Perhaps the most striking—and for some, confusing or troubling—aspect of Japanese Buddhism, from the perspective of the rest of the Buddhist community, is the presence of a married clergy. Although married clerics are to be found elsewhere in the Buddhist world, such as in Nepal or South Korea, nowhere are they so ubiquitous as in Japan.
The fascinating story of how this came to be is the subject of Professor Richard M. Jaffe’s Neither Monk Nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism (2001; 2011). It was first published by Princeton University Press, and another paperback was released by University of Hawaiʻi Press. The work is an academic text from an esteemed scholar of Buddhism, although this should not deter laypeople interested in reading it. The work is accessibly written, and does not overwhelm the reader with technical jargon or an overabundance of citations, which is not to say that it is not academically rigorous.
That said, the work does presume some basic knowledge of Japanese Buddhism—principally of its sectarian landscape—and early modern Japanese history. A reader who does not know what the differences between Nichiren, Jodo and Zen are, or what exactly the Meiji Restoration was, may soon be driven to consult AI or Wikipedia.
Although the book is ostensibly about clerical marriage, it addresses the much broader question of Japanese clerics not following the various precepts that typically are expected of the Buddhist clergy. These include refraining from consuming meat and alcohol, shaving their heads, wearing monastic robes, not handling money, and renouncing their birth names, among many other things. By Jaffe’s own admission these various issues are tightly interconnected, and indeed the Japanese term that serves as a shorthand for clerics being married, nikujiki saitai, refers literally to “eating meat and clerical marriage.”
Although the controversies documented by the book focus on the issue of marriage, the non-observance of the other precepts—particularly that against eating meat—are also discussed in the book and the work is richer for it. Indeed, one wishes there were more coverage in the book of the debates around meat and alcohol.
The monograph comprises 10 chapters. The first serves as an introduction while the second covers the premodern precedent for nikujiki saitai in Japan. What the unfamiliar reader might not know is that nikujiki saitai as a generalized feature of the Japanese clergy is a modern phenomenon. Modernity in Japan began not gradually as in the West, but with a bang with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. This “restoration” was in fact a revolution; a very intentional and ultimately successful attempt to modernize Japan as rapidly as possible so as to avoid Western domination.
Prior to this revolution, only two sects of Japanese Buddhism practiced nikujiki saitai: Jodo Shinshu and Shugendo. Indeed, the membership of the first of these during the Edo period—the era immediately preceding the Meiji Restoration—accounted for two thirds of Japan’s population. In fact, nikujiki saitai was a term coined by the Jodo Shinshu clergy to describe their peculiar non-observance of the precepts on marriage and meat-eating. The title of Prof. Jaffe’s book is actually a quotation from Shinran Shonin, the founder of Jodo Shinshu.
However, the rest of Japan’s many Buddhist sects did require celibacy and vegetarianism of its monks.
Despite this, covert marriage—as well as meat and alcohol consumption—were not unknown. The evidence regarding just how widely such illicit behavior was practiced is carefully considered by Jaffe. An important feature of the Edo period, according to Jaffe, was that the Japanese government actually required monks to abide by precepts by law. Only Jodo Shinshu and Shugendo clerics were exempt, but even they were only excused from abiding by dietary and sexual restrictions. They were still required to shave their heads, wear monastic robes and renounce their secular names. Even here, the spiritual authorities applied regulations mitigating these violations of precepts. Jodo Shinshu clerics were permitted to marry, but were forbidden to visit prostitutes. They were allowed to eat meat, but hunting and fishing was prohibited. As Chapter 2 details, legal punishments for violating precepts became increasingly severe, ultimately culminating in execution. Chapter 3 details the pre-Meiji debates between Buddhist critics of Jodo Shinshu’s practice of nikujiki saitai and Jodo Shinshu’s defense thereof.
Chapters 4 and 5 detail the major policy shifts of the post-Meiji government that would ultimately lead to the widespread adoption of nikujiki saitai. The first of these, to which Chapter 4 is devoted, was the new Household Registration System. This law required that monastics be registered, under their birth names, with a household—as opposed to with a temple. Consequently, they would be subject to the draft. The import of this law was that monks were no longer “home leavers,” at least in the eyes of the law. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the Nikujiki Saitai Law of 1872, which repealed the legal punishments for violating precepts. This was interpreted by much of the clergy as royal permission, or even a directive to, get married and eat meat.
Chapters 6 and 7 detail the considerable clerical resistance to the legalization of nikujiki saitai. Chapter 6 surveys the doctrinal reaffirmations of the importance of precepts written in the wake of the legalization, and Chapter 7 the sustained campaign to repeal the legalization. Chapter 8 is dedicated entirely to an examination of the thought of Tanaka Chigaku. Tanaka was a Nichiren sect cleric who founded what he called “Nichirenism,” an ultranationalist reinterpretation of—some would say deviation from—traditional Nichiren Buddhism.
Tanaka is significant for this study because he was the first Japanese Buddhist cleric to write extensively in favor of nikujiki saitai as a positive good, where even Jodo Shinshu thinkers had only defended it as an accommodation to the times and human weakness. Chapter 9 describes how nikujiki saitai finally became widely accepted not because of any modification of doctrine, but because of practical reality of its widespread practice.
Finally, Chapter 10 provides an overview of contemporary—at the time of the book’s writing—attitudes towards nikujiki saitai among Japanese Buddhists. By the conclusion, Prof. Jaffe demonstrates that today—Jodo Shinshu and Shugendo aside—Japanese Buddhism is characterized by an abiding tension between a doctrinal commitment to precepts and the actual reality of their institutionalized violation.
Jaffe’s monograph is, on the whole, a superb and focused work that leaves the reader with a clear understanding of the debates and dynamics in the period under consideration. In the way of criticism this review can only offer one, somewhat general, criticism and a second more minor one. Jaffe’s analytical approach is somewhat marred by a cynicism regarding motivations that is, admittedly, widespread in academia generally, and not only in the study of religion. On page 29 the decrees of Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi are described as having “been motivated at least partially by religious concerns.” Jaffe treats Tsunayoshi’s motivations here as an exception to the norm, where most Tokugawa enforcement of precepts was merely motivated by a desire to control the clergy for secular reasons.
Jaffe’s approach on this point is informed by a modern belief, most clearly expressed in Nietzsche and Marx, that humans are fundamentally motivated by selfish desires; for wealth or power. For this perspective, sincere religious piety as a motivation is an anomaly. This prejudice is also displayed when he suggests that pre-Meiji critiques of Jodo Shinshu’s practice of nikujiki saitai was motivated by jealousy. Would piety not be a more obvious explanation for the behavior in both cases? Similarly, Jaffe says that the various sects ultimately conceded a de facto recognition of nikujiki saitai out of “embarrassment” over the suffering caused to clerics’ wives and children. Is this change of heart not more easily explained, and more congruently with a Buddhist outlook, by reference to compassion?
In addition to this we can add the more minor criticism that Jaffe’s use of the word “state” to describe Japan’s pre-Meiji polity is anachronistic. This is, however, more forgivable. It is a technical point, and Jaffe’s field is, admittedly, Buddhism and not political theory.
Aside from these criticisms, as was stated above, one wishes several issues touched on in the book were expanded further, although this would go beyond the focus of the volume. A foremost example is the monk Shaku Unsho of the Shingon sect. Unsho does get an extended treatment in the book, but really this monk deserves an entire monograph dedicated to him alone. One cannot help but feel moved by admiration for this venerable monastic who cleaved so unwaveringly to Buddhist tradition in the face of modernity. He refused to adopt a secular name, strictly adhered to all 250 precepts and even tirelessly defended positions that many at the time and today see as indefensible, such as a Mount Sumeru centered cosmology and reinstating the ban on women entering Mt. Koya. Unsho’s reasoning for these controversial positions is barely touched on, and would make for fascinating reading.
Two final observations before concluding this review: Firstly, Jaffe briefly touches on the idea among opponents of the legalization of nikujiki saitai like Unsho that the violent persecution of Buddhism in the early Meiji period was a kind of karmic retribution for monks’ laxity in following precepts. This immediately brings to mind Catholic thinker Joseph de Maistre’s notion that the suffering inflicted on the French by Robespierre after the French Revolution was God’s punishment for the sin of regicide. It also recalls the widespread Islamic notion that the destruction wrought on the Muslim world by Genghis Khan was a divine punishment for the degeneracy of the Muslims. This is what earned Genghis Khan the epithet “the Scourge of Allah.” This may point to an unexamined parallel between (Japanese) Buddhist thought and that of the Abrahamic religions which deserves attention in some future work.
The second, and final, comment to be made is this: although Jaffe states that the practice of nikujiki saitai remains in tension with sectarian doctrine, it is worth noting that he repeatedly observes that the explanations clerics offer for nikujiki saitai often make recourse to the idea that we live in the mappo (the Dharma Ending Age). This concept is that as we become ever remoter in time from Shakyamuni Buddha and his beneficent spiritual influence, the capacity of beings to adhere by precepts becomes ever weaker. This argument, observes Jaffe, is invoked even by clerics from sects in whose doctrines mappo has not traditionally figured prominently, like Soto Zen. It is, however, precisely the formal doctrinal justification of nikujiki saitai in Jodo Shinshu.
I took interest in Jaffe’s work because of my involvement in Jodo Shinshu and my curiosity about the doctrinal justifications amongst other Japanese Buddhist sects for their practice of nikujiki saitai. When I asked a non-Jodo Shinshu cleric about this once, he commented that “All Japanese priests are followers of Shinran Shonin now.” Jaffe’s book may suggest that this is, to an extent, true not only in a practical but a doctrinal sense.
See more
Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism (Princeton University Press)
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