Reflecting the Past Har var d East Asian Monogr aphs 433

part system . . . that was to become the most influential historical frame 
of reference in the Buddhist schools of China, Korea, and Japan.”
62
Jan 
60. From a slightly diff erent angle, Fukunaga concludes that the typologization of 
anecdotes in 
The Great Mirror
engages in the larger task of explaining Michinaga and 
his genealogy (“Kagamimono to setsuwa,” 89).
61. Nakada, 
Nihon ryōiki
, 258. For an alternative translation by Burton Watson, 
see Kyōkai, 
Record of Miraculous Events in Japan
, 132. Because the connection between 
the ideas expressed in the first two sentences of my translation and the rest of the pas-
sage strikes me as awkward, I should mention that Watson’s translation renders Kyōkai’s 
similes as being about inevitability. However, from a strictly lexical or grammatical 
perspective, the original text is about the speed with which actions are repaid.
62. Nattier, 
Once Upon a Future Time
, 65.

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26
Introduction
Nattier’s general definitions of the three stages and their progress clarify 
what this might have meant for Heian and Kamakura audiences:
• a period of the “True Dharma” (Ch. 
zheng fa
/Jpn. 
shōbō
, correspond-
ing to Skt. 
saddharma
) immediately following the death of the 
Buddha, during which it is possible to attain enlightenment by 
practicing the Buddha’s teachings;
• a period of the “Semblance Dharma” (Ch. 
xiang fa
/Jpn. 
zōbō
, a term 
patterned on but not identical to Skt. 
saddharma-pratirūpaka
), during 
which a few may still be able to reach the goal of enlightenment, but 
most Buddhists simply carry out the external forms of the religion; and
• a period of the “Final Dharma” (Ch. 
mo fa
/Jpn. 
mappō
, a term for 
which no proper Sanskrit equivalent exists), during which traditional 
religious practice loses its effectiveness and the spiritual capacity of 
human beings reaches an all-time low.
63
In particular for 
The Water Mirror
, composed in the aftermath of the civil 
war, the fate of the world is articulated explicitly in terms of what it meant 
to exist within the “final age” (
mappō
). 
The Water Mirror
attests to the 
ways in which this age of decline was something many understood not 
only as an abstraction, but as a condition that produced real-world man-
ifestations in the form of social disorder.
This discourse gives way, however, once the 
Mirrors
are positioned 
far beyond the capital to a more flexible discourse about historical events 
as subject to the forces of the buddhas and 
kami
. The principle of the ex-
istence of a cosmic rationale remains, but the specific form that it grants 
to historical trajectories once again recedes from view. This suggests a 
gradual move away from a historiography driven chiefly by a concern with 
the decline of the dharma or the end of the world and toward a model in 
which otherworldly “divine” forces are still powerful. But rather than an 
63. Nattier, 
Once Upon a Future Time
, 65–66. For simplicity’s sake, I have omitted 
two of Nattier’s footnotes to these definitions that address Sanskrit terminology. I have 
also updated the romanization of the Chinese terms to reflect pinyin conventions. 
Readers interested in the emergence of 
mappō
as a distinct term and its original relation 
to 
masse
are referred to ibid., 101–3. In the 
Mirrors
, these terms appear to be used inter-
changeably to refer to the “final age.”

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