구라타 햐쿠조는 약관 20대 때 『스님과 그 제자』라는 희곡을 통해서, 그 당시의 일본의 젊은이들에게 널리 읽힌 작가였다. 『스님과 그 제자』는 정토진종의 개조 신란과 그의 제자 유이엔을 주인공으로 한 불교적인 작품이다. 물론, 그 당시에나 지금이나 『스님과 그 제자』에 나타난 신란이 ‘정토진종의 개조 신란’과는 다르며, 그것은 어디까지나 ‘구라타가 창조한 신란’이라는 점은 자타가 다 공인하는 바이다. 그럼에도 불구하고, 『스님과 그 제자』는 일본에서나 한국에서나 ‘정토진종의 개조 신란’에 들어가는 입문서 역할을 하고 있음도 부인할 수 없다. 특히 『스님과 그 제자』는 신란의 어록을 기록하면서 편자 자신의 탄이(歎異)를 추가한 『탄이초』가 근대 일본에서 재발견되고, 비로소 종문의 담을 넘어서 널리 대중과 사회 속에 받아들여지게 하는 데 큰 역할을 한 것으로 평가받는다. 그렇다고 한다면, 과연 구라타는 그가 문학적으로 형상화한 신란이 아닌 ‘정토진종 개조 신란’에 대해서는 어떻게 생각하고 있었던 것일까? 이 글은 바로 이러한 문제제기에 대한 해답찾기이다. 마침 구라타는 『탄이초』를 중심으로 해서, 신란의 삶과 신앙을 그가 어떻게 보고 있는지를 토론한 작품을 남겼다. 바로 『호넨과 신란의 신앙(하)』이다. 이를 통해서 구라타는 신란을 현실고 속을 살아가면서도 구제의 길을 찾았으며, 결코 교단의 조직이나 권력의 소유에는 무심했던 진실한 염불자로 그리고 있다. 이러한 신란관에 대해서 나는 충분히 공감할 수 있었다. 다만 그의 『탄이초』 이해에 대해서는 공감, 아쉬움, 그리고 비판이라는 중층적인 관점을 갖지 않을 수 없었다. 일념과 다념에 대한 논의에서는 공감을, 『탄이초』 제6조에 대한 논술을 하면서 신란의 삶에 대한 그의 관점과 결부시키지 못하고 있는 점에 대해서는 아쉬움을, 그리고 마지막으로 『탄이초』가 구심의 서(書)라고 했으면서도 정치사회적인 원심의 맥락이 그의 강의 속에 드러나고 있었다는 점에서 비판적이었다. 그것도 침략과 제국주의적 폭력을 옹호하는 논리였기 때문에 더욱 더하였다. 결국 ‘구심과 원심의 조화문제’는 『탄이초』만을 중심으로 해서 신란을 이해하는 데 한계가 있고, 신란의 『교행신증』에 서술되어 있는 환상회향의 문제가 함께 고려되어야 할 것으로 나는 생각하였다.

It was when I read his drama, The Priest and His Disciples(『出家とその弟子』) that I knew Kurata Hyakuzo(倉田百三, 1891〜1943) at first. The work, published in 1917, when he was 26 years old, was really astonishing. Japan has been read The Priest and His Disciples for about a hundred years as ever, without being sold out. The Priest and His Disciples in which Shinran(親鸞, 1173〜1262), the founder of Shin Buddhism(眞宗), his disciple Yuien(唯円), and his son Zenran(善鸞) who was disowned by his father Shinran, made very important role in causing the ‘Shinran’s boom’ in modern era of Japan. It was meshed with the phenomenon of ‘the re-assumption of Tannishō(『歎異抄』)’ in modern era of Japan. It is no wonder that, writing The Priest and His Disciples, Kurata leaned heavily toward Tannishō’, especially chapter 3, in which Shinran said to his disciple that “Even a good person attains birth in the Pure Land, so it goes without saying that an evil person will.” Nevertheless, Kurata has been blamed by Shin Buddhist order, because Shinran’s image that he made was different from that of Shin Buddhist order. Certainly about this, Kurata desired to deflect the sharp criticism of Shin Buddhist order by confessing that the image of Shinran in The Priest and His Disciple is not ‘historical Shinran’ but ‘my Shinran’, i.e. Kurata’s Shinran. So the work itself is a literary fiction. Although the image of Shinran which he created was not ‘hisrorical Shinran’ but ‘humanistic Shinran’, No one could deny that many people became to read Tannishō and to meet Shinran through The Priest and His Disciples. This point is regarded the same in Korea, because The Priest and His Disciples is expected to be going to play a role of ‘the literary guide’ to the Tannishō and Shinran. By the way, the matter is not the image of Shinran in The Priest and His Disciples(because it was already examined by many disputants) but how Kurata thought on Tannishō and Shinran. As the clue to solve this question, I took notice on Faith of Honen and Shinran (Vol. 2) although it was the later work than The Priest and His Disciples, because Kurata himself describes how to think about Tannishō and Shinran more directly in that book. At first, it is interesting that Kurata leans toward only Tannishō in the interpretation on Shinran. The stance is that it is no problem for us not to read Shinran’s main book, The True Teaching, Practice, and Realization(敎行信證). However, I think that his standpoint seems to leave a problem in the interpretation on Shinran also. It is more helpful to study confessional Tannishō and philosophical The True Teaching, Practice, and Realization together. Secondly, he made an attempt to write critical biography on Shinran’s life and thought in the second chapter of the Faith of Honen and Shinran(Vol 2). His method of historical presentation in which he recognized legends as references and authorial psychological analyses made him constitute his creative image on Shinran finally. Shinran was not only a holy man without fault and the founder of a religious order but he also agonized over the realistic pain, i.e. poverty imposed by his karma, i.e. marriage. However he endured it at all and sought the way of salvation in it. One more thing which Kurata highly evaluated is that Shinran had no religious order or temple. Kurata evaluated Shinran as a pure prayer to Amita Buddha at last. I think that this is the very significant point. Finally I examined his “the comment on Tannishō” in the third chapter of the Faith of Honen and Shinran(Vol 2), which is a part of his lecture on Tannishō. There are three points I have to comment. I was able to sympathize with Kurata’s standpoint in which he harmonized the theory of “one Recitation(一念)” vs “many Recitation(多念”) in Amita Buddha’s name. However the mention of “For myself, I do not have even a single disciple” in the sixth chapter of Tannishō is the content being able to provide foundation for the anarchistic aspect of him to give prominence in the critical biography, but Kurata could not read that point. Besides commenting on “the nembutsu(念佛) is the single path free of hindrance” in seventh of Tannishō, Kurata loses sight of his view that the Tannishō is not the external book but the internal one. So he explains Shinran’s message in the context of justifying Japanese Imperialism suddenly. Of course, it is not in accordance with Tannishō and Shinran. In that sense, I criticized him very strongly.

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The Priest and His Disciples, Faith of Honen and Shinran, Tannishō, The True Teaching, Practice, and Realization, Shinran, Kurata Hyakuzo, Shin Buddhism