CHAPTER TWO

The Prelude to Zen Culture

_It was a clear, moonlit night . . . Her Majesty . . . sat by the edge of the veranda while Ukon no Naishi played the flute for her. The other ladies in attendance sat together, talking and laughing; but I stayed by myself, leaning against one of the pillars between the main hall and the veranda.

'Why so silent?' said Her Majesty. 'Say something. It is so sad when you do not speak.'

'I am gazing into the autumn moon,' I replied.

'Ah yes,' she remarked, 'That is just what you should have said.'

_ From _The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, ca. _A.D. 995

ZEN CULTURE did not spring upon the Japanese islands as an alien force, dislodging native beliefs, ideals, and values. It could indeed be argued that precisely the opposite happened, that the Japanese actually used Zen as a framework over which to organize their own eclectic beliefs about reverence toward nature, aesthetics, anti- intellectualism, artistic forms and ideals, and basic attitudes toward life. The truth, however, lies somewhere between: Zen did not reshape Japan, but neither did Japan reshape Zen. Rather, the two melted together, with the resulting amalgam often seeming to be all Zen, while actually being, in many instances, merely older Japanese beliefs and ideals in a new guise.

Some of the most fundamental qualities of Japanese civilization had their origins in high antiquity, when the Japanese had no writing and worshiped gods found among fields and groves. These early Japanese had no religious doctrines other than respect for the natural world and the sanctity of family and community. There were no commandments to be followed, no concept of evil. Such moral teachings as existed were that nature contains nothing that can be considered wicked, and therefore man, too, since he is a child of nature, is exempt from this flaw. The only shameful act is uncleanliness, an inconsiderate breach of the compact between man and nature.

The early Japanese left no evidence that they brooded about nature or required rituals to subdue it. Rather, the natural world was welcomed as a joyous if unpredictable companion to life, whose beauty alone was sufficient to inspire love. This reverence for nature, which lay deep within the Japanese psyche, was in later centuries to become a fundamental part of Zen culture. Like the early Japanese, the followers of Zen believed the world around them was the only manifestation of god and did not bother with sacred icons or idols, preferring to draw religious symbolism directly from the world as it stood.

The first arrivals on the Japanese archipelago were a Stone Age people, known today as "Jomon," who left artifacts across a time span beginning in the fourth millennium B.C. and lasting until the early Christian Era. Arriving in Japan from northeast Asia via a land bridge now submerged, they remained primarily in the north, where they lived in covered pits, buried their dead in simple mounds, and, most importantly for the later Japanese, developed a ceramic art of low-fired vessels and figurines whose loving awareness of material and form re-emerged centuries later as a characteristic of Zen art.

The free, semi-nomadic life of the Jomon was disrupted around the time of Aristotle by the arrival of various groups of invaders known collectively as the "Yayoi." These Bronze Age warriors eventually replaced the Jomon, first driving them farther into the north and finally eradicating them entirely. The gods and culture of the Yayoi indicate a tropical origin, perhaps the vicinity of South China. They settled in the southern islands, where they erected tropical dwellings and began the cultivation of rice. Soon they were making implements of iron, weaving cloth, and molding pottery using the wheel and high- temperature kilns. The descendants of the Yayoi became the Japanese people.

For the first several hundred years of Yayoi hegemony, their ceramics, although technically more sophisticated, showed less artistic imagination than those of the Jomon. In the fourth century A.D., however, after the consolidation of their lands into a unified state, a new era of artistic production began. From this time until the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century, an interlude known as the Mound Tomb era, the arts of Japan blossomed, producing some of the finest sculpture in the ancient world. The Yayoi mound tombs, often many acres in size, were filled with the implements of their aristocratic owners (much as were the pyramid tombs of Egyptian pharaohs), and around their perimeters were positioned hollow clay statues, presumably as symbolic guardians. These realistic figures, ordinarily two or three feet in height, are today known as _haniwa_. Fashioned in soft brown clay, they portrayed virtually all the participants in early Japanese life: warriors in armor, horses standing at the ready, courtiers, rowdy farmers, fashionable laThes-in-waiting, and even wild boar.

The making of _haniwa_ died out after the sixth century, as Chinese Buddhist culture gradually took hold among the Japanese aristocracy, but the underlying aesthetic values were too fundamental to perish. When Zen culture came to flower in medieval times, all the early artistic values awoke from what seems to have been only a slumber; monk-artisans returned to an emphasis on natural materials--whether in soft clay tea bowls, in unworked garden rocks, in the architecture of unfinished woods, or in a general taste for unadorned simplicity. These men created their art and architecture from seemingly rough and imperfect materials out of deliberate choice rather than necessity--a preference rare if not unique in human experience.

During the years following the introduction of pre-Zen Buddhism, the Japanese disowned their native values and artistic instincts as they slavishly copied Chinese culture and reproduced the ornate and elaborate arts of mainland Buddhism. The nature-worshiping tribes of Japan were awed by the seemingly powerful religion of China. They were no less impressed by the manner in which the Chinese emperor ruled his land, and shortly after becoming acquainted with China they set about copying the Chinese form of government. Equally important, the previously illiterate Japanese adopted a Chinese system of writing--a confusing arrangement whereby Chinese symbols were used for their phonetic value rather than for their meaning. This lasted for several centuries, until the Japanese finally gave up and created a simplified system which included their own syllabary or alphabet.

Having borrowed Chinese administration and Chinese writing, the Japanese next decided to re-create a Chinese city, and in the year 710 they consecrated Nara, a miniature replica of the T'ang capital of Ch'ang-an. The city was soon overflowing with Chinese temples and pagodas. Newly ordained Japanese priests chanted Buddhist scriptures they scarcely understood, while the native aristocracy strode about in Chinese costume reciting verses of the T'ang poets.

Japan had never really had a city before Nara, and its population quickly rose to some 200,000. Yet less than a century after its founding it was abandoned by the court--possibly because the new Buddhist priesthood was getting out of hand-- and a new capital was laid out on the site of present-day Kyoto. This new city, founded at the beginning of the ninth century and known as Heian, was deliberately kept free of Buddhist domination, and within its precincts the first truly native high culture arose as Chinese models were gradually transcended. No longer copiers, the aristocrats of Heian turned inward to bring forth a highly refined secular civilization.

To understand the foundations of Zen beauty, it is necessary to examine this Heian culture in some detail, for many of the Zen arts and the aesthetic rules later associated with Zen arose in these early aristocratic years. If civilization may be gauged by the extent to which relations are mediated by artificiality, this would surely be the finest example in all history. Etiquette and sentimentality were the touchstones. The courtiers occupied their days with elaborate ceremonies, extravagant costumes, and lightweight versifying, and their nights with highly ritualized amorous intrigues, conducted in a fashion so formal that the courtly love of Provence seems brusque in comparison. Initially the court had modeled its behavior on the T'ang dynasty, but in the year 894, a hundred years after the founding of Heian, relations with the T'ang court were suspended. There were few formal contacts with China until the coming of Zen several centuries later. Since the country was unified and at peace, interest in affairs of state gradually disappeared altogether, freeing the aristocracy to create a misty, artificial world all its own.

This period, whose aesthetic values were the precursor of Zen art, was also Japan's great age of literature. The idleness of the court provided an abundance of free time and equally abundant boredom-- circumstances that brought into being rich, textured psychological novels, some of the earliest and most revealing diaries of the world's literature, and a concern with poetry never equaled elsewhere, before or since. These works of literature depict a society preoccupied with beauty, where life and art merged, and founded on a conviction, later to become ingrained in Japanese life and Zen art, that the ability to appreciate beauty was the most important characteristic an individual could possess.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this great age of literature is the fact that the work was produced almost entirely by women. Theirs was the aesthetic legacy that later became the foundation for Zen taste, including the overwhelming importance of brushstroke calligraphy, the subtle sense of what constitutes beauty and what excess, the vocabulary of aesthetics, the elaborate concern with the use of color, and the refinement of the poetic form that eventually led to Zen Haiku.

Taste in the use of color is an excellent place to begin examining the Heian heritage, for in later years the Zen arts would be characterized by muted, carefully matched natural shades whose application followed sophisticated rules of taste. The seriousness with which colors were matched by Heian courtiers is revealed in a famous diary of the era:

_One [of the court ladies' dresses] had a little fault in the color combination at the wrist opening. When she went before the royal presence to fetch something, the nobles and high court officials noticed it. Afterwards, [she] regretted it deeply. It was not so bad; only one color was a little too pale.1

_

Episodes in another diary reveal the importance attached to properly matched shades:

_It is dawn and a woman is lying in bed after her lover has taken his leave. She is covered up to her head with a light mauve robe that has a lining of dark violet. . . . The woman . . . wears an unlined orange robe and a dark crimson skirt of stiff silk. . . . Near by another woman's lover is making his way home in the misty dawn. He is wearing loose violet trousers, an orange hunting costume, so lightly coloured that one can hardly tell whether it has been dyed or not, a white robe of stiff silk, and a scarlet robe of glossy, beaten silk.2

_

This interest in the colors (and textures) of materials remains a Japanese characteristic to this day, perpetuated by Zen and post-Zen aesthetes, who sensibly realized that this outgrowth of their culture surpassed that found anywhere else in the world.

As may be gathered from the passage above, celibacy was not part of the fashionable world of Heian Japan. Marriages were sanctioned only after the sexual compatibility of the couple had been established, a ritual carried out by a young man calling at a young lady's quarters for several nights running before officially announcing his intentions to her parents. The secret visits were, of course, secret to no one, and at times a young lady might initiate the test by an open invitation. Such a letter also allowed the man to judge her handwriting in advance and thus not waste his time courting a girl wanting in accomplishment. The following diary passage reveals the curious Heian association of penmanship and sex:

_I remember a certain woman who was both attractive and good-natured and who furthermore had excellent hand-writing.

Yet when she sent a beautifully written poem to the man of her choice, he replied with some pretentious jottings and did not even bother to visit her. . . . Everyone, even people who were not directly concerned, felt indignant about this callous behavior, and the woman's family was much grieved.3

_

In a society where brushwork was a primary test of social acceptability, it is not hard to find the roots of Japan's later great age of Zen monochrome painting, for, as Sir George Sansom has pointed out, to write beautifully is to solve certain fundamental problems of art--particularly when that writing is executed with the brush.

The writing materials used by Heian courtiers and the calligraphy they set down became important tools for the Zen arts. Writers made use of what the Chinese called the "Four Treasures": a brush of animal hair or bristle, a block of solid ink made of lampblack and glue, a concave inkstone for grinding and wetting the dried ink, and a paper or silk writing surface. These materials are all thought to have been introduced into Japan by a Korean Buddhist priest sometime near the beginning of the seventh century, but they already had a long history in China--possibly as much as a thousand years.

With these materials the Heian calligrapher--and later the Zen monochrome artist--created a subtle world of light and shade. The preparation for writing (and later, painting) is itself a ritual of almost religious significance. The ink, called sumi, must be prepared fresh each time it is used: a small amount of water is introduced into the concave portion of the inkstone, and the slightly moistened ink block is slowly rubbed against the stone until the proper shade is realized. The brush is soaked thoroughly in water, dried by stroking it on a scrap of paper, dipped into the new ink, and applied directly to the writing surface. The writer or artist holds the brush perpendicular to the paper and spreads the ink in quick strokes, which allow for no mistakes or retouching.

Where the male scholars of the Heian period labored with complex Chinese ideograms, the female artists and calligraphers were able to work in a new, simplified syllabary of approximately fifty symbols, which had been invented by a Buddhist priest in the early Heian era. Since this new script was less angular and geometrically formal than Chinese writing, it lent itself to a sensuous, free style of calligraphy whose rules later spilled over into Zen aesthetics. The new "women's script" called for brushstrokes that were a pirouette of movement and dynamic grace, requiring the disciplined spontaneity that would become the essence of Zen painting. Indeed, all the important technical aspects of later Zen monochrome art were present in early Heian calligraphy: the use of varying shades of ink, the concentration on precise yet spontaneous brushwork, the use of lines flexible in width and coordinated with the overall composition, and the sense of the work as an individual aesthetic vision. The lines record the impulse of the brush as it works an invisible sculpture above the page; the trail of the brush--now dry, now flushed with ink--is a linear record of nuances in black across the white space beneath. The total mastery of brushwork and the ink line gave the monochrome artists a foundation of absolute technical achievement, and the Zen calligrapher-poets a tradition of spontaneity in keeping with Zen ideals.

Another legacy to Zen artists was the creation of spontaneous verse, which also sharpened the faculties and required a sure mastery of technique. Since virtually all communication was in the form of poems, to move in polite circles a man or woman had to be able to compose a verse on any subject at a moment's notice. A famous female novelist and diarist recalled a typical episode:

_The Lord Prime Minister . . . breaks off a stalk of a flower-maiden which is in full bloom by the south end of the bridge. He peeps over my screen [and] says, "Your poem on this! If you delay so much the fun is gone" and I seized the chance to run away to the writing box, hiding my face--

Flower-maiden in bloom--

Even more beautiful for the bright dew,

Which is partial, and never favors me.

"So prompt!" said he, smiling, and ordered a writing box to be brought [for himself]. His answer-

The silver dew is never partial.

From her heart

The flower-maiden's beauty.4

_

The quality of such impromptu verse is necessarily strained, but the spirit of impulsive art revealed in this episode survived to become an important quality of Zen creations.

The Heian era bequeathed many artistic forms and techniques to later Zen artists, but even more important was the attitude toward beauty developed by the Heian courtiers. Their explicit contributions were a sense of the value of beauty in life and a language of aesthetics by which this value could be transmitted. One of the more lasting attitudes developed was the belief that transience enhanced loveliness. (The idea of transience seems to be one of the few Buddhist concepts that entered Heian aesthetics.) Beauty was all the more arresting for the certainty that it must perish. The perfect symbol for this, naturally enough, was the blossom of the cherry tree, as may be seen from a poem taken at random from a Heian-period compilation.

_O cherry tree, how you resemble

this transitory world of ours,

for yesterday you were abloom

and gone today your flowers.5

_Many of the later verities of Zen art can be traced to this first philosophical melancholy over life's transience which developed in the Heian era. The vehicle for this heritage was a special vocabulary of aesthetic terms (providing distinctions few Westerners can fully perceive) which could describe subtle outer qualities of things--and the corresponding inner response by a cultivated observer--by the use of fine-grained aesthetic distinctions.6 The word that described the delicate discernment of the Heian courtiers was _miyabi_, which was used to indicate aspects of beauty that only a highly refined taste could appreciate: the pale shades of dye in a garment, the fragile geometry of a dew-laden spider web, the delicate petal of a purple lotus, the texture of the paper of a lover's letter, pale yellow clouds trailing over a crimson sunset. If the beauty were more direct and less muted, it was described as _en_, or charming, a term marking the type of beauty as sprightly or more obvious. The most popular aesthetic term was _aware_, which refers to a pleasant emotion evoked unexpectedly. _Aware _is what one _feels _when one sees a cherry blossom or an autumn maple. (This internalization of aesthetic qualities was later to have great import for the Zen arts, whose reliance on suggestiveness shifted a heavy responsibility to the perceiver.) As the notion of beauty's transience became stronger, the term also came to include the feeling of poignancy as well as pleasure and the awareness that delight must perish.

These terms of refined aristocratic discernment became thoroughly ingrained in Japanese life and were passed on to Zen aesthetics, which added new terms that extended the Heian categories to reverence for beauty past its prime and for objects that reflect the rigors of life. The Zen aesthetes also added the notion of _yugen_, an extension of _aware _into the region of poignant foreboding. At a brilliant sunset one's mind feels _aware_, but as the shadows deepen and night birds cry, one's soul feels _yugen_. Thus the Zen artists carried the Heian aesthetic response into the inner man and turned a superficial emotion into a universal insight.

The most important aspect of the Japanese character to surface during the Heian era, at least from the standpoint of later Zen culture and ideals, was faith in the emotions over the intellect. It was during this period that the Japanese rejected for all time a rigorously intellectual approach to life. As Earl Miner wrote in his description of pre-Zen Heian society, "The respect accorded to correct or original ideas in the West has always been given in Japan to propriety or sincerity of feeling. And just as someone without an idea in his head is archetypally out of our civilization, so the person without a true feeling in his heart is archetypally out of the Japanese."7 From such an attitude it is not far to the Zen intuitive approach to understanding.

The early years of Japanese isolation saw a people with a rich nature religion whose arts revealed deep appreciation for

material and form. The coming of Chinese culture brought with it Buddhism, which became a national religion and provided a vehicle for the dissemination of Zen. Finally, the aristocratic civilization of the Heian era developed Japanese sensitivity to remarkable levels, providing later generations with a valuable framework of taste and standards. The court civilization of Heian was ultimately dethroned by medieval warriors, who themselves soon came under the sway of Zen. Although the Zen artist-monks of the medieval era brought into being a new culture with its own rules of taste and behavior, they were always in the debt of the earlier ages.