Japan

The Latter Day of the Law: an apocalypse of decline, survived not by people but by a text.

East Asiadrafted

Japan's contribution to the archive is Mappō, the Latter Day of the Law — the end as decline rather than catastrophe. In the Japanese reckoning it began in 1052 CE: the Buddha's teaching enters its final age, the dharma decays, and salvation must come by reliance on Amida or the Lotus Sutra's promise rather than by human effort. What survives the end is not a remnant of people but the text itself, the sutra that carries the teaching across the dark age. Native Shinto, by contrast, has no world-ending story: the gods do not end the world, they withdraw from it. The absence is its own entry in this archive.

Traditions

Buddhist Eschatology (Dharma and the Kalpa)

drafted

The end as the decline of the teaching: the Buddha's dharma decays by stages until it vanishes, the kalpa ends in fire, water, and wind, and the future Buddha Maitreya appears to teach once more. In East Asia the decline became Mappō, a dated dark age; in Tibet it took the form of the Shambhala war.

4 myths

Stories

Mappō: the Latter Day of the Law

drafted

A dated apocalypse of decline: after the Buddha's teaching fades, the Latter Day of the Law begins — and Japan's reckoning started at 1052 CE, when salvation became a matter of faith, not effort.

linear · decay