and when the 8th century Emperor Shomu, inspired by reports of massive statues of the Buddha in China, sought to erect an even more impressive Dai Butsu (Great Buddha) in Nara, the scale of the project disturbed many who viewed Buddhism as a foreign belief system. The adherents of Shinto warned that such a statue would be an insult to the native gods of Japan. In response, Monk Gyoki of the Hosso sect, made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Goddess Amaterasu and asked the oracles there to consult the goddess about her feelings regarding the proposed monument. The oracle recognized the Buddha as Amaterasu’s emissary and declared the goddess’s approval of the project.
The great bronze Buddha, not completed until after Shomu died, was 53 feet (16 meters) tall, well shy of the 85 foot (25 meter) Chinese statue; however, the hall housing the Japanese copy was enormous—284 x 166 x 152 feet (86 x 50 x 46 meters)—making it then the largest wooden structure in the world.
The controversy over the statue was representative of the tension that was developing between traditionalists, who followed the way of Shinto, and the advocates of progress and change who tended to be, at least nominally, Buddhist. Shinto strove to establish itself as the official Japanese way of devotion; the emperor was, after all, the descendant of the Shinto sun goddess. The lower classes, however, made little distinction between the two belief systems, and Shinto and Buddhist figures were often found placed side by side in popular shrines.
By the start of the second millennium, Japanese culture, wealth, and technology had become the equal of her Asian neighbors. Politically, however, the country remained in disarray. The power of the Divine Emperor waned as the power of the military leaders known as Shoguns waxed. Feudal clans—powerful families like the Fujiwara, the Minamoto, and the Sugawara—raised armies to battle one another for control of the imperial court. Even Buddhist monasteries raised armies and fought with one another. Local war-lords (Daimyo) arose whose power rested in the fealty of the new warrior class of knights known as samurai. The warlords financed their armies by taxing the lower classes, which chose to pay taxes to them rather than to the imperial court because it was the local lords who were able to provide them some degree of protection.
Conditions reached their nadir in 1050, which began
—the Age of Degenerate Law, a dark epoch of epidemic, earthquake, fire, famine, banditry, and murder. The Fujiwara, to whom the imperial government had long since ceded its prestige, had been infected by their own decadence even as they attained the summit of their power. Their armed monks were now a threat to their own masters, and the soldiery of feudal lords in the outlying provinces was finally called upon to bring the anarchy under control. These lords—descendants of outcast emperors—detested the decadent despotism at Kyoto. Over the course of the next century, the Fujiwara were challenged and defeated by the strong provincial clans, notably the Taira or Heike, descendants of that Emperor Kwammu who had done so much to bring the Fujiwara into power. Other claimants challenged the Heike, in their turn, notably an alliance of strong clans that was grouped around the family Minamoto. In five bloody years between 1156 and 1160, when the Fujiwara were already in retreat, the Heike gained a brief ascendancy over the Minamoto and established their own emperors in court, but within a few years, they were overthrown by Yoritomo Minamoto in a series of epic battles that culminated in 1185 in the great sea coast battle at Dannoura. Within four years Yoritomo had eliminated the last resistance of the Fujiwara in the eastern provinces.
As shogun, or administrator general, Yoritomo established his own headquarters at Kamakura, three hundred miles east of Kyoto. A feeble court persisted in that city, but the Heian period was at an end. For the next seven hundred years Japan would be governed by military shoguns, mostly of Minamoto origin, who paid mere ceremonial homage to the emperors. (3)
At the beginning of the Kamakura era, three schools of Buddhism imported from China flourished in Japan—the Tendai, the Shingon, and the Pure Land. Dosho’s Hosso sect had lost influence on the islands.
The Tendai School is considered the first wholly Chinese School of Buddhism. It had evolved as the result of confusion that had arisen in China long before Bodhidharma’s voyage from the west. Often, Chinese travelers had brought back Buddhist documents from India, even though they could not read them, because it was believed the scrolls were inherently sacred. Often these documents were stored for many years before scholars arose who were able to translate them. The translators then discovered that some of the documents were only fragments and others had missing passages. More problematic was the fact that the documents reflected a wide range of perspectives within the long history of Indian Buddhism. The teachings proclaimed in one document might be difficult to reconcile with those in others, although they all purported to reflect the instructions of the Buddha. The founders of the Tendai School set themselves the task of trying to determine which of these apparently contradictory teachings were those of the historic Buddha. They finally based their exposition of Buddhist doctrine on the Lotus Sutra, which they believed to be the least corrupt of the documents they had.
Although meditation was practiced in the Tendai tradition, the majority of Tendai adherents were satisfied with understanding it as a doctrinal system which was intellectually coherent and which was able to meet the devotional needs of the literate population.
Whereas the focus of the Tendai School was on scripture, the focus of the Shingon School was on ritual. It was one of the so-called “esoteric” schools of Buddhism, in which secret teachings, or “empowerments,” were transmitted from teacher to student. These were not recorded in writing but were only available to initiates through oral instruction. The tradition was brought back to Japan by a monk named Kukai (better known by his posthumous name, Kobo Daishi) who accompanied one of the delegations from Japan to China in 804. Shingon practices included elaborate rituals and mantra recitation. A mantra is a special verbal formulation that the devotee keeps in mind. As a result of his practice with mantra, Kobo Daishi, it was claimed, acquired extraordinary powers of recall that allowed him to memorize all of the secret oral teachings that had been passed onto him in China.
The teachings that Kobo Daishi brought back to Japan survived there even after being eradicated in China during a persecution of Buddhism in that country in the mid-19th Century. Kobo Daishi did not intend to start a separate school of Buddhism but rather sought to enrich Buddhist practice. It would be his successors who would establish the school as an independent line of teaching. As the sect developed, the role of ritual became more central to it. Emperor Junna decreed that official rites for the state should be carried out in the Shingon Temple in Kyoto, and many influential families were drawn to the sect, hopeful that its rites would benefit them in their quest for political prominence.
The Pure Land Sect became popular among ordinary people who found philosophical Buddhism abstruse. Nor did traditional Shinto, which lacked a conception of personal immortality, have much to offer them; the blessings sought in Shinto ceremonies were not so much for personal attainment as for the benefit of the family and the clan. Buddhism, with its doctrine of reincarnation, offered hope to ordinary persons who found their lives burdensome. Daily difficulties, fear of brigandage, conflicts between warring clans, disease, and endless labor, gave the lower classes little to hope for in this life, prompting an understandable desire for a better life to come. The array of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (roughly the equivalent of Buddhist saints) that had developed in devotional Buddhism provided a pantheon to whom individuals could offer prayers for personal health, achievement, or consolation in times of trial. The simplicity of the Pure Land School had great appeal; it taught that the repetition of a mantra dedicated to the Buddha Amida was adequate to ensure the devotee rebirth in the Pure Land, an albeit temporary heaven-like afterlife. The teaching had been brought to Japan in the 12th century CE by a monk named Honen, whose early training had been in the Tendai School.
In the Buddhism that had evolved in the centuries following the death of Siddhartha Gautama, it was recognized that there were many other “Buddhas” both in the past and yet to be born. Amida Buddha was the Buddha who reigned in the “Western Paradise.” He had taken a vow that anyone who called upon him with faith would be reborn in that Paradise. Devotees were taught