and gods and all creatures. Success in worldly endeavors was attributed to
one’s mastery of these resemblances. The complexity of these systems, with
their infinite accumulation of hidden resemblances, could be mastered only
through ritual performances, which lent them coherence and consistency.
The Buddhist doctrines of emptiness and consciousness-only provided
these rituals with an internal logic that admitted no distinction between
mind and body nor any differences between the ritual enactment of corre-
spondences and actual relationships among objects of the real world.
Therefore, it was commonly asserted that mastery of any one system of rit-
ual resemblances revealed the core principles of every other system, since
they all consisted of the same process of merging the individual’s mind with
the universal Buddha realm.
These kinds of exoteric-esoteric associations are ubiquitous in the old-
est surviving martial art initiation documents (densho [114]). Some docu-
ments assert divine origins for martial arts by linking them to bodhisattvas
of India, to sage kings of China, and to the founding gods of Japan (e.g.,
Ômori 1991, 15). Or they describe how secret martial techniques were first
revealed by the Buddhas and gods in dreams at famous temples and shrines
(Tominaga 1972, 62; Ishioka 1981, 25–29). Many documents contain sim-
plified instructions for esoteric Buddhist rituals, such as magical spells writ-
ten in Sanskrit script that supposedly offer protection from enemies or di-
agrams that show how swords and other weapons correspond to mandalas
populated by Buddhas, gods, and sacred animals (Ômori 1991, 260–267;
Kuroki 1967). Tantric rituals to invoke the protection of Buddhist deities,
such as Acalanâtha (Fudô [115]) or Marîci (Marishiten [116]), were espe-
cially popular among medieval fighting men. Because most warriors were
illiterate prior to the seventeenth century, they relied on Buddhist priests
(the most literate members of society) to compose these early martial art
documents. Priests not only listed the Buddhist names of warrior religious
rites, but also used Buddhist vocabulary as names of fighting techniques
that lacked any relationship to Buddhist doctrines or practices. The martial
techniques themselves consisted primarily of prearranged patterns (kata
[117]) of stances, attacks, and parries that students imitated in choreo-
graphed exercises. As with Buddhist tantric ritual performances, the inter-
nalization of these patterns through constant repetition gave coherence to
the curriculum’s apparent complexity.
Assertions of divine origins and use of religious terminology imbued
martial arts with a mystical authority that helped to ensure their survival,
even after many of their fighting techniques became anachronistic. Students
of these traditions in subsequent centuries began their training by signing
written pledges (kishômon) to keep secret the esoteric lore they would
learn. In many lineages, students who completed their training received490 Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan