The Dilemma of Religious Power Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto

Michael Solomon

Jōdo Shinshū,*,1 Japan’s largest Buddhist sect, has two main branches and two head temples: Nishi (West) Honganji and Higashi (East) Honganji.2 Located a short distance apart and in close proximity to Kyoto Station, they are not only the first historical landmarks to confront the visitor arriving by train but are among the most imposing of the many temples in the old capital city. The vast compounds of the two Honganjis are generally thronged with people. Among them, the adherents of the sect, or monto, greatly outnum- ber ordinary sightseers.3 The grandiose buildings and crowds of pilgrims re- call the time about four hundred years ago when there was but one Honganji, whose monto followers were organized into a dedicated fighting force, and whose combined religious and temporal power was on a scale unique in Japanese history. Indeed, the division of Honganji into the present two branches was itself the price the sect had to pay for its political and military involvement. After ten years of battle, Honganji’s military power was finally broken by Oda Nobunaga’s army of national reunification in 1580. In 1602 Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, sponsored the found- ing of a new Honganji (Higashi Honganji) just to the east of the existing one

Source: Solomon, Michael, “The Dilemma of Religious Power. Honganji and Hosokawa Masamoto,” Monumenta Nipponica 33(1) (1978): 51–65.

* The Author is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Oakland University. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Japan Foundation, which supported the research on which this article is based. An earlier version was read at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Toronto in March 1976. 1 浄土真宗, founded by Shinran 親鸞, 1173–1262, a leading disciple of Hōnen 法然, 1133– 1212, who first established in Japan a sect based on the teaching of the Pure Land school of Buddhism. 2 西本願寺, 東本願寺. Nishi Honganji was established at its present site in 1591 on land donated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Higashi Honganji was founded under the patronage of Tokugawa Ieyasu eleven years later. 3 In Buddhism in general, monto 門徒 (‘member of a gate’, i.e., of a temple) refers to priests or disciples. In Shinshū, where the distinction between priest and layman is minimized, monto refers to adherents in general. The term is often used together with a place name to indicate the Shinshū community in a given location, as in ‘Kaga monto’.

(Nishi Honganji). This act, together with strict regulation of both branches, was intended to prevent Honganji’s resurgence.4 Since Honganji rose to prominence in an era of unparalleled political frag- mentation and military strife, it is hardly surprising that its followers engaged in militancy and that the sect became a participant in the violent struggles of the day. Nevertheless, closer examination of the roots of Honganji’s temporal power and interests is worthwhile, for it provides insights into the historical development of Jōdo Shinshū and into political and social trends during an im- portant transitional era in Japanese history. In a still broader sense, Honganji’s rise constitutes an instructive case study in the universal problem of church- state relations. Honganji was established by Kakunyo5 as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, at the site of Shinran’s grave in the Ōtani district of Kyoto. Kakunyo was a great-grandson of the revered patriarch Shinran, and from the beginning he clearly intended Honganji to be both the seat of Shinran’s line and the upholder of Shinran’s teachings; in other words, the head temple of Jōdo Shinshū.6 During the first century and a half of its existence, however, growth and recognition came very slowly to Honganji. The bulk of Shinran’s followers were in the Kantō provinces to the east, where Shinran had spent his most productive years of missionary activity, and the major communities founded there by direct disciples of Shinran were unwilling to defer to Honganji, which they viewed as an upstart and a threat to their own position.7 It was not until the tenure of Rennyo8 as head abbot, or hossu,9 that Honganji finally outstripped its rivals in the Kantō to become, as Kakunyo had envisioned, the main branch of Jōdo Shinshū. The second half of the fifteenth century, when Rennyo led Honganji, was a time of political instability and upheaval. Japan was without a central government worthy of the name. The Ashikaga family, which founded a shogunate in 1338, was by this time domi- nated by its fractious retainers, the constables.10 The weakness and internal

4 A dispute between Junnyo 准如, who headed Honganji, and his older brother Gyōnyo 教如 provided Ieyasu with a convenient pretext. Ieyasu backed Gyōnyo and established Higashi Honganji for him, thus dividing the sect. 5 覚如 , 1270–1351. 6 For a discussion of Kakunyo’s position, see my ‘Kinship and the Transmission of Religious Charisma: The Case of Honganji’, in Journal of Asian Studies, xxxiii: 3, 1974, pp. 403–13. 7 The most influential of the several communities in the Kantō area was that of Senjuji 専修寺 at Takada in Shimotsuke (modern Tochigi prefecture). 8 蓮如 , 1415–99. 9 法主 . 10 The constable, or shugo 守護, was appointed by the shogun as military commander of a province or, in many cases, of several provinces concurrently. ‘Military governor’ would be