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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
Kaidou wo yuku Vol 34 Daitokuji.
Previous trip was to the Tottori region, which is steeped in ancient culture, including Shirouto Beach, known for the myth of the “White Hare of Inaba,” and places associated with Ōtomo no Yakamochi, a Manyo (Japanese classical poetry) poet. This trip will focus on Daitokuji Temple in Murasaki, Kita-ku, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture, as described in “Mahayana Buddhism, Nirvana Sutra, and Zen Teachings” and “The Zen Way of Life” among others.
Daitokuji Temple is located in the city of Murasaki in Kyoto. The temple is located in a town called Murasaki, which literally means a field where purple grass grows. In ancient times, the color purple was considered the noblest color, and the grass from which the dye for this color is extracted was purple grass.
In the case of Zen temples in Kyoto, the Kyoto Gozan (five mountains) were established in the Muromachi period (1336-1573) as corresponding to “Rinzai Zen and the Kamakura Gozan (five mountains)” with Kenchoji (Kamakura) and Nanzenji (Kyoto) in first place, Engakuji (Kamakura) and Tenryuji (Kyoto) in second place, Jufukuji (Kamakura) in third place, Keninji (Kyoto) in fourth place, and Tofukuji (Kyoto) in fifth place, with Jochiji （The fifth is Jochi-ji Temple (Kamakura).
The head temple of Rinzai Zen in Kyoto is Kenninji Temple, which was founded at the behest of Minamoto no Yorike, the second shogun of Kamakura, and was founded by Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai sect in Japan, as described in “Rinzai Zen and the Kamakura Gozan (five mountains)“. It was founded by Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Local people in Kyoto call it Kennetsu-san, and it is also the place where Eisai first brought tea seeds from the Song Dynasty in China to spread tea, so people sometimes say, “This was Kennetsu-san’s tea farm.
The next most prominent temple is Nanzenji. It is located at the western foot of Mt. Daimonji, one of the peaks of Mt. The temple has a gate famous in the play Ishikawa Goemon (Ishikawa Goemon looks at the cherry blossoms in full bloom and says, “Is this a superb view?
Nanzenji Temple is also a Zen garden that began to be built from the end of the Kamakura period (1185-1333). The chief of Nanzenji, who is the attendant of Nanzenji, was widely sought after on a nationwide scale, and many famous monks were known for their knowledge from Kamakura to Muromachi periods. It is also famous for its magnificent autumn foliage.
Tenryuji Temple is located in Sagano, away from the center of Kyoto. It was built by Ashikaga Takauji, who had established the Northern Dynasty, to pray for the repose of the soul of Emperor Godaigo of the Southern Dynasty, and became a government-run temple in the Muromachi Period. For this reason, it was called “Tenryuji no Samurai Zuraku. The construction of the temple was financed by the money obtained from the official trade with China, called “Tenryuji-bune. Tenryuji-bune is historically important as a trading ship that opened trade with the Yuan, which had been interrupted by the Yuan Pirates in Kamakura.
Tofukuji Temple is located at the southern foot of Higashiyama, east of Kyoto Station. It was founded in the Kamakura period (13th century) and unusually became a major Zen temple under the protection of the nobility. The temple is said to have been built in the 14th and 5th centuries, and its three gates, each with a gabled roof, are particularly impressive.
There are three bridges, Bastoreum Bridge, Tongtengyo Bridge, and Gagun Bridge, built in the Nanbokucho Period and replaced by a donation from Toyotomi Hideyori, which create a beautiful sight during the season of autumn leaves.
The characteristic of Daitokuji compared to these temples is that it transcends from the worldly world as much as possible in order to preserve the strict Zen style that has existed since the time of Daitonokushi. The only part of the temple that was related to the secular power was through tea, and since Murata juko and Sen no Rikyu, it has been known as the head temple of the tea ceremony and was called “Chazura of Daitokuji Temple“.
The first person to appear in the story mentioned about Daitokuji Temple will be Shinkichi Takahashi, a Dadaist and poet of the Taisho and Showa periods. Shinkichi was called a Dadaist poet as a young man, and he later combined Rinzai Zen with poetry.
Dadaism, also known as Dadaism, Dadaism, or simply Dada, was an artistic ideology and movement that took place in the mid-1910s. It was rooted in resistance to World War I and the nihilism that ensued, and was characterized by ideas of negation, attack, and destruction of the established order and common sense. A well-known example is Marcel Duchamp‘s Fountain.
The meta-literature of James Joyce, described in “Artificial Anencephaly Speaks of Zen and Buddhabuddhism” also falls into this category.
In contrast, Shinkichi’s later poems are fully expressive of the world of Zen, as follows.
Say I’m away, say there’s no one here, I’ll be back in 500 million years.
This poem is an apt description of the empty space or the true nature of Zen.
Shinkichi also mentions a similar phrase by Daiton Kokushi, “Okuko-shuyu,” which means “a hundred million kalpa. This is because both kalpa (an infinitely long time) and suyu (a moment in time) are ambivalent, and when two people are facing each other, if they are both dissolved in the Dharma (truth), it is as if they are always meeting, no matter how far apart they are (in the Buddhist world, the living Buddha died 2,000 years ago, but he is alive as the truth, and he is alive now. In the Buddhist world, the living Buddha died 2,000 years ago, but he is still alive as the Truth, and if a person living in this life can attain the Truth, he will not be separated from the Buddha for a while).
Among the monks who left Daitokuji Temple was Ikkyu Sojun.
For Japanese people of a certain age or older, Ikkyu is famous for his cartoon “Ikkyu-san,” but the actual Ikkyu Sojun did not have the cute face and personality of the cartoon, but was a rather peculiar character, as described above. The story of Ikkyu first became famous as we know it today through the four-volume “Ikkyu Jikan (tales of Ikkyu)” published in the early Edo period by an unknown author, and he was loved as the hero of Tonchi-Banashi (stories about a famous Japanese poet).
His mother was also from a noble family, but at the age of six he entered a temple, and at the age of thirteen he attended the aforementioned Kenninji Temple, but when he heard the monks there talking about how prestigious he was, he fell into a state of pessimism and tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the lake in anxiety and despair. It is said that he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the lake in anxiety and despair.
He then studied under Hwaso Sodong, who was famous for his severe Zen style, and was given the Buddhist title of Ikkyu after realizing the idea that Hwaso had given him. When he was twenty-seven years old, he was sitting in zazen meditation when he heard the crows singing on the lake in the dark. In response, Ikkyu immediately replied, “I am an arhat, that is enough for me,” and Hwaso recognized Ikkyu’s great enlightenment.
Thereafter, Ikkyu called himself the “Great Monster of Fuden,” and even went on to love women and boys, leading a life of unrestrained freedom before becoming the abbot of Daitokuji Temple. In addition, he deepened his contacts with people at the forefront of the culture of the time, such as Konparu Zenchiku, the founder of Noh, Zeami, and Murata Jukō, the founder of the tea ceremony, and it is said that he strongly influenced them to elevate their art to an ideological and symbolic status during the rise of the medieval art form.
In his later years, Ikkyu lived at Shoen-an in Kyotanabe, Kyoto, where he died of malaria at the age of 87. It is said that his dying words were “I do not want to die.
In the next article, the trip will be to Fukagawa and Honjo neighborhoods to visit people who lived in the Edo period from steeplejacks, raftsmen of Kiba, rakugo, and so on.
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