The Society for Japanese Studies

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Carl Bielefeldt
Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 381-386
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Review Section Review Section
yoshu
9,
Tamekane's "Tori no ne
no,"
really
"echoes the
gradually spread-
ing
dawn" that the
poem
describes
(p. 110). Still,
I admire
Huey's precision
and his
unflagging
determination to tackle
poems
on the fundamental level
of
language prior
to
interpretation.
The reader who makes his or her
way
through
this
chapter,
in
particular,
will come
away
from it with a
very
keen
sense of how these
poems
"work,"
what is
special
about
them,
and
why
most readers now find them so much more
interesting
than the
contempo-
rary products
of the rival
Nijo
school.
In
Chapter
6,
Huey
offers a lucid
analysis
of seven of Tamekane's
poems,
in the
process
of which he re-uses
many
of the methods
employed
in the
preceding chapter
to define the
Kyogoku style.
This section of the
book is
yet
another
exemplary
exercise. It is
particularly
successful in
demonstrating
how the treatment of
specific
conventional
topics (for
ex-
ample,
the
uguisu,
"the end of
spring," "longing
for the
past,"
and
travel)
changed
over time.
Huey
shows
that,
from the
Ky6goku poets' perspec-
tive,
the Shin kokin wakashu
(1205)
was the
pivot
in this
process,
but more
than once he also shows how the
poetry
that Minamoto Shunrai favored in
compiling
the
Kin'y6
wakashu,
the fifth
imperial anthology,
in the first
quarter
of the twelfth
century,
also tended to break molds and test conven-
tions.
Indeed,
Huey's
several
suggestions
that the
Ky6goku
innovations
were in several
ways analogous
to those of the
Kin'yoshu
are
quite intrigu-
ing. (Even
the titles of the two
anthologies may
be said to be
similarly
iconoclastic.)
One
hopes
that it will not be
long
before another scholar-
perhaps Huey
himself-will take
up
the task of
defining
the
Kin'yoshu
style
and its
strategic points
of
departure
from the norms in
ways
that are as
useful and
revealing
as those demonstrated
by Huey
in his treatment of the
Kyogoku
movement. In that
event,
yet
another of the avenues
opened up
for us
by
Brower and Miner
may
find new
light
shed
upon
it, and,
in
turn,
the
ways
we should take into still other avenues
may
be revealed as well.
Jodo Shinshui: Shin Buddhism in Medieval
Japan. By
James C. Dobbins.
Indiana
University
Press,
Bloomington,
1989.
xii,
242
pages.
$35.00.
Reviewed
by
CARL BIELEFELDT
Stanford
University
Surely
one of the most obvious features of modern
Japanese
Buddhism is
its division into
many separate
denominations.
Indeed,
so obvious is it that
yoshu
9,
Tamekane's "Tori no ne
no,"
really
"echoes the
gradually spread-
ing
dawn" that the
poem
describes
(p. 110). Still,
I admire
Huey's precision
and his
unflagging
determination to tackle
poems
on the fundamental level
of
language prior
to
interpretation.
The reader who makes his or her
way
through
this
chapter,
in
particular,
will come
away
from it with a
very
keen
sense of how these
poems
"work,"
what is
special
about
them,
and
why
most readers now find them so much more
interesting
than the
contempo-
rary products
of the rival
Nijo
school.
In
Chapter
6,
Huey
offers a lucid
analysis
of seven of Tamekane's
poems,
in the
process
of which he re-uses
many
of the methods
employed
in the
preceding chapter
to define the
Kyogoku style.
This section of the
book is
yet
another
exemplary
exercise. It is
particularly
successful in
demonstrating
how the treatment of
specific
conventional
topics (for
ex-
ample,
the
uguisu,
"the end of
spring," "longing
for the
past,"
and
travel)
changed
over time.
Huey
shows
that,
from the
Ky6goku poets' perspec-
tive,
the Shin kokin wakashu
(1205)
was the
pivot
in this
process,
but more
than once he also shows how the
poetry
that Minamoto Shunrai favored in
compiling
the
Kin'y6
wakashu,
the fifth
imperial anthology,
in the first
quarter
of the twelfth
century,
also tended to break molds and test conven-
tions.
Indeed,
Huey's
several
suggestions
that the
Ky6goku
innovations
were in several
ways analogous
to those of the
Kin'yoshu
are
quite intrigu-
ing. (Even
the titles of the two
anthologies may
be said to be
similarly
iconoclastic.)
One
hopes
that it will not be
long
before another scholar-
perhaps Huey
himself-will take
up
the task of
defining
the
Kin'yoshu
style
and its
strategic points
of
departure
from the norms in
ways
that are as
useful and
revealing
as those demonstrated
by Huey
in his treatment of the
Kyogoku
movement. In that
event,
yet
another of the avenues
opened up
for us
by
Brower and Miner
may
find new
light
shed
upon
it, and,
in
turn,
the
ways
we should take into still other avenues
may
be revealed as well.
Jodo Shinshui: Shin Buddhism in Medieval
Japan. By
James C. Dobbins.
Indiana
University
Press,
Bloomington,
1989.
xii,
242
pages.
$35.00.
Reviewed
by
CARL BIELEFELDT
Stanford
University
Surely
one of the most obvious features of modern
Japanese
Buddhism is
its division into
many separate
denominations.
Indeed,
so obvious is it that
381 381
Journal
of
Japanese
Studies
we often take the division for
granted
and
forget
how unusual it is in the
history
of Buddhism. We have been
greatly
aided in this
forgetting by Japa-
nese Buddhist
historiography,
which is itself in
part
a
product
of de-
nominational
scholarship
and still tends to read Buddhist
history through
the lens of sectarian traditions. For these
traditions,
the modern
Japanese
"churches"-at least the "mainline churches"-are but the current in-
stantiation of ancient
institutions,
each
reaching
back to a
founding
an-
cestor in
early Japan,
and
usually beyond
to Chinese and Indian anteced-
ents. Be that as it
may,
the modern
Japanese
situation is unusual.
If Buddhists
everywhere
have had their
ideological
differences and
sociological
divisions,
the reduction of the Buddhist
community
to a set of
ritually (not
to
say legally) separate
clerical
corporations
and
especially
the
wholesale
organization
of the
laity
into exclusive
congregational
bodies
seem to be without real
precedent
in Buddhist
experience,
even in
pre-
modern
Japanese
Buddhist
experience.
How this situation came about is a
subject worthy
of more
study
than it has received. We should
probably
be-
gin
such
study
not with the
founding
ancestors but with the new
religious
circumstances created
by
the
policies
of the
early Tokugawa shogunate,
which restricted
religious organizations
to
officially
sanctioned denomina-
tions and
required
universal
registration
of the
citizenry
with local Bud-
dhist institutions.
Still,
we know that these
early
modern
developments
were
preceded
and made
possible by
a
complex process
of denominational
individuation and consolidation
during
the Muromachi
period.
The
process
was
complex,
and before we can
speak
with confidence
about the
phenomenon
as a
whole,
we shall need to trace the diverse
paths
of
social, institutional,
and
ideological development
followed
by
the vari-
ous denominations that
emerged
from it. Of
these,
none was more dramatic
than that of the Jodo
Shinshu,
or "True Pure Land
School,"
which man-
aged
to transform itself over the course of three centuries from a cluster of
marginal pietistic
cults in the Kamakura
period
to a
major religious organi-
zation able to
compete,
at least in some areas of the
country,
with the secu-
lar
powers
of the
Sengoku period.
The
particular
circumstances of Shinshui
may
not
always
tell us much about Muromachi Buddhism as a whole
(one
thinks
immediately
of the contrasts
with,
say,
the Hosso of
Kofukuji
or the
Rinzai of the
gozan system),
but the
extraordinary
success of the school-
together
with its
seemingly
"modern" features of exclusive sectarian
dogma, separate
(and married) clergy,
and extensive
lay congregational
or-
ganization-makes
it an
interesting place
to start.
James Dobbins' book
represents
such a start. It tells the
story
of Jodo
Shinshfi from the time of its
founding
ancestor Shinran
(1173-1262)
through
his most revered
descendant,
the famous Shinshu
prelate Rennyo
(1415-99). Chapters
on these two
figures
frame the
story;
in between are
382
Review Section
shorter studies of
early
Shinshu
history
and
thought,
the
development
of
the
Honganji,
the
relationship
of Shinshu to other
(especially
Pure
Land)
Buddhist
traditions,
and the various factions within Shinshfi.
Although
we
have had
previous
studies of Shinran and
Rennyo,
this is our first extended
history
of the medieval Shinshu tradition and introduces much material
hitherto available
only
in
Japanese.
An
outgrowth
of the author's 1984 Yale
dissertation,
the book is well annotated to
primary
and
secondary Japanese
sources and
provides
an extensive
bibliography,
detailed
index,
and
helpful
character
glossary
(which, unfortunately,
seems to have been
slightly gar-
bled in the
printing).
In a brief
introductory chapter,
Dobbins
lays
out the themes of his
story.
In contrast to the
assumption
that the Shinshu church
emerged
full-
blown from the life and
teachings
of
Shinran,
the author wants to show that
Shinshui sectarian
development (like
that of the other Kamakura denomina-
tions)
was
"long
and
protracted," following
"an extended and sometimes
tortuous
path"
from Shinran to
Rennyo (p. 1). Along
this
path,
he wants to
"define the horizontal or
synchronic
environment" in which the Shinshtu
teachings
occurred and to
"identify
the external influences" that
shaped
the
teachings (p.
7).
As a
"conceptual
framework for
examining
Shinshu
development,"
he is
particularly
interested in the notions of
orthodoxy
and
heresy
and the varied
ways
these notions were used to define and
justify
the
faith
(p.
8).
In
keeping
with these
themes,
Dobbins treats the first centuries of Shin-
shu
history
as a
complex
series of
struggles among
the followers of Shinran
to establish the definitive
interpretation
of his
message
and defend it
against
criticism from without and
heresy
from
within,
to create the eccle-
siastical forms
through
which the
message
could be
preserved
and dissemi-
nated,
and to
lay
claim to
political power
and
symbolic authority
over the
swelling
ranks of Pure Land believers. The
picture
of Shinshu that
emerges
from this treatment looks less like a
single
school
(let
alone a unified
church)
than a set of
competing
factions,
centered on
particular
individuals
or
temples,
that
jostled together
for influence. In the
process
of
jostling,
the
Shinshu leaders
regularly employed
the standard
techniques
of
temporal
politics-confrontation
and
conciliation,
strategic
alliance,
familial con-
nection,
and the like-and borrowed from other Buddhists and each other
the familiar
technology
of
spiritual authority-ritual
and
liturgical
forms,
initiation and transmission
rites,
esoteric documents and
lineage
certifi-
cates,
and so on.
This
picture
of Shinran's tradition
may prove
somewhat
troubling
to at
least the most conservative and
"theological" among
Shinshfu
believers,
for whom the Shinshu
experience
of faith in the Buddha Amida must be the
central
pivot
around which the
history
of the
community
revolves. Yet it
383
Journal
of
Japanese
Studies
would be
wrong
to cast Dobbins as a
cynical
critic of the tradition. He
may
want to
replace (or
perhaps
to
supplement)
the vision of an
unchanging
Shinshu creed with a historical
process
of doctrinal
evolution,
but he re-
mains confident that this
process
was "not a
premeditated attempt
to build
up
a school of Buddhism" but rather "an
attempt
over successive
genera-
tions to
explicate
the inner
logic
of faith"
(p.
10)-an
attempt
motivated
by
the
"personal
convictions" of the Shinshu leaders
(p. 9).
He
may
want to
displace
the notion of a monolithic medieval Shinshu church with a
plu-
rality
of Shinshu
communities,
but his work remains
very
much a church
history.
In
fact,
Dobbins takes a rather conservative
approach
to
historiography.
His interest in the "external" forces that
shaped
Shinshu
development
does
not extend much
beyond
the
political
and
ideological maneuverings
of the
Shinshu
prelates.
Broader issues of
economics,
politics,
cultural
pattern,
and social structure do not attract
him;
current fads for social
history
and
popular
culture do not
tempt
him.
Rather,
he
prefers
a more familiar
"great
man"
approach
to
religious history
that
explains
the rise and
development
of Shinshu
largely
in terms of the charismatic
powers
and
organizational
skills of its
leading figures-especially
the traditional heroes of the faith:
Shinran,
the
founding
ancestor;
his descendant
Kakunyo (1270-1351),
who transformed Shinran's memorial shrine into the
Honganji temple;
and
Rennyo,
who established the
Honganji
as the dominant Shinshu center.
Of these
three,
Dobbins
clearly
feels the most ambivalence toward Ka-
kunyo,
whose efforts to establish the
authority
of the
Honganji
(and its ab-
bot) deepened
the factionalism in the movement and forced Shinshu to wait
for
Rennyo
to
unify
the
community (p. 88). Kakunyo's
ruthless treatment
of his son
Zonkaku,
whom he disowned and branded a
heretic,
is
justified
here on
theological grounds (p. 87),
but the author also
recognizes
a cer-
tain flaw in the father's
"domineering personality"
and his "tenacious and
often
headstrong
adherence" to his
political agenda (p. 81). Shinran,
who
also disowned his son
Zenran,
and
Rennyo,
who was
(whatever
else he
may
have
been)
the ambitious Buddhist
politician
par
excellence,
seem not
to have had such flaws: the latter's
deep
involvement,
for
example,
in
Hokuriku
politics
and the
peasant
rebellions of the ikko ikki movement is
treated
largely
as an
attempt
to
purify
and disseminate the
faith;
Shinran's
struggle
with Zenran over control of the Kanto communities is
explained
through
the
tragic
failure of the founder's son to understand the
meaning
of
faith and
grasp
the
message
of the father
(pp. 41-42).
This failure of Zenran
(who plays
a kind of Devadatta role for Shinshu
history)
is an
early example
of what came to be called
by
the church
ianjin,
or "false faith." In this
instance,
the error
lay
in Zenran's
reputed
assertion
of his
authority
as a
spiritual
master and his
suggestion
that such
authority
384
Review Section
might play
a role in the
religious
life.
Unexceptional
as such a
suggestion
might
be in
Japanese
Buddhism
(including
much Pure Land
Buddhism),
it
is considered a
heresy
in Shinshut
dogmatics
because it threatens the church's
cardinal
soteriological principle
that salvation
depends
not on human
agency
but
solely
on faith in the
primal
vow of Amida. Zenran's father
ap-
parently
never made this error. As
evidence,
the author
quotes
the famous
passage
attributed to Shinran
by
the Tannish6 in which he denies
any spe-
cial Buddhist
learning
and describes his
religion
as a
simple
faith in the
teachings
of his
master, Honen-whom,
he
says,
he will follow even if
doing
so leads him not to
paradise
but to
perdition (p.
41).
The
interpretive
issue here is more
interesting
than the historical
ques-
tion of whether the Tannish6
accurately
reflects Shinran
(or
the Shinshu
sources
adequately represent
Zenran).
Dobbins reads this
passage
as Shin-
ran's
rejection
of the master's
role;
others
might
read it as his model for
how the faithful should submit themselves to the master. Under the latter
reading,
Zenran's error
lay
not in
elevating
the master but in
picking
the
wrong
master to elevate.
I mention this
example
because it is illustrative both of the author's inter-
est in the theme of
heresy
and of the deference he shows toward Shinshu
orthodoxy
in his treatment of the theme. Dobbins shares with the church a
nostalgia
for the faith of the
founder,
against
which,
like the
church,
he
regularly
measures the varied
teachings
and
practices
that he finds in medi-
eval Shinshu. Those that deviate from this faith are taken to be "unorthodox
interpretations" (p.
48),
"extraneous elements"
(p. 65), "mistakes,"
"completely
new ideas"
(p.
77), "misconceptions,"
and
"misinterpreta-
tions"
(p.
139).
The
particular
vision of the faith
operative
here tends toward
what
might
be called a
"left-wing
Protestant"
reading
of
Shinran,
heavily
influenced
by
the
Tannisho,
that
emphasizes
the individual's inner relation-
ship
to the
diety
and is
highly suspicious
of ecclesiastical
authority.
A sense of this vision
helps
us to
appreciate
the book's ambivalence
toward a
figure
like
Kakunyo,
who is credited at once with
preserving
the
founder's faith and
fixing
the
Honganji,
and its sacerdotal
lineage
of Shin-
ran's
descendants,
as the chief arbiter of that faith. More
broadly,
it lends a
certain
irony
to the book as a
whole,
which is after all in
large part
an
account of the
processes through
which the church came to establish its
ecclesiastical
authority
over Shinshu
religious
life. More
broadly
still,
it
raises the
question
of the extent to which the book's account of these
pro-
cesses is itself a
product
of
them,
as
they
have continued to
operate
in de-
nominational
scholarship
from
Rennyo's day
to our own.
Whatever we
may say
about Dobbins'
reading
of
Shinran,
its use as a
normative measure for
determining
what is
authentically
Shinshu seems
oddly
at odds with the author's historical theme of
plurality
and
change: by
385
Journal
of Japanese
Studies Journal
of Japanese
Studies
relegating
much of the actual
practice
and belief of the medieval Shinshu
communities to a heterodox
periphery,
it tends to reinforce the notion that
(at
least in matters
ideological)
there was a constant orthodox core. In the
end, then,
it runs the risk of
begging
at least
part
of the issue with which
we
began:
how to understand the historical character of the
premodern
Japanese
Buddhist denominations. Given the
variety
of
religious
ideas and
institutions so
clearly displayed
for us
here,
the
question
remains to what
extent
(in what senses and at what
points)
we can
say
there was a Jodo
Shinshu in medieval times. If Dobbins' book does not
quite get
us all the
way
to the
answer,
it does
provide
a wealth of the sort of historical material
we would need for an answer and
thereby gets
us
considerably
closer to it
than
any
work hitherto available in
English.
Remembering
Paradise: Nativism and
Nostalgia
in
Eighteenth-Century
Japan. By
Peter Nosco. Council on East Asian
Studies,
Harvard Uni-
versity, Cambridge,
1990.
xiv,
271
pages.
$27.00.
Reviewed
by
J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN
Cornell
University
Remembering
Paradise
surveys
the lives and works of Keichii
(1640-
1701),
Kada no Azumamaro
(1669-1736),
Kamo no Mabuchi
(1697-
1769),
and Motoori
Norinaga (1730-1801), placing
their contributions to
Japanese thought against
the
background
of
major
social and intellectual
developments
in the first half of the
Tokugawa period (1603-1868).
It also
presents
these
figures
as the
major early proponents
of a stream of
nostalgic
"nativism" which extends from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries,
and
perhaps beyond.
The author's outline of the book's
objectives (some
of which also adorn
the dust
jacket)
is
sufficiently revealing
of the work's overall tone and strat-
egy
to serve as a framework for discussion and
argumentation.
Let us set
aside the first
objective
for the moment and consider the
second,
which
accurately suggests
the book's
seamless,
narrative account of the
growth
of
eighteenth-century
nativism:
"[The book]
hopes
to make historical sense
of the
emergence
and
development
of
[the
eighteenth-century nativists']
at
times radical
philosophies,
on the one
hand,
by showing
their slow and
reasonable
emergence
over some one hundred
years,
and,
on the
other,
by
contextualizing
this
dynamic problematik
both
socially
and
ideologically"
(p. xi).
relegating
much of the actual
practice
and belief of the medieval Shinshu
communities to a heterodox
periphery,
it tends to reinforce the notion that
(at
least in matters
ideological)
there was a constant orthodox core. In the
end, then,
it runs the risk of
begging
at least
part
of the issue with which
we
began:
how to understand the historical character of the
premodern
Japanese
Buddhist denominations. Given the
variety
of
religious
ideas and
institutions so
clearly displayed
for us
here,
the
question
remains to what
extent
(in what senses and at what
points)
we can
say
there was a Jodo
Shinshu in medieval times. If Dobbins' book does not
quite get
us all the
way
to the
answer,
it does
provide
a wealth of the sort of historical material
we would need for an answer and
thereby gets
us
considerably
closer to it
than
any
work hitherto available in
English.
Remembering
Paradise: Nativism and
Nostalgia
in
Eighteenth-Century
Japan. By
Peter Nosco. Council on East Asian
Studies,
Harvard Uni-
versity, Cambridge,
1990.
xiv,
271
pages.
$27.00.
Reviewed
by
J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN
Cornell
University
Remembering
Paradise
surveys
the lives and works of Keichii
(1640-
1701),
Kada no Azumamaro
(1669-1736),
Kamo no Mabuchi
(1697-
1769),
and Motoori
Norinaga (1730-1801), placing
their contributions to
Japanese thought against
the
background
of
major
social and intellectual
developments
in the first half of the
Tokugawa period (1603-1868).
It also
presents
these
figures
as the
major early proponents
of a stream of
nostalgic
"nativism" which extends from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries,
and
perhaps beyond.
The author's outline of the book's
objectives (some
of which also adorn
the dust
jacket)
is
sufficiently revealing
of the work's overall tone and strat-
egy
to serve as a framework for discussion and
argumentation.
Let us set
aside the first
objective
for the moment and consider the
second,
which
accurately suggests
the book's
seamless,
narrative account of the
growth
of
eighteenth-century
nativism:
"[The book]
hopes
to make historical sense
of the
emergence
and
development
of
[the
eighteenth-century nativists']
at
times radical
philosophies,
on the one
hand,
by showing
their slow and
reasonable
emergence
over some one hundred
years,
and,
on the
other,
by
contextualizing
this
dynamic problematik
both
socially
and
ideologically"
(p. xi).
386 386