Temples of Kyoto. Donald Richie
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achieved a political power which Shinto could never match.
At the same time, however, different though the two religions appeared, they were—such being the way of the country—shortly brought into a kind of harmony with each other. Indeed, the ease with which these apparently inimical beliefs were accommodated makes one wonder about the real depth of either.
Sir George Sansom has voiced these doubts. "The Japanese as a people have displayed in matters of belief a tolerance amounting almost to indifference." But there was also undoubtedly another reason for this religious alloy, one which Karel van Wolferen has indicated in speaking of the melding of Shinto with Buddhism: "An amalgamation of the two religions was clearly an official policy designed to strengthen their joint endorsement of existing worldly rule."
Of the process itself, Shuichi Kato has written that "Buddhism in Japan absorbed native gods and was simultaneously transformed by contact with them... the Japanese gods themselves were transformed by Buddhism, since gods who once were objects of worship prior to the arrival of Buddhism' did not have their own myths, doctrines, shrines, or images."
Later, "under the influence of Buddhism, consistent myths and doctrines were created, the architecture of Shinto shrines was developed, and images of gods were produced." The popular Shinto deity Hachiman is called Hachiman Daibosatsu, and his original home is described as the Pure Land in the west where he is otherwise known as Amida. Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, is also at holy Ise known as the Kanzeon Bosatsu, that is, as the incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
There was a name for this: honji suijaku, which means the manifestation of the Buddha incarnated in the form of the native gods. In taking over Shinto to this extent Buddhist authorities knew what they were doing since the native religion still defined the natives. It still continues to do so, for as Nicholas Palevsky has written: "Shinto is characterized not by scriptures and churches but by... a concern for purity and defilement... Shinto is not so much a matter of personal belief as it is of being Japanese."
Beneath the Chinese infatuation (as beneath later crushes on things European and American) this native inclination persists. It resisted the ethical high-mindedness which so reflected the philosophy of Confucious, it opposed the presumed universality of China with the concrete detail and the specific example; to the model conduct of the sages, it opposed the beauty and variety of the world it knew.
No matter how much the eighth-century aristocrat was convinced of China's greatness, he is unlikely to have consequently altered all of his feelings and changed all of his opinions. Just as the modern Japanese resists a complete Westernization (one does riot trod shod in the house, one does not lather in the bath), so his ancestor must have resisted a complete Sinozation.
There is an indication of this in a complaint seen in a 724 Nara report which said that the capital lacked majesty and virtue because there were so many native plank-roofed dwellings and thatched roofs. These are difficult to build and easy to destroy, yet their presence was persisting. The report advised that all high-ranking persons be required to erect tiled dwellings and to paint them red and white in the Chinese style.
Native Japanese needs and tastes continued, however, to assert themselves and often accounted for the combinations through which the foreign influence was changed into something which was both more practical and more in accord with being Japanese.
An architectural example is that important part of the temple known as the kondo, or Buddha hall. The Japanese originally saw it in the form of a scaled model brought by a Paekche mission in 588. The first such halls constructed in Japan were all careful copies. Eventually these were seen as impractical.
The completely symmetrical is something rarely seen in native Japanese art—it too often sacrifices human convenience for reasons both aesthetic and symbolic. The Chinese-style kondo symmetrically dispensed with practicality for symmetry and comfort for effect. Simple human convenience, always prized in Japan, was consequently sacrificed. So, the hall was soon after adapted to native purposes which attempted to retain something of Chinese dignity while accommodating Japanese pragmatic needs. Now the new Buddha hall could hold a lay congregation indoors where they could see and hear the service, and at the same time it had space in which to perform the tantric rites in secrecy.
In this manner an approximation of a national style was returned to religious architecture. It shared with Shinto a practicality, a directness, a humanity one might say, which the Chinese original had not originally evidenced. Now, composed of old and new, the native and the imported, the Buddha hall became Japanese.
Buddhism in Japan was influenced not only by Shinto but also by two systems of thought which, if not precisely religions, functioned remarkably like them. Temple organization and architecture in Japan were in part formed by both Confucianism and Taoism. The former allowed and excused power and the latter extended this power into the further realms of superstition.
They came together in (as seen in one example of their manifestations) geomancy (hoigaku), This originally came from China (fengshui) and entered Japan within a decade (554) of Buddhism. It is a complicated technique for the handling (and creating) of good fortune. Taoist in origin, it was taken over only in part in Japan where it became largely a preventative art, one governed by fear of misfortune.
Temporally, it concerns itself not so much with "good days" (for weddings, the beginning of businesses, etc.) as it is with "bad days" when any kind of action was impermissible. Court lady Sei Shonagon (968-1024) has left a despairing account of the exhausting detours necessary on inauspicious occasions and figuring largely in the list of things hateful in her pillow book, the Makura no Soshi, are the inconveniences of geomanistic superstition.
Spatially, in equally negative manner, hoigaku also concerned itself with things forbidden. Early Buddhist compounds were all built according to forbidding principles. Charts were drawn up with the cardinal points indicated. Here a gate could let in only melancholy; a well in this spot brings worries but a gate does no harm; here, however, a lavatory promises ruin. Such beliefs much affected the lives of the inhabitants.
There was, for example, the belief that evil comes from the northeast. Confucious had slept with his head in that direction and so, consequently did a number of Japanese emperors. Shirakawa, insisted upon it, saying that by lying on his right side with his head to the northeast he could then emulate Buddha's posture as he entered Nirvana. But was this safe, someone wondered and someone else remarked that the great Ise Shrine lay to the south and questioned whether it were proper for the imperial highness to sleep with his feet toward the great shrine. No answer is recorded, but a decision was early reached to avoid the north. Sei Shonagon had included in her listing of Things that People Despise: "The north side of the house."
These geographical ordinances are in some sense still fundamental to Japanese architecture. For example, in any domestic building, on no account should the lavatory, the entrance, or the kitchen be placed on a northeast-southwest axis. The northeast is thought the home of evil and the southwest its compliment. It might be said that there was some original practical reason for this. Southwest winds would tend to fan flames from the kitchen. Whatever—in Japan such reason was not consulted and the Chinese rules were observed.
They still are. Even in a new house, the lavatory is found next to the entryway (and the living room) because this is one way to avoid the dreaded northeast-southwest axis. Even today the home architect consults the architectural soothsayer, who has been known to later sell amulets for points not in order. Even now many buildings in Kyoto (including the imperial palace) have their northeast corners cut off to deflect evil. But before we make too merry over this exhibition of superstitious ignorance it would be well to count the number of hotels in the West which (in by far the preponderance of cases) have no thirteenth floor.
One of the results of geomancy was that the northeast became the dangerous direction in general as well as in particular. The great militant monasteries on Mount Hiei were originally built on those heights because they are northeast of the capital, the palace, and the emperor, and