ABSTRACT
My story begins in 1945, on March 10th, in a hand-dug air raid shelter in the precincts of a Zen temple in Tokyo during a firebombing. Inside, a 31-yearold woman and her 4-year-old daughter are huddled together, surrounding a treasure of the temple, the statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon. The historical records and Buddhist memorial tablets of the temple’s parishioners are also hidden in the shelter. The temple priest, conscripted against his will to military service, is gone. The family’s one young son, 5 years old, the heir to the family’s three hundred-year heritage of the Zen priesthood, has been evacuated to the countryside in Mie prefecture for safekeeping. What was being protected in that air raid shelter? What was being pre-
served by sending that 5-year-old to the countryside? How has the history of the past sixty years shaped what those people considered worth protecting, underground and in the countryside? I talked to that woman from the shelter, now 89, in August of 2003. My
story starts there and traces the issue of the succession of Zen priests from that time to the present. At the start, I would like to note that the current issue of succession in Zen in Japan represents nothing short of a crisis, different from the time of the fire bombings, but a crisis nonetheless. Simply stated, the crisis is this: A growing number of Rinzai temples in Japan are boarded up and empty, inhabited by rats, spiders, cockroaches, and even perhaps a few ghosts, while other currently active temples fear the same fate awaits them. Also, even many significant cultural temples in Kyoto, Tokyo, and elsewhere have inadequately trained priests running them. This situation shows no sign of changing soon. My discussion in this chapter is a study of this problem with a particular
focus on the Myôshinji temple denomination, the largest religious body in contemporary Japanese Rinzai Zen. By the term ‘succession problem’, I focus on two related issues: first, the lack of potential successors to priest positions, and, second, the shifting criteria necessary to become a successor to a temple. These two issues address intricate conditions and situations regarding the cultural maintenance of a significant religious office. I suggest that the office
of Zen priest can be regarded as a cultural ‘object’ and that for many people, the succession crisis is perceived as a significant threat to a cherished heritage. Furthermore, I suggest that a study of the causes for and responses to this crisis reveals a great deal about how people in Japan, both inside and outside the Rinzai tradition, regard the category of cultural heritage. The Myôshinji community has had no easy answers to the crisis of succes-
sion. While there have always been versions of this crisis, I argue that the Myôshinji community has repeatedly recreated itself to respond to the ongoing succession problem manifested at every generation, and the current response to the crisis can be read in part as a contemporary valuation of heritage. In other words, the religious body has invented and reinvented itself to raise successors and to preserve temple property in any number of particular social and cultural contexts. Far from being a fixed form, the tradition of Zen is creative and this can be seen in how it responds to the issue of succession. Insofar as Zen can be regarded as a cultural property of Japan, the priest in part is a tangible transmitter of that culture. I argue that at the level of the branch temples, or family temples, the succession problem is an issue accompanied by the transfer of authority, heritage, and reputation of the temple. The method of succession has changed from hômyaku-sôzoku or literally ‘Dharma lineage transmission’, to ketsumyaku-sôzoku, or ‘blood lineage transmission’, which includes hereditary succession in a system predicated on male succession. These examinations of the succession problem have been overlooked by scholars and I hope to illuminate how the office of Zen priest as a cultural ‘object’ has been constructed amid rapidly changing scenarios of tradition. My discussion proceeds as follows; first, I discuss reasons for the succession
problem in the Myôshinji community; second, I discuss the responses of the religious body to the problem and, finally, I discuss the influences of the introduction of hereditary succession with a focus on concrete examples from today. Focusing on actual human experience and people I have met in my research, I suggest that it is people who preserve, create, invent, develop, and maintain their traditions to adapt to changing times. I would add, drawing on a hermeneutic approach, that I am concerned about the succession problem both as a student of religion interested in the theoretical and political implications of ideas of ‘heritage’ and also as a Zen priest who belongs to a family of Zen priests in which all males in the family have been priests for over a century. The issue of succession is not just a problem for my grandfather’s and father’s generations. Rather, it is a strong concern for me, a possible successor of my family temple or any temple I may enter in the future.
