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Title: Uchiyama Gudō Author: Daizen Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: Japan, Japanese Anarchists, Zen, biography, anarchist biography Source: Retrieved on 2020-08-19 from https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/UchiyamaGudo.html Notes: Chapter 3 in: Zen at War by Brian (Daizen) A. Victoria. New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1997. pp. 66–73.
By the time of the Russo-Japanese War it is fair to say that the
clerical and scholarly leaders of Japan’s traditional Buddhist sects
were firm supporters of the government’s policies, especially its war
policies. But this does not mean that there was no Buddhist resistance
to the government. There were, in fact, a few Buddhist priests who not
only opposed what they believed to be their government’s increasingly
repressive and imperialistic policies but actually sacrificed their
lives in the process of doing so.
This chapter will focus on one such group of “radical” Buddhists.
Because they were quite small in number, it might be argued that this
attention is unwarranted, but few as they were, they had a significant
impact on the Buddhist leaders of their time, especially as those
leaders continued to formulate their individual and collective responses
to Japan’s military expansion abroad and political repression at home.
It is the High Treason Incident (Taigyaku Jiken) of 1910 that first
brought to light the existence of politically radical Buddhist priests.
Twenty-six people were arrested for their alleged participation in a
conspiracy to kill one or more members of the imperial family. Four of
those arrested were Buddhist priests: Shin sect priest Takagi Kemmyō
(1864–1914), a second Shin priest, Sasaki Dōgen; a Rinzai Zen sect
priest, Mineo Setsudō (1885–1919); and Sōtō Zen sect priest Uchiyama
Gudō (1874–1911). All of the defendants were convicted and twenty-four
were condemned to death, though later twelve had their sentences
commuted to life imprisonment. Uchiyama Gudō was the only priest to be
executed. The remaining three Buddhist priests were among those with
commuted sentences, though they also all eventually died in prison,
Takagi Kemrnyō at his own hand.
As the execution of Gudō indicates, the authorities clearly considered
him to be the worst of the four priests. This is not surprising, for of
all the priests Gudō was the most actively involved in the movement that
the Meiji government found so reprehensible. Gudō also left behind the
most written material substantiating his beliefs. This said, even Gudō’s
writings contain little that directly addresses the relationship he saw
between the Law of the Buddha and his own social activism. This is not
surprising, since neither he nor the other three priests claimed to be
Buddhist scholars or possess special expertise in either Buddhist
doctrine or social, political, or economic theory. They might best be
described as social activists who, based on their Buddhist faith, were
attempting to alleviate the mental and physical suffering they saw
around them, especially in Japan’s impoverished rural areas.
The Japanese government attempted to turn all of the accused in the High
Treason Incident into nonpersons, even before their convictions. The
court proceedings were conducted behind closed doors, and no press
coverage was allowed, because, the government argued, would be
“prejudicial to peace and order, or to the maintenance of public
morality.” Gudō’s temple of Rinsenji was raided and all his writings and
correspondence removed as evidence, never to surface again. Only a few
statues of Buddha Shakyamuni that Gudō had carved and presented to his
parishioners were left behind. Even his death did not satisfy the
authorities. They would not allow his name to appear on his gravemarker
at Rinsenji. In fact, when one of his parishioners subsequently dared to
leave some flowers on his grave, the police instituted a search
throughout the village of Ōhiradai, located in the mountainous Hakone
district of Kanagawa Prefecture, to find the offender.
Uchiyama was born on May 17, 1874, in the village of Ojiya in Niigata
Prefecture. His childhood name was Keikichi, and he was the oldest of
four children. Gudō’s father, Naokichi, made his living as a woodworker
and carver, specializing in Buddhist statues, family altars, and
associated implements. As a child, Gudō learned this trade from his
father, and, as noted above, later carved Buddhist statues that he
presented to his parishioners at Rinsenji. Even today these simple yet
serene nine-inch images of Buddha Shakyamuni are highly valued among the
villagers.
Gudō was an able student, earning an award for academic excellence from
the prefectural governor. Equally important, he was introduced at an
early age to the thinking of a mid-seventeenth-century social reformer
by the name of Sakura Sōgorō, Discussions of such issues as the need for
land reform to eliminate rural poverty and the enfranchisement of women
were an integral part of his childhood education.
Gudō lost his father at the age of sixteen. In his book Buddhists Who
Sought Change (Henkaku o Motometa Bukkyōsha), Inagaki Masami identifies
this early death as a significant factor in Gudō’s later decision to
enter the Buddhist priesthood. On April 12, 1897, Gudō underwent
ordination in the Sōtō Zen sect as a disciple of Sakazume Kōjū, abbot of
Hōzōji temple.
Over the following seven years, Gudō studed Buddhism academically and
trained as a Zen novice in a number of Sōtō Zen temples, chief among
them the monastery of Kaizōji in Kanagawa Prefecture. On October 10,
1901, Gudō became the Dharma successor of Miyagi Jitsumyō, abbot of
Rinsenji. Three years later, on February 9, 1904, Gudō succeeded his
master as Rinsenji’s abbot, thus bringing to an end his formal Zen
training.
The temple Gudō succeeded to was exceedingly humble. For one thing, it
had no more than forty impoverished families to provide financial
support. Aside from a small thatched-roof main hall, its chief assets
were two trees, one a persimmon and the other a chestnut, located on the
temple grounds. Village tradition states that every autumn Gudō would
invite the villagers to the temple to divide the harvest from these
trees equally among themselves.
In his discussions with village youth, Gudō once again directed his
attention to the problem of rural poverty. He identified the root of the
problem as being an unjust economic system, one in which a few
individuals owned the bulk of the land and the majority of the rural
population was reduced to tenancy. Gudō became an outspoken advocate of
land reform, something that would eventually come to pass, but not until
many years later, after Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War.
What is significant about Gudō’s advocacy of land reform is that he
based his position on his understanding of Buddhism. In discussing this
period of his life in the minutes of his later pretrial hearing, Gudō
stated:
The year was 1904 ... When I reflected on the way in which priests of my
sect had undergone religious training in China in former times, I
realized how beautiful it had been. Here were two or three hundred
persons who, living in one place at one time, shared a communal
lifestyle in which they wore the same clothing and ate the same food. I
held to the ideal that if this could be applied to one village, one
county, or one country, what an extremely good system would be created.
The traditional Buddhist organizational structure, the Sangha, with its
communal lifestyle and lack of personal property, was the model from
which Gudō drew his inspiration for social reform.
It was also in 1904 that Gudō had his first significant contact with a
much broader, secular social reform movement, anarcho-socialism. Gudō
appears to have first come into contact with this movement as a reader
of a newly established newspaper, the Heimin Shimbun or “The Commoner’s
News.” By the early months of 1904 this newspaper had established itself
as Tokyo’s leading advocate of the socialist cause, and Gudō later
expressed its impact on him: “When I began reading the Heimin Shimbun at
that time [1904], I realized that its principles were identical with my
own and therefore I became an anarcho-socialist.”
Gudō was not content, however, to be a mere reader of this newspaper. In
its January 17, 1904 edition, he wrote:
As a propagator of Buddhism I teach that “all sentient beings have the
Buddha-nature” and that “within the Dharma there is equality, with
neither superior nor inferior.” Furthermore, I teach that “all sentient
beings are my children.” Having taken these golden words as the basis of
my faith, I discovered that they are in complete agreement with the
principles of socialism. It was thus that I became a believer in
socialism.
The phrase, “all sentient beings have the Buddha-nature” is one of the
central themes of the Lotus Sutra, as is the phrase, “all sentient
beings are my children.” The phrase, “within the Dharma there is
equality, with neither superior or inferior” comes from the Diamond
Sutra. Regrettably, this brief statement is the only surviving example
of Gudō’s understanding of the social implications of the Law of the
Buddha.
Even this brief statement, however, puts Gudō in direct opposition to
Meiji Buddhist leaders such as Shimaji Mokurai. In his 1879 essay
entitled “Differentiation [Is] Equality” (Sabetsu Byōdō), Shimaji
maintained that distinctions in social standing and wealth were as
permanent as differences in age, sex, and language. Socialism, in his
view, was flawed because it emphasized only social and economic
equality. That is to say, socialists failed to understand the basic
Buddhist teaching that “differentiation is identical with equality”
(sabetsu soku byōdō). Or phrased somewhat more philosophically,
socialists confused the temporal world of form (yūkei) with the
transcendent world of formlessness (mukei), failing to recognize the
underlying unity of the two. It was Shimaji’s position that would gain
acceptance within institutional Buddhism.
Of the eighty-two persons who eventually expressed their allegiance to
socialism in the pages of the Heimin Shimbun, only Gudō and one other,
Kōtoku Shūsui, were later directly implicated in the High Treason
Incident. This suggests that Gudō, like Kōtoku, was a leading figure in
the nascent socialist movement, but that was not the case. Gudō’s
relative physical isolation in the Hakone mountains limited the role
that he was able to play. He might best be described as a rural social
activist or reformer who, in his own mind at least, based his thought
and actions on his Buddhist faith.
Ironically, it was Gudō’s relative physical isolation that eventually
thrust him into the historical limelight. The Japanese government and
police devoted ever-increasing efforts to suppressing the growing
socialist movement with its pacifist platform. This suppression took the
form of repeated bannings of politically offensive issues of the Heimin
Shimbun; arresting, fining, and ultimately jailing the newspaper’s
editors; and forcefully breaking up socialist meetings and rallies. With
two of its editors (including Kōtoku Shūsui) on their way to jail for
alleged violations of the press laws, the Heimin Shimbun printed its
last issue on January 25, 1905. When the newspaper closed down, the
socialist antiwar movement within Japan virtually came to an end,
thereby enabling the government to prosecute its war with Czarist Russia
free of domestic opposition.
In September 1905 the war with Russia ended with a Japanese victory. The
victory was, however, a costly one, both in terms of the government’s
expenditures on armaments and the high number of military casualities.
When it became general knowledge that the peace terms did not include a
war indemnity, riots broke out in Tokyo and martial law was immediately
imposed. In this atmosphere of significant social unrest, the government
pursued its suppression of socialism even more relentlessly than before.
On February 22, 1907, the Socialist Party was banned and socialists were
harassed, beaten, and jailed. By 1908, unable to hold public meetings or
publish either newspapers or magazines, what was left of the socialist
movement went underground. Prohibited from advocating socialism openly,
some members of the movement came to believe that the only way they
could succeed was to take some form of “direct action” against the
imperial house itself.
It was these circumstances which prompted Gudō to visit Tokyo in
September 1908. He not only met with Kōtoku Shūsui but purchased the
necessary equipment to set up a secret press within his own temple. The
printing equipment itself was hidden in the storage area located
underneath and to the rear of the Buddha altar in the Main Hall. Gudō
used this press to turn out popular socialist tracts and pamphlets, and
he also wrote and published his own materials, including his best-known
work, In Commemoration of Imprisonment: Anarcho-Communism-Revolution
(入獄紀念・無政 府共產・革命 Nyūgoku Kinen-Museifu Kyōsan-Kakumei).
That work is interesting for a number of reasons. It contains a pointed
critique of the then prevalent understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of
karma. After beginning with a lament for the poverty of tenant farmers,
Gudō writes:
Is this [your poverty] the result, as Buddhists maintain, of the
retribution due you because of your evil deeds in the past? Listen,
friends, if, having now entered the twentieth century, you were to be
deceived by superstitions like this, you would still be [no better than]
oxen or horses. Would this please you?
Gudō clearly understood that the Buddhist doctrine of karma was being
interpreted as providing the justification for social and economic
inequality. That is to say, if tenant farmers were impoverished, they
had no one to blame but themselves and their own past actions. Shaku
Sōen was typical of the Buddhist leaders who advocated this
interpretation: “We are born in the world of variety; some are poor and
unfortunate, others are wealthy and happy. This state of variety will be
repeated again and again in our future lives. But to whom shall we
complain of our misery? To none but ourselves!” Gudō was also critical
of certain aspects of Buddhist practice. For example, on May 30, 1904,
he wrote a letter of protest to the abbot of Jōsenji, Orihashi Daikō. In
this letter he requested that the Sōtō sect cleanse itself of the
practice of selling temple abbotships to the highest bidder. When Daikō
refused to endorse his position, Gudō expressed his determination to
push for this reform on his own.
The real significance of In Commemoration of Imprisonment lay not in its
critique of certain aspects of Buddhist doctrine, but rather in its
blistering rejection of the heart and soul of the Meiji political
system, the emperor system. It was, in fact, this rejection of Japan’s
imperial system that, more than any other factor, led to Gudō’s
subsequent arrest, imprisonment, and execution. He wrote:
There are three leeches who suck the people’s blood: the emperor, the
rich, and the big landowners ... The big boss of the present government,
the emperor, is not the son of the gods as your primary school teachers
and others would have you believe. The ancestors of the present emperor
came forth from one corner of Kyushu, killing and robbing people as they
went. They then destroyed their fellow thieves, Nagasune-hiko and others
... It should be readily obvious that the emperor is not a god if you
but think about it for a moment.
When it is said that [the imperial dynasty] has continued for 2,500
years, it may seem as if [the present emperor] is divine, but down
through the ages the emperors have been tormented by foreign opponents
and, domestically, treated as puppets by their own vassals ... Although
these are well-known facts, university professors and their students,
weaklings that they are, refuse to either say or write anything about
it. Instead, they attempt to deceive both others and themselves, knowing
all along the whole thing is a pack of lies.
Gudō printed between one and two thousand copies of the tract containing
the foregoing passages and mailed them to former readers of the Heimin
Shimbun in small lots wrapped in plain paper. Its radical content,
especially its scathing denial of the emperor system, so frightened some
recipients that they immediately burned all the copies they received.
Others, however, were so excited by its contents that they rushed out
onto to the streets to distribute the tract to passersby. It was not
long, predictably, before copies fell into the hands of the police. This
in turn sparked an immediate nationwide search for the tract’s author
and the place and means of its production.
On May 24, 1909, Gudō was arrested on his way back to Rinsenji after
having finished a month of Zen training at Eiheiji, one of the Sōtō
sect’s two chief monasteries. He was initially charged with violations
of the press and publications laws and, at first, believed he would
simply be fined and released. Upon searching Rinsenji, however, the
police claimed to have discovered a cache of explosive materials
including twelve sticks of dynamite, four packages of explosive gelatin,
and a supply of fuses.
One contemporary commentator, Kashiwagi Ryūhō, claims, though without
presenting any proof, that the charges relating to the possession of
explosive materials were false. In an article entitled “Martyr Uchiyama
Gudō” he states: “The dynamite had been stored at his temple in
conjunction with the construction of the Hakone mountain railroad. It
had nothing to do with Gudō.” Nevertheless, Gudō was convicted of both
charges and initially sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment. On
appeal, his sentence was reduced to seven years.
On July 6, 1909, even before his conviction, officials of the Sōtō Zen
sect moved to deprive Gudō of his abbotship at Rinsenji. Once he had
been convicted, they quickly moved on to yet more serious action. On
June 21, 1910, Gudō was deprived of his status as a Sōtō Zen priest,
though he continued to regard himself as one until the end of his life.
On May 25, 1910, two socialists, Miyashita Takichi and Niimura Tadao,
were arrested in Nagano Prefecture after police searched their quarters
and found chemicals used to make explosives. In the minds of the police
this was concrete evidence of the existence of a wider conspiracy
against the imperial house. This in turn led to Kōtoku Shūsui’s arrest a
week later, and the investigation and interrogation of hundreds of men
and women in the following months. By this time Gudō had already been in
prison for a full year, yet this did not prevent him from becoming a
suspect once again.
At the conclusion of its investigation, charges were brought against
twenty-six persons, including Gudō and one woman, Kanno Sugako. If
convicted under Article 73, “Crimes Against the Throne,” of the new
criminal code, all of them could face the death penalty. Under Article
73 prosecutors had only to show that the defendants “intended” to bring
harm to members of the imperial house, not that they had acted on this
intent in any concrete way. Ideas, not facts, were on trial.
The trial commenced in Tokyo on December 10, 1910. Kanno Sugako not only
admitted in court that she had been involved in the alleged conpiracy
but indicated how many others had been involved as well. Upon being
asked by the presiding judge, Tsuru Jōichirō, if she wished to make a
final statement, Kanno responded:
From the outset I knew that our plan would not succeed if we let a lot
of people in on it. Only four of us were involved in the plan. It is a
crime that involves only the four of us. But this court, as well as the
preliminary interrogators, treated it as a plan that involved a large
number of people. That is a complete misunderstanding of the case.
Because of this misunderstanding a large number of people have been made
to suffer. You are aware of this ...
If these people are killed for something that they knew nothing about,
not only will it be a grave tragedy for the persons concerned, but their
relatives and friends will feel bitterness toward the government.
Because we hatched this plan, a large number of innocent people may be
executed.
In her diary entry for January 21, 1911, Kanno identified the other
persons involved in the plot as Kōtoku, Miyashita, Niimura, and Furukawa
Rikisaku.
Kanno’s plea on behalf of the other defendants fell on deaf ears. As for
Gudō, Chief Prosecutor Hiranuma Kiichirō went on to identify his earlier
writing, with its uncompromising denial of the emperor system, as “the
most heinous book ever written since the beginning of Japanese history.”
He also mentioned a second tract which Gudō had printed, entitled A
Handbook for Imperial Soldiers (Teikoku Gunjin Zayū no Mei). Here Gudō
had gone so far as to call on conscripts to desert their encampments en
masse. In addition, Gudō had, as already noted, repeatedly and
forcefully advocated both land reform in the countryside and democratic
rights for all citizens.
Many years later an alternative view of Gudō’s role in the alleged
conspiracy came from a somewhat surprising source, namely the
administrative headquarters of the Sōtō Zen sect. In the July 1993 issue
of Sōtō Shūhō, the administrative organ for this sect, an announcement
was made that as of April 13, 1993, Uchiyama Gudō’s status as a Sōtō
priest had been restored. The announcement went on to say, “[Gudō’s]
original expulsion was a mistake caused by the sect’s having swallowed
the government’s repressive policies.”
The explanation as to what caused this turnabout in the sect’s attitude
toward Gudō was contained in a subsequent article that appeared in the
September 1993 issue of the same periodical. Written by the sect’s new
“Bureau for the Protection and Advocacy of Human Rights,” the highlights
of the article are as follows:
When viewed by to day’s standards of respect for human rights, Uchiyama
Gudō’s writings contain elements that should be regarded as farsighted.
We have much to learn from them, for today his writings are respected by
people in various walks of life, beginning with the mass media. In our
sect, the restoration of Uchiyama Gudō’s reputation is something that
will both bring solace to his spirit and contribute to the establishment
within this sect of a method of dealing with questions concerning human
rights ...
We now recognize that Gudō was a victim of the national policy of that
day ... The dynamite found in his temple had been placed there for
safekeeping by a railroad company laying track through the Hakone
mountains and had nothing to do with him ... The sect’s [original]
actions strongly aligned the sect with an establishment dominated by the
emperor system. They were not designed to protect the unique Buddhist
character of the sect’s priests ... On this occasion of the restoration
of Uchiyama Gudō’s reputation, we must reflect on the way in which our
sect has ingratiated itself with both the political powers of the day
and a state under the suzerainty of the emperor.
While the Sōtō sect’s statement clearly views Gudō as a victim of
government repression, it presents no new evidence in support of his
innocence. It merely repeats Kashiwagi’s earlier unsubstantiated claim
that the dynamite found at his temple was put there as part of a nearby
railway construction project. All in all, the Sōtō sect’s statement must
be treated with some scepticism, perhaps as more of a reflection of the
sect’s regret for what it came to recognize (in postwar years) as its
slavish subservience to the state.
Because of this lack of evidence, no definitive statement can be made
about the guilt or innocence of those on trial in the High Treason
Incident. As noted earlier, much critical evidence was destroyed by the
government as it sought to make the accused into “nonpersons.” When in
1975 the descendents of one of those originally convicted in the case
petitioned for a retrial, the Ministry of Justice stated clearly for the
first time that the trial’s transcripts no longer existed. Even if the
transcripts had existed, it is doubtful that they would have provided
definitive evidence, given that everyone directly connected with the
trial was by then dead. Historian Fred Notehelfer admits at the end of
his study of the case that “an element of mystery ... continues to
surround the trial.” It probably always will.
There was never any doubt at the time, however, that the defendants
would be found guilty. The only uncertainty was how severe their
penalties would be. On January 18, 1911, little more than a month after
the trial began, the court rendered its verdict. All defendants were
found guilty, and twenty-four of them, Gudō and the three other Buddhist
priests included, were condemned to death. One day later, on January
19^(th), an imperial rescript was issued which commuted the sentences of
twelve of the condemned to life imprisonment. Three of the Buddhist
priests--Takagi Kemmyō, Sasaki Dōgen, and Mineo Setsudō--were spared the
hangman’s noose, though all would die in prison.
Mikiso Hane has suggested why the government was so determined to
convict all of the defendants:
The authorities (under Prime Minister Katsura Tarō, who had been
directed by the genrō [elder statesman] Yamagata Aritomo to come down
hard on the leftists) rounded up everybody who had the slightest
connection with Kōtoku and charged them with complicity in the plot.
Yamagata was particularly concerned by the fact that the court testimony
of nearly all the defendants revealed a loss of faith in the divinity of
the emperor. For Yamagata, this loss of respect for the core of the
state represented a serious threat to the future of the nation. Those
holding this view had to be eliminated by any means necessary.
Acting with unaccustomed haste, the government executed Gudō and ten of
his alleged co-conspirators inside the Ichigaya Prison compound on the
morning of January 24, 1911, less than a week after their conviction.
Kanno Sugako was executed the following day. Gudō was the fifth to die
on the twenty-fourth, and Yoshida Kyūichi records that as he climbed the
scaffold stairs, “he gave not the slightest hint of emotional distress.
Rather he appeared serene, even cheerful--so much so that the attending
prison chaplain bowed as he passed.”
The next day, when Gudō’s younger brother, Seiji, came to collect his
body, he demanded that the coffin be opened. Looking at Gudō’s peaceful
countenance, Seiji said, “Oh, older brother, you passed away without
suffering ... What a superb face you have in death!”