318 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
Shinto god of war, became a bodhisattva of high rank—and Buddhist monks
began to participate in Shinto shrines.
The Buddha image that was the object of concern was the Daibutsu, the
“Great Buddha” planned by Emperor Shomu for the new Todaiji Temple at
Nara. (See image 11 in Buddhist Iconography, chapter 6.) It was an enormous
undertaking, containing over a million pounds of copper, tin, and lead for an
image 43 feet high. Gold was needed to gild the image, and just in time, gold
was miraculously discovered in eastern Japan. At the eye-opening ceremony
for the Daibutsu, the eyes were painted by an Indian monk named Bodhisena,
10,000 monks were feasted, Emperor Shomu declared himself a servant of the
Three Jewels, and then abdicated in favor of his daughter to become a Buddhist
monk. Buddhism had come a long way in the 200 years since the first Buddha
image had to be tossed into a canal.The Failure of the Centralized State
It is easier to borrow a religion than a government, but the Japanese did
make a brief, and ultimately ineffectual, effort to copy the Chinese system of
government. It must be remembered how the centralized state first was intro-
duced to China: by ruthless and revolutionary alterations carried out by Qin
Shihuang after first conquering all the competing territories and lords. The Qin
had not been softened by Buddhist compassion (which did not meaningfully
arrive in China until the first century C.E.), nor rendered temperate by Confu-
cian ethics. Qin Shihuang made no claims of divine descent; he was a con-
queror and a dictator, pure and simple. He had no equivalent in seventh-
century Japan.
The first efforts at reform in Japan were attempted by Prince Shotoku. He
is better compared, as we have already done, to Ashoka, not Qin Shihuang.
Like Ashoka, he attempted to reform the Yamato state, bringing personal eth-
ics and civic responsibility to what had been, and unfortunately continued to
be, rule by competing heads of great families motivated by clan loyalties, com-
petition for honors at court, and claims to semidivine status. However, unlike
Ashoka, he did not attempt to reform the state on Buddhist values alone, for he
also had access to the very sophisticated—by Sui and Tang times—Chinese
model of the state, with its mix of practical bureaucratic centralization and
Confucian ethics. He promulgated a “constitution” in 17 articles, which advo-
cated such Buddhist values as reverence for the “Three Precious Things” (i.e.,
the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and avoidance of gluttony and
covetousness, as well as Confucian ones like reciprocal duties between superior
and inferior governed by “ceremony” (li), hard work by officials, reward of
merit and punishment of faults, and filling positions by merit, not patronage.
Next, Shotoku attempted to regularize honors at court by a system of rank
indicated by colors and styles of caps and robes as was practiced in China for
scholar-officials. This got tinkered with over the next several decades and is one
piece of the reforms that did survive.