information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
26 Juin 2015
June 23, 2015
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/column/AJ201506230010
By TOSHIHIDE UEDA/ Senior Staff Writer
YUGAWA, Fukushima Prefecture--A chance to visit a historic Buddhist temple in this northeastern village and learn about a great monk underscored the importance of passing down the history of the Fukushima nuclear disaster correctly to future generations.
My breath was taken away in April by the graceful and well-rounded look of the seated figure of Yakushi Nyorai (Bhaisajyaguru), the principal object of worship at Shojoji temple and a national treasure designated by the central government.
Tradition says the statue dates from the first half of the ninth century in the early Heian Period (794-1185).
Yugawa, a farming village in the Aizu Basin, has slightly more than 3,000 residents and is the smallest of all municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture. Shojoji temple stands behind a settlement in the village.
Despite the fine weekend weather with cherry petals fluttering in the air, only a handful of visitors could be spotted in the area, which, apparently, couldn’t have been more remote from the “garment” of tourism.
In 1996, three statues preserved at the temple--the seated Yakushi Nyorai figure and the standing statues of its two attendant bodhisattvas, Nikko Bosatsu (Suryaprabha) and Gakko Bosatsu (Candraprabha)--became the first works of sculpture from the Tohoku region to be designated national treasures.
Nine other Buddhist figures at the temple have been designated “important cultural properties” by the central government.
I wondered how the statues survived more than a millennium in this rural temple.
Shojoji officials said the temple was opened by an erudite monk, Tokuitsu by name, in the early Heian Period. Tokuitsu, a monk of the Hosso sect of Buddhism, is honorifically referred to as a “saint” or a “bodhisattva.”
MONK HELPED BUDDHISM FLOURISH
I felt ashamed that I had never known earlier about Tokuitsu. I don’t remember ever having heard the monk’s name mentioned in school classrooms.
The town of Bandai, east of Yugawa, lies at the foot of Mount Bandaisan, the famous volcano. Experts say the town was the locale of a major center of Japan’s Buddhist culture for some time beginning in the early Heian Period.
Tokuitsu led Buddhism to take root in this area. While the years of his birth and death are unknown, tradition says he studied at Nara’s Todaiji temple and elsewhere before he had a temple built at the foot of Mount Bandaisan around 807. The site of remains of Enichiji temple in Bandai, which has been designated a “historic site” by the central government, is where he did so.
The town government of Bandai restored the Kondo (golden hall) and the Chumon (middle gate), structures that formerly stood at Enichiji temple, on the temple remains in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
I was told the town government is also weighing follow-up plans, such as making replicas of Buddhist statues lost from the temple, including a figure of Yakushi Nyorai, and designing street architecture along a former approach to the temple.
I visited the town’s Bandaisan Enichiji Shiryokan museum, part of the Enichiji remains complex.
Historical documents show that Tokuitsu opened a number of Buddhist temples, most of them in the Aizu district in the west of today’s Fukushima Prefecture. He also opened others in present-day Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and other prefectures. Fifty or more temples are said to have legends associated with Tokuitsu.
Enichiji was at the center of the flourishing Buddhist culture of Aizu, and at one point it purportedly had 300 monks, several thousand armed warrior monks and 3,800 branch temples.
Tokuitsu’s name has survived to this day primarily because he had a major doctrinal argument with Saicho, his contemporary who opened the Tendai sect of Buddhism. The argument purportedly lasted for more than four years. Tokuitsu also criticized the Shingon sect of Buddhism, which Kukai established around the same time.
I was curious to know how a monk of such erudition became more or less forgotten.
One thing that came to mind is that “official history” is written by the central authority.
Emperor Kanmu, who moved Japan’s capital to Kyoto, did not allow Nara’s major temples, which constituted a big political force, to relocate to Kyoto. Instead, he protected new sects of Buddhism initiated by Saicho and Kukai.
Tokuitsu, on the contrary, was a polemic from the Hosso sect of Nara Buddhism. And he was based in Aizu, far removed from the capital.
Another misfortune of siding with the “underdog” befell Enichiji temple in later history.
Historical documents show that the temple sided with the Taira warrior clan when the latter fought the Minamoto warrior clan toward the end of the Heian Period. The chief of Enichiji’s resident monks was killed in a lost battle against Kiso Yoshinaka, a member of the Minamoto clan. When warlord Date Masamune invaded Aizu during the age of warring states in the 16th century, he set fire to the temple, which burned down except for Kondo hall.
Upon the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan’s new government issued orders to separate Buddhism and Shinto in a drive to end their syncretism, and anti-Buddhist movements rose among the public. Enichiji temple was decommissioned amid that trend in 1869, which put a temporary end to more than a millennium of its history.
HUB OF BUDDHIST CULTURE REVIVED
It was the town’s residents who revived Enichiji temple.
“Enichiji was the cradle of Aizu’s culture,” said Miyuki Suzuki, head of the Enichiji museum. “The local people had a burning desire to bring the temple back to existence.”
A movement for rebuilding the establishment culminated in the 1913 revival of a new Enichiji, which stands outside the old Enichiji site to this day.
“It is essential to hand down history in a proper way to posterity,” said Bandai Mayor Genichi Igarashi, who has led the restoration efforts at the old Enichiji site.
The consequences of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are being written on new pages of history day after day in Fukushima Prefecture. The central government and power utilities, in the meantime, are steadily moving ahead with their plan to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors, all of which currently remain idled.
Such a move could box up the history of the nuclear disaster within the bounds of Fukushima Prefecture and send it off to obscurity, just like Tokuitsu’s name was left to fade on the terrain of Aizu.
The Fukushima disaster should be part of an “official history” to be shared in a proper way by the entire globe. And it is up to every single one of us to write it.
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The author, based in Fukushima, wrote on other issues.
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