Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan [Volume 2] 9004401512, 9789004401518

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Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan Volume 2

Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan volume 2

Edited by

Galen Amstutz

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020936996

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-40140-2 (hardback, set) isbn 978-90-04-40137-2 (hardback, vol. 1) isbn 978-90-04-40138-9 (hardback, vol. 2) isbn 978-90-04-40139-6 (hardback, vol. 3) isbn 978-90-04-40150-1 (e-book, vol. 1) isbn 978-90-04-40151-8 (e-book, vol. 2) isbn 978-90-04-40152-5 (e-book, vol. 3) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents volume 1

Introduction: Brill Critical Readings on Pure Land Buddhism in Japan 1

part 1 Useful Overarching Perspectives 1

Buddhism as a Religion of Hope: Observations on the “Logic” of a Doctrine and Its Foundational Myth 17 Luis O. Gómez

2

Pure Land Buddhism as an Alternative Mārga 36 Mark L. Blum

part 2 Early Presence in Japan 3

The Development of Mappō Thought in Japan (I) 79 Michele Marra

4

The Development of Mappō Thought in Japan (II) 109 Michele Marra

5

The Growth of Pure Land Buddhism in the Heian Period 127 Robert F. Rhodes

6

Ōjōyōshū, Nihon Ōjō Gokuraku-ki, and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan 159 Robert F. Rhodes

7

With the Help of “Good Friends” Deathbed Ritual Practices in Early Medieval Japan 182 Jacqueline I. Stone

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part 3 Turn to the Nembutsu as the Sole Solution 8

Hōnen on Attaining Pure Land Rebirth: the Selected Nenbutsu of the Original Vow 223 Allan A. Andrews

9

Hōnen and Popular Pure Land Piety: Assimilation and Transformation 241 Allan A. Andrews

10

Socio-Economic Impacts of Hōnen’s Pure Land Doctrines: an Inquiry into the Interplay between Buddhist Teachings and Institutions 255 Martin Repp

part 4 Shinran’s More Radical Turn to the Enlightenment Gift as an Involuntary Emergent Property 11

Faith: Its Arising 305 Alfred Bloom

12

“Rely on the Meaning, Not on the Words” Shinran’s Methodology and Strategy for Reading Scriptures and Writing the Kyōgyōshinshō 322 Eisho Nasu

volume 2 part 5 Formation of a Major Institution: Honganji and Its Negotiations with Popular Consciousness 13

From Inspiration to Institution The Rise of Sectarian Identity in Jōdo Shinshū 349 James C. Dobbins

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14

Shin Buddhist Attitudes towards the Kami From Shinran to Rennyo 363 Robert F. Rhodes

15

Popular Pure Land Teachings of the Zenkōji Nyorai and Shinran 388 Eisho Nasu

16

Stand by Your Founder Honganji’s Struggle with Funeral Orthodoxy 398 Mark L. Blum

17

Steadied Ambiguity: the Afterlife in “Popular” Shin Buddhism 430 Galen Amstutz

18

Ambivalence Regarding Women and Female Gender in Premodern Shin Buddhism 449 Galen Amstutz

part 6 The Alternative Field: Pure Land Striven for in This World 19

Ippen and Pure Land Buddhist Wayfarers in Medieval Japan 483 James H. Foard

20 The Shingon Subordinating Fire Offering for Amitābha, “Amida Kei Ai Goma” 509 Richard K. Payne 21

Breath of Life: the Esoteric Nembutsu 530 James H. Sanford

22

Jōkei and the Rhetoric of “Other-Power” and “Easy Practice” in Medieval Japanese Buddhism 561 James L. Ford

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part 7 Pure Land Fellowships in War and Peace 23

The Life of Rennyo A Struggle for the Transmission of Dharma 603 Yasutomi Shin’ya

24 The Dilemma of Religious Power Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto 628 Michael Solomon 25

Shin Buddhism and Burakumin in the Edo Period 645 Galen Amstutz

26 Precepts in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism The Jōdoshū 695 James C. Dobbins 27

Exemplary Lives Form and Function in Pure Land Sacred Biography 712 Michael Bathgate

28 Preaching as Performance Notes on a Secretive Shin Buddhist Sermon 746 Clark Chilson 29 The Nianfo in Ōbaku Zen: a Look at the Teachings of the Three Founding Masters 759 James Baskind 30 Extreme Asceticism, Medicine and Pure Land Faith in the Life of Shuichi Munō (1683–1719) 778 Paul Groner

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volume 3 part 8 Meiji and Modernity: Political Resettlement and Realignment, Moments of Intellectual Hybridization, Emigration, Collaboration, Postwar Progressivism, Lingering Conservatism 31

Shin Buddhism in the Meiji Period 805 Mark L. Blum

32

Against Buddhist Unity: Murakami Senshō and His Sectarian Critics 875 Ryan Ward

33

The Honganji: Guardian of the State (1868–1945) 908 Minor L. Rogers and Ann T. Rogers

34 Shinran’s Thought in Present-Day Japan 931 Gerhard Schepers 35

Propagation, Accommodation and Negotiating Social Capital: Jōdo Shinshū Responses to Contemporary Crises 954 Jørn Borup

36 Family Temples and Religious Learning in Contemporary Japanese Buddhism 978 Jessica Starling 37

Shin Buddhist Studies and Secularization 993 Mitsuya Dake

38 Amida and Pure Land within a Contemporary Worldview: From Shinran’s Literal Symbolism to Figurative Symbolism 1005 Kenneth K. Tanaka 39 The Medieval and the Modern in Shin Buddhism 1033 James C. Dobbins

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40 Rethinking Acculturation in the Postmodern World 1082 Michihiro Ama 41

Nenbutsu and Meditation: Problems with the Categories of Contemplation, Devotion, Meditation, and Faith 1089 Lisa Grumbach Index of Personal Names 1103

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part 5 Formation of a Major Institution: Honganji and Its Negotiations with Popular Consciousness

∵

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From Inspiration to Institution The Rise of Sectarian Identity in Jōdo Shinshū James C. Dobbins When tracing their origins, religious organizations often depict themselves as springing into existence full-bodied from the inspiration of a founder.* Whatever they may claim as their starting point—revelation, enlightenment experience, charismatic leader, or what not—they consider institutional forms to be a direct extension and an immediate and inevitable result of that inspired beginning. Hence sectarian histories draw institutional conclusions from formative visions, and emphasize the community of believers and the religious network that coalesce around that inspiration. The rise of religious organizations, however, is generally more protracted and complicated than this. It entails an elaborate and extended evolution wherein belief systems, ceremonies and ritual, hierarchies, legitimation of authority, and institutional structure are all gradually defined. The end result is a complex constellation of religious forms that are only intimated, if included at all, in the original vision of the founder. Nonetheless, that vision functions as a causal force and sets in motion the entire evolutionary chain; it provides the raw material from which subsequent interpretations are fashioned, so that what arises later does indeed have a link to what has gone before. The intricate process of sectarian evolution is well exemplified in the history of Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗, one of the largest schools of Buddhism in Japan. Jōdo Shinshū, known more simply as Shinshū, emerged out of the teachings of Shinran 親鸞, 1173–1262, and from the band of followers he left behind. Shinran did not consider himself the founder of a school of Buddhism, nor was his following clearly distinguishable from the broader Pure Land movement originated by his teacher Hōnen 法然, 1133–1212. The entire movement arose in opposition to the organized religion of the period, the so-called eight schools of Buddhism, including Tendai 天台, Shingon 真言, and the schools associated with the powerful temples of Nara. Shinran, Hōnen, and several other S ource: Dobbins, James C, “From Inspiration to Institution: The Rise of Sectarian Identity in Jōdo Shinshū,” Monumenta Nipponica 41(3) (1986): 331–343. *  The Author is assistant professor in the Department of Religion, Oberlin College. A preliminary draft of the present article was presented at the General Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies at San Francisco on 26 March 1983.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_016

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important religious figures of the Kamakura period formulated new versions of Buddhism that were more attuned to the needs of the ordinary person. These new movements, commonly known as Kamakura Buddhism, represent the full adaptation of Buddhist ideas to the religious sensibilities of the Japanese. At the same time they constituted a threat to the established authority of the traditional eight schools, and as such incurred censure and suppression at their hands. All of these circumstances militated against the emergence of Shinshū as a formal school of Buddhism. But during the two and a half centuries after Shinran’s death, his religious heirs managed to build Shinshū into a nationwide religious organization by idealizing Shinran as its founder, by distinguishing it from other Pure Land groups, by shaping a popular religious creed out of his teachings, and by winning social acceptance for the organization. In this way Shinshū was transformed into a full-fledged school of Buddhism. The rise of Shinshū occurred in spite of strong opposition from the dominant religious authorities. Shinran’s teachings, as well as those of the Pure Land movement as a whole, were a radical departure from the prevailing Buddhism of the period. They subverted the religious world-view promoted by such major Buddhist centers as Tendai’s Enryakuji on Mt Hiei, and consequently evoked their wrath and suppression. Shinran’s starting point was the ‘exclusive nembutsu’ (senju nembutsu 専修念仏) that he inherited from Hōnen. Hōnen advocated the nembutsu as the one religious act that, when practiced exclusively, could lead any sentient being to salvation. By means of it people could be born in Amida’s transcendent Pure Land ( jōdo 浄土) during their next rebirth, and there they would achieve Buddhist enlightenment quickly and easily. Shinran went a step beyond Hōnen by claiming that it is not so much the outward practice of the nembutsu that results in rebirth in the Pure Land as the state of mind lying behind it—specifically, the state of faith (shinjin 信心). Where faith exists, birth in the Pure Land is assured, even if wrongdoings or acts of ignorance continue to occur in a person’s lifetime. The implication is that all personal religious endeavors, including those of the Buddhist clergy, are extraneous, and only faith is necessary. Hence Shinran repudiated his clerical vows by marrying and begetting a family, and he took up a life that he described as that of ‘neither priest nor layman’ (sō ni arazu zoku ni arazu 悲僧非俗). The ideas of both Hōnen and Shinran made Buddhism’s highest goals more accessible to the ordinary person, but in doing so they broke with the dominant form of Buddhism that idealized the cleric over the layperson and that made ethical action (kai 戒), meditation ( jō 定), and cultivation of wisdom (e 慧) the criteria for salvation. As a result, Hōnen, Shinran, and their followers became targets for suppression by the Buddhist establishment.

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Signs of friction appeared in 1205 when Kōfukuji in Nara submitted a petition to Retired Emperor Go-Toba 後鳥羽, 1180–1239, charging Hōnen with nine infractions stemming from his teaching of the exclusive nembutsu: 1. Establishing a new school of Buddhism without imperial recognition and without proper lineage. 2. Devising a new graphic representation of Amida Buddha called the Sesshu Fusha Mandala 摂取不捨曼陀羅 in which followers of the exclusive nembutsu are bathed in Amida’s life, but priests adhering to traditional religious practices are not. 3. Slighting the Buddha Śākyamuni by worshipping no other buddha than Amida. 4. Precluding Buddhism’s myriad ways of cultivating the good, outside of the nembutsu. 5. Refusing to revere the traditional Japanese kami 神. 6. Obscuring the Pure Land by denying that diverse religious practices lead to birth there. 7. Misunderstanding the nembutsu by claiming that uttering it is superior to using it in meditation. 8. Inflicting harm upon the Buddhist order by maintaining that violation of the clerical precepts is not an obstacle to birth in the Pure Land. 9. Throwing the country into disorder by undermining the teachings of the eight schools that upheld it.1 This list of charges reflects the tension existing between Hōnen’s following and the Buddhist authorities. There were, first and foremost, doctrinal differences that separated the two. The traditional temples advocated a syncretic approach to religion wherein the many buddhas and kami, as well as manifold beliefs and practices, all occupied a place and function within orthodox doctrine. Hōnen, however, and the other Kamakura innovators stressed exclusive devotion to a single deity or practice, in this case to Amida and the nembutsu. This difference of emphasis had social and institutional consequences as well. It brought into question the superior status of the clergy in the religious order, and it provided a rallying point for religious organization outside the established institutions. All of these aspects of the Pure Land movement threatened the authority of the traditional temples and therefore set it on a course of conflict with them. The first major attack on the movement came in 1207 when Hōnen, Shinran, and several other nembutsu priests were dealt harsh punishments by order of 1  Kōfukuji Sōjō 興福寺奏状, in Dai-Nihon Bukkyō Zensho 大日本仏教全書, Bussho Kankōkai, 1917, 124, pp. 103–08.

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Retired Emperor Go-Toba. This measure was taken at the instigation of Tendai monks on Mt. Hiei. At least two nembutsu proponents, Anrakubō 安楽房 and Jūren 住蓮, were put to death, and others were banished from Kyoto. Hōnen was sent to Tosa, and Shinran to Echigo.2 The suppression quieted the capital of the commotion that the Pure Land movement had generated, but it did not extinguish the movement altogether. On the contrary, by dispersing Hōnen’s followers to different provinces, the authorities unwittingly disseminated his teachings throughout the country, and in 1221, when Hōnen was allowed to return to the capital, the movement reappeared there with renewed vitality. The resilience of the Pure Land movement confounded the Buddhist establishment and prompted further persecution in subsequent years. Specific instances of suppression carried out by religious or civil authorities are recorded for 1207, 1211, 1217, 1219, 1224, 1227, 1235, 1239, 1240, 1303, and 1330.3 Later, as Shinshū developed into a distinct religious body, its two most prominent temples in Kyoto—Honganji 本願寺 and Bukkōji 仏光寺—were under constant threat of attack by Mt. Hiei. Militant Tendai priests menaced Bukkōji in 1338 and again in 1352, and devastated Honganji in 1465. Generally Mt. Hiei was the most outspoken advocate of suppressing the Pure Land movement and the most aggressive agent in doing so.4 But other major temples, as well as the civil authorities, occasionally joined in the suppressions when it served their interests. One of the most common accusations leveled against the Pure Land movement was that the exclusive nembutsu leads to licensed evil—that is, it gives adherents license to commit whatever offenses they please. Ordained priests, it was charged, were free to break their religious vows, and lay people might indulge in any capricious act without jeopardizing their salvation. A passage from Gukanshō 愚管抄, 1219, which mentions Hōnen’s two ill-fated followers, provides a graphic image of the misconduct that the exclusive nembutsu was thought to encourage. Upon ordination Anrakubō became an adherent of the exclusive nembutsu, and in association with Jūren he advocated the singing of the [Pure 2  For an account of the 1207 suppression, see the appendix to Tannishō 歎異抄 in Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho [ssz] 真宗聖教全書, Kōkyō Shoin, Kyoto, 1940–1941, 2, pp. 794–95. 3  This list of dates, compiled from a variety of sources, is given in Tamura Enchō 田村円澄, Nihon Bukkyō Shisōshi Kenkyū: Jōdokyōhen 日本仏教思想史研究: 浄土教篇, Heirakuji Shoten, Kyoto, 1974, pp. 63–64. 4  Mt Hiei was apparently divided into numerous competing factions from around 1200, and precisely which group organized these attacks is not clear. Murayama Shūichi 村山修一, ed., Hieizan to Tendai Bukkyō no Kenkyū 比叡山と天台仏教の研究, Meicho, 1975, pp. 19–36.

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Land] praises six times a day [rokuji raisan 六時礼讃], which is said to have been a practice of the master Shan-tao. There were many people, among them nuns, who turned to this teaching and placed their trust in it. They were given to believe that, once they became followers, Amida Buddha would not in the least regard it as a wrongdoing even if they indulged in sexual relations or ate meat or fish; that, once they entered the single-hearted and exclusive way and had faith in nothing but the nembutsu, then Amida would come without fail at the end of their life to usher them into the Pure Land.5 This type of behavior, sometimes referred to as ‘remorseless indulgence’ (hōitsu muzan 放逸無慚) or ‘unbridled wrongdoing’ (zōaku muge 造悪無碍), was what civil and religious authorities feared most from the Pure Land movement. Apparently some Pure Land adherents were indeed putting forward this kind of interpretation of the nembutsu, for both Hōnen and Shinran warned their followers against it in their writings.6 Hōnen was in a more plausible position to criticize licensed evil since he scrupulously adhered to the clerical precepts and willingly administered them to others. Shinran, on the other hand, violated his religious vows by marrying and having a family. Although he himself did not look upon his act as a form of licensed evil, the established schools of Buddhism certainly did. What is more, the practice of priests’ marrying was passed down in Shinshū from generation to generation, and it eventually became the dominant feature separating Shinshū from other schools. This in effect stigmatized Shinshū in the eyes of many Buddhists during the first centuries of its development. Nonetheless, Shinran’s convictions and the life style he adopted served as a new model of religiosity, providing the inspiration from which Shinshū would grow. Inspired by his example, Shinran’s followers organized themselves into informal congregations. They attempted to emulate the ideal that Shinran represented, but at the same time they were constantly concerned about accusations of licensed evil. In the 1250s there was considerable upheaval because proponents of licensed evil were active among Shinran’s followers in the Kantō provinces, where most of them lived. The situation grew so critical that some 5  Okami Masao 岡見正雄 & Akamatsu Toshihide 赤松俊秀, ed., Gukanshō 愚管抄, in NKBT 86, Iwanami, 1967, p. 294. 6  Passages in Hōnen’s and Shinran’s writings criticizing licensed evil can be found in ‘Ichinengi Chōji Kishōmon’ 一念義停止起請文, in Shōwa Shinshū Hōnen Shōnin Zenshū 昭和新修法 然上人全集, Heirakuji Shoten, Kyoto, 1974, pp. 800–03; Mattōshō 末燈鈔, in ssz, 2, pp. 681– 83 & 685–89; and Goshōsokushū 御消息集, in ssz, 2, pp. 700–02.

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of his disciples were summoned for interrogation by government officials.7 After Shinran’s death in 1262, licensed evil continued to be a sensitive issue among Shinshū adherents, and one way that congregations sought to protect themselves against charges of wrongdoing was to establish rules that all members were expected to observe. These represent the first step in the process of institutionalization. Three sets of rules have survived in manuscript form, the earliest dating from 1285. This set contains injunctions against criticizing believers of other Buddhist schools, disrespect toward superiors, denigration of kami, preaching heresies in the name of Pure Land teachings, eating fish or meat on days of religious services, marketing in horses or human beings, lying or cheating in business transactions, illicit sexual relations, drunkenness, stealing, and gambling.8 These injunctions represent the conventional morality of the day, and by observing them Shinshū congregations attempted to improve their image in the eyes of society at large. Shinran himself never laid down rules of conduct for his followers, and in fact considered all actions, apart from faith, to be extraneous to the salvation process. To the extent that believers equated obedience to these rules with the religious state of faith, they deviated from Shinran’s teachings. For that reason the author of Tannishō 歎異抄, a Shinshū tract written within a generation of Shinran’s death, denounced the practice of posting such rules in the dōjō 道場, or congregational meeting place. He considered them a misguided attempt to make good works a requirement for salvation.9 Despite this criticism, congregational rules, whether mistaken for the essence of Shinran’s teachings or not, emerged as a pragmatic measure aimed at upholding the reputation of Shinshū groups. During the first fifty years after Shinran’s death his following was not clearly distinguishable from the Pure Land movement as a whole. Shinran did not set out to establish a new school of Buddhism, and if he viewed himself as belonging to any school whatsoever it was to Jōdoshū 浄土宗, or the Pure Land School, originated by Hōnen. Many of Shinran’s followers likewise looked to Hōnen as the central personage in the Pure Land movement, and for that reason they held their regular congregational meetings on the 25th day of each month, in commemoration of Hōnen’s death day, instead of on the 28th, Shinran’s death day.

7  Goshōsokushū, in ssz, 2, pp. 696–97 & 708. 8  Zen’en no Seikin 善円の制禁, in Shinshū Shiryō Shūsei 真宗史料集成, Dōbōsha, Kyoto, 1974–1983, 1, pp. 1008–11. 9  Tannishō, in ssz, 2, p. 784.

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The person primarily responsible for imbuing Shinshū with an identity of its own, apart from other Pure Land groups, was Shinran’s great-grandson Kakunyo 覚如, 1270–1351. This process of sectarian definition began in 1277 when Kakushinni 覚信尼, 1224–1283, Kakunyo’s grandmother, bequeathed Shinran’s grave site to all of his followers as a memorial to him.10 This site became a natural pilgrimage spot for believers in the Kantō region who undertook the long trip to Kyoto. Kakunyo subsequently transformed the memorial into a formal temple, named Honganji, and established himself and his descendants as the hereditary priests there. More importantly, he succeeded in aggrandizing Shinran over Hōnen in the minds of Shinshū believers by ascribing to Shinran a religious significance that he himself would never have claimed. In Hōonkō Shiki 報恩講式, a memorial service to Shinran first instituted in 1294 on the thirty-third anniversary of his death, Kakunyo referred to Shinran as a ‘manifestation of Amida Nyorai’ (Mida Nyorai no ōgen 弥陀如来応現).11 In his biography of Shinran titled Godenshō 御伝鈔, written a year later, Kakunyo reiterated essentially the same point by recording a dream of Shinran’s disciple Renni 蓮位, d. 1278, in which Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子, 574–622, the revered promulgator of Buddhism in Japan, was seen worshipping Shinran as an incarnation of Amida Buddha.12 Presenting Shinran in this light was tantamount to deification. It cast him in a sacred aura that made him a far more commanding figure in the Shinshū tradition than Hōnen. From this period on, reverence for Shinran became as much a part of the religious consciousness of Shinshū followers as adherence to Pure Land teachings. In other words, Shinran became important for who he was as much as for what he said. With the apotheosis of Shinran, Honganji, as the institution originating from his grave site, derived special significance and authority, and the Hōonkō service held there to commemorate Shinran’s death eventually emerged as the most important annual event in Shinshū. In effect, the very personage of Shinran became the rallying point for sectarian identity, making it possible for Shinshū to assume a separate religious status from the overall Pure Land movement. With the conceptual framework for an independent school in place, the sectarian organization slowly began to take shape. Shinshū started out as isolated pockets of believers organized around dōjō. These congregations gradually extended their influence to surrounding areas and eventually propagated their 10  Kakushinni’s letters of bequest are found in Honganjishi 本願寺史, Jōdo Shinshū Honganjiha, Kyoto, 1961–1969, 1, pp. 136–43. 11  Hōonkōshiki 報恩講式, in ssz, 3, p. 659. 12  Godenshō 御伝鈔, in ssz, 3, pp. 641–42.

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teachings in distant provinces as well. As this process of expansion continued, networks of congregations evolved, and by the fourteenth century there emerged regional religious organizations united under major Shinshū temples. This multi-centered sectarian structure marked an intermediate phase in the development of Shinshū. The temples that were most successful in building up this kind of congregational network were Bukkōji in Kyoto, Senjuji 専修寺 at Takada in the Kantō, the Sanmonto 三門徒 temples in Echizen, and Honganji. Each of them devised its own methods of proselytization and its own claims to religious authority. Honganji, which eventually prevailed over the others, elicited support from believers because it was the grave site of Shinran and its head priest was his blood descendant. Although devotion to Shinran was the distinguishing feature of Shinshū adherents, Honganji did not command their allegiance immediately but only after an elaborate system of belief, worship, and organization had been devised. The Sanmonto temples gained prominence, primarily in the provinces along the Japan Sea coast, because of their innovations in religious thought and practice. They popularized not only nembutsu chanting but also a new form of worship—the singing of wasan 和讃, or hymns, written by Shinran. The Sanmonto were also conspicuous for rejecting such traditional practices as reciting scripture, abstaining from meat, and performing ceremonies to benefit the dead.13 If Honganji sources are accurate, Sanmonto adherents had a reputation for refusing to worship the Buddha directly (ogamazu 不拝) but instead reverenced their head priest in his place. Their priests claimed special religious authority based on secret teachings (hiji bōmon 秘事法文) supposedly passed down from Shinran.14 These became their means of legitimation and their answer to the hereditary authority claimed by Honganji leaders. Senjuji, for its part, harked back to Shinran as its founder.15 Whether or not it was actually founded by him, Senjuji was in a way the oldest of the major 13  G  uanki 愚闇記, in Shinshū Shiryō Shūsei, 4, p. 719. 14  H  ogo no Uragaki 反故裏書, in ssz, 3, p. 984. This work is a brief history of Shinshū written by Rennyo’s grandson Kensei 顕誓, 1499–1570, around 1567 or 1568. 15   Senjuji’s tradition maintains that Shinran constructed a small Amida chapel in Shimotsuke which eventually developed into the temple. Whether this event is fact or legend is uncertain.  One version of this story is found in Shinran Shōnin Shōtōden 親鸞聖人正統伝, in Gendaigo-yaku Shinran Zenshū 現代語訳親鸞全集, Kōdansha, 1975, 4, pp. 313–18, a biography of Shinran written by the Senjuji branch in 1715. Although this biography is late, the story goes back at least to 1369, for the gist of it appears in a document of that date. Matsuno Junkō 松野純孝, Shinran: Sono Shōgai to Shisō no Tenkai Katei 親鸞: その 生涯と思想の展開過程, Sanseidō, 1973, p. 353.

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Shinshū temples, for it evolved out of the so-called Takada 高田 congregation in the Kantō, which definitely dated back to Shinran’s lifetime. This congregation, although not adopting the temple name Senjuji until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, was influential in establishing the memorial chapel at Shinran’s grave site that grew into Honganji, and it provided financial support for Honganji during its early years. It was also instrumental in spreading Shinran’s teachings to other provinces, and even the founders of the Sanmonto branch and the Bukkōji branch traced their religious lineages back to Senjuji’s patriarch Shimbutsu 真仏, 1209–1258. Although Senjuji was prominent in Shinshū’s early development, the other major temples overshadowed it in the course of time. In order to bolster its declining influence, Senjuji claimed that the only person to be granted Shinran’s true oral teachings (yuiju ichinin kuketsu 唯授一人口訣) was its own head priest, and he alone could assume ‘the status of Shinran’ (Shinran’i 親鸞位).16 Despite this form of legitimation, Senjuji never regained a commanding position in Shinshū after the fifteenth century. Bukkōji outstripped all other branches of Shinshū during this period. Although established after both Honganji and Senjuji, Bukkōji quickly managed to build up a prodigious following through the use of kōmyō honzon 光 明本尊 (‘sacred light inscriptions’), ekeizu 絵系図 (‘portrait lineages’), and myōchō 名帳 (‘salvation registers’). Kōmyō honzon were wall-hanging inscriptions of the nembutsu in one of its forms—Namu fukashigi kō nyorai 南無不 可思議光如来, ‘I take refuge in the Nyorai of Wondrous Light’—and from this central inscription rays of light were shown radiating outward toward depictions of Pure Land patriarchs surrounding it. Inscriptions of the nembutsu had been popularized earlier by Shinran himself, although his were much simpler and often used different wording. The kōmyō honzon became one of the common objects of worship in Shinshū congregations and were particularly prevalent in Bukkōji dōjō.17 The ekeizu was a diagram consisting of a series of portraits connected by red lines to indicate a transmission of teachings through a succession of Shinshū teachers. It was used to show that a dōjō priest, or some other clerical figure, had received authentic teachings in a direct lineage going back to Ryōgen 了源,

16  S hinran Shōnin Shōtōden, in Gendaigoyaku Shinran Zenshū, 4, pp. 226, 265–66, & 345. There is some reason to question how far back the concept of Shinran’i goes. The work cited above dates from the early eighteenth century, and it is difficult to find earlier references to this concept. Hence Shinran’i may be a rather late formulation generated to revive the lost religious prestige of Senjuji. 17  Concerning kōmyō honzon, see Kusaka Murin 日下無倫, Shinshūshi no Kenkyū 真宗史 の研究, 1931; reprint edition, Rinkawa Shoten, Kyoto, 1975, pp. 39–75.

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1295–1336, the founder of Bukkōji, and by extension back to Shinran.18 The ekeizu constituted Bukkōji’s primary mechanism for legitimation. It gave dōjō priests credibility in the eyes of their congregations, for it was a tangible sign that their teachings were genuine. But it also tied dōjō priests tightly to Bukkōji authority, since the temple exercised the right of granting and of withdrawing ekeizu. The myōchō was a list of members in one particular congregation or under the leadership of one particular teacher. Having one’s name entered in the list was considered tantamount to salvation, as indicated by the following passage found in the introductory paragraph of most myōchō: We regard admission into this register to be the first moment of faith [ichinen hokki 一念発起, and we consider inclusion in this lineage to be our karmic link to the Pure Land of the one Buddha. Hence, to have our name entered into the register is to assume a karmic link to that Pure Land. We respectfully beseech Amida Nyorai, Lord of Salvation [keshu 化主] in the Western Paradise, and we humbly implore past generations of masters [sendoku 先徳] in our lineage to have pity on us and receive us, and to acknowledge and attest [our salvation].19 The myōchō thereby gave ordinary believers a concrete indication that they were assured of birth in the Pure Land. At the same time it concentrated religious authority in the hands of the dōjō priest since he controlled entries into the list. Kōmyō honzon, ekeizu, and myōchō were highly successful proselytization devices because they appealed to people’s desire for tangible symbols of religious authority and outward assurance of salvation. The net effect of using them was to create a burgeoning religious organization under Bukkōji. Although this temple was later eclipsed by Honganji and its religious devices thereupon eliminated, Bukkōji’s impact on the development of Shinshū was considerable. Not only did it build up a large following that Honganji eventually absorbed, but it also created a hierarchical structure that, in altered form, was grafted onto Honganji’s organization. 18  A description of the structure and function of ekeizu is found in Chiba Jōryū 千葉乗 隆, ‘Shinshū Kyōdan no Soshiki to Seido’ 真宗教団の組織と制度, Dōbōsha, Kyoto, 1978, pp. 32–36; and in Mukai Yoshihiko 向井芳彦, ‘Shinshū Ekeizu Zakkō’ 真宗絵系図雑考, in Shirin 史林, 20:1 (January 1935), pp. 100–19. 19  Miyazaki Enjun 宮崎円遵, ‘Shoki Shinshū ni okeru Monto Myōchō no Ichirei’ 初期真宗に おける門徒名帳の一例, in Uozumi Sensei Koki Kinen Kokushigaku Ronsō 魚澄先生古 稀記念国史学論叢, Uozumi Sensei Koki Kinenkai, Suita, 1959, p. 630.

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The one person who, more than anyone else, managed to bring together these disparate branches of Shinshū was Rennyo 蓮如, 1415–1499, eighth head priest of Honganji and Shinran’s blood descendant.20 During Rennyo’s early years Honganji was perhaps the least successful of Shinshū’s branches. By the time of his death, however, he had attracted the vast majority of Shinshū believers, as well as countless adherents from other schools of Buddhism, into Honganji’s fold in spite of continuing duress from Mt Hiei. Rennyo’s great contribution was to assemble into one religious organization divergent trends that had developed in Shinshū during the previous two centuries. Congregational rules, which were common in early Shinshū dōjō, were recast in Rennyo’s writings as okite 掟, or regulations for believers. His okite included such injunctions as not to denigrate the Shinto kami, not to criticize other Buddhist schools, and not to disobey civil authorities—all rules calculated to make Shinshū adherents upright in behavior and therefore reputable in society.21 Rennyo also instituted popular forms of worship, much like Sanmonto’s wasan singing, that made Shinshū attractive to the common people. Rennyo’s most important innovation in this area was the chanting of Shōshinge 正信偈, a long religious hymn composed by Shinran in his Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信証.22 Rennyo regarded the Shōshinge as an encapsulation of all the essential points of Shinran’s teachings, and he recommended that Shinshū followers—both men and women, clergy and laity—incorporate it into their daily devotions in the morning and the evening.23 Even while initiating such practices, Rennyo continued to observe the traditional ceremonies of Honganji, especially the Hōonkō service commemorating Shinran’s death. Under his direction Hōonkō grew into a great annual event at which Shinshū adherents from all parts of the country gathered for religious reflection, inspiration, thanksgiving, and 20  Three helpful studies on Rennyo in English are Stanley Weinstein, ‘Rennyo and the Shinshū Revival’, in Japan in the Muromachi Age, University of California Press, 1977, pp. 331–38; Minor Lee Rogers, Rennyo Shōnin, 1415–1499: A Transformation of Shin Buddhist Piety, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1972; and Ira Michael Solomon, Rennyo and the Rise of Honganji in Muromachi Japan, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1972. 21  Three versions of Rennyo’s okite are found in his writings, but they all contain several of the same regulations, including the ones mentioned here. Inaba Masamaru 稲葉昌 丸, ed., Rennyo Shōnin Ibun 蓮如上人遺文, Hōzōkan, Kyoto, 1972, pp. 132–33, 238–39, & 247–50.  These regulations, issued at a time when Shinshū adherents were becoming involved in peasant uprisings known as Ikkō ikki 一向一揆 were no doubt aimed at curbing disreputable and anti-social behavior. 22  Kyōgyōshinshō in ssz, 2, pp. 43–46. 23  Rennyo Shōnin Ibun, p. 313.

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renewal. Another device that Rennyo employed with great success was the nembutsu inscription. Instead of adopting the elaborate kōmyō honzon that Bukkōji had popularized, he reverted to a simple inscription of the nembutsu similar to the one originated by Shinran.24 This inscription subsequently became the standard object of worship in most Shinshū dōjō. Rennyo distributed countless copies inscribed in his own hand, and they became prized possessions of many congregations throughout Shinshū. One innovation by Rennyo, in his own right, was the ofumi 御文, or pastoral letter. During his lifetime he wrote more than two hundred such letters and they became the repository of religious truth for the ordinary Shinshū believer.25 Unlike most Shinshū works up to that time, they were written in clear, colloquial Japanese, conveying Shinshū’s simple message of faith more clearly than did Shinran’s own writings. In these letters Rennyo did more than reiterate the terminology of his predecessors. He formulated a definition of faith that sparked the imagination of ordinary believers and communicated to them the religious meaning of Shinran’s teachings. The typical description of faith presented by Rennyo reads as follows: Faith [anjin 安心] as taught by the master of our school means, quite simply, first to get beyond the idea of how profound and shameful our own wrongdoings are; then to set aside all [self-contrived] efforts and practices [aimed at salvation]; and then to rely [tanomi たのみ] single-heartedly, intently, and profoundly on Amida Nyorai to save us in our next lifetime [goshō tasuketamae 後生たすけたまえ]….26 The words and expressions found in this definition were not extracted from Shinran’s writings but rather derived from other schools of Pure Land Buddhism.27 Rennyo used them skillfully to express the idea of repudiating 24  Rennyo rejected not only the kōmyō honzon but also the ekeizu and the myōchō used by Bukkōji. In this matter he was influenced by Kakunyo’s critique of these objects in Gaijashō, in ssz, 3, pp. 64–67 & 76. Rennyo’s rejection of Bukkōji’s practices is confirmed in his letter found in Rennyo Shōnin Ibun, pp. 263–64. 25  Rennyo Shōnin Ibun, pp. 47–514, lists a total of 221 letters regarded as genuine and, pp. 515– 44, another fourteen of questionable authenticity. Eighty of these letters were singled out in the sixteenth century and assembled into a collection titled Gobunshō 御文章, in ssz, 3, pp. 402–521, which came to be used in Honganji as the central writings of Rennyo.  The translation of the word ofumi as ‘pastoral letters’ has been borrowed from Weinstein, p. 347. 26  Rennyo Shōnin Ibun, p. 470. 27  Shinran seldom used the term anjin 安心 for faith, although it was common in other Pure Land writings of his day. The term may have been absorbed into Shinshū from the Seizan

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self-effort [jiriki 自力] and turning to the power of the Buddha [tariki 他力], which were elemental to Shinran’s teachings. This way of presenting faith obviously struck a resonant chord in believers, for thousands of followers were drawn into the Honganji branch at this point. In Rennyo’s wake Honganji stood as the pre-eminent institution in Shinshū, replete with a popular creed, a sophisticated pattern of worship, and a hierarchical organization with the head priest of the temple as its ecclesiastical authority. Shinshū itself emerged as the largest school of Buddhism in Japan and continued to be so until modern times.28 Conclusion Between the time of Shinran and Rennyo, Shinshū passed through four discernible stages of development. The first was the stage of Shinran’s teachings and the harsh reaction they evoked from the Buddhist establishment. At this point Shinshū was nothing more than the personal conviction of Shinran himself. He envisioned a life of faith and total reliance on the Buddha Amida in place of the clerical ideal of a person assuming individual responsibility for his religious fate. From the perspective of Mt. Hiei and other monastic centers, Shinran’s ideas were an insidious corruption of true Buddhism, threatening to undermine their orthodoxy and to seduce the people into religious laxity. As a result, they launched repeated attacks on Shinshū during its first two and a half centuries of existence. Despite this antagonism, the insights that Shinran arrived at and the way he incorporated them into his own experience made a strong enough impression on his followers that they sought to preserve his religious vision and to make it a way of life. The second stage spanned the time from Shinran’s later years through the early fourteenth century when his teachings gradually attracted a following. At this point Shinshū began to view itself as a separate religious body from Hōnen’s Pure Land movement. It predicated its identity on the figure Shinran 西山 branch of Jōdoshū. Likewise, the expression tasuketamae to tanomu たすけたま えとたのむ may have come from Ikkōshū.  Shinshū itself came to be known as Ikkōshū from the fifteenth century, but prior to that time the named referred to a Pure Land group generally associated with Jishū.  Ōhashi Toshio 大橋俊雄, Jishū no Seiritsu to Tenkai 時宗の成立と展開, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1973, pp. 42–57 & 266–81. 28  Only in the twentieth century did the Nichiren school overtake Shinshū as Japan’s largest school of Buddhism. Statistics are provided in Shūkyō Nenkan 宗教年鑑, published by the Bunkachō 文化庁.

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as aggrandized by Kakunyo, and it promoted Shinran’s teachings as the ideal of Pure Land Buddhism. These early followers organized themselves into self-governing congregations that established rules of conduct for the first time. Congregations were centered around dōjō, which became the basic institutional unit for Shinshū growth as it spread from one region to another. Geographically, Shinran’s early following was concentrated in the Kantō, but it extended successively in a westward direction to other regions. The third stage is characterized by the appearance of quasi-independent branches of Shinshū organized under the authority of a major temple, primarily during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The temples that became prominent at this point were Honganji, the Sanmonto temples, Senjuji, and Bukkōji. They formulated modes of worship and ceremony that appealed to the common people, they employed new proselytization devices that gave believers a sense of immediacy and assurance, and they gradually established themselves as regional centers of the Shinshū tradition. But they were not organized as a single religious institution, maintaining loose ties with each other at best and antagonistic rivalries at worst. The fourth stage was the ministry of Rennyo. Under his leadership the great majority of Shinshū congregations were drawn into the Honganji branch, and thousands of believers converted from other schools of Buddhism. Rennyo succeeded by formulating a clear and comprehensible version of Shinran’s teachings and by propagating it in preaching tours and in pastoral letters to congregations. He delineated a code of conduct for believers in his okite, popularized Shōshinge chanting, and expanded the Hōonkō service as forms of worship; he also built up the sectarian organization under the authority of Honganji. Within Rennyo’s lifetime Shinshū emerged as a major school of Buddhism in Japan. In Rennyo’s wake Shinshū stood as a fully institutionalized religious body giving palpable form to trends that were only tentatively manifested in Shinran’s time. In effect this institutionalization helped transform the character of Buddhism in Japan. For one thing, a faith-oriented religiosity that addressed the needs of the ordinary person became a prominent motif in the Japanese context. For another, the importance of the celibate clergy fell into question, and by modern times all of Japan’s Buddhist schools allowed priests to marry, thereby reversing a longstanding custom dating back to the Buddha in India. These developments marked a shift in the concept and practice of Buddhism in Japan, and they did much to give it a distinct identity that set it apart from the Buddhism found in other Asian countries.

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Shin Buddhist Attitudes towards the Kami From Shinran to Rennyo Robert F. Rhodes One of the most fascinating topics in the study of Japanese religions is the complex history of the interaction between Buddhism and the native Japanese religion, Shintō.1 After the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the sixth century, attempts were made to unite Buddhism with the indigenous religion, a phenomenon often referred to as shinbutsushūgō 神仏習合, or “unification of the kami (the native Japanese gods) and buddhas.” This attempt at unification was advantageous to both sides. Shintō priests could increase their status by allying themselves with the prestigious foreign religion, while Buddhists realized that their authority and influence over the populace could be readily enhanced by incorporating the worship of the local kami into their religion. As Kuroda Toshio has noted, this Buddhist-Shintō unification proceeded by absorbing the worship of the kami into Buddhism. Between the late eighth and the eleventh centuries, a number of theories were developed to explain the relationship between the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the Buddhist pantheon with the native Japanese kami. Kuroda explains: As is already well known, between the late eighth century and the eleventh century Shintō and Buddhism gradually coalesced with one another … or, more precisely, veneration of the kami was absorbed into Buddhism through a variety of doctrinal innovations and new religious forms. Among the doctrinal explanations of the kami were the following: 1) the kami realize that they themselves are trapped in this world of samsāra and transmigration and they also seek liberation through the Buddhist teachings; 2) the kami are benevolent deities who protect Buddhism; 3) the kami are the transformations of the buddhas manifested in Japan to save all sentient beings (honji-suijaku); and 4) the kami are the pure spirits of the buddhas (hongaku).2 S ource: Rhodes, Robert F, “Shin Buddhist Attitudes Towards the Kami: From Shinran to Rennyo,” Eastern Buddhist 27(2) (1994): 53–80. 1  Important works in Japanese include Murayama 1957 and 1974. The standard work in English is Matsunaga 1969. 2  Kuroda 1981:9.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_017

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Kuroda further notes that during the late eighth and early ninth centuries, the first two theories—that is to say, the theories that (1) the kami are unenlightened beings who need to seek liberation from the cycle of birth-and-death through the practice of the Buddhist teachings, and (2) the kami are protectors of the Buddhist teachings—were dominant.3 However, from the mid-ninth century, the third theory—that the kami are the Japanese manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas—came to hold an increasingly important place in the Japanese view of the kami.4 This honji-suijaku 本地垂迹 theory, or the theory that the kami are “traces” ( jaku) which the buddhas and bodhisattvas (honji or the “original ground”) manifested (sui) in Japan to save the beings of this nation, became the most influential theory during the medieval period. By the twelfth century, the major kami had been correlated to the central figures of the Buddhist pantheon.5 To repeat, by the end of the Heian period, the honji-suijaku theory that the Japanese kami are the local manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas became widely accepted by Japanese Buddhists, and the worship of various kami had become an integral part of Buddhist practice. However, during the Kamakura period, important Pure Land figures, most notably Shinran (1173– 1262), rejected the worship of the kami, arguing that the sole source of salvation during the age of the Latter Dharma is Amida Buddha. Although recognizing that the kami often serve as protectors of Buddhism, these Pure Land thinkers did not interpret them as being manifestations of the buddhas. This position represents a break with the earlier syncretic tendency of Japanese Buddhism and marks an important epoch in the history of the Buddhist-Shintō interaction in Japan. However, after Shinran’s time, Shin Buddhist thinkers began to incorporate the honji-suijaku theory into their discussion of the Japanese kami, resulting in an important modification of Shinran’s original interpretation. This was the result of the need to temper the radical Shin Buddhist emphasis on exclusive reliance on Amida Buddha in order to make its teachings socially more acceptable. In the following pages, I will trace the development of Shin Buddhist attitudes towards the kami, focusing on the four figures: Shinran, Kakunyo, Zonkaku and Rennyo. But before considering them, it will be necessary to outline briefly the view of Hōnen, Shinran’s master.

3  Kuroda 1981:9. 4  Matsunaga 1969:227–28. 5  Matsunaga 1969:231–59.

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Although the honji-suijaku theory had become widely accepted in the Heian period, during the succeeding Kamakura period there arose a Buddhist movement in Kyoto which claimed that the worship of the kami did not lead to salvation. This was the exclusive nembutsu (senju nembutsu 専修念仏) movement led by Hōnen (1133–1212).6 According to Hōnen, the world was in the midst of the degenerate age of the Latter Dharma (mappō 末法) in which the spiritual capacities of humans had decreased to the point where it was impossible for them to achieve liberation from the cycle of birth-and-death by their own efforts. The only hope for salvation during this age, he preached, lay in attaining birth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land (called Sukhāvatī in Sanskrit or Gokuraku 極樂 [Land of Utmost Bliss] in Japanese) where one could achieve Buddhahood quickly. Hōnen emphasized that the sole practice which leads to birth in the Pure Land is the recitation of the nembutsu. This was because he considered the nembutsu recitation to be the practice specifically chosen by Amida Buddha in his Original Vow as the universal practice for effecting the birth of all beings into his Pure Land. Hōnen’s position that salvation is possible through sole reliance on the nembutsu was a revolutionary one in the history of Japanese Buddhism. For him, the recitation of the nembutsu was sufficient in itself to ensure birth in Amida’s Land. All other practices, including such basic Buddhist practices as arousing the aspiration for enlightenment, keeping the precepts and meditation exercises, were rejected as unnecessary for salvation. Although he nowhere states it explicitly, this implies that Hōnen rejected the worship of the Japanese kami as having any salvific efficacy. However, Hōnen does not deny that the kami exist. In fact, on the basis of such texts as Shan-tao’s Kuan nien fa men 観念法門 (Dharma Gate of Contemplation) Hōnen argues that nembutsu practitioners are protected, not only by all the various buddhas, but also by the kami as well.7 6  On Hōnen’s Pure Land Buddhism, see Andrews 1987. Hōnen’s views concerning the kami are discussed in Asai 1980 and Kakehashi 1986. 7  Hōnen makes this argument in chapter 15, “Passages on How the Buddhas of the Six Directions Protect Nembutsu Practitioners,” of his major work, the Senjaku hongan nembutsushū 選択 本願念仏集 (Selection of the Nembutsu of the Original Vow). The passage reads: “Further, the Dharma Gate of Contemplation … says: ‘Further, as is taught in the section on practice of the Sutra of the Samadhi Wherein All the Buddhas are Present, “The Buddha declared that if anyone wholeheartedly practices the Samadhi of meditating on Amida Buddha, then all of the many heavenly beings, including the great guardian kings of the four directions and the eight kinds of guardians of Buddhism, such as dragons and devas, will, as his protector, always follow him as closely as his own shadow and joyfully watch over him. Neither devils

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However, while denying the kami’s power to effect salvation, Hōnen does not condemn visits to shrines by nembutsu practitioners. In fact, he even declares that prayers may be addressed to the kami as long as they concern worldly matters and are not prayers for birth in the Pure Land. For example, the following exchange is found in the Ippyakushijūgo kajō mondō 一百四十五 箇条問答 (Question and Answer in One Hundred Forty-five Articles). Question: What do you think of visits to shrines by those who make the nembutsu their practice? Answer: It may be allowed.8 In his letter to Tsudo no Saburō 津戸の三郎, Hōnen states: It is all right to say prayers concerning matters of this world to both buddhas and kami. As for birth in the Pure Land after death, to engage in any practice other than the nembutsu is wrong, since it obstructs the nembutsu. It is all right to say prayers to buddhas and kami for worldly matters, since it does not concern birth in the Pure Land.9 In other words, the power of the nembutsu to effect salvation is not compromised even if the nembutsu practitioner visits shrines or prays to the kami for worldly benefits. In his view, the all-embracing salvific power of the nembutsu assures birth in the Pure Land of all people without exception. In conclusion, Hōnen’s exclusive nembutsu denied several fundamental presuppositions concerning orthodox practice and ways to salvation held by the established Buddhist sects. First, Hōnen rejected the efficacy of the various soteriological paths advocated by these older sects, claiming that only the nembutsu can result in liberation from the cycle of transmigration during the age of the Latter Dharma. Moreover, although he accepted the Buddhist cosmology, which recognized the existence of numerous buddhas, bodhisattvas and kami within the universe, he dismissed the efficacy of worshipping any other deity besides Amida Buddha as a means to achieving liberation. According to Hōnen, reliance on Amida and his Vow is the only way to salvation, and it is nor evil spirits nor misfortunes and obstacles nor disasters will come unexpectedly to confuse him …’” (Kondo and Augustine 1987:114). The original passage is found in Ishii 1955:346. Although the passage here refers only to heavenly beings (t’ien 天), they include the Japanese kami as well; see Asai 1980:43 and Kakehashi 1986:387. 8  Ishii 1955:660. Cited in Asai 1980:55 and Kakehashi 1986:389. 9  Ishii 1955:504. Cited in Asai 1980:51 and Kakehashi 1986:390.

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ineffective, indeed detrimental, to seek liberation by trusting in any other buddha or deity besides Amida. 2

Attacks on Hōnen’s Pure Land Movement

Hōnen’s ideas were in direct opposition to those held by the established sects of his day. As Hōnen’s movement grew in popularity, the older sects repeatedly petitioned the court to ban it. First the Tendai sect in 1204, and then Jōkei 貞慶 (1155–1213) on behalf of the Hossō sect in 1205, presented memorials to outlaw Hōnen’s teaching. A number of other attempts to eradicate the exclusive nembutsu movement followed.10 Many of these memorials focused on the allegation that Pure Land followers refused to worship the kami, citing it as proof that the new nembutsu movement was a potential source of serious social and political disruption. The denial of the kami by Hōnen’s followers could quickly turn into the disavowal of the legitimacy of the various religious and political institutions which appealed to these kami for their authority. Hōnen’s Pure Land movement, the proponents of the established Buddhist schools argued, is therefore subversive and must be banned. Jōkei’s petition, known as the Kōfukuji sōjō 興福寺奏状 (Kōfukuji Petition),11 led to the first suppression of Hōnen’s nembutsu movement in 1207. This memorial consists of nine articles listing the faults of Hōnen’s teachings. Among them, article five, entitled “The Error of Rejecting Spirits and Kami,” explicitly attacked Hōnen for rejecting the need to worship the Japanese kami. This article states: The nembutsu followers have long been estranged from the deities ( jinmyō 神明). They pay their respects at the great shrines and imperial sanctuaries, whether it be those of the true (deities) or provisional manifestations. They make such statements as that if one puts one’s trust in the deities, one will surely fall into hell. I will put aside the true spirits (kijin 鬼神) for the time being and refrain from discussing them. (But) the trace manifestations (suijaku) who assume provisional forms are actually the great (Buddhist) Holy Ones, revered by all the eminent priests of antiquity…. Priests in this Latter Age respect the secular authorities; how 10  According to Hisano Yoshiko, there were thirteen attempts to outlaw or destroy the new Pure Land movement during Shinran’s lifetime (Hisano 1988:109). 11  The Kōfukuji sōjō is translated in Morrell 1983.

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much more so should they venerate the holy deities…. Such abuse as this (turning one’s back on the holy gods of Shintō by the followers of Hōnen) should be stopped.12 Here Jōkei argues on the basis of the honji-suijaku theory that, since the kami are Japanese manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas, they must be respected by all Buddhists. Hōnen’s nembutsu, which denies the necessity of worshipping the kami, must therefore be banned. As a result of this petition, several of Hōnen’s leading disciples were executed, Hōnen himself was exiled to Tosa, and other disciples (including Shinran) were banished to the provinces.13 However, Hōnen’s Pure Land movement was not eradicated, and attempts to outlaw it continued. In 1224, monks of the Tendai sect once again issued a memorial urging the suppression of the exclusive nembutsu movement. Its second article states: Our country is a nation of the kami. It is the duty of the nation to revere the way of the kami (Shintō 神道). When we respectfully inquire after the origin of the hundred kami, there is none which is not the trace of the buddhas. Ise Daijingū, Shōhachimangū, Kamo, Matsuo, Hie, Kasuga, etc., are all manifestations of Śākyamuni, Bhaiṣajyarāja (Yakushi), Amida, Avalokiteśvara (Kannon), etc.… However, at present, followers of exclusive (nembutsu) attribute everything to the nembutsu and long refuse to respect the deities. Since they have lost the rites of the nation, how can they not be censured by the kami? It should be known that the divinities ( jingi 神祇) will surely send demonic spirits (kihaku 鬼魄) to vanquish them. Also, when we look into the expositions of the Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra, etc., the Buddha entrusted his scripture in its entirety to the holy deities of the ten directions. They received the Buddha’s edict and (have since then) protected the Dharma treasure. Therefore, if you receive and uphold the sūtras and teachings, (these deities) will surely guard you. But if you should slander them, they will surely cause you torment. Those who revile the Dharma should remember (that they will receive) this retribution. In particular, (this is what) I hear of the actions of the evil followers (of the exclusive nembutsu:) they eat meat and engage in sexual intercourse by the shrine fence. After coming into contact with pollution, they 12  Morrell 1983:25–26; slightly amended. 13  On the 1207 suppression, see Dobbins 1989:14–18.

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visit the shrine of the trace manifestations. (Yet they say) even those who commit the ten evils and five grave offenses will be led the Pure Land by Amida. How can the deities and the way of the kami obstruct birth in the Pure Land? [And so forth.] Sensible people should feel admonished by these words. How can those who break the laws of the kami’s land escape the king’s punishment?14 Like Jōkei’s petition above, the argument presented here is based on the honjisuijaku theory. It argues that since the kami are manifestations of the buddhas, nembutsu practitioners who commit outrage against the kami are guilty of insulting the buddhas and must be outlawed. But this theme is further amplified by invoking the notion that Japan is a divine land. Since Japan is the sacred abode of the kami, the nation as a whole has the duty to venerate the kami, and the government has the obligation to suppress those movements which are disrespectful to them. Although he did not call for its suppression, Mujū Ichien 無住一円 (1226– 1312), too, was deeply critical of the exclusive nembutsu movement. Although Mujū belongs to a slightly later age than Hōnen and Shinran, it may be instructive to consider his views here. In his Shasekishū 砂石集 (Collection of Sand and Pebbles), he states: The nembutsu sects are an important gateway to salvation appropriate to this defiled world and provide the common person with a direct route to release from birth-and-death. But though they are indeed most excellent, there are those who pass judgement on other practices, other ways of acquiring merit. They go so far as to make light of other buddhas, bodhisattvas, and deities, and to ridicule the various teachings of the Mahāyāna. These commonplace people have a way of thinking which does not admit that other disciplines also lead to the Pure Land; understanding nothing outside their own beliefs, they disparage the other buddhas and bodhisattvas…. Thus, while respecting and relying solely on Amida’s Vow and diligently seeking benefit from the nembutsu, we should not disparage other disciplines nor make light of other buddhas, bodhisattvas and deities.15 Mujū contends here that all the buddhas, bodhisattvas and heavenly beings in the Buddhist pantheon (including the Japanese kami who had by now been 14  Takeuchi 1973:271–72. Cited in Miyazaki 1971:51. 15  Morrell 1985:99–100; slightly amended.

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fully incorporated into the Buddhist spiritual cosmology) are authentic sources of salvation and must be treated with respect. However, the followers of the exclusive nembutsu preach reliance solely on Amida Buddha and neglect to honor other buddhas and divinities. This is a serious affront to these other spiritual beings. For Mujū who recognized the existence of a number of different, and equally valid, paths to liberation, Hōnen’s insistence on Amida Buddha as the sole source of salvation during the age of the Latter Dharma was unacceptable dogmatism. 3

Shinran’s Rejection of Kami Worship

Hōnen’s disciple Shinran was an innovative thinker who extended and deepened the Pure Land teachings he received from his master. On the question of the efficacy of worshipping the kami, Shinran was deeply influenced by Hōnen.16 However, Shinran went even further than his master in totally rejecting all forms of kami worship. Concerning the kami, Shinran makes the following two points: (1) Pure Land believers are not to worship the kami, and (2) the kami protect nembutsu practitioners. Shinran’s most detailed treatment of the former point is found in the Chapter on Transformed Buddha and Land 化身土巻 (Keshindo no maki) of his major work, the Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信証 (Teaching, Practice, Faith and Realization). In this chapter Shinran criticizes what he sees as the corrupt forms of Buddhism prevalent in his age. As part of his argument, he quotes over thirty passages from Buddhist and Confucian texts denouncing the worship of heavenly beings.17 In these texts, “heavenly beings” originally referred to Indian deities which had been absorbed into Buddhism. But as Miyazaki Enjun has pointed out, Shinran interpreted the heavenly beings in these passages as including the Japanese kami.18 Shinran begins part two (matsu 末) of the Chapter on Transformed Buddha and Land with the following words: “Here, based on the sūtras, the true and the false are determined and people are cautioned against the wrong, false, and misleading opinions of non-Buddhist teachings.”19 Immediately following these words, Shinran continues:

16  An excellent outline of Shinran’s attitude towards the kami is found in Dobbins 1989:57– 60. There are also a number of studies in Japanese on this topic: Kashiwabara 1961, Miyazaki 1971, Hayashi 1986, and Hosokawa 1987. 17  Miyazaki 1971:53. 18  Miyazaki 1971:59. 19  Ueda 1985:555, slightly amended. The original passage is found in Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 1969: Vol. 1, 327. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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The Nirvāṇa Sūtra states: “If one has taken refuge in the Buddha one must not further take refuge in various heavenly gods.” The Śūraṇgama Sūtra states: “Those among lay women who hear this samādhi and seek to learn it: … Take refuge in the Buddha yourself, take refuge in the dharma, take refuge in the saṅgha. Do not serve other teachings, do not worship heavenly beings, do not enshrine spirits (kijin 鬼神), do not heed any days considered lucky.” Further, it states: “Lay women who wish to learn this samādhi … must not worship devas or enshrine spirits.”20 These passages are followed by a series of over thirty quotations, some quite lengthy, denouncing the worship of heavenly beings. However, Shinran’s clearest statement rejecting the worship of the kami is found in a passage from the Analects, which he intentionally misquotes: The Analects states: “Chi-lu asked, ‘Should one serve spirits?’ Confucius said, ‘One should not serve spirits. Why should people serve spirits?’”21 The original Analects passage states: Chi-lu asked, “Should one serve spirits?” The Master said, “Until you have learned to serve people, how can you serve spirits?”22 This passage shows that Shinran unambiguously rejected worship of the kami by nembutsu practitioners. Shinran makes the same point in the following verses from his Shōzōmatsu wasan 正像末和讃 (Hymns on the Last Age). Lamentable it is that people, whether of the Way or of the world Choose auspicious times and lucky dates, Worship heavenly kami and earthly spirits, And are absorbed in divinations and rituals. Lamentable it is that these days All in Japan, whether of the Way or of the world, While performing the rites and rituals of Buddhism, Worship the spirits of heaven and earth.23 20  Ueda 1985: Vol. 4, 555–56, slightly amended. For the original see Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 1969: Vol. 1, 327. 21  Ueda 1985: Vol. 4, 612. For the original see Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 1969: Vol. 1, 380. 22  Yoshikawa 1978:31. For an alternate English translation, see Waley 1938:155. 23  Ryukoku University Translation Center 1980:101–104; slightly amended. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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The second point which Shinran makes is that the kami protect and look after the welfare of nembutsu practitioners. As we saw above, this point was also emphasized by Hōnen. Shinran expresses this idea in a number of his writings. For example, in the Chapter on Faith 信巻 (Shin no maki) of the Kyōgyōshinshō, he lists ten benefits gained by those who recite the nembutsu, the first of which is that they are “protected and sustained by unseen powers,” i.e., the kami.24 In the Chapter on Transformed Buddha and Land of the same work, Shinran quotes the following lines from the Kuan ting ching 潅頂経 (Sūtra of Ritual Sprinkling). Without revealing themselves, the thirty-six spirit-kings, together with their followings of spirits numerous as the sands of the Ganges ten billionfold, will take turns protecting those who receive the three refuges.25 And in the Jōdo wasan 浄土和讃 (Hymns on the Pure Land), he states: All the heavenly kami and earthly spirits, Are called good spirits. These good gods, each and all, Protect the followers of the nembutsu.26 These quotations all show that Shinran, like Hōnen, maintained that the kami protect all nembutsu practitioners. Shinran’s admonition not to worship the kami derives from his conviction of the need for undivided reliance on Amida Buddha’s Vow. As Kuroda has noted, Shinran (like Hōnen) was not advocating the notion that the kami do not exist. Like all other people of his age, he accepted the medieval cosmology which recognized the existence of many spiritual beings in the universe.27 But he emphatically rejected (again like Hōnen) the idea that they could be of any help in achieving liberation. However, unlike Hōnen, who condoned worship at shrines and even prayers addressed to the kami, Shinran states unequivocally that Pure Land believers must not worship them. It appears that Shinran’s repudiation of kami worship was frequently the source of friction between Shinran’s followers and the political authorities.

24  Ueda 1985: Vol. 2, 257. For the original see Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 1969: Vol. 1, 138. 25  Ueda 1985: Vol. 4, 586. Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 1969: Vol. 1, 356. 26  Fujimoto et al. 1965:140; slightly amended. 27  Kuroda 1975:192.

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This is suggested by a letter from Shinran to his son Zenran and other nembutsu practitioners in the Kantō.28 In this letter, Shinran declares: To scorn buddhas and bodhisattvas and to denigrate the divinities and spirits of the nether world (myōdō 冥道) is something that should never be…. The kami of heaven and earth watch over people who have a profound faith in the Buddhist teachings, accompanying them as if they took the form of their shadow. Therefore, if people have faith in the nembutsu, they should never entertain thoughts of disclaiming the kami of heaven and earth. If the divinities are not to be discarded, then how much less should they speak ill of or look down on buddhas and bodhisattvas. If people speak ill of buddhas and bodhisattvas, then they are individuals who utter Amida’s name without having faith in the nembutsu…. In short, it is only to be expected that lords, constables, and overseers in the area, speaking falsehoods and inclined towards error, should now take measures to suppress the nembutsu aimed at nembutsu followers…. Nonetheless, you should not say things against them. Rather, people who practice the nembutsu should have compassion and feel pity for those who would pose obstructions, and they should say the nembutsu fervently hoping that Amida will save even those posing these obstructions….29 This letter shows that the nembutsu followers’ refusal to pay respect to the kami was used as a pretext for persecuting them in the Kantō. Shinran begins this letter by denying that he ever preached disrespect towards the kami. The kami, he argues, protect and look after all nembutsu believers. Thus it is wrong to revile or ignore them. If nembutsu practitioners persist in committing outrages against the kami, it will lead to their suppression by the local authorities. To prevent such attacks, Shinran concludes that one must not be disrespectful to the kami, even if one does not worship them.30 As Hisano Yoshiko has noted, Hōnen and Shinran lived during an age in which political power passed from the hands of the court nobility to the warrior clans. Although these warrior clans were originally formed on the basis of consanguinity, they gradually developed into regional organizations worshipping the same local kami. The heads of these clans consciously fostered 28  On this letter, see Akamatsu 1961:293–95. An analysis of this letter from the standpoint of Shin Buddhist doctrines is found in Tashiro 1987. 29  Dobbins 1989:58–59; slightly amended. The original passage is found in Nabata et al. 1964:157–58. 30  Kashiwabara 1961:324–26.

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the worship of one kami by the entire warrior band in order to strengthen its solidarity. Moreover, the clan heads also required the common people of the region to worship the same kami as a means of showing their loyalty to him and his clan.31 Under such circumstances, the nembutsu followers’ refusal to worship the local kami was often seen as a politically subversive act and led to their persecution. It was the need to forestall such persecution that made Shinran warn his followers to refrain from offending the kami. 4

Developments under Kakunyo

A new and important phase in the development of Shin Buddhist interpretation of the Japanese kami begins with Kakunyo 覚如 (1270–1351), Zonkaku 存 覚 (1290–1373) and their adoption of the honji-suijaku theory.32 Neither Hōnen nor Shinran employed the honji-suijaku theory to explain the status of the kami in their writings. But changing circumstances led Kakunyo and Zonkaku to make use of this theory. As Fugen Kōju notes, the age in which they lived was marked by the gradual spread of Shin Buddhist teachings. As the teachings were accepted by more people, opportunities for conflict between nembutsu practitioners and the rest of society over the former’s refusal to worship the kami increased. Thus they were faced with the need to reconcile the Shin Buddhist refusal to worship the kami with the attitude of the society at large.33 The key to their solution lay in their use of the honji-suijaku theory. It was Kakunyo who first incorporated the honji-suijaku theory into Shin Buddhist interpretation of the kami. This theory provides the framework for the story of Heitarō and Kumano Gongen (the “provisional manifestation” [gongen 権現] of Amida Buddha at the sacred mountain of Kumano) found in the Godenshō 御傅鈔, Kakunyo’s biography of Shinran. According to this story, Heitarō, a devout follower of Shinran’s teaching, was obliged to make a visit to Kumano Shrine. Before leaving on the journey, Heitarō consulted Shinran on the propriety of visiting the shrine. To Heitarō’s question, Shinran answered as follows. Kumano Gongen, the kami of Kumano, is a manifestation of Amida Buddha. His goal is to awaken the people of Japan to Amida’s Vow and lead them to liberation. Because true nembutsu practitioners are free 31  Hisano 1988:113. 32  On Kakunyo, Zonkaku and their place in Shin Buddhist history, see Dobbins 1989:79–98. Studies on the interpretation of the kami found in the works of Kakunyo and Zonkaku include Kiriyama 1971, Kashiwabara 1976, and Hayashi 1988. 33  Fugen 1978:42.

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from all calculating thoughts, it is permissible for them “in conformity to their public duties or to their master’s instructions … (to) tread on the grounds of a kami to pay homage to his shrine or temple.”34 Just go to Kumano with faith in Amida Buddha, the “original ground” of the Gongen, counsels Shinran. There is no need to observe the special rites of purification incumbent on pilgrims to Kumano. Instructed in this way, Heitarō traveled to Kumano without undertaking any special rituals to purify himself. The night he arrived, Heitarō had a dream in which Kumano Gongen appeared to him, reproaching him for defiling the shrine precincts by coming without undertaking the necessary purification. At this point, Shinran himself in the dream appeared and explained to the kami that Heitarō was a devout follower of the nembutsu who was simply following his instruction. Thereupon Kumano Gongen bowed deeply to Shinran and said nothing more to Heitarō.35 In this story, Kakunyo makes explicit use of the honji-suijaku theory to argue that Kumano Gongen is the manifestation of Amida Buddha who appeared in Japan to awaken the people to the nembutsu faith. Since Amida and Kumano Gongen are ultimately identical, Kakunyo concludes that, as long as one’s faith in Amida remains firm, there is no need to abstain from visiting Kumano. If required in the course of one’s duties or profession, one may indeed go to shrines and even participate in their rituals. The important thing is not outward behavior, but whether or not one has faith in Amida. In this way, Kakunyo utilized the honji-suijaku theory to reconcile exclusive reliance on Amida Buddha with the pressure exerted on many nembutsu practitioners to participate in the worship of the kami. By removing a major source of tension between his followers and those who advocated kami worship by all, Kakunyo helped make Shin Buddhist teachings acceptable to the society at large. Needless to say, it also greatly facilitated the spread of Shin Buddhism. It may also be noted here that Kakunyo invokes the authority of Hakone Gongen, considered to be the “provisional appearance” of the buddha at Hakone,36 as part of his agenda to consolidate the Shin Buddhist community under his control. When in 1310 Kakunyo became the custodian of Shinran’s mausoleum at Ōtani (later to become the Honganji), he resolved to use his position to unite all Shin Buddhist followers who were dispersed throughout 34  Suzuki 1973:180; slightly amended. 35  This story is found in Suzuki 1973:179–80. 36  The Shojin hongaishū states that Hakone Gongen consists of three deities: its dharma substance (hottai 法体) is a manifestation of Manjuśrī; its relative substance (zokutai 俗 体) is Maitreya; and its female substance (nyotai 女体) is Avalokiteśvara (Kannon). See Ōsumi 1977:189.

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Japan in independent congregations under the Ōtani chapel and his leadership.37 As a part of his campaign, Kakunyo wrote the Godenshō, in which he tried to create an image of Shinran cloaked in traditional symbols of religious authority. In this biography, Kakunyo emphasized Shinran’s aristocratic background, his vision of Avalokiteśvara (Kannon) at the Rokkakudō, his close relationship with Hōnen, etc., all of which served to aggrandize Shinran. He even goes so far as to call Shinran the incarnation of Amida Buddha.38 Kakunyo’s purpose in increasing Shinran’s prestige in this way was, of course, to enhance his own authority (which derived from his role as the custodian of Shinran’s mausoleum) in his struggle for leadership of the Shin Buddhist community. The story found in the Godenshō about Shinran and Hakone Gongen must also be understood as part of Kakunyo’s strategy to provide Shinran with a supernatural aura. Once, when Shinran was crossing the mountain pass at Hakone, he was greeted by an inhabitant of the village there. The villager hold him how Hakone Gongen appeared to him in a dream and delivered to him the following message: A monk that I hold in high regard will be passing by soon; make sure you treat him with reverence! Immediately after receiving this message, the villager saw Shinran and recognized him as the monk whom Hakone Gongen had spoken about. This story clearly betrays Kakunyo’s attempt to elevate Shinran’s authority by associating it with Hakone Gongen. Hakone Gongen appears here as the supernatural witness to Shinran’s extraordinary spiritual stature. Kakunyo appropriated the prestige of Hakone Gongen to increase Shinran’s religious authority and thus strengthen his own position. In these ways, Kakunyo introduced the honji-suijaku theory into his treatment of the kami. However, it was his son Zonkaku who systematized the Shin Buddhist interpretation of the kami on the basis of the honji-suijaku theory. 5

Zonkaku and the Shojin hongaishū

The classic Shin Buddhist analysis of the kami is found in Zonkaku’s Shojin hongaishū 諸神本懐集 (On the Original Intention of the Various Kami) written in 1324.39 Zonkaku is famous as the person who laid the foundation of Shin 37  Dobbins 1989:83–84. 38  Dobbins 1989:82. 39  An annotated text of the Shojin hongaishū is found in Ōsumi 1977:182–207. Important studies on the Shojin hongaishū include Fugen 1978, Miyazaki 1988, and Imahori 1978, 1990.

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Buddhist “theology.” He wrote many influential works on Shin doctrine, including the Rokuyōshō 六要鈔 (Summary of the Essentials of the Six [Chapters of the Kyōgyōshinshō]), the oldest commentary on the Kyōgyōshinshō. The problem of the proper interpretation of the kami was an important one with which he had to struggle in order to create a systematic Shin Buddhology. According to its colophon, Zonkaku wrote the Shojin hongaishū for Ryōgen 了源 (1295–1336), who belonged to the Bukkōji 仏光寺 subsect of Shin Buddhism.40 The colophon also states that Zonkaku modeled this work on a certain earlier work on the same subject. Since Zonkaku does not mention the name of this earlier work, scholars have speculated at length over its identity. But recently Kitanishi Hiromu discovered a text entitled Kami no honji no koto 神本地之事 (On the Matter of the Original Ground of the Kami) at the Kōgenji 向源寺 in Nagano prefecture and determined that this was the source of the Shojin hongaishū.41 Zonkaku makes two closely related claims in the Shojin hongaishū: (1) the major kami are all manifestations of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and (2) all buddhas and bodhisattvas are manifestations of Amida Buddha. On the basis of this “two-tiered” honji-suijaku cosmology, he argues that the proper object of worship is not the kami, but Amida Buddha who lies at the source of all the kami.42 In fact, he concludes that the original intention (hongai) of the kami is to lead all beings out of the cycle of transmigration by teaching them the Pure Land nembutsu practice. Zonkaku begins by dividing all the kami into two categories: (1) holy kami of provisional shrines (gonsha no ryōjin 権社ノ霊神) and (2) false kami of real shrines ( jissha no jajin 実社ノ邪神).43 The former refer to the kami who are manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Although Zonkaku does not consider them proper objects of worship for nembutsu practitioners, he sees them as having value in leading people to the true Buddhist path. On the other hand, the false kami of real shrines refer to various spirits of living or dead people (including ancestral spirits) who haunt and place curses on living beings.44 Zonkaku emphatically rejects any form of worship towards them.

40  Miyazaki 1988:420–21. 41  Kitanishi 1966. Kitanishi’s article contains the text of the Kami no honji no koto. It may also be noted that Miyazaki Enjun sees the Shojin hongaishū as being closely associated with Ippen’s Ji sect of Pure Land Buddhism. See Miyazaki 1988:429–32. 42  On the “two-tiered” (nijū 二重) structure of Zonkaku’s analysis of Amida Buddha and the kami, see Fugen 1978:40. 43  Ōsumi 1977:182. 44  Ōsumi 1977:190–91.

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Zonkaku’s analysis centers on the former holy deities of provisional shrines. At the beginning of the Shojin hongaishū he declares: Now, the buddhas are the original ground of the kami, and the kami are the trace manifestations of the buddhas. If it were not for the ground, it would be impossible to manifest the traces, and if it were not for the traces, it would be impossible to reveal the source. The kami and buddhas in turn become the front and the reverse, and together grant benefits (to sentient beings). The original ground and trace manifestations become in turn the provisional and the true, and together save (all beings).45 Here Zonkaku presents an analysis of the relationship between the kami and the buddhas using fully developed honji-suijaku rhetoric. In his view, the provisional kami and their honji buddhas and bodhisattvas are two sides of the same coin, working together to effect the salvation of sentient beings. The bulk of Zonkaku’s discussion of the provisional kami is taken up with detailed explanations concerning which figure in the Buddhist pantheon is the original ground of the major kami of Japan. A brief list of the major kami and their Buddhist counterparts found in the Shojin hongaishū is as follows. 1. Kashima daimyōjin 2. Amaterasu Ōmikami 3. Susanoo no mikoto 4. Mishima daimyōjin 5. Gion Shrine 6. Inari 7. Hakusan 8. Atsuta Shine

Eleven-faced Avalokiteśvara Avalokiteśvara Mahāsthāmaprāpta (Seishi) Bhaiṣajyarāja Bhaiṣajyarāja Cintā-maṇi-cakra Avalokiteśvara (Nyoirin Kannon) Eleven-faced Avalokiteśvara Acalanātha (Fudō myōō)

Furthermore, Zonkaku explains that the kami of the three shrines of Kumano correspond to Amida, Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara and Bhaiṣajyarāja; the kami of the three shrines at Hakone are manifestations of Manjuśrī, Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara; the three kami which constitute Hachiman correspond to Amida, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta; and the kami of the seven shrines of Hie are manifestations of Śākyamuni, Bhaiṣajyarāja, Amida,

45  Ōsumi 1977:182.

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Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara, Eleven-faced Avalokiteśvara, Kṣitigarbha (Jizō) and Samantabhadra (Fugen).46 However, it is not Zonkaku’s intention to use the honji-suijaku theory to plead for equal worship of the kami and the buddhas. His point, rather, is that because the kami are merely manifestations of the buddhas one should revere the buddhas and not the kami. Zonkaku writes: However, those who deeply venerate the original ground necessarily take refuge in the trace manifestations. This is because the traces are manifested from the origin. One who solely venerates the trace manifestations cannot be said to have taken refuge in the original ground. This is because the origin is not made manifest from the traces. Therefore if one wishes to take refuge in the trace manifestation kami, one should only take refuge in the buddhas who are their original grounds.47 Here, Zonkaku argues that when one worships a kami, this does not mean that one simultaneously worships the buddha who is its original ground. On the other hand, when one worships a buddha, this necessarily includes worship of the kami who are its trace manifestations. Thus, concludes Zonkaku, it is more advantageous to worship the original ground buddha since it includes the worship of its trace manifestation kami also. Zonkaku’s argument here—that since the kami are manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas, one should worship the latter instead of the former— represents the first level of the dual structure of his analysis of the relationship between the kami, buddhas and Amida. Next, turning to the second level of his analysis, Zonkaku continues that Amida Buddha is the fundamental buddha, and the original mission of all buddhas (and their kami manifestations) is to preach birth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land. In the first place, when we inquire into the original ground of the deities of our nation, we find that many of them are Śākyamuni, Amida, Bhaiṣajyarāja, Maitreya, Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta, Saman­ tabhadra, Manjuśrī, Kṣitigarbha, Nāgārjuna, etc. These buddhas and bodhisattvas teach us to reflect on Amida and urge us to intently seek birth in the Western Direction (Amida’s Pure Land). Because the original 46  This list is based on Fugen 1978:43–44. A complete chart of the Shojin hongaishū’s kami and their corresponding buddhas is found in Hisano 1988:117. For the discussion of this topic in the Shojin hongaishū itself, see Ōsumi 1977:185–89. 47  Ōsumi 1977:182.

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intentions of the trace manifestations are identical (to those of their original ground buddhas), which spiritual being would defy it (i.e., the buddhas’ wish to preach birth in the Pure Land)?48 In this way, Zonkaku claims that all buddhas preach faith in Amida Buddha and birth in his Pure Land. But that is not all. He further continues that Amida Buddha is the source and original ground of all other buddhas and bodhisattvas. For this reason, Zonkaku argues that if one takes refuge in Amida, this is identical to taking refuge in all buddhas and bodhisattvas and, by extension, their kami manifestations. Moreover, the Pratyutpanna-samādhi Sūtra preaches, “The buddhas of the three periods of time (past, present and future) all attain enlightenment through the samādhi of meditating on Amida Buddha.” Thus it appears that Amida is the original master of the buddhas. If we reflect upon their original master, we can conform to the wishes of the buddhas. Further, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra states: “The buddhas and bodhisattvas of the lands of the ten directions have all appeared from the Realm of Utmost Bliss of the Buddha of Eternal Life (Amida Buddha).” This may be understood to mean that the buddhas are all discrete manifestations ( funshin 分身) of Amida. If this is so, the principle that people who take refuge in Amida, the original buddha, also take refuge in the discrete manifestation buddhas is clear and needs no explanation. Therefore, if one wants to conform to the wishes of the trace manifestations, one should arouse faith in the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the original ground. If one wants to conform to the wishes of the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the original ground, one should take refuge in Amida, the original buddha. If one takes refuge in Amida, the buddhas of the three periods of time will rejoice and protect him; the bodhisattvas of the ten directions will smile and constantly stand by her. If one is guarded by the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the original ground, then one will be looked after by the trace manifestation kami.49 Therefore, the deities of various places, etc., will protect nembutsu practitioners, and there are many instances of their seeking the merits of the nembutsu.50 48  Ōsumi 1977:199. 49  The text here reads “buddhas” instead of “kami.” However, this appears clearly to be a mistake, and I have followed the emendation suggested by the late Muromachi period manuscript of the Shojin hongaishū kept at the Ryūkoku University library. On this emendation, see Ōsumi 1977:202, headnote on “shobutsu 諸仏.” 50  Ōsumi 1977:201–202.

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Citing the Pratyutpanna-samādhi Sūtra and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra as his authorities, Zonkaku claims that Amida Buddha is the original source of all buddhas and bodhisattvas. Therefore he argues that once one takes refuge in Amida, there is no need to worship other buddhas or kami. Amida Buddha contains them all; if one takes refuge in Amida, one automatically takes refuge in all buddhas, bodhisattvas and kami. He states: Although their (the kami’s) original grounds are various, there is none which cannot be contained within the wisdom of the one buddha, Amida. Therefore, if one takes refuge in Amida, it follows that one takes refuge in the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Since it is thus, it accords with reason to say that, even though one does not specifically attend on the kami who are their trace manifestations, one naturally takes refuge in them (too, once one takes refuge in Amida Buddha).51 The reason why many people worship the kami is that they wish to partake of the material benefits these kami are thought to bestow. But, according to Zonkaku, the kami’s desire to bestow such blessings on the worshippers is just their preliminary goal. The ultimate goal is to lead all beings to the Pure Land and make them escape from the cycle of birth-and-death.52 This, in fact, was the original reason for the appearance of the kami in Japan. As Zonkaku emphatically states: “Therefore, when we reflect over and over again on the original intention of the deities, (we see that it was to) make karmic connections with sentient beings, gradually make them take refuge in the Buddha Dharma, and finally deliver them to the Pure Land in the western direction.”53 Thus the kami rejoice in seeing the worshippers recite the nembutsu and look after the welfare of nembutsu practitioners. The closing sentence of the Shojin hongaishū summarizes Zonkaku’s views concerning the kami most succinctly: Those who wish to gain the protection of the buddhas and conform to the wishes of the kami should respectfully seek birth (in the Pure Land) and bodhi, and exclusively recite Amida’s Name.54 In conclusion, Zonkaku presents a two-tiered honji-suijaku spiritual cosmology in order to argue that all buddhas, bodhisattvas and kami of provisional 51  Ōsumi 1977:190. 52  Ōsumi 1977:192–93. 53  Ōsumi 1977:205. 54  Ōsumi 1977:206–207.

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shrines derive from Amida Buddha. The point of his argument is that, since the kami are all manifestations of Amida Buddha, it is Amida Buddha, and not the kami themselves, who is the proper object of veneration. Indeed, he claims that the original wish of all the kami is to awaken beings to the Pure Land teachings. In this way Zonkaku attempts to reconcile the Shin Buddhist position with the worship of the kami by arguing that the ultimate source of the kami, and hence the sole true object of faith, is Amida Buddha. Zonkaku’s scheme succeeded in giving a place to the kami within the Shin Buddhist spiritual universe while simultaneously repudiating them as proper objects of veneration. Zonkaku’s conciliatory attitude towards the kami is closely related to his belief that Japan is a divine nation. The idea that Japan is a divine land can be found in some of the oldest documents this country possesses.55 It was current in Shinran’s day, too, as the Tendai memorial of 1224 seeking the suppression of the exclusive nembutsu movement reveals. However, it became especially strong with the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281.56 With the defeat of these invasions, the notion that Japan was a land ruled by the kami became widespread. Zonkaku was born just eight years after the second Mongol invasion, and the Shojin hongaishū was written in 1324. Thus, Zonkaku lived during an age when the Japanese perception of their land as being under divine suzerainty became widely accepted. In the Shojin hongaishū, he states: Above all, this great Japanese nation is originally a divine land and it is replete with spiritual powers. The honorable progeny of the Sun Goddess were gracious enough to become lords of this land, and the descendants of Amatsukoyane-no-mikoto (the Fujiwara clan) long helped with government at court. From the reign of Emperor Suinin (when Ise Shrine was established), the deities were especially revered, and during the time of Emperor Kimmei, Buddhism was propagated for the first time. From that time on, the affairs of state were conducted by venerating the kami, and worldly activities were conducted by taking refuge in the buddha. For these reasons, the (nation’s ability to) interact (with the divinity) excelled that of other countries, and the dignity of the court surpassed that of foreign courts. However, (this is the result of) the buddhas’ protection and the deities’ virtuous powers. Therefore there are 13,700-odd shrines

55  Tamura 1959:309–37. 56  On the impact of the Mongol invasions on the idea of Japan’s divinity, see Kuroda 1975:270–75.

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where the spiritual beings are venerated within the sixty-six provinces of Japan. There are 3,132 shrines listed in the Engi registry of deities.57 As these words reveal, Zonkaku stresses that Japan is a divine land. In making this claim, he was following the popular opinion of his day. But this belief contributed greatly to his attempt to reconcile Shin Buddhism with the Japanese kami. 6

Rennyo’s View of the Kami

The influence of the Shojin hongaishū on the subsequent development of the Shin Buddhist interpretation of the kami was enormous. The analysis of the kami found in this work was adopted by Rennyo (1415–1499) and, as presented in his collection of pastoral letters, the Ofumi 御文 (Letters), has continued to dominate Shin Buddhist thinking concerning the kami until recent times. In their excellent study, Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism (1991), Minor L. Rogers and Ann T. Rogers have shown how Rennyo’s understanding of the kami was developed within the context of the serious political and social turmoil in the Hokuriku district where he resided from 1471 to 1475.58 Rennyo’s letters from this period reveal that he adopted the major points which Zonkaku makes concerning the kami in the Shojin hongaishū. Like Zonkaku (and Shinran before him), Rennyo admonishes nembutsu practitioners to “entrust yourselves single-heartedly and steadfastly to Amida, and, without concerning yourself with other buddhas, bodhisattvas, and the various kami, take refuge exclusively in Amida….”59 In this way, Rennyo follows the traditional Shin Buddhist position in rejecting the worship of the kami. At the same time, however, he cautions, “outwardly take the laws of the state as fundamental and do not hold any of the kami, buddhas, or bodhisattvas in contempt….”60 Rennyo’s emphasis here on outward conformity to the political order and the deities of the established religious institutions derives from the precarious position of the Hokuriku Shin Buddhist community. During this time, Shin Buddhists were being increasingly drawn into the warfare between 57  Ōsumi 1977:183–84. 58  Rogers and Rogers 1991:88–91. My short synopsis of Rennyo’s attitude towards the kami is based primarily on this book; readers who wish a fuller treatment of Rennyo’s views are referred to this volume. 59  Rogers and Rogers 1991:161. 60  Rogers and Rogers 1991:215.

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rival warrior groups there.61 Rennyo’s injunction was aimed at preserving the neutrality of the Shin Buddhist organization by ensuring that Shin followers would not provoke powerful local religious bodies and political leaders. Also like Zonkaku, Rennyo employs the honji-suijaku theory to argue that the kami are manifestations of the buddhas and bodhisattvas. These kami, he continues, protect and look after nembutsu practitioners. Therefore, sentient beings of the present time (should realize that) if they rely on Amida and, undergoing a decisive settling of faith, repeat the nembutsu and are born in the Land of Utmost Bliss, kami (in their various) manifestations, recognizing this as (the fulfilment of) their own fundamental purpose, will rejoice and protect nembutsu practicers.62 Moreover Rennyo continues that “buddhas and bodhisattvas are discrete manifestations of Amida” and moreover that Amida is their “original teacher and original Buddha.”63 Thus, like Zonkaku, Rennyo concludes that Amida Buddha is ultimately the source of the kami and explains that the kami are all encompassed in Amida Buddha’s six character Name: Namu Amida Butsu.64 As these examples show, Rennyo relied heavily on Zonkaku in formulating his theory of the kami. 7 Conclusion In the pages above we have outlined how Shin Buddhism, which began by rejecting the worship of the kami, was gradually forced to seek accommodation with them. Shinran’s position forbidding the worship of the kami was a natural outgrowth of his emphasis on exclusive reliance on Amida Buddha’s Original Vow. However, such a radical and uncompromising position could not be sustained over time, and Shinran’s descendants had to find a way of making peace with the kami—without, however, surrendering their fundamental religious standpoint. The attempts by Kakunyo, Zonkaku and Rennyo to find a place for the Japanese kami within Shin Buddhism was an indispensable part of their struggle to institutionalize the Shin faith.

61  For details, see Rogers and Rogers 1991:72–77. 62  Rogers and Rogers 1991:176. 63  Rogers and Rogers 1991:177. 64  Rogers and Rogers 1991:180.

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References Akamatsu Toshihide 赤松俊秀 1961. Shinran 親鸞. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Andrews, Allan A. 1987. “The Senchakushū in Japanese Religious History: The Founding of a Pure Land School.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55–3:473–99. Asai Jōkai 浅井成海 1980. “Hōnen ni okeru jingi no mondai 法然における神祇の問題 (The problem of divinities in Hōnen).” Shinshūgaku 真宗学 62:30–60. Dobbins, James C. 1989. Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fugen Kōju 普賢晃寿 1978. “Chūsei Shinshū no jingi shisō: Shojin hongaishū o chūshin to shite 中世真宗の神祇思想―「諸神本懐集」を中心として (The philosophy of divinities in medieval Shinshū: centered on the Shojin hongaishū).” Ryūkoku daigaku Bukkyō bunka kenkyūsho kiyō 龍谷大学仏教文化研究所紀要 17:31–52. Fujimoto Ryukyo, Inagaki Hisao and Leslie S. Kawamura, trs. 1965. The Jodo wasan: Hymns on the Pure Land. Kyoto: Ryukoku Translation Center, Ryukoku University. Hayashi Tomoyasu 林智康 1986. “Shinran no jingikan 親鸞の神祇観 (Shinran’s view of divinities).” Kyushu Ryūkoku tanki daigaku kiyō 九州龍谷短期大学紀要 32:11–26. Hayashi Tomoyasu 林智康 1988. “Shinshū ni okeru jingikan 真宗における神祇観 (The view of divinities in Shinshū).” Shinshūgaku 78:30–50. Hisano Yoshiko 久野芳子 1988. “Jōdo Shinshū ni okeru jingikan no hatten: Shinshū wa jingi sūhai ni ikani taisho shita ka 浄土真宗における神祇観の発展―真宗は神祇 崇拝にいかに対処したか (Development of the view of divinities in Jōdo Shinshū: How Shinshū dealt with the divinities).” In Ishida Ichirō 石田一郎, ed., Nihon seishinshi 日本精神史 (A spiritual history of Japan). Tokyo: Perikansha: 105–125. Hosokawa Gyōshin 細川行信 1987. “Shinran no jingikan 親鸞の神祇観 (Shinran’s view of divinities).” Nihon Bukkyō gakkai nenpō 日本仏教学会年俸 52:231–47. Imahori Taitsu 今堀太逸 1978. “Chūsei jingi shisō to senju nembutsu: Kami no honji no koto, Shojin hongaushū no seiritsu o chūshin ni shite 中世神祇思想と専修念仏― 「神本地之事」「諸神本懐集」の成立を中心にして (Medieval philosophy of divinities and exclusive nembutsu: centered on the compilation of Kami no honji no koto and Shojin hongaishū).” Bukkyō shigaku kenkyū 仏教史学研究 21–2:1–36. Imahori Taitsu 今堀太逸 1990. Jingi shinkō no tenkai to Bukkyō 神祇信仰の展開と仏 教 (Buddhism and the development of the worship of divinities). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Ishii Kyōdō 石井教導, ed. 1955. Shōwa shinshū Hōnen shōnin zenshū 昭和新修法然 上人全集 (Complete works of Hōnen newly compiled in the Showa era). Kyoto: Heirakuji. Kakehashi Jitsuen 梯実円 1986. Hōnen kyōgaku no kenkyū 法然教学の研究 (Study of Hōnen’s philosophy). Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō.

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Kashiwahara Yūsen 柏原祐泉 1961. Shinran ni okeru jingikan no kōzō 親鸞における神 祇観の構造 (The structure of Shinran’s view of divinities). In Ōtani Daigaku 大谷大 学, ed., Shinran shōnin 親鸞聖人 (Saint Shinran). Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Kashiwahara Yūsen 柏原祐泉 1976. “Shinshū ni okeru jingikan no hensen 真宗におけ る神祇観の変遷 (Changes in the Shinshū view of divinities).” Ōtani gakuhō 大谷学 法 56–1:1–14. Kiriyama Mutsuji 桐山六字 1971. “Shoki Honganji kyōdan ni okeru jingikan 初期本願 寺教団における神祇観 (The view of divinities in early Honganji).” Dendōin kiyō 伝道院紀要 30:21–38. Kitanishi Hiromu 北西弘 1966. “Shojin hongaishū no seiritsu 諸神本懐集の成立 (The formation of the Shojin hongaishū).” In Miyazaki Enjun hakushi kanreki kinenkai 宮崎円遵博士還暦記念会, ed., Shinshūshi no kenkyū 真宗史の研究 (Studies in Shinshū history). Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō. Kondo Tessho and Morris J. Augustine, trs. 1987. “Senchaku Hongan Nembutsushu (6).” The Pure Land NS 4:107–125. Kuroda Toshio 黒田俊雄 1975. Nihon chūsei no kokka to shūkyō 日本中世の国家と宗教 (State and religion in medieval Japan). Tokyo: Iwanami. Kuroda Toshio 黒田俊雄 1981. “Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion,” tr. James C. Dobbins and Suzanne Gay, Journal of Japanese Studies 7–1:1–21. Matsunaga, Alicia 1969. The Buddhist Philosophy of Assimilation: The Historical Development of the Honji-Suijaku Theory. Tokyo: Sophia University. Miyazaki Enjun 宮崎円遵 1971. Shoki Shinshū no kenkyū 初期真宗の研究 (Study of early Shinshū). Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō. Miyazaki Enjun 宮崎円遵 1988 Shinshū shoshigaku no kenkyū 真宗書誌学の研究 (Study of Shinshū bibliography). Reprint. Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō. Morrell, Robert E. 1983. “Hossō’s Jōkei and the Kōfukuji Petition,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 10–1:1–38. Morrell, Robert E. 1985. Sand and Pebbles (Shasekishū): The Tales of Mujū Ichien, A Voice for Pluralism in Kamakura Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Murayama Shūichi 村山修一 1957. Shinbutsu shūgō shichō 神仏習合思潮 (Currents in the unification of Shintō and Buddhism). Kyoto: Heirakuji. Murayama Shūichi 村山修一 1974. Honji suijaku 本地垂迹 (Honji suijaku). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Nabata Ōjun, Taya Raishun, Kabutogi Shōkō and Shinma Shinichi, eds. 1964. Shinranshū Nichirenshū (Works by Shinran and Nichiren). Tokyo: Iwanami. Ōsumi Kazuo 大隅和雄, ed. 1977. Chūsei Shintō ron 中世神道論 (Works of medieval Shintō). Tokyo: Iwanami. Rogers, Minor L. and Ann T. Rogers 1991. Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press.

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Ryukoku University Translation Center, tr. 1980. Shōzōmatsu wasan: Shinran’s Hymns on the Last Age. Kyoto: Ryukoku University Press. Shinran shōnin zenshū kankōkai 親鸞聖人全集刊行会, ed. 1969. Teihon Shinran shōnin zenshū 定本親鸞聖人全集 (Authentic collection of Shinran’s works). 9 vols. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro 鈴木大拙 1973. Collected Writings on Shin Buddhism, ed. The Eastern Buddhist Society. Kyoto: Shinshū Ōtaniha. Takeuchi Rizō 竹内理三, ed. 1973. Kamakura ibun komonjohen 鎌倉遺文古文書編 (Works of the Kamakura period: Documents), 41 vols. Tokyo: Tokyodō shuppan. Tamura Enchō 田村円澄 1959. Nihon Bukkyō shisōshi kenkyū: Jōdohen 日本仏教思想 史研究 浄土編 (Studies in the history of Japanese thought: Pure Land Buddhism). Kyoto: Heirakuji. Tashiro Shunkō 田代俊孝 1987. “Shinran no jingikan: kugatsu futsuka ‘Nembutsu no hitobito no onchū e’ no shōsoku o tegakari to shite 親鸞の神祇観―九月二日「念 佛の人々の御中へ」の消息を手がかりとして (Shinran’s view of divinities: With special reference to the letter addressed to the people of the nembutsu dated second day, ninth month),” Nihon Bukkyō gakkai nenpō 52:249–262. Ueda Yoshifumi, ed. 1985. The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way: A Translation of Shinran’s Kyōgyōshinshō. 4 vols. Kyoto: Hongwanji International Center, 1985. Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎, tr. 1978. Rongo 論語 (Analects). 3 vols. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha.

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Popular Pure Land Teachings of the Zenkōji Nyorai and Shinran Eisho Nasu Introduction* During the Kamakura period (1186–1336), Zenkōji,1 a temple in Shinano province (present Nagano prefecture), became an important religious center for the wandering Buddhist practitioners called hijiri. Zenkōji hijiri traveled across the country to propagate the virtues of the Zenkōji Amida Nyorai, the main object of worship at Zenkōji, and to promote pilgrimage to Zenkōji.2 The S ource: Nasu, Eisho, “Popular Pure Land Teachings of the Zenkōji Nyorai and Shinran,” The Pure Land 12 (1995): 75–87. *  Portions of this paper are based on presentations which I made at the regional meetings of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region, in 1993 and 1994. The preparation of this paper could not have been completed without the help of Lisa Grumbach. I would like to thank her for her meticulous editing and many helpful comments. 1  Zenkōji, located in the relatively remote area of central Japan, was probably founded during the early Nara period (710–793) and became a famous site for pilgrimage during the midHeian period (794–1186). The temple maintains its popularity in Japan even today. Zenkōji is a non-sectarian Buddhist sanctuary which was opened to the general public during the medieval period. Zenkōji is currently managed by two denominations, the Tendai-shū and Jōdo-shū. This double-denominational structure was established during the Edo period (1603–1867).    Modern historical studies on Zenkōji were almost single-handedly accomplished by Sakai Kōhei’s magnum opus, Zenkōji shi (A History of Zenkōji). He began his research in 1924 and completed a final draft in 1938. His work, however, was not published and its existence was only known among a small number of scholars. This long neglected work was discovered and introduced by Kanai Kiyomitsu in 1966 (Kanai Kiyomitsu, “Sakai Kōhei shi Zenkōji shi ni tsuite,” Jishū bungei kenkyū 21 [1966]), and Sakai’s work was finally published in 1969. For the background episodes of the publication of Zenkōji shi and Sakai’s works, see Kanai’s “Postscript,” in Zenkōji shi, 1139–1144 (see also Kanai Kiyomitsu, Ippen to Jishū kyōdan [Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1974]). Donald McCallum’s recent publication, Zenkōji and Its Icon, incorporated many updated historical and ethnographical studies developed by Japanese scholars since Sakai’s time, such as those by Gorai Shigeru and Kobayashi Keiichirō, and is a significant contribution to the relatively neglected area of the study of popular Buddhist practices in medieval Japan (Donald McCallum, Zenkōji and Its Icon: A Study in Medieval Japanese Religious Art [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994]). 2  This pattern of institutional development of Buddhist sanctuaries by wandering practitioners was a common phenomenon in medieval Japanese society. Temples which were associated

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wandering practitioners’ association with Zenkōji during the Kamakura period transformed the temple into a nationally popular sanctuary with a network of approximately one hundred and fifty branch temples.3 The Pure Land teachings of the Zenkōji hijiri were based on the belief that the Zenkōji Nyorai is a living manifestation of Amida which has unlimited salvific power. Zenkōji hijiri promoted the belief that the Zenkōji Nyorai and its replicated figures would save all faithful people regardless of their past evil karma or social class, promising not only rebirth in a good realm after death, but happiness in this life as well. During the Kamakura period, this egalitarian teaching and its twofold benefits had great appeal among people in all strata of Japanese society. Zenkōji hijiri were particularly active in the Kantō region and in Echigo province (present Niigata prefecture)—both of these areas where Shinran lived after he was exiled from Kyoto in 1207.4 Although Shinran’s activities in these areas during the early twelfth century is historically not clear, modern scholars, such as Gorai Shigeru, believe that Shinran had close associations with the wandering practitioners of Zenkōji.5 This paper seeks to understand the social and cultural context in which Shinran developed his Pure Land teaching by examining the development of the popular Pure Land teaching of faith in the Zenkōji Nyorai during the Kamakura period. I will first briefly study the origin of the belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai, then discuss the institutional development of Zenkōji and the activities of the Zenkōji hijiri during the Kamakura period. I will finally discuss Shinran’s association with Zenkōji hijiri in the context of the development of early Jōdo Shinshū communities in the Kantō region. 1

Formation of Popular Belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai

The religious foundation of Zenkōji lies in the popular belief that the main figure of worship is not merely a statue but a living Buddha from India. According

with wandering practitioners, such as Kōyasan, Kumano, Shoshazan, etc., became popular during the same period. See, Shinno Toshikazu, Nihon yugyō shūkyō ron (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1991), 1–20. 3  Sakai, 1049–1054. Sakai Kōhei also located 443 branch temples established by the early 20th century. 4  Hiramatsu Reizō, “Shinran no sanbukyō dokuju to Senjūji no senbue,” in Hiramatsu Reizō, Shinshū shi ronkō (Kyoto: Dōbōsha shuppan, 1988), 47–48. 5  See Gorai Shigeru, Zenkōji mairi (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1988), 186–232.

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to the Zenkōji engi (the legendary tales of the founding of Zenkōji),6 the holy image of the Zenkōji Nyorai was miraculously received by a rich merchant in India named Gakkai. Gakkai, who was a non-believer, converted to become a Buddhist when his country was struck by an epidemic and his daughter Nyoze became sick. Gakkai, according to Śākyamuni Buddha’s guidance, prayed to Amida in the western Pure Land to cure his daughter. Gakkai’s prayer was heard and all the evil spirits causing the epidemic were dispelled by the power of Amida and his two attendants, the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi. Gakkai’s daughter and all the other sick people in the country were restored to good health. In gratitude, Gakkai made a vow to Śākyamuni to produce images of Amida and the two bodhisattvas. By Śākyamuni’s order, purple-gold was brought from the palace of the Dragon King and Śākyamuni and Amida together transformed the gold into those three figures. Gakkai built a temple for them and served them for the rest of his life.7 After Gakkai passed away, the engi continues, the statue flew to Kudara (Paekche) in Korea. The Nyorai stayed in Kudara for one thousand years. Then it decided to come to Japan and landed at the Naniwa bay of Settsu (present Osaka prefecture) in the thirteenth year during the reign of Emperor Kinmei (552). During the reign of Empress Suiko (554–628), the statue was moved to Zenkōji in Minochi county of Shinano province with the help of Honda Zenkō (Yoshimitsu) who laid the foundation of Zenkōji. During the Kamakura period, the monk Shōen touched the back of the statue and said “it had the warmth of human skin.”8 The belief that this Amida statue is a living Buddha is essential to the devotional practice of pilgrimage to Zenkōji. There were two patterns of worship of the Zenkōji Nyorai during the Medieval period. First was the worship of the Zenkōji Nyorai for the sake of deceased parents or children. Pilgrims to Zenkōji 6  The origin stories of Zenkōji appear in various texts of the late Heian period. The earliest version of the Zenkōji engi was probably compiled sometime during this same period, but has not been preserved in complete form. It is only known through short quotations in three texts compiled during the Heian period. They are 1. Fusō ryakki (Ajari Kōen ed. 1100?), 2. Iroha jiruishō (Tachibana no Tadakane ed. 1181?), 3. Kakuzenshō (Kakuzen, 1184?). See Sakai, 18–42, McCallum, 38–54. 7  The story of Gakkai is taken from a section in the Shō kannon kyō. In the sutra, however, there is no mention of Nyoze. The complete title is Shō kanzeon bosatsu shōfuku dokugai daraniju kyō, Taisho 20. 34, No. 1043. See, Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, Genroku gonen ban (Nagano: Ginga shobō, 1985), 16–18, Gorai Shigeru, Zenkōji mairi, 68–71, McCallum, 42 and 50. For the outline of the engi stories, see McCallum, 45–54. In this paper I will use Kobayashi’s edition for citations of the Zenkōji engi. The text of the Zenkōji engi is also available in Shoku gunsho ruijū, volume 28, (Tokyo: Keizai zasshisha, 1926). 8  Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 241.

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brought the bones of their parents and children to be buried near the holy statue of Amida.9 By performing this ritual, it was said that the dead parents or children could then enter the Pure Land of Amida. Pilgrims also believed that they might even see their ancestors or children at Zenkōji, since it was believed that Zenkōji was the place all dead spirits would visit.10 The second pattern of worship during this period was directed towards the personal salvation of each pilgrim. Zenkōji’s main hall has been open to virtually everyone—emperors, monks, soldiers, men, women, the young, the old, etc.11 Pilgrims were allowed to keep vigil overnight in the main hall of Zenkōji. Some chanted nembutsu or performed other devotional practices for expiation of their bad karma.12 People believed that the Zenkōji Nyorai offered salvation to all regardless of their evil karma or social class. By making a pilgrimage to Zenkōji, people believed that they were sure to attain birth in the Pure Land.13 This type of pilgrimage to Zenkōji probably began during the late Heian period. 2

Institutional Development of Zenkōji and Multiplication of the Zenkōji Nyorai

The institutional origins of Zenkōji are not well known because of the lack of historical records. Zenkōji has been destroyed by fire several times. Almost all the original temple records before the Edo period (1603–1868) have been lost.14 The name of Zenkōji, however, seems to have been well known during the late Heian period.15 Pilgrimage to Zenkōji also became popular during this period. When Zenkōji was completely burned to ashes by a fire in 1179,16 its popularity rose dramatically after the reconstruction of the temple, which was accomplished with the help of Zenkōji hijiri. In 1187, Minamoto no Yoritomo 9  S hasekishū, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 85, (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1966), 296, and Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 224. 10  Miyashima Junko, Shinano no hijiri to mokujiki gyōja, 98–102, Gorai Shigeru, Kōya hijiri, zōho ban (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1975), 65, and Zenkōji mairi, 49, and Kimura Hiroshi, “Shisha no Zenkōji mairi,” Rekishi techō 19–1 (1991): 4–7. 11  Restrictions placed on female pilgrims inside of the main hall were lifted during the late Kamakura period. See Sakai, 800–808. 12  According to medieval records, they circumambulated the altar while chanting nembutsu for expiation of their bad karma (Miyashima, 98–102). 13  Miyashima, 102. 14  Sakai, 9 and 15. 15  For the early records mentioning Zenkōji, see McCallum, 34–37. 16  According to the Zenkōji engi, the Zenkōji Nyorai, however, miraculously escaped the fire. Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 246–248. See also Sakai, 691–702.

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(1147–1199), then the governor of Shinano province, ordered local lords of the province to restore the temple, and authorized and supported the practices of the Zenkōji hijiri as a way to raise funds. The restoration project was completed in 1191, a year before Yoritomo was installed as Shogun.17 The reconstruction project gave the Zenkōji hijiri a great opportunity to put their faith into practice and greatly increase their activities. They spread the name of Zenkōji throughout Japan as they sought funds for the reconstruction. Even after the reconstruction of the temple was completed, they continued to travel about the country to propagate the virtues of the Zenkōji Nyorai and encourage pilgrimage to Zenkōji. Moreover, in order to provide services for people who could not come to Zenkōji, each hijiri carried a replica of the Zenkōji Nyorai in a portable altar.18 Through this kind of activity, Zenkōji hijiri also established branch temples (Shin Zenkōji) by enshrining the replicated images of the Zenkōji Nyorai in local temples throughout the country.19 Like the original image, the replicated statues were also believed to have miraculous powers. The Zenkōji engi cites various miraculous stories, such as curing diseases, restoring sight to the blind, and even predicting natural disasters.20 Currently over two hundred Zenkōji Nyorai are enshrined in these branch temples, called Shin Zenkōji. Another one hundred fifty are enshrined as “guest Buddhas” in other temples, or are privately owned or exhibited in museums as works of art.21 The institutional expansion of Zenkōji was certainly due largely to the hijiri’s systematic replication of the Zenkōji Nyorai.22 The history behind this replication is noteworthy here. According to the engi, the original statue has been hidden from sight since 654 at the request of the Nyorai in order to prevent worshippers from creating bad karma by accidentally defiling the sacred image.23 No one is allowed to open the door of the oizushi, the portable

17  Sakai, 715–725, and 1153, McCallum, 63–67. 18  The statue was approximately 1.5 feet tall. See Miyashima, 35–37. 19  Zenkōji had established branch temples before the Kamakura period. According to Sakai’s research, 31 branches were built during the Heian period. The number of the branch temples, however, increased greatly during the Kamakura period by approximately fivefold due to the activity of Zenkōji hijiri (Sakai, 1049–1054, Miyashima, 37, and McCallum, 86–99). 20  Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 236–237, and 242–245. 21  Gorai, Zenkōji mairi, 278–9, Kobayashi Keiichirō, “Shin Zenkōji/Zenkōji shiki sanzonzō ichiran,” Nagano 108 (1983): 11–57, and Shinshū Zenkōji jimukyoku, ed., Zenkoku Zenkōji daiichiji chōsa hōkokusho (Nagano: Shinshū Zenkōji jimukyoku, 1993). 22  Hiramatsu Reizō, “Takada Senjūji no sōsō to nembutsu hijiri,” 100–103. 23  Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 217. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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miniature altar in which the Nyorai is enshrined.24 Despite this situation, the Zenkōji Amida Nyorai is also famed for its compassion toward ordinary people. Undoubtedly the wandering practitioners who gathered at Zenkōji utilized this ambivalent characteristic to justify their making replicas of the hidden Buddha.25 The Zenkōji engi records two cases of replicating the statue during the Kamakura period. One is the story of the reproduction of forty-eight replicas of the Zenkōji Nyorai by the monk Jōson of Atsuta in 1195.26 The other is the story of the monk Jōren of Izusan in 1221.27 While each kept vigil in the main hall of Zenkōji, the Zenkōji Nyorai gave them oracles telling each of them to make replicated statues for the sake of people in remote areas who were not able to visit Zenkōji.28 These two wandering practitioners maintained that they came to Zenkōji to ensure their birth in Amida’s Pure Land.29 As a result of their devotional practices, the hidden Buddha miraculously granted them permission to see its true image. Those wandering monks claimed that they were assigned by Amida to fulfill the Zenkōji Nyorai’s own will of multiplication, because it was Amida who authorized them to make replicas.30 3

Shinran as a Zenkōji hijiri

During the early Kamakura period, Shinran was in the middle of the rise of this popular Pure Land movement.31 Shinran himself seems to have fit well in 24  Historically it is not clear when and how the statue was hidden from the public. Sakai Kōhei thinks this tradition probably started in the beginning of the Kamakura period. This restriction, however, does not mean that it was totally hidden. According to the historical records, several eminent monks and political figures were allowed to see the Buddha once in 60–70 years since the Yoritomo era. The Kakuzenshō, compiled during late Heian period, records one of the earliest pictures of the Zenkōji Nyorai. The author, however, does not mention this tradition of the hidden statue (Kakuzenshō, 78, and Sakai, 123). 25  Yamanoi Daiji, “Hibutsu kō, Zenkōjibutsu wo megutte,” Taishō daigaku kenkyū kiyō 80 (1995), 120–121. 26  See Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 230–237, and Sakai, 777–782. 27  See Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 237–241, and Sakai, 783–787. 28  Jōson had confined himself in the main hall for three months before he received the oracle from the Zenkōji Nyorai. In the case of Jōren, he had made pilgrimages to Zenkōji a few times a year for twenty-six years before the Zenkōji Nyorai revealed itself to him. These stories tell us that both Jōson and Jōren were wandering hijiri (Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkiji nyorai engi, 233 and 238, and Sakai, 777–787). 29  Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 231–233 and 238. 30  Kobayashi Ichirō, Zenkōji nyorai engi, 233–234 and 238. 31  Hiramatsu Reizō, “Takada Senjūji no sōsō to nembutsu hijiri,” 103. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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the community of Zenkōji hijiri. Shinran’s married status was readily accepted, since having a spouse was a very common custom among the hijiri.32 Shinran’s emphasis on the salvation of ordinary beings through “faith-only” seems to accord with the fundamental ideals of belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai. Likewise, it is not difficult to imagine that many Zenkōji hijiri may have been attracted to the teaching of Shinran, who had sophisticated knowledge of scriptures and practices of Pure Land teachings. For example, Shinran’s emphasis on the salvation of “akunin (evil person)” probably appealed to the hijiri’s own experience of the world. During the Kamakura period, akunin was not merely an abstract concept. The word referred to classes of people such as communities of fishermen, hunters, artisans, merchants, and even wandering practitioners like the Zenkōji hijiri, who did not belong to the established socio-political institutions. The wandering nembutsu practitioners themselves often became the subject of segregation and persecution as “akunin (evil person[s]).”33 One problem that is often cited when discussing Shinran’s connections to Zenkōji is that there is no absolute proof that he ever visited the temple. This is, however, a minor point. Shinran would certainly have met the wandering practitioners during his own travels, and it is a fact that some of his disciples had originally been Zenkōji hijiri. Modern historical studies of early Jōdo Shinshū communities in the Kantō region have revealed connections to the Zenkōji hijiri. For example, Shōshin (1187–1275), one of the earliest followers of Shinran in the Kantō region,34 was the daikanjin (financial officer) of Zenkōji.35 Even today the Senjūji branch of Jōdo Shinshū (Takadaha), led by Shinbutsu (1209–58) and Kenchi (1226–1310), remembers those two founders as Zenkōji hijiri by enshrining a Zenkōji Nyorai at Senjūji in Shimotsuke province (present Tochigi prefecture).36 Ryōgen (1295–1336), a disciple of Shinbutsu, who established the Bukkōji branch, was also at one time a wandering Zenkōji hijiri.37 While staying in the Kantō region, Shinran became familiar with the teachings of the Zenkōji hijiri. We know that Shinran was familiar with the stories of 32  Gorai, Zenkōji mairi, 190. 33  Takeda Kyōson, Shinran, sabetsu kaihō no shisō to sokuseki, [Tokyo: Sanichi shobō, 1992]:15– 39, and “Zenkōji shinkō to Shinran, Chūsei no nembutsu hijiri to akunin,” Nihongaku 10 (1988): 67–76. 34  Shōshin was a leader of the Yokosone monto, one of the major Shinshū groups in the Kantō region. Hiramatsu Reizō, “Kantō Shinshū kyōdan no seiritsu to sonotenkai,” Shinshū shi ronkō, 59–63. 35  Takeda Kyōson, “Zenkōji shinkō to Shinran, Chūsei no nembutsu hijiri to akunin,” 75–76. 36  Hiramatsu Reizō, “Kantō Shinshū kyōdan no seiritsu to sono tenkai,” 64–78. 37  Gorai, Zenkōji mairi, 228–232. For further information on Shinran’s followers in the Kantō region, see also Dobbins, 120–121, Shimaguchi Gishū, “Zenkōji shinkō to Shinshū Takada-ha no kankei,” Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 20–2 [1972]: 156–157, and Hiramatsu Reizō, “Takada Senjūji no sōsō to nembutsu hijiri,” 97–107. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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the Zenkōji engi, since he adapted them into a series of wasan (hymns) which begin “The Tathāgata [Nyorai] of Zenkōji temple, Taking pity on us, Came to Naniwa bay [in the form of statue].”38 Shinran seems to have accepted this egalitarian popular belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai, as long as its emphasis was strictly on “reliance on the Buddha.” Shinran, however, objected to other aspects of the popular belief associated with the Zenkōji Nyorai, such as the idea that the Zenkōji hijiri had special qualifications for spiritual teachers. At Zenkōji, however, the head priest of the temple was believed to be the incarnation of Hongan-no-onbō (Honda Yoshimitsu, the legendary founder of Zenkōji) and was worshiped as a manifestation of the Zenkōji Nyorai.39 Although Shinran strongly rejected “reliance on religious masters (chishiki kimyō),”40 his followers in the Kantō region adopted this belief and worshiped Shinran as an incarnation of Hongan-no-onbō (Honda Yoshimitsu) who was a manifestation of the Zenkōji Nyorai. Kakunyo, the third abbot of Honganji, adamantly denounced the idea of chishiki kimyō in works such as the Gaijyashō.41 He, however, included a story in his Godenshō (The Life of Shinran Shōnin) which shows that Shinran was portrayed as a Zenkōji hijiri in the early Jōdo Shinshū communities. In this story, an artist who had been commissioned to paint Shinran’s portrait has a dream in which Shinran is identified with the founder of Zenkōji. Kakunyo states that this incident demonstrates that Shinran is a manifestation of the Amida Nyorai.42 38  Shōzōmatsu Wasan, 110–114. For an English translation of these verses, see Hymns of the Dharma-Ages, A Translation of Shinran’s Shōzomatsu wasan. Shin Buddhism Translation Series (Kyoto: Hongwanji International Center, 1993): 76–79. 39  Gorai, Zenkōji mairi, 186–189. See also Hiramatsu Reizō, “Takada Senjūji no sōsō to nembutsu hijiri,” in Shinshū shi ronkō, 103–104. 40  Shinran’s struggle with the belief of chishiki kimyō is epitomized by his disownment of his oldest son Zenran, in 1256. Zenran acted as if he were a master of his followers who had the spiritual ability to mediate for Amida. This was also a very common practice among Zenkōji hijiri. Gorai, Zenkōji mairi, 218–225, Dobbins, 40–42, and Akamatsu Toshihide, Shinran (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1961), 281–306, and 307–327. 41  Gaijyashō 18, in Shinshū shōgyō zensho, volume 3, edited by Shinshū shōgyō zensho hensansho (Kyoto: Ōyagi kōbundō, 1941), 84. 42  The complete passage in the Godenshō goes as follows. “Nyūsaibō, one of the disciples of the Shōnin [Shinran], was wishing for some time to have his portrait painted, and the Shōnin, reading his thought, told him to engage the artist, Jōzen Hokkyō, for the purpose, who was living near Shichijō. Feeling grateful for his kind insight, Nyūsaibō sent for the Hokkyō, who immediately responded to the invitation. “As soon as he came to the presence of the Shōnin, he said, ‘Last night I had a wonderful dream and the holy personage who appeared in it had exactly the same features as those of the one whom I now confront.’ Saying this, he was instantly moved with the feelings of deep gratitude and adoration, and related the story of the dream: ‘Two holy-looking monks came in, and one of them requested me to draw a portrait of the spiritual personage here. I asked him who that spiritual personage was, and the reply was: He is the venerable monk who Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Conclusion Zenkōji, during the Kamakura period, developed into an enormous spiritual network based on the egalitarian and this-worldly belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai. This popular Pure Land teaching was in sharp contrast to the aristocratic Buddhist practices of Heian courtiers who built enormous temples for their ancestors or for themselves, and hired great numbers of clergy to perform rituals for the prosperity of their family.43 The Heian Buddhist institutions, however, eventually went bankrupt. During the Kamakura period, even rich aristocrats could not afford to maintain this system any more. Instead, many innovative and entrepreneurial clergy, like the Zenkōji hijiri, created a “guild” of faith, took over the bankrupt institutions of Heian Buddhism, and transformed them into a more affordable and attractive system for the majority of the populace.44 The early Jōdo Shinshū communities in the Kantō region were nurtured in the stronghold of the popular belief in the Zenkōji Nyorai. During his stay is enshrined at the Zenkōji temple as its founder. Though in a dream, I folded my hands together and knelt down most reverently before him. I was awestruck and trembled all over, for I realized that I was facing Amida himself. The monk told me that the portrait might be simply that of his head. After this dialogue I awoke from the dream. On coming here, as I looked up at the venerable features before me, I perceived their perfect identity with the holy monk in my vision.’ Saying this, he was in tears from excess of his grateful feelings.    “Then he painted, according to the miraculous advice given in the vision, the head only of the Shōnin. The vision is said to have taken place on the night on the twentieth day of the ninth month in the third year of Ninji (1242 AD).    “When we weigh the significance of this singular incident, it is evident that the Shōnin was a manifestation of Amida Nyorai. Therefore, his teaching must be regarded as the direct communication of Amida, which is on the one hand to dispel the darkness of this defiled world by means of the pure light of wisdom, and on the other to give the necessary moisture by sending down the spiritual rain of nectar, to us who are ignorant and confused and dying of dryness of heart. So let us adoringly believe this.” (Godenshō 1–8, translation by Daisetz Teitarō Suzuki, The Life of Shinran Shōnin, in Collected Writings on Shin Buddhism [Kyoto: Shinshū Ōtaniha, 19731: 175–176.) 43  Ōsumi Kazuo, “Heian jidai no Bukkyō,” in Heian jidai no shinkō to seikatsu, edited by Yamanaka Hiroshi and Suzuki Kazuo (Tokyo: Shibundō, 1992), 11–34. 44  This institutional decline was often equated with the idea of mappō (degeneration of the Dharma) by the clergy. Major temples needed to rely on the fund raising activities of hijiri to maintain their institutions. For the activities of hijiri during this period, see Gorai Shigeru, Kōya hijiri. Another famous activity of the hijiri during this period was the reconstruction project of Tōdaiji led by Chōgen (1121–1206). For Chōgen’s work and socioeconomical background of Buddhist institutions in medieval Japan, see Janet R. Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).

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in this region, Shinran certainly worked with the Zenkōji hijiri. Doctrinally speaking, the popular Pure Land teachings of the Zenkōji hijiri emphasized this-worldly merits and included many folk beliefs which Shinran rejected. Shinran’s teaching, however, shared the common ideal of egalitarian salvation for ordinary people. Shinran’s Pure Land doctrine was, no doubt, influenced by his critical reflections on his experiences among the Zenkōji hijiri. While Shinran may not have considered himself a Zenkōji hijiri, his position in society allowed for the exchange of ideas. This dialogue acted as the stone to Shinran’s intellectual blade, and was the necessary material against which he honed and refined his own thinking, so that he could finally cut away the stone itself.

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Stand by Your Founder

Honganji’s Struggle with Funeral Orthodoxy Mark L. Blum As scholars in the social sciences and humanities struggle with the means for cross-cultural comparisons in the face of interpretivist assumptions about the uniqueness of events, the study of Buddhism offers a particularly fruitful historical example of unity-cum-diversity in the plethora of orthodoxies and orthopraxies that evolved within each of its cultural spheres. While the Buddhist philosophical imperative has always professed itself to be universal in offering various strategies for liberation based on general principles, this global, often meta-psychological, dimension was in continual negotiation with none other than those who practiced Buddhism within the confines of their particular social contexts. The most salient example of this evolving reformulation of the Buddhist tradition is evident in the accretion of new practices and beliefs only partially related, or at times even wholly unrelated, to those early forms of praxis and doctrine appearing in the Nikāyas and Āgamas. When the tension inherent in the conflict between competing belief systems became too strong, authoritative intellectuals within the clergy attempted to regulate the debate, often handing down rulings on matters of controversy. There are numerous examples of this as recorded in a genre we may call “rulings.” Those works still extant are with us because they were canonized at some point in recognition of the important role they played in redefining or, as is often said in Jōdoshinshū, “reforming” their tradition in response to perceived changes in belief and practice. These texts appear in different literary forms or subgenres but all were intended as public statements about orthodoxy and offer us a snapshot of what Bakhtin called the centripetal (canonizing) and centrifugal (hyperglossic) forces within a culture.1 Examples include scholastic analyses of disparate positions told from a sectarian viewpoint as presented in Abhidharma works like Kathāvatthu, Mahāvibhāṣā, or Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya of Vasubandhu; compendiums of hermeneutic S ource: Blum, Mark L., “Stand by Your Founder: Honganji’s Struggle with Funeral Orthodoxy,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27(3–4) (2000): 179–212. 1  Bakhtin saw a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces in language use as the basic paradigm of human speech. Centripetal forces are those that draw energy toward the normative center, implying homogeneity, unification, and order. Centrifugal forces move away from the center, expressing nonconformity, creativity, diversity, and so forth. See Bakhtin 1981.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_019

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norms like Ta chih tu lun 大智度論 attributed to Nāgārjuna or Tacheng i-chang 大乗義章 by Hui-yüan of the Ching-ying ssu; treatises “settling doubts” like Ching-t’u shih-i-lun 淨士十疑論 attributed to Chih-i or Kettō jujuin gimonjō 決 答授手印疑問鈔 by Ryōchū; sectarian identity statements like Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā, Ch’ing-te chuan-têng-lu 景徳博燈録 by Tao-yan, Fo-tsu t’ung-chi 佛祖統紀 by Chih-p’an, Risshū kōyō 律宗綱要 by Gyōnen, or Gaijashō 改邪鈔 by Kakunyo; and openly polemic works such as Shen-hui’s Pu-t’i-ta-mo nantsung ting shih-fei lun 菩提達摩南宗定是非論, Hossō kenjinshō 法相研神章 by Gomyō, Zaijarin 摧邪輪 by Kōben, or Nichiren’s Risshō ankokuron 立証安國論. All these works operate on a discourse level defined by the community of the sangha. That is, they illustrate hermeneutic debates among intellectuals who shared a culture of values and beliefs defined by common oral and written traditions. But for someone without a specialist’s knowledge of Buddhist vocabulary and its doctrinal systems, these writings are more or less impenetrable. Thus what we call Buddhism inevitably embodies very different functions and meaning structures to people depending on their proximity to this group of literate cognoscenti who alone have been able to not only decode but also interpret this philosophical tradition. This article examines one historical example of the fact that this state of affairs did not preclude participation in the religion by a great many outside this perimeter of specialist knowledge, and it is my hope that it will shed some light on the ways in which “popular” aspirations were accommodated by the Buddhist clergy in one particular historical example. Indeed, it is often far more difficult to gain a clear picture of what Buddhism meant as a civil religion than to reconstruct the philosophical debates that dominate ancient and medieval Buddhist literature. The issue here is the care and ritual treatment of the dead by their families in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Japan. Given the historical differences between Indian Buddhist presumptions about rebirth and native Japanese views of the afterlife, conceptual conflicts regarding the care and treatment of the dead within Japanese Buddhist institutions were bound to arise. The case of the Pure Land Buddhist sects that arose in the Kamakura period is particularly poignant in that these conflicts are often expressed in terms of the very doctrines that gave these organizations their religious identities. I will present a few particularly telling examples of the funerary rituals that had become common in temples of the Honganji branch of the Jōdo Shin sect (Jōdo Shinshū or, simply, Shinshū) from the late medieval and early premodern periods, and the doctrinal quandary they engendered. I will discuss four popular ceremonies, all of which have left an imprint on the religious consciousness in Japan today. The doctrinal implications of these rituals, including such practices as interring the remains of the dead

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in the sacred locale of Shinran’s own grave, inevitably clash with this school’s doctrinal idealism, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the scholars who were responsible for systemizing those doctrines in the middle Tokugawa period. The writings on such problems by two prominent priests, Ekū 慧空 (1644–1722) and Genchi 玄智 (1734–1794), will be considered here. Both men devoted their careers to clarifying and upholding the doctrinal orthodoxy of their sect, and both were extremely influential among sectarian scholars even into the twentieth century. Hence their writings on this subject have come down to us in the form of rulings. But first I will present an overview of religious care for the dead in the formative period of this tradition; specifically, how this subject was dealt with by the founder Shinran and the two most influential church leaders who followed him in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Kakunyo 覺如 (1271–1351) and Zonkaku 存覺 (1290–1373). 1

Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Funerary Ritual

Care for the dead seems to have been implicit in the Buddhist mission from the beginning of its arrival in Japan. Among the earliest records of how Buddhism was practiced in Japan we have the example of Gyōki 行基 (668–749, also Gyōgi),2 a self-ordained monk who is well known for spreading Buddhism among the countryside populace by his itinerant preaching and performance of social work. What is less well known is that social work for Gyōki included taking care of the dead as he found them—often abandoned. Gyōki is seen as the archetype of the itinerant hijiri, usually written 聖 but also found as 仙衆 and 非事吏. Typically these hijiri were eremitic holy men who straddled the line between monk and layman and who became conduits for communication between the populace embedded in the native religious sentiment and the academically trained clergy.3 Hijiri were always close to funerary practices 2  There are many studies on Gyōki, including a dictionary. See, for example, Inoue 1997, Nakai 1991, and Nemoto 1991. 3  The word hijiri long predates the influx of Buddhism and Chinese culture, so the written form 聖 is clearly a translation of the original concept. Scholars have come up with a number of different etymologies, such as “knowledge of the sun” 日知 (i.e., knowing the calendar), “knowledge of spirits” 霊知, “knowing what is not” 非知, and so forth. In ancient and medieval literature it appears in a variety of contexts to describe holy, pious, charismatic, or simply powerful individuals, and is commonly used to express respect or awe for kings and influential monks. The historians’ category called hijiri typified by Gyōki is a subcategory of the broader term, defined by the lack of a fixed abode and by religious activities outside the urban areas (see Gorai 1975). A study has been made on the travelling hijiri who raised money for temple construction in the Kamakura period in Goodwin 1994.

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in one way or another, even if only to lend their sacrality to the removal of pollution from a grave site. Gyōki’s religious message for the masses seems to have been focused on purification rituals associated with the Lotus Sutra and the promise of rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land, and he is often referred to as a nenbutsu hijiri 念佛聖. Gyōki inspired a number of other hijiri,4 and through their efforts Amida’s Pure Land became firmly planted in the Japanese popular imagination. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, the late Heian ōjō-den 往生伝 records present stories of prominent individuals who “attained the Pure Land.”5 Strong religious interest among the ruling classes in Pure Land Buddhism to secure their future rebirths is evident from the tenth century onward under the influence of the Tendai patriarch Ryōgen 良源 (912–985), who died uttering the nenbutsu. In the same year as Ryōgen’s death, two important literary works on this theme written in kanbun appeared that had wide circulation among the educated: Nihon ōjō gokuraku-ki 日本往生極樂記 by Yoshishige Yasutane 慶滋保胤 (d. 1002) and Ōjōyōshū 往生要集 by Genshin 源信 (942–1017). Both authors were members of a group that gave center stage to Pure Land Buddhist rituals both at the time of death and at funerals. Emblematic of this interest among the oligarchy of the Fujiwara clan were Michinaga 道長 (966–1028), the most powerful politician of the mid-Heian period who spent a fortune building the Byōdō-in as a retreat, and his son Yorimichi 頼通 (992–1074), who erected on the Byōdō-in site to his father’s memory a magnificent mausoleum, which is popularly known as the Phoenix Hall though the actual name is Amida Hall. Although Michinaga engaged in and supported a host of different Buddhist practices, including a pilgrimage to Mt. Kōya, it is this overt display of faith by the Fujiwara elite in the role of Buddhism as mediator with the forces of the next world that had arguably the greatest impact on at least the society of the capital, if not the nation as a whole. As so much of what Michinaga did was copied by others with means, his Buddhist preparations for his own death seem to have provided an enormous stimulus for the eventual marriage of monastery and graveyard. 4  The most famous example of a nenbutsu hijiri who modeled himself on Gyōki is Kūya 空也 (903–972), founder of Rokuharamitsu-ji in Kyoto and nicknamed “Amida-hijiri” for his activities promoting nenbutsu practice. Kūya also had a loose association with the monastic establishment: after receiving the name Kūya as a novice at twenty, he did not take the full monastic precepts until the age of forty-nine, after which he rejected using the name he received at that time, Kōshō 光勝. See Futaba 1987. 5  These ninth-century figures do not appear in Yoshishige Yasutane’s first ōjō-den, which is mostly restricted to the most famous of people, but they do appear in the later collections. See a list of ninth- and tenth-century names of recorded ōjō attainers in Itō 1974, pp. 19–20.

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In the Kamakura period, a number of changes occurred in Japanese funerary culture. One of the most significant was the awarding of monastic names to laymen on their deathbeds (and even after death in some cases) to prepare them for the challenges in the next world. The practice of using memorial tablets on family altars to commemorate the dead is Confucian in origin, but gradually over the Kamakura and Muromachi periods a change occurred in which the tablets began to carry the monastic name of the deceased rather than the original family name. The implication is obvious: in life father may be head of the family, but in death he has joined the sangha. Thus membership in the professional community pledged to maintain the Dharma was seen as a prerequisite for salvation in the afterlife. These monastic names are called either kaimyō 戒名, which means something like “precept name,” or hōmyō 法名, which expressed the more generalized religious commitment of “Dharma name.” Shinshū adherents also participate in this practice, insisting on using only the term hōmyō because, as Ekū reasons, “How can we give someone a name signifying the precepts when they are in fact not obeying the precepts?”6 (1698, p. 289). The Tokugawa period is well known as a time of relative political isolation for Japan. The military government evolved a policy that regarded Buddhism as largely an administrative institution, and this led to a variety of consequences. For example, tight controls were now set by law regarding the minimal educational requirements a monk needed to become the abbot of a temple or monastery, and even the maximum time allowed to complete those requirements. Various restrictions were also put on relations between the monasteries and lay society. Perhaps best known is the fact that the monastic networks in Japan were asked to serve as census takers. Each family was required to register with a Buddhist (or Shinto) institution, and the monasteries as religious institutions were expected to provided certain services for their newfound parishioners, including care for the dead. This assumption reflects the fact that by the end of the sixteenth century, a great many small temples had come to depend upon income derived from mortuary rites.7 Both Ekū and Genchi note that there are many kinds of funerary culture throughout the land, not only Buddhist. Ekū 6  Ekū notes that some people think the kaimyō are not for people who have maintained the precepts, but for those who have not; hence they change the written form from the usual 戒名 “precept name” to 改名 “rectified name.” 7  As larger, older monasteries commanded greater respect in the general population when it came to funerals and graves, it was not uncommon for smaller temples at this time to change their sectarian affiliation not on religious grounds but in order to align themselves with these prestigious institutions (Tamamuro 1987, pp. 44–45).

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in particular frequently refers to entrenched local traditions that he considers secular or worldly (zoku 俗), remarking that even Buddhist monks have no choice but to follow them at times. Comments like this indicate that the funerary role of the Buddhist clergy at this time was not entirely at the discretion of the monks themselves. 2

Funeral Consciousness in Shinshū

The Jōdo Shin school, or Shinshū, developed as a religious institution with unswerving loyalty to the normative doctrines outlined by its founder, Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263), whose writings retained an authoritative status tantamount to buddhavacana throughout this period. Because Shinran publicly abandoned monasticism to take a wife, this school has sanctioned marriage for its clergy since the thirteenth century, and this fact seems to have aided its spread among rural, working class populations. In combining blood and doctrinal lineage as legitimating tools for Dharma succession, Shinshū has a unique history among premodern Buddhist schools, and in many ways it expresses a religious culture that can be seen as an amalgam of Mahayana Buddhist idealism and native Japanese sentiments about the world and human nature. By the dawn of the Tokugawa period, the Honganji branch of the school had grown so large and powerful that it was able to establish itself as an independent political domain, and today it is acknowledged as the largest religious institution in Japan. Together with its size and influence, its ideological iconoclasm often led others to regard it as a potential threat to the status quo, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century the largest faction within Shinshū, Honganji, had been deftly split in two by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. It is these two branches of the Honganji institution that our scholars Ekū and Genchi represent. The orthodox Shinshū position on death is standard Mahayana, and the postmortem goal of reaching the Pure Land must be understood within this paradigm. That is, the rebirth process includes a liminal state between death and rebirth called antarābhava (J. chūin 中陰 or chūu 中有). Texts such as the Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya (J. Kusharon) explain that transitional beings called gandharvas wander in this state with a subtle form of the pañca-skandha, looking for suitable conditions for their next place of birth. In the Abhidharma literature this intermediate state is a time when the karmic residue from one life is reorganized and reunited with a new identity in the next. The typical duration of antarābhava in Mahayana as well as the Sarvāstivādin school is forty-nine

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days, the same length of time that still marks the arrangement of postmortem memorial ceremonies in Shinshū today.8 At the popular level of Shinshū faith, however, the antarābhava condition is understood as the period of time required for ritual purification of the dead soul, a process that transforms it into a suitable participant in the sacred grave of Shinran, from which it will enter the Pure Land where the Founder resides. No matter how saintly a dead family member may have been in life, everyone is polluted by the physical transformation of death and needs to be purified before embarking on the important journey. Although the forty-nine day period marks the end of formal mourning on a daily basis, in Japanese Buddhism memorial services to benefit the dead typically continue for many years afterward. By the Tokugawa period, similar to today’s custom, people generally held services on the death anniversary for the first three years. After that it varied, but ten-, thirteen- or seventeen-year services were common, usually followed by a twenty-five-year memorial, and finally ending at either thirty-three or fifty years. At that point the family’s obligation has ended because the deceased has become either a buddha or a kami. Such services are generally conceptualized as a means of sending karmic merit to the deceased to assist this process of purification required for progress toward the Pure Land. As an expression of filial piety, however, despite the usual cut-off of thirty-three or fifty years, for many the felt need to continue sending weal remained, and this could be passed on to their progeny as what we might call a Confucian obligation. Writing in the eighteenth century, Genchi refers to Honganji memorial services that were held as many as two hundred years after someone’s death (1774, p. 50b). But Shinshū’s approach to funerals is complicated by the fact that its doctrine is monistic in nature, giving rise throughout its history to heightened concern for orthodoxy in thought and practice together with its sibling fear of heresy. Shinran attributes all religious gain to the power of one buddha, Amida, spawning interpretations that place Amida Buddha as the progenitor even of Śākyamuni Buddha. In addition to not recognizing the spiritual power of kami, orthodox Shinshū doctrine regards faith in other buddhas or bodhisattvas as antithetic to faith in Amida. Building on Pure Land Buddhist discourse in Japan going back to the Kamakura period, Shinshū makes great use of the terms jiriki 自力 and tariki 他力, or “power of the self” and “power beyond the self,” to clarify that the locus of responsibility for individual spiritual progress along the Pure Land path lies with the enactment of the vows made 8  Nishikawa (1991, pp. 65–68) gives an example from the sixteenth century of an accelerated ceremonial timetable used for the funeral of Jitsunyo 實如 (1458–1525), ninth abbot of Honganji and fifth son of Rennyo.

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by Amida Buddha eons ago. It is worth mentioning that in Kamakura-period usage jiriki is always used pejoratively, reflecting a strong sense of the holy in the word tariki. Indeed, jiriki and tariki may be translated “self-dominant” and “self-transcendent.” While all forms of Pure Land Buddhism doctrinally assert the accessibility of the Pure Land of Amida as an idealized intermediate goal, assuring its inhabitants quick progress to final enlightenment, Shinran’s monistic standpoint understood Amida’s Pure Land as equivalent to Nirvana itself, collapsing the distance between the two goals. Because he often referred to the occasion of Birth in the Pure Land, or ōjō 往生, in terms of the phrase “immediate Birth,” or sokutoku ōjō 即得往生 as found in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra. Sectarian scholarship for centuries has argued over whether this means that Shinran’s view was that one’s Birth in the Pure Land occurs at death or whether the event of Birth itself is to be understood as a religious epiphany experienced within this lifetime, paralleling the two kinds of nirvana attainment in Indian Buddhist doctrine. But regardless of one’s interpretation of when ōjō occurs, there is no argument that the cornerstone of the Shinshū creed is that anyone fortunate enough to reach the Pure Land will do so only by the will of Amida: this is the proper tariki position. Even for those taking the position that ōjō occurs at death, to attempt to control one’s postmortem fate by one’s own efforts or the efforts of remaining family members therefore reflects an incorrect, heterodox jiriki position, and a rather embarrassing lack of faith. Orthodox Shinshū doctrine would therefore seem to preclude any church involvement in funerary ritual. Shinran does not address this issue directly in any of his extant writings, but, speaking in opposition to prevailing nenbutsu rituals for the dead, he is quoted as having made the following statement: I have never said the nenbutsu even once for the repose of my father and mother. Tannishō, ch. 59

9  Tannishō 歎異抄, T. no. 2661, 83.728. There are many translations of this work, among them Bloom 1981 and Bandō 1996. The Tannishō contains a series of dialogues as recorded by a student of Shinran, and Shinran himself had nothing to do with its composition. It was not initially considered canonical within Shinshū, and there are scholars today who do not accept it as an authoritative source for Shinran’s voice. The earliest extant manuscript is a copy made by Rennyo, but even he instructed his students not to show it to the rank-and-file members. My usage of it here does not reflect any judgement about its provenance but rather recognition of the fact that today it has become a centerpiece of Shinshū thought and is generally accepted by both branches of Honganji as representative of their stated doctrine. On Rennyo and the Tannishō, see Terakawa 1999.

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In this statement Shinran is not rejecting filial piety. Rather, he is clarifying that his notion of the Pure Land Buddhist path precludes the use of its sacred invocation for funerary purposes. Can we infer from Shinran’s words that the dead do not need ritual nenbutsu recited on their behalf? Or merely that nenbutsu was not bestowed by the Buddha for this purpose? The answer is not entirely clear. But for the Shinshū believer used to nenbutsu recitation at funerals in other schools of Buddhism, the only possible interpretation is either that Shinran’s parents are already in the Pure Land and do not need any further assistance or that Shinran viewed the nenbutsu as something too sacred for what he regarded as a mundane ritual. Indeed, both meanings may apply. On the other hand, the religious significance of death occupied a central position in the identity of the Honganji church practically from its inception. Despite the fact that Shinran explicitly told those around him that he did not want a grave, suggesting it made more sense to feed his body to the fish in the Kamo River, his death was publicly memorialized almost immediately at Shinshū dōjō throughout Japan.10 For the group of followers led by his family members, these memorials took place on a regular basis at Shinran’s grave. One of the most significant events in the early years after Shinran’s death was the decision of his widow Eshinni in 1277 to donate land for the construction of a mausoleum at a new grave site to serve as the basis for the religious community in the capital, if not all lineages stemming from Shinran. And it was Shinran’s great-grandson Kakunyo who is generally given credit for the important step of transforming Shinran’s mausoleum into a temple called Honganji. Consciousness of the importance of this physical memorialization of Shinran can also be seen in the fact that for centuries even after the establishment of the Honganji designation, the official title of the head of the Shinshū community in Kyoto was custodian or caretaker (rusushoku 留守職) of Shinran’s grave, a position that was never assigned outside the family. 3 Kakunyo’s Hard-Line Rejection of Funeral Ritual Kakunyo’s literary legacy is heavily weighted toward rulings. One could even argue that Kakunyo invented the genre for Shinshū with his Gaijashō 改邪鈔

10  This involved changing the custom set up by Shinran of memorializing Hōnen’s death day. However, not all groups immediately switched to the day of Shinran’s death, which was perceived to be an obstacle to the formation of a separate sectarian identity. See Dobbins 1989, p. 80.

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(Notes rectifying heresy).11 He also devoted considerable time to producing official biographies of Shinran, usually in the form of picture scrolls with text to create a more iconic representation. These scrolls begin to appear at the end of the thirteenth century and thereafter were widely copied, becoming a standard form of pious expression. Even the most widely read first biography of Shinran, known by the title Godenshō 御傅鈔, is actually the text portion of one of the biographical scrolls Kakunyo had commissioned, which he called “Biographical Illustration of Shinran, His Eminence of Honganji.”12 This work contains little more than a series of panels depicting Shinran’s virtues, its hagiographic intent manifest in the fact that Shinran is revealed as an incarnation of Amida Buddha. But Kakunyo is not the first to use apotheosis; Eshinni herself refers to Shinran as an incarnation of Kannon in her letters, from which the later sectarian tradition justifies her decision to ignore his burial wishes. At the time of Kakunyo, the Honganji structure was centered around a shrine to Shinran; there was no hall to Amida Buddha. Today, in both branches of Honganji, the hall dedicated to Shinran stands side by side with the hall dedicated to Amida. Although Shinshū scholars today typically identify widespread Honganji participation in funerary ritual as representative of Tokugawa culture, Kakunyo’s writings reveal that he saw enough of such activity in his time to prompt him to issue warnings of impropriety.13 His Gaijashō, written in 1337, admonished Shinshū clerics who engaged in Pure Land rituals for the deceased that such practices were contrary to Shinran’s intent. It was a classic confrontation between taking care of doctrine versus taking care of the dead: Issue: It is unwarranted for colleagues in our school who, at memorial assemblies honoring the virtues of our Founder, do nothing in regard to [enabling] those present to [attain] faith (shinjin) that leads to Birth in the Pure Land, but rather use these meetings as an occasion for funeral rituals for the dead. Comment: We do not say the kind of things one finds in the path to selfperfection, but in Tantric discussions the stage of quickly realized great enlightenment in the body born from one’s father and mother is extolled, and [it is claimed that] whether one reaches the Pure Land or falls into 11  A published version of Gaijashō can be found in Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 3. 12  Honganji Shōnin Shinran denne 本願寺聖人親鸞傳繪, also called Shinran denne or Shinran den’e. Original dated 1295, amended in 1345. See Kobayashi 1983. 13  See, for example, Kaneko et al. 1983, p. 331.

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a realm of suffering is determined by a single dharma in the mind. We never say that an ordinary person in his state of the five skandhas can immediately ascend the platform of the Pure Land. Our notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable are different from other sects in essence and form; this is our standard. Thus to completely put aside addressing [the issue of] faith as it relates to Birth in favor of concerning oneself with aiding and assisting in funeral rituals for the dead is, from the point of view of the discourse (dangō 談合) central to our school, not representative of the realization of our Founder. We must recognize the fact that many people only regard us as if we were a shallow, worldly funerary organization, and they have no knowledge of [our teachings] of the path to Birth in the Pure Land for monastic and lay, male and female. In the past our Eminent Teacher said, “When my eyes close, just put me in the Kamo River and feed me to the fish.” This statement expressed none other than disparagement of the body and the importance of faith in the Buddha’s Dharma. For this reason I believe we really should not regard funerals as the most important thing we do. We should put a stop to this. Gaijashō 16, Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 3, pp. 80–81

This passage tells us a number of important things about the debate within Shinshū regarding the issue of church involvement in funerals. First of all, Shinran’s statement about what he expects for his own funeral (to be thrown in a river), together with his Tannishō rejection of invoking nenbutsu for his deceased parents, forms an important expression of his doctrine. Shinran rejects any sense of obligation on the part of the Pure Land practitioner to engage in ritual based on one’s faith in Amida Buddha for dead friends and relatives, including the praxis he designated as most sacred: nenbutsu. Insofar as family observance of funerary ritual universally serves to solidify the family’s internal bonds, particularly across generations, Shinran’s position on rites for the dead reflects not Shinran the son and father but Shinran the Buddhist monk. That is, his statements express both his deep faith and the fact that his religious concerns are directed to this world, not the next. For Shinran, the postmortem destiny of anyone who has turned to the Pure Land path is never at issue, for the Buddha’s covenant with sentient beings is not dependent on any form of ritual. 4

Zonkaku: the Compromise Begins

More evidence of the active role of Shinshū clergy in funeral ritual in the late Kamakura period is found in Haja kenshō-shō 破邪顯正抄 (Notes assailing

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heresy and revealing truth), a subsequent statement of rulings composed in 1324 by Kakunyo’s son Zonkaku. This treatise is written in the form of an official document presented to court to defend the exclusive nenbutsu monks from attacks by religious leaders in other communities. One of the complaints is that nenbutsu practitioners do not provide any ritual assistance to the dead. Zonkaku responds: Issue: Is it not extreme heresy that nenbutsu practitioners do not provide guidance on the path [to the next birth] for someone who has died? Comment: There is something to this issue, but I will not argue against the accusation that adepts dedicated [to nenbutsu] do not provide guidance for the dead. But it is unreasonable to claim that [we] are saying that the heresy of withholding information is a good thing. Do the rituals performed by funeral leaders in the countryside that supposedly guide the dead really lead them in the direction of the Land of Bliss among the possible directions available to them of the six realms? There is no need to lecture those who are headed for Birth through nenbutsu, as they will not be lost in the dim light of the six realms.14 This is because they will reach the Pure Land [regardless]. Even for someone who has not attained Birth, we do not stress the need to show him the way because, if we did so, that person would still not be born in the Pure Land. Therefore, in mourning [someone] on that mysterious path, the best method for promoting his or her release is the true words of the Buddha, according to what is provided in the holy teachings. People often teach the dead ridiculous things, having themselves ignored the correct explanation of scripture, and instead use their own skills at understanding. Thus what the deceased receives depends on the state of mind of the person doing the guidance…. Probably of all the merit accumulated for transfer to the deceased with the chanting of hymns, sutra lectures, and so forth, 70% stays here and perhaps only 10% reaches that mysterious path. How much less valuable is it for someone to try to assist [the dead] by his or her own devices! That is why we do not make use of these funerary rituals for nenbutsu practitioners. Looking at the Kanbutsu zanmai-kyō (Sutra 14  This is a reference to the practice of sutra reading and preaching to the deceased in a ritual context soon after death has occurred. As the exegetical tradition in Buddhism generally accepted the notion that consciousness, indeed all five skandhas, exist in subtle form in the state between death and birth, the belief was (and still is, in Tibet, for example) that for a time the deceased was still capable of exerting its will in a way that could influence its next birth.

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of Buddha Samadhi Contemplation),15 however, we see that nenbutsusamadhi functions as a signpost for people who have lost their way; it is indeed a lamp in the dark. Therefore, for one who has stopped on the dark intersection of the Six Realms … if someone [here] practices nenbutsu in mourning [to affect] where [the deceased] will be born, this will become a signpost [for him or her]. The Buddha has already made clear how bright a lamp this could be, and the effect would be immediate. For this reason, practitioners devoted to nenbutsu profoundly maintain the true words of the Buddha [in their funeral ceremonies], but they do not employ the skillful methods of fools.16 In contrast to Kakunyo’s rigidity on the issue of funerals, Zonkaku thus takes a characteristically conciliatory tone. He skillfully manages to assert confidence in the Pure Land path by stating that those who have succeeded in attaining Birth (ōjō) are destined for Amida’s Pure Land after death and therefore need no funeral service whatsoever. At the same time he recognizes that not everyone is so lucky and makes it clear that in these cases what Honganji monks refuse to perform is funerals not based on Buddhist scripture, but they have no aversion to rituals that express the true words of the Buddha. Zonkaku thereby opens the way for a reconciliation between doctrinal purity and social custom. The differences between Kakunyo and Zonkaku over funeral orthodoxy for Honganji are indicative of the deep conceptual gap that divided them, and in some sense of the ambivalence within honzan leadership over mortuary rites in general.17 Kakunyo does not specify which groups were leading funerals or precisely what the content of these funerals was. But the passages certainly confirm not only that funerals were being performed by Shinshū clergy but 15  F o-shuo kuan-fo sanmei hai-ching 佛説觀佛三昧海經 (J. Bussetsu kanbutsu zanmai kaikyō, T. no. 643, 15.645). Thought to be based on the Avataṃsaka sūtra, this text both exalts the nenbutsu and extols the virtues of samadhi attainment. See pp. 693a–697a for its discussion of nenbutsu-samadhi. Although it does not distinguish soteriologically between buddha visualization practice (kanbutsu) and buddha-name recitation practice (nenbutsu)—a key element in Hōnen’s hermeneutic—its doctrines were well studied within all traditions of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Hōnen cites it in Kanmuryōjukyō-shaku, and Shinran uses it as a proof-text for nenbutsu-samadhi in his Kyōgyōshinshō, citing a passage from Tao-ch’o’s An-lo chi. 16  Point number eleven in the Haja kenshō-shō (see Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 3, p. 175). 17  It is worth noting that despite the fact that Zonkaku was Kakunyo’s son, Kakunyo’s treatise was written thirteen years after that of Zonkaku and therefore can be assumed to include Zonkaku’s positions, if only to distance himself from them. See discussion on these two works in Dobbins 1989, pp. 88–98.

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that this was a widespread practice even though the church’s proper role was still uncertain. We can also sense a tension between what the public wanted from the church and what the church leaders (at least Kakunyo) saw as its mission. It is worth noting that Kakunyo’s transformation of Shinran’s grave site into the Honganji church inevitably invited pilgrimage by the faithful, yet there is no reference in the Gaijashō passage to the grave and its central place in the Honganji identity. In other words, Kakunyo is either oblivious to or intentionally silent about the association that many Shinshū followers are apparently making between the foundational role of the sacrality emanating from Shinran’s grave for Honganji continuity and the need for ritually transforming graves of intimate kin in a similar way for the continuity of families. 5

Burial near Shinran and Sending Merit: Premodern Precedents of Contemporary Shinshū Rituals for the Dead

By the Tokugawa period, a strong connection had been established between the sacred locale of Shinran’s grave and the church that stood upon it— conceptually if no longer physically—on the one hand, and the need of individual families to ritually transform their recent dead into a more sacred status by means of that same source of transcendent power, on the other. Individual families affiliated with either of the two Honganjis now saw both the physical temple as well as the grave site of the founder as embodying a unique soteriological power, and they clamored to bury their dead either at the founder’s grave site or within the Honganji grounds. In the popular imagination, the mausoleum/cathedral complex had become the manifest gateway to the Pure Land, a final resting place for the community as a whole. In some sense, this is the fulfillment of the Shinshū mission to erase all distinctions between monk and layman, between Shinran’s descendants and any person who stakes his or her future on the Buddha’s salvific vows of compassion. Kakunyo’s rejection of funerals had thus become untenable by at least the end of the fifteenth century, if not earlier, when the authoritative voices speaking for the church no longer tried to prevent their clergy from participating in funerals.18 They had their hands full simply trying to pass judgment on the propriety of the many forms of what were now institutionalized Shinshū rituals of interment.

18  For a discussion of the widespread practice of cremation and of Shinshū care for the cremated remains of Rennyo, Jitsunyo, and Shōnyo, see Nishikawa 1991.

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It seems clear that by the onset of the Tokugawa period, both branches of the Honganji organization had become actively involved in funerary ritual,19 and most temples and dōjō had become financially dependent on money received for these services. Ekū and Genchi are concerned not about the question of whether Shinshū clergy should do funeral services, but how they should do them. Both scholars bemoan the inability of Shinshū intellectuals in Kyoto to “correct” some of the practices occurring in local Shinshū congregations throughout the country. A comparison of local temple records would undoubtedly reveal wide variation in funeral customs, but such a project has not yet been undertaken. Without exploring regional differences, however, there is ample evidence of funerary practices taking place at the administrative centers of Shinshū in the capital itself. In the process of accommodation to and appropriation of folk belief patterns, the institution of Honganji had thus created an economic base that ensured its continuation and growth, but the philosophical consequences were not insignificant. 6

Four Shinshū Mortuary Rites

The desire to tap into the charisma of holy sites for burial purposes seems to have spread rapidly in the Kamakura period. In some cases this led to the revival of relatively moribund institutions. In the case of Gangō-ji and Mt. Kōya, for example, from at least as early as the thirteenth century lay people brought human bones, sometimes cremated but sometimes not, to be buried. Such beliefs were closely tied to the goal of reaching Amida’s Pure Land, suggesting that the Pure Land in the popular mind was not something abstract and immensely distant, as described in the Smaller Sukhāvatvyūha Sutra (100,000 × 100,000,000 worlds away), but actually located in remote yet reachable sacred locations, such as mountains and oceans. For many, paths to that realm could be trod at sacred locales consecrated by pilgrimage and/or places where 19  In Shinshū, both Zonkaku and Rennyo contributed to the closer link between the clergy and their followers by allowing the use of the Ti-ts’ang shih-wang ching 地藏十王經 (Ti-ts’ang sutra of the ten heavenly kings), Manji zokuzōkyō No. 20, 1.404, in funeral liturgies. This apocryphal text proffers ten mythical kings as governors of ten stages for the deceased. In Japan the first seven kings appear at the seven weeks that make up the crucial forty-nine-day period between death and rebirth, and the final three kings then arrive to review the case. The ten kings can also be identified as manifestations of famous buddhas and bodhisattvas, and this usage is found in Hōnen, for example. Zonkaku advocates devotional practices to the ten heavenly kings for those who lack enough understanding of Pure Land doctrine to effect their own spiritual transformation to the Pure Land directly. See Tamamuro 1963, p. 119, and Teiser 1994.

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the relics of important saints were interred. These were just some of the ways in which large numbers of people began to participate in Buddhist religious culture in the medieval period. To return to the example of Shinshū, below are four patterns of widespread ritual activity enacted at official funerals, all performative to some degree, that emerged from within this school from at least as early as the fourteenth century. The latter three demonstrate particular concern for sending karmic merit (puṇya) to the deceased. 6.1 Together Forever: Kue-Issho 倶会一処 As mentioned above, by the seventeenth century the two most sought-after burial grounds for Shinshū believers had become the site of the grave of Shinran, located at the foot of Higashiyama on the eastern side of Kyoto at what is called the Ōtani honbyō 大谷本廟 (Ōtani Mausoleum), and the Honganji compound itself. Originally located at the grave site, during Rennyo’s lifetime Honganji was rebuilt in Yamashina, Osaka, and under Tokugawa Ieyasu it was split into two orders located in the center of Kyoto, about one hour’s walk from the Ōtani Mausoleum. Many families at this time followed the common Japanese custom of dual interment (ryōbosei 両墓制), dividing the remains of the deceased between the Shinran mausoleum or Honganji complex and a grave site close to the family residence. Although there are numerous examples of cremation among the upper classes in the Heian period, Shōnyo 證如 (1516–1554, the tenth abbot of Honganji) alludes to places where commoners (zōnin 雑人) were cremated in Rennyo’s time, i.e., the second half of the fifteenth century, and Ekū confirms that cremation was the norm in his world of the late seventeenth century. But there were also communities that buried their dead uncremated and then dug up the bones after the first postmortem Bon festival to divide them for reinterment. This meant that the bones of the deceased were mobile in that (1) the individual’s passage into the next world did not require that the body remain intact, and (2) rituals were in place that effectively removed the pollution associated with corpses, a problem that otherwise would hinder or prevent the process of removing all or part of the skeletal remains. Interment at the site of Shinran’s grave was referred to as meeting together in one place (kue-issho), meaning the follower’s remains were merged with the relics of Shinran. It is worth noting that when the remains are interred at Honganji rather than at Shinran’s grave site, it is not because of a desire to be near Amida Buddha nor because of the Honganji monks’ power as sangha. Believers seek burial at Honganji because the image of Shinran is enshrined there. In other words, both forms of kue-issho reflect the same construct that Kakunyo used to create the Honganji institution: the apotheosis of the founder,

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Shinran. Kakunyo used the medium of hagiographic biography affixed to the founder’s likeness in iconic display to explain his vision of Shinran’s transcendent charisma. What we are seeing in the kue-issho ritual is essentially the same vision now embodied in Shinran’s relics and holy image, the latter enshrined on the church’s most sacred altar as the central object of veneration, or honzon. Thus does the Honganji rest upon a fixed point of sanctity. The advantages of the dual interment system are obvious. Whereas the local grave affords the family the opportunity to serve the deceased directly with offerings and prayers, the charismatic site in physical proximity to the founder serves as a guaranteed link with the Pure Land in the world beyond. It goes without saying that the local grave affords a family not only convenience in fulfilling filial duties but an appropriate locale within their known world where they can ease the pain of severance at their own pace while resting assured that they have also served the deceased in his or her new state. Interestingly, in the mid-Tokugawa period the belief in the value of interment at either Honganji or Shinran’s mausoleum grew so strong that some communities dispensed with local burial altogether.20 That people were willing to sacrifice these emotional ties to family and home for a costly burial in the distant capital shows the foundational importance in the Honganji branch of Shinshū of an implied postmortem promise to benefit the faithful. In fact, at some point making a pilgrimage to Honganji was conflated with the devotional act of bringing a loved one’s remains to the capital for interment, resulting in the phrase “pilgrimage to the Pure Land” (ojōdo mairi お浄土詣り) (Sasaki 1987, p. 252). As the practice of kue-issho grew in popularity, the competing mausoleums of the two Honganjis both ran out of space and in the middle of the eighteenth century they applied to the government for permission to expand. Competition between them only seems to have stoked this fire, for by 1861 Higashi Honganji had to establish a separate “bone office” to regulate the acceptance of cremated remains for interment at the Shinran Mausoleum (Fujishima and Hosokawa 1963, pp. 226–27). 6.2 Vegetarian Banquet: O-Toki 御齋 Today the most common ritual used by Buddhist organizations in Japan as an occasion for raising money by sending karmic merit to the dead is the 20  Some scholars have called this phenomenon of abandoning the local grave in favor of the single communal grave site at Honganji a “noninterment” (mubosei 無墓制). But mubosei is also used to refer to situations where there is no grave at all, such as when cremated remains are thrown over a cliff or into the ocean; mubosei only designates the lack of a grave or a marker for a grave within the local community. In an ethnographic study in Mie Prefecture, Morioka 1965 finds the motivation for not keeping local graves among Shinshū families to lie in Shinshū theology itself.

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Ullambana or Bon (short for Urabon-e) festival. Both Honganjis have stubbornly refused to recognize this aspect of the yearly Bon festival. But that does not mean the practice of ritually sending weal or merit to the dead has been categorically excluded from Pure Land Buddhism under Honganji leadership. The need to provide this service has simply been too compelling to ignore, with the result that over time this function has been shifted to other ritual forms. O-toki or toki is an ancient ceremony still observed by most Buddhist schools in Japan today that, in its generic form, designated the formal serving of a vegetarian meal before noon in compliance with the precepts. A religious service usually accompanied these events, within which some schools included offering rituals (kuyō) as well. Since the Heian period toki has been written either as 時 or 齋, with the latter form typically found in Shinshū records.21 Mention of the toki ceremony first appears in Honganji records during the sixteenth century, in the diaries of the Honganji leaders who lived just after Rennyo 蓮如 (1415–1499). In these events a donor makes a cash gift to a temple and also provides a meal for all monks present. In return the donor receives memorial services for the deceased of his choosing, including ritual transfer of all merit accruing from both the services performed and the donation to the sangha. Frequently referred to as the second founder of Shinshū, Rennyo deserves credit for turning Honganji into the dominant institution we know today. The diaries show repeated performance of the toki ceremony, strongly suggesting that the practice begins under Rennyo’s leadership, as his legacy cast a long shadow over everything in Honganji, including institutional issues, doctrines, ceremony, and ritual. The diary of Shōnyo, grandson of Rennyo, is filled with references to toki ceremonies.22 A typical entry for 1551 mentions a toki ceremony for the deceased parents of a Shinshū priest from Etchū, who in turn sponsored a meal for all priests at Honganji and donated 200 units of cash (hiki 疋) to the monastery.23 21  The kanji 齊 is usually pronounced sai, as in the compound saijiki 齊食, designating a vegetarian meal served either to the monks by temple donors or to the donors by the monks. The form 御時 appears in the Eiga monogatari, for example. The reason for pronouncing 齊 as toki comes from the fact that food was often eaten after the noon hour in violation of the precepts. The pre-noon meal thus became known as the one with a properly designated “time” (toki 時), while the afternoon meals were without such time, hence hiji 非時. 22  During Shōnyo’s life, the Honganji that Rennyo had reconstructed in Yamashina was burnt down by Tendai monks of Mt. Hiei in retaliation for Honganji forces having appropriated Kaga province. As a result, the so-called Ishiyama Honganji based in Osaka became the center of Honganji activities. 23  Shōnyo Shōnin nikki 證如上人日記, Tenmon 20 (1551), 5th month, 10th day. See Uematsu 1966, vol. 2, p. 627b.

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Shōnyo records whom he divided the money with and often notes how much each person received. Some money went to individuals (for example, Rennyo’s thirteenth son Jitsujū 實従 [1498–1564] usually received thirty units of cash), some to powerful temple allies such as Busshō-ji 佛照寺, some to the imperial court, and some to subtemples under Honganji leadership. These subtemples are referred to as sanjūnichi banshu 三十日番衆 (the group of thirty days) because they performed services for thirty days for their remunerations, beginning on the twenty-eighth of each month, the anniversary of Shinran’s death. The frequency of the toki ceremonies at Honganji as recorded by its abbot, the amount of money involved, and the systematic way in which it was used to maintain Honganji’s extensive network of political relationships make it clear that there was deep institutional support for this type of ceremony. In this particular record, Shōnyo notes that he agreed to accept the parents’ remains, implying interment at Honganji or the Shinran burial grounds. If Honganji accepted money to perform services for the common dead, as in the above example, it also seems to have taken money for the uncommon dead. In the record of this same Jitsujū (called Kenchi 兼智 by Shōnyo), there is a mention of a memorial service held for his father at Honganji in 1537 in which he offered twenty units of cash to the same Shōnyo.24 In this case, Shōnyo led the service but returned the money, saying that the thirty-third death anniversary of Rennyo had already passed and therefore the (obligatory) period for mourning had ended. By reasoning that the period of ritual mourning had ended and yet carrying out the ceremony anyway, Shōnyo indicates that for Honganji at this time the chanting of sutras, nenbutsu, or the words of Founder Shinran were all affirmed means for sending weal to the dead regardless of how much time had passed since the death event. Shōnyo’s comment suggests not that the service was inappropriate, only that the accepting of money for it was. That is, receiving donations for such rituals was rationalized as acceptable only for thirtythree years after a death. I interpret this to reflect church policy that put a limit on family ceremonial obligations to the dead. Never mind that Rennyo’s antarābhava state had long since passed and he should certainly have arrived in the Pure Land by that time. Not only should Rennyo hardly have needed blessings in the first place, but the very idea of transferring merit to the dead through the recitation of scripture would seem to be a perfect expression of the Shinshū notion of misguided jiriki (self-delusional) praxis. This is precisely what Shinran rejects in the Tannishō because all merit required for Birth comes from the Buddha. While such services are still conducted at Honganji today in 24  Shishinki 私心記, Tenmon 6 (1537), 3rd month, 25th day. See Uematsu 1966, vol. 1, p. 259ab.

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special circumstances, sixteenth-century records describe them as daily events (日中), and their frequency in diaries of the time confirms how routine they had become as Honganji religious activities. 6.3 Perpetual Sutra Recitation: Eitai-Kyo 永代経 Another ritual structure to emerge in Shinshū mortuary ritual is called eitai-kyō, short for eitai dokkyō 永代読経, perpetual sutra reading. The eitai-kyō service seems to have no other purpose than to recite scriptures for the dead in exchange for monetary gifts. This practice is performed by other Japanese Buddhist schools as well, usually under the names eitai kuyō 永代供養 (perpetual offerings) or shidō-kyō 祠堂経 (sutras [offered] at the ancestral hall). Dating at least to the early Kamakura period, the shidō-kyō ceremony developed in response to requests from lay believers to use the power of the Lotus Sutra to help their deceased family members. By the Tokugawa period it was a firmly established Pure Land practice in Shinshū as well. Today, as in the past, the individual makes a donation to a temple specifically requesting performance of the eitai-kyō, whereupon a document or scroll is made on which the ritually bestowed “Dharma name” of the deceased is prominently written. Called simply hōmyō-jiku 法名軸 (Dharma name scroll) or hōmyō-ki 法名記 (Dharma name record), these are hung on the altar of the temple during the sutra readings. After the initial ceremony, the name-scroll is then brought out again on a monthly or yearly basis, or in some cases at the spring and autumn equinox ceremonies called higan 彼岸, with the expectation that the monks would forever be sending merit to those whose names are displayed on such scrolls.25 Hence the ritual meant perpetual offerings to the dead from the believer’s perspective, but from the sect’s point of view it meant the individual had become a permanent member of the lineage. If a group of people, not an individual, makes the donation, the day of the ritual does not have to be the same as the day of death but rather any day convenient for everyone to attend. It is not clear when the practice of eitai-kyō began, but Genchi writes that the first instance of it that he could find was in 1678 (Genchi 1785). Custom has traditionally required that this ceremony begin only after both the initial forty-nine days of antarābhava existence and the first Bon festival had been observed. This delay signifies that the conception of the eitai-kyō ritual required a transformation in the status of the dead before it could occur. It suggests the deceased needed to be prepared for this new, higher 25  In one form of this ceremony called muen eitai-kyō 無縁永代経, the ritual continues to be performed as part of the spring and fall equinox ceremonies even after the support from the original donor had ceased.

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postmortem status, probably as ancestor in a more formal sense, and that this status could only be attained through the rituals of the sutra readings during the antarābhava period and all the rituals associated with Ullambana, regardless of formal church doctrine. On the other hand, the perpetual dimension of the eitai-kyō—I have seen reference to a ceremony performed two hundred years after the death—ensures that the ritual benefits of the sutra recitations will continue to accrue long after anyone with personal knowledge of the deceased is still alive, suggesting that even in this elevated postmortem state, the deceased was still somewhat dependent upon the performance of the ritual. The eitai-kyō tradition appears to have grown out of an older custom of reciting the Lotus Sutra repeatedly for patrons who made an appropriate donation. This practice was called either senbu-dokkyō 千部読経 (a thousand sutra readings) or manbu-dokkyō 万部読経 (ten-thousand sutra readings). Even Shinran at one point endorsed the same practice for the three Pure Land sutras26 but later changed his mind, deciding that it was against his understanding of proper belief in the salvific vows of the Buddha. 6.4 Gratitude to the Founder: Hōon-Kō 報恩講 The fourth mechanism for transferring merit to the dead began during the yearly gatherings to memorialize Shinran called hōon-kō. Such formal ceremonies for showing gratitude toward a patriarch with lectures and scriptural recitation are not unique to Shinshū. For example, Japanese Tendai created a ceremonial form of reverence for Chih-i that included a scriptural recitation and a lecture on Tendai doctrine. In the case of Shinshū, this tradition began with Shinran’s own creation of hōon-kō to recall the legacy and teachings of Hōnen. After Shinran’s death, part of Kakunyo’s efforts to apotheosize Shinran consisted of surpassing the Hōnen hōon-kō with a much grander hōon-kō for Shinran at Honganji that would continue for seven full days beginning on the anniversary of Shinran’s death, the 28th day of the 11th month. Eventually this ceremony grew in importance and spread to branch temples throughout the Honganji network. Rennyo used the event to solidify his influence, reformulating the ceremony as a kind of religious retreat that succeeded in increasing pilgrimage to the Honganji, even when the temple was not located in Kyoto. By the Tokugawa period, this annual gathering had become the most important religious event of the year for the Shinshū community. Strict vegetarianism

26  Stated by Shinran’s wife Eshinni in a letter to her daughter Kakushinni. See Eshinni shōsoku, Kōchō 3 (1263), 2nd month, 10th day, in Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 5, p. 101.

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was observed during the hōon-kō, giving the lay participants a chance to join in the restrained lifestyle of the monks. By the seventeenth century, the yearly hōon-kō had become a grandiose affair. From the viewpoint of the leaders of Honganji, the chief goals of the gathering were to increase the sense of community among the entire organization, to engage the lay community in intense practice sessions, and to provide lectures and study sessions on Buddhist doctrine. For those unable to make the pilgrimage to Honganji, hōon-kō gatherings were also held in local temples. But a week of such concentrated, disciplined practice made lay participants feel that they had heaped up a significant amount of merit and it was only natural that such merit should be transferred to their deceased relatives. There is little doubt that in the countryside, the hōon-kō retreat took on the flavor of ancestor reverence. Often after the Buddhist lecture, offerings were made to the ancestors of the community as a whole, and in rural settings this served as an important means for community solidarity. What distinguishes the hōon-kō ritual of merit-transfer to the dead is its impersonal nature. As the timing of the ritual precludes the recitation of sutras and invoking of nenbutsu on an individual’s death anniversary, merit-transfer rituals in the context of a hōon-kō instead take the form of generalized vows to help the participants’ ancestors. Since this event occurred at the end of the year, the sense of gratitude toward the Buddha and the Founder Shinran was inevitably combined with a sense of gratitude for the harvest, which in turn brought on a sense of gratitude toward the ancestors for ensuring the harvest. The combination of all these emotive forces created powerful urges to give something back to one’s parents and grandparents. Sometimes the eitai-kyō ritual was practiced during the hōon-kō as well. 7

Dogmatic Quandary: the Reactions of Ekū and Genchi

Let us now turn to the writings of Ekū and Genchi as representative scholars of the two branches of Honganji during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for a glimpse of their feelings about the issues raised by the mortuary ceremonies performed by Shinshū priests. Ekū served both as an advisor to the head of the Higashi (Eastern) Honganji and as its senior lecturer, at times in its training center.27 Ekū is arguably the most influential scholar for the Higashi 27  For a biography of Ekū see Akegarasu 1909 and Washio 1911, p. 35b. Also found in Yamazaki 1842. All are presumably based on the 1766 holograph of Ekū rōshi gyōjōki, held at Zenryū-ji in Shiga Prefecture.

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Honganji church during this period, not only because of his efforts to create a kind of reformed Shinshū credo, but also because his editions of many important texts were accepted as authoritative and remain so today. Ekū’s interest in funerals is evident in his influential work on Shinshū history and doctrine, Sōrinshū 叢林集 (Collection of scattered trees),28 and is even clearer in his Go-sōrei jitsuroku-shū 御葬禮實録集 (Collection of actual accounts of the funerals of the [seven Shinshū] patriarchs).29 Genchi30 had a similar career in the rival Nishi (Western) Honganji. His ideas on what constituted acceptable funerary practices can be found mostly in chapter two of his Kōshinroku 考信録 (Record of considerations in the faith),31 which, like Ekū’s Sōrinshū, presented a normative interpretation of proper Shinshū practices. In sum, these texts are massive rulings on a wide array of topics. Both men served as the preeminent preceptors of their day, adopting a mantle of authority that placed them in the center of the doctrinal canonization efforts of their respective sects. While the Tokugawa period produced a number of remarkable sectarian scholars, Ekū and Genchi stand out as particularly influential in defining their respective Shinshū orthodoxies. The following passage from the Sōrinshū reflects one of Ekū’s attempts to rationalize religious services for the dead. It appears as part of a discussion of merit-transference rituals in the hōon-kō ceremony. Question: In our school, the rituals and praises [for the Buddha] are services to express gratitude toward the Buddha. How can these, then, be directed to the dead? If we actually perform services for the dead, would we not fall into a jiriki form of merit-transfer? Answer: Services to express gratitude to the Buddha have the same meaning as they usually do. That is, [in the context of the hōon-kō] these are also done to express gratitude to our Founder (祖師). Sutras read during the state between death and birth may also be for deceased teachers or someone’s father. There are also offerings made to the relics of the dead, and many people following other teachings also use this ritual…. But the jiriki merit-transference you speak of is something else…. To provide 28  The earliest edition, in nine fascicles, is a 1698 manuscript in the Ōtani University collection. Printed in Tsumaki 1913–1916, vol. 63, pp. 1–410, and Shinshū Tenseki Kankōkai 1937, vol. 10. 29  A 1731 manuscript is held by Ōtani University. No publication of this text exists. 30  See the biography of Genchi in Maeda 1901. See also the summary in Washio 1911, p. 305b. From the Edo period, see Kakuo 1833 (1793–1856, a.k.a. Ryūgo 龍護). 31  Seven fascicles, completed in 1774. Printed in Tsumaki 1913–1916, vol. 64, pp. 3–238.

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[religious] teachings for the deceased is [a form of merit-transfer] called “Dharma providing,” and we know that if the deceased can be influenced by merit, then he can be influenced by the [Buddhist] teachings in the same way. If a different teaching is provided, he will not gain anything. If what one actively practices [in these rituals] is tariki in nature, then what the [deceased] gains is merit that is also tariki in nature. Ekū 1698, p. 286b

Ekū’s move is typical of Japanese Pure Land doctrinal debates dating back to the Kamakura period about the significance of the jiriki/tariki distinction when the outward form of practices such as nenbutsu recitation or meditation look the same. The usual solution to the dilemma was to say that nenbutsu praxis can have totally different meanings depending on the intentionality of its intoner. In this passage Ekū raises the issue of ritual recitation of nenbutsu and other liturgical texts performed on the occasion of Shinshū funerals for the kin of lay patrons and the monks themselves, problematic because such practices have a long tradition in Japan (and all of East Asia) of being employed for the expressed purpose of transferring merit to the deceased to improve his or her karmic status. His ruling is an attempt to diffuse the tension that must have arisen from those who saw such ritual as contrary to Shinshū doctrinal authority. He does this by framing the practice in terms of the hermeneutic categories of unacceptable jiriki nenbutsu versus acceptable tariki nenbutsu, and the reader is left to infer the primacy of intentionality operating within the ritual, for he does not explain how this distinction is effected. But note that Ekū has not questioned the orthodoxy or religious efficacy of practices that send merit, Buddhist teachings, or offerings to the dead as long as the deceased is still in the antarābhava state. Ekū is explicit only about the fact that he prefers transferring something with semantic significance, but since he does not deny that all of it is meaningful, his readers may have inferred that Ekū tacitly approved. Genchi, for his part, is more specific. In his Kōshinroku, he confirms just how widespread the practices of both eitai-kyō and senbu-dokkyō had become, and he expresses an odd ambivalence at the doctrinal principles underlying them. First are his comments on the eitai-kyō ceremony: These days we have something called perpetual sutra reading in which the donor puts forth a sum of money and the monks, as long as they reside in that institution, read sutras on the anniversary of someone’s death. While there are some differences, all the schools have some form of this practice. I believe, although they call it “perpetual,” that … it is

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not necessarily forever, but probably after fifty or a hundred years the ceremony tapers off…. Our school did not perform this in earlier times, as we do not see this term eitai-kyō in [our] old records. Genchi 1774, pp. 58–59

Next, Genchi comments on senbu-dokkyō: The original meaning of the Buddha’s message is that offerings to the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha generate karmic good. [Thus] when a patron requests a monk to read sutras, this is not necessarily a hardship. But the Buddhist services we have now involve gathering a lot of monks together and abbreviate the sense of offering. People today require a ceremony in which we have to go through the trouble of chanting a sutra a thousand times. This was not the intention of the Buddha. Genchi 1774, p. 54

These days the practice of chanting a sutra a thousand times is being done everywhere … but scholars have their doubts about this practice…. Such activity in pursuit of money may be justified by some, but this kind of thing must be regulated by the honzan for the branch temples and young monks…. Regarding the [proper] perspective on attaining the mind settled in faith (anjin), among the five Pure Land practices it is recitation of the Buddha’s name that is primary and recitation of the [Pure Land] sutras that is secondary. When we make sutra recitation primary, we commit the error of [orienting ourselves to] miscellaneous practices [rather than focusing properly on the nenbutsu as orthopraxy]…. The Lotus and Pure Land teachings are not the same in what they regard as primary and secondary, but they have a similar approach in stressing the importance of devoted practice to one form as their fundament. I am just arguing from the way I see it. Sutra reading itself reflects an imperial command from the Buddha with enormous benefits; it is much better to practice this than the mistakes of empty practices. The way of practice is quite profound, one should not make light of it. Genchi 1774, pp. 161–62

These statements show that Genchi felt obligated to set some kind of standard for normative funeral ritual in the Nishi Honganji. If this is an admission that some Shinshū temples had gone too far in accommodating the funerary needs of their communities, in the following statement Genchi is even more explicit about the doctrinal implications of these practices. Here he admonishes clergy

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who, in the performance of these ceremonies, are perpetuating ritual mechanisms that violate orthodox Pure Land Buddhist principles. Some have asked about what to do when someone comes forth to explain that the dead spirits of his mother and father have appeared and reported that after death they fell into one of the unfortunate realms and are suffering. He wants to save them and asks if there is not some means (hōben 方便) by which he can do so. In this case one must respond with a question about whether the person himself is resolved on the issue of his own liberation. If one believes in the Pure Land teaching, he relies on the power of the Buddha to be born in the Pure Land, and on this point it works the same way for saving others. All one can do is beg for the salvation coming from the mercy of the Buddha. Thus all these practices making use of the power that comes from reading sutras and reciting the Buddha’s name ultimately come back to the principle that one’s own liberation is grounded in relying on the power of the Buddha. How can the salvation of others come merely from the merit produced by religiously good practices? Genchi 1774, pp. 146–47

As these comments show, by the time of Ekū and Genchi—that is, the middle of the eighteenth century—an array of funerary customs had already become institutionalized at various levels of the Honganji branches of the Shinshū religious organization that were questionable if not heterodox in terms of their doctrinal correctness. The people responsible for the academic training of young monks, like these two men, seem overwhelmed by the situation. Although both scholars decry these practices as nontraditional, the fact that they complain but do not condemn them outright suggests just how deeply both—the scholars and the funeral customs of which they are speaking—had become entrenched in an institutional system that had already become dependent on the fund-raising benefits of providing these services to the public. Although I have included only a few of their comments, both Ekū and Genchi wrote in great detail about the philosophical and material aspects of funerary culture. The conflicts to which they allude reflect the enduring power of preBuddhist Japanese notions of death and the importance of caring for the dead, which, combined with Confucian norms of ancestor reverence, struggled to find homeostasis with the Buddhist doctrines of reincarnation, karma, and, in the case of Shinshū, the salvific promise of Birth in the Pure Land at death for those who realize, in Genchi’s words, “the principle that one’s own liberation is grounded in relying on the power of the Buddha.”

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Postmortem Rites for Rennyo

The memorial event requested by Rennyo’s son nearly forty years after his father’s death is perhaps the most curious of everything discussed here. I have generally argued that the appropriation of rituals for sending merit to the dead reflects accommodation with popular religious notions. But this case appears to reflect an entirely different mechanism. On the one hand, the dead beneficiary is Rennyo, who nearly single-handedly rebuilt Honganji, redefining both its philosophical and administrative structure. Are we to understand that Rennyo’s own son felt his father needed karmic help in settling in the paradise of Amida’s Pure Land? If Rennyo, the recognized representative of Shinran himself and a source of religious authority for millions, had not reached the Pure Land, what hope could there be for ordinary believers? The fact that the representative of Honganji, Shōnyo, accepted the request to perform the ceremony despite refusing the donation suggests that, to church elders, its performance was seen as meaningful. Should we infer the obvious, namely that the patriarchs of Shinshū do not immediately reach the Pure Land upon death? If so, then the validity of the doctrinal foundation upon which the entire spiritual edifice of this sect has been built would be called into question—a move that would not bode well for the future livelihood of the institution. We must therefore look for a more plausible explanation, one that supports the structure of the church rather than weakens it. It is my contention that the motivation behind Jitsujū’s request for the memorial service had nothing to do with sending merit or weal to the spirit of Rennyo, wherever it was, but rather had everything to do with bringing the spirit of Rennyo back to Honganji. In other words, like calling the dead back during the Bon festival, this is an example of that category of memorial service in Japan that does not express the need to help or please the dead so much as the desire to reverse the death process by inviting the dead to return home, in a kind of ritual reversal of severance. The overlap and/or integration with Buddhist notions of merit-transfer is therefore only superficial, while the actual pragmatic force of the ritual is of an entirely different nature. This explains why Ekū can rationalize the ritual process by saying that if one engages in services for the dead with a tariki attitude, the effect will be tariki. In orthodox Pure Land doctrine, there is, after all, a second form of parināṃana (transformation) originally proposed by Tanluan that occurs after the individual has reached the Pure Land, wherein he returns to our world to fulfill his bodhisattva vows of aiding those still mired in kleśa. In this way, important ancestors or recently deceased family members are purified and sanctified in their postmortem state because they have reached the Pure Land, becoming

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compatriots of transcendent saints, yet they are not lost to the family. Thus what takes the form of a parināṃana ritual to send weal to the dead is actually an appeal to the dead to send weal to the living. Apropos of this interpretation, I will close with the following passage from the Itokuki 遺徳記, a 1525 biography of Rennyo compiled by his sons Rengo and Jitsugo: In the year Meio 9 (1500), when we observed the first year [of Rennyo’s passing], we had a [memorial] service we put our hearts into that especially gave form to our sense of gratitude [to Rennyo]. The fervor of our voices raised to the heavens (sorayomi) went beyond the time when [Rennyo] was still alive in this world. The legacy of the kindness he showed us that we bore [in our hearts] reached followers everywhere in all directions, causing it to spread with a flourish to countries and counties where our school had never been. Thus, on the occasion of the first commemoration service, reports of flowers raining down [from the sky] occurred not only in one place but cropped up in town and country alike. After that, every time the yearly ceremony came around, there would be a flood of these reports of miraculous events. Stirred by the mourning of the brothers and disciples who survived him, that [Vital Spirit] of caring touch (ondoku) [embodied in Rennyo] makes its way through the vast cloudlike ocean [of expanse] that extends back a thousand leagues and, bearing kind thoughts toward us, takes upon itself the treacherous journey along the mountain path ten thousand furlongs in length, [winding] among ethereal peaks to arrive at this memorial hall. Inquiring as to tidings of the black and white of [the lives of both] the civilized and uncivilized, of the aristocrat as well as the poor far and near, [Rennyo] admonishes us to heed the wishes he left on his deathbed, on the occasion of his return year after year to that solemn gate [of our temple] in the pine grove—how impressive!32 In Japan, if not in all Buddhist countries, lay support for the sangha has always included some degree of expectation that the clergy would provide rituals for the dead. Although there are a number of different Buddhist teachings that provide postmortem goals to the lay community, from its initial dissemination in the Nara period up to the end of the medieval period, belief in the Pure Land 32  The full title of the Itokuki is Rennyo Shōnin itokuki 蓮如上人遺徳記. This text, which was compiled by Jitsugo, can be found in Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 3, p. 888.

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of Amida Buddha as an afterlife paradise grew steadily and rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land became markedly more accepted as a generalized religious goal. I have tried to show the basic themes in this process of expansion, specifically as they pertain to the school of Pure Land Buddhism known today as Shinshū. For the laity, the activities surrounding the death of a family member are often the most concrete and best understood expressions of the soteriological goals presumed in their faith. It is important to remember that what we are looking at in this scenario is not a problem or issue defined by a handful of priests serving a large community, but the relationship of two distinct communities; for as the passages quoted above have shown, the question of what a particular sectarian tradition’s orthodox position should be on the issue of death and funeral ritual spoke to the very core of the priests’ own religious and professional identities. Thus not only do the clergy serve the spiritual needs of the “people,” the clergy themselves are to a significant degree defined by those same lay communities. While we would like to know more about how this relationship of mutual dependence functions, the published literature is far more heavily weighted toward preserving the stated—assumedly publicly stated—positions of the priests. Scholars like Tamamuro Fumio are working at a painstakingly slow pace to uncover handwritten materials saved at local temples during the Tokugawa period so that we may eventually know more about the dynamic between temple and community. The author fully recognizes that the paper suffers from the fact that the views of the lay Shinshū believers have only been inferred from priestly statements. Today it is well known that the death of a family member is often the only time an individual may have close contact with the temple he supports financially and expects support from spiritually. While the tradition of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan has always been suggestive of afterlife concerns, the everyday nature of funerary involvement by priests exhibited in the writings quoted here suggest that all established Buddhist sects by the mid-Tokugawa period had relationships with their supporting lay communities in which mortuary rituals occupied an important if not central role. I think we can also infer from this degree of proximity to lay society that the clergy were well aware of the significance for the remaining family members of what they did and how they did it, irrespective of how far such duties may be from the original role of the sangha. Where I think the Buddhist clergy are decidedly weak in this context— from the point of view of the family—is in understanding the importance of funeral rituals for the deceased himself. This impression is particularly strong in Shinshū because merit-transfer to the dead is clearly a jiriki endeavor. Thus does Zonkaku state that no more than 10% of the merit accrued at a funeral

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will ever reach the deceased, and the implication in the statements of Ekū and Genchi is that if the individual did not achieve the proper faith while he was alive, we should not expect that any ritual has the power to change his karmic future after he has died. What I have tried to show is one case of how long-standing Buddhist institutions in Japan negotiated the conflict between doctrinal ideal and parishioner expectation during the better part of the Tokugawa period. The remarkable state of financial dependency on funeral “work” today in Japanese Buddhism thus had a long, somewhat agonizing, evolution. As this example shows, at the institutional level the temptation to exploit lay aspirations for peaceful resolution of the emotional trauma of grief and bereavement has often proved irresistible. For the learned clergy conscious of the need to maintain doctrinal rigor, however, defining the parameters of the officiating priest’s role and, in this case, rationalizing the honzan as second burial site have always been problematic. It may seem to some that this dilemma is less difficult for any school of Pure Land Buddhism since reaching the Pure Land is often accepted as a postmortem goal. But just because the Pure Land is accessible to everyone does not mean that everyone goes there. There is still a path, a kind of bodhicitta is still required. In the end, the problem for the elite intellectual community in the Genroku era (1688–1704) was not much different from the problem faced by Buddhist priests in Japan today. As these records show, regardless of the expectations placed upon Buddhist institutions to accommodate the demands of their lay community, the educated monks could not have been unaware of the doctrinal, historical, and even emotional contradictions between their positions as representatives of their respective doctrinal traditions and the religious beliefs implied in the rituals they performed or endorsed. References Akegarasu Haya 暁烏敏 ed., 1909. Ekū goroku 恵空語録. Tokyo: Muga Sanbō. Bakhtin, M., 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. M. Holquist, ed., and C. Emerson, tr. Austin: University of Texas. Bandō, Shōjun, 1996. Tannisho: Passages Deploring Deviations of Faith. BDK English Tripitaka series. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. Bloom, Alfred, 1981. Tannisho: A Resource for Modern Living. Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center. Dobbins, James, 1989. Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Ekū 慧空, 1698. Sōrinshū 叢林集. In Tsumaki 1913–1916, vol. 63. (See also Hosokawa 1974; Shinshū Tenseki Kankōkai 1937, vol. 10.) Ekū 慧空, n.d. Go-sōrei jitsuroku-shū 御葬禮實録集. Unpublished 1731 manuscript, Ōtani University. Eshinni 恵信尼, 1268. Eshinni shōsoku 恵信尼消息. In Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 1941, vol. 5, p. 99. Fujishima Tatsurō 藤島達朗 and Hosokawa Gyōjin 細川行信, 1963. Ōtani honbyō-shi 大谷本廟史. Kyoto: Ōtaniha Shūmusho. Futaba Kenkō 二葉憲香, 1983. Kodai ni okeru shūkyōteki jissen 古代における宗教的 実践. In Gyōki, Ganjin 行基・鑑真, Hiraoka Jōkai 平岡定海 and Nakai Shinkō 中井 真孝, eds., pp. 189–203. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Genchi 玄智, 1774. Kōshinroku 考信録. In Tsumaki 1913, vol. 64. Genchi 玄智, 1785. Ōtani Honganji tsūki 大谷本願寺通記. In Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan 1973, vol. 83, p. 600. (See also Hosokawa 1974; and Tsumaki 1913, vol. 68.) Goodwin, Janet R., 1994. Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Gorai Shigeru 五来重, 1975. Kōya hijiri 高野聖. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Hosokawa Gyōjin 細川行信, 1974. Shinshū shiryō shūsei dai-hachi kan: jishi, iseki 真宗資 料集成第 8 巻: 寺誌・遺跡. Kyoto: Dōbōsha. Inoue Kaoru 井上薫, 1997. Gyōki jiten 行基辞典. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai. Itō Shintetsu 伊藤真徹, 1974. Heian jōdokyō shinkō-shi no kenkyū 平安浄土教信仰史の 研究. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten. Kakuo 覺應, 1833. Seiryū kidan 清流紀談. Osaka: Shūseisha. (Reprinted in Shinpen Shinshū zensho: Shiden-hen 新編真宗全書・史伝編 10, Shinpen Shinshū Zensho Kankokai, ed., 1977.) Kaneko Daiei 金子大榮, Ōhara Shōjitsu 大原性実, and Hoshino Genpō 星野玄豊, 1983. Shin Shinshū jiten 新真宗辞典. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Kobayashi Yoshinori 小林芳規, et al., 1983. Kokanpon “Honganji shōnin Shinran denne” (Godenshō) no kenkyū: Zenkeiji-zō 子刊本「本願寺聖人親鸞伝絵」(御伝鈔) の研 究―善慶寺蔵. Shiga Prefecture, Moriyama: Zenkeiji. Maeda Eun 前田慧雲, 1901. Honganjiha gakuji-shi 本願寺派学事史. Tokyo: Bunmeido. (Reprinted Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1975.) Morioka Kiyomi 森岡清美, 1965. Haka no nai ie (bosei no ichi sokumen) 墓のない家 (墓制の一側面). Shakai to denshō 9/1: 13–19. Morioka Kiyomi 森岡清美, 1978. Shinshū kyōdan ni okeru ie no kōzō 新修教団における 家の構造. Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō. Nakai Shinkō 中井真考, 1991. Gyōki to kodai Bukkyō 行基御古代仏教. Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō. Nemoto Seiji 根本誠二, 1991. Nara Bukkyō to Gyōki denshō no tenkai 奈良仏教と行基伝 承の展開. Tokyo: Yūzankaku.

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Nishikawa Shūichi 西川宗一, 1991. Sengoku jidai Honganji no sōrei 戦国時代本願寺 の葬礼. Shinshū kenkyū 35: 57–74. Sasaki Kōshō 佐々木考正, 1987. Bukkyō minzoku-shi no kenkyū 仏教民俗史の研究. Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan. Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensansho 真宗聖教全書編纂所, ed., 1941. Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書, 5 volumes. Shinshū Tenseki Kankōkai 眞宗典籍刊行曾, ed., 1937. Zoku Shinshū taikei 続真宗大系. Tokyo: Shinshū Tenseki Kankōkai. Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan 鈴木学術財団, ed., 1973. Dainihon Bukkyō zensho. Tokyo: Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan. Tamamuro Fumio 圭室文雄, 1987. Nihon Bukkyō-shi: Kinsei 日本仏教史・近世. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Tamamuro Taijō 圭室諦成, 1963. Sōshiki Bukkyō 葬式仏教. Tokyo: Daihōrinkaku. Teiser, Stephen F., 1994. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Terakawa Shunshō 寺川俊昭, 1999. Tannishō to Rennyo 歎異抄と蓮如. In Rennyo no sekai 蓮如の世界. Ōtani Daigaku Shinshū Sōgō Kenkyūsho ed., pp. 77–97. Kyoto: Bun’eidō. Tsumaki Chokuryō 妻木直良, ed., 1913–1916. Shinshū zensho 真宗全書. Kyoto: Zōkyō Shoin. (Reprinted Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1974–1977.) Uematsu Torazō 上松寅三, 1966. Ishiyama Honganji nikki 石山本願寺日記. Osaka: Seibundō. Washio Junkei 鷲尾純敬, 1911. Zōtei Nihon bukka jinmei jisho 増訂日本佛家人名辞書. Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu. Yamazaki Yoshishige 山崎美成, 1842. Meika ryakuden 名家略伝. Edō: Eiya Bunzō.

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Steadied Ambiguity: the Afterlife in “Popular” Shin Buddhism Galen Amstutz 1

Preface: a Diversity of Afterlives

In the movie Wandafūru raifu (literally “Wonderful Life”, distributed in the US under the title “After Life”) (1998), director Kore’eda Hirokazu imagined a quirky bureaucratic office to which the dead go just after they expire. There each newly deceased human being must select one memory from life to take with her or him—on videotape—before she or he is sent along to some indeterminate eternal rest. With the help of a staff of hardworking salaryman-like facilitators, laboring away in a building that looks like a run-down school in a wasteland, each person chooses a memory and then participates in the shooting of the video of the scene. The facilitators are dead individuals who have never been able to make a choice and are thus stuck in their limbo-like jobs until they can commit themselves to a single memory. In planning his story, Kore’eda is supposed to have asked 500 elderly Japanese citizens to share their most profound memories with him, the ones they would choose to bear to eternity. Moments thus rendered in the film include gathering flowers and leaves as a nine-year-old; flying through clouds in a small airplane; sitting on benches in a park with loved ones; giving flowers to a daughter at a wedding; dancing in a red dress as a little girl; riding to school in a tram with a fresh breeze; lying in sunshine as an infant; enjoying amusement rides at Disneyland; or as a child simply putting one’s head in one’s mother’s lap. Wondafūru raifu is in no way an overtly religious film, yet a vaguely (yet secularized) Buddhist background atmosphere clings to it, as it clings to much of Japanese literature in the twentieth century. The film embodies respect for the sheer variability and individuality of personal experience, and it depicts a sense of responsibility for the creatability of experience via sometimes visionary imagination. Yet, for the purposes of this essay, perhaps most intriguingly the film points to a diversity of ideas about the ideal state of the mind

S ource: Amstutz, Galen, “Steadied Ambiguity: The Afterlife in ‘Popular’ Shin Buddhism,” in Susanne Formanek and William LaFleur (eds.), Practicing the Afterlife: Perspectives from Japan, Wien: Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004, pp. 157–177.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_020

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after death. Wandafūru raifu suggests that not monolithic sensibility, but rather diversity in the conception of death and the afterlife has been normal in Japanese experience. Such diversity can be approached from several perspectives. Kore’eda, a secularist artist in the late twentieth century, has looked from a purely individual angle. A specialist in folklore studies might instead focus attention on the customary beliefs, perhaps only orally transmitted, of a single region or locality. An academic scholar of modern religious cults might tend to emphasize an official monolithic view supposed to be shared among all the members of a single religious organization. However, research on a traditional or “conservative” Japanese Buddhist organization, Jōdo shinshū, reveals something else again: under the umbrella of a single species of widespread religious rhetoric, a diverse range of ideas about the afterlife exists. After briefly reviewing Shin doctrine, this essay will focus on the role of linguistic ambiguity in Shin, the multiple understandings of the afterlife which this allowed, and several additional types of ambiguity which accompany Shin thought about death. 2

A Pocket Summary of Shin Buddhism

Although it seems to have lost much of its previous cultural energy in the postWorld War II period, in earlier Japanese history (ca. 1500–1940) Jōdo shinshū (‘True’ Pure Land Tradition) was a major factor in Japanese life. Indeed, depending on exactly how the reach of “Confucianism” is understood, Shin was perhaps the largest single integrated religious/philosophical discourse during the Tokugawa period,1 when about 30% of the whole Japanese population was enrolled in Shin temples. Today its two main institutional parts, the Nishi and Higashi Honganji’s together constitute what is still the largest single religious membership in Japan, claiming about 10% of the modern citizenry.2

1  The argument is that other forms of Tokugawa discourse were in comparison non-extensive, or piecemeal, or discontinuous, or purely localized. These forms included not only Confucianism, but also organized Shintō, folk religion, other schools of Buddhism, and samurai ideology. 2  That is, about 12.5 million people. For comparison, this is about twice the number of ethnic Tibetans; and in terms of wealth, assuming that the Shin members are linked to about 10% of the modern Japanese GNP, then the wealth of the Shin community in Japan (at least until recently) that of all the Theravāda countries together On premodern membership figures, see Amstutz (1997:141); on current census data, see Shūkyō nenkan 1997.

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Shin was based on a distinct form of institutionalization of authority in Buddhism. Viewed from a broad perspective, historically three principal types of authority relationships have emerged (Amstutz 1998).3 The orthodox or classical version of Buddhism—sanctioned by earliest Indian practice and by the earliest literature—reflected the ancient Indian pattern of the wandering renunciant religious specialist. Its essential feature was the saṃgha, a community of (usually male) persons which undertook to reenact the mythic life of the Buddha Śākyamuni by following the special rules (vinaya) which Śākyamuni allegedly issued to regulate his closest followers. In practice classical Buddhism seems to have merged with a field of expectations (supernormal powers, state patronage) shared with other Indian renunciant traditions. The second major pattern in Buddhism has been tantrism or Vajrayāna (gurucentrism). This involved a specialist model in which authority formerly vested in the vinaya community was transferred instead to various lineages of tantric teachers. Orthodox and tantric Buddhism both typically used some kind of monistic mythophilosophical language, but at the same time the dualistic experiential realities with which Buddhism was concerned (ignorance and enlightenment) were reflected in monk/lay or guru/disciple dualisms in earthly institutionalization. Pure Land Buddhism—especially independent, nonmonastic Pure Land Buddhism, of which Shin was the most extreme development—has been the third major historical pattern. In contrast to the other two, Pure Land myth situated “the Buddha” as an object of “faith” outside the world—and the world’s authority structures. This conceptual structure— philosophically dualistic in appearances only—was relatively institutionally indeterminate and tended to spiritually equalize the earthly practitioners. Pure Land Buddhism had a substantial prior history before reaching Japan, but Shin was the most successful of its developments in Asia. The distinctive language of Shin Buddhism was developed by Shinran (1173–1262) who can be interpreted as an institutional revisionist who rejected traditional claims for monastic authority (Amstutz 1997b). Re-formulating earlier Pure Land ideas, the key points of his teaching were the institutional transcendence of the lay/ monk polarity in the hisō hizoku (“neither monk nor lay”) principle,4 Buddhist 3  Of course in large parts of the Buddhist teachings which have been introduced in the West outside Asia in the twentieth century especially the Zen and vipassana meditation movements, these traditional authority questions have mattered somewhat less. Instead, under the impact of modern psychology and cognitive science, authority is more technocentric, that is, vested in Methods of Meditation. 4  Shinran’s ideas culminated institutionally in the denial of the meaningfulness of the monklay categories in the experience of enlightenment. Traditional Buddhism often conceded that enlightenment involved a “leap” the exact karmic preconditions of which were not precisely knowable, but had generally accepted the authority of mythic models of monasticism Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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practice as akuninshōki awareness,5 and the essential concept of enlightenment as ekō (“transfer of merit,” Skt. parinōma[nā]). According to this concept, enlightenment must happen in the final analysis by itself, by some process coming as it were from “outside” the ego (tariki). Ekō referred to the transformation requiring shinjin, “yielding or entrusting,” towards the “Amida Buddha” which represented perfect enlightenment. In Shinran’s vision, “Amida” in and of itself had a certain dynamic energy or a “working” to effect enlightenment in human minds, a process which did not ultimately require monasticism, meditation, texts, other Buddhist deities, or any ritual practices understood as able to cause final enlightenment intentionally—such miscellaneous practices were lumped together under the classification of jiriki, “self-power.” Although undermining monastic authority was unconventional, Shinran’s ideas can be seen as merely a restatement of certain classical Buddhist problems, especially the necessary spontaneity of the “leap” to religious transformation; and it should be emphasized that the notion of “reliance on an (external) deity” was also highly traditional in all kinds of Buddhism. Rennyo, the “middle founder” of Shin (1415–1499), contributed (especially in his ofumi or letters) another layer of language derived from Shinran but which was rather less technically Buddhological. Combining folksiness and indoctrination, Rennyo’s discourse tended to become the lingua franca of the later Shinshū tradition. Due to its innovations in authority (and mythic) structures in a Buddhist tradition, Shin in its encounters with the West has been routinely recognized as having certain roughly “protestant” qualities, which, actually were most closely “anabaptist” political qualities.6 3

The Key Background Issue: the Essentiality of Ambiguity in Linguistic Phenomena

Orthodox Shin Buddhism was on the surface marked by a fairly tight, distinctive form of religious language based on the works of Shinran and Rennyo. In spite of this relative distinctiveness, the language allowed multiple understandings or of charismatic teachers and lineages. Instead Shinran pushed to the limit the idea that no person or lineage directly could mediate the working of the Buddha. 5  Having marginalized the normal monastic approaches, religious practice for Shinran consisted instead of the recognition of the give and take of the states of suffering and liberation in everyday life, i.e. the push and pull of human ignorance and “Amida’s light.” 6  A quality historically unfavored both in the neocalvinist American context and in the Catholic and post-Catholic European contexts. On the limits of the Protestant comparison, see Amstutz (1998). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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of the afterlife to coexist under its umbrella. To understand how this multivalence could arise requires an appreciation of the essential role of ambiguity as a universal device of language and communication. A recognition of ambiguity as a property intrinsic to “information” in the broadest theoretical sense has become widespread in the late twentieth century and has emerged as an analytical tool in diverse fields including linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and studies of cognition. Against earlier “platonic” expectations of Western philosophers guided by an ideal conception of language as “utterly precise, determinate, purely literal and perfectly univocal” (Scheffler 1979:1–6), empirical modern linguistics has long demonstrated the pervasiveness of vagueness and ambiguity (Fries 1980).7 Ordinarily, natural language speakers are not even aware that such vagueness usage constitutes a “problem;” rather it is a taken-for-granted, normal feature of practical communication.8 Ambiguity seems to be intrinsically embedded in cognitive processes. Brain scientists have explored the normal (not exceptional) phenomenon of “multistability,” which refers in cognitive processing to a stimulus pattern which usually allows for more than one interpretation, i.e. more than one stable form of interactive structure (Kruse and Stadler 1995).9

7  Technically such phenomena are known by terms such as semantic indefiniteness, bivalence, uncertainty, context dependence, presupposition failures, metaphors, self-referentiality, arbitrary relational and classificational properties, and so on (Pinkal 1995). Similarly, overlaps, interruptions, grammatical incompletions, and false starts, with which natural language is replete, also manifest vagueness. The usual distinction between ambiguity and vagueness is that in the former two or more distinct meanings can be attached indecisively, whereas in the latter no distinct meanings at all can be determined; Channell (1994:34–38) thinks ambiguity in this sense is less important than vagueness in real practice, because usually people choose one possible distinct meaning if such is available. Ullman (1962:34–38) attributed vagueness to four factors: a) the generic nature of words, which create somewhat fuzzy categories; b) the fact that all interpretation is context-bound; c) lack of clear-cut boundaries; in the “objective” nonlinguistic world itself; d) lack of familiarity and experience among speakers with what given words stand for. 8  Only where necessary, the process of “precisification” is that by which less ambiguous meanings are achieved (van Deemter and Peters 1996). 9  Such research often focuses on visual perception and explores relations to the structure of the brain, particularly the internally determined, self-organizing properties which lead to multistability. In fact, multistability characterizes a wide range of physical and biological phenomena. At the highest level of abstraction, as suggested for example by the physical scientist Guiseppe Caglioti (1992; especially pp. 11–20), “ambiguity” is the decision-making boundary region between a state of entropy (low or nonexistent information, uncertainty, static symmetry) and any of a number of possible states of high information (active order, dynamic structures, nonstatic equilibria). In this most theoretical sense, ambiguity is one of the universal properties matter, energy, and information.

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Historically the practical recognition and appreciation of ambiguity seems to have been commonplace, and linguistic cultures have often been intensely concerned with vividness, evocativeness, and complex effects like metaphor, irony, and analogy (Levine 1985:20–43). In medieval European literature, ambiguity was construed not as a fault but a source of richness (Cerquiglini 1988). Nevertheless and perhaps ironically in view of the sophistication of linguistic, cognitive and anthropological theories in this regard, modern feelings about ambiguity remain ambivalent. Ambiguity may be celebrated in postmodern and deconstructionist discourse, but modernity retains a craving for some kind of fixity or certainty in the management of language or perception of the world. The reasons for this persistent ambivalence seem to be both scientific and religious. On the one hand, historians note that from a global perspective it is peculiarly the modern Western scientific tradition, beginning from the seventeenth century, which has been obsessed with the pursuit of univocal meaning and extreme precision. In most modern sciences, vagueness and ambiguity represent practical weakness or failure.10 On the other hand, hesitancy is also deeply embedded in Christian culture. Even if modern conditions of knowledge no longer coherently allow static understandings of reality, at formal theological and ontological/​epistemological levels, the foundational orientation of traditional Christian thought makes it challenging to have a positive appreciation of ambiguity.11

10  The attitude was expressed in the enlightenment search for a universal (scientific) language. Later, the pursuit extended to the social sciences also, with a consequent strong tendency to underrepresent, obscure or ignore ambiguous and vague experience; only a few social scientists such as Georg Simmel or Robert Merton have shown a theoretical appreciation of ambiguity (Levine 1985:1–20, 33, 37; Scheffler 1979). 11  Tracy (1987) has discussed how against the background of traditional Christian theology the modern pluralized, contextualized, non-foundationalized, history-tied sense of language and communications can be seen as highly disorienting and fragmenting, a fundamental interruption in earlier models of cultural conversation—even though that older conversation was understood as “interpretive” (i.e. classically “hermeneutical”). Page (1985:9–34) has dwelt on the problem of how the presence of God can even be explained in view of the essentially ambiguous nature of lived experience. For Paul van Buren (1972) the problem is how to adapt older Christian ontological sensibilities to the altered understanding of the fundamentally socially-constructed nature of knowledge; this can be done (at least among religious intellectuals) by arguing for an objective perception of God that can be (mystically?) re-moved to the edges of language, i.e. to the far boundary areas of human-constructed consciousness where ordinary cognition may not work in the same way. For Bernard Cooke (1990), all cognition is indeed constructed, but the Christian perception of God resides in a more or less specially privileged, transcendent category which makes it less relative or contingent than other constructions.

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Still, some scholars in the modern Western religious studies’ tradition have appreciated positively the depth and richness of cognitive ambiguity per se. For one of these, Conrad Hyers (1995), a student of Zen, religious experience is always ambiguous because it is tensioned between relatively concrete, literalistic “prophetic” understandings and more or less trans-cognitive mystical understandings; this kind of epistemic ambiguity per se—not any alleged substantial commonality in an underlying “sacred”—is the most universal thing about religious life.12 And this is what brings us back to Japan. For one thing, it is a truism that here—appreciated—ambiguity plays a role in communication of all kinds. Japanese literature, especially poetry, contains a vast heritage of multivalent and polysemic effects with words. Religiously it has been a cliché that no other major region in the world has manifested as much attitudinal ambiguity, pluralistic diversity, and ideological complexity and Japanese religions not only typically co-exist with one another without dramatic confrontation, but often mutually influence and assimilate each other to form a syncretic religious ideology at the expense of the original purity and integrity of each (Wei-Hsun Fu 1985).13 What is even more, in the traditional Japanese sphere of Buddhist epistemological discourse, the mainstream discussion—familiar at the least from Zen, but originating in India—focused on the enlightenment experience as occupying some place on the edge of fixed uses of language. A kind of “multistability” of interpretations—hōben (Skt. upōya)—was also intrinsic to Buddhist teaching practices. Hōben, sometimes rendered as “liberative technique,” conveyed the idea that any number of communicative approaches, from the simplest to the most complex, might all play a role in leading people in the direction of Buddhist understanding. For Buddhists, the so-called “linguistic turn” potentially offers an enriched source of positive explanations for their predominant philosophical and practical orientations. Such positive interaction, however, is still relatively underdeveloped in formal intellectual ways.14 One reason for this might be that the 12  See also an approach called “theolinguistics,” which incorporates a hard core of cognitive anthropology and sociolinguistics, in van Noppen (1983); for another example MacCormac (1983). Notice also that a tradition does exist in the second half of the twentieth century proposing the constructed and constructable nature of Christian theology (see works by Sallie McFague, Gordon Kaufman and numerous others). 13  As puristic exceptions the author suggests original Shintō as purified by Motoori Norinaga, the Zen philosophy of Dōgen, or the Pure Land thought of Hōnen and Shinran. However, when put into social practice, each of these sets of ideas tended to become more ambiguous than in the minds of the founders. 14  Even theoretical applications to religious studies have been limited. As one example, sociologist of new religions Shimazono Susumu (1982) has offered a sketch of a theoretical

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tensions between the various meanings ambiguity allowed have come to be untraditionally emphasized in the post-Meiji period in Japan, when Japanese intellectuals have been—and often still are—under the influence of pressures from early modern (rather than post-modern) Western expectations and forms of thought. Shin Buddhism has been no exception to this. Thus, although hesitancies about ambiguity would seem to have nothing to do with traditional Japanese religions, twentieth-century Shin elites have tended to engage in early modernist polarization and have too frequently drawn a sharp distinction between the “pure” teaching and lay adherents’ “folk” expectations, especially when it comes to issues of death and the afterlife.15 4

Ambiguity in Shin Language and Multiple Understandings of the Afterlife

A spectrum of perhaps five “normal” ideas about the afterlife which were active among Shin members can be briefly listed, according to a rising hierarchy starting from non-Buddhist ideas and climbing to the formally Buddhist ones: 1) Folk religious interpretation, especially ancestor religion: Especially in the past, the ordinary Shin members’ understanding was shaped by a variety of popular Japanese conceptions, especially the folk ancestral paradise in the mountains or the sea. Such a “Pure Land” was conceived in a fairly literal way as the abode of the ancestors, particularly those with whom the living would be reunited at the end of their lives. The significance of this interpretation is obvious because until the twentieth century the majority of Shin rural members were poor agriculturalists who were in need of the most elementary kinds of world-view support and reassurance. Of course, in a broad perspective this basic folk understanding of death—as a phenomenon relating to one’s continuing spirit family of ancestors—is generic to many human societies. In a highly folkish environment interpretations could emerge which were altogether disconnected from official Shin teachings: for example, interest in “rebirth” could focus on ki-zui (manifestations of good omens at the death of some person thought to be enlightened) or on the “Pure Land” salvation of dead children—which promised a kind of justice for the innocent (Kashiwabara 1981). position in religious studies that argues for a pluralistic objectivity that differs from the objectivity stressed by Western sociologists of religious. Such a conception necessarily involves ambiguity, but could also better cope with the problems of contemporary culture. 15  Cf. Reader and Tanabe (1998:94–98); see also this volume, p. 17.

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2)

Buddhist hells: Official Shin teaching was not primarily interested in hells. However, Shin members could certainly believe in these as a theoretical possibility because they were part of the generic imaginative field of all kinds of Buddhism in Japan. In the first generation of teachers following Shinran, Zonkaku (1290–1373) discussed the underworld in detail in his Jōdo kenmon-shū, although primarily for the purpose of discounting the importance of hell practices for Shin followers (Teiser 1994:61–62). Fascinatingly ambiguous later in the Tokugawa period was the active use, as part of Shin preaching performances led by Shin ministers, of etoki picture scrolls depicting the horrors of hells (Sekiyama 1982:140). This kind of communication (entertainment?) could simultaneously reinforce the conception of hells while emphasizing to the ordinary Shin members the benevolence of Shin Buddhist doctrine, which made any such karmic fate unnecessary! 3) Indeterminate karmic recirculation: Official Shin teaching was not primarily interested in standard karmic rebirth either. However standard rebirth was like hells a theoretical possibility which was part of the generic perspective of Buddhism.16 4) Temporary residence in a karmic transit zone near the Amida Buddha (conventional inherited Pure Land interpretation): As part of his reconstruction and reinterpretation of earlier uses of Pure Land mythic language, Shinran’s doctrine retained elements of earlier Pure Land teachings about the potential for a rebirth of the consciousness in a karmic transit zone, located with Amida between this earthly realm and the state of perfect enlightenment. These ideas were presented in (or relegated to) the last chapter of Shinran’s interpretive anthology of Pure Land texts, the Kyōgyōshinshō. According to this chapter, persons who in earthly existence did not achieve the satori of real “yielding” or “entrusting” would be born in the “contingent” Pure Land and eventually experience the full light of Amida, but only after waiting for 500 years closed up in lotus buds. Although the conception of the transit zone was thus incorporated, entry into this intermediate state—which paralleled the level of expectation which was the mainstream idea in earlier East Asian Pure Land teaching—remained, as far as idealized orthodox Shin doctrine was concerned, of secondary interest in comparison to the hope

16  Official Shin teaching tended in actuality to short-circuit ideas 2) and 3) because a proper encounter with the “true” Pure Land teaching of Shin was supposed to lead to idea 4) as the outcome (at worst).

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of attaining real enlightenment (“yielding to the Buddha” or shinjin) (Hirota 1997: 62–71). 5) High level Buddhist claims, in which “Amida’s Pure Land” represents supreme perfect enlightenment, the state in which karma has evaporated. From this standpoint, the Shin teaching about death was merely in the mainstream of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. A human being is a stream of consciousness that moves through an imponderable number of lifetimes and physical bodies. Gradually it achieves detachment from its appetites via the accumulation of better karma. When a certain level of breakthrough is achieved in a lifetime—which happens according to Shin via tariki—unwanted karma ceases at the end of that biological span. Especially pointed in Shin teaching was the idea that in consequence of shinjin or trusting to the Buddha—which occurs in life with no particular reference to imminent death—death when it eventually happens subsequently takes care of itself. While the ideas of enlightenment and deletion of karma in Buddhism may raise a host of thorny problems, none of these are peculiar to Shinshū. Of course, these at least five normal Shin interpretations of the afterlife were and remained in a certain (muted) tension; they can be considered as almost startlingly different, because these apparently unconnected meanings were produced simultaneously, via superficially identical language, by means of something like conceptual puns.17 Nonetheless, they could be equally packaged inside the one central formula of Shin which, in its most universally popularized and ultra-condensed form, was that “Amida Buddha” “liberates/ rescues” (sukuu) all persons equally; and death, especially, would take care of itself, provided that the person has previously undergone “yielding or entrusting” to the “Amida.” Be grateful, and recite the name of the Buddha in thankfulness! The precise interpretation of this capsule message, however, depended entirely on one’s understanding of the condensed terms “Amida” and “liberate/ rescue,” and was tied especially to the richness of an individual’s relationship to the deep background tradition. In fact, Shinran’s primary language was highly Buddhological and in its full depth depended on the whole background tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism; Rennyo’s restatements of Shinran’s teachings ultimately had the same background. But it is also a fact that the philosophical background became diffuse and hazy when the language was simplified and taken out of context. One extreme of interpretation, then, could be a literalism in which “Amida” was something like a physical god who “liberates” or “rescues” people’s “souls” to a physical paradise. At the other extreme, the 17  The third type of ambiguity in the classic study by Empson (1957:117–150).

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language served as another variety of metaphor for (the usual) Mahāyāna philosophy, existential psychology, aesthetics, and so on, in which “liberation” meant the dissolution of karma. One might imagine obtaining a “census”-like understanding about what proportions of the Shin community fell into one category of interpretation or the other. However, exact measurement of the interpretations of an ambiguous religious language is probably not only inaccessible per se, but further hampered in the case of Shin for several reasons intrinsic to its tradition. For one, traditionally Japanese Shin ministers (sōryō) and members lived inside their ambiguity-supporting language world—experiencing the effects and taking them as given—without needing to thematize or make them explicit in some kind of “scientific” context such as linguistics or anthropology. For another, Shin ministers were more or less responsible for serving as apologists for the educated, high-expectation Buddhological mode of Shin teaching. Even if they were in practical terms perfectly aware of folk Shinshū and its range of literalistic or unsatisfactory understandings, to the extent that they were actually committed to promoting official Shin “orthodoxy” they were not in the business of bringing the folk aspect of the religion under descriptive scrutiny unnecessarily. Finally and most importantly, Shin leaders—even when they were unfriendly to the magical and supernaturalistic aspects of folk religion— were also deeply committed to a social politics of openness and to making as much religious meaning possible, to as many people as possible, in as openended a way as possible. Indeed, the management of a richly multivalent religious language—the “steadied ambiguity” of the system—was probably the key to its success (Andreasen 1998:132–139, 178–180). Jōdo shinshū’s matured stability was located not in strict adherence to one mode of interpretation— either a high intellectual tradition or a simplistic folkishness—but rather in a common body of broad social ideals and an institutional networking which developed over centuries. Therefore, the leadership’s active opposition to folk religion was typically confined to certain socially destructive aspects (e.g. personal pollution beliefs or fox possession beliefs) but was not exercised against others which could be understood as socially constructive such as ancestor veneration. Indeed, Shin Buddhism often reinforced folk ancestral religion, for example, by its coordination with o-bon celebrations. Popular Shin preaching even overtly reinforced a family religious element via a (non-Shinranian) metaphorical description of the Amida Buddha as “great parent” (oyasama). via Japanese amae mentality, which implies psychological identification with and dependence upon parent figures, oyasama rhetoric can indeed reinforce the more Buddhological Shin emphasis on tariki (Grossberg 1999).

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From the best-educated standpoint, Shin Buddhism—like most religious traditions—understood its message to be intended to influence the consciousness of people far before the last-minute crisis of biological death and the funeral. But in many temples—perhaps especially today, in the post-World War II period, when Shin like other forms of Japanese Buddhism in many places tends to be primarily a mortuary business—for most ordinary members, the (last minute) funeral event is important and pivotal to the “afterlife.” Many hereditary members are not attuned to any of the classical ideas associated with traditional Shin, especially that a developed prior “faith in the Buddha” (by any interpretation) is required to lead to the automatic karmic resolution at death. This kind of indifferentism creates another set of ambiguities about the afterlife in Shin which affects the liturgical professionals. How can the tradition rationalize and explain Shin death ritual for the hitherto indifferent member, for whom the religious purposes intended by the higher educational end of the tradition are hollow and empty? Under such circumstances, the funeral can be seen optimistically as a hopeful celebration of Amida’s action, despite the individual’s lack of apparent awareness of Buddhist teachings. Because of its egalitarian and universalizing political nature, orthodox Shin has tended to prefer to avoid defining or overexamining individual religious experience too closely; a principle of turning not so much a blind as a nonjudgmental eye to the inner experience of another person has dominated.18 It should be noted here that, whereas in terms of the afterlife, all forms of Buddhism are multivalent and indeterminate, Shin encompassed even greater interpretive ambiguity in this regard than “normal” monastic Buddhism.19 18  For a historical discussion of Shin elites’ awareness of a conflict between doctrinal ideas and parishioners’ expectations with regard to funerals and commemorative services, and of how they negotiated this conflict, see Blum (2000). 19  Historically, the key to “Buddhism” as a self-replicating socio-religious phenomenon has been orthopraxy, with an essentially constitutive ritual component which was rooted in monastic rule-observance, not intellectual or doctrinal orthodoxy. (Modern Western approaches to Buddhism, when conditioned by Protestant Christianity, have often been too Psychologistic and intellectual to acknowledge this historical role of orthopraxy; only the approach via “technique” allows the clarification of the traditional monastic premise that Buddhism is primarily a mode of orthopraxis.) Shin’s alteration of the monastic premises of “Buddhism” (see above, p. 159f.) involved changing a crucial structural assumption. It altered the paradigm of ritualized orthopraxis in a drastic manner which practically did away with intelligible discussion between old and new formats of Buddhism. Shin Buddhism almost never had “intellectual” debates (about philosophy, epistemology, theory of knowledge) with other kinds of Japanese Buddhism. The reason is that on the philosophical level there were not any crucial differences (essentially, Shin was based in Tendai). purpose of Shin language instead concerned practical authority; as such it

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The monastic model tended to presuppose a linear, life to life development of consciousness, in which the individual accumulated intentive merit towards entry into monastic status and eventual Buddhahood. In such a framework, the interpretive and behavioral ambiguity was primarily tied to linear advancement: where is a given person located in the progressive karmic flow? In Shin’s radical tariki model, matters of reception and interpretation were significantly more indeterminate, diverse, and unpredictable. Religious status in the egalitarian community could not be measured against a linear progress model. Rather, the ambiguity of reception and interpretation was simultaneous among all individuals, for all were subject (at least at the ultimate level of final enlightenment) to the uncontrollable workings of “Amida.” Of course such an idealistically generous, or overgenerous, spiritual attitude undermines itself by creating appearances of mere economic opportunism in the performance of funerals. What if the purpose of the funeral is to exploit textual magic or the minister’s reputation for “sanctity” rather than to celebrate (in the orthodox way) the ekō of the Buddha? Such an “empty” funeral can be a ritually implausible event, expressing logical inconsistency, false formalism, last minute grasping for spiritual insurance, or a craving for talismanic protection against bad luck or death pollution—all matters of “superstitious” belief beyond the “normal” five-part range of ideas about the afterlife which might circulate in Shin as noted above. On the other hand, indirect evidence is adequate to suggest that over several centuries (ca. 1600–1900) the Shin leadership made successful efforts in teaching that effected significant modifications in the folk culture of Shin. These brought significant sectors of the membership closer to orthodox Buddhist views and marked them out to some extent from other parts of Japanese society. The printing of Shin texts was extensive in the Tokugawa period. Among the orthodox texts, wasan collections were printed more than 200 times, the Shōshinge hundreds of times and even the Kyōgyōshinshō around 33 times after 1624. In addition, publishers and Buddhist bookstores turned out a large was distanced from the earlier orthopraxy/ritual disputes because it was not concerned about selecting from the wide possible array of monastic-based rituals, texts, gurus, or techniques. Now, disagreements about orthopraxis—if they cannot be covered by some kind of negotiated ambiguity—may be intractable because they may involve decisions about organizational and institutional action. Thus, after the Kamakura period perhaps the most significant “controversy” in Japanese Buddhism took place in local community organization; it was in this sense that Shin (especially after 1600) tended to heavily affect Buddhist “debate” in Japan. Thus traces of Shin “decision-making about orthopraxis” survive not so much in lecture room debates among educated elites as they survive in the thousands of village temples or in the mass publication of popular literature.

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quantity of ritual books, ephemeral story books, advice books, and guidebooks. The Tokugawa religious market was apparently saturated with information about Shin (Honganji shiryō kenkyūjo 1974:II: 416–437; Sasaki 1967 and 1969; Asai 1966). A major religious dispute ca. 1800 called the sangōwakuran revealed that strong interest in Shin doctrinal matters was widespread among literate members in several regions of Japan. Thus, awareness among the broader membership of the higher Buddhological traditions became more widespread than might at first be imagined. From the early Tokugawa period onwards, Shin opened up an educational middle ground between the folk interests of the mass membership and the classical Buddhological interests of the handful of leaders at the top. This transition was marked by the serious education of a substantial ministerial class, which was supported by local temple congregations all over Japan. Indeed, after the mid-seventeenth century, the two major Shin seminaries in Kyoto were among the largest educational institutions of Tokugawa Japan (1,000 to 2,000 students in attendance). Interest in the Shin intellectual tradition was extended out of Kyōto to some regions such as Etchū, where a powerful regional community of scholar ministers spread popular knowledge of serious Shin doctrine (Gakkoku Etchū henshū iinkai 1984). This trend was especially obvious in regard to death and the afterlife. Funeral customs became simpler than those of the other sects. Home ihai were avoided in Shin. Shin members were the largest community of Japanese to regularly practice cremation (a truly Buddhist practice) rather than inhumation before the modern period; incidentally this had the effect of very rapid purification of the corpse, which encouraged the relaxation of taboos. Before the Meiji period’s legal insistence on ie law, Shin districts did not have grave markers, or only very simple ones, for the bones were housed in the temple. This nōkotsu was a communalized survival of the old cult of the dead, but it supported many fewer taboos and anxieties (Fujii 1986:140–142; Mogami 1963) In the Tokugawa period Shin communities were labeled with the proverbial expression “monto mono shirazu” (“Shin followers know nothing”) because of their inattention to customary practices (Kodama 1976:234–235). A Shin tendency to a relative rejection of generic Buddhist magic or supernaturalism was widely recognized.20 20  For example as reflected in the writings of the thinker Dazai Shundai (1680–1747) in his Seigaku mondō: “The ikkōshū [Shin] members focus on entrusting to the one Amida Buddha. In any case they don’t do things such as kitō, and even in sickness they don’t use magical talismans or water. They are all like this, even down the stupid underclass farm women and servants. This is the power of Shinran’s teaching. As for myself, I am not ikkōshū, I trust to Confucius, but like those who entrust to Amida, in keeping demons and

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The interpretive complexity involved in Shin, then, was at least as great as that in other forms of Buddhism. In the case of Shin, however, the “multistable” operation of its language has probably not been evaluated adequately.21 Distinctly misleading has been the summary conceptualization of Shin as a “popular” religion. In an article in the Encyclopedia of Religion religious scholar Charles H. Long (1987) has summarized seven academic usages of the term “popular religion”; according to him, the term can mean: 1) rural, peasant society; 2) the religion of the laity in a religious community in contrast to that of the (literate) clergy; 3) the pervasive beliefs, rituals, and values of a given society; 4) an amalgam of esoteric beliefs and practices usually located in the lower strata of society; 5) the religion of a subclass or minority group in a culture; 6) the religion of the masses in contrast to that of the sophisticated and discriminating; or 7) an ideological construct about religion invented by the elite levels of society. Most of these usages are problematic when applied to Shin. Shin was rural, but certainly not a primitive folk religion in the sense of local “shrine Shintō” (in Shin’s folk religious mode, it was a uniquely modified folk tradition). There was some distinction between the perspectives of laity and professional clergy, but this was conditioned by the non-monastic nature of the tradition and also by the extent of literacy and religious education in pre-Meiji Japan, especially towards the end of the Tokugawa period. Shin was a quite large tradition, but could never claim to be “mainstream” for Japan as a whole (although it dominated certain regions). It was not esotericism and was not confined to the lower social strata. It might have been construed as a sociological minority group, but it was a powerful one. Especially, as this essay has discussed, the ambiguity of Shin language enabled it to straddle an interpretive range that prevents it from being identified purely with either the masses or the sophisticated elites. In the broadest political sense, even the highest Mahāyāna interpretation of Shin could be seen as “popular” because the essential claim was that the “working of Amida” is universally accessible, bypassing all institutional elitism. If “elites” refers to those who hold religious doctrines of structural inequality and hierarchy in spiritual authority, then all levels of Shin teaching, regardless of literacy and complexity, would have to

kami at a distance and practicing kitō and ceremonies, I am exactly like the Shin members” (cited in Kodama 1976:192–193, 234). 21  Indeed, there has been a considerable disparity, almost a double standard, in the Western willingness to appreciate interesting ambiguity in Pure Land as opposed to Zen, for example. While the metaphor of the “finger pointing at the moon” is a cliché and has been exhaustively noted in Zen literature of all kinds, towards Shin, by comparison, little predisposition has been shown to understand multivalence.

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be considered in some sense “popular.” More anthropologically, if Shin as a whole (the body of all the members) were contrasted only with the monastic elites in “normal” monastic Buddhist traditions, Shin would probably appear more folkish and would involve more simplistic interpretations. If, however, Shin as a whole were contrasted with the equivalent whole communities of participants in monastic traditions—that is, not only monks, but also all those who used the services of monks—Shin culture would probably be on average less folkish and supernaturalistic. Crucially, as an elite group the educated Shin ministers would probably be the least folkish Buddhists in traditional Asia.22 Indeed, among Long’s usages, that which applies most cogently to Shin is the seventh: “popular religion” is an ideological construct of certain modern elites.23 5

Beyond Intellectualization? The Value of Easeful Death There was once a rabbi known for his ability to read men’s minds and know their thoughts. A boy went to see him and said: “Rabbi, I have a butterfly in my hand. Is it alive or dead?” And to himself he thought ‘If he says it’s dead, I’ll open my hand and let it fly away, on high; if he says its alive, I’ll quickly crush it and show him that it’s dead.’ The boy repeated his question: “Rabbi, I have a butterfly in my hand; is it alive or dead?” The rabbi looked into the boy’s eyes and answered calmly: “As you like, my boy, as you like.” Story from Jewish oral tradition quoted in Caglioti 1992:47

It is worth emphasizing in conclusion that regardless of what kind of interpretation to which its ambiguous language led, Shin tradition(s) eased the fear of the afterlife among a large spectrum of the Japanese population. This was a practical effect, which goes quite beyond the analytical and academic problem 22  Especially, if “elite” is meant to refer to some rationalistic, modernist sense of Buddhist doctrine then what Buddhist monastics in traditional Japan actually did most of the time is excluded. Similarly it is difficult to identify among the Catholic or Protestant versions of Christianity which are the most “popular.” 23  On the political aspects of the interpretation of Shin, see Amstutz (1997a). As Long’s article explains at length, the concept of “popular religion” is fundamentally Politicized. In Japan the “folk religion” of the folklorists such as Yanagita Kunio—which was never treated shin Buddhism as “folk”—was reinforced by the modern encounter with “folk” in the West, as part of which the Japanese appropriated similar modern ethnic and nationalist concerns.

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of distinguishing the “elite” and the “folk” aspects of the tradition. At best, this easing of fear was folded into an overall ideal of social care and gentleness in the Buddhist mode. Depending on what one thinks about the psychological state of the modern world, one may or may not think of this routinized role of easing death as an interesting contribution. Nevertheless, this ancient cultural function continues in Japan on a large scale. Genuine comforting is not separable from the other aspects of the modern Japanese funeral business. References Amstutz, Galen. 1997a. Interpreting Amida: Orientalism and History in the Study of Pure Land Buddhism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Amstutz, Galen. 1997b. “Shinran and Authority in Buddhism.” Eastern Buddhist 30/1:133–146. Amstutz, Galen. 1998. “Shin Buddhism and Protestant Analogies with Christianity in the West.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40/1:724–747. Andreasen, Esben. 1998. Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Asai Ryōshū 浅井了宗. 1966. “Rokujōji naihan ni tsuite 六条寺内版に就いて.” In Shinshūshi no kenkyū: Miyazaki hakushi kanreki kinen 真宗史の研究: 宮崎博士還 暦記念, ed. Miyazaki Enjun hakushi kanreki kinenkai 宮崎円遵博士還暦記念会, 15–23. Kyōto: Nagata bunshodō. Blum, Mark L. 2000. “Stand By Your Founder: Honganji’s Struggle with Funeral Orthodoxy.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27/3–4:179–212. Caglioti, Giuseppe. 1992. The Dynamics of Ambiguity. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Cerquiglini, Jacqueline. 1988. “Polysémie, ambiguïté et équivoque dans la théorie et la pratique poétiques du Moyen Âge français.” In L’ambiguïté: Cinq études historiques, ed. Iréne Rosier, 167–180. Lille, France: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooke, Bernard J. 1990. The Distancing of God: The Ambiguity of Symbol in History and Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Empson, William. 1957. Seven Types of Ambiguity. New York: Meridian Books. Fries, Norbert. 1980. Ambiguität und Vagheit: Einführung und kommentierte Bibliographic Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Fujii Masao 藤井正雄. 1986. “Sōsei kara mita reikonkan, shigokan 葬制からみた霊魂 観．死後観” In Minzoku to girei: Sonraku kyōdōtai no seikatsu to shinkō 民俗と儀 礼: 村落共同体の生活と信仰, ed. Miyake Hitoshi 宮家準, 123–162. Tōkyō: Shunūsha (= Taikei Buk-kyō to Nihonjin 大系仏教と日本人 9).

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“Gakkoku Etchū” henshū iinkai『学国越中』編集委員会, ed. 1984. Gakkoku Etchū 学国越中 Kyōto: Nagata bunshodō. Grossberg, John Barth. 1999. “Formulating Attitudes Towards Death: A Case Study of a Japanese Jodo Shin Buddhist Woman.” In Lives in Motion: Composing Circles of Self and Community in Japan, ed. Susan Orpett Long, 207–242. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, East Asia Program (= Cornell East Asia Series 106). Hirota, Dennis, et al., transl. and ed. 1997. The Collected Works of Shinran II: Introductions, Glossaries, and Reading Aids. Kyōto: jōdo shinshū Honganji-ha. Honganji shiryō kenkyūjo 本願寺史料研究所, ed. 1974. Honganjishi 本願寺史. 3 vols. Kyōto: Jōdo shinshū Honganji-ha. Hyers, Conrad. 1995. “Rethinking the Doctrine of Double-Truth: Ambiguity, Relativity and Universality.” In Religious Pluralism and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, ed. Thomas Dean, 171–188. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kashiwabara Yūsen 柏原祐泉. 1981. “Kinsei Shinshū ni okeru ōjōkan no kōzō 近世真 宗における往生観の構造.” In Bukkyō no rekishiteki tenkai ni miru shokeitai: Furuta Shōkin hakushi koki kinen ronshū 仏教の歴史的展開に見る諸形態:古田紹欽博士 古希記念論集, ed. Furuta Shōkin hakushi koki kinenkai 古田紹欽博士古希記念会, 517–532. Tōkyō: Sōbunsha. Kodama Shiki 児玉識. 1976. Kinsei shinshū no tenkai katei: Nishi Nihon o chūshin to shite 近世真宗の展開過程:西日本を中心として. Tōkyō: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Kruse, Peter, and Michael Stadler, eds. 1995. Ambiguity in Mind and Nature: Multistage Cognitive Phenomena. Berlin: Springer. Levine, Donald N. 1985. The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Long, Charles H. 1987. “Popular Religion.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion 11, ed. Eliade Mircea, 442–452. New York: Macmillan. MacCormac, Marl R. 1983. “Religious Metaphors: Linguistic Expressions of Cognitive Processes.” In van Noppen 1983, 47–70. Mogami Takayoshi. 1963. “The Double-Grave System.” In Studies in Japanese Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson, 167–180. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Page, Ruth. 1985. Ambiguity and the Presence of God. London: SCM Press. Pinkla, Manfred. 1995. Logic and Lexicon: The Semantics of the Indefinite. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sasaki Motomi 佐々木求巳. 1967. “Kinsei Shinran chojutsu kankō mokuroku (gisho tsuke) 近世親鸞著述刊行目録 (付偽書).” In Hōken, kindai ni okeru Kamakura bukkyō no tenkai 封建·近代における鎌倉仏教の展開, ed. Kasahara Kazuo 笠原一 男, 435–448. Kyōto: Hōzōkan. Sasaki Motomi. 1969. “Seikyō kaihan no ue yori mitaru jōdokyō seikyō: Toku ni Shinshū seikyō no minshūka ni tsuite 聖教開版の上より見たる浄土教聖教:特に真宗聖教

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の民衆化の就いて.” In Nihon jōdokyōshi no kenkyū 浄土教史の研究, eds. Fujishima Tatsurō 藤島達朗 and Miyazaki Enjun 宮崎円遵, 569–579. Kyōto: Heirakuji shoten. Scheffler, Israel. 1979. Beyond the Letter: A Philosophical Inquiry into Ambiguity, Vagueness and Metaphor in Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sekiyama Kazuo 関山和夫. 1982. “Etoki no keifu 絵解きの系譜” In Etoku: Kami shibai, nozokikarakuri, utsushi’e no sekai えとく:紙芝居·のぞきからくり·写し絵の世界 eds. Minami Hiroshi 南博 and Nagai Hiroo 永井啓夫, 135–157. Tōkyō: Hakusuisha (= Gei sōsho 芸双書 8). Shimazono Susumu. 1982. “The Study of Religion and the Tradition of Pluralism.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9:77–88. Shūkyō nenkan 宗教年鑑 1997, ed. Bunkacho 文化庁. Tōkyō: Gyō-sei. Teiser, Stephen F. 1994. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (= Studies in East Asian Buddhism 9). Tracy, David. 1987. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. London: SCM Press. Ullman, Stephen. 1962. Semantics: An Introduction to Science of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell. van Buren, Paul M. 1972. The Edges of Language: An Essay in the Logic of Religion. New York: Macmillan. van Deemter, Kees, and Stanley Peters, eds. 1996. Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification. Stanford: Stanford University Press (Center for the Study of Language and Information, Lecture Notes 55). van Noppen, Jean-Pierre, ed. 1983. Metaphor and Religion. Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (= Study Series of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Theolinguistics 2). Wei-Hsun Fu, Charles. 1985. “Japanese Spiritual Resources and their Contemporary Relevance.” Journal of Dharma 10 (January–March): 82–89.

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Ambivalence Regarding Women and Female Gender in Premodern Shin Buddhism Galen Amstutz The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley

∵ 1

Buddhism’s Tradition of Complexity and Inconsistency towards Women and Female Gender*

An extensive amount of work on women in Buddhism has been accomplished since Diana Paul’s Women in Buddhism was published in 1979; any study of Japan is backgrounded by that accumulation of knowledge. It has become well-established that the religion displayed a long-running complexity and ambivalence about women, which was also manifested in Japanese Buddhism throughout its history. The early tradition was multivocal, not necessarily confused, but expressing contending interests and concerns. Sponberg (1992) identified four views: soteriological inclusiveness; institutional androcentrism; ascetic misogyny; and soteriological androgyny. In the case of Mahāyāna, Paul (1979) noted in her pioneering research that the primary texts represented a spectrum of stereotypical views: the temptress, the mother, the nun, role as “good daughter” and “good friend,” the bodhisattva with sexual transformation, the bodhisattva without sexual transformation, the feminine as celestial bodhisattva Kuan-yin, and possibly Queen Śrīmālā as a female Buddha. Wilson (1996) argued that regardless of the attitude of the historical Buddha, and no matter what the range of what later texts (especially in the Mahāyāna literature) might say, the long-term later coexistence of women and a sangha which was attempting to S ource: Amstutz, Galen, “Ambivalence Regarding Women and Female Gender in Premodern Shin Buddhism,” Japanese Religions 35(1–2) (2010): 1–35. * Galen Amstutz: Instructor, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_021

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be an all-male celibate club created a permanent tension in the mainstream institutionalization of the religion. Heidegger (2006 and 1995) noted concisely that the classical negativity towards women in Buddhism has four dimensions which are not all consistent: the actual fact of women’s greater biosocial suffering in past societies; the threat posed to male celibacy; men’s general misogyny; and the typical gender subordination of women in the majority of historical political economies and social imaginaries in which Buddhism was embedded. In short, discrimination and awareness of special suffering have routinely been combined. An important aspect of this complexity is the increasing recognition that Buddhist traditions have to be considered in the plural, as “Buddhisms,” i.e. a multiplicity of patterns that may not have quite the level of commonality that was once assumed. (Cuevas and Stone 2007) In Japan, women and Buddhism had a long history before the so-called Kamakura 鎌倉 (1185–1333) reform period. Women apparently started with a strong position in the earliest monastic system, which declined over time through the Nara 奈良 (710–794) and Heian 平安 (794–1185) periods, as surveyed by Barbara Ruch (2002).1 Within the various Buddhisms, the Pure Land sector had its own somewhat distinctive aspects of complexity and inconsistency. Important claims (mentioned in virtually every discussion of women in East Asian Buddhism) were the idea of five obstructions and three obligations (Jp. goshō sanjū 五障三従) and the idea of necessary female transformation (henjō nanshi 変成男子), i.e. sexual transformation between male and female forms, especially to show that the female could equal the male. The idea of five obstructions held that women could not become any of five types of superior beings, Brahmā, Indra, Māra, Chakravartin king, or Buddha, the fundamental idea being that women could not rule over men. The three obligations were that women must be subordinate to fathers in the natal home, to husbands in marriage, and to children in old age, with the key idea being that women must always be under the protection as well as control of men. The goshō sanjū language can be traced over a long time through various elements of Buddhist literature, but the concepts are clearly based on patriarchal social practices in both India and China which became embedded in the Buddhist texts, all produced by a male monastic class. (See e.g. Nagata 2002) The henjō nanshi concept was somewhat more ambiguous. While it indeed suggests the inferiority of women, the general idea of sexual transformation between male and female forms was multivocal, with many variations, and 1  See e.g. Groner (2002) who discusses the fluctuations in the ordination of women and the actual irregularity and complexity in women’s interaction with the Buddhist vinaya.

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appeared in an enormous number of texts, its variants including the famous story of the sea dragon’s daughter in the Lotus Sutra. The often normative idea expressed in the Pure Land literature—that a woman could (or must) be shape-shifted into male form when born in the Pure Land—was only one of many iterations of the basic concept. (Haeju 1999; there are many studies of transformation in Japanese, such as Nakano 1991) An apologetic view of henjō nanshi is that it offered women relief from suffering and served as a form of hōben 方便 (skill-in-means) encouraging women to orient themselves to Buddhism. However, obviously it involved discrimination against the female. Modern commentators have sometimes adopted an entirely unnuanced position that henjō nanshi expressed some kind of pure negativity towards women. On this view, the concept was simply misogynist, teaching women to dislike their femaleness irrationally and regardless of experience, and leaving women brainwashed without any powers of subjective criticism or selection. (Nagata 2002; Hosokawa 1999) On the other hand, the historical interpretations for women of Pure Land teachings may not be unquestionably clear from the evidence. Harrison (1998) opens his study with discussion of a modern Chinese nun who does not believe either “men” or “women” are born in the Pure Land, using this belief to interrogate, via close readings, what the classic textual tradition really says. Only one of the three major Pure Land sutras—The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha (sometimes rendered in English as the Larger Amida Sūtra)—even mentions the issue of gender transformation. The single most important passage in it is the Thirty-fifth Vow, which in various iterations is something like this: If, when I have become a Buddha, all the women in the countless, inconceivable Buddhaworlds, of the ten quarters, on hearing my name, rejoice with faith and delight, conceive the aspiration to bodhi and become disgusted with the female body, if they take female form again after their lives come to an end, I shall not attain perfect awakening. Harrison 1998: 558; this is his translation of the Chinese text used in the Shin tradition, numbered 360 in the modern Japanese Taishō edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon

In spite of a common stereotype, Harrison argues that the message of the Sanskrit (and Tibetan) text technically falls into the class of what are called generalized blessings. Via Amitābha, women can become men in the next life if they have bodhicitta (the mind for seeking awakening) and if they so choose and desire. But in the form of a generalized blessing the promise is conditional, does not actually relate only to a Pure Land (Skt. Sukhāvatī) and does not say

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women cannot be reborn in Sukhāvatī as women. The five existing Chinese versions (the Chinese translations are T. 362, 361, 360, 310.5, 363), however, have textual variations which make them inconsistent on this precise point (though the T. 360 text is closer to the Sanskrit and Tibetan). Harrison emphasizes the protean quality of this text, a quality shared with other Mahāyāna sutras. Therefore any inner intent of the Thirty-fifth Vow in Sanskrit, Tibetan and several of the Chinese translations is not transparent. The evidence suggests a long-term trend to soften any hard-line anti-female stance and move away from the renunciant model. This shows that attempts to rethink this aspect of Pure Land belief have a very long history. Granted, the single-sex conception of Sukhāvatī was “extremely persistent and influential,” but Harrison thinks nevertheless there was a tendency behind the Pure Land tradition which informed it from the beginning, which he identifies as “a kind of radical egalitarianism, not as some kind of democratic ideal, but as a more profound non-dualistic insight that divisions and distinctions that impede spiritual progress and stifle human creativity and happiness ought to be overcome …”2 From this perspective, the classic Pure Land texts represent a long-running dialogue-in-progress over the role that women should play. Along with a certain fluidity in the teachings themselves, documentation about women’s subjectivity is a formidable problem. For almost the entire course of Asian Buddhist history, we do not really know what these ideas meant to individual women because we lack adequate direct evidence about women’s subjectivity in the past. The uncertainty might be summarized as “description or prescription?” Pure Land doctrine was formed under medieval conditions of inequality. We have no way of interviewing medieval Chinese Buddhist people to find out exactly what they meant by the “inferiority” of women in a medieval context. Did they mean the ideologically inherent inferiority of women, as it tended to be presented in brahmanical, or Confucian, or male Buddhist sangha terms? Or did they mean that women were inferior because of uncontrollable biosocial conditions, including their ordinary condition of safety, social oppression, risk of death in childbirth, and opportunities for happiness? It is for this latter reason, argues a common Pure Land apologetic, that in the Pure Land (serving as it did as the epitome of all good things) sentient creatures might want not to have a female gender, just as they

2  Harrison (1998: 565–566). Cf. Hae-ju’s (1999) view of transformation that it was part of a trend subverting male sexism in Buddhism.

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might not want to be burdened there with slavery, or physical handicaps such as lameness or blindness.3 The Japan of the Kamakura period, when the Pure Land traditions evolved and expanded, remains a tangled historical problem in which it remains difficult to decide in any overall manner what was happening in Buddhism, and especially what was clearly changing.4 It is now understood that particularly in the case of Pure Land teachings any transition from “old” to “new” modulations was much more subtle than was presented in an earlier Kamakura reform (or “reformation”) model.5 A leading revisionist voice here is that of Taira Masayuki (1990, 1998, 2001), who has repeatedly returned to the problem since the issue is part of an overall reevaluation of the period to which he has contributed.6 In these studies Taira has critically addressed Kasahara’s erroneous claims: that old Buddhism denied any possibility of women’s enlightenment, and continued to do so in the medieval period; that because of lack of contact with women, old Buddhism did not produce real doctrine about women’s Pure Land birth; and that women’s salvation was finally only established via a sharp change led by the Kamakura reformers. Taira has argued that the facts were different. The oldest Japanese Buddhism showed an equality of monks and nuns. In kenmitsu 顕密 Buddhist documents, a great deal is found about women, and both positive and negative views were commonly expressed, including positive views about women lay practitioners, which increasingly spread outside of the monastic communities. At the same time there was also a deepening view of women as sinful or having problematic karma, which Taira relates to an increasingly developed patriarchal system, complemented by a growing ideology of maternalism. (The idea of female Buddhist salvation did not automatically imply at any time social equality). In any case the key implication is that if the inclusion of women was part of old Buddhism from near the beginning and the reform Pure Land teachings were popularizations of ideas that had originated within kenmitsu thought itself, then the ideas of Shinran and the Kamakura reformers were not quite revolutionary in the way formerly held. (See also 3  Is “female” a conditional status, or an “essence?” Slavery is for example a conditional status; but a “slave” might be understood as a person in permanently fixed position by eternal nature. Thus one might formulate a question of liberation either as “No person will be born in heaven in the condition of a slave” or “No slaves will be born in heaven.” Whereas the first sentence sounds liberative, the second formulation sounds discriminatory. 4  For an update on this question, see Stone (2006). 5  The older model is represented for example by Kasahara (1983). 6  The currently accepted view, originally inspired by historian Kuroda Toshio 黒田俊雄, is that kenmitsu 顕密 Buddhism—referring to the Buddhist institutions of Nara and Heian, which were bound up with the imperial legal system and the aristocracy—remained for long culturally dominant, and the reformers marginal.

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Glassman 2002) At any time, though, what this meant for individual women is hardly unobscured. Jacqueline Stone (2006: 50) reminds us “There are severe limitations to our sources, and how premodern Japanese women themselves received teachings about the alleged karmic burden of female gender remains an open question.” 2

Appreciating Ambivalence in Shin Buddhism

Some scholarship on Shin Buddhism, illustrated by James Dobbins (2004) and Simone Heidegger, has tended to approach the tradition from a roughly feminist position. Bernard Faure (2003), on the other hand, offers perhaps the leading example of an analysis which complicates the view of women across Japanese Buddhism. However, he does not focus on normal Shin tradition. This article aims to supplement the treatments of those three scholars by suggesting a perhaps somewhat stronger appreciation of ambiguity and ambivalence in the Shin version of Buddhism. This ambivalence might be approached from several directions. First is the question of women in Japanese social history generally, in which various kinds of ambiguity occur.7 Second is how the ambivalence towards women was played out in several dimensions relatively restricted to the Shin tradition itself: the nonmonastic organization of Shin temples, in which the wife (bōmori 7  The background literature is well-developed. On strong economic participation by women, see e.g. Wakita (1995) and Tabata (1994). On local and regional variation in women’s lives, see e.g. Tabata (1999), Wakita, Hayashi and Nagahara (1987), and Sōgō josei kenkyūkai (1993). On women’s economic position in the Edo period, see e.g. Wakita (1987, and 1999), Sōgō josei kenkyūkai (1992) and Leupp (1992). On the difficulty of generalizing about women and power relations in the ie 家 (the household, in its various local, customary and legal forms), see e.g. (Wakita 1984, 1987, 1993, 1999, and 2006); and Shiba (1969). On the relatively egalitarian quality of life at lower social levels, especially in non-urban agricultural village settings, see Smith (1983), Kumagai (1986), Kuramochi (1992), Masuda (1993), Nagata (2003), Hayami (1983), Yamamoto (2003) and Walthall (1990). On doubts about the influence of Confucian ideology at the lower levels, see Yabuta (2000), Yokota (1999) and Collcutt (1991). On how divorce was common and not necessarily weighted against women, see Fuess (2004) and Dutton (2002). On how Japanese society changed after the Meiji Revolution in ways that unprecedentedly limited and controlled women and gender expectations, see Smith and Wiswell (1982), Bacon (1992), and Tabata (1994). Important overall surveys are found in Tonomura and Anderson (2001), Uno (1991), Walthall (1991), Lebra (1991), and Bernstein (1991). On an early Westerner’s observations, see Bacon (1902). Furthermore, just like the topic of women and Buddhism, the disciplines of family sociology and women’s studies in general have evolved towards seeing relatively strong positions for women. See Morika (1980), Minegishi (1992), Wakita et al. (1999), Wakita (2006), Yabuta (2000), and Ooguchi (1995).

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坊守, literally, guardian of the temple) of the male minister had a narrowly

gendered role; the appearance of a few prominent female personalities in the social networks of the religion; the tradition’s partially successful avoidance of generic premodern Japanese pollution beliefs about women; and Shin’s function as a primary expression of premodern commoner (not samurai) culture. A major additional dimension was the Shin textual tradition, which is the one examined below in this article. 3

Shinran’s Texts

The thought of Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262), who produced the ideas which were afterwards manifested as the organized Shin denomination, is a fundamental reference, but Shinran’s texts actually contain very little about women per se.8 This characteristic may go back to Shinran’s teacher Hōnen 法然, who like his student did not address the issue of women systematically or quite consistently. References to women are only scattered in Hōnen’s writings. The “nonconclusions” of several scholars can be mentioned briefly. Kasahara (1983: 134–162) surveyed relevant passages of Hōnen, including those on women’s ōjō 往生 (karmic birth in the Pure Land) in Hōnen’s letters and the text called the Ichimai kishomon 一枚起請文. Of course women appear in the Daimuryōjū-kyō 大無量寿経 (Larger Amida Sūtra), which contains the Thirty-fifth Vow about female transformation, but a commentary on that sutra by Hōnen called the Muryōjūkyō-shaku 無量寿経釈 is practically the only place where he deals with women at any length, discussing the Thirty-fifth Vow and the five obstacles and three obediences. Other texts include the Nenbutsu ōjō yōgisho 念仏往生 要義抄 (Selections on Essentials of Nenbutsu Pure Land Birth), a twelve-part mondō 問答 (question-and-answer) text, and some hagiographical material (Hōnen-den 法然伝). Hōnen’s problematic, however, was that all beings can be liberated via the nenbutsu 念仏, and the issue of women as a category was peripheral. Bloom (1998) explains that Hōnen generally followed the teaching of Shandao (Jp. Zendō 善導, 613–681), in which through the nenbutsu women could be born in the Pure Land, albeit changed to male status. Fukuhara (1991) notes that of course Hōnen’s acceptance of henjō nanshi must be recognized, even if the core emphasis of his thought should be shifted to senju nenbutsu 専修念仏 (exclusive nenbutsu practice) instead. However, Fukuhara suggests that a tension between the Thirty-fifth Vow and the idea of universal equality 8  One piece of evidence commonly used to make a judgement, Shinran’s dream, is full of complexities and will be omitted.

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in the nenbutsu already appeared visibly in Hōnen.9 In a couple of passages, Hōnen turns away from the requirement for henjō nanshi, and Fukuhara reasons that in Hōnen, as in Shinran, the inner purport of equality and nondiscrimination via the nenbutsu could occasionally override the traditional interpretation of the text. In this vein, Hōnen probably preceded Shinran in suggesting the centrality of the akunin shōki 悪人正機 idea (it is the evil/ troubled person, not the good/untroubled one, who is the real object of the Buddha’s teaching) (see below). In Hōnen’s student Shinran, the conspicuous passages about women are found in two of Shinran’s wasan (Japanese-language) verses. One of these is Jōdo wasan 浄土和讃 (Hymns of the Pure Land) number 60, So profound is Amida’s great compassion That, manifesting inconceivable Buddha-wisdom, The Buddha established the Vow of transformation into men (henjō nanshi) Thereby vowing to enable women to attain Buddhahood. SSZ 2: 493; translation from CWS I: 341

This verse is one of a set of twenty-two that summarize the key points of the Larger Amida Sūtra; this particular verse summarizes the point of the Thirty-fifth Vow contained in it which was quoted earlier. The other verse is Kōsō wasan 高僧和讃 (Hymns of the Pure Land Masters) number 64, If women did not entrust themselves to Amida’s Name and Vow, They would never become free of the five obstructions, Even though they passed through myriads of kalpas; How, then, would their existence as women be transformed? SSZ 2: 508; translation from CWS I: 377

This verse is one of a set of twenty-six that summarize the key points in the writings of Shandao, the Chinese Pure Land teacher whose language was closest to the interests of Hōnen and Shinran; this particular verse summarizes one 9  Another tension in the text arose from the question why the Thirty-fifth Vow was needed at all, if the most central Vow, the Eighteenth Vow, was understood to include all persons already. The rationalization used by Hōnen is that although the Eighteenth Vow is indeed inclusive, women have so many obstacles that the Thirty-fifth Vow is needed to make extra clear their inclusion.

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of Shandao’s many allusions, here to the concept of women’s obstacles and submissions which floats generically in the background of the writing. It might be emphasized that these wasan passages do not occupy much room in the Shinran corpus. To provide a rough idea, they constitute about eight lines, or half a page with lots of spacing, in the nearly seven hundred pages of other material in the English translation The Collected Works of Shinran. Furthermore, in each context above, Shinran is citing and reviewing selections from the past history of Pure Land Buddhism, but not obviously speaking for himself; and what seems to be of interest to Shinran is not the exact details— many details in the past history of the doctrines had nuances originally differing from Shinran’s own special interpretation of them—but rather the broad idea of a movement or progression towards Shinran’s position.10 When Shinran unmistakably speaks for himself in his writings he seems to take a position of nondiscrimination. The most commonly referred-to text is located in the Shin 信 or “entrusting” chapter of Shinran’s interpretive anthology Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信証: In reflecting on the ocean of great shinjin, I realize that there is no discrimination between noble and humble or black-robed monks and white-clothed laity, no differentiation between man and woman, old and young. The amount of evil one has committed is not considered, the duration of any performance of religious practices is of no concern. It is a matter of neither practice nor good acts, neither sudden attainment nor gradual attainment, neither meditative practice nor nonmeditative practice, neither right contemplation nor wrong contemplation, neither thought nor no-thought, neither daily life nor the moment of death, neither many-calling nor once-calling. It is simply shinjin, that is inconceivable, inexplicable, and indescribable. SSZ 2: 68; translation from CWS I: 107

The point to emphasize here is that it is challenging to find passages in Shinran’s writings which express in his own unambiguous voice anything about gender differentiation as a central issue or a problem. The section quoted in full above is an illustration. Gender comes up in passing, along with a number of other 10   A peripheral issue is that in the Pure Land text Kanmuryōjū-kyō 観無量寿経 (Contemplation Sūtra) which is also used in Shin Buddhism, the narrative of Queen Vaidehī 韋提希 plays an important role in the traditional preaching imaginary. While female-oriented readings of the Vaidehī story are possible, Vaidehī’s femaleness as such has not been prominently thematized in Shin tradition; instead normally she has been taken to offer a gender-neutral image of human ordinariness and weakness.

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possible forms of discrimination, but is rhetorically embedded within and subordinated to the larger problematic of Amida’s universal salvation, and the whole is processed through an intricate discursive engagement with a mass of inherited Buddhist textual material in the way typical of Shinran’s doctrinal corpus. The kind of relatively unproblematized interpretation foregrounded (for example) in Dobbins (2004: 103–105), to the effect that Shinran simply accepted the ideas discriminatory towards women, can probably be interrogated. The problem here might be one of making distinctions among the differing “voices” which speak out of Shinran’s multilayered corpus. It was perhaps not so much that Shinran’s attitude was actually “two-edged” (as suggested by Dobbins), as that Shinran inherited, and perhaps incompletely processed (at least to later eyes), a textual tradition at odds with what Shinran finally wanted to say and which left Shinran’s descendants with formal contradictions. To further grasp this suggestion, one has to take account of Shinran’s literariness, the multiple levels of reception of the Pure Land discourse which are implicated from the beginning, and a certain tendency of representers of Shin teaching to be evasive about this fluidity.11 The personalized quality of text interpretation in Shinran was not arbitrary but inherent in the Tendai tradition in which Shinran was schooled. A detailed discussion has been provided by Jacqueline Stone, who elaborates on the condition of the hermeneutical tradition on Mt. Hiei in Shinran’s time. Prominent was a shift to the so-called kanjin 観心-style interpretive mode, characteristic of medieval kuden 口伝 (oral transmission), in which the object was to extract hidden and often unconventional meanings. In fact this appears to have been grounded in an earlier Tendai tradition in which practices of textual study, language, contemplation, and personal transformation were linked together. Rather than exegesis, this process can be termed eisegesis or “reading in,” so that the text is made to conform to the enlightened insight rather than vice versa. Application of these various twists led to the production of texts of high, even dizzying complexity and ingenuity. As Stone (1999: 153–167) notes, modern scholars have sometimes reacted by dismissing the performances as “arbitrary,” but this does not explain what was going on. Nasu (2006) provides a congruent supporting view of Shinran and kanjin from a specifically Shin standpoint. The modern Ōtani University scholar Yasutomi Shin’ya (2004) also discusses the problem of interpretation in Shin. He admits that Shin has a complicated 11  Dobbins (2004) indicates in footnotes, however, that he is completely aware of all these interpretive issues but simply decided to weight his own principal narrative differently.

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tradition of text reading; and its way of handling the readings, derived from Shinran, has always seemed strange to scholars outside the denomination. Yet Yasutomi notes that from a Buddhist point of view, flexibility of language should not be a problem. Buddhism aims to avoid attachment to language; words are only a finger pointing at the moon. Language is a symbol of truths that go beyond words. Zen of course is famous for refusal of words, but the Pure Land too is an “image” for the experience of anjin 安心 (peace of mind, satori). The sutras are metaphorical in ways that contrast with language-based fundamentalism. Presupposing then that Shinran’s approach to texts involved selection, recontextualization, and reinterpretation, it should not be assumed that Shinran’s understandings of any inherited textual material would necessarily be literal. Rather, the purpose of his assembly of doctrinal elements in a specialized rhetorical network was to support his conclusive creative idea of Amida’s universal liberative power. The second problem is reception of texts by various audiences of actual people, without which no treatment of Pure Land in Japan fully makes sense. As many as four different patterns of thinking about the Pure Land were in play. A reception which might be called “Common Japanese” was based on the typical Chinese interpretation and conveyed in Japan through old monastic Buddhism and Hōnen. In this view, the Pure Land is a “form” realm, which serves as a karmic transition zone; typically persons cannot be born there in female form, but must undergo henjō nanshi. In Japan, this view also tended to accept raigō 来迎 (the descent of Amida to the deathbed to welcome the devotee to the Pure Land), miracles, genze riyaku 現世利益 (“this-worldly benefits,” i.e. concrete magical effects achieved through Buddhist practices or deities), and (often) female pollution; in short it was a highly familiar variant of Japanese “folk” Buddhism. The “Shin formless” reception was based on a proper or “technical” reading of Shinran and followed his own idiosyncratic understanding. The Pure Land is the formless realm of ultimate nirvana, i.e. dissolution of karma. Shinjin 信心 is a (more or less) partial apprehension or satori about this reality which fixes in a person the future dissolution of karma at biological death. Since the Pure Land is formless, then the point for women is not birth in Pure Land as women or not, but dissolution into formless state directly from the present biological female form-state with no intervening male phase required. This interpretation ignores raigō and in theory is austerely avoidant towards most kami 神 (Shintō deities), miracles, genze riyaku, and pollution. A third variation can be called the “Shin vernacular,” and is based on a partial appropriation of Shinran’s ideas. In fact the concept is included, though given

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secondary status, in Shinran’s own system as the transformed or provisional Pure Land (kedo 化土) in the last part of the Kyōgyōshinshō. In this variation, the Pure Land is understood as formful, so that those persons are born there with some karmic continuity (and join family members for example). Shin (信, entrusting, “faith”) is the confidence that this karmic transfer or rebirth will happen. The most interesting point is that this position, like the formless one, also denies raigō, and is relatively austerely avoidant towards miracles, genze riyaku, and pollution; that is to say, in its own way it is an “internalized” religiosity even though it does not quite follow through with elevated Mahāyāna psychology and does not entirely cohere with Shinran’s primary religious focus. In other words, even when Shin language was not understood in a “philosophically sophisticated” way, but rather in some more vernacular way, nevertheless the qualities of strong personal interiority (distance from kami, egalitarianism, and so on) could be retained as part of the package in a fashion which made Shin to an extent distinct among Japanese Buddhisms. Though not exactly the ideal, a Shin vernacular understanding has been the hōben of the tradition for the majority of its members historically. Finally, in the “Pure Land in this world” alternative, which appears in some kinds of Zen or esoteric Buddhism, the Pure Land can be a referent for a state of enlightenment achievable in this body. The multiple levels of reception have a close relationship with women in Shin tradition in part because of the hypothesis that Shinran’s wife Eshinni 恵信尼, following a Shin vernacular understanding but in addition ignoring the idea that henjō nanshi would be necessary, expected to go to the Pure Land in her current body.12 12  Argued extensively by Dobbins (2004); see also Hosokawa (1999) and Kikumura (1988: 134); a related idea may have been that maleness was optional though not necessary. Nishiguchi (2006) also defended the idea of a gap between vernacular and elite versions of the teaching; in the former, it is natural for a woman to understand she would be born as such in the Pure Land. This is, as Dobbins argued, a view that is in a sense favorable to women, but also makes clear that Shinran’s own spouse did not fully understand or share his understanding as a Buddhist philosopher. Yamazaki (2004) focuses on the same point of divergent understandings within Shinran’s own family. As recorded in the famous correspondence between Shinran’s wife Eshinni and Shinran’s daughter Kakushinni 覚信 尼 (who was present at Shinran’s deathbed), the latter may have been confused because she did not see anything special or miraculous at the time of Shinran’s death, suggesting she had different expectations, perhaps more like the common Japanese one, perhaps a raigō scene. Her mother Eshinni corrected her on that, but for Eshinni too, it is likely that her understanding of ōjō 往生 (karmic birth in the Pure Land) differed from Shinran’s. Specifically, of course, Shinran’s idea of a formless realm was different from Eshinni’s idea of birth in form as woman (if that is what Eshinni really thought). Such a reading accepts that a difference of interpretation is not surprising, especially for two people who lived

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This introduces the matter of hesitation in confronting contradictions in Shinran. Shinran’s texts are neither perfectly systematic nor without inconsistencies. In the case of women, specific elements are in tension as sketched above. On one side are the two wasan, the Thirty-fifth Vow, the idea of henjō nanshi, and the old tropes of the five obstacles and three submissions. On the other side are the Eighteenth Vow of the Larger Amida Sūtra,13 the passage about nondiscrimination in the Kyōgyōshinshō, and the normative doctrinal conceptions of shinjin and the stage of the “truly settled” (shōjōju 正 定聚, equivalent to the forty-first or higher bodhisattva level in the general Mahāyāna mythos). Ōtani University scholar Inoue Takami 井上尚実 comments: Scholastic readings of the sutras and commentaries require a critical, ‘objective’ eye to contradictions and some ‘logical’ explanation in order to make them somehow consistent … the reason why Shinran’s original texts don’t make an explicit statement about the dissolution of “male and female” forms in the Pure Land is that Shinran (like the seven masters of the Pure Land tradition) wrote as a scholar-and-believer to scholars and believers. It’s not wise to make a single, definite statement when different levels of interpretations are possible … ‘Henjō nanshi’ is a good example of ‘textual resistance’ which requires an eye to see beyond the letter of the text to the spirit which formed it. Personal communication

Of course many scholars have encountered contradictory aspects of Shinran. Bloom (1998: 14–16) summarizes passages of Shinran, recognizing inconsistency but with the idea that the inconsistency was simply overcome by the cardinal message of tariki 他力 (“other-power” or “vow-power,” the activity of Amida in Shin doctrine). Dobbins (2004: 103) was carefully aware of the kanjin apart a long time, and when systematic Shin doctrine had not developed yet. In short, although Shinran and Eshinni have been presented as the ideal double-bodhisattva couple, there is really a limit to this kind of “family” doctrine. Yamazaki does not think this interpretation is either right, based on the evidence, or necessary either for religious purposes. It is also possible to be skeptical that we have enough evidence to really conclude what Eshinni thought about going to the Pure Land, especially any identity as a woman there (Harrison 1998: 567). 13  This is the famous linchpin of Shin doctrine, which holds (according to the special Shin reading) that the one requirement for birth in the Pure Land (however that be interpreted) is an act of nenbutsu understood as coterminous with an experience of deep entrusting (shin 信), a doctrinal conception which despite other complications has nothing to do with gender differentiation.

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tradition but still could not see quite why the great teacher apparently lapsed into doctrinal stereotypes. The evasion of confronting Shinran’s inconsistency arises in part because of a history of static, highly theoretical and textualist, even legalist readings, which oversystematize Shinran’s thought and express too little interest in examining shifting social historical contexts of interpretation. Such readings have been part of the native Japanese tradition since at least the Edo period. Until recently too few Japanese kyōgaku 教学 (doctrinal) scholars have made use of international intellectual traditions about textual interpretation. As an example, for Hishiki (1995) the cardinal truth about Shinran and women is still the Thirty-fifth Vow of the Larger Sutra. He notes there is a question about what the content means; the vow may be conditional for women who may want to change genders (cf. Harrison 1998); but eventually, conventional interpretation emphasized that change was required. The interesting point is that Hishiki feels compelled to stand close to a certain literalism in the classic texts. On the other hand, Kurihara (1991) is a scholar who takes contradiction seriously, noting that Shinran has been fiercely criticized on the issue of women, but that there are actually multiple, only partly overlapping understandings of Shinran’s views. 1) According to scholars like Kasahara and Oguri Junko, Shinran accepted henjō nanshi. 2) According to scholar Minamoto Junko, the existential situation of women is different from men’s. 3) According to scholar Matsuo Kenji, Hōnen and Shinran simply had their doctrinal limits in this area. 4) According to Taira, Hōnen and Shinran did not say much, but they left an unfortunate opening for a tendency critical of women. Kurihara himself takes Taira’s position. In the same vein, Kuroda (1994) offers an unusual apologetic rendition which admits that while Shinran can be seen idealistically as essentially transcending all boundaries, there is a real problem with the wasan, which are both related to the Thirty-fifth Vow. Overtly recognizing contradiction, then, he suggests that the Thirty-fifth Vow can actually be divided into two parts; only the first part is “really true” to the essential Shinran, because henjō nanshi is at odds with Shinran’s idea of women’s ōjō into a formless realm. In fact, Kurihara finds evidence that even some Edo 江戸-period scholars were aware of the textual contradiction posed by the Thirty-fifth Vow and tried to construct mediating interpretations centuries ago. To sum up, with kanjin literariness and implicit multiple receptions of the Pure Land in mind, it becomes perhaps easier to make sense of the (seeminglyunsatisfactory) way the topic of Shinran and women is usually handled by Japanese scholars who are relatively close to the tradition. The key point is that historically in Shin Buddhism, the “gender discourse” circles not so much

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around gender per se as around the concept of akunin shōki (flawed/evil humans are the beings who are indeed the aim of Amida’s activity), which is a fundamental aspect of the Shin psychology and which basically applies equally to women and men. When Kasahara (1983: 163–176) treated Shinran in his large study, the author’s first topic after Shinran’s biography was the akunin shōki principle. Only then did he move on to the wasan. Taira’s work includes much discussion of this mode of rhetoric, which after Shinran’s time was sometimes modified to a rhetoric of nyonin shōki 女人正機 (women are the beings who are indeed the aim of Amida’s activity). (Taira 2001: 100–167) The trope of dramatic extremes goes back to Shinran where it was rhetorically fundamental and it thus became characteristic of the general language of the tradition, for both women and men, although stronger variants could be directed to women. One of Shinran’s most famous wasan verses used the metaphor of ice and water, Obstructions of karmic evil turn into virtues; It is like the relation of ice and water, The more the ice, the more the water; The more the obstructions, the more the virtues.

Kōsō wasan number 40; SSZ 2: 506; translation from CWS I: 37114

4

Contributions of Zonkaku, Rennyo and the Edo Period to the Textual Rhetoric on Women

After Shinran, the Shin doctrinal leaders Zonkaku and Rennyo (but only these two) provided other rhetoric that applied to women, and in a distinctly more negative tone than in Shinran. In both cases, the background reasons why the language shifted are not completely clear because of lack of complete information, and explanations are debatable. Zonkaku 存覚 (1290–1373) was Shinran’s great-great-grandson, a somewhat controversial character who was very interested in proselytizing and who was estranged from his father Kakunyo for part of his life and did not become part of the hereditary lineage of the Hongan-ji. Zonkaku wrote a number of short texts on various topics. His text on women, his only address to this 14  Or as restated by the modern scholar Shigaraki Takamaro in his own metaphors, “The deeper our karmic evil, the more the life of the Buddha will be…. the deeper we dig down into the ground, the more clean water will gush forth from the earth. Or, the harder that one strikes a ball towards the ground, the higher the ball will fly up into the sky in the opposite direction.” (Shigaraki 2005: 141–142.)

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question, is a short piece called Nyonin ōjō kikigaki 女人往生聞書 (Oral Record Concerning Women’s Pure Land Birth)15 The text is composed in response to a question about the apparent disparity between the Eighteenth Vow and the Thirty-fifth Vow. Following Hōnen, the basic rationalization is that although the Eighteenth Vow is indeed inclusive, women have so many obstacles that the Thirty-fifth Vow is needed to make extra clear their inclusion. Zonkaku quotes from various pieces of Buddhist literature, i.e. sutras and treatises, which criticize women. If women understand such criticism, they will lose hope, because those texts say that even without overtly evil acts, women produce bad karma by their ordinary thoughts and actions, such as emotions of envy and personal vanity in dress. The five obstacles and three submissions are the punishing outcome of karmic rebirth as a woman. Ordinarily, women have no chance to escape this kind of transmigration, except of course through Pure Land teaching. Zonkaku then presents Hōnen’s rendering of Shandao’s teaching on women, and explains how each of the three main sutras used in the Shin tradition has something special to say to women: the Larger Amida Sūtra establishes the Thirty-fifth Vow; the Contemplation Sūtra teaches the example of Queen Vaidehī; and the Smaller Amida Sūtra (Amida-kyō 阿弥陀経) speaks to men and women together as nenbutsu practitioners. The idea is introduced that Amida’s compassion even gives priority to women among sentient beings. Women attain birth in the Pure Land and become non-retrogressive bodhisattvas.16 Evaluating this text, Bloom observes that Zonkaku was aiming to promote Pure Land teaching, but that he did so by means of traditional, monastic tropes which were disparaging of women. Kasahara noted that Zonkaku’s language shifted the akunin shōki emphasis somewhat to nyonin shōki, and considered that this language had a great deal of later influence on Shin teaching. However, the text is perhaps also a bit of a puzzle. It is not an exegesis of Shinran, but rather it is an excursion into a somewhat indirectly related area of Pure Land text reading. Nor does it sound like Rennyo, who came afterwards and who had a much more realistic-sounding, (albeit patriarchal) view of women’s obstacles. The work also seems hard to explain fully in terms of the patriarchal social change which is often mentioned as a context for Rennyo’s 15  On the text, see Bloom (1998: 16–18); Kasahara (1983: 236–244); Ducor (1993: 340); and Takadani (1976). The original text is available in SSZ 3: 109–118. 16  The composition of the text was apparently requested by the Bukkō-ji 仏光寺, one of the other early lines of Shin teaching. Chiba (1984) suggested that the request to Zonkaku from Bukkō-ji head Ryōgen 了源 (or indeed maybe even his wife Ryōmyōni 了明尼) for the Nyonin ōjō kikigaki actually marked the special value and importance of women in the Bukkō-ji community, in that time and context. (See also Tashiro 1996: 65–82.)

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language; although Zonkaku was born several generations after Shinran (born one hundred twenty-eight years after Shinran’s death), it was in a social world which had probably only changed somewhat since Shinran’s time, and was not as male-oriented as it would become a couple of centuries later. A plausible rationalization is that the text has to do with Zonkaku’s main lifetime activity of popularization. (Ducor 1993) Zonkaku was concerned with extensive proselytizing, in other words a different primary set of issues than Shinran, which brought Zonkaku into contact with the contemporary Buddhist culture in a different way, requiring a different kind of discourse and different kind of give-and-take. Perhaps his world was already more complex and problematic on women than was Shinran’s, though is not clear if Zonkaku talked to female audiences. Perhaps his work also was largely a text about texts, that is, this was an exercise in textual argument aimed at preachers from other lines of Buddhism, in a layered discursive context we do not know enough about. Perhaps Zonkaku, who had inherited a sense of textual contradiction between the Eighteenth Vow and Thirty-fifth Vows, was out on the hustings helping debate an inconsistency in doctrine and textuality to some extent with outsiders, and it was not his purpose there to present the radicalness of Shinran’s views. The second, and most important, body of language concerning women comes from Rennyo 蓮如 (1415–1499). This discourse is important not only because Rennyo had a much stronger mode of address to women than Shinran, but also because independently it would become Rennyo’s modulation of Shinran’s language which served as the most common form of communication of Shin Buddhism in the later centuries of the tradition. However, although far more is known about Rennyo than either Shinran or Zonkaku, still this does not solve all the questions in establishing the reasons for his language. The topic of Rennyo and women has been widely treated in Japanese and surveyed by Bloom (1998). Rennyo is generally regarded as having great sympathy for women because of his own family experience—loss of his mother, death of four wives, deaths at a young age of six of his fourteen daughters—and because of the large number of women who joined the membership around him. All commentators refer to this aspect of his biography. Among the two hundred and twelve authenticated letters of Rennyo, women are referred to in fifty-eight. In the main Gobunshō 御文章 collection (also referred to as Ofumi 御文), fifteen of the eighty letters mention women. In this material, there are nine passages where Rennyo refers to the five obstacles and three submissions.17 The term henjō nanshi is mentioned only once in among Rennyo’s letters, and 17  However counts of these references to women can vary; for details, see also Okumoto (1996) and Tanokura (1991).

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does not seem to have figured importantly. (This letter was not included in the main collection). Rennyo knew Shinran’s core teaching, and knew that ideally to have attained shinjin and become truly settled meant a serious level of enlightenment and dissolution into the formless at death. Rennyo also knew however that in vernacular interpretations of Shin (such as that maintained in the “divergent doctrine” Sanmonto 山門徒 line), women were understood as being able to enter the Pure Land in the form of women as in life. Probably, Rennyo knew that most of his own female members thought they would go to the Pure Land as women. A major difference with Shinran is that where Shinran’s language was generalized to human beings, Rennyo was often much more specific about women per se. From the standpoint of ultimate liberation there is no difference between the genders, and from the standpoint of evil males are already strongly labeled as bonbu 凡夫 (ordinary weak human beings, ignorant persons of error and inability). However, in comparison, Rennyo emphasizes in several places that women are even deeper than men in their karmic trouble and defilement. For example, women easily become oriented to family and household business matters rather than spiritual matters. Rennyo does not draw upon the heavy repertoire of negativity in earlier, monastic Buddhist texts, but the question arises why women should be negatively distinguished in this way at all in the rhetoric, given that the institutional system was nonmonastic and the members were often married couples. Bloom suggests the answer is sociological: in a basically patriarchal society, birth as a woman is a disadvantage, indicating bad karma. Bloom suggests that although Rennyo does not question this framework, he uses the language of women’s bad karma as a kind of special device to emphasize his understanding of their position and to get extra leverage for the notion that Amida works particularly for them. In this connection, Rennyo was distinctly sectarian. Rennyo claimed that all the other gods and Buddhas had abandoned women (or all bonbu) in the age of mappō 末法 (the latter, decadent Dharma age), so in playing up the uniqueness of Amida’s saving relationship to women, Rennyo was clearly making unusually narrow institutional claims which to some extent misrepresented the possibilities for women in other lines of Buddhism. Bloom specifies that any positivity towards women was situated in the spiritual realm, and was not addressed to raising the status of women in the actual society. The critical religious rhetoric tended to strengthen stereotypes of women as inferior creatures, which fed back into the patriarchal social world, and Rennyo did not question the idea of three submissions. Finally, Rennyo did not clarify the contradictions in the textual tradition, particularly the discrepancy between the Eighteenth Vow and Thirty-fifth Vow. Bloom’s summary

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hints why interpretations of Rennyo vary widely, dividing generally into those who think some kind of simple misogyny (leading to female self-abnegation and destruction of women’s subjectivity) was expressed in his teaching, and those who suggest that the historical situation was more complex. A supporting element on one side of such a debate is the Kengyokuni 見玉尼 letter, a rather personal account of the early death of one of Rennyo’s daughters which was not included in the primary Gobunshō collection. The letter focuses on the hardships of the daughter Kengyoku (who was sent away as a child for service work), the importance of Pure Land religiosity, and the idea that Kengyoku was a teacher to her father Rennyo. Most scholars have concluded that this death—along with deaths of Rennyo’s second wife, and three other daughters, in a rather short period of time—had a great existential impact on Rennyo. Nothing in it suggests discrimination against women.18 Yasutomi (2006) argued that Rennyo’s attitude about women was similar to attitudes about other kinds of oppressed people. Similarly in Tashiro’s (1996) discussion of Rennyo’s view of women the author argues that Rennyo put himself in same place as a woman, but that this kind of deeply symbolic, sympathetic identity-switching was afterwards distorted in the Edo period by the penetration of Confucian influence and attitudes of danson johi 男尊女卑 (respecting males, denigrating females). A number of other interpreters likewise suggest that “women” represented all sentient beings, i.e. that in a sense the terms “women,” “evil persons,” and “all of us human beings” are all existentially equivalent.19 Yet Rennyo was also genuinely negative towards women too, and Matsumura (2006) provided an excellent summary of the inconsistencies. The language of Rennyo’s letters expresses contrasting attitudes: on one hand men and women are equal; on the other hand women’s bad karma (five obstacles and three submissions) and the terrible karma of the truly evil person (ten transgressions 18  Matsumoto (1999); see Nakamura (1997) for a discussion of the death of another Rennyo daughter as well as of other women in Rennyo’s family. 19  Yasutomi (2006) recounts a famous story which suggests the real situational complexity of Rennyo’s age. The tale of the flesh-adhering mask concerns a woman who had lost both husband and children to illness. She began to go hear the preaching of Rennyo, who had come to reside at Yoshizaki 吉崎 at the time. Her mother-in-law tried to block the woman’s visits to hear Rennyo, and even one night put on a mask, waited by the side of the road, and tried to frighten the daughter-in-law. But due to her religious faith the daughterin-law was not deterred. Indeed afterwards, the mask became stuck to the mother-inlaw’s face. It loosened and fell off only after she learned from her daughter-in-law to say the nenbutsu. The story is concerned with women’s issues in specific ways, the suffering of women who have lost children and family members; mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law conflict; the low social status of women; and their special needs.

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and five grave offenses) are synonymous so that women without special aid cannot be saved in the condition of their evil karma (which is worse than men’s karma). Matsumura adopts the perspective that the apparent tension, especially of course the heavily negative language about women, refracts the attitudes of general society at that time: especially, because of social conditions and indoctrination, most women themselves regarded themselves more negatively than men; and thus represented the extreme case of suffering which particularly proved the point of Amida’s vow. It is not controversial that Rennyo’s commitment to women was very strong and effective in terms of his organization. In the end Rennyo’s ambiguity was one of creating an effective organization that fit the society of his day (which meant exercising patriarchal authority and hereditary succession), in the interests of spreading a religious teaching theoretically about inward equality, salvation and subjectivity. Still the question lingers, why did Rennyo’s rhetoric so clearly change away from Shinran’s, that is, why did the tropes oriented to male and female become so relatively distinguished in a way they had not been in Shinran’s nearly-neutral texts? As indicated by Bloom and Matsumura, the explanation maintained by a substantial number of scholars is that Rennyo was dealing with and expressing changes in Japanese society, particularly the expansion of patriarchal values. For example, Hanafusa (1984) situates Rennyo in the history of changing family structures. Hongan-ji was subject to the evolution of Japanese family types in the direction of patriarchy as originally proposed by pioneering feminist Takamure Itsue 高群逸枝. The work of sociologist Morioka Kiyomi (1962) on Shin-shū and the ie system reinforced this point: it was Hongan-ji which had to respond to the social evolution of the ie, not vice versa. The institutions of Shin’s own leadership reflected such changes, such as the process by which marriage became male-lineage-oriented and temples normatively came to be based on that type of relationship. Tanokura (1991) offers a related line of analysis, arguing that Rennyo should be treated on his own separately from Shinran. Referring to the history of modern feminism Tanokura summarizes the perspective of Takamure Itsue which he also takes as his departure point. He adopts Taira’s observation that Hōnen and Shinran have little to say on women and that socially their era was still an era of relative female freedom; but then comes Zonkaku and the following spread of patriarchy. Tanokura notes how various scholars have made differing interpretations of the shift in Rennyo’s language. Kasahara suggested that the nyonin shōki emphasis was a kind of replacement for henjō nanshi as an expression stressing how women could be liberated despite their gender. Minamoto Junko reflected the idea that “women” represented Rennyo and all people together. A third idea is that Rennyo reflected in his language his own self-consciousness of Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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sexual sin in marriage. Tanokura does not like any of these three explanations: instead, his emphasis is that Rennyo was responding to his specific audience under changing sociological circumstances. Following Takamure’s analysis, the pattern of ie formation and yometori 嫁取 (virilocal) marriages was becoming stronger in the fifteenth century, creating conditions altering the former degree of freedom and subjectivity for women. According to this analysis (or apologetic), the trope of obstacles and submissions was a way to reconnect the Buddhist language to the actual conditions of women living in an increasingly restrictive society. If Shinran’s is the first, Zonkaku’s the second, and Rennyo’s the third, the fourth phase of Shin Buddhist language about women is found in Tokugawa period literature, which has been surveyed by Kasahara (1983) and Oguri (1973 and 2002). Kasahara (1983: 333–391) examined three genres of documents from the Edo period, letters written by Hongan-ji heads, doctrinal popularization literature, and den 伝 literature recounting idealized biographies of persons. As in the case of Rennyo, communications to women are found in correspondence from the hereditary heads of Hongan-ji. Kasahara selected a number of examples. A letter from the head Ryōnyo 良如 (1612–1662) mentions obstacles and obediences, but lightly, for the emphasis is on universal shinjin. A passage from Jūnyo 住如 (1673–1739) brings up heavier criticism of women: heavy karma, doubt, the need for spiritual reinforcement provided by the Thirty-fifth Vow and henjō nanshi, and the need for good behavior on the part of women. A letter to a woman’s kō 講 (group formed in a local temple congregation) from Honnyo 本如 (1778–1826) (many letters survive from him) follows Rennyo’s language closely: women have obstacles and sins but Amida’s compassion overcomes all. From Kōnyo 公如 (1798–1871), Kasahara took an 1832 letter on a fundraising project directed to women; the text repeats standard language of women’s evils, obstacles, the Thirty-fifth Vow, and henjō nanshi. A second genre was popularization literature, and Kasahara focused on a document in dangibon 談義本 style (a category of popular preaching texts originating in the Kamakura period) called Nyonin kyōka-shū 女人教化集 (Collection on Teaching to Women). Falsely attributed to Rennyo, it was, according to Kasahara, nevertheless used widely in Tokugawa-period Shin communities. In this text, the language employed is closest to Zonkaku, who is directly quoted: women are sinful, negatively evaluated, and cannot ordinarily become Buddhas; only Amida provides liberation, and it comes equally to women and men. The basic doctrine was a continuation of Zonkaku and Rennyo, with some added emphasis on kō 孝 (filial piety). The third genre is den biographical literature. Among these was a kind of kinsei ōjō-den 近世往生伝 (Early Modern Biographies on Pure Land Birth), the Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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editing of which was associated especially with a branch of Shin-shū called the Senjūji-ha 専修寺. A number of the episodes have women as the main characters. Rather than distinctive Shin doctrinal language, the wording is more like Jōdo school language, and focuses more on an ideal of female behavior as bending and compassionate rather than on tropes of female defectiveness. The context seems to have been an appeal to the bakufu’s conservative idea of social responsibility and political subservience. Further apparent expressions of congruence with the values of the bakufu regime also appeared in the well-known Myōkōnin-den 妙好人伝 (Records of Exemplary Shin-shū Followers) collections, which are quite specifically Shin Buddhist. While these stories, whose one hundred and fifty-seven figures include a number of women in the main collection, are quite multi-sided and complex, they also tend to promote “conservative values.” In the case of women this means particularly values of filial piety and sexual reserve. The typical myōkōnin personality featured unconditional obedience to the social structure, self-sacrifice, self-blame for one’s own fate, extreme honesty, acceptance of one’s position, and hard work. Kasahara chose six examples of women myōkōnin for commentary; in these, the usual tropes of women’s sins and obstacles appear, but the more prominent aspect is conservative, gendered ideas of behavior in line with official expectations about social morality. Nyonin ōjō doctrine in this period had multiple channels of delivery, including preaching, pilgrimage, and printed publications. Shin teaching tended to combine references to women’s disadvantages, a constant emphasis on the orthodox idea of unconditional shinjin, and a degree of promotion of ideal behavior which was clearly gendered (women’s qualities were supposed to be compassion, selfdiscipline, honesty and gentleness). Oguri examined the image of ideal females from the perspective of texts such as the Onna daigaku 女大学 (Greater Learning for Women) as well as the Myōkōninden. According to her analysis, on the religious side, Shin-shū’s Myōkōnin-den depiction of women was a powerful model, and probably the “official” one for Shinshū of the era. Myōkōnin-den literature was related to other works exorting the common people (Ryōmin-den 良民伝) promoted by the late-Edo-period bakufu. The desired idea of women as exemplars of filial piety (kō) was a major aspect of these exhortations. Such literature thus includes for example the Kanai jidan 家内示談 (Household Agreements, by an author named Ryūjun 竜潤), a set of teachings for women which was divided into sections for different types of female audiences. The main points were shin or religious faith; kō (filial piety) towards parents (meaning especially probably respectful caretaking towards in-laws); and “chastity” (probably sexual decency towards the husband).

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It should be emphasized that Edo Shin-based texts are also normally saturated with standard Shin boilerplate language about shinjin and so on, which is to say the ideas at least superficially were firmly planted in a Shin Buddhist, not a Confucian, psychological framework. Nevertheless, at the same time, this type of communication was strongly flavored by the moral “add-ons” which had not been so much part of the tradition before the later Tokugawa period, particularly the promotions of filial piety, sexual discipline, an ethic of hard work, and freedom from desire. Oguri clearly sees the texts as products of a historical situation. Late Tokugawa society was unsettled, even after the reactionary Kansei 寛政 Reforms of the 1790s. The bakufu’s promotion of conservative theories about women was part of its complex of reactions to a socio-political situation over which it was losing its former sense of control. The support of the Hongan-ji establishment for the promotion of myōkōnin stories (about both women and men) was an aspect of the temple system’s own conservative, self-protective official response to the unsettled times; beyond this a kind of emergent “middleclass” orientation at the grass roots might also have been at work. In some contrast with the above treatments, however, it is also possible to engage the Myōkōnin-den without being at all struck by any special treatment of women as a quality of the literature; rather, in such readings, mainstream doctrines of shinjin come to the fore as the primary message after all. Furthermore, sheer diversity of narrative was a feature of both the Myōkōnin-den and the earlier Ōjō-den. (Bathgate 2007, especially 275, 293) In the Tokugawa phase, even more obviously than in the case of Rennyo, Shin language was a reflection of the androcentric tendency of its times. To a certain extent, in spite of the social conditions, the tradition retained a range of modulations within itself, ranging from the distinctive gender-neutral attitude of Shinran to the responsive sympathy of Rennyo to the more generic and misogynist-sounding language of Zonkaku. The teaching was not completely consistent from a logical or psychological standpoint, and remained the product of centuries of adaptation in Japanese society that was both diverse and interactive. Presumably real women in actual fact made their own receptions of the doctrines. Despite such qualifications, a great deal of the language had settled into a stereotyped, matured dramatic opposition of tropes pitting female hopelessness against universal liberation.20 Since this melodramatic structure

20  Cf. Yoshida (2002), who explains how the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sūtra too has a dramatic structure involving a rhetorical combination of both misogyny and promise of Buddhahood.

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had been ripened for a couple of centuries in a specifically Shin Buddhist context, it had certainly acquired a formulaic quality. Still, probably the actual reception of the Confucian-sounding parts of the language can be doubted. There used to be a long-standing assumption that the majority of the commoner public of the Edo-period were living in ie households which received the exhortatory Confucian messages of the regime in a naïve, obedient way. This sort of approach still seems to appear for example in Sugano (2003), who apparently takes the position that almost all Tokugawa people were involved in ie and were subject to the related Confucian ideology. However, hypotheses about any Confucian naïveté of Edo-period women should be formulated in view of broader patterns of evidence on Edo-period non-samurai women’s social history. Questions of subjectivity persist. When and how did this Shin Buddhist imaginary speak to women in the Tokugawa, not all of whom were desperate or severely oppressed? Did this language add to their secondary statuses, or help them cope with it? All that is really apparent is that myōkōnin and women together share in the trope of the subaltern and deprecated and self-deprecating, the existential lowliness of which is paradoxically reversed in value in the life of faith. Social hierarchy interacts at least metaphorically with the mind of faith in complex, paradoxical ways. (Bathgate 2007) 5

Towards Further Research

This article has aimed not at reaching fixed conclusions, but at problematizing issues, and must end with the hesitant observation that—at least with the kind of evidence used here—it may not be possible to definitively answer certain questions. It can probably be assumed that Shin Buddhist language was performing something that was valued by Shin women members. There is plenty of evidence that Shin Buddhism was usually a member-driven institution in which the priests often had a strongly interactive relationship with parishioners. The kinds of rhetoric that persisted over long periods of time were the kinds that “sold,” i.e. remained meaningful and useful to members. Since this is the case, the more subtle challenge is to explain why a rather dramatized, polarized religious rhetoric, one heightening both the mood of radical disadvantage and the mood of radical liberation for women, was sustained for centuries. It would have been interpretively plausible, both in philosophical theory and in terms of the actual flexibility of the handling of the textual tradition, to drop almost all the critique of the female.

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An obvious hypothesis is that the larger context of premodern Japanese life (a context beyond the power of any Buddhist thinkers to control even if they had wished to do so) constantly reinforced in various phases over time some sense of female disadvantage which the Shin teachings were more or less required to specially address. In addition, in many parts of Japan where Shin culture was not dominant, Shin teachings also faced a constant background pressure from more common or generic attitudes towards women and pollution. It is hard to distinguish if the religion is creating a situation of female spiritual unease or responding to a situation of female spiritual unease; in other words it is a recapitulation of the old Pure Land ambiguity about whether the teachings are engaged with description or prescription of the female situation, and whether anything could have been done to cut through the negative feedback loop in the premodern biosocial context anyway. Shin language often sounds subordinating, but there may be a gap between the appearances of that language and the toughness, diversity and selfdefinition of a great many Japanese women as they must be assessed from the standpoint of the general social history. The subjectivity of individual women and their reactions to the embedded ambiguity of Shin teachings is never transparent. As suggested above, there were multiple receptions available, probably even during the Tokugawa period: birth in a rather concretely conceived Pure Land necessarily as a male; birth there optionally as a male; birth as a female (ignoring the idea of henjō nanshi); or the more elevated understanding that proper shinjin would lead to karmic dissolution into the formless and the end of gender altogether. The evidence suggests not only that all of these ideas were circulating in the Edo period, but also that the Hongan-ji elites heavily preferred that their members grasp Shin teaching in its higher, Shinranian modality, which neutralized gender discrimination at some abstract level at least. Further clarification of such problems may depend on the discovery and utilization of new kinds of evidence about the premodern period, such as diaries. References Bacon, Alice Mabel. 1902. Japanese Girls and Women. Revised and enlarged edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company. Bathgate, Michael. 2007. “Exemplary Lives: Form and Function in Pure Land Sacred Biography.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34 (2): 271–303. Bernstein, Gail Lee. 1991. “Introduction.” In: Bernstein, Gail Lee (ed.). Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–14.

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Bloom, Alfred. 1998. “Rennyo’s View of the Salvation of Women: Overcoming the Five Obstacles and Three Subordinations.” In: The Rennyo Shonin Reader. Kyoto: Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha, The Institute of Jodo Shinshu Studies, Hongwanji International Center, 5–33. Chiba Jōryū 千葉乗隆. 1984. “Shoki Shinshū to Bukkōji” 初期真宗と仏光寺 (Early Shin-shū and Bukkō-ji). Shinshū kenkyū 真宗研究 29: 197–206. Collcutt, Martin. 1991. “The Legacy of Confucianism in Japan.” In: Gilbert Rozman (ed.). The East Asian Region: Confucian Heritage and its Modern Adaptation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 111–154. CWS = The Collected Works of Shinran. 1997. 2 vols. Kyoto: Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha. Cuevas, Bryan J. and Jacqueline I. Stone (eds.). 2007. The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Dobbins, James C. 2004. Letters of the Nun Eshinni: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Ducor, Jérōme. 1993. La vie de Zonkaku, religieux bouddhiste japonais du XIV e siècle: avec une traduction de ses mémoires (Ichigoki) et une introduction à son oeuvre. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. Dutton, Anne. 2002. “Temple Divorce in Tokugawa Japan: A Survey of Documentation on Tōkeiji and Mantokuji.” In: Barbara Ruch (ed.). Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 209–245. Faure, Bernard. 2003. The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity and Gender. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fuess, Harald. 2004. Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600–2000. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fukuhara Ryūzen 福原隆善. 1991. “Hōnen shōnin no nyonin ōjōron 法然上人の女人 往生論” (Hōnen’s Doctrine on Women’s Birth in Pure Land). Nihon bukkyō gakkai nenpō 日本仏教学会年報 57: 29–42. Glassman, Hank. 2002. “The Nude Jizō at Denkōji: Notes on Women’s Salvation in Kamakura Buddhism.” In: Barbara Ruch (ed.). Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 383–413. Groner, Paul. 2002. “Vicissitudes in the Ordination of Japanese ‘Nuns’ During the Eighth through the Twelfth Centuries.” In: Barbara Ruch (ed.). Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 65–107. Hae-ju (Ho-Ryeon Jeon). 1999. “Can Women Achieve Enlightenment? A Critique of Sexual Transformation for Enlightenment.” In Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.). Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations. Albany: State University of New York Press, 123–141.

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Nishiguchi Junko 西口順子. 2006. “‘Eshinni shojō’ ni tsuite「恵信尼書状」について” (Eshinni’s Letters). In: Nishiguchi Junko 西口順子. Chūsei no josei to Bukkyō 中世の 女性と仏教 (Medieval Women and Buddhism). Kyoto: Hozōkan, 139–161. Oguri Junko 小栗純子. 1973. “Edo jidai no onna no risōzō 江戸時代の女の理想像” (Idealized Images of Women in the Edo Period). In: Kasahara Kazuo 笠原一夫 (ed.). Nihon josei shi 4. Giri to ninjō ni naku onna 日本女性史 4. 義理と人情に泣く女 (Women Suffering Between Duty and Human Emotion). Tokyo: Hyōronsha, 57–96. Oguri Junko. 2002. “Kinsei ni okeru risōteki joseizō: ryōmin seisaku to no kankei 近 世における理想的女性像－領民政策との関係” (Idealized Images of Women in the Early Modern Period: The Connection With Bakufu Exhortatory Policy). In: Katakura Hisako 片倉比佐子 (ed.). Nihon kazoku shi ronshū 6. Kazokukan no henkan 日本家族史論集 6. 家族観の変遷 (Transitions in Views of the Family). Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 94–132. Okumoto Takehiro 奥本武裕. 1996. “Rennyo no nyonin ōjō ron: Bummei gonen no ofumi o megutte 蓮如の女人往生論－文明五年の御文をめぐって” (Rennyo on Women’s Birth in the Pure Land: Letters in the Year Bummei 5). In: Jōdoshinshū kyōgaku kenkyūjo 浄土真宗教学研究所　(ed.). Kōza Rennyo 1 講座蓮如 1 (Lecture [on] Rennyo 1). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 251–277. Ooguchi Yūjirō 大口勇次郎. 1995. Josei no iru kinsei 女性のいる近世 (The Early Modern of Women). Tokyo: Keisō shobō. Paul, Diana Y. 1979. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahāyāna Tradition. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. Ruch, Barbara (ed.). 2002. Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Shiba Keiko 柴桂子. 1969. Edo jidai no onnatachi 江戸時代の女たち (Women of the Edo Period). Tokyo: Hyōronshinsha. Shigaraki Takamaro. 2005. A Life of Awakening: The Heart of the Shin Buddhist Path. Trans. by David Matsumoto. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. SSZ = Shinshū shōgyō zensho hensanjo 真宗聖教全書編纂所 (ed.). 1977. Shinshū shōgyō zensho 2 真宗聖教全書 2 (Complete Shin-shū Religious Texts 2). Kyoto: Ōyagi kōbundō. Smith, Robert J. 1983. “Making Village Women into ‘Good Wives and Wise Mothers’ in Prewar Japan.” Journal of Family History 8 (1): 70–83. Smith, Robert J. and Ella Lury Wiswell. 1982. The Women of Suye Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sōgō joseishi kenkyūkai 総合女性史研究会 (ed.). 1992. Nihon josei no rekishi: sei / ai / kazoku (History of Japanese Women: Sex, Love, Family) 日本女性の歴史－姓·愛·家. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. Sōgō joseishi kenkyūkai (ed.). 1993. Nihon josei no rekishi: onna no hataraki 日本女性の 歴史－女の働き (History of Japanese Women: Women’s Work). Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Sponberg, Alan. 1992. “Attitudes Toward Women and Feminine in Early Buddhism.” In: José Ignacio Cabezón (ed.). Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press, 3–36. Stone, Jacqueline I. 1999. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Stone, Jacqueline I. 2006. “Buddhism.” In: Paul L. Swanson and Clark Chilson (eds.). Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 38–64. Sugano Noriko. 2003. “State Indoctrination of Filial Piety in Tokugawa Japan: Sons and Daughters in the Official Records of Filial Piety.” In: Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott (eds.). Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 170–189. Tabata Yasuko 田端泰子. 1994. “Chūsei no ‘ie’ to kyōiku” 中世の「家」と教育 (The Medieval Household and Education). In: Tabata Yasuko. Nihon chūsei joseishi ron 日本中世女性史論 (Women’s History in Medieval Japan). Tokyo: Hanawa shobo, 187–214. Tabata Yasuko. 1999. “Women’s Work and Status in the Changing Medieval Economy.” In: Tonomura Hitomi, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko (eds.). Women and Class in Japanese History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 99–118. Taira Masayuki 平雅行. 1990. “Chūsei bukkyō to josei 中世仏教と女性” (Medieval Woman and Buddhism). In: Joseishi sōgō kenkyūkai (ed.) 女性史総合研究会. Nihon josei seikatsushi 2. Chūsei 日本女性生活史 2. (History of Lives of Japanese Women). Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppansha, 75–108. Taira Masayuki. 1998. “Kyū Bukkyō to josei 旧仏教と女性” (Ancient Buddhism and Women). In Sōgō joseishi kenkyūkai 総合女性史研究会 (ed.). Nihon joseishi ronshū 5. Josei to shūkyō 日本女性史論集 5. 女性と宗教 (Women and Religion). Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 150–179. Taira Masayuki. 2001. Shinran to sono jidai 親鸞とその時代 (Shinran and his Era). Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Takadani Shunshi 高谷俊之. 1976. “Nyonin ōjō kikigaki 女人往生聞書” (On Women’s Pure Land Birth). In: Uno Enkū 宇野圓空 (ed.). Zonkaku shōnin 存覚上人 (Zonkaku). Tokyo: Kokushohankokai, 172–209. Tanokura Ryōji 田ノ倉亮爾. 1991. “Joseikan o meguru Shinran to Rennyo no shisō no hikaku: feminizumu no tachiba kara 女性観をめぐる親鸞と蓮如の思想の比較－ フェミニズムの立場から” (Comparing Shinran’s and Rennyo’s Views of Women: From the Standpoint of Feminism). Junshin gakuhō 淳心学報 9: 103–134. Tashiro Shunkō 田代竣孝. 1996. Shinshū nyūmon: Ofumi ni manabu 真宗入門－御文に 学ぶ (Introduction to Shin-shū: Learning from Rennyo’s Letters). Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Tonomura, Hitomi and Marnie Anderson. 2001. “Gender and Sexuality in Japan.” In: Richard Bowring and Noel J. Pinnington (eds.). Teaching About Japan in Japan:

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A Handbook of Approaches to Teaching About Japan to Non-Japanese Students. Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press, 91–141. Uno, Kathleen S. 1991. “Women and Changes in the Household Division of Labor.” In: Gail Lee Bernstein (ed.). Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 17–41. Wakita Haruko 脇田晴子, Hayashi Reiko 林玲子, and Nagahara Kazuko 永原和 (eds.). 1987. Nihon joseishi 日本女性史　(History of Women in Japan). Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan. Wakita, Haruko et al. 1999. “Appendix: Past Developments and Future Issues in the Study of Women’s History in Japan.” In: Tonomura Hitomi, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko (eds.). Women and Class in Japanese History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 299–313. Wakita, Haruko. 1984. “Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan From the Perspective of Women’s History.” Journal of Japanese Studies 10 (1): 77–99. Wakita, Haruko. 1993. “Women and the Creation of the Ie in Japan: An Overview from the Medieval Period to the Present.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement 4: 83–105. Wakita, Haruko. 1995. Chūsei ni ikiru onnatachi 中世に生きる女たち (Women in Medieval Times). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Wakita, Haruko. 1999. “The Medieval Household and Gender Roles within the Imperial Family, Nobility, Merchants and Commoners.” In: Tonomura Hitomi, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko (eds.). Women and Class in Japanese History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 81–97. Wakita, Haruko. 2006. Women in Medieval Japan: Motherhood, Household Management and Sexuality. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Walthall, Anne. 1990. “The Family Ideology of the Rural Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth Century Japan.” Journal of Social History 23 (3): 463–483. Walthall, Anne. 1991. “The Life Cycle of Farm Women in Tokugawa Japan.” In: Gail Lee Bernstein (ed.). Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 42–70. Wilson, Liz. 1996. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yabuta, Yutaka. 2000. “Rediscovering Women in Tokugawa Japan.” Occasional Papers in Japanese Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University, E. O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Yamamoto, Jun. 2003. “A Case Study of Female Primogeniture in Pre-Modern Japan: Ariga Village, 1739–1868.” In: Ochiai Emiko (ed.). The Logic of Female Succession: Rethinking Patriarchy and Patrilineality in Global and Historical Perspective. Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 299–319.

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Yamazaki Ryūmyō 山崎龍明. 2004. “Shinshūsha no kazokuron: Bukkyō / ningen / kazoku 真宗者の家族論－仏教·人間·家族.” (Shin Buddhists’ Discourse on the Family: Buddhism, Human Beings, Family) Nihon bukkyōgakkai nenpō 日本仏教学 会年報 69: 91–104. Yasutomi Shin’ya 安富信哉. 2004. Shin no kōzō. 信の構造 (The Structure of Shin). Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Yasutomi Shin’ya. 2006. “The Tale of the Flesh-Adhering Mask.” In: Mark L. Blum and Yasutomi Shin’ya (eds.). Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 182–195. Yokota, Fuyuhiko. 1999. “Imagining Working Women in Early Modern Japan.” In: Tonomura Hitomi, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko (eds.). Women and Class in Japanese History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 153–167. Yoshida, Kazuhiko. 2002. “The Enlightenment of the Dragon King’s Daughter in The Lotus Sutra.” In: Barbara Ruch (ed.). Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 297–324.

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part 6 The Alternative Field: Pure Land Striven for in This World

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Ippen and Pure Land Buddhist Wayfarers in Medieval Japan James H. Foard The study of Pure Land Buddhism’s ascendence in late Heian and early Kama­ kura Japan has long centered on the two great sectarian founders, Hōnen and Shinran. While both warrant intensive scholarship, such an approach has left the impression that only the Jōdoshū and the Jōdo Shinshū were responsible for the propagation of Pure Land teachings in medieval Japan. Indeed, scholars have generally treated all of Kamakura Buddhism, including that of the Lotus Sutra, as the product of distinct sectarian movements, perhaps because these movements were to prove so powerful in later Japanese history. Together with Zen, these devotional sects have been labelled “Kamakura Buddhism,” with certain salient characteristics which set them apart from Tendai, Shingon, and the Nara schools. Unfortunately, to consider the spread of Pure Land Buddhism as a purely sectarian enterprise, no matter how important and enduring such sects were to become, is to severely distort the Kamakura period itself. For that matter, it also hinders any understanding of the dramatic growth of the sects, particular­ ly the Shinshū, in later times. Of equal importance for the spread of Pure Land beliefs well into the Muromachi period (ca. fifteenth century) were mendicant orders, whose members preached solicited funds, and organized devotional groups throughout the country. Most of these orders were chartered by great temples, but one, the Jishū founded by Ippen (1239–1289), arose autonomously and maintained both its own institutions as well as affiliations with estab­ lished temples.1 Although Ippen’s intellectual roots can be traced to Hōnen, the practical and sociological expressions of his religion were derived from the earlier, temple-based mendicant orders. Ippen and the Jishū, therefore, culminated a Pure Land movement quite distinct from that of the two great sects—one which accommodated itself to, and indeed often grew within, the Source: Foard, James H., “Ippen and Pure Land Wayfarers in Medieval Japan,” in James H. Foard, Michael Solomon, and Richard K. Payne (eds.), The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, Berkeley: University of California, 1996, pp. 357–397. 1  One might well argue that the yūzū nembutsu should be included in this category as well, but it never enjoyed the distinct institutional life that the Jishū did in the middle ages. See below, note 40.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_022

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older Buddhist institutions, which unabashedly embraced Shintō worship and certain folk practices, and whose ideal life was one of mendicant wayfaring. This paper will show how Ippen not only inherited much from this wayfar­ ing tradition, but transformed it as well, according to his own beliefs and expe­ riences. First, I will briefly outline the features of earlier mendicant orders, and then discuss Ippen’s career in relationship to them. Finally, I will suggest how understanding Ippen in this light clarifies his role in the history of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan. 1

Bessho Hijiri

Ippen was a hijiri, or “holy man.” This term has a long and ambiguous history, which has been explored principally by Hori Ichirō.2 Early in Japanese religion, it referred to unordained, charismatic figures who emerged from the native shamanistic tradition and embellished their powers with those of Buddhist esotericism and Taoist immortals. They were either ascetic retreatants or itin­ erants, and often both, largely eclectic in their religion and active among the common people. As early as the Nara period, the itinerant Gyōgi (668–749) engaged in popular preaching and welfare projects. Although his activities were at first proscribed, he became so popular that Emperor Shōmu over­ turned precedent by appointing him to high clerical rank. In return, Gyōgi raised funds for the construction of the Tōdaiji, thus providing a prototype for the fund-raising hijiri who were to become permanently organized in the Kamakura period.3 Another important prototype for Kamakura mendicants was Kūya (tenth century), nicknamed the “hijiri of the market” for his activities in the capital. To him credit is given for bringing the nembutsu to the common people, and following his example, many nembutsu hijiri appeared at the end of the Heian period.4 Ippen also paid homage to him and had no small effect on popular traditions about Kūya. Although there were many other early hijiri, their first formal organizations appeared in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. Earlier hijiri may very well have had their own associations, but little is known of these, and their relationship with the Buddhist clergy was often one of mutual hostility. In 2  See his Wagakuni Minkan Shinkō Shi no Kenkyū, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1953 and 1955), es­ pecially vol. 2; and also his “On the Concept of Hijiri (Holy Man)” Numen 5 (1958): 128–60, and 199–232. 3  Hori, Minkan Shinkō Shi, I: 256–93, and II: 635–6. 4  See Hori Ichirō, Kōya, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1963). Hori prefers this reading of the name, following a contemporary reference in kana.

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the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, however, they were brought to­ gether under the auspices of the Buddhist establishment itself, primarily for the purposes of fund-raising. While not ordained as regular clergy, their dress, practices, charms and talismans became standardized, and their organizations grew increasingly sophisticated and complex, always under at least nominal jurisdiction of some temple. While the hijiri thus enjoyed greater prestige in the wider medieval world, the Buddhist institutions they served increasingly relied on the economic benefits of this arrangement, as the hijiri catered to the new, popular devotions of the age. The earliest and largest of such groups was actually a series of organiza­ tions, which began on Mt. Kōya in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The greatest impetus for the spread of such hijiri organizations came, however, from the example set by Chōgen (1121–1206), who was appointed to rebuild the Tōdaiji in 1181. Perhaps under the influence of the Mt. Kōya hijiri, Chōgen orga­ nized the hijiri at Tōdaiji to solicit funds throughout the country. The success of this effort led other temples to organize their own hijiri, upon whom they increasingly depended for funds to support special projects, such as construc­ tion, repairs and image making. This reliance upon hijiri was, of course, accel­ erated by the wide-spread destruction of the age.5 At Tōdaiji and elsewhere, these hijiri were housed at bessho, literally “sepa­ rate places,” the legal and institutional means by which older temples accom­ modated newer, popular devotions. Bessho were devotional halls originally established by confraternities or pietist retreatants from the main temple. Most maintained their own economic existence under a kind of charter arrange­ ment with their parent temple.6 From these beginnings, the bessho evolved into training and lodging quarters for mendicant hijiri, who are therefore often called bessho hijiri. The bessho hijiri’s fund-raising was called kanjin. Specific kanjin practices varied from temple to temple, but their general features were remarkably con­ sistent. The hijiri would distribute objects, usually paper talismans called fuda, to contributors and enroll their names in a register (kanjinchō). A large, round goal, such as one hundred thousand, would be set for the number of contribu­ tors to be so registered. For their part, these contributors were said to have 5  See Kobayashi Tsuyoshi, Shunjōbō Chōgen no Kenkyū (Tokyo: Yurindo, 1971). For a list of tem­ ples organizing hijiri, see Akamatsu Toshihide, et al., eds., Nihon Bukkyō Shi, 3 vols. (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1967), II: 368; and Gorai Shigeru, Gangōji Gokurakubō Chūsei Shomin Shinkō Shiryō no Kenkyū (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1964), p. 8. The destruction of the age was, of course, that of the Gempei War between the Minamoto and the Taira clans. 6  Takagi Yutaka, “Inseiki ni okeru Bessho no Seiritsu to Katsudō,” in Kamakura Bukkyō no Tenkai, ed. Kasahara Kazuo (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1967), pp. 1–98.

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established kechien, which on the popular level referred to a salvific “connec­ tion” with the buddha, bodhisattva, or other deity whose image was cast or housed by such contributions, often symbolized by the placing of the register inside the statue itself. In time, such contributors were organized into local devotional groups (kechienshū, kō).7 The authority for kanjin came from a body of legends surrounding the temple known as engi. Originally, the term engi was a translation of pratītyasamutpāda, meaning “arising or coming into existence causally.”8 From thus referring to the origin of anything, engi took on the special meaning of the origin of a temple. Engi in this sense, then, date from the beginnings of temples in Japan, but were at first merely appended to inventories of temple buildings and possessions.9 With the rise in popular devotions, however, engi became entertaining and fantastic narratives of considerable length. Not only did they tell of a temple’s origins, they also included any number of subsequent miracles which revali­ dated the miraculous founding or explained other parts of a temple complex. These legends, then, helped convert scholastic or aristocratic temples into cen­ ters for popular devotions, as they heightened the expectations of pilgrims and strengthened the authority of the hijiri. The institutionalization and spread of Buddhist mendicancy in feudal soci­ ety had a profound effect on Japanese popular religion and culture. Obviously, new deities and an expanded worldview penetrated village Japan in this fash­ ion. In addition, hijiri developed their own repertoires of visual and perform­ ing arts which laid the foundation for much of later Japanese popular culture.10 Bessho hijiri thus joined the rich culture of the medieval road, which included minstrels, merchants, wayfaring craftsmen, performers, and others outside the normal social structures of feudal Japan. Other, similar religious itinerants, such as yamabushi or Kumano Bikuni, could be added to this list. Not all hijiri 7  The most thorough description of such activity is in Gorai, Gangōji, with evidence largely from archeology. 8  E. J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1933), p. 58. 9  D. E. Mills, A Collection of Tales from Uji: A Study and Translation of Uji Shui Monogatari (Cambridge: University Press, 1970), p. 8. Sakurai Tokutarō, Hagiwara Tatsuo, and Miyata Noboru, Jisha Engi, Nihon Shisō Taikei 20 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1975), pp. 445–78. 10  The word kanjin could signify virtually any fund-raising activity, including those staged in temple or shrine grounds themselves. From this, it became associated with sev­ eral purely secular sports and arts. The sumō of the Edo period, for example, was still called kanjin sumō. An interesting article on a similar theme is Barbara Ruch, “Medieval Jongleurs and the Making of a National Literature,” in Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. Johnathan W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 279–309.

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were propagators of Pure Land teachings, of course, but clearly Amida was the most common object of their devotions. Ippen’s debt to this hijiri tradition will become clear in the following pages. Unlike the bessho hijiri, however, Ippen was not employed by one specific tem­ ple, but was something of a free lance hijiri who justified his work by a per­ sonal revelation rather than an engi. Consequently, the Jishū he founded, while closely resembling bessho hijiri, was independent of temple affiliations. It was therefore able to absorb the hijiri of many temples, as well as some smaller, independent groups similar to itself, and thus emerge as the leading order of medieval mendicancy, and perhaps the major source of Pure Land propaga­ tion for over a century and a half. To understand how Ippen so transformed the hijiri tradition by his own Pure Land belief is to understand his contribution to Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. 2

Sources for the Study of Ippen

The study of Ippen’s life depends so greatly on a single source, the Ippen Hijiri E (Illustrated Life of Ippen Hijiri), that it would be wise to describe it at the out­ set. The Hijiri E is an emakimono, a set of scrolls in which words and pictures alternate, composed on silk in 1299, only ten years after Ippen’s death, and remarkably preserved to this day.11 The colophon gives the author as Shōkai, Ippen’s half-brother and frequent companion who figures prominently in the work itself, and the artist as En’i, identified by Hayashiya Tatsusaburō as a high ranking priest of the time.12

11  Along with only one other emakimono of the period, the Hijiri E is painted on silk rather than paper. It is preserved in its entirety at the Kankikōji in Kyoto, with the exception of the seventh scroll which was acquired by the Maeda family in the Edo period. This scroll then became an imperial possession after the Meiji Restoration, and is now on display at the National Museum in Tokyo. According to notations at the end of the final scroll, the Hijiri E was repaired in 1369 and 1492, and on one of these occasions much of the sixth scroll was misarranged. Gorai Shigeru has reconstructed the original arrangement in his “Ippen to Kōya, Kumano oyobi Odori Nembutsu,” in Nihon Emakimono Zenshū (24 vols. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1958–69), 10: 34–5. This same volume contains a complete black and white reproduction of the original and some color plates, but the printed text simply follows the standard work of Asayama Enshō, Ippen Hijiri E: Rokujō Engi (Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1940). The Hijiri E is also known as the Ippen Shōnin Eden and as the Rokujō Engi. 12  Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, Chūsei Bunka no Kichō (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1953), pp. 64–79.

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Two characteristics of the text deserve our attention. The first is the engi, many rich in detail, which Shōkai provides for virtually every place Ippen vis­ ited. Shōkai undoubtedly quotes these legends to show that Ippen’s presence at each place gave him intimate contact with deity, thereby authenticating the miracles and oracles he experienced. The second notable characteristic of the text is the large number of poems, more than in any comparable emakimono. These include a long wasan, or “Japanese hymn,” and several gāthā in Chinese, but most are waka, the classical Japanese verse form. Over sixty of these waka appear, some floating outside the chronology (e.g., IV, 5),13 an indication that Shōkai may have relied on a distinct source for these verses. They may, there­ fore, have had an important place in early Jishū propagation.14 The second major biography of Ippen is the Ippen Shōnin Eshi Den (Biography of Saint Ippen in Words and Pictures), also an emakimono, al­ though a far less satisfying one than the Hijiri E.15 Composed in the first decade of the fourteenth century by a man named Sōshun, the Eshi Den was intend­ ed for a Jishū group distinct from that which gave us the Hijiri E.16 Only four of its ten scrolls concern Ippen himself; the other six relate the activities of Shinkyō Taamidabutsu (a.k.a. Taa; 1237–1319), Ippen’s most important disciple, who directed a major segment of the Jishū after Ippen’s death. Sōshun appar­ ently wanted only to present a brief account of the major, miraculous events of Ippen’s life, from which at least part of the authority of Taa, the real subject of the work, derived.17 Ippen left no writings of his own. Just before his death, he burned them all to demonstrate that the nembutsu alone was sufficient. The Hijiri E (XI, 4) re­ cords, however, that Shōkai wrote down Ippen’s words, and evidence that a col­ lection of Ippen’s poems existed has already been noted. If so, it is not difficult to imagine other sayings being collected from followers’ notes and recollec­ tions. Such may be the origin of the Banshū Hōgo Shū (Collected Statements on 13  The Roman numeral refers to the scroll number, the Arabic to the section. 14  Kanai Kiyomitsu, Jishū Bungei Kenkyū (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 1967), pp. 83–90. 15  The original was lost to fire in 1911, but a reproduction based on several copies is available in vol. 23 of the Nihon Emakimono Zenshū. The standard text is also in Asayama, Ippen Hijiri E. 16  Neither Shōkai nor his associates are ever mentioned in the Eshi Den. In contrast with the Hijiri E, Ippen’s followers are presented as a large, orderly group, with men and women carefully separated, a fact which may indicate that Sōshun was addressing a growing Jishū membership. The precise date of the work is difficult to determine, but 1303, when Taa retired, seems most probable. See Miya Tsugio, “Yugyō Shōnin Engi E no Seiritsu to Shohon o Megutte,” in Nihon Emakimono Zenshū, 23: 13. 17  The statement at the end of the Eshi Den that Ippen and Taa were manifestations of Seishi and Kannon, respectively, may indicate that they were seen as equals by Taa’s followers.

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the Law from Harima Province), a collection of Ippen’s statements perhaps er­ roneously ascribed to Harima by an eighteenth century editor.18 A copy of this text has been dated as middle or late fourteenth century, and copies at Mt. Kōya date from the fifteenth century.19 In it appear sayings concerning things which were important to the Ippen we meet in the emakimono sources—such as Kumano, Kōya hijiri, the Taima mandala, and Shōku Shōnin—but generally the work presents Ippen’s thought as much closer to esoteric (mikkyō) Pure Land Buddhism than we would suspect from the Hijiri E.20 The text most commonly associated with Ippen’s name is the Ippen Shōnin Goroku (Recorded Statements of Saint Ippen) but it is really quite superflu­ ous. Edited by a Jishū abbot named Ikkai (1688–1766) and published in 1763, perhaps in response to the bakufu’s demand for clear doctrinal statements from the various religious organizations,21 the Goroku came to be regarded as comparable to the great treatises of the sectarian founders, an attitude still encountered today. Actually, it is derived almost entirely from the three texts

18  The standard version of the work was printed in 1776. In the introduction provided by the editor, we are told that it was written down by a certain Jia from a sermon delivered by Ippen at the Hiromine Hachimangū in Harima. The name Jia, however, does not appear in the work itself, nor can an appropriate Jia be found in any source. According to the Hijiri E (IX, 3–4), Ippen did pass through Harima in 1286 and 1287 but these sayings do not tie together as a sermon. The editor probably ascribed the introduction of the first saying, which claims that it was recorded at the Hachimangū, to the whole work, and placed it in Ippen’s biography accordingly. Two sayings in the Hōgo Shū, however, were not made at Harima according to the Hijiri E. The waka of the first saying appears in the Hijiri E (IV, 4) in one of those poetry sections floating above chronology. Saying number thirty-three describes an event which is dated 1288, when the Hijiri E claims Ippen had already left Harima. See Ōhashi Shunnō, Hōnen, Ippen, Nihon Shisō Taikei 10 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971), pp. 466–78. 19  Miyazaki Enjun, Chūsei Bukkyō to Shomin Seikatsu (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1951), pp. 206–9. The text followed for the present work is that of Ōhashi, Hōnen, Ippen. 20  By this, I mean that there are no Pure Land theoretical statements attributed to Ippen in the Hijiri E that cannot be explained by his background in Seizan thought, but in the Hōgo Shū there are. This does not, however, damn the Hōgo Shū, since Ippen’s connection with Mt. Kōya can be deduced from the Hijiri E. Akamatsu Toshihide, in his Kamakura Bukkyō no Kenkyū (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1955), p. 357, claims an influence from Shingon on Ippen’s thought as a result of his Mt. Kōya visit, giving as evidence two passages from the Hōgo Shū (24 and 51) which quote Shingon documents. He goes on to say on the same page, however, that the central tenet of Ippen’s thought, the theory that Amida’s enlight­ enment ten kalpas ago and the salvation of all beings are united in one nembutsu, was shared only by the Seizan school. As will become clear in the following pages, I believe the Seizan connection was the crucial one. 21  Kanai Kiyomitsu, Ippen to Jishū Kyōdan (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1975), p. 172.

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mentioned above. The only new materials are eight waka, five letters, and a long, flawed wasan, the “Hyakuri Kugo.” Minor and derivative sources abound, but will only be cited when pertinent to the discussion in the following pages. 3

Ippen’s Early Life and Training

Ippen was born in 1239 into the Kōno clan, which had ruled the province of Iyo (present day Ehime Prefecture) for centuries, and which had fought with the Minamoto side against the Taira. Ippen’s grandfather, Kōno Michinobu, mar­ ried a daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa, thus connecting his clan with the highest circles of power. Disaster came, however, when several of Michinobu’s sons conspired in the Jōkyū Disturbance, Emperor Go-Toba’s fanciful attempt to reassert imperial authority in 1221. After the defeat of the emperor’s forces, Michinobu was banished to the far north (Ōshū), and those of his sons who were directly involved were exiled elsewhere or executed.22 Ippen’s father, Kōno Michihiro, may have been too young to participate in the affair, but even­ tually he took the tonsure as did three of his four sons. Ippen was born eighteen years after the family’s disaster, the second son of Michihiro. A Muromachi source gives his childhood name as Shōjumaru, and says that he began study­ ing at a temple called Keigyōji in 1245, under a certain Enkyō.23 The Hijiri E (I, 1), however, mentions none of this, but records that the death of his mother in his tenth year “awakened him to the impermanence of things,” whereupon his father instructed him to “leave home” (shukke) and take the name Zuien. In the spring of 1251, accompanied by an adult priest, the young Zuien traveled to Dazaifu in Chikuzen to study with a certain Shōtatsu. Although often forgotten today, Dazaifu was one of the great Buddhist centers of Japan from the dawn of Japanese Buddhism until the close of the middle ages, as 22  Ōhashi Shunnō, Ippen: Sono Kōdō to Shisō, Nihonjin no Kōdō to Shisō 14 (Tokyo: Hyōronsha, 1971), pp. 13–22. Though a major catastrophe, the Jokyū Disturbance did not spell the end of the Kōno. for one of Michinobu’s sons by Tokimasa’s daughter remained loyal to the Shogun and was rewarded. His descendants were to distinguish themselves in the fight against the Mongols and in the battles described in the Taiheiki, before being destroyed in the sixteenth century. Ippen’s ancestry and the Kōno’s history can be traced in three genealogical records, the Ochi Keizu, the Kōno Shi Keizu, and the Kōno Keizu, all available in the Zoku Gunsho Ruiju, 67 vols., divided into 33 sections, plus 4 suppl. vols. and index (Tokyo: Zoku Gunsho Ruiju Kansei Kai, 1928–37), 7th sect., 1: 136–69. 23  From the Ippen Shōnin Nenpuryaku, in the Zoku Gunsho Ruijū, ninth sect., 1: 210. The fact that this text continues through the names of Taa’s disciples may show that it is a copy of a mid-fourteenth century work.

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temples shared in the commercial and military energies naturally generated by such close proximity to the continent. Saichō had established a branch of Enryakuji there, and Tendai nembutsu practice in the area dates from at least the eleventh century.24 Shōtatsu apparently was a Tendai retreatant devoted to Amida and living on Harayama, a mountain near the main temple complex at Mt. Hōman.25 Shōtatsu first sent Ippen to read the Pure Land sutras with a certain Kedai of Kiyomizu in Hizen. Kedai changed the boy’s name to Chishin,26 and when satisfied that he had learned all he could teach him, sent him back to Shōtatsu sometime between 1252 and 1255. After mastering the “most pro­ found doctrines” of Pure Land Buddhism, the young Chishin returned to Iyo in 1263, upon the death of his father. Both Shōtatsu and Kedai, and perhaps Ippen’s father as well, were disciples of Shōkū (1177–1247), founder of the Seizan branch of the Jōdoshū.27 Shōkū had been a disciple of Hōnen, but after the latter’s death, studied Tendai doc­ trines under Jien (1155–1225), abbot of Enryakuji and author of the Gukanshō. Jien then appointed Shōkū to head the Ōjōin on Seizan, a mountain near the capital from which Shōkū’s school took its name. This Ōjōin was an institu­ tion similar to the bessho discussed earlier. Originally founded by a retreatant known as Gensan late in the eleventh century, it grew into a residence for bessho hijiri performing the nembutsu practices of Tendai, who became the nucle­ us of Shōkū’s group.28 Hence, Tendai Pure Land retreatants such as Shōtatsu could have easily adopted his teachings. Shōkū interpreted the eighteenth vow of Dharākara to mean that the salva­ tion of all beings and the Bodhisattva Hōzō’s attainment of buddhahood and perfect enlightenment are one and the same event. The moment of nembutsu, 24  Kanai, Ippen, pp. 16–7. 25  His presence on Harayama is known from the Hossui Bunru Ki, for which see note 27. His Tendai origins can be deduced from his associations with both Shōkū and the Kōno, for whose Tendai background, see Ōhashi, Ippen, p. 22. 26  The change may reflect a rejection of his father’s jiriki nembutsu practices. See Kanai, Ippen, p. 21. 27  Shōtatsu and Kedai are listed as disciples of Shōkū in the Hossui Bunru Ki (1378), an au­ thoritative chart of Jōdoshū masters and disciples. Ippen’s father is said to have studied under “Seizan Shōnin” in the Hijiri E (X, 3), which would explain a reference to “old friend­ ships” by Kedai when he met Ippen (I, 1). The Hossui Bunru Ki also implies that Shotatsu had lived in Iyo and had adopted a son of the Kōno, a certain Ken’i, who was also a disciple of Shōkū. See Kikuchi Yūjiro, ed., “Shiryō Shōkai: Hossui Bunru Ki,” Nihon Bukkyō Shi 1 (January, 1957): 94–105; 3 (November, 1957): 87–96. 28  Kikuchi Yūjiro, “Seizanha no Seiritsu,” Rekishi Chiri 85:3 (March, 1955): 1–34. Hisaki Yukio, “Shoki Seizan Kyōdan no Seiritsu ni tsuite,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (January, 1958): 251–5.

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furthermore, is both the moment of an individual’s salvation and the moment of the attainment of Buddhahood ten kalpas ago. The “Namu” of the “Namu Amida Butsu” refers to the former, and the “Amida Butsu” to the latter. Both events are contained and united in “Namu Amida Butsu” itself. Since the sutra assures us that Hōzō did, in fact, become Amida ten kalpas ago, an event syn­ onymous with the salvation of all beings, our rebirth has been established (ketsujō ōjō), and is immanent in one nembutsu. Rebirth in the Pure Land is therefore immediate in this life (sokuben ōjō) and is identical with rebirth at death. It is, indeed, beyond life and death, the present and ten kalpas ago.29 As Ippen stated, “When one takes refuge in the name which cuts the flow of past, present, and future, there is rebirth without beginning or end.” (Hōgo Shū, 29). Ippen adopted Shōku’s doctrine of sokuben ōjō intact. In 1271, he would sum­ marize it well in his “Jūichi Funi Ge” (Gāthā on the Identity of Ten and One, Hijiri E, I, 4): Perfect enlightenment having been attained ten kalpas ago, all beings of this world With one nembutsu are reborn into Amida’s land. The ten and the one are identical; thus, no life or death. Those of this world and those of that land sit in great assembly. After returning to Iyo, Ippen probably married and spent eight years in house­ hold life. Legends concerning his second departure from home abound,30 but the Hijiri E (I, 2) simply states that he reflected on himself while watching a child’s top spin. After overseeing the tonsure of his half-brother, Shōkai (the author of the Hijiri E) and escorting him to Dazaifu, Ippen proceeded on a pilgrimage to Zenkōji, a famous temple in Shinshū (Nagano Prefecture). Ippen was probably attracted to this temple by some contact with Zenkōji’s hijiri, who were among the earliest and widest ranging in Japan. With small copies of 29  Ishida Mitsuyuki, Jōdokyō Kyōrishi (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1962), pp. 204–32. Also help­ ful is Kōno Kenzen, “Ippen Kyōgaku no Chūshin Kadai,” Jishū Kyōgaku Nenpō 4 (1975): 1–24. For the origin off the term sokuben ōjō in the Kanmuryōjukyō, see Nakamura Hajime, et al., eds. and trans., Jōdo Sanbukyō, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1964), 2: 63, 124. 30  The Eshi Den (I, 1) says that Ippen was attacked and almost killed in a family dispute, a story accepted by Ishioka Shin’ichi, “Ippen ni okeru Shukke no Dōin ni tsuite no Kōsatsu,” Tōyōgaku Kenkyū 2 (1967): 87–94. The Nenpuryaku (see n. 23) claims Ippen had two beau­ tiful wives whose hair turned into snakes while they were napping, a sign of their mu­ tual jealousy. Seeing this, Ippen became understandably apprehensive about household life. This story bears a strong resemblance to that in the familiar legend of the Karukaya dōshin, and all such accounts may have derived from that of Śākyamuni’s revulsion with his harem before leaving home.

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the main statue of Zenkōji attached to their hats, they rode on the wave of Pure Land belief which swept over all classes in the late Heian period. Numerous branch temples were established in the home provinces and elsewhere, one of which was the Inamitsu Zenkōji in Chikuzen, just north of Dazaifu. From here, Zenkōji hijiri covered Dazaifu and the rest of Kyūshū, and it is easy to imagine Ippen falling under their sway. Zenkōji’s rare standing statue was said to be the living Amida arriving in Japan,31 and the Hijiri E (I, 3) gives us the first of many engi, the temple legends mentioned earlier, one which reflects these beliefs. At Zenkōji, Ippen drew, perhaps after a vision, an illustration of the famous par­ able from Shan-tao of the white path and two rivers. After returning to Iyo, Ippen meditated on this painting at a hermitage and composed the gāthā translated above. In the seventh month of 1273, he began austerities at a place called Iwaya at Sugō in Iyo, where he was to stay for at most eight months. For Sugō, Shōkai provides the finest engi in all the Hijiri E (II, 1) undoubtedly because, although still a boy, he participated in the retreat with Ippen. Briefly, the engi tells of the miraculous discovery of an image of Kannon by a hunter who later became the protective deity of the mountain, a common motif often used to accommodate a deity indigenous to an area be­ fore Buddhism’s arrival. We also learn that an imperial messenger from China, who also became a protective deity, brought treasures, which, along with the statue, miraculously escaped fire on two occasions. The rest of the engi tells of various ascetics who had practice at Sugō, and may provide a crucial clue for understanding Ippen’s later practice. Particularly important is the statement that Kūkai had retired here for austerities, and had left a statue he had made of Fudō Myōō. Although another story concerning a woman who attained the ability to fly may imply an even earlier ascetic tradition, the caves of Sugō were obviously associated with Kūkai by Ippen’s time.32 Early in 1274, Ippen left Iyo again, in the company of three women, two of whom may have been his wife and daughter,33 and proceeded to Shitennōji, in present day Ōsaka, a temple whose western gate was said to be the eastern gate of the Pure Land. On this matter, the Hijiri E (II, 3) even quotes this temple’s

31  Sakai Kōhei, Zenkōji Shi, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu, 1969), I: 260. Yoshida Kiyoshi, “Zenkōji Hijiri ni tsuite,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 13 (January, 1955): 166–7. Kanai Kiyomitsu, Jishū to Chūsei Bungaku (Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu, 1975), pp. 37–9. 32  Eventually Sugo would hold two of the eighty-eight stations of the Shikoku pilgrimage associated with Kūkai, and a guide published in 1689 gives virtually the same legends as the Hijiri E. See Miyazaki Ninshō, Henro: Sono Kokoro to Rekishi (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1974), pp. 54–68. 197–296. 33  Ōhashi, Ippen, pp. 29–31.

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engi, which has come down to us independently.34 In the accompanying il­ lustration, a marvelous view of a medieval pilgrimage center, we find Ippen passing out fuda, although the text offers no explanation of how or when he began to do so. A number of factors, however, indicate that Ippen’s fuda prac­ tice derived from that of the hijiri of Mt. Kōya, the next stop on his itinerary. Hijiri on Mt. Kōya date from the late tenth century, when they were orga­ nized by Jōyo (Kishin Shōnin) to raise funds necessitated by a great fire in 994. Specifically Pure Land hijiri, however, began with Kyōkai (Odawara Hijiri), who arrived on the mountain around 1073. He was a pietistic retreatant and occa­ sional wayfarer, and the biographies of many who followed his example are collected in the Kōya Ōjōden, compiled before 1184. In the early twelfth century, a man named Kakuban arose among the hijiri to provide them with a unity of Pure Land and Shingon doctrines, and to lead them in nearly wresting the mountain from the established clergy. Through powerful connections in the capital, Kakuban was appointed abbot both for a hall he had founded and for Kongōbuji itself, a gross break with precedent in such appointments. The ire of the regular clergy was aroused in the face of this blatant usurpation by the hijiri, and tensions erupted into brawling violence, until Kakuban was forced off the mountain in 1140. Despite such scandalous disruptions, the clergy contin­ ued to rely on the kanjin activities of hijiri, whose ranks may even have swelled with those escaping the destruction of the Gempei Wars. In the 1170’s, Chōgen served as a kanjin hijiri for Mt. Kōya, and quite probably modelled his later, prestigious efforts on his experience there. The next leader of Mt. Kōya’s hijiri was Myōhen, who arrived on the mountain in 1180 and organized hijiri at the Renge Zammai In (Rengedani). These hijiri distributed fuda, spread tales about Kūkai, and popularized burials on Mt. Kōya. This last practice was based on the belief, which arose in the eleventh century, that Mt. Kōya was the Pure Land on earth, belief which grew from the archaic view that spirits of the dead gathered on mountain peaks.35 For Ippen’s trip to Mt. Kōya in 1274, the Hijiri E (II, 4) first provides an engi explaining how the mountain itself corresponds to the mandalas of Shingon, 34  The Arahakadera Goshuin Engi, a document attributed to Prince Shōtoku and “discov­ ered” in 1007, available in the Zoku Gunsho Ruijū, twenty seventh section, 3: 326–33. The section quoted in the Hijiri E is on p. 326. 35  Gorai Shigeru, Kōya Hijiri, Kadokawa Sensho 79 (Kadokawa Shoten, 1975). Wada Akio, “Kōyasan ni okeru Kamakura Bukkyō,” in Kamakura Bukkyō Keisei no Mondaiten, ed. Nihon Bukkyō Gakkai (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1969), pp. 80–5. For Kakuban’s thought, see Inoue Mitsusada, Jōdokyō Seiritsu Shi no Kenkyū (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1956), pp. 347–58. For the continued economic power of the hijiri, see Miyasaka Yūshō, Kōyasan Shi (Kōyasan, Wakayma: Kōyasan Bunka Kenkyūkai, 1962), p. 39.

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and relating the two familiar stories of Kūkai hurling a vajra from China and awaiting Miroku in his mausoleum. All this is quite ordinary and predictable. The Hijiri E then gives, however, a most specialized and unexpected item: a block for printing Amida’s name, carved by Kūkai himself, was preserved on the mountain. Such a block would have been used to print the fuda distributed by Mt. Koya’s hijiri.36 That the Hijiri E would mention this printing block at all strongly suggests that Ippen had some contact with these hijiri, and further, that he could have derived his fuda distribution from theirs. How Ippen came into contact with the hijiri of Mt. Kōya can easily be sur­ mised. For their ascetic training, these hijiri often toured the sites in Shikoku connected by legend with Kūkai’s early life.37 The engi for Sugō summarized above suggests that the caves where Ippen retired had been an early site for Buddhist asceticism which had been given new meaning by an associa­ tion with Kūkai. In all probability, then, Sugō was frequented by hijiri from Mt. Kōya, and Ippen fell under their influence while undergoing his mountain austerities there. This thesis also explains why he is pictured distributing fuda at Shitennōji, before he arrived on Mt. Kōya. There is no confirmation of this connection at Sugo from any source, however, and we must remember that similar practices existed elsewhere. Nevertheless, this influence from Mt. Kōya seems highly probable, and it places Ippen’s practice in the tradition of fuda distribution, which, through Chōgen, extended to almost all major temples in medieval Japan. This background in hijiri ascetic and propagation practices and the training under Shōtatsu in Seizan thought constitute the two most important features of Ippen’s early years. In his experience at Kumano, the next stop in his trav­ els, they would be fused into a single, coherent Pure Land Buddhist religious life. This event would be more than personal, however; it would transform the sanctity and mission of Pure Land Buddhist wayfaring in medieval Japan. 4

The Foundations of Ippen’s Practice

After Mt. Kōya, Ippen continued south on the Kii Peninsula to Kumano, where he was to have the fundamental religious experience of his life. Kumano is an area containing three Shintō shrines of great antiquity, the central of which was the Hongū (Nimasu Jinjya) enshrining Ketsumiko-no-kami. By Ippen’s 36  Ōhashi, Ippen, pp. 49–51. 37  Nakao Takashi, “Chōgen ni okeru Sazen no Igi,” in Minshū to Shūkyō, ed. Shimoide Sekiyo (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1976), pp. 161–2.

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time, these shrines had become the objects of a great pilgrimage tradition, and had also become the base for the yamabushi (mountain ascetics) of the Honzan Branch of Shugendō.38 Under the influence of honji suijaku thought, the god of the Hongū had come to be regarded as both Shōjō Bosatsu (Truth Revealing Bodhisattva) and, more importantly, as a gongen (manifestation) of Amida.39 Ippen’s acceptance of these beliefs is obvious (Hōgo Shū, 32), and this pilgrimage to Kumano may have been his goal since leaving Iyo. On the road to the Hongū, Ippen had an experience with a priest that chal­ lenged his belief in the nembutsu (Hijiri E, III, 1): There was a lone priest. The hijiri exhorted him saying, “Awaken your faith in the one nembutsu, chant ‘Namu Amida Butsu,’ and receive this fuda.” Refusing, the priest answered, “At present I do not have a heart faithful to the one nembutsu. To receive this would be hypocrisy.” “Have you not a heart faithful to Buddhism?” said the hijiri. “Why should you not receive this?” “I have no doubts about the scriptures or the teachings,” responded the priest, “but my lack of a faithful heart comes from my own inabilities.” By this time, several pilgrims had gathered, and if this priest did not receive the fuda, neither would they. So putting aside his true feelings, 38  Wakamori Tarō, Shugendō Shi Kenkyū, Tōyō Bunko 211 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1972), pp. 194– 205. Although ascetics had practiced in the mountains of Kumano since at least the time of Jōzō, a tenth century hero of many legends, the yamabushi first became distinctly or­ ganized as pilgrim guides (sendatsu). Imperial pilgrimage to Kumano reached its peak under Emperors Go-Shirakawa (thirty-three visits) and Go-Toba (twenty-eight visits), but later Kumano pilgrimage was taken over by other classes to such a degree that “the pil­ grimage of ants to Kumano” became a common phrase. See Hori, Minkan Shinkō, 2:94–5, and 111–52. 39  Honji-suijaku refers to the belief that Shintō kami were manifestations of Buddhist deities. Alicia Matsunaga, in her The Buddhist Philosophy of Assimilation: The Historical Development of the Honji Suijaku Theory (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1969), pp. 218–27, finds four historical stages in the relationship of kami to Buddhism: first, they were guardians of Buddhism; second, they themselves were seen as suffering beings; third, they were ac­ cordingly led to enlightenment; and fourth, once enlightened, they came to be regarded assuijaku. The identification of the god of the Hongū as Shōjō Bosatsu and as a gongen of Amida would reflect the third and fourth stages. Gorai Shigeru believes the name “Shōjō Bosatsu” derives from the fact that this was a god for the repose of souls on the mountain, who revealed the truth that the dead had gone to the Pure Land. As with Mt. Kōya, then, archaic beliefs about the gathering of the dead on mountains led to an identification of Kumano with the Pure Land. See his “Kumano Sanzan no Rekishi to Shinkō,” in Yoshino Kumano Shinkō no Kenkyū, Sangaku Shūkyō Shi Kenkyū Sōsho 4, ed. Gorai Shigeru (Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 1975), pp. 168–73. Also, Murayama Shūichi, Honji Suijaku, Nihon Rekishi Sōsho 33 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1974), pp. 154–5.

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Ippen said, “Even without faithful heart, receive this,” and passed him the fuda. Seeing this, each pilgrim received one. The priest disappeared. Although the Hijiri E does not say so directly, the rest of this story shows that the fuda Ippen was distributing must have had “Namu Amida Butsu” printed on them. Ippen’s initial call to the priest is therefore significant, for it shows he connected the reception of the fuda with faithful practice of the nembutsu. The fuda was then merely a propagation tool, a device for encouraging piety in those who received it, but without direct efficacy of its own. The priest ac­ cordingly refuses the fuda because he does not have a faith deep enough to ful­ fill the obligations of continued piety the acceptance would bring. That Ippen shared his concern for such obligations is shown by the fact that he must “put aside his own feelings” to give the priest the fuda. This incident, then, clarified the inconsistency of Ippen’s fuda distribution, derived from that of Mt. Kōya’s hijiri, with the Pure Land beliefs he had inher­ ited from the Seizan school. If there were those not capable of the nembutsu then the salvation of all beings could not have been decided ten kalpas ago. Even if it had been decided, the necessity of faithful nembutsu practice would contradict the claim that all are saved by “other power.” The universality and immanence of Amida’s salvation were thus challenged, a crisis underscored by the sudden disappearance of the priest, a conventional sign of divine beings. As Ippen reflected on this, says the Hijiri E, he realized that “it was not without reason, and divine will should be consulted about kanjin.” To consult divine will, Ippen went to the Shōjō Den of the Hongū, whose deity, it must be remembered, was a gongen of Amida. The Hijiri E continues: As he (Ippen) closed his eyes without dozing, the door of the Den was pushed open and a white haired yamabushi wearing a long headpiece emerged. On the verandah, approximately three hundred yamabushi touched their heads to the ground and paid homage. Realizing that the priest had been the gongen, he was filled with belief. The yamabushi then stepped down before the hijiri and pronounced, “Hijiri who propagates the yūzū nembutsu,40 why do you propagate it wrongly? All beings are not 40  See Gorai Shigeru, “Ippen Shōnin to Yūzū Nembutsu,” Ōtani Gakuhō 41, no. 1 (June, 1961): 1–21. Also helpful is his “Yūzū Nembutsu, Dai Nembutsu, oyobi Rokusai Nembutsu,” Ōtani Daigaku Kenkyū Nenpō 10 (December 1957): 117–74. Gorai emphatically states that yūzū nembutsu served as an ideology for the bessho hijiri activities described above, including those of Mt. Kōya. Hence, this reference confirms rather than contradicts the theory of Mt. Kōya’s influence on Ippen. A hagiographical appeal to bessho hijiri groups may lie behind Shōkai’s identification, in the continuation of the Hijiri E story, of the reception

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to be reborn for the first time by your propagation. With Amida’s perfect enlightenment ten kalpas ago, the rebirth of all beings by Namu Amida Butsu was established. Do not choose between believers and unbelievers. Do not distinguish the pure from the impure. Distribute your fuda.” This revelation justified Ippen’s fuda distribution in a way consistent with the Pure Land beliefs he had held all along. The gongen’s statement “With Amida’s perfect enlightenment ten kalpas ago, the rebirth of all beings by Namu Amida Butsu was established” is, after all, virtually identical with the first two lines of Ippen’s “Juichi Funi Ge,” translated above. What was newly revealed to Ippen, judging from a letter he wrote to Shōkai (Hijiri E, III, 2), was that the fuda itself served as the ichinen, the one nembutsu by which we are immediately saved. The act of receiving a fuda, therefore, did not entail obligations of further nem­ butsu practice, but by itself brought immediate and final salvation. This revelation obviously made fuda distribution a very important act in­ deed. It also prompted Ippen to give his practice a new rationale and definite form. From the Shingū, another Kumano shrine, he sent his female compan­ ions back to Iyo with the letter for Shōkai mentioned above and a wooden block for printing fuda. This block (and hence the fuda) said simply, “Namu Amida Butsu: The Established Rebirth of Six Hundred Thousand People.” The number six hundred thousand may at first be puzzling, for in his letter Ippen clearly states that the fuda will save all beings without limit. Actually, the num­ ber probably meant “all Japanese,” for Japan was known as the “sixty-odd prov­ inces” (rokujūyoshū). The number six hundred thousand (literally “sixty ten thousands,”) should therefore be understood as “all the people of the sixty-odd provinces.” On the other hand, even though the number had this figurative meaning, it was taken as a literal goal, for the Hijiri E (XII, 2) tells us that Ippen gave his six hundred thousandth fuda away shortly before his death. Taa, his leading disciple, was to confirm that the number meant “all beings,” and that once the goal had been reached, the counting would begin again.41 Ippen also enrolled names in a register, although this is not given much attention in the Hijiri E. The relation of this register to his fuda distribution is unclear, for we find him distributing fuda in situations where recording names would have

of fuda by boys manifesting the ninety-nine ōji with Bishamon, Bonten, and Taishaku’s revelation of their names in Ryōnin’s register. 41  Hattori Kiyomichi, “Ippen Shōnin no Fusan ni tsuite no Mondai,” Nihon Rekishi 95 (May, 1956): 5–13. Taa’s statement on the matter can be found in Ōhashi Shunnō, ed. Jishū Nisō Taa Shōnin Hōgo (Tokyo: Daizo Shuppansha, 1975), pp. 173–5.

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been impossible (Hijiri E, VII, 2). At his death, he had enrolled 251,724 people (Hijiri E, XII, 2), a substantial number, but far less than six hundred thousand. Ippen also included the following gāthā in his letter to Shōkai: The six character name is the one law; The karmic beings of the ten realms are one body. Abandoning the myriad practices and relying on the one nembutsu, One rises among humans as a beautiful lotus. The word translated as “one” in the first three lines is ippen, from which Ippen took his name. In addition, the first characters of each line are, respectively, “six,” “ten,” “ten thousand” (translated here as “myriad”), and “people,” and to­ gether these form the “Six Hundred Thousand People” of the printing block. Besides its surface meaning, then, the gāthā indicates by numerology and word play that Ippen now saw himself as the bearer of the one nembutsu which would save all beings. With this new mission, Ippen spent the next three years as a solitary wayfar­ er, passing through the capital, Iyo, and Dazaifu, where he visited and bathed with his old teacher, Shōtatsu. The mobilization in Kyūshū for the defense against the Mongols may have attracted Ippen, either because of the chance for propagation in such a setting, or because Ippen felt he could offer divine assistance. In any event, he seems to have met with little success, although one provincial warrior accepted the fuda while insulting Ippen, thereby elicit­ ing Ippen’s praise (Hijiri E, IV, 1). After an impoverished trip through southern Kyūshū, Ippen impressed Ōtomo Yoriyasu, constable (shugo) of both Buzen and Bungo provinces, who invited him to remain for awhile. There, too, he gained his first and foremost disciple, Taa, who may already have been a re­ treatant in the area.42 Ippen apparently had other, unnamed followers by the time he returned to Iyo in 1278 (Hijiri E, IV, 3). From Iyo, he traveled through the province of Bizen, where he converted the son and daughter-in-law of a Shintō priest in an incident which nearly cost him his life. Arriving at the capital again in 1279, he stayed at a devotional hall dedicated to Yakushi. Initially, he slept under its verandah with beggars, until the statue of Yakushi visited one of the priests in a dream and announced 42  Taa states in the Hōno Engiki (1306) that he “abandoned the place he had been living for several years” to become Ippen’s disciple. See Ōhashi Shunnō, ed., Jishū Zensho, 2 vols. (unnumbered) (Tokyo: Geirinsha, 1974), vol. commencing with Goroku: 439. Unreliable sources claim Taa was originally a disciple of Ryōchū (1199–1287), second patriarch of the Chinzei branch of the Jōdoshū. See Kanai, Ippen, p. 100.

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Ippen’s importance. The Hijiri E (IV, 4) then provides another long engi, which tells how this image came over the ocean from India, where it had been carved by Śākyamuni himself. Late that same year, Ippen visited Zenkōji again, and then continued his kanjin in the surrounding area, namely Shinano. At a market somewhat south of the temple, Ippen held a special nembutsu service (betsuji nembutsu) for the close of the year. Purple clouds signalling the presence of Amida appeared during the service, as they would on several occasions in his life. In the accom­ panying illustration in the Hijiri E (IV, 5), we see for the first time a consider­ able number of Ippen’s followers, eighteen to be exact, together with a few lay believers. This impoverished band may have been staying in the empty stalls of the marketplace, as was a lone beggar, shown here yelling at two fighting dogs. Also in the year 1279, at a certain Odawara village in Shinano, Ippen began his nembutsu dance, one of the distinctive features of his religion. The Hijiri E (IV, 5) claims the dance began with Kūya, and quotes from an unknown work “which the hijiri (Ippen) carried” to this effect. While it is impossible to sub­ stantiate this claim from more authoritative sources about Kūya, the associa­ tion of the dance with his name is nonetheless significant. From archaic times, dances had been one means of placating the spirits of the dead. Since the nem­ butsu was initially used for the same purpose, the association of nembutsu and dance in funeral rites occurred very early. The earliest Pure Land hijiri, who were not concerned with the salvation of the living, but were magico-religious technicians who dispatched malevolent spirits of the dead to paradise where they would do no more harm, probably used the dance in the same way that it was used in funeral rites. After Kūya’s time, many of these holy men looked back to him as their model, resulting in the association of the dance with him.43 Ippen altered this tradition by making the dance an ecstatic expression. In the account given in the Eshi Den (II, 1), the dance begins spontaneously as Ippen is chanting the nembutsu together with a man who has come to him for guidance. They begin beating on metal pots, and soon others, in a kind of mass hysteria, grab more utensils and join in, until all are dancing. Although the Hijiri E gives no such account, we can detect the spontaneity of the event in the illustration. This ecstatic character is confirmed by Ippen’s poems on the dance, in which he compares the dancer to a spring colt and claims the dance expresses one’s heart, a heart enraptured with immediate salvation in which there is no distinction between this world and the Pure Land.

43  Ōhashi Shunnō, Odori Nembutsu, Daizō Sensho 12 (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppansha, 1974), pp. 13–70.

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Apparently, this dance soon became popular, as Ippen and his followers “danced here and there like children with hobby horses” (Hijiri E, IV, 5). In that same area, the sister of a provincial warrior dreamed that many small bud­ dhas were walking around her house praising Ippen. After a yin-yang master had declared the dream felicitous, she sponsored a service for three days and three nights, during which several hundred people danced. Although they broke a plank in her verandah, she did not repair it but kept it as a memorial of the event. Even today there is a stone in Miyagi Prefecture, through which Ippen would soon pass, commemorating a nembutsu dance held there in 1300. Within a decade after Ippen’s death, the dance was so popular around the capi­ tal that two contemporary texts single it out for scorn.44 The nembutsu dance was spread by the Jishū, as well as by others, through­ out Japan during the middle ages. Mixing with the ongoing tradition of danc­ ing to placate spirits, this nembutsu dance became one of the most common religious dances in Japan, to be used for salvation, for periodically welcoming spirits of the dead, for driving away insects and plagues, and for many other purposes. By the beginning of the Edo period, specialists in this practice had become virtually secular entertainers, one of whom was the legendary founder of Kabuki, Izumo no Okuni.45 The distribution of fuda and the nembutsu dance were the fundamental practices of Ippen’s Pure Land Buddhism. Both were adopted from the existing practices of Pure Land hijiri, but were infused with new meaning by Ippen’s be­ lief in the immanent and immediate salvation of Amida’s name. The same pro­ cess can be observed in the sociological dimension of Ippen’s religion, namely the Jishū, an order he founded by borrowing much from the bessho hijiri. 5

The Jishū

From around 1280 until his death in 1289, Ippen led an itinerant order, the Jishū. Although some controversy surrounds this name, it ultimately derives from a reference by Shan-tao to those who practice the nembutsu in each of the six divisions of the Far Eastern day. Both the Hijiri E (XIII, 3) and Taa mention

44  These are the Tengū Sōshi and the Nomori Kagami. See Ōhashi, Odori, pp. 124–31. For the memorial stone, see Ōhashi, Ippen, pp. 91–2. 45  Ōhashi, Odori, pp. 173–92. For contemporary nembutsu dances, see Bukkyō Daigaku Minkan Nembutsu Shinkō Kenkyū Kai, Minkan Nembutsu Shinkō no Kenkyū: Shiryō Hen (Tokyo: Ryūbunkan, 1966), pp. 140–57.

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this practice.46 The term’s meaning would thus be the equivalent of “twentyfour hours a day nembutsu group,” and was used as such by other Pure Land confraternities in the early middle ages.47 The male members of the Jishū were all given amigō, or names ending in “Amida Butsu,” such as Taamidabutsu, Joamidabutsu, and so on. The use of such names, too, was probably derived from the hijiri of Mt. Kōya—Myōhen, for example, went on pilgrimages to Zenkōji and Shitennōji under the name Kuamidabutsu—but they were used by Chōgen’s hijiri and others in the early middle ages. Amigō symbolize the absolute unity of man and buddha in the name, an idea Ippen expresses most clearly in the Hōgo Shū (85). Female members of the group were given names ending in “ichibō,” signifying the one buddha and perhaps based on the same idea.48 Both men and women dressed in plain, grey robes and black kasāya, with shaved heads and bare feet. Such was the group Ippen led in 1280 “along the roads of fishermen and traders” to the far north of Honshū. There, they visited the grave of Kōno Michinobu, Ippen’s grandfather who had died in exile.49 The Hijiri E (V, 3) re­ cords that Ippen circumambulated the tomb, performing a nembutsu service with sutra readings. Thus, “the spirit of the deceased was pacified, released from the dreams of its past homeland, and sent to eternal bliss among lotus ponds and jeweled palaces.” In other words, Ippen pacified his ancestor’s spirit, a spirit which lingered in the world, lamenting and perhaps begrudging death in exile. Such pacification was the earliest purpose of the nembutsu on the popular level, and the Jishū’s adoption of this use would help in its later propa­ gation, as it catered to both ordinary funerals and battlefield deaths. From the north, Ippen led his band to Kamakura in 1282, arriving just when Hōjō Tokimune (1251–1284), Regent for the Shogun and hero of the vic­ tory over the Mongols, was about to leave town. In preparation for his proces­ sion, the streets were being cleared of all undesireables, such as beggars and hijiri. The Jishū were accordingly driven from the city, and Ippen thrashed for impertinence. Taking refuge at Katase, south of the city, however, the Jishū enjoyed the first of a long series of public successes that would culminate two years later in the capital. A pattern was established: a popular temple, shrine, or devotional hall would invite the Jishū, which would then construct a temporary stage for its 46  Ōhashi Shunnō, Jishū no Seiritsu to Tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1973), pp. 39–41. Taa’s statement is from the Hōnō Engiki: see Ōhashi, Zenshō, Goroku vol. 439. 47  Kanai, Ippen, pp. 107–9. 48  Kanai, Bungei, pp. 266–81. 49  In 1965, incredible as it may seem, a grave mound in Iwate Prefecture was positively iden­ tified as Michinobu’s. See Kanai, Ippen, pp. 126–30.

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nembutsu dance. Crowds would gather, and presumably the resulting kanjin would benefit both the religious institution and the Jishū. At Katase, they were first invited to an ōjōin, or “rebirth chapel,” and then to a similar institution de­ voted to Jizō. The nembutsu dance appearing in the Hijiri E (VI, 1) illustration has been transformed into a routine, well practiced performance. Not only are the Jishū dancers on a stage, they are all moving in the same direction beat­ ing on metal gongs called shōko. Katase was also the scene of several miracles, including more purple clouds, flowers falling from the sky, and characters re­ maining after the paper on which they were written burned. Even more spec­ tacular was the first of several suicides for rebirth found in the Hijiri E. Such extreme acts were highly admired by Ippen, and many of his followers were to drown themselves at his death. The Jishū continued south on the road to the capital, stopping at several points. The first, the Mishima Shrine of Izu, was associated with that of Iyo, which was the clan shrine of the Kōno. Here, and later at the shrine in Iyo, Ippen supported his clan’s particularistic cult despite the universality of the Pure Land salvation he discovered, justifying this expressly by the honji suijaku theory.50 This amalgamation of Pure Land Buddhism with the religious loyal­ ties inherent in birth as a bushi would also prove decisive in later Jishū growth. In the capital itself, Ippen and Jishū visited several devotional halls, includ­ ing the Inabado, where Ippen had once spent part of the night under a veran­ dah, and the Mitsuji, associated with Kūya. At the memorial to Kūya at Ichiya, the Jishū constructed another raised stage and performed the nembutsu dance before a large audience. All this pales, however, in comparison with Ippen’s visit to the Shakadō, where a mob, verging on a riot, struggled to receive his fuda. In the illustration of this scene (Hijiri E, VII, 2), Ippen sits on a follower’s shoulders to pass fuda to eager hands, while outside the gate people dodge bolting horses and attendants of the nobility jockey their oxcarts into advanta­ geous positions. Others watch the commotion from rooftops. From the capital, Ippen led his group along the coast of the Japan Sea, where they apparently sought to save fishermen in particular,51 and then back to the home provinces in 1286. This time, they visited outstanding temples 50  The honji of the Mishima Shrine was Daitsūchishō (Mahābhijñā Jñānābhibhū). The “michi” appearing in Kōno clan names was another reading of the character “tsu” in this name. See Ōhashi, Ippen, p. 15. The justification by the honji suijaku theory is in the Hijiri E (VI, 1). 51  At a rude shelter at Anō, for example, they ministered to “those who profit from killing,” namely hunters and fishermen. In at least two instances, they constructed dōjō on beach­ es, and at one such place, the “dragon king” (Ryūō), an important deity for fishermen, rose out of the sea to hear them. See Hijiri E, VIII, 1–2.

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and shrines: Shitennōji, Shōtoku Taishi’s tomb, Taimadera, the Sumiyoshi Shrine, the Iwashimizu Hachimangū, and Shitennōji again for the end of the year. The Jishū then traveled up the Inland Sea coast, visiting the Matsubara Hachimangū, the Ichinomiya of Bingo and the Itsukushima Shrine, where they were entertained with shrine dances. Besides these three noteworthy shrines, Ippen also visited two places as­ sociated with the memory of early hijiri. The first was the Kyōshinji in Harima, which housed the relics of Kyōshin, a ninth century lay hijiri (zoku hijiri) who lived an ordinary village life while devoted to the nembutsu. The second was Enkyōji on Mt. Shosha in Harima, which was established by Shōkū Shōnin (not to be confused with the founder of the Seizan school), a tenth century Lotus Sutra devotee and retreatant. Both were heroes of many popular legends.52 These pilgrimages, together with those honoring Kūya, show that Ippen traced his own spiritual lineage to these early hijiri. Also in the years 1286 and 1287, Ippen provided the Jishū with some formal injunctions. The first was the “Seigan Gemon,” a creed in which his followers vowed that: … until our present bodies Are finally exhausted, We shall not be devoted to mortal life, But will take refuge in the original vow. All our lives We will single-mindedly chant the name … Throughout the six divisions of night and day, Successively, without interval, Like an object and its shadow, Never once parting from it … Hijiri E, VIII, 5

Later he provided them with the “Jishū Seikai,” a collection of literal “do’s and don’t’s” paired in couplets.53 Most are pedantic moral injunctions for the sake of harmony in the order. One should, for example, pay attention to one’s own faults rather than those of others. In 1287, he composed the “Betsugan Wasan,” a hymn far more sophisticated than his earlier formulations, in which man’s in­ ability to attain buddhahood apart from the nembutsu is argued for each of the 52  Hori Minkan Shinkō, 2: 334–5; idem., Folk Religion in Japan, ed. by Joseph M. Kitagawa and Alan L. Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 104–5. 53  From the Hōnō Engiki; see Ōhashi, Zensho, Goroku vol. 440.

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trikāya, or three bodies of the Buddha. Finally, in the same year, he limited the dress and possessions of the Jishū to twelve items: a rice bowl, a pair of chop­ sticks in a case, a cloth for the face and hands, a rosary, wooden clogs, a head covering, and six other specific articles of clothing. Each was said to signify an attribute of Amida. In 1288, Ippen led his group across the Inland Sea to Iyo, which he had left ten years before. The trip seems to have been largely nostalgic, for he visited the caves of Sugō and presented his father’s sutras to a certain Hatadera. On an island off the coast, he also worshipped at the Mishima Shrine, with which the Mishima Shrine of Izu was associated. Early in 1289, Ippen began to head eastward, across Shikoku, through Awaji Island, to Harima Province on the main island. We are told (Hijiri E, XI, 2) he desired to die near the remains of Kyōshin, one of the paradigmatic hijiri mentioned above, but his health forced him to stop near the coast at a devotional hall dedicated to Kannon. There, he preached to the local inhabitants, burned all his books to show that the nem­ butsu alone was sufficient, and had his disciples perform a nembutsu dance. He died on the twenty-third day of the eighth month, 1289. His grave is said to remain, exactly as pictured in the Hijiri E, near the modern city of Kobe. 6

Ippen and Pure Land Buddhist Wayfaring

Ippen’s roots were firmly in the tradition of bessho hijiri. Early in his life, he trained under a retreatant and engaged in personal pilgrimage and asceticism, all typical of a hijiri. He then embarked upon a mendicant life, passing out fuda and enrolling names in a register in imitation of Mt. Kōya’s hijiri. He called this work kanjin, believed he led people to establish kechien, and felt himself to be, and was called by others, a hijiri. His heroes were the hijiri of the past, particu­ larly Kūya, to whom he attributed the origin of his nembutsu dance, another Pure Land hijiri practice. His whole religious world was that of a mendicant hijiri shaped as it was by the engi of temples and shrines. Accepting all such legends, he became a wayfarer in that world, traveling over fifteen hundred miles through virtually every area of significant Japanese population, and visiting nearly all the great devotional centers of his time. He eventually founded a mendicant order, which in its dress, wayfaring life, kanjin practices, use of performing art, and even the names of its members, resem­ bled a bessho hijiri group. Any understanding of Ippen, then, must see him first as a mendicant way­ farer in the hijiri tradition, yet he gave Pure Land Buddhist wayfaring a new sanctity and mission according to his Seizan training and religious experiences.

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Before Ippen, hijiri were chartered by particular temples and justified their propagation with their respective temple’s engi. Pure Land wayfaring in par­ ticular, then, was a means for bringing limited numbers of people into a pietis­ tic relationship with Amida, according to Amida’s extraordinary presence at certain geographical locations, such as Mt. Kōya, Shitennōji, and Zenkōji. This “connection” would then insure their future salvation. Ippen, however, received a personal revelation at Kumano, which autho­ rized his kanjin, not by the unique presence of Amida at a particular temple, but by the salvation made immanent everywhere through Amida’s enlighten­ ment ten kalpas ago. From then on, Ippen’s wayfaring was no mere tool for propagating and soliciting funds from a set number of people. Instead, Ippen was a “hijiri who had thrown away” (sute hijiri) all earthly ties to unite himself completely with the name, and with it, save all beings, as signified by his goal of six hundred thousand. After Kumano, wayfaring and fuda distribution were not just means for leading people to establish foundations for future salvation, but were themselves the agents of the original vow, dissolving the distinctions between life and death, now and ten kalpas ago, this world and the Pure Land, humanity and Buddhahood. Although thus committed to wayfaring itself, rather than to any single shrine or temple, Ippen did not at all reject the various popular devotions he encoun­ tered on his travels. Indeed, he accepted virtually every deity in the popular Japanese pantheon whether Shintō or Buddhist, believing all devotions were incorporated in the nembutsu, and all divine powers served the original vow. Under his leadership, the Jishū was accordingly not attached to any specific shrine or temple, but went from one to the other, dramatizing by its very pres­ ence the single salvation underlying all surface variety. This inclusiveness en­ abled the Jishū eventually to absorb many bessho hijiri groups, including those of Zenkōji and part of Mt. Kōya, as well as independent groups similar to itself.54 Such hijiri organizations mingled freely, and the Jishū’s sanctification of their common wayfaring life, together with the success of its fuda distribution and dance, served to unify them.

54  Gorai, Kōya Hijiri, pp. 242–253; Kanai, Bungei, pp. 170–183; Ōhashi Shunnō, Banba Jishū no Ayumi, Jōdoshū Shi Kenkyū 4 (n.p.: Jōdoshū Shi Kenkyū Kai, 1963). Such annexations required an expanding hagiography to connect Ippen with each group, as in the familiar story of Ippen’s conversation with Hottō Kokushi (Kakushin) and in the legend of Seiganji, in which Ippen converts the ghost of Izumi Shikibu. For the former, see Gorai Shigeru, “Ippen Shōnin to Hottō Kokushi,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 9, no. 2 (March 1961): 98–103. For the latter, see Yanagida Kunio, Josei to Minkan Denshō (Tokyo: Okashoin, 1932), pp. 10–117.

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In time, the Jishū also established its own independent institutions, or dōjō, where its members settled. Taa initiated over one hundred of these, although he believed them to be a compromise of the wayfaring (yugyō) ideal. These in­ stitutions were sponsored largely by the ruling military elite, because the Jishū offered a Pure Land Buddhism wholly supportive of the Shintō deities that le­ gitimized the loyalties and structures of local feudal society. Ippen himself had supported the cult of his bushi clan, and in the Kumano revelation the honji suijaku theory had become an inseparable part of the Jishū’s message. From one of Taa’s letters, we sense the intimacy with which the Jishū ministered to the battlefield dead, and among the patrons of the dōjō appear many members of the ryōshu, the local samurai landlords.55 The Jishū was, however, thus irrevocably tied to an old order that would crumble in the Sengoku era. In the political upheavals of that time, bushi pa­ trons were lost, and the general warfare made kanjin difficult or impossible. Most importantly, the more strictly exclusive (senju) nembutsu of the Pure Land sects, rather than Ippen’s honji suijaku theories, could serve as a catalyst for new fusions of power in a time of social turmoil. The Jishū thus declined rapidly and endured through the Edo period and into modern times as only a remnant of its former self. The medieval Jishū, therefore, deserves to be remembered as an order, rather than as a sect. The term “order” usually signifies a group within a larger ecclesiastical institution, one which has renounced ordinary existence both to adopt a common—and often severe—life style, and to pursue a special mission or practice. The order, nevertheless, remains distinct from the regular clergy, who continue to insist on certain sacramental prerogatives. The crucial distinction between an order and a sect is that the order remains a commu­ nity of specialized professionals within a larger religious body, while the sect breaks with that body to form its own doctrine, clergy, and thoroughly distinct lay following (secta). The bessho hijiri, for example, should be considered orders rather than sects, not only by virtue of their standardized life style, professional status, and spe­ cialized mission, but also because of their chartered status granted by particu­ lar temples. In medieval Japan, there was no monopolistic religious authority which could have sanctioned as an order a mendicant group such as the Jishū, which had no base at a great shrine or temple. Nevertheless, the term seems 55  For a discussion of Jishū’s bushi base, as well as Taa’s letter, see Akamatsu Toshihide, Kamakura Bukkyō no Kenkyū (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1965), pp. 174–6. The best general history of the Jishū, from which this brief discussion is drawn, is Ōhashi, Jishū, pp. 79–285.

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appropriate for two reasons. First, the severe life of mendicant wayfaring, al­ though often a compromised ideal, matches that of other groups we would call orders. Second, while established religious authority was diffuse, it was pres­ ent nonetheless, and the Jishū respected it and accommodated itself to it, in marked contrast with the sectarian movements, even though it attained a high degree of institutional and intellectual independence. Such accommodation is apparent in the two principal means of Jishū growth mentioned above, par­ ticularly the inheritance of the chartered status of several bessho hijiri groups. The Jishū, in short, accommodated itself with the varied religious world of me­ dieval Japan, serving it as a specialized community of men and women, who led lives of poverty and service, and who brought the laity to Pure Land salva­ tion without denying established religious authority and practice. The Jishū’s character as an order grew from Ippen’s roots in the hijiri tra­ dition. In the general histories, Ippen is often included as a minor sectarian founder. He was nothing of the sort. So faithful was he to the varied popular religion of his age, his biography can serve as a cross section of it. His achieve­ ment was to find everywhere in this bewildering variety, whether Shintō or Buddhist, the fulfillment of the Original Vow, and to make Pure Land Buddhist wayfaring, which had until then promulgated many of these diverse devotions, the very means for realizing the universal salvation immanent in one nem­ butsu. The Jishū was therefore destined—and eventually doomed—not to a sectarian break with existing religion, but to what Ippen perceived as the ful­ fillment of it.

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The Shingon Subordinating Fire Offering for Amitābha, “Amida Kei Ai Goma” Richard K. Payne 1 Introduction Examination of the ritual corpus of contemporary Shingon Buddhism reveals that it has a very complex history, and that it includes practices devoted to a much greater variety of deities than one might expect from textbook summaries. These latter tend to highlight contrasts and to reduce the complexities of history to simplistic formulae. In the case of Shingon, the focus of attention is placed almost solely on the Tathāgata Mahāvairocana (Dainichi Nyorai, 大日如来)—as if the Shingon tradition were organized around the figure of a central deity in a fashion mimicking Christianity. Such a representation of the tradition, however, marginalizes the many other forms of practice found within the Shingon tradition. At the same time it distorts the historical record and the perception of Shingon per se, and our understanding of the dynamics of Japanese religion, including Buddhism, as a whole. The formulaic reductions found in textbooks and other popular treatments all too frequently lead to mistaken conceptions. As these misleadingly simplistic formulae become increasingly standardized in the educational system, they come to constitute what Francis Bacon referred to as “idols of the theatre,” sources of error based upon “received or traditional philosophic systems.”1 One way in which mistaken conceptions are created is when an accurate characterization is mistakenly thought to entail the negation of its opposite. Specifically of interest here is the true general claim that “all Pure Land practitioners are devoted to Amida.” It is sometimes assumed that this claim asserts an exclusive relation, in other words it is mistakenly concluded that “no practitioners of other forms of Buddhism are devoted to Amida.”2 In this case the exclusive devotional focus on Amida found in the Pure Land Buddhist tradition Source: Payne, Richard K., “The Shingon Subordinating Fire Offering for Amitābha, ‘Amida Kei Ai Goma’” Pacific World 8 (2006): 191–236. 1  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Francis Bacon,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ francis-bacon/#3.1 (accessed December 12, 2006). 2  From “All S is D” it does not follow that “No non-S is D” (or, “All non-S is non-D”), where S is “Shin practitioner” and D is “devoted to Amida.”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_023

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is misunderstood to mean that devotion to Amida is only found in the Pure Land tradition. The much more complex actuality is that many other Buddhist traditions also revere Amida, and indeed Amida has been—and continues to be—one of the most popular buddhas throughout Mahayana Buddhism. one of the Buddhist traditions in which Amida plays a significant role is the Shingon tradition.3 There are two additional sources for such pseudo-problems. The first of these is the tendency to project the idea of strict sectarian affiliation familiar from the present—both in Japan and the West—back onto the medieval situation. Prior to the restrictions imposed on Buddhist institutions during the Tokugawa era, lineal affiliation based on ordination and initiations should not be equated with exclusive sectarian affiliation.4 The second additional source is the tendency to treat founders as if their ideas were created ex nihil. While this may serve the interests of sectarian apologists who wish to emphasize the unique creativity of the founder of their own sect, it is historically misleading. The romantic notion of the creative genius, whether in the field of art or of religion, promotes an unrealistic view, that of the isolated individual solely expressing his or her own most unique experiences and insights as the sole source of progress and novelty in the world. For the study of religious praxis, a metaphor different from that of the isolated artistic genius is more appropriate. At any one time, a wealth of religio-philosophic ideas is present in a sociocultural milieu. Some individuals are in a sense catalytic, in that out of this solution they crystallize a new form. this metaphor may help us to balance the creative contribution with the reality of ideas already in circulation. One strategy for avoiding these sources of error is to shift away from presuming that all religion is necessarily fundamentally motivated by doctrine. If instead of taking a doctrinally informed view of Shingon—one that, for example, places Dainichi in a role comparable to the Christian creator god—we examine the actual practices of the tradition, we find a much more varied reality. 3  It would be easy to assume, as several scholars seem to have done, that the presence of Amida in the Shingon tradition is a reflex to the rise of Pure Land Buddhism in the Kamakura era—the presumption being that members of the Shingon tradition were attempting to take advantage of the popularity of Amida for their own purposes. Again, the situation is more complex. It is no doubt the case that there was a certain amount of competition with the increasingly popular Pure Land traditions—not only through the promotion of Amida, but also through the promotion of other, “simple” practices such as ajikan (visualization of the syllable A, written in the Siddham script). However, it is also the case that Amida was an important part of Shingon practice in Japan prior to the Kamakura era, and in the tantric tradition as a whole as well. 4  This distinction between lineage and strict sectarian affiliation is much more generally applicable throughout Buddhist studies.

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The goma (Skt. homa, 護摩), a ritual in which votive offerings are made into a fire, is widely practiced in Shingon Buddhism, and includes forms devoted to Amitābha (Amida, 阿弥陀). From textbook summaries, this might seem surprising, as according to such summaries, Amitābha is associated with Pure Land, rather than Shingon. In the following we explore some of the theoretical implications of shifting from a doctrinally informed model of Japanese Buddhism to one based on actual practices, and follow with a specific example, a goma devoted to Amitābha, the Amida Kei Ai Goma (阿弥陀敬愛護摩, employed for gaining the love and respect of others). In addition to giving doctrine a privileged position, modern Western historical studies of Japanese Buddhism have usually been structured according to sectarian forms familiar from our own time. Thus, studies of the Pure Land sects5 have generally linked the practice of vocal nenbutsu (shōmyō nenbutsu, 稱名念仏), exclusivistic devotion to Amida, and desire for birth in Sukhāvatī— Amida’s Pure Land—together as if they form a monolithic whole. Approaches to the history of Buddhism that look only at sectarian history narrowly defined tend to promote sectarian lineages as the exclusive historical conveyors of a tradition, excluding from consideration figures and movements that may have been instrumental in the history of that tradition. In the case of Pure Land Buddhism, such a perspective also tends to give the practice of vocal nenbutsu, devotion to Amida, and desire for birth in Sukhāvatī the appearance of being a closely integrated whole that is unique to the Pure Land sects. The same kind of dynamic affects the representations of Shingon. Summary descriptions that work by highlighting contrasts and the presumption that all religions are necessarily exclusivistic can all too easily effectively produce a distorted, almost grotesque caricature of the tradition. As with Pure Land a set of three elements are identified with Shingon—the symbolic centrality of the Tathāgata Mahāvairocana, the doctrinal emphasis on awakening in this present embodiment (sokushin jobutsu, 即身成仏), and ritualized visualization practices. These three can be (mis-)taken as forming the same kind of 5  Although the term “Pure Land Buddhism” has been used to identify the entirety of the cult of Amitābha/Amitāyus, I find such usage misleading on two counts. First, there are many more pure lands than just Sukhāvatī, and identification between the term Pure Land and Sukhāvatī tends to obscure or marginalize these other pure lands. Second, it is only with Hōnen that the term pure land ( jōdo) is used as a term identifying a sect (shū). To read the term backwards onto earlier forms of the Amitābha/Amitāyus cult is to construct a single, unified line of development when such a construction seems to be highly problematic. (It is comparable to Shinran’s construction of a line of patriarchs.) Hence, in this paper, I will use the term Pure Land sects to identify those that use the term as their own name, i.e., Jōdo-shū and Jōdo Shinshū, those sects from Hōnen on.

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unique whole for Shingon as vocal nenbutsu, devotion to Amida, and desire for birth in Sukhāvatī do for Pure Land Buddhism. While Japanese Buddhism was forced into a form of institutional organization based on exclusive sectarian identity during the Tokugawa era, modern Shingon practice can be examined “archeologically” as a record of the complex history of actual praxis. The contemporary fire offering (homa, goma, 護摩) devoted to Amitābha that is translated below provides an example of the complexity hidden behind the grotesque distortions of overly simplistic “textbook” representations of both the Shingon and Pure Land traditions. We find, for example, that belief in the existence of pure lands, devotion to Amida, and vocal nenbutsu practice were very widespread throughout Japanese Buddhism in the Heian and Kamakura eras. The common association made between devotion to Amida and mappō—belief that the dharma has declined to the point of its being ineffective in enabling ordinary foolish beings to become awakened—is also problematic in light of broader, synchronic perspectives on Buddhist practice. While mappō was central to Pure Land cosmology and conceptions of the path, it did not play any such role in Shingon practices devoted to Amida. A full picture of the context of the rise of Pure Land Buddhism in Heian and Kamakura Japan would require the examination of a wide variety of related practices and beliefs that formed the religious culture of the time as a whole. For example, a variety of meditative nenbutsu practices were developed on Mt. Hiei and spread within the Tendai sect.6 Similarly, recitation of the title of the Lotus Sūtra (daimoku, 題目) existed in a variety of forms prior to Nichiren.7 To use a metaphor from chemistry, there were a wide variety of different elements in solution, some of which crystalized into a particular form when the catalyst of Hōnen and Shinran were added. The phrase “Kamakura Buddhism” is still frequently used to refer to the forms of Buddhism newly established during the Kamakura era, such as Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren. Historiographically, these new forms are then taken as characterizing Buddhism of the period. However, during the Kamakura era itself Shingon-shū was by far much more influential than the then only newly established forms. The new Buddhisms are typically the ones identified with 6  Akihisa Shigematsu, “An Overview of Early Japanese Pure Land,” in Pure Land Buddhism, ed. James Foard, Robert Solomon, and Richard Payne, Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series no. 3 (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, 1996), 287–290. 7  Jacqueline Stone, “Chanting the August Title of the Lotus Sutra: Daimoku Practices in Classical and Medieval Japan,” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne, Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998).

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reform and popularization, while the established forms are treated as decadent and otiose. However, there were reformers within the Shingon sect itself,8 and there were several leaders who made efforts to reach out to the general population.9 The influence of Shingon-shū during the Kamakura era was only exceeded by that of Tendai-shū. However, the esoteric half of Tendai was itself deeply informed by Shingon-shū, and, therefore, would have had many of the same kinds of teachings and practices, as well as effects, on the broader religious culture of the time. 2

Distorting Presumptions

It is not all that uncommon to come across authors who write as if their discovery of beliefs or practices that relate to Amida (Amitābha, or Amitāyus) in any Buddhist tradition other than Pure Land or Shin indicates either an influence by Pure Land Buddhism, or an appropriation from Pure Land Buddhism. The rhetorical connotations (or, metaphoric entailments) of both of these causal notions—influence by and appropriation from—are based upon two presumptions. First, they presume a greater separate identity throughout the course of Buddhist history than we now have reason to believe has been the case. This presumption itself seems to be based on the idea that the kind of sharp sectarian delineations found in both modern Japanese Buddhism and modern Christianity are the norm for all religious traditions. Second, they presume an imbalance of some kind. Influences flow from the greater or stronger to the lesser or weaker, making the latter derivative from the former. Appropriation presumes that the one doing the appropriation sees something of value in that which is being appropriated, something that is needed in place of some lack or inadequacy in the appropriator’s own tradition. Two examples, ready at hand, demonstrate the character of the usual formulations of the relation between tantric Buddhism and Pure Land. The first is from a general survey of Japanese religion: “Mukū, who became abbot of Kongōbu-ji, on Mount Kōya, in 894, regularly practiced the nenbutsu and can 8  Matthias Eder, Geschichte der japanische Religion, vol. 2, Japan mit und unter dem Buddhismus, Asian Folklore Studies Monograph, no. 7, 2 (Nagoya: Asian Folklore Studies, 1978), 90–93. 9  Particularly by the Kōya hijiri in their fundraising efforts as discussed infra. Fundraising necessitated efforts to spread particular forms of Buddhism to the general populace. Janet Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).

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be regarded as the originator of the Shingon lineage of Pure Land teachings.”10 Here it is not the facts that are at issue, but the interpretation and implication that are problematic—that Mukū was “the originator of the Shingon lineage of Pure Land teachings” seems to indicate, first, that there were no such teachings within Shingon prior to his time, and second, that a specific “Shingon lineage of Pure Land teachings” was created at that time. While the latter may simply be the consequence of overly-loose usage of the term “lineage,” the first implication is certainly mistaken, as will be further discussed below. The second example is from Marc Buijnsters’s study of Jichihan (ca. 1089– 1144), in which he convincingly demonstrates the importance of Jichihan in the developments in Buddhist praxis (that is, the dialectic of thought and practice) during the late Heian era. Buijnsters calls attention to the fact that although Jichihan was a Tendai monk deeply trained in tantric Buddhism (mikkyō), Gyōnen “considered him … one of the six patriarchs or sages of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.”11 A majority of the scholarship on Pure Land Buddhism focuses almost exclusively on the schools established by Hōnen and Shinran, framed historically by the lineage of ancestors defined by Shinran. For this reason Gyōnen’s evaluation of Jichihan’s importance to the establishment of the Pure Land tradition has gone largely unnoticed and unmentioned. Buijnsters highlights the importance for Japanese Pure Land attributed to Jichihan by Gyōnen in such a fashion as to create the appearance of it being an incongruity. However, an important reason for the appearance of incongruity results from the reduction of Pure Land and tantric Buddhist (that is, Shingon) thought to slogans. The underlying principle of the doctrines in the Shingon school implies that the practitioner strives for the realization of direct enlightenment in this world and in the present body (sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏). In the Pure Land teaching, on the other hand, this world is considered as impure (edo 穢土), and the ulterior aim is rebirth in the paradise of a saving buddha (gongu jōdo 欣求浄土), which is situated outside the world…. It seems that there is hardly any room to unite these two ideologies.12

10  Toshio Ōhashi, “The Pure Land School,” in A History of Japanese Religion, ed. Kazuo Kasahara, trans. Paul McCarthy and Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing, 2001), 120. 11  Marc Buijnsters, “Jichihan and the Restoration and Innovation of Buddhist Practice,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26, nos. 1–2 (1999): 40. Parentheticals deleted. 12  Ibid., 61.

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And indeed, reduced to such simplistic formulae, there is not. It is, however, both inaccurate and misleading to represent religious traditions as if they were only axiomatic–deductive systems, ones in which doctrinal slogans serve as the axioms. There is an important difference between the wonderfully messy character of lived religious traditions and the logically coherent religiophilosophic systems of thought to which some theologians and philosophers of religion would like to reduce them. Buijnsters argues that Jichihan “tried both to actualize and simplify esoteric practice.”13 One instance is Jichihan’s explanation of the visualization of the syllable A (ajikan, 阿字観). In one presentation Jichihan gives the standard three-part interpretation of it as originary, all-pervading, and empty.14 A second instance is Jichihan’s presentation of the triple mystery (san mitsu, 三密) of the identity of the practitioner’s body, speech, and mind with the body, speech, and mind of the deity. According to Buijnsters, Jichihan here introduces what is a new interpretation of the three syllables of the name of Amida and the three aspects of the significance of the syllable A: At this point, Jichihan distributes the threefold explanation of the A-syllable over the three syllables of Amida’s name: “A” symbolizes that all things are uncreated 不生, “mi” that the self is not subject to changes 有, and “da” that the true state of things is enlightenment 空15 In this way, Jichihan actualized esoteric practice by being the first who conflated the visualization of the A-syllable and the visualization of Amida.16 This kind of interpretation of the name of Amida as emblematic of tantric teachings seems to have been influential on Kakuban, whose work on this is much more widely known.17 On the basis of these and other examples, Buijnsters concludes that “it was Jichihan with whom the development of esoteric Pure Land thought started.”18 And, slightly more cautiously, “Jichihan was one of the first who tried to adapt 13  Ibid., 68. 14  See Richard K. Payne, “Ajikan: Ritual and Meditation in the Shingon Tradition,” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne (see note 7). 15  The character 空 indicates “emptiness” (śūnya, śūnyatā), and hence I would render this as “that the true state of things is empty.” As an interpretation, however, realization of emptiness is, of course, central to awakening in Buddhist thought. My thanks to Charles Orzech for pointing out this discrepancy. 16  Buijnsters, “Jichihan and the Restoration and Innovation of Buddhist Practice,” 68. 17  See, for example, James H. Sanford, “Breath of Life: The Esoteric Nembutsu,” in Tantric Budhism in East Asia, ed. Richard K. Payne (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006). 18  Buijnsters, “Jichihan and the Restoration and Innovation of Buddhist Practice,” 70.

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Pure Land thought to Shingon doctrines.”19 Again, it is not the facts about Jichihan’s work that are at issue here, but rather these latter conclusions about his primacy. In considering these historiographic issues, it seems that one of the main problems is the ambiguity inherent in the use of the phrase “Pure Land” to refer to a kind of Buddhism. The received sectarian understanding—now no longer accepted uncritically—is that there is a monolithic, continuous, singular, and distinct tradition of Pure Land Buddhism. According to this image of Pure Land Buddhism, it originated in India with the preaching by the Buddha Śākyamuni of the three Pure Land sutras and was transmitted to China and then to Japan, where it was perfected in the work of Hōnen and Shinran. Upon reflection it should be clear that this is a sectarian mythistoric construct.20 As such, it is no doubt useful, but much less so as a framework for historical understandings in stricto sensu. By employing the phrase “Pure Land Buddhism” uncritically, the kinds of misleading interpretations and pseudo-problems discussed here seem almost inevitable. As I have suggested elsewhere, it may be appropriate to employ a revised set of categories that avoid inappropriately carrying a connotation of clearly delineated, separate sectarian identities.21 once having separated sectarian intents from scholarly ones, this would next involve distinguishing our usages between doctrinal and philosophic on the one hand, and socio-historical on the other. For the latter usages, use of the phrase “Pure Land Buddhism” would be limited to those religious movements that are self-identified as such.22 Thus, by “Pure Land Buddhism” we would be identifying those movements that claim that identity as their own, specifically the Jōdo and other sects that employ the phrase in reference to themselves. For other forms of praxis, the terminology of “cult” seems more than adequate. Thus, what we have is a Shingon Amida cult that employs tantric elements in at least some of its practices (such as the goma ritual translated below), and not a “Shingon Pure Land lineage.” At the same time, the terminology of “cult” would help to 19  Ibid., 77. 20  See Joseph Mali, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). See also William H. McNeill, “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History and Historians,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (February 1986): 1–10. 21  Richard K. Payne, introduction to Shin Buddhism: Historical, Textual, and Interpretive Studies, ed. Richard K. Payne (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007), xii. 22  This should not be considered as a criterion in all instances, as there are clearly other situations in which a category that is not part of a self-identification does serve an important intellectual function. Both “tantra” and “new religious movement” are instances that come to mind. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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avoid the presumption that religions can be defined by a logically coherent systematization of their doctrine. 3

On the Shingon Cult of Amida

The Japanese tantric Buddhist tradition of Shingon takes as its main buddha the figure of Dainichi Nyorai. However, the Shingon tradition has a large number of rituals devoted to a wide variety of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other deities within its ritual corpus—including rituals devoted to Amida. In part this is because both Shingon and Pure Land originate in the same early medieval period of Indian Buddhism. The practices of the Shingon tradition are based upon two ritual lineages that had been brought to China in the seventh century. The two complexes of ritual lineage, mandala and sutra, were introduced to China by Śubhākarasiṃha (673–735) and Vajrabodhi (671–741). Śubhākarasiṃha is considered to be responsible for the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi ritual lineage, while Vajrabodhi is credited with the Vajraśekhara.23 Huiguo (Jpn. Keika, 恵果, 746–805) had received initiation into both lineages, and in turn initiated Kūkai into both as well. Upon his return to Japan, Kūkai worked to create a unified system out of these two lineages, and is now considered the founder of the Shingon tradition in Japan. 3.1 India: Iconography of Amitābha in the Two Mandalas Amitābha is found in both of the two mandalas described by the two texts that are central to the Shingon tradition. Attention to the iconography of tantric mandalas is not simply an art historical matter. Because the mandalas were used in tantric ritual, such iconography points directly to the ritual praxis of medieval Indian tantric Buddhism. The two mandalas central to the Shingon tradition as it developed in Japan are linked to two sutras and to two ritual lineages. The Taizōkai Mandara (Skt. Mahākaruṇā Garbha Mandala, or more briefly Garbha Mandala) is described in the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi-sūtra,24 while the Kongōkai Mandara (Skt. Vajradhātu Mandala) is described in the Vajraśekhara-sūtra.25 23  Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 116. 24  Commonly referred to in Japanese as the Dainichi kyō (大日経), T. 848 translated by Śubhākarasiṃha and Yixing, and T. 849 translated by Vajrabodhi. 25  J. Kongōcho gyō (金剛著経), T. 865 translated by Amoghavajra, and T. 866 translated by Vajrabodhi; also known as the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgrahasūtra, T. 882 translated by Dānapāla. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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The presence of Amitābha may be dismissed as simply evidence of a rhetorical strategy of incorporating everything—all buddhas, bodhisattvas, protectors—into a single imperium dominated by Mahāvairocana. However, there is a direct correlation between the mandalas and ritual altars.26 It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that the importance of Amitābha along with the other figures was not solely rhetorical, but was also based in the cultic practices of the groups out of which the two texts arose. Within the medieval Indian Mahayana context of tantric origins, there is a suggestive similarity between the idea of buddha-fields (Skt. buddhakṣetra), such as Amitābha’s Sukhāvatī (Jpn. Gokuraku, 極楽, commonly rendered into English as “the Pure Land”), and mandalas. Buddha-fields are often located in particular cardinal directions—Amida’s of course being in the western direction, both in the cosmology of medieval Buddhism and in mandalas. It is tempting to speculate that at some point the idea of there being buddha-fields located in various cardinal directions was combined with the symbolic representation of the mandala as imperial court,27 producing a systematic and complete cosmology, one in which the buddha-field of the main buddha of a practice is located in the center and the buddha-fields of attendant buddhas are located in each of the four directions. This fivefold system—center and four cardinal directions—later becomes a frequently recurring organizing principle for much of Mahayana symbolism and thought, both in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism. The Shingon-shū vision of the universe as experienced by awakened consciousness is that of a vast, integrated whole that contains a great number of buddhas, bodhisattvas, guardians, and other deities. This universe may be experienced under two modes, awakened wisdom and compassionate action. These two modes are represented as two mandalas, awakened wisdom by the Vajradhātu Mandala, and compassionate action by the Garbhakośadhātu Mandala, rendered into English as the Vajra-World Mandala and the Matrix-World Mandala (Kongōkai Mandara, 金剛界曼荼羅, and Taizōkai Mandara, 胎藏界曼荼羅, respectively). At the center of each of these two mandalas is Dainichi Nyorai (Mahāvairocana Tathāgata), who is surrounded by four attendant buddhas, including Amida (Amitābha). The Shingon practitioner accesses the two mandalas by means of ritual practices. Generally 26  For a discussion of this relation as found in the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgrahasūtra, see Charles Orzech, “Maṇḍalas on the Move: Reflections from Chinese Esoteric Buddhism Circa 800 C.E.,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 19, no. 2 (1996): 223. 27  Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

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speaking, Shingon practices are structured meditations utilizing visualization as a key element in the ritual performance. The uniquely tantric aspect of such rituals is that the visualization is of the practitioner’s identity with the deity evoked in the ritual.28 The Shingon tradition considers the two mandalas to form a whole, each reflecting the other. This complex is known as the dual mandala (Jpn. ryōbu mandara, 兩部曼荼羅) system, and functions as an organizing principle for its practices and teachings.29 The Vajra-World Mandala expresses the cosmic embodiment of wisdom, while the Matrix-World Mandala expresses the cosmic embodiment of compassion. Each of the mandalas employs a structure of five buddha families (Skt. kula), and each family is headed by one particular buddha. Amida finds a prominent place in both mandalas as the head of the lotus family (Skt. padmakula, Jpn. rengebu, 蓮華部), not surprisingly located in the western quarter of each of the two mandalas.30 3.2 Mahākaruṇā Garbha Mandala In the Garbha Mandala there are twelve “halls,” the central of which is an eightpetalled lotus blossom, which in some renderings is white and in others red.31 28  As Davidson has pointed out, ritual identification (adhiṣṭhāna) cannot be considered the defining characteristic of all tantra. In addition to the qualifications he identifies, there are also Hindu tantric traditions, such as the Śaiva Siddhanta, which are dualistic and do not involve ritual identification as part of their practices. Within a polythetic understanding, however, ritual identification is one of the most important threads linking together much of tantric Buddhism. 29  There are various ideas about the origin of this dual-mandala system as found in Japanese Shingon. One is that it is the result of systematization that Kūkai did while awaiting permission to return to the court in Kyoto. Another is that it was the work of his teacher, Huikuo, who brought together the lineal teachings and practices brought to China at slightly different times by Śubhākarasiṃha and Amoghavajra. Recent archeological discoveries, however, suggest that there was a version of this symbolism already at work in China even before the work of Śubhākarasiṃha and Amoghavajra. A related question regards the much-disputed monument at Borobudur, which some scholars interpret as representing the union of the two mandalas. See Hudaya Kandahjaya, “A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur” (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2004). There are other scholars, however, who deny any tantric dimension to Borobudur. Should such a connection be firmly established, then it would suggest either that the dualmandala system was already created in Indian tantric Buddhism, or that it was created in Java and then exported to China. There is, obviously, still much research to be done on these questions. 30   Marie-Thérèse de Mallman, Introduction a l’Iconographie du Tântrisme Bouddhique (Paris: Libraire d’Amérique et d’Orient, Adrien Maisonneuve, 1986), 94. 31  Adrian Snodgrass, The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, Sata-Pitaka Series Vol. 354, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988), 162, 207, and 208.

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Seated upon the pericarp of the lotus is the main buddha of the Shingon tradition, Mahāvairocana. On the petals of the lotus, in the four cardinal directions, are four tathāgatas: Ratnaketu (Jpn. Hōdō) to the east, Saṁkusumita-rāja (Jpn. Kaifuke ō) to the north, Amitāyus32 (Jpn. Amida) to the west, and Divyadundubhi-meghanirghoṣa (Jpn. Tenkurai on) to the north. In the four intercardinal directions are four bodhisattvas seated on the rest of the eight lotus petals: Samantabhadra (Jpn. Fugen) to the southeast, Mañjuśrī (Jpn. Monjushiri) to the southwest, Avalokiteśvara (Jpn. Kanjizai) to the northwest, and Maitreya (Jpn. Miroku) to the northeast.33 The thirteenth chapter of the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi-sūtra, “Access to the Existence of the Esoteric Mandala,” describes an almost identical mandala that is to be visualized in the center of one’s heart. Ryūjun Tajima explains that what one is accessing is “the state that consists of finding oneself equal to the Dharmakāya Buddhas.”34 The sutra states: Then the world-honored one said to Vajradhara, the Master of Mysteries: “A person of good birth (kalaputra) vigilantly attends to the mandala of the inner heart. Master of Mysteries! We find that we ourselves are of the nature of the Dharmadhātu. By the adhiṣṭhāna of mantras and mudrās is produced the adhiṣṭhāna of your heart; it is pure by nature, and by the protective action of the karmavajra (vajra with four branches, cruciform) all stains are purified and cleaned…. The mandala [of the inner heart] is square with four entrances; one faces west, and it is entirely surrounded by encircling paths. In the interior appears a great, royal lotus of eight petals produced by your spirit;35 from the stem it opens into pistils and stamens adorned and very beautiful. The Tathāgata is found in the center of the lotus. His body is the most excellent in the world. He has surpassed the form of body, of speech, and of thought; he has attained the form of the heart;36 he has attained the delicious, supreme fruit. On the 32  Following Snodgrass, who asserts that Amitāyus is the name proper for the Garbha Mandala while Amitābha is the name proper for the Vajradhātu Mandala. Ibid., 232. However, since the two are understood to be two names for the same buddha, many authors seem to use either name without distinction. This may be appropriate for the East Asian context where it is clear that the two are understood to be two names for the same buddha; however, it is my understanding that the Tibetan tradition does treat these as two separate buddhas. 33  Ibid., 208. 34  Tajima Ryūjun, Étude sur le Mahāvairocana-Sūtra (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1936), 125. 35  Tajima notes: Isho = yid.las.byuṅ.ba. 36  This may mean that at this stage the practitioner is no longer dependent upon identification with the body, speech, and mind of Dainichi, but has rather attained identity in the heart. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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eastern side [of Mahāvairocana], Hōdō Nyorai (Ratnaketu Tathāgata); on the south side, Kaifukeō Nyorai (Saṁkusumita-rāja Tathāgata); on the north side, Koin Nyorai (Divyadundubhi-megha-nirghoṣa Tathāgata); on the west side, Muryōju Nyorai (Amitāyus Tathāgata); on the south-east side, Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra Bodhisattva); on the northeast side, Kanjizai Bosatsu (Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva); on the southwest side, Myōkichijō Dōji (Mañjuśrī Kumāra); on the northwest side, Jishi Bosatsu (Maitreya Bodhisattva). On each of the pistils and stamens rests the mother of buddhas and bodhisattvas (Buddhalocanā) and the acolytes of the six pāramitā samādhis. Below are ranged a multitude of wrathful vidyādharas. It is Vidyādhara Bodhisattva who constitutes the stem (of the flower), placed in the midst of a great, endless ocean. All of the terrestrial devas ( jigo ten = bhauma)37 and others surround the flower in infinite numbers.”38 This description differs from the Garbha Mandala in that the places of Avalokiteśvara and Maitreya are inverted.39 Iconographically, Amitāyus is shown as a buddha, with a red robe (Skt. kāśāya, Jpn. kesa) covering both shoulders, seated in lotus posture (Skt. padmāsana, Jpn. kekka-fuza) on a jewel lotus. His hands form the Amitābha dhyāna mudrā40 (Jpn. Amida jō in): both hands palm up on the lap, right hand resting atop the left, the top two phalanges of the index fingers held upright and touching back to back, while the tips of the thumbs touch the tips of the index fingers.41 37  Tajima notes: Rākṣasa, Vāyu, Agni, Vaiśravaṇa, etc. (cf. Ōmura Chōkaku 林村澄覺 et al., Mikkyō daijiten 密教大辭典, rev. and enlarged in 6 vols. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1970, 1717). (Originally published in 3 vols., 1931; 1 vol. photographically reduced ed. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1983. My copy is 6 vols., Taipei: Hsin wen feng, 1979.) 38  Tajima notes: Taishō, vol. 18, 36 c1–16. The passage is from Étude sur le Mahāvairocana-Sūtra, 126. My translation from the French. 39  Tajima, Étude, 126. 40  See Dale Saunders, Mudrā: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture, Bollingen Series, no. 58 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 85–93; esp. “type C” (p. 87), and pp. 91–92. 41  Ibid., 234–235. For illustration, see, Mikkyō daijiten (see note 37), appendices, p. 62, mudrā no. 329. Discussing this mudrā, Tajima Ryūjun notes that “however, the descriptions in various texts allow of slight differences; sometimes the last three fingers are extended, etc.” (Tajima Ryūjun, Les Deux Grands Maṇḍalas et la Doctrine de l’Esoterisme Shingon [Bulletin de la Maison Franco-Japonaise, n.s., vol. 6. Tokyo: Maison Franco-Japonaise and Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959], 180). Ulrich Mammitzsch identifies this as “the rikitan (“ultimate power”) version of the meditation mudrā” (Evolution of the Garbhadhātu Maṇḍala [Śata-Piṭaka Series, vol. 363. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1991], 190). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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3.3 Vajradhātu Mandala The Vajradhātu Mandala is divided into nine assemblies, represented by nine squares arranged three by three. The central and most important of these is the karma assembly.42 As in the Garbha Mandala, four buddhas are arranged in the cardinal directions around the centrally placed Mahāvairocana. Akśobhya (Jpn. Ashuku) is to the east, Ratnasaṃbhava (Jpn. Hōsho) to the south, Amitābha (Jpn. Amida) to the west, and Amoghasiddhi (Jpn. Fukūjōju) to the north. In the Vajradhātu Mandala each of the five buddhas is himself surrounded by four bodhisattvas43 arranged in the cardinal directions. Around Amitābha are Vajradharma to the east, Vajratikṣṇa to the south, Vajrahetu to the west, and Vajrabhāṣa to the north. Amitābha is also referred to as Lokeśvara-rāja and as Avalokiteśvara-rāja, because “Examining the degree of development of beings, he makes known that all dharmas are originally pure in nature, like a lotus blossom.”44 According to “oral tradition recorded in Bunpi’s Hizōki,”45 Amitābha is gold in color and makes the samādhi mudrā, that is, the same mudrā as in the Garbha Mandala representation. 3.4 China: Tantric Interpretations of the Amituo Cult The important role of Amitābha in the tantric streams of Buddhist praxis (thought and practice) is continued in China. In his work on the doctrinal history of Pure Land Buddhism in China, Mochizuki discusses the introduction of tantric iconography of Amitābha in the mandalas introduced during the Tang dynasty. Citing the Zuzōshō by Ejū, Mochizuki tells us that in the second volume of this work Ejū explains that there are two kinds of Pure Land mandalas in the tantric teachings. Quoting Mochizuki in extenso, According to the second volume of the Zuzōshō written by the Japanese monk Ejū, there are two kinds of maṇḍalas in the secret teachings: first is a maṇḍala drawn according to the specifications given in a tantra. In such a maṇḍala the central deity is the Buddha Amitābha surrounded by the eight great bodhisattvas who are sitting on the eight petals of the lotus flower. These eight are Avalokiteśvara, Maitreya, Ākāśagarbha, 42  Also known as the perfected body assembly, a name of Japanese origin. Snodgrass, Matrix and Diamond, 555, n. 2. 43  Mahāvairocana is surrounded by four pāramitā bodhisattvas, while the other four buddhas are surrounded by four prajñā bodhisattvas (Minoru Kiyota, Shingon Buddhism: Theory and Practice [Los Angeles and Tokyo: Buddhist Books International, 1978], 97). 44  Tajima, Deux Maṇḍalas, 179. 45  Snellgrove, Matrix and Diamond, 585.

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Samantabhadra, Vajrapaṇi, Mañjuśrī, Sarvanivāraṇaviśkambin, and Kṣitigarbha. This maṇḍala is based on the teachings of the Pa-ta p’usa man-t’o-lo ching,46 a tantric text first translated into Chinese by Amoghavajra. The second type of maṇḍala is the Amida ku-hon mandara (Maṇḍala of the Nine Grades of Rebirth), as introduced to Japan by the master Eun. In the middle of it is a fully opened, eight-petaled lotus flower, and in the middle of this flower sits the Buddha Amitābha with his hand in the mudrā symbolizing the highest grade of the highest rank of rebirth. On each of the eight petals sit eight other figures of Amitābha, with their hands in mudrās expressive of the remaining eight grades and ranks of rebirth. In the four corners of this maṇḍala sit the deities Dharma, Artha, Hetu, and Vāc. In the second enclosure of the maṇḍala there are the twelve buddhas of light, the four saṃgraha deities, and the outer four pūjā offerings. In the third level enclosure sit the twenty-four bodhisattvas; there are six bodhisattvas in each corner, for a total of twenty-four bodhisattvas. However, the Bodhisattva Dharma from the inner enclosure (the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara) is added to these twenty-four for a total of twenty-five bodhisattvas.47 We can see from this description, then, that from the time of the introduction of the secret teachings, or tantra, into China by the masters Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra, a certain type of tantric Amitābha maṇḍala became popular in China.48

46  T  . 1167, “Maṇḍala of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.” Charles Orzech has kindly examined the text briefly; he indicates that it is quite short and is used for general benefits, such as increasing fortune. The key deity’s Sanskrit name can be tentatively reconstructed as Ratnagarbha Candraprabha. In the course of the ritual described in the text, one sets up a mandala, makes offerings of flowers, and so on. The practitioner then visualizes the golden body of the Tathāgata complete with the thirty-two marks. Then, Avalokiteśvara with a red body is visualized, then Akaṣagarbha, Samantabhadra, Vajrapani, Mañjuśrī, Sarvanivāraṇaviṣkambhin, and Kṣitigarbha, including directions on how they should be arrayed as well. The text ends with verses in praise of the eight. Note that it is related to 1168A and to the siddham text 1168B. Personal communication, July 3, 2007. 47  Orzech also suggests that this description matches the Jiu pin wang sheng Amituo sanmadi ji tuoloni jing (T. 933, attributed to Amoghavajra). See his discussion in “A Tang Esoteric Manual for Rebirth in the Pure Land: Rites for Contemplation of and Offerings to Amitāyus Tathāgata” in Path of No Path: Contemporary Studies in Pure Land Buddhism Honoring Roger Corless, ed. Richard K. Payne (forthcoming). Personal communication, July 3, 2007. 48  Mochizuki Shinkō, A Doctrinal History of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, trans. Leo Pruden, ed. Richard K. Payne (forthcoming), ch. 24, “The Mid and Late T’ang Dynasty I” (ms. pp. 433–434).

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Another instance is Yu-yen (?–1101), abbot of the Ch’ung-shan ssu Monastery and author of the Hsüan-ch’ien pei-chien, his major work, and of the Ching-t’u hsiu-yin huo-tui. According to Mochizuki, “It is reported that Yu-yen always sought rebirth in the Pure Land and cultivated the Pure Land faith most diligently.”49 In his discussion of the various kinds of teachings that lead to birth in the Sukhāvatī, Yu-yen explains that The Tathāgata, through his expedience in teaching, set up various different teachings, such as single-minded acts of good (ting-shan), mentally dispersed acts of good (san-shan), the power of the Buddha ( fo-li), or the power of the dharma ( fa-li). Single-minded acts of good refer to “the marvelous insight attained through cultivation of the mind”; mentally dispersed acts of good are the cultivation of the ten recitations, “repeated continually, sound following sound”; the power of the Buddha means that one can attain rebirth through receiving the power of the great compassion and vows of the Buddha; and the power of the dharma signifies the recitation of mantras, receiving the tantric abhiṣeka [empowerment or ordination, kanjō, 灌頂], and if empowered sand is sprinkled over a corpse, the deceased will be reborn into the Pure Land.50 Here we find a tantric interpretation of Pure Land ideas and practices in China contemporaneous with Jichihan in Japan, which leads one to suspect that such interpretations were much more widespread within East Asian Mahayana than could be explained if Jichihan were the first to have created such interpretations. This includes not only the equation of the power of the dharma to mantra recitation and tantric empowerment, but also the practice of empowering sand with mantra so as to assist the dead to be born in Sukhāvatī. Although Mochizuki’s summary does not specify, this is presumably a reference to the practice of empowering sand with the Clear Light Mantra (Kōmyō Shingon, 光明眞言), made popular in Japan by Myōe Kōben (1173–1232).51 In 1200, under the rule of the Hsi-hsia in North China, the master Chih-kuang wrote the “Secret Mantras as the Perfect Cause of Rebirth” (“Mi-shou yuan-ying wang-sheng chi,” 1 chuan, T. 46, 1956). Mochizuki tells us that in this work

49  Mochizuki, A Doctrinal History, ch. 27, “The Mid and Late T’ang Dynasty IV,” section 3, “The Pure Land Faith of Pen-ju and His Disciples” (ms. p. 483). 50  Ibid., ms. pp. 483–484. 51  Mark Unno, Shingon Refractions: Myōe and the Mantra of Light (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004).

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he gives the mūla-mantra of the Buddha Amitābha [阿弥陀仏根呪], his Heart Mantra [阿弥陀心呪], the One-Syllable Mantra of Amitābha [阿弥陀一字呪], and the One Hundred and Eight-Syllable Dhāraṇī of the Tathāgata Amitāyus the King [無量壽王如来一百八多陀羅尼]…. He explains further that by recitation of these mantras, one will be able to extinguish the weighty transgressions incurred by the five heinous crimes and be reborn directly into the pure land of Sukhāvatī.52 Although there may have been relatively few such explicitly interpretive works in China, their very presence is more than suggestive.53 This work, particularly in light of the works and mandalas already discussed, demonstrates that the Amituo cult played an important role within the broad range of tantric praxis in China, and that the goal of birth in Sukhāvatī was not thought to be contradictory to tantric praxis. 3.5 Japan: Amida Cult and Nenbutsu Recitation in Shingon-shū It appears that the Kōya hijiri were one of the main vehicles for the spread of the cult of Amida within the context of the Shingon tradition. Mount Kōya was established by Kūkai in the second decade of the ninth century54 and became one of the most important centers of the Shingon tradition. By the beginning of the eleventh century, however, the temples had suffered from repeated fires, and the mountain was almost empty of practitioners. At that time Jōyo (Kishin Shōnin; 958–1047) initiated efforts to revive the mountain. Much of the fundraising for these efforts was handled by the Kōya hijiri, who combined devotion to Kūkai with recitation of the Amida nenbutsu. As the Kōya hijiri traveled around the country they spread the cult of Kūkai and nenbutsu recitation.55 Kōyasan itself came to be identified with Amida’s Pure Land. The bridge at the base of the mountain is known as Gokuraku-bashi. (Today, the rail line ends there, and the final station is likewise known as Gokuraku-bashi.)

52  Mochizuki, A Doctrinal History, ch. 32, “The Southern Sung and the Chin Dynasties,” section 3, “The Chin Dynasty” (ms. p. 593). Again, my thanks to Charles Orzech for supplying the characters for these various mantra found in the text. Personal communication, July 3, 2007. 53  Mochizuki, A Doctrinal History, ms. p. 593. Orzech also suggests that T. 930 is another example of this same phenomenon. Personal communication, July 3, 2007. 54  Imperial permission requested in 816, construction initiated in 819. Taikō Yamasaki, Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1988), 30. 55  Yamasaki, Shingon, 39.

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Kakuban (1095–1143), founder of the Shingi (new teachings)56 Shingon-shū, seems to have been the Shingon priest most instrumental in integrating Amida and nenbutsu into the Shingon tradition. Motivated to reinvigorate both practice and study, as abbot of the Daidenpōin, Kakuban integrated what he had learned from several traditions, including Pure Land,57 establishing what is known to us today as Shingi Shingon. In his Gorin Kuji myō himitsu shaku he equates Amida with Dainichi Nyorai.58 This identity provided a doctrinal basis for the practice of reciting Amida nenbutsu within the Shingon tradition. Kakuban also built a temple devoted to nenbutsu practice, the Mitsugon-in (密 厳院).59 The name of this temple refers to Mahāvairocana’s pure land, known as the Terrace of Esoteric Grandeur.60 Kakukai (1142–1223) of the Sambōin-ryū, apparently influenced by Kakuban’s thought although not a disciple, equated the pure lands of Amida, Maitreya, and Mahāvairocana. However, not only are Gokuraku Jōdo (Amida’s Pure Land of Supreme Bliss), Tosotsuten (Maitreya’s Heaven of the Satisfied Gods), and Mitsugon Dōjō (Mahāvairocana’s Terrace of Esoteric Grandeur) ultimately the same, they are all identical with this world. This interpretation is in keeping with the fundamental soteriological principle of the Shingon tradition, “becoming Buddha in this body” (sokushin jōbutsu, 即身成仏).61 The practice of nenbutsu in Shingon would, of course, be understood very differently from the understanding of it in Shin. It would simply be another instance of a mantra or dhāraṇī,62 of which there are many hundreds in the Shingon tradition. The term “mantra” has basically the same meaning as nenbutsu (buddhānuṣmṛti, 念仏), that is, to “hold mentally.” Jan Gonda defines mantra as “means of creating, conveying, concentrating and realizing inten56  Ibid., 42. 57  Ibid., 41. 58  Shigematsu Akihisa, “An Overview of Early Japanese Pure Land,” in The Pure Land Tradition, ed. James Foard, Michael Solomon, and Richard K. Payne, Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, no. 3 (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, 1996), 293. 59  Yamasaki, Shingon, 41. 60  For information regarding the scriptural sources for this land, see Robert E. Morrell, Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1987), 95. 61  Ibid., 95. 62  The differences between the application of these terms is not clear cut. As a simple rule of thumb, one may say that dhāraṇī are usually significantly longer than mantra. A functional distinction that is sometimes made is that while mantra are meditative or concentrative, dhāraṇī are mnemonic, i.e., for remembering doctrines, similar to creeds in Christianity. However, the way in which dhāraṇī are actually employed does not reflect this latter distinction.

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tional and efficient thought, and of coming into touch or identifying oneself with the essence of divinity which is present in the mantra.”63 Anuṣmṛti means “to keep in mind,” and buddhānusmṛti is to keep the Buddha in mind.64 Thus, mantra is a vocal means by which one is able to keep the Buddha in mind. While there are hundreds of mantras known to the Shingon tradition, some of these spread to popular use. One of the most popular mantras in medieval Japan is the Kōmyō Shingon (光明眞言), or Clear Light Mantra. Like other esoteric practices, its use was not delimited by sectarian boundaries, and was widely employed in such public functions as funerals. For example, during the Zen Abbot Meiho’s funeral in 1350 the Kōmyō Shingon was recited “by a group of 100 monks, chanting nonstop in three shifts.”65 In addition, other dhāraṇīs, such as the Great Compassion and Śūraṁgama, that were “mentioned in Chinese monastic regulations”66 were employed.67 Probably the most common mantra for Amida in the Shingon tradition is ON AMIRITA TEISEI KARA UN (oṃ amṛta-teje hara hūṃ).68 This is, for example, the mantra used when Amida is invoked as a member of the “thirteen buddhas” (jūsan butsu, 十三仏). This is a group of buddhas that seems to have become popular in the later medieval period, and includes (1) Fudō Myōō (Acalanātha Vidyārāja, 不動明王), (2) Shaka Nyorai (Śākya Tathāgata, 釋迦如来), (3) Monju Bosatsu (Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva, 文珠菩薩), (4) Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, 普賢菩薩), (5) Jizō Bosatsu (Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, 地藏菩薩), (6) Miroku Bosatsu (Maitreya Bodhisattva, 彌勒菩薩), (7) Yakushi Nyorai (Bhaiṣajya-guru Tathāgata, 薬師如来), (8) Kanjizai Bosatsu (tantric name for Amida; Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, 觀自在菩薩), (9) Seishi 63  Jan Gonda, “The Indian Mantra,” Oriens (1963): 255. See also, Alex Wayman, “The Significance of Mantra-s, From the Veda down to Buddhist Tantric Practice,” The Adyar Library Bulletin 39 (1975): 65–89. And, Monier-Williams, A Sanskṛit-English Dictionary, s.v., “Anu-smṛiti” and “Mantra.” For a comprehensive discussion of mantra, see Harvey P. Alper, ed., Understanding Mantras (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 64  See Paul Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmṛti” in In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Janet Gyatso (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 65  William M. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 8 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 192. 66  Ibid. 67  Regarding the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī, see Maria Dorothea Reis-Habito, Die Dhāraṇī des Großen Erbarmens des Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara mit tausend Händen und Augen, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, no. 27 (Nettetal, Germany: Seyler Verlag, 1993). 68  Takubo Shūyo, Shingon Daranizō no kaisetsu (Explanation of the Mantra Dhāraṇī Piṭaka), rev. ed. (Tokyo: Roku Ya En, 1967), 62.

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Bosatsu (Mahāsthāmaprāpta Bodhisattva, 勢至菩薩), (10) Mida Nyorai (Amitābha Tathāgata, 彌陀如来), (11) Ashuku Nyorai (Akṣobhya Tathāgata, 阿閦如来), (12) Dainichi Nyorai (Mahāvairocana Tathāgata, 大日如来), and (13) Kokūzō Bosatsu (Ākāśagarbha Bodhisattva, 虚空蔵菩薩). This grouping is particularly associated with the sequence of post-mortem memorial services. For example, Fudō Myōō would be the chief deity of the first service, while Kokūzō would be the chief deity of the fiftieth anniversary service. 4

Conclusion: Three Sources of Pseudo-Problems

From its very beginnings in India it seems that the tantric tradition of Buddhism contained within itself cultic practices devoted to Amitābha and the shōmyō nenbutsu-like practice of mantra recitation. When these were established in Japan, they contributed to the religious culture of the Kamakura era and were spread to the general populace via the efforts of many Shingon masters, as well as by the Kōya hijiri. As such they formed part of the religious culture, out of which Pure Land Buddhism arose, and were in turn brought to the foreground by such figures as Kakuban and Kakukai—probably as a result of the rising general devotion to Amida stimulated by the Pure Land sects themselves. What seems to have not been changed, at least among practitioners of the Shingon ritual tradition, was the soteriology of “becoming awakened in this body.” This was not displaced by aspiration for rebirth in the Pure Land, nor do the two seem to have been seen as necessarily contradictory. It is only under a much more narrowly exclusivistic interpretation of Pure Land teaching that the two can be considered to stand in opposition. Many monastics important during the Kamakura, such as Jōkei, were extremely eclectic in their devotions, including practices devoted to Amida along with many others.69 At the same time that Shingon practitioners did not see any particular incongruity in including Amida cult practices within the range of tantric practices, Shingon thinkers generally do not appear to have accepted the doctrine of mappō. This idea that the dharma is in a process of decay and has reached such a state that it is no longer effectively available, leaving only the vows of Amida as effective for us in this period, takes on a central, motivating role in the cosmology of Pure Land Buddhism. Such a position, though, is consistent with the Shingon position that practice has as its goal awakening in this lifetime.70 69  J ames L. Ford, Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. 70  Dōgen also held both the idea of attaining awakening in this life and rejected mappō.

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As discussed in the Introduction, the reduction of religious traditions to simplistic formulae, the presumption of exclusive affiliation, and the metaphor of founder as romantic creative genius all create pseudo-problems for the study of religion in general, and the study of the role of Amida in tantric Buddhism in particular. Abandoning these presumptions, we may then be able to perceive the complexities of actual historical processes more accurately.

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Breath of Life: the Esoteric Nembutsu James H. Sanford You are a man of Tendai training. Therefore you will divide the Nembutsu practice into three forms. First is the nembutsu of Makashikan. Secondly, there is the nembutsu of the Ōjō yōshū. And thirdly is the nembutsu of Shan Tao. Hōnen (1133–1212), to a disciple1

∵ The Japanese Pure Land tradition is often considered to derive directly—or solely—from the Tendai school and to present a form of Buddhism that constitutes a rather close analogue to Western dualistic forms of religion. This dualism is characterized by a series of oppositions that include Amida’s2 distant paradise, the Jōdo (“Pure Land”) versus edo (this dirty world of unsaved mortals); busshin (“buddha mind”), versus bonshin (our corrupt minds); the differentiation between tariki, the grace-like “other power” bestowed by Amida, and jiriki, the be-lights-unto-yourselves “self power” that has lost all efficacy in these latter, dark days of the dharma (mappō); and a parallel differentiation of Source: Sanford, James H., “Breath of Life: The Esoteric Nembutsu,” in Richard K. Payne (ed.), Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, Boston: Wisdom Press, 2006, pp. 161–189. Copyright © 1994, 2006. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Wisdom Publications, www.wisdompubs.org. 1  Kushida Ryōkō, Shingon mikkyō seiritsu katei no kenkyū (Tokyo Sankibo, 1965), p. 219. I have drawn on Kushida for a number of the quotations herein, as well as incorporating a considerable part of his historical analysis.    Makashikan is the Japanese reading for Mo-ho chih-kuan, a text by Chih-i, founder of T’ien T’ai (Tendai) Buddhism, but here Hōnen intends the term as a synonym for the whole of the Tendai tradition. The Ōjō yōshū by Genshin (942–1017) is an early text of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Shan Tao was the last, and most important, of the major Pure Land thinkers in China. His writings provided a point of departure for the views of Hōnen, the “founder” of Japanese Pure Land thought. 2  I use the Japanese form, “Amida” (Skt. Amitābha/Amitāyus), since the Pure Land tradition was largely limited to China and Japan. Other divinity names are usually given in their Sanskrit versions.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_024

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the Jōdo path versus an older, and now irrelevant, Shōdō (Way of the Saints). Humanity’s only hope in this dismal age is to do the nembutsu3 to call out to Amida in the hope that this august being will turn his compassion toward us and allow us, in spite of all our sins and our wholly undeserving nature, to be reborn, not here or in some Buddhist hell, but in his Pure Land Paradise of the West (Gokuraku, the Land of Joy). This study briefly outlines the tantric Shingon school’s himitsu nembutsu (esoteric nembutsu)4 counterversion of the usual Pure Land teachings, a monistic, this-worldly, immanental variant that had great impact across a wide range of Buddhist venues, from its foundations in the late Heian within Shingon proper, through certain aspects of medieval Tendai and Zen, and on into Pure Land “heresies” that survived as underground popular movements into the twentieth century, and probably persist in some venue somewhere in Japan even today. 1

The “Normative” Vision of the Pure Land

The differences between the himitsu nembutsu tradition and the orthodox Pure Land schools centered on three major issues: (1) the nature of Amida and his relationship to human beings; (2) the nature of the Pure Land and of ōjō, or rebirth in that land; and (3) the nature of the nembutsu itself. These issues of dispute were, of course, the basic constituents of Amidism. The last of them, the nembutsu, was in many ways the most important, since the manner in which the nembutsu was understood was often crucial to a coherent understanding of the other elements. Before examining the himitsu nembutsu

3  Recitation of the nembutsu is the core practice of the Japanese Pure Land tradition (some schools make it the sole practice). The most usual version of the nembutsu is “Namu Amida Butsu” (Hail the Buddha Amida), and its most general interpretation is as a call on the Buddha Amida’s name (nen-, “call”; -butsu, “Buddha”) in hope of attaining rebirth in his Pure Land. In the earliest Pure Land texts, nembutsu usually meant “to remember the Buddha,” the sense of nen as “to call aloud” only developing later. In tantric contexts nen often means to visualize or to make real (“evoke” in a fundamentally magical sense), and the compound nem-butsu, since it does not explicitly refer to Amida, can be taken to mean the realization of any Buddha. The word nen can also translate the Sanskrit term kṣaṇa, “an instant.” In some Buddhist contexts this meaning suggests the transformative moment of enlightenment. 4  Himitsu nembutsu literally means “secret nembutsu.” The tradition is also called Shingon nembutsu. Ordinarily this is taken to mean nembutsu of the Shingon school, but it can also be construed as something like “dhāraṇī nembutsu.” since shingon (lit., “real word”) translates dhāraṇī and mantra.

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alternative, we ought first to take a brief look at these core elements as they were seen in “normative Pure Land.”5 Though individuals within what I have called the normative Pure Land tradition disagreed among themselves over particular meanings and interpretations, the school in general held to something like the following set of doctrines on the three main issues: 1.1 Amida and Humanity In a former age of the universe there was a monk called Dharmākara. Lokeśvararāja, the buddha of that age, predicted—infallibly, since he was a buddha—that Dharmākara too would one day become a buddha. In response to this prediction, Dharmākara vowed that when that event took place he would establish a Pure Land for the salvation of all beings. Dharmākara, of course, became the Buddha Amida. And though he was in a certain sense once a man like any other, he has for eons been a full-fledged Buddha presiding over his Pure Land of the West. There he and his attendant bodhisattvas work for the welfare of worldlings trapped in the realms below, aiding them to be reborn in this Pure Land until, at the end of all time, all beings will be bodhisattvas or buddhas and we will at last, all together, all at once, take one giant step into nirvāṇa. The beings in the lower realms are trapped there by delusions that breed bad actions, which in turn breed further delusion. The arrival of Śākyamuni in India may have allowed for a brief respite, in which his immediate followers were able to apply his teachings directly and attain salvation by themselves, but the world has long since drifted into the age of decay of the dharma during which, according to most wings of normative Pure Land, only the saving compassion of Amida drawn by the nembutsu (or perhaps simply given free of all conditions by Amida) can be efficacious. 1.2 The Land: Ōjō Amida’s Pure Land of the West is an arena which seems to retain form and diversity. Indeed, as its very name, Gokuraku, implies it is a place of endless (or ultimate) joy. Nonetheless, it is a place unlike our world. For in the Pure Land 5  The term “normative Pure Land” is a somewhat artificial construct. By it I mean to signify a generalized version of the received understanding of Japanese Pure Land. it is close to but not identical with the teachings of the Shinshū School. Kakuban actually predated many of its developments; Dōhan (1178–1252) and later himitsu nembutsu proponents reacted against it. Some Japanese Pure Land groups such as the Seizan-ha and the Ji-shū held views that were fairly close to the himitsu nembutsu position.

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all is, as its name suggests, pure.6 The joy of the Pure Land is not a hindrance to the attainment of nirvāṇa but perhaps something like a foretaste. There are in fact other, similar Pure Lands among the “universes without number,” but due to Amida’s vow to bring undeserving worldlings to rebirth in his Pure Land, it is the most easily attained of these. If one insists on talking of Gokuraku in terms of conventional space, then it is located in the West, but its location is so far removed from our own dirty, impure land, that even to talk of Gokuraku in terms of distance or space is almost an absurdity. If it were not for the compassion of Amida, Gokuraku would be wholly unreachable. The application of the Western term “transcendent” for the location of this Land and for the nature of its master, Amida, may be slightly anomalous, but it is not wide of the mark by much. Rebirth in the Pure Land, or ōjō,7 is, as is implicit in the vows taken by Dharmākara, available to virtually all beings. Even great sinners, would they but make the effort of uttering the nembutsu, could slough off kulpas of deserved punishment for their past and present sins. Not all would, however, immediately become as pure as the land in which they were reborn. Normative Pure Land posits nine levels of rebirth. The truly pure and spiritually wise are born there to become, as it were, instant bodhisattvas. But others must first spend long purgatorial ages within the calices of lotus flowers, gradually leaching the dross of their former lives. For those of the ninth and lowest layer this could be a very long process indeed, but even the lowest state in the Pure Land is happier than the highest earthly throne—to say nothing of the torments of the awful hells that surely await most of us. 1.3 The Nembutsu Ōjō to the Pure Land normally follows utterance of the nembutsu (though not until the end of the believer’s current lifetime). This does not necessarily mean that the call has any coercive effect on Amida. To insist on such a suggestion would imply that Amida’s actions might in some way, shape, or form be dependent upon our attentions to him. This would be tantamount to taking a jiriki (self-powered) position. In fact, salvation is better understood to be wholly the gift of Amida (and thus tariki or “other” powered). Amida could if he chose to—though, of course, he would not so choose—ignore our cries for help. 6  It should also be understood as a place where one undergoes purification. 7  The term ōjō consists of ō-, “to go,” and -jō, “to be born.” It is the standard technical term for rebirth in the Pure Land. Often it seems to act as a substitute for the conventional term for the attainment of Buddhahood, jōbutsu. To indicate its sectarian and technical character, I have left ōjō untranslated.

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The nembutsu, then, is not really a form of worship at all—albeit its most common form “Namu Amida Butsu” may be translated “Hail the Buddha Amida.” It should, rather, be understood as a cry of thanksgiving for the fact—practically certain if not technically so—that Amida has heard and will save. I have in the paragraphs above represented a generalized understanding of the logic of the normative Pure Land position on the nembutsu. Specific understandings much worried normative Pure Land thinkers. Hōnen, for instance, was even open to the partial utility of practices other than the nembutsu. But the tradition of his followers—however much they argued over the required number of nembutsu, the preferred form of their utterance, or even the exact nature of the practice—was constantly drifting in one direction. That is, toward sole reliance on a nembutsu that was a sui generis salvational fact quite beyond the terms of devotion, worship, or meditation as those had been understood by earlier schools of Buddhism. 2

History of the Himitsu Nembutsu Tradition: Kakuban and His Precursors

The central figure in the himitsu nembutsu tradition is unarguably the Shingon prelate Kakuban (1095–1134, a.k.a. Kōgyō Daishi). Prior to Kakuban’s time Pure Land views had hardly begun to crystallize into a systematic perspective, but this does not mean that neither Amida, the Pure Land (ōjō) nor the nembutsu was unknown to the Japanese Buddhist tradition. It simply indicates that they were still nonproblematic features, similar to a number of other elements of Buddhism. Within Tendai and Shingon alike, Amida was seen as one of a number of Buddhas. And while rebirth in his Pure Land was possible, such a rebirth was seen not so much as a way station to final enlightenment and nirvāṇa as a procedure that utilized meditation on Amida to see the emptiness of all dharmas, to finally come to grips with the ultimate nature of the universe, and to become enlightened. Typically this meditation might take place on one’s deathbed as a sort of meditation of last resort, but in theory it was little different from any of a number of other visualization exercises. In Shingon and Tendai visualizing Amida was most often assimilated to the potent stimulation of bodhicitta8 that could

8  Bodhicitta (Jpn. bodai-shin) is the innate essence within mortal beings which allows them to attain (or manifest) enlightenment.

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be brought on by the Aji kan, or visualization of the syllable “A.”9 One’s meditative encounter with Amida was less an attempt to gain rebirth in the Pure Land than to evoke one’s own bodhicitta, to enter a state of perfect oneness with Amida and to forestall rebirth in any land, save to the extent that enlightenment even at the very end of one’s life could always be seen in a Shingon context as a form of that school’s most distinctive promise, sokushin jōbutsu, or “bodily buddhahood.”10 At this stage we are talking about the kind of nembutsu that Hōnen refers to in our epigraph as “the nembutsu of Makashikan.” From our point of view Hōnen’s “nembutsu of the Ōjō yōshū” and his “nembutsu of Shan Tao” were simply two hardly distinguishable stages of an emergent normative Pure Land view. With Kakuban (who, it should be kept in mind, was born almost thirty years before Hōnen) we see something else. This something was sufficiently distinct that it would eventually be singled out for special attention and a particular name. That name is himitsu nembutsu. This kind of nembutsu is first mentioned in works written after Kakuban’s death, where it is presented as a fourth form in addition to the three kinds of nembutsu that Hōnen speaks about. Thus we can suspect that the term developed primarily as a result of Kakuban’s teachings. Initially, the impact of the himitsu nembutsu interpretations was limited to Mount Kōya and other Shingon centers—especially important was Negoro, the site of Kakuban’s last years. Gradually, however, this countertradition evolved and spread beyond those confines. And, as we will see below, it was 9  Meditation on the syllable “A” goes back to the roots of Shingon. The reasons for this syllable’s special power are slightly complex. As the first letter of the Sanskrit syllabary, “A” symbolizes all beginnings. Since a- is also a privative prefix in Sanskrit, “A” also symbolizes all endings. That which coalesces all beginnings and endings also coheres all medial process as well. “A” is thus the Alpha, the Omega, and all in between. Additionally, A-ji (lit., “the character A”) is, for phonetic reasons peculiar to the Japanese language, used as a transliteration of adi-, “primordial.” finally, in its full bīja form, “Am,” “A” is the germ of the Garbhadhātu maṇḍala. For a series of Shingon texts on A-ji kan, see Tatkō Yamasaki, Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988), pp. 190–215. 10  Shingon’s assertion of its superiority over exoteric Buddhism (kengyō) is based in no small part on its claim to bring salvation in a single lifetime. The most important formulation of this central tenet of Shingon is sokushin jōbutsu, or “buddhahood in this very body,” with “body” construed to mean lifetime. The major source for this doctrine is Kūkai’s Sokushin jōbutsu gi There are several variants of this text. In some of them sokushin jōbutsu is divided into three subvarieties: rigu sokushin jōbutsu, as an innate quality of all beings; kaji sokushin jōbutsu, a rather dualistic, acquisitional form; and kentoku sokushin jōbutsu, a rapidly manifested form of bodily enlightenment. For more on the three kinds of sokushin jōbutsu, see James H. Sanford, “Wind, Waters, Stūpas, Maṇḍalas: Fetal Buddhahood in Shingon,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24, nos. 1–2 (spring 1957); 11–12.

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felt well beyond the pale of mikkyō.11 Kakuban was born in Bizen in Kyūshū. He studied with the noted monk Kanjō (1052–1125) at the Ninna-ji. Later, having attracted the support of Emperor Toba, he established the Denbō-in at Shingon’s main stronghold on Mount Kōya—and is thus counted the founder of Shingon’s Denbō-in sub-school. He was also invited to become abbot of the main temple of Kōya, Kongōbu-ji, but due to internal opposition he was not able to accept this post. Kakuban eventually left Kōya to settle at Negoro-ji, later the center of Shingi Shingon, the largest school of Shingon after the main branch on Kōya. He is, thus, deemed the founder of Shingi Shingon, though this attribution is in some ways more honorific than substantive. Kakuban is generally considered to be the founder of the himitsu nembutsu movement, though in point of fact he had precursors and collaterals as well as intellectual descendants. Nonetheless, Kakuban’s role in blending the tantric ideas of Shingon proper with the central elements of the then still emergent Pure Land ideology was major, and in terms of historical impact his fusion of Amidist and mikkyō themes constitutes the most important single contribution to the himitsu nembutsu tradition. Kakuban was a partisan of the radically nondual fu’ni (not-two) wing of Shingon, from which perspective he wrote a number of diatribes against the alternative, gradualist ni’ni (yet-two) school. It was, in fact, doubtless only Kakuban’s radical unwillingness to validate discriminations of any sort that allowed him to combine the this-worldly immanentalism of fu’ni Shingon and the implicit dualism of emerging Pure Land ideology; to construe the Pure Land message as obviously this worldly; and to consider Amida, the principal figure of the Pure Land texts, and Mahāvairocana (Jpn. Dainichi, lit. “Great Sun”), the central Buddha of Shingon, as virtual co-avatars. Though elements of this program can be found in a number of Kakuban’s works, his major contributions toward a fu’ni interpretation of Amidism were the Gorin kuji myo himitsu shaku (Secret Explication of the Mantras of the Five Wheels and the Nine Syllables), the Amida hishaku (Secret Explication of Amida), the Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū (Secrets of the Crucial Moment of Death), and several short texts on A-ji kan, the visualization of the syllable “A.” The Gorin kuji myo hishaku is the best-known work in Kakuban’s large oeuvre (for in spite of his rather short life span, Kakuban was a highly prolific writer) and was widely copied and read in later times. The Amida hishaku was possibly a bit less familiar, as well as less radical in its outlook, but it too had fairly 11  Mikkyō (lit., “secret teachings”) is the standard Japanese term for esoteric Buddhism. It usually includes all of Shingon and the esoteric wing of Tendai (called by itself Taimitsu), but one can also speak of mikkyō-ized aspects of other sects and movements.

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wide currency, perhaps because it was written not in classical Chinese but in Japanese of a reasonably accessible style and was quite short into the bargain. The Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū was also relatively well known, in part, one must suppose, because as a guide to a good death it had considerable practical appeal. The interpretations of the Pure Land posed by Kakuban in his various texts will be considered in more detail presently. Kakuban’s precursors fall into two groups. There are first of all several mainline monks whose interpretations of Amida prefigure those of Kakuban. The second line of influence is that of the so-called Kōya hijiri (ascetics of Mount Kōya), a somewhat disparate group of self-regulating, and to a large degree self-styled, holy men who had by the eleventh century gathered in substantial numbers on the numinous slopes of Mount Kōya. One contemporary text estimates that in the late twelfth century there were two thousand of these hijiri on the mountain, as against only three hundred regularly ordained monks.12 Many of these informal ascetics were devoted to, among other things, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land, Amida. Though some of them maintained an interest in Amida that was no more than simple devotion, others of the Kōya hijiri held notions that were already moving to incorporate more innovative ideas about the Pure Land into the body of Shingon thought. In particular they were prone to see Mount Kōya itself as an earthly Pure Land, a sort of geographical avatar of the Mitsugon Pure Land associated with Vairocana in numerous Shingon texts. From this point of departure, it was no great step to further equate the Mitsugon Jōdo not only with Kōya but with Gokuraku, the Pure Land of Amida. Kakuban, unlike some monks associated with official Shingon institutions, maintained close relations with many of these independent Kōya hijiri. More formal precursors of Kakuban would include Yōkan (1033–1111), a member of the Sanron school. In his Ōjō jūin (Rebirth’s Ten Causes), Yokan expounds on the themes of nirvāṇa’s identity with saṃsāra, the equation of bodhi (enlightenment) and the passions, and the specification of the heart as the locus of buddha-nature. His Ōjō kōshiki (The Ōjō Ritual) states that holding the nembutsu in the mouth gathers buddhas into the heart and that the nembutsu replaces other rituals. Another Sanron monk, Chingai (1095–1151), argued in his Bodaishin shū (On Bodhicitta) and Ketsujō ōjō shū (On Certain Rebirth) that the generation of bodhicitta was a kind of ōjō rebirth. The figure who had the deepest influence on Kakuban was, doubtless, the Hosso monk, Jitsuhan (?–114). A number of Jitsuhan’s writings, whose titles suggest that they were primarily concerned with Amida and the Pure Land, 12  Sawa Ryuken, ed., Mikkyō jiten (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1975), p. 199.

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have been lost, but surviving works include his Byōchū shugyō ki (The Practice to Be Done in the Grip of Illness), which was almost certainly the prototype for Kakuban’s Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū, both texts being outlines for the use of the nembutsu at the hour of death. However, Jitsuhan’s interpretation seems to flow uneventfully from a straightforward, if thoroughly mikkyō, reading of the Kan muryōju kyō (Visualization of the Buddha of Endless Life),13 whereas Kakuban’s text clearly takes the ideas of emergent normative Pure Land into account. 3

Further History of the Himitsu Nembutsu Tradition: Kakuban’s Immediate Followers

Later figures who followed Kakuban’s lead and who continued to develop and propagate the himitsu nembutsu ideology from within the confines of Shingon proper include Kakukai (1142–1223),14 Myōhen (1142–1224), and Jōhen (1165– 1223). Myōhen spent the years 1171 to 1174 with Hōnen, the founding father of orthodox Pure Land, before permanently settling on Mount Kōya. Because the Pure Land school was becoming a fairly well defined entity by his day, Myōhen tried to eliminate the implicit tension between Shingon and the new school by calling the nembutsu a practice belonging “neither to the exoteric schools nor to the esoteric school, an incomprehensible practice.”15 In this, the attempt to maintain room for the increasingly untenable conflation of mikkyō and Pure Land notions, Myōhen differed from most subsequent Shingon adherents of the himitsu nembutsu ideology, who more and more insisted on subsuming the Pure Land elements under an explicit Shingon orientation. Myōhen died, we are told, chanting the nembutsu, presumably in accordance with the intent of the Kan muryōju kyō, though in accordance with what vision of that text is not so clear. The next main figure, Jōhen, moved a bit further from Hōnen, making an essentially mikkyō reinterpretation of Hōnen’s views. The major himitsu nembutsu figure after Kakuban was Dōhan (1178–1252). Dōhan wrote voluminously on a multitude of topics. Among his many writings was the Himitsu Nembutsu shō (Compendium on the Esoteric Nembutsu), the 13  The Kan muryōju kyō is one of the three constitutive texts of the Japanese Pure Land tradition. Its title is often abbreviated to Kan gyō. 14  For Kakukai see Robert E. Morrell, Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1987), pp. 89–102. 15  Miyasaka Yūshō, “Heian jidai kara Edo jidai made,” in Mikkyō no rekishi, ed. Miyasaka Yūshō et al. (Tokyo; Shunjusha, 1977), 2:205. Miyasaka is quoting Myōhen’s Nembutsu hōgō.

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most influential work on himitsu nembutsu thought after Kakuban’s writings. If Kakuban can be considered the founder of the himitsu nembutsu lineage, then Dōhan must be accounted foremost among his descendants. The ensuing history of the himitsu nembutsu tradition will be briefly examined later in this study. At this point we turn to the doctrinal core of the tradition, the ideas of Kakuban and Dōhan. In each case I outline their views on the same key issues under which normative Pure Land was treated above: first, the nature of Amida, second, ōjō and the Pure Land, and third, the nature of the nembutsu. 4 The Himitsu Nembutsu Vision: Kakuban 4.1 Kakuban’s View of Amida Kakuban’s view of Amida varies. To a degree this variance may simply reflect texts from different dates: Kakuban’s ideas seem in general to have become more radical as he grew older. But it may also be a case of differing moods or differing intended audiences. Usually Kakuban’s view of Amida and humanity seems in close harmony with Jitsuhan’s consistent, if for mikkyō fairly conventional, position that all beings, including buddhas and humans, are fundamentally alike. In his Byōchū shugyō ki Jitsuhan conflates the visualization of Amida and the visualization of A-ji For Jitsuhan, Amida is the honzon, or chief object, of both of these exercises. On his deathbed the practitioner visualizes Amida, does a mudrā appropriate to Amida, and intones a call to Amida that is far more a mantra than a nembutsu in the normative Pure Land sense of the word. The purpose of this exercise is to awaken the dying person’s bodhicitta, to awaken the latent Buddhahood that is his essential nature, for in the final analysis Amida and humans are of one nature, or in Jitsuhan’s vocabulary shō-butsu ichinyo, “beings and the Buddha are of one suchness.” Kakuban, also, took the A-ji kan mediation as crucial. And, like Jitsuhan, heassociated the “A” of A-ji with the initial syllable of Amida. But Kakuban went further. If “A” linked A-ji and Amida, then it also linked Amida and Vairocana, for A-ji was preeminently the bīja of Vairocana in his Garbhadhātu aspect.16 16  The twin maṇḍalas of Shingon represent an apparent duality that is, in fact, a unity (or betters a nonduality). The Vajradhātu maṇḍala (Kongō-kai) represents Vairocana’s mind and the noumenal aspect of nirvāṇa. The Garbhadhātu maṇḍala (Taizō-kai) represents Vairocana’s body, the phenomenal universe. Thus the physical universe infused with nirvāṇic awareness is an organism which, like other living organisms, consists of an

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Therefore, Kakuban concluded, Vairocana and Amida were one and the same. Not surprisingly from a monk of Shingon training, this tended to come out, unconsciously perhaps, as a co-option of Amida into Vairocana, rather than as an Amidist rereading of Vairocana. But at the level of overt expression and probably at the level of his own understanding, Kakuban’s words were intended simply to mean what they said. For Kakuban, Amida and Vairocana were nondually one. And humans were beings on the way to, or returning to, the same state of buddhahood. Intermediary distinctions were, in the final analysis, of only marginal importance. As with Jitsuhan, human beings were buddha, but the buddha that they were was ultimately a singular buddha, the nondual Vairocana of Shingon. 4.2 Kakuban’s View of the Pure Land For Jitsuhan the visualization of Amida on the deathbed is just like the standard A-ji kan visualization; that is, it serves to raise bodhicitta. Like normative Shingon use of the A-ji kan, it opens one to the awareness of primordial nonbirth (honbushō) and emptiness. This practice done at death is, thus, more the summation and purification of a life than a translation from this world to a new life in another land. Though one may use the protonormative Pure Land term junji ōjō, or immediate rebirth, the immediacy in this case is from latency to enlightenment rather than from this world to the distant Gokuraku paradise. Since Amida and our own bodies are equally absolute, it is within the body that this procedure culminates. The contents of an afterlife do not concern Jitsuhan, primarily because it does not even occur to him that such descriptions could be more than metaphorical upāya for a rebirth that actually takes place within the human spirit itself. (Though, as usual in Shingon contexts, “spirit” is here to be seen not in contrast to but in conjunction with “body.”) Kakuban, too, held that the normative Pure Land idea that the Pure Land lay across a gap millions of miles beyond our world was wholly incorrect. As he says in the concluding lines of his Amida hishaku: “To hate this world and take joy in Paradise, to hate one’s ‘dirty body’ and revere some Buddha-body, this we may call ignorance or delusion. Even if this world were eternally impure, how, if one always sees it as a Dharma-realm, can he fail to enter the path of Buddhahood?”17 For Kakuban the locus of the Pure Land is simply our own body; Gokuraku is as close as our own heart. In the Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū’s segment on Gokuraku we are asked: “Where is Gokuraku? How could it be inseparably fused mind and body. The sexual symbolism of vajra (phallus) and garbha (womb) signals this same unity of opposites in a more typically tantric fashion. 17  Omori Shōjō, ed., Kōgyō Daishi zenshū (Tokyo: Kaji Sekkai Shisha, 1909), p. 61.

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across the ten directions, in some place other than the meditating adept? To meditate properly does not lift one out of this world, does not bring rebirth in Gokuraku. My body enters Amida, but it does not return to Amida. Rather I am transformed into Vairocana. My body evokes Vairocana. This is the wondrous realization of sokushin jōbutsu.”18 This is all perfectly clear. The view is quite close to normative Shingon. Here Amida, who in many of Kakuban’s passages is at least nominally interchangeable with Vairocana, is put clearly in third place, second not only to Vairocana but even to the individual self (as buddha) as well. In another passage from the Amida hishaku Kakuban seems even more tendentious: “Again, this heart and these Buddhas arc, from the outset, of one substance. This heart needs not seek transformation into a Buddha. If one withdraws from delusion. Wisdom will emerge of itself, and one will attain Buddhahood in this very body. To conclude that there is a Buddha-body outside of one’s own body, or to seek some Pure Land beyond this soiled world, is to encourage great fools and to bring profit to the evilest of men.”19 4.3 Kakuban and the Nembutsu If Kakuban was fairly predictable in his treatment of both Amida and the Pure Land, his views on the nembutsu were considerably less conventional. There was a progressive series of logical steps in his understanding. The first is Kakuban’s reduction of the three secrets (sanmitsu) of ordinary Shingon20 to a single secret, the secret he calls ichimitsu jōbutsu or “one-secret buddhahood.” Under Kakuban’s theory, the usual three secrets can all be subsumed under the aegis of the secret of speech. This apparently novel collapse is not, in all fairness, unprecedented. Kūkai advocated de jure the necessity of all three secrets, but his persistent stress on the crucial importance of sokushin jōbutsu amounted to a de facto privileging of the secret of body. But Kakuban’s shift to speech and his insistence on the idea of a single, crucial practice are a notable departure, and in the overall context of Japanese Shingon a departure that seems worthy of being characterized as radical, especially inasmuch as it specifically depreciates two of the orthodox mainstays of normative Shingon.21 Atop this already complex 18  Ibid., p. 158. 19  Ibid., p. 58. 20  The three secrets are central to Shingon’s ritual procedure for eliciting noumenal reality in the apparently phenomenal world. They consist of secrets of body, mudrās; secrets of speech, mantric invocations; and secrets of mind, meditation, visualization, and the like. 21  Ichimitsu jōbutsu has some resonance with Jitsuhan’s phrase Butsugō soku shingon, “the Buddha-name is, indeed, a shingon [i.e., dhāraṇī or mantra].”

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nexus of associations, Kakuban superimposes the linkage of “A” to Amida. “A” is, of course, the first syllable of Amida’s name and thereby the core of the sixcharacter nembutsu invocation, Namu Amida Butsu, “Hail the Buddha Amida.” It is as well the first syllable of the key word aṃṛta, in the nine-syllable mantra to Amida, Om aṃṛta teja hara hum. And, as noted before, “A” is a bīja of Vairocana. The identity of all these “A”s is, to Kakuban, self-evident and is but a further testimony to the identity of Amida and Vairocana. Kakuban, however, takes his reduction of all mantras to “A” yet another step. The carrying vehicle of all sound is breath. Breath is also the focal object of those yogas that depend on counting in-breaths and out-breaths. Kakuban combines these two ideas and sees that every in-breath is the substantiation of “A” and every out-breath is the substantiation of “hūṃ.” Every full cycle of in-breath and out-breath completes the mantra “A-hūṃ.”22 Inasmuch as every utterance of “A-(hūṃ)” is an invocation (or evocation) of Amida’s essential being, breath is, in and of itself, both the mantra of Amida and Amida himself. At the same time, “A” is also equated by Kakuban with the great element air (or wind), and air is taken to be the quintessence of the five material elements earth, water, fire, air, and space. Furthermore, since hūṃ is the bija syllable of Shingon’s sixth element, spirit or mind, this allows A-hūṃ to represent the two great Womb and Vajra maṇḍalas, emblematic of the body-spirit dual unity of the universe (i.e., the transcendent embedded within the immanent) and the parallel dual unity of the human mind-body complex. Thus, the “A-hūṃ, A-hūṃ” of the organic body is a constant regeneration of the identity of the six elements as well as a nyūga ga’nyū consubstantiation of Amida and Dainichi (Amitābha and Vairocana) and the individual self.23 In a word, I breathe Amida and Amida breathes me. In his A-ji kan in Japanese Kakuban tells us: Breath is A-ji. To say that whenever the mantras of the various Buddhas of the ten directions and three times are chanted there is a Nembutsu is a shallow interpretation. If we think of a victorious mantra which by inbreath and out-breath calms the mind, then the one and only example that brings all others to a halt must be this one dharma, A-ji, which quiets 22  “A-hūṃ” is vocalised “a-un” in Japanese. Tachikawa-ryū texts commonly use this double mantra to support their contention that Buddhist enlightenment and sexual ecstasy are of one substance, “a” and “un” being understood as the innate cries of lovemaking. Other of Kakuban’s texts posit not “a-hūṃ” for in-breath and out-breath, but “A-A.” 23  The development of a consubstantial identity between adept and divinity is called nyūga ga’nyū, “the Buddha entering the self; the self entering the Buddha.” It is a central aspect of the Shingon procedure of self-realization.

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the mind. Nothing else will put one on the rapid path to bodhi. The precious name, A-mi-da, surpasses other rites.24 In this passage, the nembutsu is a samādhi-engendering mantra to Amida, as are the three syllables A-mi-da themselves. But Kakuban once again takes his argument further and reduces the sound-bearing breath that reduces A-mi-da to breath alone. “The spiritual power of my body is the living breath of the Buddha-lands in every direction. This breath continues without pause whether I walk, stand, sit, or lie down, day and night even when I sleep, all without my exerting the least effort. There is no more efficacious act than just contemplating one’s breath, in and out.”25 At this point we have come a long way both from standard Shingon ideas up to Kakuban and from early normative, or proto-normative, Pure Land thought. Kakuban has not only foreclosed seeing the nembutsu as a salvific call to some transcendental divinity who sits kinglike in his distant realm of western purity but has also moved a considerable distance from the mikkyō rituals (more or less ni’ni in tone) that utilize mantra to awaken bodhicitta. In their stead we find the claim that the autonomic, purely instinctive, totally innate, entirely unconscious—and therefore absolutely immanental—process of breathing is, in and of itself, in all its materiality, the deepest form of spiritual activity. Here we are at a level that is neither tariki nor jiriki, but something beneath or beyond both. Though any fully nondual perspective might tend toward such a position, the framing of the position in terms of breath is a fresh invention which seems to have come late in Kakuban’s life. (Some of his early treatments of A-ji hardly prefigure, much less express, this radical view.) Certain linguistic features, however, make it a less arbitrary move than we might at first imagine. A good deal of the symbolic power of the conflation of Amida, breath, and A-ji comes from the fact that the translation equivalent of namu in the “Namu Amida Butsu” form of the nembutsu is “kimyo,” a compound whose constituent characters literally mean “return” and “life.”26 Since Kakuban has made air 24  Omori, Kōgyō Daishi zenshū, p. 538. Three texts called A-ji kan are attributed to Kakuban. The other two are a poetic version and a prose text, both written in classical Chinese. 25  Kushida, Shingon mikkyō, p. 204, cites this passage as being from the Aji-kan shaku, but I have been unable to find it in any of Kakuban’s standard A-ji texts. 26  I am not certain how the Sanskrit namas came to be translated by the characters ki(“return”) and -myō (“life”), Names is sometimes transliterated with the characters nan(“south”) and-mu (“not”). This too allows for an immanental construal of the Pure Land, since the nembutsu, Namu Amida Butsu, itself thus states that “the Buddha Amida is not in the West,” inasmuch as each cardinal direction includes every point of the compass.

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emblematic of Amida and also the primal element of the universe, since the sounds of the nembutsu ride on air, and since air in the human body is life breath, life too must consist of the essence of Amida’s true nature. That this is so becomes even more certain when we recall that Amida’s alternate name, Muryōju Nyorai, literally means “the Tathāgata Endless Life.” True enlightenment to Amida is, then, a form of naishō or “inner enlightenment”27 to the fact that Amida is breath, is life. Amida is the source of our every inhalation and with every exhalation we “return our life” (breath; kimyō) to Amida. According to the doctrines of Normative Pure Land, Amida will come to rescue us from our deathbeds if we but recite the nembutsu ten times (or for ten moments). This visitation is called Amida’s raigō (“coming to meet”). But, following Kakuban, we can now see that breathing in and out brings us a perpetual raigō or ōjō that renews itself from moment to moment. Another term for this endless miracle is sokushin ōjō or “ōjō in this very body.” This bodily ōjō is not, of course, limited to human beings. In a passage from Kakuban’s prose Aji-kan gi [Meaning of the A-ji Visualization] he likens the heart to a lunar orb: A-ji kan is an oral teaching concerning breath-count yoga. This is what it is. Eyes opened or eyes closed, simply concentrate on A-ji. In the center of our moon-disc heart is an innate, natural syllable “A.” This is the principle of original nonbirth. From the self-existent Dharmakāya on high,28 to the four kinds of mortal beings below, down to the soil, trees, tiles, and stones, there is not one thing that lacks the principle of original nonbirth. Therefore, when we speak of the innate essence of all beings, this is what we mean. The heart that visualizes “A” and the “A” being visualized must be seen as an originally nondual singularity. Further, the “A” of my moon-disc heart goes out for the benefit of others in my out-breaths. The out-breaths of all living beings and my out-breaths go out for the benefit of us all. And when the “A” in the moon-disc heart of all the Buddhas goes out from them, it settles into our moon-disc hearts. Thus, out-breath and in-breath have not, from the beginning of time to this very day, either increased or decreased. Nor will they into the endless future. When in this visualization the breaths are crystallized one by one, the principle of 27  The term naishō literally means “inner proof.” Though not limited to Shingon, it is a very characteristic usage. The physical connotations of “inner” are in close harmony with the embodied character of “bodily buddhahood.” 28  Mahāyāna Buddhism has several versions of the trikāya or three bodies of the buddha doctrine. Generally, nirmāṇakāya refers to a historical buddha in human form, the dharmakāya to the buddha as absolute reality, and the samboghakāya to a medial composite that manifests form but is noumenal in essence.

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original nonbirth of all beings and the essence of original nonbirth of all the Buddhas must be gathered together in your own heart. When breath leaves your breast and stirs the dust beneath your nostrils, you must open your mouth slightly and realize “A” sounding in your in-breath and your out-breath. And when you open your eyes, you must see yourself drawing the “A” before you into your moon-disc heart…. “A” is in all things. It is the natural bīja endowed by the Dharmakāya. Therefore, good dharmas and bad dharmas, the natural world and its kingdoms, the mountains, the rivers and the great earth, sand, stones, birds, and beasts, all alike sound this note, are all the “A” of this innate dhāranī. This is the samādhi of natural principle.29 Kakuban’s writings show more variety and explore many more themes than the schematic outline just provided suggests. Some of them verge on the ecstatic, and even the more conventional works display more than a few contradictions and probable changes of mind. Beyond that, Kakuban developed other inventions that, while not as important in the long run as his idea of kimyō, are just as striking as intellectual constructs. Nonetheless, even in this outline we can see that his view of Amida, the Pure Land, and the nembutsu is one in which syncretism both co-opts and resists elements of the emerging normative Pure Land worldview. This indicates, of course, that between Jitsuhan’s Byōchū shugyō ki and the late works of Kakuban a general normative Pure Land position was becoming an ever clearer alternative to older understandings of Amida’s nature and uses. 5 The Himitsu Nembutsu View: Dōhan If Kakuban was given to largely, though not entirely, unproblematic syncretism of mikkyō and emergent Pure Land ideas, Dōhan marks a different stage in the development of the himitsu nembutsu tradition, one in which real concessions to normative Pure Land views were made mostly in the breach, and serious measures were taken toward supplanting normative Pure Land interpretations altogether and replacing them with perfectly self-conscious Shingon understandings.30

29  Omori, Kōgyō Daishi zenshū, p. 227. 30  As Shingon and Pure Land are “desyncretized” by Dōhan and later Shingon figures, so too were Zen and esotericism, after a period of easy accommodation, desyncretized. See, for

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Dōhan, accounted one of the “eight geniuses of Kōya,” came to Mount Kōya in his fourteenth year and studied initially with Myōnin (1148–1229) of the Shōchi-in. In 1216, having taken tonsure and having received esoteric initiation, Dōhan left Kōya to study with Jōhen. He was also in the inner circle of Kakukai and is sometimes considered a disciple of that master as well. Eventually he returned to Kōya to serve for a time as abbot of the Shōchi-in. In 1243 he was exiled to Sanuki and did not return to Kōya until 1249. When he died in 1252 he left behind a formidable reputation and a prodigious number of writings. His works are especially noted for the scholastic rigor he applies to his arguments. Though Dōhan studied with a number of teachers and doubtless had many conversations with their peers and disciples, the most immediate influence on his views of the Pure Land was probably Jōhen, whose ideas it will be useful to consider briefly here. Jōhen, too, studied widely and wrote much. While abbot of Zenrin-ji in Kyoto, he met one of Hōnen’s disciples and became familiar with Hōnen’s Senchaku hongan Nembutsu shu (On the Nembutsu of the Selected Original Vow). He also knew Myōhen and like Myōhen was almost as much a part of the Pure Land tradition as of Shingon, though his ideas about the Pure Land carried a heavy burden of Shingon ideology. Jōhen held, for example, that if the common Mahāyāna tenet “saṃsāra is nirvāṇa” were true, then the nembutsu also equaled nirvāṇa. He denied any difference between this world and the Pure Land and held the doctrine that this present body is buddha (genshin soku butsu). 5.1 Dohan’s View of Amida By the time Dōhan was developing his own systematic presentation of himitsu nembutsu ideas. Pure Land had become a substantial spiritual force in Japan. Dōhan was obliged thereby to take basic (and now actively normative) Pure Land doctrines pretty much as they came and to address them in a serious and careful fashion. His writings are, in fact, an apologia for the himitsu nembutsu view, written directly against the normative Pure Land view. When Dōhan talks of Amida he says that there are exoteric and esoteric understandings and that while ordinary Pure Land views are not exactly false, they at best can represent the first, or possibly first and second, levels of a fourlayer structure of understanding and interpretation. These four levels of esoteric explication are; 1. The surface meaning: things just as they seem; the literal meaning. 2. The profound secret meaning: the inner, Buddhist, meaning. example, Gobō’s (1306–62) Kaishin shō, which opens with a denial of “the Mikkyō nature” of Bodhidharma.

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3.

The profound secret-within-secret meaning: the mikkyō understanding, incomprehensible to followers of other schools. 4. The secret meaning of the profound secret-within-secret meaning: the deepest mikkyō reading; examples here would include such notions as “the passions themselves are enlightenment,” “phenomena are themselves absolute,” and “mortal beings and the buddha are not two.” Stages 1 and 4 often look exactly alike. When Dōhan applies this paradigm to an understanding of Amida, the four stages develop as follows: 1. Holding the notion that Amida is the Buddha Ratnagarbha. 2. The realization that Amida is the Dharmakāya Buddha, Vairocana. 3. The realization that Amida is Vairocana as eternally manifest within this universe of time and space. 4. The innermost realization that Amida is the true nature, material and spiritual, of all beings, that he is the omnivalent wisdom-body, that he is the unborn, unmanifest, unchanging reality that rests quietly at the core of all phenomena. One could hardly imagine a more complete reversal of the dualistic and transcendental thrust of normative Pure Land. The Amida of this vision is almost indistinguishable from the first and third forms of sokushin jōbutsu enumerated in the Ihon recension of Kūkai’s Sokushin jōbutsu gi (On Bodily Buddhahood).31 Here Amida is simply an alternate term for Vairocana. At other points Dōhan suggests that Amida is an intermediary figure between beings and the Mitsugon Paradise (n.b.: Vairocana’s Mitsugon, not the normative Pure Land’s Gokuraku). 5.2 Dōhan on the Pure Land As with the other issues he takes up, here too Dōhan subjects his theme to a four-layered hermeneutic. And again the deepest, most secret layer is quite the opposite of the “superficial glimpses” afforded adherents of the normative Pure Land view. The shallow understanding of Pure Land and ojō is as rebirth into some distant world. But actually ōjō is rebirth into Gokuraku only in the sense that all “paradises” are really located in the heart. Gokuraku or Tuṣita (the paradise of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future) are but alternate names for Vairocana’s Mitsugon Jōdo, the Buddha-land of the heart. Journeys 31  The authenticity of the Ihon variant of the Sokushin jōbutsu gi is doubted by modern scholarship. But if it is a forgery, it is one of such early date that its importance to the development of Shingon thought cannot be ignored. For the three forms of sokushin jōbutsu see note 10, above.

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to the Pure Land are journeys inward. Further, if there were a literal rebirth with Amida in Gokuraku as suggested by the normative texts, that could only amount to joining Amida; enlightenment even in that Pure Land would still take kalpas. By contrast, Shingon is rapid; enlightenment (the real meaning of rebirth) is in this lifetime in this body, in this heart. 5.3 The Nembutsu as Seen by Dōhan Though Dōhan’s underlying hermeneutic is fourfold, his specific treatment of the nembutsu seems to come, oddly enough, in tripartite structures. In part this follows from the fact that Amida’s name consists of three syllables; Dōhan, unlike Kakuban, who reduced the nembutsu to a single syllable “A,” gives value—albeit not equal value—to all three syllables. Dōhan relates Amida to a series of parallel structures. “A-,” “-mi-,” and “-da” are the germ syllables of the “three families”: buddha, vajra, and lotus. They also stand for dharmakāya, sambhogakāya, and nirmāṇakāya. They correspond to the three secrets of body, speech, and mind and therefore to the three consequences of these secrets, the three wisdoms. Individually and as a whole these three syllables are articulated in three stages. These are: as latent sounds in the throat, as subvocalization on the tongue, and as externalized and audible sounds when they leave the lips. These are the three stages of beginning, middle, and end and thus emblematic of totality. Seen as a form of samādhi, there are, again, three kinds of nembutsu. The nirmāṇakāya nembutsu samādhi is reliance on the Pure Land as the sole way. (Why reliance is to be construed as a form of nembutsu is not quite clear to me.) The sambhogakāya nembutsu samādhi sees the nembutsu as a calling out (as per normative Pure Land). The highest form, the dharmakāya nembutsu samādhi, however, is to take the nembutsu as an esoteric dhāraṇī. Two parallel triplicities suggest that Dōhan has in fact made a significant departure from Kakuban. The first of these is his arrangement, in what now appears to be an ascending order, of the homology of three buddhas and the three secrets. According to this paradigm, Śākyamuni is to be equated with the secret of body, Amida with the secret of speech, and Vairocana with the secret of mind. The second paradigm is a parallel analysis of “lands.” The secret of the body is to be equated with this dirty land (edo), the secret of speech with Amida’s Gokuraku Jōdo, and the secret of mind with Vairocana’s Mitsugon Jōdo. In part this is a strategic de-syncretization. Kakuban’s nearly identical Amida and Vairocana are teased apart in order to restore Vairocana to uncompromised preeminence. We might also begin to suspect that, if for Kūkai the secret of body was the most equal of three equal secrets, and if Kakuban put

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his whole emphasis on the secret of speech, then Dōhan seems to betray a clear preference for mind. All of this leaves us still wondering, however, what became of Dōhan’s fourlevel hermeneutic. Why doesn’t it apply to nembutsu? A plausible answer to this worry can be made, I think, if we consider Dōhan’s nembutsu-as-dhāraṇī to be a third-level esoteric secret, and thus beyond the ken of normative Pure Land, but not the final, innermost, secret secret-of-secrets. That secret, of the fourth degree, is nembutsu as himitsu nembutsu. And here Dōhan reflects rather than departs from Kakuban. One of the criticisms that Dōhan makes of the orthodox Pure Land understanding is lodged against its common tenet that the nembutsu should be a perpetual nembutsu. This, if taken literally in a normative Pure Land sense, is, Dōhan argues, impossible. One cannot constantly utter the spoken nembutsu. To put it as simply as possible, some time or another we all have to sleep. And even when awake, we have enough things to say other than “Namu Amida Butsu.” Within the confines of normative Pure Land, then, perpetual nembutsu is an absurdity. But from the position of the himitsu nembutsu it is not only possible, it is even easy. Here Dōhan reverts to Kakuban’s equation of Amida, nembutsu, life, and breath. The intoning is Wisdom; the chant is Principle. Wisdom and Principle are the twin maṇḍalas. The practitioner always ceaselessly breathes, in and out. Breath is the name-body of Amida. In-breath and out-breath are the twin maṇḍalas. Out-breath is the Vajra Maṇḍala and reaches out, in-breath is the Womb Maṇḍala of inner enlightenment. Therefore, outbreath is the Wisdom of the Calling [Out] and in-breath is the Principle of Nembutsu as [inner] realization. Thus, the breath of the practitioner constitutes a ceaseless Nembutsu.32 This mode of nembutsu is also called the hōni nembutsu. Hōni is a term that refers to phenomena as latent, innate, spontaneous, or simply natural. From this wholly immanental understanding of the nembutsu we can know that all breath, and all sounds, human or otherwise, are in fact nembutsu. So too life. So too Amida. The universe is a maṇḍala, and Amida, like us, is but a figure in its midst.

32  Cited in Kushida, Shingon mikkyō, pp. 217–218.

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Decline of the Himitsu Nembutsu Tradition

In 1413 Yūkai, the great champion of Shingon’s ni’ni wing, managed to drive many of the hijiri (whose position would have been taken as supportive of the fu’ni view, and whose very nature was anathema to the more organizationally inclined Yūkai) off Mount Kōya. At the same time he managed to prohibit the building of new hijiri retreats on Kōya and to outlaw several sorts of dancing or singing nembutsu practice. This event should probably be taken as the downturn of the himitsu nembutsu tradition as well. Though it did not bring an actual end to the school’s influence, which persisted in a much more informal, even underground, fashion both within and without the Shingon school, the “housecleaning” on Kōya did signal the end of the himitsu nembutsu’s period of creativity and growth. The politically motivated destruction of Negoro by Hideyoshi in 1585 probably erased most of such lingering traces of the formal movement as still survived at that time. By the Edo period (1600–1867), texts dealing with the himitsu nembutsu were mostly repetitive of earlier redactions, but even some of these “reruns” had fairly wide popular circulation, as for example the Himitsu Nembutsu shiki (Private Notes on the Himitsu Nembutsu) of Donjaku (1674–1742) and the Himitsu Nembutsu kōwa (Discussions on the Himitsu Nembutsu), the Himitsu anjin ryakusho (Outline of the Esoteric Settled Mind), and Himitsu Nembutsu ryakuwa (Brief Notes on the Himitsu Nembutsu) of Hōjū (1723–1800). Throughout this period the works of Kakuban and Dōhan continued to hold their place as well, as can be attested by the listings of Shingon-related works appropriate for lay readers that are specified in the Shinsen shoseki mokuroku daisen (The Great Newly Selected Index of Writings) of 1681 and its supplement of 1698, which includes Dōhan’s Himitsu Nembutsu shō, Kakuban’s Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū, and Gorin kuji myō himitsu shaku; Echō’s Shingon Nembutsu shū; Rental’s Shingon kaiko shū; a biography of Kakuban, the Kōgyō Daishi gyoji ki (Acts of Kōgyō Daishi); and a contemporary work on himitsu nembutsu, the Kōya ōjō den (Legends of Ōjō on Kōya) by Kaiei (1642–1727).33 Perhaps the last of these well-known treatments was the Misshū anjin kyō shishō (Chapter on the Settled Mind of the Esoteric School) of Besshō Eigon (1814–1900).

33   Mibu Taishun and Miyasaki Yūshō, eds., Tendai Shingon (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1971), pp. 249–250.

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Himitsu Nembutsu beyond the Orbit of Shingon

We have seen that the himitsu nembutsu tradition began within the confines of Shingon, rose to a certain height under the aegis of Kakuban and Dōhan, and then fell into decline—at least at the level of institutionalized, sectarian Buddhism. Nonetheless, before this downturn, the tradition had a considerable impact on other schools of Buddhism, and both within institutionalized contexts and within the far less regulated structures of folk practice it had continuing impact well after its formal decline. The range and depth of these effects can only be lightly sketched here, but without such a sketch the full import of the himitsu nembutsu tradition’s place in Japanese religious history would remain only half told. The following depictions—which are truly no more than sample outlines—proceed in terms of sectarian categories. The fugitive remnants and hints of himitsu nembutsu thought in purely popular contexts are, as one would expect, harder to come by. But in several of the cases given below I think we can sense that the outer limits of sectarian belief are already congruent with popular belief and ritual. This is certainly the case with the Gonaishō. 7.1 Tendai Since normative Pure Land had deep organic connections with Tendai, and since Tendai—at least its Taimitsu wing—was at times hardly distinguishable from Shingon, it is simply to be expected that the himitsu nembutsu ideas would be picked up by at least some Tendai monks. And, indeed, so they were. In his 116-chapter Keiran jūyōshū (Leaves from a Storm-Blown Valley34) the Tendai monk Kōshū (early 1300s) outlines four kinds of nembutsu, including himitsu nembutsu, which he allowed was more profound than those of the regular Pure Land position. Tendai texts also talk of five kinds of nembutsu empowerment (kanjō) that seem to be derived from the himitsu nembutsu tradition. An Eshin-ryū school text called the Goju sōden kōsetsu kōshaku (General Explication of the Five Sorts of Transmission) tells us: Amida, Lord of the Western Quarter, uses the air cakra to form his body and the element metal for his substance. The Vairocana Sūtra says, “Life is breath.” Breath is an esoteric Amida, an esoteric nembutsu. In-breath and out-breath naturally return to a sea of breath that is Amida or 34  See Allan G. Grapard, “Keīranshūyōshū: A Different Perspective on Mt. Hiei in the Medieval Period” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 11 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), pp. 55–69.

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Vairocana—whether one intones the nembutsu or not. Whether the Name is uttered or not, breath is the yoga of the Three Secrets.35 This passage is practically a direct lift from Dōhan’s Himitsu Nembutsu shō: The four kinds of being of the six realms, all the voices of the ten realms of illusion and enlightenment are alike Dharma-realm bodies of Amida. Their voices are all manifestations of the Great Element, Air; are the inbreath and out-breath of living beings. This breath is the root of life of these beings. The Vairocana Sūtra says, “Life is breath.” The Yugi kyō [Yoga Sūtra] says, “Vajra is the root of life.” Both texts take breath to be the root of life.36 Therefore, Amida is, in verity, the life of all beings. Since the living beings of the world are endless, we call Amida “Endless Life.”37 A particularly notable use of Kakuban’s idea of kimyō as life-breath is that made by the Danna-ryu cult of Genshi Kimyō-dan (the Occult Altar of Breath). The altar of this cult is arranged as if it were a three-honzon altar with Amida at the center and Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta at either side. But in the place of Amida is the god Matara (a god of less than clear provenance, sometimes identified with Mahākāla, or as a ḍākiṇï). In spite of its outward appearance, this Matara is considered a form of Amida, in fact possibly the original form. The basic doctrine that connects the Genshi Kimyō-dan to himitsu nembutsu is its equation of Amida with wind, human breath, and life. Amida is the endless chain of phenomenal lives and our own life-breath is the Tathāgata of Endless Life. As a passage from a text called the Kimyō-dan denju no koto [Transmission of the Kimyō-dan] puts it: “The breath that passes through our mouth and nostrils is the raigō. Out-breath is, indeed, ōjō. The breath that passes out of the two nostrils is Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. The breath that exits from the mouth must, then, be the Tathāgata Amida. This understood, we see a perpetual raigō and an ever-present ōjō.”38 Later in its history the Genshi Kimyō-dan cult seems to have become saturated with the ideas of Shingon’s infamous left-handed school of tantra, the Tachikawa-ryū. At that point the idea that in-breaths and out-breaths were a natural nembutsu was extended yet another step. The in-and-out thrusts 35  Kushida, Shingon mikkyō, p. 220. 36  Dōhan either fails to recognize or deliberately ignores the phallic symbolism that underlies the “vajra as root of life” usage. 37  Kushida, Shingon mikkyō, pp. 210–221. 38  Ibid., p. 221.

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of sexual intercourse were considered a natural generation-regeneration of life-stuff and enlightenment.39 (Tachikawa was, of course, like the himitsu nembutsu tradition, based on a radically uncompromising fu’ni philosophy of nondualism.) 7.2 Zen Traces of himitsu nembutsu in Zen are less easy to demonstrate. I think part of the reason is that, in spite of Zen’s great simplicity and Shingon’s great complexity, these two schools are very close in basic attitudes. Thus neither has very often to resort to the metaphors of the other. Each school has its own fully adequate symbol system to express the many intuitions they hold in common. One can, however, point to an instance or two. When I first published a translation of Ikkyū Sōjun’s (1394–1481) short prose piece, Amida hadaka (Amida Stripped Bare),40 I thought it was a fairly original Zen critique of Pure Land ideas. At this point, I would argue rather that it is directly dependent on the ideas of Kakuban and Dōhan. A few brief quotations may illustrate this point. About the location of Amida’s Pure Land Ikkyū says: “The very body of the awakened person takes on the aspect of the West and is called the Pure Land. For the Buddha Amida resides within it.”41 And in a second place, “… the ultimate, ineffable joy. It is a state called by those fully awake to it the Pure Land Paradise.”42 Of Amida himself Ikkyū says: “The essence of the Universal Buddha—of the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas—has been condensed in the word Amida…. All the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions and the three ages are, in fact, Amida.”43 Ikkyū also talks of “the Pure Land simply in the heart” and states, “my own heart is Amida.” In similar fashion, Hakuin (1686–1769), like Ikkyū a monk of the Daitoku-ji lineage, takes a decidedly nondual, though not necessarily Shingon-derived, view of the Pure Land. In the Orategama zokushū (The Continued Orategama) Hakuin says: The true practitioner of the Pure Land doctrine…. Reciting the name of the Buddha constantly, he has reached the state where the mind is undisturbed…. His own body is the limitless body of Amida, the treasure trees of seven precious gems, the pond of eight virtues. He has penetrated to 39  The common Anuttara yoga tantra usage of “bodhicitta” as a cover-term for semen should perhaps be kept in mind in this context. 40  James H. Sanford, Zen-Man Ikkyū (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 216–229. 41  Ibid., p. 220. 42  Ibid., p. 221. 43  Ibid., p. 227.

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the understanding that mountains, rivers, the great earth, all phenomena are the rare and mysterious Sea of Adornment. The ultimate, in which there is complete concentration in calling the name, in which not an instant of thought is produced, and in which the body and life are cast aside is known as “going to” (ō). The place where samādhi is perfected and true wisdom makes its appearance is known as “being born” (jō). The wellingforth of this absolute principle in all its clarity, the immovable place in which he stands, not one fraction of an inch apart, is “the welcoming of Amida” (raigō). When the welcoming and the rebirth are then and there not two things—this is the true substance of one’s own nature.44 7.3 The Pure Land School Although the himitsu nembutsu took deliberate steps away from normative Pure Land views, it also affected the development of Pure Land ideology. This influence naturally tended to be deepest on those groups that were already moving in directions different from those of the Pure Land mainstream. Indeed, as we shall see below, when the influence becomes deep enough such groups attract the ascription “heretical.” Among the orthodox schools of Pure Land Buddhism the Seizan-ha borrowed much from himitsu nembutsu, and did so with no particular embarrassment. A passage from a text called the Chikurin shō (The Chikurin Compendium) should make this debt clear enough. Life [breath] resolves back to Endless Life…. The intoning breath that is drawn from a heart that dwells within the realm of the three poisons is the Buddha-body. Breath is life itself…. Amida, who is called the Buddha of Endless Life, consists of numberless lives. Thus when the beings of the ten directions intone his name they attain ten kalpas of endless, truly enlightened long life. Thus our breath intoning the Nembutsu and the Buddha’s long life are like the moon’s reflection as it floats in the pool that is our heart. In Shingon the secret of the body is primary. The mantras that resonate in the mouth, the maṇḍalas realized [nen] in the mind, and the mudrās incorporated in the body are all the Buddhas of Shingon. The core activity in the Pure Land school is to rely on the six-syllable nembutsu, “Namu Amida Butsu,” to bring Buddhahood through ōjō.

44  Philip B. Yampolsky, The Zen Master Hakuin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 128–129.

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In the mouth, life attains endless enlightenment. In the body, life attains endless awareness. When one sits in the sacred precincts, the triple activities of the bodhisattvas enter the endless awareness and become part of the efficacy of the six-syllable Nembutsu. These six syllables, Namu Amida Butsu, are usually considered a samādhi of the activity of speech. Thus the Nembutsu is a practice centered in speech. Even in the Shingon school speech can be seen as primary among the three secrets.45 Traces of himitsu nembutsu thought, at times perhaps mediated through Tendai, can be found even in such orthodox figures as the Shinshū patriarchs Zonkaku (1290–1373) and Kaku’nyo (1270–1351). Generally, however, they show up in Shin contexts only as aspects of the hiji (“secret business”) heresies. Rennyo (1415–99), the great revitalizer of Jōdo Shinshū, for example, warns against these teachings, saying, “The so-called Hiji Hōmon is not Buddhism; it is simply a fearful heresy.”46 An early example of such a Hiji Hōmon text is the Hachimanchō no nukigaki Aji-kan no honmi (Extract from Hachiman’s Banner: The True Essence of Aji-kan). This forged text, which purported to be a direct transmission from Shinran to Nyoshin, was produced in late Kamakura or early Ashikaga. At its end is a fragment called “Shinran shōnin osode no moto” (From the Sleeve of Saint Shinran) which was supposed to pass secretly from master to disciple. This is to be whispered only into the ears of those directly in the bloodline. Maintain it carefully. This is for the ears of Nyoshin alone…. The Dharmakāya of expediency is produced by the twin syllables A and Un [a and hūṃ]. The yang aspect of an instant (nen) of life-breath is the “A-” breath. In an instant this approaches Emptiness and transforms into “-mi-.” Since this comes from the heart, it is the Dharmakāya. The yin instant, which is “A-,” receives the syllable Un and transforms into the syllable “-da.” The locus of the union of the red and white47 is called the Triple Body (Dharmakāya, Sambhogakāya, Nirmāṇakāya). This 45  Kushida, Shingon mikkyō, pp. 222–223. 46  Furuta Shōkin, “Jōdo Shinshū ni okeru Hiji Hōmon no mondai,” in Studies of Esoteric Buddhism and Tantrism, ed. Nakano Gishō (Kōyasan: Kōyasan University, 1965), p. 162. For further aspects of Pure Land “heresies” in the medieval period, see James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan, 1989 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). 47  In tantric contexts the red and the white ordinarily stand for female blood and male semen. The place of their union is the womb. This entire passage could be read as an encoded treatment of sexual yoga.

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constitutes the three truths, Empty, Provisional, and Middle. Thus the twin Vajra and Womb realms are the twin red and white truths. Since this is born from the place where yin and yang unite, these two, the nature of Principle of the Dharmakāya and the content of Wisdom of the Sambhogakāya, ought ultimately to be called Amida of a single instant/ thought [or of a single nembutsu?],48 It further follows that the two characters “na” and “mu” represent the hun and p’o souls,49 mind and thought. Beyond this, nan is father and mu is mother. Therefore, the father that can be named may be called “the mother of Light” (kōmyō). There is no Bhūtatathatā apart from the Dharmakāya of expediency. To awaken to and fully realize this truth is to be a Buddha…. When the practitioner’s power is not adequate and he asks that his affairs be taken into divine hands, [this power manifests as] life-breath. And life is Amida. Amida returns (ki-) to that instant of thought that manifests as sun and moon…. When one recalls this, unspeakable tears of gratitude should be engraved in memory. Thereafter the person who realizes that the moon is of one substance, that the sun is of one substance, and that the self is of one substance, will speak of one substance with various bodies.50 Therefore, his life (-myo) is unborn, undying, and selfless. For such a person to say “kimyō” is to kimyō with selfless namu. Such a person is the veritable dispenser of the enlightened wisdom of the monk Dharmākara’s ancient vow. Maintain this secret; maintain this secret!51 The Hiji Hōmon, and other similar groups anathematized by Rennyo, survived official Shinshū disfavor well into the Tokugawa era, and even if they did not exactly flourish, neither did they expire. Doubtless they were comforted by their certainty that their own lay leaders were the true followers of Shinran (or even Rennyo), and that orthodox claims to the contrary were no more than self-serving lies. In the texts propagated by these leaders, their followers could discover such truths as the fact that “when we chant ‘Amida Butsu,’ Amida is just another name for our own heart,” that “Paradise is no longer far away,” and 48  Terms like “in a single thought” are found in Tachikawa texts to refer to the nondual unity of male and female orgasm. 49  Kon and haku in Japanese. Later Chinese thought held that the p’o faded away at death while the hun might survive as a sort of afterlife carrier of the personality. 50  I think the unity of sun and moon here reflects a Hiji Hōmon theory in which Vairocana is the sun and Amida the moon. In esoteric theories of gestation, sun and moon can also encode early stages of fetal development. See Sanford, “Wind, Waters, Stūpas, Maṇḍalas,” pp. 14–15. 51  Furuta Shōkin, Furuta Shōkin chosaku shū (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1981), 1:107–108. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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that “to say the nembutsu is to recall one’s own fundamental heart, which is pure and illuminated.”52 Adherents of these unorthodox groups might be introduced to passages such as the following from the Rennyo Shōnin hisho (Secret Book of Saint Rennyo): Due to the loving kindness of Sun and Moon, Water and Fire, of all beings, both the sentient and nonsentient, even down to the grass and trees, there is not one but that participates in the virtues of water and fire. The Western Paradise is spoken of as being ten trillion worlds away, but when darkness is dispelled by the single, thought-free heart, the moon of the Single Heart of the Western Quarter appears at once. This is to know that the Pure Land fills all ten quarters of the heart. When we say, “Namu Amida Butsu” or “Namu Muryōju Nyorai,” Amida is nowhere else but here…. Amida is in my four limbs and head…. When one contemplates the Pure Land of Amida as Mind-Alone, neither the Pure Land nor the befouled world is anywhere but here.53 As a final example of these texts I quote a segment of the so-called Ten Hiji supposedly transmitted from Shin’ei to Shinchi. Breath enters and leaves the Buddha Amida. The mouth is the altar of Amida. This is how you should understand ōjō “coming and going” [as in-breath and out-breath]…. This is something deep and darkly mysterious. However, when “Namu Amida Butsu” is uttered, Amida emerges out of “Namu.” This is the mantra of natural self-enlightenment. All living beings are father and mother. And of these two, mother is A and father is Un. Mother produces A and father produces Un. And thus living beings produce Namu. Open the mouth and breath comes out, “A.” Close the mouth and breath is drawn in, “Un.” This is the jōbutsu (becoming Buddha) of breath. This great teaching is for one person at a time. It is a teaching in the lineage of Genshin Eshin. It is not to be given to nonbelievers. Do not trade it for a thousand pieces of gold, not for a thousand pieces of gold.54

52  Furuta, “Jōdo shinshū hi okeru Hiji Hōmon no mondai,” p. 165. 53  Ibid., pp. 167–162. The co-option of Rennyo here may seem ironic, but from the Hiji Hōmon point of view, institutionalized Pure Land had simply lied about Rennyo’s true views and suppressed his secret teachings. 54  Furuta, Furuta Shōkin chosaku shū, 1:111. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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An interesting feature of this text is the way in which its purported line of unbroken person-to-person transmissions parallels that of Shingon’s transmission from the Buddha Vairocana to the bodhisattva Vajrasattva, on to a line of human patriarchs. The Ten Hiji transmission begins with Śākyamuni, passes to the bodhisattva Tenshin (Vasubandhu), then to Bodhiruci, Tan-luan, Tao-cho, Shan-tao, Hōnen, Shōkō, Nena, Jakue, on down to Shinjun, then to Shin’ei and Shinchi.55 Though the names change, the structure is exactly parallel with the standard Shingon pattern. 7.4 The Gonaishō One of the most long-lived of Pure Land “heresies” was a group called the Gonaishō cult.56 This movement combined elements of Tōzan Shugendō and Hiji Hōmon—like ideas into a complex fusion that lasted until at least the Second World War. In the overview that follows I will touch briefly on only three aspects of this movement: its literary sources, its ritual range, and its view of breath. Although the Gonaishō cult was generally led by laypeople and supported primarily by peasants, and although it stressed the inheritance of purported “secret oral transmissions” from such notables as Kūkai and Shinran, it had a rather extensive textual base. In his broad investigation of the Gonaishō sources, Kikuchi Takeshi57 analyzed the contents of one adherent’s library and found that the forty-two texts owned included ten exclusively Gonaishō works, seven Hiji Hōmon works, five Shugendō texts, four works of Daoist provenance, one orthodox Shinshū piece, and eight untitled, miscellaneous works. Among 55  Ibid., 1:120. 56  The term “Gonaishō” consists of naishō, “inner enlightenment,” to which an honorific prefix has been attached. This adoption of this Shingon technical term by a Pure Land “heresy” tells us much all by itself. Nonetheless, it is not unparalleled in other Pure Land “heresies.” The so-called Kakushi or Kakure Nembutsu (“Hidden Nembutsu”) groups of the Tokugawa period sometimes used the term Gonaihō (“Inner Dharma”) as a selfdescription. Aizawa Shiro, Ura no bunka (Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha, 1976), p. 100. Though not simply its lineal descendant, these underground Kakure Nembutsu groups did owe a considerable debt to the himitsu nembutsu tradition. Other interesting names of these groups include Kuro Nembutsu (Black Nembutsu), Dozō Hiji (Warehouse Secrets), Gozō Nembutsu (Storehouse Nembutsu), and Zaike Nembutsu (Layman’s Nembutsu). Like the Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), these groups were considered socially and politically dangerous. For more on the Hidden Nembutsu, see Chiba Jōryu, “Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Early Modern Shinshū: Kakushi Nembutsu and Kakure Nembutsu,” in The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, ed. James Foard, Michael Solomon, and Richard K. Payne (Berkeley: Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, 1996), pp. 463–496. 57  Kikuchi Takeshi, “Echigo yamabushi to Gonaishō,” Shūkyō kenkyū 51, no. 2 (September 1977): 143–144, 160.

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the other texts that Gonaishō adherents commonly used, Kikuchi found, were many that provided unauthorized legendary materials about Shinran and Rennyo and many that retold the lives of famous Myōkōnin, the spiritual “idiot savants” of popular Pure Land. Clearly these were devised in part to place the Gonaishō within a recognizable, though unorthodox, Pure Land lineage. Interestingly, this line age of individualistic hero figures included the Zen master Ikkyū—or at least a highly mythologized reflection of him as he is presented in the Tokugawa composition Ikkyū Ninagawa: kyōka mondō (Ikkyū and Ninagawa [Shinzaemon]: Their Contests of Mad Poetry). But the main authority figures elicited in support of the group’s claims to true orthodoxy were Kūkai, Kakuban, and Shinran. Kakuban’s Gorin kuji myō himitsu shaku was, in fact, held to be a sacred scripture. Shinran was understood to have been recipient from Kūkai of a secret nembutsu which is superior to ordinary nembutsu because “the exoteric nembutsu only saves monks, while the esoteric nembutsu can save monks and laypeople alike.” The textual complexity of the Gonaishō cult was matched by its ritual activities, which ranged from healing adherents and cursing enemies to procedures to effect an initiatory rebirth out of a dark cave or hut (at once a womb and a tomb) into the cult, and a highly involved ceremony to guarantee final salvation. This latter ceremony, in which a priest-psychopomp transfers his breach/ nembutsu into the body of the dead person, seems to be largely based on the final sections of Kakuban’s Ichigo daiyō himitsu shū. There are also some indications that the orgiastic “belt loosenings” and “group sleepings” that Hiji Hōmon groups were often accused of may have actually had a place in the Gonaishō—possibly via Tachikawa influence. The Gonaishō view of breath was closely linked to its rebirth and death rituals. It also seems clearly derived from the himitsu nembutsu view. The Gonaishō isshin ki (On the Single Heart of Inner Enlightenment), for example, states: “The Heart of the Singular Buddha is the breath, ‘A,’ for this breath is the breath of the syllable ‘A’ in ‘Amida.’ This is the Dharma of che One Heart.”58 Further, when a new convert was initiated, the Gonaishō master of ceremonies, who was a mortal representative of Amida, recited a nembutsu into the mouth of the neophyte and thus transmitted Amida from his breath to the convert as a variety of sokushin jōbutsu. (Perhaps this, like the initiatory death ritual above, was seen as both a death and a rebirth.) Other himitsu nembutsu—like doctrines would include the assertions of one Gonaishō teacher that in-breath and out-breath constituted the deepest teaching of Shintō, of Confucianism, and of Buddhism. This teaching was 58  Ibid., p. 147.

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called the Gozō Hōmon [Doctrine of the Five Viscera]. This last connection would lead us back once more to Kakuban, but also into a theme that we have not yet developed, Kakuban’s adoption and adaptation of the Daoist “five viscera” motif. Rather than follow that temptation, I will instead bring to an end this already too diffuse introduction to the himitsu nembutsu and related esoteric immanentizations of Pure Land thought by quoting the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Blessed Virgin Compared with the Air We Breathe”: Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere, That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-flixed Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing’s life.59

59  W  . H. Gardner, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Selection of His Poems and Prose (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1953), p. 54.

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Jōkei and the Rhetoric of “Other-Power” and “Easy Practice” in Medieval Japanese Buddhism James L. Ford If by means of self-power one attempts to eradicate these sins, it is like a moth trying to drink up the great ocean. Simply relying on the Buddha’s power, you should single-mindedly repent your errors. Jōkei, Busshari Kannon Daishi Hotsuganmon

…

All the more so, the karmic causes for birth in the Pure Land, in accordance with one’s capacity, are not the same. Finding the nectar largely depends on supernatural intervention (myōga 冥加). Jōkei, Shin’yō shō

∵ Self-power/other-power ( Jiriki/tariki 自力/他力) and difficult practice/easy practice (nangyō/igyō 難行/易行) were well-established rhetorical categories within Buddhism dating at least to fifth-century (ce) China and have even appeared as analytical categories in the study of religion more broadly. Within the medieval Japanese context, they became purported dividing lines between opposing forces in the transformation and interpretation of Buddhism. These rhetorical distinctions were especially central to the teachings of the so-called “New Kamakura” founders Hōnen 法然 and Shinran 親鸞. While recent scholarship on medieval Japanese religion has clearly progressed beyond simplistic distinctions between “new” and “old” Kamakura Buddhism based on categories such as self/other power or difficult/easy practice, the influence of these dualities persists and is still perpetuated in popular literature. For example, the popular novelist Hiroyuki Itsuki writes the following in the preface to a recent book detailing his personal and Source: Ford, James L., “Jōkei and the Rhetoric of ‘Other Power’ and ‘Easy Practice’ in Medieval Japanese Buddhism,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 29(1–2) (2002): 67–106.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_025

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philosophical Odyssey toward illumination entitled Tariki: Embracing Despair and Discovering Peace: Tariki is one of the most important concepts in Japanese Buddhism, one which first emerged during a period of tremendous upheaval and suffering in Japan, a time that called into question humanity’s efforts to control its destiny. Tariki stands in contrast to “Self-Power,” or jiriki. Since its beginnings in India, Buddhism has taught a long and arduous path of practice to reach enlightenment. This personal effort made to achieve enlightenment is a manifestation of Self-Power. Tariki, on the other hand, is the recognition of the great, all-encompassing power of the Other—in this case, the Buddha and his ability to enlighten us—and the simultaneous recognition of the individual’s utter powerlessness in the face of the realities of the human condition. It is, in my opinion, a more realistic, more mature, and more quintessentially modern philosophy than Self-Power, and it is a philosophy that can be a great source of strength to live in our world today. 2001, xvi–xvii

While I in no way mean to demean the spiritual benefit Itsuki appears to have discovered in the concept and teaching of tariki, this passage reflects clearly the perpetuated sectarian, but woefully inaccurate, Pure Land rhetoric of tariki as a “new” concept of the Kamakura period (discovered by Hōnen and Shinran) and the depiction of all prior Buddhism as a “self-power” teaching. The assertion that the “new” Kamakura schools represented the first forms of Buddhism available to the masses, precisely because they offered simple, more accessible practices, remains surprisingly prevalent.1 Much recent scholarship, stemming in part from the ground-breaking insights of Kuroda Toshio, focuses on the socio-political dimensions of the Buddhist transformation taking place during the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. But here as well, there is an enduring tendency to draw strict distinctions between “new” and “old” Buddhism based more now on a socio-political rubric of interpretation as opposed to the

1  For relatively recent examples, see Suzuki (1988, p. 46) and Machida (1999, p. 5). Ōsumi Kazuo, in his overview of Buddhism of the Kamakura period in the recent Cambridge history of Japan volume on medieval Japan, writes that the establishment of Kamakura Buddhism (by which he means the newly “founded” sects) “was a pivotal event in Japanese history, because through it Buddhism was adapted to the Japanese ways and thus made accessible to the common people.” He goes on to assert that Hōnen’s senju nenbutsu teaching was “epochmaking” because “for the first time Buddhism’s path of salvation was opened to people without specialized religious training or discipline” (Ōsumi 1993, pp. 546–48). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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dichotomies noted above.2 These socio-political interpretations are invariably linked to, and in some ways based on, the doctrinal and soteriological rhetoric of figures like Hōnen and Shinran. So there remains an often unacknowledged connection with the old interpretive framework (self-power vs. other-power, difficult practices vs. easy practices, and aristocratic Buddhism vs. popular Buddhism). Though there is not space to explore this issue further here, suffice it to say that we have not fully transcended the simplistic distinctions evident in Itsuki’s excerpt. In this essay, I would like to examine more closely the categories of otherpower and easy practice in the writings of Jōkei 貞慶 (1155–1213), a prominent monk of the Hossō school and oft-noted critic of Hōnen’s senju nenbutsu 専修 念仏 movement. I will begin with an overview of the early development of the analytical distinctions between difficult/easy practices and self-/other-power in China and their adaptation to the medieval Japanese context. I will then review Jōkei’s own use of the terms, especially in the context of his broader religious worldview and practice. I hope to show that the “new” Kamakura founders did not hold a monopoly on the advocation of “other-power” or the offering of more accessible practices in the pursuit of Buddhist liberation. Characterizations of monks within established Buddhism, both by the new founders and contemporary scholars, as “self-power” extremists are seriously flawed and gravely distort the religious and social dynamics of the period. 1

Easy Practice and Other-Power in China and Japan

The distinction between difficult/easy practices and the rubric of “jiriki-tariki” had a long history well before the time of Jōkei and Hōnen. It is perhaps not too presumptuous to assume that such rhetoric is an extension of the trend toward devotional worship within Buddhism from the first century forward. This was augmented by early Mahāyāna developments in cosmology, including myriad Buddha-lands and a growing population of deified buddhas.3 2  For example, Taira Masayuki draws a sharp distinction between new and old Buddhism and interprets the exclusive soteriological claims of the former as implicit protests against the kenmitsu orthodoxy and the socio-political system that it legitimated. Thus, he argues that “simple practices” within kenmitsu orthodoxy were simple in name only and it took Hōnen’s radically universal and soteriologically egalitarian teaching of the senju nenbutsu to truly live up to the label (1992, pp. 197–98). For other examples of this tendency to dichotomize “new” and “old” Buddhism, see Sasaki Kaoru (1988, pp. 87–92), Satō Hiroo (1987, pp. 147–55), and Ōsumi and Nakao (1998, p. 14). 3  It is not unreasonable to connect this trend within Buddhism to the wider pan-Indian bhakti movement that appeared around the third century bce. Alan Andrews, among others, has noted this connection in tracing the origins of the nenbutsu practice (1973, pp. 5–6). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Early Mahāyāna sutras and commentaries emphasized that the accumulated merit of buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas, the byproduct of their spiritual cultivation, represented, as it were, reservoirs of “other-power” that ordinary beings might draw from through acts of devotion. Thus, one might well argue that the notion of “other-power” is at least suggested in the trend toward devotionalism within the Buddhism of this time and even the stūpa worship of earlier Buddhism. By the time Buddhism began to proliferate in China, many popular texts were more explicit about these “other powers.” For example, in the Amitābha Contemplation Sutra (Kuan Wu-liang-shou ching 感無量壽經; J. Kanmuryōju-kyō), a text now considered almost certainly a Chinese apocryphon, Śākyamuni emphasizes to the king’s consort Vaidehī the importance of the three acts of merit—upholding moral virtues, following the precepts, and awakening the aspiration for enlightenment—and then declares, “By the power of the Buddha, everyone will behold the Pure Land as though seeing their own reflection in a polished mirror” (T 12, 341c). And an explicit distinction between “difficult path” and “easy path” appears in the Daśabhūmikavibhāsā-śāstra (J. Jūjū-bibasha-ron 十住毘婆沙論, T 26, no. 1521), a commentary on the Daśabhūmika Sūtra (doubtfully) attributed to Nāgārjuna for which only a Chinese version, translated by Kumārajiva, survives (Williams 1989, p. 257). In expounding on the pursuit of the stage of non-retrogression (first bhumi), “Nāgārjuna” contrasts the bodhisattva path of austerity and selfeffort, which he likens to a long journey on foot, with the path to liberation through the power and mercy of the Buddha, which is comparable to a journey by ship. T’an-luan 曇鸞 (J. Donran, 476–542), an early Chinese Pure Land devotee, relying on Kumārajiva’s fifth century translation of Nāgārjuna’s commentary, maintained the distinction between the Path of Difficult Practice and the Path of Easy Practice in realizing the stage of non-retrogression (Inagaki 1998, pp. 65–69). He appears to have been the first to use the term “other-power” with respect to Amitābha and Amitābha’s vow. Tao-ch’o 道綽 (J. Dōshaku, 562– 645), the second patriarch of the Jōdo-shū according to Hōnen’s lineal construction, is considered the first to articulate the distinction between the Path of Sages (shōdōmon 聖道門) and the Path to Birth in the Pure Land (jōdomon 浄土門) in the An-lo chi 安楽集 (Collection on the Land of Bliss; J. Anraku-shū) based on his reading of the Amitābha Contemplation Sutra. Tao-ch’o asserted that those born in the time of the Final Age (mappō 末法) should rely on Amitābha to achieve birth in the Pure Land. Tao-ch’o’s most famous student Shan-tao 善導 (J. Zendō, 613–681) adopted this distinction between the Path of Sages and the Pure Land Path, ensuring its widespread adoption within Pure Land circles. Also worth noting is Chan-jan 湛然 (J. Tannen, 717–782), the ninth

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patriarch and well-known restorer of T’ien-t’ai in China, who emphasized the “other-power” of Amitābha in his Discourse on the Ten Doubts Concerning the Pure Land Birth.4 And, finally, Japanese Heian monks such as Genshin 源信 (942–1017), Yōkan 永観 (1033–1111), and Chinkai 珍海 (1091–1152), among others, all emphasized the other-power of Amida in their Pure Land teachings.5 In short, the dichotomy between difficult practices (e.g., meditative practices requiring years of monastic training) and easy practices that were accessible to the common lay practitioner was indelibly linked to the distinction between self-power and other-power. Various expressions of this rubric had wide precedence throughout all of the schools in Japan during the Heian period. Moreover, the growing use of these categories is perhaps related, in part, to the increasing emphasis on the perceived hindrances of mappō. An obvious point here is that such distinctions were not new even among monks of the established schools in Japan prior to the Kamakura period. Thus, we will see that it was quite natural for Jōkei, without any provocation from Hōnen, to incorporate such concepts into his own teachings. Hōnen, Shinran, and “Other-Power” in the Rhetoric of Pure Land Buddhism Although the Chinese patriarchs adopted the rhetoric of easy practice and other-power to promote Pure Land devotion, it does not appear that they ever intended to abandon the traditional monastic practices. Rather, these labels became rhetorical axes in competing efforts, among other reasons, to appeal to broader audiences beyond the monastery proper. Hōnen was the first to appropriate such rhetoric within a soteriologically exclusive framework. After more than twenty years of training within the Tendai system on Mt. Hiei, it appears that Hōnen gravitated gradually toward devotion to Amida Buddha and specific aspirations for birth in Amida’s Western Pure Land (gokuraku 極樂; Sk. sukhāvatī). In 1198, Hōnen wrote the Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū 選択本願念仏集 (Passages on the Selection of the Nenbutsu in 1.1

4  Ching-t’u shih-i lun 浄土十疑論, T 47, no. 1961. See Inagaki’s translation of this portion of the text (1995, pp. 121–23). 5  Jichihan 實範 (d. 1144) is often included in this list of Japanese Pure Land patriarchs. However, as Marc Buijnster’s recent study (1999) reveals, Jichihan (Jippan) was somewhat unique in his esoteric interpretation of Pure Land practice. He emphasized the non-dual or undifferentiated nature of Amida’s Pure Land and this world, and rarely mentioned being “born” in Amida’s paradise. Buijnsters notes that Jichihan’s Byōchū shugyōki 病中修行記 differs from more conventionally exoteric texts such as Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū in that it does not advocate reliance on the other-power of Amida but rather on the practitioners’ own efforts (1999, pp. 65–67).

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the Original Vow; hereafter, Senchakushū) at the behest of Chancellor (kanpaku 関白) Kujō Kanezane 九条兼実, a text that delineates the doctrinal and scriptural basis for an independent Pure Land sect.6 The central thesis of the Senchakushū, as implied by its title, is the assertion that only the vocal nenbutsu yields birth (ōjō 往生) into Amida’s Pure Land.7 Hōnen adopted the term senju nenbutsu (exclusive nenbutsu) for this radical doctrine. Most of the text endeavors to justify why nenbutsu recitation is the only efficacious practice for achieving ōjō. Because the world had entered the last age of the Dharma (mappō), Hōnen argued that no one has the capacity to follow the traditional practices.8 Borrowing from Chinese devotees to Amida Buddha—namely T’an-luan, Tao-ch’o, and Shan-tao, as well as tenth-century Japanese monk Genshin, who wrote the Ōjōyōshū 往生要集—Hōnen makes the familiar distinctions between the Path of Sages and the Pure Land Path, difficult and easy practices, and right practices and miscellaneous practices. Hōnen rarely uses the specific terms jiriki and tariki in the Senchakushū, but it is readily evident that the sagely practices are difficult precisely because one must rely on selfpower.9 Hōnen then proceeds to justify his abandonment of the path of sages altogether: Now, the reason why [Tao-ch’o], in this [An-lo chi], set up the distinction between the two gateways of the Holy Path and the Pure Land was to 6  Despite its 1198 date, the readership of the Senchakushū was purportedly confined to Hōnen’s close followers for approximately fourteen years until soon after his death in 1212. At that time, the text was officially published. We can only guess the reason for this “secret” period, but based on its contents, Hōnen surely knew the reaction it would provoke. Even so, there must have been sufficient clues from Hōnen’s public lectures and hearsay for the established schools to discern the gist of his ideas. A petition sponsored by Tendai monks at Enryaku-ji 延暦寺 was submitted to the court in 1204, which precipitated Hōnen’s apologetic Seven Article Pledge (Shichikajō kishōmon). And Jōkei’s Kōfuku-ji-sōjō 興福寺奏状 petition to the court in 1205 makes it readily evident that the fundamental tenets of the Senchakushū were widely known by that time. 7  For Hōnen, the vocal nenbutsu is the repeated recitation of the phrase “namu Amida butsu” or “I pay homage to Amida Buddha.” 8  This was based on a prevalent belief that the Buddhist teachings (Dharma) would degenerate in three distinct stages of time after the Buddha’s death. Mappō is the third and final of these stages. Various theories existed regarding the length of each period and the date of the Buddha’s death, but in Japan, the year 1052 was widely considered to be the threshold of mappō in which it was believed that no one could follow the practice of the Buddha’s teachings or achieve enlightenment. See Stone 1985 and Nattier 1991. 9  This is made explicitly clear in Hōnen’s reliance on T’an-luan who noted that practices are difficult or easy precisely because they rely on self-power and other-power, respectively. See Senchakushū T 83, 2a26–28.

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teach people to reject the gateway of the Holy Path in favor of entering the gateway of the Pure Land. There are two reasons for this preference: one is that the passing away of the Great Enlightened One has now receded far into the distant past, and the other is that the ultimate principle is profound while human understanding is shallow. SETP 60; T 83, 2a20–23

Thus, Hōnen asserts that Tao-ch’o abandoned the traditional practices in favor of Pure Land devotion because of the temporal distance from Śākyamuni and the concomitant deterioration of human spiritual capacity. Critical, of course, is Hōnen’s emphasis on Amida’s selection (senchaku 選択) of the nenbutsu, which he interpreted as a rejection of all other practices. It is therefore clear that since the nenbutsu is easy, it is open to everyone, while the various other practices are not open to people of all capacities because they are difficult. Was it not in order to bring all sentient beings without exception to birth that he [Dharmākara] in his original vow cast aside the difficult practice and selected the easy one? SETP 77; T 83, 5c23–25

Hōnen goes on to dramatically assert in chapter seven that the “Light of Amida does not illuminate those who engage in other practices, but embraces only those who practice the nenbutsu” (SETP 96; T 83, 9a17–18). Hōnen deviated from Tao-ch’o, Shan-tao, and Genshin in two important ways. First, he rejected the efficacy of all practices other than recitation of the nenbutsu. And second, he contended that the meaning of “nenbutsu” or “nien-fo,” within both Amida’s vows and Shan-tao’s interpretation, is “verbal recitation” only. He effectively reduced all prior classifications of nenbutsu practice (such as meditation and visualization) to its vocal dimension. Allan Andrews has demonstrated that Hōnen’s selective hermeneutical method as applied to Shan-tao is problematic at best (Andrews 1993, pp. 8–9; Stevenson 1995, pp. 361–62). In other words, it is inaccurate to say that Shan-tao stressed only the verbal nenbutsu. As many have noted, there is also a problematic tension between Hōnen’s exclusive senju nenbutsu rhetoric and his own personal practice that included devout adherence to the monastic precepts, a variety of contemplative practices, and various ritual performances. George Tanabe conjectures that Hōnen’s more conventional personal practices may have been an intentional facade to deflect criticism of his more radical teaching (1992, p. 88). This is a difficult explanation to accept because it would mean that the preponderance of Hōnen’s

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personal religious life was a deception.10 A more plausible explanation is offered by Soho Machida who fully acknowledges this tension with respect to Hōnen’s personal contemplative practices and the “mystical” experiences that grew out of them: It is unlikely that such an experience did not influence his view of nembutsu. As a rule, however, he kept the visions to himself because making them public would have shaken the foundations of his own teaching, exclusive-nembutsu. Hōnen surely practiced what he preached, but he did not preach all that he practiced. 1999, p. 66

This appears to be an explicit admission by one sympathetic scholar that Hōnen’s “exclusive-nenbutsu” teaching was more a rhetorical strategy than absolute principle. Shinran, the most prominent of Hōnen’s disciples, carried his master’s teaching to its logical conclusion by emphatically dismissing all practices and teachings other than the oral nenbutsu as well as the fundamental distinction between monks and lay folk. He was also notably more explicit in framing the dichotomy in terms of self-power and other-power. While the Tannishō 歎異鈔 is not, strictly speaking, the work of Shinran’s direct hand, there is little doubt that the following well-known passage is a fair representation of his teaching: Even a virtuous man can attain Rebirth in the Pure Land, how much more easily a wicked man! But ordinary people usually say: “Even a wicked man can attain Rebirth in the Pure Land, how much more easily a virtuous man.” At first sight, this view may appear more reasonable, but it really goes quite contrary to the intention of the Other Power of the Original Vow. The reason is that since a man who does deeds of merit by his own effort lacks total reliance on the Other Power, he is self-excluded from Amida’s Original Vow. But as soon as his attitude of self-effort is redirected and he dedicates himself exclusively to the Other Power, his Rebirth in the True Land of Reward is at once assured. Shōjun and Stewart 1980, p. 61

For Shinran, radical and absolute faith in Amida’s vow was essential for rebirth and this precluded any notion of self-effort. He took the rhetorical category 10  See Hirokawa 1998, pp. 41–44, for another innovative, though somewhat convoluted, hermeneutical effort to overcome this apparent tension.

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of “other-power” to its extreme and, in doing so, tried to overcome an implicit tension in Hōnen’s own message. Any notion that one can effect birth in Amida’s paradise even remotely is foolish and self-centered. It is only the grace of Amida that enables this as even a possibility and one must have complete faith in this blessing. In his Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace, now in its ninth printing, Alfred Bloom describes the tension within the self-/other-power rhetoric and Shinran’s resolution this way: From T’an-luan to Hōnen, the practice [of the recitation of the nenbutsu] was regarded as a means for acquiring the necessary merit to gain birth in the Pure Land. The devotee could view his practice as his own effort to attain it, albeit the practice was given by Amida Buddha and rooted in Other Power. At the heart of Pure Land faith there was a mixture of the conceptions of self power and Other Power. The practice as established by Amida Buddha is Other Power, because its ultimate effect is dependent on the virtue of Amida Buddha’s name resident in the formula. However, the recitation depends on the volition of the devotee, else the virtue of the name could never be realized…. Therefore, in the tradition before Shinran there was an implicit reliance on self in the attainment of salvation. He declared for the first time in the Pure Land tradition a clear understanding of absolute Other Power and the implications of this perspective for faith and practice. 1965, p. 25

Shinran thus attempted to resolve an underlying variance in the rhetoric of self-power and other-power. Even if Amida graciously transmits his meritorious power through the simple recitation of the nenbutsu, many have pointed out that there still appears to be some measure of self-power or intentional volition in the very act of recitation by the practitioner. This leaves aside the more obvious conflict with various Pure Land passages, pointed out by Jōkei, Myōe, and later Nichiren, that emphasize the importance of moral virtues and precept adherence. Shinran, following to some degree in Hōnen’s footsteps, shifts the emphasis from the objective practice to a particular subjective state of mind (shinjin 信心) achieved not through one’s volitional choice nor even the realization of one’s necessary dependence on Amida’s power and compassionate gift. Rather, “faith” for Shinran was aroused through Amida’s very vow within the mind of the devotee. As profound as Shinran’s insight might be, it is difficult to argue that he fully resolved the tension between self-power and other-power

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in the phenomenological manifestations of Pure Land practice any more than Kierkegaard’s radical “leap of faith” resolved the issue within the Christian tradition. Thus, this tension continues to be a problem within contemporary Shin theology.11 2

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I will pursue two broad objectives in the following analysis. First, for those unfamiliar with Jōkei, this will serve as an introduction to his life and important dimensions of his religious practice. Second, I will endeavor to examine Jōkei’s own use and perspective of the rhetorical categories reviewed above. 2.1 Jōkei: a Biography Jōkei (1155–1213), posthumously known as Gedatsu Shōnin 解脱上人, was born into the once-powerful Fujiwara clan.12 At the ripe age of seven, Jōkei was sent to Kōfuku-ji in Nara due largely to the exile of his father Sadanori subsequent to the Heiji disturbance. Four years later, he took the tonsure at Kōfuku-ji and trained under his uncle Kakuken 覚憲 (1131–1212), who later became superintendent of Kōfuku-ji, and Zōshun 蔵俊 (1104–1180), a prominent Hossō scholar-monk. Available records tell us little of Jōkei’s early years of study, but he must have been prodigious given his later prominence as a scholar-monk. By 1182, at the age of twenty-seven, he was a candidate at the Yuima-e 維摩会 at Kōfuku-ji and within four years (1186) held the prestigious position of lecturer (kōshi 講師) for the same assembly.13 This was followed by at least six appearances at the major yearly lectures over the next five years. Following his performance in the 1191 Hōjōji lectures, held on the anniversary of the death of Kujō Kanezane’s eldest son, Yoshimichi 良通, Kanezane writes of Jōkei in his diary: His exposition of the Dharma is profound. It is unfortunate that his voice is so soft, but whether he is discussing or expounding, he is clearly one of the wise and virtuous men of this degenerate age (mappō).14 11  See for example Hirota’s discussion of the “turmoil over three kinds of religious acts” (sangō wakuran) during the mid-eighteenth century (2000, pp. 8–12) and his effort to overcome the implicit tension between faith and practice in Shin doctrine (pp. 47–50). 12  There are several useful biographical overviews of Jōkei. In particular, see Hiraoka Jōkai (1960, pp. 576–648), Tanaka Hisao (1971, pp. 461–69), and Ueda Sachiko (1977, pp. 27–46). In English, see Morrell (1987, pp. 66–75) and Ford (1999, pp. 12–23). 13  This was the annual lecture on the Vimalakīrti Sūtra given at Kōfuku-ji in the tenth month. 14  Quoted in KKB, 462. For the original text, see Gyokuyō 玉葉, vol. 3, 662. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Kanezane, chancellor to Go-Shirakawa and Go-Toba, was the most powerful court official until he was pushed out in 1196. In 1192, Jōkei resolved to move to Kasagi-dera 笠置寺, a somewhat remote mountain temple about twelve kilometers northeast of Nara and Kōfuku-ji. Despite appeals from Kujō Kanezane (and even the Kasuga deity, if we are to believe the Kasuga Gongen genki-e 春日権現験記絵), Jōkei actually did move in the fall of the following year.15 Though this did not prove to be a complete disengagement from worldly affairs, it was nevertheless a clear move toward a life of reclusion (tonsei 遁世). It also turned out to be a decided rejection of what had every indication of becoming a very successful career in the Kōfuku-ji hierarchy. The reasons for this unexpected move are not altogether clear but at least some evidence suggests that Jōkei was annoyed with the highly politicized environment in Nara and sought a more sedate and spiritual lifestyle.16 Kasagi-dera was not, however, an altogether obscure temple. It featured a massive cliff-carved image of Miroku 弥勒 (Sk. Maitreya) dating from the eighth century and claimed many prominent visitors.17 Over the next fifteen years at Kasagi-dera, Jōkei was involved in various kanjin 勧進 (solicitation) campaigns, temple reconstructions, and numerous public appearances. He 15  According to the Kasuga Gongen genki (Miracles of the Kasuga Deity), the Kasuga deity appeared in the form of a woman before Myōe. She professed her devotion for Jōkei and especially Myōe. But just before departing, she asked Myōe to pass along an appeal to Jōkei. The genki states: ‘“As for Gedatsu-bō,’ she then went on, ‘consider that both of you are the same age. It is extraordinary how deeply one feels for him!’ She repeated this four or five times. ‘However,’ she continued, ‘I cannot accept his living in seclusion. Do tell him so’” (Tyler 1990, p. 274). 16  The traditional reason offered for Jōkei’s reclusive move is based on a biography of Jōkei in the Genkō shakusho 元亨釈書 of the early fourteenth century (BZ 101:203b–204a). That text describes Jōkei’s righteous indignation at the ill-treatment he received from other monks at the Saishō-kō 最勝講 lectures in 1190 because of the simple robes he wore. Repulsed by the superficial values pervading the monastic world, he decided then to seek a life of serious study and practice. Hiraoka rightly questions the historicity of this episode since Jōkei had already appeared at these lectures and, given his aristocratic background, would certainly have known of the dress protocol. Hiraoka suggests other reasons for Jōkei’s reclusive move including his desire for rebirth in Miroku’s Pure Land, anxiety over his own health, and his unrest concerning the scholarly life at Kōfuku-ji (1960, p. 588). Ueda offers another very plausible explanation. She points out that in 1182, Jōkei vowed to participate in a collaborative effort, dedicated to Kasagi-dera, to copy the entire six hundred fascicles of the Daihannyakyō. The completion of this project in 1192 coincides with Jōkei’s decision to move to Kasagi-dera. Ueda conjectures that this decision may have been a result of Jōkei’s frustration at only having copied one fascicle of the sutra in eleven years (1977, pp. 28–29). 17  Examples include Fujiwara Munetada in 1118, Fujiwara Yorimichi (regent to the throne) during the Manju era (1024–1027), and Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa during the Angen era (1175–1176). See Goodwin 1994, pp. 50–51. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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also promoted a wide variety of Buddhist devotions and practices among lay folk. It was during these years at Kasagi, in 1205, that Jōkei wrote the Kōfuku-ji sōjō, his now famous petition to the court on behalf of the eight established schools appealing for a censure of Hōnen’s senju nenbutsu teaching. Three years later in 1208, after expanding Kasagi-dera considerably, Jōkei moved to Kaijusen-ji 海住山寺, another remote temple dedicated to Kannon Bodhisattva 観音菩薩 (Avalokiteśvara).18 Over the remaining five years of his life, he was active in a precept “revival” campaign and wrote a number of important treatises on Hossō doctrine. Research on Jōkei is miniscule in comparison to studies of most other prominent figures of the Kamakura period, especially the new sect founders. Nevertheless, he is widely recognized as one of the most revered monks of his lifetime. As a result, he is often referenced in historical overviews, but with little detail or analysis. These references tend to highlight three aspects of Jōkei’s life. First, he is perhaps most famous for authoring the Kōfuku-ji sōjō. Second, he is often cited as a “revivalist” of Nara Buddhism or a “reformer” of “old Buddhism” (kyū-Bukkyō). Here, many scholars highlight his efforts to “revive” the traditional monastic precepts. Finally, he is distinguished for his highly eclectic collection of devotions and practices, in contrast to the exclusive, single practice teachings of the “new” Kamakura founders. We will touch on each of these dimensions in this analysis. One of the overriding themes throughout Jōkei’s religious life is his emphatic affirmation of the necessary reliance on other-powers in the universe. We see this in a number of inter-related dimensions of his religious life and teachings. Here I would like to focus on three areas—his eclectic devotions, practices, and Pure Land aspirations. As we will see, Jōkei never advocated “exclusive” reliance on “other-power,” but it was clearly a necessary component for spiritual progress. 2.2 The Phenomenological Category of “Devotion” In the following analysis, I will frequently reference Jōkei’s “religious devotion.” By devotion, I am referring not to the broad category of religious worship, but to a specific form that centers on a personal manifestation of ultimate reality. Dale Cannon defines the way of devotion as the “cultivation of a personal 18  Both Kasagi-dera and Kaijusen-ji qualify as cultic centers and exemplify the continuity between the new and old forms of Buddhism during the Kamakura period. James Dobbins has proposed cultic centers as a possible model for understanding the dynamics of medieval Buddhism. Such a model, he argues, “attenuates the distinctions typically posed between Old and New Buddhism” (1998, p. 37).

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relationship to ultimate reality of whole-hearted adoration, devotional surrender to its transforming grace, and trust in its providential care” (1996, p. 58). While this understanding of devotion is most commonly associated with theistic religions, Pure Land Buddhism is often cited as an exception to this rule (Kinsley 1987, p. 322). In truth, the objects of religious devotion range far beyond theistic representations. Ancestors, spiritual leaders such as saints and gurus, Sage Kings in Confucianism, and of course buddhas and bodhisattvas are but a few examples of the divine personages that are the objects of devotion in various traditions. Relics, ritual objects, and sacred texts are also prominent examples. In most cases, these objects are deemed to possess sacred power and proper devotional practices are believed to be a means of accessing that power. Within Hinduism, devotion came to represent a distinct religious path known as bhaktimarga or the “path of devotion” that involved establishing a personal relationship with a divine figure. This path developed from about 500 bce through the first millennium ce and is reflected in the epic narrative traditions (e.g., Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana), the mythological accounts known as Purānas, and Tamil poetry collections.19 There is little question that this devotional tradition had a significant influence on early Buddhist practices including relic and stūpa worship, pilgrimages to sacred sites, and veneration of Śākyamuni and prominent Buddhist saints (arhant). David Kinsley notes that, in the context of competing religious paths, there are often similar arguments for the efficacy of devotion (1987, pp. 321–26; see also Carman 1987, pp. 130–33). We find that in both Hinduism and Buddhism, the devotional movement prospered most when there was a growing belief in the degenerate state of the world. In Buddhism, of course, this was evidenced by the “discourse of decline” with respect to the Buddhist Dharma (see Nattier 1991). A similar and perhaps influential theory was also present in Hinduism known as kaliyuga (the “age of Kali”). Given this widespread belief and the consequent limitations on human spiritual capacities, “devotion” is said to be an easier path to salvation than ascetic practices, rigorous meditation, or philosophical inquiry for example. Interestingly, the emergence of this “devotional” dimension within Indian religion did not engender exclusive claims concerning salvation. Though one might be a devotee of Shiva, Vishnu, or Kali, one still participates in the communal rituals such as those to Sarasvatī, the fire god Agni, or countless other deities featured in annual festivals.

19  For a useful overview of the bhakti tradition within Hinduism, see Flood 1996, pp. 103–47.

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2.3 Jōkei’s Buddhist Pluralism—Other-Powers and Easy Practices Jōkei’s religious life is perhaps best characterized by its pluralism in terms of both devotional objects and religious practices.20 This pluralism is evident in the most prolific category of Jōkei’s writings, which might be labeled “devotional” texts.21 Virtually all these texts advocate certain practices and/or devotion to particular figures or objects. Currently, there are at least thirty-nine of Jōkei’s extant texts that can be classified under this rubric. Among these are twenty-nine kōshiki 講式 texts, a literary genre in which Jōkei authored almost twice as many as any other figure.22 These texts generally praise the virtues of a particular buddha, bodhisattva, or sacred scripture and were broadly intended to enhance piety toward the featured object of devotion (honzon 本尊). The ritual, conducted on an annual or sometimes monthly basis before an image of the featured object, was highly performative, involved audience participation, and has been characterized as a minshūteki (popular) form of hō-e 法会.23 A kōshīki audience was made up largely of laypersons of various social backgrounds depending on where the ritual was conducted. Jōkei’s prominence within this genre suggests that he must have been a charismatic performer since one had to be invited to write and deliver such liturgies. Also, given the rather “popular” audience that attended such services, accusations of established Buddhism as “elitist” would appear to be wide of the mark as far as Jōkei is concerned. I would contend that kōshiki texts and their attendant rituals may legitimately be seen as part of an effort to broaden 20  “Pluralism” is not a term without problems. In its modern usage within the context of religious studies, it often refers to the multiplicity among or between a variety of religious systems. That is clearly not my intention here since Jōkei was fundamentally “Buddhist” and did not recognize soteriological alternatives beyond Buddhism proper as far as we can tell. Nevertheless, pluralism seems to me to be the best term to describe Jōkei’s recognition and advocation of the many efficacious practices, objects of devotion, texts, and so forth within the Buddhist tradition that any devotee might turn to for help. Thus, “pluralism” here is limited by the adjective “Buddhist” to recognize this constraint. 21  Jōkei’s extensive corpus also included texts on Hossō doctrine, Indian logic, and monastic precepts. 22  For a useful overview of kōshiki, see Tsukudo 1966. In English, see Guelberg 1993, pp. 67–81. Twenty-nine of Jōkei’s kōshiki texts are extant. The next most prolific authors were Myōe (16), Kakuban (16), and Genshin (10). For an up-to-date listing of extant kōshiki texts by author, see the Kōshiki Database Website maintained by Niels Guelberg at http://faculty .web.waseda.ac.jp/guelberg/koshiki/datenbj.htm (new url: https://www.researchgate.net/ profile/Niels_Guelberg [accessed March 2020]). 23  Tsukudo Reikan considers kōshiki a minshūteki ritual performance because of the general audiences it attracted. In contrast, hō-e were considerably more elaborate and performed before largely monastic and aristocratic audiences (Tsukudo 1966, pp. 324–450). Myōe was known to perform in the open air or in the house of followers if the weather was severe (Guelberg 1993, p. 265). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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the appeal of and access to Buddhism beyond the monastery proper. This will become more apparent as we examine the content of these texts. Śākyamuni, Miroku, and Kannon were each the focus of at least five of Jōkei’s devotional texts. The Kasuga deity 春日 (3), Jizō 地蔵 (Ksitigarbha) (2), Yakushi 薬師 (Bhaisajyaguru) (1), and the Lotus Sutra (1), among others, also drew the notice of his devotional pen.24 Such kōshiki and ganmon 願文 rituals were designed to foster a karmic connection (kechien 結縁) between participants and the featured object. In this sense, these rituals were not unlike the pūja of Indian religion. Some scholars perceive a logical pattern to Jōkei’s devotional eclecticism. For example, a number argue that beneath all of these is an unwavering devotion to Śākyamuni and a longing for a return to the origins of Buddhism.25 Others discern confusion in Jōkei’s multiplicity.26 I, on the other hand, argue that at the core is a devotion to what I call the “triumvirate” of Śākyamuni, Kannon, and Miroku (Ford 1999, pp. 92–109). As noted above, there are no less than fifteen texts devoted to these illustrious figures that represent the past, present, and future, respectively, of the Dharma’s manifestation in the world. In most instances, Jōkei specifically advocated aspiration for birth in the sacred realms of these figures, which I will discuss at more length below. The link between “place” and the object of devotion within Jōkei’s evangelism and corpus of writings is important to note here as well. Kōshiki rituals were usually performed before the featured object and most likely at a temple that claimed the object as its main image. Several scholars have noted the perceptible link between Jōkei’s devotional emphasis and his residing temple.27 24  See the References for a list of selected kōshiki authored by Jōkei. 25  See, for example, Yasui (1981, p. 38), Narita (1958, pp. 72–75), Hayami (1971, pp. 193–202), and Imahori (1979, p. 650). All of these scholars perceive Jōkei’s emphasis on shari worship as well as precept revival, both of which are evident to the end of his life, as manifestations of his fundamental devotion to Śākyamuni. 26  Matsunaga and Matsunaga describe the members of the “old Nara sects” during the Kamakura period as follows: “To a certain degree multi-practice represented indecision, and ultimately led to hodge-podge,” (1976, p. 283). Royall Tyler, though not taking this perspective himself, observes that “Compared to the teachings of Hōnen and Shinran, the religious faith of Gedatsu, Myōe, and others of their background appears confusing, even chaotic. Lost in a forest of ideas, practices, oracles, and dreams, one gladly concludes that these men must all have been searching for what Hōnen found: an intelligible principle at last” (1990, p. 96). 27  Most notably, Kusunoki Junshō has written several articles examining the relationship between Jōkei’s devotional life and his doctrinal views. See, in particular, his two-part series “Jōkei no Jōdokan to sono shinkō” (Kusunoki 1985 and 1986). Kusunoki perceives a shift in Jōkei’s personal devotion related to his move from Kasagi-dera to Kaijusen-ji. On the basis of on what I consider to be rather thin evidence (one textual passage that is not dated), Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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For example, Kasuga and Śākyamuni receive most of his attention while he was residing at Kōfuku-ji. Both of these figures were closely linked to Kōfuku-ji’s sister shrine, Kasuga.28 We have already noted the close link between Kasagidera and Miroku as well as Kaijusen-ji and Kannon. While scholars may debate the merits of Jōkei’s eclecticism or the relationship between his mixed textual focus and his own personal faith, I merely want to highlight the diverse devotional emphasis in Jōkei’s proselytizing efforts. He was emphatic about the necessity for establishing a karmic link with any number of sacred figures. 2.4 Pure Land Aspirations The prominence of Śākyamuni, Kannon, and Miroku must also be seen in the context of Jōkei’s promotion of the aspiration for birth in the realms of these sacred figures. In this respect, Jōkei reflects the ethos of his time and the overriding emphasis on the most immediate soteriological goal of birth in a buddha-realm. There were, of course, competing theories over the merits of a particular buddha-realm and, more importantly, qualifications for achieving birth. However, there is not space here to delineate in detail the complex correspondences between buddha-bodies, buddha-realms, and qualifications for birth according to one’s progress on the bodhisattva path.29 Generally speaking, the higher, more subtle classification of a buddha, the more difficult it is to achieve birth in his realm. Within the three-fold theory of buddha-bodies (sanshin 三身; Sk. trikāya), Amida was generally classified as a Reward Body (hōjin 報身; Sk. sambhogakāya), a subtle body transcending ordinary perception except in elevated states of samādhi. It is so titled because it is the “reward” for fulfillment of a buddha’s vows and practices. According to the most traditional view, and one maintained by the Hossō school, to achieve birth in Amida’s Pure Land one must have aroused the aspiration for enlightenment (bodaishin 菩提心; Sk. bodhicitta) and reached the third of five stages of a bodhisattva (go-i 五位) outlined in Vasubandhu’s Trimiśikā (Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only). It is at this point that one realizes the wisdom free he concludes that Jōkei’s view of Miroku and Tosotsu changed such that he considered birth in Tosotsu comparable in difficulty to Gokuraku. Therefore, Kusunoki contends that Jōkei abandoned his aspirations for Tosotsu and shifted to Kannon’s Mt. Fudaraku (1986, pp. 5–6). See also Tomimura 1976, pp. 23–24. 28  Śākyamuni and Kannon, via the honji-suijaku 本地垂迹 theory, were associated with two of the five sanctuaries of Kasuga Shrine. And Miroku was the primary image of the Hokuendō, the subtemple where Jōkei resided in his early years at Kōfuku-ji. For a detailed description of the honji-suijaku relationships at Kōfuku-ji, see Grapard 1992, pp. 74– 82, Tsuji 1944–1955, p. 472, and Ford 1999, pp. 117–23. 29  For a detailed analysis of these correspondences, see Ford 1999, pp. 134–45.

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of delusion or without outflows (muro-chi 無漏智, Sk. anāsrava-jñāna) and actually enters the first of the ten stages of bodhisattva practice. This is a fairly advanced stage on the bodhisattva path and presented a challenge for those advocating aspiration for Amida’s Pure Land. Chih-i overcame this problem by asserting that Amidha should properly be classified as a Transformation Body (nirmāṇākāya; ōjin 応身 or keshin 化身) (Inagaki 1995, p. 108). In contrast, Shan-tao held the more conventional view that Amida was a Reward Body, but asserted that Amida’s vow was powerful enough to overcome the shortcomings of the devotee’s progress. In his Hsüan-i fen 玄義分 (Essential Meanings), he writes: QUESTION: If that Buddha and his land are those of a Recompensed [Reward] Body, the nature of a Recompensed Land is too high and too subtle for lesser sages; how could ordinary beings with impurities and hindrances enter there? ANSWER Speaking of the impurities and hindrances of sentient beings, it is indeed difficult for them to aspire to and attain birth there. But by the powerful working of the Buddha’s Vow the beings of the five different paths can all equally enter there. Inagaki 1995, pp. 108–90

Hōnen and Shinran adopted this argument as well.30 Jōkei, on the other hand, embraced the more traditional taxonomy of buddhas and buddharealms. He favored Miroku and Kannon’s realms, Tosotsu 兜率 (Sk. Tuṣita) and Fudaraku-sen 補陀落山 (Potalaka), respectively, because they are more accessible for the average person. Miroku resides in the heavenly realm of Tosotsu, just as Śākyamuni did before his final incarnation, from whence he shall descend at the conclusion of this final age of the Dharma. And Kannon, classified as a “celestial” bodhisattva of the final tenth stage, resides on Mt. Fudaraku somewhere on the southern coast of India. Each of these realms reside within Śākyamuni’s “impure” buddha-field (i.e., our sahā 娑婆 world).31 Given this view of buddha-realms, Jōkei advocated aspiration for Tosotsu and Mt. Fudaraku over Amida’s Gokuraku. In the Shin’yō shō 心要鈔 (Essentials of the Mind [Intent Upon Seeking Enlightenment], ca. 1206), for example, 30  Shinran also asserted that Amida possesses aspects of all three Buddha-bodies. Thus, even the most depraved sentient being can perceive Amida’s Pure Land and attain birth there. See Inagaki 1995, pp. 190–91. 31  For a coherent overview of the Mahāyāna taxonomy of Buddha-fields, our sahā world, and the understanding of “pure” and “impure” therein, see Williams 1989, pp. 224–27.

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Jōkei promotes Miroku, as opposed to Amida, as the most efficacious figure for contemplative nenbutsu practice. QUESTION: Now what buddha should we contemplate? ANSWER: Contemplate Miroku Buddha. After this life, you will attain birth in the inner realm of Tosotsu Heaven. This is truly my desire. QUESTION: In most cases, the various sutras praise Amida. Amida’s great vow promises to save [all beings of the] sahā world. The only basis for the nenbutsu sanmai is this buddha. Why not contemplate him? ANSWER: The virtue of the various buddhas of the past, present, and future is equal. In accordance with one’s capacity, they confer predictions [of future enlightenment] that cannot be disputed. Jison [Miroku] is the great teacher who in one more lifetime will become the supreme teacher. Those who hear him preach but one phrase of the Dharma will certainly meet him when he descends and achieve [the stage of] nonregression ( futai 不退). Among the successors to the Buddha in the last age (mappō), whether one has upheld the precepts or violated them, whether one has received the precepts or not, all who attend Miroku’s Dragon Flower Assembly will achieve liberation (gedatsu 解脱). ND 63: 344a6–14

Thus, Jōkei contends that because Miroku is the next buddha, he is the most appropriate object of devotion in the time of mappō. Moreover, it does not matter whether one has violated the precepts or not (i.e., whether or not one possesses defiled karma), Miroku will still welcome the practitioner into Tosotsu Heaven. And from there enlightenment is assured. In short, achieving birth in Tosotsu is easier than achieving birth in Gokuraku because the requirements are less severe. Similarly, in the three-part, 1201 version of the Kannon kōshiki 観音講式, Jōkei argues that birth on Kannon’s Mt. Fudaraku is easier for ignorant beings than reaching Gokuraku. In the third and final section of this text entitled “Praying to be led and received [on Mt. Fudaraku] in the future” (ki-raisei-insetsu 祈来 世引攝), he writes, It is the way of unenlightened beings to commit countless sins. One life is like a dream [ending] at the river of the three crossings. The origin of these sins does not go beyond the three poisons—desire, anger, and ignorance. For those who commit many such sins, if they constantly contemplate Kannon, they will in all cases be separated [from their sin]. If even the roots [of sin] will be eradicated, how much more so for the branches

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and leaves! And once evil deeds are removed, how could you receive the fruit of suffering?…. Thus, when you revere [Kannon’s] august form and personally appeal to [his] vow within your mind, then without transformation of your present body, you will behold the wonders of the realms of the great teacher Shaka’s Vulture Peak (Ryōzen-jōdo 靈山浄土) or the Inner Realm of Miroku’s Tosotsu. What merit could be equal to this! Even in your present body, you will encounter such honored ones—all the more so in the future. As for birth in the West, this corresponds particularly to [Amida’s] original vow. Amida was Kannon’s original teacher and Kannon is Amida’s assistant (fusho) in the Land of Bliss.32 He will surely, with the holy retinue, come to welcome [the dying person]. He himself carries the Lotus pedestal and he leads us [to the Pure Land]. That which he vowed is simply this. If there is someone whose practice and karma are not yet mature and has hindrances to birth in the Pure Land, he can first reside on Mt. Fudaraku. That mountain is in the great sea southwest from here…. Even though it is different in size, it [Fudaraku] is like facing the Pure Land. Thus, it is part of the sahā world but it is not like the sahā world. Among the wise men and sages, who would not aspire to it? It is a Pure Land but not a Pure Land. Birth there is truly easy for the unenlightened (bonpu 凡夫). Kannon himself urged practitioners saying, “You will surely be born in my pure buddha-realm and together with me practice the bodhisattva way. As for my Pure Land, in the distance there is the Land of Bliss in the west and here at hand is Mt. Fudaraku.” This bodhisattva path is the compassionate teaching of Kannon’s original vow. From our father, mother, and relatives in this life to our teachers and those toward whom we have obligations and affection from prior lives, all together on that mountain will practice the Buddha path. T 84, 886c25–887a25

There are numerous elements to note in this passage. First of all, Jōkei argues that birth in Kannon’s realm is easier because it is part of the sahā world.33 It is the closest of all buddha-realms. For this reason, ignorant beings (bonpu) still 32  The latter part of this sentence might also read that Kannon “will be the next buddha of Gokuraku, the Land of Bliss.” Fusho generally means “succeeding disciple,” which is indeed possible here since the Kuan-shih-yin p’u-sa shou-chi ching (Sutra on Prediction to Avalokiteśvara, T 12, 353c27) notes that on Amida’s passing into nirvana, Kannon will become the next Buddha in Gokuraku. This is admittedly problematic from a doctrinal standpoint (given Amida’s bodhisattva vow), but it is a possible reading. For reference, see Inagaki 1995, p. 94, and also footnote 138, p. 213. 33  For a detailed analysis of Jōkei’s perspective here, see Tomimura 1976.

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burdened with karmic defilements can achieve birth there. It is even easier, he notes, than achieving birth in the realms of Śākyamuni or Miroku. Second, it is also worth noting that Jōkei actually emphasizes Kannon’s relationship to Amida in this passage. Kannon is, of course, one the two principal attendants to Amida. Jōkei asserts that if one achieves birth on Mt. Fudaraku, then it will be easy to realize birth in Amida’s Pure Land in one’s next life. Given the general popularity of Amida devotion, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Jōkei was attempting to borrow from that popular capital in his promotion of Kannon. There is not space to review Jōkei’s Pure Land aspirations in detail here. The purpose of this overview is to highlight his emphasis on this soteriological goal and his stress on the simplicity of achieving birth in Miroku or Kannon’s realms. This goal is related directly to his evangelical devotion to these two figures and the practices associated with them. Returning to our topic of “other-power,” we will see that this emphasis on devotion in Jōkei’s life and corpus was directly linked to the implicit (sometimes explicit) assumption that the power of these figures was an essential ingredient for one’s spiritual progress. Moreover, the plurality of other-powers evident in Jōkei’s evangelism is grounded in the Mahāyāna tradition more broadly and an emphasis on “place” in pre-modern (and modern) Japanese religiosity. Ian Reader and George Tanabe, in their recent study of “this-worldly benefits” (genze riyaku 現世利益) in Japanese religion, past and present, note the importance of “place” in defining the efficacious power of a particular deity (1998, pp. 50–70). The healing or soteriological power of Kannon, Miroku, or Śākyamuni, from this perspective, is directly proportional to one’s spatial proximity to an auspicious image of sacred sites related to these figures. Hence, evangelization efforts tend to center on the primary image of the temple where they were being conducted.34 In promoting devotion to the triumvirate of Śākyamuni, Miroku, and Kannon, Jōkei emphasized their efficacious powers for both this-worldly and other-worldly matters. 2.5 Easy Practices Let us turn now to some of the practices advocated by Jōkei that were, in a sense, the means of accessing these “other-powers.” While Jōkei did at times praise the merit of the traditionally “difficult” practices such as precept 34  It is in part for this reason, as James Foard has observed, that the teachings of Hōnen and later Shinran were so threatening to the established temple network. They represented a “delocation of sacrality” by undermining the fundamentally geographic principle that defined religious devotion, then and now (see Foard 1998, pp. 109–11).

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adherence, “mind-only” contemplation (yuishikikan sanmai 唯識観三昧), sutra copying, and so forth, he also promoted many “easy” practices including nenbutsu and dhāraṇī 陀羅尼 recitation, relic worship, and participation in kōshiki ritual performances. The nenbutsu was of course most prominent in devotion to Amida and was the means of accessing Amida’s power according to Hōnen and earlier Pure Land patriarchs. In article seven of the Kōfuku-ji-sōjō, Jōkei criticized the vocal (as opposed to meditative) dimension of nenbutsu practice as “coarse and shallow” (KKB 314). But Jōkei was not always so dismissive of this practice. In the Shin’yō shō, for example, he offers a more accommodating interpretation. The sixth chapter of that text specifically addresses the teaching of the nenbutsu. In the following passage, Jōkei cites the Kuan Wu-liang-shou ching 感無量壽經 (Amitābha Contemplation Sutra) to demonstrate the power of the vocal nenbutsu. He concludes, however, by equating the vocal nenbutsu with contemplation: The Contemplation Sutra says: “For sentient beings who have produced unwholesome acts such as the five cardinal sins or the ten evils, … if suffering closes in [at death] and he is unable to contemplate the Buddha, then a good friend will say, “If you are not able to contemplate the Buddha you should recite [the name of] the Buddha of Infinite Life.35 In this way, by exerting your mind and causing your voice not to be cut off, you will be able to achieve ten thoughts of the Buddha and chant ‘namu muryōjubutsu.’ By calling the Buddha’s name, within each thought you will erase eight billion kalpas of samsaric evil deeds and in the space of one thought you will achieve birth in the world of utmost bliss.”36 For those unable to contemplate (nen), because contemplation is its basis, vocal recitation is also contemplation. For this reason [by chanting the name] one can achieve samadhi and see the Buddha. ND 63: 343a14–343b2

He then goes on to categorize the vocal nenbutsu as an “easy” practice. QUESTION: The various practices are not the same; why [practice] only the nenbutsu?

35  The term Jōkei uses is “Muryōbutsu,” an abbreviation for Muryōju-butsu. This is an epithet for Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Life. 36  Jōkei is actually paraphrasing this portion of the sutra.

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ANSWER: The Shih-chu lun37 states that there are difficult and easy practices; the nenbutsu is an easy practice and is like traveling on the ocean [vs. walking]. ND 63: 343b4–5

Later in this chapter he delineates five different types of nenbutsu according to the object of contemplation. These include the Buddha’s name or title, various characteristics or marks, virtues, original vow, and dharma body. In this particular text, Jōkei promotes Miroku as the most efficacious buddha for these practices. At any rate, the first of these nenbutsu is the vocal recitation of the buddha’s name (345a–346b). Jōkei contends that vocal nenbutsu practice is not just uttering the name but embodies a contemplative quality. In fact, this interpretation is probably not far from the traditional understanding of the vocal nenbutsu practice. Jōkei notes that Shan-tao advocated the vocal nenbutsu for those who are unable to practice samādhi, but it is still a contemplative practice. As with Shingon dhāraṇī, the vocal aspect of the nenbutsu was widely viewed as a “device” to aid in meditation. For Jōkei, the power of the buddhas and bodhisattvas works concomitantly with the very practices they cultivated and left behind. It is in this sense that he writes the following in the Kan’yu dōhōki (Encouraging Mutual Understanding of the Dharma): Even though the merit of self-practice is not vast or great, the powers of the buddhas and the Dharma will surely be added to them. The buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past and present all cultivated this path and [thereby] realized enlightenment. And the same shall be true of bodhisattvas in the future. ND 64: 10a 7–10

Thus, Jōfuku Masanobu forcefully argues that for Jōkei the true benefit of the various methods of contemplation lay not in the self-effort required but in the intervening power of the buddhas and bodhisattvas that such practices embody (1993, pp. 661–65). In other words, Jōkei understood “simplification” of practice not just in terms of advocating easy practices (though he clearly did this), but by also asserting that even practices like mind-only contemplation (yuishiki sanmai), conventionally understood as “difficult,” are “easy” because of the other-power they embrace. This appears comparable to the traditional 37  This refers to the Daśabhūmikavibhāsā-śāstra discussed above.

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contention in early Pure Land circles that the nien-fo practice, contemplative and oral, embodies “power” by virtue of Amida’s vow, not just by the self-effort required. As already evidenced by the excerpt from the Shin’yō shō, Jōkei’s nenbutsu practice was not aimed primarily toward Amida. In addition to advocating the Miroku-nenbutsu, he also initiated two Shaka-nenbutsu assemblies—the first at the Eastern Hall of Tōshōdai-ji in 1202 and the second at Hōryū-ji’s Jōkanō-in in 1204 (Fukihara 1969, p. 114). Jōkei wrote the Tōshōdai-ji shaka nenbutsu ganmon 唐招提寺釈迦念仏願文 (Vow for the Nenbutsu to Śākyamuni at Tōshōdai-ji) for the first of these, which promoted the merits of Śākyamuni nenbutsu recitation. That assembly met during the ninth month for three subsequent years. While this was certainly a monastic assembly, it does evidence the plurality of Jōkei’s nenbutsu recitation practices. He also authored a brief text entitled Yuishin nenbutsu 唯心念仏 (Mind-only Nenbutsu, date unknown) that promoted the merit of a contemplative nenbutsu practice signifying Hossō’s “mind-only” truth. Among other accessible practices, Jōkei advocated relic worship and the recitation of various dhāraṇī. The latter is something of a mnemonic device, often the quintessence of a sutra, believed to possess inordinate mystical power and protection. Despite the prevalent “exoteric” characterization of Nara Buddhism, dhāraṇī recitation was widely practiced during the period for countless “this-worldly” ends such as protection from demons, thieves, diseases, and so forth. As Ryūichi Abé has recently shown, though the category of “esoteric Buddhism” was not so clearly delineated until Kūkai, dhāraṇī may be seen as clear manifestations of “esoteric” logic during the Nara and early Heian period. Kūkai in fact effectively transformed the understanding of dhāraṇī through the rubric of esoteric mantra. Largely as a result of the precedent set by Kūkai, mutual exchange characterized the relationship between Shingon practitioners and the Nara schools (Abé 1999, pp. 168ff.) This was especially evident at Kōfuku-ji where Jōkei received training in esoteric doctrine and practice and very likely was exposed further through the Shugendō practitioners at Kasagi-dera and Kaijusen-ji.38 In the Busshari Kannon daishi hotsuganmon 仏舎利 観音大士発願文 (Vow to the [Buddha’s] Relics and the Great Sage Kannon), Jōkei praises the power of a dhāraṇī offered by Kannon:

38  Royall Tyler has demonstrated the strong links between Kōfuku-ji and Shugendō as early as the beginning of the tenth century. He also highlights the strong Shugendō connections at Kasagi-dera and Kaijusen-ji, the latter being one of the “Thirty-Six Sendatsu” of early Tōzan Shugendō (Tyler, 1989).

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How many there are who, by relying, from the remote past, on the causality of subduing evil and taking refuge in Kannon’s original vow without worrying about success or failure, have profoundly aroused their specific vows and always recite the sacred dhāraṇī and have long practiced prostration and always contemplate and praise [this dhāraṇī’s] subtle virtues! Ah, to be able to remove the sins of the four roots is the wondrous function of this sacred dhāraṇī. Of illusion or [evil], what could remain? Causing all to be achieved is Kannon’s specific virtue…. Those who contemplate the sacred dhāraṇī maintained by Kanjizaison (Kannon), when they discard this body, will gain birth on Mt. Fudaraku. ND 64: 33b3–12

This text promotes a dhāraṇī offered by Kannon that enables one to access the power of the Buddha’s relics and achieve birth on Mt. Fudaraku. Similarly, in the Kanjin shōjo enmyō no koto 観心為清浄円明事 (Contemplation on the Pure and Perfect Enlightenment), Jōkei proclaims: Seeing the buddhas of the ten directions at the end of one’s life, being born in the land of utmost bliss, and Kannon’s realization of the [stage of] acquiescence to the non-production of the dharmas,39 this is the power of this incantation. This being the case, one can say this, one can say that, but in all cases this is just the extremity of the inconceivable ( fushigi 不 思議). The Buddha’s disciples, even if they have passed sixty years in vain, if they contemplate and recite it for several days, or for two hours, or only for one utterance without intent, this dhāraṇī will be inscribed in their mind. Its merit equals that of the great Arhants. By means of its majestic power, you will be newly born on the treasure mountain [Fudaraku-sen]. How can this be difficult? If you complete this vow, there is nothing else. We can only say that it is inconceivable. So for those who constantly contemplate this sacred dhāraṇī in their minds and do not discriminate merits, then they will all return to the inconceivable and that is that. ND 64: 23b13

39  M  ushōnin (S: anutpattika), sometimes translated as the “cognizance of non-arising,” is a standard term relating to one of the bodhisattva stages, perhaps 7, 8, or 9, the means by which one perceives dharmadhatu.

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Both of these passages demonstrate Jōkei’s emphasis on the simple nature of this dhāraṇī recitation and its inherent power. They also reflect the pervasiveness of esoteric ideas within Hossō practice. Finally, relic devotion is another relatively simple means Jōkei advocated for accessing the other power of Śākyamuni. Of course, relic worship dates back to India and was central to Buddhist lay devotion throughout Asia. In Japan the role of relics served many of the same functions as in India and China, though perhaps with increasing multivocality.40 In the Busshari Kannon daishi hotsuganmon, Jōkei extols the power of Śākyamuni’s relics, specifically in helping one achieve birth on Kannon’s Mt. Fudaraku. He proclaims, Even manifesting the great fruit of progress in the present (genzai 現在) is from relying on the majestic power of the relics. Moreover, it is not difficult. How much easier it will be in one’s next life to realize birth (ōjō) in the Southern Sea and see the great sages by means of the skillful means (hōben 方便) of the Tathāgata’s relics. ND 64: 33a17–33b2

Thus, by relying on the power of the Buddha’s relics, one can attain enlightenment. How much easier must it be to achieve birth on Kannon’s Mt. Fudaraku. In addition to these texts, Jōkei authored three Shari kōshiki 舎利講式 texts that praised the merit and devotion to Śākyamuni’s relics.41 These are just some examples of the simple, more accessible practices Jōkei endorsed and advocated.

40  For overviews of the cult of relics, see Faure (1996, pp. 158–68) and Ruppert (2000, especially pp. 16–36 and 59–86). Brian Ruppert’s recent ground-breaking study of the role of Buddha relics within medieval Japan reveals the diverse role of relics in medieval religiosity. The emperor appropriated relics to legitimate his physical status and authority; esoteric monks viewed them as the key to their ritual and thaumaturgical powers; warriors perceived relics as a symbol of kingship and authority, and employed them accordingly; and lay believers, including women, perceived relics as a means to salvation. Relics, Ruppert points out, derived their extraordinary authority and power from their link to Śākyamuni’s physical body and enduring presence. Ruppert and Faure both document the various benefits of venerating relics including increased good fortune, improved karma, easy childbirth, protection, fortunate rebirth, and ultimately, assurance of buddhahood. 41  The first is dated 1192, the second 1203, and the third is undated. See bibliography for a selective list of Jōkei’s koshiki.

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2.6 Jōkei’s Pluralistic Perspective and the Rhetoric of Other-Power We have now overviewed, if only briefly, the eclectic nature of Jōkei’s devotion and practice. The degree to which Jōkei advocated practices that were accessible to the least talented devotees should be evident. Anyone was capable of reciting the Shaka nenbutsu or the dhāraṇī offered by Kannon. While it is not entirely clear whether Jōkei considered his time to be within final age of the mappō, it is apparent that he saw it as a critical time for the Dharma.42 In short, we can easily infer that Jōkei perceived the necessity for other-powers and easy practices. He clearly recognized the widely accepted view that people no longer had the capacity to achieve enlightenment on their own. But Jōkei was often quite explicit in declaring the necessity of “other-power” or “supernatural intervention” (myōga 冥加). For example, in the Busshari Kannon daishi hotsuganmon, written between 1208 and his death in 1213, he promoted the power of the Buddha’s relics (busshari 仏舎利) and cautioned against sole reliance on self-power: If by means of self-power one attempts to eradicate these sins, it is like a moth trying to drink up the great ocean. Simply relying on the Buddha’s power, you should single-mindedly repent your errors. We humbly pray that the relics that he has left behind and that are the object of worship of his disciples, the holy retinue of the Southern Sea, and Kanjizaison [Kannon], will shine the beams of the sun of wisdom and extinguish the darkness of the sins of the six roots, and, by means of the power of this great compassion and wisdom, eradicate the offenses of the three categories of action. ND 64: 33a7–11

As already evidenced by the prior excerpt from the same text, he goes on to promote the power of a dhāraṇī offered by Kannon. In the Shugyō yōshō 修行 42  Jōkei is not entirely consistent in his views concerning mappō. In the Kōfuku-ji sōjō, there are no less than six references to the time as mappō. And in the Kairitsu kōgyō gansho (Vow for the Restoration of the Precepts), he states that “the Law of the Buddha in these Latter Days (matsudai) is not free from considerations of fame and profit.” He then goes on lament the fact that “decline is a function of the times” (Morrell 1987, pp. 7–8). Another example may also be found in the Kasuga kōshiki (Hiraoka 1960, p. 217). Like so many of his contemporaries, Jōkei lamented the time as “inferior, without wisdom or precepts, … without practice or virtue” (Busshari Kannon dashi hotsuganmon; ND 64: 33a1–3). On the other hand, Taira Masayuki cites three instances in which Jōkei clearly saw himself at the end of the Imitation Dharma (1992, p. 129). In the Kasuga daimyōjin hotsuganmon, for example, Jōkei explicitly states that “now is the time of the Imitation Dharma (zōbō)” (ND 64: 32a4).

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要鈔 (1213), Jōkei emphasizes the importance of mind-only contemplation. But

in response to an interlocutor’s concern regarding the feasibility of actualizing this difficult practice, Jōkei presents a more accessible alternative in the form of a verse of praise conferred by Miroku (Jison): QUESTION: What are the verses of praise that are conferred in the teachings? ANSWER: The verse says,43 “The bodhisattva engaged in meditation contemplates the fact that images are only this mind. The illusion [of those images] is extinguished and he contemplates only things as they actually are in themselves. In this way, dwelling within the mind, he knows that there is nothing to be grasped and also that there is nothing that can grasp.” After that he achieves the state of being free from delusion (mushotoku).44 In addition to this, even though there are two lines (gyo) and eight phrases, its [meaning] is expansive and difficult to exhaust. So if you only recite the one phrase kan’yō yuijōshin,45 it is just like one who contemplates the Buddha and calls upon the Buddha’s name. ND 64: 19a8–12

This is but one example of Jōkei’s emphasis on the importance of mind-only contemplation and its underlying Hossō doctrine, while simultaneously offering a simpler alternative. Though he does not call this phrase a “dhāraṇī,” it seems to function similarly as a means to the other-power of Miroku. And in the following excerpt from the Shin’yō shō (ca. 1206), Jōkei again states explicitly the necessity of “other-power”: All the more so, the karmic causes for birth in the Pure Land, in accordance with ones capacity, are not the same. Finding the nectar largely depends on supernatural intervention (myōga 冥加). ND 63: 353a16–353b

It should be more than apparent that Jōkei advocated the necessary reliance on any number of other-powers. 43  This verse appears in the Shê ta-ch’eng-lun shih (J. Shō daijōron shaku) T 31, 418a, and the Ch’eng-wei shih lun 成唯識論 (J. Jōyuishiki-ron) T 31, 12. 44  Literally this term translates as “nothing to be attained.” In the Joyuishiki-ron, it is used to characterize the state of enlightenment in which one overcomes all false discriminations of the mind (T 31, 49c). 45  Literally, “contemplate [the fact that] images are only this mind.”

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All of this does not make Jōkei unique within the world of premodern Japanese Buddhism. Reliance on the various sacred forms of power within Buddhism was emphasized since its introduction into Japan. Jōkei simply highlights the problem of depicting “old” Kamakura Buddhists as monastic, “self-power” extremists or as aristocratic elitists. Virtually all of the devotional practices he promoted were accessible to the population at large and his kōshiki rituals were integral to his evangelizing efforts beyond the monastery proper. Other-power and easy practice were oft-used categories within all spheres of pre-modern Japanese Buddhism. While most scholars have abandoned these categories as the distinguishing features of “new” Kamakura Buddhism, many continue to draw sharp distinctions between the new sects and the established schools based on a sociopolitical rubric of interpretation. Hōnen and Shinran were unique in their exclusive soteriological claims, which, it is argued, were designed to undermine the social and political authority of the established schools and temple complexes. The fact remains, however, that it was Hōnen and Shinran’s creative appropriation of the rhetorical labels of “other-power” and “easy practice” that validated their exclusive claims. These were the rhetorical axes for reimagining a new paradigm of liberation. This study is in many ways intended to contribute to the ongoing effort to nuance our understanding of Japanese religiosity during the late Heian and early Kamakura period, which is so often distorted by contemporary analysis or unreflective appropriation of the rhetoric of figures like Hōnen and Shinran. Despite their claims, reliance on other-power or easy, more accessible practices were simply not unique to “new” Kamakura Buddhism. 2.7 The “Middle Way” between Self-Power and Other-Power Jōkei differed from Hōnen’s rhetoric in at least one fundamental way. Other-power alone is not sufficient for ultimate salvation. We must contend with our own inherited karmic disposition. For Jōkei, other-power operates in conjunction with the fundamental law of causality. Underlying Jōkei’s eclectic mix of practices is the basic assumption that people embody different capacities for enlightenment. At the conventional level, people, like dharmas, are different. Consequently, there are different sects, different practices, different textual emphases, and even different buddhas and bodhisattvas to worship in accordance with one’s nature and circumstance. As he writes in the Kōfuku-ji sōjō, Although polemics abound as to which is greater or lesser, before or behind, there is for each person one teaching he cannot leave, one method he cannot go beyond. Searching his own limits, he finds his proper sect.

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It is like the various currents finding their source in the great sea, or the multitudes paying court to a single individual. Morrell 1987, p. 76

Later in the petition he adds, Numerous sectarian positions arise as occasion demands, and we partake of the good ambrosial medicine [of the Buddha’s varying teachings] each according to our karmic predispositions. They are all aspects of the True Law which our great teacher Śākyamuni gained for us by difficult and painful labors over innumerable aeons. Now to be attached to the name of a single Buddha is completely to obstruct the paths essential for deliverance. Morrell 1987, p. 78

And finally, in the Kan’yū dōhōki (date unknown), Jōkei writes that The spiritual capacity of bodhisattvas is assorted and different. Some are inclined toward sudden realization and others toward gradual realization; some excel in wisdom while others excel in compassion; some are intimidated by defilements (kleśa/bonnō 煩惱) while others are not; and so forth. And there are further distinctions within each of those. Some rely on their innate seeds of enlightenment. Others rely on the capacity of beings they teach. Whether they follow the original vow of the buddhas who teach or the meritorious power of hearing the true Dharma, at the very first they arouse the aspiration for enlightenment and vow to seek the way. ND 64: 11b4–11

The point is that there are various practices within the Buddhist tradition and various buddhas and bodhisattvas to lead us for a reason—we are not all the same. We each have different “karmic predispositions” and stand at different points along the bodhisattva path. In the face of the extraordinary diversity within Buddhism, this was, and is, the most traditional response. It is nothing less than an articulation of the principles of upāya (hōben 方便) or “skillful means,” what James Foard has called “the great universalizer of salvation” (1998, 110). Jōkei’s entire life and corpus has been characterized by one Japanese scholar as the “upāya-ization” of Hossō doctrine and practice, and this is not too far off the mark (Kurosaki 1995, pp. 6–21). We can also say that karmic causality, though interpretations of

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it may vary, is an essential element of Buddhism’s universal discourse. So, from Jōkei’s perspective, to argue for absolute reliance on the vow and compassion of a particular buddha was contradictory to fundamental Buddhist doctrine. It was equivalent to abandoning the most basic principles of Buddhism and had significant social as well as soteriological implications. Jōkei relied on the doctrine of upāya to reconcile the diversity within Buddhism with Mahāyāna’s universal soteriology. In this way, Jōkei represents the broader universal Buddhist discourse. While Jōkei emphasized the implications and importance of karmic causality, he also praised the benefits of powers beyond our own. He recognized the power of bodhisattva vows, the Buddha’s relics, and the recitation of a sacred dhāraṇī and nenbutsu. The compassion of the various buddhas and bodhisattvas in providing such supernatural mechanisms was beyond compare. In short, Jōkei recognized the well-accepted notion of his time that self-power alone was not sufficient. Despite accusations to the contrary, he never denied the importance of “other-power.” What he denied was “exclusive” reliance on other-power. It seems that there is a persistent failure to see beyond the established analytical dualities such as ascetic practice versus Pure Land devotion, self-power versus other-power, or between easy practice and difficult practice. I would propose that we see Jōkei as representing a “middle-way” between the extremes of “self-power” and “other-power.” He was not necessarily unique in this respect since this was the predominant, though perhaps unarticulated, perspective within the rubric of traditional Buddhism—this despite the rhetorical efforts of figures like Hōnen and Shinran to paint the established schools as “jiriki” extremists. I would suggest, however, that Jōkei is distinctive in expressing this middle-way as explicitly as he does. To the degree that Hōnen and, more specifically, Shinran emphasized “absolute” reliance on other-power, they were distinct from Jōkei’s more traditional and balanced understanding. But here we must again differentiate between rhetoric and reality with respect to the lives of Hōnen and Shinran and to later developments within the Pure Land traditions. Hōnen, as noted above, is particularly problematic for the Jōdo-shū apologists because of his undeniable use of other meditative practices and rituals, and his strict adherence to the monastic precepts. Just as there is a wide gulf between Zen rhetoric against icons, texts, and rituals and the pervasive reality of iconographic forms, sacred texts, and elaborate rituals throughout the tradition, so also we must acknowledge the tension within the Pure Land traditions. “Absolute reliance on the otherpower of Amida” becomes a mantra of sectarian identity and difference, but it does not accurately characterize the historical manifestation of the traditions. In the conclusion to his important study of Jōdo Shinshū, James Dobbins

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suggests that if we “demythologize” Shin Buddhism (i.e., Shin stripped of its “specific” forms), then the “religious sensibilities and practices remaining are not significantly different from those found in lay Buddhism throughout Asia. They are faith-oriented and devotional” (1989, p. 160). He goes on to assert that Shin has not created a new form of Buddhism, but rather idealizes the lay dimension of the religion. What is unique about Shin is not the beliefs and practices it propounds but its advocacy of the lay path over the clerical one. 1989, p. 160

Dobbins is merely acknowledging that the actual manifestation of Shinran’s tradition, despite its radical rhetoric, is not appreciably different from other forms of lay Buddhism. 3

Final Reflections

We can now draw a number of conclusions from this examination of otherpower and easy practice rhetoric. First of all, these were clearly well-established rhetorical categories in China and Japan well before the emergence of the new Kamakura sects. Like the doctrinal classification systems within the various “schools” or textual/doctrinal lineages, “other-power” and “easy practice” were signifiers within a competitive discourse. They were, in particular, integral to efforts to expand the appeal of Buddhism beyond the monastic universe. Virtually every lineage claimed that it offered an easier path to enlightenment. And as the belief in the degenerate age (mappō) became more widespread, this too fostered increasing claims of soteriological assurance, perhaps to address the growing anxiety and hopelessness. By the same token, we should acknowledge that mappō could also be creatively appropriated and even underscored to authorize radical departures from well-established Buddhist traditions. Second, we can also conclude that Hōnen and Shinran were indeed the first to use these terms in such an exclusive manner by claiming that oral recitation of the nenbutsu was the only efficacious practice for Pure Land aspirants. Moreover, the implication of their teachings was that all other soteriological goals were pointless and obsolete in the age of mappō. It is in this “exclusive” sense that other-power and easy practice become the discourse for sectarian dividing lines in the same way that “Mahāyāna” and “sudden enlightenment” became rhetorical dividing lines in prior Buddhist debates. But in each case, these were the rhetorical distinctions of only one side in each debate. It should

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be clear by now that Jōkei did not reject the merit of “other-power” or haughtily dismiss “easy practices.” In fact, various other-powers were promoted and recognized by all of the established schools throughout the Heian era and even before. Esoteric Buddhism, which permeated all facets of Heian Buddhism, is grounded in the other-powers invoked through ritual. The tradition of appropriating dualistic rhetoric to distinguish one form of Buddhism from another appears well established historically in sectarian disputes. Mahāyāna proponents pejoratively labeled those following the ideal of the arhant as Hīnayānists (followers of the “small vehicle”). Later advocates of the esoteric teachings (e.g., Chen-yen in China and Shingon 真言 in Japan) broad-brushed all prior Buddhism as “exoteric.” The early followers of Amitābha, as we have already seen, distinguished their “Pure Land Path” from the traditional “Path of Sages.” And finally, Southern Ch’an is noted for its claim to “sudden” enlightenment in opposition to the “gradual” enlightenment of Northern Ch’an.46 In each case, it is the newly formed sect that distinguishes itself from the established and consequently oppositional form of Buddhism in an effort to validate its divorce from the tradition (or, perhaps, its claimed “recovery” of the “true essence” of the Dharma). This appears to be a not uncommon characteristic of sectarian rhetoric across all religious traditions.47 One can certainly see this strategy within both the early and later traditions of Christianity toward its parent Judaism.48 In most cases, the rhetorical and 46  See Faure (1991), McRae (1986), and Sharf (1992) for examples of recent scholarship that deconstruct the received version of the Northern/Southern split. Bernard Faure asserts that this rhetorical doctrinal difference is really being used to legitimate Ch’an’s “passion for difference” (Faure 1991, p. 41). He also points out how the privileged claims of Ch’an with respect to the paradigms of mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, etc., served specific social and ideological functions and helped legitimate the Ch’an institution. And so, the same might well be said of the Japanese Pure Land schools’ use of “other-power” and “easy practice” vis-à-vis the established schools. 47  James Foard classifies some of the new Kamakura movements as “sects,” as distinguished from cults or orders, precisely because of “their insistence that their particular devotions alone were effective and all others useless or worse” (1980, p. 282). 48  The Synoptic Gospels depict first-century Judaism as politically corrupt, oppressive, xenophobic, and overly concerned with purity laws of separation. Jesus, on the other hand, is seen as compassionate, egalitarian, and inclusive. More recent feminist theology depicts Judaism as patriarchal and severely oppressive toward women in contrast to Jesus who is seen as fully gender-inclusive. While the teachings of Jesus may by fairly characterized along these lines (with a proper understanding of his broader apocalyptic worldview), Judaism cannot be so reductively portrayed. But early and later Christians felt compelled to distinguish themselves from their parent tradition by means of such rhetorical dualism. As I heard Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, recently declare, “Christianity does not need to make itself look good by making Judaism look bad” (Wake Forest Divinity School Lectures, Feb. 6, 2001). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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often dualistic labels adopted to distinguish the new movement from the parent tradition become standard terminology within the new movement. And in many cases (e.g., Mahāyāna/Hīnayāna and Ch’an’s sudden/gradual distinction), these labels have been accepted unreflectively by scholars interpreting historical developments. This has also been the case with the rhetorical categories of self-power/other-power and difficult/easy practices. To conclude, “other-power” and “easy practice” may be useful heuristic nomenclature at times to draw a distinction between degrees of emphasis. Certain forms of monotheistic religion advocate absolute reliance on God that contrasts markedly, for example, with early forms of monastic Buddhism that emphasized complete self-reliance. But such differences are more often measured in degrees and rarely in absolute terms. Indeed, in the case of Hōnen and Jōkei, it is clear that Hōnen advocated a more exclusive reliance on Amida’s power in contrast to Jōkei’s more balanced path. But again, we must recognize the gap between rhetoric and reality. Hōnen continued to follow the precepts, engage in meditative and visualization practices, and participate in a variety of ritual ceremonies that would appear to contradict his other-power rhetoric. We certainly cannot fault Hōnen or Shinran for creatively adapting these wellestablished labels for their own proselytizing ends. But we must dismiss these sectarian rhetorical categories as legitimate analytical categories in the study of Kamakura Buddhism. References Abbreviations BZ

KKB KKK ND SETP

T TSS

Dai Nihon Bukkyō zensho 大日本佛教全書, ed. Bussho Kankōkai, 150 vols. Tokyo: Bussho Kankōkai, 1913–1922. Kamakura kyū Bukkyō 鎌倉旧仏教. Nihon Shisō Taikei, vol. 15, ed. Kamata Shigeo and Tanaka Hisao. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971. Taishō daigaku sōgō Bukkyō kenkyūjo nenpō, 1991–1995. Kōshiki kenkyū-kai 講式研究会. Nihon daizōkyō 日本大蔵経, 100 vols. Tokyo: Suzuki Research Foundation, 1973–1976. Hōnen’s Senchakushū: Passages on the Selection of the Nenbutsu in the Original Vow. Senchakushū English Translation Project, trans. and ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, 85 vols., ed. Takakusu Jun-jirō, Watanabe Kaikyoku, et al. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–1934. Tōdai-ji Sōshō Shōnin no kenkyū narabini shiryō 東大寺宗性上人之研究並史 料, 3 vols., ed. Hiraoka Jōkai. Tokyo: Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkō Kai, 1960–1961. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Primary Sources



Texts by Jōkei

An-lo chi 安楽集. T 47 (No. 1958). Ch’eng-wei shih lun 成唯識論. T 31 (No. 1585). Ching-t’u shih-i-lun 浄土十疑論. T 47 (No. 1961). Genkō shakusho 元亨釈書. BZ 101. Gyokuyō 玉葉. By Kūjo Kanezane. Tokyo: Kunaichō Shoryōbu, 1994. Hsūan-i fen 玄義分. T 37 (No. 1753). Kasuga gongen genki-e 春日権現験記絵. Ed. Tanaka Ichimatsu, Nihon emakimono zenshū, vol. 15. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1963. Kōshiki Database (Online). Ed. Niels Guelberg https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Niels_Guelberg [accessed March 2020]). Kuan Wu-liang-shou ching 感無量壽經. T 12 (No. 365). Kuan-shih-yin p’u-sa shou-chi ching 觀世音菩薩授記経. T 12 (No. 371). Ōjōyōshū 往生要集. By Genshin. Jōdoshū zensho, vol. 15. Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū 選択本願念仏集. By Hōnen. T 83 (No. 2608). Shê ta-ch’eng-lun shih 攝大乗論釈. T 31 (No. 1585). Tanni-shō 歎異抄. In Shinran chosaku zenshū 親鸞著作全集. Ed. Kaneko Daiei 673–97. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1964.

Busshari Kannon daishi hotsuganmon 仏舎利観音大士発願文, 1 fascicle. Written between 1208–1213. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 32–34. Gumei hosshin shū 愚迷発心集, 1 fascicle. Written after 1192. KKB. Kairitsu kōgyō gansho 戒律興行願書. Also known as Kairitsu-saikō ganmon. Written between 1207 and 1210. ND 69, Kairitsushū-shōso 4, 59–62. Kanjin shōjō enmyō no koto 観心為清浄円明事, 1 fascicle. Written 1213. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 22–23. Kan’yū dōhō ki 観誘同法記, 1 fascicle. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 1–15. Kasuga daimyōjin hotsuganmon 春日大明神発願文, 1 fascicle. Dates approximately 1192. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 31. Kōfuku-ji sōjō 興福寺奏状. KKB, 312–16. Shin’yō shō 心要鈔, 1 fascicle. (circa 1196). ND 63, Hossoshū shōso 2, 327–56. Shugyō yōshō 修行要鈔, 1 fascicle. Written 1213. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 18–19. Tōshōdai-ji shaka nenbutsu ganmon 唐招提寺釈迦念仏願文, 1 fascicle. Written 1203. BZ 105. Yuishin nenbutsu 唯心念仏, 1 fascicle. ND 64, Hossōshū-shōso 3, 20–21.

Selected Kōshiki Texts by Jōkei

Hokekyō kōshiki 法華経講式, 1201: KKK 15 (1993), 218–34. Jizō kōshiki 地蔵講式, 1196, five-part: KKK 13 (1991), 214–22.

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Jizō kōshiki, date unknown, one-part: See Hoshiya Toshihide, “Jizō kōshiki no shurui,” Toyama gakuhō 4 (1958), 112–25. Kannon kōshiki 観音講式, 1201A, five-part (1201/5/18): modern edition not available; original in Kōyasan’s Kongōsanmai-in. Kannon kōshiki, 1209, seven-part [also known as the Chigū Kannon kōshiki]: modern edition not available; original in Kōfuku-ji archives. Kannon kōshiki, 1201B, three-part (1201/5/23): T.84 (No. 2728); also in KKK 15 (1993), 199–205. Kasuga gongen kōshiki 春日権現講式, date unknown: KKK 16 (1994). Kasuga kōshiki 春日講式 (also known as Betsugan kōshiki 別願講式), date unknown: TSS 3, 216–19. Kingu ryōzen kōshiki 欣求霊山講式, 1196: KKK 13 (1991), 189–200. Miroku kōshiki 彌勒講式, 1196, five-part: TSS 3, 205–11; T.84 (No. 2729); KKK 13 (1991), 201–13. Miroku kōshiki, 1201, three-part: TSS 3, 204–205. Miroku kōshiki, date unknown, three-part: TSS 3, 201–204. Monju kōshiki 文殊講式, date unknown: KKK 16 (1994), 138–46. Nyoirin-kōshiki 如意輪講式, date unknown: see Kōshiki Database (#75). Seigan shari kōshiki 誓願舎利講式, 1196: KKK 17 (1995), 236–41. Shari kōshiki 舎利講式, 1203, five-part: KKK 17 (1995), 199–207. Shari kōshiki, 1192, one-part: KKK 17 (1995), 231–33. Shari kōshiki, date unknown. See Kōshiki Database (#19). Shōtoku taishi kōshiki 聖徳太子講式, date unknown: see Ishida Mosaku, Shōtoku taishi zenshū, Vol. 5 (1943), 83–88. Tosotsu ryakuyō 兜率略要, date unknown: TSS 3, 211–14. Yakushi kōshiki 薬師講式, 1209: see Kōshiki Database (#59).



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Tanabe, George J., Jr., 1984. Sakyamuni devotionalism in medieval Japan: Where does the text lie? In Shūkyō to bunka no shosō 宗教と文化の諸相, Takenaka Shinjō Hakushi shōju kinen ronbushū kankōkai, ed., 59–69. Tokyo: Sankibō. Tanabe, George J., Jr., 1992. Myōe the Dreamkeeper: Fantasy and Knowledge in Early Kamakura Buddhism. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Tanaka Hisao 田中久夫, 1971. Chosakusha ryakuden 著作者略伝. In KKB, 461–99. Tomimura Takafumi 富村孝文, 1976. Gedatsu Shōnin to Kannon shinkō 解脱上人と観 音信仰. Risshō daigaku shigakukai 40: 21–32. Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助, 1944–1955. Nihon Bukkyōshi: Kamakura jidai 日本仏教史― 鎌倉時代, vol. 2. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tsukudo Reikan 筑土鈴寛, 1966. Kōshiki no rekishiteki kōsatsu 講式の歴史的考察. In Chūsei bungei no kenkyū 中世文芸の研究, 324–41. Tokyo: Yūseidō. Tyler, Royall, 1989. Kōfuku-ji and Shugendo. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 16: 143–80. Tyler, Royall, 1990. The Miracles of the Kasuga Deity. New York: Columbia University Press. Ueda Sachiko 上田さち子, 1977. Jōkei no shūkyō katsudō ni tsuite 貞慶の宗教活動に ついて. Hisutoria 75: 27–46. Williams, Paul, 1989. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. London: Routledge. Yasui Shukō 保井秀孝, 1981. Jōkei no shūkyō no katsudō 貞慶の宗教の活動. Nihon shi kenkyū 224: 33–58.

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part 7 Pure Land Fellowships in War and Peace

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The Life of Rennyo

A Struggle for the Transmission of Dharma Yasutomi Shin’ya Rennyo, the eighth abbot of the Honganji, played an extremely significant role in the history of the Jōdoshin school. He not only reestablished the stagnant religious organization of Honganji but also revitalized the concept of shinjin (faith) for this school of Japanese Buddhism. Therefore, Rennyo has long been known as the restorer (gosaikō shōnin) of the tradition and today is called the second founder (chūkō shōnin) of what is called Shinshū, or the Jōdoshin school: Within the tradition of the Master [Shinran] Shōnin, the essential teaching is the one thought-moment of entrusting [tanomu ichinen]. Therefore, from generation to generation, our masters have always referred to entrusting [tanomu]. However, people did not clearly understand what to entrust. Our great grand master [zenzenjū shōnin] [Rennyo] therefore composed the Letters in which he clarified [the meaning of entrusting as] “to discard the sundry practices and single-heartedly entrust [ourselves to] Amida to save us in the afterlife [goshō tasuketamae].” Because of this, he is [regarded as] the restorer [of the tradition] [gosaiko no shōnin].1 In this passage, the essence of Rennyo’s restoration of the tradition is stated clearly and concisely. Rennyo used the phrase “entrusting Amida” (mida o tanomu) to demonstrate the foundation of the Jōdoshin school faith to the people of his time. Rennyo’s life coincides with the middle of the Muromachi period (1392–1573), a time of social upheaval and natural disasters. Treason undercut the previous military ethic of loyalty, exemplified by the assassination of the Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshinori (1394–1441) by his subordinate, Akamatsu Mitsusuke (1373–1441). Frequent famines plagued the populace, and peasant uprisings shook the country like earthquakes. Power struggles among the S ource: Yasutomi Shin’ya, “The Life of Rennyo: A Struggle for the Transmission of Dharma,” in Mark L. Blum and Shin’ya Yasutomi (eds.), Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 17–37. © Oxford Publishing Limited (Academic), 2006. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear. 1  Jitsugo kyūki 124, Gyojitsu p. 100, Kikigaki 188, SSZ 3.577.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_026

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political elite eventually escalated into the great war that occurred during the Ōnin and Bunmei eras, from 1467 to 1477. Such discordance marked a turning point in the religious lives of the populace.2 The almost continuous state of war made people feel extremely anxious about the future. People were in search of a peaceful land and stable home and were hungry for spiritual consolation. Witnessing how quickly worldly happiness could be destroyed in a single fiery battle, they truly experienced impermanence. Under such circumstances, they needed strong convictions to survive. Rather than simply devoting themselves to communal religious practice—such as formulaic praying for the peace of the nation or a good harvest of the five grains—people needed to participate freely and sincerely in individual practices of faith that could sustain them through these catastrophes. The methods of propagation used by the established Buddhist schools, which emphasized this-worldly benefits (genze riyaku) and prayer rituals (kitō), did not satisfy people’s spiritual demands. Nor did their abstract doctrinal formulas capture the hearts of people. Faced with the collapse of the preexisting social order, people increasingly clamored for spiritual autonomy. In such times, what Rennyo accomplished can truly be called a religious reformation. He broke with the existing Buddhist teachings, which had become tailored to aristocratic tastes and imprinted with other Japanese religious customs, and revived the original spirit of the Buddhist path. However, Rennyo had to take drastic actions to accomplish his goals. As was mentioned earlier, Rennyo wrote his Letters to urge people to cast away other practices, pejoratively labeled “sundry practices” (zōgyō), and he taught that one should take refuge in the Buddha Amida single-heartedly for “salvation in the afterlife” (goshō tasuketamae). On the basis of this theory of faith, Rennyo would dismantle closed and self-righteous organizations of secretive medieval Shinshū communities, which were essentially constructed on the practice of taking refuge in a teacher (chishiki kimyō), and would enable ordinary followers to participate more actively in the broader medieval society. Applying this principle, he also severely criticized the practices of “entrusting through donations” (semotsu danomi) and “thieflike faith” (monotori shinjin) in which leaders of Shinshū communities treated followers as their own property. He curbed

2  Kuroda Toshio says this turning point is marked by (1) dissolution of estates (shoen), (2) the fall of the exoteric-esoteric establishments (kenmitsu taisei), and (3) the rise of common people (“Tenkanki no Shidosha” The leader in turning age 1 “Rennyo” Nanba Betsuin, pp. 131–132, 1986, April).

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the power of the head priests of these regional communities and disbanded their private organizations. The line of Rennyo’s propagation extended from Katada and Yoshizaki to cities in the western provinces. Replacing the teaching of Jishū, which had been popular during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the teaching of Shinshū was widely received among townspeople, including merchants, artisans, and sailors. The teaching also gained popularity among people who were becoming objects of discrimination, such as entertainers, women, and those engaged in certain trades.3 Rennyo’s views on such groups, particularly women, are noteworthy. At that time, women’s roles in society were grossly undervalued. Despite the fact that they constituted half the population, they labored under the oppressive ideology of the five exclusions and three submissions (goshō sanshō).4 However, Rennyo did not subscribe to the notion that women could not attain buddhahood; perhaps he was influenced by his many close yet tragic relationships with women—he was separated from his mother at an early age, he was preceded in death by four of five wives,5 and among his numerous children six daughters predeceased him. Especially toward the end of his life, Rennyo stressed that among the ordinary sentient beings whose evil karma is deep and heavy (zaiaku jinjū no bonbu), women were precisely the kind of beings (shōki) whom Amida would work to save. He taught that women should not worry simply because they were women; rather, by realizing faith (shinjin), everyone could certainly attain buddhahood at the moment of Birth in the Pure Land through the saving hand of Amida Buddha. Women could thus be saved just as they are. In these and other issues, Rennyo had to overcome incredible difficulties to succeed in restoring the tradition. This short essay will examine some of his struggles. Although Rennyo’s activities in his later life are well known through the ample historical materials, such as the Kūzenki,6 gathered by his close disciples, there are few reliable materials on his earlier life, a period crucial in the formation of his religious organization.

3  See Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦, Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu 続日本の歴史をよみ なおす (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1996), 166–171, based on the Honpuku atogaki. 4  On this problem, see chapter 5. 5  Rennyo married five times, outliving all but his last wife. Their names are Nyoryō 如了 (d. 1455), Renyū 連祐 (d. 1470), Nyoshō 如勝 (1448–1478), Shūnyo 宗如 (d. 1484), and Rennō 蓮能 (1465–1518). 6  The Kūzenki, compiled by Rennyo’s disciple Kūzen 空善 (d. 1520) sometime in the early sixteenth century, contains a somewhat hagiographic record of Rennyo’s activities over an eleven-year period at the end of his life, including his funeral.

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Birth and Early Years

Rennyo’s early years coincide with the growing pains of the developing Jōdoshinshū institution. Over a period of 150 years following the death of Shinran, his gravesite slowly grew into a locus of religious activity for his lineage. Located in the Otani foothills of Higashiyama, what began as a mausoleum gradually took on the features of a monastery, with the temple name Honganji first appearing in historical records in a document dated Genkyo 1 (1321). This was shortly after the site of Hōnen’s (1133–1212) grave, located in the same vicinity of Higashiyama, came to be recognized under the name Chion’in based on a similar institutional model. Honganji, it should be remembered, was established by Kakunyo (1270–1351), whose wish was to “rectify misunderstandings and reveal the truth” (haja kenshō). Approximately one hundred years after the establishment of Honganji, in Ōei 22 (1415), Rennyo was born at Honganji, Higashiyama Otani, Kyoto. His father, Zonnyo (1396–1457), was twenty years old, and his grandfather, Gyōnyo (1376–1440), was forty. The name of Rennyo’s mother is not known, but it is said that she was a servant of his father or grandfather, so her social status must have been very humble. The circumstances of Honganji at that time would make a significant mark on young Rennyo’s life. According to the Honpukuji yuraiki (A Record of Hompukuji’s History), “The head temple was deserted without a single visitor in sight. People living there led very lonely lives.”7 In contrast, the same record notes the prosperity of Bukkōji: “Around Ōei 20 (1413), Bukkōji at Shirutani was crowded with people because of [the temple’s] use of salvation registers [myōchō] and portrait lineages [ekeizu].” Although Honganji and Bukkōji were both the Jōdoshin school temples, they fell under the administration of the Tendai school, the former as a branch temple of the Shōren’in and the latter under the authority of Myōhōin, both Tendai temples of some authority.8 Each therefore used Tendai protocols (igi), but Bukkōji in particular from early in its history made use of salvation registers and portrait lineages in order to appeal to the populace. When Rennyo was six years old, his birth mother left Honganji. It is generally agreed that she left because Rennyo’s father, Zonnyo, had married Nyoen-ni (d. 1460), the daughter of the lord of the Ebina clan, who was a close associate of the Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408). It is said that Rennyo’s mother left the following words to the boy before leaving: “I beg you to restore 7  Honpukuji yuraiki, “A Record of Hompukuji’s History,” Shusei, p. 661. 8  Inoue Toshio, “Honganji” (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1966) 102, 149.

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the tradition of [Shinran] Shōnin during your lifetime.”9 His mother both lamented the derelict state of Honganji and entrusted Rennyo with the revival of Shinshū, so as to focus on the salvation of women and the weak. It is further recorded that Rennyo, inspired by his mother’s words, at the age of fifteen pledged to restore the Shinshū tradition, saying, “During my lifetime, I pledge to propagate the tradition of [Shinran] Shōnin everywhere.”10 2

Youth and Clerical Training

Rennyo received his ordination to become a Buddhist priest at Shōren’in11 in Kyoto in the summer of Eikyō 3 (1431), taking the name Kenju as his priestly name ( jitsumyō) and Rennyo as his Dharma name (hōmyō). Honganji was still floundering in financial difficulties, but, although there were often shortages of food and clothing, Rennyo diligently practiced and studied Buddhism. Among Rennyo’s teachers, Kyōgaku (1395–1473), [abbot] of Daijōin at Kōfukuji in Nara, is very famous. Kyōgaku was very close to Rennyo’s father, because Kyōgaku’s mother, Shōrin (d. 1442), grew up within the Honganji complex in Ōtani, Kyoto.12 Rennyo was later able to obtain land in Yoshizaki in Echizen Province thanks to his connections to Kyōgaku. Rennyo also studied the Jōdoshin school teachings with the help of his father and his uncle Kūkaku (fifteenth century).13 In addition to studying Buddhism, in Eikyō 6 (1434), when Rennyo was twenty years old, he took his father’s place at Honganji as manuscript copier of Shinshū scriptures. Currently, the manuscripts of Shinshū scriptures in table 2.1 are those he made before his succession to the office of the abbot of Honganji.14 Of all the manuscripts he copied, Tannishō is considered the most significant. Although the exact date of this manuscript is not known, Furuta Takehiko, a modern historian, suggests that the text was copied when Rennyo was forty-three or forty-four years old and the colophon was written separately

9  Rennyo Shonin itokuki, SSZ 3.870. 10  Rennyo Shonin itokuki, SSZ 3.871. 11  The Shōren’in was the same temple where Shinran was ordained. 12  See the first fascicle of Kyōkaku’s diary, Kyōgaku shiyōshō, at Zoku gunsho ruijū (Tokyo: 1971). 13  Miura Shūkō “Hōnen to Rennyo,” in Hayashiya Tatsusaburō and Asao Naohiro, ed., Shinpen Rekishi to Jinbutsu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten—Iwanami bunko 33–166–2, 1990), 205. 14  Rennyo shikigoshū, SSS 2.374–378.

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608 table 2.1

Yasutomi Shinshū scriptures copied by Rennyo

Year

Age

Text

Author

Jōdo monruiju shō Sanjō wasan Jōdo shin’yōshō Kudenshō Nenbutsu ōjō yōgishō Gose monogatari Jōdo shin’yōshō Gutokushō Anjinketsujōshō Mattōshō Gensō ekō kikigaki Sanjō wasan Nyonin ōjō kikigaki Godenshō Kyōgyōshinshō Godenshō Sanjō wasan Ojōyōshū (nobegaki) Kyōgyōshinshō (nobegaki) Bokie kotoba Saiyōshō Jimyōshō

Shinran Shinran Zonkaku Kakunyo Hōnen Ryūkan Zonkaku Shinran unknown Shinran unknown Shinran Zonkaku Kakunyo Shinran Kakunyo Shinran Genshin Shinran Jūkaku Kakunyo Zonkaku

Eikyō 6 Eikyō 8 Eikyō 10

(1434) (1436) (1438)

20 22 24

Eikyō 11

(1439)

25

Kakitsu 1 Bun’an 3 Bun’an 4

(1441) (1446) (1447)

27 32 33

Bun’an 5 Bun’an 6

(1448) (1449)

34 35

Hōtoku 1 Hōtoku 2

(1449) (1450)

35 36

Kyōtoku 2 Kyōtoku 3

(1453) (1454)

39 40

Kyōtoku 4 Kōshō 3

(1455) (1457)

41 43

when he was approximately sixty-five.15 Although Rennyo was a priest in the lineage of Honganji, the Tannishō was transmitted within the lineage of Yuien (1222–1288), one of Shinran’s direct disciples. Although Kakunyo’s writings include some direct quotes from the Tannishō and, based on an account in volume 3 of the Bokie kotoba, we know that Kakunyo and Yuien did indeed know each other, Kakunyo does not mention Yuien or the Tannishō in his own writings. Thus, from the standpoint of the Kakunyo-Rennyo line, the Tannishō was identified with a competing Shinshū lineage, and prevailing custom rendered it almost unthinkable for a religious leader to give public recognition to a text central to a different lineage by copying it and distributing it among 15  Furuta Takehiko, Shinran shisō (Tokyo: Fusanbō, 1975), 433–434.

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its own followers. Apparently Rennyo did not adhere to such old customs; he adopted the Tannishō as a significant scripture revealing the fundamental teachings of the Jōdoshin school. Although Rennyo’s tradition also originated in Shinran, his lineage was transmitted through the blood lines of Kakunyo and Zonkaku, he nevertheless felt free to absorb teachings contained in the scriptures of other lineages of the Pure Land tradition to nurture his own faith and the faith of others. Another important influence in Rennyo’s life was his travels. According to the Rennyo Shōnin goichigoki, during his early years Rennyo traveled twice to the eastern provinces with his father, following in the footsteps of the founding master Shinran, first in Bun’an 4 (1447) when he was thirty-three and then in Hōtoku 1 (1449) when he was thirty-five years old.16 Especially during his first journey, he traveled long distances on foot and his sandals cut into his feet, leaving permanent scars.17 His trips to the eastern regions were, however, not simply pilgrimages tracing Shinran’s legacy. They were also tours of inspection. Rennyo planned to investigate new areas in which to propagate the teachings, to examine the actual conditions of Shinshū in the eastern regions. Although in his early days Rennyo was so poor that he reputedly “read the scriptures by the moonlight,”18 until his succession to the office of chief abbot he lived contentedly in his lowly positions within Honganji. In Kakitsu 1 (1441), at the age of twenty-seven, Rennyo married Nyoryō, daughter of Taira no Sadafusa of the Ise clan. Although Rennyo would eventually marry five women, it was with Nyoryō that he had his first four sons and three daughters. 3

Birth of an Abbot and Propagator

Rennyo’s father died in Chōroku 1 (1457), when Rennyo was forty-three. Zonnyo was survived by two sons, four daughters, and his wife, Nyoen. Nyoen (or Nyoen’ni) hoped that her elder son, Ōgen (also Renshō, 1433–1503) would be appointed an abbot of Honganji. However, Nyojō (1412–1460), a brother of Zonnyo and the head priest of Zuisenji in the town of Inami, strongly supported Rennyo as the candidate. Because of this support Rennyo became the eighth Dharma Master (hossu) of Honganji’s office as chief abbot.

16  Rennyo Shōnin goichigoki 152, SSS 2.529. 17  Kikigaki 301, SSZ 3.608. 18  Ibid. 145, SSZ 3.567.

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Yasutomi

Rennyo’s first act as abbot was to remodel the Honganji offices, removing the upper seating level in the chamber of the Custodian [of the Founder’s Shrine] (rusushiki) and thereby placing all seats at the same common level. While working as his father’s assistant, he had realized that the seating arrangement was divisive, creating a false sense of “upper” and “lower” offices. Rennyo’s remodeling was clearly based on Shinran’s statement, “I, Shinran, have no disciples” (Tannishō 6). In Shinshū, faith (shinjin) is considered a virtue transferred from the Tathāgata Amida; therefore all are considered equal. Rennyo not only understood this ideal, he put it into practice in his everyday life. He expressed this understanding in a radical way with the phrase, “I cast away myself.” I cast away myself, take a seat at the common level [hiraza], and sit equally together [dōza]. That is because [Shinran] shōnin said, “Within the four oceans, persons of shinjin are all brothers and sisters.” I too want to live in accordance with these words. By sitting together, I hope we might clarify what is not clear and more easily attain faith [shin].19 Thus is it recorded in the Honganji sahō no shidai (An Outline of the Rituals and Practices of Honganji) that Rennyo ordered all seats be made level because the dissemination of the Buddha Dharma to all people “cannot be done if you behave like a superior person [jōrō].”20 Physically removing the upper seats seems easy enough, but changing a long-held Honganji custom would be impossible without Rennyo’s strong resolve to “cast away” himself. Rennyo continued his active propagation of Shinshū teaching in a variety of regions, particularly Ōmi, Settsu, and Mikawa Provinces. These activities are known from physical evidence such as his handwritten notes on the reverse sides (uragaki) of myōgō scrolls, portraits, and copies of the pictorial biography (eden) of Shinran.21 In order to bring Shinran’s teaching of nenbutsu salvation to the hearts of people in this politically unstable period, Rennyo first had to root out the unorthodox beliefs deeply held by many. To accomplish this, he studied not only the orthodox teachings of Shinran but also unorthodox traditions. Between the ages of fifteen and forty-three, Rennyo occupied only lowly positions within Honganji, and while this must have been a difficult period for him, it seems to have been also very productive. Later on as chief abbot, his main concern

19  K  ūzenki 93, RSG 35–36; Kikigaki 40, SSZ 3.543. 20  H  onganji sahō no shidai 172, RSG, 237. 21  Rennyo uragakishū, SSS 2.379–407.

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would be how to make the teachings he learned during this period easily understandable to ordinary people. After becoming chief abbot, Rennyo began his propagation throughout Ōmi Province at the invitation of Ōmi residents, such as Dōsai (1399–1488) of Kanegamori. He distributed ten-character myōgō scrolls written in gold ink on dark blue paper as honzon (main objects of worship) to be enshrined at the practice halls of his followers. Rennyo first gave one of these scrolls to Zenka in the Yamada village of Kurita-gun in the additional third month (uru’u sangatsu) of Chōroku 2 (1458), one year after becoming abbot.22 Until this time, the Jōdoshin school followers had simply used their own individual honzon, which included various types of objects. Many people used the six-character myōgō scroll (na-mu-a-mi-da-hutsu) or the nine-character myōgō scroll (na-mu-fu-ka-shi-gi-kō-nyo-rai) in various scripts and formats. For others, the kōmyō honzon (myōgō scroll with the rays of light in the background) were often used. Some followers enshrined portraits or wooden statues, or pursued salvation registers and portrait lineages. Rennyo’s choice of the ten-character myōgō (ki-myo-jin-jip-pō-mu-ge-kō-nyo -rai) was based in his belief that the genuine honzon of Shinshū is the myōgō scroll. He maintained that “[As the object of worship,] a portrait [ezō] is preferable to a wooden statue, and a myōgō scroll is preferable to a portrait,”23 as an expression of orthodoxy, because use of myōgō scrolls follows the spirit of the founding master Shinran and is in accordance with Kakunyo’s instructions.24 At about this time, at the request of Dōsai, Rennyo began writing his Shōshinge tai’i (An Outline of the Shōshinge),25 a commentary the Shōshinge, a verse section from Shinran’s Kyōgyōshinshō. During this same period he also began writing the Letters, by which he sought to transmit Shinran’s teaching to the common people. Although this method of dissemination is unique to Rennyo, the origin of Letters is related to the genre of medieval literature called kanahōgo commonly used by the founders of new Buddhist groups during the Kamakura period (1192–1333). Kanahōgo are collections of “Dharma messages” (hōgo), usually written on a single sheet of paper, in which Buddhist teachers concisely explain lofty doctrinal principles in colloquial Japanese; they are written in the mixed kana and kanji scripts, which are more easily understood by the common people than the Chinese-syntax kanbun, which are written for the professional clergy. Shinran wrote quite a few such Dharma messages 22  Ibid., 379. 23  Kikigaki 69, SSZ 3.549. 24  See Kakunyo’s Gaijashō 2, SSZ 3.66–67. 25  Rennyo’s Shōshinge tai’i is at SSZ 3.385.

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Yasutomi

in letters (shōsoku) to his followers in the eastern provinces after he returned to Kyoto. Rennyo himself made a copy of a collection of Shinran’s letters, the Mattōshō (Lamp for the Latter Age), in the second month of Bun’an 4 (1447).26 Rennyo’s Letters were undoubtedly inspired by Shinran’s letters.27 Rennyo’s use of Letters was, however, somewhat different from that of Shinran’s correspondence with distant followers. Rennyo Letters used as a method of teaching in combination with direct oral propagation. As is known from the popularity of a style manual for letter writing, the teikin ōrai, written during the Nambokuchō (1336–1392) and early Muromachi periods, many people were learning to read and write at this time. The Letters thus became a most fitting media for propagation. Rennyo’s restoration of the Jōdoshin school tradition greatly depended on his letter writing. Shinran’s letters provided the model, and the master’s other writings influenced the content and expression found in Rennyo’s Letters. Particularly the Anjinketsujōshō (On Establishing the Settled Mind) contributed to Rennyo’s thought, as well as the critical spirit of the Tannishō, the doctrinal significance of which was discovered by Rennyo. Further studies are necessary for an understanding of Rennyo’s process of letter writing.28 Rennyo himself was well aware of the significance of Letters for the Shinshū tradition. For example: These Letters are the mirror for the Birth of ordinary sentient beings. There are those who think that I attempt to establish a [new] teaching with these letters, but this is a great misunderstanding.29 And elsewhere: The holy teachings [shōgyō] are [often] read in wrong ways and [expressions] are not always fully understandable. As for the Letters, however, people do not make any mistakes reading them.30 There is little doubt that Rennyo’s Letters played an irreplaceable role in the spread of Shinran’s teachings throughout society during this period of civil war. 26  Rennyo shikigoshū, SSS 2.375. 27  See the opening essay by Katada Osamu in SSS 2.9–45. 28  Hosokawa Gyōshin, “Shinshū chūkō no shigan: tokuni Rennyo no Honganji saikō ni tsuite” (The wish to restore Shinshū: On Rennyo’s reestablishing of Honganji), Ōtani gakuhō 48–3 (January 1969), 6. 29  Rennyo Shonin ichigoki 112, SSS 2.453; Kikigaki, 177, SSZ 3.573–574; RSG 97. 30  Mukashi monogatariki 8, RSG 252; Kikigaki, 53, SSZ 3.546, SSS 2.611.

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Breaking Old Customs and Conflicts with the Established Powers

Rennyo’s propagation created large communities of Shin followers around Shigagun and Yasu-gun in Ōmi Province. Concurrently, Rennyo carried out bold iconoclastic actions: “[he burned] the objects of worship and other articles not in accordance with the tradition [to heat the water] whenever he took a bath” (Kikigaki, 221); he created and distributed the ten-character myōgō scroll known as the mugekō honzon (object of worship of unhindered light); and he promoted the exclusive practice of nenbutsu and dismissed all others as mere “sundry practices.” In Kanshō 2 (1461) Rennyo officiated the two-hundredth memorial service of the founding master Shinran at Ōtani Honganji established by Kakunyo in the eastern quarter of Kyoto. The middle day of the service was scheduled to be on the twenty-eighth of the eleventh month, which is Shinran’s memorial day. The service was a great success, with crowds of people said to have gathered from far and near; the previously declining Honganji was beginning to see signs of its future prosperity. However, its rising popularity strongly provoked the priests of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei. On the eighth day of the first month in Kanshō 6 (1465) the priests of Mount Hiei assembled at the Western Pagoda to discuss the indictments against Honganji and adopted a resolution to destroy the temple. On the ninth day of the first month—the day after the resolution passed—the priests of Mount Hiei attacked the Ōtani Honganji with approximately 150 armed men. This incident was the first direct confrontation between Honganji and forces from the so-called exoteric-esoteric Buddhist establishment against the followers of Shinshū. Rennyo escaped unharmed and eventually found his way to the Kanegamori community in Ōmi Province, where he took up residence. However, the forces of the Mount Hiei were not satisfied with the destruction of the Honganji edifice in the capital. Their army moved on to Kanegamori on the twenty-third of the third month and attacked Rennyo’s followers defending Kanegamori. The resistance forces (ikki) of Rennyo’s followers retreated at his order, but the next day the Hiei forces also attacked Akanoi, where a stronghold of Rennyo’s followers gathered near Kanegamori.31 This persecution of Rennyo’s followers by Mount Hiei in 1465 is called the Kanshō persecution [of the Dharma] (Kanshō no hōnan). As the result of the Kanshō persecution, not only did Rennyo lose the Ōtani Honganji, the base of his propagation, but his activities in Ōmi Province 31  From a section of the Honpukuji yuraiki entitled “Ōtani goryū hakyaku no koto,” at SSS 2.665–669.

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ended as well. He could only continue by moving from Kyoto to Settsu, then Kawachi Provinces. At this time, the regions surrounding Kyoto were fractured into many small autonomous powers. The Kitabatake clan had established its stronghold in Ise Province and had strong ties to the eastern provinces via Pacific sea routes. In Ōmi Province the Rokkaku clan, a branch of the Sasaki clan, the provincial governors (shugo) of the area, had established an autonomous domain at the southern shore of Lake Biwa. In northern Ōmi the Asai clan, subjects of the Kyōgoku clan, which itself belonged to the Sasaki clan, had similarly established its autonomous domain. In the midst of these small domains in the western provinces, governed by the regional powers, Honganji would develop into an independent religious power adapting to local conditions as necessary, eventually with significant political implications. In the second month of Ōnin 1 (1467) Enryakuji pardoned Honganji and reinstated it as a branch temple within its own institution. Rennyo boldly took the statue of Shinran, originally enshrined at Honganji but removed after Honganji’s desruction to Annyōji in Kurita-gun, Ōmi Province, and moved it to Honpukuji in Katada, at the foot of Mount Hiei. In the same year the warlords Hatakeyama Yoshinari (d. 1490) and Hatakeyama Masanaga (1442–1493) began fighting at the forest of Goryō in Kyoto, a battle that eventually developed into the great Ōnin War (Ōnin no tairan). Society was thrown into confusion. In Katada, to the east of the capital, the people controlled the thriving fishing and sailing business on Lake Biwa. In this region lived a Shinshū follower named Hōjū (1396–1479), whose family had become affiliated with Honganji during the time of Rennyo’s grandfather, Gyōnyo. Rennyo frequently visited the homes of Shinshū believers in the Katada area to propagate the teaching, and Hōjū would support this effort by organizing large groups of Shinshū followers at his practice hall. During the uprising in Kanegamori at the time of the Kanshō persecution, many in the Katada community had fought for Rennyo and he regarded them as the most trusted of Shinshū followers. Even after the persecution, skirmishes against Shin followers by the Hiei priests continued, despite the Muromachi bakufu’s attempts to stop them. In order to avoid further confrontation, Rennyo ordered his followers to halt the uprisings against the forces of Mount Hiei. Hōjū acted as a negotiator between the two sides and played no small role in the peace that was finally achieved between Hiei and Honganji. During the negotiation at Enryakuji, Hōjū brought a mugekō honzon scroll and, hanging it on the pillar in front of the Konponchūdō (the main assembly hall), he explained its origin and the teaching of the Jōdoshin school in a dignified manner. The Hiei priests, however, made no response to his doctrinal presentation, perhaps because they had already been promised the considerable

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sum of eighty kanmon of cash they had requested as compensation. The Tendai priests attending the meeting concluded the following: In every country and province, all kinds of people, including the most ignoble, carelessly handle this object of worship. The decision of the three [main] temples [of Enryakuji] should not be disregarded. Therefore, from now on, the use of [this object of worship] should be strictly banned. However, this [particular] object of worship now displayed is permitted.32 In Shinshū lore, the object of worship brought by Hōjū is known as the tozan myōgō, or “the scroll of the Sacred Name that went up to Mount [Hiei].” However, on the ninth day of the first month of Ōnin 2 (1468) a group of Katada people attacked a ship chartered by Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–1490). The authorities ordered Mount Hiei, which oversaw the Katada area, to take disciplinary action against the Katada people, triggering a harsh response. In the incident known as the great suppression of Katada (Katada ozeme), the entire township of Katada was burned to ashes during a five-day assault by the forces of Enryakuji. Again escaping danger, in Bunmei 1 (1469) Rennyo moved to the Chikamatsu region of Omi, and with the permission of Miidera (Onjōji) he built a temple that he named Kenshōji. There he enshrined the statue of Shinran. Rennyo could now perhaps breathe more easily, since Miidera tended to act as a counterforce against the powers of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei. It was the only temple in Ōmi with which the forces of Mount Hiei could not interfere. 5

Move to Yoshizaki

Over the next few years the Ōnin Wars intensified and Kyoto found itself the center of the armed confrontations, resulting in the destruction of the greater part of the city. Buddhist temples in and around Kyoto were drawn into the conflict and many people fled the capital, including religious leaders such as the well-known Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481). Rennyo had no choice but to suspend his plan to return to the original site of Honganji in the Ōtani section of Kyoto. Looking for a fresh start, in the fourth month of Bunmei 3 (1471) Rennyo decided to move to Yoshizaki in Echizen Province in the Hokuriku region. It 32  Honpukuji yuraiki, SSS 2.668.

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is not clear why he selected this particular geographical site, but of the many different theories, the following three are most compelling.33 1. Members of the Honganji clan, such as his uncle Nyojō, had already established a foundation in this area and the nenbutsu teaching had already become popular there. 2. Rennyo was personally close to Asakura Takakage (1428–1481), the warlord governing Echizen. 3. Kyōgaku at Kōfukuji in Nara owned estates (shōen) in this area, and Rennyo was promised support from him. In the seventh month of Bunmei 3 (1471) Rennyo obtained a piece of land in Yoshizaki and built a temple on top of the promontory that juts out into Lake Kitagata. From his letters, we know that his propagation activities soon expanded into communities in the Shin’etsu and Ōshū regions as well, and by the next year pilgrims from all over the country began visiting Yoshizaki. Rennyo’s new center at Yoshizaki soon developed into a large-scale religious township. 6

Institutional Expansion at Yoshizaki

Records suggest that as a popular leader, Rennyo made great efforts to capture people’s hearts and paid careful attention to their needs. From his clothing and food to his manner of speaking, he consciously tried to become friendly with people and accept them as equals, and this approach seems to have further strengthened his religious charisma. Rennyo’s stay at Yoshizaki lasted only four years, yet activities during that period won him everlasting fame in the history of Jōdoshinshū. It is thus accepted today that a new tradition of Honganji was born at this time. Let us examine four aspects of Rennyo’s effort to created this new tradition during his Yoshizaki period. 6.1 Distribution of Six-Character Myōgō Scrolls As was mentioned earlier Rennyo began distributing six character myōgō scrolls as the main object of worship (honzon). Previously he had used the tencharacter myōgō scroll, ki-myo-jin-jip-pō-mu-ge-kō-nyo-rai, but, because the Mount Hiei forces alleged that Rennyo was establishing a new school called mugekō, he changed to the more widely accepted six-character sacred phrase na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu. Many of these were written by Rennyo himself, and he 33  See Sasaki Yoshio, Rennyo Shōnin-den no kenkyū (Kyoto: Chūgai Shuppan, 1926), 66–68; Tanishita Kazumu, “Rennyo Shōnin no Yoshizaki senkyō ni tsuite,” Rekishi Chiri 62–4 (1933), 313–328; and Minamoto Ryōen, Rennyo (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1993), 178.

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produced a massive number of six-character myōgō scrolls beginning from this period.34 As new Shinshū groups formed in “practice halls” or dōjō throughout the country, Rennyo’s myōgō scrolls were often at their center. 6.2 Propagation by Letters Rennyo also wrote many instructional letters (Letters) to guide his followers, especially after he moved to Yoshizaki. Living in the midst of war, people sought genuine religious peace of mind, and Rennyo responded to their needs by expounded the simple message that “the afterlife [in the Pure Land] is indeed the blissful result in eternity.”35 During his stay in Yoshizaki, Rennyo wrote seventy-eight Letters, approximately half of the 158 extant dated letters that he produced over his lifetime. Clearly, Rennyo had transformed his method of propagation from his oral preaching in Ōmi Province to dissemination by writing. It is believed that it was primarily through this propagation with Letters that Rennyo’s religious organization rapidly expanded in the Hokuriku region. In the Letters during his early Yoshizaki period, he explained such fundamental Shinshū concepts as the teachings that faith is essential (shinjin ihon) and the cause of Birth is accomplished in everyday life (heizei gōjō).36 In the latter part of this period, however, his emphasis shifted to criticizing his followers for their unorthodox understandings and secretive practices (hiji bōmon), such as “entrusting through donation” (semotsu danomi) and “taking refuge in a teacher” (chishiki kimyō), and he admonished them against anti-social activities, which had become increasingly visible as their numbers grew.37

34  The following conversation is recorded from this period: “Once when Rennyo said, ‘There is no one who has written myōgō more than I,’ Kyōmonbō replied, ‘Very few people have done it even within the three nations [of India, China, and Japan].’ Rennyo responded, ‘That may be true.’ Then Kyōmonbō replied, ‘That is most wonderful.’” Kūzenki 35, RSG, 13; Rennyo Shōnin goichigoki 76, SSS 2.519. 35  Letter 1.10, eleventh day, ninth month, Bunmei 5 [1473], Rogers, Rennyo, 161, SSZ 3.417. 36  These two doctrines are typical of the religious attitude that typifies Shinshū thought then and now, emphasizing the importance of taking an active role in the creation of one’s religious identity. Shinjin ihon expresses the doctrine that the attainment of shinjin is of paramount importance in the lifetime of any Shinshū believer. Heizei gōjō expresses the doctrine that one should aim to accomplish the path itself within this lifetime. 37  The term hiji bōmon refers to unorthodox belief communities existing within Shinshū. Semotsu danomi points to unethical practices by priests who solicited money or other forms of compensation for the performance of rituals, healing, and magic tricks. The phrase chishiki kimyō refers to extreme devotion to one’s teacher to a point considered unhealthy.

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6.3 Formation of Local Congregational Meetings (kō, yoriai) As the social and religious foundation of Shinshū, local congregational meetings, or kō, were central in nurturing followers’ faith (shinjin). These meetings derive from aristocratic Buddhist services at the great temples and the imperial court from the early Heian period (794–1192), such as the food offering service (itsukie), the eight lecture meetings on the Lotus Sutra (hokke hakkō), and the lecture meeting on the Saishōkyō or Sutra of the Golden Light (saishōe). With the growing popularity of the Pure Land teachings, over time these meetings spread among the common people, providing religious rituals unobtainable elsewhere. The meetings served a broad variety of functions. They unitied people both here and in the afterlife through fervent pledges as in the twenty-five samadhi meetings (nijūgozanmai kō) from the time of Genshin (942–1017). They provided funeral rituals, occasions for group pilgrimages to spiritual sites, and a variety of recreational activities. Many later developed into financial cooperatives called tanomoshikō, or “trustworthy meetings.” Despite their miscellaneous functions, they all developed spontaneously and shared a grass-roots and communitarian character. Among Japanese religions, the organizational structure of Honganji developed by Rennyo was unique in maximally utilizing the functions and organization of these local congregational meetings. In the Jōdoshin school, the congregational meeting was the social center, providing for both the material and spiritual needs of its members, especially during the medieval and early-modern periods. It is not clear exactly when the Shinshū adopted the congregational meeting system, but it is known that the followers of Katada Honpukuji organized one of the first of such groups. During the Bunmei era (1469–1487) such gatherings, called yoriai, developed vigorously in the villages of the Hokuriku region in conjunction with the rapid establishment of semiautonomous unified villages (sō) and were occasions when literate village leaders would read the one of Rennyo’s Letters.38 Following Rennyo’s guidelines, the leaders of these gatherings often served as the cultural and social councilors of their communities. 6.4 Standardization of Rituals Using the Shōshinge and Wasan Rennyo also worked to reform the ritual practices of his school so that Shinran’s teaching could become a part of the followers’ everyday lives. To do this, he 38  Rennyo is quoted as saying, “If priests, elders, and heads [of villages] seriously took refuge in the Buddha Dharma, all other people would also become familiar with the teaching.” Eigenki 6, RSG 260.

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paid particular attention to two of Shinran’s compositions: the Shōshinge section in the chapter on Practice in the Kyōgyōshinshō, and three of his Wasan ( Jōdo Wasan, Kōsō wasan, and Shōzōmatsu Wasan) collections, which are hymns composed in Japanese. In Bunmei 5 (1473) Rennyo published a woodblock print edition of the Shōshinge and the three collections of Wasan in four volumes and made them the basis of the Honganji ritual chanting service. A note on the Honganji rituals comments on this change: After Rennyo Shōnin moved down to Yoshizaki in Echizen Province and adopted the ritual of reciting the six [Wasan] following the nenbutsu, he stopped the ritual of Rokuji raisan. Priests of the assembly hall at Zuisenji also remember that they [began to] practice the recitation of six Wasan at that time.39 The Rokuji raisan, which is a ritual recitation of Shandao’s Ōjōraisan six times per day, was performed at Honganji prior to Rennyo in line with the liturgical tradition established by Hōnen. Changing this service to the recitation of Shinran’s Shōshinge and Wasan, he shifted the focus to the words of Shinran, emphasizing the sectarian independence of Honganji from all other Jōdo or Pure Land schools based in the Hōnen lineage. By having this printed while in Yoshizaki, he at once established a standard liturgy unique to the Honganji organization. 7

Yoshizaki as a Religious Township and Conflict with Authorities

Rennyo’s propagation received overwhelming support from the Hokuriku populace, and the number of visitors to Yoshizaki increased rapidly. Rennyo made note of this development in one of his Letters: Everyone knows that followers of our sect—priests and laypeople, men and women—flock to the mountain in pilgrimage, particularly from the seven provinces of Kaga, Etchū, Noto, Echigo, Shinano, Dewa, and Ōshū. This is extraordinary for the last age and appears to signal something.40

39  H  onganji saho no shidai 46, RSG, 194. 40  Letters 1.7, SSZ 3.411; Rogers, 150.

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In Yoshizaki, many houses were built as residences for local priests and followers. These residences, called taya, also provided lodging for pilgrims. The area was gradually developing into a township. The prosperity of Yoshizaki area, however, became a source of conflict with the two preexisting powers in the area: the Buddhist establishment and the warlord government. The former consisted of the powerful religious establishments of Heisenji and Toyowaraji (also Toyoharaji), whose practices were centered in the traditional worship of nearby Mount Hakusan. They grew increasingly concerned about Rennyo’s rapidly expanding organization and had essentially the same fears as those that had emanated from Enyakuji on Mount Hiei regarding Rennyo’s activites in Ōmi Province. The second power structure to take notice were provincial warlords, especially the Kai clan, which was warring with the Asakura clan to control the Echizen region. The Kai grew increasingly ambitious to obtain control of the prosperous Yoshizaki area. The sense of crisis intensified during the first month of Bunmei 5 (1473). Sensing imminent danger, Shinshū followers in Yoshizaki began to fortify the town to protect it from invading enemies. Rennyo was not happy to see his followers preparing an uprising, and he began writing Letters concerning his followers’ rules of conduct (okite no ofumi) during the ninth month of Bunmei 5 (1473), approximately two and half years after he began propagating in Yoshizaki. The main issues in these letters are as follows: 1. Do not belittle the various kami shrines and the teachings of other schools (including the folk practices of avoiding things that are impure and inauspicious [monoimi]). 2. Never slight the provincial governors (shugo) and local land stewards ( jitō). 3. Firmly hold the faith (shinjin) of Other-Power within your own heart deeply and determinedly. Despite Rennyo’s orders, his followers began acting recklessly against these powers. Troubled, Rennyo moved to Chōshōji in Fujishima in Bunmei 5 and began preparations to return to Kyoto. However, the priests and followers in the taya residences in Yoshizaki forcefully brought the reluctant Rennyo back to Yoshizaki. The administrators of the temples in Hakusan and Tateyama had allied themselves either with the provincial governors and local land stewards or with warrior bands (rōnin) and were preparing to stop the further expansion of Honganji influence in the area. Worried about the situation, Rennyo urged his followers to restrain themselves to avoid creating friction with the authorites, using the words “laws of the state” (ōbō) and “laws (Dharma) of the Buddha” (buppō) together—traditional phrasing that implies cooperation with civil

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authorities—for the first time in a Letter issued in 1474.41 And just as the tension between Rennyo’s followers and the local powers in Yoshizaki escalated, Honganji followers in Kaga Province also faced a crisis situation. In Kaga, the followers of the Takada lineage of the Shinshū, who had begun propagating Shinshū even before Rennyo’s time and who were no less Dharma descendants of Shinran, felt alarmed by the expansion of Rennyo’s religious organization and began suppressing his followers in armed conflicts by allying with the governor, Togashi Kōchiyo (d. 1474). In order to prevent counter-uprisings by his followers, Rennyo wrote the following restraining order: Do not slight the provincial military governors and local land stewards, claiming that you have attained faith; without fail meet your public obligations [kuji] in full…. Besides this, in particular, take the laws of the state as your outer aspect, store Other-Power faith deep in your hearts, and take [the principles of] humanity and justice [ jingi] as essential.42 Shinshū teaching does not require its followers to observe the usual Buddhist precepts. Therefore Kakunyo, third abbot of Honganji, adopted a system promoting the five virtues (gojō) of the mundane world as rules of conduct for the school.43 Based on this, Rennyo instructed his followers to “take the laws of the state as authoritative” (ōbō ihon)44 and advised them to uphold secular laws and not to confront the secular powers.45 Nevertheless, conflicts between Honganji followers and the secular powers grew worse. On the twenty-eighth of the third month, Bunmei 6 (1474), the main hall of the temple in Yoshizaki was completely destroyed by an act of arson. In the seventh month the followers in Kaga Province rose in arms together with Togashi Masachika (1455–1488), an older brother of Togashi Kōchiyo who was competing with Kochiyo for the governership of the province. The allied forces of Masachika and the Honganji followers destroyed the forces of Kōchiyo and 41  L etters 2.10, dated the thirteenth day, fifth month, Bunmei 6 (1474). 42  L etters 2.6, dated the seventeenth day, second month, Bunmei 6 [1474], SSZ 3.434; Rogers, 180. 43  Gaijashō 3, SSZ 3.67–68. The five are humanity, righteousness, decorum, wisdom, and faith. 44  Letters 3.12 and 13, SSZ 3.472, 473; Rogers, 215. 45  In a recent lecture, Professor Okuwa Hitoshi has offered a new perspective on Rennyo’s sense of secular law which differs from the usual view. According to Okuwa, Rennyo’s ōbō is not that of rulers, but daihō (great law) of people which was established as a self-governing rule for their community. See “Rennyo Shonin no ōbō” (Higashi Honganji Shuppanbu, 1997), 20–21.

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the Takada followers. Masachika took the governorship of Kaga, and Honganji followers were allowed to practice freely. This peace arrangement was shortlived, however. In the following year, Bunmei 7 (1475), a confrontation arose between Masachika and the Honganji members. Facing another crisis, Rennyo determined more rules of conduct (okite) and publicized them broadly among his followers. However, one of Rennyo’s most trusted followers, Rensō (d. 1499), schemed against the master’s wishes and incited the hot-blooded followers to revolt. 8

Yamashina Honganji

After wave after wave of uprisings, the spiritual decline of Yoshizaki led Rennyo to leave Yoshizaki, taking with him his third son, Renkō (1450–1531). He traveled first to Obama in Wakasa Province by boat, and then continued through Tanba and Settsu Provinces, eventually to settle at Deguchi in Kawachi Province. In Deguchi village, Rennyo’s follower Kōzen (d. 1520), a priest from Iwami Province, offered Rennyo lodging in his own home. Rennyo did not wait a day to begin new propagational activities, and by the end of Bunmei 8 (1476) he had already built temples in Sakai and Tonda, both in Settsu Province. It is believed that because of Rennyo’s presence, the number of Shinshū followers rapidly increased. However, the new followers did not always understand Shinshū faith, and many retained unorthodox practices. Even in Deguchi, Rennyo had to battle this problem. The many expressions of frustration found in the Letters of this period, such as “this is utterly deplorable” (asamashi asamashi) or “this is absurd” (gongo dōdan no shidai),46 reflect Rennyo’s frustration with this situation. But what kind of unorthodox practices were they? Here are some references to this problem in Rennyo’s Letters: “Thieflike” Faith (monotori shinjin): … with such views, [these people] go around to visit Shinshū followers, read scriptures to propagate the teaching, and, above all, without permission they falsely call themselves representatives of the head temple [Honganji], using flattering and untrue words to make a living by stealing goods from [the followers].47

46  The phrase gongo dōdan no shidai is particularly common; for example, see RSI, 274, 290, 310, 313, 320. 47  Letters (Jogai), third month, Bunmei 9 [1477], RSI, 255.

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Teaching Outside the Orthodox Transmission: [These people] propagate the teaching using strange words and phrases that are not our transmitted doctrine. This should not be permitted.48 Secret Teachings (hiji bōmon): Sometime in Bunmei 7 or 8, Seichin Bizen, a resident of Nodera in Mikawa Province, gave a secret teaching [hiji bōmon] to Yasuda Kazunosuke, a son of Jōken of Kōshu in Ise Province. This transmission is secretly conveyed in Yoshizaki.49 Rennyo encountered these kinds of unorthodox practices in Deguchi. However, the existence of unorthodox interpretations and practices was, in a sense, proof that Shinshū spirituality was at least still alive. If Rennyo could first cure the diseases and defects in people’s spiritual lives, he could then lead them into healthy spiritual development. Hoping for their growth in the right direction, he continued his efforts to establish organizational bases in strategic places. Rennyo returned to the Kinai region hoping to build a new temple where he could enshrine the statue of Shinran that had been entrusted to Miidera. In other words, he intended to rebuild Honganji. Rennyo had never moved the statue to Yoshizaki, nor had he attempted to move it to his temporary residence at Deguchi or to the new temples in Sakai and Tonda. He strongly believed that the statue of Shinran belonged in Kyoto, and rebuilding the destroyed Ōtani Honganji was to be his final mission. The great war during the Ōnin and Bunmei reigns ended in 1477, when Rennyo was in Sakai. In the first month of Bunmei 10 (1478) he left Deguchi and headed to Kyoto, where people were at long last in high spirits at the prospect of reconstructing the city after the war. Rennyo was sixty-four years old, and the long-awaited reconstruction project of Honganji was now to begin. Rennyo chose Yamashina in Yamashiro Province (an area lying east of present-day Kyoto city) as the site for the new Honganji. Many reasons have been offered for his selection of Yamashina. According to one record (Itokuki), it was Dōsai of Kanegamori who recommended Yamashina.50 Modern historians also point out Rennyo’s relationship to Daigoji, which governed the village of Nomura. Whatever other circumstances there may have been, Rennyo’s vision that Honganji must be in Kyoto was the most significant reason for his selection. 48  Letters (Jogai), twenty-seventh day, seventh month, Bunmei 8 [1476], RSI, 264. 49  Letters (Jogai), first month, Bunmei 9 [1477], RSI, 269. 50   S SZ 3.875–6.

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As construction began in Bunmei 10 (1478), Rennyo moved to a hermitage in a village called Nomura in Yamashina. His third wife, Nyoshō, died in the same year. In Bunmei 12 (1480) the construction of the Founder’s Hall (Goeidō) was completed. The statue of Shinran was brought from Ōtsu, and the next year the construction of the Amida Hall (Amidadō) was completed. The entire construction project was finished in Bunmei 15 (1483), creating a huge new complex of temple buildings that far exceeded the size of the original Ōtani Honganji. Yamashina Honganji was built in three sections surrounded by three layers of protecting walls and trenches, with the third section including a “templetown” ( jinaichō) with a residential zone accommodating townsfolk. Thus a settlement for a general Shinshū community was finally established. The creation of the religious township allowed residents to enjoy an autonomous lifestyle within the city. Rennyo defined the people’s vocations variously as “services for the needs of the Buddha Dharma”51 and “services for the needs of the Tathāgata and [Shinran] Shōnin,”52 just as in Europe John Calvin (1506–1564) had introduced the idea of working ethics based in Christianity by defining work as service to God.53 9

The Final Years

The restoration of Honganji, which Rennyo had dreamed about since his days as a lowly scribe, finally came true for him at the age of sixty-nine. Followers came from all over the country to worship at the Yamashina Honganji, now so successful that it seemed an entirely different beast from the formerly destitute Ōtani Honganji. Seeing the growth of Honganji in Yamashina, other Shinshū lineages joined Rennyo’s religious organization as their leaders affiliated themselves with Rennyo, one after another. In Bunmei 13 (1481), Kyōgō (1451–1492) of Bukkōji became a disciple of Rennyo and brought many Bukkōji followers with him.54 In the following years Zenchin (1389–1465) and the lineage of Gōshōji 51  Kikigaki 162, 260, 263, at SSZ 3.570, 597, 599. 52  Kikigaki 169, 313, at SSZ 3.579, 612. 53  The early view on the resemblance between Shinshu and Protestantism would be traceable to Max Weber’s Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziolog, 3 vols. (Tübingen, Mohr 1920–1921). See Mori Ryūkichi 森龍吉 “Rennyo to Karuvan: keizai rinri o meguru Shinshū to Purotesutantizumu Tono hikakuron ni kanrenshite” (Rennyo and Calvin in Terms of a Comparative View on the Ethics of Economy between Shinshu and Protestantism), Nihon bukkyō gakkai nenpō 37 (1972), repr. Rennyo Taikei 2 (Hōzōkan, November 1996), 426–538. 54  Kyōgō, also known as Renkyō, was the twelfth abbot of Bukkōji.

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joined, and later in Meiō 2 (1493) so did Shōe (1475–1557) of Kinshokuji.55 All leaders of other established Shinshū branches, they brought with them an equal or greater number of followers as were in Rennyo’s group. In one massive charge, Rennyo’s organization expanded nationally. But with the growth of Yamashina Honganji, the increased numbers of worshippers who visited Honganji brought doctrinal problems, as many clung to unorthodox practices common to their place of origin: Meanwhile, in recent years, [some] have confused people to the extreme by spreading distorted teachings [higa bōmon] not discussed in our tradition. Others, reprimanded by local land stewards and domain holders (who are themselves entrenched in wrong views), have come to view our tradition’s true and real faith [anjin] as mistaken.56 Bracing up his old bones for fresh exertion, Rennyo remonstrated with these people, a fact that is reflected in a letter of the eleventh month of Bunmei 15 (1483), where he lists three rules of conduct (okite) to be followed by all.57 The fact was, after the construction of Yamashina Honganji, Rennyo’s Shinshū organization now faced problems of diplomacy that came with increased interest from the aristocracy and people with powerful political status. In Bunmei 12 (1480), for example, on the fourteenth of the tenth month, Hino Tomiko (1440– 1496), the wife of Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, visited the newly constructed Yamashina Honganji. Rennyo recorded the event in a letter in which he unabashedly displays his joy: Recently, Her Eminence [Hino Tomiko] visited us and inspected the Founder’s Hall (Goeidō). Such a visitation has never happened before. It does not appear to be insignificant.58 Rennyo later even describes Honganji as a prayer-offering site (chokugansho) for the prosperity of the imperial family.59 These records reveal how the association between Honganji and the powers of the bakufu and the imperial family grew closer. 55  Both Zenchin and Shōe married into the family. Shōe marrying two of Rennyo’s daughters (the first one died) and Zenchin marrying a younger sister of Jitsunyo’s wife, Nyoyū. 56  Letters 4.5, twenty-first day, eleventh month, Bunmei 14 [1482], Rogers, 226, SSZ 3.482. 57  Letters 4.6, SSZ 3.484. 58   R SI, 105–106. Dated twelfth day, eighth month, Bunmei 5 [1473]. 59   R SI, 326; dated Bunmei 13 [1481]; Rennyo Shonin Itokuki, SSZ 3.876–7.

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Does this suggest that Rennyo had developed a craving for power? Or was he rather simply attempting to secure peace and prosperity for Honganji and his followers by smoothing relationships with the established powers? Modern historians often note that because of these political maneuvers, Rennyo was allowed to build Yamashina Honganji without interference by Mount Hiei only ten years after the Ōtani Honganji had been destroyed during the Kanshō persecution. Meanwhile, at about the time the construction of Yamashina Honganji was completed, in Kaga Province the confrontation between bands of Shinshū uprising groups (ikkō ikki) and Governor Togashi Masachika had grown critical. In Chōkyō 1 (1487) Shinshū followers once again staged an armed uprising while Masachika was in Ōmi with his army. Masachika hastily returned to his domain but was forced by the Shinshū army to commit suicide in the following year. This incident is remembered as the Chōkyō uprising (Chōkyō no ikki), when Kaga become “a country owned by Shinshū followers” (monto no mochitaru kuni). Coincident with the end of the Chōkyō uprising, in Entoku 1 (1489), Rennyo wrote a letter to his fifth son, Jitsunyo (1458–1525), granting him the office of custodian (rusushiki), thereby making him the head priest of Honganji. Jitsunyo was not a man of high intellectual caliber like his father, but Rennyo recognized that his personality was honest and trusted that Jitsunyo would protect and maintain the religious organization. In fact, Jitsunyo was to fulfill this mission very successfully. After transferring the responsibilities of temple administration to Jitsunyo, Rennyo retired to Nanden, located within the ground of the Yamashina Honganji, presumably feeling content with his accomplishments.60 Yet Rennyo’s efforts at propagation did not end with his retirement. He continued to give religious writings to his followers, adding his signature (kaō) on the reverse side (uragaki). The number of Letters sent to his followers in fact increased after his retirement. Including only the letters that are clearly dated, forty-four were written after his retirement in Entoku 1 (1489). In Meiō 5 (1496) he visited Osaka in Settsu Province. There he had the idea of building a temple as his retirement residence at the strategically important spot between the branches of the Yodo River. The temple, completed in the next year, later became Ishiyama Honganji. One may consider that the temple in Osaka was built in preparation for expansion to the western provinces. However, it is not definite that at the age of eighty-two Rennyo, was still thinking of expanding his religious organization. It seems natural that he was 60  Kūzenki 1, RSG 3. Kikigaki 164, SSZ 3.571.

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interested in Settsu Province, the gateway to the western regions, and so decided to reside in Osaka, but this area of his life requires further investigation. Rennyo had never flagged in his efforts to disseminate Shinshū teachings as he moved his base from Kyoto to Ōmi, Hokuriku, Yamashina, and then Osaka, but finally he began to feel ill in the fourth month of Meiō 7 (1498): Early in Meiō 7 (1498) he first began to feel ill…. [then] Kōken sōzu [Jitsunyo] sent him an invitation. He went to the capital [Kyoto] on the twentieth of the second month [of Meiō 8 (1499)].61 Very old now, he had perhaps originally planned to die in Osaka, but he suddenly decided to return to Yamashina Honganji.62 By the second month of Meiō 8 (1499) he realized that his days were numbered and left Osaka for Yamashina. There he spent his remaining days talking to his children and disciples and often wandered through the areas surrounded by walls and trenches. He visited the temple on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, and his time there is recorded sentimentally.63 On the nineteenth of the third month he was no longer able to eat food; and on the twenty-third his pulse became unstable. Finally, at noon on the twentyfifth, he accomplished Birth in Pure Land at the age of eighty-five as if quietly falling asleep: In the middle of the hour of the horse [noon], he lay down, placing his head to the north and facing west. His last breath reciting the nenbutsu stopped as if he had gone to sleep. He was eighty-five years old.64 The cremation was held next day; the site eventually became Rennyo’s mausoleum in Yamashina. Rennyo was given the posthumous title of Shinshōin 信証院.

61  Rennyo Shonin itokuki, SSZ 3.880–881. 62  “Fall and spring have slipped away, and it is already the middle of early summer in this seventh year of Meiō; I have grown old—I am eighty-four. This particular year, however, I have been seriously beset by illness.” Letters 4:13, Rogers, 237, SSZ 3.495. 63  “[Rennyo] visited the temple on the twenty-seventh. On the way back, he was so reluctant to part from his followers that he made his cart go backwards so that he was able to see them all [as he left].” Kūzenki 127, Gyojitsu, 45. 64  Rennyo Shonin itokuki, SSZ 3.885.

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The Dilemma of Religious Power Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto Michael Solomon Jōdo Shinshū,*,1 Japan’s largest Buddhist sect, has two main branches and two head temples: Nishi (West) Honganji and Higashi (East) Honganji.2 Located a short distance apart and in close proximity to Kyoto Station, they are not only the first historical landmarks to confront the visitor arriving by train but are among the most imposing of the many temples in the old capital city. The vast compounds of the two Honganjis are generally thronged with people. Among them, the adherents of the sect, or monto, greatly outnumber ordinary sightseers.3 The grandiose buildings and crowds of pilgrims recall the time about four hundred years ago when there was but one Honganji, whose monto followers were organized into a dedicated fighting force, and whose combined religious and temporal power was on a scale unique in Japanese history. Indeed, the division of Honganji into the present two branches was itself the price the sect had to pay for its political and military involvement. After ten years of battle, Honganji’s military power was finally broken by Oda Nobunaga’s army of national reunification in 1580. In 1602 Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, sponsored the founding of a new Honganji (Higashi Honganji) just to the east of the existing one

Source: Solomon, Michael, “The Dilemma of Religious Power. Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto,” Monumenta Nipponica 33(1) (1978): 51–65. *  The Author is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Oakland University. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Japan Foundation, which supported the research on which this article is based. An earlier version was read at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Toronto in March 1976. 1  浄土真宗, founded by Shinran 親鸞, 1173–1262, a leading disciple of Hōnen 法然, 1133– 1212, who first established in Japan a sect based on the teaching of the Pure Land school of Buddhism. 2  西本願寺, 東本願寺. Nishi Honganji was established at its present site in 1591 on land donated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Higashi Honganji was founded under the patronage of Tokugawa Ieyasu eleven years later. 3  In Buddhism in general, monto 門徒 (‘member of a gate’, i.e., of a temple) refers to priests or disciples. In Shinshū, where the distinction between priest and layman is minimized, monto refers to adherents in general. The term is often used together with a place name to indicate the Shinshū community in a given location, as in ‘Kaga monto’.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_027

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(Nishi Honganji). This act, together with strict regulation of both branches, was intended to prevent Honganji’s resurgence.4 Since Honganji rose to prominence in an era of unparalleled political fragmentation and military strife, it is hardly surprising that its followers engaged in militancy and that the sect became a participant in the violent struggles of the day. Nevertheless, closer examination of the roots of Honganji’s temporal power and interests is worthwhile, for it provides insights into the historical development of Jōdo Shinshū and into political and social trends during an important transitional era in Japanese history. In a still broader sense, Honganji’s rise constitutes an instructive case study in the universal problem of churchstate relations. Honganji was established by Kakunyo5 as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, at the site of Shinran’s grave in the Ōtani district of Kyoto. Kakunyo was a great-grandson of the revered patriarch Shinran, and from the beginning he clearly intended Honganji to be both the seat of Shinran’s line and the upholder of Shinran’s teachings; in other words, the head temple of Jōdo Shinshū.6 During the first century and a half of its existence, however, growth and recognition came very slowly to Honganji. The bulk of Shinran’s followers were in the Kantō provinces to the east, where Shinran had spent his most productive years of missionary activity, and the major communities founded there by direct disciples of Shinran were unwilling to defer to Honganji, which they viewed as an upstart and a threat to their own position.7 It was not until the tenure of Rennyo8 as head abbot, or hossu,9 that Honganji finally outstripped its rivals in the Kantō to become, as Kakunyo had envisioned, the main branch of Jōdo Shinshū. The second half of the fifteenth century, when Rennyo led Honganji, was a time of political instability and upheaval. Japan was without a central government worthy of the name. The Ashikaga family, which founded a shogunate in 1338, was by this time dominated by its fractious retainers, the constables.10 The weakness and internal 4  A dispute between Junnyo 准如, who headed Honganji, and his older brother Gyōnyo 教如 provided Ieyasu with a convenient pretext. Ieyasu backed Gyōnyo and established Higashi Honganji for him, thus dividing the sect. 5  覚如, 1270–1351. 6  For a discussion of Kakunyo’s position, see my ‘Kinship and the Transmission of Religious Charisma: The Case of Honganji’, in Journal of Asian Studies, xxxiii: 3, 1974, pp. 403–13. 7  The most influential of the several communities in the Kantō area was that of Senjuji 専修寺 at Takada in Shimotsuke (modern Tochigi prefecture). 8  蓮如, 1415–99. 9  法主. 10  The constable, or shugo 守護, was appointed by the shogun as military commander of a province or, in many cases, of several provinces concurrently. ‘Military governor’ would be

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divisions in the shogunate reached an acute stage with the outbreak of the Ōnin War, a decade-long internecine struggle centered around the shogunal base of Kyoto. By the time the fighting had ended in 1477, much of the capital was in ruins, the constables had fought themselves to exhaustion, and the shogunate had become so enfeebled an institution that the question of shogunal succession—the original basis of the conflict—had become irrelevant.11 If the Ōnin War was the twilight of the shogunate and the constables, it signalled the dawn for the daimyo, new locally based military rulers, who fought their way to power in the provinces. Under the daimyo Japan was divided into a patchwork of miniature states that closely resembled high feudalism in the West. However, the transition from constable authority to daimyo authority in the provinces was not an overnight process, nor was it a uniform one. Particularly in the economically advanced provinces near the capital, peasants and lower samurai used the weakening of established authority as the occasion to assert their autonomy; likewise, they violently resisted the imposition of new authority. Popular uprisings were a common feature of the times, and they ranged from localized incidents to province-wide disturbances.12 As an era of transition and upheaval, the period of the Ōnin War and its aftermath presented both opportunities and challenges to a religious leader such as Rennyo of Honganji. Generally speaking, Shinran’s teaching of salvation easily achieved through faith in Amida had a popular appeal that was well suited to the times. The fact, however, that Honganji rather than other branches of Shinshū grew the most rapidly was due in no small degree to the leadership of Rennyo. Honganji clearly benefited from Rennyo’s responsiveness to the popular spirit of the times. Following the initiative of his father Zonnyo,13 Rennyo strove to simplify Shinran’s teaching and thereby make it more widely accessible to the masses.14 Rennyo’s major innovation, the ofumi, or epistle, accomplished a more appropriate translation, but the term ‘constable’ is more commonly used. Recent scholarship on institutional and other aspects of the Ashikaga period is well represented in John Whitney Hall & Toyoda Takeshi, ed., Japan in the Muromachi Age, University of California Press, 1977. 11  Considerable detail on the causes and effects of the war is given in H. Paul Varley, The Ōnin War, Columbia U.P., 1967. 12  The study of medieval (particularly late medieval) uprisings is a flourishing field of scholarship in Japan. Minegishi Sumio 峰岸純夫, ed., Shimpojūmu Nihon Rekishi, ix: Doikki シンポジウム日本歴史 (9) 土一揆, Gakuseisha, 1974, is a convenient introduction to the work of Japanese scholars and includes a basic bibliography. 13  存如. 14  Stanley Weinstein, ‘Rennyo and the Shinshū Revival’, in Hall & Toyoda, pp. 331–58, deals with Rennyo’s religious contribution and his place in the history of Shinshū.

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precisely this.15 In more than two hundred ofumi, Rennyo expressed the gist of Shinran’s teaching in a straightforward, idiomatic manner that was not only readily comprehensible to the masses but also held their interest. Rennyo is also given credit for democratizing the relationship between Honganji and the monto. For example, he insisted that monto pilgrims be treated as honored guests at Honganji and instructed that the drinks served to them be cooled in summer and warmed in winter. In a society where symbolism has always meant a great deal, it is significant that Rennyo, reversing Honganji’s longstanding practice, chose to sit on the same level as the monto.16 Rennyo’s personal charisma and his effectiveness as a proselytizer help to explain why Honganji grew more rapidly than—and indeed, at the expense of—the rival branches of Shinshū and why it clearly outstripped them by the end of his lifetime. But Rennyo’s organizational abilities were also an important ingredient in Honganji’s success. Here an insistence on status and hierarchy presents an altogether different aspect of the ‘democratizer’ of Honganji. Rennyo single-mindedly pursued the centralization of Honganji’s authority. Influential priests (dai-bōzu) who led major branches of Honganji in the provinces, and whose large followings made them potential rivals, were systematically subordinated to the authority of the mother temple.17 Within the mother temple itself, Rennyo strengthened the control of Shinran’s blood line through the establishment of a powerful family council (ikkeshū), whose membership was limited to close male relatives of the hossu.18 In his proselytization as well, Rennyo understood the importance of hierarchical relationships. Thus he recommended that priority be given to the conversion of village priests and elders; once the local leaders were won over, Rennyo noted, the masses would be certain to follow.19 In dealing with the volatile political and social developments of his time, Rennyo encountered some of his greatest challenges. Indeed, the case of Honganji under Rennyo illustrates the fact that religious institutions can seldom avoid being drawn into major social or political conflicts. Rennyo was a man of religion whose greatest concerns lay in the spiritual sphere: above 15  The standard collection of Rennyo’s ofumi 御文 is contained in Inaba Masamaru 稲葉 昌丸, ed., Rennyo Shōnin Ibun 蓮如上人遺文, Hōzōkan, Kyoto, 1937. Hereafter cited as Ibun. 16  Inaba Masamaru, ed., Rennyo Shōnin Gyōjitsu 蓮如上人行実, Hōzōkan, Kyoto, 1948, p. 11. Hereafter cited as Gyōjitsu. 17  Rennyo often used ofumi as vehicles for direct and indirect criticism of dai-bōzu 大坊主 and lesser priests. For examples, see ofumi 6, 7, 8, 115, 117 & 119 in Ibun. 18  I have discussed the ikkeshū 一家衆 in the article cited in n. 6, above. 19  Gyōjitsu, p. 260.

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all, the propagation of Shinran’s teaching and through it the salvation of the monto followers. Nevertheless, several factors militated toward Honganji’s political involvement. For example, Honganji monto who were motivated by economic and political as well as religious considerations came into confrontation with established authority and with newly emerging military power. Understandably, Honganji was unable to remain aloof. Since the times were perilous, moreover, Honganji found that it was necessary to seek out powerful patrons and benefactors to ensure its security. Unavoidable as such recourse was, it could lead to additional unwanted involvements. Finally, Honganji became subject to outside pressures and demands for alliance. This was because once it had developed into a well-organized institution with a large popular base, Honganji became a potentially valuable ally in spite of itself. This was particularly true of areas where Honganji’s followers were numerous or even in the majority, and where their support, therefore, could be crucial. The relationship between Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto,20 Honganji’s earliest important patron, exemplifies all three factors mentioned above. Since it was initiated by Rennyo, Honganji’s link with Masamoto provides insight into the political dimension of Rennyo’s leadership. Moreover, the relationship— the full consequences of which did not unfold until after Rennyo’s death—is significant because it marked a major step in the transformation of Honganji from a purely religious institution into a major military power and a principal in the sanguinary struggles of the sixteenth century. The connection between Honganji and Masamoto dates from the period of Rennyo’s return to the central provinces in 1475, after a four-year stay at Yoshizaki, a rustic spot on the Japan Sea to the north of the capital. Rennyo had fled there after Ōtani Honganji was destroyed by armed forces from the influential head temple of the Tendai sect, Enryakuji.21 Economic interest rather than doctrinal zeal motivated Enryakuji: Honganji had recently won many converts in the central provinces, particularly in Ōmi, which was immediately adjacent to Enryakuji and where it had important landholdings.22 In the long run, persecution was a godsend, for the years at Yoshizaki were decisive ones in Rennyo’s career and in the history of Honganji. While in Yoshizaki Rennyo built a massive base in the surrounding provinces of the Hokuriku district, and in the process Honganji finally emerged as head of the dominant branch of 20  細川政元, 1466–1507. 21  Enryakuji 延暦寺 was known for its warrior monks (akusō 悪僧), who were not actually priests but rather hired ruffians. 150 were sent to attack Honganji. See ‘Hompukuji atogaki’ 本福寺跡書, in Kasahara Kazuo 笠原一男 & Inoue Toshio 井上鋭夫, ed., Rennyo Ikkō Ikki 蓮如一向一揆, Iwanami Shoten, 1972, p. 198. 22  Enryakuji ended, at least temporarily, its persecution of the Ōmi monto when a large sum of money was paid. Ibid., pp. 200–3. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Shinshū. Although Rennyo left behind political problems among the Hokuriku monto—the Ikkō ikki,23 or monto uprisings, discussed below—his return to the central provinces was ultimately triumphal, as symbolized by the reconstruction of Honganji just outside the capital at Yamashina in 1480.24 The enhanced prestige and social standing that Honganji came to enjoy during this period are evident from the regular exchanges of gifts and the visits with high-ranking members of the court and the shogunate.25 Outstanding among those who frequented Honganji was Hosokawa Masamoto. Masamoto was the son and heir of the most prominent political leader of the day, Hosokawa Katsumoto.26 Together with the Shiba and the Hatakeyama, the Hosokawa were one of the three prominent collateral families of the Ashikaga which traditionally could hold the important office of kanrei,27 or shogunal deputy. Beginning in 1445, when he was only fifteen, Katsumoto held the office three times. The rivalry between Katsumoto and Yamana Sōzen, leader of a major constable family, was the mainspring of the Ōnin War, and each of them commanded one of the contending armies.28 Although Katsumoto died before the final outcome was decided, his mind apparently was at ease because of his confidence in Masamoto. His son was only eight years old when Katsumoto spoke from his deathbed: ‘Even if I die, since there is Masamoto the family will not suffer hardship.’29 As is often the case with men of stature, accounts of Masamoto’s background and personality dwell on the singular and convey a mythical quality. We are told that Masamoto was conceived when Prince Shōtoku flew into his mother’s mouth, and was therefore Shōtoku’s reincarnation; and that when he was kidnaped at the age of twelve, his whereabouts was revealed by an avatar of Atago.30 Masamoto naturally became a devotee of Atago, but in addition

23  I kkō 一向, ‘single-minded’ or ‘devoted’, refers to the Shinshū sect, which singles out Amida bodhisattva as the supreme savior and sole object of veneration. Ikki 一揆 is a general term for ‘uprising’. Ikkō ikki can mean either the uprising itself or the group of monto who carry it out. 24  Yamashina is today a suburb of Kyoto. 25  Honganji-shi 本願寺史, Nishi Honganji Shūmusho, 1961, i, pp. 350–2, documents the rise in Honganji’s social standing. 26  細川勝元, 1430–73. 27  管領. 28  Katsumoto led the victorious Eastern Army, while Yamana Sōzen 山名宗全 commanded the Western Army. A detailed account is given in Varley, cited in n. 11, above. 29  Gyōjitsu, p. 33. 30  Ibid., p. 33. The inclusion of this reference to Shōtoku in Kūzen-ki 空善記, a memoir of Rennyo by his disciple Kūzen 空善, is an indication of Honganji’s high regard for Masamoto. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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he avidly practiced shugendō31 and the magical arts. He allegedly could fly or stand in midair; and on one occasion when he was reading a scripture a dharani reverberated in response, making the hair of those present stand on end.32 In the years after Katsumoto’s death, Masamoto’s chief rival in shogunal politics was Hatakeyama Masanaga,33 who succeeded Katsumoto as kanrei. Masanaga was able to consolidate his position in 1490 by installing his own candidate, Yoshitane,34 as successor to the relatively independent shogun Yoshihisa.35 In 1493, however, in a daring but well-prepared maneuver, Masamoto took advantage of the absence from Kyoto of Masanaga and the shogun, who were in Kawachi fighting a recalcitrant Hatakeyama (Yoshinari),36 and staged a coup. First bringing forward Yoshizumi37 as his own candidate for shogun, Masamoto proceeded to Kawachi, where he killed Masanaga and routed his forces. In the following year Masamoto formally installed Yoshizumi as shogun and himself as kanrei. From this time until his assassination in 1507, Masamoto’s power was essentially unchallenged in Kyoto and the central provinces; known as han-shōgun (literally, ‘half-shogun’), he was in fact shogun in all but name. Although there was one instance of an incumbent shogun being assassinated,38 Masamoto’s actions were unprecedented in the history of the shogunate: the dismissal of a shogun during his absence from Kyoto, the annihilation of his chief supporter and the installation of a puppet, not to mention usurpation of the position of kanrei. The brazenness of these deeds was underlined by Masamoto’s cynical—or should it be called realistic?—attitude toward traditional symbols of authority. In 1502, during a discussion of whether to promote the shogun to a higher court rank and to stage formal enthronement ceremonies for Emperor Gokashiwabara,39 Masamoto commented concerning the shogun: ‘It makes no difference whether or not he is promoted, if people do not obey his decrees [ongeji].’ As for the emperor, ‘Even if the enthronement ceremonies are held, one who is not in substance a king [ō] will 31  修験道. 32  In Ashikaga Kise-ki 足利季世記, cited in Minegishi Sumio 峰岸純夫, ‘Daimyō Ryōkoku to Honganji’ 大名領国と本願寺, in Nihon no Shakai Bunka-shi, ii: Hōken Shakai 日本の 社会文化史 (2) 封建社会, Kōdansha, 1974, p. 102. 33  畠山政長. 34  義稙. 35  義尚. 36  畠山 (義就). 37  義澄. 38  The assassination of Yoshinori 義教 by Akamatsu Mitsusuke 赤松満祐 in 1441, which was provoked to some degree by the victim. 39  後柏原.

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not be regarded as a king.’40 Not surprisingly, in view of Masamoto’s objections, the enthronement ceremonies were postponed; Gokashiwabara had to wait nearly twenty years for his coronation. Masamoto’s actions and attitude take on wider significance when we consider that they set the pattern for shogunal politics and shogunal ‘succession’ for the remainder of the shogunate: all six succeeding shoguns were puppets whose entrance as well as exit were manipulated opportunistically, generally through the use of military force. That not one died in Kyoto bespeaks the ill fate of the office and the men who held it. It can indeed be said that Masamoto’s coup and his rule ushered in a new and melancholy era in shogunal politics. Even before he had reached the pinnacle of his power, Masamoto earned Honganji’s everlasting gratitude. In 1488 Honganji monto in Kaga defeated in battle and killed Togashi Masachika,41 the constable of the province. Masachika was an ally and a favorite of the shogun Yoshihisa, who thereupon demanded that Rennyo excommunicate the Kaga monto en masse.42 From the time Rennyo established his base at Yoshizaki in 1471, he had opposed the tendency of the monto to commit lawless and provocative acts, such as non-payment of taxes and flaunting the superiority of Shinshū. Moreover, in a series of ofumi, Rennyo gave his position religious sanction by making obedience to established authority a condition for good standing within the sect: If you have truly understood the meaning of Jōdo Shinshū tariki43 faith and established your own faith, you will keep that faith deeply within your heart and will not brandish it before others and followers of different religions. Nor should you openly praise your faith without consideration on the highways and byways or in the place where you live. You must not use your faith as an excuse for irresponsible behavior toward the constable and steward, and should pay your taxes in full. Do not be disrespectful to the many kami, buddhas and bodhisattvas, for they are all included in the invocation of Amida. Above all, while inwardly cultivating tariki faith, outwardly be obedient to secular authority44 and adhere

40  Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助, ed., Daijōin Jisha Zōji-ki 大乗院寺社雑事記, Kadokawa Shoten, 1964, xi, p. 466. 41  富樫政親. 42  Gyōjitsu, p. 123. 43  他力 (‘other power’), referring to total reliance on Amida’s saving power and used in distinction to jiriki 自力 (‘self-power’). 44  ōbō 王法.

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to the morals of society.45 Bear in mind that this is the import of the regulations46 established in our sect. Amen.47 It is true that, as requested by the shogun in 1474, Rennyo had given his reluctant approval to an alliance between the Kaga monto and Masachika, representing the shogun’s Eastern Army, against a western coalition of Masachika’s brother Kōchiyo48 and the rival of Honganji, Senjuji.49 However, following Masachika’s victory (which was due in no small part to the Kaga monto’s contribution), Rennyo called on his followers to obey Masachika’s authority and departed from Yoshizaki in 1475 when open conflict between the monto and Masachika was imminent. But in spite of the fact that Rennyo disapproved of and dissociated himself from the militancy of the Kaga monto, the shogun’s demand for excommunication was a grievous prospect for Rennyo; he reportedly said that such an act would be more painful than rending his own flesh.50 Thanks to Masamoto’s intercession with the shogun on behalf of Honganji, however, a much less drastic settlement was arranged: Rennyo would simply censure the Kaga monto. In appreciation for this timely assistance, Rennyo proclaimed Masamoto a lifetime congregant of Honganji.51 As befitted such a powerful and valuable patron, Masamoto received extraordinary deference from Honganji. For example, Masamoto, a frequent visitor to Yamashina, found disagreeable the Honganji custom of serving only vegetarian52 dishes; as a result, the rule was relaxed in his case, and the special treatment accorded Masamoto became the precedent for the reversal of a longstanding custom.53 Even Masamoto’s friends received unusual consideration from Honganji. There was a doctor-priest called Jōseiji54 from the village of 45  seken no jingi 世間の仁義. 46  okite おきて（掟）. 47  Ibun, pp. 180–1. 48  幸千代. 49  This is the only instance in which Rennyo supported an uprising by the Honganji monto (i.e., Ikkō ikki). This support is understandable in light of the fact that persecution of Honganji monto in Kaga was a result of the alliance of Togashi Kōchiyo 富樫幸千代 with the rival Senjuji (or Takada) branch. Rennyo’s position is revealed in an ofumi not included in Ibun. See Sasaki Motoki 佐々木求己, ‘Shinshutsu Ofumi-shū ni tsuite’ 新出 御文集について, in Shinshū Kenkyū 真宗研究, ii, pp. 77–92. Regarding the affinity between Honganji and the Eastern Army, see Inoue Toshio, Honganji 本願寺, Shibundō, 1966, pp. 150–3. 50  Gyōjitsu, p. 123. 51  eitai no gomonto 永代の御門徒. 52  shōjin 精進. 53  Ibid., p. 102. To this day, visitors to Honganji are served meat and fish. 54  浄西寺.

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Fukakusa, a special favorite of Masamoto; no matter how ill Masamoto’s humor, summoning Jōseiji would invariably raise his spirits. Jōseiji also happened to be a friend of Rennyo’s. Although he had been exposed to Buddhist teaching, it went in one ear and out the other;55 rather, as he said, he simply depended on the Ise Shrine for this life and on Rennyo for the next. Rennyo, for his part, agreed to attend personally to Jōseiji’s salvation.56 Although the practice of vouching for—in effect, granting—an individual’s salvation became common among Rennyo’s successors, it is significant that, besides Masamoto’s friend, the only other person so favored by Rennyo was Kasuga no Tsubone, a concubine of the shogun Yoshimasa.57 Rennyo, who was fifty-one years older than Honganji’s patron Masamoto, died in 1499 at the age of eighty-five. He left Honganji in a flourishing state under the leadership of Jitsunyo,58 fifth of his thirteen sons. Jitsunyo, insisting that he was inadequate, had repeatedly declined Rennyo’s proposals to name him as successor, and finally accepted only after Rennyo made it a matter of filial piety and religious obedience. Given Jitsunyo’s diffident character, it is not surprising that he was a conservative leader who strictly adhered to Rennyo’s example and precedent; it is said that he would not move a single tree planted by Rennyo.59 It followed as a matter of course that Jitsunyo maintained the close relationship between Honganji and Masamoto that had been cultivated by his father. Late in the year 1505, Masamoto made an extreme demand on that relationship which even Jitsunyo found difficult to accept. A series of developments had come to threaten Masamoto’s hegemony: the puppet shogun Yoshizumi began to show signs of independence. A split developed between Masamoto’s adopted sons and prospective heirs, Sumimoto and Sumiyuki;60 the deposed shogun Yoshitane had not abandoned hope of returning to Kyoto and, with the backing of Hatakeyama Shōjun,61 had gathered considerable support in the Hokuriku; and finally, an alliance between two leading members of the striferidden Hatakeyama family, Shōjun and Yoshihide,62 greatly strengthened a

55  mimi ni irazu 耳にいらず. 56  goshō wo azukaru zo 後生を預るぞ. Ibid., p. 170. 57  春日局, 義政. Ibid., pp. 169–70. 58  実如. 59  Ibid., pp. 262–3. 60  澄元, 澄之. 61  畠山尚順. 62  義英.

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traditional foe.63 The most immediate threat to Masamoto was Yoshihide’s fortress, Kondajō, in nearby Kawachi. Masamoto ordered his forces to attack, but at this critical juncture, when he needed above all a rapid and decisive victory, Kondajō would not easily be overcome. Pressing as the circumstances were, Masamoto accepted the suggestion to have Honganji mobilize its numerous monto in Kawachi and Settsu to assist him, and he went to Yamashina to seek Jitsunyo’s approval.64 Jitsunyo found Masamoto’s request extremely vexing. He replied, as Rennyo no doubt would have: ‘I am not accustomed to doing anything of this kind. I have never before asked the monto to go to war. I am a man of the cloth65 and, what is more, even were I to instruct the monto to fight, they would not agree.’ Despite Jitsunyo’s unwillingness, Masamoto pressed his case by pointing to the long-standing friendship between himself and Honganji. Still Jitsunyo refused, but Masamoto persisted: ‘Since Rennyo’s time we have cooperated closely. Now above all, when things are difficult, do not fail to assist me.’ Masamoto continued to plead his case in this manner for several days, Jitsunyo’s firm refusals notwithstanding. On one occasion, hearing that Masamoto was on his way to Yamashina to see him, Jitsunyo stole away to Ōtsu. But after Masamoto pursued him there, Jitsunyo realized that he had no choice and approached the monto in Kawachi and Settsu. ‘Masamoto’s power is so great that he is known as hanshōgun, and moreover he has exerted himself unstintingly on Honganji’s behalf. Although I have repeatedly turned down his requests, still he remains persistent, so I must ask you all to go to battle for him.’ To this the monto replied: ‘Until now we have never done such a thing, and therefore we have no weapons. Why has this matter arisen so suddenly? From the time of our founder Shinran down to the present, such warlike activity has never been a part of Jōdo Shinshū. No matter how strongly Masamoto appeals, we will not agree.’66 The leader of the monto in Kawachi and Settsu was Jikken,67 Rennyo’s ninth son, who was based at Osaka together with his widowed mother Rennō.68 Opposition to Jitsunyo’s request ran so deep that plans were made to depose

63  Shingyō Norikazu 新行記一, ‘Eishō Sannen Ikkō Ikki no Seijiteki Seikaku’ 永正三年一向 一揆の政治的性格, in Shichō 史潮, 77 (Nov. 1963), p. 31. 64  Gyōjitsu, p. 164. 65  nagasode no mi 長袖の身. 66  Ibid., pp. 164–5. 67  実賢. 68  蓮能.

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Jitsunyo and to install Jikken as hossu.69 When Jitsunyo learned of them, he forcibly expelled Jikken and Rennō (his own stepmother) and put the Osaka temple70 under Honganji’s direct control. These events are known as the ‘Osaka incident’. As for Masamoto, even after being informed of the monto’s refusal, he remained adamant. At this point the hapless Jitsunyo appealed to Kaga, the center of Shinshū military power, for one thousand men.71 Although the contribution of the Kaga contingent is not recorded, Masamoto soon after won the victory that he so fervently desired. Following Masamoto’s victory at Kondajō in early 1506, widespread Ikkō ikki erupted throughout the Hokuriku during the rest of the year. In Etchū, Honganji monto defeated the deputies of Hatakeyama, who were aided by Uesugi of neighboring Echigo, and expanded what had been a small territorial base into a province-wide autonomy comparable to that in Kaga. There were also apparently large-scale Ikkō ikki in Noto, although they are not well documented.72 In Echizen, Asakura Sadakage,73 master of a well-consolidated domain, repulsed Ikkō ikki forces led by the Shinshū temple bastions of Fujishima Chōshōji and Wada Hongakuji, which were assisted by Sadakage’s foes, Kai Masamori and Asakura Motokage,74 and by reinforcements from the Shinshū communities of Ōmi and Settsu. Traditional historiography has regarded these Ikkō ikki of the third year of Eishō as disparate attempts by Honganji monto in Etchū, Noto, and Echizen to create a territorial base like that in Kaga. However, Shingyō Norikazu, in a reinterpretation that has won wide acceptance, argues convincingly that they represented at the same time a coordinated effort by Honganji to assist Hosokawa Masamoto, comparable to but larger in scale than its help against Kondajō. The immediate precedent of Honganji’s military aid to Masamoto at Kondajō, which he calls the ‘prologue’ to the Eishō Ikkō ikki, is an important element of Shingyō’s argument. In addition, he points to the fact that the constables of all the provinces involved, including Echigo, were supporters of the deposed shogun Yoshitane and his patron Hatakeyama Shōjun, and therefore enemies of 69  The fact that Rennō, Rennyo’s fifth and last wife, was a Hatakeyama and that Kawachi was long a base of that family may help to explain the reluctance of the Kawachi community to aid Masamoto against Hatakeyama Yoshihide. The details of Rennō’s background can be found in Inoue Toshio, Ikkō Ikki no Kenkyū 一向一揆の研究, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1967, pp. 386–7. 70  Ōsaka gobō 大阪御坊. 71  Gyōjitsu, pp. 164–5. 72  See the discussion of the documentation in Shingyō, pp. 24–5. 73  朝倉貞景. 74  甲斐政盛, 朝倉元景.

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Masamoto. By a coincidence fortunate for Masamoto, the Hokuriku where his enemies were concentrated was precisely the stronghold of his ally Honganji; and the coordinated series of Ikkō ikki there during 1506 preoccupied and weakened his enemies, allowing Masamoto to strengthen his base in Kyoto and the central provinces. The coordination came, of course, from Honganji. Here Shingyō emphasizes the timing and broad scope of the Ikkō ikki, including the dispatch of monto from the central provinces to fight against Asakura.75 Although Honganji’s role cannot be pinpointed as in the Kondajō episode, there is evidence that Honganji approved and supported the military action. In contrast to Jitsunyo’s reputation as a pacifist, for example, is a letter he wrote to the religious leaders of Etchū thanking them for their loyalty and encouraging them to gain firm control of the province for the sake of the faith.76 A manifesto addressed to ‘men of principle’77 by Jitsunyo’s brother Rengo,78 a leader of the Kaga monto, is openly inflammatory. Evoking the prospect of the extermination of Shinshū in Etchū and Noto, Rengo declared: ‘Out of gratitude for Amida’s incomparable grace, is it not the fulfillment of our heart’s desire to rush to battle and smilingly sacrifice our lives?’79 Although Masamoto’s position was strengthened by the Ikkō ikki, he was still as vulnerable to the treacherous sword as any leader of his time. Just one year later, in 1507, he was murdered in his bath, the victim of a plot between two of his retainers and his adopted son Sumiyuki.80 No doubt expressing the sentiments of many in the capital, the author of the Zōji-ki could hardly contain his delight.81 For Jitsunyo, however, the loss of a powerful benefactor and ally was a serious matter. Fearing for his own safety, he immediately departed from Kyoto for the Shinshū center of Katada in Ōmi, where he remained for nearly two years. This shows the depth of Honganji’s tie with Masamoto.82 It was only after the protection of the new kanrei, Hosokawa Kunimoto,83 was assured that Jitsunyo returned to Honganji at Yamashina. 75  Shingyō, pp. 24–5. 76  Cited in Shingyō, p. 24. Jitsunyo’s testament is widely quoted as an example of his pacifism. See Gyōjitsu, p. 246. 77  kokorozashi ninzu shūjū 志人数衆中. 78  連悟. 79  Tsuji Zennosuke, Nihon Bukkyōshi 日本仏教史, Iwanami Shoten, 1944–55, vi, pp. 128–9. 80  澄之. 81  Tsuji, Daijōin Jisha Zōjiki, xii, p. 115. This was because, in common with other leaders of the military class, Masamoto exploited and undermined the estate system. See Minegishi, ‘Daimyō Ryōkoku to Honganji’, p. 105. Daijōin was a major division of Kōfukuji 興福寺, an important estate holder. 82  ‘Hompukuji atogaki’, p. 229. 83  細川国元.

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The alliance between Honganji and Masamoto was a very natural one, for they had enemies in common and were in no major sense rivals. Honganji was strong in the Hokuriku, where it was an ideal foil for enemies of Masamoto. In the central provinces, from which Rennyo had had to flee in 1471, Masamoto could ensure Honganji’s secure development. Furthermore, as Minegishi has pointed out, there were no grounds for a confrontation between Masamoto and Honganji in the central provinces because Masamoto’s authority was not so tightly consolidated as that of a full-fledged daimyo—Asakura of Echizen, for example—and because Honganji had yet to develop in the region the formidable base it had in the Hokuriku.84 The central provinces would, in fact, be the scene of just such a confrontation in the 1530s, when Honganji clashed with Masamoto’s successor, Hosokawa Harumoto.85 The alliance brought some real benefits to each side. From Honganji’s point of view, Masamoto, the strongest leader in the capital and the central provinces, was an ideal patron. The intercession on behalf of the Kaga monto is a clear example of the usefulness of Masamoto’s backing. The advantages of the link with Masamoto were most clearly evident in the central provinces where, under the umbrella of Masamoto’s protection, Honganji founded numerous temples and, unimpeded, developed a base that eventually came to rival that in the Hokuriku.86 Alliance with Honganji was likewise beneficial to Masamoto. That a leader as calculating and astute as Masamoto chose to ally himself with Honganji is ample testimony to the influence the sect had come to command under Rennyo. The seizure of control of Kaga by followers of Honganji in 1488 was a convincing demonstration of the military potential of the sect. In this sense, when he embraced the cause of the Kaga monto before the shogun, Masamoto was acting in self-interest. In addition to gaining Honganji’s great indebtedness, Masamoto acquired a politically useful role for himself as mediator between Honganji and holders of estates in Kaga, who were anxious to maintain their incomes.87 Honganji proved to be a valuable ally to Masamoto. As we have seen, Jitsunyo took the commitment to Masamoto very seriously. Moreover, Honganji’s military strength, particularly in the Hokuriku, materially assisted Masamoto in 1506 when he was in his extremity. 84  Minegishi, ‘Daimyō Ryōkoku to Honganji’, p. 115. 85  Ibid., pp. 115–26, contains a discussion of the confrontation between Honganji and Hosokawa Harumoto 細川晴元. 86  Founded, for example, during this period was the Ōsaka gobō, which later became the fortress temple of Ishiyama Honganji. On Honganji’s development in the central provinces, see ibid., pp. 117–21. 87  Ibid., p. 113.

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Apart from the benefits it derived, the tie with Masamoto was a costly one to Honganji. The Kondajō episode shows this most clearly. Honganji was so beholden to Masamoto that it was willing to provoke serious division (i.e., the Osaka incident) within the sect in order to satisfy its patron. What is more, the dispatch of one thousand monto from Kaga to Kondajō (and likewise Honganji’s positive role in the Eishō Ikkō ikki) must be regarded as a major departure for Honganji from the spirit of pacifism and non-involvement espoused by Rennyo. Indeed, the epoch-making character of the Kondajō episode was noted in the authoritative chronicle of Jitsugo,88 Rennyo’s tenth son, as ‘the first resort to arms89 by the priests and followers of Honganji.’90 Strictly speaking, military involvement on the part of Honganji monto and priests did not of course originate in the alliance with Masamoto. The subjugation of Masachika, constable of Kaga, by monto and priests in that province was certainly a prior instance of military activity. It is therefore true that, at least in Kaga, Honganji was well on the way to military involvement before the link with Masamoto reached the active stage. As suggested above, the monto conquest of Kaga can be seen as an important premise for the development of a full-scale military alliance with Masamoto. In this sense the relationship with Masamoto appears to be less of a turning point in Honganji’s history. Nevertheless, there was a significant difference between the battles Honganji monto fought on behalf of Masamoto in 1506 and the Kaga Ikkō ikki of 1488. In the case of the Kaga uprisings, monto extremists (including local priests) seized control of the province completely independent—and, indeed, against the expressed will—of Honganji (Rennyo). It may be added that although he was loath to excommunicate the militants, Rennyo, who had fled from Yoshizaki in 1471 in order to dissociate himself from the acts of extremist elements, was consistent in his opposition to lawless and anti-social action. In contrast, Honganji played a direct and central role in the military involvements which resulted from the tie with Masamoto. At Kondajō Honganji committed its monto armed forces to a battle in which it had no direct stake. With the Eishō period uprisings, when Honganji’s own interests fortuitously coincided with Masamoto’s, Honganji supported and coordinated a wide-ranging series of military campaigns, capped by an impressive victory in Etchū. Rather than

88  実  悟. 89  gusoku kakehajimetaru koto 具足かけ始めたる事. 90  Gyōjitsu, pp. 245–6. Together with Kondajō, Jitsugo also mentions the outbreak of uprisings in Echizen in the same year. The linkage implied supports Shingyō’s view that Honganji itself was involved in the latter as well as the former.

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following—let alone opposing—the initiative of extremists (i.e., the Ikkō ikki), Honganji had itself become the initiator. As significant as the relationship with Masamoto was, it is important to keep it in proper perspective. The tie with Masamoto was, properly speaking, a result rather than a cause of Honganji’s temporal involvement. Fundamentally, this involvement was a feature of the particular historical context in which the sect developed and the manner in which the historical setting shaped that development. Thus there was a close correspondence between the growth of the sect and the militance of its followers. For example, the doctrine that salvation is assured through faith in Amida and that all other practices are ‘extraneous’91 could provide not only the self-confidence but also the rationale for resistance to established authority and established religion, which served as its ideological buttress. Shinshū teaching, in other words, appealed to the spirit of resistance and rebellion that was widespread during much of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth. Shinshū, and above all Honganji, made remarkable gains during this period precisely because it could appeal to both spiritual and temporal needs. This being the case, it is not surprising that some monto made their religion into the servant of worldly interests or that others joined, for example, because they thought that being a monto meant that it was not necessary to pay taxes. Nor is it surprising that as the sect became a large, well-organized body with considerable military power, ambitious warriors both high and low came to consider it an exploitable vehicle or a useful ally.92 This was, of course, the case with Hosokawa Masamoto. Although temporal involvements and even militarization were, in the sense pointed out, ‘inevitable’, they nevertheless must be regarded as an unfortunate development in Honganji’s history. Rennyo’s frequent appeals for obedience to established authority were not intended merely to ensure the security of the sect by avoiding provocation; they were grounded on an understanding that if the temporal goals of the monto were given free rein, then intrinsically more important religious goals would be neglected. This is precisely what occurred. By the middle of the sixteenth century, when Honganji was at the height of its worldly involvement and commanded enormous military power, loyalty to Honganji itself came to supersede faith as the determinant of salvation, and the 91  ‘zōgyō’ 雑行. 92  After Masamoto’s time, when Honganji reached the height of its secular power, a number of prominent military leaders sought alliance and even offered to join the sect in order to demonstrate their sincerity. As a rule, they came from areas with large concentrations of monto. In most cases, such as Asakura in Echizen and Ishiguro in Etchū, they were refused by Honganji.

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hossu of Honganji effectively superseded Amida as its dispenser.93 Moreover, factionalism and internal dissension, already manifested in the Kondajō episode, became rampant.94 It may appear inconsistent that Rennyo on the one hand preached civil obedience and political non-involvement and on the other sought Masamoto’s patronage, sparing no effort to gain his favor. However, pragmatism rather than total consistency was the characteristic of Rennyo’s leadership and indeed may have been the key to his success. Rennyo, who had seen Ōtani Honganji destroyed by Enryakuji, knew very well the importance of self-defense and the value of a powerful patron. Moreover, as heir to Kakunyo and one committed to making Honganji the head temple of all Shinshū, Rennyo not only was unwilling to excommunicate the important Kaga community but was also prepared to seek Masamoto’s intervention in order to avoid having to do so. By the standard of his times, which is the only appropriate one, Rennyo was a very successful religious leader. If Honganji’s excesses during the sixteenth century are part of Rennyo’s legacy, so are the many millions of monto who are congregants of the two Honganjis today. 93  I have discussed briefly the expansion of the powers of the hossu in the article cited in n. 6, above. 94  This is not to suggest that internal dissension and succession disputes did not predate Honganji’s rise to secular power. Nevertheless, secular power certainly aggravated the tendency. For example, in the early 1530s Honganji was torn by ‘civil war’ over control of the extensive domain in the Hokuriku.

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Shin Buddhism and Burakumin in the Edo Period Galen Amstutz Introduction1 The large Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 schools of Japanese Buddhism (hereafter abbreviated as Shin 真 or Shinshū 真宗) had a special relationship with the burakumin 部落民 (or eta 穢多) class in Edo 江戸 (Tokugawa 徳川) period Japan (ca. 1600–1868).2 The Shin tradition—whose two main headquarters temples have long been known as Nishi Honganji 西本願寺 (or Honpa Honganji 本派 本願寺) and Higashi Honganji 東本願寺 (or Ōtani Honganji 大谷本願寺)— seemed to provide a theoretical teaching of religious equality, but burakumin remained to an important extent a ritually and socially discriminated-against group which was treated ambivalently and did not have equal privileges and prestige with other members of the religion. Despite a long history of research on this problem by modern Japanese scholars, who have been motivated particularly by anti-discrimination movements in the twentieth century such as the Suiheisha Undō 水平社運動, it is not easy to understand the Edo-period Shin-buraku relationship. The past “discrimination” may be understood as due to the Shin community’s own failure to implement its ideals, but it may be better understood as due to the overall sociopolitical environment of subordination endemic to the Edo period’s mibun 身分 (status categories) or mibunsei 身分制 (status system). This chapter will lay out some of the thinking of S ource: Amstutz, Galen, “Shin Buddhism and Burakumin in the Edo Period,” in Ugo Dessì (ed.), The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 59–110. 1  The author wishes to express gratitude to Prof. Jessica Main of the University of British Columbia, Prof. Emeritus Izumi Shigeki of Ōtani University and Shimazu Eshō of Kameoka, Japan for their consultation and inspiration. 2  For general background see De Vos and Wagatsuma (1966). It is usually considered that burakumin constitute two or three percent of the current Japanese population (e.g. McNelly 1984: 52). In modern times some 85% of burakumin have been affiliated with Shin Buddhism (Morioka 1962: 145–150; De Vos 1966: 89). The modern population distribution of burakumin follows that of the Edo period. The majority live in western Japan with the highest concentration in the Kinki 近畿 region (44% of the 1.5 million burakumin live in the Osaka 大阪, Hyōgo 兵庫, Kyoto 京都, Nara 奈良, Shiga 滋賀, and Wakayama 和歌山 prefectural areas, where Shin has been strong since the sixteenth century; the next largest concentration of 15% is in Yamaguchi 山口, Hiroshima 広島 and Okayama 岡山, areas again where Shin was strong; and the same for Kyūshū 九州 with 12%) (Brooks 1977: 105–106).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_028

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current Japanese scholarship on these matters, which also illustrate challenges in handling premodern Japanese history: the nature of the mibun system, the regionalism and inconsistency in premodern Japanese society, the limits to ethical action in Shin Buddhism, and the difficulty in applying modern expectations about justice to the past. 1

Regarding Approaches, Limitations, Research History

The material presented here aims to be no more than a brief reconnaissance into a specialized corner of an extensive body of data and research in Japanese. To start with it is helpful to note a number of significant resistances inherent in this theme. 1) Relative marginality of the topic. Relations between Shin Buddhism and social marginals (the general term which can be used here for the historical senmin 賎民, hinin 非人, eta and so on) are only a narrow part of the overall picture in the premodern sociopolitical regimes of Japan. This topic is relatively minor whether considered from the standpoint of Japanese society, samurai government, or the Honganji organizations. In terms of academic research, on the non-Japanese side, only a relative handful of foreign scholars has explored any aspect at all concerning social marginals. Religion in general is peripheral to buraku 部落 studies, questions of sociopolitical structure being much more central. (Kobayashi and Akisada 1989: 3–12) This tendency hints at the modern scholarly consensus that buraku throughout early modern and modern Japanese history have been most importantly matters of politics and government. Religion then involves only a thin slice of the wide research on buraku problems. 2) Shortage of adequate information and data for the eras before the Meiji period. Research has produced enormous amounts of information on buraku issues for the years since the Meiji, but it is characteristic of the world of Tokugawa historical documents that (in part due to the nature of its version of “church-state” separation touched upon below) that relatively few traces of pre-Meiji Shin-eta relations were recorded.3 Historians often resort to induction from absence of information as well as conclusions from presence of information. 3) Historical research driven by modern agenda. Japanese scholars often utilize approaches that are restricted by orientation or ideology. Secular and 3  Prof. Jessica Main of the University of British Columbia has suggested, following Michel Foucault, that the historical task almost amounts to devising an “archaeology of silence.”

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Marxist scholars do not understand very well how Shin Buddhism works religiously. Marxists and twentieth century ethicists (including those inside Shin Buddhism) are interested in criticism and tend to use modern social justice perspectives to evaluate the past anachronistically. There was for a long time a powerful pressure to collect and read the data for the edifying purposes of the modern buraku liberation movement. In some kinds of modernist Shin ideology, this is a product of fundamentalist attitudes about the nature of Shin Buddhism or Shinran’s doctrines, rather than handling the tradition historically as a constantly interpretable, contextual discourse.4 Teaching in a contemporary edifying mode about the failures of Shin history with regard to eta is a significant aspect of pedagogy in the modern Shin institutions, (including the sectarian universities). All of this critique is highly important on its own terms, but it is not designed for neutral historical explanation. 4) Limited self-commentary by the Buddhists in the past. Although Shin Buddhism was a quite large organization, historically there is almost no documentation about its explicit self-awareness regarding its inner contradictions and inconsistencies, its elites vs. nonelites, the effects of political power on its elites, its tensions between center and periphery, and so on.5 5) Misleading minzokugaku 民俗学 assumptions derived from modern folklorist interests. A great deal of the Japanese research on religion and social marginals has been oriented to questions concerning kegare 穢 (pollution) which come from the study of popular religion in the minzokugaku research tradition, which is not particularly germane to Shin Buddhism.6 6) Contemporary prejudice against Edo Buddhism. Until recently, nonsectarian treatments of Tokugawa Buddhism ran into a deeply embedded critical suspicion associated with the modern historian Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之 助 to the effect that all Edo-period Buddhism was corrupt or decadent (often referred to as the daraku ron 堕落論). A related longstanding trope of treatments of early modern Japanese Buddhism has been to ignore the distinctive qualities of Shinshū and instead lump it in indiscriminately with all the other

4  Nakao (1994), where the opening essay establishes a modernist perspective ahistorically and ideally in black-and-white terms, as true vs. false Buddhism (honmono 本物 vs. nisemono 偽物), all discrimination (sabetsu 差別) against eta being part of nisemono. 5  This contrasts, for example, with Protestant Christianity’s richer discourse on slavery in the nineteenth century, where the radically different abolitionist and slaveholding/segregationist interpretations which coexisted and contended were all being extensively documented. 6  For example, the great folklorist Miyata (1996) surveys kegare without mentioning Shin Buddhism.

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varieties.7 This problem has been noted in past decades by various revisionist historians; specifically relating to Shin Buddhism and the eta are for example Wada (2007: 5–7) or Kobayashi and Akisada (1989: 209–211). Nevertheless, despite extensive work by modern Shin historians (especially such as Chiba Jōryū, Kodama Shiki and Ōkuwa Hitoshi who, unlike Tsuji, used Shin regional institutional materials) questions of positive commitment in Tokugawa Buddhism are often clouded by daraku ron prejudgment. 7) Edo (city and region)-centrism in scholarship. A long tradition of Edo-oriented research which has had a dominant influence especially on western scholars has overemphasized the eastern regions of Edo Japan and underemphasized the western regions. Unfortunately the interaction between Honganji and Shin communities took place almost entirely in the latter. As with other aspects of Tokugawa history, the most interesting and accurate research is created not by overgeneralizing at some ‘national’ scale, but by the close local analysis which relate the material to regional history. In such cases, for example, local temple records are among the useful kinds of documents. (Kobayashi and Akisada 1989: 247–259) Thus, the issue of Shin Buddhism and burakumin reflects a number of deeply rooted fault lines of judgment about Japanese society, both inside and outside of Japan. Although the topic is in a sense marginal, in that respect it is also a microcosm of historiographical issues for Japan. 2

Social Marginals in Japanese History before the Edo Period

Before approaching the Edo situation, an important point to establish is that social marginal status was varied, dynamic and discontinuous throughout Japanese history, which makes the Edo circumstances largely sui generis. The origin of hinin is an old problem, but one handicapped by limited and fragmented evidence. Japanese historians have tested a number of theories. Origins in race ( jinshu 人種, including Korean ethnicity) has been discarded. Religious pollution based on killing has long been regarded as problematic because of extreme inconsistency of application (e.g. warriors or bushi 武士 were 7  Bodiford (1996). Sōtō Zen was involved in scandals and reforms in the early 1980s involving certain active efforts on the part of the Sōtō organization’s leadership to cover up and ignore systematic discrimination practices against burakumin by Sōtō clerics and record keepers. Bodiford argues these practices have been embedded in the essential nature of Sōtō religious culture—its close relation to pollution-purity practices and popular tantric magic—but lumps all the Buddhist groups together as equally guilty, not noting any degree of distinctiveness whatsoever regarding Shinshū.

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not regarded as so polluted).8 Evidence for the Shin religious organization ipso facto as later source is inadequate, along with specialized industrial activity (especially leathermaking) by itself as a cause.9 A broad long-term simplification is that the very earliest Japanese society was apparently low-productivity and almost classless, but evidence of occupational, class and status groupings shows up already in the earliest Chinese sources about Japan. The ritsuryō 律令 code formally identified five types of senmin 賤民 but then these ancient categories broke down with the shift to the shōen 荘園 system and were replaced by other kinds of marginalization in the medieval period when the key factor was local practice and custom. Medieval marginals often included service staff at shrines and temples, especially those responsible for cleaning, and the contemporary texts display terms for a wide variety of tasks and occupations with low status, e.g. entertainers, migrants, or craftspeople doing rough work. In the medieval era hinin (alternatively kawaramono 河原もの, also alternatively kawata 皮田) was a collective term for a dozen or more occupational groups, including religious itinerants, who were legally suspended in an interval between the ritsuryō and Tokugawa social systems; historians have inconclusively disputed the extent to which this was religiously encouraged at the time, i.e. by any sort of idea of kegare as a core factor in beggary and leprosy. However, the relation between this spectrum of people and the kinsei eta/hinin mibun is not necessarily direct, and the kinsei eta category would include additional groups of people as well, marking a gap between the eta of the Tokugawa mibunsei and earlier hinin people. (Wada and Nakamura 1996; Kobayashi 1990: 269; Groemer 2001) Only a few approximate generalizations seem to continue throughout this long history of marginals: a recurrent concern to classify lowest members of society; linkages to various kinds of purity consciousness; entanglements with legal conflicts involving the marginal groups, especially over privileges and duties and which parts of the underclass were in authority over other parts; and performance by underclasses of a wide variety of necessary services and jobs. (Kobayashi 1990: 339–354) From the beginning, the positioning of these lower occupational classes had something to do with sociopolitical and socioeconomic structure, having only something less clear to do with a sense of difference and inferiority bound up (at least tangentially) with ideas of pollution or 8  Kamakura Buddhism in general weakened folk religious pollution ideas; these afterwards seem to be almost irrelevant to standard Shin teaching as such (except perhaps negatively, as alien prejudices from which hinin wished to escape) (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1989: 104–107). 9  Kobayashi (1990: 282–287). The difficulties in working out the exact usages and meanings of premodern terminology about marginals should be emphasized (Kobayashi 1990 is an essential reference for technical terms).

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bad karma. The most current consensus, at least for the Edo period, is that eta status was the implementation of a deliberate bakufu policy, which might have united some of the other factors, but was nevertheless politically intentional. (Kobayashi 1990: 282–287; Groemer 2001) 3

Shin Buddhism’s Relationship with Social Marginals before the Sixteenth Century

The relationship between Shin Buddhism and social marginals had two phases: the early relations in the medieval era under the loose legal and political conditions prevailing between ritsuryō and the Edo era of bakufu-han federation (bakuhansei 幕藩制); and then relations as (more or less) systematized under the Edo-period regime from the latter part of seventeenth century up to the Meiji Restoration (Meiji ishin 明治維新). Very little is actually known about the pre-Edo phase. Social marginals existed in the world of Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1282), whose ideas were the source of Shin tradition. An often-cited fragment from Shinran’s texts demonstrates an awareness of them: this is a passage from the interpretive work Yuishinshōmon’i 唯心鈔文意 which notes that certain gerui 下類 (lowly people) called to 屠 (those who slaughter for meat) are recipients of Amida’s light like all others. (Shinshū Shōgyō Zensho Hensanjo 1979: 629) However, the reference is almost fleeting, the topic is hardly a main concern of Shinran’s, and it is ambiguous in its social implications.10 Besides this, there is an old tradition about a special relationship between Shinran and a class of special servant craftsmen associated with the Gion shrine called tsurumeso or inujinin 犬神人, who appear visually in the pictorial biography of Shinran called Shinran den-e 親鸞伝絵. (Otomo 1957: 229–330; Kawada 1994; Kobayashi 1990: 27–28) Other points of evidence emerge in the following centuries in connection with Shin writings: a mention in the compositions of Zonkaku 存覚 (1290– 1373), Shinran’s descendant and early proselytizer; some limited indications of links between kawaramono and Honganji in the Muromachi 室町 period; mention of kawaramono in the Tenmon nikki 天文日記—a diary associated with the sixteenth-century Honganji head Shōnyo 証如 (1516–1554)—; and, perhaps most convincingly, geographical correlations (observed in later times) 10  It has been pointed out (Nakao 1994) that (at least from a modern perspective) the mere recognition of inequality embedded in these texts could be taken (especially later) as conceptual approval or toleration of inferiority. Interestingly, traders or pedlars are put on the same level as slaughterers as lowly people in this text.

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between regions where Shin Buddhists were concentrated and regions where eta buraku were eventually concentrated. (Yoshida 1995) Strikingly, there is nothing in the writings of the great late medieval proselytizer Rennyo 蓮如 (1415–1499) that can be identified as specifically concerning hinin. However, for the early centuries of the Shin tradition the information is inadequate to make many substantive assumptions. Not only were the early patterns of these social marginals complex, fragmented and changing over time, but also there is insufficient evidence of sustained relations between hinin and Shin Buddhism that are of any particularly distinctive interest. The audience for Shin was a diverse one in which hinin would have been included along with many others. If the attraction of Shinran’s universalist teachings for marginals was perhaps more intense than for other Japanese, it was not essentially different in kind. Also must be considered are early non-uniformities in attitudes from local area to local area and possible mixed attitudes among the Shin leadership at all stages. The obscurity of these relations continued up to the settling of the bakufu system in the seventeenth century.11 4

A Special Relationship between the Eta and the Ikkō-ikki of the Sixteenth Century?

Because of the modern urge to find something politically edifying in the historical association of Shin Buddhism and social marginals, considerable attention has been devoted to the possible relationship of such marginals and the ikkō-ikki 一向一揆.12 During the sixteenth century more pieces of evidence for a relationship between Shin Buddhism and social marginals become visible. The relationship thesis has two arguments. The first proposition is that marginals were conspicuous, or at least identifiable, among the participants in the ikkō-ikki.13 The mentioned geographical links between sixteenth-century 11  Hinin participated in other kinds of Buddhism too and retained ties to certain kinds of minkan 民間 or folk religion (Kobayashi and Akisada 1989: 205–211). 12  These were local popular movements for local political autonomy which opened up during the sixteenth century period of feudal warfare (Sengoku jidai 戦国時代). For a recent overview in English see Tsang (2007). As an example of the ideological backgrounding which has often accompanied the subject, see Teraki (1986: 100–101), who following the broadly Marxist position of the earlier scholar Ishio Yoshihisa saw the defeat of the ikki as an ideological defeat in a class war. (This standpoint presents a historical image of marginals as resisters against class power, then afterwards as victims of it.) 13  The historian of ikkō-ikki Inoue Toshio wrote about watari 渉り (itinerant workers) with connections to Honganji. (Inoue 1966; Teraki 1986) Morimoto (1990) reviews evidence for Shin-eta connections in the latter part of the sixteenth century.

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ikkō-ikki (or at least Shinshū), some premodern provinces, and concentrations of Edo-period buraku can be shown in the provinces of Shinano 信濃, Ise 伊勢, Iga 伊賀, Ōmi 近江, Yamato 大和, Kii 紀伊, Izumi 和泉, Settsu 摂津, Harima 播磨 and Tanba 丹波. (Teraki 1986: 192–205) Some specific sixteenth century Honganji affiliate temples and specific later buraku sites can be directly linked, but only in about ten cases in the current state of research.14 Sometimes also there are precise signs of such a history. Watanabemura 渡辺村 in the Osaka area, which later became the center of the Edo period leather industry and a famous eta settlement, is an example. During the sixteenth century the settlement is known to have become part of the membership of Honganji, a natural development considering the longtime relationship of Shin and itinerant workers as well as the local proximity of Rennyo’s Ishiyama 石山 headquarters. By 1540, Ishiyama was sponsoring or protecting the Watanabe community and it was in turn supplying Ishiyama with leather, brooms and footwear. During the Nobunaga War (Ishiyama gassen 石山合戦, 1570–1580) between the daimyō Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 and Ishiyama) the village was apparently a part of the defensive ring around the headquarters, for according to the record called Nobunaga-ki 信長紀, on an occasion in 1576 when one of Nobunaga’s commanders made an unsuccessful foray against Ishiyama he reported that one contingent of defenders was a village of eta who had set up their own fortifications (eta jō 穢多城) along the south bank of the Dotomburi river. (Brook 1977) The second proposition is that the Edo-period’s intentional consolidation of buraku communities as such, as the separate mibun entities in Japan discussed below, may have been one of the consequences of the defeat of the ikkō-ikki, because the shogunate decided to lower some ikki participants into bottomlevel mibun status as a conclusive form of class war oppression and punishment, as a kind of retribution for their ikki participation. (Ishio 1982: 24–75; 1983; 1985; 1990) Because of the shortage of information, the propositions are controversial and have not played a major role among the various theses about the origins of eta buraku.15

14  Teraki (1986: 120, 210–214). See for example Teraki (1996: 227ff.) who for the Nara region uses modern statistical correlation between buraku areas and ikkō-ikki areas in Kansai. 15  Kobayashi and Akisada (1989: 38–55). On historians’ disputes about these see also Teraki (1996: 133–151) and Teraki (1986:129).

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Advent of the Tokugawa Regime: Mibunsei Enfolding Eta and Buraku

The main topic of this chapter is what happened in the Edo period regarding the relationship between Shin Buddhism and the eta.16 The political context was a crucial determinant. The Tokugawa regime was fundamentally shaped by concerns about suppression of political resistance, the implementation of agricultural taxation and the organization of a vision of quasi-military regimentation of society emphasizing occupational control. In addition, as the sixteenth century progressed, anxiety about foreign intrusion via Christian missionaries and kirishitan Japanese converts was exacerbated, leading to the evolution of the system for obligatory membership in Buddhist temples (terauke seido 寺請制度). Those two factors in combination shaped the peculiar Edo-period relationship of Shin Buddhism and eta communities. The below discussion examines first how the status of the eta was settled, then how the status of Buddhism was settled, and finally how these two kinds of arrangements interacted. The fundamental premise for eta status was the larger, enfolding legal structure called mibunsei. As described by David Howell (2005), Edo Japan displayed three “geographies of identity”—polity, civilization, and mibun—which had been created via long processes of sociopolitical boundary-construction. Among these the mibun category was extremely important, for all social relations in the period involved mibun somehow. The Edo world was intricate and diverse, and while mibun was not the only form of social organization it was the characteristic and hegemonic one, the framework which held it together.17 The largest category called shomin 庶民 was a relatively undifferentiated status group; its boundaries were frequently fluid, and the key criteria of social position within it were occupation, household (ie 家) affiliation, and formal duties (yaku 役), rather than birth (In comparison the stricter immobility of eta, especially later, was exceptional). Eta and hinin were the major groups specially subordinated under shomin but there were a number of more minor ones as 16  The eta were one of the two main categories of marginals conceptualized in the Edo period along with hinin. (Senmin is the largest conceptual category but is a modern overgeneralized term.) Hinin meant especially beggars’ groups, with the implication of fundamental rootlessness (Kobayashi 1990: 272). 17  Methodologically though, mibun has been a relatively recent emphasis in Japanese historical studies. The four-category shi-nō-kō-shō 士農工商 scheme was a formalistic Confucian ideology which had no real basis in Tokugawa law. (See also Ooms 1996: 298) Confucian ideologues had no way conceptually to, and did not try to, confront or describe the existential realities of mibunsei.

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well. Hierarchization was seen as completely natural to the system. From the standpoint of each yaku or set of compartmentalized duties, the system was a compromise between control by the state on one hand, and legitimation by the state plus a measure of autonomy on the other. (Howell 2005: 1–44) Among its other effects, the Tokugawa regime and its mibun system gave rise to worlds of often harsh village practices which were characteristic of the period. Non-urban Japanese (the great majority of the population) were enmeshed in the kind of class, status and legal existence described by Herman Ooms: a rural world actually or potentially threatening, oppressive, competitive, unstable, and fractured. (Ooms 1996: 346–349) The eta constituted a special mibun within this construction.18 However, corroborating other uncertainties of the topic, for a long time Japanese historians had not even decided—just as with the case of the other historically earlier marginals—exactly how the eta and eta mibunsei of the Edo period came about, since continuities with earlier marginal groups are problematic.19 Ideas about formation have long been divided between the theory that it was formally and systematically organized, versus the theory that it was mostly informal, customary and ad hoc. Even on the formal side, despite hints about backgrounds in Hideyoshi policy, there is no clear consensus. There are important disagreements about the timing: even if the establishment of socially isolated buraku began with Hideyoshi, it may have achieved a widespread rigidity only in the latter quarter of the seventeenth century, after the maturation of other conditions, i.e. the Edo period leather industry.20 The types of people who ended up classified into the eta buraku of the Edo period were diverse, including true indigents, low status craftsmen, and agricultural workers. Despite a degree of diversity in the practices of various domains (han 藩), some widespread characteristics of the eta category around Japan were hereditary confinement to the leather trade, obligations to do policing and punishment work (including executions) for the ruling authorities, residence forced 18  Along with DeVos and Waganuma (1966), a chapter by Ooms (1996: 243–311), Groemer (2001), and Howell (2005: 36–38) are the (only) significant sources on eta in Tokugawa in English. 19  See Teraki (1996: 26–42) on current buraku origin theories, which have their own shifting history dating back to the Edo period itself. Buraku is actually a Meiji term which developed two meanings, both retrospective towards the Edo period: old villages with independent water, etc. rights; and old eta villages (Kobayashi 1990: 277). 20  In the most immediate sense the actual policies which imposed the restrictive conditions were a long series of local edicts issued by samurai classes beginning after 1604 stipulated occupation, appearance, and residence. With the same kind of edicts, the bakufu tried to categorize and regulate other kinds of social marginals including entertainers, vagrants and itinerants (Teraki 1986: 43–48).

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onto undesirable sites, endogamous marriage within the mibun, recurrent devotion to Shin Buddhism, and increasing resistance to oppression as the end of the Edo period approached. (Wada and Nakamura 1996) Questions of eta origins and eta substance have usually been intertwined. An ancient, conventional Japanese explanation related the classification to the job of animal caretaking and feeding, with the meaning extended to animal slaughtering and meat-eating, but this explanation is false since in the Edo period animal caretaking work per se was distinctly not in the eta category. As a term, the word eta appears to have originated as an alternate word for cleaners, slaughterers, and kawaramono who carried out executions, as well as leathermakers, yet it was also associated with veterinary work, land reclamation, ‘entertainment,’ and the construction of formal gardens and rockwork for fences and walls. The term does not have a stabilized meaning in documents from sengoku daimyō 戦国大名 or in Hideyoshi’s Taikōkenchi 太閤検地 land survey. (The older common term for the above occupations was kawata) The term eta seems to have become dominant only from the 1640s because of bakufu terminological policy which applied to it a clear notion of kegare, yet actual eta work included the same broad range of marginal jobs as in the medieval past and with much regional/local variation and even with some religious jobs in the mix. Locally eta groups acquired certain economic rights and land-use rights, but the buraku settlements were separated, were usually political subordinate to normal villages which neighbored them, and were pushed onto marginal, especially flood-prone, land. (Kobayashi 1990: 278; DeVos and Wagatsuma 1966: 20–29) Leathermaking was the most economically conspicuous speciality and related crafts emerged (drum-making, shoes). Most buraku were miserably impoverished, but some leather dealers got rich; Osaka’s Watanabe settlement was the national leather market. From the end of the seventeenth century, with the rise of urban centers and their near-urban economies, the control over shomin exercised by the bakufu weakened, but samurai responded with intensified mibunsei propaganda and control policies aimed at the underclass such as elimination locally of “mixed residence” (co-residence of people in shomin and eta categories).21 Gerald Groemer’s (2001) survey of the state of the literature (especially pages 21  Kobayashi (1990: 32–36). Howell emphasizes that the eta exemplified the actual complexity of boundaries in the mibun system. They were confined in a special eta category, but by livelihood most were actually farmers who did eta work as by-employment. Despite their village life, they did not have shomin autonomy but rather special regional leaders. They could cross domain boundaries when engaged in policing, had privileges over animal carcasses, or could adopt some higher status appearances on an ad hoc basis. In short they possessed contradictory features of both rights and exclusion (Howell 2005: 36–38).

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263–269) reinforces the conclusion that Edo practice was a deliberate politicaleconomic policy of the ruling class. Discrimination and marginalization were always situational in Japanese history. The category of eta was stabilized in the process of the settling of a tighter Edo social and economic order in which the military was particularly interested in the settling of leather production, which involved a combination of advantages and discriminations for the producers. (Kobayashi 1990: 91–92) The existential outcome, however, or at least the regime’s general attitude towards eta, was what Ooms has described as systematic legislated racism and economic oppression. Essentially, the bakufu aimed to refuse eta permission to look like, behave like, or live like other Japanese shomin.22 The scheme contained at the same time many irregularities. At the beginning of the Edo period, the later-emphasized pollution ideology seems to have been weak, and class and occupational boundaries rather indeterminate; even in the later part of the period, lots of local variation in occupations and degrees of customary discrimination persisted; the bakufu had no declared overall policy until the Kyōhō reforms (Kyōhō no kaikaku 享保の改革) of 1715–1730, which heightened status distinctions generally; until about 1720 eta-hinin could sometimes escape from their special legal classification and cross over into other stipulated groups; the harshest regulations only applied absolutely in the areas of direct Tokugawa house control; in other areas (such as Hiroshima) similar measures might be implemented, but with differences; like other inhabitants of the regime, eta coped by evading the regulations rather than opposing them directly; and like other villages under the Tokugawa regime, eta-hinin communities exercised in practice much autonomous self-governance despite their special subordination. It can be argued that the high level of local variation was a main reason why no wide-scale resistance movements against eta discrimination emerged in the period. (Neary 1989: 12–29) Although the Tokugawa system exhibited such irregularities, the oppressive impact of the mibunsei, both in terms of concrete enforcement and consciousness-molding, was profound. According to Wakita 2005, since bakufu aimed to command both occupational and residential control, the system was at its strongest in areas closest to samurai centers, so that eta near castle towns suffered particularly. In the later eighteenth century, once eta status was established for a person or a family, it was almost impossible to get out. In urban layouts, eta were situated inconveniently at the far margins, in villages 22  Ooms (1996: 286–298); cf. Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo (1989: 122–124, 157–159, 220–223); and Teraki (1986: 141–155, 407–431).

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administratively subordinated to other villages. Mibun entailed not merely economic occupation, but also the internalized psychology of yaku strengthened by Confucian ideology, however abstractly. 6

Buddhism (including Shinshū) Unexpectedly Encouraged: Its Utilization as Part of an Anti-Christian Anti-Foreign Security Policy

From the 1630s, whatever the connection existing at the time between Shin Buddhism and the incipient pattern of forcibly-isolated eta buraku communities, it was greatly accelerated—adventitiously—because of the bakufu’s turn to using of Buddhist temple registration as a method of implementing its antiChristian national security policy. Before the anti-Christian policy jelled, the bakufu was already developing its own kind of relations with Buddhist institutions. In the case of monastic institutions, it initially appears to have exercised a conservative approach: traditionally—following the Indian Buddhist model—a centralized regime was associated with a patronage relationship with the monasteries which was based on the paradigm of government protection of the monastic sangha. The initial problem was to reestablish the position of Buddhist monasteries within the new legal framework in which the bakufu 幕府 had acquired national land control, and as part of this rebuilding Hideyoshi began issuing brief regulations for certain shrines and temples in 1591 and 1595 (shaji hatto 社寺法度); thereafter various local codes for such regulation began to appear from regional daimyō administrations. The hatto were meant to exercise shogunate power particularly by superseding the old kenmontaisei 検問体制 (legal-political power networks linking traditional aristocrats and monasteries) in order to fully quash old land rights. The first regulations targeting the centralized headquarters of various Buddhist schools were promulgated between 1602 and 1615 but traditional limitations on government authority were evident and the rules and expectations were not uniform among the various Buddhist headquarters (honzan 本山). A side effect of regulations was the strengthening of Buddhist organizations by requiring that the honzans begin to pull their networks together on the basis of honmatsu 本末 (headquarters and branch) hierarchical organization. (Tamamuro 1987: 6–26; Ono 1985: chronology; Umeda 1972: 11–21) Honganji did not appear in the early hatto; the relationship of the Honganji institution with the bakufu was perhaps fundamentally different than that of the monastic institutions because (despite the history of Honganji relations

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with the court) Shin’s organization differed from traditional Asian Buddhis.23 A practical difference was financial. Monasteries depended entirely on the income from estate lands granted to them by the imperial house (or its proxies), but in Shin Buddhism (even though for a time the headquarters came into possession of various estate income rights in the sixteenth century, particularly in Kaga 加賀) the principle base of its support was direct donations of money, goods and labor from the membership. Since the reform of law in the consolidation of the Hideyoshi and Toyotomi regimes mainly concerned agrarian surveying and taxation, Honganji finances were not so directly affected. Throughout the Edo period the Shin temples had almost no governmentgranted estates as compared to other Buddhist institutions; this may have meant that Shin Buddhism was in some respects in a weaker political position than the others (Akamatsu and Kasahara 1963: 331), but as a result it also came into less contact with the bakufu’s affairs. (Andō 1977; Toyoda 1973: 138–169) Another reason for absence of Honganji in these hatto was that Honganji was already relatively highly self-organizing and politically reactive as it entered the period. Following the Rennyo tradition, ideas about civil behavior consonant with bakufu expectations were reemphasized by the successive heads. Nishi’s head Ryōnyo 良如 (in headship 1630–1662), for example, continued to issue okite 掟 (members’ guidelines) with traditional civil obedience advisories during his headship along with letters which stipulated obedience to the regime and noninterference with other Buddhist organizations. (Chiba 1969: 541–552; Sasaki 1970; Chiba 1988: 80–83, 97–113) Acceleration of institutional growth under these circumstances was caused by the anti-Christian campaign. Decisions on an altered Tokugawa Buddhist policy seem to have been taken between 1632 and 1638. In 1632 and 1633 the bakufu ordered the submission of honmatsuchō 本末帳 (headquarters and branch lists) records from all the honzans of the various sects; in 1635 the teraukeshōmon 寺請証文 order was promulgated, indicating that all persons in Japan would have to become members in some local Buddhist temple; and this was coordinated with kirishitan testing procedures (such as fumi-e 踏み絵) and the establishment of the jishabugyō 寺社奉行 office. In 1637 and 1638, the bakufu put down the Shimabara Rebellion (Shimabara no ran 島原の乱), an event which completely polarized bakufu attitudes against the kirishitan movement.

23  Yamamoto (2006) has noted that the Honganjis submitted official documents to the bakufu’s urban administrators (machibugyō 町奉行), not to the regular temple-shrine supervisors (jisha bugyō 寺社奉行) who were connected with the bakufu’s normal idea of religious institutions.

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Although the purpose of the terauke registration system has been understood as rooting out Christians, no direct statement about the bakufu’s policy thinking in setting up the system actually survives.24 Buddhist temple networks were the only institutions in early Tokugawa Japan which approached having a national presence and according to one interpretation the bakufu exploited them because they were the only available resource for such a purpose. (Tamamuro 1987: 61–62) Perhaps also, since the greatest spurt of formalized Buddhist organizational effort did not occur until the later seventeenth century, some thirty to forty years after the bakufu policy was theoretically in place, a complementary, perhaps ad hoc link was to was an escalation of government interest in mibunsei, which was accelerated especially circa 1661–1681 as part of the full implementation of Tokugawa agricultural taxation which only took place about a century into the regime.25 Meanwhile the terauke policy coincided with the period of early prosperity under the Tokugawa regime, and the application of Buddhism to the whole population was not only a matter of having something unwanted imposed, but also of being given access to new religious resources that had hitherto been the privilege of elites. Though temple registration originated in a government directive, temples were initially built with great popular enthusiasm in many areas, a tendency which irritated Confucian ideologues. Local affiliation with one or another Buddhist group was voluntary during the period of most rapid membership growth; membership eventually became hereditary and routinized only after the system was complete. Initially the terauke directives set the Buddhist institutions scrambling to fill in enormous gaps in the national coverage of the population by the kind of honzan-connected Buddhism which the bakufu wanted to see. The temple networks were at the beginning spread thinly in Japan and exercised only a weak or fragmentary influence. Even popularly strong groups like Shin and Nichiren existed only in relative pockets and many of their ‘temples’ were nothing more than a room in a village house which was 24  The kirishitan argument, focusing especially on the bakufu reaction to the Shimabara Rebellion, has been advanced strongly by Tamamuro Fumio. (e.g. 1986: 3–40) and presented in English by Hur (2007). Despite an unbalanced view of Tokugawa Buddhism, the latter supports many of the points made here: the bakufu’s initial rather peripheral interest in controlling religion; the improvised bricolage of bakufu anti-Christian policy as it developed step-by-step; inconsistencies in the system, and weaknesses in bakufu control; the negotiated nature of the relationships among the participants; local and regional variation; the sociological connection between the growth of Buddhism and the growth of nuclear households and ie households in the developing Tokugawa economy; and Buddhism as expression of local social competition. 25  Ōkuwa (1979: 98–120). For more on the ambiguities of why the bakufu initiated the system see Nishiwaki (1979: 23–45).

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visited by a traveling priest; where there was an ordained priest on hand, his local support was likely to be scanty and did not necessarily represent the participation of the majority of the local population. (Tamamuro 1987: 53–57) The effect of the new terauke promulgation was an explosion in the number of new temples all across the country, growth which continued for decades as monastic, Nichiren and Shin schools all showed bursts of entrepreneurial energies. Buddhist temple enrollment was voluntary in the west of Japan, where Shin flourished, if not in the east of Japan, where new enrollment was more likely to follow the directives of feudal superiors. (Yamamoto 2006) Most of the local temples in Japan were established during this time span, although the engi 縁 起 (local temple legitimation) documents created in the late seventeenth century in coordination with the solidification of the system often inserted false information in their engi records backdating themselves to the period before 1631 when they were already (according to the theoretical expectations of the bakufu) supposed to have existed. (Kodama 1976: 176–177) Administratively the new religious system required new legal features. The jishabugyō (religious superintendents) were assigned by the bakufu from among the daimyō beginning in 1635; they had formal judicial power to appoint, promote, and demote clerical persons, to deal with official regulations about religion, and to handle ritual events; in practice they spent most of their time dealing with the usual conflicts and miscellaneous disputes not covered by other bakufu functionaries. The bakufu ordinarily only had four jishabugyō appointed at any one time for the whole country and their most effective influence was related to their position inside the bakufu and court social network and to their personal connections with the temples that were directly part of that network, i.e. the traditional monastic institutions.26 Another set of officials called furegashira 触頭 (literally “contact heads”) was assigned from among the officials of the Buddhist institutions themselves as liaison with the bakufu through the jishabugyō.27 The furegashira became assimilated to Shin’s own internal communications system, and while the system was formally equipped with supervision from the top by the bakufu, in actuality Shin (like all the Buddhist groups including the monasteries) remained primarily self-governing via internal decision making processes managed by their own councils and committees; the danka 檀家 (members) also continued to have their conventional rights and duties vis à vis the leadership. Thus as in 26  On jishabugyō officers and offices see Umeda (1972: 25–27); see also Totman (1988: 41, 196, 270–271). 27  Chiba (1988: 313–19); Honganji Shiryō Kenkyūjo (1974: Vol. 2, 199); and Udaka (1987: 159– 169, 192–193).

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the pre-Tokugawa past, Buddhist institutions remained much more internally than externally structured. Consider the level of formal supervision numerically: by the nineteenth century this meant about 125 “bakufu officials” (all but four of them actually Shin ministers) theoretically observing about nine or ten million Shin Buddhists. (Toyoda 1973: 14–169; Umeda 1972) It took decades to create any semblance of an orderly terauke system. Shin growth was not properly organizationally consolidated until beginning in the Empō 延宝 period (1673–1680) and continuing through the Jōkyō 貞享 period (1684–1687). (Kashiwahara 1979: 339) Whether bakufu supervision of Shin was ever even successfully systematic is unclear because of the shortage of primary data on Shin membership in the extant records. The bakufu went through several rounds in which it attempted to gather the appropriate proofs of compliance from the Buddhist institutions, for in the first honmatsuchō collection in the 1620s, the Shin institutions (along with Tendai and others) did not submit the documents as expected: materials were omitted or the temples tried to substitute their own versions of membership and contribution records in place of the formats officially stipulated by the bakufu. Such forms of resistance showed both the limits of bakufu suasion and created barriers to future bakufu policy. By 1692, however, Honganji had apparently completed submission of its honmatsuchō as desired by the bakufu.28 The first set of bakufu regulations which can be construed as applying to Honganji were issued in 1665, not at the beginning of the declaration of the universal registration policy but towards the end of it; the 1665 hatto recognized Shin only indirectly in a clause permitting the marriage of sōryo (priests 僧侶) in Buddhist groups “where it was customary.” (Chiba 1988: 89–91; Ienaga 1967: Vol. 3, 346) No Shin or Honganji institution appeared specifically by name in any bakufu regulatory document until 1722, when the bakufu wished to regulate local fundraising at Tsukiji Honganji 築地本願寺 in Edo.29 The Honganjis were not alone in their distinctiveness: the specific details of every Buddhist network’s operations were unique and the various patterns of headquarters and branches which emerged in the seventeenth century varied widely depending not only on the organization but even on the geographical region. (Tamamuro 1987: 40) As Howell noted, the character of the mibunsei was that its participants were coopted into the system because although they gave up full autonomy, in 28  Tamamuro (1971: 52), Tamamuro and Oguri (1972: 19–20), Akamatsu and Kasahara (1963: 337), Kashiwahara (1979), and Tamamuro (1981: Vol. 1: 5–26). 29  Chiba (1988: 91–93). The nineteen articles of 1722 dealt with organizational matters, the behavior of ministers, and various public affairs of the temples. See Tamamuro (1987: 190), Sasaki (1970), Kashiwahara (1971: 188), and Date (1974).

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return they were granted a kind of legitimation. Under the Tokugawa regime the bakufu and the Honganjis ordinarily lived in separate spheres, maintaining diplomatic relations with each other (Ōtani Daigaku 1973), with Honganji acceding to the bakufu’s limited specialized interests towards its members (i.e. taxation, civil order) while retaining a great deal of autonomy otherwise. Shin Buddhism continued to grow during the Edo period.30 Even the official ‘closure’ of the bakufu registration system declared towards the end of the seventeenth century did not take place until about the time the premodern Japanese population had already begun to level off, having risen from about eighteen (or ten) million in the late Muromachi to about twenty-five million in 1700. (Taeuber 1958: 20–21) This meant that the membership patterns stabilized after the various Buddhist groups had each already had opportunities to establish membership bases that reflected their long-term appeal to various sectors of the Tokugawa population. (Morioka 1962: 559–561) In the case of Shin, growth was an extension of a religious program that pre-existed the Tokugawa regime and evidence does not suggest that the Shin organization was essentially affected by bakufu policies about growth. Nishi temple totals increased from 259 in the mid-sixteenth century to 1000 in 1623 to 8359 in 1694. Higashi’s new temple foundings (permissions to take formal temple names) grew from 467 in 1615–1646 to 1154 in 1647–1681, so that the total by 1681 was 1621 new temples.31 By 1694 the actual number of temples in both Nishi and Higashi probably reached around 15,500; the Honganjis became the largest and most active of the Tokugawa Buddhist institutions. (Chiba 1985: 231, 242) Some conversions from other kinds of Buddhism were involved in this growth as well as instability regarding Nishi or Higashi affiliation. Nishi temples went on increasing from their seventeenth century figures, to 9,699 in 1806 and 30  Chiba (1988). Yamamoto (1999: 277) follows argument that bakufu was struggling with accelerated popularity of temples, not vice versa. Stagnation arguments are based on the limited observations that beginning with the late seventeenth century the bakufu system theoretically exercised a formal chilling effect on wide-open Buddhist proselytization and also promulgated the various official prohibitions (e.g. against informal Buddhist clubs (nenbutsu kō 念仏講), unregulated street activity, or religious activities outside of the proper grounds of recognized temples, such as popular Jōdo proselytization involving public preachers and the assembly of large audiences). Kashiwahara (1971: 187–188), Hasegawa (1978), and Tamamuro (1987) have much on ad hoc measures towards shugendō hijiri 修験道聖 and other itinerants. 31  Kimura (1985: 515). These numbers are partly based on the Kibutsu no tome document (compiled 1597–1623), a headquarters record of inscriptions on legitimating objects sent off to temples which were formalizing their named status with Nishi Honganji. Chiba 1980 contains a review of the practice of granting legitimation via granting texts, along with analytical charts of data from this document. Various other documents showing Honganji temple organization were compiled after 1779 to meet bakufu expectations (Chiba 1960; Takashima 1988: 365). On Higashi see also Ōkuwa (1979: 59–66). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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11,537 in 1853; the Higashi progress was probably similar. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Honganjis together claimed about twenty-five to thirty percent of the whole Japanese population as members, or about ten to twelve million people.32 However a great deal of information about Tokugawa institutional practice is missing. Exact numbers of members are unknown, and exact histories of most of the local temples (even founding dates) are unknown. Shin temples had many informal meeting sites, and compared to the temples of other Buddhist traditions Shin temples displayed more flexibility and change in their names, numbers, locations and memberships.33 The seventeenth century growth included all kinds of regional variability in the actual internal construction of the Shin networks, a distinctive variable being the proportion of large to small temples. In Kaga because of the conditions of sixteenth century militarization the network had been headed up by a few large temples with many smaller temple or dōjō units organized under them in feudal fashion; in contrast, the pattern which emerged in areas like Chōshū 長州 in the seventeenth century under less stressful conditions manifested more equal size and status and less hierarchical subordination. A tendency toward the Chōshū pattern prevailed during later Honganji growth.34 The regionalized configuration of 32  There was period of sharp competition for branch temples between Higashi and Nishi, and the shifting of local temples between affiliation with one or the other was an important part of the early seventeenth century process of growth on each side. Of course, where they could the higher leaderships tried to restrain the departure of members to the other organization (Kashiwahara 1969: 122; Chiba 1969: 550). Competition between Nishi and Higashi was most heated circa 1648–1652 (Chiba 1988: 86–88, 269–284; Ashiwara 1963). 33  Kodama (1976: 180–182, 185). The extant Honganji records about the Tokugawa institution have been published in a series of volumes edited by Chiba in the series Honganji shiryō shūsei, but the interpretation of the data raises many problems in judging what was really going on in local communities. The primary interest of these records is the conversion of local dōjō to full-fledged, formally named temples in possession of the appropriate legitimating objects issued from the headquarters, but this nominal conversion from unnamed to named status is what makes the relationship to the earlier actual membership unclear. If many of the new temples were just nominal conversions, then the membership in the late sixteenth century was already relatively high. Furthermore, although the temple system was supposed to be fixed in place after the late seventeenth century, the Shin network was so distant from the ordinary supervision of the bakufu that it manifested not only continuing growth but a great deal of local turnover, indeed with the names of most temples recorded in Tokugawa records having disappeared by modern times in spite of the increased Shin membership (Chiba 1980). The forms of record keeping used by Nishi and Higashi were not equivalent or uniform and makes it difficult to directly compare even the two branches of Shinshū (Ōkuwa 1979: 59). 34  Kodama (1976: 121–136). Extending this analysis of regional patterns by the use of documents which recorded permissions and exchanges with temples seeking full membership Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Shin was demonstrated by the enlargement of communities in Aki 安芸 and Bingo 備後 during the Edo period. The Muromachi expansion of Shin within the Chūgoku 中国 area was already rooted in the members’ previous economic strength (Kodama 1961; Wada 1960) and member groups began further solidifying from about 1631 onwards, although as in other areas of Japan local temples often resisted the imposition of higher central organizational authority. The majority of Honganji members had low economic status, such as laborers and servants—up to seventy percent of persons in the ninbetsuchō 人別帳 (temple population records) generally were Shin rather than members of other Buddhist groups) but although such people started the period in the weakest socioeconomic position, they were also the part of the population with the most economic potential and the part which benefited most from seventeenth century economic growth. The Aki membership was not only composed of the lowest classes; it also included some old local landed elites. (Kodama 1976: 85–98, 106–110) The lengthy excursus above has been provided to emphasize the encompassing political and institutional background for the situation of the eta vis à vis Shin Buddhism during the period, especially the degree to which the Buddhist organization seems to have occupied an autonomous sphere of action, and some general properties of Shin development. Coming now to the eta, while all historians agree on the empirical fact of a close relationship between Shin and eta communities in the Edo period, they have not agreed on how this association came about (i.e. another uncertainty about marginals in Japanese history). The approach here will be to sketch some principal facts, and then examine some main types of interpretation. 7

Numbers, Chronology, Special Organizational Features for Eta Communities

Around nine-tenths of eta were affiliated with Shin temples by the end of the Edo period.35 The situation is most readily measured by counting etadera 穢 多寺 (temples in the Honganji systems which were marked off because all the Ōkuwa discerned as many as four different patterns in membership structure (Ōkuwa 1985: 267–298; 1979: 77–94. The latter has charts of four regional types). Local legal classifications by the hans could be complex as well: in a branch of Kaga han) four different categories (old, newly sited, named direct branches, and unnamed branches) were recognized (Ōkuwa 1979b: 15–19). 35  An important paired fact however is that around Japan not all eta were Shin members, suggesting there was no general bakufu policy about it (Kobayashi 1990: 296–98). Everything about this question however has a regional and/or local angle. The regionalism of the Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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members were eta). According to an 1854 document, of some 9850 Shin temples, 451 were etadera (plus another 108 not standardly recorded); or according to another document 444 were etadera. According to another count, Nishi in late Edo had 537 etadera temples; Higashi in the Taishō 大正 period had 124 (from which a judgment of the Tokugawa situation can be made). In Settsu, Kawachi, and Izumi provinces there were around 95 recognized etadera. (Kobayashi 1990: 41–42) Numerical discrepancies seem to point to a certain looseness in the system. As important as the numbers, however, is the chronology of affiliation, which was apparently tied to regional economic developments. (Kobayashi 1990: 160–161) The emergence of distinct eta temple communities was numerous in Kinki because it was an economically advanced area. In some other regions of Japan, the development of local temples was delayed literally by centuries. Most (90%) probably preexisted the Edo period in some form (i.e. as dōjō, informal local meeting places) with about 27% of foundings in the Sengoku period, 33% in the Muromachi period, and 33% in the Genna 元和 (1615–1624) and Kanbun 寛文 (1661–1673) eras (Yamamoto 1999: 272; Kobayashi 1990: 41–42) Another evaluation is that around 60% of the etadera were founded between Tensho 天正 (1573–1593) and Keicho 慶長 (1596–1615) eras.36 The difficulty in evaluating both early membership and chronology is that local Shin dōjō existed before (sometimes for very long time spans before) they converted themselves to the recognized, named temples (jiin 寺院, with formal names jigō 寺号) which stand out better in the records. Over the course of the Edo period, dōjō in the prosperous areas were able to accomplish this self-upgrading, but in poorer areas such as Chūgoku or Kyūshū the process was long retarded. (Kobayashi 1990: 225) Meanwhile each area had its own history. Yamamoto Naotomo summarized the evolution in Kyoto as follows. An early eta-like community was associated with the proselytizer Zonkaku. Shin from an early stage probably spread by way of leather-trade networks among marginal people in western Japan. Eventually Shin was quite strong among the buraku in the Kyoto region. Prosperous locales could afford village kō 講 (confraternities) and dōjō before they could afford temple and examples exist of buraku temples possessing myōgō 名号 (Shin phrase Namu-amida-butsu 南無阿弥陀仏 meaning “take refuge in the issue is shown by the modern diversity of buraku movements by region (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1987). 36  Sauda (1995). Japanese historians give a great deal of attention to the problem of the records alone. (Yamamoto 2006; 1999: 271; and Teraki 1986: 235–247) On regions see for example Teraki (1986: 271–273) on temples in Nara or Teraki (1986: 206–216) on Tanba. However statistics do not clarify much about the inner dimensions of the Honganji-eta relationship. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Amida Buddha”) scrolls given by Rennyo. At the end of the seventeenth century etadera began to be incorporated in shūmon aratame 宗門改め registration documents. Formal recognition of temples in Yamashiro 山城 and Tanba appears from 1692, but most buraku dōjō existing at the time did not yet have the position to be so recognized. (Yamamoto 1995) The best Edo-period records pertaining to etadera exist for the old provinces of Harima and Tanba near Osaka. Dōjō were founded in many of these villages from fifty to one hundred years before the villages began to be given their buraku form beginning with Hideyoshi policy; such establishments were somewhat earlier in Harima than in Tanba. During the first half of Edo they strove successfully to turn themselves into higher status jiin. (Andachi 1995: 519–22, 538) An instance of chronological flow was exhibited by the Watanabe settlement. The location was originally a sanjo 散所 (a piece of barren, therefore tax-free land) attached to land controlled by a shrine where the inhabitants served the shrine as hunters of small animals. When the nearby river became a maritime trade route, the Watanabe dwellers worked as boatmen and longshoremen. As Sakai and Osaka grew in the sixteenth century, they turned to the leather trade, and some wealthy merchants and craftsmen emerged and the settlement became part of the membership of Honganji. After the fall of Ishiyama in 1580, residents transferred its military vassalage relationships to Hideyoshi, offered services in its area to him, and became officials of the regime, all the while undoubtedly remaining steadfast religious members of Honganji, but because they remained loyal to the Hideyoshi family in the Osaka siege of 1614–1615 by Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康, their community was smashed and scattered until 1623, when bakufu officials relocated them on the fringes of Osaka. Eventually due to its size and wealth the Watanabe community appeared repeatedly in Tokugawa records. It was given considerable freedom from bakufu supervision, ran itself by its own council of elders, and prospered to the same extent as Osaka’s chōnin 町人 merchants. It set up its own trade association and wholesale market and managed the huge leather business for most of central and western Japan while heavily supporting Honganji.37 Along the way it acquired its recognized temple. Historians have given a relatively large amount of attention to how eta were isolated or subordinated within the organizational systems of the Honganjis as 37  Brooks (1977: 45–48, 65–68, 95–97). An increase in the burakumin population took place after the beginning of the eighteenth century (although the general Japanese population growth was leveling off); this may have a partial explanation in the strong burakumin observance of Shin teaching, which discouraged feticide and infanticide (Brooks 1977: 110).

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they developed through the seventeenth century. However, it is important to note that many eta people were involved with Shin without such special forms. In large parts of Japan, for example Ise, eta were members of regular local temples, without separated or distinct etadera. In Aki in western Japan, religious activity tended to be consolidated around the larger temples, undercutting the need for separate etadera.38 In other words although the confinement of local eta residents in a Shin etadera could be a consequence of the residential patterns imposed by the enfolding bakufu policy, this was not true everywhere. Where eta were marked apart in the organization, it meant that distinct eta buraku village temples had joined the Honganji networks. These etadera could exist in both older Shin membership regions and in newer ones. Such buraku temples were incorporated in the general hierarchical honmatsu membership structure, but with a subordinated position in which certain higher level temples (uwadera 上寺 or tetsugidera 手継寺) were specialized in supervision over these lower etadera (shitadera 下寺) and dōjō. Nationally Nishi Honganji had about twenty-five such uwadera supervising eta temples. Among these, five uwadera in particular had an especially broad reach. Four of them were founded administratively (by priests, not by regular members) and were situated in the jinaichō 寺内町 quarter of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto. A fifth, Honshōji 本照寺, had been founded early in the fifteenth century and had a prestigious connection with Rennyo. It was located in the commercial urbs of Tonda 富田 in Settsu, at the center of trade routes for the Inland Sea and elsewhere, and its direct activities extended widely over these networks. Honshōji’s own montos were of mixed mibun and sought to become a direct affiliate of Honganji; the temple also had many etadera matsuji under it. After a period of neglect, in 1646 the temple was assigned Ryōkyō 良教, a son of the monshu 門主 (hereditary head of Nishi Honganji), and became one of the high-prestige renshi 連枝 temples (temples with family ties to the lineage of Shinran). Afterwards Honshōji served as the intermediary for communications between the monshu and the eta (messages were not supposed to be direct); this was the idea of the chūhonzan 中本山 (intermediating headquarters temple). The four temples in the Kyoto jinaicho acquired the sobriquet shika no honji 四カの本寺 (the four hon [main supervising] temples). Since within the normal Shin society the term hon was reserved for the high headquarters alone, the separate use of the term for this eta-supervising group suggests they were not regarded as being quite within the normal system, but instead outsiders. Surviving records yield a certain amount of statistical data about the distribution of temples under these special honji, and again a crucially important part of this buraku 38  Yamamoto (1999: 334–336); he suggests this pattern was probably widespread.

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jiin history was the late transition of many of them from local dōjō to formally recognized jiin rank. The seventeenth century saw enormous growth in formalized Shin temples; the buraku temples were merely about fifty years behind others in this process. As this transition got underway, the Honganji headquarters imposed high, even extremely high, financial requirements, but the eta communities continued to approach Honganji with a willingness to pay.39 Although the temples in the system which were unambiguously classifiable as etadera tend to stand out, in some cases the concept of ‘what is an etadera’ was not completely clear. Sauda Masayuki has discussed an Ise temple which was listed as etadera in some Edo temple listings but whose identification was actually unstable. The temple resisted classification in the 1780s; headquarters documents show the temple was treated inconsistently over time (possibly the Honganji administration got more confused); in its locale it was treated as etadera, but there was a lawsuit about its official legal mibun status; the temple itself tried to present itself as not an etadera. It appears the Honganji only declared it a clear etadera when late Edo conditions required it to do so, but then in 1851 it was raised out of etadera status by Honganji. A related problem is who was considered an etasō 穢多僧 (defined eta temple priest). In this case any sōryo 僧侶 (priests) working at etadera were loosely considered etasō by Honganji, but at the bakufu level only sōryo in actual eta mibun were called etasō. (Sauda 1990) In short the etadera concept was not unambiguous, apparently including elements of shomin mibun, jūshoku 住職 (intendant priest) mibun (as a class, Buddhist priests were another kind of mibun by themselves) and geographical and residential location.40 Administrative relationships could also change. At the beginning of Meiji, a prominent temple called Kōsenji 光泉寺 was newly put in charge of the whole etadera system. Although association with eta temples was usually statuslowering, in the bakumatsu 幕末 (end of Edo, 1853–1868) period Honganji was short of money due to legal disputes, internal politics and building repairs. The headquarters had a history of leaning on buraku jiin for money 39  Yamamoto (1995; 1999: 302–323). Overall the five most important seem to have ruled about 400–500 smaller etadera sites. (Dōwa Kyōiku Sentā 1986: 1–6) On honmatsu relationships of buraku jiin in Osaka, evidence about individual supervising temples and growth of matsuji under Honshōji and others into a network in the Honganji system see also Yamamoto (1999: 298–302), Teraki (1986: 248–265), Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo (1987: 839). Higashi Honganji had its own corresponding uwadera called Kinpukuji 金福寺 in the Higashi jinaichō. 40  Sauda (1995: 345). In Harima, there was an example of a small honji standing over some etadera, in which the honji itself was not an etadera; it is unclear how Honganji handled the local and mid-level temples, whether they were clearly regarded as etadera or not, and the exact authority relationships (Andachi 1995: 531–538).

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and was willing to change the administration to reflect the wealth of the eta temples. (Wada 2006) 8

Special Subordinations, Disadvantages, Restrictions Adopted towards Eta in the Practices of Shin Headquarters

All discussions of the Shin-eta relationship focus attention on certain subordinative practices exercised by the headquarters in Kyoto as the relationship developed during this time.41 Regulations or customs for etadera, from the headquarters perspective, were written down in long documents submitted to the bakufu in the early nineteenth century in response to bakufu official demands (1802) to the sects for descriptions of sect practices. It is assumed to at least some extent that these reports involved a setting down on paper of behavior from the previous century. Mentions of kawaramono or eta occupy only a small amount of space in these documents: despite certain differences, the majority of Shin religious practices were as much permitted to eta as to other members, so that their religious life in other words was ninety percent normal or standard. The Nishi documents, both of 1811, were Shinbutsu shogan toriatsukaikata no ki 申物諸願取扱方之記 and Shoji kokoroe no ki 諸事心得之記. According to the Shinbutsu shogan toriatsukaikata no ki (Chiba 1976: 212–272) most normal forms of religious participation were permitted to kawaramono: normal temple furnishings, including wooden Buddha statues and inscriptions (214, 224), temple titles (jigō 寺号) (215, 231), scroll pictures of Shin patriarchs and various other images (216–217, 222), use of a smaller type of hanging temple bell called kanshō 喚鐘 or yobigane (226), ritual use of the Shinran biography (218), myōgō (Namu-amida-butsu inscriptions) (224), butsudan 仏壇 (altars) and zushi 厨 子 (small shrines) (225, 259), “self-ordination” in local temples (232),42 certain 41  The term subordinated is chosen here to try to avoid some of the automatic associations of the word “discriminated-against” (hisabetsu in modern Japanese, now with the same associations as in English. Discriminated referring to eta implies that “regular” members of Honganji were all equal in terms of status (i.e. fitting modern social expectations), when in fact all the Edo-period members were involved more or less in competitive hierarchical competition, entailing widespread “discrimination” against each other in a certain institutional dimension. 42  During the Edo period regular ordination was called simply kamisori 剃刀 (the same meaning in the Shin context as tokudo 得度) and was performed at the honzan. So-called “self-ordination,” called jikamisori 自剃刀 (or alternatively jitokudo 自得度) was performed at a local or regional temple after permission had been obtained from the honzan. (The original reason for this was inability to travel, due to illness or far distance.)

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types of kesa 袈裟 (symbolic ceremonial robes, depending on rank) (257), torimusubi 取結 (communications from headquarters to local members) (258), inscriptions on honzon 本尊 (main devotional objects) for ordinary members (260–261), ritual Buddhist names (hōmyō 法名), arazuka 新塚 (a type of interment) (266) and enrollment in etaikyō 永代経 (sutra ritual programs related to ancestors) (277). Prohibited in this document was most importantly regular full-status ordination (kamisori), i.e. at the main headquarters temple in Kyoto (260).43 The Shoji kokoroe no ki document (Chiba 1976: 273–365) indicates that conventionally kawaramono had been paying a fifty percent surcharge (that is, above the normal fees) for all religious items and acts of participation provided by Honganji to them; however, the surcharge began to be lifted from the Bunka 文化 period (1804–1818) (284, 296). From 1811 kawaramono received the privilege to pay obeisance to the monshu from a closer distance (282).44 Some kawaramono with special passes (wari’in 割印) were allowed into the inner precincts. (296) Kawaramono self-ordination was first permitted from Tenmei 天 明 3 (1784) (295). The comparable Higashi Honganji document of the same time (Shinshū Ōtani-ha Kaihō Undō Suishin Honbu 2005: 177–178) is Higashi-ha Jōdo Shinshū ippa kaikyū no shidai 東派浄土真宗一派階級之次第. According to this document (178), etadera priests are not permitted to have kamisori in the main temple itself, and must not have contact with persons of other statuses. Temples of two rankings which are low in the hierarchy which happen to have eta parishioners (as well as parishioners of the usual shomin status groups) are permitted to have main honzan ordination. (Priests of these temples would not be thought of as ‘etasō’ or eta priests). However eta priests (from definite etadera) must be ordained in their own temple, or their dannadera 檀那寺 (in this case the temple above them in the honmatsu system), where the priest performing the ordination will have discretion on robes and ritual procedure during ceremony. The status separation of etasō meant there was educational subordination, especially exclusion from the regular seminaries in Kyoto called gakurin 学 林. In the Nishi Honganji, eventually a special separate seminary for etasō was situated at Honshōji, called Kōgakujō 興学場. (Sauda 1995)

The practice of such local ordinations was ended in the Meiji period (Okamura 1935: Vol. 2, 1622). 43  Also as an example of a lesser detail the use of the standard type of temple bell tsurigane 撞鐘 or bonshō 梵鐘 was prohibited. 44  Implying an earlier history of distancing.

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Subordination by headquarters took four main forms then: fifty-percent extra surcharges for institutional participation, from sometime presumably in the seventeenth century until ca. 1804–1818 (at least in the case of Nishi Honganji);45 prohibition of local temple kamisori (“self-ordination”) to eta until 1784 (in the case of Nishi) and prohibition of normal kamisori (at the Kyoto headquarters central temple) even afterwards until the end of the Edo period;46 isolated, lowest status in certain ritual practices, especially those which eta pilgrims engaged when visiting the honzan; and exclusion from higher levels of educational opportunity. 9

Local Life of Etadera

If the image of eta system from the Honganji honzan standpoint looks rigidly segregated and ‘discriminatory,’ from the perspective of the local temple things looked somewhat different: nonuniform, locally-oriented, partly flexible and negotiable. (Yamamoto 2006) The imperial culture manifested by the Honganji headquarters possessed the highest prestige in Shin tradition, but in practice was by far the lesser part of Shin life, which was predominantly a regional and village phenomenon. Shin religious life per se in buraku communities for a long time attracted less attention from academic observers than other aspects, but it seems that it was a strong, even intense version of the Shin religious life which was widespread in

45  Yamamoto (1999: 414) relates the Bunka period relaxation to Shinran’s 550th memorial celebrations. Unfortunately the earlier history of this surcharge seems to be obscure. The surcharge was possibly the cause for (according to the suggestion of Yamamoto 2006) the keeping of separate administrative records for etadera from ca. 1700. Otherwise the reasons for this separate record keeping are also somewhat veiled (though bakufu requirement is sometimes claimed, e.g. Otomo 1957: 245). What is clear is that separate shumon aratame did not mark off the eta communities until the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries; there were regional variations in records too (Teraki 1996: 177–183). 46  Kamisori was the ritual point at which etadera (or any other temples) most personally entered the rungs of the hierarchy of the Honganji institution. Here too however the earlier history is obscure along with the actual rationalization for these limitations. Yamamoto (2006) suggests that tightening at the end of the seventeenth century seems to have brought ordination restriction where it had previously not existed; then permission was gradually reinstated. As Yamamoto has also pointed out, eta communities were much later than other member communities in having the economic wherewithal to buy themselves in. Or, possibly any kind of ordination for eta temple priests had a short history (Andachi 1997: 586).

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many places in Japan.47 For the purpose of judging something about this faith, the best records survive for the Tango area, which has been studied closely by both Andachi and Yamamoto. Local confraternities (yorikō 寄り講) were the bedrock of local temple activities, including fundraising, along with monthly regional gatherings (called for example jusannichikō 十三日講, “Thirtieth Day Confraternities”). Characteristic activities were hōyō 法要 (communal rituals), gatherings of members in large numbers, communal meals, and enthusiastic preaching events. Letters from the monshu or the supervising Honshōji were treated with extreme reverence and could be ritually passed around villages on a regular circuit. Energetic religious activity via the kō organizations continued into the twentieth century. (Andachi 1997: 591–593; Yamamoto 1999: 311–315, 383–413) Local villages were often poor, and most religious services on the calendar took place in the village because travel was too difficult. (Wada 2008) In terms of the leadership patterns which developed in Shin tradition, the introductory norm for a local community dōjō leader, whether eta or not, was the kebōzu 毛坊主 role: a “priest with hair,” a committed person who would do rituals and so on, but was not properly formally ordained (and symbolically tonsured) by the Honganji institution as such. From that starting position, local temples had to help their priests ‘buy in’ and acquire their own proper jūshoku (formal intendant priest) status. (Andachi 1995: 538) In some cases, before eta themselves were allowed to become sōryo, their temples hired ministers or were appointed or sent ministers from outside. (Nobi 2007: 220–222) In practice the kebōzu of a burakumin community were little different from priests elsewhere, similarly playing important political roles in their villages. Nishi Honganji produced a special document about conditions for kebozu dōjō which also applied to eta villages, Kebōzu dōjō no koto 毛坊主道場之事 (1761). Dōjō could be recognized by the headquarters and kebōzu could have formal Buddhist names (hōmyō).48 Some historians have raised the question how purely religious this energy was, and because of shortage of data, there are problems in proving the 47  Kobayashi and Akisada (1989: 210–211). Perhaps eta had their own version of an intensive Shin religious faith, but this issue has not been fully explained or investigated. Yamamoto (1999: 273) notes that too much emphasis has been placed on just institutional history. By his account, Shin among eta was largely just a more intense version of regular Shin participation, with a definite degree of institutional subordination but regional and local variation as well. Nobi (2007) thought emphasis was needed on the roles of temples as community centers and sites of kō activity, and the multiple nuances and influences on the meanings of faith (system, region, local community). 48  Wada (2008). An irony might be that the kebōzu village with its simple, bare-bones form of religious organization but high level of interest and participation was perhaps closest to the spirit of the earlier Shin communities.

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mentality of past montos. Status competition played a major role in village life. (Ooms 1996: 189–191) The Harima documents contain much information about the local temple economies and members’ financial support. To join the Honganji network, each etadera had to make a special application directly in Kyoto and get permission for religious furnishings; the documents contain much about these financial procedures for founding a recognized temple, especially the granting of religious objects and titles. (Andachi 1995: 517, 525–526) Buraku inhabitants poured resources into Shin temples as a way of reacting to their oppressed situation, expressing a combination of faith, status subordination consciousness, and economic exertion. (Sauda 1996) The late Edo eta battle for status in Honganji was apparently propelled by their special mid-to-late Edo economic strength. (Yamamoto 2006) Perhaps the buraku relationship with Honganji was encouraged also by Honganji’s interest in attracting buraku, in order to increase membership in a context of competition with other sects. (Sauda 1995: 101–102) Cynical or not, there was a real market factor in Shin practice: Honganji offered to eta a sincerely more appealing ideology than other lines of Buddhism, and the leadership expected a serious exchange of money for it at the same time. Like many other local temples in the Edo-period Honganji network for regular shomin, local etadera often did not like being under the thumb of a larger regional temple above them, and a sense of being bullied or controlled by superiors in the hierarchy may have been especially strong for eta. Honshōji apparently exercised an unhealthy, distorted control over eta members. (Yamamoto 1999: 405) Using their general social power, uwadera temples could oppress and impoverish their etadera. Kinpukuji 金福寺, which was one of the five leading uwadera in Nishi Honganji, was a strong etadera chūhonzan with well over one hundred smaller temples under it; but the smaller ones often tried to escape, both for reasons of faith and to express resistance to subordination. (Andachi 1997: 583–591) To get away, eta members had two options. One was to switch affiliations within Shinshū. Some members migrated from Higashi to Nishi, but especially, in the later Edo period, more etadera evaded the chūhonzan by switching from Nishi to Higashi. (Yamamoto 2006; 1999: 414– 415) The other method was to establish a special kind of direct feudal affiliation to the Honganji headquarters itself called jikisan 直参. Such a relatively direct tie to the monshu family was the most powerful way to gain legitimacy and status, as well as relative independence, but such attempts were often blocked by the regular temples above in the hierarchy. (Yamamoto 1999: 400) Such urges to escape the inherited ‘middle management’ of the Shin hierarchy were not unique to eta however—this was yet another way in which eta religious experience paralleled that of regular Shin monto 門徒 (members), and from the

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mid-Edo period headquarters itself tried to increase the number of directlyaffiliated (jikimatsu 直末) member temples in the Shin network at large. 10

Local Use of Buddhist Ritual Names (in Shin Buddhism, Hōmyō49) Which Could Identify the Deceased as Eta50

As Buddhist sects came to provide the universal funeral tradition for the Edo period, the practice of generating Buddhist ritual names for ordinary parishioners of temples, especially for death purposes, became widespread. In the case of the monastically-based sects, the use of a kaimyō 戒名 (literally “precept name”) at death was a pseudo-monastic manuver which symbolically proved the last-minute taking of monastic precepts by the (formerly lay) deceased. Shin tradition, at least theoretically, was different, using dharma names (hōmyō 法名) which were supposed to mark the individual’s religious orientation, and although it might be administered only at death, it was without any specific doctrinal tie to either monastic precepts or death. When making general observations, Japanese scholars often state that sabetsu names appeared not just in Zen (which has received much of contemporary publicity) but in the practices of all Buddhist sects, including Shinshū; the view is that the practice has been universally deeply embedded throughout Japanese society out of a general desire to emphasize the pollution and bad karma of eta.51 However it is also true that ritual names which marked eta mibun were significantly less used in Shin Buddhism than in other sects, or perhaps differently used. (Kobayashi 1987: 236–240, 335–339; Matsune 1990: 48–51) During the twentieth century Ōtani temples have not been found using the same kind of kaimyō namebooks (a reference manual for priests doing funerals) as in other sects, though surveys have turned up more subtle traces of discrimination (or marking of eta identity) in death records in a few places. (Shinshū Ōtani-ha Kaihō Undō Suishin Honbu 2005) Because of the issue of contemporary 49  Okamura (1935: Vol. 3, 1947–1948). 50  Modern literature calls these sabetsu kaimyō or sabetsu hōmyō, but sabetsu is a polemical term which conveys all of the weight of modern social criticism about social justice. One of the heated aspects of hōmyō is that family death records can be used to identify persons with buraku backgrounds and discriminate against them for marriage or other purposes, a sensitive political and social issue in the twentieth century. What was more literally the case in the Edo period was that local Buddhist temples applied names which marked the former legal/occupational mibun of the deceased. 51  Nakao (1994:5). Ooms (1996: 283–284) has short discussion of posthumous names and discrimination especially in sects other than Shin.

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political correctness which surrounds the use of Buddhist names, modern Japanese Shin researchers have looked especially closely at the historical use of hōmyō in Shin. A 1983 survey of Shin temples throughout Japan searched for hōmyō and other religious records which left indications of discrimination and found scattered cases of unacceptable gravestones and kakochō 過去帳 (family books of death records). Sometimes these had been corrected post hoc to show no discrimination. Discrimination in kakochō could be revealed by details such as separate listings for eta, formatting differences, peculiar markings such as vermilion dots, or special affixes and suffixes attached to the names; or by mentions of diseases, locations, occupations, or birth details. (Kikan Undō Honbu Jimukyoku 1997) Similar results have been obtained by surveys in the Higashi Ōtani temple membership.52 However, in Shin eta-marking names were used only in cases of mixed residence with ordinary shomin (Kobayashi 1987) suggesting that such names were employed in cases where it was situationally important to distinguish eta deceased from other Japanese. Eta-marking hōmyō were not actually used in etadera where the members were all eta. Reasons for the Shin patterns are not necessarily clear and it is impossible to do archaeology on the invisible motivations for local ritual practices. Doctrinally, there is a complete lack of theoretical statements concerning the topic during the Edo period and no indication that Honganji headquarters gave directives either encouraging or discouraging local use of mibun-marking hōmyō. It might even be possible to raise the question whether, in the context of Edo consciousness, there were any Shin doctrinal implications at all in the use or non-use of such names. If in other Buddhist groups eta prejudice was fed by religious factors, including pollution-purity consciousness, strong, determinate karma theory, and karmic hierarchicalism, in Shin the trained ministers were presumably aware of Shinran’s and Rennyo’s neutrality about such matters. At least some of the appearances of discrimination are ambiguous. Hōmyō practices were sufficiently localized that a variety of deviations from the proper spirit could be committed just because of the inability of any central organization to guide everything local ministers would do. In modern times, to at least some extent technical irregularities in maintaining the official orthodox Honganji naming rules (such as incorrect use of affixes called igō 位号), seems 52  Shinshū Ōtani-ha Kaihō Undō Suishin Honbu (2005: 194–197, 205). Historical names were only part of the phenomenon of inequality; the physical layouts of graveyards were often segregated or subordinated and eta were put in the least desirable corners (low swampy spots, cold spots, slopes) and their sections usually had only a few rough gravestones and a minimum of furnishings (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1989; Teraki 1986: 276).

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to have been the chief problem rather than rather than active hostility to eta. (See e.g. Kikan Undō Honbu Jimukyoku 1998) In the later Edo period Shin was also concretely influenced by the practices of other sects and temples, apparently due to conversions to Shin (involving not only individuals, but an influx of priests and whole temples moving in from other sects) which watered down Shin distinctiveness. (Yamamoto 2006) At that time Shin priests seemed to have picked up non-traditional hōmyō naming practices from kaimyō reference books in general circulation. Gravestones too for Shin Buddhist families were a late nineteenth century development; the earlier custom was collective interment in temples. At all times the mibun system was so pervasive that it almost unavoidably left its fingerprints on the family histories of Tokugawa people despite what local temple priests would do (The segregation of eta in buraku meant that they could be identified posthumously as eta even without special hōmyō). 11

Karma Theory Infiltrating Shin Discourse and Reinforcing Social Prejudice53

Besides ritual subordination in the legitimation practices of the official organization and the use of mibun-marking ritual names in local situations, there was ideological drift in Edo-period Shin discourse in cases where thinkers in some commentarial contexts referred to karma theory in ways seeming to rationalize the disadvantaged position of the burakumin. Past karma (gō 業) in Shin is an old topic. Reflection on karma was an integral part of the Indian Buddhist heritage; most Buddhism assumed that karma was controllable by will power, and that past karma’s effects could be read now from outward signs of a person’s life. Shinran’s view was different and related to his teaching of tariki 他力 (inner involuntary spontaneity) as the key factor in enlightenment. (Nakao 1994: 53  Like the question of ‘discriminatory’ ritual names, the misapplication of ideas of past karma has been a hot-button issue for twentieth-century social critics rooted in Shin thought. According to Nakao (1994) the problem is not Shinran’s thought, but a distortion of karma ideas which grew up in the Edo period; pre-twentieth century discourse about the ambiguities of karma was weakly developed and thus since Edo, Shin sensibility has been corrupted by an unwarranted moral judgmentalism derived from unexamined assumptions about responsibility for past karma. As a matter of theory, modern critique directs a lot of attention not only to these positively-discriminatory ideas, but also to passive karma-acceptance in Shin teaching as a source of inaction and torpor towards social injustice.

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43–57, 110–141) As in the case of social marginals, it appears that Shinran in his time was well aware of his intellectual environment, in this instance the karma assumptions inherited from earlier Buddhist thought. The classical Indian category of caõóāla (Jp. sendara 旃陀羅)54 is mentioned in Shinran’s verses Jōdo wasan 浄土和讃 once; past karma was also mentioned in the Larger Sukhāvativyūha Sutra, one of the canonical texts. (Nakao 1994: 111, 23, 62, 110) However, Shinran’s only self-authored overt mention of past karma is not found in his formal commentarial or re-interpretive works, but rather in a passage on in the thirteenth (probably less authentic than earlier chapters) chapter of the oral record of his teaching called the Tannishō 歎異抄. (Nakao 1994: 61–63) In that passage, the favorable karmic acts that are meaningful are the ones done as virtually unconscious responses to situations. An official twentieth-century Shin commentary, after examining older references to karma in the canonical literature, explicates how Shinran himself refers to karma in three contexts: activity of Buddha, cause of birth in Pure Land, and activity of human person. The last is basically considered negative and thus the shukugō 宿業 (past karma) and shukuzen 宿善 (past good) which appear in thirteenth chapter of the Tannishō, must be understood as part of the discourse of shinjin (信心 entrusting to the Buddha). Karma is certainly not about payback or reward based on a person’s history of voluntary actions but is instead based on an extremely broad concept of engi 縁起 (causation) which implies an indeterminate, nonanalyzable understanding which implies a sharp questioning of self and society. The consciousness inherited from the Edo mibunsei can be blamed for misuse of karma theory to rationalize inequalities.55 Although Shinran may have rejected blaming persons for past karma or promoting the idea that the karmically polluted should suffer patiently (Nakao 1994: 57–60), such ideas nevertheless entered Shin discourse over time. Despite not being standard doctrine, traditional karmic ideas of guilt came to be represented in some dangibon 談義本 (introductory texts); past karma could be used as a threat in popular preaching; and inward reflection (hansei 反省) could be inflected as acceptance of personal responsibility applied retrospectively even to the past. The Thirteen Articles or Jūsanjō 十三条—an apocryphal document attributed to the early Honganji leader Kakukyo 覚如 (1270–1351) but which was actually a Muromachi text—criticized in one of its sections the practice 54  On sendara see also Kobayashi (1990: 180–181). 55  Gō Mondai Senmon Iinkai (2003). As Nakao explores (1994: 82, 106, 118, 135, 146–149) implicit in Shinran is an austere interiority so deep that it should not allow judgments of other people. Shinran’s indeterminacy about the karma that matters results from his view that it is not made intentionally.

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of some Shin teachers in actively going out to preach to sendara people.56 However, a pejorative emphasis on bad karma most influentially infiltrated the edges of Shin discourse primarily in the Edo period although it remained outside of the genuine Shinran-Rennyo sphere of ideas and texts. Generic books on karmic causality such as Zen aku inga kyō 善悪因果経 (Sutra on Causality of Good and Bad) or Gō ron 業論 (On Karma) circulated in the Edo period and crept into popular Shin thinking; other texts like Sendara shaku 旃陀羅釈 (Commentary on Sendara) referred to buraku people as caõóālas and butchers with whom one ought not to socialize. Perhaps also, by the later Edo period, as the membership grew ever larger, common Shin had sometimes come under a certain popular Shintō influence and had absorbed pollution consciousness of the folk kegare type. (Nakao 1994: 17–25) The effect of these influences was to rationalize buraku status by arguing that eta fate in this life was the product of previous individual karma, for which the eta was responsible and which could only be accepted. (Buraku Kaihō Kenkyūjo 1987) Even the educated Shin priestly class in their readings of the classical Sino-Japanese Buddhist literature frequently equated the classical category of caõóāla not only with animallike qualities and killing as in the earlier Buddhist literature but directly with the eta mibun. (Nakao 1984: 26–35, 150–154) (This commentarial equation of sendara with eta created a very old, but quite misleading, parallelism of the sociocosmic position of Indian lower castes with the sociolegal position of eta in Edo Japan). Shin commentators did not, however, equate eta with icchantika (Jp. issendai 一闡提), the similarly classic Buddhist category of those who may be karmically beyond all hope of liberation or salvation in any future.57 Current research does not really confirm how widespread such attitudes were among the priesthood or membership, but beneath the level of the scholarly elites, it is absolutely certain that social and psychological prejudice against eta became typical of much of the Shin membership of regular shomin. Such conclusions can be based on the way such hostilities were revealed after the Meiji period as the buraku reform movement got underway. De facto prejudice in daily life eventually became the major twentieth century problem 56  Nakao (1994: 35–36), and Sauda (1995: 330–331). The problematic section may have to do not so much with subordination of eta by Honganji as with violations of civil order by Honganji representatives (Yamamoto 2006). 57  Somewhat paradoxically, it was during the Edo period, when Shin elites frequently achieved a high standard in their general knowledge of Buddhist texts, that they tended to make conceptual unifications of Buddhist tradition which were not appropriately rooted in Shinran’s original radical perspective (Cf. post-Meiji Shin’s idea of a fictive ‘general Buddhism’).

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for the Shin school, persisting long beyond the point when Shin theorists had begun to grapple with the issue from a modern perspective.58 12

Dynamism, Resistance, Changes Over the Course of the Edo Period

Ian Neary, who researched the modern reform movements, suggested that by the nineteenth century, burakumin were a population quite beaten down by oppression: … the development of a set of religious beliefs which supported the regulations systematically imposed from the eighteenth century, effectively prevented the emergence of any kind of self-esteem which could provide a basis from which to challenge the superior bodies. Neary 1989: 26

While this claim must be certainly true in part, the broader story was more nuanced and complex. The circumstances of social marginals in Japan have always been historically dynamic and the Edo period was no exception. The degree of Tokugawa government control, the socio-religious consciousness within Honganji, and the rigidity of the overall socio-economic regime were all subject to change. Summarizing the Edo-period relationship of eta and Honganji, one can observe that eta buraku coalesced only in the course of the seventeenth century, were not in a position to seek to raise their status with Honganji until around 1700, were held back by Honganji headquarters policy for about a hundred years until the end of the eighteenth century, but then gradually accumulated increased economic and social power which was eventually expressed in greater leverage in the nineteenth century organization despite the misery and oppression of much of buraku life. At the broad sociopolitical level, the Edo period always contained countercurrents to the sociopolitical visions (or illusions) of bakufu and samurai. These included factors such as economic growth, samurai taxation failures, and increasing social mobility. Some of the shifts were quasi-ideological; there is evidence for some growing awareness about social gaps which predated the Meiji period and the arrival of western political ideas and rhetoric. A trend towards social equality among shomin (shiminbyōdō 市民平等) was visible at the end of the period. (Kobayashi 1990: 91–92, 153; Kobayashi and Akisada 1989: 73) Wakita Osamu argued that as the mibun ideology developed, 58  See chapter by Main in this volume.

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a counter-ideology against discrimination also developed. Evidence is lacking in comparison to the volume of records left by the samurai class, but implications can be drawn from materials such as the Kawara makimono 河原巻物. (Wakita 2005) There were late Edo episodes (in 1856) of kawata resistance to authority. (Ooms 1996: 264–270; see also Kobayashi and Akisada 1989: 66–67) As the samurai elites tried to impose even more restrictive conditions on them towards the end of the period, eta communities fought back, e.g. by trying to refuse imposed executioner duty. As for in the case of shomin, there was always private evasion of sumptuary and travel restrictions by eta. By the nineteenth century some voices already called for the ending of eta discrimination laws. Eta began developing their own rationalizations for equal status, e.g. arguing that handling a cow carcass is no different from taking care of a Buddhist funeral or being in contact with a foreigner. It is certain that the most successful of the burakumin communities had a sharp critical sense of their ‘polluted’ position vis à vis generic Japanese culture by the end of the period.59 In 1867 a collapsing bakufu ordered a forced contribution of money from Osaka merchants in a desperate attempt to shore itself up but the Watanabe eta community refused to pay unless the government took the occasion to release them from their status as eta. The surviving petition makes no reference to Shin, but plays on other contradictions in emergent modern Japanese culture: We are considered to be unclean beings because we dispose of beasts and eat their flesh. But we have heard that westerners partake of the flesh of animals at their daily meals; yet they are treated politely here. Even in our own country after the opening of the ports, persons of high rank are said to have developed a fondness for eating meat. Therefore, we would like discrimination against us to cease by having the use of the word eta to describe us abolished. Brooks 1977: 272

An officially disempowered and formally negated group in the Edo period could still finesse local authority and exert a certain practical level of power. Viewed from the perspective of the eta, within Shin too historical vectors were in conflict. From the bakufu point of view, formal strictures on eta grew increasingly harsh over the course of the period, but within the Honganji eta were steadily, if only slowly, improving their status, recognition, and expectations within the organization, suggesting an incremental growth of spiritual 59  See the history of Danzaemon in the Edo capital. (Groemer 2001) Social marginals were aware of the facts of their situation and struggled for advantage as much as they could.

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position, if not anything resembling later rights and justice theory. The bakumatsu period saw a flourishing of eta commitment, along with a new degree of self-assertion which helped to lead into the post-Meiji liberation movement.60 By bakumatsu, increased teaching and preaching also became available to the etadera and speakers were increasingly sent by Honganji and the gakurin to them. Despite controversies there was also increased contact between etasō and other sōryo. (Sauda 1995) In the humbler realm of local and regional temples, there were enthusiastic religious events (for example in Tango 丹後 province) where eta and shomin groups participated together without caring about status distinction.61 Such conflicts also contributed to authority conflicts between the Honganji headquarters—which was often doctrinally rigorous (i.e. closer to accurate or orthodox understandings of Shinran)—and the regional middle management levels of the system which liked to cling to control of temples under them. Yet by the mid-nineteenth century it was clear that discrimination within the institution was fading. The special powers of certain honji Shin temples to supervise etadera disappeared with the cancellation of the mibun system as it applied to eta in 1872. (Andachi 1995: 534) By the twentieth century the Honshōji lost its ancient sensibility of legitimacy of power over etadera. (Yamamoto 1999: 399) 13

The Problem of Interpreting Shin and the Eta in the Edo Period

Since the relation of Shin and eta was not directly connected to the ‘buraku rights problem’ as modern historians have generally understood it in a 60  Though direct evidence is scarce, there is no reason to assume—considering other patterns of contentiousness among Shin members over loyalty, membership, status and doctrine—not to mention the general contentiousness of peasants which could emerge in the Edo period—that the long term institutional treatment of eta could have developed without some degree of disagreement and conflict. It is also a normal historical phenomenon that quiet subversions of a system are less documented than official images and accounts. 61   Yamamoto (2006). However, Japanese scholars (who are still often influenced by Marxism) do not consider the counterpossibility that the late-Edo deterioration of earlier forms of communal consciousness may have tended to strengthen conditions for a new kind of prejudice against eta, as a hierarchical, status-competitive system gradually gave way to more open, dislocated, post-mibun, even individualistic or quasi-egalitarian status-competitive system. Despite its doctrines, Shin could link personal interiority with bourgeois discipline, contributing to psychological prejudice against people whose systemic predicament caused them to lead less orderly lives.

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twentieth-century legal-political context, it is frequently misrepresented in twentieth century buraku-movement literature, which lumps all kinds of premodern phenomena together as sabetsu. More effective understandings have to be derived instead from the larger contexts which enfolded the eta-Shin relationship, i.e. from general interpretations about Japanese Edo society. Questions about the eta-Shin relationship which have concerned Japanese historians occur in several clusters. First, was the (at first glance) systematiclooking buraku-Honganji ‘temple system’ which seems to emerge around 1700 really a system, in the sense of forward-looking intentional planning? If so, was it driven by more or less coercive bakufu instructions, or was it even a result of deliberate, manipulative planning arranged between the bakufu and Honganji? Or, was it instead mainly an unsystematic, organic evolute of elective affinities (despite the Buddhist organization’s passive acceptance of eta low sociopolitical standing) between Shin and eta people over a long period of time, which was fundamentally independent of bakufu policy as such? Each of these viewpoints has a long historiography. The former “coerced system” idea goes back to historian Tsuji Zennosuke, but has been recently updated by Andachi Itsuo, who emphasized planning by bakufu (and possibly Honganji) which came from outside of the buraku communities and was intended to embed discrimination. The latter “organic evolution” approach had a prewar history and has more recently been updated by Yamamoto and others.62 Recent emphasis has shifted away from the political argument back towards the prewar stress on religious participation per se. In particular Yamamoto has emphasized the evidence for an old, preexisting voluntary nexus between Shin Buddhism and the groups which became the buraku of the Edo period. It is possible to be doubtful that there was any Edo concept of a buraku jiinsei 寺院 制 (a planned etadera system) as such.) (Wada 2006). In this view, what happened evolved instead bit by bit out of contingent relationships. The case for a voluntary relationship is reinforced by the general position of Buddhism under the Tokugawa regime which was presented earlier. Hardly any evidence exists for eta enrollment in this system due to coercion or direction from outside the Shin leadership or membership.63 (Although once members were enrolled, 62  For reviews of this scholarly give-and-take see Kobayashi and Akisada (1989: 70–71, 209– 211), Yamamoto (1999: 265–290), Wada (2007: 7–12), and Kobayashi (1990: 160–161). 63  The main item of suggestive evidence for this idea of coercion has been the Tenmei kaishū 天明改宗 (Tenmei period sect switching) incident which occurred in 1782 when a bakufu court decision finally required some etadera in the Misaka 美坂 and neighboring areas to change affiliations from Shingonshū 真言宗 to Shinshū. The incident has been commented on by various historians, with Andachi emphasizing the element of coercion from the top and Yamamoto the activity of local montos, arguing instead that the incident

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Honganjis did have suasive influence over them). Within its own religious sphere, the Honganjis (like the other Buddhist networks) were largely selfgoverning subcultures in the Edo system. On the bakufu side no documents have been uncovered that indicate that the bakufu used its chain of command to influence directly anything the Honganjis decided to do regarding their eta membership. Therefore, the eta-Shin relation was probably a reflection of both sides’ autonomous interests, perhaps one indeed largely pushed from the bottom up. Yamamoto argued that the relationship had to be voluntary for reasons of its long-term stability.64 Even if one is willing to thus grant that Honganji attracted eta members by some kind of sincere religiosity, the unquestionable practices of subordination and inequality still rankle the modern observer. Therefore, a subsequent cluster of questions has been, if there was a voluntary, elective affinity involved, with a great deal of autonomy on both sides, what are the explanations for those four points of subordination exercised towards the eta membership? Was this subordination more externally shaped by contingencies of Edo society,65 or more internally shaped by Honganji culture itself? How can the effect of the general social order be weighted in comparison to the autonomous decision-making by the Honganjis themselves, who represented a large but somewhat exceptional form of Japanese consciousness? What are the correct assumptions to hold in the background about the everyday life of the mibun system? Honganji documentation is notably vague about all this. (Nobi 2007) The lack of policy statements and of knowledge about calculations of the actors, particularly in the Honganji leadership, means that motives have to be imputed or guessed. was an exception which provides no source of generalization. In 1769 twelve eta temples had been administratively moved from Shingon to Shin (under Honshōji) at the request of a Shin priest but encouraged by the local Shingon priest. The request was initially rejected by the higher-up Shingon temples and by four of the fifteen villages involved in the proposal, but in the end the Shingon priest went to bakufu officials and got a judgment in favor of the shift. The main mover was the (originally Shingon) priest, who by switching his temple and himself to Shin wanted to positively confirm his own job status as a priest against a background of village politics and a tricky personal family situation involving celibacy doubts about his father. The bakufu was only interested in seeing the buraku temples placed satisfactorily under some honji (Yamamoto 1999: 336–342). 64  Kobayashi and Akisada (1989: 209–211), and Yamamoto (1999: 308–311, 324–327). To some extent, a middle position might be that old positive religious affinities became opportunistically and complementarily melded with institutional and political needs of the terauke system. From the samurai viewpoint of administrative convenience and imagination, it was easy to understand and encourage placement into Shin membership as the ‘appropriate’ affiliation for eta and buraku. 65  For example Otomo (1957: 245–258) maintained that honzan was shaped and pressured by the Tokugawa regime’s hierarchical requirements and financial pressure.

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A key premise must be the Honganjis’ acceptance of a division of spheres. Since even before Rennyo, the Shin tradition had been aware of a distinction between a ‘civil’ (ōbō 王法) realm and a religious community (buppō 仏 法) realm; although during most of the Edo period this de facto distinction remained implicit and untheorized, it resurfaced quickly as a modern problematic after the Meiji period began. If the classification of eta-buraku individuals and communities was understood chiefly as part of the tax/economic system of the bakufu, then it would have been understood by Honganji as part of the ōbō realm of activity, to which Shin members would submit. This submission did not necessarily mean that Shin religious teaching per se suddenly reversed itself and began to view the eta as polluted on samurai terms; rather, it may indicate primarily Shin’s passive accordance with a political reality. In other words, the reason why the eta members of Honganji found themselves at the rock bottom of a status hierarchy—the external condition to which Shin society was adapting—was unavoidable and not because of Shin Buddhism’s religious direction within its own buppō realm. But presuming that the Shin position required both respecting the samurai ōbō sphere of authority and retaining its own autonomy does not necessarily explain why Honganji put several serious financial and social barriers in front of its eta members. It is hard to understand these particular obstacles as politically necessary vis à vis the bakufu. As mentioned subordination by headquarters took four main forms: fifty-percent extra surcharges for institutional participation for at least a century; prohibition of any kamisori to eta until 1784 and only local ordination thereafter; isolated, lowest status in ritual at the honzan; and exclusion from higher levels of educational opportunity. Regarding the surcharges, Yamamoto has suggested that they were related to the fifty-year lag (behind other member communities) in the conversion of buraku dōjō to formalized temples. Buraku applications suddenly came into the Honganjis in large numbers only at the end of the seventeenth century and by requiring surcharges Honganji was trying to deter too many from joining at once at that time. (Yamamoto 2006) If this is true, although there was presumably a (rising) body of prejudice against eta in some parts of Shin society, this specific expression of practical deterrence may have arisen out of institutional circumstances. However, the other kinds of subordination enacted social exclusion and restriction particularly in regard to the society of the honzan in Kyoto, and so this behavior probably involves something else, namely the imperial ritual and hierarchical culture which had so completely matured in the Honganji headquarters by the end of the seventeenth century. The imperial culture is a large topic which has become muted and even deliberately hidden in twentieth

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century representations of Shin Buddhism. Though completely apart from the basic teachings of Shinran and Rennyo (which were intimately known in the Edo period), it was extremely popular with the membership historically. Honganji began its formal approximation to the imperial system in 1559 when the monshu Kennyo 顕如 (1543–1592) was first named monzeki 門跡 (an ancient term suggesting relationship to the imperial family) by the emperor. This aristocracy-oriented consciousness inhabited the Honganji leaderships (who developed marital ties to old Kyoto aristocratic clans) during the Edo period and was reflected in the internal temple ranking system used by Honganji as it constructed internal network hierarchies especially from the Keian 慶安 period (1648–1652). (A term as pervasive as the in 院 for a temple originated as a reference to a temple occupied by the member of the imperial family and thus also reflected status). By the mid-Edo Honganji was kind of Buddhist imperium mimicking royalty and court, with Honganji setting standards for all kind kinds of ritual details compiled into procedural guides about the architecture of buildings, rituals, implements, clothing, sumptuary standards, priest titles and ranks, temple titles and ranks and so on. The hierarchy of temple ranks produced discriminations in clothing and seating ranks at the honzan (the latter was the dōhan 堂班 system which persisted into the twentieth century). The context of ritual participation for all montos in the later Edo-period Honganji system was gift-giving, money donation and payment for different degrees of access at honzan (especially closeness to the monshu). In a sense, there was a mibunsei internal to Honganji.66 Populist it may have been in its own way, but this culture was not favorable for the eta, who were only a small part of this overall picture and were located at the bottom of the prestige hierarchy. Some scholars such as Murakoshi Sueo 村越末男 have argued that the imperial quality of the headquarters went beyond mere social prestige and was related to the idea of the hossu 法主 (sect head, another term for monshu) as a charismatic, quasi-transcendent remanifestation of Shinran. On this account an internal logic of Shin sacrality dictated a kind of sacred sphere around the hossu which had to be protected and distanced from the lowly and disorderly represented by the eta. However, whether the sense of ‘lowly’ here truly resembled the generic kegare in folk culture or was even related to the collection of religious notions which formed around the Japanese emperor (as Shintō priest) is a topic as yet insufficiently researched. In this context, it appears the Honganjis decided not exactly to permanently ban, but rather to slow down or for a long time obstruct the kind of eta participation which would lead to their rise above the lowest ranks of the system. 66  For extended description, see Honganji Shiryō Kenkyūjo (1961–1984: Vols. 1 and 2).

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In spite of the radically equalized idea of Buddhist transformative authority taught in Shinran and Rennyo, there is no evidence that in the worldly social dimension—another realm of experience—hierarchy and mibun were felt to be a fatal contradiction by ordinary Edo period Japanese. Consequently, despite its relative openness to eta members and its close association with them, the mainstream Honganji organization subordinated them in ways that reflected just how they were situated within the enveloping tissue of the general mibunsei. No Japanese historian seems to have found any evidence of significant theoretical debate within the Shin organization about the fairness of legitimacy of this subordination until the mid-nineteenth century and the rise of new social assumptions. Until then, conflicts were over fairness of participation in the system as it was. Honganji Buddhism was a highly ramified phenomenon, expressing a long-existing dialectic between the charismatic imperial quality of the headquarters and the down-to-earth plainness of local temple communities. Historians have to give the Japanese Buddhists of the Edo period credit for having a genuine early modern religion, i.e. a religion full of inconsistency due to its complexity. If the Edo-period Shin relationship with the eta poses certain problems for Japanese scholars, non-Japanese may have an overlapping, but also somewhat different, perspective. The following comment with which Groemer concluded his article serves as an apt reference for a couple of concluding remarks: In the end, the existence of an outcaste order testified not just to inherent flaws in Confucian, Shintō, or Buddhist ideologies, though it did that too, but also laid bare the disastrous failure of the Tokugawa political and economic system to foster a just and humane society. Groemer 2001: 293

“The “disastrous failure … of a humane society:” Tokugawa society was not uniform, either in terms of its geography, its various communities of consciousness, the implementation of its formal rules, and so on. Nor was the Shin world—which eventually touched almost a third of the Japanese population (i.e. up to ten or twelve million people)—uniform either at the level of its official discourses or its local practices. However, the Tokugawa regime as a whole did fail, and given this, it seems that through their broad critiques of eta history, modern Japanese historians with progressive politics are having an argument with Japanese history as a whole as much as with Honganji tradition in particular. The tension in Shin Buddhism over the situation of eta is part of an old struggle to cope with a certain underlying viciousness in the Japanese sociopolitical order. Since the Meiji period, buraku studies and the buraku social

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justice movements have provided a site of contestation about the weaknesses of a whole civilization. “Inherent flaws in … Buddhist ideologies:” Is it fair to ask, in effect, why did Edo-period Shin not revolutionize the Edo society? One assumption behind post-Meiji criticism of the Honganji relationship with Edo eta is that organized Shin Buddhism should have been able to resist and contrast with the prevailing sociolegal trends of the Edo period after the eta mibun was officialized. However, modern sabetsu critiques are part of a phenomenon which historian James Dobbins has called Shin modernism, which has been an essential reinterpretation or adaptation of the tradition for the purposes of twentieth century consciousness. Such adaptations can be applied anachronistically: if the position is taken that mainstream Shin Buddhists “did not understand Shinran” for approximately four hundred years, between say 1600 and 1900, on account of their failure to interpret Shin sociopolitically as is preferred today, methodologically what is being presented is a starkly fundamentalist, ahistorical, static theory of what ‘religious’ tradition means. It is tempting to accuse the Honganji treatment of eta as being an immoral mirroring of the mibunsei rather than to try to understand how its religious teachings were simultaneously persistent with that system and yet continued to operate significantly in another dimension of experience. A better interpretation is that Edo Shin was (roughly like some post-Reformation European Christianities) a kind of halfway position between a highly interiorized, personal religiosity and a modern society which more fully expressed that individuality in political and social practice.67 As in these early modern Christianities, Shinran’s worldview does not quite fit into the boxes of modern rights theory, or rationalization for injustice, or total passivity either. The notion of personal religious interiority did not, historically, stipulate specific kinds of sociopolitical structures. Shin Buddhism was to some extent a kind of internal source in Japanese history for social critical ideas, but it was only in the twentieth century that these ideas could possibly have become linked to modern secular forms of thought about political equality, justice and compassion. (Dessì 2007)

67  It is important not to assume an unrealistic connection between western Christian history and modern ideas of social justice either. Modern theories of political democracy were stimulated mainly by the enlightenment, not by Christian reform per se. Only a very few, small, specialized, marginalized Christian cultures have been able to apply Christian ideals in such a way as to override the differentiating, unequalizing effect of modern economies.

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Precepts in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism The Jōdoshū

James C. Dobbins Precepts, supposedly the common thread drawing together the Buddhist world, have had a problematic and controversial place in Japanese Buddhism.* It is no secret that Japanese have long debated their content, function, and necessity, and that the value ascribed to them in Japan has differed in important ways from their value in other Buddhist countries. In fact, in the eyes of other countries, there may be some question as to whether Japanese follow a legitimate version of the precepts and whether their clergy are properly ordained. Japan’s discomfort regarding the precepts has existed from early in its history, and some of its prominent forms of Buddhism emerged with a distinct sense of ambivalence toward them. The Pure Land tradition, for one, exemplifies Japan’s attraction-avoidance response to the precepts. Pure Land Buddhism has a long and complex history in Japan, but the particular school to be examined here is the Jōdoshū 浄土宗, or Pure Land school, which claims the eminent master Hōnen 法然 (Genkū 源空; 1133–1212) as its founder. To be more exact, the school is the Chinzei 鎭西 branch of the Jōdoshū, which is traceable to Hōnen’s disciple Benchō 辨長 (1162–1238) and was further developed by such leaders as Ryōchū 良忠 (1199–1287) and Shōgei 聖冏 (1341– 1420). This is in contrast to the Seizan 西山 branch of the Jōdoshū, descended from the close disciple of Hōnen named Shōkū 證空 (1177–1247). The Chinzei branch should also be distinguished from two other Pure Land groups, which likewise emerged in the wake of Hōnens pioneering efforts: the Shinshū 眞宗 (True School), traceable to Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263); and the Jishū 時宗 (Time School), stemming from Ippen 一遍 (1239–1289). All of these took embryonic form in the Kamakura 鎌倉 period (1185–1333) and gradually assumed a separate identity from the medieval period’s prevailing forms of Buddhism.

S ource: Dobbins, James C., “Precepts in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism: The Jōdoshū,” in William M. Bodiford (ed.), Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 236–254. *  I would like to thank Professor Fukuhara Ryūzen 福原隆善 of Bukkyō 佛教 University in Kyoto and the Venerable Kondō Tesshō 近藤徹称, head resident of the Shōrin’an 照臨庵 in Kyoto, for meeting with me during the preparation of this essay to discuss the precepts in the Jōdoshū.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_029

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The Chinzei branch of the Jōdoshū originated somewhat on the periphery of Japan’s Buddhist world. It began in Kyūshū 九州, at the western end of Japan, and later expanded eastward into the Kantō 關東 region, where it came to be based particularly at Kōmyōji 光明寺 Temple in Kamakura. In the fifteenth century it grew increasingly prominent and influential when it took over exclusive leadership of Chion’in 知恩院 Temple in Kyoto, the location of Hōnen’s grave-site chapel. The branch’s fortunes were boosted considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when it received special patronage from the great unifier of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1542–1616), and subsequently from his shogunate government. Today, the Chinzei Jōdoshū is the second largest Pure Land denomination in Japan after the two main branches of Shinran’s Shinshū. 1

Antecedents of Jōdoshū Precepts

All of the aforementioned Pure Land groups arose in Japan after the Buddhist precepts had become an integral part of the established religious order. The precepts that the Jōdoshū adopted were not those of the Four Part Vinaya, which temples in the old capital of Nara upheld, but the Mahāyāna (or bodhisattva) precepts, also known as the Perfect Sudden Precepts (endon kai 圓 頓戒), which Saichō 最澄 (767–822) instituted for ordinations in the Tendai 天 台 school (Groner 2000, 107–194). Ample evidence suggests that Saichō’s was not a smooth and problem-free system. Many controversies emerged even in Tendai over the precepts’ meaning and applicability (Groner 1990a, 251–290). But because Tendai was such an influential form of Buddhism in Japan, its ordination system using the bodhisattva precepts was widely accepted, even though other Buddhist countries did not use them in that way. Hōnen and most of his disciples entered the clergy under the Tendai system. Hence, when the Jōdoshū speaks of the precepts, it is referring to the bodhisattva precepts specifically. It inherited most of the associations and significances, as well as the ambivalences, that Tendai had regarding them. At the time the Jōdoshū appeared on the scene, Japanese Buddhism was undergoing a crisis over the precepts. The problem was not whether one should follow the Four Part Vinaya or the bodhisattva precepts, as Saichō had argued. Rather, it was whether any precepts at all should be recognized. There emerged a widespread sense in Japan that the clergy was in a state of moral decay. The types of actions most commonly decried were eating meat, consuming liquor, and indulging in sexual activity and even marriage—all violations of the precepts. Whether the clergy were actually worse than in previous periods or

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simply the perception of them was worse is not of primary concern here. What is important is that a preoccupation with religious decline seemed to pervade Japan. Violation of the precepts (hakai 破戒) was considered a rampant trend within the Buddhist establishment. Outside of the establishment there emerged a burgeoning class of quasi-priests—the hijiri 聖 (itinerant monks or recluses)—who acknowledged no set of precepts (mukai 無戒), were never fully ordained, or maintained ties to no particular tradition, whether of the Four Part Vinaya or the bodhisattva precept variety. These monks broke with tradition by disregarding the precepts, but they nonetheless devoted themselves to religious concerns (Inoue Mitsusada 1975, 215–265). In the context of these events there arose a sense that the precepts had lost their efficacy to lead people to enlightenment, or at least that people had lost their capacity to adhere to them. This assumption was commonly couched in terms of the well-known doctrine of the decline of the Dharma (mappō 末法; i.e., decline of Buddhism). According to mappō, the world has entered a dark period far removed from Sākyamuni Buddha’s time. His teachings can no longer be put into practice because of the deterioration of human spiritual capacity and the disappearance of circumstances and conditions conducive to religious attainment. One of the texts widely read and cited by Buddhist thinkers in the Kamakura period was the Lamp for the Age of Declining Dharma (Mappō tōmyōki 末法燈明記), a spurious work attributed to Saichō. This text makes it clear that one of the period’s conspicuous features is widespread violation of the Buddhist precepts (Matsubara 1978, 180–193). Thus the crisis mentality over the decline of the precepts was inextricably tied to the rise of mappō consciousness in Japan. The precept crisis of the Kamakura period generated two very different responses, sometimes described as the pro-precept (jiritsu shugi 持律主義) and the anti-precept (han jiritsu shugi 反持律主義) factions (Furuta 1981d). The pro-precept group was well represented by many religious reformers in temples affiliated with Nara Buddhism. An early example is Jōkei 貞慶 (1155– 1213) of Kōfukuji 興福寺 Temple, who made a public vow around 1210 to resuscitate the study and practice of the precepts, specifically those of the Four Part Vinaya (see his Gedatsu Shōnin kairitsu kōgyō gansho 解脱上人戒律興行 願書 in Kamata and Tanaka 1971, 10–11; Morrell 1987, 7–9). The aspiration to revive the precepts of the Four Part Vinaya was further advanced by Shunjō 俊芿 (1166–1227), an eminent vinaya master who brought back vinaya from China after twelve years of study there and introduced the latest Chinese procedures and customs regarding the vinaya and bodhisattva precepts to reformminded Buddhists in Japan (Etani 1978, 172–173; Ishida Mitsuyuki 1972). The Nara revival movement eventually gave rise to mass ceremonies for administering the precepts to both clerics and lay-people, popularized by Eison 叡尊

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(1201–1290) of Saidaiji 西大寺 Temple and his disciple Ninshō 忍性 (1217–1303) of Gokurakuji 極樂寺 Temple in Kamakura. These ceremonies used not only the Four Part Vinaya precepts but also the bodhisattva precepts, depending on the circumstances and the status of those receiving them (see Groner in this volume). The pro-precept faction also included many individuals not directly associated with Nara Buddhism. For instance, the famous Zen 禪 proponent Eisai 榮西 (1141–1215), founder of Kenninji 建仁寺 Monastery in Kyoto, was an early advocate of clerical reform by the Four Part Vinaya and a close associate of Shunjō (Bodiford 1993, 168–169; Yanagida 1972, 459–466). Also the intense concern over pure rules (shingi 清規) shown by the Zen master Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) and his institution of ordination procedures into the religious program at Eiheiji 永平寺 Monastery were in many ways an outgrowth of this pro-precept sentiment, though he apparently valued the precepts as an embodiment of enlightenment rather than as moral prescriptions (Bodiford 1993, 169–173). Even Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282), by equating acceptance and practice of the five-character “Lotus Sutra” title (daimoku 題目) with upholding the precepts, can be construed as a pro-precept advocate, though of a different stripe (see his Kyōgyōshō gosho 教行證御書, NSI 2.1488; also Imai 1991, 225–226; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 373, 378–379). The anti-precept faction, outside of the ubiquitous hijiri tradition, was represented prominently by the exclusive nembutsu (senju nenbutsu 専修念 佛) movement of Pure Land Buddhism. Hence it was associated specifically with Hōnen, who was universally recognized as the author of the exclusive nembutsu doctrine. Pure Land Buddhism, even before Hōnen’s time, had generated concepts and categories that relegated the precepts to the periphery of its religious path. The time-honored divisions between the Pure Land path (jōdo mon 淨土門) and the saintly path (shōdō mon 聖道門), between easy practices (igyō 易行) and difficult ones (nangyō 難行), and between true practices (shōgyō 正行) and extraneous ones (zōgyō 雜行) became crucial in Pure Land’s understanding of the precepts. The category of true practices is defined by the Chinese Pure Land master Shandao 善導 (613–681) in his commentarial treatise The Contemplation Sūtra’s Nonmeditative Practices (Guanjing sanshanyi 觀經散善義, JZ 2.58). Shandao notes that true practices include five activities: reciting scripture (dokuju 讀誦), meditation (kanzatsu 觀察), worship (raihai 禮拝), uttering the name (shōmyō 稱名) of Amitābha Buddha (known in Japan as Amida Butsu 阿彌陀佛), and praises and offerings (sandan kuyō 讃嘆供養). Of these he deemed uttering Amitābha’s name— identified as the nembutsu—to be the act that truly ensures enlightenment in Pure Land (shōjōgō 正定業) and the other four to be secondary or auxiliary acts ( jogō 助業). It is this exegetical tradition that Hōnen and his successors

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inherited, not that of Yongming Yanshou 永明延壽 (904–975) who regarded precepts as central to the Buddhist path and the nembutsu as a safety net (see Getz in this volume). Among many Japanese, though, precepts came to be viewed as extraneous practices, appropriate for other forms of Buddhism but not for the Pure Land path, which they considered the only viable form of Buddhism in the age of decline. It is not surprising, then, that Shinran’s Shinshū and Ippen’s Jishū did not ascribe great importance to the precepts. Shinran characterized himself as “neither priest nor layman” (hisō hizoku 非僧 非俗; in Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信證, SSZ 2.201), repudiated clerical celibacy, married, and begot a family (Dobbins 1989, 21–46). Ippen, for his part, generated entirely new rules for his hijiri followers that became the fundamental Jishū regulations (Jishū seikai 時宗制誡, in Ōhashi 1971, 299–300). It is in this context that the Jōdoshū, Hōnen’s Pure Land school, emerged in Japan. Its view of the precepts, however, was less dismissive than that of the Shinshū and the Jishū. 2

Hōnen and the Precepts

The starting point for exploring the Jōdoshū’s reaction to the precepts is the views of its founder, Hōnen. Though there are a few works on precepts attributed to Hōnen, scholars nowadays consider them to be spurious (Etani 1978, 146). Hence whatever views Hōnen had of precepts have to be culled from other writings and early biographical accounts. In them there is, first of all, one strain of thought clearly subordinating precepts to Pure Land themes. For instance, in Hōnen’s Passages on the Selection of the Nembutsu in the Original Vow (Senchakushū 選擇集, HSZ 315), he says: “There are countless other practices such as alms-giving and upholding the precepts. They can all be subsumed under the term ‘extraneous practices.’” If there is a prevailing message in the Senchakushū, it is that people should set aside extraneous practices and adhere to one exclusive practice: the nembutsu. This is the idea behind Hōnen’s statement (Senchakushū, HSZ 313), “Master Shandao laid out two types of practice, true and extraneous; one should discard extraneous practices and take refuge in the true practice.” Other writings likewise convey this idea (Tsuboi 1961, 281; Etani 1978, 151–153; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 381–382). In Hōnen’s Twelve Questions and Answers (Juni mondō 十二問答), he specifically cites the Lamp for the Age of Declining Dharma’s arguments concerning the precepts: The great master Dengyō 傳教 [Saichō] wrote in the Lamp for the Age of Declining Dharma that during the age of decline there is no such thing as upholding precepts or violating precepts or even being without precepts.

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There exists nothing but monks in name only. How then can one debate upholding the precepts or violating them? [Amitābha’s] principal vow was made precisely for ordinary unenlightened beings such as ourselves, so we should invoke [Amitābha’s] name with all due haste and concern. HSZ 634

Hōnen’s devaluing of the precepts is a perennial theme in his writings. It is this strand of thought that Shinran inherited, as evidenced in the absence of a precept tradition in the Shinshū. Within Hōnen’s following some monks were clearly radicalized by this depiction of the precepts. They took Hōnen’s teachings as an impetus not simply to focus attention on the exclusive practice of the nembutsu but also to campaign actively and aggressively against the precepts (Tamura 1959, 70–76). Such wanton disregard for the precepts was commonly known as “violating the precepts without remorse” (hakai muzan 破戒無慚). This radical faction of Hōnen’s movement stigmatized his teachings in the eyes of the Buddhist establishment, leading eventually to the banishment of Hōnen, Shin-ran, and other disciples from the capital. During this crisis Jōkei, the precept revivalist of Kōfukuji Temple in Nara, became an outspoken critic of Hōnen. Jōkei is the reputed author of the Kōfukuji Petition (Kōfukuji sōjō 興福寺奏状, in Kamata and Tanaka 1971, 32–42; Morrell 1987, 75–88), which accuses Hōnen of, among other things, condoning violation of the precepts and thus inflicting harm on the Buddhist order. Hōnen himself sought to mitigate the provocative implications of his teaching and to rein in his most extreme followers. In 1204 he formulated a code of conduct known as the Seven Article Pledge (Shichikajō kishōmon 七箇条起請 文), which he obliged his followers to observe. The fourth article concerns the precepts specifically: Refrain from saying that there is no practice of the precepts in the nembutsu path; from avidly encouraging sexual indulgences, liquor, and meat eating; from impulsively calling those who adhere to the vinaya’s precepts people of extraneous practice; and from teaching that those who rely on Amitābha’s principal vow have no reason to fear committing wrongdoing. Concerning the above, the precepts are the great foundation of the Buddhist teachings. Though religious practices are diverse, they are all equally intent on the [precepts]. With regard to this, Master Shandao would not look upon a woman whenever he raised his eyes. The upshot of this behavior was to surpass even the regulations of the basic vinaya.

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If people of pure acts do not conform to the [precepts], then they altogether abandon the teachings bestowed by the tathāgatas [buddhas], and they also disregard the ancient traditions of the patriarchs. At the same time, are not they devoid of any grounding? HSZ 788

This passage reflects the other dimension of Hōnen’s view of the precepts. Though he frequently categorized them as extraneous practice, he clearly did not consider the precepts to be at odds or in conflict with the nembutsu. Hōnen in fact tried to demonstrate an affinity between them by linking the two through numerical association. In his Letter to Those Who Have Ascended the Mountain [i.e., Mount Hiei 比叡] (Tozanjō 登山状, HSZ 427) he writes, “What one should long for deeply in one’s heart is to uphold the ten major ( jūjū 十重) [bodhisattva precepts] and to invoke the ten nembutsu (jūnen 十念), to adhere to the forty-eight minor (shijūhachi kyō 四十八輕) [bodhisattva precepts] and to rely on [Amitābha’s] forty-eight vows (shijūhachi gan 四十八願).” Far from undermining the nembutsu, the precepts, he argues, in fact echo the Pure Land teachings. Hōnen himself observed the precepts scrupulously, though he declared in all humility that he had not upheld even one of them (Shōkōbō ni shimesarekeru onkotoba 聖光房に示されける御詞, HSZ 751). He apparently received the bodhisattva precepts more than once in his life, and early in his career he may have been ordained with the precepts of the Four Part Vinaya as well. He administered precepts to countless disciples. He also gave them to lay followers such as Kujō Kanezane 九条兼實 (1149–1207) even when they took them merely as a formality for good fortune or beneficial side effects (Etani 1978, 143–145; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 403–405). Hōnen’s actions therefore reflect a more conventional and positive assessment of the precepts than his portrayal of them as extraneous practices suggests. It is this facet of Hōnen’s teachings that the Jōdoshū inherited and preserved. 3

The Precept Tradition of the Jōdoshū

The three people who instituted a precept tradition in the Jōdoshū were its de facto founder, Benchō; his disciple Ryōchū; and their later successor Shōgei. Together they formalized what was implicit in Hōnen’s teachings. From an organizational point of view, they made precept ordination a necessary component in the Jōdoshū’s master-disciple lineages. Liturgically, they inherited

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from Hōnen the so-called Twelve Part Precept Ceremony ( Jūnimon kaigi 十二門 戒儀), formally known as the Bodhisattva Precept Ceremony ( Ju bosatsu kaigi 授 菩薩戒儀, JZ 15.872–878), the ritual guidelines for conferring the bodhisattva precepts developed by the Chinese Tiantai 天台 patriarch Zhanran 湛然 (711– 782) and used ubiquitously in the Tendai school in Japan.1 Benchō and Ryōchū were scrupulous about administering the precepts to their disciples, but it was Shōgei who initiated the principle that to be recognized as a Jōdoshū priest one would have to receive not only the teachings from the master but also the precepts. Specifically, he argued that it was a long-standing Pure Land tradition to maintain dual lineages between masters and disciples: a teachings lineage (shūmyaku 宗脉) and a precept lineage (kaimyaku 戒脉) (Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 379– 81, 407–409; see Shōgei’s Ken jōdo denkai ron 顯淨土傳戒論, JZ 15.895–896). This position made administering precepts the primary mechanism for generating master-disciple lineages in the Jōdoshū. From the standpoint of Buddhism in general, there was nothing strange about this practice because administering precepts has been a standard method of establishing the masterdisciple relationship throughout Buddhism’s history. What is unusual is that, in contrast to other forms of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, the Jōdoshū made induction through the precepts one of its mainstream rituals. The Shinshū, in contrast, set aside the precepts and developed its own mechanisms for formalizing master-disciple relationships.2 The Jōdoshū could have followed this route also because lineages based on Pure Land teachings were established by Benchō. He produced a digest of Pure Land teachings found in the Handprints Log of Conferral of the Nembutsu in the Latter Age (Matsudai nenbutsu jushuin 末代念佛授手印, JZ 10.1–14), which he personally inscribed and passed on to his closest disciples, who in turn passed it on to their disciples (Matsuo 1988, 1  The Jōdoshū recognized this Zhanran version as its authoritative text for ordination ceremonies rather than the versions by Zhili, Zunshi, and Yuanchao (described by Getz in this volume), even though their versions integrated Pure Land themes and motifs into the ceremony. 2  The Shinshū is commonly depicted as devoid of master-disciple lineages based on Shinran’s comment, “I, Shinran, do not have even one disciple” (Tannishō 嘆異抄, SSZ 2.776). But it is clear that there were lineages from the earliest period, as reflected in such lineage charts as the Shinran Shōnin monryo kyōmyōchō 親鸞聖人門侶交名帳 (in Yamada 1979, 351–380). Though there were apparently no uniform ceremonies formalizing the master-disciple tie, religious objects such as inscribed texts or portraits of the master were frequently passed on to disciples as tokens of the relationship, and disciples would frequently receive new clerical names from the master. Shinran, for instance, received the name Shakkū 綽空 from Hōnen, had him inscribe a copy of his Senchakushū for Shinran, and was allowed to make a portrait of Hōnen (Kyōgyōshinshō, SSZ 2.202). The Shinshū subsequently developed its own tonsure (tokudo 得度) procedure for ordination, but it never adopted the precepts as part of the ordination (Matsuo 1988, 226–227).

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209). Such lineages of teachings could have easily provided a mechanism for formal master-disciple ties. Instead, the Jōdoshū opted for a two-track line of descent composed of precept lineages on the one hand and transmission of teachings on the other. With Benchō, Ryōchū, and Shōgei there was also a gradual re-interpretation of the function of the precepts in the context of the Pure Land path. No longer were the precepts portrayed as extraneous practices. One extreme, however, that they did not go to was to consider the precepts identical to and nondualistically bonded with the nembutsu (nenkai itchi 念戒一致). Such an interpretation was more characteristic of Shōkū and the Seizan branch of the Jōdoshū than of Benchō and the Chinzei branch (Ishii 1972, 373–375). The Chinzei Jōdoshū, instead, treated the precepts as auxiliary acts to the nembutsu. That is, the precepts were presented as enhancing the exclusive practice of the nembutsu, not detracting from it. Some passages in Hōnen’s writings in fact intimate such an interpretation. For example, in a commentary on the Immeasurable Life Sūtra (Muryōjukyō 無量壽經; often referred to as the Larger Pure Land Sūtra) Hōnen indicates that adherence to anything from the three refuges (sanki 三歸) and the five precepts (gokai 五戒) for laypeople all the way up to the full set of precepts (gusoku kai 具足戒) for monks and nuns specified in the Four Part Vinaya, as well as the ten major and forty-eight minor bodhisattva precepts and the three categories of pure precepts (sanjujōkai 三衆 淨戒) of bodhisattvas, is an act leading to birth in the Pure Land (Muryōjukyō shaku 無量寿經釋; HSZ 93). Though he did not explicitly apply the category of auxiliary acts to the precepts here, he did include them in the larger scheme of the Pure Land path, as was customary in earlier Pure Land thought. Benchō, however, unambiguously described adherence to the precepts as an auxiliary act, and Shōgei furthered the argument, saying: Even though we speak of extraneous practices, there are a few ancillary practices (kengyō 兼行) that are recognized in our school. Why should we despise them? Furthermore, in the context of differentiating true (shō 正) from extraneous (zō 雜) and auxiliary (jo 助) from true [practices], none of these few ancillary exercises should be seen as extraneous. Ken jōdo denkai ron, JZ 15.896

With this type of argument, Shōgei challenged the stereotyping of precepts as extraneous practices common in Pure Land circles. Without countermanding Hōnen’s ideas, Shōgei essentially set up a twofold view of the precepts in the Jōdoshū. When the precepts are followed separately from the nembutsu, they constitute extraneous practices. But if observed in conjunction with the

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nembutsu so that they lead to a greater realization of Amitābha’s vow, the precepts function as auxiliary acts in the Pure Land path (Tsuboi 1961, 283–284; Hamada 1967, 304–307). In this way the early organizers of the Jōdoshū provided the doctrinal underpinnings for the perpetuation of precepts in the school. 4

The Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony

With Shōgei the precepts assumed a prominent institutional role in the Jōdoshū, but they did not necessarily coalesce smoothly with Pure Land teachings. Now and then reactions against them would erupt among Jōdoshū adherents. These reactions did not take the form of the anti-precept iconoclasm that rocked Hōnen’s movement, nor did they result in the total rejection of the precepts as found in Shinran’s Shinshū tradition. But they did give rise to a unique rendition of the precepts in the form of a ritual manual entitled the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony (Jōdo fusatsu shiki 淨土布薩式, HSZ 1058–1088). This work—attributed to Hōnen but traceable more to Shōgei and his contemporaries, and thus probably composed in the late 1300s or early 1400s (Ikawa 1975, 47–48)—presents in liturgical format an explanation of the precepts interpolated with Pure Land themes. Rather than describe procedures for a fortnightly assembly (fusatsu 布薩; Skt., poṣadha; Pali uposatha), it is structurally more similar to the Twelve Part Precept Ceremony, the standard liturgical text for administering the bodhisattva precepts (Ikawa 1960, 27–29). But from the beginning the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony (HSZ 1065–1066) depicts itself as transmitting a distinctive Pure Land lineage of the precepts handed down from Śākyamuni Buddha to the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī; from Mañjuśrī, who purportedly resided on Mount Wutai 五台 in China, to the three Pure Land patriarchs of China, Tanluan 曇鸞 (476–542?), Daochuo 道綽 (562–645), and Shandao; and finally from Shandao to Hōnen in a dream. What is most interesting about the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony is how the precepts are interpreted to fit the Jōdoshū’s assumptions and circumstances. For instance, in the liturgical section explaining the ten major bodhisattva precepts, the injunction against sexual activity and marriage by priests is qualified substantially, no doubt to adapt it to alternative views of the priesthood. The discussion of this precept (HSZ 1072–1073), while enumerating all the obstructions and disadvantages of physical desire and attachment, goes on to indicate that in certain situations a priest could have a wife and children, just as a bodhisattva might have them whenever such a position serves the larger goal of bringing sentient beings to enlightenment. This same idea is reinforced indirectly later in the text (HSZ 1080) where it states that, if people

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are incapable of upholding all ten major precepts, they should at least observe the four most important ones: (1) not to kill; (2) not to steal; (4) not to lie; and (10) not to slander the three jewels (sanbō 三寶; i.e., the Buddha, the Buddhist teachings, and the Buddhist order). The fact that the injunction against sexual activity (i.e., the third precept) is omitted from this final list suggests that the Jōdoshū found the clerical vow of celibacy problematic. This strategy was not unique to the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony, for in the version of the Twelve Part Precept Ceremony (i.e., the so-called Kurodani kohon 黒谷古本, ZJZ 12.5) used by the Jōdoshū until mid-Tokugawa times the third major precept omits the term “sexual desire” (in 婬) altogether. Instead, it equivocates by framing the vow as an “injunction against practicing desires without compassion” ( fu muji gyōyoku kai 不無慈行欲戒) The implication is that such desires can be practiced if compassion is present in them. Rationalizations against the vow of celibacy reflect substantial openness to the marriage of clergy and thus an ongoing tension in the Jōdoshū with this item in the traditional precepts. Partisans of the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony version of the precepts were always a minority in the Jōdoshū, primarily because the work was fairly late in appearing and circulated only in restricted circles. Though the origins of the text are obscure, scholars now think that its proponents were based principally at Kōmyōji Temple in Kamakura. This temple was established in the 1240s by Ryōchū, the foremost leader and popularizer of the Chinzei branch of the Jōdoshū during its formative period, and it emerged as one of the premier institutions of the school. Ordinations based on the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony were apparently conducted at the temple over successive generations and produced a master-disciple lineage organized around the text. But these ceremonies were generally performed in private and were perpetuated as a secret ordination reserved for an elite few. They were portrayed as the highest form of Pure Land ordination one could receive. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the Kōmyōji extended its influence first to Chion’in Temple in Kyoto, the location of Hōnen’s grave-site chapel; and later to the Zōjōji 増上寺 in present-day Tokyo, the leading Jōdoshū temple connected with the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1867). With this expansion, certain priests from those temples underwent the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony ordination. As Japan entered the Tokugawa period, several priests began campaigning for the adoption of the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony as the Jōdoshū standard because other precept ceremonies in use did not reflect distinctive Pure Land values (Suzuki Ryōshun 1982, 106–109; Ikawa 1975, 45–48). A debate emerged in which advocates of the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony were countered by other priests from both the Chinzei and Seizan

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branches of the Jōdoshū who criticized the work as a spurious composition wrongly ascribed to Hōnen. One of the leading critics was the scholar-priest Nanso 南楚 (1592–1671), who denounced, among other things, the interpolation of yin-yang 陰陽 thought and ideas from the Laozi 老子 into the concluding section of the text; he saw them as undermining the strict meaning of the precepts and inviting physical indulgences (Fusatsu shiki benshō 布薩式辨正, ZJZ 13.348–350; Sanda 1975, 757–765). His arguments and those of like-minded priests essentially stalled the drive to disseminate the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony throughout the school, thereby preserving the traditional ordination procedures of the bodhisattva precepts as the norm. Nonetheless, the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony was popular enough that it persisted in certain circles throughout the Meiji 明治 period (1868–1912), though a movement spearheaded by the eminent Jōdoshū activist and reformer Fukuda Gyōkai 福田行海 (1806–1888) finally led to its discontinuation in 1912 (Etani 1978, 191–193; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 418–421, 428–429). 5

Precepts Revival in the Tokugawa Period

Though there was some momentum in favor of the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony at the beginning of Tokugawa times, what eclipsed it ultimately was the wider precepts revival that pervaded Buddhism as a whole during this period. Reforms were initiated in most schools to place greater emphasis on the precepts and to study their content and significance. It is difficult to say what provoked this outpouring of concern for the precepts. Sectarian sources often claim that it was a reaction to the decadence of the clergy. Zen scholars sometimes cite the arrival of Yinyuan Longqi 隠元隆琦 (Ingen Ryūki; 1592–1673), the famed master from China who introduced from the mainland procedures for mass ordination ceremonies that included lay precepts, the monastic precepts of the Four Part Vinaya, and bodhisattva precepts. Even a few members of the Shinshū, which had rejected the precepts throughout its history, argued for the recognition of the bodhisattva precepts (Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 410). This preoccupation with precepts thus extended to virtually every Buddhist school during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Jōdoshū was no exception. Precepts rose to ever greater prominence in the thought and religious life of the Jōdoshū, and the earlier Pure Land critique of them as extraneous practices faded from discourse. Two noteworthy developments in the context of this precept revival were the efflorescence of the world-abandoning (shasei 捨世) movement, exemplified

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by Ninchō 忍澂 (1645–1711) and his Hōnen’in 法然院 Temple in Kyoto, and the rise of the Pure Land Vinaya (Jōdo Ritsu 淨土律) movement, organized by Reitan 靈潭 (1676–1734) at his Shōrin’an 照臨庵 hermitage also in Kyoto. The world-abandoning ideal was not specifically inspired by Tokugawa precepts reform but rather had its origins in earlier traditions of nembutsu practice. The goal was to dedicate oneself to exclusive and intense nembutsu practice in a monastic setting, while maintaining a strict and religiously pure lifestyle. This philosophy, needless to say, coalesced well with the precepts and prompted Ninchō to institute monastic rules at the Hōnen’in based on the vinaya (Itō 1958, 31–49; Itō 1964, 1–3; Etani 1978, 182–183; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 412–414). Reitan, by contrast, concentrated more directly on the issue of precepts per se and explicitly advocated adherence to them as fundamental to clerical practice of the nembutsu (Itō 1964, 1–4; Ryakudenshū 略傳集, JZ 18.480–82; Etani 1978, 182–183; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 414–418). To this day his tradition is kept alive by the Jōdoshū nun Kondō Tesshō 近藤徹称, head resident and Reitan’s dharma heir at the Shōrin’an in Kyoto. What is striking about these two Tokugawa movements is that, though they considered the bodhisattva precepts to be primary, they both adopted a conciliatory attitude toward the Four Part Vinaya precepts. This constituted a new trend in the Jōdoshū. Prior to that time, the school recognized only the bodhisattva precepts inherited from the Tendai tradition. One impetus for the interest in the Four Part Vinaya no doubt came from the Tendai school itself, where reform-minded monks such as Myōryū 妙立 (1637–1690) and Reikū 靈 空 (1653–1739) pressed for the use of Four Part Vinaya ordinations in addition to the regular Tendai bodhisattva ordinations (Etani 1978, 180–182; Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 411–412). Ninchō argued that, although the Pure Land teachings were derived from Hōnen, the precepts, properly speaking, were traceable back to Shandao in China, and his precepts no doubt included those of the Four Part Vinaya (Ishii Kyōdō 1972, 365, 367–368). Reitan, for his part, actually underwent ordination in the full set of precepts for a monk as specified in the Four Part Vinaya (Ryakudenshū, JZ 18.481). Though the viewpoints and activities of these two movements were not necessarily widespread in the school during this period, they nonetheless made a strong impression on the Jōdoshū clergy. They fostered serious consideration of the precepts among them and countered sectarian tendencies favoring Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony ordinations. Alongside proponents of the Pure Land Fortnightly Assembly Ceremony, world-abandoning monasticism, and the Pure Land Vinaya Ritsu movement, many mainstream clerics in the Jōdoshū were likewise stimulated to explore

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and promote the traditional bodhisattva precepts. A succession of Jōdoshū priests in the Tokugawa period wrote treatises on them and reasserted their primacy as the fundamental precepts of the school (Etani 1978, 186–187). One development resulting from their efforts was that the version of the ordination ceremony in use at that time, commonly known as the Old Kurodani Text (Kurodani kohon 黒谷古本, ZJZ 12.1–6), was replaced by the New-Text Precept Ceremony (Shinpon kaigi 新本戒儀, ZJZ 12.9–14). A manuscript of the Old Kurodani Text survives in Shōgei’s own handwriting, so it must have been in widespread use by the late fourteenth century. There is some evidence that it may go back to the time of Hōnen himself, for a version of the ceremony used by Hōnen’s senior disciple Shinkū 信空 (1146–1228) is almost identical to it. Nonetheless, in content the Old Kurodani Text differs in crucial ways from texts used in Tendai and other Japanese Buddhist schools. For one thing, the ten major bodhisattva precepts are written in variant language from that found in other versions, including the third precept, which, as framed, could be construed as condoning the marriage of priests. In the mid-Tokugawa period, another version of the ordination procedures, the so-called New-Text Precept Ceremony, came to light, which contained language very close to that found in the ceremonies of other schools. This new text was in fact quite old, having been preserved in the treasure storehouse of Nison’in 二尊院 Temple in Kyoto, where Hōnen had once resided and was briefly interred. Hōnen himself is said to be its author, though it is impossible to verify such a claim. Even so the work can definitely be traced back to the Kamakura period. The discovery of this text gave the Jōdoshū an alternative that was just as venerable as the Kurodani one yet closer to those used by other schools. It was quickly disseminated throughout the Jōdoshū and from mid-Tokugawa times on became the standard for ordination ceremonies. This shift was significant because it aligned the Jōdoshū more closely with the precept traditions of other Japanese Buddhist schools. The new version continues down to the present as the basis for the Jōdoshū’s precept ceremony (Etani 1972; 1978, 234–236). 6

Precepts in Modern Times

In the Jōdoshū today there are two forms of precept ceremonies conducted, one for clerics and the other for laypeople. Originally, the precepts were administered primarily to the clergy, but sometime during the Tokugawa period they were popularized among the common people as well. The early “ordinations” of laypeople were apparently a one-day affair, though the actual content of the proceedings and the motivations of the ordinands are not entirely

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known (JD 2.199, s.v. jukai 授戒 and jukaie 授戒會).3 Lay precept ceremonies today last for seven days. The first six days function as a religious retreat including worship services, nembutsu chanting, sūtra recitation, and lectures on the three refuges, the five precepts for laypeople, the three categories of pure precepts (sanjujōkai) of bodhisattvas, the ten major precepts (jūjūkinkai 十重 禁戒) of bodhisattvas, and the twelve parts of the precept ceremony (jūnimon kaigi 十二門戒儀). On the seventh day the precepts are formally administered to the participants. The ceremony is ordinarily performed before a scroll painting known as the Three Holy Ones Administering the Precepts (jukai sanshō zu 授戒三聖圖), which depicts Śākyamuni Buddha flanked by the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Maitreya. They fulfill the roles of the three ordination masters required for the ordination procedures specified in the Four Part Vinaya. Needless to say, this ritual does not serve the same purpose for laypeople as it does for the clergy. The lay ceremony is frequently called “administering the precepts to establish a karmic bond” (kechien jukai 結縁授戒). The implication here is that through this event recipients of the precepts form a karmic link that leads them to enlightenment in Amitābha’s Pure Land. The ordination ceremony for the clergy is similar in sequence and procedure. The most visible difference is that the seven-day initiation is integrated into a longer retreat for the clergy known as preparatory practice (kegyō 加行). In significance, however, the ordination of the clergy marks their induction into the ranks of formally recognized teachers of the Jōdoshū. Hence the precept ceremony is the mechanism by which they become part of the school’s official lineage (Fujii 1979, 64–66; Shiio 1931, 99–124). In light of these ceremonies and in the context of their historical evolution, what then is the role of the precepts in the Jōdoshū, and what meaning do they have for its adherents? For one thing, they provide the cohesion of a religious transmission from master to disciple over successive generations, which is crucial to the identity and perpetuation of the Jōdoshū as a sectarian body. Precepts have exerted this same cohesive effect throughout Buddhist history on other sectarian groups, and to the extent that these groups have the precepts in common, the groundwork exists for a shared, pan-Buddhist identity between them. But that function, crucial as it may be from an institutional standpoint, does not address whether the actual content of the precepts is important to the Jōdoshū. Do the specific injunctions in the bodhisattva precepts represent normative rules of behavior for Jōdoshū adherents? That question is far more complex. 3  These ceremonies may have been similar to those described in Bodiford 1993 (179–184).

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When perceived as extraneous practices, precepts, it would seem, do not have direct relevance or application to the Pure Land path. But the Jōdoshū, as shown earlier, adopted a different interpretation, construing the precepts to be auxiliary acts that work in tandem with the nembutsu. When one upholds the moral imperatives of the bodhisattva precepts, those virtuous acts augment and enhance the boundless saving power already inherent in the nembutsu. Hence ethical action does have a soteriological value but only in conjunction with the nembutsu. By contrast, the nembutsu constitutes both necessary and sufficient cause for birth in the Pure Land. Its efficacy is not dependent on other acts. Thus while acknowledging the primacy of the nembutsu, the Jōdoshū affirms the value of the precepts. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the Jōdoshū expects its adherents to observe the precepts without fail. There is adequate evidence that certain injunctions—the rule of celibacy, for instance—were never stringently observed even among the clergy. Moreover, there is some question as to whether Jōdoshū adherents actually believe they can follow the precepts unerringly. Some doctrinal scholars depict the precepts as valuable simply because they awaken in one an awareness of human failings and inadequacies, thus leading one to the superior practice of the nembutsu (Etani 1978, 149–151). In the end, the meaning of the precepts in the Jōdoshū lies not in successful observance of them in every detail, but in the adherent’s commitment to them as an ideal. That is, their symbolic value is just as important as their moral value. This understanding of the precepts is frequently couched in terms of the age-old Buddhist division between ideal (ri 理) and specific (ji 事), categories that the Jōdoshū inherited from other Buddhist schools. Viewed as specific, the precepts ( jikai 事戒) constitute a collection of rules and injunctions which, when followed scrupulously, yield a lifestyle wherein one desists from evil and cultivates good. Viewed as ideal, however, the precepts (rikai 理戒) represent a palpable expression of the impalpable Buddhist absolute, convergent with the nembutsu.4 When analyzing the precepts in this way, the Jōdoshū considers it 4  The analysis of precepts from the perspective of specific (ji) and ideal (ri) has precedents in Tendai. The bodhisattva precepts in the Brahmā Net Sūtra are identified as precepts with form (jikai); the attitudes and views promoted by the Lotus Sūtra are identified as precepts without form (rikai; Groner 2000, 206–210). For a Jōdoshū exegesis of precepts using the categories of ji and ri, see Inoue Tokujō 1908 (438). Jōdoshū doctrine shares the Tendai view that “jikai” refers to the specific injunctions of the bodhisattva precepts. Likewise, it defines “rikai” as the essence of the precepts (kaitai 戒體), which once received is never lost (ittoku fushitsu 一得不失) and constitutes the seed of Buddhahood (jōbutsu no shuji 成佛の種子). But the Jōdoshū understanding differs in other ways from the Tendai view of rikai. Specifically, it does not posit a link between rikai and the Lotus Sūtra. If rikai is identified with any teaching, it is with the nembutsu as the nembutsu precepts (nenbutsu kai 念佛戒).

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possible to uphold them as ideal without necessarily upholding them as specific. Needless to say, such an interpretation is prey to cynical and self-serving manipulation if used as an excuse for not doing good. But the important point is that the Jōdoshū values an inner assent to the precepts as much as an outward performance of them. From this point of view, the precept ceremony represents not simply a commission to do good but rather an occasion for acknowledging one’s karmic bond to universal powers working to bring sentient beings to enlightenment. The ritual event of receiving the precepts therefore contains meaning over and above one’s actual capacity to obey them. Through such doctrinal analyses, the Jōdoshū has attempted to bring harmony to seemingly diverging aspects of its tradition: the nembutsu path on the one hand and the precepts on the other.

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Exemplary Lives

Form and Function in Pure Land Sacred Biography Michael Bathgate I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?” Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, 201)

∵ Sacred biography is perhaps first and foremost a literature of exemplars, expressing a community’s religious ideals through the lives of those who embodied them. As Peter Brown (1987, 14) has suggested, to read these lives is to find oneself “perched … between particularity and grandeur,” as the events of an individual life intersect with the images and ideals of the collective religious imagination. Reflecting this basic tension between the individual and the collective, the study of hagiography has generally been shaped by two fundamental methodological approaches, which Frank Reynolds and Donald Capps (1976, 28) have described as “history-oriented” and “myth-oriented.” In scholarship of the first sort, traditional religious biographies have been examined for the clues they provide in reconstructing the lives of historical figures. In these studies, the conventions of hagiography can often appear as obstacles to be overcome, obfuscating the historical record with pious mythmaking.1 Studies of the second sort, however, have focused their attention precisely on those hagiographic conventions, using the lives of religious founders, saints, and devotees as case studies in the history of the religious imagination, charting the religious and cultural ideals of a community through the lives of those said to have exemplified them (for example Kieschnick 1997). As Reynolds and Capps have argued, S ource: Bathgate, Michael, “Exemplary Lives: Form and Function in Pure Land Sacred Biography,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34(2) (2007): 271–303. 1  Amstutz (1992, 232–33), for example, describes a “positivist bias” at work in much modern scholarship on the Pure Land figure Shinran 親鸞, one that largely ignores the “mythic” elements of traditional hagiographies, and so loses sight of the ritual uses of the texts themselves.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_030

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these two methodological orientations are ultimately complementary, and a number of studies have begun to explore the complex intersection of the actual and the ideal in the telling (and in the living) of exemplary lives.2 In each of these cases, however, the study of sacred biography has been largely shaped by what Dominick LaCapra (1983, 33–35) has called a “documentary approach” to textual sources. Indeed, the field of Buddhist studies has benefited from a growing awareness of the role and significance of extracanonical literary sources as a documentary resource. In studies of materials ranging from Indian avadāna to Japanese setsuwa bungaku 説話文学, scholars have employed sacred biographies as a complement (and sometimes a corrective) to the evidence of worldviews, values, and practices contained in ritual manuals or scriptural commentaries (for example Strong 1992, Faure 1996, Heine 1999). Even as it has yielded invaluable insights into the history of the tradition, such an approach nevertheless tends to extract the content of narratives from their discursive contexts, obscuring the specifically narrative functions of those documents. In so doing, it has the potential to lose sight of the distinctive character (and, frequently, the declared intent) of the texts themselves. Given the self-conscious didacticism of most sacred biography—written (to borrow Pierre Hadot’s phrase) “to form more than to inform”—it is perhaps surprising that research on sacred biography has taken so little account of the growing body of scholarship on the relationship between literary form and moral formation.3 If, as Paul Ricoeur (1991, 428, 433) has suggested, the intellectual and cultural resources by which we make sense of narratives are of the same order as those by which we make sense of our own lives, it seems appropriate to consider the ways in which sacred biographies provide, not simply the story of an exemplary life, but the exemplary configuration of that life into meaningful form. As Martha Nussbaum notes:

2  Studies of major historical figures such as Genshin 源信 (Rhodes 1995) and Gyōki 行基 (Augustine 2005), for example, have explored the ways their biographies were incorporated into various (and sometimes competing) narrative projects. Similarly, Dobbins (2004, 110–21) argues that the demythologization of Shinran’s biography was at the heart of the movement he describes as “Shin modernism,” creating an image of Shinran whose anachronism he works to combat by reinserting Shinran into the specifically medieval framework in which he lived. 3  Quoted by Arnold Davidson in his introduction to Hadot 1995, 20. A notable exception to the above characterization is Hallisey and Hansen 1996, in whose footsteps this study gratefully treads.

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Life is never simply presented by a text; it is always represented as something. This “as” can, and must, be seen not only in the paraphrasable content, but also in the style, which itself expresses choices and selections, and sets up, in the reader, certain activities and transactions rather than others. Nussbaum 1990, 5

The didacticism of sacred biography, in this sense, could be said to rest, not simply in its advocacy of specific behavior, but also in the orientations it provides to the contexts and consequences of that behavior. Tracing the historical development of hagiographic genres within a particular tradition would thus involve tracing these interpretive structures, through which readers are encouraged to understand the religious significance of a life, that of the protagonist as well as their own. This study will consider the implications of such an approach to sacred biography by exploring the narrative configurations of two genres from the Japanese tradition of Pure Land Buddhism. Ōjōden 往生伝 [Stories of rebirth] and myōkōninden 妙好人伝 [Stories of wondrous believers] both present accounts of individuals from various social classes who attained salvation through rebirth (ōjō 往生) in the Land of Utmost Bliss (gokuraku jōdo 極楽浄 土, Sk. Sukhāvatī) of the Buddha Amida 阿弥陀. At the same time, however, both are products of their times, and have provided modern scholarship with valuable insights into the very different doctrinal, institutional, and political contexts in which they were compiled. The six major collections of ōjōden, for example, were the work of literati associated with both the Heian court and the nearby Tendai 天台 institution at Mount Hiei 比叡山.4 Composed in classical Chinese between the tenth and twelfth centuries (before the doctrinal and sectarian developments inaugurated by Hōnen 法然, Shinran 親鸞 and Ippen 一遍), their accounts of ōjōnin 往生人 (those who have attained rebirth) are typically cited in academic studies for the images they offer of the practices, doctrinal assumptions, and social composition of the early Pure Land movement (for example Kleine 1998; Stone 2004, 88–108). The six fascicles of the Myōkōninden, on the other hand, 4  The first of these collections is the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 日本往生極楽記, composed around 986 by Yoshishige no Yasutane 慶滋保胤. The remaining collections, following selfconsciously on the model of the first, are all products of the twelfth century: Zoku honchō ōjōden 続本朝往生伝 by Ōe no Masafusa 大江匡房, Shūi ōjōden 拾遺往生伝 and Goshūi ōjōden 後拾遺往生伝 by Miyoshi no Tameyasu 三善為康, Sange ōjōki 三外往生記 by Renzen 蓮禅 (Fujiwara no Sukemoto 藤原資始) and Honchō shinshū ōjōden 本朝新修往 生伝 by Fujiwara no Munetomo 藤原宗友. All can be found in nst 7.

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were first compiled between the late-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, representing the efforts of priests affiliated with the Nishi-Honganji 西本 願寺 establishment of the Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗.5 Compiled in Japanese, in an environment of sectarian doctrinal study and popular religious education constrained by the religious and social policies of the Shogunal government, these accounts of exemplary Shin believers have been of interest to academic study as practical expressions of the Shinshū mind of faith (shinjin 信心), especially as they reflected (and actively shaped) adherents’ everyday interactions with both the Tokugawa social order and the authorities of the Nishi-Honganji (for example Davis 1989, Amstutz 1997). While studies of ōjōden and myōkōninden have revealed a great deal about the lives and historical imagery of the ideal Pure Land devotee, their focus has been limited largely to the content of these accounts—that is, the attitudes and behaviors attributed to their protagonists, and the ways in which they can be seen to change over time. Much less attention has been paid to the changing form of these collections, and what they reveal about the discursive practices and purposes of their authors. As Hayden White (1987, xi) has argued, however, the form of narrative conveys its own content, and in the pages that follow, I will consider the ways in which these genres of sacred biography reflect shifting views, not simply of the religious practices associated with ideal believers in specific religious communities, but of the nature of religious practice and community itself. 1

Ōjōden: Life as the Pursuit of Salvation

One of the characteristic features of hagiographic discourse is its tendency to subordinate the particularity of an individual life to the reiteration of traditional images of sanctity (Kleine 1998, 326–27). While the stereotypic quality of much sacred biography—concerned more with the reiteration of the ideal than with the diversity of human experience—often renders it of dubious value as biographical source material (or, indeed, as literature) it would appear to be an essential part of the didactic project motivating its authors (Heffernan 5  Begun by Gōsei 仰誓 (d. 1794), the first collection of Myōkōninden was edited by his son Rizen 履善 and his disciple Seigai 誓鎧, and substantially expanded by Sōjun 僧純, who published the collection between 1842 and 1858, including a supplementary volume (zokuhen 続篇) completed by Zō-ō 像王 in 1850 (see Kawamura 1987, 41–43). The history of this early editorial process has been considered by more than one scholarly study (see, for example, Asaeda 1982), but must remain outside the purview of the current discussion, which will be limited to the nineteenth-century text of the Myōkōninden as presented in nst 57: 147–253.

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1988, 17; see also Childs 1991, 19). Attention to the regularities within a particular genre of sacred biography can thus reveal a great deal about the way in which they were intended to influence their readers. Viewed from this perspective, ōjōden are striking for the fundamental diversity of their protagonists and their practices. Monks and laity, men and women, wonder-working saints and pious devotees, renunciants, killers, and courtiers all appear as the beneficiaries of Amida’s saving vows.6 In addition to the nenbutsu, a practice which itself ranges from the chanting of Amida’s name to more advanced visualization and meditation techniques, ōjōden also describe a variety of practices, from elaborate collective rituals and doctrinal discussion to the simple act of westward-facing prayer. Other accounts describe the recitation and copying of sutras (including not only Pure Land texts like the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra, but also the Lotus Sūtra and the apotropaic Kongō hannya kyō 金剛般若経), as well as the composition and recitation of poems and hymns in praise of Amida. In still other tales, salvation is accomplished through suicide or through grisly acts of self-mutilation. The Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, for example, includes both the story of the novice (shamon 沙門) Zōyū 増祐, whose preparation for death included descending alive into the grave, as well as the tale of an anonymous nun who expressed her devotion by having the skin removed from her own hand, and using it as the canvas on which to paint an image of the Pure Land (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 25 [nst 7: 507] and 32 [nst 7: 508]). This profound diversity of protagonists and their practices, however, is matched by a notable regularity in the narrative structure by which they are conveyed. Protagonists are typically introduced by name, often accompanied by information about their birthplace, family, social rank, and religious status. An abbreviated description of their religious or secular career often follows. But this information is subordinated to the inevitable centerpiece of virtually all ōjōden accounts: the depiction of the protagonist’s final moments and rebirth in Sukhāvatī.7 Indeed, even when the author of an ōjōden appears to have 6  That is not to say, however, that ōjōden collections are in any sense demographically balanced. In his translation and study of the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, for example, Wetzler (1977, 248) notes that monks, nuns, and novices represent thirty-two of the forty-five individuals recounted in the collection. Similarly, Kleine (1998, 333) estimates that women represent only twelve percent of the protagonists in Japanese ōjōden. Nevertheless, despite the predominance in these collections of monks over laity and men over women, the mere presence of all four constituencies of the Buddhist community (monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen) suggests at least a gesture towards religious universalism (if not egalitarianism) on the part of their authors. 7  A small minority of tales are exceptions to this rule. These accounts—describing the lives of such foundational figures as Prince Shōtoku 聖徳, the bodhisattva Gyōki, and the Pure Land

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drawn on more detailed historical records in compiling an account, the biographical elements of these tales are typically foreshortened, focusing on the events, character traits and religious practices that bear most directly—either as contributing factors or as obstacles to be overcome—on their ultimate achievement of birth in the Pure Land (Kleine 1998, 329–30). This peculiar biographical focus—telling less the story of a life than of a preparation for death—is closely bound up with the stated purpose of these texts. In his preface to the tenth-century Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, for example, Yoshishige no Yasutane cites as his inspiration the encouragement (kanjin 勧 進) provided by seventh-century Chinese tales of rebirth, and offers his own accounts of Japanese ōjōnin to encourage others to seek rebirth for themselves (nst 7: 500). In part, this effort appears to be motivated by a desire to document instances of ōjō, providing evidence that, in Japan as well as in China, rebirth in the Pure Land remained attainable. Indeed, Yasutane’s collection—which provided the model for subsequent Japanese ōjōden—is replete with marvelous signs (isō 異相) confirming the salvation of its protagonists.8 In many accounts, for example, death occurs painlessly, often accompanied by the iconic imagery of Amida’s descent (raigō 来迎), including the appearance of purple clouds, celestial music, and preternatural fragrances.9 In a similar fashion, many accounts report the dream-visions of friends and disciples corroborating their rebirth in Sukhāvatī. The condition of the body itself—retaining its prayerful posture without signs of putrefaction—is also often introduced into evidence. In at least one case, the body is said to vanish altogether (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 28; nst 7: 507–508). Certainly, portrayals of tranquil final moments present an appealing scene, and the recurrence of marvelous signs confirming their salvation of ōjōnin would certainly suggest that those who follow their example do not do so in vain. Yet the effort to encourage readers to seek ōjō would appear to have involved more than just the accumulation of corroborating evidence. The teacher Kūya 空也—tend to focus less on the protagonist’s ōjō (in the former cases it goes essentially unremarked) and more on the ways in which those figures laid the doctrinal and institutional foundations by which others were able to gain salvation in Amida’s Pure Land (Bathgate 2006, 78–79). 8  This aspect of rebirth narratives has led Kotas (1987, 300) to describe ōjōden as a “literature of proof.” In this sense, Yasutane’s ōjōden appear to prefigure the death registers (kakochō 過去帳) of the Nijūgo zanmai-e 二十五三昧会, a devotional society of which the Pure Land thinker Genshin was a founding member (see Rhodes 2001, 58; Horton 2004, 34–35). Indeed, one of the principles to which those who joined the Nijūgo zanmai-e agreed (first formulated in a covenant sometimes attributed to Yasutane) was that those who died would attempt to send some sign of their postmortem fate to their fellows (Bowring 1998, 243–47). 9  On the intersections between ōjōden and iconography, see Stone 2004, 82–83.

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practices by which individuals obtain ōjō, as well as the signs that attend it, may differ from one narrative to the next, but their placement within the course of a life provided a unifying narrative pattern, a lens through which the readers of these stories could understand the scope and significance of their own lives. In this sense, ōjōden provided not simply an exemplary set of events—a model of the ideal death—but also an exemplary perspective on those events.10 Like Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū 往生要集, which famously encourages the pursuit of rebirth in the Pure Land by framing the present within the vast and ultimately terrifying framework of the Six Paths of birth-and-death (rokudō 六道), ōjōden encourage the reader to reconsider the significance of a life by viewing it from a particular temporal perspective, an overarching teleology from which to reconsider the events of a life in terms of their impact on its inevitable end, and thus on the life to come. In what are the most straightforward accounts, salvation is portrayed as the culmination of a lifetime of pious ritual observance, seclusion, and/or study. In some tales, the protagonist is described as rising to some prominence, but their intentions—and thus the attention of the reader—are directed away from reputation or advancement and towards the pursuit of salvation. The monk Zōga 増賀, for example, is described as deliberately antagonizing potential patrons among the nobility, to prevent his erudition and holiness from becoming a means to worldly advancement, and thus to avoid the karmic hindrances entailed in fame or high office (Zoku honchō ōjōden 12; nst 7: 574). But the accounts that are perhaps most striking in this regard are those in which the causes of rebirth—as well as those hindering rebirth—are revealed after the fact, drawing attention to the chains of cause-and-effect precisely by reversing the order in which they are presented to the reader.11 Thus, for example, the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki tells the story of monk Saigen 済源, whose pure heart and assiduous practice of the nenbutsu culminates in a death accompanied by wondrous signs. The account ends, however, by pointing out that, shortly before his death, he made an offering of five koku 石 of rice to the Yakushiji 薬師寺, explaining that, many years before, he had borrowed the rice, and wished to return it, thus avoiding any karmic hindrance to his successful rebirth in the Pure Land (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 9; nst 7: 504). This sort of retroactive approach to cause-and-effect would seem to be influenced by the narrative conventions of earlier Buddhist genres; indeed, like earlier avadāna literature, a number of ōjōden locate the antecedents of 10  Compare this with Kotas 1987, 32–33. 11  On the narrative rhetoric of cause-and-effect more generally, see Culler 1982, 86–88.

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the present in the events of previous lives. In some cases, rebirth is attributed almost exclusively to good karma from past lives (shukuzen 宿善), as in the widely-reproduced tale of the monks Chikō 智光 and Raikō 頼光. When Raikō—who had shown little interest in traditional monastic pursuits—dies, Chikō is overcome with doubts about his friend’s ultimate fate. After months of worry, he is visited by his friend in a dream, in which he explains that the foundation for his birth had been laid in past lives, and that his penultimate rebirth as the monk Raikō had been committed to the constant visualization of Amida’s paradise rather than to study or ritual (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 11; nst 7: 504). In other accounts, past-life karma is presented as a hindrance to be overcome, as in the story of a monk from Higo province who, after a lifetime’s dedication to Buddhist practice, took up living with a woman in his fiftieth year. Despite her devotion to him, “performing all the duties of a wife,” the monk insisted that she not be present at his final moments, and demanded that the other monks in attendance not even notify her of his condition until he was already dead. Only when she was informed of his auspicious death and passage into the Pure Land did the reasons for the monk’s strange insistence become clear. Overwhelmed, not with grief but with fury, the woman exclaimed that she had followed the monk from one life to the next over much of the past kalpa, acting as his servant and mate in order to prevent his escape from the cycle of birth-and-death. Only by excluding her from his final moments in this life, turning from her clinging devotion to the saving power of Amida, had he succeeded in escaping her clutches (Shūi ōjōden 2: 20; nst 7: 619–20). Stories such as these reveal a recurring orientation to biography as the charting of cause and effect. In this respect, it is not surprising to encounter tales that appear to be concerned primarily with advocating the efficacy of one practice over another. The priest Myōshō 明靖, for example, is described as abandoning his accustomed practice of esoteric ritual when it proves unable to dispel the terrifying visions of hellfire that plague his final days. The reader is told, however, that by chanting the nenbutsu along with his disciples, his vision of hell is gradually replaced with one of the celestial entourage, coming to usher him to the Pure Land (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 19; nst 7: 506). In a similar fashion, the centerpiece of the story of Chikō and Raikō is a dream-vision in which the departed Raikō informs his friend that, far from making him a superior candidate for ōjō, his lifetime of assiduous study and practice were insufficient to earn him rebirth in Sukhāvatī. Instead, he is advised to adopt the exclusive visualization practice by which Raikō had accomplished his salvation. Commissioning an image of Amida and the Pure Land, the so-called

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Chikō mandara 智光曼荼羅 of Gangōji 元興寺 that was given to him by Amida himself in his dream vision, he devotes the rest of his life to its contemplation. In so doing, he succeeds in joining his friend in Amida’s Land.12 The causal logic of ōjōden is taken to what is perhaps its logical extreme in the narrative motif usually known as akunin ōjō 悪人往生 (the rebirth of evil people), describing the power of past-life karma and efficacious practice in the present to overcome a lifetime at odds with the Dharma to gain salvation in Amida’s Land of Utmost Bliss. In the preface to the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, Yasutane praises the inspirational example of “ox-butchers and fowl merchants” described in Chinese collections (nst 7: 500), but it is not until Ōe no Masafusa’s Zoku honchō ōjōden that Japanese accounts of akunin ōjō appear. The first of these portrays the venal careerism of Minamoto no Noritō 源章任, whose dedication to the pursuit of wealth and status was matched only by his devoted practice of Pure Land ritual. Reciting the Amidakyō 阿弥陀経 fortynine times every day, he was able to face his death in the proper state of mind, and was born into Amida’s paradise. The second describes the blood-drenched career of his kinsman Yoriyoshi 頼義, who eventually turned from his brutal efforts to assert the military hegemony of the Minamoto—the severed heads of his victims are described as beyond count—and devoted his life to the practice of nenbutsu. His birth in Sukhāvatī, the reader learns, was corroborated by the dreams of many people.13 Given the diversity of the practices themselves, however, the encouragement offered by ōjōden as a whole should perhaps be understood, less in terms 12  N  ihon ōjō gokurakuki 11; nst 7: 504. On Chikō as a Pure Land thinker and the role of the mandala within that thought, see Dobbins 1998, 118–20. 13  Zoku honchō ōjōden 35 and 36; nst 7: 578–79. Scholarship on this theme usually depicts akunin ōjō as a significant innovation, a departure from earlier imagery of ōjōnin that prefigures the thought of later Pure Land thinkers (see Dobbins 1989, 152–53). Yet it is precisely the superficial similarity between the imagery of akunin ōjō and Shinran’s later doctrine of akunin shōki 悪人正機 (that is, that evil people represent the principle object of Amida’s Vow) that should put us on guard against too easy a teleology, anachronistically interpreting the imagery of akunin ōjō primarily as a precursor to later developments, without considering both in their proper contexts. Stone (2004, 97–98) describes the notion of the salvation of evil people as expressing a fundamental “discontinuity” between one’s final moments and the rest of one’s life, reflecting “an implicit questioning of a direct causal relation between morality or merit-accumulation and salvation.” While such accounts clearly question the efficacy of traditional moral conduct as a source of saving merit, the emphasis on the causal efficacy of practice nevertheless remains central to these texts. Indeed, by advocating specific rituals as having the power to overcome a lifetime of impiety or immorality, the theme of akunin ōjō appears to exemplify, rather than reject, that causal logic.

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of their advocacy of specific behaviors, than of the perspective they offer on the nature of the religious life. As Paul Ricouer (1980, 175) has suggested, “the art of story telling is not so much a way of reflecting on time as a way of taking it for granted.” Events, after all, are not merely recorded in narrative; they are rendered significant by their selection and placement within a particular plot, a chain of cause-and-effect oriented towards a particular conclusion. Similarly, the reader’s work of following a narrative entails a recapitulation of the selective attention of its author, making note of individuals and actions to the extent (and in the order) that they are represented in the unfolding of the story (Ricouer 1991, 432). In ōjōden, the course of a life—with all its accomplishments and regrets, its unintended consequences and past-life karma—appears, less as a sequence of events than as a complex of causes leading towards a single effect, the attainment of rebirth in Amida’s Land of Utmost Bliss. In this sense, the didacticism of ōjōden can be said to rest, at least in part, in their recurring literary structures, inculcating in their readers particular habits of attention, shaping their experience of the world beyond the text according to a particular kind of story. 2

Myōkōninden: Life as the Expression of Salvation

The kind of story expressed in ōjōden, however, appears to have been largely a product of the late Heian Period. A few new tales can be found in the fragmentary thirteenth-century Nenbutsu ōjōden 念仏往生伝, as well as in setsuwa collections like the Shasekishū 紗石集. In a similar fashion, ōjō remained a major theme in the warrior epic Heike monogatari 平家物語. The compilation of ōjōden as a genre, however, appears to have essentially come to an end in the thirteenth century. Writing on the decline of ōjōden in this period, Kasahara Kazuo has characterized it as part of a fundamental shift in Pure Land discourse “from hagiography to doctrine,” a movement bound up with the transformations of Pure Land thought in the Kamakura Period: In their preaching, the Kamakura sects could not use the Heian-Period hagiographies to provide examples of holy men and devotees of the Pure Land teaching, since the literature embodied the very principles, criteria, and qualifications that the Kamakura Buddhist leaders had rejected. But neither did the founders of the Kamakura sects attempt to create their own hagiographic works extolling choice, exclusive practice, and easy practice, because there was as yet no popular tradition of Pure Land holy

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men and devotees consonant with the new Kamakura-Period point of view…. In contrast to the earlier reliance on pious biographies, appeals to the masses in the Kamakura Period were based on reasoning.14 Clearly, the diversity of practices portrayed in ōjōden would have been incompatible with the teachings of Hōnen—who advocated exclusive reliance on the nenbutsu—and Shinran—who rejected the notion of self-motivated (jiriki 自力) practice altogether, viewing the nenbutsu itself as a sign of Amida working through the individual rather than a means to establish ōjō for oneself.15 As I have suggested above, however, it is possible to devote too much attention to the protagonists and practices described in these texts, and to lose sight of the message and functions of the narrative form itself. Authors of ōjōden, for example, repeatedly emphasize the goal of their efforts, not only in terms of the encouragement such accounts provide, but also their capacity to forge karmic ties (kechien 結縁) between the saved and those still seeking salvation.16 Indeed, accounts of religious deaths are replete with descriptions of the audiences gathered to witness them, and so establish a karmic connection to salvation for themselves (Stone 2004, 103–104). Those who could not witness these events personally could nevertheless do so vicariously through the imaginative recreations made possible in narrative.17 The reading and compilation of ōjōden, in other words, represented, not simply an account of diverse religious practices, but a religious practice in its own right, one that would have been fundamentally inconsistent with later understandings of Pure Land practice (Bathgate 2006, 84). The decline of ōjōden can be linked, however, not only to the tradition’s changing images of Pure Land practice, but also to new understandings of the very nature of soteriological cause-and-effect itself. As Jacqueline Stone 14  Kasahara 2001, 160–61. Responding to another iteration of Kasahara’s argument, Kotas (1987, 198) has suggested that such a characterization “leaves many—if not most— questions unanswered.” 15  A brief introduction to these doctrines may be found in Shigematsu 1996, 296–307. 16  In the preface to the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, Yasutane notes that he “never fails to form a karmic connection with priests, laymen, men, and women who aspire to the Pure Land and pray for rebirth” (nst 7: 500). Similarly, the author of the Shūi ōjōden gives pride of place to such karmic considerations noting that his accounts “were recorded, not for wealth or fame, but rather to establish karmic connections [kechien] and to encourage [kanjin]” (nst 7: 567). 17  The idea that one might bear witness vicariously through narrative appears to be reflected in the practice—advocated both by the Pure Land patriarch Shandao 善導 and in Genshin’s seminal treatise Ōjōyōshū—that those attending on the dying record their last moments (Ōjōyōshū 300–301, cited in Andrews 1973, 83; see also Stone 2004, 80).

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has argued, the medieval discourse of Original Enlightenment (hongaku shisō 本覚思想) involved a reversal of commonplace understandings of cause and effect, a vision of practice as the expression of enlightenment that would profoundly influence not only the development of medieval Tendai but many of the so-called “New Buddhist” schools, as well (Stone 1999, 164, 229). In the Pure Land tradition, this critique was perhaps nowhere more fundamental (or more fraught) than in the Shin sect, where Shinran’s rejection of self-motivated practice in favor of the “Other power” (tariki 他力) of Amida constituted a departure from the most basic assumptions and orientations of ōjōden narrative discourse as a teleological chronology of cause and effect (Ueda 1984; see also Stone 1999, 87–88). Indeed, the doctrinal history of Shin Buddhism suggests that the implications of Shinran’s teaching of absolute reliance on Amida frequently ran counter to the common sense of his followers, as well. As James Dobbins has suggested (1989, 8), Shinran’s formulation of faith, practice, and salvation “did not translate easily into a socially viable religious institution,” and the early community continually struggled to navigate a course between the twin extremes of “licensed evil” (zōaku muge 造悪無碍) and the “salvific power of practice” (kenzen shōjin 賢善精進). Among the two, the latter position appears to have been the more entrenched, perhaps because it reflected an enduring, commonplace pragmatism that understood moral and religious practice as a means to an end, whether that end be defined in terms of worldly benefits (genze riyaku 現世利益) or ultimate salvation.18 The idea that such central Pure Land practices as the calling of Amida’s name represented not the cause of salvation but an expression of gratitude by those already saved provided the foundation for Kakunyo 覚如 and Rennyo 蓮如 to establish both a ritual program and a social ethic as signs of the soteriologically settled mind (anjin 安心) (Dobbins 1989, 81–86, 93–98, 144–48). Insofar as the Honganji appeared at the center of this ritual and social paradigm, these teachings were certainly a contributing factor in the survival and growth of the Honganji as an institution, but they did not ultimately eliminate the tendency of some of its followers to think of religious practice in terms of means-ends pragmatism. This is witnessed, for example, by the sangō wakuran 三業惑乱 (1796–1806), a controversy in which factions within the Honganji community advocated a vision of the nenbutsu as an act of refuge (kimyō 帰命) requiring the total involvement of the believer, as expressed in the traditional threefold 18  Dobbins (1989, 77–78) notes that the emphasis placed on kenzen shōjin by the Tannishō 歎異抄 suggests that, by the time of its composition, the influence of licensed evil doctrine had been largely curtailed.

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formulation of efficacious action (sangō): body, speech, and mind (shin-ku-i 身 口意) (Okamura 1963, vol. 1, 705–11). According to this position, for example, Rennyo’s own exposition of the nenbutsu as the cry to Amida to “please save me” (tasuke tamae たすけたまへ) was interpreted as the essential mental component of the nenbutsu, without which the physical voicing of Amida’s Name would lack efficacy.19 As Asaeda Zenshō has suggested, it is precisely in the context of this controversy that the Honganji’s own contribution to the Edo-Period revival in popular Pure Land biography was initially compiled.20 Begun by the priest Gōsei in the late eighteenth century, the Myōkōninden reached its final form in an 1858 edition of six fascicles, but its image of the myōkōnin as an ideal Shin believer—“a Lotus among people”—would continue to appear in subsequent accounts, including scholarship on the writings of such later myōkōnin as Asahara Saichi 浅 原才市 and Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶.21 Considered as part of this more general phenomenon, the characteristic behavior of myōkōnin—a life oriented around gratitude to Amida, Shinran, and the Honganji, spontaneously expressed in the nenbutsu and in the uncalculating fulfillment of social obligations—is frequently discussed as a concrete manifestation of Shinshū doctrine in practice. This is what Alfred Bloom (1987, 10) has described as the expression “in personality” of the mind of faith.22 At the same time, the composition of the Myōkōninden should also be read in terms of its immediate historical contexts, as a response to the difficulties inherent in locating moral and ritual practice within the Shinshū vision of faith. In this light, its accounts of myōkōnin appear as a corrective to the kind of ritual pragmatism that characterized commonlyheld orientations to the religious life, a view that was at the heart, not only of the sangō wakuran, but of Heian-Period ōjōden.

19  According to Dobbins (1989, 147–48), this interpretation of the nenbutsu probably originated in the Ikkōshū 一向宗, although by the time of the sangō wakuran, it was most fully associated with the Chinzei 鎮西 branch of the Jōdoshū 浄土宗. 20  Asaeda 1998, 323. The publication of the Myōkōninden was by no means the beginning of this resurgence. In part facilitated by the unprecedented growth of a popular printing industry—the first Edo-Period tales of rebirth in the Pure Land were editions of the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, published in 1632—kinsei ōjōden 近世往生伝 began to appear in the late seventeenth century (see Kotas 1987, 199–201, and Kasahara 2001, 408–16). 21  Following Shandao, Seigai links the meaning of the term myōkōnin with the statement in the Kanmuryōju kyō 観無量寿経 that “one who performs the nenbutsu is a lotus (fundarike 分陀利華) among people” (nst 57: 148). On Saichi and Issa, see Suzuki 1967; Kashiwara and Omine 1992. 22  An example of this approach can be found in Minamoto 2006.

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Reading the stories of the Myōkōninden from this perspective, one is immediately struck by the relative dearth of stories describing protagonists’ final moments. Indeed, the few tales that do include such accounts appear specifically intended to follow the pattern of earlier sources in order to contradict their underlying assumptions. The story of the impoverished commoner Rokubei 六 兵衛, for example, portrays a religious career marked primarily by the practices that he refused to perform, turning away from the accrual of merit through such practices as observing the precepts—to which he is repeatedly invited by an adherent of the Shingon 真言 sect—in favor of the nenbutsu. The recitation of Amida’s name is described, moreover, not as a uniquely efficacious practice for attaining rebirth (as it appears, for example, in the above-mentioned ōjōden account of the priest Myōshō), but rather as a sign of the salvation already guaranteed by Amida’s Original Vow. Like many Heian-Period ōjōden, the story of Rokubei ends with a dream vision, providing an indication of his successful rebirth. It is a vision, however, in which Rokubei appears, not in the midst of the Celestial Entourage or seated on a Lotus in the Pure Land, but simply passing away while reciting the nenbutsu. The story ends with the editorial remark, “More than purple clouds, marvelous scents or music, the calling of ‘namu amida butsu’ is the most auspicious sign of ōjō.”23 Such a comment, however, only serves to reiterate what is already present in the narrative itself: The reader, expecting a marvelous sign, is given precisely that, a refiguration of the nenbutsu as a sign of salvation rather than a means to attain it. This orientation to practice—as the result rather than the cause of salvation—is further conveyed by the number of accounts in which the spontaneity of the nenbutsu borders on the involuntary. In several stories, myōkōnin appear virtually incapable of stopping themselves from calling out Amida’s name, in spite of the sometimes dangerous consequences of their behavior. One tale, for example, describes an encounter between a short-tempered samurai and the pious pack-horse driver Jirozaemon 治郎右衛門. Taking offense at the man’s constant—and inauspiciously funereal—recitation of the nenbutsu as he led the warrior’s horse along the road, the warrior ordered him to desist, but Jirozaemon quickly forgot himself and before long returned to his habitual expression of faith. Even when the enraged samurai drew his sword and made 23   n st 57: 179. A similar rhetorical device is used in describing the last moments of Seikurō 清九郎, the myōkōnin who arguably forms the centerpiece of Gōsei’s collection. After describing Seikurō’s deathbed nenbutsu, the author tells the story of the similar practice of Shinran’s disciple Kakushinbō 覚信房, in which the dying man explains that his recitation is not a means to attain rebirth in the Pure Land but an expression of his gratitude to Amida for already assuring his salvation (nst 57: 170).

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to strike him down, Jirozaemon awaited the blow, the nenbutsu still on his lips (nst 57: 158–59). A similar account describes the struggles of the samurai Araki Mataroku 荒木又六, who was dismayed to find his constant practice of the nenbutsu the subject of mockery and criticism, not only by the young men with whom he worked, but by his own father, who saw his public expressions of piety as inappropriate to a member of the warrior class. In spite of his wish to obey his father’s wishes, however, he repeatedly found himself unintentionally reciting Amida’s name. Described his desperation in verse, he begged to be pardoned, saying, “my nenbutsu burns with a fire that cannot be extinguished with water” (nst 57: 183–84). In accounts such as these, the spontaneous recitation of the nenbutsu provides the source of the narrative’s dramatic tension: In contradistinction to ōjōden like the story of Myōshō (who employs the nenbutsu to escape his visions of the hellfire that awaits him), the nenbutsu appears in these myōkōninden not as the solution to a problem but as its cause. In this sense, such tales redefine the nature of the nenbutsu as a practice, presenting it as a natural, even unintentional, expression of faith rather than as a calculated means to an end. Indeed, if the nenbutsu can be said to have a soteriological effect in stories such as these, it appears to be on the stories’ antagonists rather than on the myōkōnin themselves. Faced with Jirozaemon’s calm acceptance of his fate, for example, the samurai stayed his hand as his rage gave way, first to surprise and then respect. Questioning him about the source of his steadfastness, the two began to discuss the power of Amida’s Vow, and the samurai gradually became established in faith himself. In a similar fashion, myōkōninden frequently present what Elizabeth Harrison (1977, 85) has called “conversion stories,” encounters with people of superior religious insight that lead individuals to a deeper appreciation and reliance on the power of Amida’s compassionate Vow. The story of the samurai Arakawa Sōuemon 荒川想左ェ門, for example, begins with a description of his struggle to overcome his doubts and cultivate the mind of faith. When he seeks the advice of a scholar on these matters, his questions are answered in terms repeated throughout Shinshū literature: Possessing the mind of an ordinary deluded person (bonbu 凡夫), if you try to dispel your doubts with lengthy thought and deliberation, they will only grow. Ōjō is not settled through the quality of our own minds. Only through the inconceivable power of Amida’s Primordial Vow, believing deeply that the power of the Tathāgata saves even a wretch like you, will you receive the great gift of his embrace. Even as you wonder how it is possible, you will no longer doubt your rebirth in the Land of Reward (hōdo 報土) through Amida’s Vow to save all beings. nst 57: 184–85

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In other accounts, the conversations between myōkōnin and those yet to achieve the settled mind focus on the nature of religious practice within the life of faith. In a conversation between the oil merchant Sanzaemon 三左衛 門! and his wife, for example, she complains that his constant practice of the nenbutsu leads to inattention at work and errors in bookkeeping. His reply, however, reminds her that the nenbutsu is not a distraction from what is important, but—even more than bookkeeping—is first and foremost an expression of one’s awareness of the debts that matter most: I make records in my account books so that I do not forget even the little things of this world. How much less can I forget, even briefly, the boundless benevolence of the Tathāgata that saves me in the life to come. nst 57: 175–76

It would be tempting to view such conversations as the centerpiece of the text’s didacticism, using the events of a religious life as the pretext for a reiteration of Shin doctrine. In fact, however, myōkōninden pay only sporadic attention to the content of these conversations. In more than one story, it is simply noted that such a conversation took place, with little indication of what was said (nst 57: 172). In this sense, the significance of conversion accounts would seem to lie less in their content than in their placement within the overall structure of the narrative. Unlike Heian-Period ōjōden—in which salvation is portrayed as the culmination of the character’s life—the moment of conversion appears as a kind of turning point, a point of discontinuity with the past, when selfmotivated practices are rejected in favor of an exclusive reliance on the “Other power” of Amida. It is a discontinuity, moreover, that encourages a similar orientation in the reader, a reconfiguration of the religious life concerned less with the efficacy of an individual’s actions (for good or ill) and more with the impact of powers outside the individual. Indeed, a number of conversion stories present the moment of salvation, not as the conclusion of the narrative, but as its beginning.24 One account, for example, describes a discussion between the eight-year-old daughter of a cotton merchant named Oshimo おしも and the priest of the local Shinshū dōjō 道場. Despairing of her evil karma—she confesses to committing petty theft in order to buy sweets—she inquires if there are any means by which she could overcome the deeds of her past and obtain ōjō, to which the priest responds:

24  In this sense, myōkōninden appear to reflect Shinran’s own use of the term ōjō to refer as much to the realization of faith within this life as to rebirth in the Pure Land at the moment of death (see Ueda 1984, 73). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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When you trust yourself exclusively to the inconceivable Original Vow, deeply acknowledging your evil karma, your rebirth in the Pure Land is established without doubt. nst 57: 174

Her tearful embrace of Amida’s Vow, however, is only the first in a series of anecdotes describing the firmness of her faith and the striking ways in which it was reflected in her behavior. When an earthquake struck her family home, for example, everyone fled the building except Oshimo, who remained at the family shrine, calmly chanting the nenbutsu. When asked why, she responded that, if it were her karma to die in the earthquake, she chose to do so before the Buddha, chanting his Name (nst 57: 174). A similar tale describes the story of the faithful peasant Yoichi 与市, whose experience of hell in a dream led him to attend sermons and dharma-talks at local temples and so awaken the mind of faith. The account then goes on to describe some of the ways in which that awakening was expressed in his subsequent life. When he happened to stumble on the local fishmonger stealing millet from his garden, for instance, he avoided a confrontation, explaining that if he charged the fishmonger with theft, he would cease to visit, and Yoichi would no longer have the opportunity to discuss the Dharma with him (nst 57: 192). Indeed, a great many tales seem to show little or no interest with how faith was attained, focusing entirely on the character’s subsequent life. Thus, for example, the story of Seikurō—the most detailed and perhaps most well-known of Gōsei’s myōkōninden—presents a host of anecdotes recounting his pious behavior and its effects on those around him, but gives only the barest mention of how his faith came to develop. When asked by the mother of the local feudal lord when he had attained faith, Seikurō replied, I realized the desirability of the Pure Land when I was about 32 or 33. At that time I adhered to the path of liberation, but I had all manner of doubts. Somewhere along the way, without my knowledge, those doubts cleared…. This is certainly the work of [Amida’s] Other power, for which I am thankful. nst 57: 164–65

Given its fundamental importance in Shinshū soteriology, the substantial number of accounts that do not address the circumstances of their protagonists’ settling of faith is as striking as it is significant. In a sense, the events recorded after a myōkōnin’s attainment of faith could be said to be analogous to the marvelous signs recorded in Heian-Period ōjōden, the external indications

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of a religious transformation that would otherwise remain hidden. In ōjōden, however, these signs refer back to the specific practices by which the ōjōnin sought to accomplish his or her goal, providing a confirmation of their effectiveness. Insofar as myōkōninden omit events prior to their protagonist’s settling of faith, however, they emphasize only the consequences of faith. Like the story of the peasant Kuhei 九兵衛—whose life before his conversion is mentioned only to contrast his later kindness with his earlier reputation for cruelty and violence—myōkōninden encourage the reader to view the actions of the faithful as expressions of a salvation already accomplished, rather than as a means to attain it.25 In a similar fashion, some of the most striking aspects of myōkōnin behavior may have served to emphasize this kind of expressive orientation to behavior. Like Oshimo’s response to the earthquake or Yoichi’s failure to report the fishmonger’s theft, myōkōnin are frequently described as acting in ways that at first appear inexplicable, even mad: an episode from the life of Seikurō describes him rolling naked in the snow, the nenbutsu on his shivering lips; an account of the self-tonsured nun Myōki 妙喜 portrays her giving thanks for a painful burn; and the story of the cattle dealer Kihei 喜兵衛 presents an instance when he grabbed his wife’s leg with fireplace tongs (hibashi 火箸), telling her that “since it was just laying there by the fire, I thought it was firewood.” Such pious antics could be described as questionable behavior in more than one sense of the term, however. By falling outside the boundaries of ordinary mean-ends rationality, they prompt not only bystanders within the story but also the readers of myōkōninden themselves to question the rationale for that behavior.26 Seikurō, for example, is said to have rolled in the snow in order to better appreciate the struggles by which the bodhisattva Hōzō 法蔵 (Sk. Dharmākara) brought salvation to others as the Buddha Amida (nst 57: 169). In a similar fashion, when someone makes the snide comment that Amida’s grace must be unendurable that it should result in such painful injuries, the nun Myōki responds that the burn reminded her of the much greater suffering from which she was saved by Amida’s power (nst 57: 205). And when Kihei’s wife grew angry at his bizarre behavior, he responded more seriously: This fire is also where we put the pot to boil rice offered to the Buddha (obutsuhan 御仏飯). If you are not reverent in ordinary times, I fear that 25   n st 57: 152. Lewis and Amstutz (1997) describe this quality of myōkōnin behavior as reflecting an ethics focused on character, rather than a matter of teleology or virtue. 26  In this sense, Harrison’s description (1977, 85) of these tales as “riddle stories” seems particularly apposite.

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you will follow your ordinary habit, and just lay your legs out when you boil rice for the Buddha. nst 57: 151

These responses highlight the fundamentally different perspective of the mind of faith, one focused on Amida, even in the midst of the most prosaic activities. Another frequent theme in such accounts is an awareness of the inescapable roots of the present in the karma of the past. This can be seen, for example, in the story of the unlikely friendship of the woodcutter Jirozaemon and the merchant Ryōgen 了玄. Having met at the Honganji, the two became friends in the Dharma, despite their very different circumstances. When illness kept Jirozaemon from his usual visit to the city, Ryōgen went in search of his friend, and was surprised to learn the true depths of poverty in which he lived. But when he offered his friend money, Jirozaemon refused, saying: What you’ve said makes me wonder if you even understand. After all, poverty and wealth, suffering and joy are caused by the karma of past lives. Your prosperity is a matter of past karma, and I am destitute because of past karma. Even saints cannot escape the power of karma: It seems that in attempting to help me, you fail to grasp the principles of cause-and-effect. nst 57: 156

Such comments direct the reader’s attention in a similar direction. In contrast to ōjōden accounts, in which salvation depends on overcoming the karma of the past, these tales suggest an image of karma as ultimately insurmountable by one’s own effort. It is an understanding that demands reliance on the benevolent power of Amida, who provides salvation precisely to those whose past karma renders them unable to save themselves. Moreover, the fact that such accounts present the actions of myōkōnin—in contrast to the commonsense pragmatism of others—not as an attempt to achieve salvation in its own right, but as a response to their faith-inspired vision of the world, the reader is continually reminded of an orientation to behavior as the effect rather than the cause of that faith. Indeed, the most compelling aspect of the rhetorical structure of the Myōkōninden may be the ways in which it presents, not simply a reconfiguration of the narrative discourse of earlier biographies, but a subversion of the commonplace inclination to interpret events according to the causal fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, described by Roland Barthes (1977, 94) as one of the mainsprings of narrative. Like the “persistence of vision,” by which our minds

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translate a succession of still images into the illusion of movement in film, the reader of a narrative will naturally tend to translate a sequence of events into a chain of causation (Chatman 1978, 45–46). In accounts of human salvation, this tendency to read causality into a sequence of events may just as naturally incline readers to view events prior to the moment of deliverance as their cause, an orientation that was at the heart of Heian-Period ōjōden, but which was inimical to Shinshū orthodoxy. In this sense, the challenge of the Myōkōninden was to configure its narratives in such a way as to frustrate the easy equation of sequence and causality. Responding to this challenge gives shape to some of the most distinctive aspects of this collection, an expressive orientation to practice that presents behavior as the result rather than as the cause of salvation. 3

Intersecting Lives: Character and Community in Ōjōden and Myōkōninden

The distinctive narrative orientations of ōjōden and myōkōninden have important implications, not only for their portrayal of character’s actions, but also for their depiction of characters themselves. Just as events are rendered significant by their placement in a particular narrative sequence, so characters are rendered significant not only by their attributes and behaviors, but also by the ways in which they intersect with others in the telling of a story. As Alex Woloch (2003, 14, 177) has argued, narrative is shaped by the author’s (and, subsequently, the reader’s) selective attention to characters as well as to events, a configuration of characters into a system—as major or minor, supportive or antagonistic—analogous to the configuration of events within a plot.27 Moreover, just as an author’s representation of a series of events conveys an implicit temporal perspective, the representation of characters relative to one another expresses an implicit social perspective, an understanding of the constitutive role of others in the unfolding of a particular life. In both ōjōden and myōkōninden, the lives of protagonists are replete with supporting characters. Frequently anonymous, these disciples and family members, neighbors and passersby present a social framework for the telling of a protagonist’s life, one that is as essential and as formative as the temporal framework of the plot itself. A protagonist’s exposition, after all, requires the 27  As Woloch notes, the implicit link between narrative structure and characterization can be seen in the etymology of the term “protagonist” itself, which derives from the “first actor” (protoagonist) in Greek drama (322).

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narrative presence of an interlocutor, and the auspicious signs associated with rebirth—whether they are the postmortem marvels of ōjōden or the expressions in the present life of myōkōnin faith—require the narrative presence of witnesses to those signs. And it is in many respects through these witnesses that readers experience the exemplary lives of ōjōnin for themselves. The presence of such characters is also fundamentally shaped by the bodhisattva ideal that informs both these genres (and the Pure Land movement as a whole). In these texts, salvation is never a purely solitary enterprise; rather, it is always bound up with the salvation of others. As noted earlier, for example, the compilation of ōjōden are motivated precisely by the desire to facilitate the rebirth of others, through the power of narrative to encourage (kanjin) and to establish karmic connections (kechien). These twin principles of kanjin and kechien—which informed not only the compilation of ōjōden but also much of the subsequent history of Buddhist evangelism in Japan—were bound up with nothing less than the formation of a shared community of salvation, linking author and audience, seeker and saved within the embrace of Amida’s compassionate vows (Goodwin 1994). Indeed, Yasutane’s preface to the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki concludes with the classically Mahāyāna prayer for the ōjō of all living beings, and his own hagiography—in the Zoku honchō ōjōden—portrays him as returning to the world as a bodhisattva after his own rebirth in the Pure Land (Zoku honchō ōjōden 31; nst 7: 577–78). In a similar fashion, the actions by which myōkōnin express their faith are routinely described as drawing others towards Amida’s embrace: As one tale concludes (paraphrasing of Shinran’s Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信証), “the mind bent on achieving Buddhahood encompasses all beings” (nst 57: 175; see also Dobbins 1989, 30, 35). Indeed, the same vicarious quality of narrative that allows the reader to forge karmic connections with ōjōnin also permits the reader of myōkōninden to experience their protagonists’ striking expressions of faith, and so open themselves to be moved to greater faith. The distinctive social orientations of ōjōden and myōkōninden can perhaps best be seen with regard to the role played by the “good teacher” (zenchishiki 善智識), a central figure in Pure Land thought and in Buddhist imagery more generally. An important theme in both ōjōden and myōkōninden, the distinct ways in which the image of the good teacher is conveyed in these texts nevertheless reveal the fundamental differences in the two genres’ portrayal of the social contexts of the religious life. In the preface to the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, Yasutane makes note of the Chinese precedents that led him to compile his own collection, describing tales of “ox butchers and fowl merchants” who accomplish the “ten contemplations” ( jūnen 十念) leading to ōjō thanks to their encounters with zenchishiki

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(nst 7: 500). In that spirit, Yasutane devotes considerable attention to those great masters (daihōshi 大法師) and bodhisattvas responsible for disseminating the practices by which rebirth in the Pure Land can be attained. The Tendai master Ennin 円仁, for instance is credited with “half the transmission of the Buddhadharma to the East,” a contribution described entirely in terms of the rituals of the Pure Land cult, including the Amida nenbutsu and the Lotus Repentance Rite (hokke senpō 法華懺法; Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 4; nst 7: 503). Similarly, Yasutane’s account of the prototypical Pure Land hijiri 聖 and bodhisattva Kūya concludes with the statement: Until the Tengyō era, nenbutsu meditation was uncommon, both in the halls of practice and in the towns and villages. Indeed, many small men and foolish women shunned it. After the holy man came, people recited it themselves and encouraged others to recite it. Soon everyone practiced the nenbutsu. This is doubtlessly due to this holy man’s power to save living beings. Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 17; nst 7: 506

Other accounts portray more specific encounters—frequently in the form of dream visions—in which the protagonist is able to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land thanks to the tutelage of a more advanced being. In the previously-noted story of Chikō and Raikō, for instance, Chikō is advised by his departed friend Raikō to abandon his former practices, and is told by Amida himself to devote himself to contemplation of the Tathāgata and his Pure Land. A similar story relates the dream-vision of the Tendai high priest Enshō 延昌. Told by a mysterious figure in court robes that ōjō can only be obtained by copying the Lotus Sūtra, he abandoned his other practices and devoted himself entirely to that task, and the tale ends with an account of his auspicious death (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 16; nst 7: 505). Depictions of the role of others in one’s salvation, however, are not limited to their advocacy of particular practices. In a fashion reflecting Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū, the deathbed accounts of ōjōden are frequently characterized by collective ritual practices, in which ōjōnin (especially those dwelling in monastic communities) are accompanied in sutra recitation or the nenbutsu by a number of disciples. In deathbed manuals like the Ōjōyōshū, the religious role of these zenchishiki appears essentially two-fold: in addition to tending to the physical needs of the dying, they are enjoined to assist them in maintaining the state of mind necessary to achieve ōjō, and to record their last moments for signs of their ultimate success (Stone 2004, 80–81). In ōjōden accounts, the narrative function of those attending on the dying seems to revolve primarily

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around the latter role, serving as the witnesses through which the reader is able to experience the protagonist’s final moments. Numerous stories, for example, describe disciples struck with wonder (and, sometimes, concern for their master’s sanity) when he claims to hear celestial music or to see a celestial entourage that no one else perceives. These visions, however, are vindicated when the protagonist peacefully passes away immediately afterwards. Yet the notion that a zenchishiki may serve a more central ritual function can nevertheless be detected in other tales, where the success of the ōjōnin hinges on the efforts of good friends in the Dharma. Thus, for example, the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki tells the story of the wife of a provincial governor, whose pursuit of ōjō is hindered in spite of her noteworthy piety. Only after some reflection does she remember an incident from the past, when she had released two carp into a well, a misguided act of charity that saved their lives but condemned them to confinement. Rescuing the fish, her husband undoes the karmic hindrance to his wife’s salvation, releasing his wife and the fish with the same act (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 37; nst 7: 509). Another tale concerns the posthumous ōjō of the Vinaya Master (risshi 律師) Mukū 無空. Concerned for the well-being of his disciples after his death, he secreted away an enormous sum of money, but died without telling anyone of the treasure. Appearing to a friend in a dream, he informed him that he had been reborn, not in the Pure Land, but in the form of a serpent. Explaining that it was the money that kept him snared within the bonds of birth-and-death, he asked that it be used to commission copies of the Lotus Sutra. This friend did as he was asked, discovering, not only the hidden money, but also a small snake, coiled among the coins. Once the money had been spent, Mukū appeared to him again, thanking him for his efforts on his behalf and announcing his successful birth in the Land of Utmost Bliss (Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 7; nst 7: 503). As Stone notes, the notion that zenchishiki might play such a definitive role in the salvation of others—not only by their advocacy of efficacious practices, but by performing those practices on others’ behalf—underlay the growth of the chishiki as a ritual specialist, and was central to the institutional growth of such Pure Land movements as the Jishū 時宗 during the Kamakura Period (Stone 2004, 84–8). In the Shinshū, as well, the imagery of the clergy (especially the Honganji head priest) as zenchishiki was of considerable importance to Rennyo’s efforts to consolidate and expand the social and institutional networks on which his movement depended (Rogers and Rogers 1991, 302). In accordance with Shinran’s teaching of absolute reliance on Amida, however, the zenchishiki appears in Rennyo’s writings, not as an advocate or practitioner of ritual, but as the means through which individuals come to encounter—through the maturation of past good made possible by Amida’s

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all-encompassing Light—the true significance of Amida’s Inconceivable Vow (Ofumi 御文 ii–11, in Rogers and Rogers 1991, 186–87). In this formulation, gratitude to Amida was frequently bound up with gratitude to the teacher (and the institution) through which that encounter took place, placing the Honganji at the center of a soteriological economy of benevolence (on 恩) and gratitude (hōon 報恩).28 This understanding of the role of zenchishiki is reflected in the stories of myōkōnin like Yoichi, whose repeated expressions of gratitude included both Amida—whom he worshipped as “the only parent to love someone like me”— and the Honganji head priest (described as zenchishiki-sama 善智識様), whose influence he credits entirely for the arising of faith “in a fool like me” (nst 57: 193). A similar expression of gratitude can be seen in the strange behavior of the peasant Kuhei. Heading into the mountains to cut grass during a summer drought, he saw that someone had blocked the irrigation works leading to his field. Immediately, he returned to his home altar and began to pray, expressing his thanks. Responding to his family’s questions, he said, This is retaliation for my deeds in a previous life, when I must have dammed up the water to someone else’s rice paddy. If this had happened in the old days, I would have grown angry, and blocked off their water supply. That I should be made aware of the deeds of a previous life is solely due to the kind teaching of the great good teacher [daizenchishiki 大善智識]. That is why we should give thanks. nst 57: 152

A consideration of the Myōkōninden as a whole, however, suggests an image of Amida’s compassion manifested throughout the entire spectrum of social relationships. Rather than a simple expression of centralized religious authority in which Amida’s grace flows solely (or even primarily) through the Honganji, myōkōninden are replete with incidents in which characters encounter Amida’s saving power in virtually every conceivable human relationship. While traditional religious authorities—priests, dōjō, and the Honganji itself—appear in various capacities as teachers and objects of gratitude throughout the text, what is perhaps most striking are the number of improbable social reversals, 28  As the confessional statement (ryōgemon 領解文) usually attributed to Rennyo states: “We gratefully acknowledge that our hearing and understanding these truths is [due to] the benevolence of the founding master in having appeared in this world and to that of the good teachers (zenchishiki), his successors in the transmission [of the teaching], whose exhortations were not shallow” (Rogers and Rogers 1991, 280).

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in which servants teach masters, wives teach husbands, and children teach parents.29 It was the packhorse driver Jirozaemon, after all, who led his shorttempered samurai master into the life of faith, and the illiterate peasant dullard Seikūro who led the mother of his feudal lord to embrace the Dharma. In a similar fashion, an account of the decades-long religious struggles of Chūzaemon 忠左ェ門, which included Zen meditation, fasting, pilgrimage to Shinto shrines, and the repetition of the nenbutsu and the daimoku 題目, culminates with his introduction to the teaching of Rennyo by his humble young wife (nst 57: 180–83). Moreover, the Myōkōninden is replete with accounts of pious children instructing their elders. The seven-year old Onamu おなむ, for instance, is portrayed as chastising her grandmother when she advised her to use the nenbutsu to treat a painful mouth sore: Use medicine to cure sickness. It’s ingratitude to use the nenbutsu for worldly benefits. It should only be to convey our gratitude for Amida’s boundless benevolence. nst 57: 190–91

The lowly status of such figures appears to affirm the notion that the settling of faith is not a product of the learning or eloquence of the teacher, but of the power of Amida’s Vow working through the individuals with which one comes into contact, whatever their social or institutional status. Indeed, even the actions of scoffers and unbelievers are presented as instruments of Amida’s benevolence. In one account, for example, some youngsters push the myōkōnin Yoichi into a rice paddy. Rather than responding to their prank with anger, however, he happily accepted it as a reminder that death might come unexpectedly (nst 57: 192). But the mysterious workings of Amida’s compassion can perhaps best be seen in what is one of the most poignant stories in the collection, telling of the conversion of the physician Ishibashi Jukan 石橋寿閑. A man with no connection (muen 無縁) to the Dharma, he showed nothing but learned disdain for what he characterized as the teachings of “money-grubbing priests.” When his six-year-old daughter was stricken with by an incurable disease, however, his devotion to his daughter proved greater than his disdain for the Dharma. Motivated by a desire to comfort her on her deathbed, he told her that by saying the nenbutsu she would be reborn after death “in a wonderful place called Utmost Bliss (gokuraku).” The sight of her passing—gratefully and single-mindedly repeating the nenbutsu—in turn moved him to take the prospect of ōjō seriously. After visiting temples and hearing sermons, he 29  This was a point made previously by Harrison 1992, 195.

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experienced an understanding of Amida’s Other power and became a faithful member of the Honganji community.30 It is in this context that the oft-criticized social conservativism of myōkōnin might best be understood. Throughout the Myōkōninden, devotion to Amida appears inseverably linked to a wider recognition of one’s obligation to the authorities. The peasant Kuhei, for instance, is described as weeping for joy at the sight of fighting dogs, an expression of gratitude to the feudal authorities for preventing a similar anarchy among humans (nst 57: 152–53). Similarly, the myōkōnin Yoichi is said to have knelt in thanksgiving whenever passing by a nearby prison, giving gratitude for the warning it provided against lawlessness (nst 57: 193). At the same time, tales frequently dwell on the devotion shown by the faithful to the Shinshū religious authorities, often traveling great distances in order to express their gratitude with striking displays of generosity. The myōkōnin Shichisaburō 七三郎, for instance, is described as making a yearly pilgrimage of fifty ri 里 (about one hundred and twenty miles) from his home in Mikawa province to Kyoto, eating and sleeping rough so that his offering to the main temple would be as large as possible (nst 57: 208). And one of the many anecdotes of Seikurō’s piety describe him making repeated journeys each year to the Honganji, carrying firewood that he had carefully washed and dried before making an offering of it. When, on another occasion, his reputation for filial piety earned him a sizeable reward from the local feudal lord, he gave all of it (“not withholding a single sen”) to the Honganji, in spite of his own poverty (nst 57: 163–64). The social and historical implications of such accounts are likely to give the contemporary reader pause.31 Writing on the composition history of the 30   n st 57: 160. A similar account can be found in one of Rennyo’s own letters, suggesting that he, too, was disinclined to limit the role of zenchishiki to members of the Honganji leadership. Describing his recently-deceased daughter Kengyoku 見玉, who converted from the Jōdoshū to the Shinshū, and whose last days inspired thoughts of the impermanence of things in those who cared for her, he encouraged others to view her as a good teacher, and look to her example for guidance (Rogers and Rogers 1991, 76–77 n. 19). 31  The social ethics of myōkōninden have been perhaps the central concern of contemporary scholarship in this area. On the one hand, social historians like Winston Davis (1989) have viewed the characteristic behaviors of myōkōnin as one of the “passive enablements” to the historical transition to modernity, a manifestation of a Weberian “inner-worldly asceticism” akin to the Protestant Ethic that supported the rise of capitalism in the West. Other studies have subjected the Myōkōninden to a scathing ideological critique, viewing the behavior of myōkōnin as emblematic of the Shinshū’s capitulation to the status quo, a fundamental compromise of the most radical implications of Shinran’s teaching for the sake of institutional power and social stability (see, for example, Amstutz 1997, 26, 96). Indeed, Gregory Gibbs (1998) describes the imagery of the myōkōnin as “one example of

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Myōkōninden, for example, Doi Jun’ichi points out the editorial comments of Sōjun (the editor of Gōsei’s original body of tales, and the author of many others), who describes the life of faith as a response to four fundamental obligations (shion 四恩): in addition to expressing one’s gratitude to Amida, the faithful should also be aware of their debts to teachers, to the nation, and to parents. Passages such as these, Doi argues, largely reflect the sociopolitical and economic concerns of the Nishi-Honganji establishment: a program to bolster the position of the Honganji among the faithful while establishing the Shinshū community as a bastion of Confucian virtue in the eyes of the feudal authorities (Doi 1981, 86–90). Indeed, myōkōninden frequently take pains to note the exemplary Confucian virtue of their protagonists. The behavior of Seikurō, for example, is explicitly linked to a passage from the Analects (nst 57: 163), and an 1843 colophon to Sōjun’s own contribution to the collection (penned by the priest Sōrō 僧朗) associates the message of the Myōkōninden with the teachings of Confucian and shingaku 心学 scholars (nst 57: 253). It is important to recognize, however, that such expressions of myōkōnin social ethics do not represent a form of special pleading on the part of their authors and editors; again and again, one’s obligations to teachers, country, and family are portrayed as integrally linked to one’s gratitude to Amida. Rather than a simple capitulation to the sociopolitical order in which it was composed, such depictions reflect an overarching vision of the role of social relationships in the life of faith. The social order, after all, is part and parcel of the karmically-dependent framework through which Amida’s Light embraces sentient beings.32 Like the story of Ishibashi Jukan—who encountered the mind of faith, not out of a personal desire for salvation but out of paternal devotion to a sick little girl—a number of myōkōninden describe social virtue as an entrée to the life of faith. The story of the Edo fireman Shōnosuke 庄之助, for example, recounts a life of faith that begins with the realization of his debt, not to Amida but to his mother, a filial piety that provided the foundation for his later establishment of faith (nst 57: 210–11). Another account, describing the efforts of the merchant Gozaemon 五左ェ門 to bring his wife into the life of faith, renders the link between faith and social obligation still more explicit. Although she proved uninterested in matters of salvation, she was nevertheless a wife of impeccable social virtue. One day, when Gozaemon was thanking how Jodō Shinshū Buddhism … has been reduced to a charming and harmless teaching which can be easily tolerated by the watchdogs of authority” (267). 32  As Harrison (1992, 194) notes, this was also a recurring theme in Shin Buddhist sermons of this period, focusing “on believers fulfilling their place in society while maintaining their faith, on obeying ōbō while understanding that it, too, was given by Amida and thus is buppō.”

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a friend for the dinner the two had shared the night before, she joined them to thank the other man for the kindness he had shown her husband. Later, Gozaemon asked her why, if her duty as a wife required her to thank those who had been kind to her husband, she did not also give thanks to Amida, who had not simply aided him in this life, but had saved him from the suffering of future lives. Motivated by her sense of duty, she began to do so, and soon came to realize the mind of faith herself (nst 57: 218–19). Like the story of Yoichi, who described Amida’s compassion as the love of a parent (oyasama 親様) (nst 57: 193), social obligation appears in these texts, not as an end in itself (nor, for that matter, as a means to an end in any pragmatic sense), but rather as a kind of analogue, an expression in human terms of the sense of obligation to Amida at the heart of the Shinshū vision of Other-power faith. 4

Conclusion: Chronotopes of the Religious Life

The fact that later readers should find reason to object to some of the behaviors recorded in these texts—including, not only the unquestioning acceptance by myōkōnin of the Tokugawa social order, but also the acts of religious suicide and self-mutilating piety found in ōjōden—is ultimately neither surprising nor particularly unusual. Scholarship on sacred biography often remarks on the ambivalence evoked by the actions of exemplary persons, a recognition by readers and authors alike that, in their most radical behavior, the protagonists of sacred biographies may best be viewed as objects of wonder rather than emulation. Indeed, negotiating this “tension between imitability and inimitability”—identifying the extent to which the actions portrayed in sacred biography are meant to be replicated (and by whom)—is a recurring theme in the history of virtually all traditions of sacred biography.33 As I have argued in the preceding pages, however, the exemplary character of sacred biography is seldom limited to the behavior of its protagonists. Narratives, after all, do more than represent characters’ actions; by configuring those characters and their actions within a particular image of the world, they also convey “a specific way of conceptualizing the possibilities of action” (Morson and Emerson 1990, 370). In his study of the history of the novel, Mikhail Bakhtin identified one aspect of such configurations as the “chronotopes” of narrative discourse, the concrete settings around which the time and space of the narrative are organized, “the place where the knots of narrative are tied 33  Cohn 1987, 1. Examples of this negotiation can be found in Bynum 2001, 51–3; Tambiah 1987, 121–3; and Gelber 1987, 16–17.

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and untied” (Bakhtin 1981, 250). Just as the history of the novel may be illuminated by an exploration of the changing temporal, spatial (and social) implications implicit in the use of different chronotopes over time—Bakhtin makes note of several that characterized the literature of different periods, including the road, the parlor and the threshold—so the changing understandings of the exemplary life in sacred biography might be better understood by attention to the narrative contexts in and through which those lives are expressed. In this sense, Heian-Period ōjōden might best be characterized by the chronotope of the deathbed (rinjū 臨終). It is this “liminal period right before and after death” that serves both as the point of intersection between this world and the Pure Land and as the narrative focal point of virtually all ōjōden (Stone 2004, 93). It is at the point of ōjō that the consequences of past practices (their own and others’, for good or ill, in this life and in previous lives) become apparent. And it is in reference to that moment that subsequent signs of rebirth manifest themselves to others. In comparison, the narrative focus of the myōkōninden appears considerably more diffuse, both in time and in space. It is possible to delineate a number of scenes and settings in which these lives unfold. In accordance with Sōjun’s editorial comments on one’s obligations to parents, country, and teachers, for example, one might distinguish between episodes focusing variously on the private space of the home (where faith is expressed in and through the familial dynamics of husband-and-wife or filial piety), the public space of the village or road (where the faithful express their gratitude in the context of social relations with their neighbors or the state), and the institutional space of the temple or dōjō (where the faithful receive the Dharma and respond with offerings). Nevertheless, these different settings, with their characteristic economies of on and hōon, can all be said to refer back to an overarching narrative structure, as ciphers for and instruments of the saving power of Amida. In this sense, the physical, temporal and social space of the family, the village or the Honganji institution itself appears as a reflection of the more fundamental relationship between this life and the Pure Land, and between the mind of faith and Amida.34 As Bakhtin notes, narrative chronotopes, and, indeed, narratives more generally, ultimately derive their significance from the “continual mutual interaction” between the “real and represented world” (Bakhtin 1981, 253–54). This 34  In Bakhtin’s parlance, the private, public, and institutional spaces of myōkōninden might be described as “minor chronotopes” that together work to articulate the “major chronotope” of the religious life as a point of contact with Amida and his Pure Land (Bakhtin 1981, 252).

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interaction, often implicit in other narrative genres, is at the heart of exemplary literature, a portrayal of historical lives as the embodiment of a community’s ideals. The complex intersection of representation and didacticism—of lives as they were and as they ought to be—has been the subject of numerous studies of sacred biography, providing invaluable insights into the history and literary formation of exemplary individuals, many of whom stand at the heart of their respective religious traditions. Exemplary lives, however, are less a matter of exemplary individuals or exemplary behavior, than of exemplary stories. It is as part of an overarching narrative framework that the actions of individuals achieve coherence, the configuration of a collection of events into a meaningful unity: a life. Returning to the comments of Alasdair MacIntyre that provided the epigraph to this work, it is one’s understanding of the kind of story—the kind of life—of which one is a part that provides the ground by which one’s actions become meaningful. Insofar as a life can be viewed as a story—that the self, in other words, can be configured through narrative—it becomes possible to trace, not simply traditional roles and archetypal actions as they are reflected, shaped, and challenged in literature over time, but also the traditional genres in which those roles are played. Whether the actions of exemplary individuals are understood as objects of emulation or of wonder, they are experienced as part of a particular sort of story, stories it behooves us to take seriously. References Abbreviations

nst 7 Nihon shisō taikei 日本思想大系, vol. 7. Inoue Mitsusada 井上光貞 and Ōsone Shōsuke 大曾根章介, eds. Ōjōden Hokke genki 往生伝法華験記. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974. nst 57 Nihon shisō taikei, vol. 57. Kashiwahara Yūsen 柏原祐泉 and Fujii Manabu 藤 井学, eds. Kinsei Bukkyō no shisō 近世仏教の思想. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973.



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Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō 鈴木大拙貞太郎, ed., 1967. Myōkōnin Asahara Saichi shū 妙好 人浅原才市集. Tokyo: Shinjūsha. Tambiah, Stanley, 1987. The Buddhist arahant: Classical paradigm and modern Thai manifestation. In Saints and Virtues, ed. John Stratton Hawley, 111–26. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tanaka, Kenneth, and Eisho Nasu, eds., 1998. Engaged Pure Land Buddhism: Challenges Facing Jōdo Shinshū in the Contemporary World. Berkeley: WisdomOcean Publications. Ueda Yoshifumi, 1984. The Mahayana structure of Shinran’s thought. The Eastern Buddhist 17/1: 57–78 and 17/2: 30–54. Wetzler, Peter, 1977. Yoshishige no Yasutane: Lineage, learning, office, and Amida’s Pure Land. PhD dissertation, University of California Berkeley. White, Hayden, 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Woloch, Alex, 2003. The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Preaching as Performance

Notes on a Secretive Shin Buddhist Sermon Clark Chilson 1 Preamble On a cool November afternoon I arrived at an old wooden Buddhist temple nestled in an urban residential area of Kyoto, Japan. The priest and others at the temple were performing an annual memorial service for the temple’s founder, Kūya, who is widely known as a tenth-century holy man. The temple was dimly lit, with about a hundred people sitting pressed shoulder to shoulder on tatami mats. Although I had come that day to learn about Kūya, I met people who would teach me about a religious tradition that had little to do with Kūya and which scholars assumed had died out long ago—secretive Shin Buddhism. During the service, in addition to observing recitations of Buddhist scriptures, ritual dancing, and a tea ceremony, I asked those in attendance about Kūya and their interests in him. Many told me about his historical significance, but one man said he went to a Kūya-related temple in a city about an hour from where I lived. None of the published sources on Kūya mentioned the temple, so I was eager to see it. But when 1 expressed my desire to visit it and asked where it was, he became evasive. With curiosity overpowering polite impulses, I pushed to get an exact location. He consulted with some men he was with about my request, and then gave me his phone number. He said I could visit if I called him first. Later that week I telephoned him and was told a time at which to go to the temple. I expected that the temple was old and would need to be opened for guests. I was therefore surprised to find a newer temple with about 30 or so people already inside listening to a sermon. Upon arrival, I was led to a back room to meet an old man, who was referred to as sensei (teacher) and zenchishiki (good friend). After talking for a while about Kūya and my research, the old man told me that for him and the others at the temple Shinran was more important than Kūya. I indicated I knew about Shinran, the founder of Shin,

S ource: Chilson, Clark, “Preaching as Performance: Notes on a Secretive Shin Buddhist Sermon,” in John S. Harding (ed.), Studying Buddhism in Practice, 1st Edition, New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 142–153. © Routledge, 2012; reproduced by arrangement with Taylor & Francis Books UK.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_031

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one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan for centuries. The old man, whom I shall call K-sensei, said that his group, unlike Shin priests, followed Shinran’s ultimate teachings called Urahōmon (secret dhanna). These teachings, he said, were entrusted to the laity and were kept secret to protect against corruption by priests and others who might try to use them to make money. Intrigued, I asked for permission to return and was allowed to do so. After visiting the temple for a while, I learned that the association with Kūya was primarily a façade to protect the group from being seen as a nefarious secret society. Eventually K-sensei invited me to be initiated, but I declined for ethical reasons after he told me the rite should not be done for research purposes. Because I still wanted to study the group, an agreement was worked out by which K-sensei would let me visit on days when there were no secret initiation rites, during which the most secret doctrines were taught. On the basis of this agreement, I studied these people’s practices, their secrecy, and their ideas on the “real” Shin. Most of my field work was done between 1998 and 2001, with a follow-up visit in 2008. During my fieldwork I took detailed notes and was allowed to make audio recordings of some sermons and interviews. Among the many things I learned from secretive Shin Buddhists is that the deeper we look the more we can see. 2 Narrative 2.1 Urahōmon Practice and Practitioners Throughout Japan the secretive Shin Buddhist tradition of Urahōmon has some 10,000 members who belong to one of perhaps a couple of hundred groups. Each group is autonomous and led by a zenchishiki who is the highest authority; there is no larger organizational structure in Urahōmon beyond the individual group. They are secretive in that they hide their religion and its activities from outsiders—they do not reveal where they meet, they do not allow those without the zenchishiki’s permission to participate in any of their services or rites, and only the initiated are given in-depth instruction in the secret teachings. Followers of Urahōmon refer to themselves as “practitioners” or gyōja. As practitioners they practice more than just their secretive tradition—they practice shinjin. The term shinjin is central in Shin Buddhist doctrine in general, not just Urahōmon. Priests at public Shin Buddhist temples teach that it refers to a heart that trusts Amida Buddha, or more simply to an entrusting heart. For Urahōmon gyōja, it means this and more. For them, shinjin also refers to what they received in the secret initiation rite.

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Although I did not witness this rite, over time the gyōja did talk about it with me. Shin Buddhists who were able to infiltrate groups and who wanted to expose them also have published details of the rite. During this rite, called ichinen kimyō (one-thought moment of entrusting), an initiate bows up and down repeatedly while earnestly asking Amida for help by saying over and over again “tasuketamae, tasuketamae, tasuketamae” (“save me! save me! save me!”). At some point, perhaps after about 20 minutes or so, the zenchishiki who is watching the initiate do this shouts “yoshi” (“good”), indicating the sudden moment when Amida endows the initiate with shinjin. When a person receives shinjin from Amida, he or she is said to experience great happiness and to become like a buddha. As those who have received shinjin from Amida, they then practice it in their lives. One way they practice it is by attending an Urahōmon place of worship. The place where the gyōja I came to know best meet is a privately owned chapel that is quite inconspicuous. On the outside it resembles in architectural style and size a middle-class home. On the inside, it looks similar to many Shin temples. It has a large tatami-mat room where people sit for religious services. The furnishings in the front of this room are similar to a Shin temple’s sanctuary: gold-colored shrines about four feet tall house statues of Amida and Shinran; in front of the statues, flowers are placed and incense and candles are burned; there is a platform upon which the head teacher sits to recite Buddhist texts; and next to the platform sits a bell in the shape of a large bowl used to announce the beginning and end of services. In the back of the room is an offertory box the size of a storage chest, into which people occasionally drop coins. Gyōja gather at the chapel several times a month for services that last from 10 am to about 3 pm, with a break for lunch. About once a month, there is a secret initiation rite or a ceremony open to non-initiates such as a memorial service for the deceased (eitaikyō). The most common type of service, however, is called sōzoku (“succession”) and consists of three or four different sermons, each given by a different man. The zenchishiki always gives his sermon right after lunch. The sermons before lunch and the last sermon are given by ministers who have the authority to preach but who, unlike the zenchishiki, do not possess the secret text or have special training in the secret teachings. 2.2 A Sermon by K-Sensei December 16, 2000: 15 or so people are in attendance this day; all except a few appear to be over 60 years old. It is almost 1 pm. We have just left the kitchen, where we ate a light lunch consisting of miso, rice, and vegetables. Some men are sitting around a brazier in the hallway smoking cigarettes, while some women chat in front of the sanctuary. A faint scent of incense fills the air. Few

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have left or arrived since 10 am, when the service started. During the morning everyone recited the Amidakyō, a sūtra that describes Amida Buddha’s Pure Land, and then everyone listened to two different ministers give two sermons: one on attaining shinjin and the other on a Buddhist hymn written by Shinran. At 1 pm, a minister strikes a gong with a mallet to indicate that K-sensei’s sermon is about to begin. Everyone moves to the main hall and sits on the floor. The ministers and K-sensei walk in through a side door and sit facing the image of Amida. Although K-sensei and the Urahōmon ministers say they are lay Buddhists, while giving sermons they wear the vestments of Shin priests, consisting of a stole and of black robes over a white gown that go down to their ankles. K-sensei begins by ringing the large bowl-shaped bell twice, after which everyone presses their palms together in a gesture of reverence and recites several times “namu amida butsu.” (This recitation, called nenbutsu, can be translated as “I take refuge in Amida Buddha,” or “In Amida Buddha I trust.”) Some are holding prayer beads (nenju). He then turns around to face the congregation, and sits on a chair behind a desk that is brought to the center of the room by the ministers. K-sensei is an affable man who at almost six feet is remarkably tall for a Japanese man approaching the age of 80. He laughs often and easily. Before becoming a zenchishiki a few years earlier, he ran a medical supplies business that he owned. His son, he proudly once told me, is a physician. No one knows what his sermon will be about today, but the expectation is that compared to the ones given in the morning, which were mostly read and delivered with much archaic language, his sermon will be easier to understand. K-sensei again recites “namu amida butsu” several times and, without greeting the audience, starts reading a phrase from a text. He begins as follows: [Reading] “Ichinen to iu wa hongan o shin’gyō suru gokusoku o sashite mōsunari.” [Speaking] These are the words of Shinran. The word ichinen is one that Shinran explains the meaning of at length. If I may convey what he said, there is ichinen and tanen. What is ichinen? Shinran said it is hongan wa shin’gyō suru gokusoku o sashite mōsunari. Hongan refers to the eighteenth vow of Amida. [K-sensei then says as if quoting a scripture passage from memory] “By concentrating on the three aspects of faith—sincere mind, entrusting, and aspiring to be born [in Amida’s Pure Land]—one receives from Amida the Buddha wisdom of shinjin.” This is hongan. Shin’gyō means to rejoice and to put into action. That is shin’gyō. Then there is gokusoku. This indicates not the gradual, or something that happens while unaware. Rather it means “immediately” or “in an instant” to

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receive from Amida wisdom, Buddhist wisdom. That is what Shinran is teaching. This all, however, on the surface makes no sense. It would not be normally understood. If the person is not one who has been led to practice, he will not understand. If one is not a practitioner [gyōja], it will convey no meaning. Thus even if ichinen to iu wa hongan o shin’gyō suru gokusoku o sashite mōsunari is written, what that means will not be understood; but if a person asks Amida to receive shinjin, and thereby Buddha wisdom, he will have the intelligence to understand. Following the above explanation of K-sensei, we might translate the reoccurring sentence attributed to Shinran as “Ichinen indicates the instance when Amida, in accordance with his eighteenth vow, brings a person to happiness and to practice.” This passage, K-sensei is telling them here, can only be understood by those like themselves who have participated in the secret ichinen kimyō rite of which most Shin Buddhists, including Shin priests, are ignorant. He thus relates this first part of the sermon to the initiation experience of his audience. Using a mix of formal honorific language when referring to Amida and Shinran and informal language when addressing the audience, he next explains tanen in a similar manner. [Reading] “Tannen to iu wa shin no ue ni mōsu shōmyō o tanen no gyō to iu nari.” [Speaking] What does tanen mean? It means numerous sayings of the nenbutsu. With the phrases shin no ue (“with faith”) and “saying nenbutsu numerous times,” Shinran is teaching that the recitation of namu amida butsu comes after the receiving of shinjin from Amida. There are, as I always teach, three types of namu amida butsu. Shōmyō is to recite. Then there is the nenbutsu that is contemplation on Amida. That is nenbutsu. Then there is myōgō. Myōgō is also nenbutsu but it is that which is practiced, the thing which … it is the practicing of. Myō is … well … the origin. Gō is what we call the result of that origin. Because we ask Amida for help with complete concentration and are vitalized by him, we understand the origin by which we are moved. We can understand the feelings of the Buddha. That is butsugō or the result of the Buddha. Because of this we recite the nenbutsu. Without shinjin the nenbutsu would not come out [of our mouths]; that is what this means. Reciting the nenbutsu with faith is called the “gyō of numerous recitations of the nenbutsu.” What is called gyō is the happiness due to Amida’s merit and our receiving of shinjin.

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“Ahhh … Thank you for that.” You have some food or something and feelings of gratitude arise. You say “Ahhh my stomach is full. My stomach’s full.” You must take the action. If you don’t eat your stomach won’t be full. It is with this type of gratitude in mind that we can understand tanen. It is the nenbutsu of gratitude. When we repeatedly say the nenbutsu with gratitude; we call that tanen. Our recitations of the nenbutsu become numerous. Shinran is teaching that the nenbutsu will not come out of those who don’t practice. He is teaching many things simply. Over the next 30 minutes or so, the sermon continues in this way, with K-sensei reading phrases by Shinran and explaining the words in those phrases. He explains other ideas related to ichinen and tanen. He relates ichinen to lasuketamae (“save me!”), which they said during the initiation rite. He preaches that Shinran taught that what is most important is to receive shinjin. He also talks more about joy and gratitude. At the end he concludes by simply saying, “That is ichinen and tanen.” He then turns to face the image of Amida, rings the bell, and says the nenbutsu while all in the congregation press their palms together in prayer, some wrapping their hands in prayer beads. He exits through the side door by which he entered to return to his private room. After a break of about 10 to 15 minutes, a minister gives a final sermon, after which people say the nenbutsu a few times. With that, the services for the day end. People leave while the ministers clean up and change back into their regular clothing. 3 Discussion 3.1 The Sermon as a Pedagogical Performance with Multiple Messages The above description is the only one published of a contemporary secretive Shin sermon. It is also the only text to include a transcription of the oral language of an Urahōmon sermon or that includes translations into English of what is said. Although the description indicates that K-sensei’s sermon is distinctive, we can read it as representing something common. Depending on the context in which we situate the sermon, we can see how it is similar to (as well as different from) other religious practices. To show how this is the case, I will mention just two contexts. The first is that of Shin Buddhism’s dharma talks (hōwa). Although dharma talks are not as central to the liturgy of Shin temples in Japan as sermons are to Christian churches in North America, they are frequently given. At large Shin temples, priests give sermons daily. Those who attend commonly bring prayer beads (nenju) and sūtra books. Some people might bring a donation for the

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temple. As with the Urahomon sermon above, hōwa often include recitations of the nenbutsu and readings of Shin texts, which are then explained in depth. One key difference is that sermons at temples often include stories and end with a song or with the recitation of the Shin text Gaikemon (“Confessional Statement”). By situating K-sensei’s sermon in this context, we can learn how it both reflects and refracts from public Shin sermons to understand Urahōmon’s unique doctrine and how its sermons differ from those of mainstream Shin to better understand both. Another much wider context in which we can situate it—and the one I will focus on here—is that of performance. To view the sermon as a performance is not to suggest that it is theatrical or entertaining; rather it is to say that it makes a presentation to an audience with actions at a particular place and time. By examining it as a performance, we can notice what we might miss if we were to simply focus on the words of the sermon. Examining it as a performance can also show how actions and the setting of the sermon can complement the spoken words. Furthermore, it can reveal how multiple messages are presented, only some of which may be intended by the preacher or consciously understood by the audience. It is worth emphasizing that all the messages a sermon presents and potentially conveys are not limited to the intentions of the preacher or what the audience notices, any more than the potential multiple meanings of a novel or short story are limited to their authors’ intentions or what a particular reader understands. As a performance, K-sensei’s actions would most likely be recognized by many people as a sermon, even if they did not understand Japanese and knew little about Shin Buddhism. The reason for this is that it resembles performative patterns and elements of sermons found elsewhere, beyond Shin Buddhism: a man in distinctive clothing speaks to a group of people who sit lower than him; there is no dialogue between speaker and audience; hands are put together in a gesture of reverence or prayer at the beginning and end of the event; there is formulaic recitation; candles and incense are burned; and icons are displayed that distinguish the site from a classroom or lecture hall. But to understand how the specific sermon event under investigation communicates different particular messages, rather than just how it is similar to other sermons, we can analyze it by identifying major and minor parts of it, examine how those parts interact with each other, and then highlight some of the messages they present. The three major parts I will focus on are the framing elements, the actors, and the articulated words. Framing elements are boundary markers that set the sermon apart and help distinguish it from ordinary speech and other activities. The subparts that make up the framing elements are the site of the performance, the objects at

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that site, and the formalistic actions performed at the start and conclusion of the sermon. The site of the sermon is a large room in a building which only those invited are allowed to enter. This building and its restrictive access help distinguish it from the open, public realm. The exclusivity of the site also serves to valorize the activity in it. The objects in general associate the place with Shin Buddhism. The statues of Amida and Shinran are particularly important because they evoke their presence and serve as symbols that connect the actions in the room with Shin history and scripture. Like the mise-en-scène of a theatrical production or the set of a film, they create an atmosphere of expectancy about the type of activity that will be performed and shape perceptions. In addition to the site and inanimate objects in it, symmetrical actions also frame the event. The main actions that do this are the ringing of bells and the recitations of the nenbutsu. These formalistic actions at the beginning and end of the sermon serve to punctuate it and set it apart from the other activities before and after it. The actors in the sermon performance are K-sensei and the audience. They are actors because they perform actions—not because they pretend to be what they are not. K-sensei’s main act is speaking. As a preacher, he is the leader of the sermon while the audience acts as listeners and as supporters of K-sensei in framing the sermon with recitations. As the main actor, K-sensei delivers the sermon in a voice that is eager to share knowledge but is not dramatic. K-sensei’s style is didactic. His exegesis of Shinran’s words is that of an instructor rather than an entertainer. This is proper, because the audience does not expect to be entertained; in fact, a sermon that is too entertaining would probably be seen as inappropriate, less than profound, and more about the messenger than the explicit message. His clothing also distinguishes him from the audience. The audience members perform fewer actions, but without them there listening, K-sensei would be performing a soliloquy rather than a sermon. The audience also influences what he says. As he formulates his speech, he does so with knowledge of its members. He knows he can speak to them as insiders, that is, as people who have received shinjin. Their presence also creates a communal experience of the sermon that is shared by all in attendance. We can understand the articulated words of the sermon more deeply by looking beyond just what is said and asking a basic socio-linguistic question: what types of language are used during the social event? In K-sensei’s sermon performance, we can identify three types of language. First, there are the formulaic sacred utterances of the nenbutsu. In addition to helping frame the preaching event, they are distinctive in that they are addressed to Amida, are said repeatedly, and are recited, more or less, in unison by all the actors.

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Unlike other speech during the sermon, the nenbutsu is not didactic; rather, it expresses reverence and gratitude. Second, there are words that are read out loud by the preacher. These are words attributed to Shinran found in texts that could be referred to again at a later time. They are the source and focus of K-sensei’s speech throughout the sermon. By speaking them, he orally represents them. Third, there is the spontaneous expository speech of K-sensei. Although K-sensei no doubt thought about what he would say in advance, his speech is primarily spontaneous in that it is neither read nor recited completely from memory. This gives the words a greater sense of immediacy. As unwritten speech, it is also ephemeral. It was only the intrusion of a recording device that kept all tangible evidence of what he said from disappearing. His use of honorific language for Amida and Shinran, furthermore, makes the sermon not only sound more formal, but also indicates their relational distance and higher status. With the framing elements, the actors, and the articulated words of the sermon performance delineated, we can now turn to how the sermon presents multiple messages by clarifying one of its explicit messages and three of its tacit ones. Explicitly the sermon is a pedagogical performance that presents knowledge of Shinran’s conception of ichinen versus tanen, or the one-thought of Amida (or recitation of the nenbutsu) versus repeated thoughts or recitations. K-sensei says as much at the end of the sermon. On the surface, it thus deals with the problem of how we can understand the terms ichinen and tanen. It is, in effect, explicitly about Shin Buddhist vocabulary. This explicit message teaches us about basic Urahōmon doctrine and a zenchishiki’s interpretations of Shinran’s writings, but the sermon as a whole communicates much more. While actions in the sermon might speak with greater subtlety than the explicit words articulated, they do tacitly make important statements. A few of the tacit messages presented are: a method for engaging with Shinran’s writings, the authority of K-sensei, and the identity of the actors. In presenting a method for reading, it is not just what is said but how it is said. The way K-sensei presents the words provides an example of a method for grappling with Shinran’s statements. He models this method by the manner and structure in which he presents Shinran’s teachings. This method involves contemplating and examining in depth specific words and phrases, how they relate to each other, and how they relate to personal experience, such as the gratitude you might feel after eating. K-sensei models this method in his preaching when he meticulously explains key words in each sentence attributed to Shinran. He presents each word as having importance and a rich array

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of meanings. This manner of presentation demonstrates for members of the audience how they too can come to better understand and read the writings of Shinran. The way K-sensei preaches is also conducive to enhancing his authority. Although this is not obvious from observing the event alone, his style of instruction imitates Shinran’s. K-sensei does not mention it during his sermon, but there is a well-known text by Shinran on ichinen and tanen titled Ichinen tanen mon’i (Notes on Once-Calling and Many-Calling). Members of his audience, or at least some of them, are almost certainly familiar with it. In this text, Shinran presents words individually and then explains them. Here is an example from Shinran’s text: “Soku also mean to ascend to and become established in a certain rank. Attain means to have attained to what one shall attain…. ‘To grasp’ (sesshu) means to take in (setsu) and to receive and to hold (shu)” (Collected Works of Shinran, vol. I, p. 474). K-sensei imitates Shinran in this manner of explanation. This mimesis, common in many performances, has the rhetorical effect of closely associating the preaching of K-sensei with that of Shinran. This enhances his authority because it shows him to be following the example of the founder, Shinran. K-sensei’s style of preaching, moreover, indicates that he is not teaching his own ideas so much as those of Shinran. His words of explanation are spontaneous, but by reading the words of Shinran he presents the teachings as rooted in the authority of Shinran, not in any way in his own authority. To emphasize this he frequently repeats Shinran’s words. K-sensei thus presents himself as a conduit for Shinran; he is merely passing on Shinran’s teachings. By articulating the teachings and explaining what they mean, however, he gives the words a vitality that would be lost if they were simply read from a prepared script. K-sensei finally enhances his authority by the way he physically presents himself during the sermon. This is most obvious in his distinctive clothing, which imitates that of a Shin priest. Despite his claims that he is simply a layman, his use of clerical vestments has the effect of associating him with clerical authority. The third tacitly conveyed message relates to identity as gyōja, literally “practice people.” In the sermon K-sensei is implicitly addressing a basic question related to identity formation: “Who are we?” He answers this question in at least three ways. First, he defines who they are by contrasting them with others. When he says while explaining a sentence by Shinran “If one is not a practitioner (gyōja), it will convey no meaning,” he is emphasizing how they as a people who can understand Shinran’s teachings are distinct from most other people. K-sensei knows that his audience consists almost exclusively of people who received the shinjin in the ichinen kimyō rite, which he tells them during

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the sermon endows them with Buddha wisdom to understand. This supposedly gives them the intelligence to comprehend what those outside Urahōmon, who are not gyōja, cannot. Second, he clarifies their identity by alluding to their sameness or what they have in common with each other. He does this when he interprets the words of Shinran in a way that summons to mind the ichinen kimyō rite that they experienced. When he explains “gokusoku” as “‘in an instant’ to receive from Amida wisdom,” he is reminding them of the moment in the rite when he as zenchishiki says “yoshi,” indicating the moment they received shinjin. He also does this when he says “if a person asks Amida to receive shinjin.” With these words he is suggesting the part of the rite in which they “ask” Amida for shinjin by repeatedly reciting “save me!” (K-sensei has explained on other occasions that the word “ask” [tanomu] is one that Shin priests misunderstand as “to rely on.”) A third way K-sensei answers the question “Who are we?” for the audience of gyōja is by explaining why they are a people who do what they do. At the beginning and end of the sermon event, and on many other occasions, gyōja recite the nenbutsu. K-sensei’s sermon tells them why with his explanation of tanen. He does this when he preaches that Shinran taught that “the recitation of namu amida butsu comes after the receiving of shinjin from Amida.” He further adds that it is because of shinjin they recite the nenbutsu and because they asked “Amida for help” they understand that Amida is the origin “by which they are moved” to recite the nenbutsu. K-sensei, in his exegesis of Shinran’s writings, is thus giving the gyōja an understanding of why they recited nenbutsu before the sermon and why they will recite it after. In effect, he is telling them that as gyōja they recite the nenbutsu because of who they are and because of their relationship with Amida, who has led them to practice it. 4

Concluding Remarks

If we were to examine the sermon further, we could no doubt find more messages. Viewing sermons as performances opens rich interpretive possibilities. I expect others examining the sermon will see things I missed and have insights I did not. In fact, I hope they will, because this can increase our knowledge of both Urahōmon sermons and the performance of sermons more generally. We have all learned that scholarship should be critical. Yet, once we have done the critical analysis, we can synthesize the elements found in our analysis to gain new appreciation for what on the surface may seem mundane. To a simple onlooker, much of Buddhist activity can appear boring. At the same

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time, if we labor to cultivate our ability to observe, to formulate and to ask illuminating questions, and to place an activity in a new context or view it from a unique perspective, we are rewarded with the pleasure of discovery. Persistent ethnographic work, in short, possesses the power to reveal that our world is indeed a fascinating place. Readings A wide variety of ideas on how to view performance can be found in Richard Schechner’s Performance Studies: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002). Those interested in exploring speech in particular as a performative act would do well to search in the fields of socio-linguistics and anthropological linguistics. On sermons specifically, the reader can consult Rosaleen Howard-Malverde’s “Words for Our Lord of Huanca: Discursive Strategies in a Quechua Sermon from Southern Peru,” Anthropological Linguistics 40 (1998), pp. 570–95, and Mahinda Deegalle’s Popularizing Buddhism: Preaching as Performance in Sri Lanka (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). On Shin Buddhism, secondary sources in English are plentiful, but most of them deal with historical and doctrinal issues. The best historical overview of Shin Buddhism up to the sixteenth century, which gives particular emphasis to its doctrinal development, is Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan by James Dobbins (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). For translations of primary sources, see The Collected Works of Shinran, 2 vols. (Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997) and Ebsen Andreasen’s Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion and Culture (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1998). The most in-depth study in English on Shin sermons is Elizabeth Harrison’s doctoral dissertation “Encountering Amida: Jodo Shinshu Sermons in Eighteenth-Century Japan” (University of Chicago, 1992). On secretive Shin Buddhism, there are very few studies in English. Most scholars of Shin Buddhism have treated secretive Shin as heretical. This can be seen in Chiba Jōryu’s “Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Early Modern Shinshū: Kakushi nenbutsu and Kakure nenbutsu,” in James Foard, Michael Solomon, and Richard Payne (eds.), The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development (Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1996), pp. 463–96. Although Chiba’s chapter privileges the perspective of Shin priests, it provides a useful introduction to the history of two types of secretive Shin. For ethnographicbased studies, the reader can refer to two articles by me: “Religion Concealed and Revealed: The Uses of History by a Secretive Shinshū Leader,” Japanese

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Religions 27 (2002), pp. 195–206; and “A Religion in Death Throes: How Secrecy Undermines the Survival of a Crypto Shin Buddhist Tradition in Japan Today,” Religion Compass 4(4) (2010), pp. 202–10. Author Clark Chilson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the co-editor of two books: Shamans in Asia (with Peter Knecht, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and the Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (with Paul Swanson, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), which was recognized by Choice magazine in 2007 as an “Outstanding Academic Title.” He has published scholarly articles on the tenthcentury Buddhist holy man Kūya and on secretive Shin Pure Land Buddhists. He is currently writing on the consequences of concealment for secretive Shin Buddhists. He is also researching the life and religious leadership of Ikeda Daisaku, president of Sōka Gakkai International.

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The Nianfo in Ōbaku Zen: a Look at the Teachings of the Three Founding Masters James Baskind To the Edo-period Japanese Zen monks, one of the most striking aspects of the Ōbaku school was the practice of reciting the Buddha’s name (nianfo 念仏) within their teaching and training practices.* For an accurate assessment of the Ōbaku school’s true stance on the practice of the nianfo, however, it is necessary to investigate the writings and teachings of the school’s founding masters, the very figures who established and codified what came to be seen as standard practice: Yinyuan Longqi 隠元隆琦 (J. Ingen Ryōki, 1592–1673), Muan Xingtao 木庵性瑫 (J. Mokuan Shōtō, 1611–1684), and Jifei Ruyi 即非如一 (J. Sokuhi Nyoitsu, 1616–1671). It was the Japanese reaction to this practice that led to the accusation that the Ōbaku monks were practicing an adulterated form of Zen that was contaminated by Pure Land elements. It remains, however, that much of the misunderstanding regarding nianfo practice can be assigned to the Japanese unfamiliarity with the doctrinal underpinnings of the Ming Buddhist models that the Ōbaku monks brought to Japan. (Mohr 1994: 348, 364) This paper will attempt to clarify the nianfo teachings of these three foundational Ōbaku masters. 1

Chan and Pure Land Practices in China

One thing that should be kept in mind when considering the Zen style of the Ōbaku monks is that they were steeped in the Buddhist culture of the Ming period, replete with conspicuous Pure Land aspects. (Hirakubo 1962: 197) What appeared to the Japanese Zen community of the mid-seventeenth century as the incongruous marriage of Pure Land devotional elements within more traditional forms of Chan practice had already undergone a long courtship in China that had resulted in what seemed to the Chinese monks as a natural and S ource: Baskind, James, “The Nianfo in Ōbaku Zen: A Look at the Teachings of the Three Founding Masters,” Japanese Religions 33(1–2) (2008): 19–34. *  James Baskind: Project Researcher, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004401518_032

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legitimate union. Recitation of Amitābha’s (C. Amituo, J. Amida) name has an established place in some of the Chan school’s most fundamental practices and institutions. Already in the Chanyuan qinggui 禅苑清規,1 regarded as the earliest Chan monastic code still in existence, the chanting of the Buddha’s name was already a standard practice at the funeral of a monk.2 This work became the basis of later monastic codes, and thus stands in a solidly unassailable position from the perspective of standard monastic practice. Yongming Yanshou 永明延寿 (J. Yōmei Enju, 904–975),3 a Chan monk of the Fayanzong 法眼宗 (J. Hōgenshū), made prominent use of the nianfo within Chan training. (Baroni 2000: 109) He also asserted that the Pure Land is to be sought in the mind only (yuishin jōdo 唯心浄土), a theme that had appeared well before his own lifetime. (Sharf 2002: 313) Yongming could perhaps be considered the first to self-consciously formulate the compatibility of the two practices, evidenced in the attribution of the “fourfold summary” [of Chan and Pure Land] to him, a concise formula that relates the harmony of the two practices.4 Another conspicuous figure who inherited and elaborated upon this 1  While this monastic code is the earliest one still in existence, it is not thought to be the first monastic code. The Baizhang qinggui 百才清規 is posited as the first example of a monastic code, although it is not extant, and even doubted by some to have existed at all. For an annotated translation of the Chanyuan qinggui with extensive commentary, see Yifa (1996). 2  Yifa 1996: 333, 338. Throughout the funerary ceremony, there are several occasions upon which ten recitations of the Buddha’s name are performed. The number ten is also a significant Pure Land influence since in the Wuliangshou jing (J. Muryōjukyō) 無量寿経, one of the three foundational scriptures of the Pure Land school, Amida’s eighteenth vow also puts forth “ten recitations” or “ten contemplations” shinian 十念 as the prescription for birth in his Pure Land. There is also the question as to the interpretation of nian 念 which early on meant to visualize and only later came to be used in the context of an oral recitation. For more on the early history of mixed practice in China, see Kōchi 1972 and Hattori 1971. 3  Z GDJ I:111d, s.v. Enju. 4  Shih 1987: 118. Even if this attribution is spurious, it nonetheless demonstrates the position that Yongming is perceived to have held in this Chan/Pure Land dialectic. Shih quotes the “fourfold summary” as:    “With Ch’an but no Pure Land, nine out of ten people will go astray. When death comes suddenly, they must accept it in an instant.    With Pure Land but no Ch’an, ten thousand out of ten thousand people will achieve birth [in the Pure Land].    If one can see Amitābha face to face, why worry about not attaining awakening?    With both Ch’an and Pure Land, it is like a tiger who has grown horns. One will be a teacher for mankind in this life, and a Buddhist patriarch in the next.    With neither Ch’an nor Pure Land, it is like falling on an iron bed with bronze posters [i.e., one of the hells].    For endless kalpas one will find nothing to rely on.” (Shih 1987: 118) Shih borrows this translation, with minor changes, from Yü (1981: 52).

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practice is Zhiche 智徹 (J. Chitetsu, ?–1310) whose own awakening was said to have been spurred by the conundrum “Who is it calling the name of [meditating upon] the Buddha” nianfo shi shei 念仏是誰, which thereby provided the start for the formal practice of nianfo gongan 念仏公案 (J. nenbutsu kōan). (Zhang 1975: 386) In China, the two practices of Chan meditation and the calling of the Buddha’s name were natural parts of any monks’ Buddhist practice, such to the extent that Zhongfeng Mingben 中峰明本 (J. Chūhō Myōhon, 1263–1323)5 would comment “Chan is the Chan of the Pure Land and the Pure Land is the Pure Land of Chan” (chanzhe jingtu zhi chan, jingtu zhe chan zhi jingtu 禅者 浄土之禅、浄土者禅之浄土). (Zhang 1975: 386) Mingben was a prominent Yuan-period monk who contributed in large measure to the Chan/Pure Land synthesis. (Satō 1981: 233) Regarding this combined practice, Konggu Jinglong 空谷景隆 (J. Kūkoku Keiryū, 1392–?) described the nianfo as “the most important shortcut method of training” (nianfo yimen jiejing xiuxing zhi yao 念仏一 門捷径修行之要), and Hanshan Deqing 憨山徳清 (J. Kanzan Tokusei, 1546– 1623), considered one of the great masters of the Ming period, expounded on the nianfo saying, “The single practice of the nianfo is the true huatou 話頭 (J. watō, “head word”), the supremely easy [method] of gaining succor in [this world] of dust” (weidu nianfo shenshi de huatou, chenlao zhongjiyi de li 唯独 念仏審実的話題、塵労中極易得力). (Furuta 1960: 23) Chinese Buddhism has changed little in this regard, as Holmes Welch noted in his study of early twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism. He reports that monks in the monasteries he visited jointly practiced meditation and recitation of the Buddha’s name. (Welch 1967: 399–400) Certain monks echoed Mingben’s words above by asserting that Chan and Pure Land practice not only complement each other, but even more so cannot be practiced apart from one another. (Welch 1967: 400) One of the most conspicuous figures in Ming Buddhism is Yunqi Zhuhong 雲棲株宏 (J. Unsei Shukō, 1535–1615). This Chan monk of the late Ming is foremost known for his joint practice of meditation and nianfo, but he also promoted the compatibility of the Three Teachings (of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism) and produced morality books (shanshu 善書)for his disciples as well as a more general audience for the purpose of inculcating moral values in the readership. (Yü 1981: 102) Yunqi was the object of considerable scorn 5  Zhongfeng is in a pivotal position in the history of combined practice, standing between the late Song masters who engaged in mixed practice, and Yunchi, the Ming-period champion of incorporating Pure Land within Zen (Satō 1981: 233–34). It is also Zhongfeng’s dharma line that flourished and would come to include the Ōbaku monks. While Yunchi contributed in good measure to the popularity of the nianfo among Chan practitioners, the codification owes much to Zhongfeng (Nishio 1985: 52).

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from the Japanese monk Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768), who in his Oradegama 遠羅天釜 described Yunqi as having “abandoned the ‘steepness’ technique of the founders of Zen … advocated strongly the teachings relating to the calling of the Buddha’s name, and displayed an incredibly shallow understanding of Zen.” (Yampolsky 1971: 147–148) Yunqi played a defining role in the formation and final codification that crystallized in the joint practice of Chan and Pure Land teachings during the late Ming period. Yunqi was not the only monk of the late Ming period to promote this style of practice, but he was perhaps the most emphatic when it came to asserting that the practice of the nianfo was the most suitable and efficacious method in the era of Degenerate Law (mofa 末法) for both attaining awakening in this life, for those so able, or for achieving birth in the Pure Land. (Yü 1981: 57) He interpreted the invocation of the Buddha’s name in Chan terms in the sense that when one concentrates on the recitation of the name in a single-minded manner, one is simultaneously cultivating the bodhisattva path as well as achieving the mindfulness necessary to shatter illusion and break through to awakening.6 At this point it may prove instructive to say a word about the nature of the nianfo. In broad terms, the nianfo can refer to two separate practices: 1) to visualize Amituo Buddha, recalling his merit and form, and; 2) to chant aloud the name of Amituo Buddha in order to attain birth in his Pure Land (also called shōmyō nenbutsu 称名念佛 in Japanese). (Onda 1974: 1) While the former meaning describes the nianfo practice of early Chinese Buddhism, from the time of the Chinese monk Tanluan 曇鸞 (J. Donran; 476–542), standard nianfo practice increasingly came to refer to the latter meaning. (Nakamura 1999: 1801, Mochizuki V: 4158a–4160b) As Baroni points out, the great Tang monk Zongmi 宗密　(J. Shūmitsu; 779–841), a recognized master in both Huayan and Chan, interpreted nianfo practice in such a way that included two additional categories to those listed above: 1) to concentrate on a physical representation of the Buddha, and; 2) to identify oneself with Amituo. (Baroni 2000: 110) Together 6  Yü translates a passage from Yunqi’s four-volume work Foshuo Amituojing shuchao 仏説阿 弥陀経疏鈔 (J. Bussetsu Amida kyōsho) in which he expounds on his belief that through the practice of “Buddha-invocation with one mind” one is also training themselves in the six perfections of a bodhisattva: “Now if a person practices i-hsin nien fo [Buddha invocation with one mind], he will naturally stop clinging to external objects; this is the perfection of giving. If he practices it, he will naturally stop all evils; this is the perfection of discipline. If he practices it, his heart will naturally be soft and pliant; this is the perfection of patience. If he practices it, he will never retrogress; this is the perfection of vigor. If he practices it, no extraneous thoughts will arise; this is the perfection of meditation. If he practices it, correct thoughts will appear distinctly; this is then the perfection of wisdom.” (Yü 1981: 58).

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these four varieties of practice include nearly the whole of Pure Land praxis as it developed in China. While there is little doubt that Pure Land-related practices flourished in China from early in Buddhism’s history in that country, there is much room for debate whether it can be said that a “Pure Land school” existed at all. This is touched upon below. Recent scholarship has increasingly called into question whether it is appropriate to use the term “Pure Land” to refer to a self conscious school in China.7 Robert Sharf investigates the problematic formation of the “Pure Land patriarchs,” as well as the pervasiveness—of both lay and monastic—of what may be termed “Pure Land practices” throughout Buddhism in China, and through his deft analysis, concludes that the origin of the Pure Land patriarchy, and the formulation of Pure Land as a separate school was a Japanese contribution, specifically by Hōnen Shōnin 法然上人 (1133–1212). He demonstrates that early Tang-period Chan masters did not reject nianfo, but rather emphasized a Mahāyāna approach in accord with such ideas as detachment, nonduality, and emptiness. (Sharf 2002: 308–309) What Chan masters did discourage was a “simple-minded” approach to Pure Land teachings (examples of which might include the belief in a physical rebirth upon a lotus blossom in the Pure Land), and insisted that the Pure Land was to be sought here and now in the purity of one’s own mind. (Sharf 2002: 314) This theme of the Pure Land as synonymous with a “pure mind” will appear repeatedly when we turn to the teachings of Yinyuan, Muan, and Jifei. We start with Yinyuan below. 2

Chan and Pure Land in Yinyuan’s Thought and Practice

Yinyuan stands as the undisputed founder of the Ōbaku school in Japan. Although he spent the majority of his life in China, having come to Japan when he was sixty-two, his tireless activity in both Nagasaki and then later in the capital area was directly responsible for the establishment of the Manpuku-ji. Fortunately for those Ōbaku scholars investigating his religious thought and practice, his philosophy and teaching style is faithfully recorded throughout his voluminous writings, in the form of verse, letters to disciples, and his dharma talks. 7  See Sharf 2002. In this informative article Sharf looks at the written records of the Chan patriarchs in order to highlight their own use of the nianfo as a viable practice within training. Much of what these Tang Zen masters wrote will be echoed in the passages of the Ōbaku masters below. Yinyuan, Muan, and Jifei’s practice of nianfo and Chan was substantiated by centuries of practice in China and only in Japan did any cognitive dissonance result.

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In order to understand Yinyuan’s approach to Zen and Pure Land, it may be instructive to look at his own master in China, Feiyin Tongrong 費隠通用 (J. Hiin Tsūyū; 1593–1662). Feiyin, as many monks during his time, extolled meditation on Amituo and the Pure Land; however, it was strictly metaphorical: Always residing in the Resplendent Pure Land, without giving rise to a single thought [one] attains a vision of the true nature of Amituo; without moving a single step [one is] born into the Pure Land of the Mind. This mundane world is not [even] separated by a hair’s breadth from the Western Land ten trillion worlds [away]. Morimoto 1960: 76

A sharp distinction should be drawn between Feiyin’s understanding of the nianfo and that of Yunqi. As is evident in the above passage, Feiyin extols Amituo and the Pure Land solely as a manifestation of the mind, and not in the devotional or salvific sense that Yunqi did. For Feiyin, even a single repetition of the nianfo is unnecessary, since simply by seeing the true nature of Amituo in every moment one is born in a Pure Land of the mind, which thereby transforms this world into the very Pure Land. Yinyuan also advanced the importance of reciting the nianfo, describing the state of the “One-mind Pure Land” (yixin jingtu 一心浄土) which is attained through this very practice. (Morimoto 1960: 76) There are also instances in Yinyuan’s own writings where he explains the nianfo in a manner more than mildly reminiscent of a typical kōan-like exchange. In his collected works (kōroku 広録) when the cook (tenzo 典座)8 asked Yinyuan to elucidate the true meaning of the recitation of the Buddha’s name, Yinyuan’s response in the ensuing encounter stands very much in line with the type of exchanges found within the classic kōan collections. The exchange runs thus: On ascending the hall during the winter solstice: The cook asked, “Reciting the name of the Buddha out loud is not the correct method of practicing the nianfo. Silently reciting the Buddha’s name is not the correct method of the nianfo. What is the correct method of practicing the nianfo?” Yinyuan said, “A broken ladle.” The monk made obeisance. Yinyuan said, “Come and return the ladle to me.” The monk was speechless. Yinyuan struck him, and thereupon said, “If you desire to know the

8  In a Zen monastery, the tenzo is the monk in charge of preparing the food. See ZGDJ II: 895a.

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meaning of Buddha nature, you must see through to the correct time and conditions. When the time arrives, then it will be clear all of itself.” Hirakubo 1979 I: 79

In the response to the monk’s question, Yinyuan does not directly address the issue with an unqualified response, but rather uses the indirect and nondiscursive didactic method characteristic of the type of Chan exchanges typified in the vast kōan literature. The recitation of Amituo’s name is of secondary importance compared with trying to halt and redirect the thought patterns that result in the posing of such a question in the first place. In the above exchange, the nianfo that appears in the question itself is a fangbian 方便—an expedient means—within the larger didactic context. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a holistic picture as to what extent the nianfo was used in kōan practice as well as what was its specific didactic rationale in the Ōbaku school. This is owing to the dearth of specific information that relates to the Ōbaku kōan curriculum and how it differs from that of the contemporaneous Rinzai tradition in Japan. (Mohr 2000: 255) The written records of the foundational Ōbaku masters are our only tool for investigating what they had to say about the practice of the nianfo and its place in Chan training. While no one would take issue with the fact that Yinyuan was comfortable with the practice of reciting the Buddha’s name within the monastic setting, evidenced from the practices that crystallized in the Ōbaku monastic code, the Ōbaku shingi 黄檗清規, and also judging from the paucity of instances in Yinyuan’s writings that elaborate on, or praise the salvific merit of the nianfo, it becomes apparent that he differed greatly from Yunqi in regard to its importance. For Yunqi, even if he asserted that on a certain level the nianfo was no different from Chan, this was not to say that the two should be practiced simultaneously, or even that Chan was the equal of Pure Land practice. (Yü 1981: 62) Yinyuan, on the other hand, does not promote the recitation of the Buddha’s name to attain anything other than what are mainstream “Chan goals”—the calming of the mind and focusing of attention—practices that were professed by numerous masters during the Ming period. Found within Yinyuan’s dharma talks are examples when he instructs a follower by constantly asking the question “who is it (reciting the nianfo)” (shi shei 是誰; J. kore tazo). Although it is obvious that Yinyuan is referring to his interlocutor when he asks such, the irrational obviousness of the question is intended to spur an awakening. An example runs: Who was it that during your early years first gave rise to the mind [striving for awakening]? Who was it that practiced and investigated [the

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meaning]? Who was it when you had not yet the power of discernment? What I wish is that when free and busy, moving or at rest, all the while walking, abiding, sitting and lying, without forsaking your original training, always investigate thoroughly [this question]. Hirakubo 1979 V: 2174

If Yinyuan’s disciples may stand as a measure of his teaching style, then it will prove instructive to look at Dokushō Shōen 独照性円 (1617–1694),9 one of Yinyuan’s few Japanese dharma heirs. In a teaching addressed to a female lay believer, Dokushō specifically takes up the topic of the nenbutsu kōan and expounds at length. He says: This mountain monk will teach you the nenbutsu kōan. Endeavor in this practice. Taking up the holy name of six characters of Namu Amida Butsu, meditate upon it when walking, also when residing, also when sitting, and also when lying. [Practice] this while taking your meals, your, tea, when in the depths of profound meditation, and when your mind is dispersed, meditate upon this [Amida’s name]. Meditate when coming, meditate when going, [while] walking, you will not see walking, abiding, you will not see abiding, [while] sitting, you will not see sitting, [while] lying, you will not see lying, when eating your meal you will not know the [taste of] the food, when drinking your tea, you will not know [the taste] of the tea, Your whole being will be nothing more than this single [recollection of] Amida Buddha. [If you want] to meditate on it with additional flair, try calling out the name with your voice, once, twice, or three times, and finally, meditate as to who it is exactly that is [reciting the name of Amitābha]. When you arrive at the contradiction of whose name it is, you will at last come to see that this original self is the Buddha. Hirakubo 1962: 193

Dokushō simply exhorts his audience to constantly recall the Buddha to the extent that one loses all sense of discrimination. Although Dokushō does not ask who it is that is recalling the Buddha, he reveals in the last line that when one comes to practice in this way, the practitioner will come to the realization that the meditator/intoner is none other than a Buddha, thereby expressing the concept of non-duality; namely, that from the awakened perspective, just as there is no distinction between ignorance and awakening, neither is there 9  Dokushō, in addition to Yinyuan, also studied under some of the most famous masters of the day such as Takuan Sōhō 沢庵宗彭 (1573–1645) and Isshi Bunshu 一絲文守 (1608–1646) (OBJ 274b–75a). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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a distinction between self and Buddha. As we have seen, Yinyuan and his disciples made ready use of the nianfo in their teaching activities, but it was not the preferred method of instruction. As follows below, we get a clearer picture of the place of nianfo practice in Yinyuan’s teachings. In looking at the Pure Land elements of Yinyuan’s practice, it is plainly revealed in his writings that the nianfo is only an expedient for those of lesser abilities who cannot measure up to the steep and demanding lifestyle of a Zen meditator. Yinyuan explains this thus: It has been ten years since this old monk has come East to this land [of Japan]. During that time I have practiced [and taught] only the Way of Rinzai. Unfortunately, concerned by the low ability of the people of the times, [I see that] they are not able to bear the burden [on their own]. [Therefore] the only recourse is to have them practice the nianfo. Truly this is akin to prescribing the correct medicine in accordance with the illness. Who can find fault with this? Hirakubo 1979 VII: 3319–20

This explicit admission is a clear indication that Yinyuan, as the most central and representative Ōbaku master, employs the nianfo solely in the capacity of an expedience, and that it is relegated to an inferior position compared with meditation. This emphasis on reaching out to those of lesser abilities by means of nianfo practice is consistent with the Ming emphasis on lay Buddhism, the Buddhist milieu in which Yinyuan and the other foundational masters came of age. (Baroni 2000: 112) So far we have seen how Yinyuan’s nianfo practice, which, steeped in the Buddhist culture of Ming China, appeared quite different from Buddhism as it was practiced in contemporaneous Japan. The accretions that had come to characterize Buddhism during the Ming period had given it a new appearance, one that did not accord with Japanese sensibilities. This was the cause of the Japanese perception that Ōbaku practice was a corruption of Zen. It should be noted, however, that the increasing vitriol that came to characterize evaluations of the Ōbaku school and its practice by members of the Rinzai and Sōtō schools were later additions by those that had no direct dealings with the Ōbaku school or even Ōbaku monks. The original assessment of the Ōbaku school according to Japanese eyes was by Kyorei Ryōkaku 虚櫺了廓 (1600– 1691),10 a Myōshin-ji monk who had direct contact through his observance of 10  Kyorei never changed allegiance to the Ōbaku school and remained a Rinzai monk in the Myōshin-ji line throughout his life. He merely made his way to Nagasaki in order to ascertain the way of practice of the newly-arrived Yinyuan (OBJ: 84a). Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

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Yinyuan and the Chinese assembly during the Winter Retreat of 1654–1655. In his overall sanguine appraisal, he concludes that although in a general sense Ōbaku practice may look like Pure Land on the outside, the inner is like Zen. (Tsuji 1970: 322–325) As the exposure and popularity of the Ōbaku monks increased, however, certain Japanese monks attempted to staunch the flow of the unchecked enthusiasm that followed Yinyuan and the Ōbaku monks in their early and startling success in Japan. The story does not end with Yinyuan, however, for as we shall see below, his disciples Muan and Jifei continued to carry the torch of Ōbaku practice, which illuminated a path for the spread of late Ming/early Qing Buddhist models throughout the Japanese religious landscape. 3

The Nianfo in Muan’s Writings

Muan Xingtao 木菴性瑫 (J. Mokuan Shōtō; 1611–1684) was a prominent disciple of Yinyuan during their time in China, and after Yinyuan’s arrival in Japan Muan would make the journey himself in order to be by his master’s side. While Yinyuan was the one directly responsible for the establishment of Manpuku-ji in Uji, and hence the start of the Ōbaku school in Japan, it was his disciple Muan who brought this work to fruition in terms of both the human and physical resources of the school. When Muan inherited the abbacy of Manpuku-ji from Yinyuan in 1664, he took control of a fledgling monastery that was still in the earliest stages of institutional development. Under his leadership the Ōbaku school centered on Manpuku-ji was transformed into a Zen establishment of national importance that had networked into Edo, the capital of the military government (bakufu), and the surrounding Kantō provinces. Reared in the Buddhism of the late Ming period, both Yinyuan and Muan were instrumental in bringing contemporaneous Chinese Buddhist models to 17th century Japan. One of the striking attributes of late Ming Buddhism was the permeation of Buddhist practice into the population at large. (Yü 1981: 64–65) The Ōbaku monks were also active in serving the lay community, most prominently by administering precepts as well as addressing sermons to householders. Within this two-tiered pedagogic framework of monastic and layperson, the nianfo was broadly applicable, capable of being adapted to the needs or abilities of either audience. While instructing someone in Japan who adheres to the practice of the nianfo, Muan says:

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On Teaching a Practitioner of the Nenbutsu In every thought-instant and movement of the mind, simply recite the Buddha’s name daily without ever forgetting. When you face the end of your life you will be born in the Pure Land. Hirakubo 1992 V: 2119

A word should be said here about the nature of nenbutsu practice in Japan. Since the time of Hōnen, the founder of the Japanese Pure Land school, the nenbutsu has been practiced as the means par excellence to gain birth in the Pure Land. Some of Hōnen’s followers believed that the greater the number of recitations brought with it a greater amount of merit. As we see in the Zen practice of the Ōbaku monks, however, the nenbutsu is merely a means to concentrate the mind in meditation, and not a salvific practice intended to achieve birth in Amida’s Pure Land. Buddhism, however, as a teaching that openly employs the concept of expedience as one of its prominent didactic methods, can thereby subsume what would superficially appear to be opposing or contrary approaches to practice. The above passage is addressed to a practitioner of the nianfo, thus suggesting an adherent of the Pure Land school, and Muan would appear to personalize his teaching to the tastes of his audience. Muan not only encourages him to engage in the practice of reciting the Buddha’s name, but to do so in a focused and intent manner, upon which he will be born in the Pure Land. Although the Pure Land may be used in a metaphorical sense within Zen practice and thought, rarely does one come across passages that directly refer to birth in the Pure Land. Even making allowances for expedient means, however, at first glance there is little in Muan’s words that may seem to represent a Zen-like element in his teaching. Upon closer reflection, however, one sees that Muan’s emphasis on the single-mindedness regarding the practice of reciting the Buddha’s name subtly suggests a Zen approach. Considering that Muan addressed this teaching to one who was not a Zen practitioner, someone who would most likely have little to no understanding of Zen matters, Muan’s exhortation to continually practice nothing but the nenbutsu would produce the focused and concentrated frame of mind that is not so different from the mental state that is sought after through the “Zen” practice of seated meditation. Looked at in this manner, Muan instructs his pupil within his own framework without making direct recourse to Zen concepts and practices. Recurrent themes in the Zen teachings of Muan that are explained through the medium of the nenbutsu are: a constant recitation that conduces for a Zen-like meditative trance; and the equivalence of the Pure Land with the

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mundane world. The following passages present these themes further adorned with Pure Land imagery: On Teaching the Good Nenbutsu Practitioner The practicing of Zen and the recitation of the Buddha’s name [should] never depart from your mind. Suddenly awakening to your own mind, stop seeking it outside [of yourself]. All of the myriad worlds are originally the Pure Land … Important to keep in mind for the practitioner of the nenbutsu is to unceasingly [focus] all your thoughts [on recitation of the Buddha]. While reciting the Buddha’s name, when you suddenly arrive at the point where you forget your recitations, lotus blossoms with flow forth and a [sweet] scent will suffuse your mouth. Hirakubo 1992 III: 1152

The above passage explicitly states that when engaging in Zen training one should continually practice the nenbutsu, and that by doing so one will awake to his own mind, thereupon realizing to stop searching on the outside for that which exists inwardly. Whether it is Amida’s Pure Land or awakening itself, there is nowhere to look for it except in one’s very mind. The practitioner perseveres in the intoning of the nenbutsu until the act of reciting is forgotten and one arrives at a state of absorption in which the gap between subject and object has been transcended. This is the state aspired to by Zen meditators, and in this passage Muan simply employs the nenbutsu as the means to attain this condition. Another example runs as follows: To Zen’na of the Gokurakuji who used the practice of the recitation of the Buddha’s name as the means [to discover] his original nature. Questioning Muan [about this] he produced [a] gatha in explanation. One should engage the mind in unceasing recitation of the nenbutsu. [When] reciting and arriving at the state of no-mind, do not seek it outside. Awakening to [the fact that] originally your nature is none other than Amida, you will come to clearly transcend the past and the present. Hirakubo 1992 VI: 2699

This passage echoes what has been included in every passage examined so far except one: the emphasis on the continual recitation of the Buddha’s name. Whereas a Pure Land devotee may engage in protracted periods of continual recitation for the attainment of merits believed to accrue through the greater

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number of recitations, Muan’s insistence on unceasing practice of intoning the Buddha’s name is wholly intended to lead the practitioner to the state of mind sought after through meditation. Muan does not posit the goal of birth in the Pure Land, but rather the state of Zen awakening. In looking at the above examples, it is apparent that the nenbutsu was a powerful and versatile pedagogic tool for Muan that allowed him to extend his teachings to a wider swath of the monastic and lay population than would have been possible for a contemporaneous Japanese Zen monk. He could effectively instruct a Pure Land monk just as easily as a lay practitioner of the nenbutsu by appealing to their religious preferences in his use of Pure Land terminology and concepts to explain traditional and fundamental Zen ideas and practices such as Buddha nature and meditative absorption. Jifei, the third of the foundational masters, also practiced and promoted the nenbutsu in a manner similar to Muan and Yinyuan. This will be investigated below. 4

The Nenbutsu in Jifei’s Teachings

Jifei Ruyi 即非如一 (J. Sokuhi Nyoitsu; 1616–1671) was another prominent disciple of Yinyuan’s from their time in China. He arrived in Japan in 1657 at Yinyuan’s request that he help with serving the needs of the community in Nagasaki. Although Jifei never officially ascended to the abbacy of Manpuku-ji, he nonetheless remains a crucial figure in the early Ōbaku school, foremost for his unique teaching style. Although Jifei spent the majority of his fourteen years in Japan unsuccessfully attempting to return to China, and although his collected works are half as long as Muan and a third as long as Yinyuan’s, since Jifei is foremost known for his dynamic teachings, we shall pay particular attention to his words on the nenbutsu. When discussing the nenbutsu in the teachings of the Ōbaku monks it is important to keep in mind that it is almost always simply a means of training intended to lead or assist the practitioner to the “higher” or “desired” state of meditative absorption, the Zen practice par excellence that is to lead to an intuitive understanding that then results in the attainment of the ultimate goal, awakening. In this regard, it fulfills the same function as a kōan, and indeed as we have seen, is often used as one. By reading the goroku or “collected sayings” of the Ōbaku monks and considering their words on the nenbutsu it becomes clear that although it is practiced within the context of a kōan, for the most part the nenbutsu appears predominantly as a concentrative device, used to induce or aid in the state of

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absorption. In addition, the Pure Land and Amida are presented metaphorically as a state of mental purity to which the meditator aspires in his practice. Jifei’s words below echo this theme: Inquiring about the Buddha Amida, [one asks] “As for that which we here call Amida, where does he presently reside? If you do not know the answer, this mountain monk will turn to the second teaching and expound at length. If in one thought you attain [the state of] no birth, then in each thought-moment Amida manifests. If in one speck of dust you are unmoved, then each speck of dust [is none other than] the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss. As it says in the sutra, “When the mind is purified, then the Buddha manifests in the world.” It also says, “If the mind is pure then the Buddha Land is also pure. One should understand that the countless worlds do not exist outside of the single mind (isshin 一心). Listen to and consider this verse. If within this [verse] you attain immeasurable life (muryōju 無量寿), then you have understood all the kōan of the patriarchs. Hirakubo 1993 I: 157

As a variation on the theme as to who it is that is reciting the name of Amida, Jifei’s interlocutor asks instead about Amida’s whereabouts. Jifei responds that like all things, Amida and his Pure Land are a state of mind—providing his correlative paradigm that posits the Buddha and the Pure Land manifesting only when the mind is pure, that everything, the “countless worlds” do not exist outside of the mind, and when this is understood, all the kōan in Zen (of the Patriarchs) are grasped. As we have seen before, while the Ōbaku monks do indeed take up Amida and the Pure Land in their teachings and writings, it is almost always used to describe a state of mind, or the nenbutsu is practiced as the means to achieve such a state. In the following passage from Jifei’s goroku we can see how he presents the recitation of the Buddha’s name as being compatible with Zen practice, and also as being equally efficacious as a means of realizing religious truth. Jifei states it thus: Question: A student has become fixated on the practice of the nenbutsu. I [humbly] desire that you offer a teaching on this. The master answered saying, “At all times and at all places focus all your energy on taking up the one phrase ‘Amida butsu’ and reflect on who it is that is reciting the Buddha’s name. In your practice you will arrive at the place where reliance [on the other] will cease and you will

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break away from this body as if suddenly awakening from a dream. At that instant, it is crucial that you understand that training is none other than the recitation (念), and the recitation is none other than training (san 参). Birth is thus no birth, and no birth is thus birth. Zen and the Pure Land teachings are two ways of achieving the same result. This is the true nenbutsu. This is its highest meaning. Endeavor [in this practice]. Hirakubo 1993 I: 441

Granted, there should be some context provided for this passage, since the question that is posed to Jifei concerns one who has become attached or fixated on the single practice of the nenbutsu, and since attachments are never desirable in the Buddhist worldview, the questioner requests a few words of advice from the master on this matter. In accordance with the student’s condition, Jifei does not advise that he change what he is doing or try to find a substitute or balance—rather, he encourages him to endeavor single-mindedly in his practice of the nenbutsu. Jifei reassures the student that by persisting in this way he will “suddenly awake from a dream” upon which he will realize that “Zen training is none other than the recitation, and the recitation is none other than Zen training.” When Jifei explicitly states that Zen and the Pure Land practices are two ways of achieving the same result, he heralds this as the “true nenbutsu” and its “highest meaning.” Jifei’s emphatic and unequivocal assertion of the equivalence of Zen and the nenbutsu is a clear indication of the high degree of assimilation that characterized these two practices within the Ming Buddhism propounded by the founding Ōbaku masters. It was this vision that was at odds with what the contemporaneous Japanese Zen world would inveterately see as the disparate practices of Zen and the nenbutsu. As will be shown below, it is far from the truth to assert that the practice of the nenbutsu is incompatible with or a corruption of Zen as it was formulated and practiced in China, and in fact, the appearance of the nenbutsu within cherished and established institutions is with clear precedent. An example where the nenbutsu appears in a Zen context can be seen in the monastic code, Chixiu baizhang qinggui 勅修百丈清規 (J. Chokushū hyakujō shingi).11 This will be further discussed below.

11  T  . 48 no. 2025. For Mujaku’s learned commentary on this work, see Yanagida Seizan ed., Chokushū hyakujōshingi sakei, Vol. 8 ( jō-ge) Zengaku sōsho 禅学叢書 (Kyoto: Chūbun shuppansha, 1979).

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The Chixiu Baizhang Qinggui

The Yuan-period monastic code Chixiu baizhang qinggui stands as one of the formative monastic codes in both China and Japan. In particular, it leveled a profound influence on Japanese codes within the Gozan system, which at one time stood at the apogee of the Japanese Zen world. Based on this alone, its stance on the nenbutsu warrants investigation since it can be assumed that the entire content of the text would have been intimately known and studied within the great Gozan monasteries. A particularly revealing section regarding the nenbutsu appears in a section entitled, “Recalling [the Buddha] When a Monk is Ill” Bing seng niansong 病僧念誦 (J. Byōsō nenju).12 The passage in part runs as follows: … If the monk is gravely ill, then they [the assembly] should make ten recitations of [the name of] Amituo Buddha. At the time of reciting, they should first clearly praise [Amituo] saying, “Amituo Buddha of a pure golden color has no equals in his beautiful aspects. The tuft of white hair between his eyes [ūrṇa-bhrū] form into the five peaks of Mt. Sumeru. His deep blue eyes are clear and bright like the sun [over] great oceans. The manifestation Buddhas [that reside] in his effulgence are without number. The assembly of manifestation Bodhisattvas are also without limit. The forty-eight vows save all sentient beings, and the nine-tired Pure Land causes all to ascend to the other shore. This morning, since such and such a monk is ill, it is necessary to eradicate the defilements of many lifetimes, and to atone for countless eons of transgression. He should only bring forth the greatest sincerity, and respectfully trusting in the pure assembly [of monks], he should praise the name of the Buddha and thereby wash away the deeply rooted sin. Respectfully trusting in the intonations of the honorable assembly, there should be one hundred recitations of namo Amitofo [praise to Amituo Buddha], and ten recitations of [the name of Amituo’s attendants] the bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and the assembly of bodhisattvas of the pure great oceans. In the Transfer of Merit ceremony, it follows, Praying in prostration, such and such a monk is ill. If his many ties [to this world] are not yet at an end, he should quickly endeavor to achieve relief [from this world]. Since the ties of life are difficult to escape from, 12  Baroni (2000: 111) also refers to this example.

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he should immediately [find] birth in the Pure Land. [Praise] the ten directions and the three worlds etc. When reciting the name of the Buddha, the assembly should focus and purify their minds, and should not be distracted by random thoughts. Chixiu baizhang qinggui T. 48: 1147b-19–29

The part of the Bing seng niansong that precedes the above section describes the practice for when a monk is ill (C. bingseng, J. byōsō 病僧). This is in contradistinction with the section translated that specifies the prescription for when a monk is gravely ill (C. bingzhong, J. yamai omoku shite 病重). When the monk is simply “ill” after receiving his friends and offering candles and incense, the assembly is to chant the name of Rocana 盧遮那 Buddha ten times. When the monk is “gravely ill,” however, a slight yet crucial difference appears in the routine. In accordance with the increased severity of the illness is the need for an increased salvific power, and thus it is the name of Amida that is chanted, and not ten times, but one hundred. Considering Amida’s role as the Buddha of the Western Pure Land, where he welcomes his departed devotees, the recitation of his name in this situation would fulfill the role of a death-bed ritual. This inclusion of Amida in this context is a clear indication of the belief in his heightened salvific power as well as the particular reverence that was accorded to him within the Chan school in Yuan China. 6 Conclusion The initial reaction of certain segments of the Japanese Rinzai school to the arrival of the Ming monks was one of guarded suspicion that transformed into active opposition. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that the Ōbaku monks openly represented latent trends in Japanese Zen, such as the nenbutsu and the newfound emphasis on precepts that was causing concern for the Rinzai leadership centered on the Myōshin-ji. By the Edo period, for the most part Japanese Zen had divested itself of overt Pure Land practices, which were associated with Tendai, Jōdo, and Jōdo shinshū. (Sharf 2002: 322) In actuality, as Sharf points out, the Ōbaku monks’ style of practice, replete with its Pure Land elements, was in many ways still closer to the Zen of the Song dynasty than what was practiced in contemporaneous Rinzai or Sōtō monasteries. (Sharf 2002: 322) It would seem that the initial estimation of Ōbaku practice as made by Kyorei Ryōkaku was indeed appropriate, for one can say with confidence that the practice of Yinyuan, Muan, and Jifei, the three central Ōbaku masters, may look like Pure Land on the outside, but on the inside is strictly Zen.

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Abbreviations OBJ

T.

ZGDJ

Ōbaku bunka jinmei jiten 黄檗文化人名辞典, Ōtsuki Mikio 大槻幹郎, Katō Shōshun 加藤正俊, and Hayashi Yukimitsu 林雪光, eds. Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1988. Taishō shinshō daizōkyō 大正新修大蔵経. Ed. Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡辺海旭. 85 vols. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō, 1922– 1923. Zengaku dai jiten 禅学大辞典. Ed. Komazawa Daigakunai Zengaku Daijiten Hensanjo 駒沢大学内禅学大辞典編纂所. 3 vols. Tokyo: Taishūkan Shoten, 1978.

References Baroni, Helen. 2000. Obaku Zen: The Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Berling, Judith A. 1980. The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en. New York: Columbia University Press. Furuta Shōkin 古田紹欽. 1960. Zen to Jōdo 禅と浄土 (Zen and Pure Land). Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Harada Hiromichi 原田弘道. 1983. “Chūsei zenshūto nenbutsu-zen” 中世禅宗と念 佛禅 (The Medieval Zen School and Nenbutsu Zen). Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū Vol. 31 (No. 2): 61–65. Hattori Eijun 服部英淳. 1971 “Zen-Jō yūgō shisōni okeru jōdo no kaimei” 禅浄融合思想 における浄土の解明. (Zen and Pure Land Syncretism in the Interpretation of Pure Land Buddhism). Bukkyōdaigaku kenkyū kiyō Vol. 50: 83–91. Hirakubo Akira 平久保章 ed. 1962. Ingen 隠元. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Hirakubo Akira 平久保章 ed. 1979. Shinsan kōtei Ingen zenshū 新纂校訂隠元全集 (Newly compiled and corrected collected works of Ingen). 12 vols. Tokyo: Kaimei Shoin. Hirakubo Akira 平久保章 ed. 1992. Shinsan kōtei Mokuan zenshū 新纂校訂木庵 全集 (Newly compiled and corrected collected works of Mokuan). 8 vols. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan. Hirakubo Akira 平久保章 ed. 1993. Shinsan kōtei Sokuhi zenshū 新纂校訂即非全集 (Newly compiled and corrected collected works of Sokuhi). 4 vols. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan. Kōchi Eigaku 光地英学. 1972. “Chūgoku ni okeru Zen-Jōkankei” 中国における禅浄関 係 (The relationship between Zen and Pure Land in China). Komazawa daigaku bukkyō gakubu kenkyū kiyō 駒沢大学仏教学部研究紀要 Vol. 30 (March): 1–6.

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Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. 1958–1963. Bukkyō daijiten 佛教大辞典. 10 vols. Tokyo: Sekai Seiten Kankō Kyōkai. Mohr, Michel. 1994. “Zen Buddhism during the Tokugawa Period: The Challenge to Go Beyond Sectarian Consciousness.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 21 (No. 4): 341–372. Mohr, Michel. 2000. “Emerging from Nonduality: Kōan Practice in the Rinzai Tradition since Hakuin.” In: Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, eds., The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 244–279. Morimoto Sangai 森本三鎧. 1960. “Ōbaku no nenbutsu-zen” 黄檗の念佛禅 (The Nenbutsu Zen of the Ōbaku [school]). Zen bunka No. 18: 76–78. Nakamura Hajime 中村元. 1999. Bukkyōgo daijiten 佛教語大辞典. (1 vol.) Tokyo: Tōkyō Shoseki. (First Edition 1981). Nishio Kenryū 西尾賢隆. 1985. “Genchōni okeru Chūhō Myōhon to sono dōzoku” 元 朝における中峰明本とその道俗 (The Lay and Monastic of Zhongfeng Mingben in Yuan China). Zengaku kenkyū 禅学研究 No. 64: 31–56. Onda Akira 恩田章. 1974. “Zen to nenbutsu no shinrigakuteki hikaku kōsatsu” 禅と念 佛の心理学的比較考察 (A psychological comparison between Zen and nenbutsu). Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū Vol. 23/1 (No. 2): 1–7. Satō Shōkō 佐藤秀孝. 1981. “Gen no Chūhō Myōhon ni tsuite” 元の中峰明本について (Zhongfeng Mingben—A Yuan Dynasty Monk). Shūgaku kenkyū 宗学研究 No. 23 (March): 231–236. Sharf, Robert H. 2002. “On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an/Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China.” T’oung Pao Vol. 88: 284–331. Shih Heng-ching. 1987. “Yung-ming’s Syncretism of Pure Land and Ch’an.” The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Vol. 10 (No. 1): 117–134. Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro. 1927. “Zen and Jōdo, Two Types of Buddhist Experience.” The Eastern Buddhist Vol. 4 (No. 2): 89–121. Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助. 1970. Nihon bukkyōshi: Kinseihen 日本仏教史近世篇の三 (History of Japanese Buddhism: The Medieval and Early Modern Period) Vol. 3. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, (First Edition 1954). Welch, Holmes. 1967. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900–1950. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Yampolsky, Philip. 1971. The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings. New York: Columbia University Press. Yifa. 1996. The Rules of Purity for the Chan Monastery: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chuanyuan qinggui. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University. Yü, Chün-fang. 1981. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhang Shengyan 張聖厳. 1975. Chūgoku bukkyō no kenkyū: toku ni Chigyoku o chūshin to shite 中国仏教の研究:特に智旭を中心として (Research on Chinese Buddhism, particularly focusing on Chigyoku) Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin. Galen Amstutz - 978-90-04-40151-8 Downloaded from Brill.com11/21/2020 02:54:32PM via University of Cambridge

Extreme Asceticism, Medicine and Pure Land Faith in the Life of Shuichi Munō (1683–1719) Paul Groner I* first became interested in Shuichi Munō 守一無能 (1683–1719) while doing research on Ryōō Dōkaku 了翁道覺 (1630–1707), an Ōbaku 黄檗 monk who founded Japan’s first public library.1 Ryōō engaged in ascetic practices for most of his life, prostrating himself numerous times until his knees were bloody, burning the same finger several times, and reducing the amount of food he ate even late in life. One of the most dramatic episodes in Ryōō’s life occurred when he castrated himself as part of his efforts to master his sexual desires. As I sought to understand this extreme act, I looked for other examples of autocastration. One of the very few I found was Munō. As I investigated Munō’s career, I became interested in the physical manner in which he characterized his life and practice, constantly observing his health and the toll that asceticism took on it. Much of Buddhism focuses on using meditation to alter one’s mind, but the efficacy of practices that focus on the mind are difficult to observe in an objective manner. The situation is perhaps more difficult when the object is to have a moment of complete faith, entrusting oneself to the Buddha and hoping for post-mortem salvation. As a result, Pure Land advocates sometimes looked for physical evidence for birth in the Pure Land: seeing purple clouds, hearing music overhead, or observing the manner of death. These are repeatedly mentioned in the popular genre, Biographies of Those Reborn (in the Pure Land) (Ōjō-den 往生傳). These were compiled in Japan over a period of almost one-thousand years, beginning with the Nihon ōjō gokuraku-ki 日本 往生極樂記, compiled in 984 up to the Sennen ōjō-den 専念往生傳, compiled in 1863; their popularity waned after the Kamakura period, but then revived during the Tokugawa period. Munō turns his gaze upon himself and closely observes how his physical existence reflects his practice. In addition, he teaches his followers that they can observe the results of practice in their own efforts to deal with illness. The S ource: Groner, Paul, “Extreme Asceticism, Medicine and Pure Land Faith in the Life of Shuichi Munō, 1683–1719,” Japanese Religions 37(1–2) (2012): 39–62. * University of Virginia. 1  See Groner (2007 and 2009).

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fascination with the physical is not unusual in Buddhism. For examples, note such issues as the manner in which breathing changes during meditation, the debates over whether an enlightened male practitioner might experience desires that are not consciously under his control such as nocturnal emissions, or the emphasis on discovering relics after an advanced practitioner dies. Some early Mahāyāna practitioners engaged in austerities. (Nattier 2003) Munō’s affiliation with the Japanese Pure Land School (Jōdo-shū 淨土宗) seems odd in this regard because Jōdo-shū often focuses on the importance of faith and receiving Amitābha’s help more than on an individual’s overcoming the physical body’s suffering through intense practice. Thus, Munō’s life is so focused on the physical and asceticism that it seems unusual in Japanese Pure Land Buddhist history. One of the early sources of practice used in China that would eventually contribute to Pure Land was the intense meditation retreat mentioned in the Pratyutpanna-sūtra (T no. 418), which was later adapted by the Tiantai master Zhiyi 智顗 as the ninety-day constantly-walking samādhi. This involved visualizations of the Buddha; however the degree of physical pain and suffering that Munō underwent when he engaged in prolonged recitations was never stressed by Zhiyi. Munō never practiced the 90-day retreat, but the emphasis on maintaining a concentrated mind clearly influenced him, as did the emphasis on visualization. Munō never mentions a realization of emptiness, the goal of the 90-day retreat. Instead, the Pure Land is seen as a paradisiacal place for birth, an emphasis not found in the Pratyutpanna-samādhi sūtra or Zhiyi’s constantly-walking samādhi. In the following pages, I describe Munō’s biography and practices, focusing on three areas: his asceticism, proselytizing and the use of the nenbutsu in curing illness, and the circumstances of his death. Both Munō and his biographer constantly stressed his fascination with how his intense austerities were physically affecting him. Munō was part of a world-renouncing (shasei 捨世) movement among Jōdo-shū monks that began in the warring states period and extended through the Tokugawa period, with the earliest figure being Shōnen 称念 (1513–1554).2 Many of these looked up to Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) as a model, emphasizing the ideal of a man who had withdrawn from the Tendai establishment on Mount Hiei and retreated to Kurodani 黒谷, a deep valley on Mount Hiei 比叡 that was separate from the Tendai 天台 power center at Enryakuji 延暦寺, located on a different area of Mount Hiei. Often these world-renouncing Pure Land monks were reacting against an “establishment” form of Buddhism that seemed to emphasize advancement in the world and the acquisition of wealth 2  For a short discussion of these monks, see Satō Takanori (1995: 60–61).

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over spirituality.3 Some of them focused on Hōnen as a monk who still meditated and observed the precepts even as he preached a faith-based practice that did not require his followers to either observe the precepts or meditate. In doing so, these ascetic practitioners may have been attempting to obtain one of the highest forms ( jōbon 上品) of birth in the Pure Land, a categorization based on the Contemplation sūtra (Kanmuryōju-kyō 観無量壽經).4 In addition, many of these monks had no fixed home and traveled from site to site, a practice found in Munō and his associates. Much of their activity was centered in the Kantō region. (Hasegawa 1980: 38–43) Although Munō clearly came from this tradition, his activities centered on the Tōhoku region, particularly on temples associated with Nagoe 名越 tradition of Jōdo-shū, which was active in Tōhoku. (Satō 1995: 62–63) Munō was particularly noted for his ascetic tendencies and proselytization among those people at the bottom of society; his efforts far exceeded most of the other members of Pure Land proselytizers in intensity. Munō’s biography is found in the Record by Hōjū 寶洲5 (d. 1738) and the Zoku Nihon kōsō-den 續日本高僧傳 (Continuation of biographies of Japanese eminent monks). (DNBZ 64: 80c–81a) A set of letters and excerpts from Munō’s dharma-talks has recently been published by Hasegawa Masatoshi 長谷川 匡俊, the scholar who has conducted the most thorough research on Munō. (Hasegawa 2003: 206–223) Although issues of authenticity have not all been resolved, these sources generally agree in their emphasis on Munō’s asceticism and proselytizing. In addition, I have utilized sections of a compilation of reports of practice and its healing effects by Munō’s disciples and Munō himself, entitled Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki 近代奥州念仏験記 (A record of recent proofs of the nenbutsu in Tōhoku); although this has not yet published in its entirety, it has been extensively quoted in Hasegawa Masatoshi’s studies of Munō. The accounts were collected from people affected by Munō and totaled well over 1200. These short accounts are remarkable in their detail, including the names, places of residence, ages, afflictions, prescribed numbers of nenbutsu, notes on how they were performed, and testimonies about the efficacy of the practices. The similarity to accounts by patients and doctors is clear. 3  Munō makes a distinction between worldly and world-renouncing monks in the Munō oshō gyōgō-ki 無能和尚行業記 (Record of the practices of the priest Munō, hereafter cited as Record) (JZ 18: 154b–156a). 4  Although her interpretation is controversial, Fusae C. Kanda (2004) has argued for the importance of the nine types of birth in interpreting Hōnen’s observance of the precepts and meditation. 5  Hōju was a scholar-monk who assiduously observed the precepts and spread Pure Land teachings. He was the author of a number of works on these topics (Kaneko 1975: 194–196).

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Munō actively collected these testimonials; they were eventually published by Gizan. (Hasegawa 2003: 16–18) One fascicle of these records, the Kanke dōjō kitoku-shū 勸化道場奇特集 (Record of miracles at the place of proselytization and practice), compiled by Munō’s disciple Funō 不能, has been published by Hasegawa (2003: 18–20, 224–238). In addition, Engu 厭求6 collected documents that were not included in the Record in the Munō oshō gyōgō yuiji 無能 和尚行業遺事 (Bequeathed record concerning Munō’s activities).7 The people referred to above as “disciples” were actually called “those who aspired to the way” (dōshin-ja 道心者); Munō took no disciples in the sense that he served as preceptor at their ordinations. However, their devotion to him and their adoption of his practices make the term “disciple” appropriate. 1

Early Life and Austerities

Munō was from the Yabuki 矢吹 family from Ishikawa County in Ōshū (modern Fukushima prefecture). He is described as having a compassionate and respectful nature. Because his father had too many sons, he offered to have Munō adopted into the Ōki 大木 family, but Munō objected because he had wanted to become a monk from an early age. Munō paid obeisance to images of the Buddha and read scriptures. At the age of seventeen, he became a novice under Ryōkaku 良覚 of Daian-ji 大安寺8 in the city of Koori 桑折, Date 伊 達 county (Fukushima prefecture). After his initiation, Munō began reading Pure Land texts and for the next few years studied these texts assiduously; he engaged in formal debates (rongi 論義) and discussions with other monks. When he was eighteen, he showed the first signs of his predilection for austerities, sequestering himself at the Mañjuśrī Hall at Kameoka 亀岡 to request the 6  Engu (n.d.) is also known as Gon’yo 嚴譽 and should be distinguished from the Pure Land Saint (shōnin 上人) Engu, also known as Kōyo 廣譽 (1634–1715). For a brief description of Gon’yo, see Hasegawa (2003: 147–148). 7  This text was composed in 1740, twenty-one years after Munō’s death, and published seventeen years after the death of Munō’s disciple Funō in 1778. It is found in the Shiryō hensanjo at Tokyo University as BA4246484X. I was able to obtain a copy with the help of Kikuchi Hiroki 菊池大樹, associate professor at the Shiryō hensanjo, but the document was written in a cursive style that made it difficult to read. My use of it has depended on selections commented on by Hasegawa. 8  Daian-ji, located in Koori 桑折 in Fukushima prefecture, was founded between 1492 and 1500 by Ryōsan Ryakugan 良珊歴巖. Because it was located in the bakufu’s agricultural lands, it was the site of a number of the graves of the rural intendants (daikan 代官) who administered the lands. It would have been a prominent local temple at the time Munō went there, but burned in 1768.

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deity’s help in obtaining the wisdom to see things as they really are (nyojitsuchi 如実智) and perfecting the two types of benefit (niri 二利, for oneself and for others). He went to a number of temples; particularly noteworthy was his visit to San’en-zan 三縁山 (Zōjō-ji 増上寺), the site of the Tokugawa family temple in Tokyo and an important Jōdo-shū temple and seminary (danrin 檀林) during the Tokugawa period. When he was nineteen, he went to Narita-san 成田山 to see the Fudō Myōō 不動明王, where he fasted for seven days. He was told by Shingon practitioners there that he must practice single-mindedly and be pure and celibate if he wished to attain the inexplicable meditations, realms, powers and eloquence. The attitudes expressed by the Shingon monks at Narita-san came to characterize his later practice of austerities more than the dictates of the Jōdo-shū, but the content of his teachings to the masses was clearly Jōdo-shū. In 1705, at age twenty-three, he was ordained by Ryōtsū 良通 of Senshō-ji 専称寺 in the Nagoe 名越 lineage of the Jōdo-shū from whom he received lineages for both the precepts and doctrine.9 During the subsequent years, he would narrow his practices: first to practices that only were directed to birth in the Pure Land. He used divination at the Saijō sanbō-ji 最上三寶寺 in Dewa to determine his practices by preparing several options, usually a combination of recitations of Pure Land scriptures and praises combined with the recitation of the nenbutsu. However, one of the options was the recitation of the nenbutsu 60,000 times each day; this was the option upon which he kept drawing. He immediately abandoned the “auxiliary practices” ( jogō 助業, namely: chanting scripture, worshipping, praising, and making offerings) of the Pure Land tradition.10 The Nagoe lineage was one of the six lineages that began under the third patriarch of the Jōdo School, Ryōchū 良忠 (1199–1287). It was founded by Ryōchū’s disciple Sonkan 尊観 (1239–1316), who emphasized the teaching that a single recitation of the nenbutsu could insure salvation (ichinen gōjō 一念業成). How and whether this doctrinal position related to Munō’s asceticism is not clear. A debate between the Nagoe lineage and the Shirahata 白幡 lineage over who was the true successor to Ryōchū began late in Ryōchū’s life. The Nagoe lineage was energized by the debate and came to dominate the Tōhoku region’s Pure Land temples during the fifteenth century. Senshō-ji was the headquarters (sō-honzan 総本山) of the Nagoe lineage. This temple burned down in 1668,

9  Z  oku Nihon kōsō-den (DNBZ 64: 80c–81a). 10  R  ecord (JZ 18: 116b–117a).

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but was rebuilt beginning in 1671.11 Thus at the time Munō went there it would have been recently restored. In 1704, he went before the Buddha at Senshō-ji and vowed to end his sexual desires and to recite the nenbutsu 10,000 times a day. In the eighth month, he again fasted for seven days while he recited the nenbutsu both day and night. In 1708, he vowed that he would constantly sit and not lie down and increased the recitations to 30,000 times each day. In 1709, he withdrew from the world to live alone in a rough straw hut in Kawamata 川俣 (Fukushima prefecture), began reciting the nenbutsu 60,000 times each day and did not take off his robes day or night except to bathe or go to the toilet, and never put down his rosary except when eating or going to the toilet; when he wrote down the nenbutsu or those rare times when he consulted a text, he still held the rosary in one hand. He did not remove his footwear except when necessary.12 Because his teacher had stressed how people were drawn by the world, Munō made light of his physical needs and desires so that he could focus completely on the nenbutsu. Whenever Munō rested, he would sit by the western window and gaze into the distance. He reflected on whether the three states of mind (sanjin 三心) required for birth in the Pure Land were complete: 1) a sincere mind, (2) a deep mind (i.e. deep faith), and (3) a mind that directs all merits to one’s own birth in the Pure Land. In 1711, beginning with the fifteenth day of the tenth month, he was able to recite the nenbutsu 100,000 times each day for a week. By 1713, his practice averaged 60,000 recitations each day with each of the six characters in the nenbutsu clearly pronounced without omissions or slurring. The difficulty of this practice can be appreciated when the number of seconds in a day is calculated: 86,400. Thus Munō had to be focused if he were to repeat the nenbutsu clearly at a rapid rate. He slept only a little during the fourth watch (1–3 am), and lived on rice gruel and tea. When he shaved his head or washed, he would continue to count recitations of the nenbutsu on his fingers because he could not hold the rosary at such times. He never spoke of worldly issues or dealt with trivial worldly affairs. In addition, he wore paper robes (kamiko 紙衣). These were often made from the remnants of flax glued together with konnyaku paste, soaked in persimmon juice to preserve them and then softened by kneading. Often they were 11  For a useful summary of the Nagoe lineage’s history and doctrinal stance, see Tamayama Jōgen (1975: 708–730). The move of the lineage from northern Kantō to Tōhoku is described in Ōhashi Shunnō (1978: 155–158). A detailed history of Senshōji is found in Satō (1995). 12   J Z 18:117b; reading 黈 as 鞋.

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produced in the Tōhoku region and were favored by Risshū monks and others. The thickness of the paper helped ward off cold. Although paper robes were emblematic of poverty at first, eventually they became a luxury good because they could not be washed and would have to be thrown out when they became dirty. (Shimonaka 1993 Vol. 2: 382a–b) However, the Record records a dream in which a monk appeared and told Munō that the fragility of paper robes was like that of the body and would help him practice assiduously. (JZ 18: 159a) Munō’s biography includes a list of ten virtues that wearing such robes entailed: 1) they are easy to obtain and do not cause trouble; 2) one need not fear that they will be stolen; 3) they do not give rise to fame or riches; 4) they guard one from the cold and block the wind; 5) one need not go to the trouble of washing them; 6) they are not infested with lice; 7) they do not lead to clinging; 8) they naturally lend themselves to a quiet daily life; 9) others do not envy them; 10) they encourage practice.13 As Munō’s practice advanced, he was able to recite the nenbutsu from 84,000–100,000 times each day. According to the Continuation of the Biographies of Japanese Eminent Monks, he recited the nenbutsu innumerable times during his life.14 2

Auto-Castration

One of the most dramatic episodes in Munō’s life was his self-castration. He had long been bothered by his inability to suppress his sexual desires. His decision to castrate himself is described in the Record: When the teacher was thirty-one years old, on the seventeenth day of the fourth month of 1713, when he was living at Baishō-ji 梅松寺 in Kojima in Date-gun, he took the razor for shaving hair and cut off his genitals (inkon 婬根). There was no surgeon in Date, but within five days, it had been treated, and within thirty days, the wound had mostly healed. When someone asked our teacher about his intention when he castrated himself, he replied, “During the Tang dynasty, there was a monk at Qinglong-si 青龍寺 named Shi Guangyi 釋光儀, who cut off his genitals to avoid

13  Zoku Nihon kōsō-den (DNBZ 64: 80c); Munō oshō gyōgō-ki (JZ 18: 159). 14  The text gives the number of 106,930,000, reflecting the records that practitioners kept of recitations. The value of the number oku 億 varies (Nakamura 2001: 160b), but a note in the text specifies that in this case, oku is 10,000 multiplied by 10,000 (DNBZ 64: 81a).

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violating the dharma and causing himself obstacles and difficulties.15 He was able to carry out his intentions and benefit greatly. This is recorded in the biographies of monks. When I saw this, I regarded it favorably and thought that the wise and fools of the past and present have often made mistakes as they trod the dangerous paths of human desires. Moreover, they received criticism as they proselytized. So, for the sake of my own practice and for proselytizing, I thought for years of castrating myself to strengthen my practice as a monk, but I was afraid I would be thought of as a defective human being (haijin 廃人) and that this would interfere with my practice. As a result, I put off making my decision. I then read the work of Myōe 明恵 of Toganoo 栂尾, who disregarded his own life and body for the Buddha-dharma and so cut off his right ear. When I saw this in his biography, my mind was decisive and firm so that I carried out my intention. Afterwards there was no illness or suffering.16 Munō’s biographer comments that anyone contemplating such an act should consult the various sources that prohibit self-castration, including Yijing’s travel diary,17 the Sūtra of forty-two sections,18 and the Faju piyu-jing 法句譬 喩經.19 The biographer then concludes that if a person’s intention is to advance in his practice, castration would be permissible, but that if it were done only to control sexual desire, it was not. Although this interpretation is not found in the Buddhist sources mentioned by Munō’s biographer, it suggests a way to validate Munō’s actions. (JZ 18: 119) By that time, Munō’s practice also involved a vow never to lie down. 15  Ming gaoseng-zhuan (T 50: 873a–c); Faure (1998: 35). 16   J Z 18: 118–19. The incident is briefly mentioned in the biography in the Zoku Nihon kōsō-den as “he cut off his own penis (shōshi 生支) and the wound quickly healed” (DNBZ 64: 80c). 17  In a short comment following his criticism of monastic suicides, Yijing criticizes those who castrate themselves, saying that such a practice appears nowhere in vinaya texts (T 54: 231b; Miyabayashi and Katō 2004: 400). 18  The Buddha tells a monk who is about to castrate himself, “The Buddha said to him, you want to cut off your male organ. It would be better to cut off your false-thinking mind. Your mind is like a supervisor: if the supervisor stops, the people working under him will also stop” (T 17: 723b; transl. by Hsuan Hua, accessed from http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/ Buddhism/BTTStexts/S42--Contents.htm). 19  In the Faju piyu-jing, a monk is about to use an axe to cut off his genitals because he cannot control his desires when the Buddha stops him, saying that he is ignorant and does not understand the essentials of the way. If he wishes to seek the path, he must first cut off ignorance and then control the mind. The mind is the origin of good and evil (T 4: 577b).

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That same year, Munō began to reflect on whether he should adhere to the precepts as he recited the nenbutsu or whether he should just be an “ordinary monk” (bonsō 凡僧) and recite the nenbutsu. A monk appeared in a dream and urged him not to abandon his aspiration, but later he came to feel that perhaps rigid adherence to the precepts might interfere with single-minded devotion to Amida’s vow. Such devotion would naturally take care of any evil tendencies. As a result, later that year Munō composed seventy-two vows. Rather than taking the form of precepts, which might involve a focus on administration and punishment, the vows focus on single-minded devotion to nenbutsu practice. Many of them were drawn from earlier nenbutsu practitioners. An extensive selection of them is translated below with numbering by the author.20 1. Reflect on our indebtedness to the nenbutsu, but do not be boastful about the primordial vows. 2. Be compassionate and do not neglect teaching and proselytizing. 3. Make your aspiration to attain the path strong and do not be irresponsible about practice. 4. Do not neglect your practice just because you are not ill. 5. Do not let go of the rosary unless you have to carry out your work (samu 作務). 6. Be completely dedicated to the nenbutsu and do not be drawn away by other activities. 7. Dedicate your merits to the Pure Land; do not seek other rewards. 8. Whether you are walking, standing, sitting or lying down, do not turn your back to the west. 9. When spitting or going to the toilet, do not face west. 10. When facing an image of the Buddha, do not neglect propriety. 11. Do not disrespect the various sacred teachings. 12. Other than bathing or using the toilet, do not take off your robes. 13. Do not stop chanting the Buddha’s [name] except when sleeping or eating. 14. Strive to spread the Dharma and do not indulge in the various forms of entertainment. 15. Abide in a mind that treats all equally and do not argue about who is closer and more removed. 16. Be considerate of others and do not seek your own pleasure. 20  This list is based on Hasegawa (2003: 27–28) who has excerpted the rules that he considered to be central to Munō’s practice. A fuller list that includes the rules following this note is found in JZ 18: 161b–163b.

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17. If one sees an unwholesome action, do not disparage the person who performed it. 18. Abide in a compassionate mind and do not hate evil people (akunin 惡人). 19. Discern the Buddha-nature within others and do not make light of those of low birth. 20. Be satisfied with a little and do not covet riches. 21. Be wary of donations from lay believers (shinze 信施); do not become infatuated with beautiful things. 22. Be content with being poor and of low status; do not desire high office or riches. 23. Cut off any thought of fame or profit; do not be flattered by common opinions. 24. Be humble and do not desire respect. 25. Be frugal and do not seek offerings. 26. Be sincerely appreciative and not jealous of the accomplishments of others. 27. Desire one’s own practice and do not belittle that of others. 28. Always seek quietude and do not desire to mix with others. 29. Even though one is correct, do not engage in arguments. 30. Do not insist you are right and others are wrong. 31. When one sees one’s fellow practitioners do wrong, do not neglect [your obligation to] to teach and remonstrate with them. 32. Although someone may have an obligation to you, do not think of the rewards [for yourself]. 33. Receive the favors of others, but never forget your obligations. 34. Do not come in contact with sensuous pleasures; think of them as if they were poisonous snakes. 35. Do not crave gold or jewels; think of them as sweet poisons. 36. Entrust yourself to whatever comes and do not grieve over worldly events. 37. Think of the [world as a] burning house and do not be attached to the six sense objects. 38. Protect the Buddha-dharma and do not begrudge one’s life. 39. Think of death and think of the Buddha throughout one’s life. Besides these, several other vows, not included in Hasegawa’s list deserve mention. 1. Always encourage sentient beings to think about the three types of actions [physical, verbal and mental]; whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down, they should focus on Amida.

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2.

At all times, remember hell and set forth the dominant intention to be born [in the Pure Land]. 3. Vow not to create karma that would result in birth in the three unfortunate realms [hell, hungry ghosts, animals]; the pleasures of existence in the realms of gods or humans should enter one’s mind. 4. When facing Buddhist images, do not violate the propriety used in the [other non-Pure Land] teachings. 5. When one sees someone do something that is not good, do not give up on that person. 6. When one hears someone saying something that is not true, do not tell others. 7. Do not discuss the strong and weak points of being monastic or lay. 8. Do not show off one’s merits. 9. Maintain a compassionate attitude; do not hate bad friends. 10. Always chant the Buddha’s name and do not speak about pointless issues. (JZ 18: 161b–63b) The rules focus on creating a single-minded devotion to nenbutsu practice, with the practitioner’s mental attitude stressed more than verbal or physical actions. The rules also indicate that one should strive to be a virtuous person in accord with the Dharma and should strive to create a good, just society. Note that no provision for punishments is specified if any of these were violated. The threat of losing salvation if one were to lose one’s concentrated mind sufficed as motivation. 3

Proselytizing and Medicine

As part of his practice in the Tōhoku area, Munō stressed the physical benefits that could be gained from the practice of the nenbutsu. Although the ultimate goal of nenbutsu practice remained birth in the Pure Land, the detail in which he recorded the physical benefits of practice indicates that for many people, the cure of physical ailments was probably equally, if not more important than post-mortem salvation. Proselytization took place on both a personal basis in which Munō visited individuals and in small groups of people to whom Munō spoke; an example is found below in which Munō spontaneously visited a small group of lepers. At other times, he was invited to give sermons and is said to have spoken to as many as 15,000 people. Even allowing for the possibility of exaggeration, these were clearly large crowds. The topic of these sermons is often not stated, but was probably the Pure Land scriptures. In one case, Munō lectured on Hōnen’s

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Senchaku-shū 選択集,21 a text that was favored by monks of the Nagoe lineage. A number of people at the meetings came forward to receive a daily assignment (nikka 日課) of a specific number of recitations of the nenbutsu. Munō assiduously advised them about the proper recitation of the Buddha’s name, how to hold the rosary, and other issues of deportment. When their practice did not bring about the desired result, he might advise them about pronunciation, holding the rosary, correcting their posture or increasing the number of daily repetitions. At times, the practice of the nenbutsu was accompanied by refraining from eating meat or drinking alcohol. Near the end of Munō’s life, the Jōdo-shū scholar-monk Gizan 義山 (1648– 1717) decided to ask some of those who had agreed to recite the nenbutsu daily for personal accounts. These included their vows to recite, either written down by the person him or herself or by someone else, as well as accounts of the benefits of their practice; other passages were based on testimony from Munō. Altogether 1260 accounts were collected in twenty-three volumes.22 Of these, 166 were included in the three-fascicle Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki. A consideration of what terms such as “illness” and “cure” might have entailed for Munō helps set the background for his activities. Several months before his death at age 36, Munō was taken to a hot spring in Shinobu 信夫 county (modern Fukushima-city). The water was praised for its health-giving effects, which were said to be particularly effective for Munō’s health problems. Munō, however, was not interested in the curative properties of the spring, arguing that his health problems were terminal, that a release from the suffering of the round of birth and death to the Pure Land of bliss had long been his goal. Although he was grateful that people came to call on him, concern for his health and efforts to prolong his life threatened to lure him away from his long cherished goal of birth in the Pure Land. (JZ 18: 151a–52a) Such accounts call the definition of illness into question. For Munō clinging to the evanescent pleasures of this life was illness because it obscured a higher goal. Although for most people, curing a physical or psychological illness was the goal, this was not always the case. In one episode, a practitioner conversant with medicine concludes of a patient, “This illness cannot be cured in this life … You can only pray for the next life.” After the patient received a set number of recitations from Munō, Munō appeared in the patient’s dream and said, “You have thought (nen 念) of me for a number of years, you will be reborn in the eastern

21  A number of passages from the Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki describing these meetings are quoted in Chimoto Hideji (1999: 179–180). 22   J Z 18:127b–28a; Chimoto (1999: 178).

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land of the Medicine Buddha.”23 The passage is important because it demonstrates that for some of his followers, birth in a Buddha-land was the cure. The inclusion of birth in a land other than Amida’s western paradise demonstrates an openness to other deities, bodhisattvas and Buddhas. In fact, several Buddhist figures such as Jizō are mentioned in Munō’s biography. Finally, the mention of Munō’s appearance in his follower’s dream in the same manner that Amida and others appeared in Munō’s own dreams indicates the stature that Munō had attained for his followers. Many of the accounts in the Kanke dōjō kitoku-shū, compiled by Munō’s disciple Funō, describe visions of Munō or of Amida or Kannon emanating from Munō’s body. At the same time, Munō realized that most people would not share his views. How could he preach that this life was not to be valued to someone who had spent his life clinging to family, wealth, and other goods? Such a direct approach would only lead the listener to become angry and filled with hate. Instead, those who would preach or attend the dying must listen to a person’s concerns and try to respond to them. (JZ 18: 149b–150b) Munō’s preaching to people about the cure of illnesses must be seen in this light. Four varieties of ailments are major themes in the records of Munō’s proselytizing: blindness, bad dreams, deafness, and leprosy.24 In addition, a few entries concern female problems of excessive bleeding and difficult births; in the cases of difficult births, the mother, but not the child sometimes survived, indicating that this was not simply a record of miracles, but reflected the difficult medical realities that people faced. These cases are recorded in the Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki. This text is different from the genre Ōjō-den (Biographies of those born in the Pure Land) because the this-worldly benefits of the nenbutsu are stressed rather than the spiritual benefits of post-mortem salvation. People with leprosy or difficulties seeing and hearing were considered to be suffering from karmic recompense. (Groemer 2001: 350) The recitation of the nenbutsu had long been considered as an antidote to health problems because it produced large amounts of merit; the popularity of Munō’s treatments is not surprising. Accounts of the restoration of sight or hearing are difficult to interpret, but one of the issues that has not been adequately investigated concerns how blindness and deafness are defined. At what point does poor eyesight become blindness or bad hearing become deafness? For the partially blind person, could the way in which he or she was treated by family and friends be important? Could a better diet, particularly with certain vitamins be 23  Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki, quoted in Chimoto (1999: 181). 24  Hasegawa (2003: 96); see pp. 97–99 for a chart listing the ages, genders, illnesses, practices and outcomes of the cases in the Kindai Ōshū nenbutsu genki.

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a factor?25 In several of the stories about blindness, refraining from drinking alcohol is mentioned. Could alcohol poisoning account for a change in seeing? In the case of deafness, then could care of the ears (perhaps removing wax so as to improve hearing the nenbutsu as part of the preparation for practice) or focusing on hearing the nenbutsu more than on hearing ordinary conversations be a factor? While Munō traveled, he established huts or hermitages called Sokuni-an 塞耳菴, literally huts for stopping up the ears. The name of these huts referred to a sage who had refused to discuss worldly affairs, reciting the nenbutsu as though his ears were stopped up.26 Not enough information is found in the short accounts of the benefits of reciting the nenbutsu to definitely resolve these issues, but they should be considered. In the case of blindness, the description of the ailment and its cure are closely related to practice of the nenbutsu. The following passage, typical of many of the accounts, is a record by the reporter, whose remarks are in parentheses (added by the author) that includes first-person passages of the patient. (So-and-so’s eyes began hurting the eighth month of last year and he went blind.) ‘Although various treatments were tried, they had no effect. It was difficult to behave in accord with my family’s needs. On the seventeenth day of that month, three friends urged me to go to Shōmyō-ji 称 名寺, where I listened to a sermon. I received the practice of reciting the nenbutsu 200 times each day. I carefully chanted the nenbutsu, and during the night of the nineteenth of that month, I dreamt that I suddenly opened my eyes and went to Sekinami 関波 Village. I felt extremely grateful to the nenbutsu. When I did open my extremely damaged eyes again, I found that I could move freely. The colors of things were clear, just as they had been before [I went blind]. I am extremely thankful and increase my recitations to one-thousand each day.’ (Later this person stopped drinking alcohol and recited the nenbutsu 15,000 times each day. But later at the urging of a bad person, he broke his vow to refrain from drinking 25  A discussion of the degrees of blindness is difficult to find, but the records of Catholic missionaries include mentions of partially blind people serving in capacities that were reserved for the “blind.” See Ruiz-de-Medina (2003: 113). The history of blindness in Japan has not been studied well. Eye diseases are mentioned in the Yamai soshi 疾病創始 (Origins of disease) written in the eleventh century. A number of traditions of treating eye diseases developed in Japan, but their methods were kept secret. The earliest textbook on eye diseases is probably the Ganmoku meikan 眼目名鑑 (A guide to the eyes) in five fascicles, published in 1689. The length of the text indicates a prior history of treatment of blindness, probably through Chinese medicine (Nakajima 1986: 139–141). 26   J Z 18: 123; Hasegawa (2003: 30).

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alcohol and killing; in addition, he stopped believing in the nenbutsu. By the seventh month, he was again blind).27 The sudden onset of the blindness and the sudden cure and their association with alcohol may be important in evaluating these claims. The appearance of dreams in the Record is treated very seriously. A section on “stimulus and response” (kannō 感応) in the Record begins with a description of dreams, dividing them into two types: false (mōmu 妄夢) and true dreams (shinmu 真夢). The Record claims that according to medical manuals, false dreams were caused by various imbalances in the body’s qi (ki 気); twelve types of oversupply ( jūni-sei 十二盛) and fifteen types of deficiency (jūgo fusoku 十五不足) are mentioned. These two terms appear in Chapter 43 of the Yellow Thearch’s Inner Classic, Basic Questions (Huang Di nei jing su wen 黄帝 内経素問). If the qi were balanced, one would have a deep dreamless sleep. However, dreams also provided a way for deities to communicate with people; they are frequently treated this way by Munō. Discussing the issue of dreams in terms of medicine, an approach that differs from the manner in which they are usually thought of today, reminds us that definitions of medicine differ according to period and culture. Even if bad dreams were a medical problem, Munō claimed that proper recitation of the nenbutsu could cure bad dreams because they were seen as both a medical and a spiritual problem. In contrast to false dreams, true dreams were spiritual revelations; the author of the Record then listed numerous dreams from both Buddhist and heterodox sources, such as the Buddha’s mother’s dream about her pregnancy and Confucius’ dream of the Duke of Zhou. How could so many examples not indicate the truth of dreams? Some Buddhists had argued that such auspicious dreams would only occur to those who had upheld the precepts or who had accumulated good merit; they certainly would not occur to someone who merely chanted the nenbutsu. But Munō argued that the power of the nenbutsu was such that it could save even the most evil person with ten repetitions; surely the nenbutsu could account for auspicious dreams. (JZ 18: 144b) Munō was fascinated by dreams. They are mentioned repeatedly in the records of those upon whom he conferred the nenbutsu. He also kept a record of his own dreams. (JZ 18: 159b–161b) Almost all of these consisted of a Buddhist deity or monk appearing and speaking to him. He carefully noted the images’ sizes. The cast of characters included such figures as Jizō 地蔵, who is identified with Amida in one case in which Munō is instructed to tell one of his followers to chant Jizō’s name. Because both Jizō and Amida are closely connected with 27  Cited in Hasegawa (2003: 100).

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death and postmortem salvation, the identification is reasonable. In others, esoteric figures appear, such as Kurikara Fudō 俱利伽羅不動, the personification of Acala’s sword, and Karuraen Fudō 迦樓羅㷔, Acala who is like the Garuda that symbolizes the flames. (JZ 18: 160b) Round circles of light or halos (enkō 円光) and moon disks (gachirin 月輪) also appear; perhaps these figures reflect the influence of his early stay at Narita-san, a site popular with pilgrims asking for Fudō’s protection during the Tokugawa period.28 Fudō had been associated with birth in the Pure Land since the ninth century, frequently with birth in Maitreya’s heaven, but also was invoked in connection with Amida. (Mack 2006: 297–317) Images of Hōnen also appear in Munō’s dreams. At times the deities chide Munō, such as a figure of Hachiman 八幡 who appeared in 1716 and accused him of being beset by sexual desires throughout his past lifetimes. (JZ 18: 161b) The following examples are typical of Munō’s treatment of bad dreams. Narrated by Shigeshirō 重四郎 of Sōma Nakamura Okobito-machi 相馬 中村御小人町 [in modern Fukushima prefecture]. From three years ago I suffered from headaches; moreover, every night I had bad dreams. My hands and feet were numb and I could not move them. This was quite frightening and my situation was quite grave. On the twentieth day of the fifth month, I agreed to perform three-hundred recitations. When I performed these, from that night my illness quickly vanished. Because of this, I increased the number of recitations. Hasegawa 2003: 102

Related by the mother of Taiyūemon 太右衛門 of a hut in Sōma Nakamura: I am sixty-nine years old. For many years I have been troubled every night by a dream in which I am eaten by a horse. My suffering is difficult to describe. However, I received a daily commitment of reciting the nenbutsu from our honored teacher. From the night I practiced this, the dreams stopped. I am extremely thankful and have increased my recitations to 16,000 each day. I have also received a hanging scroll with the recitation on it. Hasegawa 2003: 102

My wife has suffered terribly from bleeding these past seven years. From long ago she has been deaf. On the twenty-seventh day of this past month, we agreed to recite the nenbutsu two-hundred times each day. 28  For a study that focuses on Fudō at Narita-san, see Bond (2009).

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The following day we increased this by one-hundred recitations. On the night of the twenty-ninth day of that month, Amida and Jizō appeared in our dreams. By the Buddha’s command we heard the sound of the Jizō sūtra being read in our dreams and awoke. From that time her illness was healed; and her ears were able to hear. We feel thankful for the daily benefits (of this practice). First day of the third intercalary month, 1716. Kichi 吉, grandson of the Tamuras 田村 of Kinbara 金原. Hasegawa 2003: 102

Leprosy was thought to be the physical manifestation of moral depravity and bad karma. At the same time, it could be transmitted to others, leading to the sequestering of those afflicted in separate communities. The curing of leprosy is found in the activities of other Buddhist monks, most notably Eison’s 叡尊 (1201–1290) activities on behalf of “untouchables” (hinin 非人), many of whom had skin diseases other than leprosy.29 Eison’s adherence to the precepts was believed to have protected him and his followers from leprosy; a similar belief probably influenced Munō. The scope of those said to have leprosy was much broader than the modern definition of leprosy as Hansen’s disease.30 Hygiene and care provided by monks might have helped cure some of these diseases. In the following case, the mention of quitting alcohol and perhaps greater selfconfidence arising from his practice may have played a role. I began suffering from leprosy from the tenth month two years ago; my form was ugly and despicable. Although I tried various cures, they had no effect and my condition daily became graver. The hair on my head and my eyebrows fell out. I had difficulty interacting with people; even my wife and children did not know what to do with me. On the seventh day of the eleventh month of last year, when the teacher was proselytizing at Daian-ji in Koori, I secretly went to see him. I agreed to perform one-hundred nenbutsu and then performed them. On the evening of the sixth day of the first month of this year, I dreamt that our teacher appeared and said, “This [way of practice] is useless in treating the disease. If you perform [the nenbutsu] daily with complete sincerity, the disease will be completely cured.” Then I awoke from the dream. I then performed the practice single-mindedly and the next evening our teacher 29  For a good overview of the background of East Asian religion and leprosy, see Leung (2009: 66–83). For leprosy and Buddhism during the Tokugawa period, see Williams (2005: 108–110, 188–89). 30  S.v. “rai 癩” in Kokushi dai-jiten henshū iinkai (1993 Vol. 14: 480a); Goble (2011: 67–88).

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again appeared in a dream and said, “The way in which you practice is not good; you should perform the practice while sitting facing the Buddha. If you practice in accord with the teaching, then a figure generated by your meditation will come.” Then I awoke from the dream feeling thankful. Subsequently, I recited more than ten-thousand times every day while facing the Buddha. Within one or two months, my illnesses were cured. The hair on my head and eyebrows grew back as before. I quit alcohol and meat-eating and increased my practice to twenty-thousand times. The end. On the tenth day of the seventh month of this year, when I performed the nenbutsu at our family’s Buddhist shrine ( ji-butsudō 持 仏堂), light appeared from the hanging scroll with the Buddha’s name (go-myōgō 御名号) that our son Yoshi no jō 善之丞 had received and a golden Buddha about nine inches tall appeared and stood. Father and son both worshipped it. Minami Handa village, Yoshishirō.31 In a passage in the Record, Munō was preaching at the Kannon-ji 観音寺 in Date. Afterwards he saw a dilapidated shack in the mountains and wondered who lived there. When he was told that lepers lived there, he said that they were afflicted with karma and suffering from the past and that if they were not taught about Buddhism, then their suffering would continue in future births. He entered the shacks and found the people surprisingly open to his teaching. He saw people missing limbs and fingers that could not hold a rosary or count. He asked those who could hold the rosary or count to sit next to them and help. The author of the Record compares this to the efforts of Eison’s disciple Ninshō 忍性 (1217–1303) to feed those with leprosy. (JZ 18: 123b–124b) 4

Munō’s Death

In the spring of 1718, Munō began to feel ill and decided to stop travelling and reside in a meditation hut in Kita Handa. He realized that he would not live much longer. By the fall, the illness had worsened. On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, about a week before he would die, he assembled his followers and spoke about procedures after he died. He also wrote down his final instructions (ikun 遺訓) to govern those lay believers and monks who were in attendance. (Hasegawa 2003: 218–19) He announced that his impending death was unavoidable (hisshi 必死) and that he would soon enter a place prepared for his death. Those without any business should not approach his sick bed. 31  Included in Hasegawa (2003: 103–104).

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Only one or two people should attend him and they should constantly recite the nenbutsu. He had been accustomed to reciting the nenbutsu 100,000 times each day; but now that he was ill, the number was not so important. Instead, the practice needed to be continuous so that he would not backslide in his practice. The recitations should be matched to his breathing. Munō also explained the rationale for his earlier vow never to lie down, explaining that he would now abandon it. Earlier he had focused on the numbers of recitations and had feared that if he lay down, he would give in to fatigue and sleepiness. In addition, a prone position was not suitable for counting with the rosary. Now that he had to deal with physical fatigue, the crucial issue was to keep reciting the nenbutsu. Those who attend him should encourage him by softly reciting and using the hand-bell (inkin 引磬). His lips were to be moistened with purified water from consecrated earth (kaji dosha no jōsui 加持土砂の淨水). After he stopped breathing, the recitations were to continue accompanied by small cymbals (shōko 鉦鼓) until all body heat had left the corpse. Then his body could be washed and buried in a plot chosen by divination. A pine tree was to be planted over the grave; the grave should not be imposing. The funeral should be conducted by those who were close to him with the recitation of the nenbutsu and transfer of merits. Any memorial service should be done privately at one’s residence and should not be anything lasting several days. On the twenty-seventh, Ryōkaku 良覚, who had been the previous abbot of Daian-ji and had been Munō’s teacher, Ryōin 良隠, and the current abbot of the temple Ryōshō 良声 came to pay a visit and ask how he was. Munō answered that this was their final farewell in this life, but they would meet again in the Western (Pure) Land, where they would share the lotus platform (kedai 華台). Ryōshō remarked that Munō had always been firm in his devotion to practice over many years; he would no doubt attain one of the top ranks ( jōbon 上品) of birth in the Pure Land. Several years earlier, Munō had written to Zennyū 善入 (1668–1735) in 1713 about his vow to recite the nenbutsu 100,000 times each day, saying that he had been able to recite as many as 110,000 and that he had been encouraged by others to strive for the highest degree of birth. In the letter, he noted his dislike of the world and his unwillingness to wait for birth in the Pure Land to come when he was older.32 These statements reveal that such extreme acts as self-castration were part of Munō’s efforts to maintain the concentration that would lead to highest birth.

32  Hasegawa (2003: 208, 219). For a discussion of Munō’s relation with Zennyū, see Hasegawa (2003: 119–127).

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Munō answered Ryōshō that “I have unusual karma that has enabled me to convert several ten-thousands of people. Now I will creep back to the Pure Land. The primordial vow that led me to appear in the world was nothing other than this.”33 On the twenty-eighth, he prepared to prognosticate whether he would die during the current year or the beginning, middle or last part of the first month of the new year. The answer came twice that he would die during the current year. He had his deathbed prepared so that he would lie with his head to the north and face the west; colored cords were connected to the Buddha’s hands. However, he did not die until the second day of the first month of the new year. The author of the Record explained that the incorrect prognostication had simply encouraged Munō’s practice and that death was near. (JZ 18: 132b) Munō’s chanting was stronger than that of his attendants. Periodically he would alter the phrases he chanted to include, “For the very worst of evil people, no other way exists but chanting the name of Amida to be born in the Pure Land.”34 That same day in the afternoon, he called the two monks who were closest to him, Engu and Renshin 蓮心.35 Munō told them that he had seen the Pure Land in a vision, indicating that his desire to be born there would be fulfilled. Moreover, every aspect of it had conformed with the descriptions found in the scriptures. No room for doubt existed. That night he had psalms on the ten types of bliss ( jūraku 十樂) associated with the Pure Land softly recited; these included such aspects as being escorted to the Pure Land upon death and the joy when one’s lotus first opened in the Pure Land. On the thirtieth day, a number of people came to see his death (birth in Pure Land). With the new year, Munō seemed well. Several lay believers came to wish him greetings for the new year. Munō replied that he was still alive due to the Buddha’s expedient means. Munō asked for a special cake, but no matter how hard his attendants tried to bring him what he asked for, they failed. Finally, they realized that he was asking for the hundred-flavor cakes from the Pure Land.36 They then realized that even though he had not eaten, he had remained healthy, almost as if he had been fed from the Pure Land. A person 33   D NBZ 64: 80c. A slightly different statement is found in JZ 18: 132a. 34  The phrase is found in several early Pure Land works by Genshin and Hōnen, including the Ōjō yōshū (T 84: 77a) and the Kurodani Shōnin gotōroku (T 83: 124b). Genshin cites the Contemplation sūtra as the source, but the words do not appear in it. Later commentators claim that it captured the sense of the text, but the locus classicus for it remains unclear. The verse had become widespread by Munō’s time (Ishida 1970: 419–420, 479–480). 35  Hasegawa (2003: 148–149). Engu and Renshin play major roles during the last period of Munō’s life. 36  Mentioned in the Wuliangshou-jing (T 12: 271c).

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from the mountains related the story of Yamamoto Genpachi 山本源八, who had died in the eleventh month of the previous year. Munō had encouraged him to recite the nenbutsu and he had done 80,000 recitations each day. The visitor related how he had seen Yamamoto and Munō eating cake together in a dream. (JZ 18: 235b) Around four in the afternoon, Munō summoned Engu and asked him to chant the praises for Amida’s welcoming the dying to the Pure Land. Munō listened with his hands in a gasshō and seemed particularly moved. In the early evening, he summoned Engu and Renshin and asked them to chant the praises of the ten blisses of the Pure Land. During the night, Munō held his rosary and strings attached to an image of Amida and the three Pure Land sūtras. His attendants took turns chanting the nenbutsu and playing the hand-bell to help him. Munō began to breathe with gasps, but still chanted the nenbutsu. Even when his voice could no longer be heard, his lips moved. He seemed to be happier and healthier than ever. Finally he appeared to be sleeping and his breath stopped. Within an hour the earth quaked, prompting his attendants to remember passages in the scriptures describing how the earth moved when the Buddha died and to realize that this was a sign that Munō had attained his desired birth. When they washed his corpse, it was unusually light and supple; his face seemed beautiful, as if they were looking at the founder of their school. They left him there through the night of the third as people came to pay their respects. Finally, at noon on the fourth day, they decided to bury him in accord with his wishes. People came from all over, vying with each other to touch his coffin. Because the situation seemed dangerous, the attendants decided to quickly place the coffin in the grave, but even so, many fell into the grave. Munō’s robes and rosary were torn apart by those in attendance, anxious to have some sort of physical connection to Munō. Miracles of the appearance of light and the Buddha’s body were witnessed. The events that occurred several years later are described in the Munō wajō gyōgō yuiji. In the summer of 1724, Munō’s remains were being moved to Daian-ji, the temple where he had first been initiated. When his remains were being installed, they emitted light; several hundred relics were obtained. Engu received two of them. The relics were brought to the town of Sōma-jō 相馬城, where many people venerated them, creating karmic ties to the Pure Land. Thus Munō continued his proselytizing even after his death. The following account appeared as an appendix to a set of hymns by Munō, the Kanjin eika-shū 観心詠歌集.37 Three years after his death, Tsunoda 37  Hasegawa (2003: 163–165) has translated the passage into modern Japanese.

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Sansaemon 角田三左衛門 of Koori decided to have an image of Munō made to express his devotion. He asked a sculptor, Shibutani Rizaemon 渋谷利左衛門 to make the image. Although the sculptor had seen Munō, he could not recall his features and kept postponing work on the image. A mysterious monk appeared. When the sculptor asked where he was from, the monk replied around here. When asked whether he was a Zen, Tendai, or Shingon monk, the monk would always answer with whatever was suggested. Finally, the sculptor’s mother and wife both said that he resembled Munō and that he must be a manifestation of Munō. When other people came by the sculptor’s house and saw the monk, they said the same thing. The monk then disappeared, but the sculptor was able to recall Munō’s features and make the sculpture. He felt that Munō had appeared out of compassion. Munō’s fame would be enhanced when his disciple Funō 不能 (1700–1762) renamed a temple Shuichi-san Munō-ji 守一山無能寺, and dedicated it to Munō’s memory and to carrying on his tradition of austerities.38 Funō would only have been twenty when Munō died, but the short amount of time they spent together was crucial for Funō. His name Funō was patterned after Munō and the temple’s name Munō reflected his devotion to his teacher.39 The temple became the site where a number of monks carefully observed the precepts and was called a Ritsuin 律院 (vinaya hall). Such institutions were founded by Jōdo-shū monks during the eighteenth century who wished to follow Hōnen’s model as a reclusive monk.40 A major part of their practice was adherence to the precepts and the rejection of the danka system and the monastic education system fostered by the Tokugawa government. 5 Conclusion Munō’s biography reminds us that the stereotypes of Japanese Buddhism that have come down to us often obscure a much more nuanced and complex narrative. In Munō’s case, his extreme ascetic practices reveal a concern that an emphasis on faith in Amida alone was not enough to satisfy some practitioners. In fact, it may not have been enough for a number of Pure Land practitioners. Such figures as Genshin 源信 and Hōnen’s disciple Shōkū 証空 (1177–1247) exhibited an interest in the highest levels of rebirth that was reflected in practice 38  The temple had been founded by Ryōnen 良然 in 1596, it had originally been named Daikō-san Shōtoku-ji 大光山正徳寺. 39  Hasegawa (2003: 169–196) has compiled Funō’s biographical information. 40  S.v. “ritsuin” 律院 in Jōdo-shū kaishū happyaku-nen kinen shuppan (1980 Vol. 3: 446b).

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and the devotional paintings they commissioned. (Kanda 2002, 200–242) The need to enter meditative concentration without any distractions led Munō to fasting, never lying down, unimaginably large numbers of recitations each day, and self-castration. The desire for assurance that the practices were successful led to a focus on the physical indications of their effects. Munō was fascinated by his own impending death and his physical state as he approached it. Earlier, Munō’s interest in physical indications led him and his disciples to compile records of the curative powers of the nenbutsu. Finally, even after his death, Munō’s physical presence was manifested by the appearance of his relics and the salvific power of them as they attracted believers. Abbreviations DNBZ Dainihon Bukkyō Zensho, ed. by Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan (1970–1973). JZ Jōdo-shū Zensho, ed. by Jōdo-shū kaishū happyaku-nen kinen kyōsan junbikyoku. (1971–1975). T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, ed. by Takakusu and Watanabe (1924–1934).

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