Prince Shotoku — The Man Who Was Called a Saint Too Often

A Statue in His Hair

"Won't we lose? If we don't make a vow, it won't go well."

The boy, fourteen by the old Japanese count, thought this in his heart, the Chronicles of Japan say.

The boy was at a battle. And he was at the very back of the army.

Up front, his side was being pushed back. The enemy had built a fort and held it. Their commander, Mononobe no Moriya, climbed into the branches of a tree himself and shot arrows down like rain. The armies of the princes and the soldiers of the officials were all afraid. Three times they pulled back.

The boy's hair was tied up in a bunch above his forehead. It was the old way boys wore their hair until about fifteen or sixteen.

The boy cut down a sumac tree. With it he quickly carved a statue of the Four Heavenly Kings. They are four guardian gods, said to protect the Buddha's teaching and the world.

He set the statue on top of his tied hair.

And then, it is said, he made a vow.

"If you let me defeat the enemy now, I will build a temple and a tower for the Four Heavenly Kings, who guard the world. I promise."

Soga no Umako, who had called for this war, made the same kind of vow. If we win, he said, I will build a temple and a tower and spread the Buddha's teaching.

This boy was Prince Umayado. He is the man who would later be called Shotoku Taishi.

The Chronicles record many strange stories about him. His mother was walking through the palace, and when she bumped into the door of the horse stable, she gave birth suddenly, without any pain. He spoke as soon as he was born. As a grown man, he could listen to ten people's pleas at once and miss none of them.

It sounds like the story of a saint.

But the fourteen-year-old in the same Chronicles was a boy who thought he might lose, and who set a hastily made statue on his hair.

It was a year of losing one thing after another for the boy.

In the fourth month of the old calendar, his father, Emperor Yomei, fell ill.

His father loved this son, the Chronicles say, and let him live in a grand hall in the southern part of the palace. That is why the boy was also called "Kamitsumiya," the upper palace.

Sick, the father returned to the palace, and in front of his ministers he is said to have said:

"I wish to put myself in the hands of the Buddha, his teaching, and the monks. Please talk this over, all of you."

Mononobe no Moriya glared at him sideways, they say, and was furiously angry.

An inscription on a statue of the Healing Buddha at Horyuji temple tells another story. As his illness grew worse, the father called his sister Kashikiya-hime and the boy. He vowed to build a temple and a statue of the Healing Buddha so that he would get well. But he died before the statue was finished.

On the ninth day of the fourth month of the old calendar, his father died.

Two months later, in the middle of the night, soldiers surrounded the palace of a prince. They first climbed up a high tower and struck the prince on the shoulder. He fell from the tower and ran into a side room. The soldiers held up torches and killed him.

The dead man was Prince Anahobe, the boy's uncle. He and the boy's mother had the same mother.

The soldiers had been sent by Soga no Umako and his allies. It was done in the form of an order from Kashikiya-hime, the Chronicles say.

Where the boy was and what he was doing then, the Chronicles say nothing.

In the seventh month of the old calendar, his father was buried in a tomb at Iware. In the same month, the boy was in Umako's army. In that army was also his father's half-brother, Prince Hatsusebe.

Back to the battlefield.

Moriya's army was strong. The Chronicles say his soldiers filled the houses and spilled over the fields. It was when the boy faced this army that he set the statue on his hair.

The battle turned on a single arrow.

A man named Tomi no Ichii shot Moriya down from the tree. Moriya and his children were killed, and his army quickly fell apart.

Umako's side had won.

After the war, a temple called Shitennoji was built in the land of Settsu. The Chronicles do not say who built it. But right after that, they go on to say that Umako also built a temple at Asuka, as he had vowed. So it may be that the boy's vow was kept.

Still, the Chronicles say that people at the time were saying this to each other:

"The wife of the Soga minister is the sister of Moriya, the chief. The minister made reckless use of his wife's schemes and killed the chief."

Even the winning side had its dark rumors.

For almost thirty years from then on, the boy would stand beside this Umako and move the country's government.

The Boar's Head

"When will I get to cut off the head of a man I hate, the way I cut off this boar's head?"

The emperor pointed at a boar that had been given to him as a gift, and said this, it is said.

This emperor was Prince Hatsusebe. Five years before, he had fought Mononobe no Moriya in the same army as Prince Umayado. After the war he took the throne. He would later be called Emperor Sushun.

More weapons than usual were gathered around the emperor.

When Soga no Umako heard these words, he feared that the man the emperor hated was himself. He gathered his allies and began to plot to kill the emperor.

The third day of the eleventh month of the old calendar, 592. Umako fooled the ministers by saying that tribute from the eastern provinces would arrive that day, and had one of his men kill the emperor.

The emperor was buried that same day.

Prince Umayado was nineteen, by the old count. In the Chronicles' account of this event, his name does not appear.

The next to take the throne was Kashikiya-hime. She would later be called Empress Suiko, a woman who was emperor. She was the sister of Umayado's father, so she was his aunt.

In 593, twenty-year-old Prince Umayado was made crown prince. The Chronicles say that all matters of government were left to him.

Beside him stood Umako, the minister. Again and again the Chronicles show the empress giving orders to "the crown prince and the minister."

The Chronicles also write this about the crown prince:

"He heard the pleas of ten people at once and judged them without missing any. He even knew in advance things that had not yet happened."

Another old record, the Jogu Shotoku Ho-o Teisetsu, tells the same story, but says eight people.

Ten, or eight? Depending on the book, the number is different.

Around that time, a monk named Eji crossed the sea from Koguryo, a kingdom in Korea, and became the crown prince's teacher. The prince learned Buddhism from Eji and Confucian books from another scholar, and came to know both well, the Chronicles say.

The fighting across the sea went on too.

In 600, the army of Wa, as Japan was then called, attacked Silla, a kingdom in Korea, to help Mimana, a land Wa was tied to. The king of Silla raised a white flag and gave up. After that, the kings of Silla and Mimana sent messengers with a letter to the empress, and it is said they swore:

"Above us are the gods, and below them is the empress. Besides these two gods, what is there to fear? From now on, we will not attack each other."

But once the Wa generals went home, Silla soon attacked Mimana again.

Two years later, the crown prince's younger brother, Prince Kume, was named general to attack Silla. He was the next brother down, born of the same mother.

He was given an army of twenty-five thousand. Prince Kume went as far as Tsukushi, gathered ships, and had food supplies carried there.

But there he fell ill. He could not go out to attack.

The next year, 603, on the fourth day of the second month of the old calendar, Prince Kume died in Tsukushi. A messenger on a fast horse carried the news to the capital.

Empress Suiko was greatly shocked. She called the crown prince and Umako and is said to have said:

"Prince Kume, the great general going to Silla, has died. Right before a great task, he could not finish it. How sad this is."

The Chronicles say the crown prince knew things before they happened. How did this brother hear the news? What the Chronicles keep is only the empress's words.

In the fourth month of the old calendar, Prince Taima, Prince Kume's older brother, became the new general. He had a different mother from the crown prince.

Prince Taima left Naniwa in the seventh month and got as far as Harima. There, the wife he had brought with him died at Akashi. Prince Taima buried her on a hill at Akashi and turned back.

The plan to attack Silla was dropped without ever being carried out.

One brother fell ill, and the other prince lost his wife and turned back.

On the first day of the eleventh month of the old calendar that year, the crown prince is said to have said to his officials:

"I have a precious Buddha statue. Is there anyone who will take this statue and worship it with respect?"

The one who stepped forward was a man named Hata no Kawakatsu.

"I will worship it."

Kawakatsu took the statue and built a temple around it. It was Hachiokadera.

It was at the end of the year when the crown prince lost his brother and the other prince's campaign came to a halt.

The next month, the Twelve Cap Ranks began. Officials' ranks were divided into twelve, and caps were sewn from cloth of a different color for each rank.

And then in the fourth month of the old calendar, 604, the Chronicles say the crown prince himself made, for the first time, a set of rules in seventeen articles.

The man of whom it was written that he heard ten pleas at once and knew what had not yet happened.

In the tenth article of the rules said to be his, there is this sentence:

"I am not necessarily a saint."

A Buddha Taller Than the Door

"I am not necessarily a saint. And the other person is not necessarily a fool. We are both just ordinary people."

An "ordinary person" is someone who lives with doubts and confusion, like most of us. This is a passage from a text that the Chronicles of Japan present as the crown prince's own work.

Under the year 604, the Chronicles record a set of rules in seventeen articles that the crown prince made himself, for the first time. It is the text later called the Seventeen-Article Constitution.

Whether the crown prince really wrote it is still argued among scholars today.

But whoever wrote it had watched people closely.

The tenth article is about anger. Do not be angry just because someone is different from you. Everyone has a heart, and every heart holds something it will not give up. If the other person is right, then you are wrong. If you are right, then the other person is wrong. After writing that, the text comes to the sentence above.

The first article says to value harmony. Right after that, it goes on: people all form cliques, and few can see things clearly.

If he really did write it, these are the words of a man who had lost two uncles to fighting.

The fifth article blames officials who act for money. The pleas of the rich pass through easily, like a stone thrown into water. The pleas of the poor are turned away, like water thrown on a stone.

Four years before these rules were made, in 600, a record from Sui, the empire across the sea, tells of a messenger who came from Wa.

Asked by a Sui official about his country, the messenger answered. The king of Wa, he said, treats Heaven as his older brother and the Sun as his younger brother. Before dawn he comes out and listens to government matters, sitting cross-legged. When the sun rises, he stops work and leaves the rest to his younger brother.

The emperor of Sui said:

"This makes no sense at all."

The Sui record says he told the messenger to change this. That record gives the king of Wa's name as "Tarishihiko" (written with a different character in some books), and it mentions neither Empress Suiko nor the crown prince.

After that, the country of Wa began to tidy up its appearance.

In 603, officials' ranks were marked by the color of their caps. In 605, the crown prince ordered the royal family and officials to wear a kind of garment called a hirami.

The eighth day of the fourth month of the old calendar, 606. A great Buddha statue made of bronze was finished, to be placed in the main hall of Gangoji temple.

But the statue was taller than the door of the hall. It would not go in.

The craftsmen talked it over, and it is said they said:

"Let's break down the door of the hall and get it in."

But Kuratsukuri no Tori, who had made the statue, was so skilled that he got it into the hall without breaking the door.

The next month, the empress praised Tori and said, "This is all your doing," the Chronicles say. Tori was given a rank and rice fields.

In the seventh month of the old calendar that year, at the empress's request, the crown prince taught a sutra called the Shomangyo. He finished it in three days. That year he also taught the Lotus Sutra.

The empress was very pleased and gave the crown prince a hundred cho (an old land measure) of rice fields in the land of Harima. The crown prince gave them straight to Ikarugadera temple.

In the seventh month of the old calendar, 607, Ono no Imoko was sent to Sui.

According to the Sui record, the messenger from Wa said this: we heard that the Son of Heaven across the sea in the west, like a bodhisattva, is making the Buddha's teaching flourish again. That is why we came to pay our respects. We also brought several dozen monks to study the teaching.

The letter he handed over read:

"The Son of Heaven where the sun rises sends a letter to the Son of Heaven where the sun sets. Are you well?"

Emperor Yang of Sui read it, was displeased, and said to the head of the office that handled foreign guests:

"There is a rude letter from the barbarians. Do not let me hear of it again."

Who wrote this letter is not known. Some scholars think it was the crown prince.

In the fourth month of the old calendar, 608, Imoko came home with the Sui envoys. But after the envoys' party reached Naniwa, Imoko is said to have reported:

"When I was leaving, the emperor of Tang gave me a letter. But the day I passed through Baekje, people there found me and took it from me. So I cannot hand it over."

The Chronicles call Sui "Tang" here.

The officials talked it over and said:

"A messenger does not lose his mission even if he dies. How could he be so careless as to lose the letter of a great country?"

Imoko was sentenced to exile.

Then Empress Suiko said:

"Imoko is guilty of losing the letter. But we must not punish him lightly. If the guests from the great country heard of it, they would not think well of us."

Imoko was forgiven.

In the eighth month of the old calendar, the Sui envoy entered the capital. On the day the letter was presented, the princes, the royal family, and the officials all wore golden hair ornaments and welcomed him in brocade and silks of many colors.

The next month, when the Sui envoy went home, Imoko was chosen as ambassador again. According to the Chronicles, the empress's letter he was given began like this:

"The Emperor in the east respectfully speaks to the Emperor in the west."

The earlier letter, in the Sui record, had begun with "The Son of Heaven where the sun rises."

Imoko crossed the sea once more.

The One Who Would Not Give a Name

"If you hate my spotted skin, then you cannot keep white spotted cows and horses in this country either."

In 612, a man from Baekje, across the sea, is said to have answered back like this.

The man had white spots on his face and body. People disliked how different he looked and feared he had a serious disease, and they were about to abandon him on an island in the sea.

He went on, they say:

"Besides, I have a little talent. I can build the shape of a mountain. If you keep me and use me, I will be of use to the country. Why throw me away on an island in the sea for nothing?"

People listened to his words and did not abandon him. In the garden south of the palace he built a model of Mount Sumeru, the mountain at the center of the Buddhist world, and a bridge in the style of Wu, an old name for southern China. They say people called him Michiko no Takumi, a name that means master builder.

The man who answered back was saved.

In the eleventh month of the old calendar the next year, 613, the Chronicles record that several ponds were dug and a great road was cut from Naniwa to the capital.

The next month, on the first day of the twelfth month of the old calendar, the crown prince went out to Kataoka.

A starving person lay fallen by the road. Asked for a name, the person did not answer.

The crown prince looked at the person and gave drink and food. Then he took off the robe he was wearing and laid it over the person, and is said to have said:

"Sleep in peace."

And then, it is said, he sang:

"On Mount Kataoka, a traveler lies fallen, starving for food. How sad. Were you born and raised without parents? Do you have no lord to serve? A traveler lies fallen, starving for food. How sad."

He was asking in song: you who would not give your name, do you have no parents, no lord?

The next day, the crown prince sent a messenger to see how the person was. When the messenger came back, the starving person was already dead.

The crown prince was very sad. He had the person buried there and the grave sealed tightly.

From here on, the Chronicles tell a strange story.

A few days later, the crown prince called one of his attendants and said:

"The starving person who was lying on the road the other day was no ordinary person. Surely that was a shinjin."

A shinjin is a person who has reached the end of the Way.

The messenger went to the grave. It was still sealed, and had not been moved. But when he opened it, the body was gone. Only the robe lay folded on top of the coffin, they say.

The crown prince sent the messenger once more to bring the robe back. And he put it on again, just as before. It was the robe he had laid on a dead person himself.

People at the time were amazed, and they say they told each other, "It is true that a saint knows a saint."

We are both just ordinary people. The man who is said to have written that said the starving stranger, whose name he never learned, was no ordinary person.

That person did not die. They went somewhere.

Perhaps he could not leave someone he had failed to save as just an ordinary person.

The fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the old calendar, 615. Eji, a monk from Koguryo, went home to his country.

He was the same Eji who had crossed the sea twenty years before and become the crown prince's teacher.

According to the old record, the Jogu Shotoku Ho-o Teisetsu, Eji went home carrying a book of commentary on a sutra said to have been written by the crown prince.

A few years later, news would reach Eji across the sea.

The World Is Only Borrowed

In 620, the crown prince and Lord Shima sat down together and wrote a record of the emperors and of the country.

Lord Shima was Soga no Umako.

It was thirty-three years since a fourteen-year-old boy had set a wooden statue on his hair in the army of the man who had his uncle killed. Now the two of them sat side by side, writing the country's history.

In the twelfth month of the old calendar the same year, the Chronicles of Japan say a red vapor shaped like a pheasant's tail appeared in the sky. It was a little over one jo (an old unit of length) long, about three meters.

On the twenty-first day of the twelfth month of the old calendar, 621, the crown prince's mother, Princess Anahobe no Hashihito, died.

When the new year came, on the twenty-second day of the first month of the old calendar, the crown prince fell ill and took to his bed.

As the crown prince's illness went on, his consort, who came from the Kashiwade family, also fell ill from exhaustion, and the two lay in bed together. This is what the inscription on the halo of the Shaka statue at Horyuji temple tells us.

The consort, the princes and the retainers were deeply worried, and made a vow together. They would make a statue of Shaka, the Buddha, as tall as the crown prince. By the power of this wish, may he be healed, may his life be lengthened, may he rest in peace in this world. And if it is his fixed fate, then may he go to the Pure Land.

The Jogu Shotoku Ho-o Teisetsu also holds another story.

As she neared her end, Lady Kashiwade asked for water. But the crown prince did not allow it. She died just like that. The crown prince is said to have composed a song to remember her. The song begins "Ikaruga no."

Why he did not allow it is not known.

He was a man who had given drink and food to a stranger by the road.

On the twenty-first day of the second month of the old calendar, the consort died. In the middle of the night the next day, the crown prince died too, the inscription and the Teisetsu say. He was forty-nine by the old count.

The Chronicles give the day of his death as the fifth day of the second month, a year earlier, also at midnight. Just like the ten people and the eight, here too the date is different depending on the book.

The Chronicles also record how people reacted. The old people lost even the taste of salt and vinegar, as if they had lost a dear child. Small children cried as if they had lost kind parents, and their voices filled the roads. Farmers stopped their plows, and women stopped pounding rice.

It is said that they all said:

"The sun and the moon have lost their light. Heaven and earth have fallen. From now on, who can we rely on?"

The news reached Eji too, in Koguryo across the sea.

Eji invited monks, prepared a memorial meal for the crown prince, and taught the sutras himself. On that day, he is said to have made this vow:

"In the land of Japan there is a saint. His name is Prince Kamitsumiya no Toyotomimi. He is truly a person Heaven gave us, and he was born in Japan with deep and holy virtue. (...) He honored the Buddha's teaching and saved the people from their suffering. He was truly a great saint. Now the crown prince has died. I am a foreigner, but my heart was bound to his, firm enough to cut through gold. What is the use of living on alone? Next year, on the fifth day of the second month, I will surely die. And in the Pure Land I will meet Crown Prince Kamitsumiya, and together we will save the people."

Eji died on the fifth day of the second month of the next year, just as he had said. In the Teisetsu, the day Eji gave was the twenty-second of the second month, the same day the crown prince died.

People are said to have told each other that not only Crown Prince Kamitsumiya but Eji too was a saint.

In the third month of the old calendar, 623, the Shaka statue they had vowed was finished. On the inscription, the name of the maker is carved as "Tori." It is the same name as Kuratsukuri no Tori, who got a great Buddha into a hall without breaking the door.

The wish that he would get well did not come true. Only the statue was finished, just as they had wished.

It was the same with his father. The Healing Buddha statue he had vowed so that his sick father would recover was not ready in time for his death, and was finished later by Empress Suiko and the crown prince, the inscription on the Horyuji Healing Buddha says.

The crown prince had other consorts too. One of them was Tachibana no Oiratsume.

She came before Empress Suiko, and, according to the inscription on an embroidered hanging, she said:

"It is not right for me to speak, but my heart will not stop. My great king and the king, my mother-in-law, went away one after the other, as if they had promised each other. I cannot compare my grief with anything."

"My great king used to say: the world is only borrowed. Only the Buddha is true. If I think about that teaching, my king must have been born in the Land of Heavenly Life."

"But I cannot see what that land is like with my eyes. I wish to have it made into a picture, so that I can at least see how my king was born there."

Empress Suiko was saddened and agreed. She had three painters draw the design, and ordered her palace women to make two embroidered hangings.

At fourteen, the boy cut a sumac tree and quickly made a statue of the Four Heavenly Kings. Let us win, he asked, and set it on his hair.

Thirty-five years later, those who were left made a Buddha as tall as he was, and stitched the land he had gone to with thread.

People called him a saint. Eji called him a great saint.

Tachibana no Oiratsume called him simply "my great king."