These construct a spatial narrative—a sheaf of vistas which define but do not limit. In this way the photographer is very like the bunjin artists of old Japan, those profound amateurs who looked for essence, not in order, but in the sighting of a scene.
In the same fashion, the author, almost equally ignorant, years later following the path of the photographer he never met, has attempted to do with time what had been done with space—to make a temporal record of what he has read or heard or himself seen.
So, I wanted something like a narrative—a broken chronology with many a hole through which one might peer back into time itself, a history arranged in layers through which we can move from one temple to the next.
Together, the text and pictures seek then to define the temple. The photos contain few people and the text is filled with the deeds of the dead. A kind of definition seems possible.
—DONALD RICHIE
| Introduction |
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A city of temples reminds one of some lost vision of a moral order—where the manlike god lives in his holy house and all is eternity. Seen from a distance, these temple-cities—Benares, the Katmandu valley towns, Kyoto—still offer this view. The stupa or the to against the new winter dawn seems to hold out a vision of some holy metropolis from where we have come and toward which we returning.
Yet these celestial-seeming cities are nonetheless the work of man and they are of the same common earth that we are—that dappled soil of hopes and fears, of a self never wholly outside, yet never entirely in.
Such holy cities, like all the others, are thus also worldly, venal: as elsewhere the making of the money accommodates the lust for power. Unlike the prosaic secular city, however, these municipalities of temples have their saving concern. No matter how religion is perverted in its politicization, it still rests upon an individual vision, a need, a hope. In the grandest of the imperial temples where all is tradition, ritual, the accumulation of land and the avoidance of taxes, there is still somewhere, in some corner, a man kneeling, trying to both lose and find himself.
Buddhism came to Japan on October 13, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the emperor Kimmei—that is, 552. This is recorded in the Nihongi, that government-commissioned chronological history which appeared two hundred years later in 720 but was still accepted as accurate.
The reason that the date is so precisely known is that this is the day that a Korean envoy presented to the Japanese court a gold-plated Buddha, a gift from his king, Song-myong of the Paekche. Along with it came a letter in which Buddhism was highly praised, something of its history was imparted—its beginnings in India and its travels through China—the missal concluding with the information that the Buddha himself had said that his teachings would travel east.
Kimmei, emperor of this land furthest east, is said to have been both pleased and impressed" stating that he had never seen anything more beautiful than the face on this statue of the Buddha. Of a mind to import the religion into his own land, the emperor held a council. One minister said that since it had been accepted elsewhere it ought to be accepted here as well. Another, however, said that this would be dangerous. From times past it was the native gods—those later to be identified as Shinto—who had protected the land. Introducing such competition would make them angry.
Since neither of the ministers would back down and since no agreement seemed possible, Kimmei then did something we would now find very Japanese. He decided that both religions would be observed—that of the native gods and that of the new one. This pragmatic solution caused some initial difficulty but it has worn well. Shinto and Buddhism remain the two religions of the Japanese. The first is observed by the newly born, by those reaching the ages of three, five, and seven, and those getting married; the second is officially the province of the dying and the dead.
Buddhism was already at least a thousand years old when it came to Japan. During this time the religion had much changed shape. It had become a complex set of doctrinal beliefs far from the tenets of its founder.
Originally the Buddha had taught that the release from this period of suffering called life could be achieved through enlightenment—by following the prescribed commandments making up the eightfold path. These were of a simplicity and universality that remind of Jesus later advice. One was to follow the right view with the right intention as expressed in right speech and demonstrated in the right action, which would lead to the right livelihood, as achieved through right effort, right mindedness, and right concentration.
Prescriptions this artless call for interpretation and over the years the eightfold path became littered with them. They multiplied until eventually, five hundred years after the death of the historical Buddha, the overburdened belief broke into two—a major schism had occurred.
A large number of priests began to preach that traditional teachings had left behind the true intentions of the Buddha. The religion had come to imply that only those with special capacities—such as intelligence and perseverance—could hope to correctly follow the eightfold path. Actually, they said, the Buddha did not intend anything like this. On his deathbed, these priests maintained, he had revealed that anyone—and this included everyone—had the potential for Buddhahood.
Those who claimed this called their Buddhism the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana). They could then call their conservative rivals the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana). This schism—still observed—provided endless fuel for quarrels and much complicated the role of the religion in Japan.
Buddhism was exclusively of neither camp. Then as now, the recent import was carefully sorted over and only those elements attractive to the new believers were incorporated. Early Japanese Buddhism is thus a pragmatic amalgam of both Mahayanan and Hinayanan Buddhism.
Nonetheless, much of the spirit of strife occasioned by the original schism remained to trouble the Buddhist church in Japan, though many of the benefits of a much larger number of aristocratic and moneyed believers continued to ornament and enrich the church.
A Mahayanan idea which took deep root in Japan was that the Buddha was a transcendent being. Leaving behind his mortal form, he ascended to the heavens and there reigned, welcoming all true believers. If he was deity, and no longer of this world, however, then someone to intercede was necessary.
Christianity at this point found Jesus Christ. Buddhism discovered the bodhisattva, the Buddha-to-be, a kind of messenger, though of much greater standing, a being who, though meeting all the requirements for Buddhahood, in great compassion postponed entry in order to help those left behind also achieve this desired state.
This Buddha himself took three bodhisattva-like forms. He was to be seen as the healing Buddha (called Yakushi in Japan), the Buddha of enlightenment (Amida) and the Buddha of the future (Miroku). In this way, also, Mahayana believers could begin to account for the entire pantheon of Buddhas and other supernatural beings it had appropriated from Hinayanan belief as well as from Hinduism and other local religions. These could be attached to appropriate forms of the Buddha-bodhisattva and thus create a semblance of order.
It was order which appealed to the seventh-century