朱の世界 3The World of Vermilion, Part 3
Kukai, the enigmatic founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism. In the previous article I examined the broader picture from the perspective that shifts in political dynamics between Japan's ancient clans and its rising immigrant clans had a powerful influence on his sudden ascent at the dawn of the Heian period. Looking at outcomes alone, Kukai's meteoric rise was synchronized with the establishment of Heian-kyo from 794 onward. By 804 he had received the extraordinary appointment of being dispatched to Tang China alongside Saicho, already one of the most prominent monks of the age. After crossing the sea and studying together in China, the two brought the motif of esoteric Buddhism back to Japan through Tang intermediation. Saicho became the founder of the Tendai school on Mount Hiei, while Kukai would later establish the Shingon school on Mount Koya, each developing esoteric Buddhism along his own distinct path.
Saicho, however, had already been a figure of renown and had existing connections to the court. Kukai was an obscure monk born into a provincial gentry family in Shikoku. The mystery of why such a man was selected for a state-sponsored mission abroad has never been resolved. And to bring this back to the pilgrimage, after entering Tang China Kukai received the full transmission of esoteric teachings from the master Huiguo in a remarkably short span of time and returned to Japan ahead of schedule. The founding of the Shikoku pilgrimage attributed to him is said to have occurred afterward, in 815.
The Shikoku pilgrimage remains enormously famous to this day, yet not a single clear fact about its origins has been established. The popular image of the route as a sacred training ground for ascetic practice belongs to a later period, and it is unclear how faithfully it reflects the reality of Kukai's era. The question of whether Kukai truly built the Shikoku pilgrimage during this time is one that no one can actually answer. I personally believe a shift in perspective is called for. The Shikoku pilgrimage traces its origins to Kukai in terms of Buddhist practice, but the underlying prototype of the route itself was most likely established by unknown predecessors long before him. Kukai's role was to follow the traces left by these nameless forebears and reinterpret them through the lens of Buddhist training and devotion. But the history stretching from the pilgrimage's true origins to Kukai's involvement was in fact unrelated to esoteric practice as it is understood today.
With the recent articles on Kukai's circumstances as background, I want to explore a different angle in this piece. The key context to keep in mind during this shift in perspective is the frantic sequence of capital relocations from Heijo-kyo to Nagaoka-kyo to Heian-kyo. Understanding that background connects directly to what Kukai was doing in Shikoku. I believe it was the hidden circumstances within that history that were deeply linked to his extraordinary rise.
My view is that Kukai's movements at the origin of the pilgrimage were backed by a group providing financial support. When you allow yourself to make this kind of bold shift in perspective, the fixed image commonly held of Kukai begins to disassemble. The Kukai we think we know was constructed through centuries of posthumous deification, and it is highly likely that we are seeing only a narrow sliver of who he actually was.
Let me start with one firm fact. The places Kukai was deeply connected to throughout his life share a single common thread. It has nothing to do with Buddhist devotion. The thread is cinnabar. The vivid vermilion pigment derived from cinnabar was revered in ancient China not only as a symbol of immortality and nobility but as a sacred color believed to ward off calamity. In Japan as well, the veneration of vermilion has ancient and vigorous roots. The Gishiwajinden, which I have been examining in a separate series, also contains a fascinating passage about cinnabar. According to the Wei report, the Wa people of the Japanese archipelago painted their bodies with vermilion. In other words, the Wa people whom the Wei envoys are presumed to have encountered maintained a distinctive custom of applying vermilion to their bodies, and this is corroborated by archaeological sites and artifacts.
The period recorded in the Gishiwajinden corresponds to what is called the Yayoi period in Japanese chronology, but my own research in Japan has confirmed that the Jomon people of the preceding era were already paying close attention to vermilion and incorporating it into daily life. The Kamomiya-no-mae site in Tokushima on Shikoku, dating to roughly 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, has been identified as the largest and oldest cinnabar production center in the country. This suggests that by the Jomon period a large-scale operation was already in place encompassing cinnabar mining, pigment processing, and distribution networks. Many people still reflexively imagine the Jomon period as a time of primitive tribal existence. This is an entirely modern error that contradicts the evidence.
Today vermilion has been largely replaced by chemical substitutes and natural use has nearly disappeared, but it remains one of the colors most emblematic of Japan. The torii gates of Shinto shrines have been painted with vermilion since antiquity. That said, rather than the Jomon people having used vermilion continuously across their long history, my research suggests a developmental arc that began with the use of lacquer before attention shifted to vermilion under external influence. In Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, traces of lacquer use by Jomon people dating to approximately 12,600 years ago have been unearthed, making this the oldest known example of lacquer use in the world. What matters here is that red-colored lacquer was used extensively in this practice. The foundation for prizing the color of vermilion may therefore have been laid as far back as the Jomon period.
Put another way, the custom of painting the body with vermilion described in the Gishiwajinden may itself derive from an ancient Jomon practice, one that persisted as a base layer while gradually transforming under the influence of the northeast Asian migrants who became the parent population of the Yayoi people. The critical point is that the largest and oldest cinnabar production site in the country was found in Tokushima on Shikoku. Let me state the implication directly. What Kukai was searching for as he traveled across the whole of Shikoku may have been cinnabar. And this was not something he undertook of his own volition. The premise is that someone commissioned Kukai to carry out this search. His success in this mission may have been the achievement that earned him the foundation on which he built his extraordinary position.
Evidence suggesting this is no mere fantasy already exists in the Gishiwajinden. The text states that the mountains of the Wa kingdom contain cinnabar. This was likely not something the Wei envoys witnessed firsthand but rather information they recorded from the Wa people themselves. It can also be read as a reflection of how highly the Chinese valued cinnabar. What is suggested is that within the domain governed by the queen Himiko there were mountains producing cinnabar, that large-scale mining was already under way, and that the mineral was being distributed across the region. As noted earlier, this points to the Wa rulers making use of networks that had been built during the Jomon period.
The Wei envoys visited Japan around the mid-third century, which places their arrival thousands of years after the era of the Kamomiya-no-mae site in Tokushima. With this in mind, one aspect of Himiko's character as queen of the Wa comes into focus. She was managing the vermilion distribution network. This would naturally have been deeply connected to her role as a shamanistic priestess. It is highly likely that Himiko conducted rituals that made use of vermilion's perceived magical properties. Most intriguingly, cinnabar deposits are not distributed across the whole of Japan. They are remarkably concentrated.
The locations of cinnabar production can be traced through the distribution of mercury ore deposits. In Japan cinnabar is found only in specific areas. As of 1974 all domestic cinnabar mines have been closed due to environmental concerns, making it difficult to survey the remaining traces. Yet there is an undeniable fact. The regions where cinnabar was produced align perfectly with the places connected to Kukai's life and work. For reference, mercury ore deposits are hydrothermal deposits with cinnabar as their primary component.
The mercury deposit zones of Japan are principally the Yamato mercury deposits centered along the Yoshino River on the Kii Peninsula, the Awa mercury deposits running across the center of Shikoku, and certain deposits in parts of Kyushu. Geologically these are distributed along the Median Tectonic Line of southwestern Japan, tracing a single line that cuts across the archipelago. Kukai was born in Kagawa Prefecture, situated at the northern edge of the Awa mercury deposits in Shikoku, and when the pilgrimage was established he traversed the entire island. Today the emphasis tends to fall on the pilgrimage as a circuit around Shikoku, but rather than looking only at the eighty-eight temple sites themselves, consider the mercury deposit zones that lie within the territory those sites encircle. Then Kukai's intentions become visible.
The reason is that Kukai may not have been traveling Shikoku for the sake of devotion at all. He may have been moving from place to place in pursuit of cinnabar for entirely practical purposes. Given that later generations revered Kukai so profoundly, it is more realistic to assume that his true image was considerably distorted in the process. To push the point further, we should also factor in the religious marketing carried out by Shingon monks who inherited his legacy. When a charismatic founder is lost, the surviving institution invariably mobilizes large sums of money to propagate the faith and ensure its own survival. Shingon Buddhism was no exception. I suspect it was the later administrators of Shingon, people with no direct connection to Kukai, who grafted the narrative of spiritual practice and devotion onto the Shikoku pilgrimage. If we confine Kukai to the context of monasticism and esoteric Buddhism we will misread him. For the rulers of Heian-kyo what mattered far more than religion was fiscal survival.
Kukai's connection to cinnabar does not end with Shikoku. It is worth noting that the place he ultimately chose as his headquarters after returning from the Tang mission was Mount Koya on the Kii Peninsula, now known as the home of Shingon Buddhism. Something I have long found curious is the name of the great river that flows through the cinnabar-rich zone on the Tokushima side of Shikoku. It is the Yoshino River. The great river flowing just north of Mount Koya bears exactly the same name. Moreover, the Kii Peninsula river cuts directly across the boundary between Wakayama and Nara prefectures. On the Wakayama side it is called the Kino River, but upstream from a point roughly coinciding with Mount Koya it is known on the Nara side as the Yoshino River. The origin of this naming is still unclear, though one theory holds that Kukai, having established his base at Mount Koya, named it after the river in his home region of Shikoku because the old meaning of Yoshino was something like "river of divine salvation." With Kukai as a kind of hinge, a connection between Shikoku and the Kii Peninsula surfaces, and running beneath it is always the same keyword. Cinnabar.
Indeed, Mount Koya is so strongly associated with the Shingon temple Kongobu-ji and its image as a Buddhist holy site that little attention is paid to a deeper layer. But the sacred origins of Mount Koya reach back far before Kukai. In fact, from ancient times to the present, the guardian deity of Mount Koya is a goddess. She is formally positioned within the Shinto framework, but I believe she originated from a more primordial nature worship that predates Shinto entirely. In other words, this goddess carries an extremely ancient provenance, one discovered by the Jomon people.
The veneration of this guardian goddess of Mount Koya is said to span more than 1,700 years, placing it in a stratum far older than Kukai's arrival. The deity enshrined there is Niutsuhime. Put simply, Niutsuhime is the goddess of cinnabar. This becomes clear from the kanji rendering of her name, 【丹生】 (Niu). In ancient Japanese 【丹】 means cinnabar and 【生】 denotes a place of production. The phonetic root Niu or Nyu is very likely derived from the Jomon language and was inherited by the subsequent Yayoi and later populations. For the ancestral communities of Japan, the worship of Niutsuhime had a plainly practical origin. It marked the location of cinnabar production sites, and Niutsuhime was venerated as the deity who guarded those sacred deposits. Even today the Niutsuhime cult remains strong on Mount Koya, and those who understand the deeper traditions make a point of visiting her shrine alongside Kongobu-ji.
What follows is my own interpretation. Suppose Kukai, or whoever was backing him, turned their attention to these ancient and long-forgotten cinnabar deposits. Then behind Kukai's recorded achievements we can begin to see the outlines of a secret national-scale project to dispatch him and identify the locations of ancient cinnabar production sites. The reason it would have been kept secret is, as I have been arguing, that the project presumably involved Emperor Kanmu and the immigrant clans led by the Hata, the forces backing the new regime. These new powers had to hold their ground against the old establishment that had remained in Heijo-kyo on the Nara side, where clusters of very ancient clans still held sway. Extending Heian-kyo's political reach into the Nara sphere was no simple matter, precisely because the support base of Heian-kyo was fundamentally composed of immigrant factions. Once Emperor Kanmu, the emperor who carried immigrant blood, died, it was only natural to expect internal court struggles aimed at restoring the old bloodlines. Kukai should be understood as having operated within this delicate balancing act as a religious figure positioned outside the formal power structure.
The question remains how the immigrant clans came to know about these ancient cinnabar deposits in the first place. Certainly in some regions the knowledge of cinnabar production had been passed down through generations, and given Japan's relatively long history of cinnabar use, traces would have survived. But grasping the full picture would have required a systematic survey, one that also touched on mining rights and therefore demanded caution. The costs would have been enormous.
From the written record, the Engishiki, a compendium of court protocols compiled during the Heian period, documents that mercury derived from cinnabar was being sent as tribute to the court from Ise Province. Details about other regions are unclear. Ise Province corresponds to the present-day Ise area of Mie Prefecture and was another cinnabar production hub. It is said that for Heian-period aristocrats the use of rare and expensive natural vermilion in architectural finishes was a mark of status and an object of intense aspiration. Because cinnabar was so scarce and expensive, anyone who controlled its supply stood to gain a formidable advantage. Given this, it is curious that the recorded tribute of cinnabar to the court was limited to Ise alone, since cinnabar deposits extended across a much wider area and had a far older history. It is possible that by this time knowledge of most production sites had already been lost.
Here we should note that Kukai chose to establish Kongobu-ji not in Heian-kyo but on the remote Mount Koya. This was not a case of the court granting him the mountain. In 816 Kukai petitioned Emperor Saga directly and was granted permission in what was clearly a proactive decision on his part. There is no question that Kukai had his eye on Mount Koya. His stated justification to Emperor Saga was the establishment of a Shingon training center, but we should consider the practical dimensions as well.
As I have discussed in the On Dogen series, the Heian period was an era in which mountains like Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei were sacred spaces in themselves, privileged zones that even the court's rulers were not permitted to touch. By leveraging this kind of privileged space, establishing Kongobu-ji on Mount Koya, housing a large community of monks ostensibly devoted to practice, and simultaneously conducting mining operations to collect cinnabar and sell it as vermilion, a covert network could have been sustained. Just as the Mount Hiei establishment used its vast financial resources to dominate trade and eventually launched moneylending operations in Heian-kyo, the temples of this era are better understood as conglomerates. They must not be confined to the category of religious training grounds. Mount Koya would have operated under the same logic.
After all, cinnabar does not come from Mount Hiei. But Mount Koya sits on cinnabar-producing land. By controlling the mining rights in the surrounding area and coupling that with Shingon Buddhism's role as a spiritual guardian of Heian-kyo, the monks regularly dispatched from Mount Koya to the capital could have served as a smuggling route for vermilion. The possibility that Kukai sold vermilion to Heian-kyo's aristocracy and funneled the profits into funding the propagation of Shingon Buddhism cannot be dismissed. Given how little we actually know about Kukai, it is an attractive hypothesis. Viewed from a slightly unconventional angle, Kukai may have known somehow about the distribution of cinnabar across ancient Japan, and it may have been the discovery and exploitation of those deposits that generated the enormous wealth behind his rise. In today's terms, Kukai may have been a formidable entrepreneur as well as a monk.
If so, we can also imagine the existence of a partner who provided the financial backing for his surveys. My leading candidate for that role is the Hata, the immigrant clan that had risen to prominence by integrating a diverse range of industries.
But when Kukai returned from Tang China, unsettling events were unfolding inside Heian-kyo. He arrived back in Japan in 806. Roughly two months earlier Emperor Kanmu had died. Kanmu had been one of Kukai's key supporters, an emperor with strong ties to the Hata and broad backing from immigrant factions. His death temporarily severed the channels through which Kukai had enjoyed access and accommodation within the court. As a result, Kukai was punished for having unilaterally cut short his planned twenty-year stay abroad to just two years. He was barred from entering Heian-kyo for a time. And in the wake of Kanmu's death, political instability had gripped the capital.
The trouble began when the fifty-first emperor, Heizei (r. 806–809), who had succeeded Kanmu, arrested Prince Iyo (783–807) on suspicion of plotting a rebellion. Both Heizei and Prince Iyo were sons of Kanmu. The two had originally been allies, but after Kanmu's death the succession disputes that perpetually plagued the imperial family drove them apart. What demands our attention is that when Prince Iyo, imprisoned through this unilateral action by Emperor Heizei, took his own life, Kukai's uncle Ato no Otari is believed to have lost his position as well. This was clearly a political purge triggered by the succession struggle that erupted after the death of Kanmu, the man who had been the linchpin of the Heian-kyo relocation. Behind it, in all likelihood, lay a collision between the new forces of Heian-kyo and the old establishment of Heijo-kyo, something approaching a power struggle between Kyoto and Nara.
What this tells us is that Ato no Otari had been aligned with Prince Iyo's faction. In practical terms the disorder and breakdown of control within Heian-kyo meant that Kukai's entry into the capital was not permitted. It was only two and a half years later, in April of 809, when Emperor Heizei abdicated and Emperor Saga took the throne, that Kukai was finally granted permission. This owed much to the efforts of Saicho, who had also crossed the sea as part of the Tang mission. At that time the two men shared a sense of common purpose as monks of a new era and maintained a good relationship. Later, however, their paths would diverge and the bond would break.
By the time Kukai returned from Tang China he had become a monk of stature rivaling Saicho. Compared to Saicho, who had the profile of an establishment figure, Kukai projected the image of a self-made genius who had clawed his way to the top on raw ability. He was simply popular among younger monks. But his appeal and the trust he inspired extended well beyond commoners and clergy to the court itself. After his return he began involving himself actively in the various affairs of Heian-kyo. When set against the near-total absence of information about Kukai before his departure for Tang China, this represents a dramatic transformation.
Moreover, the roughly two years between his return to Japan and his permission to enter Heian-kyo are also a blank. It is generally assumed that he spent this period at Dazaifu in Fukuoka, the gateway for travel between Japan and China, and at nearby temples before moving to Osaka, though nothing is certain. The sheer volume of unknowns surrounding Kukai is staggering, yet once he enters Heian-kyo his accomplishments are documented in considerable detail. To reframe the question, was Kukai truly an unknown monk at all? It may be more productive to consider that he was a key member of a secret national project, entrusted with a specific mandate. One reason I lean toward this view is that for the seven years preceding his appointment to the Tang mission, not a single trace of Kukai's whereabouts or activities can be found. In Japan this is known as the Seven Lost Years. After those seven silent years he was suddenly appointed to the Tang mission. How are we to make sense of that?
And who exactly were the Hata, the foremost patrons of Heian-kyo? Kukai's existence, swirling with layer upon layer of mystery, simply cannot be grasped from a single conventional angle. It is only by examining his many-sided reality against the political circumstances of Heian-kyo that a different facet of the man begins to emerge. I have sketched the outlines of Kukai's mysteries broadly across these articles. Next I will turn to the forces that drove the flourishing of vermilion worship in ancient Japan, and from there explore how Kukai may have encountered the knowledge of Japan's ancient cinnabar landscape.