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her cremated remains were brought to Koya for burial near the main hall of Kongobuji, where her tomb still remains.
THE GROWTH OF PURE LAND BUDDHISM
Amida (Sanskrit, Amitabha or Amitayus) Buddha, the central figure of the Pure Land faith, is one of the most popular divinities in the Buddhist pantheon, his name or that of his Pure Land appearing in more than 270 scriptures, roughly one out of every three works in the Mahayanist canon.127 At a very early stage in the development of Indian Mahayana there emerged a cult centering on Amida, that viewed him as a sort of savior who had, through his own boundless merit, created a Pure Land, or haven, offering shelter to all beings who demonstrated their faith in him by certain devotional acts. In China the Amida cult grew steadily after the year 402, when the monk Hui-yiian founded the first Pure Land association of lay and clerical devotees. Faith in Amida and his vow to deliver all beings to Pure Land became one of the dominant themes in Chinese Buddhism and was recognized as an ancillary teaching by the various Buddhist schools, whose masters often produced commentaries on the Pure Land scriptures and advocated the Pure Land faith, but always in such a way that it was subordinate to the principal tenets of their own school. In addition to these sectarian interpretations of Pure Land, however, an independent cult, which viewed Pure Land Buddhism as the only valid type of religious practice for the present age, began to take shape in the sixth century under the guiding hand of T'an-luan. This cult, known later in China and Japan as the Pure Land school, culminated in the work of Shan-tao, who, while recognizing the necessity of such traditional practices as sutra chanting, meditations, image worship, and the presentation of offerings, asserted that the vocal recitation of Amida's name was the primary devotional act leading to rebirth in Pure Land.
Although Pure Land scriptures had already been copied and studied in the Nara period and images of Amida could be found in Nara temples, it was only in Heian times that the Pure Land faith emerged as a major movement within Japanese Buddhism. In seventh- and eighth-century Japan, Amida was viewed primarily as a Buddha who could deliver the souls of the dead to his Pure Land, commonly
127 Yabuki Keiki, Amida Butsu no kenkyu, rev. and enlarged ed. (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1937), P- 449-
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called Paradise (Gokuraku).128 As the inscriptions on his images indicate, Amida was worshiped most frequently by laymen seeking to ensure the rebirth of a deceased relative in Pure Land. Relatively few instances are recorded of individuals commissioning statues of Amida in the hope that they themselves might be able to enter his Pure Land after death.129
Pure Land observances on Hiei
The systematic practice of chanting the name of Amida in the hope of attaining rebirth in his Pure Land was introduced into Japan by Ennin, who, as we have already noted, first became acquainted with the goe nembutsu service during his brief stay at the Chu-lin ssu in Wu-t'ai in 840. The founder of this monastery was the Pure Land devotee Fa-chao (died c. 820), who had himself devised the goe nembutsu, which combined the traditional meditations on Amida with the fervent invocation of his name as taught by Shan-tao. Ennin encountered the goe nembutsu again at the Tzu-sheng ssu, the monastery in Ch'ang-an at which he resided for almost five years. The melodious chanting of Amida's name constituted an important part of the liturgy used at the Tzu-sheng ssu.
In 848, the very year that Ennin returned from China, he built a Jogyo zammai-do (frequently abridged to Jogyodo) in the Toto (Eastern Pagoda) temple complex on Hiei. The Jogyodo, as its name indicates, was a hall exclusively devoted to the practice of the jogyo zammai, a meditation lasting ninety days in which one concentrated one's thoughts on Amida while invoking his name and circumambulating his image.130 The jogyo zammai, which was one of the four basic types of meditation taught by the Tendai school, was practiced not primarily to bring about rebirth in Pure Land but, rather, to enhance the powers of concentration of the devotee by enabling him to focus his mental and physical activities on Amida. But for Ennin, who had been greatly influenced during his stay in China by the intense piety of Fa-chao, the jogyo zammai was not simply a meditative exercise but an act of devotion to Amida that facilitated entry into his Pure Land. So strongly did Ennin feel about Amida worship that,
128 Although Buddhism does not technically recognize the existence of a soul (Sanskrit) atman; Japanese, gd), the notion of a soul, commonly referred to as rei or ryo, is widespread in popular Japanese Buddhism.
129 Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon Jodo-kyo seiritsu-shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1956), PP- 15-26.
130 Eigakuydki (ca. 1267), kan 1, Gunsho ruiju, vol. 15, p. 542a.
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in his will, he instructed his disciples to begin the practice of fudan nembutsu, "uninterrupted contemplation of [Amida] Buddha."131
First performed in 865, the year after Ennin's death, the fudan nembutsu played a crucial role in the dissemination of the Pure Land faith among the Hiei clergy and their aristocratic lay supporters. The fudan nembutsu was held annually at the Jogyodo from the morning of the eleventh day of the eighth month through the night of the seventeenth day. The goal of the participants was to achieve rebirth in Pure Land through the practice of the fudan nembutsu, which it was believed had the power to destroy the effects of accumulated evil karma. The fudan nembutsu had three components, each signifying a different realm of human activity: (1) the continuous invocation of Amida's name, occasionally interrupted by the chanting of passages from the Amidakyd extolling the merit embodied in the name; (2) the circumambulation of an Amida's image; and (3) the concentration of one's thoughts on Amida. These three components represented respectively the verbal, physical, and mental activities of the person, in short, the totality of human actions. By dedicating his verbal utterances, physical movement, and mental processes to Amida in this fashion, the devotee immersed himself completely in Amida, which guaranteed his rebirth in Pure Land.132
The popularity of the fudan nembutsu grew steadily: in 893 a second Jogyodo was built with imperial sponsorship in the Saito (Western Pagoda) complex on Hiei and in 968 a third Jogyodo was established by Ryogen atYokawa, the third major temple complex, thus enabling the two thousand or so monks on Hiei to take part in the annual fudan nembutsu. It was not long before provincial clerics who came to Hiei for training also became devotees of the yama no nembutsu (Amida-contemplations of [Hiei] mountain), as the fudan nembutsu came to be popularly called, and erected Jogyodo in their home regions. By the end of the tenth century Jogyodo could be found in such diverse places as Kyoto, Otsu (as an adjunct of Onj6ji),T6no-mine, and as far east as the Izu peninsula. The predominance of Amida pietism on Hiei is attested in a document dated 970, which wryly observes that although novices had been expected to spend twelve years learning all four types of Tendai meditations, they now limit themselves to the practice ofjdgyd zammai alone.133
131 Sammon dosha ki (early 14th century), Gunsho ruiju, vol. 15, p. 488a.
132 For a description of the fudan nembutsu, see Sambo ekotoba, BZ, vol. 111, p. 467; English translation, Kamens, pp. 342-44.
133 Nijurokka jo kisko, Heian ibun: komonjo hen, vol. 2, p. 435a.
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The Ojo yoshu and the dissemination of the Pure Land faith among the aristocracy
The appearance of Genshin's Ojo yoshu {Anthology on Rebirth in Pure Land) in 985 marked the beginning of a new phase in the development of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Its author, Genshin (942-1017), who had been a disciple of Ryogen, won recognition early in his career for his great learning. Instead of pursuing high ecclesiastical office, as was the custom of the Hiei elite, Genshin chose to go into seclusion at Eshin'in inYokawa, where he devoted himself to meditation and scholarship. With more than eighty extant works attributed to him, Genshin was one of the most prolific monks of the Heian period, his writing covering such diverse topics as Tendai doctrine, Hinayana philosophy, logic, esoteric ritual, and Pure Land teachings. Although Genshin always remained within the Tendai tradition, his interpretation of Pure Land doctrine, particularly as he presented it in his Ojo yoshu, provided the impetus for the Pure Land faith that swept Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries resulting in the rise of the Jodo, Jodo Shin, and Ji schools of the Kamakura period.
What distinguished Genshin's approach to Pure Land doctrine from those of his Tendai predecessors was his belief that the world was on the verge of entering the mappo age, that is, a period of irreversible spiritual decline that called for less demanding religious exercises. Whereas in earlier periods it was possible to attain enlightenment through meditation, adherence to precepts, and cultivation of wisdom, in the mappo age, which Genshin believed was about to commence, these practices were exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for most people.134 The most appropriate teaching for the mappo age, in Genshin's view, was that of Pure Land, which Amida Buddha had created as a refuge for all beings, both good and evil, who sought rebirth there. Although Ennin established Pure Land as a devotional practice on Hiei, he did not attempt to provide a doctrinal justification for it in any of his numerous writings. That task fell to Genshin, who, in order to lay a firm theoretical foundation for the practice of Pure Land within the Tendai school, undertook an extensive study of the Buddhist scripture as well as of the various treatises on Pure Land by Chinese scholars, as is attested in his Ojo yoshu, which quotes from more than 160 different works.135 It is par-
134 See the opening lines of his Ojo yoshu, kan 1, T, vol. 84, p. 33a.
135 Hanayama Shinsho, trans., Ojo yoshu, Iwanami bunko, vol. 2992-96 (Tokyo: Iwanami sho-ten, 1942), p. 3.
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ticularly significant that among the Pure Land treatises most frequently cited are those of Shan-tao and his master, Tao-ch'o, who laid the foundation for an independent Pure Land faith in China.
Running through the Ojd yoshu was a simple theme: our present world is one of defilement and pain in contrast to the Pure Land of Amida, which is a blissful realm free from taint or suffering. By using copious quotations from the scripture that provided graphic accounts of the suffering of beings trapped in the cycle of transmigration contrasted with the ecstatic existence of the inhabitants of Pure Land, Genshin sought to warn his contemporaries about attachment to the transitory pleasures of this life and awaken within them a yearning for Amida's Pure Land. While Genshin in theory accepted the traditional Tendai emphasis on the importance of meditation on Amida as a means to achieve rebirth in Pure Land, he also recognized that in the mappo age such practices were difficult for most people, who could not sustain for long periods of time the demanding meditations in which one contemplated each of the thirty-two physical signs of Amida's Buddhahood, not to mention the more abstract ones in which Amida's radiant form is viewed as a manifestation of absolute truth.
For such spiritually weak people - and Genshin included himself in this group - Genshin advocated, as a last resort, isshin shorten, "wholehearted invocation of Amida's name (sho) combined with contemplation (neri)," the latter referring specifically to contemplating the act of submitting oneself to Amida or to visualizing the deathbed scene in which Amida, accompanied by a host of bo-dhisattvas, descends from the sky to lead the dying person to Pure Land. The single most important religious practice for the Pure Land devotee was nembutsu, which signified not simply the repetition of the name of Amida as it did in Kamakura times and later, but also included the notion of meditating on Amida as well. To Genshin, the highest expression of Pure Land faith was jinjo nembutsu, in other words, the continuous practice of nembutsu in one's daily life. Since Genshin believed, however, that the world was about to enter the mappo age, he acknowledged that jinjo nembutsu remained more of an ideal than a practical course of action. He therefore attached particular importance to rinju gyogi, "deathbed rites," in which the dying person, surrounded by friends and relatives urging him to think of Amida's imminent arrival, repeatedly invokes Amida's name while holding a cord attached to the hand of an image of Amida.
It seems likely that Genshin intended the Ojd yoshu to be a practi-
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cal guide for the Nijugo zammai-e, a spiritual mutual-help society formed in 986 by twenty-five monks from the Shuryogon'in in Yokawa who vowed to assist one another in attaining rebirth in Pure Land.136 The monks agreed to meet on the fifteenth day of each month for a service that opened in the early afternoon with a lecture on the Hokekyo, after which the group began meditations on Amida, while invoking his name and chanting the Amidakyd. If any member of the society became ill, he would be cared for by the others, and if it seemed that he was dying, he would be brought to the Ojoin (Chapel for Rebirth), which was a hall enshrining an image of Amida, where his colleagues would encourage him to chant Amida's name while envisioning the arrival of Amida with his retinue of bo-dhisattvas. In return, the dying person promised that after reaching Pure Land he would reappear in the dreams of his colleagues to describe Pure Land and strengthen their determination to reach it.
The rules of the Nijugo zammai-e were drafted by Yoshishige no Yasutane, a devout Pure Land believer who had taken the tonsure just before the Nijugo zammai-e was established. Earlier, in 964, Yasutane had founded the Kangaku-e (Society for the Promotion of Learning)137 which was a Pure Land society consisting of twenty monks from Hiei and twenty laymen, most of whom had aristocratic or literary backgrounds. The Kangaku-e, which met twice yearly at temples around Hiei, contributed to the spread of the Pure Land faith among the upper classes and helped pave the way for the all-clerical Nijugo zammai-e, whose membership soon expanded to include Genshin himself and Emperor Kazan, who had renounced his throne and taken holy orders a month after the founding of the Nijugo zammai-e.
The Ojd yoshu was well received by the aristocracy, who were deeply moved by its profound religious message and enthralled by its detailed description of the palaces, lakes, and gardens of Pure Land. The most powerful aristocrat of the day, Fujiwara no Michi-naga, was an avid reader of the Ojoydshcu and an admirer of Genshin, to whom he twice sent emissaries after becoming ill in 1004.138 A de-
136 For the Nijugo zammai-e, see Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), pp. 162-64, and the same author's Nihon Jodo-kyo seiritsu-shi no kenkyu, pp. 148-49.
137 The origins and practices of the Kangaku-e are discussed in Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon Jodo-kyo seiritsu-shi no kenkyu, pp. 150-52. For an early account see Sambo ekotoba, BZ, vol. 111, pp. 45ob-5ib; English translation, pp. 295-98; see also the valuable notes inYa-madaYoshio, Samboe ryakuchu (Tokyo: Hobunkan, 1951), pp. 288-92.
138 For Michinaga's involvement with Pure Land Buddhism, see Inoue, Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo, pp. 165-70, andTsuji, Nihon Bukkyo-shi: josei hen, pp. 572-73.
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vout Pure Land believer, Michinaga took the tonsure in 1019 and the following year built an Amida Hall (also known as Mido or Murydjuin), in which he installed nine 16-feet-tall gilded images of Amida, each representing this Buddha in one of the nine traditional divisions of Pure Land. Michinaga died at his Amida Hall, in the manner of Genshin, clutching a silk cord that linked him to the nine images of Amida. Michinaga's son and successor, Yorimichi, likewise built an Amida Hall, the famous Hoodo at By5d6in in Uji, which when viewed with its surrounding landscape was intended to be a re-creation of Pure Land in this world. The great popularity that the Pure Land faith enjoyed among the aristocracy and the powerful clans is attested by the large number of Amida Halls built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Documents of the period indicate that at least ninety-five Amida Halls were established between 1020, when Michinaga dedicated his Mido, and 1192, when Minamoto no Yoritomo built Nikaido with its nine images of Amida at Eifukuji in Kamakura.139
The popularization of the Pure Land faith
The Amida Halls with their resplendent images and elegant gardens suggestive of the topography of Pure Land, the meditations on Amida, and the elaborate ceremonies called mukae-ko (welcoming services) in which young monks wearing jeweled crowns, golden masks and the raiments of bodhisattvas pretend to welcome their prestigious patrons in to Amida's Paradise had little to do with the Pure Land faith of the common man, who could neither read the Chinese in which the Ojd yoshu was written nor participate in the rituals of the aristocratic Amida Halls.140 His faith in Pure Land was inspired not so much by the monks of the great monasteries as by the hijiri, "holy men," who were typically clerics who had chosen to pursue the religious calling away from the main monasteries.141 Some of the hijiri were eccentrics who shunned clerical garb in favor of deerskins; others spent long periods in remote mountain retreats practicing austerities while chanting the Hokekyo; still others lived in her-
139 Inoue, in his Nihon kodai no kokka to Bukkyo, pp. 171-78, provides a detailed list of the Amida Halls of this period giving the date of construction, the name of the hall, its sponsor, and the primary sources in which the hall is mentioned.
140 On mukae-ko, see Ishida Mizumaro, Jodo-kyo no tendai (Tokyo: Shunjiisha, 1967), pp. 130-32.
141 For a comprehensive study of the hijiri, see Hon Ichiro, "On the Concept of Hijiri (Holy-Man)," Numen 5, 2 (April 1958): 128-60; 5, 3 (September 1958): 199-232.
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mitages known as bessho, "places apart," which were located on the fringes of the precincts of larger monasteries; some others such as the yugyd hijiri, "wandering hijiri," roamed the countryside preaching to the common people and soliciting small contributions from them for religious projects - a practice known as kanjin - which appealed greatly to members of the lower classes for it enabled them to "establish affinity" (kechien) with a hijiri and partake of his great merit.
Although hijiri appear in Buddhist sources as early as the Nara period, it was only after the middle of the tenth century that they became a prominent feature of Japanese Buddhism. Their religious faith, for all its intensity, was usually an amalgam of esoteric rites that were simple enough to be performed by the individual, devotion to the Hokekyo, and belief in Amida as a savior, coupled with a yearning for rebirth in his Pure Land. The first hijiri to play a major role in the dissemination of the Pure Land faith was Kuya (903-72), also known as Koya, who had spent his early years undertaking spiritual exercises in the mountains.142 After tonsuring himself in his twenties at the Owari Kokubunji, Kuya became an itinerant prosely-tizer, carrying scriptures and holy images in his backpack. Like the famous Gyoki of the Nara period, he is said to have built roads, erected bridges, dug wells, and collected abandoned corpses for cremation, all activities that brought him close to the common people. Known as Amida hijiri because of his continuous chanting of the name of Amida - even the wells he dug came to be called "Amida wells" - Kuya settled in Kyoto in 938, spreading the Amida faith among its inhabitants and earning the appellation ichi hijiri, "the hijiri of the marketplace." Kuya's alienation from the established church, which was common to many hijiri, is evidenced by his failure to seek formal ordination on Hiei until he had reached the relatively advanced age of forty-five. Commenting on his achievements, the Nihon ojo gokuraku ki, which is a late-tenth-century collection of biographies of people who have attained rebirth in Pure Land, observes that before the Tengyo era (938-47) few of the simple folk practiced Amida devotions, but thanks to the efforts of Kuya, "who invoked the name himself and made others invoke the name," the whole of Japan came to devote itself to nembutsu.143
142 The most reliable treatment of Kuya's life is to be found in Hori Ichiro, Kuya, Jimbutsu sdsho, vol. 106 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1963).
143 Yoshishige no Yasutane, Nihon ojo gokuraku ki (985), in Inoue Mitsusada and Osone Shosuke, eds., Ojo den, Hokke genki, vol. 7 of Nihon shiso taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1974). P- 9-
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By the eleventh century, warriors, farmers, fishermen, and others whose occupations brought them into conflict with the Buddhist precepts increasingly viewed the practice of nembutsu as the principal method for achieving rebirth in Pure Land. The five djo den (biographies of people who have attained rebirth in Pure Land), written in the twelfth century, contain numerous stories of such individuals - not to mention rapacious officials, monks who had fathered children, and other assorted miscreants - who were saved through the power of the nembutsu. Typical is the biography of Kiyohara no Masakuni in the Shiii djo den, which claims that although "there was not an evil act that he did not commit," he nevertheless attained rebirth in Pure Land after taking up the practice of nembutsu at age sixty, reciting the name 100,000 times daily.144 Similarly the learned monk Jungen, "who turned his daughter into his wife," began the practice of nembutsu only on his deathbed and yet was received into Pure Land.145
Although in most cases the nembutsu was practiced in conjunction with other devotional acts not intrinsically connected with the Pure Land faith, such as chanting the Hokekyo or performing simple esoteric rites, the djo den indicate that some laymen and monks performed nembutsu alone, to the exclusion of all other types of Buddhist devotional practice. The Go-shld djo den reports, for example, that a Hiei monk named Ryusen (1047-1116) renounced the study of Tendai and Mikkyo early in his career to devote himself exclusively to nembutsu, uttering the name of Amida 120,000 times daily for thirty years.146 The same work tells of an impoverished farmer from Omi who was too poor to make offerings, but instead continuously recited the name of Amida both when doing his daily devotions as well as when working in the fields.147 As the Konjaku monogatari attests by its frequent use of such phrases as nembutsu wo tonau, "to recite the nembutsu," the term nembutsu by the twelfth century had come to signify for many laymen and nonelite monks simply the recitation of Amida's name without any reference to meditation.148
The concept that even evil men could attain rebirth in Pure Land, the belief that practice of nembutsu alone was sufficient to bring about rebirth there, and the emergence of the view that the nembutsu
144 Miyoshi Tameyasu, Shuiojo den (ca. 1111), kan 2, Ojo den, Hokke genki, p. 339.
145 Shuiojo den, kan 3, pp. 363-64.
146 Miyoshi Tameyasu, Go-shuojo den (1139), kan 1, Ojo-den, Hokke genki, p. 649.
147 Go-shuibjd den, kan 1, p. 651.
148 Konjaku monogatari shu (ca. 1120), kan 15, NKBT, vol. 24, p. 382.
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consisted primarily of reciting the name of Amida laid the foundation for the Pure Land schools that were established in the Ka-makura period and that came to figure so prominently throughout Japanese religious history. Shinran (1173-1262), the founder of the Jodo Shin school, openly acknowledged his debt to the lay tradition of Pure Land Buddhism that emerged in the Heian period by declaring that he modeled himself after Kyoshin (d. 866), a tonsured but married layman (shami) who expressed his deep faith in Pure Land simply by reciting Amida's name as often as possible in his everyday life.149
149 Kakunyo, Gaijasho (1335)) Shinshu shogyb zensho, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Oyagi kobundo, 1964), pp. 67-68. For examples of Kyoshin's piety, seeYokan's Ojd fi in (1103), Jodo-shu zensho, vol. 15 (Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin, 1971), pp. 3750-778.
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