Part 6 (1/2)
_For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
_Pericles, ca. 430 B.C.
_SILVER PAVILION, KYOTO 1482
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_Golden Pavilion, Kyoto
_THE FLOWERING of Zen culture might be described as the Periclean age of j.a.pan. As with fifth-century Greece, this was the era that produced j.a.pan's finest cla.s.sical art at the same time that rampant plagues and internecine warfare bled the land as never before. Government, such as it was, rested in the hands of the As.h.i.+kaga clan, men ever ready to sacrifice the general good in furtherance of personal interests. That these interests happened to include Zen and the Zen arts probably brought scant solace to their subjects, but today we can weigh their selfishness against the culture they sponsored. In any case, all who admire the cla.s.sic Zen cultural forms should be aware that their price included the heartless taxation of and disregard for the entire peasant population of j.a.pan.
The historical backdrop for the As.h.i.+kaga era reads like a Jacobean tragedy peopled by cutthroat courtiers ever alert to advantage in chambers or in battle. The political shape of the As.h.i.+kaga era began to emerge in the early years of the fourteenth century as the once invincible Kamakura rule of the Hojo family dissolved, plunging j.a.pan into a half-century of war and feuding over the ident.i.ty of the rightful emperor. Throughout much of the century the provincial _daimyo _warlords and their _samurai _warred up and down the length of the land, supporting first one emperor, then another. It was during this time and the two centuries following that Zen became the official state religion and Zen monks served as foreign diplomats, domestic advisers, and arbiters of taste.
The political troubles that ended the Kamakura warrior government and unseated the Hojo seem to be traceable to the war against the Mongols.
It was a long and costly operation which left most of the _samurai_ impoverished and angered at a government that could give them only cheerful thanks rather than the lands of the vanquished as was traditional practice. The general discontent found a focus in the third decade of the fourteenth century when a Kyoto emperor named G.o.daigo attempted to unseat the Hojo and re-establish genuine imperial rule. After some minor skirmishes, the Hojo commissioned an able general nanied As.h.i.+kaga Takauji (1305-1358) from an old Minamoto family to march on G.o.daigo and settle the difficulty. Along the way Takauji must have thought things over, for when he reached Kyoto instead of attacking the emperor's forces he put the Hojo garrison to the sword.
Shortly thereafter, another general supporting the imperial cause marched out to Kamakura and laid waste the Hojo capital. The last few hundred Hojo supporters committed suicide en ma.s.se, and the Kamakura age was ended.
G.o.daigo gleefully set up the new j.a.panese government in Kyoto, and soon it was like old times, with aristocrats running everything. In a serious miscalculation, he a.s.sumed that the
provincial warlords had joined his cause out of personal loyalty rather than the more traditional motive of greed, for he gave the Hojo estates to his favorite mistresses while regarding warriors like Takauji as hardly more than rustic figures of fun. As might have been expected, another war soon broke out. This time the conflict lasted for decades, with almost unbelievable convolutions, including a number of decades in which j.a.pan had two emperors. At one point Takauji found it necessary to poison his own brother, and it has been estimated that his military exploits cost some sixty thousand lives, not to mention the general ruin of the country at large. The end result was that the forces of G.o.daigo were defeated, leaving j.a.pan in the hands of the As.h.i.+kaga family.
For all his bloodletting, Takuji was also a patron of the Zen sect, giving it a formal place in the national life and encouraging its growth and dissemination. One of his closest advisers was the great Zen prelate Muso Soseki (1275-1351), whose influence made Rinzai Zen the official religion of the As.h.i.+kaga era. An astutely practical man, Muso established the precedent for doctrinal flexibility which allowed Zen to survive while emperors and shoguns came and went:
_Clear-sighted masters of the Zen sect do not have a fixed doctrine which is to be held to at any and all times. They offer whatever teaching the occasion demands and preach as the spirit moves them, with no fixed course to guide them. If asked what Zen is, they may answer in the words of Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, or else in terms of the doctrines of the various sects and denominations, and also by using popular proverbs.1
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Like many Zen teachers, Muso enjoyed the company of the powerful. He began his career in statecraft as a supporter and confidant of the ill- fated Emperor G.o.daigo. When G.o.daigo was deposed, he adjusted his allegiance and became the high priest of the As.h.i.+kaga house. He was soon the constant companion of Takauji, advising him on policy, flattering his taste in Zen art, and secretly trying to give him a bit of polish. Although Takauji could scarcely have had time for extensive meditation amid his continual bloodletting, Muso preached to him in odd moments and soothed his occasionally guilty conscience.
Since Takauji was clearly haunted by his treatment of G.o.daigo, Muso suggested that the former emperor's ghost might find repose if a special Zen temple was built in his memory. The project was well underway when funds ran low, whereupon the resourceful Muso suggested sending a trading vessel to China to raise foreign-exchange cash. The venture was so successful that before long regular trade was established-- naturally enough under the guidance of Zen monks. In later years a special branch of government was established devoted exclusively to foreign trade and directed by well-traveled prelates of Zen. (The Chinese regarded this trade as the exchange of Chinese gifts for j.a.panese tribute, but the j.a.panese were willing to overlook the insult in the interest of profit.) Muso's other lasting contribution to the growth of Zen influence was persuading Takauji to build a Zen temple in each of the sixty-six provinces, thereby extending state support of the religion outside of Kyoto ruling circles.
Takauji was the founder of a line of As.h.i.+kaga shoguns who gave their name to the next two centuries of j.a.panese history. His entire life was spent on the battlefield, where he concentrated his energies on strengthening the shogunate through the liberal application of armed might. In a sense he prefigured the att.i.tude of John Adams, who once lamented that he must study war so that his grandsons might fas.h.i.+on art and architecture. Indeed, Takauji's grandson was the famous aesthete As.h.i.+kaga Yos.h.i.+mitsu (1358-1408), who ascended to shogun in 1368 and soon thereafter brought to flower a renaissance of the Zen artistic tradition of Sung China.
Yos.h.i.+mitsu was only nine years of age when he became shogun, so the early years of his reign were guided by regents of the Hosokawa clan, who put to rest any remaining dissidence. Consequently, when Yos.h.i.+mitsu came of age, he felt secure
enough in his office to tour the country, visiting religious shrines and establis.h.i.+ng his place in the pageant of j.a.panese history. More significantly for the rise of Zen culture, he also turned his eyes abroad, encouraging the trade with China by stabilizing political relations and becoming the best customer for the silks, brocades, porcelains, and--most important--Sung paintings brought back by the Zen monks.
In a very short time, Yos.h.i.+mitsu had become addicted to the Chinese finery and antique Ch'an art of the Sung which his monks were importing. He was fortunate that the country was stable and peaceful enough to allow him his whims, especially since he almost entirely lost interest in all functions of government save taxation, which he found necessary to apply to the peasants in ever greater measure in order to support his patronage of the arts. Absorbed with aesthetics and Zen art, he became a cloistered sovereign whose luckless subjects were left on their own to weather fortunes that alternated between starvation and the plague, leavened by intermittent wars among provincial chieftains.
The peasantry, however, was not blind to his callous priorities, and it is said that his reputation survived into the nineteenth century, maintained by country folk who would trek to a certain temple to revile an old statue of the As.h.i.+kaga shogun.
His personal failings notwithstanding, Yos.h.i.+mitsu was the key figure in bringing about the rise of Zen art. His contributions were manifold: he founded a Zen monastery which became the school for the great landscape painters of the era; his personal patronage was largely responsible for the development of the No drama; his example and encouragement did much to bring into being the identification of Zen with landscape garden art; his own practice of _zazen _under the guidance of a famous Zen monk set an example for the warrior court; his interest in tea and poetry served both to set the stage for the development of the tea ceremony as an aesthetic phenomenon and to temper the literary tastes of his warrior followers; and, finally, his interest in Zen-inspired architecture was responsible for the creation of one of the most famous Zen chapels in j.a.pan.