Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition

·期刊原文
Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition:
The Nihon Ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai
Reviewed by Helene Bowen Raddeker
Journal of Religious History
Vol.22 No.2 ( June 1998)
Pp.246-248
COPYRIGHT 1998 The Association for the Journal of Religious History

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KYOKO MOTOMOCHI NAKAMURA, trans, and ed.: Miraculous Stories from
the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryoiki of the Monk
Kyokai. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997; pp. xxi + 322.
Kyokai was little known in his own time and was, perhaps, a more
than usually self-effacing monk. The little that is known today of
his life largely derives from a few remarks in his three-volume work
entitled Nihonkoku genpo zen'aku ryoiki (Miraculous Stories of
Karmic Retribution of Good and Evil in Japan) which was probably
compiled between A.D.). 810 and 823; in his three prefaces, however,
he did not reveal even the place or date of his birth. We learn only
a little more about his life in one of his 116 miraculous tales, the
second last, for here his intent was not autobiographical -- drawing
this time on a few fragments of his own life-experience, once again
he mainly sought to demonstrate the truth of the law of karmic
causation.
The very modest Kyokai could not have imagined that the "future
generations" for whom he so painstakingly recorded these miraculous
tales from Japan's oral tradition would extend so far into the
future. And despite his fears, later generations have not laughed at
his efforts. Far from finding his scholarly labours to be
presumptuous, clumsy, or incompetent, they have valued them for
reasons that far surpass Kyokai's own estimation of their
moral-spiritual worth.
Naturally, one reason for the later recognition of the importance of
Kyokai's Nihon ryoiki has been its contribution to an understanding
of religious belief and practice in early Japan. Even in the title
of his work, Kyokai made quite clear the didactic intent of his
project, which was to convince his contemporaries of the Buddhist
maxim that "good and evil cause karmic retribution [in this or in
subsequent lives] as a figure causes its shadow, and suffering and
pleasure follow such deeds as an echo follows a sound in the valley"
(preface to vol. 1, 101). That people needed to be convinced at that
time reflected the fact that Buddhism had not long since found
favour with Japan's imperial court and, by degrees, its nobility,
and was yet to become a truly popular religion in Japan. The work
was meant to be a manual for practical use by clerics, at least
those who were interested in bringing the Buddhist message to the
people. What Kyokai did, in many cases, was to take popular legends
of strange, "miraculous," or seemingly irregular occurrences in the
phenomenal world, and recast them in Buddhist terms for popular
consumption. The many tales that warn of the consequences of not
heeding the teachings of Buddhism (for even imperial princes can be
brought low!), of speaking ill of monks, even of not respecting
their property are themselves evidence of the weakness of the
institution of Buddhism in Japan then, relative to later times.
Japan's religious tradition as a whole is often said to be unusually
eclectic, but perhaps it was due to this relative weakness that the
Buddhism disseminated in the Nihon ryoiki so obviously drew upon
other continental traditions as well. One could hardly fail to note
its Taoist and Confucian inspirations.
In Japan, Taoism and Confucianism were never displaced by Buddhism,
but were rather "digested" by it in its all-embracing Mahayana form.
The fact that Buddhism would become before long the "scientific"
paradigm of the age, however, not just its dominant religion, may
have had less to do with Mahayana's doctrinal flexibility than with
the persuasiveness of one particular aspect of Buddhism's message;
karma and transmigration. One commentator on Kyokai's work has
cogently argued that, within the paradigm of karmic retribution and
reward for past deeds, apparent "anomalies" in the physical world
(not necessarily "miracles") could be rendered explicable in a way
that was more satisfying to medieval Japanese than other
explanations because more comprehensive and thus more convincing.
(William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary
Arts in Medieval Japan, University of California Press, 1983.)
A further reason for the intrinsic interest and importance of the
work is that it also reveals rather a lot about contemporary secular
practices: the class or caste system of nobility, free merchants and
peasants, and slaves; and also the situation of women in an
increasingly patriarchal social system. Nara and Heian women
certainly suffered under a system of polygamy, yet they were also
accorded a rather ambiguous spirituality. Doubtless this was due
firstly to the traditional role of women as shamans, some having
been very highly placed in the social hierarchy, even in the
imperial court (one ancient queen in/of "Japan" was a shaman named
Himiko who admitted no men to her presence save her brother who was,
apparently, merely the land's civil administrator). Secondly, it was
surely due to the more sexually egalitarian traditions of Mahayana
Buddhism that were, nonetheless, still rather ambivalent concerning
the feminine. In a situation where Buddhism in Japan was only in the
process of achieving religio-philosophical hegemony, it comes as no
surprise that women could still be represented as beings of high
spiritual attainment, even bodhisattvas in disguise. Only later in
Japan would the view gain common currency that a woman, if she could
achieve enlightenment or salvation at all, had to be transformed
into a man in order to gain entrance into the (Amida's) Pure Land.
Finally, as to this particular edition of the work, the translator
Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura offers the reader a scholarly rendition of
the Nihon ryoiki, including a first chapter on the author's
background and philosophical influences, and a second chapter on
various elements of his world view. The text contains extensive
explanatory footnotes, and also appendixes detailing imperial
lineages and listing Buddhist scriptures then known in Japan, as
well as legendary works of the Heian and Kamakura periods (from the
ninth to fourteenth centuries). While I cannot comment on the
quality of the translation since I have not read the work in the
original, it seems to me that Curzon Press was quite right to
reissue this volume first published by Harvard University Press in
1973. As Japan's earliest extant work of legendary literature,
Kyokai's Nihon ryoiki has long had an inestimable scholarly
importance.