Fromthe Introduction

What will remain as my legacy?
Flowers in the spring,
The hototogisu in summer,
And the crimson leaves of autumn.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1968, the late Yasunari Kawabata quoted the above poem of Ryokan's and added that Ryokan transmitted the essence and emotions of old Japan. Daisetz T. Suzuki wrote in his Zen and Japanese Culture, "When we know one Ryokan, we know hundreds of thousands of Ryokans in Japanese hearts." Both Kawabata and Suzuki felt that Ryokan represents something very special in the Japanese character and that therefore all who wish truly to understand Japan should study the life and poetry of this eighteenth-century hermit-monk. From a religious standpoint also, Ryokan is exceptional, exemplifying as he does the Zen Buddhist idea of attaining enlightenment and then returning to the world with "a serene face and gentle words." In his life he was indeed Daigu, the "Great Fool" (the literary name he gave himself), one who had gone beyond the limitations of all artificial, man-made restraints.

Ryokan's life and character
Ryokan was born sometime around 1758 (the exact date of his birth is unknown) in the village of Izumozaki in Echigo province on the west coast of Japan. This area, now known as Niigata Prefecture, is rather remote even today, far removed from the commercial and cultural centers of Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. It is "snow country" and bitterly cold in winter. Ryokan's family was well established in the area, and his father, Tachibana Inan, was the village headman, the local Shinto priest, and a prosperous merchant.

Ryokan's father was a complex person with a sensitive and passionate nature. He was a haiku poet of some note, with a certain following, but also an ardent imperial supporter and opponent of the bakufu, the military government in Edo. The reason for his unhappiness with the government is not clear (perhaps in his duties as village headman he had some clashes with bakufu officials), but when his son Yoshiyuki succeeded him (Ryokan was the oldest son but turned his inheritance over to his brothers and sisters when he became a monk), Inan left home and spent many years wandering around Japan before settling in Kyoto. He again declared his support of the emperor and, evidently feeling intolerably oppressed by the bakufu, committed suicide in 1795 by throwing himself into the Katsura River in Kyoto as a protest; he was sixty years of age. Little is known of Ryokan's mother, but it is clear from his poems concerning her that she was a very gentle and loving person. She died in 1783, and Inan left the village forever three years later.

Ryokan's childhood name was Eizo. He was a quiet and studious boy who often spent long hours reading the Analects of Confucius. His family was well off, and the atmosphere in his home was a literary and religious one—two brothers and one sister also entered the Buddhist priesthood. His youth was calm and sheltered, and passed uneventfully until his eighteenth year.

Ryokan was to succeed his father as village headman when he turned eighteen. While training for the post, he found it especially trying. He was honest and conciliatory by nature and hated contention or discord of any kind, but was forced to deal with many conflicts and troublesome cases. In addition to those burdensome duties, he seems to have been undergoing some inner, spiritual crisis. Previously he had been a fun-loving young man, generous with his money and the center of attention at the local geisha parties, but he started to become withdrawn and silent in the midst of festivities.

Clearly something was troubling him, and he decided to become a Buddhist monk. In 1777 he shaved his head and entered Kosho-ji, the local Zen temple, where he took the name Ryokan (ryo means good; kan signifies generosity and largeheartedness). After he had trained there for about four years, a famons Zen priest known as Kokusen came to deliver a lecture. Kokusen was the abbot of Entsu-ji temple at Tamashima in Bitchu province (present-day Okayama Prefecture). Ryokan was greatly impressed with Kokusen and decided to become his disciple and return with him to Entsu-ji. Ryokan was then twenty-two.

He trained under Kokusen at Entsu-ji for almost twelve years. During this time he continued his studies of waka, Chinese poetry, linked verse, or renga, and calligraphy, becoming skilled in all of them. He was appointed Kokusen's chief disciple and was given a document certifying his enlightenment in 1790. The following year Kokusen died and Ryokan left Entsu-ji to begin a series of pilgrimages that would last almost five years. After learning of his father's suicide in 1795, Ryokan went to Kyoto and held a memorial service for him. He then decided to return to his native village.

After searching for a time, be found an empty hermitage halfway up Mount Kugami, about six miles from his ancestral home. He named it Gogo-an. Gogo is half a sha, the amount of rice necessary to sustain a man for one day; an is hermitage. It is this period of Ryokan's life—extending from his establishment of Gogo-an at the age of forty to his death thirty-four years later—that is the most remarkable.

While his hermitage was deep in the mountains, he often visited the neighboring villages to play with the children, drink sake with the farmers, or visit his friends. He slept when he wanted to, drank freely, and frequently joined the dancing parties held in summer. He acquired his simple needs by mendicancy, and if he had anything extra he gave it away. He never preached or exhorted, but his life radiated purity and joy; he was a living sermon.

He respected everyone and bowed whenever he met anyone who labored, especially farmers. His love for children and flowers is proverbial among the Japanese. Often he spent the entire day playing with the children or picking flowers, completely forgetting his begging for that day. If anyone asked him to play the board game go or recite some of his poems, he would always comply. He was continually smiling, and everyone he visited felt as if "spring had come on a dark winter's day."

When he was sixty he moved to a small hermitage next to Otogo Shrine, and at sixty-nine, due to ill health, he went to live with his disciple Kimura Motoemon. It was in the Kimura residence in Shimazaki that he first met his famous disciple, the nun Teishin.

Teishin was forty years Ryokan's junior. She had been married to a physician when seventeen or eighteen, but he died several years later and she became a nun at the age of twenty-three. She was twenty-nine when she met Ryokan, and they seem to have fallen in love almost immediately. They delighted in each other's company, composing poems and talking about literature and religion for hours. She was with him when he died on January 6, 1831. One of his last verses reads:

Life is like a dewdrop,
Empty and fleeting;
My years are gone
And now, quivering and frail,
I must fade away.

Four years later, in 1835, Teishin published a collection of Ryokan's poems entitled Hasu no tsuyu (Dewdrops on a lotus leaf). Teishin devoted herself to Ryokan's memory until her death in 1872.

There are many stories and anecdotes concerning Ryokan's eccentric behavior. Following are a few of the most famous.

Kameda Hosai, a famous scholar who lived in Edo (now Tokyo), once went to visit Ryokan. He found the way to Ryokan's hermitage, but when he reached it Ryokan was sitting in zazen on the veranda. Hosai, not wishing to disturb him, waited until he finished almost three hours later. Ryokan was very glad to meet Hosai, and they talked of poetry, philosophy, and literature for the rest of the day. Evening approached, and Ryokan wanted to get some sake so they could continue talking. He asked Hosai to wait a few minutes and hurried out.

Hosai waited and waited, but Ryokan did not return. When be could stand it no longer, he went out to try to find Ryokan. To his astonishment, he saw Ryokan about a hundred yards from the hermitage, sitting under a pine, gazing dreamily at the full moon. "Ryokan! Where have you been? I've been waiting for you for more than three hours! I thought something terrible had happened to you!" Hosai shouted. "Hosai-san! You have come just in time. Isn't the moon splendid?" "Yes, yes, it's wonderful. But where is the sake?" "The sake? Oh, yes, the sake. I'm so sorry, please excuse me. I forgot all about it. Forgive me. I'll go get some right away!" Ryokan sprang up and bounded down the path, leaving Hosai standing in amazement.

One spring afternoon, Ryokan noticed three bamboo shoots growing under his veranda. Bamboo grows rapidly, and soon the shoots were pressing against the bottom of the veranda. Ryokan was quite anxious, for he did not like anything to suffer, even plants. He cut three holes in the floor and then told the bamboo shoots not to worry; he would cut a hole in the roof if necessary. He was happy once again.

Ryokan never preached to or reprimanded anyone. Once his brother asked Ryokan to visithis house and speak to his delinquent son. Ryokan came but did not say a word of admonition to the boy. He stayed overnight and prepared to leave the next morning. As the wayward nephew was lacing Ryokan's straw sandals, he felt a warm drop of water. Glancing up, he saw Ryokan looking down at him, his eyes full of tears. Ryokan then returned home, and the nephew changed for the better.

Ryokan loved to play hide-and-seek with the children. One day he ran to hide in the outhouse. The children knew where he was but decided to play a joke and run away without telling him. The next morning someone came into the outhouse and saw Ryokan crouching in the corner. "What are you doing here, Ryokan?" she said. "Shh, be quiet, please," he whispered, "or else the children will find me."

Once when he was walking near the village he heard a small voice cry, "Help! Help me, please!" A little boy was stuck in the topmost branches of a persimmon tree. Ryokan helped the lad down and said he would pick some fruit for him. Ryokan climbed the tree and picked one of the persimmons. He decided to taste it first, since unripe persimmons can be very astringent and he did not want to give one to the boy. No, it was very sweet. He picked another and it too was sweet. One after another, he stuffed the persimmons into his mouth, exclaiming, "Oh, how sweet!" He had completely forgotten about the little boy waiting hungrily below until the boy yelled, "Ryokan! Please give me some persimmons!" Ryokan came to his senses, laughed, and passed the delicious fruit to his small friend.

Someone told Ryokan that if you find money on the road you will be very happy. One day, after he had received some coins during a begging trip, he decided to try it. He scattered the coins along the road and then picked them up. He did this several times but did not feel particularly happy, and he wondered what his friend had meant. He tried it a few more times and in the process lost all the money in the grass. After searching for a long time he finally found all the money he had lost. He was very happy. "Now I understand," he thought; "to find money on the road is indeed a joy."

Ryokan's tomb is located in Shimazaki, and his hermitage still stands on Mount Kugami. There is a small temple on the cliff overlooking the Japan Sea where Ryokan's boyhood home once stood, and an art museum and memorial hall dedicated to him have been erected near Izumozaki. Many people come each year to visit these sites associated with Ryokan, one of Japan's most beloved poets.

Ryokan and zen
Ryokan was a monk of the Soto Zen sect, which was brought to Japan from China by Dogen (1200–4253), the founder of Eihei-ji monastery in Fukui Prefecture, the largest and most famous monastery in Japan. Dogen's teaching emphasized two main points: (1) shikantaza, themeless sitting in zazen, that is, abandoning all thoughts of good or bad, enlightenment or illusion, and just sitting; and (2) shusho ichigyo, "practice and enlightenment are one." There is no sudden enlightenment, and enlightenment cannot be separated from one's practice. For these reasons, Soto Zen is usually contrasted with Rinzai Zen, with its use of koans during zazen and its striving for kensho, an instantaneous, profound insight into reality. Generally speaking, Rinzai Zen tends to be somewhat violent and severe, while Soto Zen is usually more restrained and quiet. As a Soto Zen monk, Ryokan first followed the traditional pattern of communal life in the monastery, then a period as an unsui, a pilgrim monk drifting from place to place like "clouds and water" (unsui) visiting other masters. Ryokan could have become the head of a temple or taken some other position in a large monastery, but he was not interested. His severe training had made him not austere or remote but more open and kind. Therefore, he "returned to the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands," the state depicted in the last of the well-known Zen series of the ten ox herding pictures and the culmination of all Buddhist practice.

Ryokan's life at Gogo-an represents that highest stage of Zen spirituality very well. He mingled with all types of people, living Zen without preaching about it. He was detached from his detachment, free of any sort of physical or spiritual materialism; in love with nature, he was sensitive to all the myriad forms of human feeling.

With no-mind, blossoms invite the butterfly;
With no-mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes;
When the butterfly comes, the flower blooms.
I do not "know" others,
Others do not "know" me.
Not-knowing each other we naturally follow the Way.

In this famous poem "no-mind" is mushin, the mind that abides nowhere, the mind free of contrivance. No-mind has no obstructions or inhibitions and therefore is synonymous with Zen. "Know" here means to categorize or analyze oneself and others. Throughout Ryokan's poems we find this theme: "Don't cling! Don't strive! Abandon yourself! Look beneath your feet!"

The other Buddhist element strongly felt in Ryokan's poems is mujo, impermanence. This world is a dream, passing away like dew.

Long ago, I often drank sake at this house;
now only the earth
Covered with plum blossoms.

Ryokan's Zen is replete with mushin, the mind without calculation or pretense, and mujo, the sense of the impermanence of all things.