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天あ　ま

田だ

喜よ　し

應ま　さ

Amada Yoshimasa

“Finally I was able to see all around me.”

My name is Amada Yoshimasa. I am 18years old. I live in a temple (tera1) inShizuoka prefecture where my father isa priest. I spent three years at Minobu-san High School,2 a boarding school lo-cated in Yamanashi prefecture run bythe Nichiren sect of Buddhism,3 in orderto study to become a priest. This springI entered the Rissho University Facultyof Buddhist Studies in Tokyo.

Four pages of Takarabako will be devoted to intro-ducing and providing a wide variety of resourcesand information, mainly about the lives and cul-ture of Japanese young people. Three pages willpresent various ideas and teaching plans for usingthese materials in the classroom. This issue featuresAmada Yoshimasa, the model of prize winningwork of the seventh TJF “Lives of Japanese HighSchool Students: Photo and Message Contest.”

My family. When the temple parishioners (danka4)gather for a temple function, my father does a lot morethan just conduct the service.5 He tries to get everyoneto have a good time by singing songs with them andserving them food he cooks himself. My older brothersays, “Father’s services are just like Johnny’s pop starconcerts.6 He’s all for the audience participation-type ofevent and he gets right down there with everyone else.”I think my admiration for my father is what made medecide to become a priest.

During class. Minobusan High School was es-tablished over seven hundred years ago byKuonji, a temple with a long and distinguishedhistory that stands at the head of all the templesbelonging to the Nichiren sect of Buddhism.The school is small and has only about twentystudents per year. Future priests from all overJapan attend classes here while boarding andtraining at Kuonji or other temples nearby.Aside from the regular high school curriculum,we also take classes on Buddhism. We learnabout things we will need to know in the futuresuch as how to conduct funeral ceremonies andvarious other services.

http://www.tjf.or.jp/takarabako/index.htm

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Father: As a parent I am of course sometimes compelled to scoldhim. Usually when a parent scolds a child, the parent is himself feel-ing irritated and inevitably acts somewhat unreasonable. But evenwhen he knows I am being unfair Yoshimasa just looks a little wistfuland puts up with it.

Playing the ryuteki.9 At school I joined the teaceremony, dance, and basketball clubs. I alsostudied gagaku10 music, since it is a required partof Buddhist temple ceremonies, and played in-struments including the sho11 and ryuteki.

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A junior student at high school: During services Amada-senpaiknows how to perform the required movements very gracefully. Healso has good leadership skills and is very understanding. Once, whenI was so discouraged by the harshness of the training that I wanted toquit, he was sympathetic and listened attentively to what I had to say.I was quite impressed to realize that he was the kind of person whotries to guide others by caring about them and making the effort tosee things from their point of view.

Older brother: He really wants to become a priest and he is veryeager to learn. I think he is better than I am at attracting and leadingothers, probably because he is gentle and open-minded.

Mother: He’s just like his father. I have never seen him get angry.

Morning prayers.7 We must sit in formal kneeling po-sition (seiza8) for the hour and a half to two hours theservice lasts. At first none of us could stay in this po-sition for even five minutes, but we slowly got ac-customed to sitting for longer and longer periods oftime. It takes over a month to be able to sit correctlythrough the whole service.

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At the convenience store. Wehad one or two days off everyone to two months. On thosedays we went out to do thingslike buying CDs, going bowlingor singing karaoke. At karaoke Ioften sing songs by bands likeTUBE12 or The Trabryu.13 Since Ihad very little chance to go out,I always made sure to look nicewhenever I went shopping orfor karaoke.

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Evaluations of Yoshimasa by those around him

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Right after the entrance ceremony on the first day ofhigh school we attended a welcoming ceremony fornew boarders held at the temple where we were tostay. That night the older students shaved our headswith barber’s clippers. Our training for the priesthoodstarted the next day. Every morning we got up at fiveand attended prayers for about an hour and a half totwo hours. After prayers were over we had breakfastand then cleaned the temple halls before going toschool. After school we came back to do anotherround of cleaning, followed by dinner, baths, andevening prayers. There was no time at all to rest. Dur-ing our first year the second-year students taught usin great detail how to clean, how to speak respectfullyto our elders, how to serve food at mealtimes, and thelike. I found cleaning the hardest task. We had to workvery quickly to get the job done in time and some-times I would get cramps in my legs. My hands gotred and chapped from rinsing the mops in icy coldwater in the winter.

Every day we all wantedto go to school as soon aspossible, as school was theonly place we could get anysort of break. Some stu-dents were emotionally un-able to go on because theycouldn’t adjust to the newlife and became unbearablyhomesick. Others had toleave because their knees

become inflamed from sitting in the seiza position toolong. There were twelve boarders at the temple in-cluding myself when we started out, but only six, orhalf, were able to graduate.

I felt like quitting many times as well. The first yearwas very hard physically, since I was on the move thewhole day through. I don’t know whether I could do itagain if I had to. But I was able to get through it all rightas long as I did what the older students said so I wouldnot get scolded. My second year was psychologicallyhard, since I had to instruct and take care of theyounger students while at the same time continuing tolearn from the older students. During this year I expe-rienced firsthand how hard it is to teach others. If youcannot teach well your efforts are wasted, since theyounger students get confused and soon stop listeningto you. I learned that you have to adjust your approachaccording to each student and pay attention to their in-dividual feelings. During my third year I was made oneof the leaders of the student body. As I did this work Ibecame aware of how difficult it is to be at the head ofa group. If those in the lead do not set a good example,those who are following them will become careless andsloppy. You also cannot lead others if you do not havefirm ideas and convictions of your own.

During my first year I could only see one way:ahead. In my second year I became able to look backat the way I had come as well as to see what was com-ing up. Finally, in my third year I was able to see all 360degrees around me. I think it was the experience withleadership that made this new perspective possible.

During services. In the future, I want to beable to do things for my temple like entertain-ing the parishioners with my own cookingwhenever there is a service and arranging theflowers myself. I want the temple to be an en-joyable gathering place for the whole commu-nity and a force from which citizens can worktogether for world peace. Though Buddhism,Christianity, and Islam all differ in terms oftheir historical background, social environ-ment, and teachings, the spirit of their prayersis still the same. I think that the importantthing is to try to understand each other and totranscend our ethnic and religious differencesso we can be tolerant of each other as humanbeings, just the same as we would be tolerantof our own children.

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Photos: Yoshida Tadamasa (1, 2, 3, 4), Kurihara Hirofumi (5, 6, 7)

Finally I was able to see all around me.

Photo: Yoshida Tadamasa

Yoshimasa’s Essay

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1 Tera（寺）: A Buddhist temple. A place enshrining images of theBuddha and used as a setting for ascetic training and religiousservices.

2 Minobusan High School: Religious schools make up 27% ofall privately run high schools in Japan. Of these schools, 60%are Christian, 33% Buddhist, 2% Shinto, and 5% other. Out of120 Buddhist high schools, only about five schools offer pro-grams enabling students to attain the priesthood upon grad-uation. (From Shukyo kyoiku shiryo shu [Source Materials onReligious Education], Kokugakuin University Institute forJapanese Culture and Classics, ed., Suzuki Shuppan, 1993).

3 Buddhism: Historical accounts say that Buddhism was in-troduced to Japan from India via China and the KoreanPeninsula in 538 A.D. The Nichiren sect was founded in themid-thirteenth century by the Japanese priest Nichiren (1222-82) and is one of the largest of the 157 Buddhist sects regis-tered with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology. There is no single standard course for at-taining priesthood in Japan, candidates must instead work tofulfill the conditions established by the individual sect towhich they belong. Buddhist priests in Japan may marry.

According to the Nihonjin no kokuminsei chosa [Study of theJapanese National Character](1998) conducted by the Institute ofStatistical Mathematics, the proportion of Japanese who saythey belong to a religion or have some sort of religious faithstands at 33 percent, a figure which has remained nearly un-changed for the past forty years. The 2003 Shukyo nenkan [Re-ligion Yearbook], issued by the Agency for Cultural Affairs,the total number of followers of various religious organizationsin Japan is approximately 216 million (note: the total popula-tion of Japan is 120 million). Of this figure, 49.9 percent areShinto, 44.2 percent Buddhist, 0.9 percent Christian, and 5.0percent other faiths including Muslim and Hindu. Some Japa-nese consider themselves affiliated with a Shinto shrine and aparishioner of a Buddhist temple simultaneously. AlthoughShinto celebrations and rituals such as omiya mairi (the firstvisit made to a shrine after the birth of a baby), shichigosan (cer-emonies held for three- and five-year-old boys and three- andseven-year old girls in order to celebrate their health andgrowth), and hatsumode (the first visit made to a shrine at NewYear’s) are a familiar part of Japanese life, a majority of peoplealso observe Buddhist traditions such as O-Higan and O-Bonand choose funerals conducted in Buddhist style, an indicationof how firmly Buddhism is entrenched in daily life.

4 Danka (檀家): Parishioners/lay members of a particular tem-ple who attend its services and participate in its administra-tion and management.

5 Buddhist memorial services in honor of the dead: Servicesheld every seven days during a forty-nine day period imme-diately following a person’s death and on designated an-niversaries thereafter.

6 Johnny’s (ジャニーズ事じ

務む

所しょ

): A talent agency that managesSMAP as well as many other popular male performers andsinging groups.

7 Prayers: The act of praying and chanting sutras while sittingformally in front of a Buddhist image or altar, usually per-formed in the morning and at night.

8 Seiza (正せい

座ざ

): Literally, “the proper wayto sit.” Ways of sitting formally varyfrom culture to culture. In Japan, whenassuming a formal sitting posture, forexample while in a Japanese-style roomor during Buddhist services, one sits inthe manner as shown in the photo.

9 Ryuteki (竜りゅう

笛てき

): See photo 5. A horizontal flute made ofbamboo. A gagaku instrument.

10 Gagaku(雅が

楽がく

): The name given to the style of traditional musichanded down within the Japanese imperial court, often per-formed at the beginning and end of Buddhist memorial services.

11 Sho (笙しょう

): A woodwind instrument made of wood and bamboo.One of the most commonly seen of the gagaku instruments.

For details on the content of notes 9 to 11, see the followingweb sites.

12 TUBE (チューブ): A four-member bandthat made its debut in 1985. Most oftheir songs, including the hit Seasonin the Sun, are set in summer.

13 The Trabryu (虎トラ

舞ブ

竜リュウ

): A four-memberhard rock band that made its debut in1982.

Notes

てら だん か

http://www.tube.gr.jp/

http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/e08/ed08-01.html

(Imperial Household Agency web site)

http://www.nihongagakukai.gr.jp/instrumants-j.html

http://www.trabryu.com/

Figures