Chapter 8 Japan 317earn merit, and there are still in existence copies commissioned by Emperor
Shomu, the Empress Komyo, the daughter of Fujiwara Fusasaki, and the
Empress Shotoku (Tanabe 1988:32).
Sutra copying as an act of piety and as an industry continued throughout
the eighth and ninth centuries, as scrolls gradually became works of art as
much as competent texts. Paper was dyed indigo and characters written in gold
ink, with illustrated frontispieces attached to the beginning of the scroll. A one-
copy commission was no longer enough; when Emperor Shomu’s beloved aunt
died in 748, he had a thousand copies of the Lotus Sutra made to ensure her
happiness in the next world, and soon everyone who could afford it was doing
the same. The entire 5,000-volume canon was copied 56 times during the
Heian period, and ceremonies of dedication were held at court with prayers,
music, and dance. Sutra copying reached an extravagant extreme.
Then a custom called gyakushu developed: one could have one’s funeral
carried out ahead of time, in your own lifetime, to be sure it was done right.
These, of course, required 49 copies of the sutra for the 49 days of the cere-
mony. Finally, there were sutra burials. The doctrine of mappo held that a Bud-
dhist Dark Age would descend 1,500 years after the life of the Buddha, when
enlightenment would become impossible and dharma would go into oblivion
until the coming of Maitreya. This period of mappo was thought to begin in the
eleventh century. In 1007, Michinaga was the first to bury eight sutras to
ensure his return from Paradise to hear Maitreya’s sermon, and this began a
rush of sutra burials all over Japan.
It is clear from this and much else that Buddhism was becoming a state
religion, but the conflict with the native religion, now needing a name to con-
trast it with Buddhism and so called “Shinto” (from the Chinese word shen for
“spirits” and dao (tao), “way,” thus “the way of the kami”), had to be resolved.
Shinto also was the state religion; remember that among the very first books
written in Japan with the newly available script were the Kojiki (712) and Nihon
Shoki (720), and this in the very century that Buddhism was peaking in popu-
larity. Revering the Buddha in no way reduced belief in the powers of the kami,
and a way had to be found to integrate the two religions.
The ancient records describe a rapprochement between Amaterasu and
Buddha. In 742 a monk named Gyogi carried a sacred relic of the Buddha to
the shrine of the Sun Goddess at Ise to get her opinion about a great Buddha
image, which the emperor was planning to install in the capital. He prayed at
her shrine for seven days and nights until finally she spoke to him. The Sun
Goddess proclaimed (in classical Chinese verse and in Buddhist metaphors!)
that “the sun of truth illumines the long night of life and death and the moon of
reality disperses the clouds of sin and ignorance.” And, yes, she was delighted
with the building of a great Buddha image in Nara. Shortly afterward she con-
firmed her approval by appearing to the emperor in a dream in the form of a
radiant disc, proclaiming that she and the Buddha were one. In time, the high
Shinto deities were redefined as avatars of bodhisattvas—Hachiman, the