Philosophy of Buddhist Statues
When the Gaze Is Annihilated, Buddhism Manifests from the Depths
I have seen a great many Buddhist statues across Japan, but the ones that truly captivate the heart are remarkably few. No one knows exactly how many Buddhist statues exist in Japan, but the estimate exceeds 300,000. That a country with no original history of Buddhism should have adopted the faith and expanded it to this degree in roughly 1,500 years is deeply moving. But my interest lies in why only a small number among those 300,000 seize my heart and will not let go. You may have felt this yourself. Why do certain statues possess an attraction that cannot be put into words? Perhaps this is what the Japanese felt the first time they laid eyes on a Buddhist statue.
Historians commonly say that when Buddhism first arrived on the Japanese archipelago, the indigenous people who had never before seen idol worship, the statues, the monks, the temples, were either captivated by the splendor or seized by awe. But we need to question whether this account is sound.
The circumstances under which Buddhism reached the Japanese archipelago were far from simple. Official and unofficial transmissions of Buddhism were entirely different affairs, and the unofficial side has vanished into historical darkness because it left no written record. But it strains common sense to believe that Buddhism was transmitted directly to ancient Yamato, situated deep in the interior of the archipelago. What is important is that the people involved in this transmission were neither Indian nor Chinese. They were Korean. In the official sense it was Seimei, king of the ancient Korean kingdom of Baekje, who dispatched Buddhist statues, sutras, and monks to the Yamato court.
Seen from another angle, Buddhism had already advanced as far as the Korean Peninsula. If so, I believe the likelihood is high that Buddhism had been brought to the Japanese archipelago through the complex ancient sea routes, still not fully understood, that connected the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese coast to the Japanese side. These routes were not one-directional. People from the Japanese archipelago may have crossed and brought Buddhism back. Unless we turn our attention to ancient maritime traffic, this dimension will remain invisible.
The conventional dates proposed for Buddhism’s official transmission have long been either 538 or 552, and 538 is now considered the more probable. Behind this lay not the religious prestige of Buddhism but the political situation on the Korean Peninsula. At the time the peninsula was divided among Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla, three kingdoms frequently at war. King Seimei of Baekje, which had maintained close ties with the Japanese side since antiquity, sent Buddhist statues, sutras, and monks in an effort to forge a stronger alliance with Japan. But this “Japan” refers only to Yamato, not the entire archipelago. The transmission of Buddhism was not a pure religious exchange. It was a diplomatic act born of peninsular power dynamics.
The gift from Baekje was not welcomed from the start. Emperor Kinmei showed interest in the arrival of the statues but exercised caution over their acceptance. He entrusted them to his senior minister Soga no Iname with instructions amounting to little more than “try worshipping them and see what happens.” This anecdote reveals that the emperor’s personal embrace of the new faith was heavily constrained by the political dynamics of Yamato. Both the Baekje side and the Yamato side understood the transmission of Buddhism as an intensely political matter, specifically one of domestic politics. This continues to be ignored, but in the dynamics of ancient East Asia the movements of China, Korea, and Japan were linked. When China wavered, Korea and Japan wavered. When Japan wavered, Korea and China wavered. This triplet relationship is important for reading the current East Asian situation, yet this perspective is routinely dismissed.
When a massive epidemic struck Yamato during Emperor Kinmei’s reign, the anti-Buddhist faction led by the Mononobe clan petitioned the throne. The Buddhist statues were cast into the canal at Naniwa and the temple buildings were burned to the ground. At the root of this violent resistance lay the internal conflict between the pro-Buddhist Soga clan and the anti-Buddhist Mononobe. In 587, during the reign of Emperor Yomei, the Mononobe were destroyed. Buddhism was formally accepted. Riding the current of the new era, Prince Shotoku rose to prominence and laid the foundations for Buddhism’s flourishing by constructing Horyu-ji and Shitenno-ji. A persistent view holds that Prince Shotoku never existed as a historical individual. The portrait attributed to him is shrouded in doubt, and the court rank associated with him did not exist at the time. The current prevailing view is that the prince did exist but that everything attached to his image was fabricated by later generations.
Seen from yet another angle, the acknowledgment of Prince Shotoku’s existence may be inconvenient for certain parties. The reason remains unclear, but my own view is that something problematic lay in his bloodline and that later generations altered the record to conceal it. The flourishing of Buddhism was in fact constructed as a triangle among the Soga, a rising clan that had consolidated power by uniting naturalized immigrant groups, the Emperor Yomei whom they installed, and Prince Shotoku, said to be Yomei’s son. My personal view is that Prince Shotoku was the child of immigrants. The movement of this new immigrant-backed faction to seize control of the imperial court provoked a fierce backlash from the old-guard clans, the Mononobe, the Nakatomi, and the Otomo. The Otomo, however, were the first to defect to the immigrant side, betraying the old guard in exchange for interests on the Korean Peninsula, and were eventually destroyed by the Mononobe for their treachery. In this era, if we limit our view to Yamato, the forces led by indigenous clans and the forces led by immigrant clans were locked in fierce conflict over domestic governance. A new dynamic was being born. Without grasping this dynamic the true significance of Buddhism’s arrival cannot be perceived. To say merely that people were captivated by splendor is to say nothing at all.
With this background in view, the historians’ interpretation of Buddhist reception as “captivation by splendor” is revealed as hopelessly superficial and meaningless. People died in great numbers over these statues. Temples were burned. A political and spiritual shock of that magnitude ran through the people of this archipelago. The foundation of the problem was not Buddhist faith itself. It was the process by which, confronted with the choice of acceptance or rejection from the standpoint of maintaining domestic hegemony, they ultimately took Buddhism in. It is in that process that the prototype of the complex emotion the Japanese have held toward Buddhist statues can be found. At that moment a transmission of Buddhism occurred that transcended political calculation.
How do you look at a Buddhist statue when you stand before one?