Before the Tokugawa Period very few swordsmen were able to lift the art of the samurai sword on to a higher philosophical plane. The men who succeeded were the kengõ (master swordsmen) like Miyamoto Musashi, who went on ‘warrior pilgrimages’ (musha sh
gyõ). This painting of the great swordsman is in Kumamoto.
Throughout this book the point has been made that the world of the samurai and the world of the sacred were not opposing entities. Instead, the two aspects coalesced into one unitary world view. To the Western mind there is no better evidence of this fact than the link that is frequently made between the samurai and Zen Buddhism. To many outsiders Zen is Japanese religion, and is therefore used to explain everything about the samurai from the battlefield to the tea house. This chapter will show that Zen does not provide the sole answer to ‘what made the samurai tick’, neither in art nor in warfare. Other influences contributed to the complex nature of the samurai’s religious beliefs, and to the survival of the cultural legacy of the samurai and the sacred.
Zen Buddhism is by its nature a very confusing subject. Its origins may be traced back to the preaching of the historical Buddha, but not through any scriptures like the Lotus Sutra. Instead we are told that Buddha was once offered a flower and asked to preach the Law. He turned the flower in his hand but said nothing. All of his disciples were mystified, except one, the wise K
shyapa, who realized the significance of the teaching, and was thereby entrusted with handing down a truth that could be transmitted without words.
Zen was taken to China by Bodhidharma, the 28th successor to Kshyapa, during the 6th century AD.1 Bodhidharma is known in Japan as Daruma, whose image is one of the most familiar depictions of a holy man to be seen anywhere in Japan today. Daruma spent nine years in meditation, and the effects this had on his physical state are expressed artistically by his appearance as a mystic wrapped in a cloak with wide open eyes and withered legs. His eyes stare because he is said to have once fallen asleep and was so ashamed of himself that he cut off his eyelids.2 Daruma also appears in this guise as a lucky doll. Traditionally you buy a Daruma doll with no eyes painted in, so you paint in one eye and make a wish. When the wish comes true you paint in the other eye. Darumas are very popular at the time of elections, and one imagines there are lots of discarded one-eyed Darumas after the votes have been counted.
A striking depiction of the Zen patriarch Daruma on the wall of a temple in Hikone.
The great pioneers of Zen in Japan continued this tradition of influence through a master who possessed a larger-than-life personality. The first Zen evangelist, Eisai (1141–1215), studied on Mount Hiei. On his return to Japan from China with the message of Zen he based himself in Kamakura, where his ideas (and his other Chinese innovation: the drinking of tea) found favour with the military government. But when Eisai moved to Kyōto he was forced to compromise with the established sects if his new ideas were to have any hope of taking root. Eisai’s teachings became the Rinzai school of Zen, which made particular use of the kõan, a theme or problem the solution of which leads to sudden understanding. This moment of truth could be stimulated by some sudden dynamic revelation introduced by an external event – hence the familiar image of the Zen master striking his disciples on the back with a wooden stick.3
Eisai’s willingness to compromise was in the great tradition of the accommodative world of the sacred in Japan, and it certainly helped the promulgation of his teaching. One characteristic of Zen has always been its adaptability; however, Eisai’s successor Dōgen (1200–53) reflected the opposite virtue of Zen by his rugged determination and uncompromising independence. This led to him leaving Kyōto for Echizen province, where he founded the Sōtō school of Zen. Instead of the Rinzai kõan being used to provide enlightenment, Dōgen stressed the practice of zazen (sitting in meditation) with no problem or goal in mind. The result would not be a sudden flash of awakening, but a gradual life-long realization. It was an attitude that could, and should, find additional expression through the performance of life’s mundane daily tasks. A Zen monk raking the sand in a temple garden or a swordsman in a dõjõ (practice hall) might both be expressing these very sentiments through their actions.4
Daruma is most often encountered in Japan as a lucky doll. Here is a collection of Daruma dolls waiting to be finished at a factory near Otsu.
The rapid growth of Zen is a remarkable instance of the wide-reaching developments that took place within Japanese Buddhism during the Kamakura Period. When Minamoto Yoritomo established his Shogunate in Kamakura there was not a single Zen monastery in Japan. In 1333 the members of the Hōjō regency ended the era by an act of mass suicide performed within a Zen temple, the Tōshōji, an institution that was then but one among many in Japan.
Why did Zen spread so rapidly? The usual explanation given for the popularity of Zen is the enormous appeal it had for the samurai. The word ‘Zen’ means meditation or concentration. Unlike other Buddhist sects, with their emphases on faith in Amida’s vow or the seeking of enlightenment through study and ritual, Zen proclaimed that salvation was not to be sought outside oneself or in another world, because each person has an inner Buddha nature. Zen demanded discipline and emphasized self-understanding rather than hours spent studying texts. It also stressed intuition and action, and through its promise of enlightenment within this life rather than a world to come, a samurai was helped to face the prospect of death in battle with an attitude of detachment.
In an age threatened by the uncertainty of mappõ, Zen offered a solution that was the complete opposite from the populist Amidist sects. Hōnen and Shinran taught that people could no longer help themselves (jiriki) but must be helped by another (tariki). Zen looked closer into the human soul than any other sect; so close, in fact, that it could demand great efforts on the part of its practitioners. In spite of Dōgen’s praise for the ‘daily round and common task’, the monastery therefore provided its ideal setting, where only an elite few could pursue such a path. The samurai lay one step removed from the monastery, but turned to Zen because it offered them so much. This impression that Zen was very much ‘in tune’ with the samurai mind has given rise to the popular misconception that almost everything concerned with the samurai and the sacred can be explained completely by their espousal of Zen. From archery to garden design and from ink-painting to suicide, almost any topic can be considered under the by-line of ‘Zen and the Art of…’. Haiku poetry, the Noh theatre, landscape gardening, flower arranging and the tea ceremony, let alone the entire canon of the martial arts, are all explained through the lens of Zen.5 One eminent enthusiast describes this phenomenon in the following terms:
When absolute cleanliness is a thing sought after, a Zen gardener may have a few dead leaves scattered over the garden. A Zen sword-player may stand in an almost nonchalant attitude before the foe as if the latter can strike him in any way he liked; but when he actually tries his best, the Zen man would overawe him with his very unconcernedness.6
Zen was undoubtedly attractive to the samurai mind, and some warriors are known to have practised meditation so assiduously that they were awarded certificates by Chinese masters.7 One authority links the samurai class to Zen through the ‘honest poverty’, ‘manliness’ and ‘courage and composure of mind’ that they had in common.8 But as this book has shown already, the contribution of Buddhism to the development of the samurai class within the Japanese ‘religious supermarket’ was much wider than could ever be encompassed within the teaching of one single sect, no matter how death-defying or manly that sect was. Also, many of the supposed exclusive precepts of Zen that are most often applied to the way of the samurai may be found elsewhere. For example, self-discipline lies at the very heart of Confucianism, and it was not just Zen practitioners who willingly accepted death in battle. Such fatalism was the sine qua non of the samurai warriors who fought in the Ikkō-ikki armies of Jōdo Shinsh
. Even the mikkyõ Buddhism of Shingon, with its mystical rituals and secret transmission of doctrine, resembles Zen in its essential intangibility and its promise of enlightenment within this life. Shingon’s painted mandalas, although very different in appearance from the understated brushwork of a Zen sumi-e scroll, provided a similar opportunity for insight into Buddha nature. Indeed, the continuing development of Zen after the fall of the Hōjō owes a great deal to the mingling of esoteric Buddhism with Zen in the person of an interesting character called Musō Soseki (1275–1351).
The famous Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) is a temple hall by the side of a lake in Kyōto. It was founded by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and represents a particular artistic tradition in Japan.
Musō Soseki studied Shingon Buddhism before entering the Zen priesthood and in 1325 became abbot of the famous Nanzenji temple in Kyōto. He was an important influence on the first Ashikaga Shogun, Takauji, and it was at Soseki’s behest that Takauji established the ankokuji temples for the pacification of the war dead. When Soseki died his successor, Gidō (1334–88), continued to win friends and influence people. As an authority on Neo-Confucianism as well as Zen, Gidō became the confidant of the great Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408). Yoshimitsu was the ‘renaissance prince’ of Japan who not only brought to an end the schism in the imperial family, but also promoted trade relations with China (sundered because of the Mongol invasions) and patronized art and culture on a grand scale. It is to him that we owe the exquisite Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) in Kyōto. The present Kinkakuji is a replacement after its destruction by an arsonist in 1950, and its original form contained some remarkable interior features that expressed the syncretic nature of Japanese religion. The ground floor housed a statue of Amida Buddha. The next floor up had a statue of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, while the uppermost floor was a Zen sanctuary.9
The Golden Pavilion may be glorious, but in the quest for Zen aesthetics the earnest student tends to look elsewhere in Kyōto for something much more restrained, and finds it on the opposite side of the city in the Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion). The Silver Pavilion was built by Yoshimitsu’s grandson, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–90), whose remarkable contributions to Japanese culture and Zen aesthetics were cruelly disrupted by the terrible Onin War of 1467–77, which reduced much of Kyōto to ashes and marked the curtain-raiser for the Age of Warring States. The situation of the times meant that no funds were available to cover the Ginkakuji in silver, so it remains to this day as a natural wood pavilion buried in the shadows of the hills of Higashiyama. It may actually have been Yoshimasa’s intention to leave it in this modest state, because much of what we know as ‘Zen culture’ is enshrined here. The building represents perfectly the principle of sabi – the appreciation of that which is old, faded and rustic – and it exudes a lonely aura. It also expresses wabi, a more abstract concept that has to do with quietness and tranquillity.10 Near to it lies the Tōgdō, which houses a simple room that is considered to be the forerunner of the Japanese tea house. Finally, beside the Ginkakuji stretches one of Japan’s most famous Zen gardens, although this was added during the 17th century and was probably not in the original design. An expanse of raked white sand with a raised cone said to represent Mount Fuji, it is said to look most beautiful in moonlight.
Related to sabi and wabi is the much older artistic principle of ygen, roughly translatable as ‘mystery’. In art there is ygen in the achievement of a simple perfection and a perfect simplicity. As ‘a suggestive indefiniteness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect’, art produced under the spirit of ygen hints at things rather than stating them plainly. The Noh theatre is the greatest example of ygen in action, or rather in inaction, when a moment of stillness rather than of gesture conveys something very profound.11 Once again one must not rush to the conclusion that ygen, wabi and sabi are exclusively the property of Zen. All had their origins long before Zen came on to the scene. Seami (1363–1443), the great master of Noh, took existing artistic values and both transformed and enhanced them through the influence of Zen. What was ‘charming’ in the Heian Period became ‘moving’ in the Muromachi Period. But even if Zen is recognizable in the expression of the Noh theatre, there is much more than Zen Buddhism to be found in the content of the plots of its plays. These strange tales of ghosts and tragic victims contain strong elements of folk religion and a longing for rebirth in the Buddhist Pure Land. Shintō kami also play a prominent role, so the Noh theatre may be regarded more as an expression of the syncretic blending of Japanese religious and artistic traditions both in its form and function.12
This simple gateway into a tea garden in Hirado represents perfectly the principle of sabi: the appreciation of that which is old, faded and rustic and exudes a lonely aura.
A much closer association with Zen may be found in chadõ (the way of tea). Of all the pastimes in which a samurai could indulge none had more lore and tradition associated with it than the performance of the tea ceremony. Tea had originally been introduced to Japan as a means of keeping Zen monks awake for their nocturnal devotions. In addition to its ubiquity as a beverage, however, tea drinking developed in this one highly specialized way that encompassed much of what a samurai valued in terms of aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity. The way of tea centred on the drinking of a bowl of green tea with like-minded companions in an artistically pleasing and aesthetically inspiring manner. The ceremony would take place in a tea room, which was often located in a tea house set within a tea garden. The décor of a tea house was traditionally very simple and rustic in accordance with the principles of wabi and sabi. The guests would enter from the garden and take their places, after which the tea master, who was sometimes a daimyõ, would join them through a separate door made deliberately low so that the tea master was forced to express his humility by crouching down. A meal of exquisite design and quality might be served, but the centre of the meeting was always the tea ceremony itself, whereby the master boiled the water and served the tea in a strict formality that allowed his guests to appreciate every gesture and factor involved. They would admire the quality of the pottery used in the vessels, the artistic depiction of the seasons in a flower arrangement or a hanging scroll and the play of light in the garden outside, partially visible through the sliding screens. Most of all they would be enthralled by the motions of the tea master as his hands moved in a ‘kata of tea’ that would be reminiscent of the greatest exponent of swordplay.
A performance of a Noh play within the shrine of Itsukushijima on the holy island of Miyajima. The actor is silent, expressing through mime the emotions that accompany the chanting and music.
Where the tea ceremony left Zen behind lay in the uses, or rather abuses, the samurai made of it. Hideyoshi, whose flamboyance in artistic matters was renowned, was known to have used a tea room where the wooden beams were plated with gold, and the political pay-offs from the tea ceremony were similarly outrageous. Information gathered from guests, political support confirmed by attendance, bonds of comradeship forged by fellow enthusiasts, gifts of priceless tea bowls and other earthly benefits arose from these gatherings. Murder might even be plotted over a nice cup of tea, and on two occasions at least murder was almost carried out. The tea master Sen Riky is said to have fended off a sword stroke using his tea ladle.13 Katō Kiyomasa once went to a tea ceremony hosted by a rival whom he wanted out of the way. He hoped to find the man so engrossed in the ritual that Kiyomasa would be able to stab him with a spear. But the man’s deportment was so alert and in control that Kiyomasa never caught him off guard.14 Nothing could be further from the ideals of Zen, but then Katō Kiyomasa would have had no dealings with Zen anyway, being an exclusivist of the Nichiren persuasion.
Even when the tea ceremony was being performed with all the punctilious exactness that Zen demanded, its socially competitive potential should not be overlooked. The way of tea sorted the aesthete from the boor and distinguished the patient man from the over-hasty. It revealed areas of self-control that would stand a samurai in good stead both in a zazen session or on the battlefield. As a tool of ‘personnel selection’ it exposed his weaknesses under pressure. In the tea ceremony a samurai practised the inner martial arts where he had no sword but his wits, and no defence to a challenge but to draw on the fund of aesthetic knowledge he was required to possess.
A set of masks for a performance of Kagura, a primitive version of Noh, at a shrine festival in Shimobe.
Many anecdotes exist that relate skill in the tea ceremony directly to skill on the battlefield. Ueda Shigeyasu was mocked by younger retainers in his lord’s service, who concluded that his exquisite performance in the tea house meant that he would exhibit an opposite level of skill in battle. In 1615, however, Shigeyasu led Asano Nagaakira’s vanguard at the battle of Kashii, one of the important preliminary actions of the Summer Campaign of Osaka, and took an enemy head:
Standing up before the whole assembled clan, Shigeyasu exclaimed, ‘How now you fellows? You have derided me as a tea-page of ten thousand koku and declared that my sword would only be wet with the blood of a cat or a mouse, and how has it turned out? You, who have never known anything about tea, but only have devoted yourselves to martial arts alone, are not only less distinguished than a Tea Master like myself, but have done practically nothing at all!’15
Many of the Zen temples and monasteries that nowadays make Kyōto such a fascinating and inspiring place to visit owe much of their appeal to their exquisite gardens. Even if these gardens express ideas that go beyond Zen, it is undoubtedly true that the philosophy behind Zen Buddhism provides for them the perfect spiritual home. One particular feature of these gardens is their asymmetry, an artistic principle that derives from Taoism as much as it does from Zen. In The Book of Tea Kakuzo Okakura recognizes this dual debt:
In the background is the tea house of the Tōji-In in Kyōto set within a pond garden designed by the Zen master Musō Soseki.
[Taoist and Zen philosophies] laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea-room (as in the garden) it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself.
In another passage Okakura advises the artist to leave something unsaid so that the beholder is given the chance ‘to complete the idea. Thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up to the full measure of your aesthetic emotion.’16 So in a kare-sansui (dry landscape garden), where a cleverly arranged system of rocks and sand suggests a mountain gorge, every element is present except water. The essence of Zen in this situation lies in the beholder not merely imagining the water, but himself becoming the water.
The kare-sansui (dry landscape) garden of the Taizō-In within the Myōshinji complex in Kyōto. This little garden is a Zen invitation to the viewer to ‘add the water’.
Even in a garden layout there is always more present than just Zen ideals. Taoism is noted as an influence above, and what considerations, one wonders, lay behind the selection of the particular rock that occupies a prominent position in the spectacular garden of the Sambō-In at the Daigōji temple in Kyōto? The rock, known as the Fujito, is beautiful enough in its own right, but its chief claim to fame is that it was chosen because its surface was stained by the blood of a samurai killed during the Gempei War.
Japanese aesthetics clearly owe a debt to Zen in many aspects of their expression, but just as in the more narrowly ‘religious’ world of the sacred, it is the blending of different but complementary elements into a satisfying whole that provides the final picture. Is the same true of the martial arts of Japan? Is Zen their bedrock, as it is often claimed to be?
An examination of the written sources can be quite confusing. The extraordinary claims made for the purity of the styles of sword-fighting ryha (schools), for example, can daunt even the boldest scholar. The admirably undaunted Karl Friday has tackled this topic head on, and it is interesting to note that his study of one of Japan’s foremost sword-fighting traditions, the Kashima Shinry, is concerned with an organization that cannot be linked exclusively with Zen. Indeed the reverse is true. Its founding is associated firmly with Shintō tradition, while Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, the school’s great exponent, took a keen interest in Zen as did his famous student Yagy Muneyoshi. Other master swordsmen down its genealogical line embraced Pure Land Buddhism, and Friday begins his book with a quotation from a Confucian scholar.17
This simple hand basin in the Ryōanji garden is an item that expresses so well the mystery and aesthetic beauty of Zen.
In the tiny Daisen-In garden in Kyōto’s Daitokuji these huge rocks provide the cliffs for an imaginary roaring torrent that flows through the garden in a symbolic representation of the journey of life.
Nevertheless, many fine contemporary written works exist that link Zen and swordsmanship in a convincing manner. For example, Fudochi Shinmyoroku, by the Zen priest Takuan Sōhō, who taught Zen meditation to the great swordsman Yagy Munenori, has as its essence the concept of fudochi (permanent wisdom). This means that the working mind, though constantly changing, is always attached to nothingness, and therefore to the eternal universe. In this view Zen Buddhism takes swordsmanship directly to the goals of attaining enlightenment and the achievement of selflessness. By the blending of self and weapon through action the swordsman moves towards that complete emptiness which is the aim of all Zen practices.
One must always bear in mind, however, that most of the written material about Zen and swordsmanship was produced at a time when the art of the samurai swordsman was not encumbered by any need actually to win battles. By being thus concerned with means rather than ends, sword-fighting entered the realm of the meditation on daily things that would have been so valued by Dōgen. When samurai were real fighting men the value they attached to Zen could be very different. The ‘means’ provided by zazen was an excellent ‘training for the mind’, and would therefore be a very valuable preliminary exercise for the fight. But the samurai existed to serve his master, and numerous accounts emphasize that a samurai should never waste his life needlessly. Actively seeking death on the battlefield or simply throwing one’s life away in a street brawl was condemned as an unnecessary deprivation of the service one rendered to one’s lord.18 The Zen ‘detachment’ of popular myth was therefore a means of preparing a man for death, not an encouragement towards seeking it.
Because of the master/servant relationship in which he found himself – a relationship that owed more to Confucian ideals of hierarchy and filial piety than it did to the essential independence of Zen thought – a samurai’s life was precious, and a Kamakura samurai could not escape from the constraints that this relationship placed upon him. Nor could the art of swordsmanship escape from this bloody reality until a time when it no longer had to be used primarily for killing people. Before the Tokugawa Period very few swordsmen were able to lift the art of the samurai sword on to a higher philosophical plane. The men who succeeded were the kengõ (master swordsmen) like Miyamoto Musashi who went on ‘warrior pilgrimages’ (musha shgyõ). This was much akin to the common Japanese practice of making long religious pilgrimages to distant parts, thereby obtaining spiritual enlightenment through endeavour and personal discomfort.19
Other considerations beyond Zen led to the selection of the Fujito rock in the Sambō-In garden, because its surface is stained with the blood of a samurai killed during the Gempei War.
The Zen priest Takuan Sōhō, who taught Zen meditation to the great swordsman Yagy Munenori, from his statue in Yagy village.
The typical ‘sword pilgrim’ was likely to have had some service to a daimyõ and some battle experience behind him before setting off. His wanderings could last for several years, and might include temporary spells of military service and some teaching. Austerity and abstinence were the hallmark of the pilgrim warrior, whose travels would invariably involve duels, each of which taught the swordsman a little more about himself. In the Age of Warring States kengõ were much in demand as teachers to a daimyõ’s retainers, but with the coming of peace even cowards could sometimes pass themselves off as experts. Every desk-bound samurai bureaucrat was theoretically a sword-fighter, and as Friday notes so perceptively, ‘it would have been as unthinkable for a samurai to confess to complete unfamiliarity with his swords as it would for one of his contemporaries in New England to confess to total ignorance of the Bible’.20
In the hands of a master the practice of the martial arts acquired a genuine spiritual dimension and became a process of self-realization in which Zen played a vital role. Nor was there any separation made between the practical and physical on one side, and the philosophical and spiritual on the other. Just like the blending of Japanese religion and daily life, they were seen as a continuum of martial experience in which various religious traditions merged.21 Yet there are still martial arts practitioners who wish to lay claim to their territory exclusively in the name of Zen. This is best illustrated by the most controversial link of all between the samurai and Zen through the practice of kydõ (Japanese archery). The position may be summarized by the following quotation:
The purpose of Zen archery is not to hit the target, but rather the concentration achieved by the archer in order to create a style that expresses his perfect mental serenity. When the archer does hit the centre of the target in such a state of mental calm, it is proof that his spiritual discipline is successful. The spirit (shinki) is linked to the target by the union of man, bow, and arrow, and ultimately this linkage achieved through strict mental and physical discipline produces a personal character that blends harmoniously with life… In fact, kydõ without any reference to Zen is a meaningless exercise.22
This is a considerable claim to make, but how realistic is it for the age of war? Archery was a fundamental skill of the samurai until the introduction of firearms in the 16th century led to a shift in emphasis with missile weapons from targeted sharp-shooting to mass infantry tactics. The samurai of the Gempei War referred to their calling as kyba no michi (the way of horse and bow) and skill at archery was much more highly prized than skill with the sword. At this time every archer certainly intended to hit the target – his life depended upon it, let alone the fundamental demands of service to his master – so any philosophical or religious ideas that he applied to his military prowess would be subservient to those vital considerations.
Modern kydõ (archery) in action, a martial art that is associated too closely in the popular mind with Zen.
The above quotation is from a modern work that derives from a very influential book called Zen in the Art of Archery, written by Eugen Herrigel in 1953.23 Herrigel enjoyed several ‘mystical’ experiences in the presence of kydõ practitioners, including a rather eccentric teacher of his own, and interpreted them through his own views of Zen. As ‘a credulous enthusiast who glorified Japanese culture’, he let his imagination run riot when it came to analysing the relationship between what he saw and what he believed lay behind the events.24
The reality is that in Japan kydõ was only to be associated with Zen after the time of Herrigel, not before. This is not to say that Zen had no influence on archery. An early Tokugawa Period manuscript concerned with archery quotes from a Zen text of 1229, but only in the context of the mental attitude of samurai, because ‘When one is willing to sacrifice oneself and regards lightly the loss of one’s own life, then one’s bow comes alive.’ Yet in this very same paragraph there is an additional reference to Shingon concepts,25 so once again we see an example of Japan’s ‘religious supermarket’ in action.
A samurai is met by a hail of arrows. This was the reality of Japanese archery during the time of war, and owed nothing to Zen Buddhism other than a determination by the samurai to face death bravely and with a composed mind.
In conclusion, Zen was a very important influence on samurai culture, but it was not the whole story, and this can be seen best by its failure to explain one other well-known concept concerned with the samurai and the sacred: bushidõ – the way of the warrior. This is the topic to which we will now turn.