East Asia: Later Buddhist Japan
The Zen shu was introduced into Japan from China during the
Kamakura period and became an important aspect of the Buddhist religion
in Japan that survives to the present day. The two major forms of Zen,
Rinzai and Soto (following the teachings of Dogon [1200 1253]), Rinzai became
an important religious movement among the warriors and the members of the
shogunal families and promoted intense meditational practices that were
not based in the scripture but in direct insight. They taught the possibility
of sudden enlightenment, the use of Koans (a kind of riddle), and the aesthetic
experience of Cha-no-yu -- a formalized ceremony of drinking tea. It is
hard to over-estimate the importance of Zen-based aesthetics on the shogunal
courts from the Kamakura period on, and the effects of this influence can
still be seen to the present in many traditional forms of Japanese art.
One of the areas that these aesthetics touched most profoundly was the
notion of wabi, sabi and shibui. Wabi is essentially simplicity, understatement
and transience; sabi is essentially the rustic , weathered and to some degree
the old or antique while implying a bit of a lonely quality. These terms
along with several others were used to describe the qualities of works of
art, environments and of life in general. These qualities were something
to aspire to and the Samurai and the wealthy practitioners often went to
great expense and effort to create appropriately rustic and antique looking
settings.
The Garden setting of the Kinkaku (Golden Pavilion) at the Rokuon-ji,
originally constructed in the 1390s at a garden that had been first built
in the 1320s. It was the retirement villa of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa
(1358-1409) and only after Yoshimasa's death was it made into a temple.
However, it was the epi-center of cultural activity during Yoshimasa's retirement.
