Describe the Focus of Japanese Religions and Art During Fuedal Times

Paul Watt
October 2003
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Contents

Shinto

Buddhism

Confucianism

Christianity and the New Religions

Notes

The Japanese religious tradition is made upward of several major components, including Shinto, Japan'south earliest religion, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Christianity has been only a minor move in Nippon. However, the so-called "new religions" that arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are a prominent feature of Japanese religious life today.

Shinto

Shinto, or the "style of the spirits or deities," began to take class in Japan's pre-historic period earlier the sixth century C.Eastward. In this early on phase, Shinto was the religion of a pre-literate society that was organized around the cardinal social unit of measurement of the clan. Shinto deities or kami were seen as permeating the natural earth. Uniquely shaped or awe-inspiring copse, mountains, rivers, and rocks, all could be considered kami, just human beings could besides exist viewed as kami. An early mythology developed by the leading clan of the sixth and 7th centuries, the Yamato association, after known as the Regal family, holds that the leader of the clan, the emperor, was a descendent of their protector kami, the sun goddess Amaterasu. But great warriors and poets, for example, have likewise been recognized as kami by virtue of their special abilities.

Since early Shinto did non accept a founder or produce sacred texts, information technology was through communal rituals that the organized religion was transmitted. The goal of the rituals was to maintain or reinstate the harmony between nature, humans and the kami that the early Japanese appear to have taken as the norm. As the Japanese began to adopt agronomics around the 3rd century B.C.E., Shinto rituals became closely tied to the agricultural year. Communal festivals were conducted at times of planting or harvest, or at important times in the history of a community. Major rituals independent iv parts: purification, offerings, recitations or prayers, and a terminal meal. All members of the customs took role, if merely symbolically, in the final meal, thus bringing harmony again to the relationship of humans and the kami.

Although Shinto had no sacred structures in its earliest phase, by the sixth and seventh centuries C.E., the Japanese began to build shrines that housed symbolic representations of the kami and that provided a site for rituals. (1)

It is worth noting that, while Japanese government leaders used Shinto to legitimate Japan's State of war in the Pacific from 1937 to 1945, throughout most of its history, Shinto was a religion linked to nature, agriculture and local communities.

Buddhism

Buddhism arose in Republic of india in the sixth century B.C.E and, after passing through China and Korea, arrived in Japan in the sixth century C.E. As originally presented by the historical Buddha, Buddhism was a path of do that an private could take upwardly to gain release from suffering. The Buddha taught that, regardless of the relative degrees of happiness that i might achieve in life, all living beings eventually get ill, grow former and die. And considering he accepted the Indian idea of rebirth according to karma, suffering was understood to extend indefinitely into the future. The Buddha held that to gain release from suffering i had to attain a new agreement of reality. In detail ane had to see that persons and things do non be apart, on the footing of individual "selves," but rather that all things are linked in a network of interdependency. To overcome the self-centeredness of the ignorant, one had to transform i'due south fashion of thinking and acting through the practice of Buddhist morality, meditation and wisdom or written report.

A new co-operative of the religion called Mahayana, or the Greater Vehicle, arose in the first century B.C.East. Mahayana connected to transmit the path of morality, meditation and wisdom as the way to liberation, only it also developed new forms of idea and practice in guild to reach out to as many people as possible. Mahayana leaders added hundreds of new sutras or scriptures to the Buddhist canon, texts that introduce Buddhas and bodhisattvas (enlightened administration to the Buddhas) that were non seen in the earlier tradition.

Some of the new sutras recommend a path of devotion to these enlightened beings as a fashion of taking the showtime step toward liberation, or in some few texts, equally a way of gaining rebirth in the pure land of one of these Buddhas. Moreover, like most all religious traditions, both early Buddhism (normally called Theravada or "The Teachings of the Elders" today) and Mahayana Buddhism transmitted a strain of magic that promised followers relief from a variety of calamities. It was Mahayana Buddhism that spread to China, Korea, and Japan. (2)

When Buddhism reached Japan in the sixth century from Korea and China, its sophisticated philosophical message was difficult for near Japanese to understand. A small aristocracy was and then learning Chinese (Japan'due south first written language) and some of them began to report Chinese Buddhist texts, as scholars and members of the clergy do in Japan downward to the present. However, most Japanese were showtime attracted to Buddhist art, to Buddhist magic or to the possibility of closer ties with the avant-garde civilization of China, where Buddhism had already spread. Whatsoever the allure, past the 8th century, when the Japanese established their commencement permanent capital in the city of Nara, the Japanese courtroom had embraced Buddhism as well as Shinto.

As might be expected, a number of influential Buddhist sects arose over the course of Japanese history. Three examples may provide some insight into unique features of the Japanese Buddhist tradition.

At the end of the eighth century, Nihon'due south capital was moved from Nara to Heian-kyo, the forerunner of present-day Kyoto. During the Heian period (794-1185), a grade of Buddhism usually called Tantric Buddhism in Bharat, but Esoteric Buddhism in Nihon became widely popular. The Shingon (True Word or Mantra) sect, founded by Kukai (774-835), was 1 of ii Esoteric sects to spread at this time.

Shingon was associated with a unique style of meditation that involved mandalas (artistic representations of various Buddhas and bodhisattvas or of the earth equally seen by those aware beings), mudras (symbolic paw positions associated with each Buddha and bodhisattva in the mandalas), and mantras (sacred Sanskrit verses associated with these figures). By focusing the mind on one of the images in the mandala, by mimicking the hand position of the Buddha or bodhisattva on which 1 was concentrating, and by reciting the mantra associated with that existence, one might evoke an awareness of one's ain identity with the Buddhas in body, oral communication, and mind.

For many Japanese practitioners, however, gaining union with the Buddhas and bodhisattvas in the mandalas was also a way of gaining supernatural powers. In their minds, this meditation could pb to the attainment of the power to cast out offensive spirits, heal the sick or cause rain. Further, Esoteric Buddhism sought to incorporate Shinto into its interpretation of the world, arguing that the Shinto kami were Japanese manifestations of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. (3)

Two other influential Japanese Buddhist movements, Zen and Pure Land, arose in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time of political disorder and warfare. Japan's samurai or warrior class rose to power in the late 12th century to establish a feudal political arrangement headed in theory by the emperor but in reality by the shogun or leading general of the land. This new leadership class was attracted not to Esoteric Buddhism just to Zen. The Zen or Meditation sect had arisen in China in the sixth through ninth centuries. Every bit it presented itself to the Japanese in the 12th century, Zen was famous for the bailiwick and frugality of its monastic traditions, for its stress on meditation as the fundamental to attaining liberation, for its use of the koan (a cursory and enigmatic exchange between a Zen chief and disciple that was sometimes used as an aid in meditation) and for its history of Zen masters willing to exercise almost annihilation to drive their students to enlightenment "at present." The samurai class was especially drawn to Zen's stress on subject field and its seriousness most life. Zen also became closely associated with sure arts in Japan (monochrome ink painting, the tea ceremony, and others) and, through them, it has had a broad impact on Japanese culture. (4)

The devotional tradition in Mahayana Buddhism also came to the fore in the 12th and thirteenth centuries. Considering of the warfare of the twelfth century as well as a series of natural disasters that struck the upper-case letter region, many Japanese believed that the country was inbound a dark catamenia in its history that they called the "degenerate age of the Dharma (or Buddha's teachings)" (mappo). They argued that during such a period few human being beings were able to reach enlightenment through traditional methods. Honen (1133-1212), the founder of the Pure Country sect in Japan, taught that all i could do in the degenerate historic period is call on the name of Amida (Amitabha in Sanskrit), a Buddha who in certain Pure Land Sutras said that he would bring to his pure land all who phone call on him in faith. No other practice was required. Honen's disciple, Shinran (1173-1262), the originator of the True Pure Land Sect, took an even more radical interpretation of the texts. To show that there was aught that one could do to accomplish liberation in a degenerate age, Shinran rejected completely the celibate, vegetarian life of the monastery. Subsequently all leaders of the True Pure Country Sect take lived equally lay folk. Shinran was the starting time monk in the mainstream Buddhist tradition to reject the monastic life.

Confucianism

Like Buddhism, Confucianism also entered Japan from Korea and China. The tradition was founded in China by Confucius (551-479 B.C.E), whose teachings were passed on to posterity by his disciples in the Analects or Sayings of Confucius. Having lived at a time of political unrest, Confucius tried to lead his world dorsum to peace and stability by urging people to cultivate virtue. In particular he emphasized the values of filial piety or respect for parents and elders, decorum or proper conduct, duty, loyalty, learning, and benevolence. His sayings suggest that he saw stable families as the basis for stable governments. Although he had niggling interest in the numerous deities that his contemporaries recognized, he did see his social vision as legitimated past a sacred force that he called T'ien or Heaven.

Confucianism was known to the Japanese from the 6th C.Eastward. on; however, it was not until the Edo or Tokugawa period (1600-1868) that it became a leading ideology of land and a pervasive teaching in Japanese gild. At the time, the Japanese had emerged from another menstruum of political anarchy, and the new warrior family that took power, the Tokugawa, saw the value of Confucian teachings, along with Buddhism and Shinto, in their effort to found a lasting peace. The Tokugawa government eventually set a Confucian school, the Shoheiko or "The Schoolhouse of Prosperous Peace," and heads of the feudal domains that the Tokugawa controlled established similar schools. Several teachers avant-garde a special ethical code for the warrior class, know every bit bushido, the mode of the warrior, that brought together Zen'due south emphasis on field of study and frugality, Shinto'due south love of the country, and the Confucian values of filial piety, loyalty, dedication to duty, and learning. Such values and attitudes were spread throughout Japanese society past popular teachers similar Baigan Ishida (1685-1744), who taught a syncretism or blending of Confucianism, Buddhism and Shinto. (5) As many scholars of mod Japan have noted, the spread of such values helped the Japanese modernize quickly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Christianity and the New Religions

Two other noteworthy components of the Japanese religious tradition are Christianity and the new religions. Christianity entered Japan first in the sixteenth century, when Catholicism was introduced in 1549. It gained few followers at the time, and the Tokugawa family suppressed Christianity in the seventeenth century. Subsequently the plummet of Tokugawa command and the opening of Nippon to the world in the Meiji period (1868-1914), Christianity was again introduced past Protestant missionaries. Christian missionaries and teachers built schools and hospitals and were an important conduit for knowledge of the West. They too gave particular attention to the needs of women and workers. Nonetheless, in this period as well, Christian adherents never made up more than than one percent of the Japanese population. Two stumbling blocks to the religion'south spread were Christianity's demand for exclusive allegiance (which stood in abrupt contrast to the more inclusive arroyo of the Japanese), and the condescending attitude toward Japanese civilization that some missionaries exhibited.

The and then-called new religions of Japan arose by the thousands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. About of these religions have only a few hundred or thousand followers, just some, like Soka gakkai ("The Value Creation Society"), a Buddhist-based grouping, claim several one thousand thousand. These groups tend to share a number of characteristics in mutual. They usually have a charismatic leader who has overcome hardships. They tend to promise concrete benefits, such as wellness, wealth and the solution to family problems. Although they may have a principal association with Shinto or Buddhism, they frequently blend elements from several religions. They tend to be critical of the older religious institutions and they usually involve their followers more intensely in religious practice. Some observers of the new religions have estimated that equally much every bit ane-quarter of the Japanese population may have some involvement in the new religions. However, one should not infer from this fact that the Japanese today consider themselves to exist "religious." On the opposite, well-nigh Japanese think of themselves as secular, having only occasional contact with religious institutions at times of weddings, funerals or major holidays such as New Yr's Day. Yet many of the values that the traditional religions legitimated take become part of the cloth of everyday life.

Notes

1 For a visual introduction to Shinto, see http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/visuals/japan_visuals/shinto.HTM. A straightforward give-and-take of Shinto ritual can be found in Ono Sokyo, Shinto, The Kami Way (Tokyo: Charles Due east. Tuttle, 1962), 50-57.

two A general introduction to Buddhism that too touches on the religion's spread to Japan is Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford Academy Printing, 1996).

three For more on Kukai and Shingon, see Paul B. Watt, "Kukai," Buddhist Spirituality: Later Cathay, Korea, Nippon and the Modern World (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999), 174-185.

iv An instructive video on Zen is The Principles and Practice of Zen (Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities, 1988). Parts of the video can be used to introduce both life within a Zen monastery and the cultural impact of Zen.

five On Baigan Ishida's movement, known as Shingaku, see Paul B. Watt, "The Buddhist Element in Shingaku," Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Nippon and the Modernistic Globe(New York: The Crossroads Publishing Visitor, 1999), 337-347.

Paul Watt is professor and director of Asian Studies at DePauw University.

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Source: https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/japanese_religions