It is nearly seven hundred years since the man, known to us of to-day
as Nichiren or “Sun Lotus,” was born in the obscure and small village
of Kominato, Japan. While his doctrine and his death have served to
render celebrated the two monasteries which are head-quarters of the
sect he founded, his birth and boyhood there have not rescued this
village from its obscurity or greatly increased the number of its
inhabitants. Kominato lies on the ocean side of the peninsula which
encloses Tokyo Bay,--the body of water with the capital city at its
head and Yokohama, the principal port of the country, on its western
shore. The railroad now runs part way down the peninsula, but does
not as yet consider it worth while to extend itself into a region
which, although its coast is interesting and picturesque, is occupied
almost exclusively by fishermen and petty tillers of the soil. The
case is by no means the same, however, with Minobu and Ikegami,
the two monasteries which divide between them the welcome task of
cherishing the bones of their saintly founder. These monasteries are
much visited, not only by the members of the sect, but also by other
Japanese engaged in going upon religious pilgrimages and more purely
secular sight-seeing excursions. At the chief annual festivals the
grounds of these monasteries, and the surrounding villages, are densely
thronged with both sightseers and devotees; and indeed with all sorts
of visitors. A few of these visitors, occasionally, are foreigners.
I think, however, that no other foreigner has visited either of the
monasteries in the same way in which it was my privilege twice to visit
Ikegami, during the Autumn of 1906.
But before giving an account of this visit I wish to say a few words as
to Nichiren and the Buddhist communion which has borne his name during
all these centuries. As is the right of all great saints and religious
reformers in the days when science had not yet claimed to have made
impossible any credit given to such stories, the entire career of
Nichiren was enveloped in the supernatural; it was even frequently
punctuated by the miraculous. His very name, “Sun-Lotus,” is derived
from a dream by his mother, in which she saw the sun on a lotus-flower
and in consequence of which she became pregnant. From the first her
offspring was endued with supernatural power, so that he acquired the
most perfect knowledge of the entire Buddhist canon while yet in his
youth. And later, when his zealous and uncompromising denunciation of
the existing government made it possible for his enemies to persuade
the Regent Tokimuné that the doctrines of Nichiren tended to subvert
the state, the executioner sent to behead him could not compel his
sword to act upon the neck of so holy a man. What wonder that the
relics of so invulnerable a saint should be thought to have value for
purposes of both protection and cure, even after the lapse of centuries
of time!
The important facts of the life of Nichiren can be briefly told. He was
born, 1222 A. D. He entered upon study for the priesthood at the early
age of twelve, and three or four years later became a tonsured priest.
His authorised biographer of to-day, Wakita Gyoziun, himself a priest
of the Nichiren sect, in deference to modern views omits all references
to miraculous experiences in the life of his master. He makes Nichiren
spend all his youth, until thirty-two years of age, in study and
travel consisting of journeys undertaken in various directions,
visiting many eminent sages and teachers of Buddhism, in quest of the
“True Doctrine.” But everywhere the wanderer found errors, heresies,
and corruptions, both of doctrine and of life. The consequence was
that Nichiren determined to “discard the opinions of the sectaries
altogether, and to search for the Truth in his own consciousness and
in the sacred writings.” This resolve led to the discovery that this
truth is to be found only in “The Holy Book of the Lotus of the Good
Law”; and, besides, it produced a courage that became audacity in
the denunciation of existing error and civil wrongs; and, as well, a
zealous confidence which generated intolerance in the double attempt to
impress his own convictions and to controvert the heresies of the other
sects. Opposition and persecution followed as a matter of course. While
these things succeeded in restricting his work, so that when Nichiren
entered Nirvana he left behind only some forty recognised disciples,
they did not prevent the permanency of his impression upon his country.
Fifteen years ago the Nichiren sect in Japan had five thousand temples,
seven thousand priests, and more than two million of adherents.
If I were capable of expounding credibly the theology, whether more
popular or more philosophical, of this Buddhist sect, I fear that I
could not make it understood. For it employs that manner of clothing
its conceptions in figures of speech, and of couching its syllogisms
in remotely related analogies and symbols, which characterises the
philosophy and theology of the Orient in general. But there are two
things about the Nichiren sect to which it is quite worth while to
invite attention. These are rather permanent characteristics which
were impressed upon it by the character of its founder. The first is
the appeal which it makes to the authority of the written word. It was
originally a Protestant or reforming sect; but it became almost at once
a claim to give final form to the truth in a book written by men of
old time; and this scripture must not be contested or even questioned
as to its right to demand submission. This sect has, therefore, been
more than any of the others a church militant; and, indeed, to-day it
is said to have special attractions for those religiously inclined
among the military classes. But more distinctive still of the Nichiren
sect is the peculiar type of its patriotism. The one tenet--it has
been called the “axiom”--which the founder laid down as the basis
of his life-work, was the assertion that “the prosperity or decline
of the state depends entirely upon the truth or perversion of its
religion.” Nichiren, accordingly, boldly accused both rulers and ruled
as wanderers in dangerous and fatal errors. The truth, he held, must
somehow be substituted for falsehood, or the peace and prosperity of
the country could not be attained. In this belief he launched defiance
at the government of the time; in the same belief he had the prevision
that the Mongols under Kublai Khan would invade Japan, and it was as
influenced by this prophetic vision that he stirred up both rulers
and people to resist them. In the opinion of the faithful it was the
prayers of this saint which induced the gods to overthrow the invaders.
All through its history his sect has cherished the same militant
spirit--not only in its methods of extending its own adherents, but
also in respect to the watch it has kept over the fidelity of its
members to the sect as a matter of patriotic interest in the welfare
of the country at large. Instead of “God and the Czar,” it is “Buddha
and Nippon,” which may be said to have hitherto been the motto of the
Nichiren-Shu.
The manifold and rapid changes which are being effected in all
departments of the life of the Japanese people have seldom been
more forcefully illustrated in my experience than they were by the
two visits to Ikegami, to which reference has already been made.
Beyond their local colouring, which is in itself enough to make them
interesting, they have a wider significance as showing how the popular
forms of religion which characterise the various sects of Buddhism in
Japan are adapting themselves to the exigencies and expediences of the
modern time.
The great annual festival in honor of Nichiren is held at Ikegami
from the eleventh to the thirteenth of October. But the night of the
twelfth is the culminating period of the entire celebration. On the
afternoon of this date, at the close of my lecture to the teachers
of the Imperial Educational Society, two of my former pupils were in
waiting to conduct me to Shimbashi, the “Grand Central” railway station
of Tokyo. Here two more former pupils were met, whose kindly office was
to see that a dinner should be prepared, suitable to those expecting to
spend the night upon their feet in a drizzle of rain rather than lying
dry and warm in a comfortable bed. Of these Japanese friends, all four
were teachers; but one was a priest of the Nichiren sect who, after
several years of study of philosophy in this country, had returned to
his native land to found a school for the training of “temple boys.”
The trains, which were leaving every few minutes for Omori, the
station nearest to the monastery, were all crowded to their utmost
capacity--so far as the third-class cars were concerned. But there was
abundant room for the comparatively few who chose the second-class. By
the time we left the train at Omori, darkness had come on--a darkness
made more dense and gloomy by the character of the sky overhead, and
more disagreeable by the condition of the ground underfoot. The sights
which followed, however, were not easily to be forgotten. The roadway
for the entire two miles from Omori to Ikegami was lined with either
the more permanent shops of the village through which we were passing
or with booths extemporised for the occasion, all gaily lighted with
lamps and coloured lanterns, and so thronged with surging crowds that
independent progress was nearly or quite impossible. Indeed, when we
reached the one hundred stone steps which ascend the hill on whose top
the buildings of the monastery are standing, there was no other way
than to allow ourselves to be slowly borne upward by the weight of the
human mass. But even here, there was apparent no pushing or rudeness of
other kind.
Having arrived at the top of the stone stairway, and at least partially
extricated ourselves from the crowd, our attention was directed to the
students of the neighbouring Nichiren College, who were posted here and
there, throughout the dimly lantern-lighted grove, exhorting the people
to the religious life and expounding the tenets of the sect. But the
crowd on the outside, for the most part, was not on religion bent. The
Hondo, or main temple, however, was solidly packed with a body of truly
devout believers, all sitting on the floor and expecting to spend the
entire night in silent meditation and devout prayer.
[Illustration: “THE CHIEF ABBOT CAME IN TO GREET US”]
With great difficulty we forced our way to the beautiful and new
priests-house which had been built in the place of a similar one among
the several monastery buildings destroyed by a recent fire. There I
was received with no small ceremony, ushered into a waiting-room that
had been reserved for us, and offered cakes and tea. Soon the chief
abbot and the vice-abbots came in to greet us and to express their
regret that, since all the rooms of the monastery were occupied by the
faithful who had come to pass the night there, they could not entertain
their guest more as they would have desired. Before excusing himself,
however, the chief abbot invited me to bring Mrs. Ladd and, at some
time in November, when the maple trees for which Ikegami is justly
celebrated should be at their best, give them the pleasure of making us
both their guests. At that future time it was promised that we should
see the best of the temple’s treasures, and have the principles of
the sect duly expounded. For the present, one of the vice-abbots, who
seemed overflowing with religious enthusiasm, explained in a somewhat
deprecatory way that, although the authorities of the monastery did not
by any means approve of all which was done by the crowds who attended
the festival, and would not wish to have the spiritual principles of
the sect judged by this standard, they did not think it best to check
the manifestation of interest. In reply I was glad to say that I had
seen nothing suggestive of immoral conduct. I was indeed--although
I kept the thought to myself--reminded of the answer of my Bengali
friend, Mr. Kali Bannerji, who, when I asked him if the Bengalese have
any proverb corresponding to ours about “killing two birds with one
stone,” responded: “Yes, we say, going to see the religious procession
and selling our cabbages.” But it is not in India or Japan alone that
religion and cabbages are mixed up in some such way.
The promise of another visit to Ikegami, when daylight and leisure
should make it possible to see the place and hear the doctrine
much better, accentuated our willingness at the present time to spend
one-half rather than the whole of the night in seeing the festival,
however interesting and instructive it was likely to prove to be. Not
long after midnight, therefore, we began the severer task of forcing
our way against the crowd and back to the railway station where we
could take the train for our return to Tokyo.
But, first, let us spend a few minutes in taking in more thoroughly the
remarkable scene afforded by the annual all-night festival in honour of
its founder whose birth occurred nearly seven hundred years ago. The
stately and somewhat gloomily beautiful cryptomerias, which are the
favourites for temple-groves in Japan, when seen at night through the
upward rays of myriads of coloured lanterns, form a rarely impressive
and appropriate vault for a congregation of out-door worshippers.
No cathedral pillars made by human hands can easily rival them. The
wholly frank exposure of the mixture of motives which has brought the
crowds together does not necessarily lessen the complex impressiveness
of the scene. The aged peasant man or woman, bronzed and bowed nearly
double with years of hard labor under a semi-tropical sun, and
the child-nurse with the wide-eyed baby on her back; the timid and
lady-like maiden with her grand-dame or servant for escort, and the
stalwart youth of the other sex who has the frame of an athlete and
something of the manners of a “soshi”; tonsured priests, and temple
boys, venders of eatables and drinkables, of toys and charms, of
religious notions and bric-a-brac;--all these, and others, for various
purposes have come to the festival at Ikegami. Preaching, beating of
drums, praying and clapping of hands, the clinking of small coins as
they fall into the collection-boxes, blend in a strange low monotone
of sound; while the sight of some faces upturned in religious ecstasy
and the sight of others gaping with curiosity or giving signs of mirth,
invite our sympathy in somewhat conflicting ways. Doubtless, as we have
just been told, all that the crowds do at the annual all-night festival
at Ikegami is not to be approved in the name of religion, and perhaps
not in the name of morality; but there in the temple built by men
beneath nature’s greater temple were the “good few” of the truly devout
and faithful, according to their light and to the inner voice which
they sincerely believe has spoken to them, as it had spoken to their
patron saint, the holy Nichiren, so many centuries before.
All the way from the foot of the hundred stone steps to the station
of Omori the road was still packed with those coming to join for the
night in the festival at Ikegami. And now we were frequently compelled
to stop entirely and stand beside the way, in order to let pass by
more than two-score of those sodalities of which the sect boasts, in
all one hundred or more. There had obviously been no small amount of
friendly rivalry to influence the splendid manner in which they had
“got themselves up” for this occasion. With lanterns, banners, and
illuminations, devised to give the impression of a superiority of
initiative, so to say, and with beating of drums and much shouting and
repeating of sacred formulas, they came tramping on in a succession
quite too frequent and resistless to favour the speed of parties going
in the opposite direction. And, although there was little of obvious
rudeness, it was plainly good policy to step well out of the way, stand
still, and let them pass by.
But all things have an end; and so did, although it seemed almost
endless, the muddy and thronged road from Ikegami to Omori in the
“small hours” of the dark morning of October 13, 1906.
It was the second visit to the monastery, which occurred more than a
month later, and was made on invitation to a luncheon with him by the
chief abbot, that was most distinctive and informing. The invitation
itself--so our host assured those who conveyed it--was entirely unique.
For, although during the last fifty years foreigners who, as tourists,
had visited the monastery at their own instance, had been offered
refreshments, no other foreigners had ever been especially invited as
the abbot’s guests. Three of the same four Japanese young men who had
formerly accompanied me on my visit to Ikegami now served as escort
and companions. Although it was past the middle of November in what
had been an unusually cold Autumn, the day was warm and moist, but
without falling rain, as a day in June. The fields were brilliant in
colouring, with the ripened rice and the great store of young and green
vegetables; while the sides of the hills were aglow with the red and
yellow flame of the maples, made the more splendid by the dark foliage
of the cryptomerias and the pines. Large crops of daikon, lettuce,
onions, Brussels-sprouts, and other eatables, gave promise of plenty
for the dwellers in the humble homes beside the way. It was a good day
to be alive, to have no work to do, and to escape from town.
When we reached Omori, since the jinrikishas which were to be sent from
the monastery had not yet arrived, we waited in the tea-house opposite
the station, where we were treated to tea and a drink composed of hot
water with an infusion of salted cherry blossoms. The road to Ikegami
was muddy, as it was on the night when we had tramped it to attend the
great annual festival in honour of Nichiren; but how different its
appearance in the sober daylight from the impression made by its lining
of illuminated bazaars and its throngs of thousands carrying lanterns
and banners! At its end, however, we climbed the same flight of one
hundred stone steps and entered the sacred grove, now scarcely less
solemn than it had been at midnight, but lighted enough by such of the
sun’s rays as could find a way through the over-arching cryptomerias
and maples, to note its multitude of ancient and more recent tombs
and memorial offerings of stone or bronze lanterns and monuments. No
person, I am sure, who possesses even the beginnings of an emotional
religious nature, can easily avoid having feelings of mystery, awe, and
longings for inward peace, come over him on entering any one of the
most typical temple-groves of Japan.
Near the priests-house a young acolyte met us; and under his escort
we visited the sacred library, the shrine which covers the relics of
Nichiren,--although most of his bones were taken to the monastery
he had founded at Minobu,--the temple and house where he spent his
last days, under the hill, and the well from which the saint of such
olden time drew the water to make his tea. Then climbing the hill
again we wandered in the ancient cemetery where for so many centuries
so many hundreds of the faithful have esteemed it a last privilege
to lay themselves to rest. The tombs of some of the Tokugawa family,
descendants of the great Iyéyasu, who have been patrons of the sect,
are among the number buried here. At some distance from the burial
ground stands the monument which was erected to commemorate the
ship-wrecked American sailors to whose bodies the hospitable monks of
Ikegami had given a lodgment under the trees of the consecrated grove.
[Illustration: “WHERE NICHIREN SPENT HIS LAST DAYS”]
On returning to the monastery we were received with great distinction
by the temple servants and taken almost immediately to the rooms in
which luncheon was to be served. These rooms looked out through _shoji_
on a beautiful garden of gibbous-moon shape, lying far down below the
bank on whose edge the building was placed, and backed by a circular
row of pines, cryptomerias, and maples, which climbed high up the
opposite bank. In the garden was a lotus pond and a goodly variety of
shrubs and flowers. But the distinctive thing in the garden, as well
as in the neighbouring vale near the house where Nichiren spent his
last days, and, elsewhere in the grounds, was the “_kaeri-sakura_,”
or “second-time-blooming cherry tree.” It ministers to the faith and
affection of believers to know that these trees customarily bloom for
the second time each season at about the date of the death of the
founder saint. And, indeed, the one which we had just seen in blossom,
in the valley, was an offshoot of a stock, a fragment of whose decayed
trunk is still preserved, and which may easily have been in blossom a
century ago this very day.
Our entertainment was evidently planned to be in princely fashion. The
rooms had been especially decorated; and the finest of the lacquer
trays and bowls and the best of the porcelain, such as were customarily
used when the Tokugawas were the guests of the abbot, had been brought
out of the store-house in honour of the occasion. The venerable and
kindly abbot soon appeared. But our host instead of proceeding at once
to luncheon, wished in person to show us the garden, the ceremonial
tea-house, and some of the choicest of the temple’s curiosities and
treasures. Among all these he seemed to take a special pride and
pleasure in the so-called “turtle-room.” Here was a collection of
representations of this animal, of varied sorts--dried turtle-shells,
turtles wrought in bronze, and turtles painted on kakemonos. But our
good abbot’s first name was Hikamé (_kamé_ is the Japanese word for
turtle),--a sufficient explanation of his peculiar interest in the
collections in this room.
The luncheon was in purely Japanese style. On the cushions on the
floor, at the head of one room sat the abbot, and on his left, so that
they might look out upon the garden, were the two principal guests;
while in the second room, which was, however, completely opened into
the first, were the young Japanese. The food was such as is strictly
suitable for a Buddhist monk,--wholly of fruit and vegetables and
nuts, but deliciously prepared with modifications of the native manner
which had been learned by the cook, who, after taking a course in law
in Japan, had spent some years in the United States. Before sitting
down to the meal we had exchanged photographs, and had secured the
consent of the abbot to write his name in the autograph-book of his
guests. This consent turned out in a manner disastrous in its effect
upon the part played at the table by the host. For the holy father
had scarcely begun to eat, when he rose somewhat hastily and
disappeared, not to return until the luncheon was nearly over. It
was then discovered that he had been inspired with a poem which was
duly presented to us, beautifully inscribed upon the page that had
been designated for his signature. Now every scholar knows that it
is quite impossible to render the delicate suggestiveness and subtle
shades of meaning of a Japanese poem into any other language, no matter
how expert a linguist the translator may have become. But here is an
attempt at giving some idea of what the Abbot of Ikegami wrote in the
autograph-book of his guests, about noon of November 17, 1906.
_Tō-ten hachi-da awogeba ki-gi tari.
Ai wo haki en wo nomu, shiru iku-i zo?
Saku-ya san-kō ren-gaku wo yumemu.
Kin-ryū takaku maki koku-un tobu._
“In Eastern skies Something appears; its eight sides raised aloft;
But all of them enveloped thick with mist and smoke, drunk in
and out.
Last night, at watch the third, I dreamed it as a mountain
lotus-shaped;
And shrouded in black cloud a golden dragon flying high.”
Only a part, however, of the object of this excursion had been
accomplished when we had been entertained at the Monastery of Ikegami.
I particularly wished to become acquainted with the work of my pupil,
Mr. Shibata, who after his return from his studies in this country had
succeeded in founding a college for the young priests of the Nichiren
sect in such manner as to fit them for usefulness under conditions
belonging to the moral and religious development of the “New Japan.”
Immediately after the luncheon, accordingly, we begged leave to
depart; and this granted, we bade good-bye to the kindly, sincere,
and simple-hearted abbot with feelings of respect and affection. The
jinrikishas took us to “Nichiren College” over a road, which for much
of the way was little more than a foot-path through the fields. The
buildings of the college are seated on a hill about a half-mile from
the station at Osaki and occupy at present some 3500 _tsubo_ (a _tsubo_
is 6 ft. by 6 ft.) of ground. They are all new and well adapted to
their collegiate uses, being constructed in modified Japanese style.
Since the advertised hour of the address had already passed, we went
to the chapel at once; and here I spoke to about two hundred young
priests and theological students on “The Personal Qualifications for
a Minister of Religion.” The address was in no important respect
different from that which would be suitable on the same subject for an
audience of theological students in England or the United States; nor
did its reception and appropriation seem any less thorough and sincere.
After inspecting the work in drawing and water-colours of which--so
the posted notice read--“An Exhibition is given in honour of ----,”
Mrs. Ladd returned to Tokyo; but I remained to carry out my purpose
of spending a full day and night among my priestly Buddhist friends.
In our many confidential talks while we were in the relations of
teacher and pupil, the latter had avowed his life-work to be the moral
reform and improved mental culture of the priesthood of his sect.
It had then seemed to me a bold, even an audacious undertaking. But
seeming audacity was quite characteristic of the youth of all those
very men who now, in middle life and old-age, are holding the posts
of leadership in Japan in a way to conserve the best results of the
earlier period of more rapid change. Besides, I knew well that my pupil
had the necessary courage and devotion; for he was not only a priest
but also a soldier, and had been decorated for his bravery in the
Chino-Japanese war. And again, toward the close of the Russo-Japanese
war, when he had been called out with the reserves, he had once more
left the position of priestly student and teacher to take his place at
arms in the defence of his country.
How wholesome and thoroughly educative of their whole manhood was
the training which was being given to these young temple boys, I had
abundant reason to know before leaving the Nichiren College at Osaki.
After tea and welcome-addresses by one of the teachers and two of the
pupils, followed by a response by the guest, an exhibition of one side
of this training was given in the large dining-hall of the school. For
as it was in ancient Greece, so it is now in Japan; arms and music must
not be neglected in the preparation to serve his country of the modern
Buddhist priest. Sword-dancing--one of the chants which accompanied the
action being Saigo’s celebrated “death song”--and a duet performed upon
a flute and a harp constructed by the performer out of split bamboo and
strings of silk, followed by _banzais_ for their guest, concluded the
entertainment.
Of the nine who sat down to dinner that evening in a private room
belonging to another building of the school, four besides the host
were priests of the Nichiren sect. They constituted the body of
the more strictly religious or theological instructors; the courses
in literature and the sciences being taught for the most part by
professors from the Imperial University or from the private university
founded by Japan’s great teacher of youth, the late Mr. Fukuzawa. Of
the priests the most conspicuous and communicative was proud to inform
me that he had been the chaplain of General Noghi at the siege of Port
Arthur. With reference to the criticisms passed at the time upon that
great military leader he said with evident emotion that General Noghi
was “as wise as he was undoubtedly brave.” This same priest had also
interesting stories to tell of his experiences in China. In speaking of
the ignorance of the teachers of religion in that country he declared,
that of the hundreds of Tâoist priests he had met, the vast majority
could not even read the Chinese ideographs when he wrote them; and none
of the numbers he had known could make any pretence to scholarship.
They were quite universally ignorant, superstitious, and physically and
morally filthy. Among the Buddhist priests in China, however, the case
was somewhat better; for perhaps three or four in every ten could make
some pretence of education; and there were even a very few who were
real scholars. But neither Tâoists nor Buddhists had much influence
for good over the people; and “priest, priest,” was a cry of insult
with which to follow one. As to their sincerity, at one of the Tâoist
temples he had asked for meat and wine, but had been told that none
could be had, because they abstained religiously from both. But when
he replied that he had no scruples against either, but needed them
for his health and wished to pay well for them, both were so quickly
produced he knew they could not have come from far away. (I may remark
in this connection that if the experiences and habits of the Chinese
in Manchuria resemble at all closely the experiences and customs
of the Koreans in their own country, the unwillingness to furnish
accommodations to travelling strangers is caused rather by the fear of
having them requisitioned without pay than to any scruples, religious
or otherwise, as to what they themselves eat and drink or furnish to
others for such purposes).
The same subject which had been introduced at the priests-house, on
occasion of the all-night festival at Ikegami, was now brought forward
again. What had been my impressions received from the spectacle
witnessed at that time? When to the inquiry I made a similar
answer,--namely, that only a portion of the vast crowd seemed to be
sincere worshippers, but that with the exception of a few rude young
men in the procession, who appeared to have had too much saké, I saw
no immoral or grossly objectional features--all the priests expressed
agreement with my views. Where the superstitions connected with the
celebration were not positively harmful, it was the policy of the
reforming and progressive party of the sect to leave them to die away
of themselves as the people at large became more enlightened.
After a night of sound sleep, Japanese fashion, on the floor of the
study in my pupil’s pretty new home, we rose at six and hastened
across the fields to attend the morning religious services in the
chapel of the school. Here for a full half-hour, or more, what had
every appearance of serious and devout religious worship was held by
the assembled teachers and pupils. All were neatly dressed in black
gowns; no evidences of having shuffled into unbrushed garments, with
toilets only half-done or wholly neglected, were anywhere to be seen,
nor was there the vacant stare, the loud whisper, the stolen glance at
newspaper or text-book; but all responded to the sutras and intoned
the appointed prayers and portions of the Scriptures, while the time
was accented by the not too loud beating of a musical gong. Certainly,
the orderliness and apparent devotion quite exceeded that of any
similar service at “morning prayers” in the average American college or
university.
A brief exhibition of _judo_, (a modified form of _jiujitsu_), and of
Japanese fencing, which was carried on in the dining-room while the
head-master was exchanging his priestly for his military dress, in
order to take part in a memorial service to deceased soldiers, at which
General Noghi was expected to be present, terminated my entertainment
at this Buddhist school for the training of temple boys. As we left
the crowd of them who had accompanied us thus far on the way, and
stood shouting _banzais_ on the platform of the station, there was
no room for doubting the heartiness of their friendly feeling toward
the teacher of their teacher; although the two, while sharing many of
the most important religious views, were called by names belonging to
religions so different as Christianity and Buddhism.
The impressions from these two visits to Ikegami regarding the
changes going on in Buddhistic circles in Japan, and in the attitude
of Buddhism toward Christianity, were amply confirmed by subsequent
experiences. At Kyoto, the ancient capital and religious centre of the
empire, I was invited by the Dean of the Theological Seminary connected
with the Nishi Honwangi to address some six hundred young priests of
various sects on the same topic as that on which the address was given
at the Nichiren College near Ikegami. It should be explained that
this temple is under the control of the Shin-shu, the most numerous
and probably the most wealthy sect in the Empire. The high priest of
this sect is an hereditary count and therefore a member of the House
of Peers. He is also a man of intelligence and of a wide-spreading
interest in religion. At the time of my visit, indeed, the Count was
absent on a missionary tour in China. This address also was listened
to with the same respectful attention by the several hundred Buddhist
priests who had gathered at the temple of Nishi Honwangi. Here again
Mrs. Ladd and I were made the recipients of the same courteous and
unique hospitality. Before the lecture began, we were entertained in
the room which had been distinguished for all time in the estimate of
the nation by the fact that His Majesty the Emperor held within its
walls the first public reception ever granted to his subjects by the
Mikado; and after the lecture we were further honoured by being the
first outsiders ever invited to a meal with the temple officers within
one of the temple apartments.
Later on at Nagoya, further evidence was afforded of the important
fact that the old-time religious barriers are broken down or are being
overridden, wherever the enlightenment and moral welfare of the people
seem likely to be best served in this way. Now Nagoya has hitherto
been considered one of the most conservative and even bigoted Buddhist
centres in all Japan. Yet a committee composed of Buddhists and of
members of the Young Men’s Christian Association united in arrangements
for a course of lectures on education and ethics. This was remarked
upon as the first instance of anything of the sort in the history of
the city.
When we seek for the causes which have operated to bring about these
important and hopeful changes in the temper and practises of the
Buddhism which is fast gaining currency and favour in Japan, we are
impressed with the belief that the greatest of them is the introduction
of Christianity itself. This influence is obvious in the following
three essential ways. Christian conceptions and doctrines are modifying
the tenets of the leading Buddhistic thinkers in Japan. As I listened
for several hours to his exposition of his conception of the Divine
Being, the divine manner of self-revelation, and of his thoughts about
the relations of God and man, by one of the most notable theologians
of the Shin Shu (the sect which I have already spoken of as the most
popular in Japan), I could easily imagine that the exponent was one of
the Alexandrine Church-Fathers, Origen or Clement, discoursing of God
the Unrevealed and of the Logos who was with God and yet who became
man. But Buddhism is also giving much more attention than formerly to
raising the moral standards of both priests and people. It is sharing
in the spirit of ethical quickening and revival which is so important
an element of the work of Christian missions abroad, but which is
alas! so woefully neglected in the so-called Christian nations at
home. Japanese Buddhism is feeling now much more than formerly the
obligation of any religion which asks the adherence and support of the
people, to help the people, in a genuine and forceful way, to a nobler
and better way of living. Hitherto in Japan it has been that peculiar
development of Confucian ethics called Bushidō, which has embodied and
cultivated the nobler moral ideals. Religion, at least in the form
which Buddhism has taken in Japan, has had little to do with inspiring
and guiding men in the life which is better and best, here and now. But
as its superstitions with regard to the future are falling away and are
ceasing practically to influence the body of the people, there are some
gratifying signs that its influence upon the spiritual interests of the
present is becoming purer and stronger.
That Buddhism is improving its means of educating its followers, and
is feeling powerfully the quickening of the national pulse, due to the
advancing strides in educational development, is obvious enough to any
one able to compare its condition to-day with its condition not more
than a score of years ago. There are, of course, in the ranks of all
the Buddhist sects leaders who are ready to cry out against heresies
and the mischief of changes concealed under the guise of reforms. The
multitudes of believers are still far below the desirable standard of
either intelligence in religious matters, or of morals as controlled by
religious motives. But the old days of stagnation and decay seem to be
passing away; and the outlook now is that the foreign religion, instead
of speedily destroying the older native religion, will have helped it
to assume a new and more vigorous and better form of life.
As the period of more bitter conflict and mutual denunciation gives
way to a period of more respectful and friendly, and even co-operative
attitude in advancing the welfare of the nation, the future of
both Buddhism and Christianity in Japan affords a problem of more
complicated and doubtful character. The nation is awakening to its need
of morals and religion,--in addition to a modern army and navy, and to
an equipment for teaching and putting to practical uses, the physical
sciences,--as never before. The awakening is accompanied there, as
elsewhere in the modern world, by a thirst for reality. Whatever can
satisfy this thirst, however named, will find acceptance and claim the
allegiance of both the thoughtful and the multitudes of the common
people; for in Japan, as elsewhere in the modern world, men are not
easily satisfied or permanently satisfied with mere names.