| Show BUDDHISM IN JAPAN A Curious Phase of the Buddhist Bud-dhist Religion A CABLE ROPE OF HUMAN HAIR The JApaneso as Infidels and the Prospects of Buddhism as an American Religion a KIOTA November 25 1888Special e Correspondence of THE HERALD I have just finished an afternoon in the company of Mr Akamatzu who is one F of the most noted Buddhist priests of d Japan He is one of the heads of the largest Buddhist sect of the country and he presides over the highest temple in the Japanese empire The audience room of his temple with its moneychangers money-changers and its multitude of worphip y ers makes one think of the scenes in the great temple at Jerusalem in the days of Christ It covers half an acre and the anterooms and chambers of the temple form a labyrinth of Japanese Japa-nese apartments walled with gold leaf and decorated with costly carvings and paintings by the greatest of Japanese artists The Buddhist religion embraces among its followers onefourth of all the people in the world it contains more believers than any other religion and it is the chief religion of Japan There are here 72000 Buddhist temples and Kiota which is a city the size of Cincinnati is said to have 3 500 temples of this religion Still Buddhism came into Japan 500 years after Christ was born though it originated 600 years before that time The Japanese Buddhists have as many sects as Protestant Christianity and these vary widely as to their doctrine and their beliefs The priests of many of them shave their heads until they shine like so many billiard balls and these lead celibate lives Other sects believe in marriage and the sect of Mr Akamatzu is one of the most liberal of the whole Its believers may be called the Unitarian Unitar-ian Protestants of Japanese Buddhism and its theories vary so widely from the generally accepted ideas of Buddhism that my conversation with Mr Akamatzu can not fail to be interesting interest-ing It was in one of these gorgeous gold walled rooms that I met the great Buddhist Bud-dhist a short slender fullbearded kind eyed man of 45 He was dressed in a long black gown of a sort of silk I grenadine with sleeves which hung down like those of a Japanese lady afoot a-foot or so below the wrist His feet were clad in the whitest of foot mittens and he had left his sandals on the ground outside I had likewise been directed to take off my shoes and thus in stocking feet we sat on European chairs and talked together Mr Akamatzu had spent two years in England Eng-land about fifteen years ago and he spoke our language fluently He talked freely using a great many illustrations illus-trations ot the most commonplace order and aurprised me continually at the liberality of his views and the wide extent of his reading and information He was very particular in his statement that all Buddhists were not as he was ana that many of the different sects I did not look upon religion and Christianity Chris-tianity as he did but he said the Buddhists Bud-dhists believe that they are all going the same way and that the sects will be finally united in the Nirvana I asked as to the growth of Buddhism Mr Akamatza replied Japan is in a deplorable state as far as religion is concerned The people of the better classes are largely Agonostics They believe in no religion and though the bulk of them are nominally Buddhists they are really Infidels I believe that any religion is better than no religion and there is at present room in Japan for all the work that both the Buddhists and Christians can do When the two religions have conquered the Empire and the sects come together there maybe may-be trouble but not before We have now our preachers and the Christians have their missionaries There is a vast field before us and there is room for both to do good Our tea hiDlZs are in many respects the same and we both aim at the establishment of a better morality and the elevation of manYour idea of religion is far different from that of the other Buddhist sects is it not I asked Yes replied the priest the Buddha Bud-dha we worship is the amita Buddha the boundless Buddha the chief of all the Buddhas Amita means boundless and we believe that Buddha is boundless bound-less in all his attributes We believe be is a god ot boundless mercy of boundless bound-less goodness and purity and of bou d less light We believe that his light t nd life are perfect and our religion is one of faith and works From the time of Trotting faith in the saving pcwr of Buddha we do not need any power of selfhelp but need only keep his mercy in heart and invoke his name in order to remember him We believe in the doctrines of cause and effect and that III the state of our present life has its causes in what we have done in our previous existences up to the present On this account our religion forbids all prayers lor happiness in the present life because the events of the present life can not be alt red by the power of others We may better our condition lathe next life by attending to our moral duties in this by loving each other and by keeping the laws Then you have the doctrine of transmigration trans-migration of souls Yes all Buddhists believe in that We believe that mind or soul is never lost It goes from one transmigration to another rising higher or sinking lower in the scale of creation as its actions are good or bad Some of the Buddhists believe in hells And there is a theory that there are eight hot hells and eight cold hells The tight hot hells are states of blazing fire The eight cold hells are those of freezing water The lower classes believe these hells to exist in reality It is with the Higher classes much as with the brim stone damnation of Christianity The blazing fire and freezing water are not made by other beings but by oar thoughts alone We have theories that the lowest and wickedest men may spend their next state in the souls of beasts or insects The good man by doing his best for the right in this world is born with a bettor soul into the next transmigration By being good there he rises higher and thus goes onstep by step and life by life until he reaches the Nirvana Whatis the Nirvana It is hard to explain this in English Eng-lish I find that Christians do not rightly appreciate it It is not a state of soul annihilation as many suppose It is not a negative state but a positive one Nirvana means eternal happiness and it is the state of Buddha In it we believe that all the bad that is in mans nature is annihilated and all the good continues to grow If is a state in which all the evil is taken from mans nature and his happiness comes from his appreciation of the true the beautiful beau-tiful and the good in its perfection Buddhism believes in the extinction of the evil passions of mankind and that when these are all cut ott the miserable state of transmigration ends Covet uonsness anger vice hypocrisy pride are dead and the pure soul enters the Nirvana This is a beautiful theory but does all Buddhists hold it Not at all replu the priest The nominal Buddhist wear merely the cloak of the religion and many people of the lower classes expect to receive good fortunes in this life for their religious work Do any of them worship the images themselves I think not They worship them only as the representative of Buddha They do not believe that the wood and stone has life or powar Do you think that Buddhism will ever become the chief religion of the world in other words will all the people peo-ple in the world sometime be Buddhists Bud-dhists I hardly think so was the reply though I understand there are Buddhists Bud-dhists in America and Madame Blavetsky and the theosophists are treading close on the heels of Buddhism Bud-dhism Still I would not like to say I that all the world would eventually be I Buddhists J But the Christians claim that they will eventually Christianize the whole world said I Well as for claiming replied the priest with a twinkle of his eye I can claim as much as they can I can claim that all the world will be Buddhists Bud-dhists and I can set down the day hour and minute when this will be But it would only be claiming after all There are now 10GOOOCOO Protestant Christians in the world There are 2JOOOOOOO Roman Catholics Wa Buddhists Bud-dhists at the lowest estimate number 310000000 and Buddhism is not at a standstill Before the sixth century we were not known in Japan and we spread over this whole Empire in avery a-very short time Some of the Mikados of the past were Buddhists and the day may come when there will be a Buddhist President in the White House who will push the Buddhist religion to the front in the United States Do the Buddhists give largely to their church I Not so much as they should replied i the priest Still they do very well considering the poverty of the country This church in which we are now talking talk-ing has an income of 200000 a year And another branch of this denomination denomina-tion is building a cathedral which will cost well up into the millions Our people give as much as they see fit We do not fix the amount of their contributions con-tributions and there Is no tithing among us In company with Mr Akamatzu I next took a walk through this vast temple known in Japan as the Nishi Hongwan Ji We walked through corridor cor-ridor after corridor in our stocking feet and inspected room after room I carpeted with mats and walled with gold leaf The walls were made of sliding screens and upon each of these were paintings by the old masters Priceless carvings of a noted left handed artist who lived about 300 years ago formed the freize workof one side of most of the rooms and this was made up of birds and animals of life size so accurately cut that the blood seemed to flow through them We visited the great audience room of the temple the roof of which is upheld by immense pllars and the floor of which takes 954 yards of matting to cover it The ceiling was made of richly painted panels bound with laqquer and great brass lanterns each of which would have filled a good sized hogshead hung from the ceiling We went through splendid reception rooms and this sect of Buddhists have some of the finest of the Japanese temples The art of Japan is connected with the temples and in them are found the finest specimens speci-mens of Japanese carving and bronze work We looked at the great bell of the temple which is rung by a log of wood so held up by means of a rope that its end points against the lower part of the outside of the bell and which is rung by a man pulling this log back and lettling it strike against the ball We walked through the beautiful beauti-ful temple garden and watched goldfishes gold-fishes of about five pounds each swimming swim-ming by the hundreds within the lake in the centre We chatted the while of Christianity and Buddhism and as we went out we saw a service being conducted con-ducted in one of the ante rooms by a Buddhist priest From 500 to 1000 bareheaded men women and children in gowns sat on their bare heels on the floor and attentively listened to the Driest who read from manuscript his sermon His reading was a singsong drawl but the audience was devout and the whole was not without its solemnity We then went past the treasury of the temple The priests sat behind little cagelike desks a foot high and the crowds thronged around with their gifts with the pushing and crowding of a bank on a busy day Money has changed and gifts in kind were given and from what I could see this branch of Buddhism seemed far from dead I was the more surprised when our government guide took us to the other temple of this sect which is now being built It is to cost 8000000 when completed com-pleted and it will be finished next year It has already been nine years in building and its funds are made up entirely from the offerings of the people peo-ple I went into its workshops Imagine forty acres of land covered with low sheds and in these sheds goes on the work of turning the great logs brought from the Island of Formosa into the finest of carvings and into the numerous numer-ous pieces of wood work which go to make up a great Japanese temple Everything is done by hand Logs four feet thick are sawed into boards by hand and great beams two of which would form a good load for a team of Senator Palmers perch eron horses are carried by a score of men in couples up a wide roadway which has been built from the ground to the roof of the temple This temple will cover acres of ground It will like all the temples of Japan consist of an immense ridgeroofed building the sides of which will slope downward in the shape of a bow and the beams and every part of which will be a mass of gorgeous carving Five I hundred men are now at work upon it and work of all kinds goes on under its roof This roof was put up upon great poles before the work was begun and the scaffolding of this building consists of tens of thousands of poles which range in size from the thickness of a fat mans body at the waist to that of a fishing rod These are tied together with ropes and upon them these acres of roof are built Here can be seen better than anywhere else in the world I doubt not the modes of architecture of the ancients It is wonderful what mans hand can do unaided by machinery machin-ery There are no steam engines no derricks and no machines of any kind Work upon this temple has been and is largely a labor of faith and love The carpenters and carvers are Buddhists who come from all parts of the country to d3 voluntary work for the temple and one of the most striking objects of the whole of the building apparatus is the offering of women This is the rope which have been used in hauling these immense logs which make up the material of the temple They are numbered by the hundreds of feet and the largest of them are as big around as the thigh of a goodsizsd man Great cables of brownish black They hang in long strands from the roof to the first floor of the temple wading a screen nearly one hundred feet high and twenty feet wide so thick that they shut out the light And these thousands of feet of big rope are made of what They are entirely composed of human hair Two hundred thousand woman cut off their locks and gave them for this purpose pur-pose as an offering to Buddha The whole was braided together and the thin cords were retwisted until they became be-came thick ones The strand grew into ropes and the ropes became these massive cables I fingered them with my hands and I tried to clasp them but they were so large that my thumbs and fingers would not meet I pressed my thumb upon them and they were as hard almost as a cable of wiThy wi-Thy were dry All the oil had gone out uf the hair and the whole looked more dead than alive Still could see that all sorts of lives were wrapped up in this rope Here tho fine silky brown locks of the maiden were twined in and out with those of the white haired woman and long strands were braided about short ones and at the end of the ropa these different locks had become loosened and they hung down like the tail of a horse of vari gated colors One cable alone contained con-tained tbe hair of 2000 women and some of the smaller cables were worn thin almost to breaking by the immense strain that had been put upon them in the pulling of the logs These ropes will be kept in the temple and when this great temple is completed they will have one of the honored places among its relics They are truly a monument of the desire of the women of the east for something better than they now have In this letter it must be remembered that I have treated chiefly of Protestant Protes-tant Buddhism and that the sects of Buddhists are many Idolatry in many of the temples seems to prevail and the superstitutions which exist among the Japanese worshipers would in the telling tell-ing more than fill the columns of this paper There is the Doctor Buddha here who if you put your fingers upon his eyes and then anoint your sore ones will effect a cure Who if you have the stomachache and rub his wooden abdomen and then rub yours will have the effect upon you of bicarbonate of soda and who if you have a cold in the head will relieve you by the alternate alter-nate rubbing of his nose and yours There are little wooden gods for babies diseases and there are big wooden Baddhas for women desiring children In the grandest temples at Nikko there i < 3 a sacred pony whom you may feed with holy beans at a cent a plate and every other country temple has its stone foxes which are worshipped I find vestages of the worship of twentyfive years ago which will not bear telling in the newspapers and the Shinto religion which has in Japan 14000 temples is made up of a combination of relying on the spirits of dead ancestors an-cestors and of the worship of silver mirrors Christianity in the meanwhile mean-while has I believe come to Japan to stay There are 60000 Christians of all kinds in Japan There are many native selfsupporting churches and the missionaries are as a class bright earnest men whose homes are refined and whose work is enthusiastic and progressive FRANK G CARPENtER |
