AH #18: Japan & Buddhism

Works of Art

Geisha, with their white painted faces, elaborate hairstyles and beautiful kimonos, represent the traditional ideal of feminine, graceful beauty in Japan.

Geisha in Training

Traditionally, geisha began their training as young as 9 years old. The young geisha-in-training would learn many different arts and would not go into public until their difficult training was complete.

Although geisha used to be common in Japan, there are probably less than 2,000 actual geisha today.

Are kimonos worn today?

Most people in Japan today wear western clothing and kimonos are mainly worn to special occasions like tea ceremonies and weddings. There are less expensive kimonos that can be worn to go shopping or traveling and then there are very expensive, high quality kimonos that would only be worn once in a great while.

Sumo Wrestlers

Sumo is full of ancient Japanese traditions and rituals, as when the wrestlers throw salt at the beginning of each match in order to purify themselves and the ring.

Sumo wrestlers will eat large meals with beer and then

sleep immediately after in order to put on extra weight.

But don’t be fooled by the extra fat:

sumo wrestlers are fast, powerful athletes.

The Samurai Uniform

Every samurai wore a long sword (katana or tachi) together with a short sword (wakizashi or tanto). The uniform of the samurai included

elaborate metal and leather body armor as well as a distinct helmet (kabuto).

The End of the Samurai

Although the samurai were very powerful in Japan for hundreds of years, by the 1870’s the samurai class was abolished and a western-style army was established in Japan. The last samurai fought in the Battle of Shiroyama and afterward many joined the army or became scholars or businesspeople.

Katsushika Hokusai

The woodblock prints of Katsushika Hokusai are some of the most famous images in the world. His brightly colorful, decorative prints often depict stories and include animals, birds, and landscapes as well as people such as famous actors and athletes. Some of his prints required 20 or more separate wood blocks to be carved, all printed on the same paper with different colors of ink.

Manga

Today Manga (the Japanese comic book) is as popular as ever. But Manga is not just for children. It often deals with heavy, adult subjects: politics, war, sexuality, death, etc. It is common to see people in their 70s or 80s reading comic books in Japan. It is similar to reading short stories or novels.

Anime

Some comics are made into Anime (Japanese animated films). Akira is a landmark example of Anime. It is a cyberpunk, science fiction film

set in Tokyo in 2019. It features gang-warfare, revolutionaries,

psychics, and science gone horribly wrong in a dark, post-

apocalyptic Japan. Most definitely not for children!

Chinese Origins

The Japanese written language originally came from Chinese characters. In Chinese there is no alphabet. Every character stands for a different word. So, in Chinese there are well over 80,000 separate characters. In English there are only 26!

Kanji

"love"

"alone"

In Japanese, the separate word-characters based on Chinese are called Kanji.

Hiragana

But over time the Japanese also developed a syllabic alphabet for Japanese words called Hiragana. Hiragana contains 48 characters representing different sounds.

Katakana

As if that wasn’t complicated enough, a second syllabic alphabet was created for foreign words and names called Katakana. Now try to imagine how in the world you text in Japanese! It takes many years for non-Japanese people to learn to write in Japanese.

Life of an Ascetic

Siddhattha joined a group of wandering ascetics, people that give up everything (home, family,

money and sexual contact) and have a minimum of sleep, food, clothing and other comforts in

order to seek spiritual truth. Today this tradition of asceticism is seen in many cultures: Yogis or

Hindu holy men in India, Buddhist monks, the Christian Desert Fathers and Islamic Sufis are all

examples of ascetics. Siddhattha mastered the discipline of meditation and nearly starved himself

to death over years of ascetic practice. In time he realized that starving himself would not solve the

problem of human suffering.

Buddhahood

He spent the next 45 years traveling, teaching and establishing sanghas, or communities of Buddhist monks. He died a normal human death and his life and teachings became an inspiration to billions of people.

The Truth of Enlightenment

According to the Buddha, we cannot avoid bodily pain, sadness or death; in fact every human is weighed down by shame, anger, depression, jealousy and many other ‘bad’ or ‘sinful’ thoughts and actions.

But our real suffering comes from pretending that these things don’t affect us. For instance, we lose an important relationship and we are heartbroken. That is painful. But the suffering begins when we can’t let it go: we hold anger toward the person, we feel badly for ourselves, we wish that things had turned out differently, we feel we have been treated unfairly, etc.

Rather than accepting the painful loss we hold onto it and it sinks us to the bottom of the sea like a lead weight. Often when people experience terrible loss, like a terminal illness or the death of a loved one, they are forced to see human life as it really is: short, beautiful and much simpler than we imagine. THIS realization is the path to the Buddhist version of Nirvana.