by Ruth M. Tabrah
A few years ago, Rev. Ruth Tabrah wrote a compelling novel about the first few decades of Shinran's life (The Monk Who Dared). The Monk's Wife is a sequel to that novel. Like the first book, The Monk's Wife is a fictional story based upon known facts which are woven into the story. Both books reveal the human side of Shinran and Eshinni, their struggles with life and its vicissitudes, and their devotion to Buddhism. The Monk's Wife is written from the perspective of Eshinni, but it sheds considerable light on the people in her life, especially Shinran. Both books are a testament to the human condition in its struggle for spiritual realization.
Until early in the 20th century very little was known about the life of Shinran, the founder of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism (Shin Buddhism), and even less about his family. In 1921 in Japan, a source of direct information came to light with the discovery of 10 letters by Eshinni, Shinran's wife, to their youngest daughter Kakushinni, letters that had been tucked away and forgotten for centuries. These letters attest not only to Shinran's profound devotion to the Dharma of Amida Buddha, the way of the Nembutsu, but they also shed light on Eshinni herself, likewise a devoted follower of the Nembutsu way. The letters stimulated great interest in the personal lives of Shinran and Eshinni. Until the discovery of the Eshinni letters, there were many who doubted even the existence of Shinran. The letters put to rest this uninformed opinion and open a window into Shinran's and Eshinni's personal and spiritual ives.
The Monk's Wife dovetails from the latter part of Tabrah's The Monk Who Dared, starting at the time of Shinran's banishment to Echigo as punishment for his part in the Nembutsu-only movement of Honen, the founder of Jodo Shu. The Monk's Wife returns over and again to Shinran's work on a treatise documenting and authenticating Honen's teachings through ample quotations from sutras and commentaries in the Pure Land tradition, which Shinran completed later under the title Kyo-gyo-shin-sho (Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Realization).
In the novel, Eshinni is presented as an all-too-human being, given to selfishness, jealousy, dishonesty, and rage - feelings we all have had many times at one time or another in life - even against her pious husband, Shinran. But it also shows how she is transformed into a person of deep faith in Amida Buddha's Primal Vow, a transformation of "pieces of rubble into gold," as Shinran would write about the transforming power of the Nembutsu way. Both are real people, not abstract historical figures to be merely revered as Shin icons.
The book makes assumptions about details in Shinran's and Eshinni's lives, some of which are still conjecture from the historian's viewpoint. Even so, it is amazing how much known fact is woven into the story. One major point of conjecture is Eshinni's personal background. Was she of noble parentage or was she a native of Echigo? In order to show how Eshinni comes to view all people as equals in the eyes of Amida Buddha, Tabrah first paints Eshinni as a high-born individual who looks down upon the gennin class of indentured or slave workers as subhuman. Gradually she awakens from her elitist views and sees, through the example of Shinran and her relationship to one of "her" own gennin, how all people are embraced by Amida Buddha's compassion regardless of class or any other distinction.
Further, when Eshinni discovers that Shinran has a son by an earlier wife (a fact which is contested by historians), she becomes consumed with jealousy and rage and walks out on him, returning from their second home in Kanto back to her own land in the harsher climate of Echigo. Historians are divided on when this separation took place and why, but it is known that Eshinni left Shinran at some point and returned to Echigo where she apparently owned land and where she eventually died. Some think, for various reasons, that Eshinni left Shinran while they were living and raising children in Kanto, a view which Tabrah shares. Others feel that Eshinni accompanied Shinran when he moved from Kanto back to Kyoto. Tabrah's decision about their separation in Kanto makes possible a transformation of attitude in Eshinni in Echigo, who comes to deeply rue having left Shinran, and it makes for a powerful reconciliation between the two of them at the end of the book, as they awaken to their blind passions through their faith in Amida.
The novel has wonderful character development, not only of Eshinni and Shinran but of their children, friends and servants. Life must have been very difficult and trying every step of the way for them in circumstances that we today would consider abject poverty and primitive living conditions. The painful crossing of the mountains between Echigo and Kanto, while highly fictionalized, has a solid ring of truth to it, as does the entire book. When finishing the book, the present writer concluded, "Yes, it must have been something like this!" The beauty of this historical novel is in the choices the author makes to emphasize her deep affinity for and insights into the subject. Clearly, Rev. Tabrah has thought about Eshinni and Shinran for many years, and her two novels are a profound reflection of that thought, full of humanity and informed by deep devotion to the Dharma of the Nembutsu Way.
Living in the early twenty-first century, we tend to take for granted the progress of women's rights, but that was a movement that only really got started in the 1960s. Further, Japan has traditionally been a culture dominated by men. The Monk's Wife depicts Eshinni as a strong-willed woman who makes up her own mind and has an important impact on the life of her husband, Shinran. She is not a shrinking violet. The book, through artful fabulation, also depicts the hardship of women in premodern days, for example Eshinni's difficult pregnancy brought about by the arduous journey made over mountains from Echigo to Kanto, and the use of native herbal medicine by the midwife in treating the pregnancy.
One can only surmise what the long-range impact of this book can be in opening the "mysteries" of Shin Buddhism to the larger public. The book is hopeful and positive. It clearly has didactic value as well as providing the sheer joy of great fiction. Tabrah carefully adapts passages from the Tannisho into comments Shinran makes in the book. The passages are worded in the context of imagined natural conversation and take on a special personal meaning that the rarified text of the Tannisho cannot (and is not designed to) provide. It is another in a series of highly readable and instructive Shin Buddhist books by Ruth Tabrah, including Ajatasatru: The Story of Who We Are, Shin Sutras to Live By, and The Natural Way of Shin Buddhism, co-authored with Rev. Shoji Matsumoto.
The Monk's Wife is a real page-turner. It is hard to put it down once one starts to read it, and the reading goes by swiftly. It begs rereading, in order to savor the wealth of details presented and the insights into the characters of the book as well as the profound spiritual principles that naturally unfold during the telling of the story. One hopes that it is not too much to ask that Rev. Tabrah write another sequel to cover Shinran's and Eshinni's later years. The Monk's Wife and The Monk Who Dared are truly wonderful gifts in an age consumed by issues of materialism and military aggression. What is needed is a regeneration of spirituality and an openheartedness in the world that true religion can provide. These books go a long way in that direction.
Reviewed by Richard St. Clair