Last month, several fellow budoka and I went to an exhibit that specifically dealt with art as it related to the samurai. I enjoyed it; though there were a few aspects of the exhibit that upset me a little bit - a very clear fingerprint on a fine antique blade (moisture from a fingerprint will cause the blade to rust at that point, often in an impressively detailed image of the offending print), lots of fingerprint marks on an ornate, lacquered helmet (doesn't anyone wear cotton gloves when setting this stuff up?) and a museum-wall blurb claiming the "special relationship" that samurai had with "Zen."
I was further dismayed when I read essays in the museum bulletin (more like a quarterly journal than what lay people normally think of as a "bulletin") that additionally extolled the relationship between "samurai" and "Zen." I guess art historians don't read much beyond their fields. Or, like a lot of busy people, they find it easier to simply lump individuals into large groups, and then make generalities about the large groups they have created.
I understand. I used to think the same way. When I was first starting my budo study, being the geek type, I started reading books about it. Since I did not read Japanese, I read books written by English-speaking writers, and books by Japanese writers (and others) in translation. Among other things, I read D.T. Suzuki's Zen in Japanese Culture, with its sections that seemed specifically to address just what I was looking for. At the time, I was living alone in what was then Dangerous New York City, and I found a certain amount of comfort in Zen stories. After all, anything could happen in the Big Bad City - anything, from getting hit by a bus (happened to someone I knew), to getting mugged (ditto), and the kicker was - everything moments earlier was perfectly normal. It is not much of a stretch to consider that a samurai warrior, sworn at any moment to give his life for his lord and master, should be prepared for whatever might happen at any time. And it was in practically every samurai movie I had ever seen up to that point. Add to that Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery, and it isn't very surprising that I thought I had the spiritual side of my practice nailed down, and it all made perfect sense to me.
But grad school has this annoying way of making one see nuance in everything. So does reading more accurate research. So I found out stuff - like that samurai were not a monolithic class, but had many subdivisions, and not just damiyo and footmen. There was a whole spectrum of classes and subclasses, and these in turn varied by local domain. And then there was the march of time - in considering "samurai," are we talking about the ruling class of the Ashikaga shogunate or the Tokugawa shogunate? They were more than a hundred years apart, and many things changed over time. Suddenly, truisms like "samurai had a special relationship to Zen" started to ring hollow.
Most importantly, as I went to Japan from time to time to train, I met people who were descendants of samurai families. I found out that their belief systems were all over the map. Japanese religion is syncretic, in many instances. There are certainly people who identify as either Shinto or Buddhist, but in practice they may burn incense in front of a butusdan (a cabinet with an image of the Buddha inside) and also put a cup of rice on the kamidana (a place where traditional gods and ancestors are honored). One family I stayed with in December also mounted a Christmas tree in the living room. And at New Year, everyone goes to the shrine to throw coins for good luck and prosperity in the coming year.
The syncretic nature of Japanese religion seems rich now, but back before 1868 it was an even more indiscernible blend of Shinto, Buddhist and folk beliefs. The Meiji Emperor, in wanting to create a modern state, decided that Shinto should be the state religion, and he set about either purifying Shinto to make it more "Japanese," or creating a state-sponsored version out of whole cloth, depending on one's point of view. But the result was a wrenching apart of a heterogeneous belief system that had existed up to that point, making Shinto and Buddhism more distinct from each other. So, the very concept of "Shinto" or "Buddhism" 400 years ago did not resemble the practices that we recognize now.
So what about Zen? Yes, some famous and high-ranking warriors followed the teachings of Takuan Soho, and some supported Zendo as well. Many middle-ranking samurai seemed to favor Mikyo Buddhism. There has been some scholarly work that suggests a "secret" cult of Marishten, a minor deity in the Buddhist pantheon, but at this point, it does not seem to have been a widespread phenomenon. In an autobiographical sketch of a low-ranking, late Edo period samurai which I recently read, the author described his belief system as an amalgam of practices, primarily rituals to ensure good luck, seemingly from any deity that might listen to him, regardless of origin. This same individual did not seem so overtly religious as to not descend to selling "mystical" objects that buyers hoped would make them luckier, either. A guy's gotta make a living somehow.
A short while ago, I went back and revisited both Herrigel and Suzuki. I was surprised to recognize my beginner's naivete. Suzuki in particular seemed, in the vernacular, to be "full of it." (A scholar-friend of mine once described him, *very charitably,* as "not mainstream." Indeed). Some Japanese scholars have pointed out that Herrigel's archery teacher, upon whom he had based his book, was an eccentric, both in archery technique and belief system, and not at all considered typical (whatever typical means).
I am not a sociology of religion person; just someone who reads books, talks to people and makes observations. And all of that tells me that the nuance of multiple beliefs, though messy and hard to parse, is a lot more colorful and interesting than the homogenous groupthink ascribed to millions of people, over several hundred years, as a whole. When I go to Japan, I throw a coin at the local Buddhist temple, clap my hands at the shrine, and mutter a short prayer to the spirit of my mother. It's nice to know that I am not alone in my eclecticism, either then or now.
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