Chapter VII · - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

Syncretism in Religion.

Two centuries and a half of Buddhism in Japan, showed the leaders and teachers of the Indian faith that complete victory over the whole nation was yet very far off. The court had indeed been invaded and won. Even the Mikado, the ecclesiastical head of Shintō, and the incarnation and vicar of the heavenly gods, had not only embraced Buddhism, but in many instances had shorn the hair and taken the vows of the monk. Yet the people clung tenaciously to their old traditions, customs and worship; for their gods were like themselves and indeed were of themselves, since Shintō is only a transfiguration of Japanese life. In the Japanese of those days we can trace the same traits which we behold in the modern son of Nippon, especially his intense patriotism and his warlike tendencies. To convert these people to the peaceful dogmas of Siddartha and to make them good Buddhists, something more than teaching and ritual was necessary. It was indispensable that there should be complete substitution, all along the ruts and paths of national habit, and especially that the names of the gods and the festivals should be Buddhaized.

Popular customs are nearly immortal and ineradicable. Though wars may come, dynasties rise and fall, and convulsions in nature take place, yet the people's manners and amusements are very slow in changing. If, in the history of Christianity, the European missionaries found it necessary in order to make conquest of our pagan forefathers, to baptize and re-name without radically changing old notions and habits, so did it seem equally indispensable that in Japan there should be some system of reconciliation of the old and the new, some theological revolution, which should either fulfil, absorb, or destroy Shintō.

The Kami and the Buddhas.

In Japan, to solve the problem of reconciliation between the ancient traditions of the divine ancestors and the dogmas of the Indian cult, it was necessary that some master spirit, profoundly learned in the two Ways, of the Kami and of the Buddhas, should be bold, and also as it seems, crafty and unscrupulous. To convert a line of theocratic emperors, whose authority was derived from their alleged divine origin and sacerdotal character, into patrons and propagandists of Buddhism, and to transform indigenous Shintō gods into Buddhas elect, or Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion for all mankind.

The Mission of Art.

In our day, Japanese art has won its own place in the world's temple of beauty. Even those familiar with the master-pieces of Europe do not hesitate to award to the artists of Nippon a meed of praise which, within certain limits, is justly applied to them equally with the masters of the Italian, the Dutch, the Flemish, or the French schools. It serves our purpose simply to point out that art was a powerful factor in the religious conquest of the Japanese for the new doctrines of the Yoga system, which in Japan is called Riyōbu, or Mixed Buddhism.

We say Mixed Buddhism rather than Riyōbu Shintō, for Shintō was less corrupted than swallowed up, while Buddhism suffered one more degree of mixture and added one more chapter of decay. It increased in its visible body, while in its mind it became less and less the religion of Buddha and more and more a thing with the old Shintō heart still in it, making a strange growth in the eyes of the continental believers. To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or Japanese Buddhism.

Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?

Kōbō the Wonder Worker.

Let us sketch the life of Kōbō,

We mention these legends only to call the attention to the fact that they are but copies of those already accepted in China at that time, and are the logical and natural fruit of the Tantra school at which we have glanced. In 804, Kōbō was appointed to visit the Middle Kingdom as a government student. By means of his clever pen and calligraphic skill he won his way into the Chinese capital. He became the favored disciple of a priest who taught him the mystic doctrines of the Yoga. Having acquired the whole of the system, and equipped himself with a large library of Buddhist doctrinal works and still more with every sort of ecclesiastical furniture and religious goods, he returned to Japan.

Kōbō Irenicon.

All the Shintō deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They were manifestations to the Japanese, before Gautama had become the enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire. Further more, provision was made for the future gods and deified holy ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other Japanese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus recorded in a Japanese popular work:

Descending from the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shintō and Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, Kōbō forthwith baptized each native Shintō deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shintō festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band of disciples, he sent them forth proclaiming the new irenicon.

The Hindu Yoga Becomes Japanese Riyōbu.

This branch of Buddhism is said to have been founded in India about A.D. 200, by a saint who made the discovery of an iron pagoda inhabited by the holy one, Vagrasattva, who communicated the exact doctrine to those who have handed it down through the Hindoo and Chinese patriarchs. The books or scriptures of this sect are in three sutras; yet the essential point in them is the Mandala or the circle of the Two Parts, or in Japanese Riyōbu. Introduced into China, A.D. 720, it is known as the Yoga-chara school.

Kōbō finding a Chinese worm, made a Japanese dragon, able to swallow a national religion. In the act of deglutition and the long process of the digestion of Shintō, Japanese Buddhism became something different from every other form of the faith in Asia. Noted above all previous developments of Buddhism for its pantheistic tendencies, the Shingon sect could recognize in any Shintō god, demi-god, hero, or being, the avatar in a previous stage of existence of some Buddhist being of corresponding grade.

For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in Japanese pronunciation Bosatsu, was appointed. Each of these Bodhisattvas became a Dai Miō Jin or Great Enlightened Spirit, and was represented as an avatar in Japan of Buddha in the previous ages, when the Japanese were not yet prepared to receive the holy law of Buddhism.

In this way, Kōbō arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings, in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable. In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repetition in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and Japan is Asanga, Hiukiō and Kōbō.

The Happy Family of Riyōbu.

Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an ox and ass in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It will sometimes happen that one god escapes the classification made by the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shintō, or vice versa; while again the label-makers and pasters—as numerous in scholastic Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom—have hard work to make the labels stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Miō-jin, whose name and renown has for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts. On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous Shintōists, savor of the smartness of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification. It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shintō, to extricate the various gods out of the mixture and mess of Riyōbu Shintō, and to keep them from jostling each other.

All Japanese popular religion of the past has been intensely local and patriotic. The ancient idea that Nippon was the first country created and the centre of the world, has persisted through the ages, modifying every imported religion. Hence the noticeable fact in Japanese Buddhism, of the comparative degradation of the Hindu deities and the exaltation of those which were native to the soil.

The normal Japanese, be he priest or lay brother, theologian or statesman, is nothing if not patriotic. Even the Chinese gods and goddesses which, clothed in Indian drapery and still preserving their Aryan features, were imported to Japan, could not hold their own in competition with the popularity of the indigenous inhabitants of the Japanese pantheon. The normal Japanese eye does not see the ideals of beauty in the human face and form in common with the Aryan vision. Benten or Knanon, with the features and drapery of the homelike beauties of Yamato or Adzuma, have ever been more lovely to the admiring eye of the Japanese sailor and farmer, than the Aryan features of the idols imported from India. So also, the worshipper to whom the lovely scenery of Japan was fresh from the hands of the kami who were so much like himself, turned naturally in preference, to the "gods many" of his own land.

Succeeding centuries only made it worse for the imported devas or gods, while the kami, or the gods sprung from the soil created by Izanami and Izanagi steadily rose in honor.

Degradation of the Foreign Deities.

Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of Shintō and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols might be in the front, and the Shintōist in the rear of the sacred hall, or vice versa, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shintō interior contained a museum of idols.

Shintō Buried in Buddhism.

Yet, after all, it is a question as to which suffered most, Buddhism or Shintō. Who can tell which was the base and which was the true metal in the alloy that was formed? The San Kai Ri shows how superstitious manifold became imbedded in Buddhism. It was not alone through the Shingon sect, which Kōbō introduced, that this Yoga or union came. In the other great sect called the Tendai, and in the later sects, more especially in that of Nichiren, the same principle of absorption was followed. These sects also adopted many elements derived from the god-way and thus became Shintōized. Indeed, it seems certain that that vast development of Japanese Buddhism, peculiar to Japan and unknown to the rest of the Buddhist world, scouted by the Southern Buddhists as dreadful heresy, and rousing the indignation of students of early Buddhism, like Max Müller and Professor Whitney, is largely owing to this attempted digestion of Japanese mythology. The anaconda may indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit, subterranean or superficial growth, that we are eating. So in Riyōbu, whether it be most imo or kabocha is a fair question. If the Buddhism in Japan did but add a chapter of decay and degradation to the religion of the Light of Asia, is not this owing to the act of Kōbō—justified indeed by those who imitated his example, yet hardly to be called honest? A stroke of ecclesiastical dexterity, it may have been, but scarcely a lawful example or an illustrious and commendable specimen of syncretism in religion.

Many students have asked what is the peculiar, the characteristic difference between the Buddhism of Japan and the other Buddhisms of the Asian continent. If there be one cause, leading all others, we incline to believe it is because Japanese Buddhism is not the Buddhism of Gautama, but is so largely Riyōbu or Mixed. Yet in the alloy, which ingredient has preserved most of its qualities? Is Japanese Buddhism really Shintōized Buddhism, or Buddhaized Shintō? Which is the parasite and which the parasitized? Is the hermit crab Shintō, and the shell Buddhism, or vice versa? About as many corrupt elements from Shintō entered into the various Buddhist sects as Buddhism gave to Shintō.

This process of Shintōizing Buddhism or of Buddhaizing Shintō—that is, of combining Shintō or purely Japanese ideas and practices with the systems imported from India, went on for five centuries. The old native habits and mental characteristics were not eradicated or profoundly modified; they were rather safely preserved in so-called Buddhism, not indeed as dead flies in amber but as live creatures, fattening on a body, which, every year, while keeping outward form and name, was being emptied of its normal and typical life. It is no gain to pure water to add either microbes or the food which nourishes them.

Buddhism Writes New Chapters of Decay.

Nevertheless, the ethical element held its own in the Japanese mind; and against the pessimism and puerility of Buddhism and the religious emptiness of Shintō, the bond of Japanese society was sought in the idea of loyalty. While then, as we repeat, everything that comes to the Japanese mind suffers as it were "a sea change, into something new and strange," is it not fair to say that the change made by Kōbō was at the expense of Buddhism as a system, and that the thing that suffered reversion was the exotic rather than the native plant? For, in the emergence of this new idea of loyalty as supreme, Shintō and not Buddhism was the dictator.

If this be the position in China, something not very far from it is found in Japan to-day. Whatever may be the Buddhism of the few learned scholars, who have imbibed the critical and scientific spirit of Christendom, and whatever be the professions and representations of its earnest adherents and partisans, it is certain that popular Buddhism is both ethically and vitally in a low state. In outward array the system is still imposing. There are yet, it may be, millions of stone statues and whole forests of wayside effigies, outdoors and unroofed—irreverently called by the Japanese themselves, "wet gods." Hosts upon hosts of lacquered and gilded images in wood, sheltered under the temple tiles or shingles, still attract worshippers. Despite shiploads of copper Buddhas exported as old metal to Europe and America, and thousands of tons of gods and imps melted into coin or cannon, there are myriads of metal reminders of those fruits of a religion that once educated and satisfied; but these are, in the main, no longer to the natives instruments of inspiration or compellers to enthusiasm. In this time of practical charity, they are poor substitutes for those hospitals and orphan asylums which were practically unknown in Japan until the advent of Christianity.

Kōbō's smart example has been followed only too well by the people in every part of the country. One has but to read the stacks of books of local history to see what an amazing proportion of legends, ideas, superstitions and revelations rests on dreams; how incredibly numerous are the apparitions; how often the floating images of Buddha are found on the water; how frequently flowers have rained out of the sky; how many times the idols have spoken or shot forth their dazzling rays—in a word; how often art and artifices have become alleged and accepted reality. Unfortunately, the characteristics of this literature and undergrowth of idol lore are monotony and lack of originality; for nearly all are copies of Kōbō's model. His cartoon has been constantly before the busy weavers of legend.

It may indeed be said, and said truly, that in its multiplication of sects and in its growth of legend and superstition, Buddhism has but followed every known religion, including traditional Christianity itself. Yet popular Buddhism has reached a point which shows, that, instead of having a self-purgative and self-reforming power, it is apparently still treading in the steps of the degradation which Kōbōbegan.

The Seven Gods of Good Fortune.

We repeat it, Riyōbu Buddhism is Japanese Buddhism with vengeance. It is to-day suffering from the effect of its own sins. Its ingwa is manifest. Take, for example, the little group of divinities known as the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, which forms a popular appendage to Japanese Buddhism and which are a direct and logical growth of the work done by Kōbō, as shown in his Riyōbu system. Not from foreign writers and their fancies, nor even from the books which profess to describe these divinities, do we get such an idea of their real meaning and of their influence with the people, as we do by observation of every-day practice, and a study of the idols themselves and of Japanese folk-lore, popular romance, local history and guidebooks. Those familiar divinities, indeed, at the present day owe their vitality rather to the artists than to priests, and, it may be, have received, together with some rather rude handling, nearly the whole of their extended popularity and influence from their lay supporters. The Seven Happy Gods of Fortune form nominally a Buddhist assemblage, and their effigies on the kami-dana or god-shelf, found in nearly every Japanese house, are universally visible. The child in Japan is rocked to sleep by the soothing sound of the lullaby, which is often a prayer to these gods. Even though it may be with laughing and merriment, that, in their name the evil gods and imps are exorcised annually on New Year's eve, with showers of beans which are supposed to be as disagreeable to the Buddhist demons "as drops of holy water to the Devil," yet few households are complete without one or more of the images or the pictures of these favorite deities.

This illustration of the Seven Gods of Happiness, whose local characters, functions and relations have been developed especially within the last three or four hundred years, is but one of many that could be adduced, showing what proceeded on a larger scale. The Riyōbu process made it almost impossible for the average native to draw the line between history and mythology. It destroyed the boundary lines, as Pantheism invariably does, between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood. The Japanese mind, by a natural, possibly by a racial, tendency, falls easily into Pantheism, which may be called the destroyer of boundaries and the maker of chaos and ooze. Pretty much all early Japanese "history" is ooze; yet there are grave and learned men, even in the Constitutional Japan of the Méiji era—masters in their arts and professions, graduates of technical and philosophical courses—who solemnly talk about their "first emperor ascending the throne, B.C. 660," and to whom the dragon-born, early Mikados, and their fellow-tribesmen, seen through the exaggerated mists of the Kojiki, are divine personages.

The Gon-gen in the Processions.

As seen by four kinds of spectators, the average ignorant native, the Shintōist, the learned Buddhist, and the critical historical scholar, these effigies represented three different characters or creations. Especially were those divine personages called Gon-gen worth the study of the foreign observer.

(1) The common boor or streetman saluted, for example, this or that Dai Miō Jin, as the great illustrious spirit or god of its particular district. To this spirit and image he prayed; in his honor he made offerings; his wrath he feared; and his smile he hoped to win, for the Gon-gen was a divine being.

(2) To the Shintōist, who hated Buddhism and the Riyōbu Shintō which had overlaid his ancestral faith, and who scorned and tabooed this Chinese term Dai Miō Jin, this or that image represented a divine ancestor whose name had in it many Japanese syllables, with no defiling Chinese sounds, and who was the Kami or patron deity of this or that neighborhood.

(3) To the Buddhist, this or that personage, in his lifetime, in the early ages of Japanese history, had been an avatar of Buddha who had appeared in human flesh and brought blessings to the people and neighborhood; yet the people of the early ages being unprepared to receive his doctrine or revelation, he had not then revealed or preached it; but now, as for a thousand years since the time of the illustrious and saintly Kōbō, he had his right name and received his just honors and worship as an avatar of the eternal Buddha. So, although Buddhist and Shintōist might quarrel as to his title, and divide, even to anger, on minor points, they would both agree in letting the common people take their pleasure, enjoy the festivals and merriment, and preserve their reverence and worship.

(4) Still another spectator studied with critical interest the swaying figure high in air. With a taste for archaeology, he admired the accuracy of the drapery and associations. He was amused, it may be, with occasional anachronisms as to garments or equipments. He knew that the original of this personage had been nothing more than a human being, who might indeed have been conspicuous as a brave soldier in war, or as a skilful physician who helped to stop the plague, or as a civilizer who imported new food or improved agriculture.

In a word, had this subject of the ancient Mikado lived in modern Christendom, he might be honored through the government, patent office, privy council, the admiralty, the university, or the academy, as the case or worth might be. He might shine in a plastic representation by the sculptor or artist, or be known in the popular literature; but he would never receive religious worship, or aught beyond honor and praise. In this swamping of history in legend and of fact in dogma, we behold the fruit of Kōbō's work, Riyōbu Buddhism.

Kōbō's Work Undone.

Buddhism calls itself the jewel in the lotus. Japanese poetry asks of the dewdrop "why, having the heart of the lotus for its home, does it pretend to be a gem?" For a thousand years Riyōbu Buddhism was received as a pure brilliant of the first water, and then the scholarship of the Shintō revivalists of the eighteenth century exposed the fraudulent nature of the unrelated parts and declared that the jewel called Riyōbu was but a craftsman's doublet and should be split apart. Only a splinter of diamond, they declared, crowned a mass of paste. Indignation made learning hot, and in 1870 the cement was liquefied in civil war. The doublet was rent asunder by imperial decree, as when a lapidist melts the mastic that holds in deception adamant and glass, while real diamond stands all fire short of the hydro-oxygen flame. The Riyōbu temples were purged of all Buddhist symbols, furniture, equipment and personnel, and were made again to assume their august and austere simplicity. In the eyes of the purely aesthetic critic, this national purgation was Puritanical iconoclasm; in those of the priests, cast out to earn rice elsewise and elsewhere, it was outrage, which in individual instances called for reprisal in blood, fire and assassination; to the Shintōist, it was an exhibition of the righteous judgment of the long-insulted gods; in the ken of the critical student, it seems very much like historic and poetic justice.

In our day and time, Riyōbu Buddhism furnishes us with a warning, for, looked at from a purely human point of view, what happened to Shintō may possibly happen to Japanese Christianity. The successors of those who, in the ninth century, did not scruple to Buddhaize Shintō, and in later times, even our own, to Shintōize Buddhism while holding to Buddha's name and all the revenue possible, will Buddhaize Christianity if they have power and opportunity; and signs are not wanting to show that this is upon their programme.

The water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass, which needs cleansing to purity by a knowledge of one God who is Light and Love. Without such knowledge, the manifold changes in Buddhism will but form fresh chapters of degradation and decay. Holding such knowledge, Christianity may pass through endless changes, for this is her capability by Divine power and the authorization of her Founder. The now Buddhism of our day is endeavoring to save itself through reformation and progress. In doing so, the danger of the destruction of the system is great, for thus far change has meant decay.