CHAPTER X

JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT

[Footnote 1: T.J., p. 71. Further illustrations of this statement may be found in his Classical Poetry of the Japanese, especially in the Selection and Appendices of this book; also in T.R.H. McClatchie's Japanese Plays (Versified), London, 1890.]

[Footnote 2: See Introduction to the Kojiki, pp. xxxii.-xxxiv., and in Bakin's novel illustrating popular Buddhist beliefs, translated by Edward Greey, A Captive of Love, Boston, 1886.]

[Footnote 3: See jade in Century Dictionary; "Magatama, so far as I am aware, do not ever appear to have been found in shell heaps" (of the aboriginal Ainos), Milne's Notes on Stone Implements, T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII., p. 71.]

[Footnote 4: Concerning this legendary, and possibly mythical, episode, which has so powerfully influenced Japanese imagination and politics, see T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., Part I., pp. 39-75; M.E., pp. 75-85.]

[Footnote 5: See Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 1, 2; Persian Elements in Japanese Legends, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., Part I, pp. 1-10; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January, 1894. Rein's book, The Industries of Japan, points out, as far as known, the material debt to India. Some Japanese words like _beni-gari_ (Bengal) or rouge show at once their origin. The mosaic of stories in the Taéktori Monogatari, an allegory in exquisite literary form, illustrating the Buddhist dogma of Ingwa, or law of cause and effect, and written early in the ninth century, is made up of Chinese-Indian elements. See F.V. Dickins's translation and notes in Journal of the Royal Oriental Society, Vol. XIX., N.S. India was the far off land of gems, wonders, infallible drugs, roots, etc.; Japanese Fairy World, p. 137.]

[Footnote 6: M.E., Chap. VIII.; Klaproth's Annales des Empereurs du Japon (a translation of Nippon 0 Dai Ichi Ran); Rein's Japan, p. 224.]

[Footnote 7: See Klaproth's Annales, _passim_. S. and H. p. 85. Bridges are often symbolical of events, classic passages in the shastras and sutras, or are antetypes of Paradisaical structures. The ordinary native _hashi_ is not remarkable as a triumph of the carpenter's art, though some of the Japanese books mention and describe in detail some structures that are believed to be astonishing.]

[Footnote 8: Often amusingly illustrated, M.E., p. 390. A translation into Japanese of Goethe's Reynard the Fox is among the popular works of the day. "Strange to say, however, the Japanese lose much of the exquisite humor of this satire in their sympathy with the woes of the maltreated wolf."--The Japan Mail. This sympathy with animals grows directly out of the doctrine of metempsychosis. The relationship between man and ape is founded upon the pantheistic identity of being. "We mention sin," says a missionary now in Japan, "and he [the average auditor] thinks of eating flesh, or the killing of insects." Many of the sutras read like tracts and diatribes of vegetarians.]

[Footnote 9: See The Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIV.; Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangements, by J. Conder, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII.; T.J., p. 168; M.E., p. 437; T.J., p. 163.]

[Footnote 10: _The_ book, by excellence, on the Japanese house, is Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, by E.S. Morse. See also Constructive Art in Japan, T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 57, III., p. 20; Feudal Mansions of Yedo, Vol. VII., p. 157.]

[Footnote 11: See Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 385, 410, and _passim_.]

[Footnote 12: For pathetic pictures of Japanese daily life, see Our Neighborhood, by the late Dr. T.A. Purcell, Yokohama, 1874; A Japanese Boy, by Himself (S. Shigémi), New Haven, 1889; Lafcadio Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Boston, 1894.]

[Footnote 13: Klaproth's Annales, and S. and H. _passim_.]

[Footnote 14: See Pfoundes's Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 130, for a list of grades from Ho-ō or cloistered emperor, Miya or sons of emperors, chief priests of sects, etc., down to priests in charge of inferior temples. This Budget of Notes, pp. 99-144, contains much valuable information, and was one of the first publications in English which shed light upon the peculiarities of Japanese Buddhism.]

[Footnote 15: Isaiah xl. 19, 20, and xli. 6, 7, read to the dweller in Japan like the notes of a reporter taken yesterday.]

[Footnote 16: T.J., p. 339; Notes on Some Minor Japanese Religious Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May, 1893; Lowell's Esoteric Shintō, T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI.; Satow's The Shintō Temples of Isé, T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 113.]

[Footnote 17: M.E., p. 45; American Cyclopaedia, Japan, Literature--History, Travels, Diaries, etc.]

[Footnote 18: That is, no dialects like those which separate the people of China. The ordinary folks of Satsuma and Suruga, for example, however, would find it difficult to understand each other if only the local speech were used. Men from the extremes of the Empire use the Tōkiō standard language in communicating with each other.]

[Footnote 19: For some names of Buddhist temples in Shimoda see Perry's Narrative, pp. 470-474, described by Dr. S. Wells Williams; S. and H. _passim_.]

[Footnote 20: The Abbé Huc in his Travels in Tartary was one of the first to note this fact. I have not noticed in my reading that the Jesuit missionaries in Japan in the seventeenth century call attention to the matter. See also the writings of Arthur Lillie, voluminous but unconvincing, Buddha and Early Buddhism, and Buddhism and Christianity, London, 1893.]

[Footnote 21: M.E., p. 252.]

[Footnote 22: T.J., p. 70.]

[Footnote 23: See The Higher Buddhism in the Light of the Nicene Creed, Tōkiō, 1894, by Rev. A. Lloyd.]

[Footnote 24: "I preach with ever the same voice, taking enlightenment as my text. For this is equal for all; no partiality is in it, neither hatred nor affection.... I am inexorable, bear no love or hatred towards anyone, and proclaim the law to all creatures without distinction, to the one as well as to the other."--Saddharma Pundarika.]

[Footnote 25: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II., p. 247.]

[Footnote 26: For the symbolism of the lotus see M.E., p. 437; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. I., p. 299; M.E. index; and Saddharma Pundarika, Kern's translation, p. 76, note:

"Here the Buddha is represented as a wise and benevolent father; he is the heavenly father, Brahma. As such ho was represented as sitting on a 'lotus-seat.' How common this representation was in India, at least in the sixth century of our era, appears from Varâhamihira's Brihat-Sainhita, Ch. 58, 44, where the following rule is laid down for the Buddha idols: 'Buddha shall be (represented) sitting on a lotus-seat, like the father of the world.'"]

[Footnote 27: See The Northern Buddhist Mythology in _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, January, 1894.]

[Footnote 28: See The Pictorial Arts of Japan, and Descriptive and Historical Catalogue, William Anderson, pp. 13-94.]

[Footnote 29: See fylfot in Century Dictionary.]

[Footnote 30: The word _vagra_, diamond, is a constituent in scores of names of sutras, especially those whose contents are metaphysical in their nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood to be compared to the secret truth which is always in existence and not to be broken. In the latter sense it implies the power of the enlightened, that destroys the obstacles of passions."--B.N., p. 88. "As held in the arms of Kwannon and other images in the temples," the vagra or "diamond club" (is that) with which the foes of the Buddhist Church are to be crushed.--S. and H., p. 444. Each of the gateway gods Ni-ō (two Kings, Indra and Brahma) "bears in his hand the tokko (Sanskrit _vagra_), an ornament originally designed to represent a diamond club, and now used by priests and exorcists, as a religious sceptre symbolizing the irresistible power of prayer, meditation, and incantation."--Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan, p. 31.]

[Footnote 31: Jizō is the compassionate helper of all in trouble, especially of travellers, of mothers, and of children. His Sanskrit name is Kshiugarbha. His idol is one of the most common in Japan. It is usually neck-laced with baby's bibs, often by the score, while the pedestal is heaped with small stones placed there by sorrowing mothers.--S. and H., p. 29, 394; Chamberlain's Handbook of Japan, 29, 101. Hearn's Japan, p. 34, and _passim_.]

[Footnote 32: Sanskrit _arhat_ or _arhan_, meaning worthy or deserving, i.e., holy man, the highest rank of Buddhist saintship. See Century Dictionary.]

[Footnote 33: M.E., p. 201. The long inscription on the bell in Wellesley College, which summons the student-maidens to their hourly tasks has been translated by the author and Dr. K. Kurahara and is as follows:

1. A prose preface or historical statement.

2. Two stanzas of Chinese poetry, in four-syllable lines, of four verses each, with an apostrophe in two four-syllable lines.

3. The chronology.

4. The names of the composer and calligraphist, and of the bronze-founder.

The characters in vertical lines are read from top to bottom, the order of the columns being from right to left. There are in all 117 characters.

The first tablet reads:

Lotus-Lily Temple (of) Law-Grove Mountain; Bell-inscription (and) Preface.

"Although there had been of old a bell hung in the Temple of the Lotus-Lily, yet being of small dimensions its note was quickly exhausted, and no volume of melody followed (after having been struck). Whereupon, for the purpose of improving upon this state of affairs, we made a subscription, and collected coin to obtain a new bell. All believers in the doctrine, gods as well as devils, contributed freely. Thus the enterprise was soon consummated, and this inscription prepared, to wit:

"'The most exalted Buddha having pitiful compassion upon the people, would, by means of this bell, instead of words, awaken them from earthly illusions, and reveal the darkness of this world.

"'Many of the living hearkening to its voice, and making confession, are freed from the bondage of their sins, and forever released from their disquieting desires.

"'How great is (Buddha's) merit! Who can utter it? Without measure, boundless!'

"Eleventh year of the Era of the Foundation of Literature (and of the male element) Wood (and of the zodiac sign) Dog; Autumn, seventh month, fifteenth day (A.D. August 30,1814).

"Composition and penmanship by Kaméda Koyé-sen. Cast by the artist Sugiwara Kuninobu."

(The poem in unrhymed metre.)

Buddha in compassion tender With this bell, instead of words, Wakens souls from life's illusions, Lightens this world's darkness drear.

Many souls its sweet tones heeding, From their chains of sin are freed; All the mind's unrest is soothed, Sinful yearnings are repressed.

Oh how potent is his merit, Without bounds in all the worlds! ]

[Footnote 34: Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 129.]

[Footnote 35: M.E., pp. 287-290, 513-514; Perry's Narrative, pp. 471, 472; Our Neighborhood, pp. 119-124. The following epitaphs are gathered from various sources:

"This stone marks the remains of the believer who never grows old."

"The believing woman Yu-ning, Happy was the day of her departure."

"Multitudes fill the graves."

"Only by this vehicle--the coffin--can we enter Hades."

"As the floating grass is blown by the gentle breeze, or the glancing ripples of autumn disappear when the sun goes down, or as a ship returns to her old shore--so is life. It is a vapor, a morning-tide."

"Buddha himself wishes to hear the name of the deceased that he may enter life."

"He who has left humanity is now perfected by Buddha's name, as the withered moss by the dew."

"Life is like a candle in the wind."

"The wise make our halls illustrious, and their monuments endure for ages."

"What permanency is there to the glory of the world? It goes from the sight like hoar-frost in the sun."

"If men wish to enter the joys of heavenly light, Let them smell the fragrance of the law of Buddha."

"Whoever wishes to have his merit reach even to the abode of demons, let him, with us, and all living, become perfect in the doctrine."]

[Footnote 36: Rev. C.B. Hawarth in the _New York Independent_, January 18, 1894.]

[Footnote 37: In 781 the Buddhist monk Kéi-shun dedicated a chapel to Jizo, on whom he conferred the epithet of Sho-gun or general, to suit the warlike tastes of the Japanese people.--S. and H., p. 384. So also Hachiman became the god of war because adopted as the patron deity of the Genji warriors.--S. and H., p. 70.]

[Footnote 38: Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 90.]

[Footnote 39: Dixon's Japan, p. 41; S. and H., Japan, _passim_; Rein's Japan; Story of the Nations, Japan, by David Murray, p. 201, note; Dening's life of Toyotomi Hidéyoshi; M.E., Chapters XV., XVI., XX., XXIII., XXIV.; Gazetteer of Echizen; Shiga's History of Nations, Tōkiō, 1888, pp. 115, 118; T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII., pp. 94, 134, 143.]

[Footnote 40: T.A.S.J., Vol. VIII., Hidéyoshi and the Satsuma Clan in the Sixteenth Century, by J.H. Gubbins; The Times of Taikō, by R. Brinkley, in _The Japan Times_.]

[Footnote 41: The Copy of the Buddhist Tripitaka, or Northern Collection, made by order of the Emperor, Wan-Li, in the sixteenth century, when the Chinese capital (King) was changed from the South (Nan) to the North (Pe), was reproduced in Japan in 1679 and again in 1681-83, and in over two thousand volumes, making a pile a hundred feet high, was presented by the Japanese Government, through the Junior Prime Minister, Mr. Tomomi Iwakura, to the Library of the India Office. See Samuel Beal's The Buddhist Tripitaka, as it is known in China and Japan, A Catalogue and Compendious Report, London, 1876. The library has been rearranged by Mr. Bunyin Nanjio, who has published the result of his labors, with Sanskrit equivalents of the titles and with notes of the highest value.]

[Footnote 42: "Neither country (China or Japan) has had the independence and mental force to produce a literature of its own, and to add anything but a chapter of decay to the history of this religion."--Professor William D. Whitney, in review of Anecdota Oxoniensia, Buddhist Texts from Japan, in _The Nation_, No. 875.]

[Footnote 43: Education in Japan, A series of papers by the writer, printed in _The Japan Mail_ of 1873-74, and reprinted in the educational journals of the United Status. A digest of these papers is given in the appendix of F.O. Adams's History of Japan; Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. II., pp. 305, 306.]

[Footnote 44: Japan: in Literature, Folk-Lore, and Art, p. 77.]

[Footnote 45: Japanese Education at the Philadelphia Exposition, New York, 1876.]

[Footnote 46: See Japanese Literature, by E.M. Satow, in The American Cyclopædia.]

[Footnote 47: The word bonze (Japanese _bon-so_ or _bozu_, Chinese _fan-sung_) means an ordinary member of the congregation, just as the Japanese term _bon-yo_ or _bon-zuko_ means common people or the ordinary folks. The word came into European use from the Portuguese missionaries, who heard the Japanese thus pronounce the Chinese term _fan_, which, as _bon_, is applied to anything in the mass not out of the common.]

[Footnote 48: See On the Early History of Printing in Japan, by E.M. Satow, T.A.S.J., Vol. X., Part L, p. 48; Part II., p. 252.]

[Footnote 49: Japanese mediaeval monastery life has been ably pictured in English fiction by a scholar of imagination and literary power, withal a military critic and a veteran in Japanese lore. "The Times of Taikō," in the defunct Japanese Times (1878), deserves reprint as a book, being founded on Japanese historical and descriptive works. In Mr. Edward's Greey's A Captive of Love, Boston, 1880, the idea of ingwa (the effects in this life of the actions in a former state of existence), is illustrated. See also S. and H., p. 29; T.J., p. 360.]

[Footnote 50: It is curious that while the anti-Christian polemics of the Japanese Buddhists have used the words of Jesus, "I came to send not peace but a sword," Matt, x. 34, and "If any man ... hate not his father and mother," etc., Luke xiv. 26, as a branding iron with which to stamp the religion of Jesus as gross immorality and dangerous to the state, they justify Gautama in his "renunciation" of marital and paternal duties.]

[Footnote 51: See Public Charity in Japan, Japan Mail, 1893; and The Annual (Appleton's) Cyclopaedia for 1893.]

[Footnote 52: I have some good reasons for making this suggestion. Yokoi Héishiro had dwelt for some time in Fukui, a few rods away from the house in which I lived, and the ideas he promulgated among the Echizen clansmen in his lectures on Confucianism, were not only Christian in spirit but, by their own statement, these ideas could not be found in the texts of the Chinese sage or of his commentators. Although the volume (edited by his son, Rev. J.F. Yokoi) of his Life and Letters shows him to have been an intense and at times almost bigoted Confucianist, he, in one of his later letters, prophesied that when Christianity should be taught by the missionaries, it would win the hearts of the young men of Japan. See also Satow's Kinsé Shiriaku, p. 183; Adams's History of Japan; and in fiction, see Honda The Samurai, p. 242, and succeeding chapters.]

[Footnote 53: In the colorless and unsentimental language of government publications, the Japanese edict of emancipation, issued to the local authorities in October, 1871, ran as follows: "The designations of eta and hinin are abolished. Those who bore them are to be added to the general registers of the population and their social position and methods of gaining a livelihood are to be identical with the rest of the people. As they have been entitled to immunity from the land tax and other burdens of immemorial custom, you will inquire how this may be reformed and report to the Board of Finance." (Signed) Council of State.]

[Footnote 54: In English fiction, see The Eta Maiden and the Hatamoto, in Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., pp. 210-245. Discussions as to the origin of the Eta are to be found in Adams's History of Japan, Vol. I, p. 77; M.E., index; T.J., p. 147; S. and H., p. 36; Honda the Samurai, pp. 246, 247; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I., pp. 210-245. The literature concerning the Ainos is already voluminous. See Chamberlain's Aino Studies, with bibliography; and Rev. John Batchelor's Ainu Grammar, published by The Imperial University of Tōkiō; T.A.S.J., Vols. X., XL, XVI., XVIII., XX.; The Ainu of Japan, New York, 1892, by J. Batchelor (who has also translated the Book of Common Prayer, and portions of the Bible into the Ainu tongue); M. E., Chap. II.; T.A.S.J., Vol. X., and following volumes; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II.; Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, London, 1895.]

[Footnote 55: "Then the venerable Sāriputra said to that daughter of Sagara, the Nāga-king: 'Thou hast conceived the idea of enlightenment, young lady of good family, without sliding back, and art gifted with immense wisdom, but supreme, perfect enlightenment is not easily won. It may happen, sister, that a woman displays an unflagging energy, performs good works for many thousands of Aeons, and fulfils the six perfect virtues (Pāramitās), but as yet there is no example of her having reached Buddhaship, and that because a woman cannot occupy the five ranks, viz., 1, the rank of Brahma; 2, the rank of Indra; 3, the rank of a chief guardian of the four quarters; 4, the rank of Kakravartin; 5, the rank of a Bodhisattva incapable of sliding back," Saddharma Pundarika, Kern's Translation, p. 252.]

[Footnote 56: Chiū-jō-himé was the first Japanese nun, and the only woman who is commemorated by an idol. "She extracted the fibres of the lotus root, and wove them with silk to make tapestry for altars." Fuso Mimi Bukuro, p. 128. Her romantic and marvellous story is given in S. and H., p. 397. "The practice of giving ranks to women was commenced by Jito Tennō (an empress, 690-705)." Many women shaved their heads and became nuns "on becoming widows, as well as on being forsaken by, or after leaving their husbands. Others were orphans." One of the most famous nuns (on account of her rank) was the Nii no Ama, widow of Kiyomori and grandmother of the Emperor Antoku, who were both drowned near Shimono-séki, in the great naval battle of 1185 A.D. Adams's History of Japan, Vol. I., p. 37; M.E., p. 137.]

[Footnote 57: M.E., p. 213; Japanese Women, World's Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, 1893, Chap. III.]

[Footnote 58: There is no passage in the original Greek texts, or in the Revised Version of the New Testament which ascribes wings to the _aggelos_, or angel. In Rev. xii. 14, a woman is "given two wings of a great eagle."]

[Footnote 59: Japanese Women in Politics, Chap. I., Japanese Women, Chicago, 1893; Japanese Girls and Women, Chapters VI. and VII.]

[Footnote 60: Bakin's novels are dominated by this idea, while also preaching in fiction strict Confucianism. See A Captive of Love, by Edward Greey.]

[Footnote 61: "Fate is one of the great words of the East. _Japan's language is loaded and overloaded with it._ Parents are forever saying before their children, 'There's no help for it.' I once remarked to a school-teacher, 'Of course you love to teach children.' His quick reply was, 'Of course I don't. I do it merely because there is no help for it.' Moralists here deplore the prosperity of the houses of ill-fame and then add with a sigh, 'There's no help for it.' All society reverberates with this phrase with reference to questions that need the application of moral power, will power."--J.H. De Forest.

"I do not say there is no will power in the East, for there is. Nor do I say there is no weak yielding to fate in lands that have the doctrine of the Creator, for there is. But, putting the East and West side by side, one need not hesitate to affirm that the reason the will power of the East is weak cannot be fully explained by any mere doctrine of environment, but must also have some vital connection with the fact that the idea of a personal almighty Creator has for long ages been wanting. And one reason why western nations have an aggressive character that ventures bold things and tends to defy difficulties cannot be wholly laid to environment but must have something to do with the fact that leads millions daily reverently to say 'I believe in the Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth.'"--J.H. De Forest.]

STATISTICS OF BUDDHISM IN JAPAN.

(From The official "Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon," Tōkiō, 1894.)

In 1891 there were 71,859 temples within city or town limits, and 35,959 in the rural districts, or 117,718 in all, under the charges of 51,791 principal priests and 720 principal priestesses, or 52,511 in all.

The number of temples, classified by sects, were as follows: Tendai, with 3 sub-sects, 4,808; Shingon, with 2 sub-sects, 12,821, of which 45 belonged to the Hossō shu; Jō-do, with 2 sub-sects, 8,323, of which 21 were of the Ké-gon shu; Zen, with 3 sub-sects, 20,882, of which 6,146 were of the Rin-Zai shu; 14,072 of the Sō-dō shu, and 604 of the O-bakushu; Shin, with 10 sub-sects, 19,146; Nichiren, with 7 sub-sects, 5,066; Ji shu, 515; Yu-dzū; Nembutsu, 358; total, 38 sects and 71,859 temples.

The official reports required by the government from the various sects, show that there are 38 administrative heads of sects; 52,638 priest-preachers and 44,123 ordinary priests or monks; and 8,668 male and 328 female, or a total of 8,996, students for the grade of monk or nun. In comparison with 1886, the number of priest-preachers was 39,261, ordinary priests 38,189: male students, 21,966; female students, 642.