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Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report (Nanzan Series in Religion & Culture)

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It's easy to forget just how ahead of its time this book was. Nowadays few scholars take the old standard paradigm of Kamakura Buddhism at face value. The predictable narrative of newly-founded, vibrant, and popular new schools of Buddhism--Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren--more or less instantly sweeping away and replacing the allegedly moribund, stuffy, and stagnant schools of Heian and Nara Buddhism now looks a little quaint and old-fashioned--almost nostalgically simplistic. And any number of studies have been published showing that the monks of "established" Buddhism, besides being overwhelmingly in the religious mainstream of the time, were doing a whole lot more than just resting on their laurels and hobnobbing with the aristocrats. This was far from the case in 1987, when Robert Morrell's "Minority Report" was first published. Indeed, it was exactly what its title says. So counterintuitive was its approach here, in fact, that Minoru Kiyota lauds Morrell's unique contribution in the book's foreword even as he inadvertently reiterates the standard narrative almost in the same breath. It was that hard a box to think outside of.

All of which is to highlight this deceptively modest little book's dramatic significance in the field of Buddhist Studies, NOT relegate it to the past. It's a fascinating book, offering an intriguing glimpse of several monks of the "established" schools active during the Kamakura Period and exploring their religious ideas and activities. And despite years of "re-visioning" Kamakura Buddhism, these guys are still kind of overshadowed--and this book then still urgently relevant. After setting the stage with some preliminary considerations, then, Morrell introduces us to four monks: Jien, the Tendai abbot, historian, and waka poet; Myoe, the earnest Kegon reformer and exemplar of the monastic ideal; Myoe's friend, Jokei, the devout Hosso reformer and opponent of Pure Land exclusivity; and Kakukai, the Shingon abbot on Koyasan and deconstructor of mythological literalism. Each section includes extensive translations allowing these monks to speak on the issues in their own words--key translations include Jokei's historically important refutation of Honen's emerging Pure Land school, Myoe's popular if delightfully pedestrian aphorisms, and Jien's Buddhist-themed waka poetry from the Imperial anthologies. Also included as an appendix is a fine translation of the Noh play "The Dragon God of Kasuga" affording us an example of Myoe and his life as they appeared in the medieval literary imagination.

The translations are top-notch, careful and scholarly and not afraid to be a little stiltedly literal when need be--as with some of the doctrinal explications, where being exact is more important than trying to outdo Arthur Waley. Morrell's discussions too are thought-provoking, interesting, and models of scholarly clarity with a dash of wit. When he's arguing against conventional wisdom and received opinion, he does so with rare balance, fairness, and gentlemanly grace. And for those of us who are visually-minded, rare portraits of each of the four monks are provided as illustrations. All in all, then, "Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report" is a groundbreaking book that's still great and of major importance well after the ground's been broken, an indispensable volume in the personal library of anyone interested in Japanese Buddhism. As Myoe might say, just the way a book should be.

P.S. For later books influenced by this title and continuing its approach, you may want to check out Re-Visioning "Kamakura" Buddhism (Studies in East Asian Buddhism, 11) and Jokei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan.