When asked to comment on their religious affiliation, most Japanese continue to identify themselves as Buddhists. And yet the majority of Japanese Buddhists come into contact with Buddhist institutions only following the death of a loved one, when a priest is called on to perform funeral and memorial rites. Many regard this situation as evidence of Buddhism's increasing irrelevance to contemporary Japanese society, perhaps even an indication that Japanese Buddhism is not long for this world.
Some also find it troubling that these rituals are ostensibly performed for the well-being of the soul of the deceased, flagrantly contradicting the central tenets of “true” Buddhism, which stresses an unsentimental acceptance of impermanence and the nonexistence of the soul. So-called funerary Buddhism, however, is not unique to Japan, and, contrary to popular belief, Japanese Buddhism's concern for the dying and the dead is not something that has emerged only recently. Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism, edited by Jacqueline I. Stone and Mariko Namba Walter, explores the diverse ways in which the Japanese Buddhist tradition has been employed for more than ten centuries to provide ritual and doctrinal means for dealing with the problem of death.
The book begins with an excellent introduction, which, in addition to chapter summaries, provides a broad overview of the development of mortuary rites in Japan. The introduction also identifies themes that tie together the book's nine chapters. Throughout the volume, one theme in particular surfaces repeatedly in many fascinating variations: how Buddhists have historically embraced what Duncan Williams describes as “contradictory logics” in their attempts to deal with the complex tangle of opposing emotional and intellectual imperatives that arise in the ritual management of death.
The essays proceed chronologically and are exceptionally well integrated, with authors regularly relating their work to material covered in other chapters. The first two chapters by Sarah Horton and Jacqueline Stone deal with deathbed rites originating in the Heian period. Horton's piece illuminates the history of the mukaekō—a ceremony enacting the descent of Amida to accompany the deceased to the Pure Land. Stone tracks the development of deathbed nenbutsu practices in the Heian through the Kamakura periods from a different perspective, arguing that in the course of those centuries, the responsibility for rebirth in paradise shifted from the dying person to ritual specialists.
In the third chapter, Brian Ruppert examines relic veneration in medieval Japan and explores the tensions inherent in the practice of cremation, which served as a vivid demonstration of the doctrine of impermanence and, at the same time, generated relics symbolizing the Buddha's abiding presence in this world. Mark Blum's chapter takes up instances of collective suicide that reportedly followed the funeral of the Jōdo Shinshū abbot Jitsunyo (1428–1525) in order to shed new light on the phenomenon of jigai ōjō—suicide for the purpose of being reborn in the Pure Land.
In chapter 5, Hank Glassman traces the transformations of rituals and beliefs connected to the Bowl of Blood Sutra (Ketsubonkyō)—a scripture depicting a special hell for women perceived to have committed sins of pollution through menstruation or childbirth. This far-ranging essay relates changes in the reception of this sutra to shifting family structures and gender identities. In chapter 6, Duncan Williams discusses the emergence in the Tokugawa period of the Sōtō Zen funeral, which served as the model for later Japanese Buddhist funeral rituals across sectarian lines.
The final three chapters of the book work particularly well together, starting with Walter's chapter outlining what she describes as the relatively uniform underlying “deep structure” of the contemporary Buddhist funeral rite and its various sectarian manifestations (p. 269). She also provides a useful history of the development of funeral rites within different sectarian traditions. In chapter 8, Stephen Covell writes about contemporary controversies surrounding the practice of granting posthumous precept names (kaimyō), usually in return for donations. In contemporary Japan, where most are skeptical of the soteriological efficacy of the kaimyō, many question what they see as their exorbitant “price.” Covell deals with, among other issues, attempts by Buddhist leaders to resist this seemingly inevitable trend toward the commodification of kaimyō.
George Tanabe's concluding chapter directly confronts the modernist assumptions that lead many to conclude that Japanese Buddhist funeral rites contradict orthodox Buddhism and describes recent attempts by sectarian scholars to overcome these perceived contradictions—the most salient being the apparent contradiction between the doctrine of the nonexistence of the soul and doctrines premised on the existence of a soul that requires ritual care through funeral or memorial rites. Noting that Buddhism's vast scriptural corpus can and has been mined selectively to produce any number of “orthodoxies,” Tanabe first points to passages describing “intermediary existences” that seem to fit the requirements of the Buddhist funeral ritual quite nicely. His point is not that Japanese funerals are in fact “orthodox,” but rather to demonstrate that orthodoxy is always a matter of choice. He concludes that regardless of how Buddhist scholars construct orthodoxy to rationalize their mortuary practices, what is clear is that the contemporary Buddhist funeral can claim the more important status of orthopraxy.
Death and the Afterlife includes a glossary of Chinese and Japanese characters as well as an index. Although the notes are placed handily at the end of each chapter, a bibliography also would have been helpful. Efforts were made to include scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, but most chapters are written from a textual or Buddhist studies perspective. This relative uniformity of approach, while it might be regarded as a limitation, also contributes to a higher degree of focus and integration than is found in many edited volumes.
Although primarily geared toward scholars of Japanese religion, there is much in this volume that will be of interest to those involved more broadly in the study of Japanese history and culture. The later chapters would work particularly well in undergraduate courses on Japan or Japanese religion. For those of us who regularly encounter students who, armed with a little bit of knowledge about Buddhism, echo modernist critiques of “funerary Buddhism,” this book will be an invaluable aid. The summaries I have provided do not come close to conveying the breadth and richness of these essays; there is much in them that will fascinate specialists and nonspecialists alike. As a work that provides valuable insight into one of the most fundamental aspects of the Japanese Buddhist tradition, Death and the Afterlife makes an extremely important contribution to scholarship on Japan and its religious, intellectual, and cultural history.
