Sado: Japan's Island in Exile

by Angus Waycott

  The sun was still blazing out of the mid-afternoon sky when I left the inn and walked on down into the village of Oda. I had intended to find a room there for the night, but everything was closed and silent. From the far end of the single street a trail led off into the mountains, roughly concreted and wide enough for the passage of a car; but ahead along the coast, perhaps a mile further on, I could see a headland jutting out into the sea, with a white lighthouse and a beach that looked good for camping. Along the way, beside a group of tiny, solemn Jizo statues which had been decapitated and then inexpertly repaired, lay the body of a creature run over by a passing car. Most of the flesh had already been picked from the bones, but from the scraps of fur left on the face and tail I saw that it was a tanuki; it had paws like a dog, with curved claws, and its lips were drawn back as though smiling, displaying a mouthful of broken teeth.

  A road sign by the headland was inscribed with the name Matsugasaki (Pine Headland). There was a temple with a massive old tree in the courtyard, and a shop that sold packets of dried food, a few vegetables, ice cream, chewing gum, and, to my surprise, a few dusty bottles of cheap French wine. Between the shop and the temple, a footpath led out to the shingle beach. Driftwood lay scattered about in piles thrown up by the sea, so making a fire would be no problem: there were even a couple of brick-built barbecues set up on a grassy knoll that served as an official picnic area. It was a perfect place to camp.

  Drawing the cork on my bottle of wine, I looked out at the sea and listened to the waves as they lapped at the gray stones. Now I remembered where I had heard of Matsugasaki before: it was the place where Sado's most famous exile had landed at the start of his sentence — Nichiren, the enfant terrible of Buddhist history. Back near Sawada I had visited a temple where he was supposed to have stayed; but that was a later chapter in his story. The person who stumbled ashore at Matsugasaki was very different — condemned, cold, exhausted, and filled with despair.

  Nichiren's journey into history began on February 16th 1222, when he was born in a tiny fishing hamlet called Kominato, on the Pacific coast of the Chiba peninsula, east of Tokyo. Even today's overlay of asphalt roads, vending machines, and convenience stores does little to hide the village's simple character. On one side, a long beach scattered with seaweed, driftwood, and broken crab shells, where as a child Nichiren helped his father and the other local fishermen to haul their boats out of the surf, repair their nets, and hang up the lamps for another night at sea. On the other, a daunting landscape of steep, knobbly mountains, completely covered with trees and scrub and so close together as to leave only the narrowest patches of valley floor for cultivation.

  The boy showed early signs of an intelligent, questioning character, and in 1233, when he was 11, his father sent him to start a religious training at Seicho-ji, a temple in the hills behind his village. Here he learned to read and write and studied the doctrines of Tendai Buddhism. He was evidently a bright student, taking his vows of ordination only four years later and being given the name "Rencho" or "Lotus Eternal." But life in the rustic temple soon began to chafe, and in his mid-teens he decided to go out into the world and "study all the branches of Buddhism known in Japan."

  At 16, he set off on a pilgrimage that lasted for ten years and took him to many important Buddhist centers, including the great Tendai complex of red-painted wooden temples on Mt. Hiei, above Kyoto. What he saw on his travels convinced him that something in Japan was badly wrong. All the established sects of Buddhism danced on strings held in the hands of the aristocracy. Of the young acolytes in each temple, it was always the well born who were marked out for favor and promotion. Buddhist practice, too, seemed over-complex, finicky, and elitist. Resentful and dissatisfied, he sought a more straightforward route to salvation, one which everyone, even the poorly educated, could undertake. Out of this quest emerged one over-riding conviction — that the supreme truth was to be found in the words of the Lotus Sutra. The sutra's title is the phrase myoho renge kyo, which means something like "the scripture of the Lotus of Perfect Truth," and the essential core of everyday religious practice, according to Nichiren, was repetition of this formula prefixed by the Sanskrit word namu, which signifies devotion. Chanting it over and over again would concretize the worshipper's allegiance to the truths which the sutra revealed. This was a landmark in his thinking, and he commemorated it by changing his own name from Rencho to Nichiren, which means "Sun Lotus."

  To test his ideas, he returned to his birthplace and paid a visit to his old master and fellow monks at Seicho-ji. Here he expounded the new doctrine, declaring it to be not merely an improvement on all other forms of Buddhism, but the only antidote to their heresies. The effect was the opposite of what he intended: his hearers were offended and took him for a simpleton. And when word of the incident reached Tojo Kagenobu, the local lord, he flew into a temper. Orders were given for the blasphemer to be killed at once. But the death squad arrived too late: Nichiren's friends took pity on him and managed to arrange an ignominious escape through the forest.

  Disappointed but not disheartened, he embarked on missionary journeys through other nearby provinces before finally settling in a town just south of Edo called Kamakura, which was then the seat of government. Here he embarked on his dangerous lifelong habit of writing open letters to the ruling authorities, harshly criticizing their policies and recommending — later demanding — that they adopt his own suggestions instead. His first petition, presented in July 1260, was entitled "The Establishment of Righteousness and the Security of the Country", which shows that he was not a man to go for small themes. But his criticisms displeased the authorities, and shortly afterwards, probably at their instigation, Nichiren's hermitage was attacked by a mob and burnt down.

  Buddhism was already well established in Japan, having been imported by priests and scholars who had studied in China or Korea and then returned to set up schools and temples of their own. By and large they adopted a good-neighbor policy towards each other, so that different sects with their own individual variations flourished at the same time. Sensibly regarding none of these versions as definitive, the secular and ecclesiastical authorities allowed all of them to take root and flower side by side. But as general learning spread and grew, so did the differences between the sects — degrees of popularity, numbers of adherents, influence at court, material wealth. Many were blatantly corrupt, and some of the most powerful temples maintained armies of priest-warriors called sohei, with which they conducted raids and even prolonged wars against their rivals. The young Nichiren thought them immoral, lazy, spiritually weak, parasites on the people. And by the time he took up residence in Kamakura, it seemed to him that the same situation had arisen which always arises when religious big shots eat too much, drink too much, sleep too much, have too much money, and not enough useful work to do. Other people, he found, felt the same way. They shared his belief that the Age of Mappo had come, the prophesied time when virtue would decline and moral degeneration would spread throughout society.

  And was it a coincidence that Japan was suffering such an unprecedented number of natural disasters? Certainly the 13th century had more than its share: devastating typhoons, catastrophic earthquakes, fires that gutted whole cities and, more than once, famines which so weakened the people than human and animal corpses lay unburied beside the roads. To Nichiren, these events had an ominous significance: they were directly caused by the nation's spiritual decay. As usual, there would be nothing for the poor to do except die, or grow poorer. The rich and well-connected could sit it out in their castles and their palaces, attending to the fashionable preoccupations of the day. Conventional Buddhism could skulk in its gilded temples, devising ever more abstract concepts and abstruse rituals. But nothing would change for the better until control of the country was wrested from the military usurpers in Kamakura and a new wave of religious purity cleansed the land.

  In fact, things might easily get worse. For instance, what if Kublai Khan, lord of the mighty Mongol
empire, took it into his head to add Japan to his possessions? Nichiren issued his first warning on this subject in 1260, but was ignored. But when in 1268 it became known that Kublai Khan actually had such a plan, and had dispatched envoys precisely for the purpose of demanding official submission from Japan and the payment of tribute, the result was something like panic. Nichiren was astute enough to realize what thanks he could expect. "We are likely to face prosecution," he wrote in a circular letter to his small band of followers, "with either exile or death as the outcome. You must not be surprised."

  Meanwhile his denunciations of other Buddhist sects increased in scorn and bile. The teachings of the Pure Land sect he dismissed as a direct route to hell. Zen was the teaching of demons. Shingon was obsessed with pageantry. Ritsu was directly to blame for natural calamities. This aggressive mode of argument was, as he admitted, a deliberate tactic. "Strong remonstrances have been made on purpose," the same letter adds, "in order to awaken the people."

  Absenting himself from Kamakura for a year after his hut was burnt down, Nichiren returned in 1261 and was promptly arrested and banished to the Izu peninsula, three or four days' journey to the south. There he stayed until the beginning of 1263, when for reasons which are not known, the banishment order was lifted. In April he returned to a warm welcome from his followers in Kamakura, but ignored their pleas to change his tone and act more moderately.

  So why did they stick by him? Obviously because his teaching carried conviction. To know the Lotus Sutra, he declared, was to understand the true character of the Buddha. This had not been an ordinary man, as others claimed, who had been born in central India and just went around teaching the simple elements of a simple faith. Nor was he a superman with miraculous powers, offering enlightenment as a reward for devotion. Nichiren's Buddha was beyond either of these. He was the Great Self of the Universe, a sort of immanent god; through him, everything and everyone, however humble or insignificant, shared the same divine nature. "Behold!" Nichiren could have said in another time and place, "the kingdom of God is within you!"

  Another reason for his success must have been the sheer force of his personality. No convention was too sacred for criticism. One that particularly irked him was the idea that women were intrinsically inferior to men, that their acts of worship should be bound by special restrictions. In 1263, he received a letter from a female follower — and the fact that it was written at all says a lot about his character — asking about the rules that she should observe during her monthly period. At the time, menstruating women were regarded as polluted and were forbidden to approach sacred places. Nichiren wrote back that no special precautions were necessary. She should worship and recite the scriptures as usual. If she had any scruples about uncleanliness, he added, she need not actually hold the scriptures in her hand: it would suffice to pronounce the words. This combination of delicacy toward the individual and indifference to established norms was, to say the least, unusual.

  In the autumn of 1264, Nichiren heard that his mother was ill, so he set out to pay her a last visit. When he arrived, he found her close to death, but his prayers had some effect — or so he believed — because she gradually recovered and lived on for another 4 years. Full of faith in his own powers, Nichiren again paid a visit to his old teacher at Seicho-ji, hoping this time to convert him. Again, the visit was a failure. Moved to tears, the old man thanked Nichiren for his efforts but declined to change course so late in life. This disappointment was quickly followed by near-disaster: no sooner had Nichiren and his followers left the temple than they were waylaid by servants of the same local lord who had tried to kill him before. This time there was a fight, involving (according to Nichiren) "hundreds of attackers whose arrows fell from the sky like rain and whose swords clashed like lightning. One of my followers was killed, two were badly injured, and I myself was struck on the forehead and also on the left hand. It seemed there would be no escape, yet somehow I was saved. How, I cannot explain."

  Day 7

  Ball Of Fire

  Details of his life for the next four years are sketchy, but in 1268 he was certainly back in Kamakura because that was the year in which Kublai Khan sent envoys to demand Japan's submission. "Recall the warning I gave 8 years ago!" wrote Nichiren in another of his open letters. "Is it not now coming true? Is there anyone but I who can repel this danger to our country? Only one who knows the real cause of a situation can influence its outcome." This appeal, like its predecessors, went unanswered, so Nichiren stepped up a couple of gears and dispatched a total of 11 letters simultaneously to government officials and to the abbots of leading monasteries. What happened next is not recorded: probably Kamakura became too hot to hold him, as he dropped out of sight again.

  By 1270 he was back, as truculent as ever. This time his principal target was Ryokuan, the popular abbot of Gokuraku Temple and an associate of the ruling Hojo family. That summer there was a severe drought, and Ryokuan let it be known that he was performing special prayers and rituals to bring rain. When these efforts failed, Nichiren derided Ryokuan as a charlatan, angering the abbot's supporters at court. At the same time he fell out with a prominent courtier called Hei no Saemon, a relative of the Hojo and a follower of Amidha, the Buddha of the Pure Land sect. Nichiren insulted this man in a succession of aggressive letters, eventually provoking him to seek judicial satisfaction. A summons was issued, ordering Nichiren to appear in court on October 15 and justify his slanderous attacks.

  Characteristically, the fisherman's son who once described himself as "the most intractable man in Japan" responded by firing off yet another broadside. This time, it was one too many. On the morning of October 17, a troop of soldiers came to arrest him. At their head strode Hei no Saemon, "wearing the headgear of a court noble, glaring angrily and giving orders in a fierce tone of voice."

  The trial was held immediately: the charge was treason and the sentence was banishment to Sado. A curious juridical twist, not uncommon at the time, left the manner of the prisoner's journey into exile and his fate in the meantime in the hands of the individual technically responsible for bringing the charge — in this case, Hei no Saemon. There wasn't much doubt as to what Nichiren could expect.

  That evening, Nichiren was mounted on a horse and paraded round Kamakura so that his downfall should become known. After midnight, the party moved off along the coast road to what is now Koshigoe, a village close to Enoshima, where there was a public execution ground known as Tatsunokuchi (The Mouth of the Dragon). There, the scene was set for a theatrical revenge. Armed soldiers stood guard, the executioner held his sword at the ready, and Hei no Saemon watched impassively from the official witness's chair. Realizing that the end had come, Nichiren knelt down on the tatami mat spread out for him, put his hands together and spoke the words of his final prayer.

  Then, quite suddenly (according to Nichiren's own account), "a ball of fire as bright as the moon flew across the sky over Enoshima Island," lighting up the scene so that everyone's face was clearly visible. The dazzled executioner staggered, dropped his sword, and fell to the ground. The soldiers were terrified, running this way and that in panic or prostrating themselves while still in the saddle. Order degenerated into chaos, and the execution was abandoned.

  Fearing that divine intervention had been the cause, the authorities were in some confusion about what to do next. But the decision was not long in coming. The original sentence of the court was reaffirmed. Nichiren was detained near Kamakura, while travel preparations were made. One month later he set out for Sado.

  It was an arduous 11-day walk to the Japan Sea coast and the little beachside port of Teradomari ("Temple-stay"), from which ferries to Sado still sail today. Winter was well under way and the weather was bad: the party had to wait for a further week in Teradomari before they could attempt the crossing. While they were at sea, another storm blew up, this time from the south; blown off course, they missed Akadomari, Teradomari's corresponding port on Sado, and made landfall a few miles to the
north, on the stony beach at Matsugasaki.

  ***

  Another cool, sunny dawn greeted me as I crawled out of my sleeping bag at first light and sat on the grassy knoll with a cup of tea. Behind me among the trees stood the temple I had seen the night before — the same temple, or rather the same temple site, where Nichiren and his military escort supposedly spent their first night on Sado, with the prisoner himself sleeping out in the open at the foot of a zelkova tree. When I walked round to take a look, I found a signboard on which were painted the words

  NICHIRENSHU

  THEHONGYOJI

  TEMPLL

  Sure enough there was a huge old zelkova in the courtyard, but as 700 years had elapsed since Nichiren's visit, there didn't seem much likelihood of its being the same one. But when I examined it I wasn't so sure. The trunk was truly massive, eight or ten feet in diameter at the base and divided into a giant fork about 12 feet off the ground. The bark was made up of thick, chunky plates divided by deep cracks, like the roughly chapped hide of a prehistoric monster.

  Whether it was the original tree or not, this was evidently Nichiren's place of arrival. From here he had a further journey to make across the mountains to his final destination on the Kuninaka plain. If the party had arrived at the port they intended, their route would have taken them over the same road I had followed down into Akadomari the day before. As it was, they were too far north to make the detour worthwhile, so instead they took the mountain trail out of Oda village, which bore the same name then as it does today — Matsugasaki Kaido, or Pine Headland Road. That meant starting off with a walk along what must have been little more than a footpath at the base of the cliff, freezing cold in the December gale, probably in a swirl of snow, and traveling for an unknown distance to an unknown place of detention.