Site 18: Buddhist Graveyard
He attends the honoring of his family grave.
Themes:
1. BUDDHISM
2. honoring the dead
3. idea of returning
4. Japanese overseas
5. Kamakura
EXTERIOR: BUDDHIST GRAVEYARD
Professor Miyagawa and his mother arrive at a Buddhist graveyard to honor their ancestors’ graves in a traditional Buddhist ritual.
PROFESSOR MIYAGAWA
July 5; 4:04 pm. The family is here at the Buddhist temple
for the anniversary of my Suehiro grandmother’s death. My mother traveled all the way from Alabama to Japan for months at a time to care for her mother-in-law during the last years of her life. This crypt contains the ashes of all my Miyagawa ancestors. Think of it: generations of Miyagawa’s.
KAMAKURA
Kamakura is just to the southwest of Tokyo, a peaceful town with many temples and historic sites. In the 12th century, Minamoto no Yoritomo established there the political center of the Kamakura shogunate, and from then to 1333 Kamakura was the capital of the country. The Great Buddha dominates the town, but many Zen Buddhist temples are also attractions.
WILLIAM TREVOR - author
(born William Trevor Cox, 1928, Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland) Irish writer of novels and short stories. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Most notable novel is The Old Boys (1964) in which aging “old boy” committee members plot revenge on one another. He wrote several well received collections of short stories which were published comprehensively as the Stories of William Trevor in 1983.
EXCURSIONS IN THE REAL WORLD
Autobiographical travel book by the Irish writer William Trevor, Penguin Books, New York, 1995.
BUDDHIST
Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini, Nepal about 446 BC. Buddhism evolved in resistance to highly ritualized religions of the era, to point to a “true eternal law” or dharma, which would be valid for humanity for all ages. This transcendent teaching spread after the third century BC over India and itself developed in several tracks, or schools. Missionaries east through Asia spread Buddhism through China and Southeast Asia, and later, north to Tibet. In this spread, Buddhism took different forms. It arrived in Japan in about 550 AD, when a Korean mission brought images and sutras to the Emperor.
In the Nara Period (710-794) Buddhism became the state religion, and many monasteries and temples were built. As on the Asian mainland, Buddhism developed in different schools within Japan, some inherited from the mainland, some created new in Japan. Some like the Tendai and Shingon sects, which were introduced in the Heian Period (794-1185), appealed to the elite through their highly developed philosophies and rituals. Others, like the Nichiren sect (13th century) simplified text and practice, and appealed to lower class followers. Zen, from a Chinese school, arrived in Japan in the 7th century, and became more esoteric and ascetic, while much later, the so-called “new religions” were organized and propagated for popular, cult-like, followers.
Japanese Buddhism, as distinct from Asian mainland Buddhism, tends to emphasize human society and institutions, rather than the afterlife and supernatural. It is also intuitive and emotional, rather than rational. There is felt no contradiction in using both Shinto and Buddhist practices and it is very likely that a person today would have a Shinto wedding and a Buddhist funeral. In general, Shinto ceremonies are for the life course, Buddhist for the after life.
Statistically, about 80% of Japanese say they are Buddhist.
REINCARNATION
The doctrine that a soul is reborn into a new body. Buddhism, as well as many other world religions, hold this teaching.
MRS. MIYAGAWA
MRS. ICHIRO MIYAGAWA
MITSUKO YAMADA
MITSUKO
Shigeru’s mother, Mitsuko Miyagawa, (born 1928), the daughter of Tatsu Go Ro and Nami Yamada
THE JAPANESE OVERSEAS
White, Merry, The Japanese Overseas: Can They Go Home Again?, The Free Press, New York, 1988
INSIDER-OUTSIDER
UCHIMAGO
SOTOMAGO
Corky comments:
“Inside-outside, public-private, appearance-reality: people like to explain Japan in these dichotomies. Well, they DO help organize space and behavior, to some extent. In the past, the difference between uchi and soto in terms of actual privacy was much less than now, at least in people's houses as they were much more porous -- the fences between them were minimal, the doors/windows open in good weather -- on a clear day you could see all the way through a neighbor's house. Now the cement walls between them, and the heavy construction mean neighbors can't (and don't have to) watch each other for the risk of fire, for example.
“As for the more symbolic meaning of insider and outsider, indeed as a gaikokujin myself I sometimes find it puzzling that some (especially older) Japanese want to imply that I could never be a real insider. They'd ask me, repeatedly, “you don't eat raw fish, do you?” or, “Can you sit on the floor?”, meaning well of course, but making me feel strange, after all I can sit on the floor better than some young Japanese.
“While the home is the ultimate uchi, some say the whole nation is an uchi, as when politicians, caught by world indignation at an ethnocentric utterance, say “but that was just for us Japanese at home, and foreigners weren't meant to hear it”. But on the other hand, a sense of consensus and harmony, predictability and safety (challenged shockingly by the subway gassings in 1995) are a product of the constructed ideal of uchi.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2006 Visualizing Cultures
