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Journal ofWorld Buddhist Cultures
Vol. 5
CONTENTS❖ Articles ❖◆ Biography as Interreligious Dialogue: The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH
◆ Foucault’s Zen Body: The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori Sōgen
Filippo PEDRETTI◆ For Want of a Disciple: Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples in the
Early Modern Period
Alexander VESEY❖ Book Review ❖◆ Review of Mind Seeing Mind. Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism by
Roger R. Jackson
Michael R. SHEEHY

Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures,
Ryukoku University

2022.3

Journal ofWorld Buddhist Cultures
Vol. 5

Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures,
Ryukoku University－ March 2022 －Editorial Note
Kosuke Shimizu
Director, Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures

The Research Centre for World Buddhist Cultures (RCWBC) was able to arrange
two symposia and several workshops during the 2021–2022 academic year despite the
COVID-19 epidemic. The symposia and workshops covered a wide range of topics,
from basic research in Buddhist studies to applied research on contemporary social andpolitical events. Through these activities, we are confident that the RCWBC has
contributed to the further development of Buddhist studies. Most of these events wereconducted online, where we were able to attract a large audience. We are grateful for thecooperation we received to make this possible.
With great pleasure, we present the fifth volume of the Journal of World Buddhist
Cultures. The journal upholds the rigorous standards of a peer-review process. We arevery proud of the articles that have been included in this volume, and would like tothank all the reviewers for their kind and thoughtful comments. We would also like toexpress our sincere gratitude to all the contributors.
We hope that through the quality of our research results, we will build a networkof Buddhist studies with people from all over the world. We look forward to furtheringcollaboration in the future.

i発 刊 の 辞清水 耕介
世界仏教文化研究センター長

コロナウイルスの蔓延が続いた 2021 年度、世界仏教文化研究センターは二つのシンポジウムと多くの研究会を開くことができました。これらは仏教学の基礎研究から現代の社会情勢についての応用研究まで幅広いトピックを取り上げ、仏教研究の更なる展開に寄与したと自負しております。これらのほとんどはオンラインで行われ、多くの聴衆を集めることができました。これも皆様のご協力の賜物であると感謝しております。
さて、こうした様々な研究活動を通して『世界仏教文化研究』の第５号を皆様にお届けできることを大変喜んでおります。本誌は大変厳しい査読過程を設け、そうした厳しい査読を通過した今回の掲載論文は、非常に質の高いものが揃ったと自負しております。
今回の査読者の皆様からは厳しくも丁寧なコメントいただき、本当にありがとうございました。また、投稿いただいた皆様にも厚く御礼を申し上げます。
このような質の高い研究成果を通して、世界各地の皆様と共に仏教研究のネットワー
クを構築してまいりたいと考えております。今後とも、何卒よろしくお願いいたします。

ii

Table of Contents
Editorial Notei

Table of Contentsiii❖

Articles ❖Biography as Interreligious Dialogue: The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH
Foucault’s Zen Body: The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori
Sōgen
Filippo PEDRETTI
For Want of a Disciple: Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples
in the Early Modern Period
Alexander VESEY

❖

3

23

41

Book Review ❖Review of Mind Seeing Mind. Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan
Buddhism by Roger R. Jackson
Michael R. SHEEHY
81

Purpose of the Journal

87

Authors’ Profiles

90

iii

目

次

発刊の辞

i

目次

iii

❖ 論

文 ❖

Biography as Interreligious Dialogue: The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH
3
Foucault’s Zen Body: The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori
Sōgen
Filippo PEDRETTI
23
For Want of a Disciple: Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples
in the Early Modern Period and Retrieval
Alexander VESEY S 41

❖ 書 評 ❖
Review of Mind Seeing Mind. Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan
Buddhism by Roger R. Jackson
Michael R. SHEEHY

81

発刊の目的

87

執筆者一覧

90

iv

凡

例

1, 本誌は、英語を主言語とするが、日本語による投稿もさまたげない。したがって、目次、巻末執筆者等は、英語と日本語を併記する。
2, 漢字表記については、翻訳を含む日本語原稿の場合、一部の人名、書名を除き、原則、
常用漢字に統一する。
3, 本誌中に使用されている図版の無断コピーは固く禁ずる。

v

Articles

Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue

Biography as Interreligious Dialogue:
The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH
Postdoctoral Fellow,
Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures,
Ryukoku University

3❖ Articles 1 ❖❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Abstract
This article discusses the possibility of reading biographies as interreligious dialogues. It
focuses on Shinran and three modern biographies influenced by Christianity: Murata
Tsutomu’s The True Biography of Shinran, Ishimaru Gohei’s The Passion of Shinran, andKurata Hyakuzō’s The Priest and His Disciples. Most of the previous research on religious
biographies has addressed the question of the biography’s historical adequacy or analysed thetexts from the standpoint of the history of literature. However, there has been hardly any
attempt to clarify the potential of biographies in the doctrinal discourse. This article
contributes to this field of study by analysing the dialogical structure of biographies that
extensively use the Christian language and refer to similarities within the development ofboth religious traditions. The three biographies contribute to the interreligious dialogue by
describing Shinran’s life in the context of a Christian background. This approach allows thereader to observe connections between thematised religions because the religious practice ofShinran in his life is a touchstone to prove the compatibility of the Jōdoshin Buddhist andChristian teachings. Murata’s biography conducts interreligious dialogue throughcomparison. Ishimaru’s narrator uses the Christian language to tell the story of Shinran’s
struggles. Kurata creates a new language and understanding of Jōdoshin Buddhist teachings
that cannot be clearly assigned to either of the two religions. The article clarifies how
biographies contribute to the interreligious dialogue and intrareligious discourse on doctrine.

4Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖Biography as Interreligious Dialogue:
The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH

Keywords:

Interreligious Dialogue,
Doctrinal Studies

Biography,

Shinran,Christianity,

1. Introduction
The life of Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262) has gained attention in a high number of contexts.
It stands in the centre of the most crucial ceremony in Jōdoshin Buddhist practice–
Hōonkō 報恩講 (Assembly to return in gratitude [Shinran’s] benevolence).1 Shinran is
one of the most recognised priests in biographical literature. He has also become theobject of studies aiming to confirm the historicity of his biography. However, despite thisrelevance to academia and ritual practice, we can hardly observe equal importance interms of approaching Shinran’s teachings. One reason for this problem is easy toconceive: biographies do not directly deal with doctrinal problems in most cases.
However, because a biography is not only a chronology but creates a causality to connect
the events of a person’s life, it makes usage of certain axiology.2 At this level, the questionof a biography’s author is irrelevant because it is the content of the narrator’s argument
within the story, not the author’s motives, which must be the basis for analysing themessage of the biography.
Another reason lies in the widespread concept that those interested in doctrinalquestions should read texts discussing points of the teachings in the style of a treatise.
This idea is further supported by the fact that reading a biography as a text discussing
doctrine requires considerable prior knowledge. The research literature also reflects thistendency because most of it tries to clarify the historicity or the development of Shinran’s
images in the context of the history of literature.3 This article takes the opposite approach
The most prominent examples in the context of religious practice are Kakunyo’s 覚如 Godenshō 御伝鈔 (Essentials of the Life [of Shinran]) and Zonkaku’s 存覚 Tandokumon 嘆徳文 (Scripture to Praise
the Virtues [of Shinran]).
2
The point is not whether the biography is presented as a table or in sentences but where an author uses
for example subordinating conjunctions such as “because” or “whereas.”3
Although much research discusses the historical truth within Shinran biographies and clarifies thedevelopment of Shinran images, both approaches do not go beyond the study of history. In this context, themost notable works are Akamatsu, Shinranden no kenkyū; Imai, Shinran no denshō to shijitsu; En’ya,
15❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5and detaches the biographies of Shinran from history. This will allow us to use thebiographies as a tool to discuss the teachings of Shinran. The condition for this reading is
to conceive the biographies as fiction, thus facilitating uncovering new elements in thistext genre. 4 Based on this, I will discuss how biographies can contribute to theinterreligious dialogue.
2. Interreligious Dialogue and Biographies of Shinran
Before beginning the analysis of the biographies, it is necessary to define the term
“dialogue.” A dictionary defines it as “a formal discussion between two groups orcountries, especially when trying to solve a problem, end a disagreement, etc.”5 The main
point lies in the existence of a specific question. On this background, the parties compare
their view on a topic and try together to “solve a problem.” In most cases, interreligious(or interfaith) dialogue means that two or more discussion participants share arguments
on a specific topic derived from their religious standpoint.
My approach slightly differs from this structure because I do not want to focus on
dialogues with multiple participants that one biography may include as part of its story. I
want to consider the narrator as one participant and the characters - especially theprotagonist - as another. The first standpoint appears in the shape of the biography’s
language, whereas the content of the figures’ actions expresses the second standpoint.
One simple example of such kind of interreligious dialogue can sound as follows:“Shinran was moved by the blessing that he surely will reach heaven.” The participants
engaging in dialogue are not distinguishable. Therefore, my understanding of the terminterreligious dialogue differs because it is a dialogical monologue that includes two or
more positions. Moreover, as the example made clear, one standpoint often appears
implicitly in the shape of a religious position expressed by Shinran’s figure. If we apply
this to the example above, the sentence does not become a dialogue as such, but only if
the reader anticipates the Buddhist terminology of kindness (onkei 恩恵) and Pure Landor Nirvana as (un)equal terms compared with blessing and heaven. Therefore, the authorof such a biography needs to include both positions sufficiently in terms of content andrhetoric.
In the case of the biographies of Shinran, the above-mentioned problem of the
dialogue is Shinran’s life and his struggles. Because the purpose of the dialogue is not
simply to exchange information, the meaning of biography as dialogue cannot solely
provide historical data about Shinran. Instead, his life serves as a means to discuss various
problems he had as a religious thinker. Therefore, if we read biographies as a type of
religious dialogue, the specific problem rarely appears in the title or subtitle of the text.
Katarareta Shinran; Taira, Rekishi no naka ni miru Shinran; and Matsuo, Shirarezaru Shinran. The twoworks that have a similar approach to this article are Umehara, Shinran ‘yottsu no nazo’ o toku; and Sueki,
Shinran.
4
For a detailed discussion of the possibility and method of connecting studies in biography and doctrine,
see Rüsch, Argumente des Heiligen.
5
Turnbull, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, “Dialogue,” 418.

6Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖Instead, the author addresses various topics by stressing their image of the characters particularly the protagonist - in the novel. In this sense, a biography functions similar toa doctrinal treatise. The author expresses their interpretation of the teachings through thepractice and daily life of the characters. Therefore, a biography can, on its own, contributeto the doctrinal discourse by clarifying aspects that tend to be overlooked in more abstract
discussions of the teachings.
Notably, we cannot read every biography as interreligious dialogue. The questionis, what are the two or more groups that represent the condition for dialogue? In thisarticle, I want to understand dialogue as the use of terminology from a religious tradition
that differs from the context of the thematised story. Therefore, in our case, the first
dialogue partner is Shinran, his life, and the language of Pure Land Buddhism. The second
partner is the narrator, who uses a non-Buddhist language, which is the vocabulary of
Christianity in this article. Only the author of such a biography creates a dialogue where
the dialogue partners are parts of the narrative. Such dialogues are conceivable from amacro perspective between Christianity and Buddhism and as intrabuddhist or evenamong Jōdoshin Buddhist dialogues.6 As I will discuss in the following, this approach to
Shinran’s life runs the risk of creating a new religion that is neither Christian nor Buddhist.
However, the three examples show that a successive dialogue clarifies the similarities anddifferences between the two partners and can provide new insights into one’s own
tradition.
Among the many biographies on Shinran written until today, the novels and dramas
from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are notable in the context of interreligious
dialogue. However, we cannot maintain that the authors wrote the biographies with the
motivation or consciousness to conduct a dialogue. Therefore, in this article, I do not referto the putative motivations or biographies of the authors; however, my purpose is toconduct an intratextual analysis. The thesis of this article is not that the authors wrote
their biographies to conduct a religious dialogue. I aim to maintain that their biographies
are (unwittingly) cases of interreligious dialogue as long as we read them from thestandpoint of doctrinal studies. Concerning biographies of Shinran before Christianity’s
strong impact, we can observe interreligious dialogue between Jōdoshin Buddhism andShinto. This dialogue does not stand in the centre of these biographies. However, referringto Shinto within the biographies is a crucial sign of the self-consciousness of the Jōdoshin
Buddhist community and the understanding of the teachings towards Shinto. Examples
of such a dialogue between Jōdoshin Buddhism and Shinto are the Godenshō 御傳鈔
(Essentials of the Life [of Shinran]) and Shinran shōnin eshiden 親鸞聖人繪詞傳(Illustrated Biography of the Saint Shinran).7

We also can call parts of the stories on wondrously excellent people (myōkōninden 妙好人伝) an intra
Jōdoshin Buddhist dialogue since they thematise the two standpoints within the dispute “confusion[concerning] the three [types of] acting” (sangō wakuran 三業惑乱). See for example Shinshū Shiryō
Kankōkai, Taikei Shinshū Shiryō: Denkihen. Vol. 8, Myōkōninden, 265.
7
See Jōdo Shinshū Honganjiha Sōgō Kenkyūjo, Jōdo Shinshū Seiten Zensho, vol. 4, 97–102 and Shinshū
Shiryō Kankōkai, Taikei Shinshū Shiryō: Denkihen. Vol. 1, Shinranden, 365/368.
67❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5In this article, I analyse the biographies Shinran shinden 親鸞眞傳 (The True
Biography of Shinran, first published in 1896), Junan no Shinran 受難の親鸞 (ThePassion of Shinran, first published in 1922), and Shukke to sono deshi 出家とその弟子(The Priest and his Disciples, first published in 1917) as examples of interreligious
dialogues between Jōdoshin Buddhism and Christianity.8 Especially in the cases of Junanno Shinran and Shukke to sono deshi, we can hardly say that such a dialogue was the
purpose of the authors when writing their texts. However, both authors describe the lifeof Shinran by extensively using the Christian language, whereby the dialogical context is
automatically given. This article aims to clarify the intratextual tools to look at Shinran’steachings from a Christian perspective. Further, I want to discuss the potentials and limitsof biographies as dialogue to determine how they can contribute to the doctrinal discourse
in general.
3. Examples of Biographies as Interreligious Dialogue
3.1 Murata Tsutomu, Shinran shinden: Comparison as Dialogue
As the title of Murata’s biography indicates, the author tries to account for the so-called
historically true parts of Shinran’s life. He informs the reader about this approach alreadyon the front page which contains a “subtitle” in smaller letters that reads “a historicalcritique.” Further, this page also includes an essential paratextual element–namely, thenote that Murata is the author of a book titled “Luther.” Therefore, the reader can expect
a biography of Shinran that shows high awareness of Christianity and, presumably, will
provide several comparative notes on the relationship between the religions that followed
Luther (1483–1546) and Shinran.

I use the following editions of the biographies: Murata Tsutomu, Shinran shinden (1896), Ishimaru Gohei,
Junan no Shinran (1922), and Kurata Hyakuzō, Shukke to sono deshi (1921). The biography written by
Kurata is the only one that has also been translated. In this article, I use a reprint of the English translation
by Glenn W. Shaw, first published in 1922. Shukke to sono deshi has also been translated into Dutch (Depriester en zijne discipelen) in 1926 and French (Le prêtre et ses disciples) in 1932.
8

8

Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖A perspective on Shinran’s life, strongly influenced by Christianity, is apparent in theentire biography. The author is interested in providing a solid basis for discussing thefacts of Shinran’s biography. However, the point that the author provides many references
to Luther shows that his interest in knowledge does not stop with simple historical data.
In that case, no reference to the relationship between Luther and Shinran would bepossible. Murata can pursue this latter interest only by referring to similarities in theirteachings, which demands a distinct interpretation of the writings of these two figures. At
this point, he does not argue on the level of historiography but theology. Here, Murata’s
text becomes interesting in the context of biography as interreligious dialogue. One
example is the third chapter titled “The Origin of the Pure Land Sect and [Shinran’s]
Joining the Yoshimizu [Group],”9 which Murata writes as follows after an explanation of
the achievements of the Pure Land monk Ryōnin 良忍 (1073–1132):
In other words, the Pure Land sect before Hōnen developed step by step in that way. But atthat point, the time was ripe, the people’s hearts got tense again due to [new] demands, andfinally, it came to the appearance of a great religion through the efforts of Hōnen. The roleof Hōnen is very similar to Luther’s. Although there were a high number of minor Luthers
before Luther, there was the need to wait for the grand talent of Luther so that the importantmission of founding a new sect finally got done, visible to all people. [Similarly:] Although
there were a high number of minor Hōnens before Hōnen, in the end, the great work ofestablishing the Pure Land sect got public due to the great virtues of Hōnen.10

We may describe Murata’s comparison of Luther and Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212) as
directed to the historical formation of the two sects and the function Luther and Hōnen
played in this context. His interest lies less in referring to doctrinal points. However,
because Murata writes this part within a biography of Shinran, it is remarkable that themost critical turning point in the development of Pure Land thought came not with
Shinran but with Hōnen. If we consider the popularisation of Christianity and an emphasison one’s inner faith as Luther’s achievements, the “great work” of Hōnen lies in thefounding of the Yoshimizu group and the accentuation of faith within religious practice.
In contrast, although Pure Land thinkers such as Ryōnin spread their understanding of
Buddhist teachings, their activities cannot break free from the existing organisations.
Murata’s decision to put Hōnen on top of the development of Pure Land thought
has an important impact on the function of Shinran within the interreligious dialogue. The
first consequence is that Hōnen and his teachings became the centre of the religious
movement. It is noteworthy that this must not necessarily be equal to what the modern orcontemporary Jōdo sect conceives as Hōnen’s teachings. However, the achievements of
Shinran cannot exceed those of Hōnen, and therefore, his unique function lies at most inclarifying the teachings of his master. Hōnen belongs to one of the Seven Patriarchs in
the Jōdoshin Buddhist sect. Hence, there is no problem in comprehending Hōnen’steachings as consistent with Jōdoshin Buddhism. Instead, the rhetoric of Hōnen as the
910

The Yoshimizu Group refers to the community around Hōnen.
Murata, Shinran shinden, 26.

9❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

zenith of Pure Land history complicates the construction of Shinran as the central figureof a religious community.
The second consequence concerns the understanding of Pure Land thought itself.
Further reading would be necessary to clarify Murata’s understanding of the completionof Pure Land thought. However, the part above shows that Shinran’s significant
development cannot clarify a new element in the teachings. 11 If the author wants topresent Shinran as an eminent monk, his life must conform to the religious goal describedin Hōnen’s teachings. Similarly, to some extent, this applies to Luther’s teachings.
Although the reader is dependent on the statements of Murata on what he understands as
Luther’s religion, the reference to Luther sets another frame in which Shinran’s
attainments must be contextualised. Therefore, the religious valuation of Shinran’s life isconnected to the teachings of Hōnen and Luther.
Comparison as a type of interreligious dialogue provides a means to ease theapproach to an unknown figure and their thinking. In this sense, Murata’s Shinran shinden
can function as an effective tool by which a reader who is already familiar with Lutherand Hōnen may be led to the figure of Shinran. The efficacy of such an approach to a newreadership is constrained by the fact that the extent of the reader’s understanding of
Shinran’s teachings is limited to the reader’s knowledge of the object of comparison.
Hence, Shinran shinden requires an understanding of Luther’s role in the history of
Christianity and the central points of his teachings. The biography may only attract
readers with such a background. Otherwise, one could not explain the function of theparatext that emphasises Murata’s expertise in the Christian context. In addition to the
problem of prior knowledge, the ability to reach new readers risks hindering an approachto Shinran for someone who bears a negative image of Luther. Therefore, the case of
Murata shows us the potentials and limits of comparison as a type of interreligious
dialogue. The comparison tends to clarify only the connections between the two traditions
without discussing specific problems, such as the salvation of human beings. Instead, theconstruction of this distinct dialogical function is left to the reader, whom the author
challenges in drawing doctrinal connections based on the comparisons given by Murata.
3.2 Ishimaru Gohei, Junan no Shinran: Heterogenous Language as Dialogue
Ishimaru’s Junan no Shinran is the biography analysed in this article that most clearly
depicts its protagonist using a Christian background. The author does this primarily
through the specific use of language that the book’s title and its chapters have alreadyrevealed. Junan no Shinran is divided into five chapters that deal with Shinran’s married
life, the reactions at Mount Hiei, the collapse of Hōnen’s Yoshimizu group, and thebanishment of Shinran. The titles of the chapters are as follows.

We can call this a typical element in the hagiography of Shinran, such as the completion of his main
work Ken jōdo shinjitsu kyōgyōshō monrui 顕浄土真実教行証文類 (Collection of Passages Revealing
the True Teaching, Practice, and Realisation of the Pure Land [Way]) that marks–in this rhetoric–thebeginning of Shinran’s original thinking. On this basis, the author has the best conditions to argue that
Shinran fulfils the conditions of a notion of a saint based on this new kind of Buddhist teachings.
11

10Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖1. Tumult at Mount [Hi]ei
2. Shinran’s Marriage
3. The World of Faith (shin 信)
4. The Collapse of the Yoshimizu [Group]
5. The Passion (junan 受難)

The first detail I want to point out is the usage of the word “faith.” The translation
obscures Ishimaru’s use of the term that we cannot principally find in Shinran’s writing.
In the second context, we can find the character compounds shinjitsushin 真実信, shinjin
信心, or shingyō 信楽. Although some less representative parts in Shinran’s commentary
writings use the word shin 信,12 we can assume that Ishimaru uses shin as a reference toShinran’s shinjin. This approach is made even clearer by the choice of the word junan,
which means “meeting with hardship” in general, but in a religious context, is used forthe sufferings of Jesus on the cross.13 Considering that the lifetime of Jesus ended withhis death on the cross, it is difficult to compare this state with the banishment of Shinran.
This point makes two characteristics of Ishimaru’s novel clear. First, if we analyse thiswork from the standpoint of comparative religion, we may identify more differences
between the lives of Shinran and Jesus than similarities. For example, while the hardshipof Jesus refers primarily to his death, in the case of Shinran, it implies only a banishment
over a comparatively short period and personal suffering over an uncommon long lifetime.
Another example is the relationship between God and Jesus as father and son, whereas
Amida and Shinran are not even similarly connected.
These limits of simple comparison show us that this could not be the main intention
for Ishimaru to write his novel. This aspect is related to the second point. If we assume
that Ishimaru’s motive does not suggest the equivalence of Jesus and Shinran, we mustask what kind of new Shinran’s image his unorthodox language usage creates. By thismethod, Ishimaru brings the Christian and Jōdoshin Buddhist teachings into a dialogue
because he uses the Christian language to describe the life of Shinran. This approach also
makes it apparent that the objective of this novel is not to present several facts of Shinran’s
biography but to tell the reader the religious attitude of the protagonist. Thereby, Ishimaru
not only produces a new image of Shinran but discusses, at the same time, the differences
as well as shared features of the teachings of both religions.
What could be an adequate interpretation of “passion” in the context of Jōdoshin
Buddhism? The lives of Shinran and Jesus have in common that both became the objectof hate by following the religious path they considered as truth. Although Shinran andJesus proselytised other people, their activities were less explicitly directed against otherreligious groups. Nevertheless, both were subjected to great suffering because of theirviews of true teachings. However, the type of consequence and its meaning differ in the
One example is the Yuishinshō mon’i 唯信鈔文意 (Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’) where we
read: “Faith [shin] is the heart and mind without doubt,” see Hirota, The Collected Works of Shinran, 451(italics in the original) and Jōdo Shinshū Honganjiha Sōgō Kenkyūjo, Jōdo Shinshū Seiten Zensho, vol. 2,
683.
13
Nihon kokugo daijiten dainihan henshū iinkai, Nihon kokugo daijiten dainihan, “Junan,” 1420.
12

11❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5main points as indicated above. In the case of Jesus, his crucifixion and voluntary
suffering are connected to the salvation of all humans. In contrast, the sufferings ofShinran do not imply any good karmic seeds for others or even their–or his own–
enlightenment. We may even call the teachings of Shinran the one in Japanese Buddhism,
which is far from such thinking.
For example, terms such as “praying for empowerment” (kaji kitō 加持祈祷) and“making merit and offering it to the deceased” (tsuizen kuyō 追善供養) are for many
Buddhist sects in Japan central in their practice. However, the Jōdoshin Buddhist
understanding of Pure Land thought exhaustively negates the view that one can atone forthe sins of oneself or others. Although several biographies of Shinran describe him as oneof Amida’s transformation bodies (keshin 化身), even in these examples that may look
similar to Jesus’ case, Shinran does not act as an individual but functions as a mediator of
the working of Amida. Instead, Ishimaru’s decision to treat passion as the main topic in
his novel thematises suffering as the fundamental problem of human existence and thefact that one cannot overcome this situation by its power. The greatest sufferings, such as
Jesus’ crucifixion and Shinran’s banishment, were not the result of an intentional act suchas violent missionary. Therefore, both cases are characterised positively by a highproportion of passivity. Following this interpretation, Ishimaru refers to passion to apply
it to an individual’s experience (Jesus) and express a conditio humana using Shinran as
an example and Jesus as a reference.
Junan no Shinran includes many cases where the author describes Shinran’ssuffering with Christian terminology. The following three passages serve as examples:
1. What does the Venerable Hōnen teach? I do not know any details. But after I directly
heard your own intimate confession (kokuhaku 告白) after you left Mount Hiei, I was not
at all surprised about the planned marriage.14
2. [Shinran:] “It is a fact that I am still impure (kegareteiru 汚れて居る). Equal to what I
confessed to you earlier, I am a human with deep passions (bonnō 煩惱). However, I cannot
agree with [the view] that I have been pure (kiyokatta 清かつた) when I lived at Mount
Hiei.”15
3. Practise is part of the Path of the Sages. Practise means morality (dōtoku 道德). Needlessto say, morality is necessary in this world. However, is there not something that makes
salvation impossible for [humans] by precepts or morality? ––– The Buddha Amida puts
the [question of] salvation at an unconditional (zettai 絶對) level. Does the true realm of a
firm mind (anjin 安心) not lie in developing the faith [in this kind of salvation] in thegreatest despair? ––– This does not mean that someone with faith (shinjin 信心) must
throw away morality. “Salvation” means the unconditional realm that even transcends(chōetsu 超越) morality. “Namo Amidabutsu, Namo Amidabutsu.”16

As these three paragraphs illustrate, Ishimaru tries to approach the Jōdoshin Buddhist
teachings through language largely detached from Jōdoshin Buddhism-specific word
Ishimaru, Junan no Shinran, 39.
Ishimaru, Junan no Shinran, 57.
16
Ishimaru, Junan no Shinran, 168.
14
15

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Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖usage. This approach risks oversimplifying the doctrine and even causing
misinterpretations. Concerning the above-cited paragraphs, the following terms derivefrom a non-Buddhist context: confession, morality, unconditional, and transcend, and tosome extent also pure and impure. Because these terms belong to Christian andphilosophical terminology, someone who demands consistency with the Jōdoshin
Buddhist doctrine in a narrow sense may easily criticise Ishimaru’s novel. However, if areader keeps this risk in mind, there are no other means to conduct an authentic dialoguethat tries to overcome a comparison that focuses on the similarities of specific terms.
However, what is the unique potential of this approach? What do we gain throughthe dialogue? The first quality lies in bringing together two traditions that were separated
through their languages. Nevertheless, a supposedly even more significant capability liesin providing new perspectives or revealing weak points of another religion. The strengthof Ishimaru’s approach lies in creating a language frame that sheds light on the life of
Shinran from a new direction. As mentioned above, if we understand a biography only asa genre that informs the reader about specific historical data about a figure, Ishimaru’s
novel would be of nearly no interest. However, by considering the life of an eminent
religious figure as a story of fulfilling a religious goal, a new aspect of Shinran’s life leads
to a new aspect of his teachings.
The parts cited above reveal that the novel tells the reader that the Jōdoshin Buddhist
faith is not connected to anything that is described as morality. Because morality is a topic
that Shinran did not thematise directly, Ishimaru connects Shinran’s teachings to newfields of human life. Another example is the emphasis on passion, which clarifies that
suffering is immediately connected to salvation. As explained above, although suffering
does not lead to salvation equal to Jesus’ crucifixion, Ishimaru shows that an individual’s
suffering stands in a direct relationship with the salvation by Amida because it can be achance to gain insight into the own powerlessness. Finally, in addition to widening thereadership, the group of participants in a dialogue increases. Therefore, the discussion ofa religious topic—such as the liberation of human beings—gains depth. Therefore,
Ishimaru’s approach of applying the Christian or philosophical language to Shinran’s
thinking does not mean that the parts in his Buddhism are similar to Christianity. Instead,
Ishimaru invites new participants to the Jōdoshin Buddhist discourse and, therefore,
contributes to interreligious dialogue and the interpretation of the Jōdoshin Buddhist
doctrine.
3.3 Kurata Hyakuzō, Shukke to sono deshi: The Rhetoric of Intermixture
Kurata’s approach is similar to Ishimaru’s approach, but Kurata introduced Christianteachings to a considerably larger extent. In Junan no Shinran, we observed an attempt
to express Jōdoshin Buddhist thinking using primarily Christian terminology. However,
Kurata’s understanding of Shinran and his use of language are characterised by a complex
mixture of both positions, making it nearly impossible to divide the parts. The following
sections will clarify that Kurata tries less to give an account of what one may call an
orthodox understanding of Shinran’s teachings. Instead, he tells the reader his personalview of religion and the problem of suffering. His tool to undertake this task is Shinran’s13❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5life and his disciples. However, both Jōdoshin Buddhist and Christian thought
fundamentally influence these teachings. The following citation illustrates Kurata’s
rhetoric of combining the language of the mentioned two religious traditions.
Yuien. Please leave all to Buddha. I’m praying [inotteimasu 祈っています] for you withall my soul [kokoro 心, heart]. (With emphasis.) That you may realize your long cherisheddesire of happy rebirth in Paradise [ōjō no hongai 往生の本懷, the original purpose ofbeing born (in the Pure Land)].
Shinran. To die has long been my wish. It’s been my single hope. Now I’ve dreamed of theblessing [shukufuku 祝福] awaiting me on the other side of the grave! Now has come thetime for that dream to be realized. The happy time. (Pauses.) Last night as I prayed, I fell
into a sleep. It was blessed [shukusareta 祝された] with a grateful dream. The unworldly
Pure Land, bright with majesty [shōgon 莊嚴, adornment] and beauty, spread out before
my eyes. My soul [tamashii 魂] was filled with a mysterious joy [kōfuku 幸福]. I don’tknow how to convey to you that unearthly [chijō no kagiri o koeta 地上の限りを越えた]
happiness. The Amida Sutra says, “All the men of highest virtue come together in one place[shojō zennin kue issho 諸上善人俱會一處].” I was surrounded by a throng of saints[shōju no mure 聖衆の群れ]. They all wore beautiful crowns. Abashed, I hung my head.
When I heard that I had that day been added to that company, I wept for joy [ureshisa う
れしさ]. Then looking, I saw that beautiful crown was set on my head as on the rest. Thenfar off in the sky began to sound etherial [mimyō 微妙] music. To this the throng of saints
joined their voices and sang songs of praise [homeru uta 讚める歌] to Buddha. Thenflowers fell from heaven, and all the air was filled with [pure] perfume [kiyoi kaori 淨い香り]. As I looked fascinated at the flowers raining down on the earth all covered withgolden sand, I thought, “Ah, these must be the lotus blooms of Paradise [mandarake 曼陀羅華, flower of the Mandāra (tree)].” Then I awoke.
Yuien. What a holy [tōtoi 尊い, precious] dream!17[…]
Shinran. What of Senku?
Kenchi. This spring he went to Ōshū. (Tearfully.) He can’t get here in time.
Shinran. I’d rather hear that than see him. (Pauses.) All live together amicably. After I’mgone, all work for the law [hō 法, dharma] with united strength. Never quarrel. No matter
what arises to give you painful or outraged feelings, don’t curse [noroi 呪ひ] Buddha orman. Bless [shuku seyo 祝せよ] everything. Endure your pain. To endure is to make virtue
your own. Love your neighbor [rinjin o ai seyo 隣人を愛せよ]. Treat the stranger kindly.
In the name of Buddha [butsu no na ni yotte 佛の名によつて], all be bound together. (Hisvoice becomes thinner and thinner and has a tendency to break.) It’s wrong for you not totreat others as you’d be treated. (YUIEN dips a fine-haired little brush in water and moistens
SHINRAN’s lips. The disciples follow his example.) The judging heart [sabaku kokoro 裁く心] and the vowing heart come of devils. Be the servants [shimobe 僕] of others. Wash
their feet [hito no ashi o aratteyare 人の足を洗つてやれ]. Bind the thongs of their shoes.
(Pauses.) Glorious Buddha! […] A miracle [kiseki 奇蹟]!18

Kurata, The Priest and His Disciples, 228–229 (italics in the original, underline added) and Kurata,
Shukke to sono deshi, 274–275.
18
Kurata, The Priest and His Disciples, 242–243 (italics and small capitals in the original, underline added)
and Kurata, Shukke to sono deshi, 289–290.
17

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Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖As the underlined parts indicate, Kurata uses Christian and Buddhist terminology to
express Shinran’s sufferings and thoughts. By this means, he widens the perspective on
Shinran’s teachings. However, this method simultaneously risks reaching a stage where
it becomes difficult to distinguish between religious traditions. We can call this aconsequence of Kurata’s religious standpoint, characterised by a high degree of
eclecticism. Examples of distinct Christian terminology are as follows:
Blessing: God’s help and protection, or a prayer asking for this.19
Earthly: The place where humans are dwelling and that is created by God.
Love your neighbour: Refers to the Great Commandment in Luke 10:27, “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, andwith all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”20
It’s wrong for you not to treat others as you’d be treated: Refers to the Golden Rule in Luke
6:31, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”21
Wash their feet: Refers to the Christian maundy (foot washing).
Miracle: An act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused
by God.22

In addition to such terminology, Kurata also uses many typical terms from Pure Land
Buddhism. For example, he refers to the Pure Land as the goal of birth, describes it as aplace that is beautifully adorned, and the holy crowd (shōju raigō/raikō 聖衆來迎)
accompanies people who reach that place. The characteristic of Kurata’s writing style liesin establishing a multi-layered language in which neither the Christian nor the Buddhist
terminology dominates. This means that Kurata uses Christian expressions to describe thePure Land Buddhist process of someone being liberated by the holy crowd. In this case,he uses Buddhist terms to refer to visible aspects of salvation, while the Christianlanguage serves to describe Shinran’s personal feelings. If we positively value Kurata’s
drama, we can maintain that he uses the strengths of both religions to create a new paththat can ease human beings’ anxiety about death. Although it is questionable whether thetwo religions could perform this task on their own, we can see Kurata’s motivation forthis approach in combining the positive relationship of Christianity to this world with thespectacular world of the after-life in Pure Land Buddhism. We can observe thisunderstanding of Kurata because he uses Buddhist terms to describe the human after deathand Christian language for worldly concerns.
One key term of the second part of the citation above is “love,” which is also acentral topic in Shukke to sono deshi in general. Kurata maintains that the love of a humanbeing should be equal to the unlimited love of the Buddha Amida. Therefore, his
understanding of the Jōdoshin Buddhist doctrine demands humans’ peaceful coexistence
based on evident individualism. In this context, Amida serves less as the saviour ofhumankind than as a model for binding morality. This view implies that humans must
Turnbull, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, “Blessing,” 148.
See The Gospel according to St. Luke authorized (King James) Version, 25.
21
See The Gospel according to St. Luke authorized (King James) Version, 12.
22
Turnbull, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, “Miracle,” 977.
19
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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5manifest the love of Amida in their actions. Shinran in Kurata’s narrative is a person
bearing deep anxiety towards his own afterlife. However, at the same time, he isconcerned with religious morality that guarantees a peaceful community. A reading ofKurata’s drama shows that he considered the Christian system of values more appropriate
for solving mental problems in this world. However, in the context of interreligious
dialogue, Shukke to sono deshi also provides the reader with the opportunity to question
whether the Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran lacks a moral meaning, as described above.
The multi-layered usage of religious language by Kurata is an impressive example of sucha dialogue because the Christian description of the narrative points at a problem one may
tend to overlook in the context of a pure Buddhist discourse. Therefore, the use of theChristian language to describe Shinran’s sufferings puts the questioner in a dialogue thatforces the partner to discover new elements in the own standpoint.
The following last citation clearly shows Kurata’s understanding of the Pure Landteachings. In this example the description is influenced by Christianity, but, at the sametime, we can also observe an interpretation of Pure Land thought that has noticeable
elements of self-power. Notably, we may call this the orthodox variant of Pure Land
Buddhism in Japan. However, from the standpoint of Shinran’s teachings, the quotation
also shows problematic points whose harmonisation with the writings of Shinran may becomplex. Kurata describes the scene of the moment of Shinran’s death, and the purity ofhis deathbed as follows:
Shinran. It’s drawn near. The omen [kizashi 兆し],–the room’s all cleaned, isn’t it?
Yuien. To the last speck of dust.
Shinran. My body’s cleansed, isn’t it?
Shōshin. You were bathed yesterday.
Shinran. Call the disciples. Call them all. For me to take leave of them. To give them mylast blessing.
Shōshin. I go. (Rises.)
Yuien (suppressing his great agitation and speaking to SHŌSHIN). The doctor.
(SHŌSHIN hurries out.)
Yuien (gripping SHINRAN’s hand). Master [oshishōsama お師匠樣], please make yourspirit [oki お氣] firm.
Shinran (nodding). A taper. Light a taper in the shrine [butsudan 佛壇, Buddhist altar].
Namu Amida Butsu.23[…]
Zenran. I’m unfit. I’ve heaped up many sins [tsumi 罪].
Shinran. Amida [Amidasama 阿彌陀樣] atoned [tsugunōtekudasareta 償ふて下された]
for those sins aeons ago. They’re forgiven, they’re forgiven. (His voice grows thin and stops.
The Physician raises his brows.) Now I’m going to leave this world. (Thinly but firmly.) Do
you believe in Buddha? (ZENRAN makes no reply.) Don’t refuse his mercy [jihi 慈悲]. Say

Kurata, The Priest and His Disciples, 234 (italics and small capitals in the original) and Kurata, Shukke
to sono deshi, 280.
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Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖you believe. Give peace to my heart on the day my soul returns above. (ZENRAN turns palewith the anguish in his soul.) All you have to do is receive it.24

These descriptions resemble the deathbed rites (rinjū no gyōgi 臨終行儀) found in
Genshin’s Ōjō yōshū 往生要集 (Essentials for Attaining Birth). 25 In Shukke to sonodeshi, Shinran is so anxious about the circumstances of his death that he even instructs
the people around him to guarantee an ideal and pure environment. If we interpret thisscene favourably, Shinran’s doubts concerning his faith are emphasised. However, evenin that case, this scene gives to a significantly greater extent the impression that thesalvation by Amida would not be unconditioned, which is in strong contrast to Shinran’steachings. One characteristic of Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism is the grounding on thenotion of salvation that does not relate to a distinct environment or state of mind as thecondition for being born in the Pure Land. From the perspective of interreligious dialogue,
we can observe the conception that a priest grants a blessing in the moment of death–theChristian aspect–and that in this situation, the dying person must prepare a pure place–the Pure Land aspect–. We can argue that the coexistence of Christian and Buddhist
terminology is the most direct way to conduct an interreligious dialogue.
In contrast, comparative religious studies tend only to list the religions’ answers tospecific questions. The characteristic of interreligious dialogue must lie in being
confronted by a shared problem that the religions try to solve together. If we apply this tothe passage quoted above, the shared problem is how one should behave in the momentof death. The type of dialogue that Kurata performs allows a distinction between thedivision of roles of each religion. However, Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism areintertwined in a new religion from the perspective of drama. The meaning of creating a
religion that cannot be subsumed by an existing religion may be controversial. However,
we can call Shukke to sono deshi a constructive literary work that can provide bothreligions with new perspectives and problems in their community.
Shukke to sono deshi ends with a stage direction that verifies that Shinran’s soulwell returned to heaven (ten 天). The conception that human beings on earth finally returnto the realm above is based on the Christian worldview. As discussed above, this approach
may direct readers towards the similarities between the Christian heaven and Amida’s
Pure Land. However, the last comments by Kurata in his drama also show the problems
inherent in this proceeding. One example of a severe misunderstanding would be theconcept that–equal to Christianity–Pure Land Buddhism teaches life in the Pure Land as
the final goal within the process of salvation.
However, if we connect both concepts by focusing on the human returning to a landfilled with joy after one’s death, the interreligious dialogue can deepen while clarifying
the differences between religions. Therefore, the purpose of interreligious dialogue
should not be to create as many points in common as possible but to clarify the sharedfeatures and differences. From the viewpoint of spreading the teachings of Shinran, we
Kurata, The Priest and His Disciples, 244–245 (italics and small capitals in the original) and Kurata,
Shukke to sono deshi, 291–292.
25
Genshin, “Ōjō yōshū,” 170–181.
24

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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5must consider Shukke to sono deshi as a text that is prone to misunderstandings. Yet, thestrength of this tool by Kurata lies in describing parts of the life of Shinran, and especially
Yuien, which are mostly not thematised in biographies. Because the sections withhistorical evidence are very limited and mostly already fully uncovered in Kurata’s
lifetime, it is evident that the attraction of this drama is not historiographic. Kurata uses
these grey or dark parts of Shinran’s biography and the liberties of writing a drama that
resulted from these circumstances to present a new understanding of Shinran as anindividual and his teachings. An obvious advantage of this approach is a biography of
Shinran that is easier to understand for a reader with a Christian background. However,even for a Jōdoshin Buddhist reader, this drama can become an opportunity to reconsider
their religion. Moreover, one can gain insight into the concrete relationship between
Christianity and Jōdoshin Buddhism concerning similar and different standpoints towards
shared questions. Shukke to sono deshi realises this type of interreligious dialogue not by
discussing various aspects of the teachings but by presenting how religious people spend
their lives and respond to particular problems. This method is a unique feature of
biographies understood as interreligious dialogue because they clarify parts of religious
teachings and practices that doctrinal texts alone cannot make evident.
4. Conclusion
The analysis above showed how biographies could contribute to interreligious dialogue.
This article aimed to demonstrate that this genre does not only provide information about
a person’s life, but that biographies can be part of the discussion about doctrinal questions.
All three authors used events from Christian history or the Christian language to describe
the religious life of a Jōdoshin Buddhist. Therefore, the reader can clearly understandwhere both religions are similar and different. We can compare this method with anexperiment that intentionally tells the story of Shinran in an alien environment. Thismethod allows the reader to observe which situations and struggles in Shinran’s life fit
the Christian worldview and identify passages that cannot satisfy both dialogue partners.
For example, the last citation from Shukke to sono deshi showed a concept similar to thatof unconditioned salvation. However, we may regard the view of Amida as someone who
atones the sins of human beings quite different from the Jōdoshin Buddhist conception ofsalvation regardless of one’s sins. However, the judgement on the adequacy of several
interpretations is part of the Christian and Jōdoshin Buddhist teaching discourse, equal toany doctrinal writing.
As I pointed out, one function of biographies on Shinran that uses the Christianlanguage or events from the history of Christianity can lead a new type of consumer toShinran and his teachings. Although this is essential potential of biographies asinterreligious dialogue, there is little evidence to claim that the three biographies analysedin this article fulfilled this function regarding their contemporary readers and listeners. In
particular, the translations of Shukke to sono deshi might have contributed to spreading
knowledge about Shinran among Christians. The high popularity of that drama in Japan18

Markus RÜSCH
Biography as Interreligious Dialogue❖ Articles 1 ❖may be related to another fact. All three authors described Shinran’s life from outside of
the sectarian community and, presumably, without attempting to contribute to theflourishing of the sect as an institution. Considering this, we should perceive the value ofthe three biographies for a Japanese-speaking person in modern Japan in approaching
Shinran from an entirely new direction. In this historical dimension, the essential point
was not that the biographies were interesting for Japanese Christians, but that theChristian language in Japanese was alien enough to liberate the content from the sectarianboundaries while leaving the topic in a religious context. This point indirectly connects
to one goal of religious dialogue, which in my opinion lies in clarifying fundamental
questions shared by all humans, which religions answer with more or less significant
differences.26
In this article, I did not address the rhetorical function of that type of interreligious
dialogue. In addition to the new doctrinal insights obtained through biographies, they also
play an essential role in intercultural communication. Although an exhaustive use of theChristian language bears the risks described above, it also can allow readers with little orno prior knowledge to become familiar with an unknown religion. For example, eventhough the concepts of heaven in Christianity and Amida’s Pure Land in Buddhism differ
in fundamental respects, a combination of both parts within the narrative can allow an
uninformed reader to gain access to the teachings of Shinran. We can observe this functionof heterogenic language for intercultural exchange not only in modern times where, forexample, Mori Ōgai 森鷗外 (1862–1922) refers to an old church at Kloster street in
Berlin as “an old temple (koji 古寺).”27 Even today, the Jōdoshin Buddhist community
in America calls themselves “Buddhist Churches of America” and their leader a“Bishop.”28 In the context of biographies and the usage of the Christian language, theauthor can access a new type of readership. Especially concerning Kurata’s drama, hismost crucial attainment is the spread of the name of Shinran and elements of his thought
to a kind of recipient not limited to Jōdoshin Buddhist followers. Therefore, the meaningof intercultural exchange implies the crossing of country borders and can occur, as in thecase of Kurata, even within one country and between different social groups.
I argue that one essential potential of biographies on Shinran has not yet been
sufficiently examined. Most research focuses on the historical adequacy of texts or
meaning in the context of the history of literature. The examples analysed above
demonstrated that there is a function of biographies that do not primarily rely on historicaldimensions. In this context, the life of Shinran and his inner thoughts are a means topresent the application of religious teaching. On this basis, biographies with a dialogicalstructure as defined above can undertake the function of determining the dis/similarities
of different religions and providing new impulses for the intrareligious discourse.

My approach to religious pluralism follows the concept of Perry Schmidt-Leukel. See especially
Schmidt-Leukel, Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Theology.
27
Mori, “Maihime,” 10.
28
Buddhist Church of America, “Leadership,” https://www.buddhistchurchesofamerica.org/leadership.
26

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Vol. 5

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https://www.buddhistchurchesofamerica.org/leadership.

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Foucault’s Zen Body

❖ Articles 2 ❖Foucault’s Zen Body:
The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori Sōgen

Filippo PEDRETTI
Master’s Student,
Religious Studies, Buddhist Studies,
University of Padua/Ca’ Foscari University of Venice23

❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Abstract
The topic of this article is centered on Michel Foucault’s brief Zen practice in Japan, whichhappened in 1978 at the Rinzai Zen temple of Seitaiji, founded by the Zen Master Ōmori
Sōgen; his stay at the temple also involved dialogues with some monks and Ōmori himself.
Although this experience didn’t inspire any significant reflection by Foucault upon Zen,Japan, or intercultural and interreligious dialogue, I argue that several important issues can beraised when analyzing it. I will focus, in the first instance, on the reasons that brought
Foucault to be interested in Zen. I will briefly show how Foucault’s interest in the history of
subjectivity and in the techniques of the self are central in understanding why he decided topractice Zen. Then I will clarify how the body and the bodily experience he lived while
meditating constituted the central element of this experience, briefly confronting his words
with Ōmori’s description of zazen practice. I will then define the ideal (or even ideological)
starting points of Foucault and Ōmori when relating to each other. I will discuss the
Occident/Orient divide of the former and the way Ōmori tried to adapt Zen when facing
western modernity. Finally, I will argue that Foucault’s Zen experience plays a specific rolein the context of the ideal borders imposed by their orientalist discourses: I will show that
Foucault, operating upon his body, somehow opened a breach within those imaginary borders.
The article analyzes Ōmori’s attitude towards the “West” as well, in order to better understandthe thought of a fundamental figure of contemporary Japanese Rinzai Zen.

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Foucault’s Zen Body

❖ Articles 2 ❖Foucault’s Zen Body:
The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori Sōgen*Filippo PEDRETTI

Keywords:

Michel Foucalt, Ōmori Sōgen, Orientalism, Body, Rinzai Zen Buddhism

1. Introduction
During his second trip to Japan in 1978, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) spent some timeat Seitaiji, a temple belonging to Rinzai-shū 臨済宗 (Rinzai school, one of the three sectsof Japanese Zen). There he practiced zazen 坐禅,1 meeting also one of the most famous
Rinzai Zen masters of the 20th century, Ōmori Sōgen 大森曹玄 (1904-1994). Besides
being a Zen master, Ōmori was the president of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist University ofHanazono 花園 and a master of swordsmanship and calligraphy, arts that he included in
his way of teaching Zen alongside with traditional methods. Having been the founder ofboth Seitaiji 青苔寺 and Chōzenji 超禅寺 (the latter a temple in Honolulu, Hawaii, thefirst Rinzai Zen temple outside Japan), Ōmori had several disciples, active both in Japanand overseas. 2 Transcriptions of the dialogues happened during that time appear in
Foucault’s Dits et écrits (Sayings and writings) 3 and in Ōmori’s Zen no hassō (Zenthought), 4 but Foucault never discussed this meeting in detail. 5 Furthermore, Daniel
Defert, Christian Polac and Moriaki Watanabe dampen the interest Foucault may have
had in Zen, claiming that his stay at the temple was nothing more than mere “media*

I would like to thank Juan Enrique Ordóñez Arnau for helping me, showing me his work on Foucault’s
askesis that sadly ended too soon, for introducing me to part of the fundamental literature on Foucault’s
techniques of the self and for his revisions to the final version of this little work. I would also like to thankGiulia Luzzo, who helped me throughout the whole writing process, and Osvaldo Mercuri: they helped meenormously in polishing my raw translations from Japanese.
1
While the name of the temple is widely reported as Seion, this is probably due to a misreading of Seitaiji
青苔寺. Also, there are contradictory reports about the length of Foucault’s stay at the monastery. As
inferred from Daniel Defert’s chronology, the overall trip to Japan lasted for 20 days, out of those only a
few were dedicated to the stay at the temple. See Defert, “Chronology,” 67.
2
See Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen.
3
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen.” The translation of the dialogues has been made by Christian Polac.
See also Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction.” For a Japanese translation, see Foucault, “M. Fūkō to zen.”4Ōmori, Zen no hassō. A few translated passages can be found in Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 85–91.
5Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 199.

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hype.” 6 However, Defert also reports that Foucault was an avid reader of Eugen
Herrigel’s Zen and the Art of Archery 7 and that he had read several books on Zen
preparing prior to his trip to Japan;8 also, Foucault himself declared to have had a greatinterest in Buddhist philosophy.9
Despite the lack of any significant reflection on Zen in Foucault’s writings, a few
scholars argued that interpreting and elaborating on the topic could reveal fundamental
aspects of his thought. According to Lauri Siisiäinen, Foucault’s interest in Zen was notby any chance incidental, since it falls squarely within his interests during the late ‘70s
and the early ‘80s, namely spirituality and de-subjectivation. Furthermore, Siisiäinen
extensively elaborates Foucault’s reflections on Zen, arguing that they can help us
understanding Foucault’s concept of resistance and the various ways to oppose power.10
Uta Liebmann Schaub goes further claiming that Foucault’s concern with Eastern
philosophy should be reconducted to an Oriental subtext in his thought, or in a generativecode beneath his discourse,11 that could explain parts of his work and which serves the
purpose of criticizing Western civilization.12
As for the meeting between Foucault and Ōmori specifically, an interesting
perspective has been given by Adrian Konik. According to him, Foucault decided topractice Zen with Ōmori, rather than with Buddhist teachers who were residing in France
at the time (i.e., Taisen Deshimaru and Thich Nhat Hanh),13 in virtue of specific featuresof the former. Konik suggests that Ōmori’s Zen, which had strong political aims oriented
towards the imperial restoration, could be seen as in part opposed to the Westerndisciplinary/bio-power of Euro-American heavily influenced post-war Japan;
furthermore, he argues that the warrior-like rhetoric of Ōmori and his Zen contemporaries,
alongside with their politicization of Zen (which involved complex disciplinary
dynamics), could have been of high interest for Foucault. 14 I will thus elaborate on the
topic considering this already existing scholarship, focusing on the reason behind it andits meaning for Foucault’s worldview; I will also try to offer a personal interpretation ofŌmori’s stance, starting from his own original texts. Confronting Konik’s view on thematter, I will propose a different viewpoint, also briefly considering the implications of adeep analysis of Ōmori’s work within contemporary Zen studies.

Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient,199.
Gros, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 227.
8
Defert, “Chronology,” 67.
9
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 618.
10
Siisiäinen, Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance, 153–160.
11
Schaub, “Foucault’s Oriental Subtext,” 307.
12
Schaub, “Foucault’s Oriental Subtext,” 315.
13
Konik, “Reconsidering Foucault’s dialogue with Buddhism,” 47.
14
Konik, “Reconsidering Foucault’s dialogue with Buddhism,” 48.
6
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❖ Articles 2 ❖2. Subjectivities and Bodies
In the short preface to the transcript in Dits et écrits, it is said that Foucault started
developing his interest in Zen while working on Christianity,15 focusing in particular on
Christian mysticism:
I think Zen is totally different from Christian mysticism. And yet, I do think that Zen is aform of mysticism. […] What is impressive regarding Christianity and its technique, is that
one is always looking for more and more individualization. One tries to understand what
is at the bottom of an individual’s soul. “Tell me who you are,” here lies the spirituality of
Christianity. As far as Zen is concerned, it seems that all the techniques linked to spirituality,
on the contrary, are intended to attenuate the individual. Zen and Christian mysticism are
two things that cannot be compared, while the technique of Christian spirituality and theone of Zen are comparable. And here there is a big opposition.16

Both Christian mysticism and Zen are, in Foucault’s own terminology, techniques of theself, 17 a kind of techniques that allow someone to operate on their own body, soul,
thoughts and conducts in order to transform or modify themselves, so as to arrive at a sortof perfection state, happiness, purity, even gaining supernatural power.18 This kind oftechniques, for Foucault, is not made up by the individual, but constitute patterns that areproposed or imposed by culture or society.19 In a dialogue with Moriaki Watanabe20 thatwas held in July 1978, Foucault declared that Christianity played a key role in shaping
Western subjectivity;21 in his words, Christianity was so important because it formed thepattern for the modern creation of subjects, a pattern subsequently secularized by themodern forms of governing.22 The aim of Foucault was then to find alternatives to thismodern subject. Furthermore, following Nietzsche, Bataille, and Blanchot, Foucault
thematized the idea of an experience capable of annihilating the subject.23
I would love to compare these Christian techniques with those of Buddhism or Eastern Asianones; to compare techniques that look like each other to a certain point but may have acompletely different result, because the rules of Buddhist spirituality aim to adeindividualization, to a desubjectivization, to really bring individuality to its limits andbeyond its limits, so as to free the subject […] That’s the first point, the second point would
be to be able to find people in far Eastern countries interested in this kind of issues, in order

Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 618.
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 618; emphasis added.
17
Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” 18–22.
18
Foucault, “Sessualità e solitudine,” 147–148. It is very important to notice that here Christianity andBuddhism are opposed once again, also in relation to the concept of Truth.
19
Foucault, “The ethic of the care for the self as a practice of freedom,” 11.
20
Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie.”
21
Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie,” 592–593.
22
Cremonesi, Irrera, Lorenzini, “Introduction,” 8.
23
Trombadori, Colloqui con Foucault, 34–35 and 44–48.
15
16

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Vol. 5to conduct studies, if possible simultaneously, or at least, crossing and echoing each other,about the disciplines of the bodies or the constitution of individuality.24…this dissolution of European subjectivity,25 of the coercive subjectivity imposed upon us
by our culture after the 19th century is still, I think, one of the challenges of the current fights.
That is my interest in Zen Buddhism.26

As in the above-mentioned quotes, Foucault’s aim was to use the experience of Zen
techniques in order to deepen his concept of techniques de soi and advance the related
genealogy of modern subjectivity on which he was focusing. A specific technique itself
is what, in Foucault’s own words, can be compared between two different cultural realities
such as Christianity (i.e., Christian mysticism) and Zen. Foucault does not specify towhich techniques he refers to. As for Zen, we can infer that the main technique consideredby Foucualt is zazen, being also the technique he practiced while at Seitaiji. Zazen is a
type of silent meditation largely performed in Zen monasteries, assuming a crossed-leg
position and, depending on one’s sect, not focusing on a given object 27 but/or counting
one’s own breaths. 28 Lauri Siisiäinen, when studying Foucault’s reflections on Zen,considers as Christian techniques the ones belonging to the Benedectine monastic order,
such as the practices of obedience, humility and poverty, as well as praying andperforming silent meditation (the latter being, as a form of self-investigation, substantiallythe only reference for Foucault). 29 Significantly, however, Foucault claimed that
Christianity adopted techniques and practices both from Greco-Roman antiquity30 and
Asian spirituality31:
Christianity had in front of itself, or rather next to itself, behind itself, an intense model ofreligious life, which were Hindu monasticism and Buddhist monasticism, and the Christianmonks who spread over the whole Mediterranean Orient starting from the 3rd Century, wholargely resumed ascetic practices.32

The results of his involvement with Zen practice were recalled by Foucault in these terms:

Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie,” 592–593.
I.e., the Cartesian self. See: Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie,” 590–593.
26
Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie,” 592.
27
Ui, Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, 334–335.
28
Yamada, “Zazengi kōwa,” 25. For Zen’s seated meditation as intended by Ōmori Sōgen, see Ōmori,Introduction to Zen Training and Ōmori, “Suwaru.”
29
For a wider overview of the concept of Christian technique in Foucault, please refer to Siisiäinen,
Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance, 156–158.
30
A privileged field of inquiry for Foucault, especially in relation to the concept of “care of the self” in the
Greek/Roman antiquity. (Cf. Cremonesi, Irrera, Lorenzini, “Introduction,” 8).
31
Siisiäinen, Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance, 155.
32
Foucault, “Sexualité et pouvoir,” 565.
24
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❖ Articles 2 ❖If I could feel something through the posture of body in Zen meditation, that is to say theright posture of the body, it could be a new relationship that could exist between mind andbody, and furthermore, a new relationship between the body and the external world.33

The statement of Foucault about a “new relationship between mind and body” becomes
clearer when confronted with Ōmori’s emphasis on the “oneness of mind and body” ofZen (which recurs repeatedly in his texts). In Ōmori’s words, we could configure thisexperience in terms of learning Zen with one’s own body (shingakudō 身学道),34 so as
to unify mind, body and breath:
Since zenna 禅那 (meditation) is thought as the process of unification with the mind, zazenis the state where breath, body and mind are unified or are becoming unified throughsitting.35

Zazen posture, according to him, should be seen as a “purely physical method of
regulating one’s body” and Zen as the way of “regulating the mind.”36 The other kind of
new relationship that Foucault experienced, “the one between his body and the external
world,” resonates in a passage where Ōmori speaks about a particular state during zazen,
where “the whole body is lost and the distinction between sitter and surrounding isforgotten.”37 After his practice, Foucault asked to Ōmori:
Europe’s thought, education and social customs all share the idea that “mind and body” areseparable. Through my experience of Zen, however […] mind and body were one. Is thisexperience wrong?38

Ōmori examined the question and finally answered:European view is wrong. In eastern thought, and especially in Zen, body and mind are
unified. Your experience is correct.39

In conclusion, the “new body experience” constitutes the centrality of Foucault’s Zen
practice at Seitaiji in 1978. This is further clarified by Watanabe’s question to Foucault,
asking him if his Zen practice had the aim of “verifying on the spot that the meaning of
the body in Zen practice is different [from that of Christianity]” with Foucault’s answer
that “Zen is a totally different religious exercise in which the body is grasped as a sort of
instrument.”40 Foucault’s aim was neither to propose a factual replacement of the modern
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 621.
Cf. Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 75.
35Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 58.
36Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 23.
37Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 96.
38Ōmori, Zen no hassō, 164.
39Ōmori, Zen no hassō, 164.
40
Quoted in Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 212.
33
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Vol. 5subjectivity with Zen’s subjectivity, but solely to prove the existence of other kinds ofsubjectivity rather than the modern one. “I am not looking for an alternative; you cannot
find the solution of a problem in the solution of another problem raised at another moment
by other people.”41 On the same lead: “I think that re-examinations [of Western thought]
can be pursued confronting Western thought with Eastern thought, too.” 42 Anyways
Foucault, practicing zazen, allowed himself to “experience” firsthand a culturally
different technique of the self (that is, a technique of the self codified by other people
rather than the ones who “experience” modern subjectivity) upon himself, so to transform
himself; all of this resulted into the already mentioned “experiences” 43 of “newrelationships between body and mind and body and the external world.”
3. About borders
Foucault expressed what he felt was the aim of Buddhism as “bringing individuality to
its limits and beyond its limits.”44 Limit is a key word in order to understand the cultural
otherness of Japan in Foucault’s thought.45 When asked if his interest in Japan was either
deep or superficial, Foucault answered:
Honestly, I’m not constantly interested in Japan. My interest is the history of westernrationality and its limit. About this point, Japan poses a problem that cannot be avoided, it
is an illustration of it. Since Japan is an enigma, very difficult to decipher.46

In Foucault’s view, there is some sort of connection between his idea of limit and Japan,
which is situated beyond that limit, thus representing something that can’t be easily
understood. It becomes clearer when examining the 1961 preface of History of Madness,deleted in subsequent editions, where he describes the Orient as the inaccessible limit
posed by western rationality.47 As Marnia Lazreg notices, the Orient-Occident division
is never questioned or problematized by Foucault.48 The reason for this Western-posed
divide, as Marnia Lazreg says, lies in Foucault’s belief that a
Culture has limits internally, creating an exterior edge within its interior, and externally withanother culture […] Western culture draws two fundamental limits, one within itself,Michel Foucault, quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 229. In this context
the other people were the ancient Greeks.
42
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 622.
43
I insist on the word experience because Foucault himself does so. See Foucault, “Michel Foucault et lezen,” 624. It is also noticed in Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 207.
44
Foucault, “La scéne de la philosophie,” 592–593.
45
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 192.
46
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 620; emphasis added.
47
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 193.
48
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 193.
41

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❖ Articles 2 ❖between madness and reason, the other between Orient and Occident.49

However, this limit needs to be carefully analyzed. If the Western culture poses a limit to
itself (the Orient), then what is the status of this limit, which is a limit to something that
Foucault claims has become universal (so limitless)? 50 He says, for example:
Europe situates itself into a determined region of the world and into a specific historical era.
That said, it presents the particular feature of having created a universal category thatcharacterizes the modern world. Europe is the place of birth of universality.51

This quote seems to find a perfect answer in the statement by Naoki Sakai that “What wenormally call ‘universalism’ is a particularism thinking itself as universalism, and it isworthwhile doubting whether universalism could ever exist otherwise.” 52 In fact,
Foucault himself was, on a certain degree, aware of how Europe had universalized manyof its concepts, extolling them from the historical and cultural context in which they wereborn.53 However, as Marnia Lazreg notices:
Indeed, Foucault leaves unquestioned the “universal” character of the Western ratio. As
Kobayashi suggests, “universal reason does not permit division.” In this sense, “Foucault
positioned himself within Western history (and European societies). In so doing, he left inabeyance the significance, for the presumed universality of Western reason (itself aparticular or regional reason), of the limits within itself.” To return to the quotation, Westernreason establishes its universality through “colonization,” implicitly as if to compensate forthe cultural division it makes and that it cannot resolve culturally.54

Interestingly, Foucault’s idea of a crisis of Western thought is linked by him to the end ofimperialism, that is, the end of the universalistic project;55 in other words, I would argue
that imaginary orientalist geography and its categories built by euro-Americancolonialism could no longer grasp the complexity of the world.
Sakai Naoki and Jon Solomon also stress the fact that Foucault’s thought ischaracterized by “the construction of respective ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ regions with theircorresponding ‘ways of thought’.”56 This is due to what Sakai and Solomon call a “joint
matrix, the recursive admixtures of world and thought”: a matrix they call“amphibological region.”57 They describe Foucault’s Europe as:
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 194.
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 196. On the same lead, Sakai and Solomon ask: “where would ‘outside Europe’
be in an age when ‘Europe’ is synonymous, as Foucault asserts, with the universal?.” Sakai and Solomon,“Introduction,” 14.
51
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 623.
52
Sakai, “Modernity and its Critique,” 98.
53
Siisiäinen, Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance, 152.
54
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 196.
55
Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction,” 5.
56
Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction,” 5.
57
Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction,” 17.
49
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A definite geographical region and as a universal category of thought through which
categories themselves appear. As such, the amphibological region corresponds exactly towhat Foucault, in The Order of Things (Les mots et les choses), calls the ‘empiricotranscendental doublet’ that characterizes the emergence of Man as both subject and objectof (self-)knowledge in the modern period. The amphibological region is, thus, precisely, thequintessential bio-political habitat corresponding to Foucault’s modern Man.58

It is possible to say, then, that going to Japan Foucault sees himself as a representative of
the modern man (who belongs to the European amphibological region, a man
characterized by a specific subjectivity) interacting with other people 59 of anotheramphibological region and with other kinds of subjectivity: specifically, the distinctive
form of subjectivity of Zen.60
But Foucault was not the only one imagining a world composed into geographicallydivided regions, which were also the loci of specific ways of thinking. In Ōmori’s writings
we find several claims explicitly recalling the ideas of a specific “western thought” andan “eastern thought.” For example, he outlines the different conceptions of the self thatexisted between East and West recalling Immanuel Kant and the Chan master Hyakujō
Ekai 百丈懐海 (Ch. Baizhang Huaihai): if Kant’s self is the autonomous and rational self
which is “the subject of the sacred moral laws because of its free independence,” 61Hyakujō’s self:
is the subject which is one with Absolute Nothingness and has cut duality of before and after
while dropping all fetters from mind and body. The difference between Hyakujo and Kant
lies in this point. Without detecting this difference it will be impossible to distinguishbetween the Eastern and the Western modes of thought.62

Ōmori, however, says that Zen is a universal truth that could be equally recognized byboth Westerners and Easterners. Answering Foucault’s question if Zen was separablefrom Buddhism, he stated as follows:
You have just said that you have felt a new relationship between the mind and the body andbetween the body and the external world. I find it admirable that you felt this with such ashort experience with Zen. Feeling that the mind and the body become one, and that oneself
and the world become one as well, aren’t these universal experiences? This shows that Zen
has an international and universal character. Zen is small if only thought as part of Buddhism,
but we don’t consider it a part of Buddhism. If you could understand Zen in this sense withyour experience, I think you would be convinced of the universality of Zen.63

Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction,” 5.
Cf., again, to Foucault’s own words in Dreyfus, Rabinow, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 229.
60
“Foucault located the specificity of Japan in Zen, which purportedly shapes a mind-set that distinguishes
Japanese culture in spite of its Western-like modernity,” Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 202.
61Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 174.
62Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 174; emphasis added.
63
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 622. See also Foucault, “M. Fūkō to zen,” 224–225. Whether
58
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❖ Articles 2 ❖We have thus encountered an alternative universality from Foucault’s European one: theuniversal experience of Zen. Ōmori often stresses this quoting Bernard Phillips, professor
in the Religious Studies department of Temple University, with whom Ōmori declares tohave had several agreements on Zen:64
There is no true world religion except for Zen. Undoubtedly, many other religions claimed
to be “world religions,” but they have all been affected by a specific time, place and regionalfeature. They all made the mistake of absolutizing a specific method or belief. Since the eyesof modern humanity gaze at the infinite and at the universe that is expanding everywhere
without obstacles, the religion it needs should also have a center expanding everywhere likeits universe, and this center should have peripheries in no place.65

Although Ōmori also thought that meditation was something common to both East andWest, 66 one of Ōmori’s teachers, Tanouye Tenshin 田上天心, claimed that there wasnothing close to shugyō 修行 (proper training) in the West, and therefore asked Ōmori
to introduce it there. This request was concretized in the establishment of Chōzenji, “aplace of Zen training where people of any race, creed or religion who are determined tolive in accordance with Buddha Nature (the Inner Self or the Way) may fulfill this needthrough intensive endeavor.” 67 Ōmori also appears to be conscious of Zen’s overall
condition in Europe and America, and how much importance a Japanese master teaching
zazen could have in its spreading. He quotes Trevor Leggett, head of the BBC’s Japaneseservice and expert of Japanese culture and martial arts:“What we expect from Japan is something new that has never been developed in the West.”[…] People involved in Zen teaching do not explain in detail how to do zazen, but only theprinciples, and because of this there are very few Zen centres. “Not only that, but there wasalso not anyone who could follow his (author note: D.T. Suzuki) lead.” Therefore, the seeds
were sown, but the gardeners who look after the land are rare. As a result, many foreigners
read Suzuki’s writings, creating personalized forms of Zen. Some are far from Japanese Zen.
Together with “pure Zen,” there are several weeds growing in the garden […] “Pure Zen” isthe aforementioned group of Japanese Zen masters who travel abroad so as to provide directteaching, and the “weedy” Zen could stand for the hippie-way “reading Suzuki and making
up a personalized Zen.”68Ōmori believed that the modern West needed a deep change that only Zen could give.69
He was strongly critical of the modern man and of his idea of self:
Foucault could have agreed on the universality of Zen as exposed by Ōmori or not is opened to debate. See
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 207 and Siisiäinen, Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance, 161.
64
Besides the following quotes, Phillips is also mentioned in Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 86 and Ōmori,Introduction to Zen Training, 251–253 about the same topics.
65Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 52. Ōmori is cautious in calling Zen a religion, carefully explaining in which terms
Zen can be defined as such in Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 253–254.
66
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 113, and Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 9–12.
67
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 77–78.
68Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 53–54.
69Ōmori, Zen no hassō, 165–166.

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If one experiences this [Zen’s ultimate realization], modern man’s present ideology will
naturally be criticized. But by being criticized, change will take place. […] Just simple
theory, however, is not enough. It is necessary to have physical experience behind it. If you
experience this, the view that only man is the center of the universe (in exclusion to others
also being the center) will become absurd.70

The self of the modern man is, I argue, not what Ōmori called Hyakujō’s self but what hecalled Kant’s self: the western self.
Contrary to our expectation that the epoch-making development of science and technology
would bring about the most supreme blessings to human beings, the modern world has begun
to reveal itself as the most disturbed period unprecedented in the history of the human race.
[...] At this turn of our era, we must go beyond the age of science in order to ask anew what
human beings are and to inquire into our true selves.71Ōmori could find in people like Phillips reasons to believe that the West needed Zen. He
writes:Westerners were attracted by Zen because it “seemed to offer a possible solution” to theirfour hundred years old spiritual hunger.72 I think that this should be kept in mind by those
who reflect on how things are going in Zen. In other terms, until now Zen has been conceived
as a path to liberate oneself from the ideas of life and death, emancipating from the personal
suffering of life, ageing, illness, and death; but now the thing is that there are people who
seek in Zen the liberation from social suffering that cannot be cured addressing personal
issues only. Professor Phillips writes that the spiritual starvation of western people is causedby the corrosive effects of modern disciplines and the modern way of life on the traditionalreligions of the West. To put it simply, I think that this is more a civilizational issue than apersonal one.73

Thus, when Foucault asked:
In Europe, there is the idea that “Nature and Humankind are separated,” and humans are thesubjects that conquer nature. Through my experience, man and nature were one. How so?74

It was then natural for Ōmori to answer that:
Humankind conquering nature is their presumption.75 European way of thinking is just thethought of a humanity that for four hundred years has lost God.76 As Bakunin said in his
book God and the State, mankind has pulled God down from its throne, and has put itself
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 88–89.
Ōmori, Introduction to Zen Training, 254.
72
This is something that Phillips claimed.
73Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 51.
74Ōmori, Zen no hassō, 164–165.
75
In particular, in Buddhism zōjōman 増上慢 means to think to be enlightened without actually being it.
76
Kami 神.
70
71

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Filippo PEDRETTI
Foucault’s Zen Body

❖ Articles 2 ❖on its place. This is the false anthropocentrism. Because of that nature is polluted and,contrary to every expectation, humankind is close to death. Thus, some people, as life
scientists, started to notice the errors of modern civilization, and began using the term
“ecosystem.” Surely, humans can only live in an ecosystem, and that is the correct thought,
the correct knowledge.77

The criticism towards modern civilization is the criticism of the West, of the culture that
produced the modern man who, reading Phillips, Ōmori learnt (or confirmed) was
needing of the universal spiritual guidance of Zen.78 Ōmori even suggests that Zen shouldchange its focus from the traditional Buddhist domain of liberating from the sorrows oflife and death to solving wider social issues. Using Konrad Lorenz’s “Eight deadly sinsof humanity” as representatives of modern global issues of his times, Ōmori asks:
Should not Zen, in principle, being a universal religion, also take responsibility foranswering these problems? […] I think Professor Lorenz’s “eight deadly sins of humanity”
could be solved by this awakening of Buddha and a committed spiritual life based on it,
right?79

And finally, coming to Foucault:
That such a respected philosopher would have a realization will be the reason for aqualitative change in the modern civilization of Europe. […] This sense of oneness which
Foucault experienced is what Zen can contribute to modern society.80

Following Sakai and Solomon, I argue that we can configure Foucault’s Japanese and Zen
experiences as encounters, dialogues between individuals who pose themselves as fixedsubject positions, where participants see themselves as national and civilizational
subjects.81 These fixed subject positions are not built up as a monologue, 82 but as a
dialogical conversation between the subjects themselves and a mutual agreement of eachother.83 It is a Zen monk who firstly introduces the theme of the “crisis of the Westernthought” and “how can Eastern thought contribute to it” when talking with Foucault;84 it
was Foucault that questioned Ōmori about the universality of Zen and about the different
conceptions of mind/body and nature in Europe and Japan, leading Ōmori to ask himself:Ōmori, Zen no hassō, 165.
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 87–88.
79Ōmori, “Suwaru,” 52.
80
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 87.
81
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 16.
82
Miyake, Mostri del Giappone, 34.
83
Miyake, Mostri del Giappone, 34.
84
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 622.
77
78

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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Isn’t it wonderful that someone as Doctor Foucault could speak openly about his doubts
concerning Western civilization, write and ask questions and approaching Eastern thoughtlooking for a “change of civilization?”85

What I argue is that the fixed subject positions in Foucault-Ōmori encounter are
constructed in a complex mirrors-like identity game, where the Orientalized tried todeclare their own autonomous identity confirming and responding to the orientalism of
the “Orientalizers” and vice-versa.86
4. Conclusion
Foucault’s trip to Japan is summarized by Marnia Lazreg, quoting Yasuo Kobayashi,saying that“Foucault encountered the Orient, the Oriental, the Asian, the Japanese. But in the end hecould not refine his view (perhaps due to lack of time), his methodology, and really work on
the ‘limit’ […] Japan may not even have been the Orient he was looking for.” What he waslooking for was perhaps, in Kobayashi’s view, “the body,” the elusive yet tangible body in
Zen as ushering in the unrealizable knowledge of the Orient.87

Following this quote, in line with the first part of this paper, I argue that the cornerstoneof this experience is what we can call the Zen body, the set of new relationships between
body and mind and between body and external world that Foucault claimed to haveexperienced while undergoing the strict exercise of zazen.88 Furthermore, in the context
of the orientalist borders set by the two parts of the encounter, I argue that the experienceof the Zen body holds a particular status between the amphibological regions of thisimaginary geography.89 During meditation Foucault relaxed his fixed subject position,transforming himself in the attempt of reaching a proximity point, a common ground withthe ones he was encountering.
I will now try to examine carefully Konik’s thesis that Foucault, somehow, could
have preferred Ōmori’s Zen to the one taught by the Buddhist masters living in France atthe time because of the underlying political implications of the former. It has to beconsidered that, on one hand, Foucault declared that his interest was mainly in “the life
in a Zen temple,” where “a whole different mentality from ours is formed,”90 and it isreported that he was brought to Seitaiji by the French embassy; 91 since Foucault never
expressed any reason which would have led him to choose Ōmori instead of other Zen
masters, and we have no hint that Foucault was aware of recent Zen history (somethingŌmori, Zen no hassō, 165–166.
Cf. Miyake, Mostri del Giappone, 34.
87
Lazreg, Foucault’s Orient, 239.
88
See also Sakai and Solomon, “Introduction,” 17.
89
Cf. Miyake, Mostri del Giappone.
90
Foucault, “Michel Foucault et le zen,” 618.
91
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 89, Defert, “Chronology,” 67 and Ōmori Zen no hassō, 164.
85
86

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Filippo PEDRETTI
Foucault’s Zen Body

❖ Articles 2 ❖that became known outside of Japan only with relatively recent scholarship), I think we
can conclude that Foucault simply wanted to see a Japanese Zen temple in Japan, andthus there was no point for him in engaging with the Buddhist masters that were living inFrance.
On the other hand, Konik rightfully includes Ōmori within what Robert Sharf (oneof Konik’s main references for Zen history, alongside with Brian Victoria and Bernard
Faure) identified as a “contemporary Zen discourse,” strongly tied with nationalist
politics; certainly, Ōmori cannot escape the accusation of nationalism, having been activein violent far-right groups. 92 While Konik mainly focuses on Ōmori’s and his
contemporaries’ usage of Zen as a political weapon,93 broadening the context in whichŌmori operated considering other cultural aspects may deepen the research. I would addthat the similarities between Ōmori and such discourse are even more evident when
considering how Ōmori was, somehow, trying to adapt Zen to the modern age proposing
it as a spiritual solution to the problems of modernity and its spiritual “anxiety.” 94
Moreover, this discourse stresses the idea that Zen should be considered as a non-sectarian
mystical experience95 and inverts the old orientalist stereotypes in favour of Japan and“the East.”96 Figures such as Hisamatsu Shin’ichi and D.T. Suzuki97 (who, according to
Sharf, was the main proposer of such discourse), were in fact acquaintances of Ōmori (asKonik remarks98). However, one interesting thing to notice is that Sharf argues that
D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani Keiji, and Abe Masao, […] all lacked formal transmission in a Zen
lineage, and their intellectualized Zen is often held in suspicion by Zen traditionalists. We
should be cautious before uncritically accepting their claim that Zen is some sort ofnonsectarian spiritual gnosis, for such a claim is clearly self-serving: by insisting that Zen
is a way of experiencing the world, rather than a complex form of Buddhist monastic
practice, these Japanese intellectuals effectively circumvent the question of their own
authority to speak on behalf of Zen.99

But Ōmori, who was a high representative of “institutional Zen,” nonetheless promoted
Zen as a universal experience, thus it would be worth considering further research on the
topic outside Zen laity.100 In any case, while surely figures such as Ōmori had strong
Victoria, Zen War Stories, 39–66.
Konik, “Reconsidering Foucault’s dialogue with Buddhism,” 50.
94
Sharf, “Whose Zen?,” 49–50.
95
Sharf, “Whose Zen?,” 44.
96
Sharf, “Whose Zen?,” 48. It should be noted that Hori (in Hori, “D.T. Suzuki and the Invention of
Tradition”) contextualizes Suzuki’s attitude of privileging Japan and Zen as a response to the orientalist
scholars who claimed authority above Buddhism and to Euro-American colonialist aims.
97
Hosokawa, Ōmori Sōgen, 68–70.
98
Konik, “Reconsidering Foucault’s dialogue with Buddhism,” 45.
99
Sharf, “Whose Zen?,” 43.
100
It should also be noted that Sharf’s thematization of “Zen experience” as a XXth century invention
drawn from Euro-American influences has been criticized by scholars such as Victor Sōgen Hori in Hori,“D.T. Suzuki and the Invention of Tradition,” 55–57, who claims that far from being a modern invention,
the idea of Zen as an experience is in fact traditional, and Stephan Kigensan Licha in Licha, “Hara Tanzan
and the Japanese Buddhist discovery of ‘Experience,’” who argues that the concept of experience was
92
93

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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5political interests, a more complex analysis would help avoiding an “ideologicalreductionist”101 approach to contemporary Zen.
In conclusion, I think that Foucault’s encounter with Ōmori offers a great example
in acknowledging the stereotyped fixed subject positions on which certain dialogues are
based. But such stereotyped encounters are, after all, just first encounters, and thus
constitute a first form of overcoming the imaginary borders posed by historical and social
constructions.102 I argue that, somehow, Ōmori tried to adapt Zen to the modern times
reworking orientalist tropes, using them as a tool for making Zen known to the world ina particular historical context, in a similar fashion to D.T. Suzuki himself.103 Foucault
and Ōmori’s encounter gives us a hint in order to cross those borders: the firsthand body
experience that, maybe, could help forming the ground for a better understanding of
human beings within their cultural diversity.

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Cremonesi et al., 1–11. London/New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.
Defert, Daniel “Chronology.” In A Companion to Foucault, edited by Christopher Falzon,
Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki, 9–83. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blacwell, 2013.
Dreyfus, Hubert Lederer and Paul Rabinow. “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview
of Work in Progress.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism andHermeneutics, edited by Hubert Lederer Dreyfus, and Paul Rabinow, 229–252.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Foucault, Michel. “M. Fūkō to zen.” In Misheru Fūkō shikō shūsei Ⅶ chi/ shintai ミシェル・フーコー思考集成 VII 知／身体, edited by Watanabe Moriaki 渡邊
守章 et al. Translated by Satō Kiyoyasu 佐藤清靖, 219–228. Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobō, 2000.

already being sustained by figures such as Hara Tanzan (1819–1892) and emerged as an intercultural
product of local Japanese and overseas influences.
101
Cf. Hori, “D.T. Suzuki and the Invention of Tradition,” 62: “the concept of satori has an ideological use
and can be used strategically for political ends. However, I add a methodological caution: the fact that astatement has an ideological function does not mean it is otherwise meaningless. To always ignore thecontent of a statement and to insist that it has meaning only as ideology would be ideological reductionism.”102
Miyake, Mostri del Giappone, 130.
103
Ogawa, Goroku no shisō-shi, 409.

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❖ Articles 2 ❖———. “Sessualità e solitudine.” In Archivio Foucault. Interventi, colloqui, interviste,III, 1979-1985. Estetica dell’esistenza, etica, politica, edited by Alessandro
Pandolfi, 145–155. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998.
———. “Sexualité et pouvoir.” In Dits et écrits, 1954-1988. Tome III: 1976-1979, editedby Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques Lagrange, 552–570. Paris:
Editions Gallimard, 1994.
———. “La scéne de la philosophie.” In Dits et écrits, 1954-1988. Tome III:1976-1979,edited by Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques Lagrange, 571–595. Paris:
Editions Gallimard, 1994.
———. “Michel Foucault et le zen: un séjour dans un temple zen.” In Dits et écrits, 19541988. Tome III: 1976-1979, edited by Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques
Lagrange, 618–624. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1994.
———. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technology of the Self: a seminar with Michel
Foucault, edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–
49. Amherst: University of Massachusets Press, 1988.
———. “The ethic of the care for the self as a practice of freedom.” In The Final Foucault,
edited by James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, 1–20. Cambridge, MA/London:
MIT Press, 1987.
Gros, Frédéric. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1981-1982, translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Hori, Victor Sōgen. “D.T. Suzuki and the Invention of Tradition.” The Eastern Buddhist
NEW SERIES 47, no. 2 (2016): 41–81.
Hosokawa, Dōgen. Ōmori Sōgen: The Art of a Zen Master. London/New York: Routledge,
2011.
Konik, Adrian. “Reconsidering Foucault’s dialogue with Buddhism.” South African
Journal of Philosophy 35, no. 1 (2016): 37–53.
Lazreg, Marnia. Foucault’s Orient: The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia
to Japan. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017.
Licha, Stephan Kigensan. “Hara Tanzan and the Japanese Buddhist discovery of‘Experience’.” Journal of Religion in Japan 10, no.1 (2021): 1–30.
Miyake, Toshio. Mostri del Giappone. Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2014.
Ogawa Takashi 小川隆. Goroku no shisō-shi 語録の思想史. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
2011.
Ōmori Sōgen 大森曹玄. Introduction to Zen Training. New York: Taylor and Francis,
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Vol. 5———. “Suwaru: Mi/Iki/Kokoro no chōwa” 座る・・・身・息・心の調和. In Zazen
no susume 坐禅のすすめ, edited by Yamada Mumon 山田無文, Ōmori Sōgen 大
森曹玄, and Hirata Seikō 平田精耕, 49–85. Kyoto: Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo, 2008.
———. Zen no hassō 禅の発想. Tokyo: Kōdansha Gendai Shinsho, 1983.
Sakai, Naoki. “Modernity and its Critique: The Problem of Universalism andParticularism.” In Postmodernism and Japan, edited by Miyoshi Masao and Harry
Harootunian, 93–123. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1989.
Sakai, Naoki and Jon Solomon. “Introduction: Addressing the Multitude of Foreigners,
Echoing Foucault.” In Traces 4: Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference,edited by Naoki Sakai and Jon Solomon, 1–35. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2006.
Schaub, Uta Liebmann. “Foucault’s Oriental Subtext.” PMLA 104, no. 3 (1989): 306–316.
Sharf, Robert. “Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited.” In Rude Awakenings: Zen, theKyoto School and the Question of Nationalism, edited by James W. Heisig andJohn C. Maraldo, 40–51. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994.
Siisiäinen, Lauri. Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance. London/New York: Routledge,
2018.
Trombadori, Duccio. Colloqui con Foucault. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1999.
Ui, Hakuju, ed. Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1965.
Victoria, Brian. Zen War Stories. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003.
Yamada Mumon 山田無文. “Zazengi kōwa” 坐禅儀講話. In Zazen no susume 坐禅のすすめ, edited by Yamada Mumon 山田無文, Ōmori Sōgen 大森曹玄, andHirata Seikō 平田精耕, 3–49. Kyoto: Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo, 2008.

40

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖For Want of a Disciple:
Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples in the
Early Modern Period

Alexander VESEY
Associate Professor,
Faculty of International Studies,
Meiji Gakuin University41

❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Abstract
Even though modern scholars do not closely adhere to the model of Buddhist “decline”
during Japan’s early modern period (1600–1868), the effects of this interpretation continue
to influence topics of research and our perspectives of the Buddhist clergy during that timeframe. One such example is our understanding of the experiences of non-famous, non-eliteclerics who lived in temples across rural Japan. Although new studies of clerical networks
and temple economics have gained traction in recent years, other aspects of clerical life still
merit further attention. Drawing upon data presented by recent research, this paper delves
into the ramifications of one challenge: the need to find and train disciples in the mid-18th
to early 19th centuries, a period when economic and social changes affected family
dispositions of younger sons who might have been put up for ordination. It will start with abrief survey of these transformations, and then it will survey recruiting issues and theprocesses involved with clerical advancement. These discussions are punctuated with
examples of problematic youths whose choice to enter the clergy was not theirs to make.
While it is easy to dismiss such cases as further evidence of moral turpitude within theclergy, this paper argues that we must study this element of clerical life as a social issue. It
also argues that the heretofore focus on clerical decline has marginalized the efforts of rural
abbots to maintain their temples and communities in the face of such challenges.

42Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖For Want of a Disciple:
Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples
in the Early Modern Period

Alexander VESEY

Keywords:

Disciples, Training, Childhood, Social transformation, Rural Buddhist temples

1. Introduction
As Orion Klautau notes in his study of Meiji era interpretations of early modern Japanese
Buddhism, present research projects on this topic are no longer bound by theinterpretative constraints of the “theory of [Buddhism’s] decline” (darakuron 堕落論)
that informed anti-Buddhist polemics from the mid-1800s onwards. Although he was not
the only advocate, the prominent historian Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助 (1877–1955) isoften most associated with this perspective, and thus post-war scholars have been
motivated by the goal of “overcoming Tsuji.”1 This revision of perspective has motivatednew studies of early modern religion and politics, clerical intellectual endeavors andeducation, and the complex networks and practices that operated between religious
figures (including Buddhist clerics) and peasant communities. Furthermore, whereas
earlier studies focused on individual clerics who were lauded for resisting the overall
trend of increasing decadence (for example, Jiun Onkō 慈雲飲光 [1718–1805] andHakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 [1686–1769] ), better access to data in local archives provides
the means for more nuanced views of other Buddhist clerical lives and experiences.
These same local sources also hold the potential for new insights on the difficult
challenges that confronted the rural abbots who comprised the largest segment of earlymodern Buddhist organizations. A case in point is the growing body of data indicating apronounced decline in village-level clerical populations in the greater Kantō region fromthe mid-1700 onwards. This led to increasing numbers of abbot-less (mujū 無住) temples
that appear in organization network lists (honmatsuchō 本末帳) maintained by regional
head temples (honji 本寺). The “decline theory” argued that early modern Buddhist
corruption arose from clerical avarice at urban temples and the abuse of samurai
1

Klautau, “Against the Ghosts of Recent Past,” 264–268.

43❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5anti-Christian/anti-heterodoxy policies to extract financial benefits from danka 檀家 lay
families who were obligated to support the clergy in exchange for clerical certification of
their compliance with these codes. While such cases did exist, local archives provide
evidence that the rising strata of newly wealthy and thus economically empowered elite
farming families (gōnō 豪農) used their growing stature in village life to play the role ofpeasant patrons who exerted their own agency in clerical-lay interactions.2 In practice,rising vacancy rates led to increased clerical reliance upon active lay participation in
temple management practices.3
The lack of sufficient personnel naturally raises questions about the causes of thistrend and its effect on clerical networks in areas where it occurred. Building upon earlier
studies of empty temples, this paper takes up these issues to consider the implications ofsuch population pressures for clerical leaders who were charged with maintaining the
integrity of Buddhist sectarian networks in rural communities. I will begin with a shortsurvey of data taken from studies of the Kantō and then move to consider the impact oflarger early modern demographic and socio-cultural shifts on clerical recruitment. From
there I will use several case studies involving problematic disciples of rural abbots to
examine the personnel challenges that confronted temple abbots in the mid- to late- earlymodern period.
The examples of problematic clerics naturally evoke the specter of a Tsuji-esquevision and support for the decline model. There is no denying the examples of lax clerics
that appear in local records, and the case studies no doubt reenforce the overall import ofthe earlier view that there were serious issues among early modern clerical communities.
However, that interpretation’s focus on willful acts of clerical greed and lust makes animplicit argument for a pervasive culture of degeneracy at all Buddhist temples, and it
does not consider the impact of larger social trends and transformations on Buddhist
recruitment practices. Furthermore, the decline model does not consider efforts by local
clerical leaders who struggled with the management of problematic individuals within
their temples. By drawing upon insights from six decades of research on early modern
economic developments, social changes and cultural transformations like the spread ofliteracy among commoner elites, this paper seeks to offer a more nuanced explanation for
Buddhist clerical problems that appear in historical records.
2. The State and Implication of Empty Abbacies
To start with a brief overview of Buddhist networking principles, rural temples wereorganized into tiers based on a ranking system. At the top were “head temples” (honji 本寺 ) and their abbots performed the following functions: the management of their
networks of subordinated temples; acting as liaisons between their subordinates andhigher clerical authorities at sectarian headquarters (honzan 本 山 ) and the special“liaison temples” (furegashira 触頭) in or near Edo that handled many administrative2
3

Vesey, “Peasants as Clients and Patrons of Buddhism in Early Modern Village Life.”
Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido.

44Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖matters; and, depending on the school, the running of local training halls (danrin 檀林)
for shoke 所化 (ordinands who had trained for several years under their ordination
masters prior to entering a danrin). Under the head temples were one or more layers of“branches” (matsuji 末寺). These temples were fully accredited as sites of a head
temple’s Dharma lineage (hōryū 法流), and thus their abbots were empowered to recruit
and initially train disciples, and to lead funeral/memorial services. Given this latter right,
the majority of village lay families had formal “funeral danka” (metsuzai danka 滅罪檀家) affiliation with branches, which meant they were obligated to financially support
these temples in exchange for the abbot’s certification of their religious registry (shūmon
aratamechō 宗門改帳).
While the head-branch and temple-funeral danka relationships have both received
extensive treatment in studies of early modern Buddhism, there was a numericallyextensive lower layer in these hierarchies that has not drawn as much attention,
particularly in non-Japanese scholarship. These entities were known as monto 門徒(“followers”) in the Tendai and Shingon schools, while other schools such as Jōdo and
Sōtō called them heisōchi 平僧地 (“common cleric’s site”). 4 As suggested by suchnomenclature, these bottom strata consisted of small temples that were in the system but
not recognized as a lineage site. Their abbots were not permitted to train disciples or to
conduct funeral services; therefore, they had few funeral danka, and often their fiscal
viability depended upon small land holdings that might be rented out.
In the case of Shingon and Tendai monto, this scarcity of resources could bepartially off-set by support from “prayer” (kitō 祈祷) danka that patronized a temple for
rituals the provided protections against fire, illness and other afflictions of daily life.5
Branches and monto could have both kinds of danka families, although the ratio of
funeral vs. prayer was usually greater at branches. For this reason, temples including
monto that did not have funeral danka, and thus their activities centered on votive
practices, were also called “prayer” temples (kitōji 祈祷寺). Prayer families did not carryfinancial burden of a funeral danka house, but at least in some regions, their association
with a monto evolved into a formal relationship that was recognized by secular andclerical authorities. This position gave prayer danka a say in temple management issues
along with the funeral danka, although it also meant that these danka, too, could noteasily break their relationship with their prayer temples.6
These institutional ranking limitations also affected the careers of their residents.
Following their ordination and years in training, a shoke who met their school’s
certification criteria could eventually attain the abbacy of a prominent branch or head
temple. However, regardless of their personal attainments, the limits placed on
monto/heisōchi functions applied to their abbots as well, such that even a fully certified
cleric who happened to reside in a monto did not have the rights and privileges accorded
to those posted to a branch.
4

Tanaka covers many aspects of these lowest level temples (Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi nokenkyū).
5
The general term for these wishes was “worldly benefits” (genze riyaku 現世利益).
6
Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido, 282–283.

45

❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5In theory, Buddhist sectarian communities were well integrated into transregional
and trans-domain networks that that united elite headquarters in the Kyoto/Nara region
with even the lowliest temples in small villages. These structures were the organizational
basis of the clergy’s legal status (mibun 身分) within early modern society.7 Based on
the figures in head-branch registries, there were thousands of Buddhist temples in the
Kantō provinces. In the upper part of Musashi, in what is now Saitama Prefecture, thefigure was 3363.8 However, recent studies of Kantō area temple archives now suggest the
Buddhist clerical presence was less substantial than it might appear on paper. Tanaka
Yōhei has recently highlighted this discrepancy with a series of surveys of abbatial lists
produced by head temple administrators.9 To summarize some of his data points:
According to a Bunsei 文政 13 (1830) register at the Nichiren school’s Hondoji 本土寺(in Matsuo, modern Chiba Prefecture), ten out of thirty-nine branches (20%) did not haveabbots. Six of these had less than twenty danka families and small landholdings valued atunder 7.5 koku 石 of rice production.10
Comparing data on thirty-four prayer temples supervised by the prominent Tendai regional
head Senmyōji 千妙寺, all were staffed in Genbun 元文 3 (1738) but that number fell totwenty in An’ei 安永 5 (1776), and then to only eighteen in Kansei 寛政 2 (1790). Here, too,
weak finances were the main cause of the decline in abbatial numbers.11
Myōjōin 明星院 was a major Shingi Shingon temple in the upper Musashi region andaccording to Tenmei 天明 7 (1787) data, it supervised twenty-one branches (one was
empty), and fifty-nine monto (twenty-eight empty). Most of these monto were establishedas administrators (bettō 別当) of village tutelary shrines (chinju 鎮守).12 In a later Ka’ei
嘉永 1 (1848) survey of twenty-nine monto, only six had abbots.13
Sōrinji 雙林寺 was a prominent Sōtō temple that supervised networks in Kōzuke 上野
Province (modern Gunma Prefecture) and regions to the north. Mid-18th century temple
registries stated Kōzuke had 429 Sōtō school sites of all ranks. In a Tenpō 天保 14 (1843)
survey of empty abbacies compiled by its abbot, fifty branches lacked abbots, and the7

Vesey, “Clerical Agency and the Formation of Buddhist Organizations in the Early Modern Period.”
SSKT 4: 882. The chart on this SSKT page lists a total of 3791, but this includes 428 temples affiliatedwith Shugendō networks. I have removed these non-Buddhist temples to obtain 3363. A footnote also
states that some of the tallies here do not match those from an earlier edition of the prefectural history.
9
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū.
10Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 32–36. One koku is 180.39 liters; supposedly it wasenough to supply one person for a year. Of course, rice alone was not sufficient to maintain the abbot’s
health, and this figure is the purported productive value of the land. The actual income depended on thefluctuating rice market and any income from the rental of productive lands to local peasants. Judging
from the 1830 Hondoji records, five branch temples managed to support a resident cleric, but it was afinancial challenge at others.
11
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 70–71.
12Since these temples had few funerary danka and were established as shrine administrators for theworship of protective deities, their widespread existence indicates the building of these rural Buddhist
temples was due to local faith and effective proselytization activities by Shingi clerics, and not to
Buddhist participation in the suppression of heterodoxies like Christianity.
13
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 196–205.
8

46

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖average duration of these vacancies was eighteen years. In the same period, another survey
revealed sixty empty heisōji. (According to Tanaka, differences in the collection of datasuggests Sōtō leadership was particularly worried about the vacancies at the more
important branches, which indicates they had a lower regard for heisōji.)14

In addition to this data, Hōzawa Naohide’s study of Shingi Shingon networks in Awa 阿
波 (modern Chiba Prefecture) includes research on vacant abbacy lists compiled in thefirst half of the 19th century. There were at least 253 temples in the province. According toa 1843 survey submitted by the regional head Hōjuin 宝珠院, 113 sites lacked an abbot.
Some of these had been un-staffed for decades and many had fallen into varying degrees
of disrepair.15
Similar findings appear in Higurashi Yoshiaki’s detailed survey of the network
supervised by Daihiganji 大悲願寺, a Shingi Shingon head temple in modern Akiruno
あきる野市 (Tokyo Metropolitan Area). All totaled there were ten branches, nineteen
monto, and three subtemples within Daihiganji’s precincts.16 In Kyōhō 享保 6 (1721), allof the branches were staffed, with seven of them having two clerics in residence (theabbot and a disciple or retired cleric; Daihiganji alone had four disciples in residence),
and thirteen monto also had abbots (three of them had two clerics in residence.)
Furthermore, eight of the branches listed the presence lay-staff (again Daihiganji had themost with eight laymen) as well as villagers who resided in the area before the temple
precincts. Subsequent surveys were conducted in 1732, 1756, 1816 (data appears to belimited), 1822, 1840, 1852, and 1864. Judging from these lists, Daihiganji and its threelargest branches maintained stable populations with at least two clerics apiece, but theother seven branches began to experience declines in residency to one cleric only (i.e., theabbot without a disciple in training), and four were vacant in either 1840 or 1856. For the
monto, staffing conditions were more severe: between 1756 and 1822, all the abbacies
became vacant, and only a very few were maintained by clerical caretakers.
Records at Shingi temple of Yakuōin 薬王院 on Mt. Takao show a similar trend. A
Kansei 1 (1787) register of temple residents for Yakuōin and fourteen of its seventeen
branches shows that Yakuōin alone had an abbot and two disciples. Another threesubordinates had a resident abbot and one disciple; two others had both active and retired
abbots but no disciples; five had only an abbot (again, there were no potential successors
in residence); and five were staffed by caretakers.17 The list does not provide informationon three other branches.18
14

Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 162–170.
Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido, 137–146.
16
Higurashi “Shingi Shingonshū inaka honji Daihigan to sono monmatsu ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyū,”86.
17
TYM 2: 81–83.
18
Yoshioka provides general information on Yakuōin’s network (Yoshioka, “Kinsei jiin ni okeru
monmatsu chitsujo to chiiki no ronri.”). Other evidence on the prominent numbers of monto in Shingi
systems appears in Kushida Ryōkō’s survey of Shingi network lists for the whole of Musashi (including
what is now the Tokyo Metropolitan area as well as Saitama) that were compiled in 1675. These
documents show there were 3107 temples in the province. Separated by kind, their numbers were: 220
heads; 258 branches; and 2629 monto (Kushida, Shingon mikkyō seiritsu katei no kenkyū, 1011). Udaka
15

47❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Looking at another Tendai source, Kitain 喜多院 was the most prominent cloister
within the precincts of Muryōjuji 無 量 寿 寺 in Kawagoe 川 越 (modern Saitama
Prefecture), and its abbots kept diaries of temple affairs including the Administrator’s
Records (Chijiroku 知事録) from the 1780s until the 1850s. An entry for the first day of
Bunsei 3 (1820) noted that vacant branches and monto of Nakain 中院 (another cloister)
were not required to a make monetary gift at New Years. According to the diary, two out
of Nakain’s twenty-four branches and nineteen of its monto were vacant. Among anotherten monto, five had caretakers and only five had seated abbots.19
While not exhaustive, the appearance of similar data within these different
Kantō-area Buddhist networks suggests two common and closely interwoven trends
during the latter half of the early modern period, one of which was temple
impoverishment. If a temple had few funeral danka families who were obligated toprovide donations of money and goods (dantoku 壇徳), it might balance the books withincome from renting temple lands to local farmers, but those without such resources faced
severe economic challenges.20 Gifts from prayer danka were another vital source ofincome, but as Tanaka shows in his study of Senmyōji’s kitōji prayer temples, these danka
numbers were also low, hence the overall small fiscal bases of these monto could often
only provide limited support for a full-time abbot.21 Under such circumstances, it wasalso difficult to replace buildings lost to fire or age, which further eroded a temple’s
sustainability as a viable site of Buddhist activities.
Impositions by regional heads and headquarters placed further burdens on
constrained finances. As temples of some prominence, these elite institutions often
received grants of tax-exempt lands from Tokugawa and domain lords, but the head
temples nonetheless expected annual gifts from their subordinates. Even higher ranked
temples in Edo and the Kansai issued their own requests for funds whenever they rebuilt
their halls, performed special memorial services for school founders, etc. Abbots ofwell-appointed branches and monto could meet such demands, but their poorer brethren
were severely pressed, and if necessary they had to draw upon saved money (shidōkin 祠
堂 金 ) to meet these obligations. 22 As I shall discuss below, it was possible forand Tokunaga’s study of the network supervised by Sokushōin 息障院 (in modern Saitama Prefecture.)shows it consisted of nineteen branches and seventy-eight monto (Udaka and Tokunaga, Musashi Yoshimi
Sokushōin monjō, 208–212).
19
KN 4: 162–163. While it was only one of several cloisters that were created at Muryōjuji during themedieval period, Kitain assumed overall control of the precincts once its abbot Nankōbō Tenkai 南光坊
天海 (1536?–1643) became an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the cloister received patronage from
Kasuga no Tsubone 春日局 (1579–1643; the wetnurse of the second shogun Hidetada 秀忠). The
Administrator’s Record and other accounts were compiled into the Daily Record of Kitain (Kitain nikkan
喜多院日鑑). An earlier petition for the relief of Nakain’s empty monto was submitted in the last days of
Bunka 文化 15/Bunsei 1 (the names changed in 1818) (KN 3: 416). There was no mention of it in thefollowing year, but the 1820 approval strongly suggests continuing financial problems in the Nakain
network.
20
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 71–79.
21
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 59–62.
22
Hasegawa, Daiganji shiwa, 89.

48

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖monto/heisōchi to raise their stature to full-branch status, but this, too, was very
expensive, hence difficult to achieve.
The second issue that clearly challenged rural clerical networks in the Kantō was
the gradual growth of severe personnel shortages. Vacancies at poor temples is not
surprising, but the reduction to just one cleric (the abbot, with no disciple for the next
generation) at mid-level branches in various networks suggests the impact of otherdemographic and social factors at work in the early modern Kantō. Despite Buddhism’s
relatively high social position above peasants, Shugendō and shrine clerics, and theoutcaste groups, it faced a unique challenge. With the exception of Ikkō 一向 School(modern Jōdo shinshū 浄土真宗) clerics who married and fathered sons, Buddhist
abbots had to recruit disciples (i.e., their successors and the next abbatial generation)from other status groups. Ideally, adult males joined from a personal desire for a religious
vocation, but data from various temple archives indicates much earlier ages for their
recruits. In Higurashi’s study, eighteenth~mid-ninetheenth century personnel records forforty-one Daihiganji branch and monto abbots show a wide range at the time of initial
ordination. Fifteen was often seen as the age of transition into adulthood, and ten
disciples were that age or older when they entered the Shingon clergy. Of the others, threeboys were six years old or younger; fifteen were between seven and ten; and anothertwelve of them were in the eleven to fourteen age range. (The starting age for one othercleric in the list is not given.)23 Tanaka has examined similar records for six Sōtō clericsat Kōshōji 廣正寺 (Kōnosu 鴻巣, Saitama Pref.), and their ages at entry were “0” (i.e.,
infancy; two boys); seven years (one boy); 8 years (two boys); and 11 years (one boy).24
Further indications of low induction ages appears in Shingi Shingon personnel data
garnered from late Tokugawa lists of candidates for the abbacies of the Edo liaison temple
Enpukuji 円福寺 (1857), 25 the headquarters Chishakuin 智積院 in Kyoto (1868), 26
and personal resumés (nintai kiryūsho 人体起立書) in Yakuōin’s archives.27 Most ofthese clerics were between the ages of seven to fifteen when they took ordination, withten being the average. There were or course exceptions: Yakuōin’s file for a cleric named
Shūsei states he came from a samurai background and entered the Shingi Shingon schoolat the late age of twenty-five.28
In short, Kantō temple networks had to maintain their staffing levels by ordaining
and training a steady stream of boys who were bestowed upon the clergy before theyreached adulthood. As Or Porath reminds us, children of elite families were sent tomedieval monasteries for an education and their potential for disruptions necessitateddiscipline manuals. 29 The induction of pre-adult novices thus had long standing
precedents. However, by the early modern period, Buddhist abbots in small temples
23

Higurashi, “Shingi Shingonshū inaka honji Daihiganji to sono monmatsu ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyū,”
93–96.
24
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 158–162.
25
TYM 1: 207.
26
TYM 1: 211.
27
TYM 1: 246-247, 253; TYM 2: 145.
28
TYM 1: 250.
29
Porath, “Nasty Boys or Obedient Children?”49❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5scattered across the Kantō increasingly had to compete with major population shifts due
to urbanization, migration and market expansion, as well as rising levels of literacy that
influenced the worldview and aspirations of commoners who might have considered
placing a second or third son in the Buddhist clergy. In following section, I willsummarize these factors before looking at their impact on Buddhist temple communities.
3. Society-Wide Pressures on Buddhist Recruiting
Although Buddhist clerics and temple networks operated as discrete entities with uniquesocial functions, they were but one constituent within Kantō area society, hence ourunderstanding of their personnel challenges requires at least some framing of Buddhist
communities within the context of social and economic changes that occurred in the 18thand 19th centuries. The following will not cover each aspect in depth, but it will provide
general observations on how non-religious societal shifts could affect clerical recruiting
and training.
Broadly speaking, the population grew in most areas of Japan during theseventeenth century, but greater regional fluctuations appeared as society under the
Tokugawa shogunate entered its second century.30 The greater Kantō region experienced
a general decline during the eighteenth century, with the northern areas of what is now
Gunma, Tochigi and Ibaragi Prefectures experiencing significant downward shifts. These
losses were particularly severe following the eruption of Mt. Asama in 1783 andwidespread starvation due to crop losses,31 but even in normal years village populations
were under pressure.32 Infant mortality due to disease always restricted numbers, butaccording to Hayami the growth of Edo was also an important factor in rural declines. By
mid-period the population of this city steadied to about 1,000,000, but poor hygiene andthe increased danger of rapidly spreading diseases in the dense commoner districts
created conditions for higher urban mortality and lower birth rates. The resulting vacuumin Edo’s population due to the “urban graveyard” effect was offset by the influx of excess
labor from the greater Kantō region. 33 He estimates that in the 1843–1868 period,
between 21.7% and 29.5% of Edo’s population was born outside the city.
Hayami’s observation reminds us that demographic shifts were closely intertwinedwith social transformations in Kantō area villages. Households that adapted well to30

Hayami, The Historical Demography of Pre-Modern Japan, 46; Rekishi jinkō kenkyū, 22–40.
Hayami, The Historical Demography of Pre-Modern Japan, 49.
32
To provide concrete figures, Hayami’s data for northern Kantō populations between the 1720s and1840s and shows a 27.9% overall drop, with the rate of fall of -13.6% in normal years and -14.2%
following disasters. In southern the Kantō region (modern Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and parts of Kanagawa
Prefectures), the rates were -5.2 overall, -0.7 in normal years and -4.5% in disaster periods (Hayami,
Rekishi jinkō kenkyū, 30, 152). These changes as measured by percentages are depicted in map form inRekishi jinkō kenkyū (28–29), and The Historical Demography of Pre-Modern Japan (48).
33
Hayami, The Historical Demography of Pre-Modern Japan, 52–56; Rekishi jinkō kenkyū, 32–33.
Hayami discusses in depth similar trends in the Kansai region around Osaka and Kyoto. Conversely, healso notes that population shifts in regions without large urban centers and castle towns require further
research (Hayami, Rekishi jinkō kenkyū, 35).
31

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖commercialization, whether they were descended from late-medieval patriarchal families(dogō 土豪) or newer families with the entrepreneurial skills required for developing
new technologies and goods, emerged as wealthy peasant elites (gōnō). At the lowest
levels of rural society, less adroit or economically challenged peasants lost what little land
they possessed, and thus they had to rent paddies and fields from more affluent families inorder to continue farming.34 Commercialization brought opportunities as well, and evenmid-level families that retained their own agricultural lands increasingly engaged inby-employments or off-season work migrations (dekasegi 出稼ぎ) to earn additional
income.35 For example, a talented child could become a “jobber,” who was a peasantagent acting between village-level cotton producers in the northern Kantō and urban
buyers.36 The emergence of these market-oriented industries contributed to the rise of notjust Edo but also to regional centers of production such as Kiryū 桐生 (a site of silk
production in modern Gunma). Conversely, if heavy debts or natural disasters
overwhelmed a family’s resources, sons might join the exodus to Edo in search of
employment. 37 In the grimmest moments, infanticide was an option for reducing
additional burdens—a choice which also had a long-term impact on later population
growth.38
According to Tanaka’s survey of temple finances, the overall decline in farming
populations could be highly detrimental to temples with small danka bases, because they
could not rent out their lands to gain enough extra income for the support of a full-time
abbot. Like the poorer strata of peasants whose debts ultimately forced them to sell off
their holdings, temples at the lowest levels lost what land they had and thus became evenmore destitute.39
Another option that drew second or third sons of farming families away fromvillage homes for long-term gainful employment was the evolution of the service
system. 40 Originally, the term hōkō 奉公 referred to military services rendered to asamurai overlord, but it eventually indicated the hiring of servants by wealthy samurai
households, commoner families (in towns and in villages), and even temples and shrines.
Whereas servitude in the earlier decades of the 17th century could be life-long and carried
the legacy of slavery, it shifted to contract service practices by the mid-1700s.41 The
bakufu initially tried to regulate the contact periods by placing a ten-year limit, but
enforcement proved to be difficult, hence the hiring master and the servant negotiated thelength. Poorer peasant families could opt to place their children in service to off-set debts
in the home village, and masters might abuse their advantageous position to force
34

See Pratt’s “Introduction” in his Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite for an overview of the gōnō elites andtheir influence over village life. Saitō notes the impact of peasant “differentiation” due to economictransformations (Saitō, “The Rural Economy,” 403).
35
Saitō, “The Rural Economy.”
36
Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite, 108.
37
Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite, 111.
38
Kodama, Kinsei nōmin seikatsushi, 273–275.
39
Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 78.
40
Kodama, Kinsei nōmin seikatsu shi, 271–273.
41
Leupp, Servants, Shop Hands and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan, 16–27.

51❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5involuntary extensions of service, but in general the concept of life-long servitude (fudai譜代) faded. On a more advantageous note, service in a samurai or affluent commonerhousehold exposed village-born peasant children to business and cultural practices that
could be useful if they returned to their families. Contract service was not limited to Edo,and economically rising families in the smaller towns and farming villages also hired
them. One example from Leupp’s study was the growing textile center of Kiryū noted
above, in which servants were 22% of the population in 1757 and 19% in 1819.42
Taking stock of these points, the expansion of Buddhist temple networks in the
Kantō during the seventeenth-century was contemporaneous with an expanding
population, but from the mid-eighteenth-century onwards, the pool for potential clerics
declined as region-wide economic shifts negatively affected some families, while newmeans for increasing income afforded other families with opportunities toadvantageously use the labor of sons who would not succeed the father. In comparison, achild placed into the Buddhist clergy took on clerical orders and thus underwent a
fundamental change in their status identity. This shift was signified by the removal of
their name from village registers, and the addition of their new clerical name to temple
personnel lists. As we shall see below, a cleric could still maintain personal connections
with his natal family, but his social transformation placed him beyond the reach of parents
who later might want to place their son in more profitable activities or bring him backhome. In short, the pressures on Buddhist ordinand recruitment grew as the overall rural
population declined and options for gainfully employing extra sons emerged during thesecond half of the early modern period.
In addition to these demographic implications, the politico-economictransformation of Kantō village practices generated new opportunities for creating
cultural empowerment. The rise of such aspirations among elite villager families did
benefit temples, because these peasants-as-patrons were willing to sponsor elaborate
rituals and rebuilding projects as expressions of faith and as acts of cultural-social capitalcreation. 43 Furthermore, whenever an abbacy became vacant, these families often
worked with head temple administrators to maintain the grounds and facilities until a new
abbot could be found, and there are cases in which they played an important role in theactual search for a successor.44 Quite frankly, village-level data shows that such lay
families were vital to the continuity of Buddhism’s presence in rural society.45
At the same time, the rising cultural aspirations of this same stratum of elite peasantfamilies posed additional challenges to Buddhism’s place in village communities. Asidefrom their roles as ritualists, spiritual guides and certifiers of orthodoxy, it is well known
42

Leupp, Servants, Shop Hands and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan, 30.
Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido, 205–258; Vesey, “Peasants as Clients and Patrons of
Buddhism in Early Modern Village Life.”
44
Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido, 230–238; Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiin keieishi no kenkyū, 79–
86; Vesey, “Clerical-Lay Relations in Edo Period Local Temples.”45
Hōzawa shows this in his study of the Saitō family, who exerted influence over temples in their homevillage of Hirayama (Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido). Aoki also reveals their role asemployers of peasants in service (Aoki, “Kinsei no Kantō hatasaku nōson ni okeru koyō to rōdō nohenshitsu katei”).
43

52

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖that rural Buddhist clerics provided basic education to peasant children at temple schools(terakoya 寺子屋). This function continued throughout the early modern period, but inthe eighteenth-century increasing numbers of teachers came from the laity.46 To a certain
extent, Buddhist educational activities contributed to this trend because they fostered
basic literacy among commoners. More importantly, shifting land ownership trends andincreasing access to the economic benefits of marketization stimulated interest in thevalue of education among elite peasant families, because the ability to read and write wasvital to the creation and control of documents that were mandatory for village
administration. Therefore, families with elite aspirations came to see a child’s efforts inschool as more valuable than working in the fields.47 Such literacy also facilitated theelite’s participation in regional networking activities with their economic and social
peers,48 and it allowed them to access cultural trends and the growing body of publishedmaterials that flowed out of cities like Edo and Kyoto. When displayed during the courseof village activities, these intellectual attainments further enhanced the stature of elitefamilies.49 Finally, on the point of increasing options for the deployment of youthfullabor, the growth of schools meant that teaching became a viable vocation for
intellectually oriented sons who might have otherwise considered a clerical career toobtain knowledge. (According to Tone’s study of terakoya in the upper Musashi [modern
Saitama] region, 57% of the teachers were first born, while another 25% weresecond-born sons).50
Decades of scholarship on early modern history has detailed the intellectual andideological transformations among peasant elites that also contributed to the decenteringof the Buddhist clergy in village life. These developments, too, surely affected theconsideration of a clerical career for children among the rising stratum of villagers who
had cultural and local socio-political aspirations. Increasing literacy not only provided
access to technical knowledge, but it also facilitated well-read peasants’ ability to draw
upon Buddhist concepts while developing lay oriented practices and movements.
Examples of such intellectual agency are the Sekimon Shingaku 石門心学 movement inwhich non-clerical thinkers formed a belief system through a synthesis of Confucian and
Zen ideas,51 and the various discourses on personal cultivation that emerged during the46

For the upper Musashi region, see SKS 1: 195–202. Platt’s study of commoner teachers in the Shinano
region notes a similar trend. In Shinano, teachers of peasant origins were always numerous, but up to themid-1700s, 35% were Buddhist (with a few Shinto) clerics and another 25% were of samurai origins. By
end of Tokugawa period, clerical and samurai teachers were still present, but commoners had assumed themost active role in expanding rural education (Platt, Burning and Building, 28).
47
Platt, Burning and Building, 51–51.
48
This integrative aspect of literacy was already an important element in the maintenance oftransregional Buddhist organizations and sectarian identities.
49
Platt, Burning and Building, 39–43. In this sense, the ability to control knowledge was comparable tothe socio-cultural benefits accrued from acts of temple patronage by commoner elites that drew uponolder aristocratic and samurai precedents (Vesey, “Peasants as Clients and Patrons of Buddhism in Early
Modern Village Life; “Fashioning the Abbot”).
50
Tone, Tera koya to shomin kyōiku no jisshōteki kenkyū, 273.
51
Sawada, Confucian Values and Popular Zen.

53

❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5early modern period.52 Buddhist clerics increasingly faced even greater challenges froma range of Confucian ideologues and Nativist advocates, including those who supported
Hirata Atsutane’s efforts to propagate his vision for stabilizing village communal life.53
The potential impact of this latter movement is well reflected in Anne Walthall’s study ofMatsuo Taseko 松尾多勢子 (1811–1894).54 An ardent believer of Buddhist teachingsin her early life,55 her encounters with the Nativist teacher Iwasaki Nagayo 岩崎長世
(1807–1879) altered her world view.56 As in her case, Hirata’s ideas were espoused by
the gōnō stratum of prominent villagers. Therefore, even though these families became
rural Buddhism’s wealthiest patrons, the diffusion of Nativist beliefs in the latter decadesof the early modern period would have dissuaded the adherents of the new ideology fromconsidering a clerical career for their sons.
4. Challenges Facing Regional Clerical Leaders
Even though Kantō area rural population began to rebound from the 1830s, 57 thecontinuing records of temple vacancies indicate there was no reduction of the Buddhist
clergy’s personnel difficulties. Temple abbots thus had to attract possible disciples in an
increasingly competitive social environment. While there were surely some boys who
expressed a personal interest in a clerical calling, the authority to submit a request forordination lay with the child’s parent or guardian. There is little documentation on how
commoner families made the choice to place a son in a temple, but Sakamoto Masahito’s
study of one young cleric’s ordination offers a unique window on the process.58 The
account comes from the daily record of Tōfukuji 東福寺, a regional Shingi Shingon head
temple in the Katsushika 葛飾 district (modern Chiba Prefecture). In 1844, a nine-year
old boy named Gakuzō 学蔵 was introduced to the abbot Kan’yū 寛融 by his step-father
Matabei 又兵衛, who had taken charge of the boy and his elder brother following his
marriage Gakuzō’s divorced mother. 59 Matabei, however, had other sons from own
previous marriage, hence, Gakuzō and his older brother occupied an awkward position
within the new household. Since Matabei’s faith in Buddhism led him to study the Lotus
Sutra with Tōkufuji’s Kan’yū, he first sent his eldest stepson for ordination, and once
Gakuzō was of age, the stepfather offered him, too.
In Shingi Shingon, the new arrivals received basic instruction in the sutras and learn
to perform simple duties around the temple. There was a subtle name change as well, inthat during this probationary period the temple abbot added “maru” 丸 to the end of the52

Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 10–88.
Platt, Burning and Building, 57–64. Harootunian discusses the ideological value of Nativist thought topeasant elites and their efforts to justify their authority over village matters (Harootunian, Things Seenand Unseen, 230–233).
54
Wathall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman.
55
Wathall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 70.
56
Wathall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 100–120.
57
Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite, 115.
58
Sakamoto, “Kinsei no shukke.”
59
Adding to the complications, apparently Gakuzō and his elder brother did not have the same father.
53

54

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖new arrival’s secular name. (In keeping with the dictates of status prerogatives, children
from elite families were addressed with an official title.) 60 Gakuzō was thus called
Gakuzōmaru at first, which was abbreviated to Gakumaru in the temple’s diary.
After an abbot determined his new ward’s suitability, he shaved the disciple’s headand performed the ordination by giving him the novice precepts (shamikai 沙彌戒). He
also replaced the lay name with two new clerical names: a courtesy title (kemyō 仮名),and a new Buddhist name (jitsumyō 実名). After spending nine months at Tōfukuji,
Kan’yū agreed to accept the boy as a disciple, and Gakumaru thereby became the young
Shingi cleric Jōzanbō 定山房 (his kemyō) Yūjitsu 祐実 (his personal name). Temple
records indicate that Yūjitsu did receive regular visits from his mother and stepfather at
Tōfukuji. He was also allowed a visit their home prior to his ordination. Other parents or
guardians may have been less concerned with the children they handed off to the clergy,
but Yūjitsu’s parents apparently did share a continuing interest in his wellbeing. In 1849,
Yūjitsu began the shido kegyō 四度加行 training that formed the core of Shingon rituals,
which concluded with learning the goma 護摩 rite and his anointment (kanjō 灌頂).
According to Sakamoto’s study, Yūjitsu’s completion of the training apparently
influenced his relationship with his other parent, too. Prior to that point, the father
Fujiemon 藤右衛門 does not appear in the temple’s account, but once Yūjitsu became afully anointed Shingi cleric, he performed the goma for Fujiemon, and his father attended
his Dharma talk.
As in this case, the placement of a child depended on the relationship between aparent/guardian and an abbot, and the initial probation indicates Kan’yū was aware of theneed to assess the Gakuzō’s ability to accept the new life course set by Matabei’s decision.
Since ordination did change the boy’s identity within the early modern status system,other parties beyond the parent-abbot nexus participated in the process. On the secularside, officials in his village signified their approval by removing him from the village
register and sending a certificate authorizing the novice’s transfer to a temple registry. In
the last decades of the early modern period, bakufu intendants and domain officials also
reviewed these petitions prior to approval.61 In order to ensure the intake of suitablenovices, higher clerical authorities established guidelines with quite explicit selection
criteria. For example, in 1675 the Shingi Shingon headquarter temple Hasedera 長谷寺
in Nara issued regulations for rejecting cripples (gotai fugu 五躰不具) and those with
dubious backgrounds (e.g. wandering mendicants like kōya hijiri 高野聖 or sarugaku
猿楽 performers).62 A similar list submitted to the bakufu in 1802 by the Shingi liaison
temples included further conditions for samurai petitioners (they should be investigatedand accepted only with the recommendation from their domain lord), and sons of those60

According to the 1802 Shingi shingonshū shukke seiritsu saisho yori ryō honzan e tenzuru shōshin
made no shidai 新義真言宗出家成立最初ゟ両本山江轉昇進迄之次第 (a description of Shingi
Shingon clerical practices that the Shingi liaisons filed with the bakufu), a new potential disciple wasgiven a maruna 丸名 or hyakkan kunina 百官国名; ZGR, 380.
61
NSS, 498–499. Item dated 1843.
62
Saitō, “Nihon bukkyō kyōikushi kenkyū,” 242–243. While certainly biased, exclusions based on social
origins reflected bakufu policies for handing or suppressing religious mendicants with no sectarianaffiliations.

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engaged in “mean trades” (geshoku shōbai 下職商売; leather sandal making and brushbinding, for example) were to be rejected out of hand.63 In other words, abbots were notallowed to accept petitions from applicants associated with the reviled status groups at thelowest levels of the early modern social hierarchy. (The 1802 statement also hints thatfamilies from discriminated communities tried to hide their origins by placing children inpeasant, townsmen, and Shugendō households.) The Kan’ei 寛 永 9 (1632) Jōdo
regulations governing novices at the training halls of Zōjōji 増 上 寺 also had an
appearance clause and restrictions against candidates affiliated with other clericalorganizations. In this code, fifteen was the minimum age for ordination.64
Following their formal acceptance into a Buddhist organization, ordinands like
Yūjitsu were enveloped in a religious milieu that sought to instill the tenets and practicesof that school and the social mode of the Edo era Buddhist clergy. Assuming the novice
adapted to this dramatic shift in lifestyle and possessed a degree of ability, he proceededalong a well-established career path that would hopefully lead to the abbacy of a rural
temple and perhaps spiritual fulfillment. During this process, he was exposed to thesocializing influences of temple obligations, regularized education, and clothing
regulations that centripetally pulled him into the larger Buddhist order. Given the overallthrust of the status system—social ordering—these forces integrated lay-born sons drawn
from villages and urban wards into a legally recognized sectarian community that served
specified functions in Tokugawa society.
The process of acculturation began under the guidance of the ordination master (e.g.,
Kan’yū in Yūjitsu’s case). In the beginning, shoke spent the several years learning basic
temple practices, including elemental knowledge of sutras, prayers, and some initial hand
gestures (in 印; mudrā) used in rites. In Shingi Shingon, the initial training centered theshido kegyō, a four-part curriculum that provided fundamental knowledge in esoteric
Buddhism. According to the 1802 description submitted to the bakufu, a shoke was
expected to complete 250 days of training in the “eighteen paths” (jūhachidō 十八道),
the Diamond Realm (kongōkai 金剛界) and Womb Realm (taizōkai 胎蔵界) mandalas,
and the goma fire ceremony. They could complete the sequence in succession, or split thecourse over several years, and they might fulfill parts of it in other nearby temples.65
Newly ordained Jōdo shoke were expected study the three major sutras of the Jōdo
tradition.66
In addition, they might attend the abbot when he left the temple grounds on businessor helped him to perform annual rites such as the offering of prayers and food to hungry
spirits (segaki 施餓鬼) that was conducted in the eight month. Since parishioner relations
were a major element in temple operations, shoke also learnt the proper manners forgreeting guests, and they might assist with memorial rites held in parishioner homes. In
63

ZGR, 380–386.
Hasegawa, “Zōjōji shozō ‘Nyūjichō’ no kenkyū (2),” 320. A footnote particularly notes there was nouse for anyone who could not read the sutras.
65
Sakamoto, “Kinsei no shukke,” 411–412, 418. The kegyō training was also mandated by the bakufu in
1615; NSS, 336.
66
Jōdo training methods are described in JZ, 157–159.
64

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖keeping with its catholic approach to Buddhism, Tendai training combined formats.
According to the Tendaishū sōto keireki senkyo etai no shidai 天台宗僧徒経歴選挙衣体之次第 submitted to the bakufu in 1802, Tendai shoke in the esoteric training trackfollowed the shido kegyō, while those in exoteric training undertook an extended courseof course of textual and doctrinal study.67
After several years of such guidance, shoke education shifted to regional training
halls, many of which were in head temples. Early modern clerical educational systems
emerged from medieval cenobitic practices, with additional support coming from
Tokugawa bakufu policies that acknowledged Buddhist sectarian traditions as the basis
for establishing authority over smaller regional networks and individual temples.68 As
these systems evolved, they came to be known by the number of their constituent
institutions, or by the ranks of their abbots. The Jōdo School in the Kantō thus had
eighteen danrin (jūhachi danrin 十八談林) with the main ones being in Edo, while theKantō Tendai organization consisted of a three tiered “three sōjōji 僧正寺, eight danrin,
and seven bantōji 伴頭寺” system.69 Within Shingi Shingon, there were eleven main
danrin affiliated with the Kansai headquarters of Chishakuin and Hasedera, and they sat
atop a training system with scores of smaller schools scattered across the Kantō.
Since temple codes for any school stipulated danrin training as a key criterion for
an abbatial appointment, these halls were vital for the preparation of clerics who could filltemple vacancies, but in an ironic twist, there is evidence indicating the transregional
nature of these systems facilitated the drain of personnel from the countryside into Edo (atrend that mirrored the larger demographic changes noted above). In the case of Tendai,
Kan’eiji’s elite position in the Kantō heightened the stature of is training facilities(Kan’eiji gakuryō 寛永寺学寮) and thus a young cleric might spend his first years in arural hall and then move to Kan’eiji to complete his studies.70 In 1711, Tendai authorities
tried to reverse the flow with a requirement of ten years of rural hall training before anapplication to Kan’eiji (SKS 2: 284), but this was later reduced to just seven or eight.71
The eventual decline among rural Tendai danrin is evident in records from Daikōfushōji
大光普照寺 in the northern Musashi region: Kan’eiji granted it with danrin stature in
1684, and it initially had over eighty shoke in residence. By 1751–1764 the population
was only forty, and in the early 1800s it was down to ten shoke.72
67

Citation in ZGR, 356–357. This section of the text directly pertains to practices on Mt. Hiei 比叡, but
it notes the Kantō Tendai temples followed the same traditions. This is reiterated in the Kan’eiji 寛永寺
section on pages 360–361. The duration was set for twelve years on Mt. Hiei, but only eight wererequired at the Nikkō, Kan’eiji and other Kantō rural training halls.
68
For further reference, the Tokugawa bakufu’s emphasis on clerical training standards is evident in the
myriad of codes promulgated between 1600 and 1615. See NSS, 321–342.
69
The list of Tendai training centers is in Saitō’s Nihon bukkyō kyōikushi kenkyū (204–205) and Volume
2 of SKS (275, 280). The designations of sōjōji and bantō indicated temples whose abbots were of thesōjō and bantō clerical ranks respectively.
70
Kan’eiji’s authority stemmed from its position as a Tokugawa house prayer/funeral temple and as themain Tendai liaison to the bakufu. In the first part of the period, it also oversaw the whole Kantō-area
Tendai training system.
71
ZGR, 362–364.
72
SKS 2: 282.

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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5The Jōdo school experienced a similar movement among its clerics. Hasegawa
Kyōshūn’s research of the eighteen Jōdo School training halls reveals that increasing
shoke residency at the most prestigious Edo temples (Zōjōji, Denzūin 伝通院, Reiganji
霊巌寺, and Reizanji 霊山寺) came at the expense of regional training centers. At Zōjōji,for example, the average annual intake was 142 shoke, while the average matriculation
rates at regional halls ranged from only four to seventeen new trainees per annum. Jōdo
authorities, too, tried to counterbalance this gradual movement towards Edo withadmission restrictions and a lottery admission system (chūsen 抽籖), but ambitious
shoke circumvented these methods by becoming the disciples of abbots of the four
temples or the sub-temples within their precincts.73 Upon completion of their training,urban-raised clerics did return to rural temples, but exposure to the lifestyle at majormonasteries could encourage the better qualified ones to seek positions at temples in ornear Edo. Furthermore, since shared training experiences at a regional hall (which werealso the regional head temples in the Jōdo school) strengthened communal bonds among
clerics in locally networked branch/heisōchi temples, this demographic shift broke thelinks between generations of clerics, and those who trained for years in Edo lost theirsense of obligation to their former head temple and local brethren.74 There was a negative
institutional impact as well, because the decline in shoke numbers led to the reduction ofresidential facilities at regional Jōdo training halls by the early 1800s.
The general demographic shift appeared in Shingi Shingon, too, but the center ofgravity was in the Kansai rather than Edo. The school’s codes mandated a minimum totalof twenty years of training experience for all Shingi clerics seeking an abbacy, at least
three of which were to be spent at the Chishakuin or Hasedera.75 Thus, there was aconstant flow of Kantō area Shingi shoke to Kyoto or Nara, and according to theobservations of a cleric named Eigaku 英岳, by 1711 the numbers had declined in the
Kantō danrin.76 Shingi authorities tried to counterbalance this shift by appointing somedanrin as itenji 移転寺 (“transfer temples”) that were suitable abbatial seats for eliteclerics in the headquarter training halls, yet this policy did not really mitigate thedeclining educational significance of regional Shingi danrin relative to the headquarter
facilities.77
Tsuji’s analysis included the critical observation that “formalization” (keishikika 形式化) contributed to the overall decline of early modern Buddhism. Compared to earlymodern clerics who have been praised for their doctrinal or spiritual innovations (e.g.,
Hakuin or Jiun), Tsuji’s comment is not without merit. That being said, the bakufu
expected clerical leaders to bring order and accountability to their schools. Given the factthat they had to train shoke who may not have been personally motivated to follow a path73

For this data, see Hasegawa, “Zōjōji shozō ‘Nyūjichō’ no kenkyū (1)”; “Zōjōji shozō no ‘Nyūjichō’ nokenkyū (2)”; “Zōjōji shozō no ‘Nyūjichō’ no kenkyū (3).” Hasegawa discusses the circumventions on
page 319 and the lottery on page 321 (Hasegawa, “Zōjōji shozō no ‘Nyūjichō’ no kenkyū (2)”).
74
Hasegawa, Daiganji shiwa, 92–93.
75
NSS, 336.
76
Quoted in Saitō, Nihon bukkyō kyōikushi kenkyū , 225.
77
Hōzawa, Kinsei bukkyō no seido to jōhō, 67–68. For a detailed analysis, see Kushida, Zoku Shingon
mikkyō seiritsu katei no kenkyū, 704–754.

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖of ascetic/spiritual training, the educational systems did provide at least a modicum ofgeneral standards. Although Sakamoto’s account of Yūjitsu does not follow him into
middle age, career path consistency is evident in the biographies of three Shingi clerics in
the Yakuōin archives. (The biographies at Daihiganji cited above reflect similar career
trajectories.)
Biographies at Yakuōin78

Event

Kanzui 環瑞(1797)

Zonkaku 存覚(1807)

Ken’a 賢阿(1844)(Place; age)

(Place; age)

(Place; age)

Ordination

Kichijōin; 13

Daishōji; 11

Shōrenji; 12

Kegyō

Enpukuji; 16

Daishōji ; 13

Chōfukuji; 17

ShinkaKichijōin; 16

Daichiji; 12

Shōganji; 18

Kanjō

Hōshōji; 25

Kōtokuji; 24

Hōjūin; 23[Hasedera]; 24–30[Hasedera]; 20–29[Hasedera]; 10 yrs.

Daichiji; 32

Shōrenji; 33

HQ period
Hōdan

Following their initial ordinations, they underwent the shido kegyō training andparticipated in Hōonkō 報恩講 that honored the founder of Shingi Shingon, Kakuban
覚 鑁 (Kōgyō Daishi 興 教 大 師 [1095–1143]). 79 The textual studies centered onquestion/response dialogues compiled by the medieval-era Shingi cleric Shōken 聖憲(1307–1392).80 For each session, the participants engaged in practice debates or formal
exchanges in which a younger shoke would raise a question or topic, and then seniorclerics offered responses based on the texts being studied. After several years ofparticipation, shoke would assume the role of responder. Their first time was known asshinka 新加, and judging from the personnel histories, it was a significant milestone in acleric’s progress through the training program. Aside from Shingi texts, their education
included studies in Tendai, Hossō 法相, Sanron 三論, Kegon 華厳, and Hīnayāna 小乗
texts as well as further training in the goma.81 The move to Hasedera (also known as
Koikebō 小池坊) took place in their early twenties, after they had passed the shinka
stage at a rural danrin Hōonkō and received anointment. Seventeenth-century Shingi
authorities expected shoke to have fourteen to fifteen years of rural danrin experience
before matriculating at a headquarter school, but by the 1760s this requirement was often
78

Documents are TYM 1: 246–247, and 253.
The importance of the Hōonkō in danrin training is stressed in a Hōei 宝永 1 (1704) announcement
promulgated by Shingi authorities (TYM 1: 176) and in the explanation of Shingi Shingon given to thebakufu one hundred years later in 1801/12 (ZGR 382–383).
80
For a description of the evolution of these texts and a biography of Shōken, see Katsumata, Shingon nokyōgaku, especially 1: 32–38.
81
ZGR, 382–383.
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reduced to less than ten.82 (The Yakuōin biographies reflect this trend towards reductions
in training time.) Eventually they returned to the Kantō, and gave their First Dharma Talk
(hatsu hōdan 初法談) at a danrin or large temple. At this point they were ready to assume
a branch temple abbacy.
During the latter stages of training, if a cleric showed a degree of responsibility andmanagerial ability, he might be appointed to the caretakership of a vacant branch temple
by local leaders of his school.83 Since his certification was still incomplete, such an
appointment did not confer upon him the right to perform funeral rituals or take on
disciples, but it did provide practical experience in temple management and clergy-danka
relations. While only a temporary response, this employment of older training clerics wasa viable means for handling a regional network’s personnel issues. If a cleric did notfinish his training, his future was permanently limited to this caretaker status, or apossible appointment to a monto/heisōchi temple that did not require the completion of
the full education/certification process.
4.1 When the robe did not fit: Problems that emerged during training
While clerics such as Yūjitsu appear to have complacently adapted to the vocation chosen
for them, many children carry the latent potential for more obstreperous engagement withthe social forms and practices that envelope them. In the context of early modern Japan,
W. Puck Brecher’s 2015 study argues that in contradiction to the descriptions ofwell-behaved children penned by nineteenth-century western visitors, child disobedienceand violence was common. Popular role models of masculine valor contributed torebellious children, as did social and economic instabilities from the late 1700s
onwards.84 Responding to these conditions, they used ritually substantiated modes of
disruption and mock battles as a means for self-expression and resistance to socially
imposed norms.85
In stark contrast to the openness this lifestyle, Buddhist clerics were expected toraise shoke who could: follow precepts that limited their activities; read the complex textsof their traditions; and perform the rites that were a focal point of clerical life. Therefore,
an ordination master had to effectively resituate a disciple (who may have come joined
the clergy with a degree of individuality and resistance) into a new context in which there
was a strict moral code and little latitude for personal expressions of ambiguous behavior.
The training methods of the various schools, while formulaic, did facilitate theacceptance of such a dramatic identity change through years of enculturation, and rural
abbots were perhaps guided by instructions for handling disobedient acolytes that theyreceived from medieval temple practices.86 However, there should be no surprise that82

SKS 2: 306.
Sōtō Zen records refer to the position as kansu 監寺 or kanbō 看坊 (Tanaka, Kinsei chihō jiinkeieishi no kenkyū, 165–167).
84
Brecher, “Being a Brat,” 94–95.
85
Ujiie provides numerous examples of children’s aggressive behavior in early modern life (Ujiie, Edono shōnen, 99–127).
86
Porath, “Nasty Boys or Obedient Children?,” 27–30.
8360

Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖among these boys who were forced into this life prior to their physical, social and mental
maturation, some would resist such measures. We must also acknowledge the potential
for additional psychological pressure from confusion, sadness and anger among children
and adolescents who were unwilling leave their families, or who had sufficient
self-awareness to realize the looming disjuncture between their personal desires and thepath selected for them.
A skillful abbot could combine a firm hand (training as coercion) and empathy (thepower of suasion) to overcome resistance, but tensions grew if the child did not adapt.
The strongest willed and most resourceful might try to run away, but younger children
were less able to do so. The abbot might also decide a case was hopeless and order the
resisting child to leave, but there was no guarantee that the biological family would
accept their return. While an extreme example, the following case reflects the potential
for destructive stress between a recalcitrant novice and the training abbot. In Bunka 4(1807), the bakufu’s deliberative council (hyōjōsho 評定所) had to judge the case of a
Sōtō school shoke named Genzui 元隨 who was convicted of arson. According to theincident description, Genzui was disciple of Hōrinji 芳林寺, a Sōtō temple in Iwatsuki
岩槻, and the abbot had strongly excoriated Genzui for stealing money from the abbot tobuy sweets. The abbot also rebuked the disciple for his overall distain of clerical life.
Genzui had decided to return to his uncle’s residence, but upon being scolded again he set
a fire that consumed the precincts. Genzui’s personal statements are not stated in theaccount, but the report speculates anger with the abbot’s treatment motivated his attack.
Arson was a capital offence for which adults were executed by burning (hiaburi 火炙),but since Genzui was still a minor, bakufu officials banished him to an offshore island forlife once he became fifteen. Until that time he was under his uncle’s supervision. There isinsufficient information to judge whether the abbot’s training methods were to blame for
Genzui’s recourse to violence, but he was clearly unsuited to the life.87
There is also anecdotal evidence that families with mentally challenged children
tried to ease their burden by asking an abbot to assume guardianship. An illustrative caseconcerns a twenty-six year old man named Sashichi 佐七 who suffered from periods ofinsanity. His sister and brother-in-law petitioned the family temple of Seiōji 清雄寺 totake him in. The abbot later took Sashichi on a trip to the Kansai, but while in Okayama,
Sashichi obtained a knife and killed the abbot’s nephew; he also wounded several others.
87

OR, 498–499. This compendium contains examples of various crimes and judgments that wereselected as juridical precedents for reference. Genzui’s case was listed in the section for cases of arson bychildren and the elderly, hence it was not included as a particularly “clerical” incident. The OR lists
another clergy-related case in a section for thieves on the run. This occurred in 1817 when a shoke named
Shūmin 秀民 at a Jōdo temple in Hitachi Province 常陸国 stole thirty-four ryō and ran off to the
Shinagawa and Shinjuku post-stations to drink. He also assumed the guise of a doctor and purchased thesexual services from a maid at a Shinjuku inn. Local officials wanted to execute him, while his
abbot-master petitioned for leniency (OR, 301–302). Drawing upon earlier precedents, the bakufu orderedpublic exposure (sarashi 晒) and expulsion from Edo, and then he was to be handed over to Jōdo liaison
officials for intra-school punishment. Luckily for Shūmin, the bakufu issued a reprieve for the banishment
and exposure when it celebrated the birth of a Tokugawa house child. The maid Ehi ゑひ who had
unknowingly received some of this stolen money was identified, and officials confiscated the funds (OR,435–436).

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Upon investigation into his mental state, the bakufu and domain authorities ordered him
into lifelong care under his sister.88 Hiramatsu cites this case and adds that if a family had
to deal with a potentially disruptive son with such an issue, the options were confinement
or disowning him (kandō 勘当).89 If the latter option was chosen, then placement withthe clergy became possible. Hiramatsu further argues that since many were placed in
Tendai, Shingon, Nichiren and Sōtō temples, the families may have hoped their prayer
rituals could alleviate the affliction.
With the passage of time, the ordinand hopefully settled down to accept histransformation, but records of Kitain indicate this was not always the case. Muryōjuji wasan important site of clerical education in the medieval period, and while Kitain assumed
overall control of the precincts in the early modern period, Nakain continued this heritage
as one of eight Kantō-area Tendai training halls90 The hall supervisor (ryōsu 寮主) had
the name of Jōjubō 成就坊, and senior shoke were appointed to the position of “head seat”(shuso or shuza 首座). The entries for 1818 indicate there were over twenty trainees atvarious levels in their careers in residence.91 In addition to their studies, they played
supporting roles in Kitain’s annual rituals and other activities, and if they stayed longenough to acquire certification, then they might be appointed to a branch abbacy in a
nearby Tendai temple.92
The hall in 1818 was free of major issues, but Kitain’s 1819 diaries describe adifficult event for the shoke in residence.93 On the tenth day of the intercalary fourth
month, the temple community discovered an attack on three dogs that were kept within
the precincts.94 Based upon the evidence, the administrators believed the perpetrators had
used a sickle. One died from its deep wounds, and volume of spilt blood near the main
hall was so great that the abbot ordered the stripping and replacement of topsoil to purify
the spot. Kitain’s head administrator (chiji 知事) condemned the act as a transgression
against the precepts and ordered the supervisor Jōjubō and the head seat Ichiinbō 一印房
to conduct a thorough inquest. A member of Kitain’s lay staff saw an unidentified culprit
running into one of the training hall’s buildings, and that night a shoke named Tokuonbō
得恩房 was identified as the sole culprit. 95 Fortunately for him, the harsh animal
protection laws of the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi were a distant memory, but Kitain
immediately expelled him from the training hall and its general precincts for his heinous
act. The temple also strongly reprimanded Ichiinbō for his failure to rigorously
investigate the matter. There was subsequent discussion of punishing the head seat andJōjubō with a period of confinement to quarters, but ultimately Kitain’s administrators
withheld this penalty on the expectation of better leadership from them in the future. One
88

Fuse, Hyakkajō shirabegaki, 4125–4129.
Hiramatsu, “Nihon bukkyō ni okeru sō to chigo no nanshoku,” 99–100.
90
SMF 8: 249–250.
91
KN 3: 109, 144.
92
KN 4: 88, 101, 301.
93
Records for the following case are in KN 4: 89–91, 195, 227, 230, and 243.
94
KN 4: 89–94.
95
Tokuonbō was listed as trainee on the twentieth day of the first month of Bunsei 2 (KN 4: 23).
Therefore, he apparently was in residence for only a short period.
89

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖month after his expulsion, on the twentieth day of the fifth month Tokuonbō approached
the abbot of Minamiin 南院 (another cloister in the precincts) to express his regret for
his actions and to plead for an intercession on his behalf in the hope of returning.96 The
administrator informed Minamiin on the twenty-fifth that Tokuonbō should wait at least
100 days before making such a petition. The diary makes no mention of such a requestfrom him during the rest of that year or the next.
Aside from this recorded expression of regret, Kitain’s dog butcher did not leave
any personal testimony; hence we can only speculate about his motives. Like Sashichi,
innate psychological instability may have incited his aggression. From a comparative
perspective, the motivations for his violence against domestic animals may have been
like those ascribed to young Parisian workers who killed the cats of their masters as a
calculated means for resisting the social inequalities that informed the harsh conditions of
their employment in the years before the French Revolution.97 The Kitain account does
not suggest that Tokuonbō viewed the dogs as a symbolic representation of the clergy or
the temple, and while Tokuonbō may have been abused while in residence, the temple’s
diary makes no mention of such a condition.98 Therefore, his actions may not closely
match Darton’s account of the youthful French cat-killers, but Tokuonbō perhaps used thehapless animal as medium for expressing similar frustrations.
The remainder of 1819 was relatively quiet, but other disciplinary issues arose in1820. At the start of the fourth month, Ichiinbō was implicated in an incident with anotherhead seat shoke named Kōkanbō 興観房, and both were ordered into confinement (enryo遠慮) for fifty days.99 The confinement was cut short, when Ichiinbō apologized on theseventeenth and was granted a reprieve.100 One month later, Kitain held a display ofreligious objects (kaichō 開帳) at the Jieidō 慈恵堂 (its main hall), with the various
cloisters and votive chapels also holding events. Myōkanbō 妙観房 was serving in thetemple administrative offices, and on the twelfth day he left the precincts without
permission and began to drink sake.101 Given his position and the religious gravity of the
moment, the administrators ordered strict confinement (oshikomi 押込). Only three days
later, a different cleric named Shōinbō 正因坊 had created friction with other membersof the temple and was ordered into light confinement (sashihikae 差 控 ). 102 The
punishment, however, apparently did not work: on the twenty-third of the fifth month, the96

KN 4: 123.
Darton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes of French Cultural History, 75–104.
98
This lacuna does not preclude the possibility of such abuse, but if that were the case, then the temple’s
diarist exercised his authority over the narrative to omit this information.
99
KN 4: 194. There were various forms of confinement used in early modern penal practices. Enryomeant the recipient was confined to quarters during the daylight hours, but they could quietly leave atnight. Oshikomi was a stricter form that prohibited leaving the site of confinement. Conversely,
sashihikae was a lighter sentence in which the recipient was forbidden from publicly leaving theirresidence via a front gate, but they could discretely leave by side doors.
100
KN 4: 203. Kōkanbō had been let out earlier to visit a prominent cleric at Kan’eiji who was gravely ill(KN 4: 200).
101
KN 4: 227.
102
KN 4: 230.
97

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Vol. 5administrators felt that he was unsuitable for Kitain and ordered his departure.103 In the
fourth month yet another cleric—Kikanbō 起観坊—was given the same penalty for
misbehavior.104 Eventually he and the previously mentioned Myōkanbō were let out ofconfinement in the seventh month.105
Peering through the window of the Administrator’s Record on this brief segment of
Kitain’s early modern history, it is evident that even with a long period of structured
training, it was not always possible to judge whether the Buddhist clerical life would
transform a problematic child into a viable member of the community or create a
miscreant who would never conform to the expectations placed on them. Judging fromthe expulsions and confinements used in response to these cases, Buddhist authorities
struggled to strike a balance between the need to train clerics, and the quality of thosewhom they accepted into their schools. At the same time, the treatment of Tokuonbō
suggests the limitations of such punishments. Practically speaking, expulsion from themonastery and the prominent Kitain was paramount to ostracization within Tendai andend the aberrant shoke’s career: without the credentials, a temple abbacy would not open
for Tokuonbō. However, the Diary records do not indicate formal disrobement (datsue奪衣) and expulsion from the Tendai school, and the later comment regarding a possible a
reprieve suggests some reticence among the leadership to take this most extreme
response—an act that would strip Tokuonbō of his clerical identity and thus cast him
adrift in the status system. Since he did express regret and such responses were an
important element in early modern mechanisms for resolving non-criminal cases andsocial strife, Kitain officials may have hoped for a change of heart that would allow for
his reinstatement at the training hall.106
4.2 Abbatial Burdens
If a cleric met the full training requirements established for this school, he usually
returned to his home area and temples to prepare for entering local society as an abbot.
This would involve his participation in rituals such as the First Dharma Talk that was
expected of Shingi Shingon clerics.107 Once he was accepted into a regional network andappointed as the abbot of a branch or monto temple, he began to develop relationships
with other abbots of the same school. Depending on the size of the local network, his
temple might be part of a sub-group (kumiai 組合) under the supervision of the regional
head, and he could be called upon to support other temples in his group. After several
years, an abbot might move to a bigger or more prominent temple within the same school,
and if he met the higher training requirements for a danrin abbacy, he would exert
103

KN 4: 250.
KN 4: 243.
105
KN 4: 312.
106
If Tokuonbō had killed a human, he would have come under Kawagoe 川越 domain jurisdiction. The
sentence for murder was beheading or possibly post-execution gibbeting (gokumon 獄門); hence the dog
was an easy and relatively “safe” target. See fn. 87 above for another example of clerical leniency.
107
This requirement is in the 1615 Shingonshū shohatto 真言宗諸法度 of 1615 (NSS, 336, art. 6) and in
the 1801 Shingi explanation to the bakufu (ZGR, 381).
104

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖considerable influence over the next generation.108 If a cleric with sufficient credentials
was appointed to the abbacy of monto/heisōji, it was possible to petition the regional headfor full branch stature. Success not only required approval from the head temple, its otherbranches and higher clerical authorities, but also gifts of money. Therefore, a sufficientlay support base (danka families, temple lands, village shrine lands, etc.) was necessary.
If the petition was accepted, the newly minted branch abbot could take on a greater rangeof roles.
In addition to the funerals, memorial rituals, and prayer rites expected of him by his
fellow clerics and the laity, a rural abbot often shouldered the burdens arising from vacantabbacies within his schools. He participated in searches if there were no viable candidates
within his network, and an abbot with social connections to clerics in other areas might becalled upon to draw upon these resources in the search. If no candidate appeared, then ahead temple could appoint a viable abbot to take on an “added appointment” (kentai 兼帯), which meant he would temporarily carry out abbatial functions for an empty temple
as well his own.
Most importantly, a branch abbot was allowed to train new disciples, and thereby
prepare the next generation of clerics. If he was fortunate enough to attract a viablecandidate like Yūjitsubō, the abbot had a relatively easy experience with the initial stagesof his ordinand’s training. If the disciple returned to his network following the danrinsojourn, then the abbot could influence the abbatial appointment as well. Conversely, as
we have seen above, if a disciple grew disaffected or began to resist the limitations
imposed by clerical life, then the abbot shouldered responsibility for handling this discord.
A case in point appears in the records of the Shingi temple Daihiganji that was a source
for the Higurashi survey of temple populations noted earlier. In Tenmei 天明 5 (1785),
the temple appointed a cleric named Hōrin Jimyō 法輪慈明 as its twenty-sixth abbot.
Jimyō was born to a local peasant family, and like many others in his school, he entered
the clergy at the age of twelve. His ordination was at Daikōji 大光寺, a Daihiganji branch,
but he became a disciple of Daihiganji’s twenty-fifth abbot. After passing through theregional/headquarter training system, he spent eighteen years at Hasedera in Nara.109
Three years after his accession (1788) Jimyō took on his first disciple, a nine-year
old boy whom he entitled Senzenbō 千全房.110 This brought the clerical population to
five: Jimyō; his now retired master Banshin 鑁津; two younger disciples of Banshin
named Gigenbō Hōmyō 義現房法明 and Shinkōbō 真光房; and Senzenbō. 111 The
ordination was celebrated with gifts from nine branches and monto. Early diary entries
give little hint of trouble, and in the eleventh month of Kansei 6 (1795) Senzenbō
performed his first goma rite, which signified the summation of the shido kegyō part of108

Hōzawa details many aspects of rural clerical networks (Hōzawa, Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido;
Kinsei bukkyō no seido to jōhō), and Sakamoto 1974 and Hasegawa 1974 both discuss the role ofsub-groups and “same Dharma” (hōrui 法類) relationships in the affairs of rural clerics (Sakamoto, “Edojidai ni okeru jiin no ‘kumiai/hōrui’ seido ni tsuite”; Hasegawa, “Kantō Jōdoshū kyōdan no matsuji
tōsei”).
109
Jimyō’s resumé (nintai kiryūsho 人躰起立書) is in DN 1: 11.
110
DN 1: 75–76.
111
DN 2: 206.

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Vol. 5

Shingi training. As the first disciple of Daihiganji’s abbot, the importance of the rite wassignified by gifts from all of the temples in Daihiganji’s network, and the attendance ofSenzenbō’s mother, brothers and others from their home village of Hirai 平井. 112
However, apparently there were underlying tensions between Jimyō and his disciple, andthirteen months later, Senzenbō ran away from Daihiganji to one of its nearby branches topetition for “time away” (itoma 暇) permission from his ordination master.113 Eventually
other clerics in the Daihiganji network effected something of a reconciliation between themaster and disciple, and Jimyō allowed Senzenbō to take on caretaker duties at a branch
named Sairenji 西蓮寺 in 1799. 114 When Senzenbō reached the age for training at
Hasedera in 1801, Jimyō provided him with the required referral letter and one ryō ingold as a gift.115 Their relationship continued for another three years, but in second
month of Kyōwa 享和 4 (1804) tensions reemerged when Senzenbō ran away once
more.116 He did not really settle down until he moved to a different Shingi network at theage of thirty-one.117
As the abbot of the network’s head temple, Jimyō faced additional problems createdby the actions of several other clerics within the Daihiganji system. In Bunka 3 (1806),
the disciple Shungenbō 春玄房 at the branch Daikōji 大光寺 disappeared, taking withhim 200 ryō in gold coins from the temple’s coffers. Several years before, the oldest
disciple of Shinshōji 真照寺—one Ryōkan 亮環—became abbot, and in Kansei 11(1801) he and two other young abbots petitioned Daihiganji and Shingi authorities for
permission to wear a colored robe, which was the mark of full abbatial accreditation.118
However, three year later (1804) Ryōkan claimed that his temple’s debts had increased
during his tenure, and he asked to leave his position. The village headman later reported
him missing, 119 and a new abbot was appointed from another branch. 120 During thetenure of Jimyō’s successor, Ryōkan reappeared in the records as Shinshōji’s caretaker in
Bunka 10 (1813). However, following a major dispute between several villages over ashrine festival on the temple’s grounds, he moved to the position of caretaker at yet
another empty branch. Six months later in 1814, he ran away again to parts unknown,
taking only his own clothes (i.e., unlike Shungenbō, he did not steal temple funds).121
Daihiganji reported his disappearance to the bakufu.
The cause of Senzenbō’s break with Jimyō is not stated, but the fact that he stayed in
the Shingi clergy suggests the reasons were personal. As Jimyō’s first disciple, Senzenbō
was an obvious future candidate for the Daihiganji abbacy, hence Jimyō’s expectations
112

DN 1: 172.
DN 1: 196.
114
DN 1: 243.
115
DN 2: 16.
116
DN 2: 30.
117
The DN editors provide a short summary of Daihiganji’s disciples and problematic branch abbots in 2:
206.
118
DN 2: 9–10. Shinshōji was the largest and most prominent branch temple in the network.
119
DN 2: 36–37, 206.
120
DN 2: 43.
121
DN 2: 218–223.
113

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖would have been high. On a personal level, Jimyō supported his master and retired abbot
Banshin, and Senzenbō as abbot would have done the same for him upon his own
retirement. Perhaps Jimyō was abusively strict, or Senzenbō did not want to shoulder
such burdens. In any event, the tensions resulted in alienation, and eventually Jimyō
appointed Gigenbō as his successor.122
4.3 Another Option on the Margins of the Clergy
If there were no readily available clerics with training credentials who could to serve as
full-time abbots or caretakers, administrators such as Jimyō could appoint dōshin 道心
to care for smaller temples. Over the last twenty years, scholarship on Edo life hasbrought into focus the existence of numerous subgroups within larger status communities,some of whom occupied ambiguous positions on society’s fringes. The range and degreeof marginalization depended upon the nature of the occupations that fixed their formal
placement within the social hierarchies. In urban areas, hairdressers and firefighters wereclassified as townsmen (chōnin 町人), yet they performed specific functions with adegree of autonomy from other commoners in their neighborhoods. Others such as thestreet performers and night soil sellers also earned their livelihoods within city wards, but
due to the social stigma associated with their occupations they came under thejurisdiction of hinin 非人 or eta 穢多 leaders who oversaw those distinctly low statuscommunities. On the furthest margins were those who had fallen off the population
registers entirely and were thus condemned to survive without the support of any
recognized group (nohinin 野非人). They were the real “outcastes,” because they had norecognized status identity.123
Dōshin (also known as hosshinsha 発 心 者 ) were a marginal group within
Buddhism. 124 Whereas most disciples were expected to undergo years of training
following ordination, dōshin took the initial precepts but went no further.125 The namederives from a Buddhist term for one who seeks awakening, but based upon the limited
data available, often these men entered a temple community to escape economic hardship(as opposed to those who fled to the cities), or their age prevented them from keeping
gainful employment.126 They shaved their heads, received two-character clerical names
122

DN 2: 134–137. Gigenbō’s career path resembled that of Jimyō, but it included experience as a liaison
official in Edo.
123
Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan, 29–30.
124
Articles in Yoshida, Jisha o sasaeru hitobito discuss other officiants and ritualists who existed on thefringes of recognized sacerdotal groups (Yoshida, Jisha o sasaeru hitobito).
125
Hasegawa, “Kinsei Jōdoshū no dōshinsha nit suite”; “Kantō Jōdoshū kyōdan no matsuji tōsei”;
Kushida, Shingon mikkō seiritsu katei no kenkyū, 1066.
126
Hasegawa, “Minkan shūkyōsha no ichi tenkei,” 201–205. A 1789 Yakuōin temple roster listed fivedōshin residing within its system. Their average age was sixty with the eldest being seventy-two (TYM 2:
81–82). Along similar lines, Hōzawa’s study of a ten-temple network on the Bōsō Peninsula shows theaverage age for eight listed abbots was 32.3 years, while ten dōshin were 46.6 years old (Hōzawa,
Bakuhan kenryoku to jidan seido, 124). Higurashi’s table of Daihiganji network temple populations lists
three dōshin caretakers of monto in 1816 and 1822, but there was only one in 1840 (Higurashi, “Shingi
Shingonshū inaka honji Daihiganji to sono monmatsu ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyū,” 98).

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Vol. 5for their precept masters, and wore simple clerical garb. They were thus a form of cleric,but it was not uncommon for village registers to list them separately from temple abbots
and their disciples. As a result, they were ritualists who occupied a vague position
between fully certified clerics and the laity. 127 Many survived by gathering alms
(takuhatsu 托鉢) as they wandered from village to village, but if they could find acaretaker position at a small votive hall or temple with a plot of land, they could
supplement their income by growing food.128 They also received support by acting as
extra chanters at major temple events.
The nature and function of such marginal clerics is illustrated by the case of adōshin named Nenjō 念生. Daiganji 大巌寺 in Oyumi 生実 was one of the eighteen
Jōdo School danrin, and its abbots oversaw both the training facility and subordinate
Jōdo temples and halls in the area.129 One of these was a Jizō 地蔵 shrine, where part of
the grounds had gradually become a village grave site. With the support of nearby lay
families who filed a petition on his behalf, Nenjō created a permanent position for himself
as the regular shrine attendant. In order legitimate his residency the villagers offered amonetary gift to Daiganji, and its abbot agreed to enter a pro forma teacher-disciple
relationship with Nenjō—an act that conveniently that slipped him under the umbrella ofclerical status legitimacy. 130 Along somewhat similar lines, Sekiguchi’s study of the
Matsumura 松村 family in Shitami 志多見 village (modern Saitama Prefecture) notes
they supported a succession of dōshin from different schools to serve as ritualists in theirprivate chapel for ancestor veneration.131
Not all dōshin, however, quietly shouldered their responsibilities, and unsettled
ones generated problems for administrators. Daiganji’s twenty-eight abbot Ben’yo 便誉
132
noted in his temple’s diary for 1765 that the caretaker of the Jizō at thistime—Gonshin 欣心—was a drunkard and gambler who lost donated items. Writing in
general terms, Ben’yo observed that dōshin were an uneducated lot. Gonshin’s familystood as guarantors to make good the losses, but he was replaced by another dōshin
named Saijō 西浄. This second dōshin’s uncle and older brother twice petitioned Ben’yo
for Saijō’s appointment, and he was eventually made a disciple of the branch temple
Daikakuji 大 覚 寺 . As with Gonshin, Saijō’s relatives stood as guarantors to takeresponsibility for any problems or losses during Saijō’s incumbency.133 Another example
was a problematic dōshin at Kitain’s Benten 辯天 dormitory in 1819. Even though he

127

Hasegawa, “Minkan shūkyōsha no ichi tenkei,” 211–214.
Sekiguchi, Kinsei sonraku no ryōiki to mibun, 307–314.
129
Oyumi is in modern Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture. This statue was known as the Yokosuka Jizō 横須賀地蔵, because it originally came from Yokosuka in Hamamatsu.
130
Hasegawa, “Kinsei Jōdoshū no dōshinsha ni tsuite,” 7–8.
131
Sekiguchi, Kinsei sonraku no ryōiki to mibun, 305–325.
132
Abbatial tenure: Hōreki 宝暦 11 (1761) to Meiwa 明和 6 (1769); d. 1791 (Hasegawa, Daiganji
shiwa, 212).
133
See Hasegawa, Daiganji shiwa, 126–128, for a brief description of these Jizō hall dōshin. Also see
DG 5: 215–217 and 236.
128

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖knew the Kitain abbot was scheduled to visit this facility, on that day he opted to go
drinking in the shops by the front gate. The next day he was expelled.134
Reliance upon dōshin was a necessity, but their numbers alone were insufficient tocover the deficit in personnel. Therefore, as noted earlier, network administrators likeJimyō often had work with the representatives of a temple’s affiliated funeral/prayer
families (danka sōdai 檀家総代) and village officials to maintain empty branches ormonto. The laity, of course, could not substitute for an abbot at ritual functions (thesewould be conducted by a certified cleric from the head or another branch temple), andempty branches were legally owned and controlled by their regional heads. At the sametime, the bakufu did recognize danka authority over the maintenance of their temple’s
grounds and material properties. Their purview included keeping the account books,
compiling lists of temple holdings (lands, artwork, dishes, abbatial robes they had
purchased, etc.), and the paying of taxes. If repairs became necessary while the abbacy
was empty, the lay leaders filed petitions to the head for permission to use the temple’s
funds, and there are many examples of requests to cut and sell trees within the precincts
for this purpose. Since a lay-managed temple might be in a separate village from the heador other branches, it was possible for predatory lay representatives to abuse their authority
to cut and sell trees/bamboo for their own benefit. Hence other abbots in the network had
to keep watch over lay managers, which amounted to an additional duty placed on theirshoulders.
5. Conclusion
Although clerics in the early 1800s might not have foreseen the challenges that appearedin the last decade of the Tokugawa regime, with hindsight we can see how the issues ofvacancies and problematic disciples helped to set the stage for Kantō-area Buddhist
temple reductions during the early Meiji period. For example, Murata Yasuo’s 1999 studyof Shinto-Buddhist separation at the start of the Meiji era notes that abbot-less andeconomically challenged sites were subject to removal or merger with a staffed temple.135
According to his analysis, this led to the closing of over 550 temples in what is now
modern Saitama Prefecture. Strong anti-Buddhist sentiments certainly drove acts ofwide-spread temple destruction in other regions, and there were similar incidents in some
districts of the Kantō, but the data on long-standing vacancies suggests the closings werealso inherent to a process of structural rationalization for over-extended clericalcommunities. Now that we have better information on specific temples, it is possible totrace with greater detail and better nuance the long-term trajectory of changes to Buddhist
temple infrastructures over the course of the 19th century.

134

KN 4: 134. He was not the only miscreant who felt the temple’s anger that day: Myōkanbō served in
the administrative office, and due to some faux pas before the abbot’s appearance, he was ordered into
confinement.
135
Murata, Shinbutsu bunri no chihōteki tenkai, 11, 29, 142–143.

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Vol. 5The personnel issues with disciples also offers new insights on clericaltransformations during the same period. In some respects, the stories help us to better
understand the cause of popular visions of clerical decline in the last half of the earlymodern period. I have not delved into stories of clerical sexual activities that punctuate
this narrative of overall deviancy, but we can see heterosexual or homosexual relations as
possible modes of resistance (and personal expression) for disgruntled disciples. 136
Furthermore, even though clerics of the celibate orders (Shingon, Tendai, etc.) used thephrase “meat eating and being married” (nikujiki saitai 肉食妻帯) to denigrate membersof the Ikkō School in Edo period sectarian disputes, 137 there are well known andoften-cited claims that some “pure clerics” (seisō 清僧) of these schools may have had
hidden wives and children. 138 Gorai Shigeru has further claimed that “half-cleric,half-lay” officiants at small temples who lived among they laity were a mainstay ofJapanese Buddhism.139 Given these correlations, there is value to further examining therole of disciple-oriented pressures on decisions made by rural and urban temple clerics ofall schools to marry once the Meiji state rescinded the older penal codes for punishingfornication.
However, while the popularized stories of married clerics and claims of women on
temple grounds fostered images of a wide-spread practice, the data on mid- to late-earlymodern temple poverty and vacancy suggests that it would have been difficult for rural
clerics to maintain such a household. Furthermore, given what we now know ofincreasing oversight of temple matters by influential danka (who were often village
officials with their own links to samurai authorities), any liaison between an abbot and awife-like partner would have depended on implicit lay family acceptance and support, as
well as the silent acceptance of other clerics in local sectarian networks. While certainly
not impossible, such an arrangement would have required a unique set of understandingsthat depended on the silence of all parties.
Along the same lines, the records of individuals like Jimyō suggest that the image ofclerical deviancy has occluded examples of abbatial diligence from scholarly narrativesof early modern clerical life. The sense of responsibility to one’s temple and school isreflected in a Meiwa 2 (1765) tenth month entry by the Daiganji abbot Ben’yo in his
Miscellaneous Records (Zatsuroku 雑録). The following commentary appears among
his directives for running his temple:

136

Of these choices, the former was more dangerous, because Buddhist and samurai authorities deemed
heterosexuality be a major felony (nyobon 女犯). Apprehended disciples were subject to public exposureand later sectarian disciplining, while those of abbatial rank faced punishments ranging from island
banishment to execution and public humiliation of the head. There are several studies of Buddhist clerics’
sexual relations with women and their punishments, but for a representative sampling of this literature,see Jaffe, Neither Monk nor Layman, 14–26.
137
Jaffe, Neither Monk nor Layman, 36–57.
138
For examples, see Morioka, “Sōryo saitai to jiin no seshū,” 31–42.
139
Gorai, Nihon no shomin bukkyō, 31–42.

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖Repairs[While] it is needless to say that it is difficult to repair the many buildings, theabbot/educator in principle is not seated for his own ease. If he acts as the leader [literally“the roof ridge and beams”] of his school, working hard for his own temple is a given. In
this world, it is worthwhile to engage in such labors. [A cleric] who becomes anabbot/educator and prefers his own ease is ignorant/deluded. [A cleric in this position]
should strive to the point of grinding their bones and crushing their bodies. The
abbot/educator is the hostage [guarantor] of their school. For example, even the abbot of ahei[sō] temple who has the heart [proper mindset] will not prefer his own ease. How much
more so for the abbot/educator who, based on this, should take on the labor of beautifying
the extant buildings of this temple.”140

Ben’yo’s mid-1700s comments obviously refer to the duty of enhancing the physicalinfrastructure of Daiganji. However, considering his roles as the head of a Jōdo training
hall and supervisor of local Jōdo temple networks, he was regularly engaged in themaintenance of the regional Jōdo personnel infrastructure as well. As shown by therecords of Daihiganji, Kitain and other temples in the Kantō, Ben’yo’s earlynineteenth-century successors and their contemporaries like Jimyō and Jōjubō struggled
to meet the staffing challenges posed by the population and economic shifts, and the riseof educated and affluent lay families that affected Kantō society from the mid-1700s
onwards.141 Therefore, while the accounts of temple life that are a main source for thisstudy do not carry the prestige of innovative doctrinal treatises, they do reveal how asmall cadre of well-trained and dedicated rural abbots emerged from the training system
to shoulder the heavy weight of managerial duties for their networks and communities. In
short, Jimyō, Yūjitsu, Jōjubō, and Ben’yo’s activities were vital to Buddhism’s continuity,even survival, in the latter decades of early modern society. They were the ones who
strove to recruit and train boys adopted from lay families, so that the next generation
carried forth an understanding of their respective schools’ teachings and the ability tofulfil the ritual-social functions required of the rural clergy. Ultimately, these abbots set
the foundation for succeeding generations who struggled to maintain the integrity of theirtemples and their schools amidst the more tumultuous changes wrought by the advent the
Meiji government and Japan’s shift towards modernization.

140

DN 5: 226. The original text was transcribed under the direction of the Hasegawa Kyōshun, who is
Daiganji’s sixty-first abbot and former president of Shukutoku University 淑徳大学. I have translated
the term nōge 能化 as “abbot/educator” to reflect the dual roles of these clerical leaders.
修復ノ事、 建ものの多きは修復難儀言二不及、能化ハ元自楽のためにあらす、宗門棟梁[なれ]ば自房の苦労は勿論也 世界中手に及ぶ苦労はいたすか克キ也 能化と成自楽を好むハ不覚也
分骨摧身あるへき也 能化ハ宗門人質也 縦ひ平寺の住寺[持]二而も心あるハ自楽をこのます況や能化をや、依之当山なとも先建ものを全美いたし而の上の修復苦労すへき也.
141
Hasegawa briefly summarizes efforts to fill vacancies in the Daiganji network during this period(Hasegawa, Daiganji shiwa, 107–110).

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❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖Katsumata Shunkyō 勝又俊教. 1981. Shingon no kyōgaku: Daisho hyakujō daisanjū
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Alexander VESEYFor Want of a Disciple❖ Articles 3 ❖Yoshida Nobuyuki 吉田伸之, ed. Jisha o sasaeru hitobito 寺社をささえる人びと,
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Meicho Shuppan, 1998.

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Book Review

Michael R. SHEEHY
Review of Mind Seeing Mind

❖ Book Review ❖Book Review
Jackson, Roger Reid
Mind Seeing Mind: Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.
Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2019. 752 pages.
ISBN 978-1-61429-577-8. US $59.95 (hardcover) | US $41.49 (eBook)
Michael R. SHEEHY(Research Assistant Professor, Contemplative Sciences Center,
University of Virginia)

Meditation is inherently a private act. Barring the employment of an explicit
phenomenological method, which is necessarily reflective, meditative experience is only everdisclosed to the meditator. Of course, one could argue that all experiences are private, which
to some extent is true, however sitting self-contained in silence for extended durations while
watching the flickers of one’s mind lends itself to a particular kind of privacy. Besides accessto the inner world of a meditator through their own first-person description, which is actually
very rare, the entryway is through written meditation instructions. While written prescriptionsof a specific contemplative practice don’t enable us to probe an individual’s personal
meditative experience, detailed procedural instructions enable us to understand the practices
that meditators are supposed to be performing. So, in addition to the pragmatics ofprescribing a contemplative practice to enact, written instructions provide loose descriptive
accounts of meditative experiences. Fortunately, at least for those of us interested in the studyof meditation, Tibetan Buddhist contemplative authors have recorded an astounding array ofwritten instructions on various styles and techniques of meditation. Even given thisextraordinary body of Tibetan contemplative literature, with both its prescriptive anddescriptive virtues, the academic field of Tibetan Studies has paid relatively little attention to
the study of meditation. With notable exceptions, studies in the field have largely been
philosophical, historical, or biographical, and to a lesser extent modern cultural studies, withlittle attention given to contemplative practices that Tibetans have described, innovated, andperformed. Roger Jackson’s Mind Seeing Mind: Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of
Tibetan Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 2019) at once breaks away from this norm byproviding us with an in-depth study of a specific meditation tradition in Tibet while traversing
many of the familiar historical and philosophical trend lines that are crucial for understanding
Geluk mahāmudrā.

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With its origins in late Indic Buddhism, and transmission into Tibet during therenaissance period starting in the late tenth century, Mahāmudrā or the Great Seal had adeeply felt impact on shaping the views, practices, and lives of countless Tibetan
contemplatives. Derived from meditation advice taught by the eighty-four mahāsiddhas,
especially the poetic dohā works of Saraha (10th c.), the systems of mahāmudrā thatdeveloped in Tibet were synthetic blends of tantric yogic practices and pragmatic approaches
to the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness. As mahāmudrā took root in Tibet, indigenous
Tibetan authors shaped and elaborated the ideas and practices of the tradition, and in turn,gave new and diverse textures to mahāmudrā. From the early days of Buddhist transmissions
from India to Tibet, mahāmudrā meditation has been indelibly associated with its South Asian
forefathers Tilopa (10th c.), Nāropa (d. 1042), and Maitrīpa (986–1063), Tibetan progenitor
Marpa Lotsāwa Chökyi Lodrö (1012–1097), and the lineage of oral instructions (bka’ brgyud)that proceeded from him to his beloved disciple Milarepa (1040–1123), then to Gampopa(1079–1153), and the multigenerational network of their disciples that followed. In fact, it’s
relatively safe to say—though mahāmudrā (phyag rgya chen po) is a term with a broad
semantic range—that mahāmudrā came to be a brand of meditation associated with the Marpa
Kagyü order of Tibetan Buddhism. Mind Seeing Mind however tells a more complex story
about mahāmudrā, one that is distinctively Geluk. With the nuance and reflection of a true
virtuoso, Jackson situates what is self-referenced as the Ganden Hearing Transmission (dga’ldan snyan brgyud), and the process of the Geluk appropriation of mahāmudrā, in the broader
context of the historical and philosophical discourse about mahāmudrā in Tibet.
The book is organized into five parts that detail (1) background to Geluk mahāmudrā,(2–3) early and later Geluk mahāmudrā, (4) perspectives on Geluk mahāmudrā including key
issues and questions, and (5) translations of important Geluk mahāmudrā texts. In the first
three parts (pp. 17–338), Jackson’s formula in each chapter (1–14) is to systematicallyintroduce key figures, provide a brief biographical sketch for each figure that includes when
and where they were born as well as their social network of teachers and students, and tosummarize key works authored by these figures that relate to mahāmudrā. Part 1 gives asurvey of mahāmudrā in India with a focus on the sūtras and tantras, and influence of the
mahāsiddhas. Part 2 discusses the transmission of mahāmudrā from India to Tibet, cites how
the term mahāmudrā embraced an expanding set of referents—from sexual consort tobuddhahood (p. 66)—and reviews the use of the term in the Kadam, Zhijé and Chöd, Shangpa
Kagyü, Sakya, and Nyingma traditions. A point of consequence for our understanding of thehistory of mahāmudrā is the role that Atiśa (982–1054) and his Kadam circle of followers
played in its early transmission. Jackson points out that mahāmudrā teachings from Atiśa
were likely transmitted to Gampopa, and that the influence of these teachings was soimportant that it alters the narrative of stemming from early Kagyü origins, or at least,suggests that the mahāmudrā taught by Gampopa owes a great deal to Atiśa and theKadampas (p. 73). The following two chapters are about this more normative narrative of
mahāmudrā in early and later Kagyü traditions, following a historical trajectory from Marpa,

82Michael R. SHEEHY
Review of Mind Seeing Mind

❖ Book Review ❖Milarepa, Gampopa, and their successors up through the Ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorjé(1556–1603). These chapters provide synopsis of pivotal Kagyü mahāmudrā figures
including Pakmo Drupa (1110–1170), Dakpo Tashi Namgyal (1512–1587), and Pema Karpo(1527–1592).
These first five chapters set the context for what is at the heart of this book, a study ofmahāmudrā in the Geluk order of Tibetan Buddhism, which starts with a chapter about
Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) on mahāmudrā. The later Geluk tradition tells us that Tsongkhapa,
while in meditation retreat in the 1390s, transmitted to his disciple and fellow retreatant
Tokden Jampal Gyatso (1356–1428) secret mahāmudrā teachings of what became variously
known as the Geden Oral Transmission (dge ldan bka’ brgyud), the Ensa Hearing
Transmission (dben sa snyan brgyud), and the Ganden Hearing Transmission (dga’ ldan
snyan brgyud) (p. 145). This secret oral transmission, which included several teachings
including Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṃvara along with mahāmudrā, was allegedly recordedon an emanated scripture (sprul pa’i glegs bam) which had been presented to Tsongkhapa by
the deity Mañjughoṣa in a vision and was handed down successively from one lineage-holder
to the next until roughly the time of the seventh holder, Paṇchen Lama Losang Chökyi
Gyaltsen (1570–1662). Paṇchen Chögyen, as he is otherwise known, was the first to write
down and publicize Ganden mahāmudrā (dga’ ldan phyag rgya chen po) despite the fact that
Tsongkhapa did not compose a single text or give “instructions on mahāmudrā practice ofthe sort that would be attributed to him by later Geluk tradition” (p. 161). Nonetheless, circa
the year 1600, Paṇchen Chögyen attributed these special secret teachings to Tsongkhapa in aseries of four texts that would become the basis for an explicit Geluk tradition of mahāmudrā.
These four compositions are Highway of the Conquerors and its prose commentary, Lamp So
Bright; a Mahāmudrā Lineage Prayer that was subsequently expanded; and a biographicalanthology of lineage figures titled, Like a Treasure Inventory. Jackson’s translations ofHighway of the Conquerors, which becomes the root text of the Geluk mahāmudrā tradition,and Lamp So Bright are included in Part 5 of the book.
As Jackson notes, there is little textual evidence that the Geluk tradition of mahāmudrāpublicized by Paṇchen Chögyen was part of a transmission that preceded him (p. 165).
Regardless, chapters seven to fourteen detail the contributions made by the central figures
who explicated and transmitted this later Ganden Hearing Transmission in Central Tibet andAmdo, from Paṇchen Chögyen in the 1600s to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. After Paṇchen
Chögyen, it wasn’t until a century and a half later that this distinct tradition received detailed
instructions, and when it did, the teacher to impact mahāmudrā most dramatically was Yeshe
Gyaltsen (1713–1793), a tutor to the Eighth Dalai Lama Jampal Gyatso (1758–1804). Yeshe
Gyaltsen wrote ten works on mahāmudrā, the most by any Geluk author, and Jackson
describes his most influential work, Bright Lamp of the Excellent Path, to be a “highly Gelukcentric text” (p. 260). Though this isn’t surprising that the tutor to the Eighth Dalai Lamacomposed a Geluk-centric work, it is significant for the broader discourse on mahāmudrā inTibet because it signals an abrupt pivot away from even sympathetic credit to Kagyü

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Vol. 5mahāmudrā traditions. Unlike Paṇchen Chögyen’s works before him, Yeshe Gyaltsen’s
writings bear little evidence that he was conversant with Kagyü presentations of mahāmudrā.
Yeshe Gyaltsen’s overt disregard for Kagyü contributions to its hallmark contemplative
practice along with his reemphasis on a normative Geluk presentation of emptinessestablished by Tsongkhapa and fixed by Paṇchen Chögyen was a double punch that both
reduced reliance on the Kagyü tradition and rebranded mahāmudrā. These two consequential
gestures—de-emphasizing any affiliation with Kagyü mahāmudrā and emphasizing the
Geluk presentation of emptiness—along with a distinctively Geluk interpretation of what
meditation is, dramatically shaped the tradition from the eighteenth century onwards.
As with any complex story, there is a tapestry of subplots that are woven throughJackson’s magisterial book. Part 4, Perspectives on Geluk Mahāmudrā, addresses some ofthese undercurrent threads in the form of issues and questions, including comparisons of
Kagyü and Geluk mahāmudrā, Saraha’s role in the tradition, and sixteen doctrinal questions
that Jackson identifies to be relevant from Can a Single Realization Suffice? (p. 391) to Whatis Mind? (p. 427). Interwoven throughout the book and made explicit in the section on Geluk
and Kagyü Mahāmudrā Compared, is a plotline that I’d like to spotlight: the metamorphosisof insight meditation (vipaśyanā, lhag mthong). Though there are scripted practices, such assādhanā, too often contemplative practices are conceived as if they are immutable monolithic
activities that persons perform, like anthems to be sung by each performer with the same
melody and lyrics, regardless of circumstance. However, a closer look at the history of
meditation in Tibet, and as Jackson’s book certainly suggests – contemplative practices areprofoundly private, creative, and contextually constitutive acts. A cogent example of thisfluidity is the signature Buddhist practice of vipaśyanā or insight meditation. As Jackson’s
study teaches us, following Tsongkhapa’s realization and articulation of emptiness as ananalytical insight indistinguishable from dependent origination, the practice of insight
meditation in the Geluk order was indefinitely altered. A new practice of insight meditation
was born, creating the hallmark Geluk presentation that effectually was a Prāsaṅgika
Madhyamaka stylization of insight meditation. Crystalized in Tsongkhapa’s Great Expositionof the Stages of the Path to Awakening (p. 154), this reformed insight meditation was reified
by the Second Dalai Lama Gendun Gyatso (1475–1542) in his writings on how the
Prāsaṅgika view relates to mahāmudrā (p. 187), assimilated as Geluk mahāmudrā by Paṇchen
Chögyen’s Lamp So Bright (p. 212), and ultimately, canonized by Yeshe Gyaltsen’s
essentialized Geluk instructions on insight meditation (p. 278).
This has ramifications up to the present-day when the Dalai Lama teaches that sūtra
mahāmudrā for the Geluk is based on a Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka analysis applied to a mind
pacified by serenity or calm-abiding meditation (śamatha, zhi gnas) which provides thephilosophical framework for tantric mahāmudrā in the Geluk (p. 335). Because the Gelukpresentation differs considerably from mahāmudrā instructions detailed in Kagyü meditation
manuals, this is consequential for the history of mahāmudrā insight meditation, and with theaid of Jackson’s work, we can now chart this metamorphosis. For instance, prior to Paṇchen

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Michael R. SHEEHY
Review of Mind Seeing Mind

❖ Book Review ❖Chögyen’s Geluk synthesis circa 1600, the Kagyü author Dakpo Tashi Namgyal, whocompleted his Moonbeams of Mahāmudrā manual in 1565 or 1577, criticized Tsongkhapa’spresentation of insight meditation for using an inferential rational cognition to intellectuallyfabricate emptiness. 1 Jackson’s chapter on Saraha, Archer Among the Yellow Hats, morethoroughly contextualizes this by stating that Saraha’s verses, an authoritative source for
Dakpo Tashi Namgyal and Kagyü authors, “do not provide a basis for the practice of Geluk
mahāmudrā insight meditation, which remains strictly within the compass of the
Madhyamaka approach developed by Tsongkhapa” (p. 379). This history of insight
meditation in Tibet is complexified by reading Atiśa. Not in his renowned Lamp on the Path
to Awakening, but in his less well-known, Stages of the Path to Awakening, the Kadam authorprescribes instructions on insight meditation that differ significantly from the analytical styleof meditation that utilizes reasoning, as found in his Lamp, but rather focuses on pointingout the connate nature of the mind. 2 As noted, though Tsongkhapa’s forebearer, Atiśa’s
meditation instructions likely influenced Gampopa and early Kagyü mahāmudrā.
Jackson’s Mind Seeing Mind is a monumental contribution to the scholarship on Geluk
mahāmudrā, and more broadly, to the history of Tibetan meditation (also monumental in size,
weighing in at 715 pages!). This book will undoubtedly remain an authoritative resource forthe study of mahāmudrā for years to come and should be included as a core reading in related
graduate and undergraduate courses. In conclusion, there are however two, admittedly rather
divergent, meta-reflections on the state of Tibetan meditation studies that Jackson’s book has
stimulated: the first is the neglected discourse regarding the politicization of meditation in
Tibet; and the second is the importance for advancing scholarly methods in the study ofcontemplative practices.
From 1604 to 1605, the same time that Paṇchen Chögyen was publicizing Geluk
mahāmudrā, in the wake of the Ninth Karmapa’s death and the coronation of the Fourth Dalai
Lama by the Mongol Army, the Karmapa faction drove-out the Fourth Dalai from Tibet where
he died twelve years later in exile. The Mongol Army led by Gushri Khan responded byappointing the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1642 who swiftly vanquished the Karmapa’s politicalpower along with its network of patrons and established the Ganden Potrang government in
Lhasa. Many of the Geluk authors who wrote on mahāmudrā, as Jackson’s survey attests,
were political figures including Dalai Lamas, Paṇchen Lamas, and their students and tutors.
So, when we talk about a Ganden mahāmudrā, we must talk about the Ganden Potrang.
Though Jackson acknowledges these conflicts and possible political motives (pp. 128–130,237), I would like to underscore that the Geluk-Kagyü politics in Tibet during the time when
Geluk authors were writing about mahāmudrā should not be reduced to background historicalcoincidence. As we have seen with the injection of Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka into mahāmudrāinsight meditation, Geluk authors were keen to appropriate Kagyü mahāmudrā, and from1
2

Dakpo, Moonbeams of Mahāmudra, 66–67, 88, 98–103, 219.
Apple, “Atiśa’s Teachings on Mahāmudrā,” 20–22.

85❖ 2022.3 ❖Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

Vol. 5

Yeshe Gyaltsen onwards, minimize its Kagyü origins. The polemics of meditation was not
so different than the polemics of philosophy in Tibet—as is evident in the rangtong/zhentong
debates that infused intellectual discourse, including mahāmudrā (pp. 110–111, 336–337,
399–401, etc.)—and polemics, I would argue, was an effective rhetorical tool in the power
politics of Tibet.
As mentioned, Tibetan Studies as a field has produced an unremarkable body ofscholarship on the diversity of meditation and yoga practices in Tibet. Jackson’s book, whilea very welcomed contribution, follows trend lines familiar to the field with its focus on
historical, biographical, and philosophical dimensions of meditation. Now that we haveJackson’s foundational study on Geluk mahāmudrā, what’s next for the study of Tibetan
meditation? How can we advance methodologies in the study of contemplative practices? Tobuild on Jackson’s work, and hopefully other such foundational works to come in the studyof Tibetan contemplative practices, I’d like to suggest that we devise new methods foranalyzing contemplative texts, emphasize the need for ethnographic and contextual studies,and incorporate methods from the emerging field of Contemplative Studies. With a given
historical context established, we can produce studies that analyze and interpret thecontemplative mechanisms of a specific practice, such as mahāmudrā insight meditation,across its many recorded instances of instruction. This next level of focus on a specificcontemplative practice would produce comparative studies of procedural instructions withextraordinary details about the architectures, descriptive contexts, and performative
dynamics of a practice. Coupled with ethnographic fieldwork on practitioners, this methodof textual analysis would give us salient insights into practices that have shaped incalculable
inner worlds.
Bibliography
Apple, James. “Atiśa’s Teachings on Mahāmudrā.” The Indian International Journal of
Buddhist Studies 18 (2017): 1–42.
Dakpo Tashi Namgyal. Moonbeams of Mahāmudra. Translated by Elizabeth M. Callahan.
Boulder: Snow Lion Publications, 2019.

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Journal ofWorld Buddhist Cultures

Purpose of the Journal
The Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures at the Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan wasestablished with the aim of forming an international research institute for Buddhism, which could respondto the serious challenges facing the modern world. An important mission of the center is to accomplish awide variety of academic projects on Buddhism and thereby contribute to an increasingly globalized society.
All knowledge is expected to be transformed into information in a globalized society. Thus, at its
inauguration last year, the center also decided to publish an electronic journal to disseminate the center’s
research results more widely in order to fulfill its main purpose—in line with global trends ofinternationalization and informatization. Electronic journals have become indispensable platforms tointeract with researchers, Buddhists, and adherents of other religious traditions outside Japan, and tocooperate with foreign universities and research institutes.
The Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures has started a new electronic journal, Journal ofWorld Buddhist Cultures. In its long history, the Ryukoku University has accumulated a large body ofknowledge on Buddhism. The center hopes to develop this knowledge further and actively disseminate
it all over the world by means of this electronic journal, through which the center will also attempt toencourage international intellectual exchange and seek solutions to various problems facing people incontemporary society.
In contemporary society, people’s values are significantly diversified and complicated, and we areindeed hardly able to recognize what is “true.” Journal of World Buddhist Cultures will include not only
scholarly articles on Buddhism, but also articles that respond as a guide to urgent problems that arise inevery part of the world. Buddhism has been practiced all over the world for more than 2 500 years. The
journal will invite submissions in which this universal religion is discussed from a global perspective.
In addition, Journal of World Buddhist Culture will also include reviews of books on Buddhism,
records of lectures organized by the center, and a wide variety of translated works. It especially welcomes
papers written in English. Through this electronic journal, the center hopes to establish an international
platform for Buddhist studies and contribute to Buddhism’s further development.

87

Objective of the Research Center for World
Buddhist Cultures at Ryukoku University

1. Comprehensive Academic Research of Buddhism
Our objective is to contribute to the advancement of academic research on Buddhist philosophy,
history, culture, and other relevant fields while searching for ways to respond to the challenges facing
our modern world. By using effective and appropriate research methodologies, we aim to explore
Buddhist topics that meet the needs and concerns of our modern world.

2. Interdisciplinary Research that Combines the Fields of Humanity, Science, andReligion and the Creation of New Wisdom
By combining the three fields of humanity, science, and religion, we will explore the prospects ofcreating a new wisdom for the 21st century. We will aim to become a global research hub wherescholars from both Japan and abroad can converse and interact in order to provide guidelines that canhelp address social issues and global crises from a Buddhist perspective.

3. Building a Global Platform for Buddhist Studies
By collaborating with universities and research institutions in Asia, the Americas, and Europe, wewill carry out projects with overseas scholars, Buddhist priests, and academics of religion. We will
publish our research results through our website and publications and provide them in English andother languages. Also, by using information and communication technology (ICT), we will collaborate
with overseas universities and research institutions in real time in both the graduate and undergraduate
programs. In addition, we will build a system that can quickly respond to requests from overseas
research institutions who may ask for information about local historical sites by employing various
views from across the university.

4. Research Results that will Benefit the Undergraduate and Graduate Schools
By collaborating on the curriculum for each academic area, we aim to build an integrated
program that spans across all the departments. We will also promote participation in educational
collaboration programs—not only within our university, but with other educational institutions as
well. We will recruit short-term research fellows from graduate and post-graduate programs inand outside of our university, by providing research grants (scholarships) and publishing theirfindings online or on print.

88

Significance of the Publication of Journal of World Buddhist Cultures

The

ResearchCenterfor World

Buddhist Cultures consists of following
three research divisions: Basic Research,
Applied Research, and International
Research. Among them, the International
Research Division plays a central role in
the publication of the electronic journal.

International Research Division
The International Research Division will be responsible for sharing information about the activitiesof the center with the international community while continuing the project of translating andpublishing Buddhist canons and texts that was originally carried out by the Research Institute for
Buddhist Culture. In addition to the publication of the e-journal and the management of the center’s
website, the division will also promote exchanges with overseas scholars, other Buddhists, andreligious specialists through ICT. The division will encourage collaboration with universities andresearch institutes in different parts of the world, and sponsor international symposiums and invite
scholars from overseas to attend them.
As religion becomes more global and multi-dimensional in contemporary society, there has been agrowing awareness of a need for inter-religious dialogue. The division will encourage theseconversations and interactions by collaborating with various religious research institutions abroad.
Under the theme “Inter-Faith Education” the division will carry out research at institutions of higher
education.
In the international context of inter-religious dialogue, this division will explore how Japanese
Buddhist ideology is viewed by the outside world and what Japanese Buddhism can do to contribute
further to inter-religious education. Through these activities, the division’s core focus will be todevelop young scholars’ understanding of the importance of having an international mindset and to
facilitate global interaction between scholars.

89

Contributors

Markus RÜSCH

Postdoctoral Fellow,
Research Center for World
Buddhist Cultures, Ryukoku
University

Shin Buddhist Studies

Filippo PEDRETTI

M.A. Student, University of
Padua/Ca’ Foscari University of
VeniceReligious Studies, Buddhist
Studies

Alexander VESEY

Associate Professor, Faculty ofInternational Studies, Meiji
Gakuin University

Social history of Japanese
Buddhism

Michael R. SHEEHY

Research Assistant Professor,
Contemplative Sciences Center,
University of Virginia

Tibetan Buddhism

執 筆 者 一 覧Markus RÜSCH

龍谷大学世界仏教文化研究センター 博士研究員

真宗学

Filippo PEDRETTI

パドヴァ大学/ヴェネツィア
・カフォスカリ大学 大学院
生

宗教学、仏教学

Alexander VESEY

明治学院大学国際学部 准教授

日本仏教社会学Michael R. SHEEHY

バージニア大学
究所 研究助教

チベット仏教90

瞑想科学研

Editorial Board

Editorial Board
Kosuke SHIMIZU（Editor-in-Chief）

Aya HONDA

Mami IWATA

Junshi NOMI

Sei NORO

Yuka OTANI

Junshin UCHIDA

Assistant Editor
Markus RÜSCH

Chihiro SAKA

Assistant Staff
Mariko HATANAKA

Advisory Board
Yasuro ABE

Micah AUERBACK

Mitsuya DAKE

Yasuko FUKUYAMAPaul GRONER

Janet GYATSOCharles HALLISEY

Dennis HIROTA

Shoryu KATSURA

Noriko KAWAHASHI

Chon-hak KIM

Seiji KUMAGAI

Hideaki NAKATANI

Eisho NASU

Masaaki NONIN

Eiichi OTANIEric SCHICKENTANZ

Chih-yu SHIH

Jacqueline STONE

Fumihiko SUEKI

Kenneth TANAKA

Jong-min SUH

Yozo TANIYAMA

Yusho WAKAHARA

Wenliang ZHANG

91

Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures, Ryukoku University

Journal of World Buddhist Cultures~ Vol. 5 ~March 31, 2022
EditorResearch Center for World Buddhist Cultures, Ryukoku University, Editorial Board

Publisher

Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures, Ryukoku University
125-1 Daiku-chō, Shichijō-dōri Ōmiya
Higashi-iru, Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto 600-8268
Hakuakan (Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures)
Phone Number

domestic： 075-343-3812

international：+81-75-343-3812
E-mail: rcwbc-ejournal@ad.ryukoku.ac.jp
URL: http://rcwbc.ryukoku.ac.jp

Printer

Kawakita Printing Co., Ltd.

© 2022 by Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures, Ryukoku University, JapanAll rights reserved.

世界仏教文化研究
第5号
コンテンツ
❖ 論 文 ❖
◆ Biography as Interreligious Dialogue: The Case of Modern Biographies on ShinranMarkus RÜSCH
◆ Foucault’s Zen Body: The meeting between Michel Foucault and the Zen master Ōmori Sōgen
Filippo PEDRETTI◆ For Want of a Disciple: Personnel Challenges Among Kantō Area Buddhist Temples in the Early Modern
PeriodAlexander VESEY❖ 書 評 ❖
◆ Review of Mind Seeing Mind. Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism by Roger R.
JacksonMichael R. SHEEHY

龍谷大学世界仏教文化研究センター

2022.3