Organizer: Brian D. Ruppert, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Chair: Neil McMullin, University of Toronto
Discussant: Jacqueline Stone, Princeton University
Most scholars know that clerics and warriors had a close relationship in medieval Japan, but few attempt to investigate their interdependence. Studies rarely address the similarities between these groups and often assume a clear distinction between them.
A way to challenge this presupposition is to analyze a series of specific examples in the medieval era. This panel does so through examining written manuscripts as well as picture scrolls and architecture from the late twelfth through the fourteenth century. Roy Ron analyzes documents concerning the building of the Kamakura shrine-temple Tsurugaoka Hachimanguji to consider the motives of Yoritomo in its construction and his conception of the relationship between rulers and clerics. Todd Brown takes a new look at the illustrated biography of the Jishu founders to examine the strategies whereby their disciples appealed to warriors. Brian Ruppert focuses on the cult of relics among warriors to provide insight into the esoteric and performative strategies by which leaders of the shogunate drew on the powers of monks and relic rituals to consolidate their authority and ensure the salvation of their families. Mikael Adolphson discusses representations of fighting monks in picture scrolls and other sources to evaluate the extent and character of their relationship with the warrior class.
This panel uses nuanced analysis of these cases to gain an understanding of the strategies that drew monks and samurai together and, where possible, to re-imagine the boundaries that presumably separate them.
Roy Ron, University of Hawaii
Shortly after entering Kamakura, Yoritomo ordered the construction of a new shrine at the foot of Mount Kitayama to which he transported the god Hachiman. It was a branch of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, a small shrine located some distance from the new shrine. Within a few years the branch shrine became a grand shrine-temple complex staffed with clerics whom Yoritomo selected. Yoritomo’s involvement in the construction of Tsurugaoka Hachimanguji began with specific orders concerning the physical location and appearance of the shrine, and extended to the nature and time of its festivals as well as the recitation of Buddhist texts. Its system of monks resembled that of temples linked to the Kyoto court, while the monks themselves were selected exclusively from Mount Hiei.
The purpose of this paper is to explore Yoritomo’s motives behind the construction of a shrine-temple in Kamakura, and the political role of that shrine-temple in connection with the early Kamakura bakufu. I will analyze a number of documents, including the records of Tsurugaoka Hachimanguji and Yoritomo’s orders, to look at the way in which Yoritomo, religious as he was, used the power, authority and symbolism of religion to legitimize and strengthen himself, and revive the Minamoto clan. Finally, I will also attempt in doing so to gain insight into Yoritomo’s conception of bushi society in relationship to the clergy and court aristocracy: does such construction suggest an effort to distance himself from the court, or something quite different?
Todd Brown, Princeton University
After its formation in the summer of 1278, the Pure Land religious order known as the Jishu quickly gained prominence, soon becoming one of the largest of the so-called "new schools" of Buddhism that arose in Japan during the Kamakura period. To a great extent, its success was a result of the enthusiastic reception it enjoyed among provincial warriors, who served as patrons of individual Jishu temples (dojo) established on their lands.
While scholars have often sought to explain the Jishu’s popularity among the bushi with reference to the sect’s founder, Ippen Chishin, this paper will examine the role of Ippen’s immediate successor, Ta’amidabutsu Shinkyo. In particular, I will focus on the Yugyo shonin engi e, an illustrated biography of Ippen and Shinkyo created under the latter’s direction. It has long been recognized that this work was created primarily as a tool of proselytization, and that it served to glorify Ippen’s memory, to exalt the Jishu and, perhaps above all, to legitimate Shinkyo’s assumption of the sect’s leadership; less attention, however, has been paid to internal evidence that the Engi e was designed to appeal specifically to a warrior audience. By examining several key episodes in the narrative, and by considering some important omissions, I will demonstrate that the Engi e portrays the Jishu as uniquely qualified to address the particular religious needs of the provincial bushi, and that it can thus be seen as one element in Shinkyo’s long-term campaign to win warrior patronage for his sect.
Brian D. Ruppert, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Although it is well known that aristocrats, the imperial family and monks of medieval Japan had an interest in obtaining and venerating Buddha relics, were warriors involved in relic veneration?
The early Kamakura shogunate sponsored the construction of multiple reliquaries, and by the late thirteenth century its leaders began the construction and continued patronage of three major temples that became centers of relic veneration: Engakuji, Shomyoji, and Gokurakuji. Later, the Ashikaga leaders of the Muromachi shogunate sponsored the large-scale construction of "reliquaries of the Buddha’s favor" (rishoto) in provinces throughout Japan, and often requested distribution of Buddha relics from the temple Toji in Kyoto.
This study demonstrates that there were at least two interrelated relic cults that medieval shogunates patronized: those of large-scale reliquary construction, and of temple centers where lineages of relic veneration were forged. First I argue that these governments sponsored reliquary construction to publicly demonstrate their piety and authority. Second, I interpret their leaders’ acquisition of relics from China and native Shingon temples as primarily reflecting their ideological and ritual roots in governmental and Buddhist traditions of western Japan, where the imperial government had for centuries offered reliquaries to shrines and temples, and esoteric Buddhists had long constructed lineages of relic possession and veneration. Thus the leaders of each shogunate especially drew on imperial precedent as well as the powers of monks and rituals of the exoteric-esoteric Buddhist system (kenmitsu taisei) to ensure the salvation of their families and empower their rule.
Mikael Adolphson, University of Oklahoma
The armed forces of the leading Buddhist temples were as feared as the most furious warriors during the Kamakura and Muromachi eras. Yet whereas our understanding of the warrior class has progressed in the last two decades, surprisingly little is known about the fighting servants of Buddha. In part, this negligence can be attributed to the overwhelmingly negative image that has been associated with armed monks for centuries. The first evidence of criticism can be found in picture scrolls from the late Kamakura period, when patrons of the new populist Buddhist sects attempted to discredit the older sects for their secular power. Since these images pay little attention to the actual role of armed servants and tend to confuse their functions within the monasteries, only a careful scrutiny of the origins, behavior and appearance of these figures in contemporary sources will allow us to understand them in the proper context.
This paper asserts that armed forces employed by temples and shrines to protect private estates and in conflicts with other religious institutions were primarily a result of the privatization of government that also gave rise to the warrior class in the late Heian period. Both groups, whether clad in monk garments or armor, were accepted figures in Heian and Kamakura Japan, fulfilling specific functions for the secular and religious elites. However, whereas the leadership of the warrior class rose to national prominence in the fourteenth century, armed monks were disassociated from the new warrior polity and criticized by it.