Buddhist Influences On Print Technology - Buddhism and Printing in Japan

Buddhism and Printing in Japan

Little is known about the techniques and procedures used for woodblock printing before 1600 in Japan; printing and publishing in the Tokugawa period became more commercialized and thus there is more information about it.(47)

First a manuscript is passed to a copyist and a clean copy (hanshita) is written out. Sometimes a calligrapher would be employed to make a copy when quality calligraphy was desired, although the author often prepared the copy. Second, the hanshita was given to the block-carver who pasted the hanshita face down onto a wooden block and carved away the white parts leaving the text, illustrations, and borders in relief. Third, the block was passed to the printer who inked the block, laid a sheet of paper on it, and then rubbed the paper to make the impression. Sometimes a printing was made for the purpose of proofreading but this seems to have been rather rare. It is not clear how much proofreading was done but it was done for the more important texts. (52) Fourth, when enough copies were printed they were passed to someone who aligned the pages. Lastly, a cover was made and the book was finally bound. (47, 48)

The reproduction of texts was done by the technique called kabusebori. Reproduction was an unstable process. Copies would be made from earlier editions of the text by using the text itself as the hanshita. The woodblock resulting from this technique of duplication was similar but not an exact replica. This method was used during the Muromachi period to reproduce Chinese texts and also when a popular text needed to be reprinted but the original woodblocks were worn down, damaged, or lost. (49) This method was also used when particular pages of a text needed to be replaced such as when some woodblocks were more worn than others or when a family or business needed to update its directories. (52)

Umeki was another technique used to make corrections to a text to avoid censorship or when mistakes were made during the carving process. A portion of the woodblock would be carved out and removed, then replaced with the corrected text on a portion of wood measuring the same dimensions as that which had been removed. (52)

Print technology was introduced to Japan in the 8th century but it took approximately 1000 years for Japan to become a print culture when printing had finally become commercialized. (112) Initially printing in Japan was a ritual exercise for the production of devotional texts and it was not until the 11th century that texts were printed for the purpose of reading. This was much the case in China although calendars and Buddhist texts had been printed for reading for quite some time. Therefore, printing reached Japan from China in the form of a ritual practice. (113)

The only surviving evidence of printing from the 8th century Japan comes from Nara in the form of the Hyakumanto Dharani. (115) The Hyakumanto Dharani are slips of paper with Buddhist text printed on them installed in miniature pagoda that were placed at various locations in Nara. They were apparently made to atone for a rebellion that took place 746. The rebellion was in response to the growing influence Buddhism had in the Japanese court; a Buddhist monk, Dokyo, had been able to have himself appointed to the position of Chancellor of the Realm. The interference in courtly matters by the Buddhist clergy led to much resentment and Fujiwara no Nakamaro led a rebellion against Dokyo. The ex-Empress Shotoku ordered the printing of one million charms to appease the Buddhist monks and temples, although it is unclear whether this order was fully carried out.(87-88) Very few of the dharani survived to this day.(89) Hyakumanto dharani represent the earliest existing proof (from Japan) that Buddhism was an influence on printing in East Asia.

Inbutsu, religious stamps depicting the Buddha, were common in pre-Heian times and continued to be made through the Heian period.(117) Further evidence of printing in the Heian period comes in the form of books and other texts imported from China by Japanese monks returning to Japan from China and Chinese monks and travelers. Devotional printing was common in Heian Japan. Fujiwara no Michinaga’s diary (1009 AD) mentions that 1000 copies of the “Lotus Sutra” were commissioned but none of these survive. It seems that the paper that these devotional texts were printed on was of poor quality and this explains why so few of them exist to this day. The reason for printing these devotional texts lay in the meritorious act of reproducing sacred texts, not in the reading of them. Therefore, there was no concern for the fate of the texts after being printed since the act of printing them was what brought about merit. (118) As described above, Buddhist influence on printing in Japan was initially for gaining merit with the Buddha and great effort was put into printing texts for this reason. Because Japan during the Nara and Heian periods was primarily a manuscript culture and texts for reading were hand copied, Buddhism’s influence on print had yet to exhibit the influence it did in China.

Practical printing can be dated to the 11th century, during the Heian era when Chinese texts from the Sung Dynasty became popular in Japan in the form of commentaries on sutras and doctrines. Nara became the center of non-devotional printing in Heian Japan and the oldest existing example of this kind is the Joyuishikiron (a Buddhist text in Chinese) of 1088 printed by the monks of the Kofukuji temple. Kyoto became the center of devotional printing because this is where the aristocratic sponsorship for such printing existed. (118-119)

During the Kamakura period printing became more established and began to shift its emphasis from devotional printing to practical printing. Inbutsu continued to be produced but their production began to expand to more populist images such as the Amida Buddha and Jizo. The Kofukuji was important in the shift to practical printing as well as other temples such as Todaiji, Daianji, and Saidaiji. The monasteries of Mt. Koya also began printing texts of the Shingon sect, continuously printing up to the 19th century. It was during the Kamakura period that Kyoto began to be a center of printing. The 13th-century temple Sen’yuji was one of the most prominent. Its founder, Shunjo, had brought back books from China and reproduced them using the kabusebori technique. Texts from Song editions relating to monastic discipline were also printed. Kyoto temples also began printing Pure Land Sect texts during the Kamakura period but the location and dates of production is unknown. (119-121)

It is from the Pure Land Sect that the first book printed in Japanese, the Kurodani shonin gotoroku (1321), originates. It is most likely due to the populist nature of the Pure Land Sect that this text was printed in Japanese. It was a collection of sayings by the sect’s founder Honen (1133–1212). It was printed in hiragana with kanji glossed with furigana. Later in the 14th century more of Honen’s works were printed. The Pure Land Sect was one of the first Buddhist sects responsible for reaching out to a general audience through the print medium in the Kamakura period. (121)

Zen sects had the largest influence on printing during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Texts came from five monasteries in Kyoto and five in Kamakura and later other Zen temples began to print texts. It was with the Zen-printed texts that an educational element began to enter into the act of printing. These texts were reproductions of Zen master sayings intended for the training of novices and disseminating the teachings to lay persons. Devotionals were still printed but when Zen monasteries printed devotional texts it was at the behest of sponsors rather than the monasteries themselves. (121-122)

Gozan-ban (the name given to texts printed by Zen sects) were for the most part written by Chinese authors but some were by Japanese authors (monks). They were also kabusebori editions so they looked like Chinese editions. Chinese monks also assisted in the printing of Gozan-ban. Eight Chinese monks had traveled to Kyoto in the 14th century (1367) and these monks were mostly block-carvers and printers employed by the Japanese monks and temples. Some texts, though, were printed at the expense of the Chinese monks. Most of the Gozan-ban were Zen and other Buddhist texts but some were secular texts of Chinese origin. It was in the 14th century that the first non-Buddhist texts were printed. By the 16th century a large number of secular Chinese texts had been printed by Zen temples. It would seem then that the Zen monks were the custodians of Chinese culture in Japan. (122)

From the 14th to 16th century secular texts are divided into three categories: 1) canonical texts, 2) dictionaries and other sinological reference texts, and 3) poetic texts. The first secular Chinese text to be printed was Confucious’ Analects, printed in Sakai in 1364 with commentaries by the third century scholar He Yan. In 1528, some Chinese medical texts were printed. Not all the secular texts were printed by Zen monks, but one quarter of the Gozan-ban were secular texts and printed in Japan for the first time. The Zen monks' interest in secular Chinese literature resulted in much of the Chinese poetry and Confucian literature printed. (123)

By the 16th Century printing was well established but had yet to become commercial. Prior to this, the printing of books for reading was done primarily by Buddhist monasteries and monks and were mostly Buddhist texts in the original Chinese. These books may have been made available for sale. Little is known how the books were circulated before the Tokugawa era. (124-125)

Buddhism influenced both printing and reading. The earliest references to reading in Japan relates to Buddhist texts. (251) There is a question regarding “reading” because at first Buddhist texts were printed as a meritorious act and “reading” was secondary. Buddhist texts were studied and there was a ritualized reading of them. When discussing reading of the sutras and other tests, “reading” takes a number of forms: silent vs. chanted, individual vs. mass/group. During the Nara and Heian periods, there was a number of public readings of Buddhist texts for devotional and other religious reasons. (252)

Buddhism played a large role in literacy during the Nara and Heian periods. Because Buddhism was a scriptural religion, literacy in Chinese was required because texts available to the Japanese were printed in Chinese. During the Heian period it was men who were for the most part literate in Chinese (most likely the “literary Sinetic” that Mair refers to) but there is proof that some women were literate in Chinese as well. After the Heian period Buddhism remained a text-based religion and it was the Zen monks were particularly interested in secular Chinese texts. The literacy in Chinese that was thought to be so important during the Nara and Heian periods became less stringent during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Literacy gave way to the Sino-Japanese kanbun. The literate were most likely to be found in the Zen monasteries during these periods. (270-271) Literacy began to rise during the Tokugawa period as a result of printing becoming commercialized and the Tokugawa bureaucracy had become dependent on printed and written communications among the various government offices in the capital and provinces. (272-273)

So from the Nara period on, literacy in Chinese was important for the Japanese bureaucracy, but more important for the reproduction of Buddhist texts and the production of commentaries on Buddhist texts. In the 7th and 8th Centuries the greatest efforts at manuscript and printed text (by extension) production was for the copying of Buddhist texts. There is evidence that the entire Buddhist canon existent in Japan had been copied by 673. By 700 there was a large number of Buddhist temples and monasteries that required texts. By 727 the government had established a sutra scriptorium (the Shakyojo) in Nara that was the center of sutra-copying. It did not survive the move to Heian-kyo. The number of surviving printed Buddhist texts, as opposed to printed secular texts, helps to illustrate the influence Buddhism had on printing. (91)