KYOKO MOTOMOCHI NAKAMURA, trans, and ed.: Miraculous Stories from 
            the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryoiki of the Monk 
            Kyokai. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997; pp. xxi + 322. 
            Kyokai was little known in his own time and was, perhaps, a more 
            than usually self-effacing monk. The little that is known today of 
            his life largely derives from a few remarks in his three-volume work 
            entitled Nihonkoku genpo zen'aku ryoiki (Miraculous Stories of 
            Karmic Retribution of Good and Evil in Japan) which was probably 
            compiled between A.D.). 810 and 823; in his three prefaces, however, 
            he did not reveal even the place or date of his birth. We learn only 
            a little more about his life in one of his 116 miraculous tales, the 
            second last, for here his intent was not autobiographical -- drawing 
            this time on a few fragments of his own life-experience, once again 
            he mainly sought to demonstrate the truth of the law of karmic 
            causation. 
            The very modest Kyokai could not have imagined that the "future 
            generations" for whom he so painstakingly recorded these miraculous 
            tales from Japan's oral tradition would extend so far into the 
            future. And despite his fears, later generations have not laughed at 
            his efforts. Far from finding his scholarly labours to be 
            presumptuous, clumsy, or incompetent, they have valued them for 
            reasons that far surpass Kyokai's own estimation of their 
            moral-spiritual worth. 
            Naturally, one reason for the later recognition of the importance of 
            Kyokai's Nihon ryoiki has been its contribution to an understanding 
            of religious belief and practice in early Japan. Even in the title 
            of his work, Kyokai made quite clear the didactic intent of his 
            project, which was to convince his contemporaries of the Buddhist 
            maxim that "good and evil cause karmic retribution [in this or in 
            subsequent lives] as a figure causes its shadow, and suffering and 
            pleasure follow such deeds as an echo follows a sound in the valley" 
            (preface to vol. 1, 101). That people needed to be convinced at that 
            time reflected the fact that Buddhism had not long since found 
            favour with Japan's imperial court and, by degrees, its nobility, 
            and was yet to become a truly popular religion in Japan. The work 
            was meant to be a manual for practical use by clerics, at least 
            those who were interested in bringing the Buddhist message to the 
            people. What Kyokai did, in many cases, was to take popular legends 
            of strange, "miraculous," or seemingly irregular occurrences in the 
            phenomenal world, and recast them in Buddhist terms for popular 
            consumption. The many tales that warn of the consequences of not 
            heeding the teachings of Buddhism (for even imperial princes can be 
            brought low!), of speaking ill of monks, even of not respecting 
            their property are themselves evidence of the weakness of the 
            institution of Buddhism in Japan then, relative to later times. 
            Japan's religious tradition as a whole is often said to be unusually 
            eclectic, but perhaps it was due to this relative weakness that the 
            Buddhism disseminated in the Nihon ryoiki so obviously drew upon 
            other continental traditions as well. One could hardly fail to note 
            its Taoist and Confucian inspirations. 
            In Japan, Taoism and Confucianism were never displaced by Buddhism, 
            but were rather "digested" by it in its all-embracing Mahayana form. 
            The fact that Buddhism would become before long the "scientific" 
            paradigm of the age, however, not just its dominant religion, may 
            have had less to do with Mahayana's doctrinal flexibility than with 
            the persuasiveness of one particular aspect of Buddhism's message; 
            karma and transmigration. One commentator on Kyokai's work has 
            cogently argued that, within the paradigm of karmic retribution and 
            reward for past deeds, apparent "anomalies" in the physical world 
            (not necessarily "miracles") could be rendered explicable in a way 
            that was more satisfying to medieval Japanese than other 
            explanations because more comprehensive and thus more convincing. 
            (William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary 
            Arts in Medieval Japan, University of California Press, 1983.) 
            A further reason for the intrinsic interest and importance of the 
            work is that it also reveals rather a lot about contemporary secular 
            practices: the class or caste system of nobility, free merchants and 
            peasants, and slaves; and also the situation of women in an 
            increasingly patriarchal social system. Nara and Heian women 
            certainly suffered under a system of polygamy, yet they were also 
            accorded a rather ambiguous spirituality. Doubtless this was due 
            firstly to the traditional role of women as shamans, some having 
            been very highly placed in the social hierarchy, even in the 
            imperial court (one ancient queen in/of "Japan" was a shaman named 
            Himiko who admitted no men to her presence save her brother who was, 
            apparently, merely the land's civil administrator). Secondly, it was 
            surely due to the more sexually egalitarian traditions of Mahayana 
            Buddhism that were, nonetheless, still rather ambivalent concerning 
            the feminine. In a situation where Buddhism in Japan was only in the 
            process of achieving religio-philosophical hegemony, it comes as no 
            surprise that women could still be represented as beings of high 
            spiritual attainment, even bodhisattvas in disguise. Only later in 
            Japan would the view gain common currency that a woman, if she could 
            achieve enlightenment or salvation at all, had to be transformed 
            into a man in order to gain entrance into the (Amida's) Pure Land. 
            Finally, as to this particular edition of the work, the translator 
            Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura offers the reader a scholarly rendition of 
            the Nihon ryoiki, including a first chapter on the author's 
            background and philosophical influences, and a second chapter on 
            various elements of his world view. The text contains extensive 
            explanatory footnotes, and also appendixes detailing imperial 
            lineages and listing Buddhist scriptures then known in Japan, as 
            well as legendary works of the Heian and Kamakura periods (from the 
            ninth to fourteenth centuries). While I cannot comment on the 
            quality of the translation since I have not read the work in the 
            original, it seems to me that Curzon Press was quite right to 
            reissue this volume first published by Harvard University Press in 
            1973. As Japan's earliest extant work of legendary literature, 
            Kyokai's Nihon ryoiki has long had an inestimable scholarly 
            importance.