The temple schools were early established, and in the course of centuries became at times almost coextensive with the empire. Besides the training of the neophytes in the Chinese language and the vernacular, there were connected with thousands of temples, schools in which the children, not only of the well-to-do, but largely of the people, were taught the rudiments of education, chiefly reading and writing. Most of the libraries of the country were those in monasteries. Although it is not probable that Kōbō invented the Kana or common script, yet it is reasonably certain that the bonzes[47] were the chief instrument in the diffusion and popularization of that simple system of writing, which made it possible to carry literature down into the homes of the merchant and peasant, and enabled even women and children to beguile the tedium of their lives. Thus the people expanded their thoughts through the medium of the written, and later of the printed, page.[48] Until modern centuries, when the school of painters, which culminated in Hokŭsai and his contemporaries, brought a love of art down to the lowest classes of the people, the only teacher of pictorial and sculptural art for the multitude, was Buddhism. So strong is this popular delight in things artistic that probably, to this passion as much as to the religious instinct, we owe many of the wayside shrines and images, the symbolical and beautifully prepared landscapes, and those stone stairways which slope upward toward the shrines on the hill-tops. In Japan, art is not a foreign language; it is vernacular.
Thus, while we gladly point out how Buddhism, along the paths of exploration, commerce, invention, sociology, military and political influence, education and literature, not only propagated religion, but civilized Japan,[49] it is but in the interest of fairness and truth that we point out that wherein the great system was deficient. If we make comparison with Christendom and the religion of Jesus, it is less with the purpose of the polemic who must perhaps necessarily disparage, and more with the idea of making contrast between what we have seen in Japan and what we have enjoyed as commonplace in the United States and Europe.
Things Which Buddhism Left Undone.
In the thirteen hundred years of the life of Buddhism in Japan, what are the fruits, and what are the failures? Despite its incessant and multifarious activities, one looks in vain for the hospital, the orphan asylum, the home for elderly men or women or aged couples, or the asylum for the insane, and much less, for that vast and complicated system of organized charities, which, even amid our material greed of gain, make cities like New York, or London, or Chicago, so beautiful from the point of view of humanity. Buddhism did indeed teach kindness to animals, making even the dog, though ownerless and outcast, in a sense sacred. Because of his faith in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the toiling laborer will keep his wheels or his feet from harming the cat or dog or chicken in the road, even though it be at risk and trouble and with added labor to himself. The pious will buy the live birds or eels from the old woman who sits on the bridge, in order to give them life and liberty again in air or water. The sacred rice is for sale at the temples, not only to feed but to fatten the holy pigeons.
Yet, while all this care is lavished on animals, the human being suffers.[50] Buddhism is kind to the brute, and cruel to man. Until the influx of western ideas in recent years, the hospital and the orphanage did not exist in Japan, despite the gentleness and tenderness of Shaka, who, with all his merits, deserted his wife and babe in order to enlighten mankind.[51] If Buddhism is not directly responsible for the existence of that class of Japanese pariahs called hi-nin, or not-human, the name and the idea are borrowed from the sutras; while the execration of all who prepare or sell the flesh of animals is persistently taught in the sacred books. These unfortunate bearers of the human image, during twelve hundred years and until the fiat of the present illustrious emperor made them citizens, were not reckoned in the census, nor was the land on which they dwelt measured. The imperial edict which finally elevated the Eta to citizenship, was suggested by one whose life, though known to men as that of a Confucian, was probably hid with Christ, Yokoi Héishiro.[52] The emperor Mutsuhito, 123d of the line of Japan, born on the day when Perry was on the Mississippi and ready to sail, placed over these outcast people in 1871, the protecting aegis of the law.[53] Until that time, the people in this unfortunate class, numbering probably a million, or, as some say, three millions, were compelled to live outside of the limits of human habitation, having no lights which society or the law was bound to respect. They were given food or drink only when benevolence might be roused; but the donor would never again touch the vessel in which the offering was made. The Eta,[54] though in individual cases becoming measurably rich, rotted and starved, and were made the filth, and off-scouring of the earth, because they were the butchers, the skinners, the leather workers, and thus handled dead animals, being made also the executioners and buriers of the dead. After a quarter of a century the citizens, whose ancestry is not forgotten, suffer social ostracism even more than do the freed slaves of our country, though between them and the other Japanese there is no color line, but only the streak of difference which Buddhism created and has maintained. Nevertheless, let it be said to the eternal honor of Shin Shu and of some of the minor sects, that they were always kind and helpful to the Eta.
Furthermore it would be hard to discover Buddhist missionary activities among the Ainos, or benefits conferred upon them by the disciples of Gautama. One would suppose that the Buddhists, professing to be believers in spiritual democracy, would be equally active among all sorts and conditions of men; but they have not been so. Even in the days when the regions of the Ebisu or barbarians (Yezo) extended far southward upon the main island, the missionary bonze was conspicuous by his absence among these people. It would seem as though the popular notion that the Ainos are the offspring of dogs, had been fed by prejudices inculcated by Buddhism. It has been reserved for Christian aliens to reduce the language of these simple savages to writing, and to express in it for their spiritual benefit the ideas and literature of a religion higher than their own, as well as to erect church edifices and build hospitals.
The Attitude Toward Woman.
In its attitude toward woman, which is perhaps one of the crucial tests of a religion as well as of a civilization, Buddhism has somewhat to be praised and much to be blamed for. It is probable that the Japanese woman owes more to Buddhism than to Confucianism, though relatively her position was highest under Shintō. In Japan the women are the freest in Asia, and probably the best treated among any Asiatic nation, but this is not because of Gautama's teaching.[55] Very early in its history Japanese Buddhism welcomed womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56] yet the Japanese ama, bikuni, or nun, never became a sister of mercy, or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even by the native scholar—except in fiction.