Remnants of a Forgotten Age

Emperor Meiji (r. 1867-1912) established laws that regulated religious practices. Self-mummification was outlawed, and opening the tomb of any monk that had buried himself was also prohibited. However, there was one exception to this policy. Any monk that entered nyujo before the new law had been passed could still be disinterred end enshrined if found to be incorruptible.

Tetsuryukai Shonin was training to become a Living Buddha when this prohibition was enacted. However, he had devoted most of his life to the cause, and he decided to disregard the law and proceed with his self-mummification. After his decease, he appeared to other issei gyonin in dreams and requested that his remains be disinterred and treated. As this was illegal, some individuals had to sneak out of the temple at night to unearth and care for the corpse.

Once dried and treated, the men were left with another problem. They could not enshrine the body, because such an action was against the law. They were, in effect, criminals because they assisted Tetsuryukai in this illegal activity. In order to assuage this problem, they changed temple records that contained accounts of his life. They changed the date of his death from 1878 to 1862, 15 years before the law was passed, thus making his enshrinement possible.

At the time Tetsuryukai was abstaining from cereals and preparing for his death, a number of other issei gyonin were doing the same. They had trained for years, intending to become universal saviors by attaining nyujo, in which the spirit is freed and the body is left behind for the benefit of humankind. However, unlike Tetsuryukai, when the emperor commanded them to stop, they did. Since they died of natural causes and were cremated like ordinary people, there were no whole body relics left behind. In place of actual bodies, wooden effigies were created to resemble them. Two of these statues are located at Kaiko Temple in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, and there are many more throughout the rest of the country.45

Wooden effigies, like the one pictured above, were often created as substitutes for the non-existent relic bodies of Buddhist priests — bodies that were not preserved. This one is located in Yamagata Prefecture.

There are more than 30 individuals in recorded Japanese history that have either mummified themselves or attempted to mummify themselves. The earliest known case was in 1081, when a man named Shojin buried himself alive at the age of 71 (Matsumoto, 2002). His body, when disinterred, had not mummified and was reburied. However, there are four members of the Fujiwara clan that successfully mummified themselves between 1128 and 1189. Their bodies are now located at Chuson Temple in Iwate Prefecture.46

Besides the recorded cases, there were probably many ascetics in Japanese history who mummified themselves, and yet there is no historical evidence of their existence. Documents get lost, temples burn to the ground, and stories that are passed down orally lose their importance through generations, and are forgotten in time.

There have been cases of fires breaking out in temples that not only destroyed necrologies and registers, but also consumed the mummified bodies of Buddhist priests located inside. Junkai Shonin, the oldest known self-mummified monk in the Yudono sect, died in 1636, when he was 78 years

Old. His body was displayed at Agawasen Temple. In 1880, a fire destroyed part of the temple, and it burned away his flesh and internal organs. Today, his charred bones are located at Gyokusen Temple, in Niigata Prefecture, a constant reminder of the transitory nature of existence.

Other mummies were completely destroyed by fire, and no trace of their existence remains. Long before Shinnyokai Shonin and Zenkai Shonin made their way through Dainichibo temple (where the body of Shinnyokai is currently located), another two individuals mummified themselves and were enshrined therein. One of the individuals was called Gakkokai Shonin, and the other’s name is unknown. Near Dainichibo is Churen Temple, where the relic body of Tetsumonkai Shonin is located and the site that has perhaps seen the most Living Buddhas in the history of the issei gyonin sect. Before Tetsumonkai, the mummified remains of Kinkai Shonin were enshrined at the temple. These three bodies (of Kinkai, Gakkokai, and of one unknown individual), along with any record of their lives and deeds, were erased by fire, and it is as though these individuals never existed at all (Hijikata, 1996). Other individuals that had once been considered saints and living gods were forgotten in like manner, and most of the world today knows nothing about these men or the reasons behind their intentional deaths.

Although many people have never heard of the phenomenon of selfmummification, it is common to find accounts of the act in Japanese historical documents. References to immortality attained through death are also found in ancient Japanese literature. For example, a story written in the eleventh century tells the tale of a Buddhist monk that lived near the Kuzu River. He abstained from cereals and practiced asceticism. He had a dream in which a holy being came to him and said, “There is an Immortal on Mount Hira and he chants the Lotus. Go and get his blessing” (Tyler, 1987. p. 125).

He immediately began climbing, searching for the immortal that lived there. In time, he heard a faint chanting in the distance, and he followed the sound of the voice. It grew louder and louder, and it led him to a small cave hidden on the mountainside. “Peering in, he saw the Immortal. His bones had no flesh on them and his only robe was moss” (Tyler, 1987, p. 125).

Mummification by ascetics in the mountains most likely occurred before recorded history in Japan, and the act continued until the twentieth century. Tetsuryukai (d. 1878) is the newest mummy in Yamagata Prefecture, but the most recent mummy in the entire country is Bukkai Shonin, who buried himself alive in 1903 at the age of 76. The government knew what he had done, and his family and friends were not permitted to open his tomb after three years had passed, so the body remained buried.

In 1961, five mummified bodies were found by chance in Yamagata Prefecture and it was all over the news, as the majority of people in Japan (and

The rest of the world) knew nothing about these individuals and the unusual way that they had ended their own lives. The phenomenon defied common sense, and people could not understand why these men sacrificed themselves in such a way. They also could not comprehend how their bodies were naturally preserved without any obvious signs of artificial mummification.

In order to investigate these issei gyonin, a committee was formed called the Mummy Research Group (miira kenkyu grupu), which included Ando Kosei, Sakurai Kiyohiko, Ogata Tamotsu, Morimoto Iwataro, and other researchers. They compiled existing records to learn more about the six newly discovered mummies, and they researched similarly mummified bodies in other parts of the country and in China. Ando Kosei actually bought a mummified body in China and brought it to his office in Japan for further examination (Bingenheimer, 2006, p. 42). In their conversations with locals in northern Japan, they learned about the existence of Bukkai, a man who practiced severe asceticism in the mountains.

He was born on May 9,

Bukkai Shonin dressed in traditional issei gyonin white robes. This picture is located at Kaiko Temple, in Sakata (Yamagata, Japan).

1828, in Niigata Prefecture, and he entered the seminary at Churenji (in Yamagata) when he was 18 years old.

He trained in unparalleled austerities. While meditating in rough rivers, he was swept up and thrown against rocks, sustaining serious injuries on many occasions. He also poured oil on his left hand and set it aflame (Hijikata,

1996). This was a practice that originated in China, and it is justified by a passage in the Lotus Sutra, which states that the merit gained by burning off one of your own fingers in front of the Tathagata is incalculable.

The researchers, having learned that the body of Buk-kai had yet to be unearthed, petitioned the government for permission to exhume his

Remains for their research. Permission was given, and the men traveled to Bukkai’s grave in Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture, which is located southwest of Yamagata Prefecture.

A number of curious locals came out to watch the exhumation (Matsu-moto, 2002; Sakurai et al., 1998). First, the researchers removed the grave marker itself, a large inscribed stone weighing 400 kg (880 lbs). Beneath that was another large stone weighing 300 kg (660 lbs). After struggling to remove that stone, they exposed the brown earth that lay beneath. They dug until striking the stone cover of the tomb with their shovels, located between one and two meters beneath the surface of the earth. The cover was made up of three flat stones put together so that there was no space between them. Each stone was approximately 30 centimeters long (Matsumoto, 2002).

Once these were removed, the wooden coffin that housed Bukkai Shonin was revealed. He, along with many of the other issei gyonin, would have sat in the wooden coffin while still alive in either kneeling or lotus posture. The coffin would then have been sealed and nailed shut, leaving the monk in total darkness. He would have felt the coffin lifted and then placed into the hole dug for his burial. Then, he would have listened to the sound of earth being thrown on top of the tomb, until all noises stopped and he could hear nothing. There, in his underground abode, surrounded by eternal darkness and infinite silence, he would have prayed until he died.

The investigators removed his body and examined it. It was 158.2 cm (approximately 5.2 ft) in height and it weighed 7.2 kg (15.9 lbs). Describing the condition of his remains, they reported:

Many bones were separated at the joints. The soft parts had decomposed and were attached to the bones like dirt, but some skin of his back was mummified. There is no evidence that the brain and viscera were extracted. The body was probably in a sitting position when it was placed in the coffin, but it was not so at the time of our excavation [Sakurai et al., 1998, p. 322].

Bukkai’s body was the only one that had not been damaged by rats. Every other mummy in Yamagata prefecture had been damaged in differing degrees by rats. Generally, “the viscera were eaten, and the destruction [of the bodies] was accelerated by rat excreta” (Sakurai et al., 1998, p. 322).

After their study had been concluded, the body of Bukkai Shonin was re-dressed in sacerdotal robes and enshrined at Kanzeon Temple in Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture. In the past, men who engaged in this act of selfmummification were considered Bodhisattvas: Universal Saviors, and they were treated with the respect given to any holy individual. They were sokush-inbutsu, Buddhas in the flesh, and people believed that they could still perform miracles and grant requests by the powers infused within their incorruptible

Remains.

However, when Bukkai was unearthed, the majority of people did not look at him with the respect reserved for divinity. Some of the locals that were present at the unearthing had actually known the man, and they talked about how they had met him and what they knew of him, but they spoke of him as a mere mortal, a man who was quite possibly confused rather than enlightened (Raveri, 1992).

“For the majority of people, Bukkai’s death was nothing more than a suicide” (Raveri, 1992, p. 65). Times had changed, and the end of the Living Buddhas had come. The bodies enshrined in temples today are nothing more than corpses to the majority of people that visit them, and they visit not for spiritual reasons, but out of mere curiosity. For most people, these bodies are nothing but relics of forgotten times. On the other hand, there are still a small number of people in Japan (and abroad) that continue to view the self-mummified monks as saints or tutelary deities, and miraculous occurrences are continuously attributed to them today.

Their beliefs were an amalgamation of more than four distinct religious and spiritual systems. All of the self-mummified monks in Japan were Buddhists, and all of the issei gyonin (in Yamagata Prefecture) were Shingon Buddhists, whose beliefs were a blend of esoteric Buddhism and some indigenous Shinto practices. The monks were versed in Daoist techniques of immortality, and their religious rituals incorporated elements of Hinduism and mountain shamanism (Miyake, 2001). They also utilized alchemic practices in order to gain powers (Blacker, 1975). In conjunction with such practices, they all trained in asceticism.

In order to understand the reasons behind the act of self-mummification, and to (possibly) provide insight into the nature of death itself, it is necessary to briefly study the belief systems that guided them.