Table of Contents
- H-Net Job Guide Weekly Report For H-Buddhism: 4 December - 11 December
- Tu on Stone, 'Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan' [review]
- O'Leary on Bowring, 'In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582-1860' [review]
H-Net Job Guide Weekly Report For H-Buddhism: 4 December - 11 December
by Jason Protass
The
following jobs were posted to the H-Net Job Guide from 4 December 2017 to
11 December 2017. These job postings are included here based on the
categories selected by the list editors for H-Buddhism. See the H-Net Job
Guide website at http://www.h-net.org/jobs/ for more
information. To contact the Job Guide, write to jobguide@mail.h-net.msu.edu, or call
+1-517-432-5134 between 9 am and 5 pm US Eastern time.ANTHROPOLOGY
American Philosophical Society - Head of Digital Scholarship and
Technology
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56208
Arizona State University - Postdoctoral Fellow
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56188
Long Beach Community College District - Anthropology Instructor -
Cultural
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56185
Yale University - Post Doctoral Fellowship in South Asian Studies
(Humanities and Social Sciences)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56184
ASIAN HISTORY / STUDIES
Heidelberg University - Lecturer in Tibetan Language
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56205
Rubin Museum of Art - Director of Collections and Research
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56198
Rubin Museum of Art - Director of Exhibitions
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56200
Seton Hall University - Term Faculty position in Modern Asia with
specialization in Contemporary China
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56192
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
American Philosophical Society - Head of Digital Scholarship and
Technology
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56208
National Park Service - National Park Service Mellon Humanities
Postdoctoral Fellowships (Two located in Washington, DC and one
located in Philadelphia, PA)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56182
Universitat Wurzburg - wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in (TV-L 13)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56203
EAST ASIAN HISTORY / STUDIES
Harvard University - 2018-19 FELLOWSHIPS IN JAPANESE STUDIES AT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56190
Misericordia University - Assistant Professor - History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56189
JAPANESE HISTORY / STUDIES
Harvard University - 2018-19 FELLOWSHIPS IN JAPANESE STUDIES AT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56190
Tsuda University - Associate professor (junkyoju) or lecturer (sennin
koshi), Japanese Studies
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56193
RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND THEOLOGY
DePaul University - Holtschneider Chair in Vincentian Studies
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56210
NONE
Carleton College - Instructor, Carleton-Antioch Buddhist Studies in
India
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56183
University of Arkansas - Assistant Professor of Architecture
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56197
Tu on Stone, 'Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan' [review]
by System
Administrator
Reviewed by Xiaofei Tu (Lecturer Department of Languages,Literatures, and Cultures Appalachian State University)
Published on H-Buddhism (December, 2017)
Commissioned by Erez Joskovich
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=49177
Right Thoughts at the Last
Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan
This book is an informative survey and in-depth analysis of Japanese
Buddhist deathbed practices in late Heian and Kamakura periods. It adds
substantial knowledge to our understanding of medieval Japanese people’s
attitudes and behaviors at the last moment of their lives and of Japanese
Buddhism in general. It is a thorough source and a well-conducted research work
that benefits scholars of Japanese studies, religious studies, and Buddhist
studies.The book has an introduction and seven chapters. In her introduction, the author sets four goals for her book, which I shall assess below. There is also a brief discussion of doctrinal justifications for the significance of life’s last moment in both Indian and Chinese Buddhism. The author further makes it clear that her main sources are rinjū gyōgisho, or Japanese medieval instructions for the time of death and ōjōden, or hagiographies of exemplary deaths resulting in blissful rebirths. Indeed, this book is a masterful textual analysis and is very light on material culture or theorizing.
Chapter 1 begins with a short prehistory of Japanese Buddhism’s impact on death, focusing on Pure Land aspirations and nenbutsu. The chapter then proceeds to detailed discussions of (1) the beginning of Buddhist deathbed rituals in medieval Japan, marked by a series of events such as the formation of Twenty-Five Samadhi Society, a group of Buddhist monks who pledge mutual assistance to achieve rebirth after death in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land; (2) the scholar-monk Genshin’s instructions on achieving birth in Amida’s realm; and (3) the literati Yoshishige no Yasutane’s collection of biographies of the Japanese people who supposedly have reached the Pure Land.
Chapter 2 discusses multiple issues: the importance of the idea of “shunning this defiled world and aspiring to the Pure Land” (enri edo gongu jodo) in the development of deathbed rituals; pilgrimage and sacred sites in Pure Land beliefs; the doctrinal tension between the immanent Pure Land and the afterlife Pure Land; gender issues in Pure Land aspirations; and “evil” people’s prospects for a desirable rebirth.
Chapter 3 is a comprehensive analysis of ideal deaths that successfully result in rebirths in Pure Land. An exemplary death could involve foreknowledge of one’s own death for advanced practitioners and receiving the Buddhist precepts for lay people. In most cases, a Buddhist deathbed ritual needs to be meticulously performed and all instructions carefully followed. The details of the ritual include the indispensable Buddha image, to which the dying person is connected with five-colored cords, the chanting of nenbutsu and other appropriate Buddhist texts by both the dying person and whose who assist him, the dying person’s correct body gestures, as well as decorum observed by both the dying person and his or her caretakers.
Chapter 4 and part of chapter 3 discuss the signs of a desirable death as the signs are the evidence that a good rebirth happened. These signs typically include the appearance of purple clouds and wondrous fragrance, and chanting and music heard in the air. They can also happen in the forms of survivors’ dreams and visions, or corpses defying decay. When such signs appear at the time of death, people are motivated to witness such occurrences, and the pollution resulting from regular deaths stops being a concern.
Chapter 5 is perhaps the most interesting part of the book as it discusses the possibility that deaths could go wrong and deathbed rituals could potentially not work. Just as the right mindset and actions at the last moment of life can be extraordinarily rewarding, any mistakes made in this period could also be extremely harmful. Very realistic hindrances come from distractions in the surrounding environment as well as physical pain and disability, all of which prevent the dying from concentrating his or her thoughts on Pure Land. In addition, there is a danger of attachment: an accomplished monk, because of his passing attachment to a small jar in his room, was reborn into a snake occupying the same jar (p. 232). Finally, there are demonic interferences that attempt to keep people out of Pure Land. Due to the above reasons, there have been unflattering reports (or at least rumors) about non-exemplary and even inauspicious deaths. In the cases of religious leaders and reputed Buddhist masters, such reports can raise doubts among their followers and be devastating to the sectarian institutions that they represent. To avoid such embarrassments, disciples of famous masters tended to be reluctant to make public their teachers’ death scenes, sometimes defying the latter’s wishes, as happened in the case of the Zen master Enni (p. 248). The popular practice of reciting nenbutsu a great many times in medieval Japan could be considered an attempt to hedge by accumulating merit in one's lifetime rather than placing an all-in bet when one died.
Chapter 6 discusses the role of deathbed attendants who are usually semi-reclusive monks. Unlike prominent monks who are responsible for public functions and unwilling to incur death pollution, the semi-reclusive monks are ideal people to care for the dying’s spiritual needs. In addition, precisely because of their reclusiveness, they are seen to be saintly and having the power to deliver people to Pure Land.
Chapter 7 begins with deaths on the battlefield that present special challenges to Pure Land aspirations. Beyond the fact that proper deathbed rituals are impossible to perform when fighting, the dying person’s mind is set in the worst possible condition. Related are discussions of competing views that downplay the pivotal importance of death rituals. For instance, from Honen’s strict “other power only” perspective, the obsession with death rituals is an attempt to save oneself by self-power. From a Zen perspective, the overemphasis on the death moment is not commendable either. The book ends with the decline of Buddhist deathbed rituals in early modern times due to changes in the general cultural ethos, especially in the form of criticism of such practices by Confucianism and Shinto.
As mentioned above, the author sets four aims for herself: the first aim is to advance our understanding of premodern Japanese approaches to death and dying. In my view, the author has done a wonderful job in this regard. The second aim is to explore the interfaces of doctrine and social practice. I believe it is a worthy endeavor because as the author rightly points out, the recent dominance of social history, ritual studies, and art history on this subject has unfortunately led to neglect of intellectual history. A quick check on recent publications on the same topic finds title such as Karen M. Gerhart’s The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan (2009) and Nam-lin Hur’s Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System (2007), both of which focus on “religion on the ground.” While these are worthy and valuable researches in their own right, one does get the impression that studies of beliefs and doctrines are being crowded out of the field. It is rather evident that without a relatively self-coherent belief system, the wide spread of deathbed practices would not have been possible. In addition, given the vast medieval Japanese documents left to us, there is much room to conduct further studies. Hence, I believe the author’s point is well received. The book’s third aim is show how medieval Japanese people used Buddhism to address the personal crisis and social rupture that death poses. The four aim is to use exemplary deaths as a case study of extraordinarily demanding religious ideals. Insofar as many of the complexities and inner tensions in Japanese Buddhist deathbed rituals are analyzed in thought-provoking ways, these two goals are also reached.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=49177
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
O'Leary on Bowring, 'In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582-1860' [review]
by System
Administrator
Reviewed by Joseph S. O'Leary (Professor English Literature, Sophia University, 1988-2015; Roche Chair for Interreligious Research, Nanzan University, 2015-16.)
Published on H-Buddhism (December, 2017)
Commissioned by Erez Joskovich
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=49178
O'Leary on Richard Bowring's
"In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan,
1582-1860"
This masterful account of the intellectual and spiritual life of Edo Period
Japan is a sequel to Bowring’s The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 (2005),
and no doubt will be followed by a third volume on the period since the Meiji
Restoration. Bowring’s writing becomes more engaging as he moves toward modern
times, and we may augur that the final volume, when he rejoins his original
field of study—seen in Mori Ōgai and the Modernization of Japanese
Culture (1979)—will be the most exciting of the three. The very broad
cultural and literary horizons from which he approaches his ambitious project
are further illustrated in his studies of Lady Murasaki—see The Diary of
Lady Murasaki (1996)—and his work with Peter Kornicki on The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Japan (1993).The first volume of Bowring’s history covered Buddhism extensively, even giving an account of Chinese Chan as background to the Japanese Zen schools, but in the present volume Buddhism is put on the back burner and is seen mainly through the eyes of its opponents. The period began with a “collapse in the prestige of Buddhism” (p. 304), which ceased to be a foremost player in Japanese intellectual and political life. Strong on the institutional aspects and the social contexts of Buddhism, Bowring is not as fascinated by the intricacies of Buddhist thought as he is by Shintō and Confucianism, and he seems to slight such Edo Period Buddhist luminaries as Takuan Sōhō (1573-1645), unmentioned, and Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1768), mentioned only fleetingly.
The first part of the book, covering the years 1582-1680, gives a very lucid account of the political policies adopted to suppress Christianity and regulate Buddhism. Intellectual highlights are the “Confucian turn” embodied by Hayashi Razan (1583-1657) along with the individualistic Nakae Tōju (1608-48) and Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91), the “way of the kami” championed by Yamazaki Ansai (1618-82), the “way of the warrior,” represented by Yamaga Sokō (1622-85), and “the way of man” represented by Itō Jinsai (1627-1705). Bowring generously translates illuminating passages from these and other major thinkers.
A very interesting feature of these years is the rapprochement between Shintō and Confucianism, in opposition to Buddhism. The energetic Deguchi Nobuyoshi (1615-90) of Ise, who sought to revive the Watarai Shintō tradition, had trouble purging it of Buddhist (Shingon) elements and turned to Cheng-Zhu metaphysics as an alternative, expounding Shintō in Confucian terms. Long before, Shintō’s quest for an intellectual foundation had used Daoist and Confucian terms “in an attempt to fill the void when Buddhism was removed from the equation” (p. 93). Deguchi’s tradition sought purity though a return to “primeval nonduality, when ‘Yin and Yang had not yet separated’” (p. 94). Esoteric Buddhism affected its shift to individual prayer that bypassed priestly mediation, though the Buddhist ideas are “cloaked in Confucian prose”: “one breathes with the breath of an empty and pure mind” (p. 96). Meanwhile from the Confucian side, Razan’s dislike of Buddhism led him to create “his own special form of Shintō imbued with Confucian values” (p. 93). A favored topos was the identification of the three regalia of Shintō with the Confucian virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and valor. Tōju, “a maverick, uncompromising and courageous to boot” (p. 71), which could describe several other figures in this history, rejected Razan’s minor accommodations to Buddhism as unprincipled.
The period from 1580 to 1786 was less militaristic and encouraged learning, with a leading role taken by the academies of Ansai and Jinsai on the opposite sides of the Horikawa canal in Kyoto. Here Bowring adverts to the growth of Buddhist scholarship and some “significant movements for reform” (p. 181), but he tends to regard much of this as “navel-gazing” (p. 183). Popular movements such as the cult of Mt. Fuji, street preaching, and pilgrimage are noted, and pride of place is given to figures who remain on the margin of Buddhist establishments, such as Ishida Baigan (1684-1744), Bankei (1622-93), and Masuho Zankō (1655-1742), who “gave up Buddhist practice and instead turned himself into a popular Shintō street preacher” (p. 191). Bowring ends this discussion with the startling figure of Tominaga Nakamoto (1715-46), “one of the most original, fresh thinkers of his age, which is precisely why to his contemporaries he seemed an impossible liability”; he produced “a truly devastating critique of faith” (p. 194). Another strong character in whom one may sense the note of modernity, albeit in a sweepingly negative guise, is Dazai Shundai (1680-1747), author of an influential Political Economy, who poured contempt on Shintō and Buddhism from a Confucian perspective, but whose own social philosophy was impractical and made him a despairing critic of Japan’s rulers.
When Confucianism became oppressive and seemed to be making the Japanese mind stiltedly Sinitic, relief came from an unexpected quarter, not from Buddhism but from a rediscovery of old Japanese poems and sagas that had seemed just a background murmur. This came to a head in the third period, 1786-1860, in the work of Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), who urged the Japanese to enjoy their own culture more: “Honestly, the Way of the Sages is all about keeping the world at peace; nothing to do with personal enjoyment” (quoted, p. 256). His intoxicating proposal to desensitize Japan and return to the pure Japanese spirit of the Man’yoshu and the Kojiki as he had deciphered it is somewhat contradicted by his elaborate instructions for his funeral, “carried out in accordance with Pure Land Buddhist practice” (p. 267).
I suggest that the current enthusiasm for teaching the “philosophy” of all cultures in departments of philosophy comes to grief here. Norinaga was the greatest thinker of his period, yet his thought is indissociable from grammar and refined appreciation of literature, and as such has no place on a philosophy syllabus; and many cultures have produced comparable great thinkers whom philosophy cannot handle. None of the thinkers Bowring discusses can be taken out of their social, cultural, or religious contexts to be treated as “philosophers” in the Western sense. Though elements of philosophy can be found in them, they are embedded thinkers who would lose all their force and attraction if slotted into a philosophy curriculum.
The subtle, skeptical, and versatile Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) was Norinaga’s nemesis, querying his claim to recover the spoken language of ancient Japan; then a Buddhist priest, Fujiwara Teikan, enraged him by the claim “that Japanese culture had come from China and Korea and that neither the Kojiki nor the Nihon shoki could be trusted” (p. 271). Nevertheless, even such critics agreed with Norinaga that “Buddhism and Confucianism had run their course” (p. 274).
Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843) was something of a Norinaga redivivus. “Norinaga died before Atsutane had even come across his name” (p. 282), but he claimed to have been accepted by the dead master in a dream. He had sharp political preoccupations, such as fear of Russian encroachment in northern Japan, and his wide curiosity about the world of spirits led him to read proscribed Chinese works, even Christian ones such as those of Matteo Ricci. His effort to sketch a cosmic Shintō that could rival Buddhism and Christianity was poorly appreciated by the more philological disciples of Norinaga. Atsutane’s fascination with the world of spirits led him to adopt two boys successively. The first boy regularly visited the realm of the dead, and described it in terms matching Atsutane’s own conceptions. The second was a reincarnation of another boy; Atsutane “systematically expunged the Buddhist elements of the tale” (p. 285).
Professor Bowring’s book is packed with information and insight, and will be revisited again and again by those who want to understand Japanese intellectual tradition. It is immaculately produced, and misprints are so few that they can be listed: “a unrivalled” (p. 45); a missing “of” (p. 63); “Kamumusubi” for “Kamimusubi” (p. 279); “encense” for “encens,” “Japonaise” for “Japonaises,” and “Späten” for “späten” (p. 316); “Dunkan” for “Duncan” (p. 320). Due to careless binding, pp. 51-66 in my copy were displaced and followed p. 82. Also irritating is the pervasive suppression of capital letters in titles.
The book captures well the vitality of a nation in which three internally diversified traditions (Confucianism, Shintō, and Buddhism) interacted in a great variety of ways, often in the persons of intensely original intellectuals. Should we regret that the Christian contribution was rejected and that knowledge of the West was restricted? That in any case left Japan to develop maximally its own resources, so that when Western science and philosophy and Christian missions came flooding into Meiji Japan Japanese thinkers could hold their own and receive the new influences discriminatingly and creatively.
Citation: Joseph S. O'Leary. Review of Bowring, Richard, In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582-1860. H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. December, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=49178
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
