Japanese Buddhism: in daily life, symbols & forms and short history

The majestic outdoor bronze Buddha facing the sea in Kamakura

Buddhism is a key part of daily spiritual life in Japan. Buddhism in Japan (and throughout Asia) is primarily focused on death and the afterlife, as opposed to Shintoism which is about this life. Nearly all funerals in Japan are Buddhist and almost exclusively cremation. Japanese Zen Buddhism, Soto and Rinzai, are less concerned with death and more about being clear and focused in this life.

Strictly speaking, Buddhism is a philosophy not a religion. And for this reason, Buddhist temples in Japan and much of Southeast Asia that are not major tourist attractions are places of prayer for the elderly, as they prepare for death and the next life. And also places of prayer for younger generations paying their respects to their recently departed ancestors. But this is a simplification as prayer and superstition is very strong in Japanese culture and society. Buddhist temples are also a common place in all communities, big and small, that function as a venue to ask the deities for “help”, whether safety, prosperity, or health.

Zen sect temples like Ryoanji Temple and Pure Land sect temples are also notable for opening their facilities to the general public for concerts, meetings, seminars and exhibitions. In this sense, these sects are more open and integrated with the lives of people and their daily life needs.

The average modern Japanese people's home has few references or objects that directly refer to Buddhism. And for this most part this is also true of Shintoism. However, the eldest child of any family is usually responsible for praying at home and lighting incense at home for the dead in their family. And this is performed in front of the butsudan or Buddhist altar.

The Buddhist altar functions as the center of a family's religious and spiritual life but there is normally one butsudan per extended family. And it’s almost always in the home of the eldest child when their parents pass away. A typical butsudan is black with minimalistic gold touches. And a butsudan normally has candle stands, metal vases, incense burning accessories, symbolic lamp shades on the left and right, and the mortuary tablets of recent generations of ancestors. The butsudan is almost always on the ground floor in the main living room area.

Forms of the Buddha can also be found in the kitchen. But this is a tradition that few modern apartment dwelling families follow. However, in country farm homes and traditional family residences, most kitchens have a statue of Daikoku (God of wealth, farmers, the kitchen, and provider of food). Sanbo Kojin, another Buddhist deity, are also found in some kitchens. And many Japanese view these two deities as the same.

In Zen monasteries and temples, which all have big kitchens, Idaten is the preferred kitchen deity. He is also known to be the protector of monks and monasteries.

Clay statues of Monju Bosatsu, the deity of wisdom and intelligence, were also part of residential kitchens since the Heian period. And in really traditional homes, especially in Kyoto and in the countryside, Moju Bosatsu are still common as a symbol of the discipline and wisdom required to maintain a large traditional home.

In the 21st century, Japan's major Buddhist sects represented the following percentage of the entire Japanese population:

Pure Land sects (Pure Land and True Pure Land): 23.5% of the population
Zen: 16.4%
Shingon: 11.7%
Nichiren: 11%
Tendai esoteric: 4% of the Japanese people

In the next 20-30 years, it is estimated 30% of all the Buddhist temples in Japan will close down as young people continue to move to cities and villages get smaller and smaller or vanish all together. Japan has the fastest aging population and one of the lowest birthrates in the world. This means many temples will no longer have a priest or monk in residence. About 200 residents are necessary to support a Buddhist priest (and his family) and many villages and towns are shrinking quickly. Japan's population dropped from about 133,000,000 to 121,000,000 between 2014 and 2024!

Content by Ian Martin Ropke, owner of Your Japan Private Tours (est. 1990). I have been planning, designing, and making custom Japan private tours on all five Japanese islands since the early 1990s. I work closely with Japan private tour clients and have worked for all kinds of families, companies, and individuals since 1990. Clients find me mostly via organic search, and I advertise my custom Japan private tours & travel services on www.japan-guide.com, which has the best all-Japan English content & maps in Japan! If you are going to Japan and you understand the advantages of private travel, consider my services for your next trip. And thank you for reading my content. I, Ian Martin Ropke (unique on Google Search), am also a serious nonfiction and fiction writer, a startup founder (NexussPlus.com), and a spiritual wood sculptor. Learn more!

Buddhist symbols and common statue forms

The triple ying yang or mitsu-tomoe: This symbol is very common in Japan, if you know where to look. It can be seen on the last roof tile in temple structures, on the last roof tile of many traditional historical residences, and on the last tile of the narrow roof top of walls surrounding temples and traditional homes. Surprisingly, the more famous yin yang black and white version is almost absent in Japan. This symbol entered Japan from the Korea peninsula around the middle of the 6th century and has endured in Japan while in Korea and China it is less prevalent. This symbol can also be found on taiko drums. It also became closely associated with samurai and Zen temples.

Manji: The Japanese Buddhist swastika or manji (an ancient and powerful symbol of the four directions and the course of time in many ancient civilizations around the world) is almost always turning in a counter clockwise direction. It is easy to see all over Japan in temples and on the street. Do not think of World War II when you see this symbol (the Nazi version is rotated on the diagonal 45 degrees). More than anything, the manji is a universal symbol of good luck and happiness.

Nyorai: Nyorai occupy the top level of the Buddhist world of deities. They represent the Five Great Elements (earth, water, fire, wind, and emptiness) and the Five Great Directions (east, west, north, south, and center). Nyorai can be identified by the raised pile (signifying wisdom) on the top of their head, and their extremely simple robes (often open at the chest). The four most important nyorai are: Shaka (the historical Buddha), Yakushi (the Buddha of Healing), Amida Nyorai (the Buddha of the Western Paradise: Amida Buddhism and the Pure Land sects), and Dainichi Nyorai (the cosmic Buddha esoteric Shingon-sect Buddhism). In Japan, the Amida Nyorai is particularly popular. Amida is said to have made a promise to humankind: Anyone who sincerely calls Amida by name will be received at death and guided to the Pure Land in the Western Paradise. Japan’s most exquisite Amida Nyorai can be found at Byodo-in in Uji.

Bosatsu & Jizo Bosatsu: Bosatsu are compassionate beings who have attained enlightenment but who choose to remain on earth to help others. Bosatsu are almost always standing, as opposed to seated, finely clothed and without any background decoration. Every Bosatsu, and there are many, has a different purpose or role. All of them, however, remain in this world to teach others how to attain enlightenment. One of Japan’s most popular Bosatsu is Kannon, the incarnation of mercy and compassion. Kyoto’s Sanjusangen-do Hall has a thousand and one Kannon statues. In every tiny neighborhood in Japan you will find tiny “temples” dedicated to the Jizo Bosatsu: the Buddhist patron saint of children, firemen and travelers. You will also see them at historical crossroads throughout Japan.

Japanese Buddhism from the 6th to the 19th century

The First 600 years: From Horyuji Temple conception to Amida Buddhism & what happened in the next 600 years

Buddhism reached Japan in the late 6th century, nearly 1,100 years after the death of the Buddha. Though there was some resistance to its entry, it was quickly embraced by Japan’s first central governments (Asuka and Nara) as an excellent religion upon which to build and maintain power. This short essay tries to give an overview of Japanese Buddhism in the first 600 years and what happened in the next 600 years.

From the beginning, organized Buddhism in Japan, like all forms of organized Christianity, focused on material matters: land, collecting taxes, avoiding taxes, and the organization of power. For this reason, much of organized Japanese Buddhist history, has more to do with connections to the court and maintaining legitimacy, than it does with spirituality. Organizations, like any living thing, are interested in survival more than anything else.

As an organization, Buddhism was perfectly designed and it met with little resistance in a Japan that had just discovered the promise of centralized government and power. By late 8th century, leading temples and head monks in Nara had so much power that Emperor Kammu (who went on to found Kyoto) and his court felt threatened. A new capital was thus established first in Nagaokakyo (a few kilometers southwest of Kyoto) and then Kyoto (Heiankyo, 794).

In Heiankyo (the original name of Kyoto), so great was the fear of Buddhist power, that no temple was allowed within the city limits. Instead, esoteric forms of Chinese Buddhism-Shingon and Tendai-were embraced by the imperial court, and Buddhist power centers moved away from large centers to the high slopes of remote mountain valleys.

Indeed, much of Japan’s Buddhist history is intimately connected with mountainous areas, where religious practices could be pursued in quiet, and where the central government had little control and little chance of attacking and overthrowing the centers the monks built to such great size and influence.

Japan’s Tendai and Shingon schools were respectively founded by two monks, Saicho and Kukai, who had been sent by the Imperial court to China specifically to find new Buddhist doctrines that would be acceptable to the court. Both returned and founded huge mountain temple centers: Saicho on the upper slopes of Mount Hiei, which guards the northeast or “the Devil’s Gate” of Kyoto, and Kukai south of Nara on Mount Koya. Though they battled with the power of the Nara temples for legitimacy in their lifetime, the schools they founded, especially the Tendai school, quickly replaced the Nara school.

The Tendai school, centered around Enryaku-ji Temple on Mount Hiei, is the mother of nearly all of Japan’s subsequent primary Buddhist sects. It was also the first to use large armies of mercenaries for protection and to attack Kyoto. The schools that grew out of the Tendai school were nearly all resistant to government influence. Both Tendai and Shingon Buddhism are also classified as Mikkyo Buddhism. Mikkyo practices were centered in remote mountainous areas and combined existing Shinto beliefs with esoteric Buddhist forms. Early Mikkyo practitioners ate lacquer during the last stage before death to preserve their bodies from within.

Esoteric, Buddhism at a distance, began to lose its popularity at the end of the 12th century for two reasons: 1) The common man had become interested in the idea of salvation, as promised by more and more street “preachers”, and in response to the crumbling of the Heian centers of power; 2) As part of the first point, Japan’s growing military class, the samurai, also were looking for something that suited their lifestyle.

In fact, by the end of the 12th century many people had become to believe that mappo or the end of the world, as described in Buddhist texts, had arrived. The Heian aristocracy had lost control and power increasingly rested in the hand of individual warlords based at different places around the country. Within a hundred years completely new forms of Buddhism rose up in Japan (to be continued . . .).

Japanese Buddhism: From Honen's Buddhism for the people to Zen and the end of the samurai class

The story of Japanese Buddhism is intricately connected with Enryaku-ji, the temple that was built to protect Kyoto from evil entering from the northeast (the tiger’s or devil’s gate in Chinese geomancy). By the 12th century, this temple, the central monastery of the Tendai sect, located just beyond the northeastern edge of Kyoto at the top of majestic Mount Hiei, had become the center of Buddhist training for the entire country. The founders of Japan’s dominant (then and today) Buddhist sects—Honen (Jodoshu; Chion-in), Shinran (Jodoshinshu; Nishi and Higashi Hongan-ji) and Nichiren (Nichiren; Josho-ji, Koetsu-ji)—all “graduated” from the monastery at Enryaku-ji. Japanese Buddhism, the Buddhism shaped by these three remarkable men, was all about developing spiritual practices whereby the common man could easily achieve enlightenment. In developing these practices these three men also founded institutions that achieved immense power and wealth.

When Honen (1133-1212) left Mount Hiei in 1175 he left with a dream: finding a way of bringing salvation to the common man as opposed to seeking it on the esoteric and singularly difficult path layed out in the Enryaku-ji doctrine. This path was built on the promise of the Dharmakara Bodhisattava to guide all people on an easy path to enlightenment. Dharmakara kept his promise and became the Amida Buddha who ruled over the Pure Land.

Honen began his teaching period at a small temple he set up in Higashiyama on the east side of Kyoto south of the massive slopes of the mountain where he studied and soon had more than a few loyal disciples. One of Honen’s leading students, Shinran, is credited with founding the practice of True Pure Land Buddhism.

Shinran (1173-1263), who had already spent 20 years on Mount Hiei, left the Enryaku-ji monastery when he heard about Honen’s new approach to achieving spiritual enlightenment. Shinran was frustrated with the path encouraged by his Enryaku-ji teachers because he felt no closer to his goal than when he started. Shinran devoted himself exclusively to the promise of providing people with an easy route to the Pureland. And before long, Shinran felt that the Dharma practices of his teacher could be further clarified and even more importantly simplified. Though he had no desire to start a new sect, the students that followed in his footsteps obviously did. As a result, Shinran became the founder of Jodoshinshu or True Pure Land Buddhism of which Honen is the last of the founding patriarchs.

Nichiren (1222-1282) felt that the core Tendai beliefs had strayed too far from the original message of the Buddha, so he broke off from his teachers at Enryaku-ji and began urging the people to return to what he felt was the purest path of enlightenment of all: the Lotus Sutra. So he considered all other forms of Buddhism to be wrong and even ‘evil’. Reciting the sutra—'Namu Myoho Renge Kyo' ('Hail to the Lotus Sutra')—was the only way. In his lifetime, Nichiren felt it was his mission to covert the shogun, emperor and everyone else in Japan to the “way of the Lotus Sutra”. Eventually, in a way, he succeeded.

Honen’s, Shinran’s and Nichiren’s road to ‘sainthood’ were very similar. Their sects were nothing more than persuasive ideas until their teachings and training system were systematically organized in the 15th century. All three were labeled as criminals and exiled—Honen to the south, Shinran to the north, and Nichiren to Sado Island (a favorite place of exile for particularly ‘dangerous’ types). Their exile was the result of the jealousy and fear they inspired in their rivals, especially the all powerful Tendai school from which they had broken off. All three were eventually pardoned and all three died relatively unknown.

In 1868, Buddhism became Japan’s unofficial second religion. This was likely because Westerners who began to influence Japan were monotheists, i.e. they had one God. So the Japanese, who had two at the time, decided that their original religion, Shinto, would be the official Japanese religion. As part of this separation, thousands of temples removed all their Shinto shrines and references. And thousands of shrines removed all their Buddhist references.

However, in daily life, Buddhism continues to play the primary role in the salvation of people’s souls (95% of all funerals in Japan involve temple priests), the very work Honen, Shinran and Nichiren set out to simplify. And Buddhist temples have survived as centers for scholars, and as huge tourism attractions.

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