The Samurai And The Sacred

Nitta Yoshisada throws his sword into the sea as an offering to the gods during the battle of Kamakura in 1333. As a result of his prayer the tide pulled back and his army crossed on dry land.

Few passages in the gunkimono (war tales) of Japan elicit a chuckle. With their concentration on the inevitable working out of remorseless fate against a background of the degenerate age of Buddhism, there is not much space for humour. One exception, albeit unintentionally, occurs in Taiheiki, the epic chronicle of the 14th-century civil wars, when a reverse during the siege of Chihaya is attributed to, of all things, the losing side’s inability to write decent poetry:

Now when the fighting was stopped, the warriors’ spirits were wearied beyond endurance by lack of occupation. They brought down linked verse teachers of the Hana-no-mono school from the capital and began a linked verse of ten thousand stanzas, whereof the opening stanza on the first day was composed by Nagasaki Kurō Saemon-no-jō: ‘Forestalling the rest, show your triumphant colours, O wild cherry!’ Kudō Uemon-no-jō added a supporting stanza: ‘The tempest indeed will prove the blossoms’ foe.’ To be sure, the words of both these stanzas were skilfully allusive; likewise the form was superior. But was it not auspicious to call their own side blossoms and compare the enemy to a tempest? So indeed it was later understood.¹

The account goes on to say that in addition to poetry contests, games of backgammon and tea-judging helped pass the boredom of the siege. These, presumably, had less deleterious effects upon its subsequent outcome, because poetry, unlike backgammon, was very closely linked to prayer, and its composition could be seen as a prayerful act. In this sense it was merely one rather elaborate way whereby intercession with the kami might be carried out.

Of all the kami the ones more likely than others to be addressed by samurai were the ‘gods of war’. Hachiman is often referred to as the god of war, but even though his name was frequently invoked there were others. The list included three Buddhist deities (Marishiten, Daikokuten and Benzaiten); three Shintō kami from ancient mythology (Takemikazuchi, Futsumeshi mikoto and Kashima Daimyōjin); and historical or semi-historical personages who had been deified, such as Hachiman, his mother Empress Jing

, Takeuchi sukune, and, very surprisingly, Prince Shōtoku, Nara Buddhism’s greatest spokesman. If there was any confusion over the gods’ identities rituals might simply be offered to ‘the 98,000 gods of war’.²

The gods of war may have demonstrated their displeasure from time to time– defeat in battle was a sure sign of this – but steps could be always taken to avoid such a tragedy. Descriptions of Japan’s early military expeditions are scarce, but an operation in 602 against the Korean kingdom of Silla provides a fascinating glimpse into the early relationship between the world of the warrior and the world of the kami. When Prince Kume set off for Korea his army included Shintō priests, who offered prayers for victory and blessed weapons before battle. Prince Kume would have taken part in these rituals.³

On occasion, the war gods made it clear that they were actually pleased as a result of some action carried out by a sentient being. When Ashikaga Takauji (1305–58), the first Shogun of the Ashikaga Dynasty, advanced on Kyōto in 1336 he observed a pair of doves fluttering above his white banner. This was a highly auspicious omen, as doves were regarded as the symbol of Hachiman: their arrival at the head of Takauji’s army assured Hachiman’s favour. The Taiheiki adds that the apparition also caused thousands of enemy troops to desert to the cause of the highly favoured Ashikaga.⁴ During the same campaign, Takauji composed verses in honour of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. Shortly afterwards he had a dream in which her image appeared in a brilliant light on the bow of his ship, accompanied by 28 attendant deities, each fully armed. The favourable wind that ensued was attributed to Kannon’s favour, just as Takauji’s contemporary Imagawa Ryōshun was to do when a similarly favourable wind rewarded his poetic efforts. ‘[These events] could only indicate the actions of the gods,’ he wrote. ‘My foolish poems moved [them].’⁵

The interior of the Isaniwa Hachiman shrine in Dōgo Onsen near Matsuyama, showing the votive offerings in the form of doves, the messengers of Hachiman. If a clan that was devoted to Hachiman saw doves on the way to battle it was a very good omen.

SERVANT OF HACHIMAN

Poetry and prayers immediately before a battle were only a small part of a general’s spiritual preparations. To be absolutely successful the religious groundwork had to be laid much earlier. In 1180 the future Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo (1147–99) was in Izu province when he received the proclamation of Prince Mochihito. The later Heike Monogatari account depicts him as reluctant to respond, having to be goaded into action by the priest Mongaku, who presents Yoritomo with the skull of his father Yoshitomo, slain by the Taira.⁶ The Azuma Kagami reports no delay other than that of religious obligation. Yoritomo’s first act, before even opening the document that launched the Gempei War, was to don ceremonial robes and bow in the direction of the Iwashimizu Hachiman shrine, just as Matsuura Shigenobu was to do hundreds of years later. By this act he entrusted the fortunes of the Minamoto cause to their tutelary kami.⁷

Yoritomo was a child of his times, and a few months later he directs other prayers towards the Buddhist pantheon. Attempting to recite one thousand passages from the Lotus Sutra, he has trouble reaching his target; however, a Buddhist priest versed in numerology reassures him. He points out that as Yoritomo is the follower of Hachiman, whose name literally means ‘eight banners’, and the descendant of Hachiman Tarō Yoshiie, the great Minamoto hero, and because he was also the man chosen to punish the eight crimes of the Taira leader Kiyomori, whose residence in Kyōto was on Hachijō (Eighth Avenue), then 800 passages would suffice.⁸

Yoritomo’s religious preparations continued with the recruitment of two useful volunteers to his flag. One was a samurai who was ‘deeply versed in Shintō ritual’, while the other was a Shintō priest who claimed descent from a priest attached to the Great Shrine of Ise. Yoritomo took them into his service so that they might conduct prayers on his behalf. Even though the former was a samurai and would therefore be expected to fight, the religious contribution he could make was valued more highly.⁹

Minamoto Yoritomo, the first permanent Shogun of Japan, was typical of his age in that he had a firm belief in the influence of the kami on the outcome of a battle.

Yoritomo’s new recruits worked out the best date for his attack, but by the eve of the appointed day, when more prayers for victory were being offered, an important contingent of the Minamoto army had not yet arrived. Yoritomo’s greatest concern was that postponing the attack would impinge on a very important Buddhist ceremony scheduled for the next day. In the event, the missing samurai arrived during the early afternoon of the planned day, so Yoritomo’s initial move against the Taira – a comparatively minor skirmish – took the form of a night attack. Although the assault was entirely successful, Yoritomo now had fresh religious concerns: he feared that his military campaigning would prevent him from purifying himself through his daily recitation of the Buddhist sutras. His solution was to find a nun who would do them on his behalf, much to the relief of all concerned.¹¹ The final religious act of this military operation was a promise to make good the damage done to certain temple lands by his campaigning warriors.¹²

So far Yoritomo’s religious life was probably not atypical of the samurai class as a whole. He accepted Shintō and Buddhism as being basically the same and showed great concern over matters of divination and good luck, although there was a certain ritualistic element involved in the interpretation of omens as lucky or unlucky. For example, if a samurai was thrown by his horse when preparing for war, it was an unlucky omen only if he fell off on the right-hand side; a fall to the left was considered lucky. Similarly, if he had the misfortune to break his bow, it was an unlucky omen only if the bow broke below the hand grip. If the horse turned naturally towards the direction of the enemy, that was considered good luck; it was bad luck if the horse turned towards the general’s own troops.

Certain actions thought likely to bring bad luck were avoided prior to battle. Many involved Shintō notions of ritual purity, the most polluting elements being contact with blood, birth or death. Sexual intercourse before going on campaign was absolutely forbidden, and a general had to ensure that none of his clothes or equipment came into contact with a pregnant woman. In a similar vein, no samurai setting off to war was to come into contact with a woman within 33 days of her having given birth, or with a woman having her menstrual period. Taoist notions of lucky direction further forbade a samurai from placing his suit of armour in a north-facing direction.

It is also interesting to discover that Yoritomo wore religious amulets. One was a juzu, a string of prayer beads similar to a Catholic rosary. Yoritomo was to lose it during the subsequent battle of Ishibashiyama, and was overjoyed when it was brought to him after his flight from the battlefield.¹³ The Azuma Kagami notes that the juzu was well known to his companions. The other item was a tiny statuette of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, which he had worn in his pigtail since childhood.¹⁴ Yoritomo removed the image prior to the battle and hid it in a cave, explaining that this was not so much because he was afraid of losing the treasured amulet, but that if his head were cut off he would be ridiculed for having an image in his hair. Clearly, the demands of personal religious devotion were not universally respected.¹⁵

Despite Yoritomo’s thorough preparation, the gods did not smile upon him when he was defeated in his first major encounter with the Taira at the battle of Ishibashiyama. He wisely decided to regroup and set up his headquarters in the little seaside town of Kamakura. In part the location was chosen for sound political reasons. Kamakura was a safe distance from imperial Kyōto, which was dominated by the Taira, and it was also close to the traditional Minamoto heartlands. The choice of Kamakura had considerable religious significance as well. It was the site of the important Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine, the foremost centre in eastern Japan for the worship of the kami who was the Minamoto family’s tutelary deity.

The historical blending of Shintō and Buddhism is shown by the inclusion of this Inari shrine within the courtyard of the Buddhist temple of Kiyomizudera in Kyōto. To the left is seen a rack laden with ema – painted votive offerings bearing handwritten prayers.

The Kamakura Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine dated from 1063, when Yoritomo’s ancestor Minamoto Yoriyoshi (995–1082) had established it in gratitude for his victory in the so-called ‘Former Nine Years’ War’. It was probably through his guard duties in the capital that Yoriyoshi first became attached to Hachiman, who was prominently enshrined at the Iwashimizu Hachiman shrine to the south of Kyōto. In founding another shrine in Kamakura, Yoriyoshi welcomed this powerful kami to the general area of his military triumphs. His ambitious descendant, Minamoto Yoritomo, entered Kamakura in 1180, and on the morning after his arrival he made a visit to the Hachiman shrine. Yoritomo had plans for Kamakura, which included relocating the shrine, but it was first necessary to seek the kami’s approval for such a radical act. So Yoritomo purified himself by abstinence from meat and drew lots at the shrine’s altar. The decision was a favourable one.¹⁶

The Azuma Kagami goes on to record Yoritomo’s personal visits to the Hachiman shrine, detailing his determination to use its rebuilding and patronage as a symbol of his role as the head of the Minamoto family. As the religious focus of his campaign against the Taira, the Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine remains today as a potent reminder of the power of the Minamoto, even though it is somewhat changed in form from its early role. At the time of the Gempei War it was a prime example of a jing-ji (shrine/temple) complex, a product of the blending of Shintō and Buddhism that had characterized the Heian Period. Today, as a result of the separation of Buddhism and Shintō enforced by the Meiji government in the late 19th century, no traces of its once vibrant Buddhist nature remains.¹⁷

Not slow to recognize the honour that Yoritomo had done to him, Hachiman blessed him with his first victory against the Taira at the battle of the Fujigawa, where the Taira samurai were alarmed into thinking that the noise made by a flock of wildfowl was a surprise night attack.¹⁸ It was a turning point in the Gempei War. From this time on, Yoritomo took almost no part in the actual fighting and left the business of defeating the Taira to his brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori and his cousin Yoshinaka. This was accomplished through major victories at Kurikara (1183), Ichinotani (1184) and Yashima (1184). Even before Yoritomo’s ‘crowning mercy’ that was the battle of Dannoura in 1185 – a naval battle where the sea ran red with the blood of the Taira and the red dye from their flags – he had sufficient confidence in his ultimate triumph to pledge his support for the righting of a great wrong:

Regarding the Tōdaiji: the aforementioned temple has been damaged by Heike rebels, and subjected to the trials of a fire. Its images have been burned to ashes and its priests and monks have perished. Rarely has a temple seen such trials and tribulations, for which I express my personal grief. I now pledge the repair and reconstruction of this temple so that it might continue to offer prayers for the defence and safety of the nation. Although the world is in decline, the benign virtue of the ruler will promote the prosperity of both the imperial government and the Buddhist Law.¹⁹

The Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine in Kamakura, founded by Minamoto Yoriyoshi to enshrine the tutelary deity of the Minamoto family. Yoritomo used the shrine as the focus of his efforts to build a power base in eastern Japan.

Yoritomo’s final victory at Dannoura eliminated Taira influence and established Yoritomo as Japan’s first permanent Shogun. The victory was remarkable in many ways, not least for the Taira’s extraordinary decision to take with them into battle the infant Emperor Antoku and the three sacred emblems that made up the Japanese crown jewels. When the battle was lost the young emperor’s grandmother jumped into the sea with the child, drowning them both. ‘Ah, the pity of it,’ says Heike Monogatari in its finest Buddhist rhetoric, ‘That the gust of the spring wind of impermanence should so suddenly sweep away his flower form.’²⁰ The dowager empress had the sacred sword and the sacred jewel with her as she committed suicide. The jewel was recovered when the casket in which it was kept floated to the surface, but the sword was never found. Its disappearance was not lost on those who saw the signs of mappõ all around them:²¹ it was a warning that the imperial court had lost its vitality and would need to be defended by warriors, whose rise to power was in itself indicative of the world’s fallen state. This was the nearest that any Japanese person (in this specific case the monk Jien in his 13th-century history Gukanshõ) could allow himself to move towards the Chinese notion of imperial rule by the mandate of heaven.²²

Yamanaka Shika no suke, the loyal retainer of the Amako family, who prayed to the three-day-old moon for help in restoring the fortunes of the family.

With the coming of peace, Yoritomo found time to put other religious matters right. According to Azuma Kagami, since the death of his father Yoshitomo in the Heiji insurrection of 1160, Yoritomo had read the Lotus Sutra every day to pray for the salvation of his parent’s departed soul. In 1185 his wish to transfer his father’s remains to Kamakura came true.²³

The ‘Kamakura Period’ refers to the next 150 years of Japanese history, when the government passed from the imperial capital of Kyōto to Kamakura, the capital of the newly established bakufu or Shogunate. Even though the triumph of the Minamoto over the Taira was complete, they had only three generations left in which to enjoy the benevolence of the kami, and were in turn usurped by Yoritomo’s widow’s family, the Hōjō. Yet such was the respect for the institution of the Shogunate that the Hōjō ruled only as regents in the form of the Hōjō shikken until being overthrown in 1333. It was therefore under the rule of the Hōjō that the samurai and the sacred faced their most serious threat.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

By the middle of the 13th century the great Mongol Empire – begun by Genghis Khan and brought to its culmination by his grandson Khubilai Khan, the first Yuan (Mongol) emperor of China – had grown far beyond the grasslands of Central Asia. Japan first perceived a threat when the Mongols acquired control over Korea and its naval resources. In 1266 and again in 1269, Khubilai Khan sent envoys on a mission to Japan. The envoys reported back to Khubilai Khan that the Japanese were ‘cruel and bloodthirsty’ and lived in ‘a country of thugs’.²⁴ This negative view may well have been one factor behind Khubilai Khan’s decision to pacify the unruly island empire and bring it under his sway. Not surprisingly, his demand for tribute from Japan provoked a harsh reaction. The Japanese, who fully appreciated the threat of invasion thereby conveyed, were placed on their guard, and did not have to wait long for the outcome. Khubilai Khan gave orders to Korea to supply 900 ships and an army of 5,000 men. The fleet that finally set sail in 1274 included 15,000 Yuan (Mongol) soldiers and 8,000 Koreans, together with a very large number of crewmen.²⁵

The Mongol invasions of Japan (Khubilai Khan’s army returned in 1281) provided the only occasion in over 600 years when the samurai fought enemies other than themselves. The first attempt at invasion was a short-lasting affair, typical of the usual Mongol pattern of sending out a reconnaissance in force prior to a major campaign. It was met with incredible bravery by the samurai of the islands of Tsushima and Iki, and finally by the warriors of the mainland when the Mongols landed near Hakata in northern Ky

The Mongol invaders returned to Japan in 1281, determined to conquer and occupy the country, as evidenced by the inclusion of farm implements on board the invasion fleet.²⁶ Their vanguard attacked Tsushima and Iki, then attempted to land in Hakata Bay. As before, the ferocity of the Japanese defence forced them back, but the Mongols established themselves on two islands in the bay. From there, they launched attacks against the Japanese for about a week, then withdrew offshore until reinforcements arrived. While the full fleet lay at anchor, a typhoon blew up and was devastating in its effects. Forced by the Japanese raids to stay in their ships and unable to drop anchor in protected harbour waters, the Mongol fleet was obliterated. Tens of thousands of men were left behind with the wreckage as the remains of the fleet headed home, and most of these were killed in Japanese attacks over the following few days. The typhoon became known as the kami kaze (divine wind), sent by the Sun-Goddess to aid her people.²⁷ It was this term, kami kaze, that the suicide pilots of World War II adopted as their title, thus identifying themselves with the successful destruction of an invader.

An ema, at the Isaniwa Hachiman shrine in Dōgo Onsen near Matsuyama, showing the action at the battle of Uji in 1184.

Decisive though the typhoon was, it would have been minimal in its effectiveness if the determination and fighting qualities of the samurai had not forced the entire fleet to lie at anchor with all their armies on board and unable to establish a beachhead. The samurai mounted their defence against a strange enemy that attacked in large formations and flung exploding bombs at them. When the dust had settled, all these factors had to be taken into account for the allotting of awards, a process that caused a strange and unique rift between the samurai and the sacred.

One outstanding example of an aggrieved samurai was Takezaki Suenaga. At the conclusion of hostilities, Suenaga felt that he had been denied the rewards that were properly his, so he took his complaints directly to the Hōjō’s capital of Kamakura. His efforts to obtain a reward were every bit as insistent as his efforts against the Mongols, and of much longer duration. The journey to Kamakura from his home province of Higo took five months each way, with the interview lasting the better part of a whole day. He also commissioned a remarkable set of scroll paintings called the Mõko Shrai Ekotoba.²⁸ The scrolls are among the most important primary sources for the appearance and behaviour of samurai in the 13th century, but they were never intended to be a historical document for posterity. They were instead created purely to press his claim for reward.²⁹ Suenaga eventually got what he wanted, even though his achievements were not quite as impressive as he seems to have thought. During the first invasion he did not kill a single Mongol. His sole achievement would appear to have been leading a suicidal charge with only four companions as the Mongols were retreating. His horse was killed under him, and Suenaga would almost certainly have been killed had another Japanese detachment not managed to rescue him. His military record in 1281 was better when he took part in one of the famous ‘little ship’ raids against the Mongol fleet. Using only his sword and his quick wits, Suenaga cut off some enemy heads.

The problem that Suenaga and his comrades faced lay in the two unique aspects of the Mongol campaign. The first was that, unlike any previous encounter since the birth of the samurai, there were no conquered enemy lands to share among the victor’s faithful followers. The second problem was that in the distribution of largesse the samurai had to stand in line along with the sacred, because certain religious institutions pressed claims for reward every bit as insistently as those who had fought in battle. The basis for the claims lodged by shrines and temples was that their prayers had brought about the victory. The matter was not just concerned with the blowing of the kami kaze, which was commonly regarded as the answer to the prayers made at Ise to the Sun-Goddess by the representative of her earthly descendant. On other occasions during the fighting prayers had been made and had been answered appropriately. That the bakufu believed this is shown by the fact that at least two shrines, and possibly more, received rewards before any samurai did so. In addition, a letter of 1284 accompanying a donation to the Usa Hachiman shrine acknowledges the service rendered and asks the priest to keep praying, because ‘it is rumoured that enemies may come to attack us again’.³⁰

An interesting trend in recent years in Japanese religion has been the erection of enormous statues of Kannon. This example is on the island of Ikitsuki, and from this angle its head appears to be poking out from the ground, although it is in a valley.

In commenting upon these claims it has been suggested that priests and monks ‘made up stories which seem incredible to us today, giving the intervention of their deities full credit for the destruction of the Mongol armada in order to claim rewards’.³¹ But this is to misunderstand the religious mindset of the times. Takezaki Suenaga fought, and he also prayed, as a belief in the ‘this-worldly’ efficacy of prayer permeated the whole of the samurai’s environment. In the well-chosen words of Thomas Conlan, ‘The battlefield was conceived as a realm where gods and buddhas mingled with men.’³² Nevertheless, the resolution of the Mongol threat caused a temporary rift in this ancient acceptance. For the only time in Japanese history a dispute over reward placed the worlds of the samurai and the sacred into two separate and competing spheres in a way that would have been incomprehensible to Minamoto Yoritomo, whose personal victories were attributed to personal gods.

The interior of the shrine on the island of Iki, dedicated to Taira Kagetaka, the governor of the island during the first Mongol invasion in 1274.

The actual situation regarding the claims for reward deposited by shrines and temples was a more extraordinary one than is implied by a simple fabrication of stories or competing claims by samurai and priests. In certain cases rival religious claims set kami against kami. In one extreme example, the Iwashimizu shrine claimed the credit for the raising of the kami kaze because of Buddhist prayers that were offered on behalf of Hachiman, rather than that of Amaterasu. Seven hundred Buddhist monks had been involved in a seven-day-long service for the repulse of the Mongols, and Hachiman spoke through a medium to tell them that he had been so strengthened by prayer that he was about to blow the fleet away. A messenger later confirmed that this had occurred while the prayer service was in progress, and everyone was awestruck at the news.³³

A dead samurai in full yoroi armour typical of the Kamakura Period wars, from the Kasuga Gongen Scroll.

Monks and priests, whose petitions to the bakufu included reports of kami in the form of dragons, birds or monkeys, were as persistent as Takezaki Suenaga in seeking reward, and considerably more patient. As late as 1309 the chief priest of the Takeo shrine was to be found complaining that he still had received no reward, even though in 1274 the kami had shot arrows against the Mongol host, and in 1281 witnesses had seen three purple banners on top of his shrine flying towards the Mongol ships just before the kami kaze struck them.³⁴

A PROPHET WITHOUT HONOUR

Among the new Buddhist sects that developed during the 13th century, Japan had acquired one that was to have a curious bearing on the religious side of the Mongol defeat. The monk Nichiren was born in 1222 in Awa province in eastern Japan. He entered the religious life, but finding that provincial Awa was not the best environment for his earnest and inquiring mind, he had studied on Mount Hiei. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Nichiren did not become the pupil of a particular teacher. Instead he found his inspiration among scripture, and soon became the greatest devotee of the Lotus Sutra.³⁵ To Nichiren this contained the essence and reality of all Buddhist teaching. To some extent, therefore, Nichiren did not turn away from the Tendai teaching, but turned back to it. He vehemently rejected the esoteric Buddhism that he felt had corrupted the original truths contained in the Lotus Sutra, where ‘Namu Myõhõ Renge-kyõ!’ (‘Hail to the Lotus of the Divine Law!’) was the pledge of salvation, a phrase that could be easily and dramatically beaten in time with a drum.³⁶

A bas-relief on the plinth of a statue of Nichiren in Hakata. He is being escorted on his way to execution (a sentence later commuted) by armed samurai. The figure of Nichiren has been polished by the hands of numerous pilgrims.

Nichiren did not believe that the disorder of the times was due to some cosmic arithmetic concerned with calculating the time of mappõ. It was instead the inevitable consequence of a land that had abandoned the True Law and given itself over to false teachings. In 1260 he wrote Risshõ Ankoku Ron (On Establishing the Correct Teaching and Pacifying the Nation), a religious polemic that he presented to the former regent of Japan, Hōjō Tokiyori. Tokiyori did not accept Nichiren’s suggestion that natural calamities were the result of bad governance. This point came very near to political heresy, and in 1261 Nichiren was banished from Kamakura. He returned from a brief exile more belligerent than ever, and sustained a broken arm in a tussle with opponents.³⁷

Nichiren gradually became more deeply entrenched in his views, demanding exclusive devotion to the Lotus Sutra. He called Kōbō Daishi ‘the greatest liar in Japan’. The nembutsu (Buddha-calling) of the Pure Land sects was the cause of punishment in the lowest of hells, while Zen was the doctrine of demons.³⁸ These comments have naturally caused Nichiren and his followers to be accused of having broken the tradition of religious tolerance in Japan,³⁹ although Nichiren’s exclusivism was far more than mere intolerance.⁴⁰ By this time, the Japanese government had cause to take a new interest in this fiery outsider, because in his 1260 tract Nichiren had warned that unless Japan mended her ways she would be visited by the spectre of foreign invasion. The arrival of the Mongol envoys with Khubilai Khan’s demands for tribute transformed Nichiren’s image into that of a visionary. It was the period of greatest numerical growth among Nichiren’s followers, but their harsh and uncompromising stand against all other believers made Nichiren into a prophet without honour in his own country. Harsh persecution followed and Nichiren was condemned to death, although the sentence was finally commuted to exile. On his way to execution the procession passed a shrine to Hachiman, where Nichiren stopped and mockingly challenged the great kami to save him.⁴¹

Katō Kiyomasa was afervent adherent oftheNichiren sect, and isshown in this print inaction at the battle of Shizugatake in 1583 withthe Nichiren motto ‘Namu Myõhõ Renge-kyõ!’ (‘Hail tothe Lotus ofthe DivineLaw!’) emblazoned on his sashimono(back flag).

Nichiren kept his attitude of rigid exclusivity until his death in 1282, by which time the Mongols had come and gone. Unlike so many other religious figures who had been involved in some way with the tumultuous events of the Mongol invasions, Nichiren neither demanded nor expected any reward. His most tangible link with the Mongols exists today in the city of Hakata, where a memorial to the defeat of the invaders bears on its side scenes from the Mongol attacks and from his own life. Towering above them is a huge statue of the prophet, as fierce and uncompromising in bronze as he ever was in life; the perfect embodiment of Japan’s most turbulent priest.

THE SACRED SAMURAI

It was not long before civil war began again, brought about by an attempt by Emperor Go Daigo to rule as his imperial ancestors had done before without the influence of a Shogun. In 1333 his supporters attacked the Hōjō capital of Kamakura, which was defended on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the sea. In spite of hours of fierce fighting, no real breakthrough had been achieved by Nitta Yoshisada’s investing army; however, he realized that there was a chance of outflanking the defences if it were possible to round the cape where the promontory of Inamuragasaki projects into the sea. There was a small expanse of beach at low tide, but the tide was high and the Hōjō had taken the added precaution of placing several ships a short distance from the shore, from which a barrage of arrows could cover any flanking attack.

Nitta Yoshisada resorted, quite naturally, to prayer. The words attributed to him in Taiheiki reflect exactly the religious belief of the times: the primacy of the founder of the imperial line whose cause Yoshisada had espoused and her identification with a supreme manifestation of Buddha, as well as the mysterious rule of the oceans by the dragon gods:

The dying warrior. A mortally wounded samurai tries to rise to his feet using his bloodstained sword.

I have heard that the Sun-Goddess of Ise, the founder of the land of Japan, conceals her true being in the august image of Vairocana Buddha, and that she appeared in this world in the guise of a dragon-god in the blue ocean. Now her descendant our emperor drifts on the waves of the western seas, oppressed by rebellious subjects… Let the eight dragon-gods of the inner and outer seas look upon my loyalty; let them roll back the tides a myriad leagues distant to open a way for my host.⁴²

So saying he took his sword and threw it into the sea as an offering to the dragon-gods, and the waters parted like the Red Sea before Moses.

With the fall of Kamakura the reign of the Hōjō Regents, the family who had defied the Mongols on Japan’s behalf, came to an end. However, Go Daigo’s initial success faltered for the same reasons that had clouded the defeat of the Mongols, when one of his followers, Ashikaga Takauji, felt that he had not received sufficient rewards for his services. When the emperor sent him to war again Takauji proclaimed himself as the new Shogun. This led to a long conflict known as the Nanbokuchō War, the ‘War Between the Courts’ – so called because the Ashikaga retaliated against their labelling as rebels against the throne by setting up their own nominee as emperor. Takauji also moved the Shogunate to Kyōto and established a palace in the Muromachi district of the city; thus, the time of Ashikaga rule is known as the Muromachi Period.

Just as Yoritomo was devoted to Kannon and carried an amulet of her with him, Ashikaga Takauji claimed to be particularly favoured by Jizō and carried with him a small statuette of this popular deity.⁴³ Jizō was originally the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, whose worship may have appeared in Japan about the 10th century.⁴⁴ His particular role is to save those on their way to hell, and as a bodhisattva Jizō made a vow not to attain Buddhahood until the last soul in hell might be redeemed. Takauji’s devotion to Jizō was somewhat unconventional for a member of the samurai class, since Jizō was seen more as the special protector of the lower classes in society. It is also interesting to see how this versatile Buddhist divinity took over the role of the traditional ‘kami of the road’, who was believed to guard the turning points of highways. Jizō added to this the concept of being the guardian of those who were at a turning point in their lives, particularly those who were facing the life to come.⁴⁵ In the course of time Jizō also came to be regarded as the special protector of children who had died, including stillborn infants and aborted foetuses.⁴⁶ The combination of these two roles means that Jizō is one of the most common religious images seen in Japan today. Along with wayside Shintō shrines, it is the little stone statues of Jizō wearing babies’ bibs and knitted woollen hats that most excite the curiosity of the visitor to Japan. They may be decorated with flowers or pinwheels, but the traditional votive offering to make before a Jizō is a pebble, because ‘each of these pebbles meant one pebble less to be heaped up on the beach of the river in hell by the souls of the children, who stood under Jizō’s protection’.⁴⁷

Nichiren’s most tangible link with the Mongols exists today in the city of Hakata, where a memorial to the defeat of the invaders bears on its side scenes from the Mongol attacks and from his own life. Towering above them is a huge statue of the prophet, as fierce and uncompromising in bronze as he ever was in life; the perfect embodiment of Japan’s most turbulent priest. This identical statue is in Kyōto.

Ashikaga Takauji’s devotion to Jizō was of course very different, as the god guaranteed him military victory. Takauji repeatedly dreamed of Jizō, and also drew pictures of him. He may have hedged his bets with prayers and poetry to Kannon and Hachiman, but in a remarkable personal development Takauji believed that he was not only the unique recipient of Jizō’s favour, but was actually a manifestation of the bodhisattva on earth.⁴⁸ No samurai leader could go further than this in claiming divine guidance for his acts, and in fact none seem to have dared to make such an outrageous connection between god and man.

History was to record the gods’ displeasure at this presumption, albeit mediated through the opinions of men. Although one of the most successful samurai commanders in Japanese history, Ashikaga Takauji is traditionally reviled for opposing the cause of the rightful emperor Go Daigo and for bringing about the death in 1336 of Kusunoki Masashige: the nearest thing Japan ever produced to a samurai saint. Masashige, whose cult (there is no other adequate expression) was popularized during the Meiji Restoration when exemplars of loyalty towards the imperial ideal were sorely needed, met his end as a result of unquestioning devotion to the imperial will. Takauji, on the other hand, turned against the emperor and set up his own candidate for the throne. There is a wooden statue of him in the Tōji-In in Kyōto, and until recently one could pay a small fee to beat it with a stick. In such a way Ashikaga Takauji, the sacred samurai, suffered a long-delayed act of revenge from which neither Hachiman nor Kannon nor Jizō could save him.

A statue of Jizō surrounded by pebbles at Unzen, near Nagasaki. The pebbles have been left by visitors in the belief that this will help dead children in the afterlife.

THE GODS GO TO WAR

SERVANT OF HACHIMAN

DIVINE INTERVENTION

A PROPHET WITHOUT HONOUR

THE SACRED SAMURAI