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EASTERN RELIGIONS
Contrary to Christianity and Islam, native East Asian
religions offer no sense of a single Satan or God, and there
is not the overwhelming presence of the church in daily
lives. Accordingly, there are not the same angry reactions
to unanswered prayers or the failure of clergy.
Buddhism, like Christianity in the West, has been a
significant force shaping Asian literature. It arrived in
China in the first century A.D. and was actively imported to
Japan in the seventh and eighth centuries; shortly, Buddhist
monasteries and temples sprang up everywhere in East Asia.
Dark, incense-clouded temples filled with candle-lit
paintings, sculpture, and illuminated scriptures have
provided much of the ambience distinctive of Japanese Gothic
fiction. Mahayana Buddhism, which dominated China and Japan,
also contributed to Asian literature its images of hell. In
"The Spider's Thread" ("Kumo no Ito," 1918) Akutagawa
describes hell as a "pool of blood" where the eternally
exhausted sinners bob up and down, choking, seeing only the
"gleaming of pointed needles jutting sharply from the
ghostly Mountain of Needles."(83) But few Gothic figures
ever confront this extreme realm of punishment. A life of
violent ingratitude and betrayal, like Toru's in Mishima's
Decay of the Angel, will simply erode one's karma, leading
to a life of suffering. Japanese Gothic plots typically
place humans on a spiritual continuum, a karmic wheel,
rather than in a divided world of good and evil.
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WORLD RELIGIONS
COMPARED
WORLD
RELIGIONS CLIPART |
