Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan & the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia

Abstract

The main goals of this book are: 1. to investigate Yinyuan "and delineate the contour of his Zen mission in the context of early modern Sino-Japanese history"; 2. to place Yinyuan's Zen mission "within multiple religious, political, and cultural contexts as spiritual leader, political representative, and writer of belles lettres" (243); and 3. to demonstrate that "a complete subversion of a China-centered world-view only happened after both countries were challenged by the intrusion of Western powers," even if "the seed of the changes was already planted in the early modern time" (266-76). [...]the "book road" mentioned earlier inspired Ogyü, and others who Wu thinks must have held Yinyuan and Chinese Öbaku monks in especially high esteem, to take up the approach and methodology to investigate the world through close reading of Confucian classics, with special attention to phonology, philology, paleography, textual criticism, and etymological exegesis-referred to as practical learning (Ch. shixue; Jp. jitsugaku ...), evidential learning, or ancient learning (Jp. kogaku ...

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Jiang Wu, Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan & the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 384 pages. Hardcover, $105.00; paperback, $36.95. isbn 9780199393121 (hardcover); 9780199393138 (paperback).

THE NARRATIVE set forth in Leaving for the Rising Sun is ambitious and comprehensive with a breadth of methodological analysis and a depth derived from meticulous archival research. It cover events leading up to the arrival of Chinese Chan master Yinyuan Longqi ... (Jp. Ingen Ryüki, 1592-1673) in Japan in 1645; the establishment of Manpukuji ... in Uji, as the head monastery of a new, Japanese Zen tradition, Öbakushü ... via temples in Nagasaki serving Chinese immigrants, many from Fuqing county ... in Fujian province ... in 1661; and the influence eleven Chinese abbots exerted in Edo-era (1603-1868) Japan until 1740 or 1768. In several respects, Leaving for the Rising Sun is a follow-up volume to Wu (2008), and the research in both monographs is derived from Jiang Wu's 2002 PhD dissertation. The title, Leaving for the Rising Sun, is somewhat misleading because, strictly speaking, only two chapters out of seven, plus a dynamic introduction and thoughtprovoking conclusion, concern the life, times, and impact of Yinyuan Longqi in China before he left to embark upon a legendary career in Japan. The main goals of this book are: 1. to investigate Yinyuan "and delineate the contour of his Zen mission in the context of early modern Sino-Japanese history"; 2. to place Yinyuan's Zen mission "within multiple religious, political, and cultural contexts as spiritual leader, political representative, and writer of belles lettres" (243); and 3. to demonstrate that "a complete subversion of a China-centered world-view only happened after both countries were challenged by the intrusion of Western powers," even if "the seed of the changes was already planted in the early modern time" (266-76).

What separates Leaving for the Rising Sun from Japanese secondary studies of the history of Zen Buddhism (for example, Ibuki 2001) and Helen Baroni's two excellent books (2000; 2006) on the subject of Öbaku Zen Buddhism and Tetsugen Dökö ... (1630-1682) is expressed in the subtitle: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan & the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia. Rather than emphasizing the significance of converts or disciples who promoted novel Öbakushü practices in Japan-recitation of buddha Amitäbha's name (nembutsu ...), southeastern Chinese, Ming-style pronunciation of scriptures and spells during a regulated recitation regimen (Minchöfü bonbai ...), and even vegetarian diet (fucha ryöri ...) or drink (sencha ...) at Manpukuji or other Öbakushü temples-this book focuses on Chinese abbots.

Between 1661 and 1740, eleven Chinese abbots of Manpukuji were welcomed by the bakufu twenty-one times at Edo castle. At least one intellectual, Ogyü Sorai ... (1666-1728), was delighted to practice his colloquial Chinese (3-5) with these individuals. Yinyuan Longqi and his Chinese disciples, therefore, influenced both Edo-era Japanese Zen Buddhist monastics with their claim to have conveyed to Japan an "authentic transmission" of Rinzai Zen Buddhism-through the publication of Feyin Tongrong's ... (Jp. Hiin Tsüyö, 1593-1661) Strict Transmission of Five Chan Lamps (Ch. Wudengyantong; Jp. Gotö gentö ...) in Japan in 1657- and, perhaps more significantly, because Yinyuan and Chinese abbots of Manpukuji stimulated intellectuals to attentively engage with what Benjamin Elman has called "an East Asian community of textual scholars who specialized in empirical research and philological studies of the Chinese classics" (2008)-connected through the Nagasaki book trade or what Wang Yong (1999) calls a "book road"-to respond to an "Authenticity Crisis" that challenged classical Chinese notions of universal discourse, which still sets the center (China) apart from the periphery (so-called "barbarians"). As Wu explains,

[I]n the seventeenth century down to the mid-eighteenth century, there was no clear sign that East Asian intellectuals had found the solution to get out of such a crisis and to identify clearly their own position in the civilized world. The primary language and vocabulary for describing themselves were still dictated by literary and cultural conventions derived from Chinese civilization. In Japan the nativist movement represented by [Motoori] Norinaga's [1730-1801] National Learning (kokugaku) had not yet dominated the mind of intellectuals in the late eighteenth century. He completed his Commentary on Kojiki (Kojikiden) only in 1798. In other words, the light of modernity has not yet dawned on East Asia. (263)

Chapter 1, "In Search of Enlightenment: Yinyuan and the Reinvention of the 'Authentic Transmission' in Late Ming Buddhist Revival" and chapter 2, "Building a Dharma Transmission Monastery: Mount Huangbo in SeventeenthCentury China," develop several themes regarding continental Buddhism that Wu first proposed in Enlightenment in Dispute (2008). Chief among those with considerable bearing upon the development of Öbaku Zen in Japan include a revival of textual studies, first among Chinese exegetical experts (for example, Tiantai ThMM, Huayan SÄM, and Yogäcära ...), and later by Chan masters (25) who had ready access to the Jiaxing edition ... of the Chinese Buddhist Canon (alt. Jingshan ed. ... comp. 1579-1610). They gave special attention to the Chinese pseudo *Süramgama-sütra (Ch. Shoulengyan jing; Jp. Shuryögongyö ... T. 945) because "it teaches about how to practice Buddhism" and "not about learning and knowledge" (40)-despite well-known Chan/Sön/Zen shibboleths promoting the myth that this tradition transmits a teaching separate from the scriptures (Ch. jiaowai biechuan; Jp. kyöge betsuden ...). The practice of Chan was particularly important for both of Yinyuan's teachers in China-Miyun Yuanwu ... (Jp. Mitsuun Engo, 1566-1642) and Feyin Tongrong, the first and second abbots of Huangbo monastery in Fuqing county, Fujian province, after a revival in the seventeenth century-because they promoted a "reinvented tradition" on Mount Huangbo as a Dharma Transmission monastery (Ch. Chuanfa conglin; Jp. Denbö Sörin ...) where neither "transmission by proxy" (daifu ...) nor "remote inheritance" (Ch. yaosi; Jp. yöshi ...) were tolerated. Tang dynasty (618-907) Chan discourse with shouts (Ch. he; Jp. katsu ...) and blows (Ch. bang; Jp. bö ...) was also reenacted and subsequently recorded in the distinctive genre of discourse records or recorded sayings (Ch. yulu; Jp. goroku ...), newly compiled to underscore the lineage meticulously redefined according to the Strict Transmission of Five Chan Lamps (27, 51). Controversy surrounding contemporary and legendary "genealogical disputations" in Strict Transmission of Five Chan Lamps resulted in a lawsuit the year Yinyuan left China. An opponent of Yinyuan's in Japan, Keirin Süshin ... (1652-1728), claimed that Yinyuan had left China because of the suit against his teacher, Feiyin Tongrong, which ended in defeat for Feiyin four months after Yinyuan had departed.

In chapter 3, "Leaving for the Rising Sun: The Historical Background of Yinyuan Longqi's Migration to Japan in 1654," Wu explains that Yinyuan came to Japan not because he was fleeing China for reasons that might dovetail with a "psychohistorical" approach or "mythologization of a (sic) historical event," but because the abbot of Köfukuji (in Nagasaki), Yiran Xingrong ... (1601-1668), sent four invitations soliciting him between 1652-1653 (82-87). After dispelling somewhat farfetched claims that Yinyuan was a Ming loyalist and confidant of Zheng Chenggong ... (alt. Koxinga, 1624-1662), Wu provides four social conditions within the Chinese diaspora community in Nagasaki to clarify why Yinyuan came to Japan: 1. demand for religious services; 2. in response to measures designed to prevent the further spread of Christianity; 3. to provide authorized caretakers for the local Mazu cult; and 4. the invitations to Yinyuan on Mount Huangbo in China came from immigrants from Fuqing, Fujian (90-107, especially 96).

Chapter 4, "The Taikun's Zen Master from China: Yinyuan, the Edo Bakufu, and the Founding of Manpukuji in 1661," focuses almost entirely upon Japan. Wu demonstrates why the bakufu's measured efforts to elevate the status of Yinyuan in Japan were "calculated considerations to engage China and to create a symbolic presence for China on a new Japan-centered map" through discussion of two coincidences (112). First, Yinyuan and a Korean embassy travelled and arrived in Osaka on the same day: 6.9.1655. Second, immediately after the arrival of a letter to the bakufu from Zheng Chenggong that mentioned Yinyuan's name, Yinyuan was called to Edo in 1658 (11319). Although Yinyuan did not meet with the envoy who delivered the letter from Koxinga in Edo, nor was he, in all likelihood, actually on a tribute mission:

In a clear move to perpetuate the image of Yinyuan's trip as a "tribute mission" performed by Chinese monks, the bakufu, after granting him land and financing the building of Manpukuji, set the precedent of only appointing Chinese monks as Manpukuji abbots, while requesting they attend the shogun's inauguration ceremonies as the Korean and Ryukyu embassies did. (120-21)

Tables 4.1 and 4.2 abbreviate the case that "the institutionalization of audiences with the shogun for Chinese monks represented the symbolic presence of China in the bakufu's new world order" (135-37). Yinyuan specified in the sixth article of his will that the idea of inviting Chinese monks so Chinese abbacy at Manpukuji could be maintained was actually Sakai Tadakatsu's ... (1587-1662). In practice, however, from the selection of the third abbot, both Chinese and Japanese monastics' names were submitted to Edo for selection of the abbot. A Japanese candidate's name was not selected until 1740, when Ryötö Gentö ... (1663-1746) became abbot because of an insufficient number of candidates from China (133).

There is much, much more to learn about the failure to invite monks from China in Leaving for the Rising Sun. But that chronicle must wait until chapter 7. Chapter 5, "The Multiple Lives of a Chinese Monk: Yinyuan as Zen Master, Literary Man, and Thaumaturge," and chapter 6, "Authenticity in Dispute: Responses to the Ideal of Authenticity in Edo Japan," discuss how and why Yinyuan became a symbol of authenticity in seventeenth-century Japan despite both facts that the style of Chan he taught was "syncretic"-contrasted with Song dynasty (960-1279) Chan introduced via Dögen ... (1200-1253) or Lanxi Daolong ... (Jp. Rankei Döryü, 1212-1278), centuries earlier-and that his aptitude for and knowledge of contemporary Chinese literary and religious developments could seem rather eclectic to seventeenth-century Japanese. In response to the question "what would an authentic Zen master teach?," Wu summarizes several points about Yinyuan's Öbaku Zen from Enlightenment in Dispute (265-73). These include emphasis upon the meritorious act of propagating publication of the Buddhist canon; the practice of releasing animals to accrue merit; new, stricter and updated "pure rules" for monastics (Öbaku shingi ...); daily recitation manuals (Zenrin kaju ...); the rite feeding hungry ghosts (Ch. fangyankou; Jp. höenkö ...); blood writing; secluded retreats (Ch. biguan; Jp. Hekkan/hekikan ...); and triple ordination procedures (according to Yinyuan's Rite and Procedure for Spreading Ordination (Ch. Hongjie fayi; Jp. Gükai högi ...) (147-53). Yinyuan's skill in literary endeavors-poetry and calligraphy-further sealed his reputation as a valid Zen master (154-63). Reading zuihitsu (Ch. suibi, lit. "following the brush"), rather than critical accounts of Yinyuan already covered by Baroni and others (for example, Mujaku Döchü's ... [1653-1744] Outsider's Notes on Öbaku [Öbakugeki ...), to examine his status as a Taoist-inspired thaumaturge who compiled (or wrote) oracle books (165-73) testifies to the extent of Wu's scrutiny of the record of Yinyuan's legacy in Japan. In chapter 6, Wu examines competing views of Yinyuan's status as an icon of Chinese cultural legitimacy in Japan through the writings of Mukai Genshö ... (1609-1677) and Yamaga Sokö ... (1622-1685), who questioned his spiritual qualifications within a Japan-centered world view, and Sötö Zen master Dokuan Genkö ... (1630-1698) and Ogyü Sorai for whom China remained the center in their imaginings of civilization and Yinyuan the best of "Central Efflorescence" (208). Here Wu develops several threads, particularly concerning Ogyü's intellectual discourse, that he picks up again in the conclusion.

Chapter 7, "Where Are the Authentic Monks? The Bakufu's Failed Attempts to Recruit Chinese Monks," takes up where chapter 4 leaves off: even though the Öbaku Zen institution had been able to successfully recruit many monastics from China for roughly a century, after the last Chinese abbot, Dacheng Zhaohan ... died in 1784, there were no Chinese monastics in Japan. Archival research at the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture and Manpukuji Bunkaden concerning the number of Chinese arrivals before 1723 yielded evidence that the 1715 policy change by the bakufu to enforce strict ordination procedures and monastic reforms for Öbaku monastics-and especially abbots-directly caused an acute absence of any Chinese monks in Japan (209). In line with the Shötoku New Regulations (Shötoku shinrei ...) that sought to constrict the number of vessels and volume of trade with China, these monastic reforms ca. 1698-based on close readings of Öbaku texts Yinyuan had brought to Japan from his teacher, Feiyin Tongrong-further crippled efforts to recruit capable candidates from China who could prove, to the bakufu, their lineage was closely tied to transmission from Yinyuan. In part because many Chinese Öbaku monastics had become famous and perhaps even wealthy due to close connections with Japanese intellectuals, it was only natural that two problems related to ordination lineages Feiyin had responded to in China-"transmission by proxy" and by "remote succession"-caused Öbaku administrators-via contacts in Nagasaki and, in turn, Fujian-to invite Chinese monks without any official transmission at all (212-17). This explains why other Chinese monks, including Daozhe Chaoyuan ... (Jp. Dösha Chögen, d. 1660, arr. 1658) and Donggao Xinyue ... (Jp. Tökö Shinetsu, 1639-1696, arr. 1658)-with Linji (Jp. Rinzai) and Caodong (Jp. Sötö) lineage in China, respectively-arrived in Japan. From one narrow vantage point, this can be seen as evidence of an earlier time in Öbaku lineage transmission, when stricter procedures led to exclusivity (ichiryü söjösatsu ...) that eventually inspired reforms within the greater Japanese Zen community in seventeenth and eighteenth century Japan (221-23). The situation became so dire by 1727 that an aged Chinese master at seventy-three with proper credentials, Zhongqi Daoren ... almost became the final Chinese abbot of Manpukuji; under orders from Qing emperor Yongzheng ... (r. 1722-1735), Zhejiang governor Li Wei ... -who considered monks leaving for Japan serious criminals for violating the law-arrested Zhongqi and prevented his departure for China (233). Once there were no longer Chinese monks in Uji, "with the rise of Hakuin Zen, these Japanese abbots were also receptive to the new way of practicing Zen, which was considered more pure and authentic than the syncretic Chinese style" (242); practices that might be called authentic Öbaku Zen faded into obscurity when the thirty-third abbot, Ryöchü Nyoryü ... (17931868), reverted the lineage back through Hakuin (242).

The thread Jiang Wu pulls the hardest to unravel from the highly nuanced account of the many facets of Yinyuan Longqi and his legacy, his detractors and supporters, and Chinese abbots of Manpukuji until no more could be located to fill such axiomatically large shoes (ca. 1740) in Leaving for the Rising Sun becomes much more well-defined in the "Conclusion: Yinyuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia." It is relatively well known by historians of early modern East Asia that the reception of Chinese culture, and, in particular, cultural products or goods including Chinese books and other artefacts expanded in the seventeenth century. The fall of the Ming dynasty, when the "barbarian" Manchu-led Qing consolidated power over the Middle Kingdom, mirrors, in many respects, the fate of the Chinese under the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), when "true" or "pure" Zen monasticism had arrived in Japan in the first place. The English word "authenticity" Wu devotes many pages to address in this book-ben ... (original), zhen ... (genuine), or zheng ... (true) in classical Chinese (6)-was principally employed during the late Ming period in China. Authenticity, Confucian scholars vociferously argued, refers to the restoration of cultural authenticity (in the wake of the Mongols, of course). Late Ming Confucian ideas stimulated the intellectual and economic exchange in Chinese culture in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and in the Ryukyu kingdom that, in turn, encouraged so-called nativist discourse, or perceptions of the world in which China was no longer the archetypal center. Ogyü Sorai is one Japanese intellectual who clearly demonstrates that neither Zhu Xi's ... (11301200) nor Wang Yangming's ... (1472-1529) learning of objective principles or of the [Zen-like] mind, respectively, held much appeal for learned Japanese in the seventeenth century. Instead, the "book road" mentioned earlier inspired Ogyü, and others who Wu thinks must have held Yinyuan and Chinese Öbaku monks in especially high esteem, to take up the approach and methodology to investigate the world through close reading of Confucian classics, with special attention to phonology, philology, paleography, textual criticism, and etymological exegesis-referred to as practical learning (Ch. shixue; Jp. jitsugaku ...), evidential learning, or ancient learning (Jp. kogaku ... (248-49). The progenitor of evidential learning in China, Gu Yanwu ... (16131682), assigned the ability to recover the moral and philosophical cultural tenets of China in an almost antediluvian age to the phrase "investigate words to understand the sounds" (kaowen zhiyin ...), thereby favoring phonology and the search for "authentic sound" (zhengyin ...)-or linguistics, in modern parlance-above almost everything else (246). Nativist Learning advocates including Motoori Norinaga ... and Mito scholar Aizawa Seishisai ... (1731-1863), according to Wu, were ultimately inspired by evidential learning proponents who supported Öbaku monks in Japan, and initiated an East Asian crisis of authenticity that was as deeply felt and experienced in Chöson Korea and Vietnam as it was in Japan (254-59).

As I stated at the outset, Jiang Wu's Leaving for the Rising Sun is an ambitious and important book that will undoubtedly spark fruitful debate among scholars of early modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism, religion, history, and international relations. There is one desideratum I feel obliged to point out. With no separate list of Sinographs apart from the index, which is not inclusive (for example, tsüshin ... and tsüshö ... 137, or shisan jitsugo (shinsan jitsugo ...) and tökan (sic) inji ... 215) of works cited, it may be difficult for readers who are not comfortable with both Chinese and Japanese to follow along with names, terms, and phrases.

References

REFERENCES

Baroni, Helen

2000 Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

2006 Iron Eyes: The Life and Teachings of the Öbaku Zen Master Testsugen Dökö. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Elman, Benjamin A.

2008 Sinophiles and Sinophobes in Tokugawa Japan: Politics, classicism, and medicine during the eighteenth century. East Asian Science, Technology, and Society 2: 93-121. dx.doi.org/10.1215/s12280-008-9042-9

Ibuki Atsushi ...

2001 Zen no rekishi ... Kyoto: Hözökan.

Wang Yong ...

1999 Kentöshijidai no bukku rödo ... Ajia yügaku 3: 24-38.

2003 Zhong-Ri Shuji zhi lu yanjiu ... Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe.

Wu, Jiang

2008 Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in SeventeenthCentury China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.