Buddhist monks now going
clubbing
BY AYATERU HOSOZAWA, THE ASAHI
SHIMBUN, August 16,2007
Tokyo, Japan -- The booze is flowing freely and
the patrons in the smoke-filled bar are in good spirits. Club
Chippy in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward is known as a place to go for good
jazz. But instead of musicians taking the small stage, three
Buddhist monks face the audience.
Buddhist monks perform at Club Chippy in Tokyo's Edogawa
Ward.(SHINICHI IIZUKA/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
That much is evident from their shaved heads and conventional black
attire.
They then start chanting Buddhist sutras and passages in Sanskrit
while patrons sit back in awe or try to do the same.
This unusual scene occurs one night a month. It is part of an
effort to stir up interest in Buddhism among Tokyoites, whose paths
rarely cross with Buddhist monks outside of funeral ceremonies or
occasional visits to temples.
Increasingly, younger-generation monks are trying to reach out to
the public.
They say that only by connecting with the public at large does
Buddhism have any chance of remaining relevant to ordinary people.
Thus, the performances at Club Chippy, in an area near JR
Shin-Koiwa Station crowded with bars and eateries, are as much
about survival as anything else.
The club appearances are the brainchild of Hogen Natori, 48, a
senior monk at the Mitsuzoin temple of the Shingon sect of
Buddhism, located in Edogawa Ward.
He is joined by two younger monks for the stage shows.
Natori said he came up with the idea of the sutra sessions during
his visits to Chippy to listen to live jazz performances. That was
five years ago.
"In the beginning, some people thought there was a funeral wake
going on inside and just left," said Kyoko Sakamoto, who runs the
establishment. "But now, people come for the comfort that the
sounds of sutra offer."
The monks perform three or four pieces each time and later sit
among the audience, sometimes offering advice on life's problems to
those who seek it.
Meantime, monks from the Komyoji temple of the Jodoshinshu sect of
Buddhism in Tokyo's Toranomon district set up tables and chairs in
cafe-style in front of the temple's main hall, overlooking the
temple's cemetery plot.
The venue is open to the public. Dubbed the Kamiyacho Open Terrace,
it is filled with office workers who bring their lunch around noon
each weekday.
"Temples were once the center of communication for the community,"
said Keisuke Matsumoto, 28, a Komyoji monk. "We organized this in
the hope that people would come just as they would to a
cafe."
Young monks have been holding regular meetings at the Soto sect's
Seishoji temple in Tokyo's Minato Ward since 2003 to talk about
issues of Buddhism in contemporary society, ranging from ways to
hold better funeral rites and religious support for terminally ill
patients to relief work in the aftermath of natural
disasters.
"Suffering in society cannot be addressed if monks just stay cooped
up inside their temples," said Noriyuki Ueda, associate professor
of cultural anthropology at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"Buddhism in Japan will surely become more relevant if the number
of younger generation monks with ambition to spread the word
increases."
Ueda, who serves as an adviser to the monks' meetings at Seishoji,
says the only way to revitalize Buddhism is for monks to have
greater contact with the world at large.
