Vol. 23 | A Prehistory of Jodo Buddhism, Part 2

Reading the full series? Browse all volumes here.

Before diving in — Vol. 2 sets out the author’s framing and caveats.

Moves by Japan’s statesmen in the seventh and eighth centuries sought to acquire the latest learning from the Chinese dynasties of the day — Sui, and then Tang — and student monks crossed to the continent in step with that effort. Measures such as the Seventeen-Article Constitution, discussed in the previous instalment, meant that from ancient times Buddhism in Japan was practised chiefly by officials and aristocrats.

Behind this pattern of diffusion lay the idea of chingo kokka: that the realm is protected by the teachings of the Buddha. By the Heian period, however, aristocratic believers had begun to want something more personal — long life and tranquillity, the curing of illness, worldly benefit. The body of doctrine that answered that demand was Heian Pure Land Buddhism, which would lead in time to Jodo Shu and Jodo Shinshu.

Before coming to Heian Pure Land Buddhism, though, some account of Tendai Shu, the school founded by Saicho, is needed. The reason is straightforward: Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, the head temple of Tendai Shu, is where both Honen, the founder of Jodo Shu, and Shinran, the founder of Jodo Shinshu, studied.

Tendai doctrine and its hold on later Japanese Buddhism

Saicho, the founder of Tendai Shu, was born in 767 and died in 822.*¹ In terms of Japanese periodisation, his career as a monk falls broadly in the early Heian period — the eighth to twelfth centuries, when the capital stood at what is now Kyoto and politics was conducted by and for the aristocracy.

The previous instalment touched on Sui and the kenzuishi that Japan sent there. By Saicho’s day Sui had already fallen and a new dynasty, Tang, had been established in China. With that change of regime the kenzuishi became the kentoshi. Saicho, who had been studying Tendai doctrine as a monk sanctioned by the Japanese state, crossed to China in 804 as a kentoshi — his purpose being to study the mainstream of Tendai doctrine at Mount Tiantai itself.

What is Tendai doctrine? Rosan Ikeda, a Soto Shu priest who served as president of Komazawa University, describes it as a Buddhist scholarship that unifies doctrinal theory with the practice of religious training.*² Pressed further on precisely what is taught there, this author — an ordinary Buddhist layman — would not trust himself to answer. Or rather: the reach of Tendai teaching is very wide. Japan’s Jodo schools, the Zen schools and the Lotus schools such as Nichiren Shu have all been shaped by it in large measure. So, to put it crudely and plainly for a reader who is not a Buddhist, Tendai doctrine might be called the integrative scholarship of the Mahayana Buddhism practised in China, Japan and elsewhere.

One other monk of note crossed to Tang alongside Saicho in 804: Kukai, the founder of Shingon Shu.

On returning from Tang to Japan the two men led contrasting lives. The schools they founded, meanwhile, went on to histories that were contrasting in the opposite sense.

Saicho and Kukai: two students abroad, and a parting of ways

Begin with what the two did after reaching Tang.

Saicho studied Tendai doctrine at Mount Tiantai, exactly as he had hoped. There he received instruction from two eminent monks: Daosui, the seventh legitimate successor in the Chinese Tendai lineage, and Xingman, abbot of Butsuro-ji (Folong-si) on the same mountain.*³ Saicho, in other words, studied Chinese Tendai Shu and its doctrine through the official channel.

What Kukai chiefly studied in Tang, by contrast, was esoteric Buddhism — mikkyo, in which the inner meaning of Buddhism is transmitted from master to disciple as though it were a secret. Examples include the methods for obtaining the worldly benefit described above, and sokushin jobutsu, the attainment of Buddhahood in this very body.*⁴

A statue of Kukai at Daisho-in on Miyajima, Hiroshima prefecture

A related term is kengyo, exoteric teaching: the Buddha’s teaching expressed so that anyone may understand it. The two appear to form a pair of opposites, but they are not in conflict. In Nanto Rokushu, covered in the previous instalment, and in Tendai Shu, as will be seen, monks study both.*⁵

To return to the thread: Saicho came home in 805*⁶ and Kukai in 806.*⁷ It was Saicho who received a shock on his return. As noted at the outset, the aristocracy looked to Buddhism for worldly benefit — the curing of illness above all — and wanted the ritual power of esoteric Buddhism to that end.

Saicho had studied esoteric Buddhism in Tang, but his object had always been to master Tendai doctrine. Having little choice, he found himself asking Kukai, who had studied abroad at the same time, to instruct him in it.

The two men broke with one another nonetheless. A disciple of Saicho’s left for Kukai; and Kukai refused Saicho’s request to borrow an esoteric text, the Rishushakukyo.

From a modern Japanese vantage point it is not hard to imagine how commanding a presence Kukai was in his own day. Japan has a proverb, ‘even Kobo makes mistakes with the brush’. Kobo (Daishi) is Kukai’s posthumous title. Kukai was a master calligrapher as well as a monk, and the proverb accordingly means that even the greatest master errs.

Japan also has pilgrims who walk the Ohenro, the circuit of the eighty-eight temples of Shikoku — the temples associated with Kukai on Shikoku, one of the four comparatively large islands that make up Japan. People who are not adherents of Kukai’s Shingon Shu walk it too, and hardly anyone objects.

Tendai Shu, by contrast, is a school people have heard of, while Saicho, its founder, makes little impression on the ordinary Japanese. Among the elite of the Heian period, the aristocracy in particular, demand ran higher for Kukai than for Saicho — and it is arguable that this has carried through to the present.

Where Tendai Shu’s standing comes from

Study Japanese history, however, and Saicho’s Tendai Shu looms large. Two reasons suggest themselves.

One is that after Saicho’s death monks of his lineage — Ennin and Enchin among them — went to Tang to study esoteric Buddhism and developed it further. Tendai esotericism is known as taimitsu; Shingon esotericism, by contrast, as tomitsu. Both terms appear in Japanese school education, and students sitting high-school or university entrance examinations in Japanese history are obliged to learn them.

There is also the simple fact that Saicho had mastered Tendai doctrine, a systematisation of Mahayana Buddhism as scholarship, in the first place. With the esoteric Buddhism his disciples acquired and developed added to that foundation, Mount Hiei, the head temple of Tendai Shu, became a place of training for monks of every school and cast of mind. That the Jodo, Zen and Nichiren traditions of Japanese Buddhism were all shaped by Tendai doctrine is the clearest proof of it.

This instalment draws, as the notes indicate, on books by Hiromi Shimada, a scholar of religion well known to the general public, and by Satoko Koyama, a rising historian of Japanese religion. Both describe Mount Hiei as having been a comprehensive university. Whatever one wished to learn about Mahayana Buddhism could be learnt at the Tendai Shu’s Mount Hiei. That the same characterisation appears in two separate books presumably reflects its status as received opinion in Japanese religious studies.

The second reason for Tendai Shu’s reach is location. Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei stands on the boundary between Kyoto and Ohmi (the temple’s address is in Otsu, Shiga prefecture; Shiga is the modern name for Ohmi). Kongobu-ji on Mount Koya, the head temple of Shingon Shu, lies some way from Kyoto in what is now Wakayama prefecture.

Because its head temple stood close to Kyoto, the ancient capital, Mount Hiei and Tendai Shu were bound to appear in the historical record. A good example is the burning of Mount Hiei by Nobunaga Oda, roughly 750 years after Saicho’s own lifetime. Oda is one of the significant commanders of Japan’s Warring States period, and he put the mountain to the torch because Hiei carried not only religious weight but considerable military force.

Go to Kyoto, moreover, and even without climbing anything you will find the Eizan Electric Railway marked on maps and the like — which leaves the sense that Mount Hiei lodges in the memory more readily than Mount Koya.

Set against all this, the adherent numbers reported by the religious bodies themselves in present-day Japan tell a rather different story from historical influence: about 2.5m for the Tendai family of schools, against about 5m for the Shingon family.*⁸ The Jodo schools account for about 21m, the Zen schools 4.8m and the Nichiren schools 9.6m.

The author is embarrassed to admit that he has visited neither Mount Hiei nor Mount Koya. He intends to get to both as soon as he possibly can.

Readers abroad should likewise visit not only Mount Hiei near Kyoto but Mount Koya as well, if time allows. Kukai is held to be alive still at Kongobu-ji, continuing his religious practice, and a rite in which monks deliver meals to him is performed twice a day, every day. Ordinary visitors may watch the portion in which the monks set out carrying the food.

OHYASHIMA is seeking information about the Ohmi Shonin

In connection with this series, OHYASHIMA welcomes information about the Ohmi Shonin. The author would be particularly grateful to hear from:

Museum curators and archivists — in Japan or elsewhere — who hold collections related to the Ohmi Shonin
Those who work for companies with ties to the Ohmi Shonin, or whose own ancestors were Ohmi Shonin
Those who know of Ohmi Shonin merchants who conducted business outside Japan

OHYASHIMAは近江商人に関する情報を求めています

本連載にあたり、近江商人に関する情報を募集しています。たとえば、下記に該当する方はぜひご存じの情報をお寄せください。