The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji

by William Elliot Griffis

This popular sect also makes greatest use of charms, spells and amulets, lays great store on pilgrimages, and is very fond of noise-making instruments whether prayer-books or the wooden bells or drums which are prominent features in their temples and revival meetings. In one sense it is the Salvation Army of Buddhism, being especially powerful in what strikes the eye and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for the priests of all other sects." When the Parliament of Religions was called in Chicago, the successors of Nichiren, with their characteristic high-church modesty, promptly sent letters to America, warning the world against all other Japanese Buddhists, and denouncing especially those coming to speak in the Parliament, as misrepresenting the true doctrines of Buddha.

Doctrinal Culmination.

When the work of Nichiren had been completed, and his realistic pantheism had been able to include within its great receiver and processes of Buddha-making, everything from gods to mud, the circle of doctrine was complete. Kōbō's leaven had now every possible lump in which to do its work. All grades of men in Japan, from the most devout and intellectual to the most ranting and fanatical, could choose their sect. Yet it may be that Buddhism in Nichiren's day was in danger of stagnation and formalism, and needed the revival which this fiery bonze gave it; for, undoubtedly, along with zeal even to bigotry, came fresh life and power to the religion. This invigoration was followed by the mighty missionary labors of the last half of the thirteenth century, which carried Buddhism out to the northern frontier and into Yezo. Although, from time to time minor sects were formed either limiting or developing further the principles of the larger parent sects, and although, even as late as the seventeenth century, a new subsect, the Oba-ku of Zen Shu, was imported from China, yet no further doctrinal developments of importance took place; not even in presence of or after sixteenth century Christianity and seventeenth century Confucianism.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries form the golden age of Japanese Buddhism.

In the sixteenth century, the feudal system had split into fragments and the normal state of the country was that of civil war. Sect was arrayed against sect, and the Shin bonzes, especially, formed a great military body in fortified monasteries.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, came the tremendous onslaught of Portuguese Christianity. Then followed the militarism and bloody persecutions of Nobunaga.

In clashing with the new Confucianism of the seventeenth century, Buddhism utterly weakened as an intellectual power. Though through the favor of the Yodo shōguns it recovered lands and wealth, girded itself anew as the spy, persecutor and professed extirpator of Christianity, and maintained its popularity with the common people, it was, during the eighteenth century, among the educated Japanese, as good as dead. Modern Confucianism and the revival of Chinese learning, resulted in eighteenth century scepticism and in nineteenth century agnosticism.

The New Buddhism.

In our day and time, Japanese Buddhism, in the presence of aggressive Christianity, is out of harmony with the times, and the needs of forty-one millions of awakened and inquiring people; and there are deep searchings of heart. Politically disestablished and its landed possessions sequestrated by the government, it has had, since 1868, a history, first of depression and then of temporary revival. Now, amid much mechanical and external activity, the employment of the press, the organization of charity, of summer schools of "theology," and of young men's and other associations copied from the Christians, it is endeavoring to keep New Japan within its pale and to dictate the future. It seeks to utilize the old bottles for the new vintage.