April 25, 2002

The first time I came to Japan, I spent two months in the Japan Center for Michigan Universities summer language program in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture. Knowing I was interested in Buddhism, my host family took me to just about every temple in Shiga. We walked around exclaiming about how beautiful and peaceful they all were, and I took dozens of photos, trying to get some of that temple-visiting feeling preserved. The weather was beautiful that summer, and there were lots of other visitors at the temples we went to, even up in the remote mountains. That same summer I went to Nara for the first time with a friend, and the grounds of Todaiji resembled a middle-school playground, filled with uniformed students. I did not mind the crowds; they felt like fellow participants in an amazing experience of discovering the depth and scale of Japan's religious past.

I have spent about two more years in Japan since that first summer, and the thrill of visiting Buddhist temples has not worn off. I study seventeenth-century nuns and convents, so when I go, I think about the religious purposes of the buildings I am in as a tourist. The monastic communities, male and female, that are still active keep their living and working quarters separate from the areas that tourists can enter, so while we walk around, we are having a very different experience from the one the inhabitants have. I have always wanted to see more of what goes on behind the scenes at Japan's convents and temples.

I recently had the opportunity to do this and to experience Japanese Buddhist temples in a new way - as a researcher. This past fall, I assisted in an ongoing project of surveying and cataloging the archives of convents in the Kansai region (around Kyoto and Osaka). There are quite a few convents that have thousands of documents, dating to at least the early Edo period (1603-1868), and they had never been surveyed by an outside group until the past few years. This current survey is vital, since these documents can tell researchers not just about the history of nuns but about the history of Buddhism in Japan as it was lived by both men and women.

The fall survey took place at Reikanji in Kyoto. It is just off the Philosopher's Walk (Tetsugaku no Michi), a popular route for tourists, but it is not open to the public. It was thrilling that first day to walk through the usually closed gates, although I was nervous about my ability to contribute to the survey. Inside the convent were the usual tatami rooms and wooden-floored corridors, but inside some of the rooms were couches, clocks, and a fax machine. It was initially odd to see the fax machine and the abbess's collection of chiming clocks, but of course modern-day nuns do not live in a vacuum. This is one of the things we miss when we visit the pristine, empty temples; while part of their pleasure is that they give the visitor the feeling of being somewhere simpler or more conducive to spirituality, that pleasure enables us to gloss over the reality of temples and convents and their inhabitants. The only way we bump up against that reality, often, is at the stations selling postcards or omamori (protective amulet), the profits of which contribute to the survival of many of these establishments.

The nuns of Reikanji are real people. They are pleased by the melodies played by their chiming clocks. They need to fax documents. The abbess of Reikanji is conscious of the importance of the historical records entrusted to her, and she was very gracious to the survey team while we were there. We sat at low tables, having cleared away the couches, and as we listened to the phone ring and the clocks chime, we sorted and cataloged documents from the Meiji period (1868-1912) and Taisho period (1912-1926). I worked primarily as a measurer, since my Japanese was not up to the task of reading the documents, which were mostly handwritten. There were letters and bills, newspaper clippings, an omamori from a nearby temple to ward off mice, and handbooks on how to perform rituals, among other things. Sorting through these old papers, I felt again a sense of the reality of the nuns who had lived at Reikanji over a hundred years ago, who performed rituals but also bought lamp oil and sweets and were concerned with the mice in their kitchen.

I am very lucky to have had the experience of working in a convent. I met the abbess, and I touched important documents. I feel like this gave me some kind of an understanding of the life of Japanese Buddhist nuns, which I hope will help me do better, more sensitive research, but I left very conscious as well of the limitations of my role as a researcher. While I may have penetrated the divide between tourist space and nun space for a few days, I entered that space as a lay person, and I remain a lay person. I can say that the nuns of Reikanji are real people, but that does not mean I got to be friends with the abbess or that I truly understand her life or character. Still, I hope that in my role as a researcher and writer, I can make people in both America and Japan aware of the remarkable, real lives of Japan's Buddhist nuns, both past and present.