The divine is present everywhere:  in rocks and trees, in mountains and lakes, in the beauty of the sunset, as perceived by Japanese.   In this unit, we will review the most important religious themes from Shinto, Buddhism, and Zen; we will see how Japanese religions evolved during the Middle Ages; and we will look at a couple of the "New Religions" of Japan.  This review relates especially to chapters 8 and 14-17 of Patrick S. Bresnan, Awakening:  An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought, 3rd edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 2007).  After this review, I'll take you briefly through key places for Chinese and Japanese religions.  You'll need the maps of China and Japan at the end of your syllabus.  If you don't have that map page, please stop now, and come back when you have it, so that you can follow along as we travel from place to place in our review. 

SHINTO

    In the units on India and China, I helped you to see the close relationships between nature and society in the religions of Asia.  This is especially true for Japan.  The understanding of divinity in indigenous Japanese religion is so broad that it includes natural elements and phenomena, ancestral spirits, and certain animals, as well as personal gods.  The Japanese word for a divine being, for many divine beings, or for divinity in general is kami.  The name of this indigenous Japanese religion is thus kami no michi, "the way of the gods."  When this term was put into Chinese characters, it became Shinto (from shen, "spirits" + dao, "way"). 

    Be sure to observe the uniqueness of Shinto:  it doesn't have a historical founder, a canon of scriptures, or a set of basic beliefs.  Every Japanese is born into Shinto, and many persons continue certain Shinto practices even when they affiliate with other religions.

    One of the central stories of Shinto is its creation myth.  It describes how two kami brought into being the Japanese islands and a number of other things which make up the world as we know it.  Izanagi was the male kami, and Izanami was the female kami.  They may be compared to Adam and Eve in the biblical creation stories.  The creation story also describes the supreme deity in Shinto:  Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.  She is the source of light and life, and she sent her grandson to rule over the land.  The Japanese imperial family traces its descent back to her.  Japan is known even today as the Land of the Rising Sun.

    Any religion has certain objects with strong symbolic value.  Christianity has the Cross, Judaism the Star of David, and Islam the Crescent and Star.  Key symbols in Shinto are swords, jewels, and mirrors.  Susano-o, the god of the wind and sea, presented to his sister Amaterasu the sword which he used in slaying a dragon.  When Amaterasu was offended by her brother, she hid in a cave, plunging the world into darkness.  She peeked out only when other kami sang and danced; they also used a string of jewels to lure her out.  After seeing her own reflection in a mirror, she was finally persuaded to come out, saving the world from perpetual darkness.

    As we compared symbols, we can also compare architecture.  Whenever we see a steeple, we assume that a building is a Christian church.  When we see the tall, slender towers known as minarets, we assume that they are near a Muslim mosque.  The structure that marks a Shinto shrine is a torii:  a ritual gateway with two upright pillars and two horizontal beams.  The most important Shinto shrine of all, dedicated to Amaterasu, is at Isé (pronounced ee-say).

BUDDHISM

    In modern Japan, many people have in their homes both a Shinto shrine, called a kamidana, "god shelf," and a Buddhist altar, called a butsudan.  They celebrate Buddhist holidays as well as Shinto holidays.  So let's go back in time and see how Buddhism came to Japan.  Which people brought Buddhism to Japan:  the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chosen People?

    Not the Indians -- although Buddhism originated in India, it would make its way through two other cultures before arriving in Japan.  

    Not the Chinese -- although the form of Buddhism that flourished in Japan was Chinese, it actually came to Japan first by way of a different culture.

    So it must be the Chosen People!  Please forgive my awful sense of humor.  Chosen (pronounced cho-sin) is the Japanese name for the nation that we call Korea.  In the 500's C.E., Buddhism was introduced into Japan from China, by way of Korea.

    For half a century Japanese rulers were sharply divided over whether to allow Buddhist expansion or not.  Meanwhile Korea continued to send missionaries, images, and scriptures.  Finally pro-Buddhist forces won, and temples were built by the government.  A key person in the early stage was Prince Shotoku.  He established a direct link with China, so that Japanese monks could study with Buddhist masters in China and return to Japan with their teachings.  Prince Shotoku wrote commentaries on the sutras.  He is considered Japan's greatest Buddhist "saint."

    Mahayana Buddhism in China had formed a number of different ways of thought and practice, or "schools."  In the unit on China, I noted that we would review two of them which became popular in Japan.  One of them makes you think of the sound of one hand clapping.  Yes, it's the meditation school, known in Chinese as Chan, and in Japanese as Zen.  The other makes you think of the Western Paradise, the Pure Land.

    Let's talk about Pure Land Buddhism first.  It teaches that the Buddha Amida (known in Sanskrit as Amitabha) has vowed to save all who call on him in faith, by bringing them to eternal happiness in the Pure Land, the Western Paradise.  Pure Land Buddhism is thus a religion of grace.  How does one call on Amida?  By saying three words:  "namu Amida Butsu," "I take refuge in Amida Buddha" or "Praise to Amida Buddha."  This phrase is called the nembutsu.

    Two monks who were influential in establishing Pure Land Buddhism in Japan were Honen and Shinran.  Honen lived such a sincere, devoted life that he won over all kinds of people -- royalty and common people, men and women.  Shinran stressed that even the reciting of the nembutsu was made possible by the grace of Amida.  Shinran had a wife and family, thus serving as a model for a married clergy in Japanese Buddhism.

    Which came first:  the chicken or the egg?  Not the chicken; it is hatched from an egg.  Not the egg; it is laid by a chicken.  This is one of life's great riddles; a Zen Buddhist might call it a koan, "riddle."  The only wrong answer is an attempt to answer it logically.  Neither the chicken nor the egg comes first.  Zen uses such riddles to break us from a tendency to use reason to answer questions which have no logical answers. 

    Although Zen originated in China, it has become most widely known in Japan and America.  Through koan, enlightenment poems, and techniques of self-discipline, Zen enables a person to get away from normal ways of thinking.  Haiku poetry and beautiful Zen gardens help one to come close to nature.  Enlightenment (satori) leads a person to see old things in new ways.  Even a simple ritual action, such as a tea ceremony, can give meaning to all of life.

NEW RELIGIONS

    A third significant branch of Japanese Buddhism, unlike Pure Land and Zen, began in Japan itself rather than China.  Nichiren Buddhism was founded by a monk named Nichiren, who lived in the thirteenth century C.E.  We have seen different kinds of "refuge" formulas.  From early Buddhism, the Triple Refuge has been chanted:
    "I take refuge in the Buddha.
     I take refuge in the dharma.
     I take refuge in the sangha."
 

In Pure Land Buddhism, the nembutsu is recited:
    "I take refuge in Amida Buddha."

    Nichiren developed a new chant:
    "Namu myoho renge kyo" = 
    "I take refuge in the Lotus Sutra," or
    "Homage to the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law."

    Nichiren taught that study of and devotion to the Lotus Sutra are the path to salvation.  Today Nichiren's teachings are promulgated by Soka Gakkai, "Value-Creation Society."  Its ten million followers use well-developed, strong techniques in a number of social and political movements.  You'll hear a lot about it in the news media.  Soka Gakkai is considered one of Japan's New Religions.

    Another New Religion is Tenrikyo, founded by Nakayama Miki in the nineteenth century.  Miki's body was taken over by Tenri O no Mikoto, a kami, in order to proclaim salvation to the world.  Some religions describe God as Father or Mother, but the usual translation of Tenri O no Mikoto includes both images:  God the Parent.  God the Parent seeks to help all of us grow as our minds develop, and as we experience natural joy in the world.  Working together is one of the best ways for us to participate in the happiness which God the Parent intends for us.  

MAP REVIEW

    We left our Humvee in Myanmar, and now it's time to continue our journey.  We'll go along the Chinese coast up to a point where we can take a ferry across to Taiwan.  Unfortunately, we can't find either Han Solo or Hanuman.  But we do run into a different Han who is not Han Chinese:  Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tick N-hut Han), one of the most thoughtful Buddhist philosophers alive today.  He grew up in Vietnam and developed beautiful concepts like interbeing, which we studied.  Maybe Hanh is like Hesse's character Vasudeva, the ferryman who enabled Siddhartha to listen to the river and learn about life.  Yes -- he's willing to take us across the water to Taiwan!

    We find that the island of Taiwan lives up to the name which Portuguese explorers gave it:  Formosa ("beautiful" in Portuguese, like hermosa in Spanish).  But most importantly for our purposes, Taiwanese have preserved many of the ancient Chinese traditions that were once widespread on the mainland, such as the practice of feng-shui, divination by consulting the Yi Jing, and the use of spirit tablets to honor ancestors.  We are reminded that a large part of the island's population consists of descendants of Nationalists and others who fled from the anti-religious Communists who established the People's Republic of China in 1949.  So Taiwan has many persons who follow Christianity or traditional Chinese religious practices.

    From Taiwan we go to the city which we might consider its opposite:  Shanghai.  The Chinese Communist Party was born there in 1921, led by Mao Zedong.  As we have seen, Communism in both Russia and China was very much like a religion, inspiring deep commitment from its followers.  Although Karl Marx considered religion the "opiate of the masses," he certainly appealed to the kinds of religious longings which most people have.  Most Christian churches were forcibly closed, all over China, and turned into factories or other facilities for producing goods and services.  One thing which we have to see here in Shanghai is the very first Christian church that was allowed to reopen in China:  a Methodist church, which was reopened in 1979. As we stand here with thousands of other people, we admire the courage of Shanghai Christians who endured harassment and persecution from 1949 to 1979 -- especially the decade of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960's, when Red Guards burned Bibles and made it very difficult to be a Christian, even in secret.

    Way up in the north of China is the capital city of Beijing (formerly anglicized as Peking).  It was a key city in ancient times, with a large mound where the Emperor offered sacrifices to Earth in the spring and autumn, and to Heaven in the summer and winter.  The Emperor sought the Mandate of Heaven to support his rule and give prosperity to the people.  The Ming developed an area in Beijing called the Forbidden City, where only nobles, not ordinary people, were permitted.  Mao Zedong established Beijing as the capital of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and opened up the city to all the people.  Our Humvee can't enter Tiananmen Square, but we look in and remember the events of 1989.  Today the religious significance of Beijing lies in its very tight control over all religious groups:  official policy permits religions which are registered and authorized by the government but is very harsh toward unauthorized groups such as Falun Gong.   

    We would like to go north from Beijing, but a famous landmark lies in the way:  the Great Wall.  It stretches for more than 1,500 miles, almost as long as the Appalachian Trail.  Or should we just try to find a way around the wall? 

    Our decision is to go west, looking for a place where our Humvee can get through.  We stop and look at the sign which says "The First Sovereign Ruler-God slept here."  We know that the reference is to Shi Huang Di, the Qin Emperor who ruled from 221 to 207 B.C.E.  We remember that the name China came from the name of his empire, since Qin is pronounced "Chin."  So we take a detour to his final resting place, which today goes by the name Xian (it was called Chang-an in ancient times).  The Emperor of course needed burial companions in the afterlife, so he took with him women from his harem and all those who built his underground mausoleum (so they couldn't reveal the secret of where it was).  But recent archaeological digs have revealed his subterranean hideaway, including a life-size army of 7,000 pottery men and horses as well as other treasures.  Shi Huang Di was the King Tut of China!       

    From Xian we can load our Humvee onto a barge and go up the Yellow River through a hole in the Great Wall, into Mongolia.  We're amazed at the vast area of rolling plains, high mountains, and the bleak Gobi Desert -- very different from southwest Virginia.  As a camel caravan passes by, we wonder what the Chinese felt like when Genghis Khan and his grandson Kublai Khan took over China and established a Mongol dynasty.  They really shook things up, putting foreigners such as Marco Polo in positions of authority.  Kublai Khan established some tolerance of other religions, including Islam and Christianity.  Mongols ruled China for a century, until the Ming Empire threw them out and reestablished traditional Chinese values, including Confucian principles of civil service and Buddhist religious practices. 

    But as we leave Mongolia, we remember that after a few centuries of rule over China by the Ming, their vases were broken by people from Manchuria.  The Manchu dynasty (also called the Jing dynasty) lasted right up until the 20th century!  It was during the Manchu period that Christianity had a real impact on China.  Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci gave new interpretations of ancient Chinese traditions and related them to Christianity -- even the Confucian ceremonies that honored ancestors.  Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries also established churches, schools, and hospitals during the Manchu dynasty.   

      We can't follow the natural path which Chinese religions took from China to Japan:  the peninsula of Korea.  Since Korea is today sharply divided into two parts, we'd better abandon our Humvee in Manchuria and take a ship to Japan.  There we can buy a small car which will be more appropriate for the heavily populated Japanese islands.

    OK, now we've done our civic duty and rented a Honda Civic.  But this one is different from my wife's Civic:  the steering wheel is on the right side!  I'll have to drive very carefully.  Let's go first to the beginning point of all human history, according to Japanese tradition:  the island of Kyushu, where Izanagi and Izanami descended from heaven.  We remember the beautiful creation myth from the Kojiki, how the two kami rode down a rainbow from heaven, stirred up the mud at the bottom of the ocean with a spear, and formed the first island.  They were then very productive in creating many other aspects of the world. 

    On Kyushu we also make a pilgrimage to Nagasaki with sadness in our hearts.  We know that this area had more Christians than any other part of Japan, drawn to the religion by its teachings about ethics and values.  But the atomic bomb dropped by Americans on Nagasaki  in 1945 destroyed not only so many lives but also the hopes and dreams of many Japanese Christians.  We stop and remember those who died on that day.  We also think of the peasant Christians on Kyushu who rebelled against their hard life in the 1600's, leading to harsh options:  imprisonment and death, renunciation of their faith, or practicing Christianity as an underground religion which continued this way for centuries. 

    Then we go on to the much larger island of Honshu.  According to tradition, Jimmu, the first emperor of Japan, descended from the sun-goddess, established his capital on Honshu in 660 B.C.E.  We're heading for the place on Honshu which is an alternative spot commemorating where Izanagi and Izanami descended on their rainbow bridge from heaven to create the world:  Tenri City.  This specific location was identified by Nakayama Miki, the founder of the "New Religion" of Tenrikyo.  We visit the main shrine of Tenrikyo and learn that worship services directed to Tenri O no Mikoto, God the Parent, have been held in this place ever since the 1800's.  We see pilgrims coming to this temple from all over the world.  

    It's just a short way from Tenri City to Isé.  The Grand Shrine to the sun-goddess Amaterasu here is the most important of all Shinto shrines.  Every twenty years, this shrine is torn down and rebuilt in natural cypress wood in the exact same form.  The last time this happened, in 1993, the sacred object which is the focus for Amaterasu's spiritual presence was moved to the new shrine, along with other treasures, in an elaborate ceremony.  Isé has a whole shrine complex, with places for the worship of more than a hundred other kami as well as the deity of the sun.  When Akihito became Emperor in 1990, he had a private mystical ceremony in which he spent the night in communion with his ancestress Amaterasu.

    Going north from Isé past Tenri City, we come to the ancient capital of Nara.  The 600's C.E. marked the First Great Transformation, a time in which Japan absorbed a lot from Chinese language, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism.  The leader in these massive changes was Prince Shotoku, who built his Constitution on the Confucian principles of social harmony.  Eventually the first permanent capital of Japan was established at Nara, and this new capital followed Chinese models.  The Nara period of the 700's C.E. was a golden age, with a lot of Buddhist influence.  The great temple complex featured a huge Buddha statue.  In effect, Buddhism became the state religion of Japan during this time. 

    But there was a fly in the ointment.  Do you believe that religion and politics should be interwoven?  A recent AP survey cited in the Bristol Herald-Courier reported that while 61% of Americans don't think so, 37% do believe that religious leaders should be involved in political issues.  Well, the Buddhist monks in Nara thought so too.  In fact, they got so involved in political shenanigans that the whole system became corrupt.  (Maybe we should call it the Watertorii scandal!)  The capital had to be moved away from Nara just to reestablish the independence of politics from religion.  Look on the map to find our next city to tour, just a little ways north of Nara. 

    During the Tokugawa period (1603-1867), two cities whose names are anagrams of each other had great religious significance:  Tokyo and Kyoto.  Since we're near Kyoto, we'll visit this city first.  The imperial capital was moved here after the Nara fiasco, a millennium before the Tokugawa shogunate.  Over the years, many great Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines had been built here.  The emperor was always a patron of culture, especially such arts as poetry and flower gardening.  During the Tokugawa era, even though the shogun in Tokyo held the real political and military power, the emperor in Kyoto was still important -- especially because of his descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu.

    On our way from Kyoto to its sister city Tokyo, we'll pass by two mountains with great religious significance:  Hiei and Fujiyama.  Let's visit Mt. Hiei first.  In the 1200's C.E., a monk named Honen spent years of intense meditation in a monastic retreat there, but he never had a "mountaintop experience."  Frustrated, he abandoned that whole approach and turned to the idea that a person doesn't have to follow the ascetic path.  All that is needed is to devote one's life to Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light, and recite the nembutsu:  Namu Amida Butsu, "I put my faith in Amida Buddha."  Salvation doesn't come from a person's own strenuous efforts but from grace, which enables a person to reach the Pure Land in the next life.  We call this form of Buddhism, developed by Honen and his disciple Shinran, Pure Land Buddhism.

    Now we come to one of my favorite mountains in the whole world:  Mt. Fuji.  In my study at home, I have a silk-screen painting of Fujiyama that is one of my treasures from a trip to San Francisco when I was twelve years old.  About the same time as Honen and Shinran, another Buddhist monk named Nichiren began a mission to convince all Japanese to follow the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.  He gave his followers a different chant, the daimoku:  Namu myoho renge kyo, "I put my faith in the Lotus Sutra."  There were already a number of shrines on Mt. Fuji.  Nichiren established a central shrine there, with an ordination platform to ordain priests who could spread the message of the Lotus Sutra.  He also placed in the shrine a gohonzon, a sacred sheet of paper with the names of the leading Buddhas and bodhisattvas in the Lotus Sutra.  We leave Fujiyama impressed by the reverence with which Nichiren Buddhists regard this great Mahayana scripture.

    Next we arrive at the city which was parallel to Kyoto in influence during the Tokugawa period, when it was known as Edo.  For simplicity's sake, we'll use its modern name of Tokyo.  The shogun had his central administration, the bakufu, in the city, as well as a huge castle to impress everyone with how powerful he was.  He was smart enough to require lesser military leaders and samurai to spend part of each year in Tokyo.  Since they were accompanied by their families, Tokyo became the largest city in the world in the 1700's, and it's still one of the largest cities.  It also became the center for artistic, cultural, and religious activities.  During the shogunate, Christianity was banned, and Japan was closed off from the rest of the world. 

    In 1853 American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with his fleet, reopening Japan to the "outer world" and eventually bringing an end to the shogunate.  The Meiji emperor moved to Tokyo and made it the imperial capital.  Today, as the very modern capital of Japan, Tokyo is a fascinating mixture of the very latest in technology and architecture with thousands of simple Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples where incense is burning all day long, and Christian churches. 

    We have come to the end of our journey, as well as the end of this brief review of Japanese religion.  I hope that it has been helpful for you.  Any tips to your tour guide are welcome, especially if you have tips about any information that is unclear or incorrect.  If you wish, you may send me tips or questions by e-mail.  Sayonara!

    To look at one of my other syllabi, go to my Home Page.

    To review a different unit in this course, go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 1, Hinduism
    Unit 2, Buddhism
    Unit 3, China

    If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.

Last updated:  April 19, 2008