A young priest sells sticks of incense. People circle the main building to offer incense at several smaller shelters housing old and new Jizos. One is a beautiful modern bronze statue. In an openfaced shed at the back there are many stone Jizos from a few inches to four feet tall. Some are new with sharply carved features. Some are ancient, almost formless and dark-stained from centuries of incense and candle smoke. Legend says the bodhisattva is singed with smoke from nightly trips to hell to rescue sinners. Red capes adorn even the oldest headless torsos. Many little baby bibs in gay colors are strung as offerings along the wooden slats of the small Jizo shrines. Plastic toys, infant clothing, baby blankets, and tiny sneakers lay at the feet of the statues, placed there in memory of children who have died.
The outside walls of the main building at Kugi Nuki Temple are covered with curious wooden plaques. To each are affixed two long iron nails and a pliers. The plaques bear dedications to individuals in black calligraphy and requests for afflictions to be removed. In the courtyard of the temple is a sculpture of a huge metal pliers and two nails.
A pamphlet explains that the Nail Pulling Temple originated with Kobo-Daishi, the founder of the Shingon sect. Kobo-Daishi returned from China to Japan in the ninth century with a large stone from which he carved a statue of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva (Jizo). He prayed to this image for the relief of people’s suffering and sickness. Seven centuries later in Kyoto a well-known merchant named Dorin had a sudden onset of severe pain in his hands. He tried many remedies with no relief. Finally he undertook a religious retreat in hopes of ending his pain. On the last night of the retreat he dreamed of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva who told him that his pain was due, not to sickness, but to evil deeds committed in a previous life, when in anger he had driven nails into a straw figure of an enemy, a kind of voodoo. Kshitigarbha told Dorin that because of his recent devoted practice the pain that afflicted him would be cured by divine intervention.
Plaques with pliers and nails covering the walls of Kugi Nuki (“Nail Pulling”) Jizo Temple in Kyoto. Each bears a written petition for relief of pain.
When Dorin awakened he was astonished to find that his pain had vanished. He hurried to the statue of Kshitigarbha and found that two long red nails had appeared in front of it. In gratitude for the “pulling out of the nails of pain,” Dorin worshiped at the temple for one hundred days. This Jizo became known as the Nail Pulling Jizo.
The Jizo Who Heals Eye Disease
A second popular Jizo temple in downtown Kyoto houses the Ameyami or Meyami Jizo. The entrance to Chugen-ji Temple, lined with white lanterns, is off a busy street in the old Cion district. At the left in the small courtyard is a simple Jizo of smooth black stone about five feet tall. Here, after purifying their hands, people take a dipper full of water and dash it energetically at the statue rather than pouring it gently over. Its primitive style and wet gleam make this Jizo not cheerful but somewhat dark and mysterious.
In the main shrine is a beautiful sixteen-foot Jizo carved of wood with eyes of glass. In a side shrine is a beautiful old many-armed Kannon. Ame means “rain” in Japanese and Ameyami means the “Rain Stopping Jizo.” Kyoto was once the capital of Japan, a beautiful and fragile city of paper and wood houses always under the double threat of flood and fire. It is situated on a floodplain and its buildings are kept from sinking by a series of drainage canals that course their way through the city. The Ameyami Temple was founded in 1228 in an effort, fortunately successful, to stanch rising floodwaters. The name also may signify the shelter the temple offered to people caught in downpour. Now the name has become Meyame Jizo, meaning the Jizo who miraculously heals eye (or me, in Japanese) disease.
This transformation in Jizo’s function to meet the needs of the times is not uncommon. In ancient times Jizo’s protection was invoked for floods, fires, and epidemics. In modern times people have gained relative freedom from large-scale disasters and ask Jizo for help with individual needs such as cataracts, passing exams, or securing a certain boyfriend. Some prayers to Jizo, like those for successful conception and easy childbirth, are timeless.
The Wheel-Track Jizo
A third small and quiet Jizo temple is tucked under high-rise hotels only a few blocks from the huge Kyoto train station. It houses the Wagata or Wheel-Track Jizo. In the old days the main trade items between Kyoto and Nara were rice and salt, carried on carriages by horses and cows. To lighten the burden of the animals on the rough and rutted road, people laid stone tracks with chiseled grooves for cart wheels to run in smoothly.
Three hundred years after these stone pavers were laid, a local man had a dream. A priest appeared to him saying, “I have been practicing under the ground to save the souls of hard-working horses and cows. Now their hardship is less. I would like to save people instead. Please dig me out of the ground.” When the man looked at the road the next morning one of the stones was shining. The villagers worked together to dig the paving stone up and found it was a statue of Jizo lying face down with the wheel groove running right down its back. They built a small shrine for the statue, and later a temple. It became a well-known guardian of travelers and a protector of the health of horses and cows. People came from near and far to petition for safety in travel, the smooth delivery of a baby, or freedom from suffering.
Wheel-Track Jizo, who protects travelers. Found-under a paving stone.
In Japan Jizo Bodhisattva is like a comfortable, country-style general practitioner. This doctor is always in, available to everyone for any pain, fear, or worry, large and small. He provides solace to all who ask his help and to infants and other creatures who suffer and cannot speak. In modern times there are bodhisattvas for the protection of the elderly from senility and Alzheimer’s disease. A doctor’s wife whom I met at one temple told me of the Yo-mei irazu Jizo and Kannon. She explained, “Our religion is very practical. Yo-mei means ‘bright’ and also ‘daughter-in-law.’ Irazu means ‘without.’ Older people pray to these bodhisattvas to prevent their having to be cared for by their daughters-in-law.” She said this is for two reasons: first, those who have cared for their own in-laws in the past know what a trial it can be, and second, they do not want to become indebted to their daughters-in-law. She also mentioned the Pokkuri Jizos and Kannons who receive prayers for a quick and painless death. Pokkuri is an onomatopoeic word for the sound of—what we would call in English—suddenly dropping dead. Old people do not want to linger in illness and become a burden to the next generation.
The History of Jizo in Japan
How and when did Jizo Bodhisattva become so popular in Japan? Jizo probably entered Japan when Buddhism did, in the fifth or sixth century, from China via Korea. The early history of Jizo in Japan consists of many colorful legends embroidering a thin fabric of fact. The oldest known statue of Jizo is a standing figure, made of sandalwood, with empty hands in the mudras (sacred hand gestures) of fearlessness and blessings. This image is said to have been given to Emperor Bidatsu in 577 c.e.
Buddhism and its bodhisattvas did not enter Japan to fill a religious void. They encountered indigenous religious beliefs, animism and Shinto. Shinto had existed for over five hundred years, as the worship of the divine in nature. This essential force manifested as a multiplicity of kami, or spirits. They were petitioned to help fulfill the basic human need for fertility of person and crop, and to avert disaster related to natural forces, flood, drought, and fire. Rocks, oceans, groves of trees and cascading waterfalls were themselves held sacred. There were no statues to represent the kami. The only images were fertility symbols such as phallic stone rods and primitive female fecundity figures of unglazed clay.
When Chinese and Korean Buddhists entered Japan in the fifth century, they found a people less sophisticated than they, and by comparison, uncultured. Perhaps these traits survived longer in Japan because of the frequency and fury of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunami. The Japanese people lived in simple huts clustered in villages ruled by local chiefs, subject to the upheaval o
f frequent wars. They had no cities, no money, little commerce, no written language, no science, little knowledge of other lands, no formal schools, and no temples or complex religious rites. The Chinese brought to Japan all the manifestations of a civilization already old, a religion that had developed beyond the magical and animistic, and with these, a literal age of enlightenment.
Imagine a retinue of cultured men, women, and priests in beautiful silken robes, riding on groomed and ornamented horses or carried in decorated palanquins, entering a nondescript fishing village on the coast of Japan. The strangers bring scrolls, paintings, fine jewelry, poetry, and musical instruments. They unwrap a beautiful image, which they call a bodhisattva. It is exquisitely carved, quite lifelike, with benevolent features and eyes of shining crystal that seem to follow the onlooker, and flowing robes painted in bright colors, trimmed in gold. The strangers offer fragrant incense and chant melodiously in praise of this lovely god. Who would not wish to worship this wondrous being who seems to grant its believers these riches, such heavenly delights?
The villagers suddenly become aware of the possibility of a life filled with luxury and pleasure-in comparison with their lives, a heavenly realm. If a realm so far above is possible, it is a logical step to imagine a realm below, an existence filled with terror, unending pain and hunger. Some historians believe that the early Shinto view was life affirming and did not concern itself with what occurred after death. Human effort was directed toward staying alive and reproducing both people and food. Death is a simple, necessary fact to people who hunt and grow crops. Beings are alive until they die, when they decay and disappear. Through Buddhism, the Japanese were introduced to a more complex cosmology including belief in an afterlife with various potential destinations, either wonderful or terrible.
This same awakening occurs in the life of each human. We are happy in childhood with our life just as it is until we develop a mind that compares. Then, when we see another child being treated differently, in our own or in a different family, or even on TV, we realize that things could be much worse or much better. We crave the better, are afraid of the worse. The very treasure that makes us civilized, our discursive minds, becomes the source of our suffering. We compare ourselves to others and the present to the past. We are worried about what will occur tomorrow or after we die. Thus are born hope and anxiety, clinging and avoiding.
Historians speak of the Japanese as eminently practical, adopting new ideas from China but adapting them to serve the basic realities of daily life. The Chinese worshiped Jizo because he could intercede with the fearsome Lords of Death and mitigate their sentences. To the Japanese it was fine to have a Jizo who helped after death, but couldn’t he also help with everyday worries like planting rice and having babies?
Jizo’s designation as the Earth Store or Earth Womb Bodhisattva was understandable to the Japanese, very much like the familiar kami of mountains and rivers. Jizo could easily blend with old beliefs, becoming a more personal sort of kami. The Sai no kami were ancient phallic stone images placed at crossroads to represent the gods of the way and of fertility. Stone Jizos and wayside Jizo shrines gradually replaced these. As Jizo statues age, they often lose their heads due to accidents, earthquakes, or by being defaced during times of persecution. Over time they weather to featureless lumps noticeably phallic in shape, just like the stone rods of old Shinto. Old and headless, they are almost unrecognizable today as Jizos, but are still adorned with red capes and offered pieces of fruit or bits of candy.
From China and Korea, the Japanese adapted Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian ideas, developing more sophisticated systems of legislation, jurisprudence, and education. The Shinto religion evolved into a more complex belief system, incorporating ethical codes and the practice of veneration of ancestors from Confucianism, and a sophisticated cosmology, philosophy and ceremonial rite derived from Buddhism. The aristocracy was the first to take up Buddhism and with it the worship of bodhisattvas like Jizo. The ruling class had a vested interest in maintaining the power of their feudal families over generations, an interest supported by Chinese Buddhist rituals in which ancestors were honored and enshrined. They used their wealth to build temples and commission religious works of art, leaving a legacy that continues to inspire us over a thousand years later.
Jizo Bodhisattva also had popular appeal. He was incorporated into the indigenous Shinto religion and eventually adopted by all the foundational schools of Japanese Buddhism including Shingon, Tendai, Jodo, and Soto and Rinzai Zen. For several centuries there was relative peace in Japan, but in the twelfth century Japan entered five hundred years of bitter strife. Monasteries became citadels and battlegrounds, monks trained and fought as soldiers, and Jizo Bodhisattva became the guardian of those at war. He was also a savior for hapless victims of the conflicts. As conditions in society deteriorated, people became convinced that they lived in the time of the mappo, an era when the truth of Dharma would be lost. Buddhism became a religion to comfort those who suffered and were most helpless: the oppressed, aged, and poor. Jizo Bodhisattva emerged as a benevolent savior for a degenerate age, a bodhisattva who helped those who were unable to raise themselves out of misery, a bodhisattva who descended into hellish realms that were to those unhappy people not allegorical but real.
During this time people were anxious to confess their sins and atone before death. Repentance rites were commonly held in honor of Jizo and other bodhisattvas. The founder of the Pure Land school of Buddhism, Shonin Shinran, taught that a Buddha called Amida would save devotees at the moment of their death if they had recited his name. Shinran said that Jizo’s mercy, however, was universal and not dependent upon the sinner’s readiness, prior spiritual practice, or even upon any prior belief in Jizo.
Japanese religion is characteristically inclusive and syncretic, adapting to the needs and sophistication of the people. Jizo Bodhisattva fit this flexible form of spiritual belief, taking on whatever form necessary to help rescue beings from misfortune and pain. For aristocrats he was a bodhisattva in royal jewels and fine raiment, sitting in a posture of ease. For peasants he was a humble priest with smoky face and muddy toes acquired, like theirs, from hard work helping people in simple and practical ways. These are the two iconographic forms of Jizo in Japan, regal bodhisattva and rustic priest. These are the two forms of Japanese Buddhism. It is simultaneously a religion of the state, supported by the aristocracy, manifest in great temples and beautiful works of art, and a folk religion that offers a doctrine of compassion to the poor and oppressed. These two forms were personified in two Japanese men who promoted Buddhism soon after it entered Japan and who became venerated as “living bodhisattvas.” They were Prince Shōtoku, who spread Buddhism among the elite, and Gyōgi Bosatsu, who brought Buddhism to the common people.
Prince Shōtoku (573-621 c.e.) was born just as Buddhism was being introduced into Japan. Tutored by Korean monks, he became a devout Buddhist, building temples and monasteries and giving his own lectures on the sutras. Although he promoted Buddhism as the “final resort of all beings,” he supported a multi-religious state, issuing edicts invoking Confucian principles of propriety in government and asking all ministers to pay homage to the Shinto kami in order to maintain the natural order of the world. He wrote Japan’s first constitution in 604 c.e. as a moral guide for government officials. It begins with these words: “Harmony is to be esteemed above anything else.” Later it asks, “Who is wise enough to judge which of us is good or bad? We are all wise and foolish by turns, like a ring without an end.” After his death, Prince Shōtoku was worshiped as an incarnation of Kannon Bodhisattva. His name is linked with several Jizo images, and he is said to have built a Jizo chapel, but little is known, fifteen hundred years later, about what devotional relationship Shōtoku had with Jizo.
The name of Gyōgi Bosatsu (670-749 c.e.) is often associated with Jizo Bodhisattva. Gyōgi was a monk from a Korean family, ordained at age fifteen in the Hosso sect. He spread Buddhism to the common people by
charismatic preaching and social welfare projects. His followers numbered in the thousands and whole villages would empty when he was speaking nearby. He traveled through Japan preaching and is credited with drawing the first map of Japan and conducting the first census. He undertook many public works projects, mobilizing large numbers of believers to build a major road, six bridges, three aqueducts, fifteen reservoirs, forty-nine chapels, and nine charity houses. The government became uneasy with his popularity and in 717 c.e. issued edicts against him. He was charged with leading people astray by ordaining people without government permission and of encouraging so many farmers to leave their farms to do social welfare work that tax revenues from farms decreased.
About twenty years later, however, Japan suffered from a fresh series of natural disasters: famines and epidemics. Shinto prayers could not save the four sons of the Fujiwara regent; all four died of smallpox. Hoping to turn the fortunes of the nation around, Emperor Shomu ordered the construction of the Great Buddha statue at Todai-ji in Nara and turned to Gyōgi, who helped raise the necessary funds and labor. Because there was concern that the Shinto deities might be offended by the projects, Gyōgi, now age seventy-two, was sent to the shrine of the Sun Goddess at Ise, carrying with him a holy Buddhist relic. After he had prayed for a week, the oracle proclaimed that the emperor’s project was agreeable. The emperor then had a felicitous dream in which the Sun Goddess proclaimed that the sun and the Buddha were the same. Gyōgi thus helped prevent conflict by mitigating the resistance of Shinto adherents against the immigrant Buddhist religion. He was proclaimed a living bodhisattva (bosatsu in Japanese) and worshiped by the masses. He died at age eighty-one soon after conferring the bodhisattva precepts upon the emperor.
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