Higashi Hongan-ji

The two Hongan-ji, east and west, were originally one. Upon the death of Shinran in 1262, venerable at the age of ninety, die emperor Kameyama gave his old shishin-den to the order Jodo Shinshu) and ten years later a temple was built to hold the holy ashes and the whole complex was properly named. Hongan-ji means "Temple of the Primal Vow" and celebrates Shinran's belief that one recitation was (contrary to Honen's repetitions) quite enough. All further repetition of the formula, he wrote, being only praise, pleasant but useless.

Over the years the sect and its main temple flourished but always had to contend, as did everyone else, with enmity of Enryaku-ji. Finally in 1470 the quarrelsome monks from Mount Hiei had the priest Rennyo, eighth in his line (1415-99), officially expelled. They had burned down Hongan-ji itself and they chased the unfortunate priest out of the city.

Rennyo went north—to Omi, Echizen. Yamashina—where his evangelism had successful results. His new followers formed communities, challenged the local authorities, and even took a new name. They called themselves the Ikko (Single-Minded) sect, a name based upon a phrase much used by Rennyo (Ikko Isshin, "one direction, one heart"). However, the sect, escaping the founder's control, took to methods that were so militant, and to uprisings so extensive, that it was soon dubbed Ikko Ikki, which might be translated as "Fanatical Uprising."

The local daimyo made what use they could of this militant group, to play one partisan sect off against another or to suppress the risings of the hungry peasants. In 1532 the Nichiren party (supported by the Hosokawa family) attacked an Ikko stronghold. The reason was religious dissent and the object was the securing of true Buddhism. By 1537 Rennyo's sect had gotten the government to suppress the followers of Nichiren's party. In this case, however, the militants were unsuccessful. A great battle took place in Kyoto, and all twenty-one Hokke temples were destroyed with many priests and followers slaughtered and, as so often occurred, dark smoke ascended to the clear Kyoto sky.

Behind blind faith, purposeful politics were now plainly visible. As Marguerite Yourcenar has said of completely different religious wars: "By now the two warring religions were, as almost always the case with rival ideologues, nothing but the pretext or the disguise of the violent and the ambitious, a means of rousing mass hysteria, a way of sanctifying the arms of cunning in the eyes of the foolish and the dull."

That Buddhists of whatever sect could revive themselves to wield such power indicated a new weakness of the central government. Indeed, the Buddhist church by the end of the fifteenth century was close to regaining the empire of Japan for itself. That it did not, says Sansom, was because the church was as much a prey to schism as the shogunate was prone to factions.

These various squabbles lead to the calamity of the Onin War. The ostensible reason for this famous folly was, as we have seen, the reigning Ashikaga shogun Yoshimasa's squabbling over succession rights with his own family and then with the heads of rival families. Soon the decade-long war broke out, one which brought no advantage to either side and laid waste to Kyoto, ending only with the exhaustion of the combatants.

It was a full scale war with extensive results. In 1477, battles still raging, the emperor Go-Tsuchimikado sought refuge in the shogun's palace and then in 1500 died on the throne because he was too poor to retire. After that his body was left for six weeks because there was no money for his funeral.

The succeeding emperor, Go-Kashiwabara, reigned for two whole decades before the funds were found for his enthronement ceremony. The palace had by then been destroyed. Living in a hut, the emperor was reduced to selling what amounted to his autograph, specimens of imperial calligraphy, for money. Nor did things much improve. When Oda Nobunaga's troops occupied the capital and the new emperor Ogimachi held a welcoming banquet, it consisted only of noodle soup. Not, people said, that the new warlord deserved better fare.

Oda was a petty daimyo who had through expeditious treaties with other families, and a series of well-coordinated attacks against common enemies, reached a position of eminence. It was he to whom the emperor Ogimachi had turned in his efforts to pacify the land; he whom Ashikaga Yoshiaki had asked for support in order to secure the succession of his brother, the shogun Yoshiteru. And it was he who would eventually rise to the highest honors of the land and begin that grand, creative, repressive reorganization of the land which the Tokugawa family would complete.

Oda was also unpopular. He had militantly forced the populace of Kyoto to welcome him; when he needed stones to build his castle on the shores of Lake Biwa he ordered the heads from the stone Buddhas removed and used; and when the people of north Kyoto could not pay the taxes he had levied, he burned down that entire section. But he did, as we have seen, do something about Enryaku-ji.

Though the monks of Mount Hiei had not been popular favorites within the city, still, they were nonetheless a part of the local scene, which the Oda was not. Their destruction in 1571, along with their temple citadel, was thus viewed as a calamity. The poet Sakunen commemorated the ruin with a poem that spoke of all the temples great and small sent swirling up in the smoke, the waters of the lake below growing warm with the conflagration even as the embers of three thousand temples grew cold. When Oda was assassinated in 1582 Kyoto was pleased.

The unification was then taken over by one of Oda's generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. This warlord—Oda's second-in-command and born in the ranks—had need of a traditional pomp that could add a needed luster to his origins. So he set about reconstructing the city into something resembling the imperial capital it had once been.

He also, like Kammu, having seen what power the church could wield even in its latter days, took care to restrict the influence of the temples. He particularly placed the hostile Nichiren and Jodo sects where they could be watched. At the same time he himself made religious gestures. One of his projects was the great Buddha which he ordered cast. This gave him a reason for his now-famous sword hunt of 1585 which allowed him for holy reasons to confiscate all privately owned weapons under the slogan:"Give Iron to the Buddha." General Hideyoshi said that "back in the old days of the emperor Shomu it took two decades to cast the Nara Buddha. I will do it in five years." And so he did.

He also erected its big Hoko-ji temple as well. Neither the temple nor its statue lasted as long as Nara's, however, because an earthquake toppled both in 1596, not even ten years after their completion. Along with them went the infamous Mimizuka, the mound composed of the moldering ears taken from those slain during Hideyoshi's grandiose but unsuccessful attack on Korea—whole heads being too bulky to bring all the way back.

Since he was busy with all his other projects it was not until 1591 that Hideyoshi had the opportunity to arrange for the Hongan-ji to return home, as it were. Much was made of the move. The huge pillars needed for the founder's hall were dragged in procession through the streets, but since not enough ropes were available, local temples were asked to help. Hearing of the problem, "female devotees, without hesitation," says the official pamphlet, "cut off their hair to weave massive ropes."

These, called kezuna, were fifty-three in number, and the largest (again information from the pamphlet) was 367 feet in length, over a foot in circumference, and weighed over two thousand pounds. It—or one like it—is still on display, an oddly fierce-looking object, under glass, dusty and frayed, but indisputably a hair rope.

No sooner was the temple up, however, than the sect itself was given over to inner rivalry. After the death in 1592 of Kennyo, his eldest son Kyonyo was appointed. Since this child had once been disowned by his departed father, however, his younger brother Junyo took advantage of this fact and put himself up for the post.

Kennyo had been much opposed to Oda Nobunaga, as had the new warlord, so when Hideyoshi took over, he decided to beautify Hongan-ji—perhaps largely because the dead warlord had so disliked it. Hideyoshi even gave the temple a Noh stage (still there) from his own palace, the luxurious Juraku-dai. In addition, he decided to recognize the younger brother. This meant that Kyonyo, the eldest son, was forced into retirement.

Kyonyo, however, was no stranger to intrigue by this time and realized that the true power lay no longer with Hideyoshi but with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord who would shortly replace him. It was thus Kyonyo who was cloistered together with Ieyasu on the very eve of the climactic Batde of Sekigahara in 1600 that elevated the Tokugawa family to the highest power.

Nevertheless, it is probably not true that the two made a compact which would have enabled Ieyasu to divide and subjugate the True Pure Land sects adherents. It is possible, though, that there was some agreement to the effect that when Ieyasu came to power he would do something about all this rivalry within the sect. In any event, Ieyasu built in 1603 another, grander temple, just east of Hongan-ji. This became Higashi (East) Hongan-ji and Kyonyo was installed as its abbot.

Though the shogunate did not officially recognize the establishment as an independent branch of Jodo Shinshu until 1619, Kyonyo was in full power and so he remained for a time. His temple had managed to survive the vicissitudes of three warlords, each one different, each one dangerous.

The dangers were apparent and the differences were indicated in a saying of the period:

Nobunaga says, "Cuckoo, if you don't sing, I will kill you."

Hideyoshi says, "Cuckoo, if you don't sing, I'm going to make you."

Ieyasu says, "Cuckoo, if you don't sing, I'll just wait until you do."

Still, Hongan-ji split in two was only half as powerful as it had been before. In addition, the new temple did not prosper. The buildings were all destroyed in the great Kyoto fire of 1783, then were burned down again in 1823, in 1854.and once again in 1864. The sad later history of the temple, indeed of all temples, might be seen as symbolic of the decline of Buddhism.

The mappo no yo proved to be the latter days of the law indeed, and the collapse of this religion as a political power occurred with the unification of the country. Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had broken the power of the church and the legislation of leyasu ensured its continuing impotence.

A result of all this is that Higashi Hongan-ji docs not have the architectural authority of Nishi Hongan-ji. However the grand founder's hall, completed in 1895, does have the distinction of being, along with the Daibutsuden at Nara's Todai-ji, one of the world's largest wooden buildings. Also, claims the pamphlet, anxious to make the most of what it has, this great barn contains nine hundred twenty-seven tatami mats and, on the roof, nearly one hundred seventy-six thousand tiles. These must be constantly renewed and each of the faithful are invited to sign one of these with their name and address. Thus, for a not inconsiderable sum, one may become a part of the house of Buddha.

Higashi Hongan-ji is still much in the business of saving souls though its rate of success can be nothing like it was in the days of Shinran. Perhaps this is the reason it has modernized its teaching. "Let Us Discover the Significance of Birth and the Joy of Living" proclaims a billboard outside the temple precincts. This banal generality is far from the stunning particularity of the ncmbutsu. The latter is a personal shout of exaltation; the former was recently formulated by a committee.

Higashi Hongan-ji, still anxious to proclaim its excellence over its larger rival temple, has long claimed to hold the remains of Shinran the founder. But so does Nishi Hongan-ji. Each indeed has a such a mausoleum, but neither has the holy ashes. These are at Nishi Otani.