Wang Jing
Compared with Japan's acceptance and recognition of Buddhism and Confucian thought, the question of whether Chinese Taoist thought ever had a significant influence on Japanese culture has long been a focus of scholarly debate.
Although Japanese scholars have done much research on Taoism with abundant results, their main aim has mostly been to understand Chinese culture through the study of Taoism; strong arguments taking Taoism's influence on Japanese culture as their starting point are rare. Some Japanese scholars deny that Taoist belief had much influence on ancient Japanese culture. Fukui Fumimasa, for example, in the Encyclopedia of Taoism that he edited, not only denies Taoism's influence on ancient Japanese culture but even flatly denies that Taoism was ever transmitted to Japan. The Japanese historian Tsuda Sokichi held that although some knowledge of Chinese Taoism reached Japan, it did not influence the everyday world of the Japanese or become a belief. By interpreting the Taoist character of the Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai, I attempt to explore the influence of Taoist thought on ancient Japanese culture.
The Ritual Texts Have a Taoist Character
The Lord of Mount Tai (Taishan Fujun) is one of the mountain gods of Mount Tai. The title first appears in In Search of the Supernatural (Soushen Ji) of the Eastern Jin. It originated in nature worship and later existed as a form of Taoist belief in gods and immortals.
In China, the title of the Lord of Mount Tai changed several times: in the Wei and Jin it was “Lord of Mount Tai,” in the Tang “King Equal to Heaven,” and in the Song “Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak.” By the Eastern Han there was already the saying that “souls return to Mount Tai,” and in the Wei and Jin the Lord of Mount Tai was regarded as the god who governs the underworld and rules the souls of the dead.
After the belief in the Lord of Mount Tai reached Japan, believers regarded him as a god with power over life and death, honor and disgrace. After this belief merged with Buddhism, the Lord of Mount Tai came to be regarded as an attendant of King Yama. In the nearly one thousand years from the Heian period to the Meiji period, there are more than 400 records of rites for the Lord of Mount Tai performed for Japanese emperors, high aristocrats, and samurai, which shows the important historical place of the Lord of Mount Tai in the religious culture of ancient Japan.
The ritual petition (tojo) of the Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai was one of the ways in which the person offering the rite expressed to the gods the purpose of the sacrifice and his wishes. It corresponds in form to the “votive texts” of Japanese Buddhism and the “purification prayers” of Shinto; all are different names for ritual texts. To the worshipper, a ritual text communicates with the gods, so its content is truthfully stated. Compared with studying the Japanese belief in the Lord of Mount Tai through books compiled and altered by later hands, the petitions undoubtedly reflect the true appeals and beliefs of the worshippers more directly and objectively. In the petitions to the Lord of Mount Tai offered by emperors and aristocrats, Taoist prayer phrases such as “averting calamity and prolonging life,” “long life and lasting vision,” and “preserving ten thousand blessings for a hundred years” appear again and again.
For example, in the ritual text of Fujiwara no Korefusa, of the senior fourth rank and Major Controller of the Right, who offered the rite to the Lord of Mount Tai to save his gravely ill beloved daughter, there is the line “Hearing of the fame of the Three Pots, how could I not seek the elixir of the immortals under the moon of the Penglai isles?”—exactly in line with the idea of “elixirs” in the Taoist classic the Baopuzi (Inner Chapters). In the ritual text in which Fujiwara no Saneyuki prayed for promotion, there is the line “The spring blossoms of distant Gushe; I rejoice only that the fragrance of virtue reaches my home.” “Distant Mount Gushe” comes from the chapter “Free and Easy Wandering” of the Taoist classic the Zhuangzi, where it originally refers to a distant immortal mountain where divine beings dwell; in the ritual text it is a metaphor for the palace of the retired emperor, expressing the wish that he may live as long as the immortals. It can thus be seen that the purposes of the rites for the Lord of Mount Tai were mostly related to Taoist beliefs such as removing calamity and illness and attaining long life without death, unlike the nirvana and extinction of Buddhism.
In addition, the petitions to the Lord of Mount Tai were written in vermilion on yellow paper, a form similar to the “yellow memorials” used in Taoist rites of submitting memorials to heaven.
Most of the Deities Worshipped Are Taoist Gods
The Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai mainly honors twelve underworld deities: the Lord of Mount Tai, the Son of Heaven Yama, the Great God of the Five Paths, the Heavenly Official, the Earthly Official, the Water Official, the Controller of Destinies, the Controller of Emoluments, the Natal Destiny deity, the General of the Shared Road, the Numinous Spirits of the Earth God, and the “Family Kin Literati.”
Japanese scholarship generally holds that these deities derive from the Buddhist belief in the Ten Kings. After investigation, however, I believe that most of these twelve underworld deities come from Chinese popular religion and share their origins with Taoist gods. For example, the Heavenly Official, the Earthly Official, and the Water Official are together called the Three Officials, indispensable deities for relieving hardship and removing calamity in Taoist fasts and offerings (zhaijiao). The Controller of Destinies is the god who governs human life in Taoist books such as the Scripture of the Northern Dipper, the Scripture of Great Peace (Taiping Jing), and the Seven Slips from the Cloudy Satchel (Yunji Qiqian). The Controller of Emoluments derives from the popular deities the Divine Lord Wenchang and the god of Zitong, and under the influence of Taoist thought became the god in charge of official rank, fame, and emolument. The Natal Destiny deity derives from the Chinese folk practice of “praying to the favorable star”; Taoism later developed it into the belief in the “sixty-year cycle (jiazi)” and “sixty natal stars,” and established the “Natal Destiny Offering” to worship the natal deity, who in the early Taoist text the True Scripture of the Most High Mysterious Numinous Northern Dipper on Natal Destiny and Prolonging Life is regarded as the god who controls human fate. “Family Kin Literati” is a copying error and should be “Family Kin Elders,” a form of ancestor worship arising from the fusion of Taoism and Chinese popular religion. In addition, judging from the names of the more than forty kinds of Onmyodo rites conducted by onmyoji (yin-yang masters) in the late Heian period—such as the Rite for the Heavenly Bureaus and Earthly Offices, the Natal Destiny Rite, the Rite for Summoning the Soul, the Great Yin Rite, and the Rite for the Earth Lord—the deities they worshipped were also mostly Chinese Taoist gods. Therefore, it is indeed inappropriate for some Japanese scholars to classify the twelve underworld deities as Buddhist gods.
The Rite Resembles Taoist Memorial-and-Offering Rituals
The Japanese Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai was performed by onmyoji, while Taoist memorial-and-offering rituals are generally performed by a high priest (gaogong). Each has its own features, but the onmyoji and the Taoist high priest overlap in their duties. Although the onmyoji who performed the rites had no Taoist temples, they came under the government-led Bureau of Yin and Yang (Onmyoryo); both carried out religious affairs within an organized body.
Besides conducting rites, onmyoji were also in charge of such techniques as water-clock timekeeping and astronomy, and the scope of their duties was close to that of early Taoist high priests.
A picture in the Illustrated Scroll of the Origins of the Blessings of Fudo (fourteenth century) in the Tokyo National Museum depicts a Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai: an onmyoji in official robes sits on the ground reading the petition aloud; beside him burns a pile of firewood; directly opposite stands a long offering table on which are placed offerings such as “silver coins” and “white silk” made of paper, and along the front upper edge of the table are pasted paper talismans painted with “saddled horses,” “brave servants,” and the like. The whole scene resembles the Taoist memorial-and-offering ritual recorded in the “Treatise on Books” of the Book of Sui: “They prepare gifts of silk, burn incense, and read aloud, saying that it is presented to the Heavenly Bureaus, requesting the removal of misfortune; this is called submitting a memorial. At night, beneath the stars, they set out wine, dried meat, cakes, and gifts, and worship in turn the Heavenly Sovereign Taiyi, the five planets, and the lunar mansions, writing a document in the manner of a memorial to present to them; this is called an offering.” The Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai was usually performed “when the moon and stars appear, for heaven is then said to be favorable,” which also resembles the timing of Taoist memorial-and-offering rites, “at night, beneath the stars.”
It can thus be seen that the content of the petitions, the belief in immortals, and the ritual procedure of the Rite for the Lord of Mount Tai all bear strong traces of Taoist culture.
From this we may infer that, at least by the Heian period in Japan, Taoist thought had begun to influence the personal lives of the emperors and aristocrats, confirming that in the Heian period Chinese Taoist belief did indeed permeate Japanese culture.
Historically, Japan often developed its own culture by drawing on the cultures of powerful neighboring countries, and ancient China had a profound influence on Japanese culture. With the decline of modern China and the rise of the Western powers, Japan turned its gaze from China to Europe and America. Especially after the Meiji Restoration, the idea of “leaving Asia”—“abandoning the Confucian spirit, breaking away from Chinese thought, and absorbing and learning from Western civilization”—prevailed in Japan.
Under the influence of this idea, Japanese scholars have tended to avoid Chinese elements in much of their historical and cultural heritage, and in the study of intellectual history they have tried as far as possible to strip out the influence of Taoist culture. Admittedly, Japan was often innovative in absorbing traditional Chinese culture, but the historical facts of cultural transmission should also be respected.