I want to write about the two movies I watched on the flight
back to the U.S. from Japan. Their contrast could be a metaphor for where Jodo
Shinshu stands in the midst of Western Buddhism.
During my dinner, I watched the 2003 Tom Cruise movie “The
Last Samurai.” I often refer to that movie when I lecture on Manshi Kiyozawa
and the Meiji Era, admitting that I’ve only seen bits of it on TV. So I was
glad to finally have a chance to watch it.
It’s an absorbing film to watch but the story reminded me of
the old TV miniseries “Shogun” with Richard Chamberlain. In the movie there was
protest against the rising military-industrial complex with the samurai
representing the more compassionate way of life. As embodied by Ken Watanabe’s
character Katsumoto, the ideal samurai is an alluring hero, devoted to Zen
serenity and disciplined code of honor.
After I slept some, I wanted to see the Tora-san movie
before the flight ended. Some might dismiss the long-running series of Tora-san
movies as lightweight slapstick comedies, but I always felt the ones I’ve seen
were each well-crafted and somehow there’s a serious spirituality informing the
formulaic plots.
The film I watched was the 1982 “Tora-san the Expert” (see
poster above). Early on in the film, Tora-san attends a Buddhist funeral. When
Tora-san is invited to offer incense, he ceremoniously whips out his scrunched
up koden (condolence money) envelope and kneels down in a strict gassho (palms
together) pose. Then instead of reaching into the granulated incense holder
section of the oblong container before the altar, he mistakenly puts his
fingers in the section with the burning incense. With a yelp of pain, he tosses
up the burning incense grains he had pinched and they fall down into the
neckline of the priest. The priest then yells in pain and a bustle of people
are trying to help him by pulling off the layers of his formal robes, stripping
him down to his underwear.
That scene is exactly what Jodo Shinshu teaches us – that we
are bonbu, foolish ordinary beings, who pompously try to look wise and moral but
end up screwing things up for ourselves and others. Yet as much trouble
Tora-san gets himself into and causes for others, in the end he is embraced by
everyone’s love, by the many lives (Amitayus) around him, particularly embodied
by his sister Sakura, who is the bodhisattva Kannon in an apron and slacks.
Those of us brought up in the West are like the Tom Cruise
character in “The Last Samurai” when we are drawn to the exotic surface of
Buddhism. “Yes, this is calmness, this is the honorable way to follow,” we
think and dream of being the gallant warrior conquering all our defilements and
attaining a “good death.” But as the Tom Cruise movie and all other depictions
of samurais show, the way of the warrior is really about glorifying one’s self
and one’s tribe and putting down everyone else.
In the Tora-san movies, despite the slapstick roughhousing
and flying insults, the plots are really about getting people together. No one
is violently assaulted out of spite or for revenge. Instead there’s the comedy of
come-uppance – I can’t help identifying with the priest in that hilarious
scene. He covers himself up with shiny robes of authority but suddenly stung by
the burning grains of suffering, he’s hopping around with his shabby real self
exposed.
You don’t have to be Japanese to enjoy the Tora-san movies
but I can see those movies won’t appeal to Westerners who’d rather see Japan as
a samurai culture. (Ironically the director of the Tora-san series, Yoji
Yamada, won international acclaim with his samurai films.) But Tora-san movies
show the down-to-earth and caring aspects of modern-day Japan, just as Jodo
Shinshu brings us a get-real Buddhism, not a package of attractive but
unattainable fantasies.
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