Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (23 page)

T
HE GREAT
C
HINESE
emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti (221 to 210
BC
) is famous for building the Great Wall of China. This massive structure would be destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the ensuing centuries, but enough of it was rebuilt and repaired in the centuries after Ch’in Shih Huang Ti’s reign to ensure that the flow
of immigration on the mainland was to the east, toward Japan, and not the west, toward China. By the sixth century
AD
, Japan and Korea were engaged in frequent cultural exchanges. Korean artisans who’d mastered many of China’s sophisticated technologies, like architecture and metalwork, were often brought to Japan, where their skills were prized. There is also evidence that Japan’s elite clans were full of Koreans who came perhaps to enjoy the freedom of the “wild east,” or perhaps to help ensure the fealty of the powerful Japanese clans, should the Korean kingdoms require aid in the event of a war with China, or with each other. Indeed, in 660
AD
, the Korean kingdom Paekche fought with its neighbor Silla, who was aided by T’ang China. Though the Japanese navy was dispatched to aid Paekche, Silla prevailed. History tells us that many royal members of the Paekche family forever abandoned their homeland to live in Japan.

III. THE STATUE

In either 538 or 552
AD
—historians still disagree—an envoy of monks, priests, and artisans from the kingdom of neighboring Paekche arrived in Yamato (now not only the name of the clan but also the area it controlled) bearing a bronze statue of the Buddha whose surface was covered with gold. While we don’t know the specific location of the Yamato court on this date, we do know it was somewhere near modern-day Nara, which is nineteen miles east of present-day
saka. The Buddha and the envoy were presented to the head of the Yamato clan, King Kimmei, who ruled from 539 to 571
AD
. Two other clans were also powerful and influential in Kimmei’s court: the liberal Soga and the conservative Mononobe.

The statue of the Buddha came with a tantalizing inscription by the king of Paekche: “This doctrine is amongst all doctrines the
most excellent, but it is hard to explain and hard to comprehend. Even the Duke of Chou and Confucius could not attain a knowledge of it. This doctrine can create religious merit and retribution without measure and without bounds, and so lead on to a full appreciation of the highest wisdom. Imagine a man in possession of treasures to his heart’s content, so that he might satisfy all his wishes in proportion as he used them.”

What happened next tells us a great deal about the Japanese. The open-minded Soga, many of whom were of Korean descent, were fascinated by the Buddha. The clan’s main leader, Umako, seems to have believed that Buddhism, with its hierarchical system of reverence, had the possibility of uniting the clans of Wa to create a unified kingdom like Paekche, or even China. Such a vision would have been tantalizing to the educated men of Wa, who were aware of just how powerful the Chinese Sui dynasty had become.

Prior to the arrival of the serene and gilded Buddhist figure, it’s likely that no one in Japan had ever seen such a statue. On a recent visit to T
ky
, I stopped by the T
ky
National Museum, where numerous versions of Buddhas like this one are housed; the fate of the original is not known to history. Over time, the gold color of these statues has tarnished, but there is one piece, a replica, that demonstrates just how shiny the statue would have been. Even in the sleep-inducing, patina-preserving dark lighting of the museum, this statue is blindingly bright. It was impossible for me not to look at it and think of the power gold once had over the ancient world, before modernity festooned whole buildings with images made out of neon light.

Not everyone was happy with the statue of the Buddha, or with the introduction of Buddhism to the Japanese isles. The Soga’s chief rivals, the Mononobe clan, made their displeasure clear. Mononobe leaders did not want this new religion in their land, when there was already a perfectly good religious system in place. Many members
of the Mononobe were priests of this older form of religion, which we know today as Shint
, the nature-based religion. King Kimmei finally allowed the Soga to build a temple for the little Buddhist statue. The Nihon shoki, the officially recorded history of Japan, tells us that the ensuing years were a struggle for the little Buddha; it was thrown into the Naniwa river not once but twice, while its temple was burned, rebuilt, and then burned again. Buddhism’s future in Japan looked uncertain.

I
N 585 AD
, a Soga emperor, Y
mei, took the Yamato throne and declared himself a Buddhist. But Emperor Y
mei died less than two years later, the casualty of a smallpox epidemic that raged through the Yamato plain. The Mononobe claimed that Y
mei’s acceptance of Buddhism had angered the native gods, and that the fatal illness was his punishment. Shint
, remember, stresses the importance of “purity” and cleanliness. Some historians have wondered if in fact the Mononobe clan poisoned Y
mei. Whatever the cause of death, the stage was set for one final battle between the two impassioned families.