A Part I the Origin of the Danka System

part i The Origin of the Danka System Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), who endeavored to unify Japan during the Sen- goku (or “Warring States”) period of the late fifteenth to late sixteenth century, handled two major political problems in a manner that led to his early demise. One of these problems was related to Buddhist forces, particu- larly those of the obstreperous Ikkō ikki (revolt by Jōdoshinshū followers), which were determined to fight to the death for their autonomy; the other was related to the imperial court, which still retained, if only symbolically, strong political authority. In dealing with these two unrelenting power blocks, which seemed to be incompatible with his “heavenly” ambitions, Nobunaga refused any compromise and pursued two high-handed strategies, which involved: (1) defeating the Buddhist forces through military might and (2) bypassing the imperial court by simply disregarding it. Neither of these strategies proved to be successful. Nobunaga’s battle with Ishiyama Honganji, the Jōdoshinshū temple that was the stronghold of the Ikkō followers, lasted from 1570 until 1580 but did not produce a clear winner. In settling the confrontation, imperial in- tervention allowed a deal to be struck: Nobunaga, despite the rhetoric of “pardon” upon which he insisted, could do little but watch the Honganji temple move from Osaka to Sagimori in Kii. When they reconciled with Nobunaga, the Honganji adherents were eventually able to preserve what they had fought for: “the Law of the Buddha and the seat of the Saint (Shin- ran, Founder of Jōdoshinshū).”1 But Nobunaga was not to be so easily deterred. 32 The Origin of the Danka System In 1567, from his new headquarters at Gifu Castle, Nobunaga resumed campaigns against Buddhist forces under the slogan “blanket the realm with military might” (tenka fubu). Nobunaga demanded that recalcitrant Buddhists, and by extension, the general population, take that slogan liter- ally: his goal was, simply and solely, to achieve national unification through military subjugation. His ruthless campaigns of destruction against En- ryakuji (on Mount Hiei) along with Negoroji and Kokawadera (both in Kii), not to mention the beheading of about 4,000 Kōya hijiri (the itinerant practitioners of Mount Kōya), were supposed to show what would happen to those Buddhists who persisted in resisting him. Although the Honganji matter remained a sore spot, Nobunaga determined that the Law of the Buddha would not be free of his authority. Nobunaga also snubbed the imperial court. Rather than seeking an imperial anointment, he sought to legitimate his grip on power through apply- ing the principle of the realm under heaven (tenka), or the heavenly way (tendō), which he claimed to possess by virtue of military might. His vision of the heavenly way, under which he strove to promote the welfare of the people through benevolent rule, served as his sole source of justification for eliminating anything that stood in his way. When he ousted Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki in 1573, Nobunaga accused him of violating the principle of the heavenly way; and when, in that same year, he forced Emperor Ōgimachi to change the name of the era from Genki to Tenshō (“Heavenly Righteousness”), he did so in order to show that he was in charge of the entire realm under heaven.2 Having solidified his power base, Nobunaga ensured that he stood above everyone else by declining the emperor’s offer of the shogunal title in 1581. Ironically, however, Nobunaga’s claim to rule by the heavenly way was inevitably destined to collapse: because it was based on military might, his power could be challenged when he faced a stronger military force or a threat from within. By rejecting imperial sanction, which in premodern Japanese tradition shielded the leader from arbitrary political interference, Nobunaga compromised his political position in his complete dependence upon simple military superiority. His demise in 1582 at the hands of one of his own vassals, Akechi Mitsuhide (1528–82), proved that the ideology of military tenka must eventually succumb to its own logic of control by violence, violence being represented by the dictum “those below over- throw those above” ( gekokujō).3 In other words, Nobunaga fell victim to his own karma. Unlike Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98) not only appreciated the legacies of Buddhism and the imperial court, but he also sought to .

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