of the next morning saw the whole fleet of the proud Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, swept completely away into the bottomless sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the horror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable disappointment of our determined soldiers. Out of the hundred thousand warriors who manned the invading ships, only three are recorded to have survived the destruction to tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great Khan!

[15] Four years later the first temple of this school was opened in Hakata under the patronship of the Emperor Gotoba.

Then after a short interval of a score of peaceful years, Japan was plunged again into another series of internal disturbances, from which she can hardly be said to have emerged until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when order and rest were brought back by the able hand of Tokugawa Iyeyasu. During all these troublous days, the original Contemplative sect, paralleled soon after its establishment in Japan by a new school called _Sôtô_, as it was again supplemented by another, the _Ôbaku_ school, five centuries afterwards, found ample material to propagate its special method of enlightenment. This sect, which drew its patrons from the ruling classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up to as best calculated to impart the secret power of perfect self-control and undisturbable peace of mind. It must be remembered that the ultimate riddance in the Buddhist sense, the entrance into cold Nirvâna, was not what our practical mind wanted to realise. It was the stoic indifference, enabling man to meet after a moment's thought, or almost instinctively, any hardships that human life might impose, that had brought about its otherwise strange popularity.

Another charm it offered to the people of the illiterate Middle Ages, when they had to attend to other things than a leisurely pursuit of literature, was its systematic neglect of book-learning. Truth was to be directly read from heart to heart. The intervention of words and writing was regarded as a hindrance to its true understanding. A rudimentary symbolism expressed by gestures was all that a Zen priest really relied upon for the communication of the doctrine. Everybody with a heart to feel and a mind to understand needed nothing further to begin and finish his quest of the desired freedom from life's everlasting torments.

The self-control that enables us not to betray our inner feeling through a change in our expression, the measured steps with which we are taught to walk into the hideous jaws of death--in short, all those qualities which make a present Japanese of truly Japanese type look strange, if not queer, to your eyes, are in a most marked degree a product of that direct or indirect influence on our past mentality which was exercised by the Buddhist doctrine of Dhyâna taught by the Zen priests.

Another benefit which the Zen sect conferred on us is the healthy influence it exercised on our taste. The love of nature and the desire of purity that we had shown from the earliest days of our history, took, under the leading idea of the Contemplative sect, a new development, and began to show that serene dislike of loudness of form and colour. That apparent simplicity with a fulness of meaning behind it, like a Dhyâna symbol itself, which we find so pervadingly manifested in our works of art, especially in those of the Ashikaga period (1400-1600 A.D.), is certainly to be counted among the most valuable results which the Zen doctrine quickened us to produce.

In short, so far-reaching is the influence of the Contemplative sect on the formation of the Japanese spirit as you find it at present, that an adequate interpretation of its manifestations would be out of the question unless based on a careful study of this branch of Buddhism. So long as the Zen sect is not duly considered, the whole set of phenomena peculiar to Japan--from the all-pervading laconism to the hara-kiri--will remain a sealed book.

This fact is my excuse for having detained you for so long on the subject.

I now pass on to the consideration of our own native cult.

Shinto, or the 'Path of the Gods,' is the name by which we distinguish the body of our national belief from Buddhism, Christianity, or any other form of religion. It is remarkable that this appellation, like Nippon (which corresponds to your word Japan), is no purely Japanese term. Buddhism is called Buppô (from _Butsu_, Buddha, and _hô_, doctrine) or Bukkyô (_kyô_, teaching); Confucianism is known as Jukyô (_Ju_, literati); and both terms are taken from the Chinese. In keeping with these we have Shinto (_Shin_, deity, and _to_, way). This state of things in some measure explains the rather unstable condition in which Buddhism on its first arrival found our national cult. It has ever since remained in its main aspects nothing more than a form of ancestor-worship based on the central belief in the divine origin of the imperial line. A systematised creed it never was and has never become, even if we take into consideration the attempts at its consolidation made by such scholars as Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the middle of the seventeenth century tried to formalise it in accordance with Chu-Hsi's philosophy, or, later still, by such eager revivalists as Hirata-Atsutane (1776-1843), etc. At the time when Shintoism had to meet its mighty foe from India, its whole mechanism was very simple. It consisted in a number of primitive rites, such as the recital of the liturgy, the offering of eatables to the departed spirits of deified ancestors, patriarchal, tribal, or national. This naïve cult was as innocent of the cunning ideas and subtle formalisms of the rival creed as its shrines were free from the decorations and equipments of an Indian temple. So, although at the start Buddhism met with some obstinate resistance at the hand of the Shintoists, who attributed the visitations of pestilence that followed the introduction of the foreign belief to the anger of the native gods, its superiority in organisation soon overcame these difficulties; especially from the time when the great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious but mischievous idea of solving the dilemma by the establishment of what is generally known in our history as Ryôbu-Shinto, or double-faced Shinto. According to this doctrine, a Shinto god was to be regarded as an incarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, who made his appearance in Japan through metamorphosis for Japan's better salvation--a doctrine which is no more than a clever application of the notion known in India as Nirmanakâya. This incarnation theory opened a new era in the history of the expansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending over a period of eleven centuries, during which Shintoism was placed in a very awkward position. It was at last restored to its original purity at the beginning of the present Meiji period, and that only after a century of determined endeavour on the part of native Shintoist scholars.

From these words you might perhaps conclude that Buddhism succeeded in supplanting the native cult, at least for more than a thousand years. But, strange to say, if we judge the case not by outward appearances, but by the religious conviction that lurks in the depth of the heart, we cannot but recognise the undeniable fact that no real conversion has ever been achieved during the past eleven centuries by the doctrine of Buddha. Our actual self, notwithstanding the different clothes we have put on has ever remained true in its spirit to our native cult. Speaking generally, we are still Shintoists to this day--Buddhists, Christians, and all--so long as we are born Japanese. This might sound to you somewhat paradoxical. Here is the explanation:--

For an average Japanese mind in present Japan, thanks to the ancestor-worship practised consciously or unconsciously from time immemorial, it is not altogether easy to imagine the spirit of the deceased, if it believes in one at all, to be something different and distant from our actual living self. The departed, although invisible, are thought to be leading their ethereal life in the same world in much the same state as that to which they had been accustomed while on earth. Like the little child so touchingly described by Wordsworth, we cannot see why we should not count the so-called dead still among the existing. The difference between the two is that of tangibility or visibility, but nothing more.

The _raison d'être_ of this illusive notion is, of course, not far to seek. Any book on anthropology or ethnology would tell you how sleep, trance, dream, hallucination, reflection in still water, etc., help to build up the spirit-world in the untaught mind of primitive man. Yet it must be remembered that these origins have led to something far higher, to something of real value to our nation, and to something which is a moral force in our daily lives that may well be compared to what is efficacious in other creeds. Notice the fact that Buddhism from the moment of its introduction in the sixth century after Christ to this very day has on the whole remained the religion, so to say, of night and gloomy death, while Shintoism has always retained its firm hold on the popular mind as the cult, if I might so express it, of daylight and the living dead. From the very dawn of our history we read of patriarchs, chieftains, and national heroes deified and worshipped as so many guardian spirits of families, of clans, or of the country. Nor has this process of deification come to an end yet, even in this age of airship and submarine boat. We continue to erect shrines to men of merit. This may look very strange to you, but is not your poet Swinburne right when he sings--

'Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down, He, dying so, lives.'

Might not these lines explain, when duly extended, the subtle feeling that lurks behind our apparently incomprehensible custom of speaking with the departed over the altar? The present deification, is, like your custom of erecting monuments to men of merit, a way of making the best part of a man's career legible to the coming generations. The numberless shrines you now find scattered all over Japan are only so many chapters written in unmistakable characters of the lessons our beloved and revered heroes and good men have left us for our edification and amelioration. It is in the sunny space within the simple railing of these Shinto shrines, where the smiling presence of the patron spirit of a deified forefather or a great man is so clearly felt, that our childhood has played for tens of centuries its games of innocent joy. Monthly and yearly festivals are observed within the divine enclosure of a guardian god, when a whole community under his protection let themselves go in good-natured laughter and gleeful mirth before the favouring eyes of their divine patron. How different is this jovial feeling from that gloomy sensation with which we approach a Buddhist temple, recalling death and the misery of life from every corner of its mysterious interior. Such seriousness has never been congenial to the gay Japanese mind with its strong love of openness and light. Until death stares us right in the face, we do not care to be religious in the ordinary sense of the term. True, we say and think that we believe in death, but all the while this so-called death is nothing else than a new life in this present world of ours led in a supernatural way. For instance, when the father of a Japanese family begins a journey of any length, the raised part of his room will be made sacred to his memory during his temporary absence; his family will gather in front of it and think of him, expressing their devotion and love in words and gifts in kind. In the hundreds of thousands of families that have some one or other of their members fighting for the nation in this dreadful war with Russia, there will not be even one solitary house where the mother, wife, or sister is not practising this simple rite of endearment for the beloved and absent member of the family. And if he die on the field, the mental attitude of the poor bereaved towards the never-returning does not show any substantial difference. The temporarily departed will now be regarded as the forever departed, but not as lost or passed away. His essential self is ever present, only not visible. Daily offerings and salutations continue in exactly the same way as when he was absent for a time. Even in the mind of the modern Japanese with its extremely agnostic tendencies, there is still one corner sacred to this inherited feeling. You could sooner convince an ordinary European of the non-existence of a personal God. When it gets dusk every bird knows whither to wing its way home. Even so with us all when the night of Death spreads its dark folds over our mortal mind!

But ask a modern Japanese of ordinary education in the broad daylight of life, if he believes in a God in the Christian sense; or in Buddha as the creator; or in the Shinto deities; or else in any other personal agency or agencies, as originating and presiding over the universe; and you would immediately get an answer in the negative in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Do you ask why? First, because our school education throughout its whole course has, ever since its re-establishment thirty-five years ago, been altogether free from any teaching of a denominational nature. The ethical foundations necessary for the building up of character are imparted through an adequate commentary on the moral sayings and maxims derived mostly from Chinese classics. Secondly, because the little knowledge about natural science which we obtain at school seems to make it impossible to anchor our rational selves on anything other than an impersonal law. Thirdly, because we do not see any convincing reason why morals should be based on the teaching of a special denomination, in face of the fact that we can be upright and brave without the help of a creed with a God or deities at its other end. So, for the average mind of the educated Japanese something like modern scientific agnosticism, with a strong tendency towards the materialistic monism of recent times, is just what pleases and satisfies it most.

If not so definitely thought out, and if expressed with much less learned terminology, the thought among our educated classes as regards supernatural agencies has during the past three centuries been much the same. The Confucian warning against meddling with things supernatural, the atheistic views and hermit-like conduct of the adherents of Laoism, and the higher Buddhism, all contributed towards the consolidation of this mental attitude with a conscious or unconscious belief in the existing spirit-world. Except for the philosophy which they knew how to utilise for their practical purposes, the educated felt no charm in religion. The lower form of Buddhism with its pantheon has been held as something only for the aged and the weak. For the execution of the religious rites, at funerals or on other occasions (except in the rare instances when some families for a special reason of their own preferred the Shintoist form), we have unanimously drawn on the Buddhist priesthood, just in the same way as you go to your family doctor or attorney in case of a bodily or legal complication, knowing well that religion as we have understood it is something as much outside the pale of the layman as medicine and law.

For the proper conduct of our daily life as members of society, the body of Confucian morality resting on the tripod of loyalty, filial piety, and honesty, has been the only standard which high and low have alike recognised. These ethical ideals, when embraced by that formidable warrior caste who played such an important part in feudal Japan, form the code of unwritten morality known among us as Bushido, which means the Path of the Samurai. This last word, which has found its way into your language, is the substantival derivative from the verb _samurau_ (to serve), and, like its English counterpart 'knight' (Old English _cniht_), has raised itself from its original sense of a retainer (cp. German _Knecht_) to the meaning in which it is now used. To be a Samurai in the true sense of the word has been the highest aspiration of a Japanese. Your term 'gentleman,' when understood in its best sense, would convey to you an approximate idea if you added a dash of soldier blood to it. Rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity, loyalty, and a predominating sense of honour--these are the chief colours with which a novelist in the days of yore used to paint an ideal Samurai; and his list of desirable qualities was not considered complete without a well-developed body and an expression of the face that was manly but in no way brutal. No special stress was at first laid on the cultivation of thinking power and book-learning, though they were not altogether discouraged; it was thought that these accomplishments might develop other qualities detrimental to the principal character, such as sophistry or pedantry. To have good sense enough to keep his name honourable, and to act instead of talking cleverly, was the chief ambition of a Samurai.

But this view gradually became obscured. It lost its fearful rigidity in course of time, as the world became more and more sure of a lasting peace. Literature and music have gradually added softening touches to its somewhat brusque features.

It must, however, be always remembered that the keynote of Bushido was from the very beginning an indomitable sense of honour. This was all in all to the mind of the Samurai, whose sword at his side reminded him at every movement of the importance of his good name. The care with which he preserved it reached in some cases to a pathetic extreme; he preferred, for example, an instant suicide to a reputation on which doubt had been cast, however falsely. The very custom of seppuku (better known as hara-kiri), a form of suicide not known in early Japan,[16] is an outcome of this love of an unstained name, originating, in my opinion, in the metaphorical use of the word _hara_ (abdomen), which was the supposed organ for the begetting of ideas. In consequence of this curious localisation of the thinking faculty, the word _hara_ came to denote at the same time intention or idea. Therefore, in cutting open (_kiru_) his abdomen, a person whose motives had come to be suspected meant to show that his inside was free from any trace of ideas not worthy of a Samurai. This explanation is, I think, amply sustained by the constant use to this very day of the word _hara_ in the sense of one's ideas.

[16] The first mention in books of a similar mode of death dates from the latter part of the twelfth century. But it does not seem that the custom became universal until a considerably later period.