Importing a foreign belief :

how Buddhism successfully embraced

Japanese culture and Shintoism

​

​

Despite the long periods of isolation that the archipelago has been knowing through its history, nobody would deny that Japanese culture as it is nowadays is full of foreign influences. In the Yamato period, the language characters were for instance imported from China, as well as the first penal code and the new government organization were inspired by Chinese practices.

​

However – and this is one of the major strength of Japanese civilization – this could not be considered as a simple copy-paste. Whenever Japan has been experimenting ideas from abroad, it has managed to keep its uniqueness. The best example to highlight this assertion can be found in religion : indeed, should we take the case of Buddhism, and we would figure out that it has known many transformations before getting integrated to Japanese society.

​

​

The traditional religion of Japan was Shintoism. Its main aspect was the faith in the existence of Kami, kinds of supernatural forces who were living in several objects (called Shin-tai 神体) such as trees, mountains, rocks and so on. Kami are considered as being parts of nature : in fact, they even participate to its self-organization – that people sometimes had to calm down through Shizume (鎮). Buddhism, which first appeared in India in the Vth century B.C. and was introduced from China and Korea to Japan in the Vth and VIth century A.C., had to adjust to these Shinto traditional believes.

​

One of the characteristics in Shinto is that everything can be a Kami. However, in the Buddhism of Gautama, only humans could have the possibility to be candidates for buddhahood – and only after a very hard training. After being introduced to Japan, this postulate changed radically. According to the Tendai school (天台宗), which started in the Heian period, every individual had buddhahood in himself. This is the concept of Hongaku (本覚), born in India, which specifies that as everyone is already enlightened deeply in his mind, we may all become a Buddha by getting rid of desires on surface. The gap between profane and buddhahood became even more ambiguous during the Kamakura period, with the invention of the concept of Pure Land, or Jôdo (浄土). As the Nirvana (涅槃, 寂滅) is quite difficult to attain for normal people (you have to renounce to everything), it was believed that Amitabha Buddha could provide another way to reach enlightenment : instead of trying to get this state of mind by yourself, people just had to invoke Amitabha (this was called Nen-butsu (念仏)) to go to this Pure Land, where bodhisattvas were teaching you how to be fully enlightened. In Japanese Buddhism, in fact, everything has finally been considered as having buddhahood : with this postulate of ubiquitousness of buddhahood (悉有仏性), which could be found, from that time, in grass, trees, rivers and so on, buddhahood in Japanese Buddhism schools turned out to encompass all human beings and even non-humans entities. Therefore, getting closer than ever to the animistic believes of Shinto, the separation between profane and sacred in Buddhism became impressively more and more vague…

​

Shinto has always been a religion of nature. According to Takeshi Umehara, famous Japanese philosopher, “Shinto originated as a form of nature worship, rooted in the civilization of the forest”. Shintoism, in other words, is the recognition of nature forces, symbolized by Kami. Unlike Western individualism, whose main principle is emancipation of individuals so their domination over nature, one of the most fundamental concepts of Shinto is the self-organization of this nature : thus, as everything is interdependent (the Buddhist equivalent is Engi 縁起), people have to pay a great respect to their environment, to nature which is not seen as being bellow human being. Similarly, this significance of nature related to Shinto has been emphasized since the early beginnings of Japanese Buddhism. For instance, in the Heian period, Tendai school and Shingon school (真言宗) were both mountain Buddhism which were already appearing quite close to Shintoism animistic considerations… In Japanese Buddhism, furthermore, the concept of Funi (不二) denies any difference between human and nature.

​

​

​

Another point that I would like to discuss concerns the idea of cyclicity of life in Japanese Buddhism, showing once again that it has assimilated some Japanese traditional values related to Shintoism. In Shinto, when you die, your spirit goes to the world of Kami, called Takai (他界). Here, it becomes itself a Kami and it lives with its family, like on Earth. At New Year’s day, midsummer, and the equinoxes of spring and fall, the spirits return to the world of the living and spend about three days with their family or their descendants. Consequently, the two worlds are not completely impervious. Later, there is a rebirth of the spirit on Earth : the ancestors on both sides of the parents decide which spirit will be sent back in the still unborn child’s body. This cyclicity is the main reason why the elderly as well as children, in Shintoism, are looked on as being really near to the sacred world.

​

Originally, the consequence of attaining buddhahood was to break the cycle of reincarnation, the perpetual cycle of pain that humans had to encounter because of their passions. Nevertheless, Japanese Buddhism differs a little from this. I have already written about the concept of Pure Land a few lines above. But what I have not mentioned yet is the interesting idea of Genso-eko (還相回向), developed by the True Pure Land school (Jôdo Shinshû 浄土真宗), which was established by Shinran in the XIIIth century and which is now one of the most practiced type of Japanese Buddhism. Whereas Buddhism initially tends to view nirvana as a perfect state of peace of mind, where you even forget about the people left behind, Genso-eko refers to the idea that when someone gets enlightened, he may return from the Pure Land in order to help the others relieve their pains. According to Shinran, the true practitioners are in fact those who will regularly come back to the world of the living to save suffering people. Thus, this is very similar to the belief of reincarnation which is found in Shinto ; there is this idea of cyclicity and the two worlds are definitely not so impermeable in Japanese Buddhism…

​

I would eventually argue that in Japanese Buddhism, religious names are generally given to dead people, which are moreover generally called Hotoke-sama (仏様), sorts of Buddhas. As this seems to mean that any passed person has become a Buddha, it contrasts quite much with the original principles of Buddhism… However, isn’t really close to traditional Shinto, which tells that everyone, after death, become a Kami ? Another convincing example revealing how Buddhism was affected by the existence of Shinto’s ancient believes when it was imported in the archipelago.

​

​

​

In a nutshell, we can doubtlessly argue that Shintoism, Japan’s indigenous religion, influenced the country’s Buddhism, whose some principles consequently changed to better embrace Japanese traditional culture. We should not forget that even though the old Nara, Kyoto and Zen schools were for instance introduced from China, their founders had in fact never been there…

Every country picks up from abroad and then tries to adapt these inputs to its own culture, but Japan especially manages to “digest” them quite well. Hasn’t it been the case as well when the ethic of Confucianism was imported in the country in order to serve political philosophy and education in particular ? Nowadays, Japanese Buddhism and Shinto seems to be complementary : while the rites related to the death generally come from Buddhism, those of the living remain essentially Shinto.