COPYRIGHT NOTICE Stone & Walter/Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism is published by University of Hawai‘i Press and copyrighted, © 2008, by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers. Introduction Thehistorianof deathmustnotbeafraidtoembracethe centuriesuntiltheyrunintoamillennium.Theerrorshe willnotbeabletoavoidarelessseriousthanthe anachronismstowhichhewouldbeexposedbytooshort achronology.Letus,therefore,regardaperiodof a thousandyearsasacceptable. —PhilippeArie`s Providing funeral and memorial services represents the major so- cial role of Buddhist priests and temples in Japan today. For many people, death may be the only occasion when they turn to the family temple,or,indeed,learnmuchof anythingaboutBuddhism.Inhisin- troductory study of contemporary Japanese religion, Ian Reader re- countsaconversationbetweentwouniversityprofessorsof hisacquain- tance; queried by one about his family’s Buddhist sectarian affiliation, the other replied, ‘‘I do not know: no one in our household has died yet.’’1 Japanese scholarly histories of Buddhist mortuary ritual have often taken a teleological approach, attempting to show just how this present association of Buddhism with death came about. They also tend to be informed by a modernist critique of Buddhist institutions thattargetstemples’relianceonfuneraryandmortuaryritesasasymp- tomof decline.2Thelocusclassicusofthisapproachisof courseTama- muro Taijo¯’s influential S¯oshiki bukky¯o (Funeral Buddhism), first pub- lished in 1963 and still in print, which traces the growth of Japanese Buddhist institutions from the standpoint of their funerary rites. No previous scholar had framed the entire history of Japanese Buddhism in this way, and the data Tamamuro presented, if read critically, re- main useful today. Yet his underlying question was clearly one of how the present, and in his view, deeply problematic, state of Buddhism had come about. Tamamuro writes that he chose his particular focus because, of the three avenues by which Buddhism had once appealed to the populace—healing, granting good fortune, and mortuary rites—only mortuary rites still remained influential. But even these no longer answered modern needs. ‘‘The issue facing [Buddhism] to- day,’’hewrote,‘‘istopurifyitsfuneralsof ancient,feudal,andmagical 1 2 Introduction elements,aswellasthosepertainingtoancestorworship,and[instead] createfuneralritesthat[simply]comfortandcommemorate.ButBud- dhistleadersclosetheireyestothisrealityandwandervainlyinaworld of illusion. Herein, I suspect, lies the cause of the confusion in the Buddhist world.’’3 Tamamuro’s study not only reflected ongoing de- bate over the continued relevance of Buddhist funerary rites but also helped literally to define its terms, as the title s¯oshiki bukky¯o quickly be- came a catchphrase encapsulating stereotypes of ossified Buddhist in- stitutions, out of tune withpeople’s spiritual needs in this life andpre- occupied solely with death. We, the editors of this volume, have no interest in pursuing the modernist critique (except as an object of study), and while we find the roots of the contemporary Buddhist near-monopoly on death rites to be a fascinating subject, we do not necessarily read their history as a trajectory of Buddhist decline. Bracketing Tamamuro’s modernist assumptions, we find the story outlined in his S¯oshiki bukky¯o to be a re- markable one, worthy of further inquiry and historical interpretation. For more than a millennium, despite moments of fierce competition from Shinto, Confucianism, Nativism, and, more recently, the secular funeral industry, Buddhism has dominated Japanese rites for the dead. No comprehensive understanding of Japanese religion or cul- ture for any period following Buddhism’s introduction would be possi- ble without some knowledge of its death rituals and views of the after- life and their impact on social practice. Nonetheless, no book-length English-language study presenting an overall history of death in Japa- nese Buddhism has yet appeared.4 Cognizant of this lack, Mariko Wal- terorganizedapapersessiononthistopicforthe2000annualmeeting of the American Academy of Religion, which became the impetus for the present volume. The nine essays gathered here include studies by both established scholars and younger voices in the field and display a range of approaches, including not only Buddhist Studies but also art history, literarycriticism, ritualstudies,gender studies, sociologyof religion, and ethnographic fieldwork. They are presented in chrono- logical order of their subject matter, beginning with the Heian period (794–1185), and collectively cover a period of roughly a thousand years—coincidentally, the very length of time deemed appropriate by historian Philippe Arie`s for a proper study of death. As Arie`s suggests in the epigraph above, the perspective of the longue dure´e does indeed make possible an overview of persistent patterns as well as significant shifts in approaches to death. While we make no claim to compre- hensiveness (nor even to so detailed a treatment as Arie`s’ own monu- mental study of the history of Western attitudes toward death), we are confident that each essay included here addresses issues vital to an Introduction 3 understandingof deathandtheafterlifein JapaneseBuddhistthought andpracticeandthat,takeninconjunction,thestudiespresentedhere will provide a more thorough picture of this topic than has hitherto beenavailable.Ourhopeisthatthisvolumewillnotonlybenefitschol- ars and students of Buddhism and Japanese religion but also interest those focusing on other areas of Japan studies or religion and culture more broadly. As coeditors, we asked our contributors to make clear the connections among their individual essays by highlighting one or more of three themes: (1) continuity and change over time in Japa- nese Buddhist death-related practices and views of the afterlife; (2) thedualroleof Buddhistdeathritesinbothaddressingindividualcon- cerns about the afterlife and at the same time working to construct, maintain, and legitimize social relations and the authority of religious institutions; and (3) Buddhist death rites as a locus of ‘‘contradictory logics,’’ to borrow a felicitous phrase from Duncan Williams’s chapter, bringing together unrelated, even opposing ideas about the dead, their postmortem fate, what the living should do for them, and what constitutes normative Buddhist practice. These three sets of interre- lated issues are of course by no means limited either to Japan or to Buddhism. To introduce our essays most effectively, then, let us first offer some background and then contextualize the individual chap- ters by providing a brief historical overview of death in Japanese Buddhism. ‘‘Entrusting theAfterlife to Buddhism’’ We have only fragmentary information about the multiple concepts of the afterlife existing in Japan before the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century. The spirits of the dead were thought to reside in mountains, or cross over the seas to the ‘‘eternal world’’ of Tokoyo, or descend to the bleak ‘‘land of Yomi’’ of the Yamato myths.5 The first dynastic histories make reference, in connection with the system of double burial practiced among the nobility, to notions of a spirit (tama)requiringmourningandpacification;earlyon,Buddhistmonks and nuns were incorporated into the rites surrounding the mogari no miya, or place of temporary interment, to perform services for de- ceased imperial family members.6 Over time, however, explicitly Bud- dhistmodelsdisplacedthisearlierritualcomplex,comingtodominate thedeath-relatedpracticesof thearistocracy.Thechief siteformemo- rializing the dead shifted fromthe mogari no miya to Buddhist temples, and funerary ritual for tenn¯o or emperors gave way from eulogies read by courtiers before their tombs to Buddhist rites of merit trans- ference.7 According to the Nihon shoki, Urabon ceremonies for the 4 Introduction deceasedwerefirstsponsoredbythecourtasearlyas606.8BytheHeian period,Buddhistritualhadcometobeunderstood,atleastamongthe nobility, asthe preeminent spiritual technology for consoling and pac- ifying the dead. Buddhist rites were not only performed to memori- alize the dead collectively but were also sponsored by families for the sake of deceased relatives. For this purpose, Buddhist mantras, dha¯- ran¯ıs, and other invocations such as the nenbutsu were chanted, and ˙ goma rites, repentance rituals, and other ceremonies were conducted. Buddhistconceptsof theafterlife,including theforty-nine-dayinterim periodbetweendeathandrebirth,rebirthinthesixrealmsof samsaric existence, and the possibility of salvific birth in a pure land were spreadthroughpreachinganddoctrinalwritingsaswellasvisualrepre- sentations,songs,poetry,anddidactictales.Thereceptionof Buddhist death rites in turn stimulated a thriving religious culture supporting su¯tra transcription, ritual performance, production of Buddhist im- ages, and construction of mortuary chapels on a lavish scale. Buddhist cosmology shaped not only the memorializing of the dead but also individuals’ own postmortem aspirations, and specific Buddhist rites were increasingly adopted to insure one’s personal well-being in the next life. These included the ‘‘deathbed tonsure’’ (rinju¯ jukai, rinju¯ shukke),firstadoptedatcourtbyEmperorNinmyo¯ (d.850),whichcon- ferred the soteric benefit of enabling one to die as a Buddhist monk or nun and perhaps represented the earliest symbolic association in Japan of death with monastic ordination;9 the gyakushu or ‘‘preemp- tive funeral,’’ performed for oneself or another prior to death, such as the grand ceremonies sponsored by the courtier Fujiwara no Michi- naga (966–1027) described in Eiga monogatari (A tale of flowering for- tunes);10and‘‘deathbedrites’’(rinju¯ gy¯ogi)orritualpracticesaimedat focusingone’sthoughtsatthelastmomentsoastoescapesamsaricre- birth and be born into a pure land. An attitude of ‘‘entrusting the af- terlife to Buddhism’’ was forged during the Heian period and, despite vicissitudesand transformations,haspersisted to thisday.11 ButwhyshouldBuddhisminparticularhavecometobeentrusted with the afterlife? It has often been noted, and thus scarcely needs re- stating, that Buddhism at the time of its introduction possessed a sys- tematic doctrine, an institutional organization, and a stunning ritual repertoire unequalled by any other religious tradition represented in Japan, and thus it rose quickly to prominence. Yet we gain some fur- ther insight by detailing more specific reasons for Buddhist preemi- nence in the realm of death. While others could be adduced, three suchreasonsmeritmentionhere.OneliesinBuddhism’sintellectually compelling doctrine of an ethicized afterlife, in which individuals are reborn in pleasant or painful circumstances according to their deeds. Introduction 5 This doctrine provided both an incentive for virtuous behavior and assurance that the structure of reality is a moral one, in which, ulti- mately, good conduct is rewarded and wrongdoing punished. Yet, while cognitively satisfying, it was also profoundly disturbing, in that one could never be sure of having performed enough meritorious deedstooffsetthesinsof priorlifetimes.12Thusin Japan,aselsewhere intheBuddhistworld,thedoctrineof karmiccausalitybecameinextri- cably intertwined with an opposing yet interdependent logic by which merit transference on the part of the living could ameliorate or even eradicate the postmortem suffering of the dead.13 One might say that teachings of karmic causality generated the problem of possible retri- bution in the afterlife, while rituals of merit transference provided a solution. In the magnetic tension generated between these two per- spectives, Buddhism acquired and held its dominance over death throughout the premodern period. A second factor contributing to Buddhism’s ascendancy in the realm of death lies in its well-known capacity to assimilate and refig- ure elements from other traditions. In particular, notions of a total- izing, integrated cosmos characteristic of the Japanese Maha¯ya¯na— exemplified by teachings about skillful means tending toward the one vehicle, the myriad dharmas manifesting the true aspect, or all forms in the visible universe being the body of the cosmic buddha— encouraged and legitimized the redefining and incorporating of local religious elements as aspects of Buddhist truth. Recent research has illuminated, for example, the ‘‘combinatory logic’’ by which kami or local deities and other gods of continental origin were recast as the provisionalformsof buddhasandbodhisattvas,andtheirworship,inte- grated into a Buddhist ritual and institutional framework.14 Though seldom as explicitly schematized, similar processes occurred with death-related matters. Buddhist ethical norms of compassion and rites of merit transference to the deceased were mapped onto ancient con- cerns about the need to pacify unhappy or vengeful spirits. Notions of the afterlife froma range of traditions—eternal Tokoyo, the ‘‘Land of Roots’’ (Ne no kuni), the island of Mt. Penglai, and various Daoist heavens and immortal realms—were assimilated to the topological paradigms of Buddhist pure lands.15 In every period, Buddhist rituals for the deceased have incorporated features of local religious culture, which is why a comprehensive study of death in Japanese Buddhism should include the approaches, not only of Buddhist Studies per se, butalsoof socialhistory,folklorestudies,literature,andanthropology. OnemightwellarguethattheBuddhistnear-monopolyondeathprac- tices has stemmed, not only from Buddhism’s own compelling teach- ings about the afterlife and the perceived efficacy of its rites, but 6 Introduction also from its capacity to absorb and refigure elements from a range of traditions. Third, Buddhism has provided a class of religious specialists per- ceived as capable of managing the dangers and defilement of death and of mediating between this world and the next. It has sometimes been assumed that Buddhism gained its preeminence in death rites by stepping in, as it were, to fill a gap left by the ‘‘native’’ tradition of kami worship that shunned death pollution (shie). But the historical situation proves far more complex. In the Heian and early medieval periods,Buddhistmonksinvolvedincourtritualorritesfortheprotec- tionof thenationwereexpectedtomaintainritualpuritybyobserving the same avoidances or taboos (imi) surrounding the worship of kami (jingi saishi) associated with the imperial cult, and not all Buddhist clerics routinely conducted funerals.16 It was often those monks prac- ticing outside the formal structures of temple administrative posts and the clerical career path—such as hijiri, or thaumaturgical recluses— who most frequently attended deathbeds or provided funeral rites for lay devotees. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, monks of the emergent Zen and Ritsu orders began regularly to perform funer- als for lay patrons.17 But not until the Tokugawa or early modern period (1603–1868) did the great majority of Buddhist monks—or priests, as Western scholars tend to refer to them especially from that period on—come to perform funerals as part of their routine ritual obligations, a situation that still obtains today. The topic of Buddhist ritual and death pollution is a complex one and callsfor further inves- tigation. While some Japanese Buddhist discourses have dismissed the notion of death pollution as soteriologically irrelevant, others have maintained or even actively promoted it, as a foil over and against which the thaumaturgical power of Buddhist adepts could be displayed.18 Aspirations forthe Pure Land andthe Momentof Death By around the mid-ninth century, Japanese elites were not only per- forming and commissioning Buddhist rites for the welfare of the deceased but had also begun to envision their own postmortem fate in Buddhist terms. Increasingly, people aspired to achieve ¯oj¯o, or birth after death in a pure land or other superior realm, such as the Tusita Heaven (Tosotsuten), abode of the future buddha, Maitreya ˙ (Miroku); the bodhisattva Kannon’s Potalaka realm (Fudaraku); Sa- cred Eagle Peak (Ryo¯jusen), where the eternal S´a¯kyamuni Buddha preaches the Lotus Su¯tra; or—the most sought-after of all postmortem destinations—the buddha Amida’s western Pure Land of Utmost Bliss (Gokuraku Jo¯do).ItisAmida’srealmtowhichtheterms¯oj¯oand‘‘Pure Introduction 7 Land’’mostcommonlyrefer.Fromadoctrinalstandpoint,birthinthe Pure Land was equivalent to reaching the stage of nonretrogres- sion on the bodhisattva path; once born in that realm, one would no longer fall back into the realms of samsaric rebirth but was certain to gain enlightenment. There, conditions for practice and realization were said to be ideal, and after achieving awakening in the Pure Land, one could return voluntarily to the realms of suffering as a bo- dhisattva,inordertoassisttheliberationof others.Formany,however, Amida’s Pure Land was simply a postmortem paradise, where the suf- ferings of this world would be transcended. While trained meditators might have visions of the Pure Land in this life, for most, ¯oj¯o repre- sented agoal whoseachievement was bydefinition mediatedby death. Those who could focus their thoughts on the Buddha at the time of death would be welcomed by Amida himself, who would descend to- gether with his holy retinue to escort that person to the Pure Land. Thus death underwent redefinition as the moment of success or fail- ureinachieving¯oj¯o. This was before the rise of the exclusive nenbutsu movements of Ho¯nen (1133–1212) and Shinran (1173–1262), and birth in the Pure Land was often deemed extremely difficult to achieve—‘‘the most dif- ficult of all difficult things,’’ as the monk Kakucho¯ (953/960–1034) is said to have declared19—requiring sustained efforts in meditation or devotional practice. Yet this sense of the difficulty of achieving ¯oj¯o co- existed with the subversive logic of the deathbed rite, by which even the most sinful persons could achieve birth in the Pure Land by right contemplation in their final moments. The treatise O¯j¯o y¯oshu¯ (Essen- tials of birth in the Pure Land) by the scholar monk Genshin (942– 1017) wasthe first workcompiled in Japan to set forth instructions for deathbed contemplation. Deathbed practices such as it describes were first formally adopted by the Niju¯go zanmai-e or Sama¯dhi Society of Twenty-five, an association of monks formed in 986 at the Yokawa re- treat at the great Tendai monastery on Mt. Hiei, in which Genshin took anactive part. The heightened attention accorded to life’s last moments in Pure Land practice forms the context for the first two essays in this volume. The first, by Sarah Horton, explores the role of visual imagery in the spread of Pure Land devotion and the reconception of death as a lib- erative opportunity. This reconception, Horton suggests, was made possible more than anything else by the image of Amida’s welcoming descent (raig¯o), that is, Amida’s arrival, accompanied by his holy reti- nue, to receive the dying and escort them to his Pure Land. Her essay explores the textual basis of the raig¯o concept and its early representa- tions, with particular attention to the role of Genshin, whom Heian sources credit with initiating the tradition of Japanese raig¯o painting. 8 Introduction While modern scholarship has concentrated on Genshin’s contribu- tions to Pure Land thought, Horton suggeststhat hisrole in the devel- opment of raig¯o imagery may have contributed far more immediately than did his doctrinal writings to the spread of Pure Land aspirations. Inparticular,Hortonfocusesonthemukaek¯oorceremonyof welcome, a dramatic enactment of Amida’s descent to welcome the dying, using music, bodhisattva costumes, and masks. The mukaek¯o, possibly Gen- shin’s innovation, was instrumental in disseminating hopes for the Pure Land among persons of all classes. Its visually stunning perfor- mance, Horton argues, helped alleviate fears of death by representing it asajoyful occasion of salvific encounterwiththe Buddha. The second chapter, by Jacqueline Stone, offers a contrasting ar- gument. Stone suggests that, while hopes for the Pure Land may have encouraged a reconceiving of death as joyful, the importance placed onright-mindfulnessinone’slastmomentsalsoprovokedfears.If cor- rect meditative focus at the moment of death could transcend the sins of a lifetime and secure one’s birth in the Pure Land, the reverse was likewise true; under the liminal influence of life’s last moments, it was said, even a single stray delusory thought could obstruct the merits of one’spriorpracticeandsendonetumblingbackdownintothepainful realms of rebirth. Thus whether or not one would be able to die with one’s thoughts focused calmly on the Buddha became a new source of anxiety and a problem to be ritually addressed. Examining instruc- tions for deathbed practice produced from the late tenth through early fourteenth centuries, Stone traces the increasing importance of the ‘‘good friend’’ or zenchishiki, here meaning the religious advisor orritualistinattendanceatthedeathbed,whoexhorteddyingpersons inright-mindfulness,guidedtheirdeathbedvisualizations,andassisted their chanting of the nenbutsu. Over time, Stone argues, the dying per- son’s ‘‘success’’ in achieving¯oj¯o came to depend less on the deathbed practice of the dying person per se than on the ritual actions of the zenchishiki, who might also assume responsibility for postmortem rites. The emergence of the zenchishiki at the deathbed as a formal ritual role, she suggests, marked a significant step in the growing influence of Buddhist clergyoverdeath-related practices. Death andthe Persistence of WorldlyTies Ina1907landmarkessaybasedonhisstudyof Malayfuneralpractices, anthropologist Robert Hertz argued an inseparable relationship be- tween the treatment of the corpse, the presumed journey of the de- ceased spirit to its new abode, and the mourning rites observed by the community.Throughproperdisposalof the bodyand performanceof Introduction 9 funerary rites, Hertz noted, the deceased is led through three stages: separation from world of the living, transition through a dangerous liminal realm, and reincorporation with a new status into the social world of the survivors.20 Subsequent research has refined Hertz’s insights and also shown their broader relevance to other cultural spheres. Chapters 4 through 6 of this volume, ranging in chronology from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, focus on the roles played by Japanese Buddhist ritual, discourse, and institutions in rein- tegrating the dead into the world of the living and, in the process, defining the contours of that world. As Maurice Bloch has observed, ‘‘Deathasdisruption,ratherthanbeingaproblemforthesocialorder, as anthropologists have tended to think of it, is in fact an opportunity for dramaticallycreating it.’’21 At first glance, claims about the ongoing relationship of the living and the dead might seem incompatible with the Buddhist message of transience and nonattachment. However, it is important to note that whileBuddhistdoctrinedoesindeedcharacterizedeathasemblematic of the truth that all is impermanent, Buddhist ritual has just as often been understood as affirming the persistence into the afterlife of this- worldlybonds—social,familial,andaffective.Thisemphasisoncontin- uance and stability should be seen neither as a corruption of an origi- nallypureBuddhistdoctrinenorasanaccommodationtouneducated laypersons, butasaninfluential strandof Buddhist thoughtinitsown right, present in virtually all Buddhist traditions from a very early date and coexisting, although in tension, with normative teachings about impermanence and nonattachment.22 Death is, as we have said, a site uniting contradictory logics, a major theme of the essays collected here. Brian Ruppert’s chapter concerns the funerary and mortuary di- mension in premodern Japan of the worship of relics, said to be the physical remains of the historical Buddha. The account of the Bud- dha’s cremation (and Buddhist cremation more generally) has didac- tic value as a dramatic performance of impermanence, the body of a once-living person being reduced to smoke and ashes before the view- ers’ eyes. Yet at the same time, cremation has an equally significant if opposing purpose in generating enduring physical relics for enshrine- mentandveneration.23Recentscholarshiphasshedlightonhowbud- dharelicshavebeenunderstoodasprolongingthecareerinthisworld of S´a¯kyamuni Buddha, whose spiritual powers were understood to still inhere in his remains.24 Buddha relics, then, in effect transcend the boundarybetweenlifeanddeathandthuscametorepresenttheongo- ing possibility of enlightenment even in an age of decline. Ruppert shows that relic worship in medieval Japan, as on the Asian continent,