Good evening everyone. Tonight, I'll be talking through the effects and influences of death on three different aspects of Japanese culture. The way they constructed their houses, the way they portrayed it in their art, and the way it shaped aspects of ancient and medieval Japanese practices and society.
To start, let's look at Japan through the period we studied in class for a moment. Buddhism, which came to Japan through Korea and China primarily, was bolstered by Prince Shotoku. According to the Nihongi, or Nihon Shoki, a government commissioned archival document, Shutoku wrote the Annotated Commentaries on the Three Sutras, a Buddhist religious text, promulgated the Seventeen Article Constitution, which was based on the Confucianist Chinese constitution of the time, and also established the Twelve-Level Cap-and-Rank System, a method of ranking government officials by Confucianist values, such as discipline and virtue, in 603. The Nakatomi clan rose to power in 645 and further adopted Confucianist values, including the Mandate of Heaven, the system by which the Chinese imperial dynasty validated its rulership. After being involved in Korea for roughly 200 years, the Japanese navy was utterly decimated by the Koreans in the Battle of Bayekgang and would ultimately withdraw. Japan's first shogun, Otomo no Otomaru, would be appointed by Emperor Kanmu in 794. and would thus be granted near absolute power over all Japanese territories through the use of the military.
In 1185, the Kamakura Shogunate would be formed after winning the Genpei War. The Kamakura would face both Mongol invasion attempts and attempted internal uprising, and create a feudal system after seizing power from the central government in 1192. They were dethroned when the city of Kamakura was sieged in 1333 by pro-imperial forces, and the Ashikaga shogunate, which came after, would establish the daimyo system in 1336. Circling back to the topic of people dying, it's probably best to continue on the vein of conflict. As many of us most likely already know and understand, Japan was frequently dealing with all manner of internal armed conflicts, from pirates to civil and reunification wars.
For example, let's look at the siege of Sanjo Palace in 1159. Soldiers belonging to the Minamoto clan sacked the palace and kidnapped former Emperor Go Shirakawa, burning buildings and killing an unknown number of palace guards and other people, including Go Shirakawa's advisor, Fujiwara no Michinori, who was found hiding in a hole just south of Kyoto and decapitated. As can be seen in several battles like the siege of Sanjo Palace, the torching of buildings was common and brutal, most likely used to drive defenders from places where they could hide. or strike fear into them by burning the area around them, filling it with heat and smoke, and or also dissuading non-combatants from attempting to help the defenders.
Looking at this secondary representation of the 1184 battle of Ichinotani that ousted the Taira clan from power and allowed the Kamakura to take control, we can determine that fighting across the board was brutal and hectic. Warriors in close quarters bunch up in groups, and soldiers on horseback pursue each other in swarms, fast and efficient. But next, let's talk about Japan itself. Japan is an island situated squarely on the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire, where most of the world's seismic and volcanic activity occurs. As a result of this, Japan experiences plenty of earthquakes.
The earliest documented earthquake is listed here. having occurred in 684 and striking three provinces. Additionally, while this earthquake's total damage and casualties were great, they were, but even if they were still unknown, they were great enough to spur the government into documenting this earthquake and documenting all future ones.
This specific earthquake also caused a city by the name of Tosunotayan, which was about 12 square kilometers in size, the same size as the total built-up area of 12 of New York City, to sink. into the ocean. Another earthquake listed here as having been in 1099 caused an area of a thousand hectares which is roughly 10 square kilometers to sink into the ocean once more about the same size as the built-up area of Boston and Providence here in the United States.
All of the earthquakes listed here all the earthquakes that caused the destruction listed on this slide were from 8.25 to 8.5 magnitude which on the earthquake magnitude scale is between major and great. Very large earthquakes, very destructive. So how did the Japanese overcome the death and destruction by this force of nature? The answer lies in the houses they built for the common peasant, and to the Minka style of house construction.
Minka roughly translates to House of the People, a name which probably invokes a similar feeling to Volkswagen, the people's car, and it had a similar principle behind it. Minka houses are vernacular style, meaning they were built without oversight or input from academics or properly trained architects. These houses were instead constructed by their owners, or members of the surrounding community. and all took into account regional requirements, needs, and needs of the community first.
They also all took into account the structure of the house, first and foremost. As a result, the primary support structure was built before the rest of the house, and the living space within was not given much consideration or second thought. Oh, pardon me. This is in stark contrast to the Tsukiya-style houses.
which were based on tea houses for the warrior class and generally prioritized the living first. Minka houses were made from common materials of the region and designed to be easy to construct. In the event that the house was destroyed by an attack by a hostile clan or by natural phenomenon such as a landslide or a tsunami, it could simply be rebuilt again. Unfortunately, due to its nature as a vernacular style house, the Minka has lost much of the expertise that was required to build it in the centuries that have gone by and as new housing methods have come to Japan.
It also helps very little that the original framework that the idea was built on, so to speak, is unknown to begin with. The Minka has mysterious origins for the most part. Next, it comes time to discuss art.
Shown here are two different Imaki scrolls depicting two different elements of death that I want to talk about here. The first, the hungry spirits, hinges on Buddhist concepts of the afterlife. In the case of Japan, the hungry spirits fell into one of two categories. The gaki, spirits of jealous or greedy people cursed with unending hunger for repugnant substances or fluids.
In the jikiniki, the spirits of jealous or greedy people or impious people cursed to seek out and consume human corpses. In this particular painting, the ghosts are presumably gaki based on the lack of human corpses in this specific frame. They're shown as remarkably lifelike and grotesque, which hardly makes a good impression on thoughts of both the afterlife and one's current life alike.
In the second painting, The Siege of the Sanjō Palace, fallen Imperial Guards can be seen in the lower part of the center-left region of the scroll. Their death, despite being absolutely tragic, is glossed over and forgotten about. It's unceremonious and factual, being simply moved on from as opposed to lingered on and dwelled over. Other aspects of Japanese literature do something similar.
In the Heike Monogatari, a semi-historical epic account of the Genpei War, characters are frequently described as being simply put to death. Few of the details are provided. There's little mention of blood, no visceral details, and no fanfare. It is very plainly a statistic.
Now, finally, we come to how death shaped various Japanese practices. To start, during the Asuka period of history, lasting from 538 to 710 BCE, Buddhism began to gain traction in Japan. Buddhism brought with it many meditative practices, although this one section will focus on the most, is the contemplation of the nine stages of a decaying corpse. According to the Satipatthana Sutta, The observer must watch a corpse decay in a field, graveyard, or charnel ground this is just a field where a body is left to decay by nature elements instead of being buried or anywhere else and watch the corpse decay.
In Japan, this meditative practice manifested itself as an art style by the name of kusouzu where a painter would paint a dead person in the process of decay across all nine stages. Distension, rupture, exudiation of blood, Putrefaction, Discaleration and Desiccation, Consumption by Carinators, Dismemberment of the Skeleton, Reduction to Bones, and the Spirit's Exit to Another World, which is generally considered as having occurred once a memorial stone was placed where the body lay. For the sake of the audience, because I'm a conscious presenter, I did not want to put any of these specific samples of painting in this presentation. I know we're all adults, we can all probably handle it, but I dislike looking at it. I have a feeling all of you would as well.
It's a unique exercise over improv. impermanence and how life sacredness can always come from its short period of time. Nature does not care much for your legacy or your social status after all. But impermanence also had other ways of displaying itself. It was common practice among Japanese warriors to bring the heads of their fallen adversaries back to their superiors, either to prove that the right head had been claimed, that the right kill had been claimed, or that a kill had been claimed at all in exchange for.
an increased stipend perhaps. In a sense, this practice was also a reminder that life itself was not forever, and that neither was status or legacy. Some warriors would even unintentionally drive this point home by shoving grass into the mouths of opponents they had killed in battle, so they could return later and claim the heads once the battle was finished. Similarly, the average Japanese funerary procedure generally includes the cremation of the corpse.
Several cities and local level authorities have banned standard burials in favor of cremations due to the comparative cleanliness that cremations offer. There are no bodies, there is no decay, there is nothing to bury other than bones in an urn. And about 99% of all funerals in Japan include a cremation. Thank you everybody for listening, and I hope and I'm ready, hopefully, to answer any questions that you may have.
And to the best of my ability. if I have an incomplete picture on the information. Thank you.