Nichiren's Calligraphic Mandala as Artwork

By Luigi Finocchiaro

Few people have never heard of the Japanese monk Nichiren and many Buddhist schools refer to his thought and venerate the mandala he conceived. What does this mandala represent and how to orient oneself in the face of a mostly sectarian literature, sometimes imbued with doctrinal controversy? And what exactly is this focus of devotion (honzon)?
For many, the fact that almost 130 specimens have survived intact to this day might be surprising. This book explores the mandala starting from the historical and artistic context of medieval Japan in a broader and objective framework than the purely sectarian narrative and indeed, mainly as a work of art. The author was able to directly analyze a large part of Nichiren's original mandalic corpus and visited all the places wherethey are preserved, direclty interviewing the curators and experts in this field. The book also stems from research carried out at Rissho University, adapter to a wider audience and not necessarily Nichiren devotees.
The innovative approach lies in the fact that the mandalas are read as if they were figurative paintings. This research goes far beyond Nichiren and also analyzes the work of his direct disciples, their successors and the traditions that have arisen over the centuries from the visual perspective and not from the doctrinal aspect. Although precise and detailed, this text is accessible to all and complemented by partly original photos by the author and therefore unpublished.
Interesting for those who just want to find out about Nichiren, the work goes beyond purely academic study, full of difficult terminologu and disregards any sectarian influence, deliberately avoiding parochial language

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312759602

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~ 日蓮文字曼荼羅の美術性 ~

Nichiren’s Calligraphic Maṇḍala as Artwork

Index

Introduction and purpose

Acknowledgements

Preface

A preamble: sign, image, and syntax

Art and the Lotus Sūtra

Nichiren and the visual arts

The Arts in Nichiren’s Weltanschauung

The appeal of Mikkyō

Buddhist monks active during Nichiren’s time

A sign of the times: sacred invocations as powerful icons

Myōji-honzon of Myōe

Songō maṇḍala of Shinran

Rokuji-myōgō of Ippen

Shodō the Art of caligraphy

Evaluation parameters of Nichiren’s maṇḍala

Evaluation criteria (1): the kōmyō spikes

Evaluation criteria (2): the Buddha’s voice bon’onjō

Evaluation criteria (3): three-dimensional rendering by two-dimensional means

Evolution of the Nichiren maṇḍala in the Bun’ei period from 1271 to 1274

Evolution of the Nichiren maṇḍala in the Kenji period from 1275 to 1277

Evolution of the Nichiren maṇḍala in the Kōan period from 1278 to 1282

Early Kōan period (1278)

Apex on the Kōan period, persecutions, and the Mongol attack

Nichiren’s final years

Successors of Nichiren

Works of direct disciples

Works of eminent monks in following generations

Exemplars in the Edo period

Final remarks

Bibliographical sources and references

Copyright © 2022 Luigi Finocchiaro

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 

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~ 日蓮文字曼荼羅の美術性 ~

Nichiren’s Calligraphic Maṇḍala as Artwork

Introduction and purpose

The Vishnudharmottara Purana, an ancient Hinduist treatise, states that

the purpose of art is to show us the harmony and grace that underlies all of creation, to help us on the path towards reintegration with that which pervades the universe.

By exploring the visual stimuli encountered in his youth, the zeitgeist in which Nichiren (1222~1282) lived in, his talent as a calligrapher, interpreter of the Lotus dramaturgy, exegetical writer and Buddhist theologian, this book aims to fill a gap in the current scholarship on the Nichiren mandalic corpus and demonstrate the artistic value of Nichiren’s calligraphic moji-maṇḍala. Much has been already published about his extraordinary erudition, literacy, and charismatic preaching, yet the fact that he consciously intended to communicate his message and captivate an audience also by using visual means, remains widely unexplored.

It must be noted however that some of the sources and assumptions quoted in this book are based on oral records that emerged in the later Edo¹ period and would hence not be accepted as historical facts for academic scrutiny outside a specific study on legends around Nichiren.

It is generally accepted that a representative example of Nichiren’s Buddhism is found in his most renowned treatise, the Risshōankokuron. While this taxonomical work is definitively crucial, an incomplete reading that discounts his mandalic work would be indeed a great limitation. The same goes for its importance as historical documentation outside the context of Nichiren’s group only. Kawazoe Kenji (1984) has already pointed out that Nichiren’s letters to his followers are a vivid historical testimony of the Mongol invasion in the XIII century from the perspective of the samurai class and their families². His calligraphic maṇḍalas reflect the feelings in society as much as his letters and perhaps even more. It needs to be considered that among his followers were also illiterates or from a society stratum with limited comprehension of Buddhist principles, thus unable to discuss with him on doctrinal issues. Exceptions would be leading disciples among the clergy and middle-class bureaucracy such as Toki Jōnin (1216~1299), Soya Kyōshin (1224~1291) or the learned Confucian scholar Hiki Yoshimoto (Daigaku Saburō 1202~1286).

Nichiren’s career has been a crescendo in expressing his pathos for the Lotus narrative. During his earliest days at Seichō-ji, he copied the esoteric works of Kakuban (1095~1143) that contained several drawings and studied the powerful appeal of mantras, sacred Sanskrit syllables and universal symbols as signifiers of reality. He also explored the correlation between words, script, and imagery. Through his formation period in western Japan, he was immersed into the visual arts on Mt. Hiei, up to his becoming Nichiren and pursuing an audacious³ life which he juxtaposed to the Lotus narrative.

The evolution of his career can be clearly observed in his exegetical rhetoric, yet even more clearly in his calligraphic moji-maṇḍala. Moji is intended as syllable, here indicates ideograms and the written word. While relatively simple in comparison to the grandiose esoteric maṇḍalas, these works should be likewise understood as a tridimensional representation that functions both as a portal to a different dimension, suspended in space and time, as an esoteric encoding of his teachings.

As with any form of art that contains a form of abstract thought in comparison to an immediately recognizable purely visual element, the observer needs to be made aware of what is being observed, to be able to appreciate it to the fullest.

It would be far too limitative to define the moji-maṇḍala merely as a shodō artwork. Shodō means calligraphy in the Asian script context, which has far wider implications than writing beautiful letters that are well proportionate and pleasing to the eye as in the case of the western alphabet. Shodō is also an art form per se and certainly conveys a message, pathos, and feelings. A section in this book contains discussions about the nature of shodō with the renowned calligrapher Okamoto Kōhei who is also an expert on Kūkai, considered one of the three leading calligraphers of the Heian period.

In a letter to a dear friend and follower Nichiren writes⁴ that he "poured his soul in sumi-ink". His work however transcends shodō, as it created a mold, a template, a pattern, a model for communicating the message of the Lotus Sūtra. He was innovating and differentiating from the established iconography of his time. While deviation usually conveys a negative undertone, in aesthetics, deviation means creating new forms of art. Carmelo Strano defined this as the elliptical artwork (opera ellittica) as a designation for new art movements that starts at the periphery to gradually gain momentum and eventually move to the center.

This deviation is exactly what Nichiren did with his teaching, starting as a priest of modest origins compared to the leading aristocracy; he forced himself at the center of Japan’s history⁵, when the country experienced the very first foreign invasion. Even if the incursion eventually resulted in no more than a local circumscribed attack, after ransacking the two islets of Iki and Tsushima, the Mongols indeed landed in Kyūshū, Japan’s portal to the world at the time. Due to its potential implications, this event changed the nation’s culture forever, leaving no doubt that the defiled mappō-era was indeed materializing. Although Nichiren’s predictions are probably his own adapted reading of the times, this does not change the depth of conviction about his interpretation of the canonical texts, albeit a Mongol invasion is not specifically predicted in the Risshōankokuron. The treatise quotes the Yakushi Sūtra which predicts calamities and disasters for a country that goes against the Dharma. Invasion from a foreign land is one of these calamities and in Nichiren’s view of Lotus exclusivity (Hokke-senshū), Japan was de facto rejecting the true Buddhist Law.

Nichiren needs to be understood from a holistic perspective and not separately from the flow of history, especially of his own reading of the events contemporary to him. Even if the attempted invasion failed, would have been no Mongol threat, Nichiren could not have memorialized the Kamakura regime and thus projecting himself at the very center of those events, albeit from a perspective of the Lotus narrative.

At the time, to the bakufu he was probably just a nuisance, an unruly troublemaker, obsessed with his religious discourse; yet no serious historian can ignore him out from the picture. The Nichiren moji-maṇḍala is hence a living testimony of those dramatic times and how these were perceived by him, his group, many vassals (goke’nin) and ordinary people.

Nichiren was not the only innovator of his time and there were also other protagonists in the new Kamakura Buddhism scene, which employed communication formats such as myōgō scrolls (written sacred invocations) and thus these works may confirm that the time was ripe for this type of medium, albeit Nichiren imbued unparalleled sophistication and complexity in the moji-maṇḍala.

Recent western scholarship has largely disapproved about disentangling Buddhist iconography from its original context and categorizing it as art. The aim of this book is not to force an abstruse reading of Nichiren’s maṇḍala as purely artwork per se, but on the contrary to contextualize his message within a framework of aesthetics and the arts.

Art has been defined through the times through many different angles. In its core chapters, this research taps mainly into the studies of the late Rudolf Arnheim (1904~2007), the perceptual psychologist who explained why and how certain visual stimuli have various effects on the human brain. Arnheim explained that these are inborn natural mechanisms and not based on individual visual taste.

This research would thus fill part of a gap in ongoing research on Nichiren. To achieve this goal, he should be untied from the ideological structure erected around him by sectarian scholarship to acknowledge his calligraphic maṇḍala as an ingenious communication tool that not only defined his whole career but paved the way for his original teaching, apart from being merely a branch of the Tendai School.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Watanabe Hōyō, scholar, prolific author, and former rector at Risshō University, for suggesting a different approach to the Nichiren maṇḍala, based on my earlier studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

Terao Eiichi, former head of Buddhist studies department and recently appointed rector at Risshō University who welcomed me at his faculty and accepted to tutor me for this research in spite of his several obligations. Thanks to his considerable patience and understanding, I could not only graduate, but receive an honorable mention for my master thesis, as the only westerner who has graduated into the Japanese master course. Although this book differs from my original research in Japanese, which had to follow strict academic guidelines, its principle remains the same and owns much to Prof. Terao’s immense knowledge on the subject. It has been a real privilege to study under someone who’s many books I have avidly devoured in the past decade.

My gratitude goes also to Takahashi Gyōe and Akita Takahiro for widening my view on sacred art, Buddhist history and placing Buddhism into a much broader perspective with constancy and patience. I also want to thank Jaqueline Stone and Lucia Dolce for their counsel and advice through the years, particularly for their valuable insight and for inspiring me to pursue my studies at Risshō University.

A very special mention of gratitude goes also to shami Ryūgan Mark Herrick, who not only edited and corrected this volume in English language but also offered interesting suggestions.

Last, but not least, I also wish to thank Elisabeth ten Grotenhuis, Halle O’Neal, George Tanabe, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Okamoto Kōhei, and Ryūichi Abè for the kindness they extended to me during my studies and beyond.

Preface

The way mankind perceives the phenomenal world, including emotional and spiritual experiences, has been expressed through the arts way before the formation of civilization. The earliest known artwork, the Lascaux caves wall paintings, emerged around the Upper Paleolithic or Late Stone Age, about 17,000 years ago. Art triggers an emotional reaction rather than a merely intellectual one, thus the depiction quality does matter less than its power to trigger a collectively shared emotion. On the contrary, when art becomes focused only on technique, it vanishes into sophisticated craft. Yet, prior to the Renaissance, Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael and even Leonardo were merely considered as skilled craftsmen or specialist workers. Artifex in Latin meant someone capable in producing a certain item. Thanks to Michelangelo, who founded the first Art Academy in Florence around 1561, art started to be distinguished from craft and the artist was borne.

There are obviously huge cultural differences between European and Asian sacred art, in addition to diverse religious tenets that strongly influences visual expression. Moreover, apparent isomorphism or connections among unrelated artwork and discourses needs to be clearly distinguished from artworks that really share an equivalence thus not to fall into the trap known as apophenia.

It is however worth to consider that the Lotus Sūtra (in the form translated as Myōhōrengekyō by Kumārajīva) actually originated in the Kushan Empire of Yuèzhī ⁶, the easternmost region of the Hellenistic world, a crossway of Roman, Greek, Persian and Indian cultures and thus embeds values that are more universal to mankind rather than purely sectarian or ethnical. According to Akita Takahiro, from the viewpoint of the arts, Heian (794~1185) Japan was dwelling in a sort of fantasy world, while the Kamakura era (1192~1333) was immersed in mannerism and realism. The style of talented sculptor Unkei (1150~1223) is certainly a typical example of esthetic values comparable to the Italian Renaissance. In Japan, from the Muromachi period (1336~1573) onwards, devotional art became streamlined, almost mass-produced. While the representation technique improved greatly, artistic value collapsed. When the subject, material and design are chosen in function of cascade production, there is no pathos anymore and, as Walter Benjamin explained in 1935⁷, art vanishes.

As elaborated later, Kamakura era Japan was deeply permeated with mikkyō⁸ tantric esotericism, and everything was ritualized. Classic esoteric visual compendiums from the Heian period, such as the Gobushinkan, Asaba-shō, Kakuzen-shō, Besson-zakki and Shoson-zuzō are abundant with astonishing artwork. Of course, the depicted abhiṣheka devotional rituals (ganchō) describing the disposition of altars and sacred instruments as well as the maṇḍalas are based on sacred texts, albeit not always perfectly mirror them. Texts are transformed into ritualistic performance and icons of salvation. Rituals are indeed enacted prayers and therefore a sort of living maṇḍala, something that in the theatrical world is defined as tableau vivant.

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Figure 1: statue of Asaṅga (Mujaku) and Vasubandhu (Seshin), 12th century, Kōfuku-ji; photo: Wikimedia Commons

In medieval Japan, the Ryōzen’in practice hall at Enryaku-ji was adorned with a group of large paintings depicting the Buddha expounding his teachings with a full-sized image of Śākyamuni Buddha at its center considered to be living and attended all the time by the clergy and devotees. Hence, those meditating would feel as if they were de facto participating in the event⁹, which is essentially the same concept of Nichiren’s maṇḍala.

Thanks to the innovations introduced by Kūkai (774~835) much earlier, Japanese Buddhism enjoyed broader freedom from restrictions of the Confucian ritsuryō and sōniryō systems dictating the role of the clergy as bureaucratic ritual performers. He also infused society with an awareness of the power of spoken and written words and spells. Although Nichiren strongly criticized Kūkai and his lineage, among Kamakura Buddhist reformers, he was the one of who most gained from the esoteric discourse.

Rituals are living maṇḍalas and the enacting of scriptures that are the relics of the Buddha’s words. Oral tradition is thus transformed into text, image, and ritual, which are indeed the true relics of the dharmakāya, the body of the teaching (Dharma) and not merely the mortal remains of the historical Buddha who lived in India some three and half millennia ago.

For the reader who is less familiar with Buddhist terms, the so-called three bodies (trikāya) concept distinguishes the historical figure of Gautama Siddhartha born into this world and the bliss or enjoyment body (Saṃbhogakāya) manifesting in extra-cosmic realms outside this world, from the teaching he expounded (dharmakāya) which is the most important and immutable.

The Asaba-shō is a Tendai manual depicting not only the various archetypal figures, but also the rituals connected with them. A ganchō enactment and the moji-maṇḍala are indeed expression of the Hokke narrative. The Lotus scripture (voice to letters) is originally a drama (letters to enacting) and art when expressed by means that transmit a commonly shared message (enacting to depiction). The Lotus scripture is a deep philosophical message, narrated in form of a drama play. The rituals based on it, enable the participant to be part of an Eternal Return which is rendered through art. Nichiren produced his artwork with the conviction of being himself Viśistacāritra (Jōgyō), the emissary of Śākyamuni, Eternal Buddha of the dharmakāya.

The concept of Eternal Return, elaborated by the historian Mircea Eliade (1907~1986) means that by enacting myths through rituals it is possible to always return to the mythological event. Regardless of the event being mundane or sacred, human beings have the innate capacity to returning to an event, that either really happened or a myth that has become an archetype. The re-enacting of the Eucharist is a typical example, and such practices find their roots in ancient civilizations.

The dharmakāya is intended as the embodied teaching of the Buddha thus not the historical person, but those principles that survives mortal remains and are thus eternal or immutable. The unique aspect of the Nichiren School is that its honzon (focus of devotion) is not merely the epigone or samaya of a Buddha image but depicts the quintessence of the Dharma to which all Buddha are enlightened.

From the viewpoint of the arts, it can be argued that an intangible value is rendered through a physical object such as the moji-maṇḍala. This book aims to demonstrate that the calligraphic maṇḍala is art per se, independently from its value as a shodō artwork or a deconstructed piece like Hurufi art, which will be briefly described later. The calligraphic honzon inscribed by Nichiren endows the multiple properties of a work of art. Yet, the Nichiren maṇḍala has never been considered worthy of reading as an artwork. The relative secrecy that has surrounded the Nichiren maṇḍala, leading to a scarcity of photographic references as well as the common perception of its main function solely as a religious object, might be the cause of failing to recognize its value as artistic expression.

Although the Nichiren honzon is completely devoid of any form of decoration, frame, or embellishment, in the esoteric traditions, the visual versions such as the Taizōkai (Womb-realm) and Kongōkai (Diamond-realm) maṇḍalas are commonly recognized as artwork, even in the variety where the butsu-ga figures are substituted by Sanskrit seed logographs. Paintings and bas-reliefs depicting