Japanese Buddhism: Going Out of Business?
Buddhism flourished in Japan for more than 14 centuries. But it flourishes no more. In recent years there has been an epidemic of temple closings and fallen membership. Priests, including heads of temples, have had to get non-religious jobs to earn a living.
There are multiple reasons for the decline of the dharma in Japan. But many point to a decree of the Meiji Period (1868-1912). In 1872, the Meiji government ruled that Buddhist monks and priests (but not nuns) should be free to marry if they chose to do so. Marriage became more a rule than an exception; years ago a visiting monk from a major Japanese Rinzai Zen temple told me he was expected to marry and raise little monks. Temples and monasteries have become family businesses, handed down from fathers to sons.
The chief source of income for these family businesses has been funerals. It has long been tradition in Japan to go to the local Buddhist temple for funeral and memorial services, while Shinto temples -- and recently Christian churches -- get the wedding and other ceremonial business. As a result, many small Buddhist temples -- often staffed only by one priest and his family -- offer nothing but funeral and memorial services.
Today rural areas are losing population, and the trend among urban Japanese is to take funeral business to a funeral home or have no funeral at all. Japanese Buddhism has become something like an over-specialized species that can't survive a habitat change.
Some suggest Japanese Buddhism needs to re-embrace the Vinaya-pitaka, the rules for monks given by the historical Buddha that are still, for the most part, observed in the rest of Asia. Celibacy is high on the list of rules. Others call for Japanese Buddhism to diversify -- branch out into teaching the dharma and providing social services other than funerals. However it's done, Japanese Buddhism seems in dire need of a revival.
Comments
One of the factors may be a tendency that was also seen in India - monks withdrawing from the public.
A couple of years ago I attended a lecture by a Shingon priest. He spoke about the Heart Sutra. His presentation wandered around a bit and never really got into the meaning of the sutra. Near the end of the allotted time, he actually mentioned idea that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. However, rather than continuing, he immediately apologized for bringing up a difficult subject and said that we in the audience should not worry about such things. All we had to do was the chant the sutra, without any understanding, and leave the difficult thinking to the monks in the monastery.
While I am no expert on this subject, this does seem to be the attitude of most Japanese Buddhist monks, and so a divide is apparent between the monks and the lay people who only use the temples for funerals, acquisition of Buddhist names, and other ceremonies. Buddhism in Japan has little to do with everyday life.
As a life long Buddhist from the US, who has now practiced Buddhism in Japan for the past 4 years, I feel the death of “funeral Buddhism” (as many critics of many Japanese Buddhist preisthoods call much of Buddhism in Japan) is a great thing for the growth of Buddhist lay organizations in Japan and around the world.
In the Lotus Sutra, which is the preeminent text of many sects of Buddhism in Japan, the Buddha states, “In the beginning I made a vow to make all people equal to me, with no distinctions.”
Priesthoods have been a formality that existed long before Buddhism came into existence that Buddhism should have shaken a long time ago, in order to live up to Shakyamuni’s vow.
In Buddhism, all people are Buddhas and there should be no distinctions between priests and laity, nor between male of female priest or male or female lay persons (perhaps this is why the first person to attain enlightenment in the Lotus Sutra was a women [the dragon king’s daughter]).
The growth of Lay Buddhist organizations in Japan, along with the development of the printing press, universal literacy, and now the internet has superannuated the need for professional religious people in Buddhism or any other religion.
Their only role in Buddhism has been to copy, transcribe, and translate Buddhist texts and to interpret them for the illiterate public.
This was needed in a feudalistic society where most people were illiterate and most people worked all day and they only had one day each week (if that) to get involved in religions activities.
The death of “funeral Buddhism” in Japan will hopefully start a wave of the death of priesthoods in all religions, which are no longer needed in our modern world.
Timothy Harada
www.timharada.com