Chinese Objects Recovered from Sutra Mounds in Japan, 1000-1300

284 Li Chapter 8 Chinese Objects from Sutra Mounds in Japan Chinese Objects Recovered from Sutra Mounds in Japan, 1000-1300 Yiwen Li In 1175, two Japanese Buddhists carved their prayer on a sunflower-shaped Chinese mirror. They then re-purposed that mirror as the lid of a sutra con- tainer, and buried it in a sutra mound in modern Miyazaki 宮崎 Prefecture on the island of Kyushu 九州, Japan, as part of an offering in anticipation of the coming of the Final Dharma (末法 Ch. mofa; J. mappō).1 According to the inscription on the mirror, they were praying for a peaceful life.2 A stamp on the mirror gives the name and location of the workshop that manufactured it— “the bronze mirror was made by the fifteenth son of the Shi 石 family in Huzhou 湖州.”3 Huzhou mirrors were not the only Chinese objects that ended up in sutra mounds on the Japanese archipelago: porcelain boxes, porcelain sutra containers, and ceramic outer containers made on the continent have also been excavated from sutra mounds in Kyushu, Shikoku 四国, and south- ern Honshu 本州 islands. The Miyazaki Prefecture finds fit into the prevailing understanding of the trade between Song dynasty China and Japan: the Chinese-made goods traveled along the well-documented sea route between Ningbo 寧波 (known in the Song as Mingzhou 明州), also in Zhejiang 浙江 province, and Hakata 博多 (modern Fukuoka 福岡), on Kyushu. Other goods of Chinese manufacture, or karamono (唐物, Ch. tangwu, literally, “Tang goods”), excavated from sutra burial mounds moved along undocumented routes from northern China, possibly through the Korean peninsula, and sug- gest a larger picture of East Asian trade than previously understood. Building sutra mounds was a popular way to prepare for the Final Dharma in the Japanese archipelago, particularly between the eleventh and thirteenth 1 This research was supported by a fellowship from the Japan Foundation. I sincerely thank Youn-mi Kim, Valerie Hansen, Shih-shan Susan Huang, Patricia Ebrey, Tsubasa Nakamura, and Mark Baker for their valuable suggestions. Chang, 7-14 shiji zhongri wenhua jiaoliu de kaoguxue yanjiu, 167. 2 Kyōzuka ibun, 153. 3 Chang, 7-14 shiji zhongri wenhua jiaoliu de kaoguxue yanjiu, 167. Huzhou was a prefecture south of Lake Tai in modern Zhejiang province, 150 km west of Shanghai. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004349377_010 Chinese Objects from Sutra Mounds in Japan 285 centuries. But the situation was completely different for its continental neigh- bor: no sutra mounds have yet been found in China, nor are any recorded in any extant texts. Why did the Japanese bury Chinese objects when they built sutra mounds? Is there anything special about them? What can we learn from this activity of burying such objects in sutra mounds? Attempting to answer these questions brings to the fore the material aspect of the visual and material cultures in Middle Period China and beyond. By investigating the distribution and function of Chinese objects recovered from sutra mounds in Japan, this study sheds light on the Japanese reception of Chinese objects, the influence of China on Japan, and the undocumented but very real maritime networks span- ning East Asia In this essay the word “China” does not refer to only the Song dynasty (960- 1276). It also includes the Liao dynasty (907-1125)—a dynasty established by the nomadic Kitan people that was the Song’s northern rival. The devoutly Buddhist ruling class of the Liao believed in the Final Dharma, as did their contemporary Japanese neighbors. The similarities between Japan and the Liao provide fertile ground for comparison and help illuminate Japanese prepa rations for the Final Dharma. This chapter also shows that the interac- tion between the Liao and Japan was much more extensive than previously believed.4 Building Sutra Mounds: The Characteristics of the Preparation for the Final Dharma in Japan Japanese devotees believed that the Dharma, the Buddha’s teaching, would pass through successive stages of degeneration: the True Dharma, the Sem- blance Dharma, and the Final Dharma. During the True Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings and practices are available and enlightenment is achievable, while during the Semblance Dharma the teachings and practices are maintained but humanity’s spiritual capacity has seriously diminished. When the Final Dharma comes, proper practices will disappear; only the teachings remain, but they are doomed to vanish soon. The world will then slip into the Dark Age, when the capacity for enlightenment becomes extremely low, and the world 4 Recently scholars have started to pay more attention to Liao-Japanese relations. See Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi; Kamikawa, Nihon chūsei Bukkyō shiryōron; and Kim, “The Secret Link.” .

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