Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

660 Warrior Monks, Japanese/Sôhei
ers of landholding nobles, and even in confrontations with other temples.
But the resolution of conflicts by military means was not limited to religious
institutions. The imperial family and nobles competing for positions
at the imperial court, as well as Buddhist temples, relied more and more on
warriors not only to protect and administer private estates but also in factional
struggles in the capital. When the equilibrium between these factions
broke down in the late twelfth century, armed forces from both the warrior
class and influential religious institutions were involved in a five-year-long
civil war, leading eventually to the establishment of Japan’s first warrior
government (the Kamakura bakufu) in 1185.
The new government was meant to complement the existing imperial
court in Kyoto, and its main goals therefore were to preserve order and
contain intrusions by the warrior class. However, local warriors continued
to make headway by appropriating land and titles from temples, shrines,
and the gradually weakening class of nobles in Kyoto. Yet, the most powerful
monasteries managed on the whole to retain their independence and
assets, owing in part to their armed forces. Indeed, they were so successful
that, beginning around the turn of the fourteenth century, war chronicles
afford warriors serving religious institutions a reputation for courage and
martial skills that rivaled those of well-known samurai heroes. The best
known example is Benkei—a giant of a monk who lived in the tumultuous
late twelfth century—who symbolizes such characterizations in terms of
strength, martial skills, wit, and unselfish loyalty. He is said to have won
999 duels in order to collect swords in Buddha’s honor, before he was
beaten by a young aristocratic warrior (Minamoto Yoshitsune), whom he
later served loyally until their brave deaths in the face of a much superior
force. Furthermore, according to the well-known war chronicle the Heike
Monogatari, a furious and violent worker-monk named Jômyô Meishû balanced
on a narrow bridge beam while successfully repelling hordes of warriors
during the war of the 1180s. In an effort to convey the dual character
of this monk, the tale describes how Jômyô calmly removed his armor
following the battle and counted and treated his wounds before putting on
his monk robe and retreating, piously chanting the name of Amida, the
Buddhist savior.
Sponsored and appreciated mainly by members of the warrior class,
these chronicles praise the heroics of such violent monks, while other
works commissioned by capital nobles portray the religious forces of the
major monasteries as a negative and disruptive influence on the imperial
court. For example, fourteenth-century picture scrolls show groups of
armed clerics participating in general monk assembly meetings in order to
influence the temple community to stage protests in the capital, and various
hagiographies glorifying the lives of founders of new, more populist