The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 3: Medieval Japan

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THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 579

Because of this outlook, the Shinshu religious organization, during its

formative period at least, consisted of nothing more than individual

congregations. In congregational dojo there was no great difference

between dojo leaders and ordinary believers, in either intellectual ca-

pacity or economic means. But this idyllic period of Shinran's school

did not last long, for a master-disciple relationship gradually evolved

between the dojo head and the average adherent. The dojo leader was

at first merely a representative chosen from the ranks of congrega-

tional members. But as he became more specialized in his religious

functions, the intellectual and economic gap between him and the

other members widened.

106

The expansion of the dojo leader's power

gradually accorded him a superior status, and ultimately it fit well into

the hierarchical sectarian pyramid that developed under the

Honganji.

107

Among the various Kamakura schools, congregations of

this type were most prominent in the Shinshu. Their egalitarian char-

acter derived not simply from Shinran's teachings but also from the

fact that there was a greater social homogeneity of believers in Shinshu

congregations than in other schools.

In other Kamakura schools, temples commonly functioned as the

rallying point for the formation of religious organizations. Therefore,

the people who were most involved in the construction of the temple

usually emerged as the dominant figures among the laity. In Honen's

Jodoshu school and Eisai's Rinzai Zen school, for example, aristocrats

and powerful samurai became major donors and supporters, and so

they exerted considerable influence on the organization's affairs.

108

The role of the religious organizers was limited more or less to the

religious functions of the school. There gradually emerged a gap be-

tween the influence of these supporters and that of ordinary believers,

who comprised the wider membership of the schools. Ordinary adher-

ents had little say in the organization's administration, and so what-

ever activities they initiated had minimal impact.

Powerful supporters also began to place members of their own fami-

lies in positions of influence as religious leaders and organizers in the

temples. As a result, the power of other groups of believers within the

school was circumscribed even more. The tendency in these religious

106 Osumi Kazuo, "Kamakura Bukkyo to sono kakushin undo," in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi,

vol.

5, p. 245.

107 For an overview of the development of the Shinshu school in this context, see Akamatsu,

and Kasahara, eds., Shinshushi

gaisetsu;

and Kasahara, Shinran to wgoku nomin.

108 The Tofukuji in Kyoto is an example of a temple in which aristocratic adherents became

influential. The Jufukuji and the Engakuji in Kamakura are examples in which samurai

became influential.

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580 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD

organizations was to revert to the pattern of the traditional schools of

Buddhism wherein a small elite controlled the religious organization.

The Nichiren school varied somewhat from this pattern. Its major

supporters were mostly samurai, but there was not as pronounced a

difference between them and the other believers. Thus, a broad spec-

trum of adherents was involved in the school's religious activities.

Because of the greater number of parties initiating action and exerting

influence, the religious organization was pulled in several different

directions at the same

time.

These internal dynamics may have contrib-

uted to the sectarian schisms that plagued the Nichiren school more

than the other Kamakura schools.

109

There has been considerable research on the specific classes in soci-

ety that became the social foundations of the various schools of

Kamakura Buddhism. Investigation into the organization of the

schools and the circumstances of the believers who were attracted to

them has been extensive in the postwar period. Although a number of

controversies still remain, the prevailing views concerning the social

origins of the Kamakura

schools are as

follows: Honen's teachings made

their greatest inroads among aristocrats and commoners living in the

increasingly complex urban environment of Kyoto and its vicinity.

110

Shinran's teachings were disseminated primarily among the farming

peasants of the Kanto countryside.

111

The Nichiren school received its

principal support from the samurai residing along the coastal belt of the

eastern provinces.

112

Eisai's Rinzai school of Zen appealed to urban

aristocrats and upper-class samurai, whereas Dogen's Soto school

spread among the samurai of the outlying regions.

These are the

dominant theories concerning the social composition of the Kamakura

schools, but debate continues over many of their finer points."

CONCLUSION

The period from the middle of

the

twelfth century through the midale

of the thirteenth was a pivotal juncture in the history of Japanese

109 Nakao Takashi, Nichirenshu no seiritsu to tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1973), pp.

28-84.

no Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon Jodokyo seiritsushi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,

1956),

pp. 283-333; and Tamura, Nihon Bukkyo

shisoshi

kenkyu,

pp. 58-123.

in Kasahara, Shinran to

logoku

nomin,

pp. 277-303.

112 Kawazoe Shoji, "Nichiren no shukyo no seiritsu oyobi seikaku," in Nihon

meiso

ronshu,

vol.

9: Nichiren (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1982), pp. 2-28.

113 Imaeda Aishin, Zenshu no

rekishi

(Tokyo: Shibundo, 1966), pp. 13-213.

114 For alternative views and variations on these points, see Ienaga, Chusei Bukkyo

shisoshi

kenkyu, pp. 2-109;

>d Akamatsu, Kamakura Bukkyo no

kenkyu,

pp. 60-72.

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CONCLUSION 58l

Buddhism. A number of priests broke ties with Mount Hiei, the

citadel of established Buddhism, and became critical of the Buddhism

espoused there. They believed that the religious ideal propounded in

the traditional schools made it impossible for people to be saved in the

present age, and they spawned a movement that sought to address the

human condition in its actual state. This movement concentrated on

the weakness of humans in their current situation, and it generated a

new religious path containing a heavy component of faith. The leaders

of this religious revolution steadfastly maintained that no person is

excluded from enlightenment, and so they focused on how the Buddha

can save even those overwhelmed by wrongdoings and defilements. In

the process they produced forms of religious thought oriented toward

the internal experience of human beings.

This new movement of thought, though creative in

its

own right, was

built on ideas inherited from the literati of

the

Heian period, as well as

on doctrinal principles produced at Mount Hiei. The context for its

appearance was the profound social, political, and economic changes of

the

late

Heian and Kamakura periods - that

is,

the

decline of the aristoc-

racy, the expansion of samurai control, the emergence of

new urban

class of townsmen, and the transition from

shoen to

autonomous villages

in the countryside. Kamakura Buddhism turned its back on the author-

ity of earlier Buddhism; it exerted

strong influence on samurai society,

which itself strove to create a new culture; and it spread its teachings

aggressively among the common people.

Kamakura Buddhism generally refers to those schools with roots in

the Kamakura period. They have had a pervasive influence on the

religious thought and sentiment of the Japanese people even into

modern times. The significance of Kamakura Buddhism in Japanese

history is that for the first time Buddhism, which entered Japan as a

foreign religion, was fully adapted to Japanese concerns and put

down roots among the common people. Buddhist thought, transmit-

ted with great difficulty from India, was boiled down to a few essen-

tials.

It was rendered into simple and comprehensible teachings and

couched in the context of religious practices that ordinary people

could perform. Admittedly, the Japanese adaptation of Buddhism

made it diverge in several ways from its original form. From the

beginning the Japanese fused Buddhism with Shinto and with their

own long-held cosmology of the spirit world. In the Kamakura

schools themselves the veneration of religious teachers and sectarian

founders also distinguished Japanese Buddhism from its antecedents

in other parts of Asia. Nonetheless, the streamlined and simplified

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582 BUDDHISM IN KAMAKURA PERIOD

tenets produced by the Kamakura originators had a distinctly Bud-

dhist message at their core.

The emphasis on belief and practice found in Kamakura Buddhism

displaced a luxurious aesthetic sensibility that had been a part of

Buddhism in the Heian period. Buddhism in the Kamakura period

did not produce artistic works in the fields of painting, sculpture,

architecture, or even literature. The only exceptions to this rule were

the artistic images of the schools' founders used in the memorial ser-

vices and the illustrated biographies of them used in religious teach-

ing. The

Rinzai.

Zen school, which had close ties to the bakufu, was

later influential in the creation of Japan's literature, art, and culture of

daily life, but such involvements of Rinzai did not exist in the

Kamakura period. They emerged only in the Muromachi period that

followed.

Notwithstanding Kamakura Buddhism's divergence from the fine

arts,

its impact on other spheres of society and culture was extensive.

Its teachings stimulated Japan's most widespread propagation of Bud-

dhism among the lower classes and fostered for the first time organiza-

tions that could rightly be called religious institutions of

the

people. It

also challenged the earlier schools of Buddhism so profoundly that

they were inspired to initiate various religious activities of their own.

These consequences and others, as they worked their way through aii

levels of society, carved out an indisputable place for Kamakura Bud-

dhism in Japanese history.

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CHAPTER 13

ZEN AND THE GOZAN

The medieval centuries can fairly be described as the great age of

Japanese Buddhism. Honen, Eisai, Shinran, Dogen, Nichiren, Ippen,

Rennyo, and thousands of lesser-known but equally dedicated reli-

gious leaders took Buddhism out of its traditional place in monastic

cloisters under elite patronage, found new possibilities for personal

salvation, and carried their message to common people throughout

Japan. During these centuries, the foundations were laid for those new

schools of Buddhism - Pure Land, True Pure Land, Nichiren, and

Zen - that still claim the spiritual allegiance of the majority of Japa-

nese.

In response to these surges of reform, innovation, and popular-

ization, some of the older schools of Buddhism produced reformers

who called for a return to stricter monastic discipline and tried to make

their teachings more accessible to ordinary men and women.

The social ramifications of this religious upsurge were enormous.

Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of monasteries, nunneries,

hermitages, and "training places" (dojo) for lay devotees were estab-

lished. Monasteries, monks, and wandering preachers looked for, and

found, new patrons; received donations and grants of land; served as

bearers of culture and learning as well as advocates of Buddhist spiritu-

ality; acted as political advisers; and engaged in commerce and diplo-

macy. Some of the older monastic centers remained powerful political

and military forces in society. And some of the newer groups, espe-

cially the Nichiren and True Pure Land followers, displayed a militant

edge.

The general development of Buddhism in the medieval period is

discussed in Chapter 12 of this volume. This chapter will examine the

introduction and spread of Zen Buddhism as one aspect of the larger

development of Buddhism and of changes in medieval society. The

growth of Zen was rapid and striking. In 1200, there were no more

than a handful of small Zen temples in Japan, in most of which Zen

meditation was practiced in conjunction with Tendai or Shingon Bud-

dhist ceremonies. By 1600, the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen had

583

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584 ZEN AND THE GOZAN

developed clear sectarian identities, and there were literally thousands

of Zen monasteries in Japan, some having populations of a thousand

monks. The impact of this expansion of Zen on the religious, social

and cultural life of the age can hardly be overestimated.

The development of medieval Zen in all its religious and social

manifestations cannot be dealt with in a single chapter. Here, there-

fore,

I shall concentrate on five topics: the transmission of Zen from

China to Japan, the institutional growth and diffusion of the major

branches of Zen and the patronage that made this possible, the admin-

istration and economy of the medieval Zen monastery, the transforma-

tion of Zen thought and practice in the Japanese context, and the

contribution of Zen monks to medieval Japanese culture.

THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM TO JAPAN

The Asuka, Nara, and Heian periods

Before the mid-twelfth century, few monks claimed to be bearers of

Zen. Meditation in one form or another is part of the spiritual practice

of most schools of Buddhism. However, Japanese monks and some of

their imperial patrons during the Nara and Heian periods were aware

that some Chinese monks emphasized meditation

(dhyana

ch'an)

a path to enlightenment more direct than such traditional Buddhist

practices as sutra study, prayer and ritual, and the accumulation of

merit through good works. The Japanese monk Ennin (793-864) re-

corded in his journal several encounters with Ch'an monks during his

pilgrimage to Chinese Buddhist monasteries in the mid-ninth century.

But he was not impressed by the Ch'an devotees nor inspired to study

Ch'an:

After we had eaten, we drank tea, and then, heading due north, we went

twenty-five li to Hsing-t'ang hsien in the territory of Chen-chou and went to

the Hsi-ch'an-yiian inside the walled town and spent the night. There were

over twenty Zen monks who were extremely unruly men at heart.

Ennin journeyed to China to study what he believed to be the main-

stream of T'ang-dynasty Buddhism - T'ien-t'ai teachings and tantric

practices. Ch'an was clearly peripheral to his interest, and on this

occasion at least, he seems to have been repelled by the boisterousness

of the Ch'an practitioners he met.

1 For Ennin's comments, see Edwin O. Reischauer, trans., Ennin's Diary: The Record of a

Pilgrimage to China in Search of

the

Law (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), p. 210.

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THE TRANSMISSION OF

CH'AN

BUDDHISM 585

Other Japanese monks during these early centuries were more favor-

ably disposed that Ennin was toward Ch'an Buddhism. Dosho (629-

700),

one of the founders of the Hosso school of Buddhism in Japan,

went to China in 653 as part of an official embassy. Together with

Hosso teachings, he also studied Ch'an and after his return to Japan

established a meditation hall in his monastery, the Gankoji. Saicho

(766-822), the founder of the Tendai (T'ien-t'ai) school in Japan, is

said to have received a Ch'an transmission from a Ch'an master on

Mount T'ien-t'ai. He incorporated meditation into a fourfold Tendai

practice that involved sutra study, esoteric rituals, study of the Vinaya

precepts, and contemplation (shikan). Saicho's receptivity to Ch'an

was to have significant consequences for later phases of the Zen trans-

mission. In the late Heian period, many monks who had been trained

in the Tendai monastery of the Enryakuji renewed their interest in

meditation and sought to use Zen to revive Japanese Tendai Bud-

dhism. But this impulse toward reform was rejected by the Tendai

establishment. Had the Tendai leadership been more accommodating

to the advocates of Zen, it is possible that Zen would have continued

to develop within a Tendai framework rather than emerging as an

independent school of Japanese Buddhism.

Several Chinese exponents of Ch'an found their way to Japan during

the Nara and Heian periods. Around 736, the monk Tao-hsuan

(Dosen) arrived. He was an adherent of the Vinaya school who had

studied Ch'an under masters of the Northern school of Ch'an. Tao-

hsuan received imperial patronage and established a meditation hall

within the Nara monastery of Daianji. A century later the Ch'an monk

I-k'ung (Giku) was invited to Japan by Empress Tachibana, a consort

of Emperor Saga and an enthusiastic patron of Buddhism. She had

heard from Kukai that Ch'an Buddhism was in vogue in T'ang China

and had requested that a Ch'an master be sent to Japan. I-k'ung was

installed in the newly built monastery of Danrinji. He lectured on Zen

before the imperial court and instructed some Japanese monks in

Ch'an, but then he eventually returned to China.

Thus,

although Zen was known in Japan in the Nara and Heian

periods, the transmission was sporadic and did not lead to any sus-

tained development. Ch'an was only one among many expressions of

T'ang Buddhism and was certainly not the most clearly defined or

2 Biographical information on Dosho, Saicho, Tao-hsuan (Dosen), and I-kung (Giku) is drawn

from Komazawa daigaku zengaku daijiten hensanjo, ed., Zengaku daijiien, 3 vols. (Tokyo:

Taishukan shoten, 1978).

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586 ZEN AND THE GOZAN

socially influential.

The Japanese monks accompanying the official

embassies to China during these centuries sought out masters of the

major philosophical schools of Buddhism - T'ien-t'ai, Hua-yen, or

Fa-hsian - or monks who could instruct them in monastic precepts or

esoteric practices. It was these monks, not the Ch'an practitioners,

who dominated the great metropolitan monasteries of the T'ang em-

pire.

If they displayed an interest in Ch'an, it was as a complementary

practice. Dosho combined Ch'an meditation practice with Hosso meta-

physics. Saicho blended it into a syncretism in which devotion to the

Lotus Sutra and the conduct of tantric rituals played major roles.

Many Chinese monks came to Japan during the Nara and early Heian

periods, and some, like the Vinaya master Ganjin, attracted many

followers. Few of these Chinese masters were specialists in Ch'an

meditation or philosophy, however, or advocated Ch'an as an exclusive

practice. Tao-hsuan combined Ch'an with Vinaya discipline. I-k'ung

came as a Ch'an master, but he left Japan before establishing anything

resembling an independent meditation practice.

Opportunities for the transmission of Zen were drastically reduced

with the abandonment of official embassies to China after 894 because

of the expense involved and the political disorder on the continent.

Thereafter, until the twelfth century, the only contacts were sporadic

ones made by traders, pirates and a few pilgrim monks. One Japanese

monk, Jojin, is known to have journeyed to China and studied Ch'an

during the Northern Sung period. There is no evidence, however, that

he ever returned to Japan.

The Kamakura

period

The number of monks transmitting Ch'an teachings

Japan during the

late twelfth and thirteenth centuries increased dramatically. This trans-

mission was hardly interrupted by the Mongols' invasion attempts in

1274 and

1281.

During this period, Japanese and Chinese monks intro-

duced to Japan not only Zen thought and meditation techniques but

also monastic forms and cultural idioms. A few of the monks who

journeyed from Japan to China during the Kamakura period studied

Vinaya (Ritsu) or Pure Land teachings, but most were bearers of Zen.

Why, when there had been so little interest in Ch'an during the Nara

3 The general character of T'ang-dynasty Buddhism is discussed by Stanley Weinstein, "Impe-

rial Patronage in the Formation of

T'ang

Buddhism," in Arthur F. Wright and Denis

Twitchett, eds., Perspectives on the

T'ang

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973),

pp.

265-306.

THE TRANSMISSION OF CH'AN BUDDHISM 587

and Heian periods, should there have been so much enthusiasm dem-

onstrated in the Kamakura period? By the late Heian period, monks

and lay people alike were convinced that Tendai and other branches of

established Buddhism were in serious decline. Monastic regulations

were flouted; monks and nuns lived like aristocrats and indulged in

political intrigues; and monastic armies periodically threatened the

capital, fought among themselves, or challenged the military power of

the new warrior bands. The growing awareness of social dislocation

and political disorder in the eleventh and twelfth centuries heightened

these feelings of religious decline. So did the belief that beginning in

1052 Japan had entered the Later Age of the Buddha's Law (mappo), a

phase of cosmic spiritual degeneration in which the remoteness of the

Buddha's teaching made salvation by such traditional methods as the

accumulation of merit extremely difficult.

By the late twelfth century, Japanese Buddhist circles were showing

signs of revitalization. The lead was taken by Tendai monks seeking to

reform traditional Buddhism and extend the promise of salvation to

the common people. One powerful current developing in Tendai Bud-

dhism emphasized the compassion of the Amida Buddha as the surest

recourse in the age of mappo. Honen (1133-1212), for instance,

stressed that sincere devotion to Amida, expressed through the invoca-

tion of his sacred name (nembutsu), offered the easiest path to rebirth

(pjo) in the Pure Land of Amida's Western Paradise. Other Tendai

monks came to believe that they could revitalize Tendai practice by

reasserting the centrality of the Lotus Sutra or by reemphasizing the

Vinaya discipline. Others believed that revival could best be accom-

plished by bringing the latest and best in Buddhist teachings from

Sung China. Like their predecessors in the Asuka and Nara periods, a

few determined monks made the dangerous sea crossing to study in

the great Buddhist centers of the Southern Sung empire.

When they reached China, however, they quickly discovered that

most of the Chinese monks they encountered no longer advocated

T'ien-t'ai or Hua-yen doctrines but were devotees of Ch'an. In the

intervening centuries, while the older schools of Chinese Buddhism

had languished, Ch'an had flourished and had become the most vital

branch of Chinese monastic Buddhism. This vitality was expressed in

a sharply focused spiritual practice based on rigorous meditation, a

carefully ordered monastic life, an active intellectual and cultural influ-

ence throughout Chinese society, and institutional growth based on

generous secular patronage. Purges of established metropolitan Bud-

dhism of the kind witnessed by Ennin in the mid-ninth century had

588 ZEN AND THE GOZAN

left Ch'an and Pure Land communities - with their provincial roots,

loose organization, and relative lack of wealth or reputation for

wealth - virtually unscathed. In fact, by attacking established Bud-

dhism as alien, opulent, and antisocial, the purges helped clear the

way for the spread of Ch'an and Pure Land teachings and practices

that could easily be reconciled with Chinese sensibilities. Even if they

had not impressed the Japanese monks, T'ang Ch'an masters like Ma-

tsu (709-88) ,and Lin-chi (d. 867) had attracted able monks and in-

trigued many laypersons through their direct approach, cryptic re-

sponses, and vigorous advocacy of the possibility of immediate enlight-

enment through meditation and self-negation.

In the centuries follow-

ing the collapse of the T'ang dynasty, while Pure Land devotion

spread widely at the popular level, Ch'an won the support of large

numbers of monks, literati, and provincial military governors:

With the diffusion of political power after the An Lu-shan Rebellion, the

military governors came to share with the imperial court the patronage of

Buddhism. The governors and the men around them were attracted to the

ideas of the school of meditation (Ch'an), and this school flourished in many

provincial centers.

Thus,

monasteries that had once been filled with T'ien-t'ai, Lii

(Ritsu), Fa-hsiang, or Hua-yen monks were now dominated by Ch'an

monks and headed by Ch'an masters. During the Sung dynasty, some

thirty Ch'an centers thoughout the empire were organized in a hierar-

chy, culminating in five great monasteries, cr mountains

(wu-shan),

Hangchow. These monasteries had great wealth and prestige. Of

course, together with official sponsorship went alignment with the

secular bureaucracy. The lives of the mcnks were carefully regulated,

and the appointments of their abbots were subject to official confirma-

tion. It was to these thriving Ch'aa rr.anasteries in and around

Hangchow and the lower Yangtze River region that Japanese monks

came in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

When they enrolled in the monks' hails of these Chinese monaster-

ies and recovered from their surprise at the pervasiveness of Ch'an, the

Japanese monks found that they had much to learn. The Ch'an teach-

ings that I-K'ung introduced to Japan during the T'ang dynasty had

4 The growth of Ch'an Buddhism is introduced by Heinrich Dumoulin, A History of Zen

Buddhism (New York: Pantheon, 1963).

5 Wright and Twitchett, eds.,

Perspectives on

the Tang, p. 21.

6 Brief discussions of the role of

Ch'an

Buddhism in Sung-dynasty society can be found in Araki

Kengo, "Zen," in Kubo Noritada and Nishi Junzo, eds., Shukyo, vol. 6 of

Chugoku

bunka

sosho

(Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1968), pp. 106-114; and Tamamura Takeji, "Zen," in Bito

Masahide, ed., Chugoku bunka

to Chugoku

(Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1968), pp. 151—71.