Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

E XOTERIC-ESOTERIC (KENMITSU) BUDDHISM IN J APAN
braced by the other ruling elites, for it confirmed and
bolstered their authority too.
The dominance of Kenmitsu Buddhism
Kenmitsu Buddhism’s ritual power was considered efficacious
in engaging a vast range of spirits and sacred
beings including buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities of
heaven and earth, spirits of the dead, demons, ominous
spirits, and also local gods (kami), the class of
deities associated with Shinto. One of the contributions
of Kuroda’s theory was to refute the idea that
Buddhism and Shinto have been separate and distinct
religions. This, he argued, is largely a modern conceptualization
arising from the forced separation of buddhas
and gods and their religious institutions by the
government during the Meiji period (1868–1912). This
successful partition consolidated the idea of Buddhism
and Shinto as independent religions, which was then
superimposed on earlier periods of Japanese history.
What is now known as Shinto, Kuroda claimed, was
actually submerged in Kenmitsu Buddhism during
medieval times. Rituals to gods were performed alongside
rituals to Buddhist deities, and shrines to gods
were integrated with Buddhist temples, as exemplified
by the Kasuga Shrine and Kofukuji temple complex
in Nara. Moreover, a variety of explanations and rationalizations
of the gods emerged in Kenmitsu doctrine.
They ranged from the idea that the gods are
protectors of the buddhas and Buddhism to the belief
that the gods themselves seek Buddhist liberation and
enlightenment, just as humans do. The most important
and pervasive interpretation, though, was the
honji suijaku principle: that the gods are none other
than worldly manifestations of the buddhas and bodhisattvas
in Japan, and that the buddhas and bodhisattvas
are the true essence of gods. Hence, they
cannot be separated, and certainly should not be seen
as rivals. This view provoked widespread pairings of
specific gods with particular buddhas or bodhisattvas
in medieval religious institutions, so that the sun goddess
Amaterasu was frequently identified with
Dainichi (Mahavairocana) Buddha. Such perceptions
held sway as part of Kenmitsu Buddhism throughout
the medieval period, and persisted widely until the
nineteenth century when Shinto was forcibly extracted
from Buddhism.
The dominance of Kenmitsu Buddhism in medieval
Japan—in the major religious institutions, in
its partnership with other ruling elites, and in the very
fabric of popular belief and practice—casts the socalled
new schools of Kamakura Buddhism in a very
different light. Previously they were seen as the culmination
and highest expression of Buddhism in the
medieval period. But the degree to which they diverged
from the Kenmitsu standard suggests that they
were more an anomaly of the period. Mount Hiei was
where most of the founding figures of the new Pure
Land, Zen, and Nichiren movements received their
first inspirations. But in each case they left Mount Hiei
because of disenchantment with one aspect or another
of the Buddhism there. They criticized the ambitions
and self-indulgences of priests in the religious hierarchy,
and they championed streamlined religious
alternatives—chanting Amida (AMITABHA) Buddha’s
name, practicing Zen meditation, or chanting the title
of the Lotus Su tra—which challenged the authority
and relevance of esoteric practices and exoteric
doctrines. The reaction of Mount Hiei and the Nara
centers of Kenmitsu Buddhism was twofold: to suppress
these dissenting groups and to initiate reforms of
their own. Some mainstream priests actually embraced
these alternative practices, but sought to integrate
them into the Kenmitsu framework. The dissenting
movements in many cases survived suppression, but
tended to hover at the margins of medieval Japan’s religious
world, attracting only meager followings. Those
that gained institutional stability and strength in the
1300s and 1400s usually did so by building ties with
Kenmitsu institutions or by developing similar religious
functions. Zen’s Rinzai monasteries, for instance,
performed rituals for the benefit of their imperial, aristocratic,
and warrior patrons. But the new Buddhist
movements were largely peripheral and were frequently
regarded as aberrant or even heretical.
Kenmitsu Buddhism finally lost its hold on Japan
during the so-called Warring States period (1467–1568).
Its decline coincided with the disintegration of medieval
Japan’s political and economic order. Though Kenmitsu
Buddhism dominated religious affairs throughout medieval
times, it never completely functioned as a seamless,
monolithic system, especially as internal tensions
and contradictions arose from it. The dissenting Kamakura
movements were one product of these tensions,
and they eventually became the successors of Kenmitsu
Buddhism itself. With the emergence in the fifteenth and
sixteen centuries of powerful new religious organizations
such as Pure Land’s Jodo Shinshu, Nichiren’s congregational
alliances of Kyoto, and Zen’s Soto school,
the ascendancy of Kamakura Buddhism over Kenmitsu
was finally realized.
274 E NCYCLOPEDIA OF B UDDHISM