The Doctrine of Houon (Repaying the Debts of Gratitude)in Japanese Buddhist Thought and
its Role in Labor Ethics Formation
Lyubov Karelova

T

HE formation of labor ethics in Japan was taking place along with
the imbedding of labor perceptions in the context of Confucian ethic
and political rhetoric, as well as Buddhist and Shinto religious-ethicaldoctrines. Concepts of the Confucian and Buddhist teachings were specially adapted to the sphere of labor activity.
It should be noted that the development of the Japanese Buddhist
ethics was taking place within the channel of the tendencies that had
already outlined within the Chinese Buddhism. If in China the Buddhist
ethics was considerably influenced by Confucianism, in Japan the Buddhist teachings received considerable impact of both Confucianism andShinto. Confucian philosophy oriented to this world and concentrated onreaching happiness and prosperity in this life, to great extent determinedthe character of both Chinese and Japanese Buddhist teachings, that presupposed the possibility of becoming Buddha in this world and even inthis very body, and stipulated the appearance of the ideals of «the world
asceticism», equally refering to the monkhood and to the laymen.
On the other hand, the life-asserting world view of Shinto also promoted the Japanese Buddhism’s orientation towards salvation without
exceeding the bounds of this world and within the frames of everyday
life.
At the first look, the maxims of the Japanese labor ethics seem alikethe Protestant ethics, based on the religious doctrines of Luther and of
Calvin. Ethicizing professional labor and «the world asceticism» wereequally characteristic of the Protestant ethics and of the labor ethics ofJapan. In both cases, industry, honesty and thrift were recognized as
central virtues. Property, wealth, profit were estimated from the viewpoint of justice or injustice of their origin and their usage. Achievementof material wealth was considered as criterion of zeal and diligence
while passiveness and idleness were decidedly condemned and constantperfection in one’s professional activity was percieved as moral requirement. Usefullness for society was considered to be the principal value
orientation of labor.
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Notwithstanding the external similarity of the moral principles of thelabor ethics in different cultures, they differ in their correlation with thebasic values and peculiarities of national cultures and, accordingly, intheir labor motivations. Here one can find the sources of the stability andof the intensiveness of these motivations.
The most important characteristic feature of the Japanese labor ethics
is the sense of duty as its basic principle. This was inspired by the typeof the identification of the individual as of integral part of a social entity(such as family, household, community, social estate, nation). The partitive individual is inside the multi-layer system of mutual dependencies.
By contrast to the Protestant ethics, which regards the external worldas certain material that should be transformed, in the Japanese ethicalsystem the labor concept first of all appeared as a means of social harmony and of adaptation to the existing order. If in the Protestant ethics,
the individual was perceived as an independent entity (in his relation to
the God) and the main attention was concentrated on the problem ofhis/her rights and interests, his/her labor was the way of being agreeable
to the God, accomplishment of the task set by the God. On the contrary,in the Japanese traditional labor ethics, man was always perceived aspart of some group, of which the aims and interests became his own,
and, consequently, as the central problem was presented his implementation of his duty. Therefore, the labor values, as it may be observed at
the examples of the Japanese ethical teachings of the Tokugawa epoch,
had first of all a collective character. And a separate man was regarded
as part of a certain labor community and he found satisfaction, first ofall, in the fulfillment of his duty and in adequate social approval. And
though today Japanese society is under the very strong influence of
globalization processes, that dictate depersonalizing contractual relations, it is still a collective subject in a form of a certain spatially-temporal continuum that constitutes the basis of labor ethics.
Labor in Japan was traditionally regarded not as much as a system ofmutual needs and interests, but as a sphere of realization of mutual
duties. This fact laid an imprint on all aspects of the labor ethics, as onlabor motivations, on moral requirements to the style of behavior in theprocess of labor activity, as well as on the relevant links among people.
Significance of the duty concept as social and cultural archetype ofJapanese culture was very convincingly expressed by Ruth Benedict inher book «The Chrysanthenum and the Sword», where we read: «Man is
not only debtor of the past, every day any of his contacts with other people increases his duty in the present. In his everyday decisions andactions he must be guided by this duty. And that is the starting point of

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his behavior... The justice is determined in Japan as comprehension by
man of his place in the long chain of mutual duties linking together both
his ancestors and his contemporaries».1
This special feature of the Japanese labor ethics originates in many
respects from the Buddhism of Mahayana and it is expressed, in particular, in the doctrine of houon (repaying the debt of grace). According toit, man devotes himself entirely to his occupation in order to endless
repay with his labor the debt of grace to Buddha as well as to the parents, to the state and to all the living beings, thanks to which heappeared in the world and is making use of all its graces.
The doctrine of houon greatly helped the formation of the strong
deontological component of the Japanese ethics. This component consists in the decisive role of duty in moral behavior, in the priority of dutyas the basis of morality. Different aspects of carrying out of one’s duty
through intensive labor were expressed in the teachings of Japanese
thinkers with the help of this Buddhist doctrine in conjunction with such
key categories of Confucian ethics, as benevolance, loyalty, filial piety.
The principle of houon (repaying the debts of gratitude) or ongaeshi(literally: «returning the debts of gratitude») expressed the state of being
obliged to people and to other fellow beings, without whom the humanlife is impossible, as well as the need of properly repaying for theirgraces. The doctrine of houon in Japanese culture originates tomahayanist sutras—«Meditaion on the True Dharma Sutra» (Jap.
«Shobonenjo-kyo»), which was translated into Chinese by Indian monk
Prajnyaruti in the 6th century, and «Mediation on the Mind Ground
Sutra» (Jap. «Shinjikan-kyo»), which was translated by Indian monk
Prajnya in the 8th century. According to these sutras, all living beings
get four kinds of graces (shion), which they must return to the world.
[The first of these two sutras refers to such kinds of graces—the gracesof father, of mother, of Buddha Nyorai and of the teacher of the Buddhist law; and the second Sutra—the graces of parents, of all living
beings, of the ruler of the country, the graces of the three treasures—of
Buddha, of the Buddhist Law, and of the monkhood.]
These sutras, expressing one of the cardinal ideas of mahayana aboutmutual dependence of all existant beings, stressed that interaction withthe surrounding world must have in its basis the feeling of gratitude forother people and things that support our life. For a long period of time,these sutras and their teaching about the need of repaying for graces,
remained without attention of explicators and commentators. Neither inIndia, nor in China did they get any development. Nichiren (1222–1282)
was practically the first Buddhist thinker who began to discuss the fourTHE DOCTRINE OF HOUON IN JAPANESE BUDDHIST THOUGHT

139

graces and in his letter of 1262 to Kudo Yoshitaka—the letter is known
also under the title «Shionsho» («The Four Graces Due to Repay») andin a number of other works explained in detail the essence of each of thegraces and proclaimed as the life program for each Buddhist and eachman incessant return of these irredeemable debts.
After him the situation began to change, and in the Tokugawa epoch
different thinkers began to pay attention to this doctrine, commenting it
in different ways and placing the accent to this or that of the graces. As
a result, it became one of the key principles of Japanese ethics. Moreover, it acquired new life not only in modern religious-philosophicalteachings in Japan itself, but also in countries of South-East Asia, forexample, in Vietnam—in the Buddhist school of Hoa Hao, or in Won
Buddhism in Korea.
It is necessary to mention that Nichiren was the first who started touse the Confucian term of «filial piety» in application to the idea of thegratitude to the parents and who began to regard the feeling of gratitude
to the parents as the basis of the rest three debts, including the debt to
the ruler. In the Tokugawa period, final synthesis of the Buddhist houonteaching with the Confucian concept of duty took place. In particular,
the idea of the necessity of repaying for the parents’ graces was combined with the maxim of the filial piety, and the repaying the debts to theruler was regarded as faithfulness of the subject. Numerous works of theTokugawa epoch were devoted to concrete realization of the houon principle in everyday life.
The mechanism of the houon principle performance, that constituted
the heart of the «filial piety» and of the «loyalty», was regarded in theteachings of the Tokugawa period as directly related to the participationin the affairs of one’s household (or ie), to mastering and improving theprofessional activities to which the parents and the forefathers of thehousehold had devoted themselves.
The teaching of the peasant syncretist thinker of the Tokugawa epochNinomiya Sontoku (1787–1856) may serve as a vivid example of functioning of the doctrine of houon in the labor ethics.
Ninomiya’s labor ethics was based, first of all, on a system of values
related to the institution of ie and agricultural community.
In Ninomiya’s teaching one can find, perhaps, the most representative
understanding of the ie in its temporal perspective. The household andthe Family enterprise existing on its basis, were perceived not only as
something concretely present here and now, but also as an infinitely
developing dynamical essence. The actual state of the household wasregarded as a sort of a step, connecting the achievements of the previous

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and of the future generations. Therefore, according to Ninomiya Sontoku, the members of the household were responsible for transferring
the heritage to the next generations. The idea of infinitely progressing
development of the household combined both the economic goal andethical ideal at once.
Another point that Ninomiya especially stressed in his interpretationof the idea of ie, was its role in the identity of man. Each man’s dignity
was determined, first of all, not by his personal merits, but by his
belonging to this or that household, whose actual state and reputation
had been created by previous generations. In the Evening Talks by
Ninomiya one can find the following remark adressed to a merchant by
the name of Nakamura: «Born as a descendant of a distinguished family,
you, thanks to the merits of your ancestors, have been raised to a highsocial position. Standing higher than other people, you enjoy theirrespect... You would better look at yourself. What do you think, are you
yourself fit for anything? You are useless... Only thanks to a sequence ofgood deeds of your ancestors, thanks to their noble birth and high position you are referred to with respect, as a man fit for something»2.
Ninomiya’s admonition to a man named Takano contains the following dictum: «Although a man acts in the world by the means of his own
strength, his possibilities should not be considered his own. Because inreality these are possibilities provided by the position and the salary heinherited from his parents and ancestors, by the authority of the post hehas been appointed to. If it were not the possibilities provided by the
position and salary inherited by the parents and the ancestors, if it were
not the authority of the post, then any man, just like an arrow shot froma badly drawn bow, or a bullet in which the powder has run short, would
fall to the grass. People would consider him a fool, good-for-nothing»3.
So, a man who let ruin his household, was instantly losing his dignity asa respected society member.
One of the central idea of Japanese labor ethics, closely connectedwith the houon doctrine, was the idea of duty to the ruler and to thestate.
The pathos of selfless devotion to the Master in gratitude for his
patronage, typical to the samurai ethics and visibly presented in worksof such Zen thinkers as Takuan (1573–1645), Hakuin (1685–1768),
Suzuki Shosan (1579–1655) e.a., found its reflection in consideration of
one’s occupation as a service. What becomes understandable in this context, is the emotional intonation that accompanied the recommendations
concerning one’s labor duties, which called not only to carry out one’s
duty well, but with outstanding zeal and self-sacrifice.

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It is important to note that the majority of thinkers of the Tokugawa
period regarded the activity determined by the framework of the occupation (shyokubun), as the subject’s duty to the sphere of the public(oyake), which was associated, as a rule, with the power and the state.
Performing a concrete occupational activity, a man promoted the harmony and peace in the state.
The ideal of social harmony, expressed in Tokugawa epoch in the slogan of «rich country and appeased people» has become the highest
value promoting national consolidation, and the driving motive of thelabor ethics. The guarantee of social harmony was the order and prosperity of each separate household.
In time, this ideal became the starting point for the formation ofnational goals formulated by Japanese government in the process ofmodernization and also had the character of general values stimulating
people to intensive labor activities. Thus, in the periods of Meiji andTaisho national unity under the slogans of «rich country and strongarmy» was subordinated to the goal of rapid modernization for the sakeof keeping state independence under the conditions of tough competition with the Western powers. After the WW-2 and the American
occupation, the idea of Japan’s reaching the level of the leading world
powers was put forward.
At the same time, in connection with labor relations, Japanese
thinkers elaborated such aspect of the houon principle as gratitude for«all living beings». This aspect was often formulated as the debt of gratitude towards the society, towards the people of the world (seken), whowere consumers of the labor products.
For example, early Tokugawa epoch Buddhist thinker Suzuki Shosan,
who derived from the Soto-Zen tradition, paid special attention to such asignificant component of houon doctrine as unconditional duty towards
all the living beings (shujo-no on). The development of the ongaeshi
idea one can find in his treatise «Moanjo» (“A Staff for the Blind”),
where he, for the first time, connected the performance by each man of
his occupation with his moral duty, and thus gave the direction for further comprehension of labor relations from the viewpoint of ethicalproblems. Suzuki Shosan singled out four kinds of graces, placing themin the following order: graces of Heaven and Earth, graces of the teachers, graces of the master and graces of the parents. Into a separate category he put the mutual graces of all living beings, to which he referred
the graces of representatives of all occupations, determining their mutual obligations: «There exist graces of peasants, graces of artisans, graces
of producers of clothes, graces of the merchants, the graces of mutual

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interdependence of all occupations. If you understand this well andtruly, you won’t separate from people»4. So, he announced as the moral
purpose of each man the returning of the graces he had received to theworld of the fellow living beings.
The principle of mutual help and of mutual dependence is formulated
in his work entitled «Roankyo» (The «Ass’ Saddle» Bridge) in the following way: «All in the saha world (perishable world.—L.K.) exist
thanks to mutual help. So far as I dwell in the saha world, it will bewrong of me if I did not as well support the existence of others»5. In«Shokunin nichiyo», the idea of importance of each occupation for thewell-being of all the world is explained in the following way from theviewpoint of the Buddhist teaching: «There cannot be any activity outside Buddhist practice. The proof is that everything one does is for thegood of the whole world... The one Buddha, the Tathagata originallyawakened, benefits the world by dividing himself into countless millionsof parts. Without blacksmiths, carpenters, and all the other artisans, theneeds of the world would never be satisfied. Without samurais, theworld would not be governed. Without farmers, it would not be fed, andwithout merchants, nothing in the world would circulate freely. Anyother occupation, as soon as it appears, begins to serve the world. There
are men who have discussed of Heaven and Earth, there is the man who
invented written language, and also the man who invented medicine,having differentiated five principal organs. Although these achievementsthat have emerged in great multitude, exist for the benefit of the world,
they are nothing but the manifestations of the grace of one Buddha inaction»6.
The fourth kind of moral duty towards the three treasuries—Buddha,
dharma and sangha,—in distinction from the initial Nichirenian treatment, in which the main accent had been made on the fighting against
false teachings and on the propagation of the true teaching of the «Lotus
sutra», —also began to be interpreted by Suzuki Shosan as incentive forlabor activity, which he estimated higher than meditation within thewalls of a monastery.
The dominant role of duty in Japanese labor ethics has to a great
extent predetermined such its characteristic feature as large personal
responsibility of the subject of labor activity to the social group he/shebelongs to and identifies himself/herself with—to the society, to thenation, to his/her inner and outer circle. Particularly, this phenomenon
has found its expression in interpreting each person’s labor activity as
his/her service to the state as an state official. [The problem of responsibility of business to the society is the central one in Shibusawa Eiichi’sTHE DOCTRINE OF HOUON IN JAPANESE BUDDHIST THOUGHT

143

teaching.]
One more distinctive feature of Japanese labor ethics is the emphasison the importance of the small, on the attention to details, on each individual’s responsibility for every—even insignificant—piece of work.
The value of labor of any particular small person increased in connection with the responsibility carried by this or that individual. Meanwhile,
this responsibility for the wealth of the nation and for the well-being ofa corporation was equally shared by rank-and-file subjects and representatives of the elite.
Further on, having become the basis of corporatism of a family type,this ethics played the role of a mobilizing factor not only in the sociopolitical, but also in the socio-economic spheres. Such a phenomenon
took place neither in China, nor in Korea. The type of social relations
that was elaborated within the framework of this model, became a precondition of the unity of the managers and of those managed, that later
turned out into one of the basic features of the Japanese management.
Nowadays along with the process of globalization one can see thenumerous cultural hybrids (zasshu) emerge. It demonstrates us how
archetypal particular features [rooted in linguistic models and in paradigms] of national thinking, display ability to reproduce themselves at
new levels, co-existing with new ideas and growing through them.
I estimate as promising the idea of the Russian economist Ye.Z.
Mayminas of labor ethics as an inseparable part of the socio-economic
genotype of the society, [quote] «which includes the value system, themotivational complex, the paradigm of carrying out economy andmanagement and which manifests itself as an outline of regulation andmanagement of socio-economic processes...»7.
Therefore, even in case if Japanese business would totally reject the
principles of corporatism and adopt the labor contract system of Western
type, the national forms of labor ethics would hardly completely dissappear.
There exists already rooted opinion (which is defended, for example,
by professor Kawato Akio, former envoy to Russia), that it was nothingelse but Confucianism that played decisive role in the formation of labor
ethos and capitalist spirit in Asian countries. But this opinion can be put
under question as Japan is concerned. In the Japanese case, it was exactly the transformation of mahayanist teachings, and in particular, the doctrine of houon, reinforced by the morphologically close Confucian
ideas, that promoted the formation of strong labor motivations comparable with Protestant ethics, and of the perception of labor as of the «layic
asceticism» including both the monks and the laymen. This is especially

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important for the formation of labor values.
Both in the Protestant and in the Japanese labor ethics, strong labor
motivations are present. As compared to that, in Catholic and Orthodox
Christianity, they are weaker. In Protestantism, labor is equal to a prayer.
Similar ideas are to be found, for example, among the ideas of the Zen
thinker Suzuki Shosan, who maintained that labor is exactly Buddhist
meditation that helps one to open in himself/herself the nature of Buddha. Catholic tradition calls to labor and prayer. Whereas the Orthodox
Christian tradition, though it attached great significance to labor asceticism in monastery life, puts above all prayer and fasting (food restrictions). Moreover, in Orthodox Christianity, the ideal of labor service to
God was concentrated in the image of a hard working monk. However,even among the monkhood, considerable differences took place in theattitudes towards labor as an occupation suitable for a monk. The followers of Josef Volotsky—the founder and prior of one of the largest
Russian monasteries in early 16th century—regarded labor as a form of
asceticism, and the followers of his counterpart, a hermit Nil Sorsky,
demanded complete renunciation of the earthly life, regarding a monk’s
duty in inner fight with sins.
According to the researcher of the Orthodox Christian labor ethics
prof. Tatyana B. Koval’, [quote] «economic and professional perfection
remained at the periphery of the religious consciousness: material equipment, technical perfection of labor, economic successes remained out of
the field of attention and were not blessed by Christianity»8. Nevertheless, such a branch of Orthodox Christianity, as the Old Belief constituted an exception. Patriarch Nikon’s mid-17th-century refroms caused thedivide of the Russian Church. The Old Believers, who did not accept thereforms and were persecuted by the dominant church and the tzar’s
power, at first constituted 20% of Russia’s population. Big settlementsof old believers, who searched refuge from persecutions, emerged in the
Urals and in Siberia. Their most radical part took to the conviction thatthe Devil had gained the victory over the Russian church and the state.9
And if, initially, the dissidence took place on the ground of rejecton of
the innovations in the Orthodox ceremonial rites, whereas the basic dogmas of the belief remained unchanged, then, as time passed, new accents
began to appear in the Old Believers’ worldview. One of them was the
emergence of strong labor motivation. The need of defending their convictions and of proving the truth of their belief, as well as the increase of
the significance of the problem of salvation of the soul against the background of the eschatological moods [based on the motif of the advent of
Antichrist into the world], the Old Believers concentrated on the obser-

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145vance of «truly Christian mode of life». As a result, a kind of «layic
asceticism» emerged. In Russian reseacher Vladimir V. Kerov’s words,[quote] «in the attitude of the ‘fathers’ of the early Old Belief to labor,
including economic and physical labor, the only new element was thefact that the increasing sacralization of everyday life that had become
arena of the struggle for true belief, resulted in spreading of the normsof monastic labor to the labor of ’true believers’ among the laymen,
who, from now on, were also called to take part in the soul-saving
sacred labor»10. At the border of the 19th and the 20th centuries, the Old
Believers adopted a concept of labor as of God’s affair. The re-orientation of labor to Salvation, to consolidation of old belivers’ communityand social service was considered as a basic condition of its sacredness.
It is imporant to note that many well-known Russian industrialists andenterpreneurs, such as Morozov, Ryabushinsky, Shchukin and others,
known for their philanthropy and patronage of arts, had old-believers’
background.
* * *In conclusion, estimating the role of Japanese Buddhism in the formation of Japanese labor ethics, let me quote Boston University reseacher
Gregory Ornatowski who said: [quote] «While Buddhist lay ethics may
have helped provide the necessary type of lay values for the development of modernization and modern capitalism (in Japan, for example),these ethics were not sufficient factors in themselves to propel suchdevelopment. Moreover, while Buddhist believers and institutions were
not initiators of the political, social and economic changes which led toeconomic modernization in Japan in particular, this does not eliminate acertain Buddhist ‘flavor’ to the strong work ethic and almost religious
view of work which has supported the development of modernizationand modern capitalism in Japan»11.
Notes
1

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture2
Ninomiya Sontoku. Ninomiyaou-yawa [33].—Nihon-no meicho, Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1983, vol. 26, p. 226.
3
Ibid., pp. 227– 228.
4
Suzuki Shosan Dojin zenshu, Tokyo: Sankibo busshorin, 1962, p. 53.
5Ibid., p. 234.
6
Ibid., p. 70.
7

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THE DOCTRINE OF HOUON IN JAPANESE BUDDHIST THOUGHT(«
Culture (Materials of a Round Table)—«losophy), 1992, No»). Labor Ethics as a Problem of National» (The Problems of Phi[Koval’ T. Orthodox Labor Ethics].—

8[World of Russia], No 2,

94.

9[Zen’kovsky S.A. Russian Old Belief: Spiritual Movements of
the 17th Century] M., 1995. c. 341.
10«»
[Kerov V.V. “This is the
Man and His Deed...”. Confessional and Ethic Factors of Old Belivers’ Enterpreneurship].
11
Ornatowski G.K. Continuity and Change in the Economic Ethics of Buddhism. Evidence from the History of Buddhism in India, China and Japan.—Journal of Buddhist
Ethics. Vol. 3, 1996.