[In the essay below, Thornhill exposes elements of Shinto doctrines in the treatment of the sun goddess myth in works by Zeami and his successor Komparu Zenchiku.]

In recent years, scholars of Japanese literature have made ambitious attempts to redefine the medieval period. Sensing the conventional periodization, which classifies the Kamakura and Muromachi eras as medieval, to be ultimately based on events of political rather than cultural history, they propose new divisions. For example, Konishi Jin'ichi defines chûsei as the period when Chinese culture was truly assimilated and thus transformed the earlier “ancient” cultural patterns.¹ Accordingly, he sets the beginning of chûsei at the early 10th century, and its demise at the rise of Western influence in the seventeenth century. William LaFleur designates as medieval the age when a Buddhist episteme—defined most prominently by the cosmology of the Six Paths (rokudô)—dominates: thus it commences with the composition of the Nihon ryôiki in the ninth century, and comes to a quiet end as the dominance of the Buddhist world view attenuates after 1600.²

I have no objection to these periodizations, both of which are convincing on their own terms. However, it is possible to identify one cultural transformation which does in fact occur at the beginning of what is more conventionally considered the medieval age, in the late twelfth century: the appearance of formal Shinto discourse, in response to the Buddhist hegemony. The first stage was the emergence of Ryôbu Shintô, a synthesis of Buddhist thought and Shinto elements devised by a group of Buddhist priests residing in the Ise region, who proclaimed that the Inner and Outer shrines of Ise were symbolically equivalent to the Womb and Diamond Realms of esoteric Buddhism. Soon thereafter, the first true Shinto ideology was formulated by members of the Watarai family, priests of the Outer Shrine. To support their views, they created an instant canon of apochryphal “classics,” known in the Tokugawa Period as the gobusho. While these works were largely designed to elevate the deity of the Outer Shrine, Toyo'uke-no-ôkami, to a position of parity with the sun goddess Amaterasu, they represent a significant advance in Shinto cosmology, expanding the original Nihon shoki accounts by systematically incorporating elements from both esoteric Buddhism and Chinese yin-yang thought. Later in the medieval era, we find such developments as the Shinto-influenced historiography of Jien's Gukanshô (ca. 1220) and Kitabatake Chikafusa's Jinnô shôtôki (1343), and the establishment of Yoshida Shintô, the most enduring of the medieval Shinto schools.

It is my contention that we can see a similar development within the field of aesthetics: the emergence of Shinto-derived aesthetic ideals, against a backdrop of Buddhist domination. To be sure, the expression “medieval aesthetics” brings to mind such concepts as sabi and yûgen, developed by the waka poets Saigyô and Shunzei, and the aesthetics of impermanence presented in the recluse literature of Chômei and Kenkô. The role of Buddhism in the formation and practice of these ideals is widely recognized. In the area of noh drama as well—an art of the “high medieval,”³ according to LaFleur—the structure and themes of the plays reflect the dominance of the Buddhist world view. Similarly, the aesthetic principles presented in the critical writings of Zeami are permeated by Buddhist ideals: for example, the Buddhist paradigm of michi is adopted to represent the training of the performer, and the principle of hana can be seen as an aesthetic of the ephemeral. Even more explicitly, Zen terminology abounds in such works as the Kyû-i (The Nine Levels).

Nevertheless, native Shinto elements are evident in many aspects of noh. Most prominently, the backdrop of all noh stages is the Yôgô Pine, where the Deity of Kasuga is said to have appeared as an old man and danced. One of the most important obligations of the four Yamato sarugaku troupes was the performance of Okina at the Wakamiya Festival of Kasuga Shrine, a tradition which continues to this day. And indeed, the plays of the first category are reserved for explicitly Shinto themes.

Despite the predominance of Buddhist elements, Zeami's critical writings also contain many allusions to the Shinto tradition. Here, I would like to focus on just one of these: his treatment of the seclusion of the sun goddess in the Heavenly Rock Cave, one of the most famous incidents from the “Age of the Gods” section of the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki. In the original story, Susanoo, the brother of the sun goddess Amaterasu, has offended his sister: when she is about to celebrate the autumn harvest festival, he pollutes the ceremonial hall by smearing excrement on its doors, and then throws a flayed colt inside. Upset by this unacceptable behavior, the sun goddess retreats into the cave at Mt. Kagu.

In the Fûshi kaden (Style and the Transmission of the Flower), Zeami provides the following account of this incident:

The beginnings of sarugaku in the age of the gods, it is said, occurred when Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, concealed herself in the heavenly rock cave, and the whole earth fell under endless darkness. All the myriad deities gathered at the heavenly Kagu mountain, in order to find a way to calm her. They played sacred music to accompany their comic dances. In the midst of this Ama no Uzume came forward, and, holding a sprig of sakaki wood and a shide, she raised her voice and, in front of a fire that had been lighted, she pounded out the rhythm of her dance with her feet and became possessed by divine inspiration as she sang and danced. The Sun Goddess, hearing the voice of Ama no Uzume, opened the rock door slightly. The land became light, and the faces of the gods could be seen again. It is said that such entertainments marked the beginning of sarugaku …⁴

In this passage, the rock-cave myth is used to legitimize sarugaku as an art of ancient and divine origin. Indeed, this incident is often described as the first performance of kagura. Incidentally, kagura was often linked to sarugaku, by Zeami and other medieval figures, in imaginative ways. For example, when the left-hand radical of the first character of the compound used to write kagura (“divine music”) is dropped, kami changes to saru, and thus the compound becomes sarugaku. In addition, the deity Ama no Uzume, who performed the dance described above, is the legendary ancestress of the Lord of Sarume, thus providing another pseudo-etymology for sarugaku.⁵

In a later work, the Shûgyoku tokka (Finding Gems and Attaining the Flower), Zeami expands upon this incident to introduce a set of three principles, myô, hana, and omoshiro, which are the component parts of the Style of the Miraculous Flower, the highest form of hana and the first of the Nine Ranks. The key passage reads as follows:

Question: How did the expression omoshiro come into being? The term hana is a metaphor; but what of the exclamation “Fascinating!” uttered without realizing it? This is not a metaphor—what is its origin?

Answer: This is a matter which should be investigated after the phenomenon of hana has been fully understood. The three elements mentioned earlier—omoshiroki, hana, and mezurashiki—are all different names for one entity. It goes by such names as the Wondrous (myô), the Flower (hana), or Fascination (omoshiro),⁶ but these are actually one phenomenon which has three aspects: high, middle, and low. Myô is the extinction of the workings of the mind which cuts off the use of words. To actually experience this state of myô is hana; when it is grasped as an object of awareness, it is omoshiro.

The expression omoshiroki dates from the time when the (sun) goddess opened the door of the rock cave, responding with delight to the playful performance of kagura at the heavenly Mt. Kagu. The faces of the assembled deities all became brightly visible; thus the expression omoshiro (“face-white”) came into being. The instant the door opened should not be termed omoshiro; rather, omoshiro is the name for the moment when a conscious awareness of the event was established. What indeed can one call the moment before this objectivity arises?

Considered from the standpoint of our art, the mental instant when a performance is perceived as “fascinating” is the sensation of no-mind. … When the goddess shut the rock door, the entire world and its lands were plunged into constant darkness; was the feeling not simply one of joy at the instant when, without warning, [the world] became bright? This is the moment when a subtle smile crosses the face without thinking. The state when the rock door is closed and everything is blackness, when all speech has been cut off, is myô; hana is the stage at which this turns to brightness; and omoshiro is the stage of objective awareness …⁷

Myô, hana, and omoshiro are most easily understood as terms which describe the psychology of audience response. Myô is a state of mystery and speechless expectation: the audience is stunned by the sudden darkness, as their conventional perception and mental functioning are suspended. At the same time, they are in a state of anticipation, sensing the numinous presence of the goddess just beyond their perceptual field. The subsequent stage of hana is the feeling of surprise and wonder experienced at the instant when the rock cave has opened, and the direct presence of the sun goddess is first encountered. It is a spontaneous response, which occurs before the conscious mind realizes what has happened. Omoshiro is the final stage, when the mind understands that “the door has opened,” and is able to associate this fact with the sublime emotion just experienced at the stage of hana. In this progression, the spontaneous subjective delight gives way to fascination, fixed on a recognizable object—the skillful actions of a performer.

However, this psychological interpretation does not exhaust the meanings of the three categories. In the original myth, as recounted in the Nihon shoki, the sun goddess is portrayed as an individual subject to human-like emotions. She is first upset, then curious as her fellow kami entice her from seclusion. But in Zeami's age, the sun goddess has become a more august deity: within the teachings of Ryôbu Shintô, Amaterasu has been elevated to a transcendental position, explicitly the equivalent of the cosmic Sun Buddha, Mahâvairocana. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to portray her emergence from the cave as the result of mere curiosity. For Zeami, she is a transcendental presence which becomes manifest when the performance is of the highest possible quality. And so her emergence from the cave in the theater becomes a symbol for hierophany, the appearance of divinity. In this sense, the aesthetic experience is implicitly elevated to the level of the transcendental. Hidden, the sun goddess provides the anticipation; furthermore, it is this very hidden quality which creates the potentiality for hana to appear. To extend the biogenetic metaphor of hana, in her unmanifest state the sun goddess' presence is like a seed, planted in fertile soil. Once she appears, her luminosity generates the dazzling effect of hana. In addition, her illuminating function provides the ability to discriminate among objects. Through the light of awareness, the differentiated world of forms, and the accompanying aesthetic fascination, come into being.

To be sure, the terminology used here has Buddhist connotations. Myô is a “wondrous” realm beyond explanation or cognition, where the sensation of “no-mind” occurs. In two other works, Zeami alludes to a passage from an unidentified source, which he calls the “Tendai myôshaku”: “[Myô is the place where] the way of words is cut off, and the activities of the mind are extinguished.”⁸ In the Buddhist context, this state is teleological, a final step in the striving for enlightenment. However, through the use of the cave metaphor drawn from the Shinto tradition, myô becomes a preparatory stage, a kind of gestation period, which highlights the pristine nature of the hana response which emerges directly from it.

Hana also has explicit Buddhist overtones. In several of his treatises, Zeami alludes to the famous story of the “wordless transmission” from Shakyamuni to Kasapa, celebrated in Zen circles. During the course of a sermon on Vulture Peak, Shakyamuni held up a flower; no one understood his meaning except the disciple Kasapa, who smiled. By alluding to this incident with the phrase “the moment when a subtle smile crosses the face without thinking,” Zeami reinforces the sense of the transcendental, neatly linking his aesthetic ideal of hana to the flower raised by the Buddha.

The term omoshiro, on the other hand, has precedent in earlier Shinto writings. The same etymology for the word omoshiroki is presented in the ninth-century Kogo shûi:

The Sun-Goddess coming forth from the Rock-Cave now illumined the sky and consequently the spectators were enabled to distinguish one another's faces once more. Overflowing with joy, they loudly cried:

“Ahare! ahare!” (signifying that the sky is now illuminated)

“Ana omoshiroshi!” (“O how delightful it is to see one another's faces!”)

“Ana tanoshi!” (“What joy to dance with outstretched hands!”)⁹

The response of unrestrained joy, then, is represented by the “white faces.”¹⁰

Zeami's son-in-law and artistic heir, Komparu Zenchiku (1405-1468?), also utilizes Shinto terminology in his critical writings. In addition to adopting Zeami's interpretation of the rock-cave myth, which he summarizes in the opening of his Kabu zuinô ki,¹¹ Zenchiku quotes directly from medieval Shinto treatises.¹² This is not surprising in light of his relationship with Ichijô Kanera (1402-1481), the great scholar who, among his many accomplishments, wrote an important treatise on the Nihon shoki, the Nihon shoki sanso. Having read a Buddhist commentary on Zenchiku's symbolic system of “six circles and one dewdrop” (rokurin ichiro) composed by the eminent cleric Shigyoku (1383-1463), Abbot of the Kaidan'in at Tôdai-ji, Kanera responded with his own commentary, providing cognates to Zenchiku's seven categories culled from the Confucian tradition.¹³ In addition, in his commentary Kanera proclaims the Unity of the Three Creeds (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto), and discusses some of the pseudo-historical connections between Shinto mythology and sarugaku described above.¹⁴ In later versions of the rokurin ichiro treatises, Zenchiku himself adopts the Unity of the Three Creeds theme, providing his own Shinto-derived parallels to supplement the Confucian and Buddhist interpretations of Kanera and Shigyoku.

Perhaps the most significant of these is the concept of tenchi kaibyaku, the “division of heaven and earth,” as described in the opening of the Nihon shoki. Originally adapted almost verbatim from the Huai-nan tzu, the influential Taoist work of the second century B.C., this famous passage presents a cosmogony in which a state of undifferentiated formlessness (hun-t'un, or konton in Japanese) undergoes transformation: yin and yang polarize and soon coalesce into matter, forming heaven and earth. In the Nihon shoki, the first kami subsequently emerge, the distant ancestors of the imperial line. In the Japanese textual tradition, this genesis is most important because it depicts one smooth continuum of being, underscoring the divinity of the imperial family and the Japanese nation. However, in the Taoist tradition of self-cultivation, this creation paradigm is frequently played back mentally in reverse, as the adept attempts to return to the Great Beginning, a formless state of perfection “before yin and yang have divided.”¹⁵ And this attitude is in fact adopted by such medieval thinkers as Kanera, who also emphasizes the stage before division as a privileged state: “The One Mind is the palace of Hun-t'un, the dwelling-place of divinity.”¹⁶

Zenchiku applies this grandiose mythic imagery to the microcosm of musical rhythm within a performance. In Go'on sankyoku shû he writes,

Concerning interval and beat: all actions should be executed in the interval. If they are performed on the beat, they have little effect. The state when heaven and earth have not yet divided is the interval; the division is the beat. [The manifestation of] all things comprises arising from this interval.¹⁷

For Zenchiku, the empty space between musical beats is an interval of creative tension, and the performer must begin his movement during this interval in order to generate the maximum effect. Similarly, among his six circles, the first Circle of Longevity, represented by an empty circle, symbolizes perfection and also potentiality; thus it is the state before division.¹⁸ The second Circle of Height, represented by a single vertical line arising within a circle, is the stage at which movement arises from stillness, and musical pattern emerges: this is the “division of heaven and earth.” The emphasis, then, is on the potential energy compressed within the state of commingled yin and yang: when division occurs, the act of polarization unleashes great kinetic force. Within a performance, the silence before the energy is released is beyond time, insofar as the beat is indeterminate; yet such intervals provide a psychological tension which heightens the effect of subsequent movement, when discernible form appears.

It is not difficult to see a parallel between the state before the polarization of yin and yang—of light and dark—and the anticipation generated by the sun goddess seclusion in the heavenly rock cave. In Zeami's paradigm, the flash of light represents the process of reception: the arising of feeling in the minds of the audience. For Zenchiku, the division of heaven and earth represents the act of expression: the appearance of movement and rhythm. In both cases, the Shinto analogies provide a sense of potential energy, a kind of gestating force which explodes into manifest form.

In the Heian Period, the rokudô system and the extensive pantheon of esoteric Buddhism created an expanded universe of classical stature. As a consequence, the native Shinto deities receded from view, obscured by the symbolic and conceptual majesty of this vast system. Nevertheless, Shinto did enter the intellectual mainstream in the twelfth century, as a discourse of Buddhist-Shinto relation emerged. The original honji-suijaku doctrine, which presented the buddhas as fundamental essence and the kami as trace-manifestations, was devised by Buddhist schools as an expedient means to attract the Japanese to the foreign Buddhist pantheon; later on, this doctrine was reversed to proclaim the pre-eminence of the native kami.

This ideological reversal was possible in part because Japanese Buddhism had undergone a transformation. As what is commonly referred to as “Kamakura Buddhism” unfolded, Buddhism became increasingly internalized: for the first time, personal experience became the focus, as Buddhism was widely perceived as a religion which offered salvation for the individual. In this sense, both the Pure Land and Zen developments of this era can be seen as a romantic movement, supplanting the earlier classical phase. At the same time, Buddhism became increasingly somber, a reflection of the pessimism of mappô ideology. While the dominant position of Buddhism in the Kamakura Period showed no sign of weakness or attenuation, its tonal darkness enabled the qualities of “brightness and purity” characteristic of Shinto to emerge as an alternative.

It is here that the aesthetic developments discussed above are of great interest, elucidating patterns of Buddhist-Shinto relation not easily detected in the more formal arena of intellectual history. As we have seen, Zeami takes an originally Shinto myth and utilizes it to represent certain qualities of audience response. Insofar as he is treating the psychology of the audience, the myô-hana-omoshiro paradigm inevitably contains Buddhist terminology. Buddhism is the only tradition available to Zeami which treats the workings of perception and consciousness in detail.

However, Buddhist symbols and terminology are not entirely suited to Zeami's task. In the final analysis, the joy of enlightenment is the joy experienced upon escaping from the world of conventional human feeling, even if it does not involve a total extinction of the phenomenal realm. In contrast, the delight experienced at a dramatic performance, and perhaps all of what we refer to as “aesthetic experience,” is an essentially natural, human response, and thus is somewhat at odds with a Buddhist conception. Therefore, it is only fitting that Zeami turn to the native Shinto tradition. The Shinto paradigms discussed above are metaphors of generation, based upon the symbolism of (human) reproduction. While there are many teachings within the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism which present the world of phenomena as arising from the matrix of the Absolute, and thus seem to affirm the phenomenal realm, the primary function of these doctrines is to reveal the absolute aspect of worldly existence in order to facilitate escape from that existence as it is conventionally experienced. In contrast, the generation paradigms of the Shinto tradition are celebrations of life-force qua life-force.

In conclusion, I would argue that the image of the sun goddess emerging from the rock cave provides a powerful metaphor for the cultural dynamics of the medieval age. Obscured by the grandeur of Buddhist culture, Shinto undergoes an extended period of occlusion during the Heian era. Subsequently, Buddhism reaches its apex in the pessimism of Kamakura Buddhism and the monochrome aesthetics of yûgen and sabi. Against this pervasive background of tonal darkness, the brilliance of Shinto symbology emerges to maximum effect. That aspect of Shinto mythology which appeals most to Zeami and Zenchiku—the affirmation of generative force—underscores the inherent weakness of Buddhism as an ideology to promote anything other than personal salvation. Aided by an affinity with certain strains of Neo-Confucian thought, Shinto discourse will flourish, eclipsing the ultimately impotent Buddhism in the coming post-medieval age.

Notes

1. Konishi Jin'ichi, A History of Japanese Literature, vol. II (Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 3.

2. William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words (University of California Press, 1983), xi-xiii.

3. LaFleur, xiii.

4. Translation by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu, On the Art of Nô Drama (Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 31.

5. Ichijô Kanera mentions this in his rokurin ichiro commentary, recorded in the Rokurin ichiro no ki (discussed below). Omote Akira and Katô Shûichi, eds., Zeami, Zenchiku (Iwanami Shoten, 1974), p. 329. Hereafter this volume is abbreviated ZZ.

6. These are the translations for myô, hana, and omoshiro used by Rimer and Yamazaki.

7. ZZ, p. 188.

8. In the Yûgaku shûdô fûken (ZZ, p. 166) and in the Goi (ZZ, p. 170). The phrase “Tendai myôshaku” may refer to “interpretations of the term myô within the Tendai tradition,” rather than representing the title of a work.

9. Gunsho ruijû, vol. 25, p. 4. Translation from Genchi Katô and Hikoshirô Hoshino, Kogo shûi: Gleanings from Ancient Stories (London: Curzon Press, 1972), p. 26. The author of the work, Imbe no Hironari, provides the interlinear glosses in Chinese; the exclamations are written out phonetically.

10. In the Iwanami kogo jiten, Ôno Susumu et al. state that omoshiroshi—whose modern cognate is a common word meaning “interesting”—originally denotes a state in which “the eyes open wide upon seeing a bright object”; this meaning extends to the delight experienced at music and dance performances. The Kokugo daijiten lists this and several other possible etymologies.

11. ZZ, p. 342.

12. For example, at the beginning of the Rokurin ichiro hichû, where he uses the phrase “Aru shinsho ni iwaku …” (ZZ, p. 380). Unfortunately, the quotations are not precise, and it is not always possible to identify the source. Itô Masayoshi feels that Zenchiku may not have had direct access to the “classics” of Ise Shintô, and instead relied upon a more recent work, Jihen's Toyoashihara shinpû waki. See Itô Masayoshi, Komparu Zenchiku no kenkyû (Kyoto: Akao Shôbundô, 1970), pp. 171-8.

13. For a complete translation of the Rokurin ichiro no ki, see Arthur Thornhill, “Six Circles and One Dewdrop: The Dramaturgical Treatises of Komparu Zenchiku,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1985, pp. 42-59.

14. ZZ, p. 329. For details on the Unity of the Three Creeds (sankyôitchi) doctrine in Japan, see Haga Kôshirô, Chûsei zenrin no gakumon oyobi bungaku ni kansuru kenkyû (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1981), pp. 221-44.

    For Kanera's role in the history of Shinto thought, see Wajima Yoshio, Chûsei no jugaku (Yoshikawa Kôbunkan, 1965), p. 142 ff., and Kubota Osamu, Chûsei Shintô no kenkyû (Kyoto: Shintôshi Gakkai, 1959), pp. 386-96.

15. See N. J. Giradot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism (University of California Press, 1983), p. 134 ff.

16. Kokumin Seishin Bunka Kenkyûjo, ed., Nihon shoki sanso (Meguro Shoten, 1935), p. 18.

17. ZZ, p. 373.

18. As explicitly stated in the Rokurin ichiro no kichû, ZZ, p. 336.