In 784 the emperor Kammu relocated the seat of government to Nagaoka, a site to the north of Nara and slightly to the west of present-day Kyōto. This move was an attempt to escape the meddling dominance of the Buddhist clerics in Nara and thus to allow unfettered development of a centralized government. Nagaoka was marred by contention and assassination, however, rendering it an inauspicious location for the capital. Thus, in 794 a site to the east of Nagaoka on a plain sheltered on the west, north, and east by mountains and intersected by ample north-south rivers was judged appropriate by geomancers. Named Heian-kyō (“Capital of Peace and Tranquility”) and later known as Kyōto, this city was modeled on the grid pattern of the Tang Chinese capital at Chang’an. Heian-kyō remained the site of the imperial residence, if not the consistent seat of political power, until 1868.
For nearly four centuries Heian-kyō was the crucible for a remarkable florescence of Japanese art. Within a century after the move from Nara, political chaos in China caused the cessation of official embassies to the continent. Free from the overwhelming dominance of Chinese artistic models, Japanese culture, particularly literature and the visual arts, was able to evolve along independent lines and reflect national concerns. These developments were invigorated through dedicated aristocratic patronage of both religious art and a nascent secular art.
The Heian period can be subdivided into four political periods. From the founding of Heian-kyō until the mid-10th century was a period of relative imperial control aided by counselors from the Fujiwara clan. From the mid-10th through the mid-11th century the implementation of a regency system and intermarriage with the imperial line made the Fujiwara family de facto rulers of Japan. In the mid-11th century, an unanticipated break in the line of Fujiwara-produced emperors allowed the imperial line to experiment with a cloister government. A succession of emperors abdicated, leaving ceremonial and bureaucratic duties to a usually exceedingly junior heir, while continuing to pursue political and economic power from a headquarters separate from the court. This format was relatively successful in allowing the imperial line to concentrate on its economic well-being, if not overarching national interests. Finally, armed intramural conflict over imperial succession in the mid-12th century allowed Taira Kiyomori, warlord and ostensible peacekeeper, to usurp the imperial line.
Thus, while sometimes viewed nostalgically as an unbroken series of halcyon years during which courtly aestheticism produced the “classical” body of Japanese literature and art, the Heian period was in fact a time of ongoing political contention during which imperial attempts at centralization of government were consistently checked and ultimately defeated by powerful provincial warlords. In theory, all land and its revenue-producing capability was the property of the central government. In reality, outlying land managers, aristocrats, temples, and warlords accumulated landholdings unabated throughout the Heian period, ultimately crippling the economic power of the court. In the waning years of the 12th century, internal strife over succession and a scramble for what wealth remained in imperial hands forced the court to restore order with the assistance of the warrior class. This steady decline in aristocratic fortune and power was perceived by courtiers as an impending collapse of a natural and just order.
Literature and art of the period were thus often infused with nuances of sadness, melancholy, and regret. The consolations of Buddhism stressed the impermanence of life and served to reinforce for aristocratic believers the deeper meaning of readily apparent social developments. Indeed the shifting emphases found in Buddhist iconography during the Heian period are incomprehensible unless viewed in the context of doctrinal responses to social change. Most significant among these are the establishment of two Japanese schools of Esoteric Buddhism, Tendai and Shingon, in the early 9th century, the increasing appeal of Amidism in the 10th century, and, with the understanding that Buddhism entered a final millenarian era in the mid-11th century, a florescence of various iconography produced in the hopes of gaining religious merit.
Esoteric Buddhism
The court in Heian-kyō was justifiably wary of Buddhism, at least in any powerfully institutionalized form. Attempts by the Nara court to use Buddhism as a complicit pacifier in the pursuit of state goals had run afoul; excessive expenses incurred in erecting massive temples and commissioning appropriate iconography had effectively bankrupted the state treasury; and Buddhist attempts at political intrigue had nearly resulted in a religious dictatorship. Thus, in the configuration of the new capital, only two Buddhist temples were allowed within the boundaries of the city. Tō Temple and Sai Temple, located respectively at the east and west side of Rashomon, the southern gateway to Heian-kyō, were conceded space that was as far away as possible from the imperial palace and government offices in the north of the capital.
Dissatisfaction with the scholastic Buddhism of the Nara sects was also voiced by some clerics. An imperially approved embassy to China in 804 included the well-known monk Saichō and the lesser-known Kūkai. Saichō was already relatively close to the emperor Kammu, probably favoured because he had broken with the Nara sects and established a hermitage on Mount Hiei in the mountain range northeast of and overlooking Heian-kyō. The two monks were intent on the study and assimilation of current Chinese Buddhist thinking. Saichō studied the teachings of the Tiantai sect (Japanese: Tendai). Tiantai beliefs were an important synthesis of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, emphasizing the impermanence of all things, an ultimate reality beyond conceptualization, and a fundamental unity of things. Meditational practices were believed to lead to enlightenment. The Lotus Sutra (Japanese: Myōhō renge kyō) was regarded as the primary text of the sect. This early Mahayana sutra was structured into its canonical form in China in the early 5th century and thereafter adopted by Tiantai as the most appropriate expression of the sect’s universalist teachings. Saichō returned to Japan in 805 and petitioned the court to establish a Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei. His request was granted, but the emperor required Saichō to include some Esoteric practices in his Tendai system.
Forms of Tantric Buddhism had been introduced into China by Indian practitioners in the early 8th century. Heavily influenced by Hindu beliefs, prayer methods, and iconography, these so-called Esoteric Buddhist beliefs were still being assimilated by Chinese Buddhists during the 9th century. Kūkai devoted himself to the mastery of these relatively new beliefs under the Chinese master Huiguo. Returning to Japan in 806, more than a year after Saichō, Kūkai was welcomed as an Esoteric master. Through the force of his personality and the attraction of his teachings, he eclipsed Saichō in popularity. Saichō, who regarded Esoteric teachings as an aspect of the more inclusive Tendai tradition, studied with Kūkai, and they remained on good terms until disputes over doctrinal issues and a student led to the rupture of the relationship. Whatever particular differences are found between Tendai and Shingon, as Kūkai’s syncretic doctrine is called, the two schools are grouped under the central category of mikkyō, or Esoteric Buddhism. Neither belief system, as interpreted in Japan, rigorously emulated the Chinese versions; they were syntheses created by Saichō and Kūkai.
Esoteric Buddhism relied heavily on visualization in its praxis. The creation of an environment of worship was essential. The use of mandalas, expressed both in two dimensions as paintings and in three dimensions as ensembles of sculpture, invited the believer into a diagrammatic rendering of a spiritual cosmos. A central tenet of Esoteric teaching was the nonduality of the Buddha. Whatever the manifestations, the phenomenal and the transcendental are the same. The goal of spiritual practice was to unite what seemed to the uninitiated to be separate realms. Thus, one of the most important iconographic images was the ryōkai mandara (“mandala of the two worlds”), which consisted of two parts—the kongō-kai (“diamond world”) and the taizō-kai (“womb world”)—that organized the Buddhist divinities and their relationships in a prescribed gridlike configuration. The deities or spiritual entities portrayed in these paired paintings represent, in the kongō-kai, the realm of transcendent, clear enlightenment and, in the taizō-kai, the humane, compassionate aspects of the Buddha. It was the repetitive meditative practice of journey through and visceral assimilation of this symbolic, schematic cosmos that could lead the believer to an enlightenment of unity.
In 823 Kūkai was granted imperial permission to take over the leadership of Tō Temple (also known as Kyōōgokoku Temple), at Heian-kyō’s southern entrance. Images developed under his instruction probably included forerunners of the particular ryōkai mandara known as the Tō Temple mandala. Stylistically, these paintings reveal a shift from Tang painting style to a flatter, more decorative approach to image. Also in the sanctuary at Tō Temple is an important assemblage of sculpture that constitutes a three-dimensional mandala. In a tandem similar to the one effected in mandala painting, dual aspects of the single Buddha nature are portrayed. Bodhisattvas represent limitless compassion, while other assemblages portray yet another dimension of the central divinity, one that came to heightened prominence in Shingon practice, the fierce Myō-ō (Vidyaraja), or Kings of Bright Wisdom. These manifestations, perhaps best typified by Fudō Myō-ō (Acalanatha), are terrifying and uncompromising guides for the believer in the journey to enlightenment. To the unfamiliar eye, their appearance seems demonic, but their wrath is directed at the enemies of Buddhism. They extend to a more fantastic perceptual level the role of guardian general deities and offer a realistic assessment of the intensity of dedication needed for enlightenment.
In general, sculpture produced in the 9th and 10th centuries followed and developed from the techniques of the late Nara period. Many works were constructed using variations of the lacquered wood-core technique. The heightened mannerism and heavy, brooding quality noticeable in some late Nara works are found in abundance in the early Heian period. The great late 8th-century standing Yakushi figure housed at Jingo Temple north of Kyōto perhaps best typifies this style. Other fine examples can be found in Murō Temple, a well-known Esoteric sanctuary to the east of Nara. Stylistically, these works hearken back to a type of sandalwood sculpture that enjoyed popularity in India and in China. With occasional elaborations through the use of lacquer, these powerful works were essentially carved from large, single pieces of wood, a technique called ichiboku-zukuri. It has been suggested that Buddhist reformers planned the contrast between the abrupt, extreme force of these sculptures and the aristocratic elegance of Nara period works. Created unabashedly of wood, they represented the elemental force of the forests that surrounded the urban centres.
Because Esoteric practitioners were initially relegated to the mountainous regions outside the capital, the layouts and architecture of their temples varied greatly from the flatland architecture of the Nara temples and, thus, from the symmetrical Chinese styles. Placement and structure were adapted to rugged terrain, creating unique solutions. Ironically, this relative individualism of style was a subtle symbolic disruption of Nara period attempts at a hierarchically dispersed power through visual means.
The highly syncretic nature of Esoteric Buddhism considered the noumenal aspects of indigenous religions as emanations or manifestations of the Buddha essence. Rather than confronting and competing with native deities and belief systems, mikkyō readily adapted and included their features. Magico-religious ritual, along with an emphasis on purificatory and exorcistic rites, reflected and embroidered upon certain functions of existing native popular religiosity, further enhancing the appeal of Esoteric Buddhism with Japanese aristocrats. For example, Shintō, the primary indigenous religion, which had developed from ancient animistic cults, had a very limited iconographic program. Until the Heian period, Shintō deities (kami) were largely considered to be unseen, often formless spirits that inhabited or personified such natural phenomena as the sky, mountains, and waterfalls. Esoteric Buddhism, however, encouraged the inclusion of Shintō deities in a kind of subordinate tandem with Buddhist deities in a variety of visual representations. This incorporation of Shintō kami not only served as an acknowledgment of indigenous beliefs but also increased the thematic scope of Buddhist art, particularly landscape painting. The Shintō belief that topography and its included features of rivers, trees, and distinctive rock formations were the abodes of the spirits meant that a sacred formation of mountains could be interpreted as a topographic mandala. Rendering these forms in painting expanded the iconographer’s repertoire beyond the production of anthropomorphized deities. This theory in which kami are viewed as temporary manifestations of the essential Buddha, allowing each Shintō deity to be identified with a Buddhist one, is known as honji-suijaku. It gained considerable acceptance by the 10th century and became well established in the Kamakura period.
Esoteric Buddhism offered skittish Japanese aristocrats a compatible belief system that seemed to pose no challenges to the tentatively established political order in Heian-kyō. Rituals for the protection and prosperity of the nation were devised by Kūkai. Indeed, the formal name for Tō Temple, Kyōōgokoku, may be translated as “Temple for the Defense of the Nation by the King of Doctrines.” Although Kūkai and Saichō were initially kept at a distance in remote mountain monasteries, the government granted independent ordination authority to the Tendai sect in 822, and in 823 Kūkai was appointed by the emperor to head Tō Temple at the capital’s southern gate. These two developments marked the eclipse of Nara Buddhist power. Thus, important currents of continental Buddhism, an embracing universalist creed as expressed in Tendai, and the pragmatic, viscerally engaging ritual of Shingon revitalized Japanese attraction to the faith.