Donald Keene - Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion : the creation of the soul of Japan

YOSHIMASA

AND THE

SILVER PAVILION

Asia Perspectives

Asia Perspectives

HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE

A series of the East Asian Institute,

Columbia University,

published by Columbia University Press

Carol Gluck, Editor

Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the

Japanese Military During World War II

by Yoshimi Yoshiaki

The World Turned Upside Down:

Medieval Japanese Society

by Pierre Franois Souyri, tr. Kthe Roth

Wooden statue of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, dressed in the robes of a Zen priest. (Courtesy Jish-ji, Kyoto)

Donald Keene

YOSHIMASA

AND THE SILVER PAVILION

The Creation of the Soul of Japan

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Weather-head East Asian Institute Publications Program and The Blakemore Foundation toward the costs of reproducing the color illustrations in this book.

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2003 Donald Keene

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-50386-0

Frontispiece: The Ginkaku, or Silver Pavilion.

(Courtesy Jish-ji, Kyoto; photograph by Akira Nakata)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Keene, Donald

Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion : the creation of

the soul of Japan / Donald Keene.

p. cm. (Asia perspectives)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0231130562 (ALK. PAPER)

1. Ashikaga, Yoshimasa, 14361490.

2. ShogunsBiography.

3. JapanHistoryMuromachi period, 13361573.

4. Ginkakuji (Kyoto, Japan)

I. Title. II. Series

DS865.A82K44 2003

952 023092dc21 2003053124

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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To the memory of Shimanaka Hji (19231997),

friend and publisher

CONTENTS

Only the first ten shoguns of the Ashikaga family appear in this genealogical chart. The dates indicate the years when a shogun reigned, not those of his birth and death. The numbers indicate the order of succession. Yoshimochi, who had abdicated in favor of his son, Yoshikazu, resumed the functions but not the title of the shogun from 1425 to 1428, following Yoshikazus death. Yoshimi did not serve as shogun, but his son Yoshitane succeeded as the tenth shogun.

In 1953 when I was first living in Kyoto, I often went to a nearby temple, Tji-in, in order to escape the din of the children in the school next door. The temple was virtually deserted in those days. I never saw a priest, though I was told that one came every week from the Tenry-ji, a temple of the same branch of Zen. The only persons I ever encountered in the temple were a few young men studying for their university entrance examinations. The temple was neglected. Tall weeds sprouted from the roofs of the gates and temple buildings, and the fusuma-e, the paintings on the sliding doors between the rooms, said to be the work of the celebrated Kano Sanraku, were smudged and torn, especially around the metal fittings. I dont recall ever seeing a visitor, though even in those days the celebrated stone and sand garden of the nearby Ryan-ji attracted a constant stream of tourists, both Japanese and foreign. The Tji-in was an ideal place to study without noise or other interruption.

Apart from the main buildings, the temple includes a small, curving pond in the shape of the character kokoro. Similar ponds are found in the precincts of other Zen temples, perhaps because the use of the mindone of the meanings of kokorois especially important in Zen Buddhism.

Tji-in was originally founded in the fourteenth century at the foot of Mount Kinugasa, in fulfillment of a vow made by Ashikaga Takauji (13051358), the first of the Ashikaga shoguns. His inconspicuous stone gravestone in the temples garden is hardly of the magnificence one might expect of the tomb of the man who founded the dynasty of shoguns who ruled Japan from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Indeed, there could be no greater contrast to the elaborate mausoleum erected in memory of the founder of the next dynasty of shoguns, Tokugawa Ieyasu (15431616).

In recent years, an effort has been made to increase Tji-ins appeal as a tourist attraction. The pond, and indeed the whole templebuildings, gardens, and wallslook far better today than they did when I first knew them, though I remember nostalgically the poetic neglect. The interior of the main building has been refurbished; the fusuma-e are now protected by glass; and a much larger area of garden than I had seen before has been opened to the public. Picture postcards on sale in the temple attest to the beauty of its seasonal flowers and leaves, but I have no recollection of any flowers or colored leaves fifty years ago. For that matter, I even have difficulty in associating picture postcards with the gloomy presence of the Ashikaga shoguns. One small building, however, remains exactly as I remember it from the past: the Reik-den, the hall where the Ashikaga shoguns are enshrined.