Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (22 page)

But the school of thought that ultimately took root in Japan was the newer Mahayana school. We don’t know precisely when or how Mahayana developed, though its oldest texts date from five hundred years after the Buddha died. The Mahayanists revere the historical Buddha for what he accomplished and what he revealed, but they believe in the concept of infinite Buddhas, and their temples are often filled with statues of various figures aside from the historical Buddha.

Mahayanists are also taken with the idea of helping others to
gain enlightenment. What is the point, they say, of entering nirvana on your own if other people around you are still suffering? Wouldn’t a truly compassionate person who is capable of being a Buddha nonetheless remain behind to help others in need? Well, yes, religious scholars said. They gave this compassionate person a name: the bodhisattva. The figure of Jiz
, which Kaneta encourages tsunami survivors to make out of clay, is one such bodhisattva, a kind and loving being who stays behind on earth, determined to free humans from their mortal coils.

II. BECOMING JAPAN

The history of Buddhism in Japan is deeply intertwined with the development of Japan as a country. Up until the sixth century, Japan was a kind of wild, wild east, here and there settled by immigrants from Korea and China and mostly inhabited by loosely affiliated tribes of uncertain geographic origin. Because Japan didn’t exist as a unified country, it did not start writing its own official history until the sixth century, over a thousand years after Buddhism was born. This means that the earliest accounts of Japan come from the remarkable Chinese historians who had been documenting their own history, and the world around them, as far back as three thousand years.

For centuries, Japan, as seen by China, was one of the “Eastern barbarian countries,” known specifically as “Wo” or “Wa,” and inhabited by many tribes who were often at war with each other. In 297
AD
, a document known as the “History of the Kingdom of Wei” presents the first eyewitness, physical description of early Japanese. The people of Wa are described as short, with a penchant for bowing and clapping their hands at shrines and a preoccupation with ritual purification and bathing. The Chinese also noted that
the residents of Wa loved to drink liquor and eat seafood, which is certainly something you can say about Japanese hanging out in an
izakaya
in the middle of modern-day T
ky
.

In this same document, the Chinese recorded that a queen named Himiko was chosen to rule over the land of Wa, after its many tribes spent years engaged in warfare. Scholars and feminists find the story of Himiko intriguing because it suggests that long after the rest of Asia had undergone by transformation from matriarchy to patriarchy—a process expedited in China and Korea due to the early adoption of patriarchal Confucianism—women in ancient Japan could still hold significant leadership roles. Indeed, Japan’s early history is filled with empresses before the men completely take over.

Up until the sixth century, “Wa” is written with the following Chinese character:
. Like all Chinese characters, “Wa,” or
, can be thought of as a picture. To the left, the figure
represents a person standing upright. Then we have the two shapes on the right. The top piece,
, represents a grain of rice, with a head bowing over from its stalk. Beneath this is
, or woman. Together, a “grain of rice” and “a woman” are meant to conjure a picture of a woman bending over her work in a field of rice. Put all these pieces together, and the character
or “Wa,” means “bent over” or “submissive” or “docile.”

Here is a further description of Wa, also taken from “History of the Kingdom of Wei”: “Over one thousand li to the east of the Queen’s [Himiko’s] land, there are more countries of the same race as the people of Wa. To the south, also there is the island of the dwarfs where the people are three or four feet tall. This is over four thousand li distance from the Queen’s land. Then there is the land of the naked men, as well as of the black-teethed people. These places can be reached by boat if one travels southeast for a year.” There is no doubt in these passages who represents the advanced,
civilized country and who are the somewhat amusing and backward people.

In the seventh century, the Japanese began to compile an “official history,” the Nihon shoki, completed in 720
AD
. It is believed that large parts of the Nihon shoki preserved stories that had been previously passed on by storytellers. But the Nihon shoki is most certainly a partly fabricated work, written to give the impression that Japan had a long and legitimate history, like the much admired, if also feared, China. For example, the Nihon shoki claims that Japan’s first emperor was Jimmu, who ruled circa 660
BC
and from whom the current emperor is said to be descended. This picture of a peaceful Japan under the continuous rule of one imperial family does not match the picture painted by Chinese scholars of an island nation inhabited by dwarves with blackened teeth and made up of clans who frequently fought with each other.

Scholars today believe that ancient Japan—or Wa—was in fact inhabited by numerous clans, just as the Chinese historians say. Over time, a few families gained prominence. Ultimately, the Yamato became the most powerful clan. If the name “Yamato” sounds familiar to you, it should; Japan’s imperial family is descended from the old Yamato clan, making it the oldest royal household still in existence. Today, court officials help to maintain the fiction that Yamato was always in charge of Japan, though the truth is that by 500
AD
, when Buddhism arrived, Yamato had the upper hand but wasn’t the exclusive power. Japan was not yet a unified country.