The Karma Canon: Representations and Subversions of Buddhist Thought in East Asian Cinema
By Enoch Lai, Edited by Alexis Lopez
Introduction
When daydreaming about an escapade to Tokyo, Japan, a cinephile would eventually be curious about the locations of the graves of iconic filmmakers such as Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. This brings me to the grave of Yasujiro Ozu. Located in Engaku-ji in the historic town of Kamakura, Ozu's headstone is a clean-cut, dark gray block with a character carved on its surface. Its minimalist design echoes the minimalism of Ozu's films, but below the headstone are offerings from Ozu's family and admirers: flowers and booze, which reveals the dueling quality of natural beauty and drunken poetry in Ozu's films. The most interesting element, however, is the character carved on the headstone–‘mu,’ which means ‘nothing’ in Japanese. Meanwhile, other filmmakers like Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, just like any traditional headstones in a Japanese cemetery, only display the family name. So, why is Ozu's headstone engraved with ‘mu?’
The first term to point towards is the Buddhist concept of emptiness, which ‘mu’ likely implies. Emptiness, or in Sanskrit, ‘sunyata,’ is a common concept in Mahayana Buddhism that suggests that all things are conceptual constructs and therefore empty (Oliver, 89). In this case, the conceptual constructs of many themes, such as family dynamics and social change, explored in Ozu's films are challenged. Although Ozu was never outwardly Buddhist in his filmmaking, Ozu's oeuvre is marked by deconstruction, especially that of a family unit. Lauded as one of the most important filmmakers of all time, Ozu has made over 50 films from the late 1920s to the late ’60s, and has left an influence on filmmakers from Hou Hsiao-Hsien to Hirokazu Kore-eda. Instead of presenting dramatic conflicts, characters in his films are subtle and the conflicts are hidden within layers of subtext. Characterized by long takes, stillness, and wide shots, ‘emptiness’ as a Buddhist concept is hinted at in Ozu's world through both form and narrative.
Buddhism in Cinema
Since the emergence of film, filmmakers have tried to capture their spirituality on camera by combining cinema with religion, translating their own spiritual experiences and philosophies onto the screen. Following the introduction of cinema in the West, Christianity has been dominating the religious film subgenre. Filmmakers like Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman have engaged with their faith in films by exploring the way human beings struggle with their beliefs. Mainly due to Europe and America's access to film technology and the concept of Evangelism, which encourages spreading the Gospel, Christian films are more prevalent than films of other religions. In the West, films about Buddhism only began to gain wide appeal after the Dalai Lama had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 (Whalen-Bridge, 44). The newfound interest in Tibet and Buddhism led to more and more films from the West exploring Buddhism, such as Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1994) and Scorsese’s Kundun (1997) (Whalen-Bridge, 44). Buddhist cinema eventually gained traction, and different filmmakers across Asia have weighed in on their interpretations of Buddhism. However, I will be focusing more on Buddhist representations in East Asian cinema here, especially in films that are not strictly or explicitly Buddhist. Through several films I have chosen, I will then dissect how Ozu's filmography also aligns with the subtleties of Buddhist expressions.
Impermanence and Immorality in This Transient Life
The original Japanese title of Akio Jissoji’s This Transient Life (1970) is ‘Mujo,’ which literally translates to ‘impermanence.’ The film tells the story of Masao, a man in his twenties, who has an incestuous relationship with his sister while learning to make Kannon (a name for a Bodhisattva in Japan) sculptures with a master. In the film's final moments, Masao breaks the fourth wall, stares into the lens, and begins ranting about morality. His argument is that “by accepting that everything is impermanent in life, one admits that there is no end result in living morally, thus there is no point in following what society considers ‘moral.” In the textbook Buddhism: An Introduction to the Buddha's Life, Teachings, and Practices, author Joan Olivia defines ‘impermanence’ as “the nature of all compounded or conditioned things to decay … thoughts and things arise because certain causes and conditions come together, and they disappear when causes and conditions change” (Olivia, 61). This can be applied to Masao’s character, who is oddly absent from the final scene after a dream sequence in which he helps his dead grandmother dig out a sculpture of a carp, which has “eaten” all the dead people. Here, Masao represents one force of nature, albeit a lustful, malicious, and transgressive force, that works to reveal death as the ultimate force of nature, represented by the carp. The story begins when certain causes and conditions come together, like Masao’s interest in Buddhism intersecting with his lust towards his sister, but as the lust fades away, he too fades into nothing. By putting a polarizing spin on the concept of ‘impermanence,’ Jissoji provided a new perspective on a centuries-old tradition.
Considering this film’s unconventional approach to filmmaking with its unhurried narrative and unconventional angles, it came as no surprise that this film is sponsored by the Art Theatre Guild of Japan, a company that produced and distributed arthouse films that contributed to the Japanese New Wave (Domenig). Jissoji’s jarring transition into arthouse cinema also came as a surprise, given that his previous works are in the child-friendly television series Ultraman. Rebelling against traditional and modern class values has been a recurring motif in Japanese New Wave, but Jissoji takes it a step further by connecting it to Buddhist themes (Fullerton, 128). Though Ozu's films were never as transgressive as Jissoji's, his films are tinged with themes of impermanence. At the end of Tokyo Story (1953), a major plot point takes place where Noriko, the main character of the film, is forced to come to terms with the impermanence of life, and instead of abandoning morality, she learns to embrace it.
Enlightenment and Fatalism in A Touch of Zen
A Touch of Zen (1971) is a 3-hour wuxia (martial arts) period film by King Hu, one of the most seminal filmmakers from Taiwan. During the late 1960s to the late 1970s, wuxia was one of the most popular genres in the Sinosphere. These wuxia films were characterized by heroic main characters whose righteousness defeats a force of evil with fantastical kung-fu. King Hu was a filmmaker who stands out by subverting tropes while being boldly spiritual. A Touch of Zen places us viewers at the Ming dynasty, sometime between 14th to 17th century, following a young scholar Gu Sheng-Zhai who encounters a mysterious neighbor Yang Hui-Zhen, a fugitive on the run from the government. Later in the story, a Chan Buddhist Abbot, Hui Yuan, offers protection for Yang. This film is subversive in multiple ways: the narrative focus flows from one plot point to another, and there is not a fixed main character, unlike traditional wuxia stories. Yang, the hero of the story, becomes a nun at a Buddhist monastery at the end instead of living with Gu, which first and foremost subverts feminine archetypes in wuxia storytelling. But more importantly, the ending of the film shows Abbot Hui getting stabbed by an antagonist, and as he ends up abruptly sitting and meditating in front of an injured Yang, the sun then forms a halo behind the Abbot’s head. The story does not end victoriously where ‘good defeats evil,’ but with the imagery of enlightenment, which supersedes everything else. The lack of narrative focus and the moral ambiguity exhibited in this film not only echoes themes of impermanence – in this case the impermanence of human conflicts – but also exhibits enlightenment, letting go of earthly matters and thus transcending above ‘good and evil.’
The ending of the film digs at the concept of fatalism even further. During the last few shots, Abbot Hui stands still after he is stabbed by the enemy, and he is bathed in blinding sunshine. That can be read as a process of sublime transfiguration by which he achieves Buddhahood (Teo, 102). This gives us the first clue as to King Hu's intentions - the Abbot transfigures the same way the ending of the film transfigures into spiritual territory. But why not end the film with the protagonist Yang gloriously defeating the enemy? King Hu wanted the viewers to understand that in the bigger picture, these mortal conflicts matter much less as all outcomes are already destined. Through this film, King Hu exhibits the Buddhist principle of fatalism – life and death does not matter in the face of destiny (Teo, 103). Even though King Hu explicitly maintained that he wasn’t a Buddhist, he had always been attracted to spirituality (Teo, 104). And while wuxia films are not strictly spiritual, they always explore fatalism to some extent by placing characters in situations they cannot control yet learn to live through. Inevitable demise is a plot device common in wuxia, such as in the ending of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), where protagonists accept their end knowing that there is always a greater story in the bigger picture. Because fatalism plays such an important role in wuxia, it can be said that wuxia heavily intertwines with spirituality.
When discussing wuxia, one can also draw a connection to a plethora of Hong Kong wuxia films made by the Shaw Brothers Studio. Those films, such as the Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984), also overtly include Buddhist monks as part of the story. Despite the Eight Diagram Pole Fighter’s depiction of Buddhist monks fighting antagonists, which is clearly ungrounded in reality considering the Buddha’s stance on pacifism. Yet, the film explores themes of fatalism by placing its characters in inevitable tragedies. Gordon Liu plays a character who is almost fated to join the Buddhist monastery after surviving an attack that killed all of his brothers. Thus, fatalism remains a central tenet in the subgenre of wuxia.
Once again, Ozu was never known for period action epics, but what brings to mind is Late Spring (1949), where Noriko (also portrayed by Setsuko Hara), is placed against her inevitable marriage. As his father peels off the skin of an apple at the end of the film, alone at his empty house, he comes to the realization that now he is completely alone, a devastating reality that both he and Noriko wanted to prevent but couldn't because of the tradition of marriage. The film cuts to the raging waves of the ocean, just like the golden sun at the end of A Touch of Zen, the characters’ fates are part of the natural force.
Samsara in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring
Moving on from depictions of Buddhism in unfamiliar settings, such as in the mind of a lustful middle-aged Japanese man or a sword-wielding heroine in imperial China, depictions of Buddhism in contemporary cinema tell a different story.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003) is a South Korean film by Kim Ki-Duk. Kim’s other films have never been about Buddhism, and he explicitly stated that he was not a Buddhist, but in fact a Christian (Cho, 109). Instead, Kim Ki-Duk discusses life, morality, and virtues using Buddhism as a vehicle. The film is narratively broken down into five segments, as the title suggests, and shows a young boy and a Buddhist master living on a floating wooden platform in the middle of the lake. The first ‘Spring’ shows the young boy toying with animals cruelly and is punished by the master; ‘Summer’ sees the young boy growing up into a teenager and becoming lustful and violent before leaving the platform, taking a small Buddha statue with him; ‘Fall’ reveals that he comes back after many years while being charged for murder and his ‘repentance’; ‘Winter’ is where he becomes the Buddhist master while adopting another young boy; ‘…and Spring’ shows the new young boy toying with animals cruelly, forming a full circle. This is a straightforward telling of the ‘samsara.’ ‘Samsara’ in Sanskrit means ‘wandering’ and in the case of Buddhism, signifies the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Each section of Spring… plays out like a moral tale while playing a part in the cycle of life. And in the context of Buddhist teachings, ‘samsara’ only brings forth suffering, as the Buddha said, “birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering” (Oliver, 56). Thus, instead of showing the story change, by forming a full circle in its narrative, the film proposes a world that does not transcend beyond suffering, which goes against the mainstream ideology of reaching enlightenment and moving away from suffering, as shown in the ending of A Touch of Zen.
The interesting part is that the Buddhism explored in this film does not reflect traditional Korean Buddhism at all but more from an ‘outsider’s perspective’ (Cho, 110). The ‘outsider’ Buddhist elements here lend themselves to a more contemporary interpretation of Buddhism, like supernatural abilities - during ‘Summer,’ after the young boy escapes the platform on a boat, the master was able to use his hands to summon it back from a far distance. But the more interesting character choice is the master’s refusal to prevent events such as the young boy’s departure or his own demise. Thus, he does not interrupt ‘samsara,’ the cycle of existence, but accedes to its inevitability, which calls back to themes of fatalism (Cho, 115). Almost in a cynical way, the film is skeptical towards enlightenment. In Mahayana traditions, there is skepticism towards the samsara-nirvana polarity, which refers to the mutual exclusivity of the cyclic existence of suffering and enlightenment (Cho, 119). The master’s death does not lead to reaching enlightenment, but the reincarnation into a snake. This subverts the traditional idea of breaking out of ‘samsara.’ By stripping away conventional story structures, the philosophy at the core of the film is given the spotlight, and it just so happens to be deeply tied to Buddhist themes. In some regards, the ending of Floating Weeds (1959) showcases samsara in the form of a failed father and husband, forever rejected by his family despite perpetual efforts to redeem himself. The cyclic nature of Floating Weeds as well as the idea of aging in Tokyo Story harks back to the concept ‘samsara’.
Slowness in Walker
Further stripping away conventional story structures leads to avant-garde films such as Walker, a 27-minute-long experimental short film by Malaysia-born Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, who captured actor Lee Kang-Sheng slowly walking through the city of Hong Kong. And by ‘slowly,’ it would be more appropriate to define the slowness as extremely slow, to the point where it seems as though Lee would not move a muscle for seconds. In an interview with Film Comment, Tsai explained that his inspiration came from the idea of Xuanzang, a 7th-century monk, who obtained and translated Buddhist scriptures from India and took them back to China by walking (Ng, 4). The extremely slow movement of Lee Kang-Sheng juxtaposes the extreme fast pace of modern Hong Kong, as the viewers are constantly placed in a fixed view of the walker while challenged by colorful posters, neon signs, busy pedestrians, and traffic noise. By juxtaposing modernity and slowness, Tsai utilizes Buddhist ritualism as a counterpoint to modernity (Ng, 4). This draws another line from the usage of Buddhist storytelling to Ozu’s obsession with societal changes under modernity. Walker also refers to an early Indian Buddhist ritual of walking around the stupa - a Buddhist shrine, a precursor to ‘mindful walking.’ Mindful walking is to simply walk with no destination in mind, set only on living in the current moment (Oliver, 116). In a city where everyone is governed by speed and efficiency, the walker is thus fully focused on existing in the present.
In addition, Tsai’s Walker invites the viewers to live in the same space and time as the film as a spiritual practice. As Ng Teng-Kuan points out in his essay on Tsai’s Walker film series, Tsai’s use of slowness can be connected to the broader context of the Slow Movement, a cinematic movement that emphasizes longer shot lengths and stillness of the camera (Ng, 5). This connects to the other greats of Taiwanese cinema, such as Edward Yang with the film Yi Yi (2000), which also deals with themes of the inevitability of death and the futility of trying to break out of existential suffering via slow, long takes, once again subtly displaying Buddhist themes. Maybe not so subtly, considering that one of the characters visits a Buddhist monastery and briefly leaves the story. Walker, Yi Yi, and many other films in the ‘slow cinema canon’ do not simply extend the length of a shot, but actively invite the audience to participate in its slowness by passively showing ‘nothing.’ The fact that someone else could be watching the same scene at the same time will experience the same rhythmic unfolding of scenes at another time and place, creating a synchronicity (Wijaya, 144). And who else is known for their long takes and careful orchestration of the slow rhythm in cinema other than Ozu? And by forcing the audience to accompany these characters, the audience gains spiritual insight.
The Grave of Yasujiro Ozu
Although film scholar David Bordwell insists that Ozu has little to no interest in Buddhism, elements of Buddhism can still be found in Ozu’s life. It is undeniable that Ozu’s involvement in the invasion of China during World War II is questionable, especially given his being stationed in Nanjing in 1938, which implies Ozu’s participation in war crimes (Hasumi, 327). This puts into question how Ozu dealt with that through his films: did he reject what he had experienced? Or did he learn to process that by way of spirituality? During his war service in China, Ozu asked a Chinese monk to write ‘mu’ for him (Geist, 102). Perhaps ‘mu’ is Ozu’s answer to his experience in war, an unforgiving emptiness that tramples on all of humanity. In a sense, though Ozu seldom explored war or his faith in his films, his quiet family dramas are the only way Ozu could interrogate what he had seen.
Despite Ozu’s avoidance of connecting his film’s themes to Zen Buddhism, especially when asked to explain his films during interviews, Buddhist themes are ingrained in his narratives in nuanced ways. For instance, Tokyo Story begins and ends in the grandparents’ place, suggesting a complete revolution of the life cycle, the ‘samsara’ (Geist, 106). Themes of fatalism and samsara constantly bubble towards the surface in the world of Ozu, never making splashes.
Similarly to Walker, Ozu’s restraint of emotions and conflict allows the viewers to lean further towards the narrative. Film scholar and filmmaker Paul Schrader describes the separation of audience and screen as ‘leaning towards’ and ‘leaning away’ (Verchery, 10). In Lina Verchery’s essay on Buddhism and cinema, she states that “it is precisely this alternation—of deliberately increasing the distance between the audience and the film, and then suddenly collapsing it again—that is the dance of cinema” (Verchery, 10). Perhaps Ozu’s use of restraint is also a way he communicates his spirituality with his audience.
Throughout the history of East Asian cinema, many filmmakers have more or less explored Buddhist themes from action-packed wuxia films to arthouse films. Different genre films pass around ideas of impermanence, fatalism, karma, and existential suffering. Arthouse films reflect spirituality by indulging in emptiness and slowness. Spirituality seems to be a looming subject matter in cinema, since viewing a film itself can also be spiritual in that it is a form of meditation. After ‘waking up,’ a person takes a second to recognize their current place in time and space, and form a sense of self, and that second might as well be cinema in a nutshell (Verchery, 8). With cinema being a meditative practice, the interplay of reality and what we experience is likened to how we transcend our sense of self. Perhaps the ‘mu’ on Ozu’s grave speaks more about the way he contended with his life than his films, especially when his films are the split-second of meditation manifested from his own life.
Works Cited
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Directed by Ang Lee. Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, 2000.
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The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. Directed by Lau Kar-Leung. Shaw Brothers Film, 1984.
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Floating Weeds. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Daiei, 1959.
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Hasumi, Shiguehiko. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Chikuma Shobo, 2003.
Late Spring. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1949.
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Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring. Directed by Kim Ki-Duk. LJ Film and Pandora Film, 2003.
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This Transient Life. Directed by Akio Jissoji. Art Theatre Guild, 1970.
Tokyo Story. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1953.
A Touch of Zen. Directed by King Hu. Union Film, 1971.
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Walker. Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang. Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, 2012.
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Yi Yi. Directed by Edward Yang. Omega Project, 2000.