Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

by Lafcadio Hearn

Buddhism, however, did more than tolerate the old rites. It cultivated and elaborated them. Under its teaching a new and beautiful form of the domestic cult came into existence; and all the [192] touching poetry of ancestor-worship in modern Japan can be traced to the teaching of the Buddhist missionaries. Though ceasing to regard their dead as gods in the ancient sense, the Japanese converts were encouraged to believe in their presence, and to address them in terms of reverence and affection. It is worthy of remark that the doctrine of Pretas gave new force to the ancient fear of neglecting the domestic rites. Ghosts unloved might not become "evil gods" in the Shinto meaning of the term; but the malevolent Gaki was even more to be dreaded than the malevolent Kami,—for Buddhism defined in appalling ways the nature of the Gaki's power to harm. In various Buddhist funeral-rites, the dead are actually addressed as Gaki,—beings to be pitied but also to be feared,—much needing human sympathy and succour, but able to recompense the food-giver by ghostly help.

One particular attraction of Buddhist teaching was its simple and ingenious interpretation of nature. Countless matters which Shinto had never attempted to explain, and could not have explained, Buddhism expounded in detail, with much apparent consistency. Its explanations of the mysteries of birth, life, and death were at once consoling to pure minds, and wholesomely discomforting to bad consciences. It taught that the dead were happy or unhappy not directly because of the attention or the [193] neglect shown them by the living, but because of their past conduct while in the body.* It did not attempt to teach the higher doctrine of successive rebirths,—which the people could not possibly have understood,—but the merely symbolic doctrine of transmigration, which everybody could understand. To die was not to melt back into nature, but to be reincarnated; and the character of the new body, as well as the conditions of the new existence, would depend upon the quality of one's deeds and thoughts in the present body. All states and conditions of being were the consequence of past actions. Such a man was now rich and powerful, because in previous lives he had been generous and kindly; such another man was now sickly and poor, because in some previous existence he had been sensual and selfish. This woman was happy in her husband and her children, because in the time of a former birth she had proved herself a loving daughter and a faithful spouse; this other was wretched and childless, because in some anterior existence she had been a jealous wife and a cruel mother. "To hate your enemy," the Buddhist preacher would proclaim, "is [194] foolish as well as wrong: he is now your enemy only because of some treachery that you practised upon him in a previous life, when he desired to be your friend. Resign yourself to the injury which he now does you accept it as the expiation of your forgotten fault… The girl whom you hoped to marry has been refused you by her parents,—given away to another. But once, in another existence, she was yours by promise; and you broke the pledge then given…. Painful indeed the loss of your child; but this loss is the consequence of having, in some former life, refused affection where affection was due…. Maimed by mishap, you can no longer earn your living as before. Yet this mishap is really due to the fact that in some previous existence you wantonly inflicted bodily injury. Now the evil of your own act has returned upon you: repent of your crime, and pray that its Karma may be exhausted by this present suffering." … All the sorrows of men were thus explained and consoled. Life was expounded as representing but one stage of a measureless journey, whose way stretched back through all the night of the past, and forward through all the mystery of the future,—out of eternities forgotten into the eternities to be; and the world itself was to be thought of only as a traveller's resting-place, an inn by the roadside.

[*The reader will doubtless wonder how Buddhism could reconcile its doctrine of successive rebirths with the ideas of ancestor-worship, If one died only to be born again, what could be the use of offering food or addressing any kind of prayer to the reincarnated spirit? This difficulty was met by the teaching that the dead were not immediately reborn in most cases, but entered into a particular condition called Chu-U. They might remain in this disembodied condition for the time of one hundred years, after which they were reincarnated. The Buddhist services for the dead are consequently limited to the time of one hundred years.]

Instead of preaching to the people about Nirvana, [195] Buddhism discoursed to them of blisses to be won and pains to be avoided: the Paradise of Amida, Lord of Immeasurable Light; the eight hot hells called To-kwatsu, and the eight icy hells called Abuda. On the subject of future punishment the teaching was very horrible: I should advise no one of delicate nerves to read the Japanese, or rather the Chinese accounts of hell. But hell was the penalty for supreme wickedness only: it was not eternal; and the demons themselves would at last be saved…. Heaven was to be the reward of good deeds: the reward might indeed be delayed, through many successive rebirths, by reason of lingering Karma; but, on the other hand, it might be attained by virtue of a single holy act in this present life. Besides, prior to the period of supreme reward, each succeeding rebirth could be made happier than the preceding one by persistent effort in the holy Way. Even as regarded conditions in this transitory world, the results of virtuous conduct were not to be despised. The beggar of to-day might to-morrow be reborn in the palace of a daimyo; the blind shampooer might become, in his very next life, an imperial minister. Always the recompense would be proportionate to the sum of merit. In this lower world to practise the highest virtue was difficult; and the great rewards were hard to win. But for all good deeds a recompense was sure; and there was no one who could not acquire merit. [196] Even the Shinto doctrine of conscience—the god-given sense of right and wrong—was not denied by Buddhism. But this conscience was interpreted as the essential wisdom of the Buddha dormant in every human creature,—wisdom darkened by ignorance, clogged by desire, fettered by Karma, but destined sooner or later to fully awaken, and to flood the mind with light.

It would seem that the Buddhist teaching of the duty of kindness to all living creatures, and of pity for all suffering, had a powerful effect upon national habit and custom, long before the new religion found general acceptance. As early as the year 675, a decree was issued by the Emperor Temmu forbidding the people to eat "the flesh of kine, horses, dogs, monkeys, or barn-door fowls," and prohibiting the use of traps or the making of pitfalls in catching game.* [*See Aston's translation of the Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 329.] The fact that all kinds of flesh-meat were not forbidden is probably explained by this Emperor's zeal for the maintenance of both creeds;—an absolute prohibition might have interfered with Shinto usages, and would certainly have been incompatible with Shinto traditions. But, although fish never ceased to be an article of food for the laity, we may say that from about this time the mass of the nation abandoned its habits of diet, and forswore the eating of meat, in accordance with [197] Buddhist teaching…. This teaching was based upon the doctrine of the unity of all sentient existence. Buddhism explained the whole visible world by its doctrine of Karma,—simplifying that doctrine so as to adapt it to popular comprehension. The forms of all creatures,—bird, reptile, or mammal; insect or fish,—represented only different results of Karma: the ghostly life in each was one and the same; and, in even the lowest, some spark of the divine existed. The frog or the serpent, the bird or the bat, the ox or the horse,—all had had, at some past time, the privilege of human (perhaps even superhuman) shape: their present conditions represented only the consequence of ancient faults. Any human being also, by reason of like faults, might hereafter be reduced to the same dumb state,—might be reborn as a reptile, a fish, a bird, or a beast of burden. The consequence of wanton cruelty to any animal might cause the perpetrator of that cruelty to be reborn as an animal of the same kind, destined to suffer the same cruel treatment. Who could even be sure that the goaded ox, the over-driven horse, or the slaughtered bird, had not formerly been a human being of closest kin,—ancestor, parent, brother, sister, or child? …

Not by words only were all these things taught. It should be remembered that Shinto had no art: its ghost-houses, silent and void, were not even [198] decorated. But Buddhism brought in its train all the arts of carving, painting, and decoration. The images of its Bodhisattvas, smiling in gold,—the figures of its heavenly guardians and infernal judges, its feminine angels and monstrous demons,—must have startled and amazed imaginations yet unaccustomed to any kind of art. Great paintings hung in the temples, and frescoes limned upon their walls or ceilings, explained better than words the doctrine of the Six States of Existence, and the dogma of future rewards and punishments. In rows of kakemono, suspended side by side, were displayed the incidents of a Soul's journey to the realm of judgment, and all the horrors of the various hells. One pictured the ghosts of faithless wives, for ages doomed to pluck, with bleeding fingers, the rasping bamboo-grass that grows by the Springs of Death; another showed the torment of the slanderer, whose tongue was torn by demon-pincers; in a third appeared the spectres of lustful men, vainly seeking to flee the embraces of women of fire, or climbing, in frenzied terror, the slopes of the Mountain of Swords. Pictured also were the circles of the Preta-world, and the pangs of the Hungry Ghosts, and likewise the pains of rebirth in the form of reptiles and of beasts. And the art of these early representations—many of which have been preserved—was an art of no mean order. We can hardly conceive the effect upon inexperienced imagination of the crimson frown of Emma [199] (Yama), Judge of the dead,—or the vision of that weird Mirror which reflected, to every spirit the misdeeds of its life in the body,—or the monstrous fancy of that double-faced Head before the judgment seat, representing the visage of the woman Mirume, whose eyes behold all secret sin; and the vision of the man Kaguhana, who smells all odours of evil-doing…. Parental affection must have been deeply touched by the painted legend of the world of children's ghosts,—the little ghosts that must toil, under demon-surveillance, in the Dry Bed of the River of Souls…. But pictured terrors were offset by pictured consolations,—by the beautiful figure of Kwannon, white Goddess of Mercy,—by the compassionate smile of Jizo, the playmate of infant-ghosts,—by the charm also of celestial nymphs, floating on iridescent wings in light of azure. The Buddhist painter opened to simple fancy the palaces of heaven, and guided hope, through gardens of jewel-trees, even to the shores of that lake where the souls of the blessed are reborn in lotos-blossoms, and tended by angel-nurses.

Moreover, for people accustomed only to such simple architecture as that of the Shinto miya, the new temples erected by the Buddhist priests must have been astonishments. The colossal Chinese gates, guarded by giant statues; the lions and lanterns of bronze and stone; the enormous suspended [200] bells, sounded by swinging-beams; the swarming of dragon-shapes under the caves of the vast roofs; the glimmering splendour of the altars; the ceremonial likewise, with its chanting and its incense-burning and its weird Chinese music,—cannot have failed to inspire the wonder-loving with delight and awe. It is a noteworthy fact that the earliest Buddhist temples in Japan still remain, even to Western eyes, the most impressive. The Temple of the Four Deva Kings at Osaka—which, though more than once rebuilt, preserves the original plan—dates from 600 A.D.; the yet more remarkable temple called Horyuji, near Nara, dates from about the year 607.

Of course the famous paintings and the great statues could be seen at the temples only; but the Buddhist image-makers soon began to people even the most desolate places with stone images of Buddhas and of Bodhisattvas. Then first were made those icons of Jizo, which still smile upon the traveller from every roadside,—and the images of Koshin, protector of highways, with his three symbolic Apes,—and the figure of that Bato-Kwannon, who protects the horses of the peasant,—with other figures in whose rude but impressive art suggestions of Indian origin are yet recognizable. Gradually the graveyards became thronged with dreaming Buddhas or Bodhisattvas,—holy guardians of the dead, throned upon lotos-flowers of [201] stone, and smiling with closed eyes the smile of the Calm Supreme. In the cities everywhere Buddhist sculptors opened shops, to furnish pious households with images of the chief divinities worshipped by the various Buddhist sects; and the makers of ihai, or Buddhist mortuary tablets, as well as the makers of household shrines, multiplied and prospered.

Meanwhile the people were left free to worship their ancestors according to either creed; and if a majority eventually gave preference to the Buddhist rite, this preference was due in large measure to the peculiar emotional charm which Buddhism had infused into the cult. Except in minor details, the two rites differed scarcely at all; and there was no conflict whatever between the old ideas of filial piety and the Buddhist ideas attaching to the new ancestor-worship, Buddhism taught that the dead might be helped and made happier by prayer, and that much ghostly comfort could be given them by food-offerings. They were not to be offered flesh or wine; but it was proper to gratify them with fruits and rice and cakes and flowers and the smoke of incense. Besides, even the simplest food-offerings might be transmuted, by force of prayer, into celestial nectar and ambrosia. But what especially helped the new ancestor-cult to popular favour, was the fact that it included many beautiful and touching customs not known to the old. Everywhere [202] the people soon learned to kindle the hundred and eight fires of welcome for the annual visit of their dead,—to supply the spirits with little figures made of straw, or made out of vegetables, to-serve for oxen or horses,*—also to prepare the ghost-ships (shoryobune), in which the souls of the ancestors were to return, over the sea, to their under-world. Then too were instituted the Bon-odori, or Dances of the Festival of the Dead,** and the custom of suspending white lanterns at graves, and coloured lanterns at house-gates, to light the coining and the going of the visiting dead.

[*An eggplant, with four pegs of wood stuck into it, to represent legs, usually stands for an ox; and a cucumber, with four pegs, serves for a horse…. One is reminded of the fact that, at some of the ancient Greek sacrifices, similar substitutes for real animals were used. In the worship of Apollo, at Thebes, apples with wooden pegs stuck into them, to represent feet and horns, were offered as substitutes for sheep.