How Did Zen Buddhism Shape The Arts And Samurai Of The Kamakura Shogunate?

This is also why I often begin my historical aesthetics workshops by bringing up the Kamakura shogunate and the moment in which Zen crystallized into a unique and efficacious form of practice for the warrior and the creative individual. We have to remember the social context in which the samurai slowly came to govern in place of the court, and in which Zen monasteries evolved into centers for study, for practice of traditional forms of ink painting, for calligraphy. Rinzai is the school of Zen that is best exemplified by the use of koans to bring about sudden insight, and it is a practice well-suited to the nature of the samurai: decisive action, swift decision.

This new way of thinking soon spread to the arts. Sumi-e painting emphasizes a single decisive brushstroke that reveals the artist’s mind. Rock gardens from this period are made up of a few basic elements such as sand, stone and water, which form a landscape that encourages the viewer to take time to think about and contemplate his life. In performance art, music, dance and poetry the same sort of restraint is found. Even the rituals performed by the various groups of warriors were carried out in a very deliberate manner. It is well documented how the training of Zen helped the samurai to remain calm under fire and to lose all fear of death. The temples where the monks lived became salons for many of the influential patrons of the arts where they could discuss their latest creations. The blending of the spiritual, the artistic and the samurai culture was in itself a form of cultural engineering and was done to great effect.

Strolling through the damp, mossy stones of a tranquil forest temple garden, on a gray drizzly afternoon, one may gain insight as to how Zen influenced the armor clad samurai and artists of the Kamakura shogunate era that followed the elegant Heian Period court. These rough-hewn warrior statesmen were greatly influenced by two branches of Chinese Chan (Zen) introduced to Japan in this period, Rinzai and Sōtō. By developing concentration techniques such as meditation and various ‘koan’ methods to sharpen the samurai’s attention, to reduce his natural hesitation and learn to cope with the harsh reality of change and impermanence, he was able to mature into a full human being.

Artistic expression followed similar tracks, as warriors turned to a spare, immediate and elegant style which focused on the essence of a subject or idea. Thus ink wash paintings of landscapes, beautifully calligraphed sacred texts and contemplative rock gardens were all expressions of the Zen lifestyle, with each one a single stroke or sweep of gravel which evoked a great deal. Also popular were stories such as The Tale of the Heike, which expressed themes of loss and change relevant to the practice of Zen’s concept of mujō or ‘impermanence’. The patrons of many of these temples were samurai, who financed monks who taught a range of subjects from poetry to physical discipline. The resultant style was that of a metropolitan culture, elegant, simple and above all powerful, like a finely-crafted sword. In this sense Zen took the rough martial energy of the samurai and converted it into a sophisticated cultural force which was in no way the sole property of Buddhist monks.

A young samurai folds his armor and goes into zazen before dawn. That’s how I see Zen influencing practice during the Kamakura era. In place of courtly elegance, art became stripped down and excusive in terms of expression: lines are few, composition is rigid, paint is ink, characters are few, and gardens are examples of emptiness. Above all, that kind of art expresses the mental training of Zen and thus helps the samurai to be composed and to endure change.

Temples of Zen became locations where the cultured samurai could meet with the monks and commission all sorts of work. Even ritual was aestheticized and became part of Zen practice. So although there was a lot of culture and a lot of combat in Japan during the medieval period, the two mixed all the time and had a profound influence on art ever since – a legacy of simple, sharp and highly controllable expressions of emotion.

Even today, I get a kick out of imagining a samurai meditating at dawn in the Kamakura period. In those days, Zen wasn’t just sitting around; it demanded concentration in order to cut through the kind of panic that can take over in a split second. And this kind of focus was reflected in art. Monochromatic ink painting, sparse calligraphy, the beginnings of garden design all demanded and actually created empty space and so emphasized elegance and restraint. In short, the aesthetic of these Zen artists was that of the samurai, a warrior class that had little taste for the adornment characteristic of Heian art.

I went to a Rinzai temple once, and the hangings were all wonderful – this one big black stroke against a white ground with not a speck of a border. The connection between Zen economics and samurai paraphernalia, like their brilliant armor and magnificent swords, was obvious. That elegant asceticism of the arts – so far from Heian flashiness – is reflected in the samurai’s taste. So the artists and the monks had a great deal to do with each other, and the Zen teachings showed up in the appearance of things, in behavior. It’s pretty to see how philosophy could actually determine how people lived and what they made.