Ryôbu Shinto (arts of Japan cycle)

Thirty Banshin in British Museum

 In the year 742 AD emperor Shomu sent Gyôgi Bosatsu to the Sun sanctuary in Ise to ask a goddess for advice about the figure of Buddha Greatsun. A bit earlier the Fujiwara family founded Kôfukuji monastery in the newly built capital of Nara and asked their own divine ancestor to protect it. The Fujiwaras worship four deities and built a shrine for them next to Kôfukuji, the shrine is called Kasuga Tasha. Some years later a monk named Ennin, an abbot of the mount Hiei monastery, very patiently copied Lotus Sutra using a method called ichiji sansai: after writing each sign he got up and three times he fell on his face (to the Buddha, his teaching, his community). It took him three years to finish, after which the sutra was placed in a special pavilion and Ennin called thirty most important deities in Japan to protect it, each in a different day of the month. The deities protecting Lotus Sutra are called Banshin in Japanese. Calling gods worshipped in Japan was of course specific to that country, but it was not unusual for Buddhists. Buddhism never propagated any doctrines or ideologies, never questioned existence of any gods, never questioned local beliefs. It only assumed that if those deities really want good for the people who worship them, they have to support teaching of the Awakened One. In India Vedic gods, especially Indra and Brahma, were assumed to be protectors of Buddhism. It was completely natural that the Japanese sought similar protection from gods they worshipped.

EMANATIONS

Ennin, and a bit earlier Kûkai and Saichô, studied in China and brought from there the Buddhist teaching of Tantrism. Tantrism is a set of practices that are supposed to lead to realisation of Unseen Reality. To help those practices, schematic images of the Unseen world, called mandalas, were painted. They illustrated a system of emanations: some people can be emanations of bodhisattvas, bodhisattvas were emanations of Buddhas and all the Buddhas are emanations of the highest Buddha Greatsun. Getting local deities into that system of emanations was quite logical. Especially logical was connecting the sun goddess Amaterasu with Buddha Greatsun. Connections of other deities weren't so obvious, nevertheless monks connected them somehow, so now we know who is whose emanation. For example Amenokoyane, the ancestress of the Fujiwara family, who used a mirrir to woo Sun out of the cave, is an emanation of a bodhisattva leading the dead through the land of shadows. The deer-riding protector of archery is an emanation of a historical Buddha, the Sage of the Sakyas. Blizzard, or Amaterasu's brother Susanowo, is an emanation of Buddha Boundlesslight. His (and Amaterasu's) mother, Izanami, is an emanation of Kannon of Thousand Hands. In other words she is an emanation of an emanation of Boundlesslight, who is identified with her own son, and Boundlesslight himself is an emanation of Buddha Greatsun, who is identified... well, it all gets tangled a bit, but nobody demands normal logic in the myths. The myths are not strictly consistent either: sometimes Vairochana the Greatsun is identified not with Amaterasu, but with Amenominakanushi, the Lord of the Centre of Heaven, who created himself out of nothing before everybody else and hid himself straight away, so only his name is known.

SADDLED DEER

In Buddhist ritual there is no room for votive offerings, but they are perfectly normal in Shintô sanctuaries, so people started bringing images of Buddhist equivalent of a given deity to a Shintô sanctuary. Sometimes an image was in bas-relief, sometimes etched and sometimes it was no image at all, but a letter of a Sanskrit alphabet. These images were called kakebotoke, which literally means 'hanging Buddha'. They were hanged on walls of sanctuaries either inside or outside, or on a front eave. Or on a deer, as in Kasuga sanctuary. One of the four deities worshipped in Kasuga rides a deer, so a votive offering there consisted of a deer saddled with a twig of sacred tree, on which a kakebotoke was hanged. In sanctuaries connected to Tantric monasteries there were paintings of mandalas of Shintô deities. This kind of mandalas were painted in Hie Taisha, a big sanctuary situated at the foot of mount Hiei. The deities worshipped in Hie Taisha were protectors of (how else) Tendai order.

FOUR SOULS

Buddhas can have several emanations, but to complicate things even more, every deity can be an emanation of several Buddhas. To be more precise: each deity have four aspects of their souls, each aspect can be an emanation of a different Buddha. In Shintô one talks of four aspects of a soul, or maybe of four souls – it is not very clear, as Shintô does not have theologians, who would elaborate on the subject. Soul is in Japanese called tama, or – with a honorific – mitama. The thing is that every person and every deity has four of those mitamas: aramitama is wild and raw, nigimitama is quiet and subtle, sakamitama is joyful and flowering, kushimitama is hidden and mysterious. Sometimes separate sanctuares are built for each mitama of one deity. For example god Oyamugi, King of Hiei mountain, has a separate sanctuary for his nigimitama in the valley and a separate one for his aramitama on the top of the mountain.

SLEEPING IN THE MOUNTAINS

In the 7^th century, still in Asuka period, one En-no Gyôja went to the mountains to practice mitama shizume, or calming the soul. He was doing that meditating under waterfalls, walking scantily dressed on snowy peaks, eating roots. In the end he was unified with Amenominakazushi, The Lord of the Centre of Heaven. He is considered the founder of the order of yamabushi, Shintô ascetics calming their soul high in the mountains. The name means 'sleeping in the mountains'; it is an unorthodox sect supposedly under influences of Tantric Buddhism. As in Tantric Buddhism, much of it is secret. Meditating under waterfalls is a way of finding a connection with the Lord of the Centre of Heaven. Yamabushi mostly congregate in Kumano in the south of Kii peninsula, and in Dewa Sanzan in the north. Some of the more radical Dewa Sanzan were known to auto-mumify: for a long time they reduced food they took, in the end the walled themselves up in a cave high in the mountains, where they dried up and died. Sometimes mitama shizume is practised by priests of some important sanctuaries, their meditation techniques are passed in secret only to the successor.

BEATIFUL CALLIGRAPHY

Amida from Kumano in Zenrin-ji temple in Kyoto

In Kumano there are three great sanctuaries, called Kumano Sanzan. In the main one, called Hongu, Susanowo the Blizzard is worshipped. In the Hayatama Taisha, not far from there, his father Izanagi is worshipped. Another one, also not far, called Nachi Taisha, is dedicated to his mother Izanami. God Susanowo is considered to be an emanation of Amida the Boundlesslight, hence paintings of Amida emerging from behind Nachi mountain were produced. Kumano was known in history as a pilgrim place, on the main road pilgrims appeared like ants (as someone wrote). Emperors were among them. There was a custom of writing poems and leaving them, written in beautiful calligraphy, in sanctuaries along the main road. There are poems written by many a famous poet. Poems written by emperors (living gods after all) are now worshipped.

DANCING IN THE STREETS

The most famous pilgrim to Kumano was no emperor, however. It was a monk of Hiei mountain named Ippen. He came to Kumano and had a vision, in which the deity worshipped there appeared to him as Amida and told him to travel up and down the country to propagate his name. From that time until his death in 1289 this is exactly what Ippen did. He travelled from town to town, sang nembutsu dancing in the streets (this practice is called odori nembutsu, or 'calling the name while dancing') and distributed leaflets with a name of Amida on them, whether recipients wanted it or not. In addition he preached that Amida may be worshipped both in Buddhist temples and in Shintô shrines. Amida appearing as a deity above the holy mountain of Kumano became a subject of painting ever since.

TIME OF JAPAN

At similar time another monk from Hei mountain also travelled around the country and equally stubbornly preached that reciting a mantra Namu Amida Butsu is a mistake and the only mantra to be recited is Namu Myôhô Renge Kyô. The name of this monk was Nichiren. He was much more original: mantra Namu Amida Butsu came from India via China, whereas the author of the mantra Namu Myôhô Renge Kyô was Nichiren himself. It is created from the Sanskrit word Nam and the title of the Lotus sutra in Chinese, but in Japanese pronunciation. Nichiren preached that Pure Land sutras are heretical and wrote letters to the shôgun that he should persecute worshippers of Amida. Actually, heretical are not only those sutras, but any sutras except the Lotus Sutra. In the Lotus Sutra there is a prophecy that he – Nichiren – will appear on earth, as he considered himself to be an incarnation of boddhisattva Visitacharita, who was to proclaim true Buddhism at the time of false teaching. Now is the time of Japan, now mantras are created in Japan, true teaching is taught in Japan and from Japan it will be spread throughout the word. Even the name Nichiren can be interpreted as 'Lotus Flower in Japan'. All this because in Japan the uncorrupted Lotus Sutra has been preserved, all because of Ennin, who called 30 Shintô gods to protect it. Even today in the order started by Nichiren pictures of 'thirty Banshin' are used in some ceremonies.

BURN THE SCRIPTURES

A figure of a deer in Nara with a blank
 disk where kakebotoke would be.

The True Teaching must have been having problems indeed. Intolerance of Nichiren, his attachment to doctrine and his nationalism seem to be almost exact opposites of Buddhism. Nichiren preached using at least Buddhist language, after him came other people who made the next step: they rejected Buddhism altogether. If Japan is the best country in the world, if the divine descendants of Sun rule in it, why should teaching coming from some barbarian country be accepted there? In early Edo period there appeared thinkers combining Shintô and Confucianism, but rejecting Buddhism. In the 18^th century some thinkers rejected Confucianism as well as a foreign influence. Among the last group of thinkers (or should I say “thinkers”) Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane had the biggest influence. They had no doubt that descendants of Sun rule Japan and therefore this is the most important country in the world. This is after all written in Kojiki, the book describing the creation of the world. Buddhism came from India, which is a country of barbarians with no culture. Hirata wrote about India as if he actually had been there. Of course he could not, as in Edo times foreign travel was a capital offence, but what did it matter? Buddhism is foreign and by definition harmful, therefore it should be banned. Even worse is mixing Buddhism and Shintô, this is sacrilege pure and simple. Anything that is suspect of Buddhist origin should be removed from Shintô shrines. All sculptures representing Shintô deities in human form should be burned, as Shintô gods have no bodies and these sulptures were created because of Buddhist influence. The yamabushi practices should also be banned, as Tantric Buddhism influence.

DESTROY IMAGES

Motoori and Hirata did not live long enough to see it, but what they wrote about started to be introduced after the fall of Tokugawas in 1868. Tokugawas supported Buddhism, so anger against them became partly anger against Buddhist monasteries. In the beginning of 1870s a movement haibutsu kishaku (destroy Buddhas, abandon scriptures) appeared and started burning monasteries and forcing monks and nuns to return to lay life. This caused a reaction of the people, who did respect monks; in the end the revolutionary Meiji government just separated the two religions. It was proclaimed that Shintô does not know images of deities, therefore all images created through centuries should be destroyed. This is what the government said, therefore by definition was true. Anything that smelled of Buddhas was to be removed from sanctuaries. An orgy of iconoclasm started.

HOLY TRADITION

Not much have been saved from this. Some images were lucky enough to be transferred to Buddhist monasteries. Some found their way to private collections and having ceased to be cult objects did not interest cleaners of the official religion. Some were preserved in those sanctuaries where local priests preferred to keep the local holy tradition and which the official cleaners for some have not reached. So in a small shrine of Nabi Jinja in Gifu prefecture there are a couple of hundreds of kakebotoke, images of Buddhas hanged as votive offerings. In Hayatama Taisha some sculptures – without doubt representing Shintô deities – have been preserved. And in Yoshio Mikumari Jinja in Nara prefecture there are figures carved in Kamakura period and also representing Shintô gods. They are so full of charm that the very thought that they could be chopped sends one shivers. 

A Buddhist temple with shinto signs

If you want to know more on the subject, there is a book: