Komizucha, a warrior monk from Negorodera in Kii province, a temple of the Shingi (‘new meaning’) branch of the Shingon sect. The monks of Negorodera fought alongside the Ikkō-ikki against Oda Nobunaga and were early converts to firearm technology. This print illustrates the final defeat of Negorodera by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1585.
In the degenerate age of mappõ one message of hope was embraced above all others: the reassurance provided by the hongan (original vow) of Amida Buddha not to attain Supreme Enlightenment so long as any human beings remained unsaved.1 On their death the faithful would be taken to him in the western paradise of the Jōdo (Pure Land). Amidism, as this belief is known, took root in Japan by the mid-7th century, and was given a new prominence by the deep pessimism of the Heian Period.2
Pure Land Buddhism only became a separate sectarian entity with Hōnen’s foundation of the Jōdo sect. Hōnen (1133–1212) studied on Mount Hiei, where the atmosphere in the mid-12th century was hardly conducive to quiet contemplation. The first Pure Land text that Hōnen read was Ojõ Yõsh
by the Pure Land pioneer Genshin, who stressed meditation on Amida as the best practice. Hōnen seriously questioned this point of view, believing that the time of mappõ had begun and that ordinary people were sunk in a deep pit of suffering. Yet it was precisely for such an eventuality that Buddha had prepared the Pure Land path to salvation. But how many poor people, who were so much in need of salvation, could meditate? Tendai and Shingon may have possessed profound doctrinal systems and impressive esoteric rituals, but what good was the provision of a gateway to salvation if the majority of people could not hope to pass through it? Surely the recitation of Amida’s name, an act of devotion that could be performed anywhere and under any conditions, was the true path to salvation? Thus it came about that the constant repetitive practice of nembutsu – the chanting of Amida’s name through the invocation Namu Amida Butsu – became the centre of Jōdo devotion.3
In about 1201 Honen had a visit from a monk from Mount Hiei called Shinran (1173–1262). After meditating for a hundred days Shinran had experienced a revelation: that rebirth in the Pure Land was assured at the moment one attained true faith in Amida, even if the person concerned was still in a state of sin. Shinran became one of Hōnen’s keenest disciples, stressing the acceptance of two facts: the absolute power of Amida to save sinners, whom Shinran regarded as the principal object of Amida’s compassion, and the absolute lack of power to achieve rebirth at the human level.4 Where Shinran’s teaching began to diverge from that of Hōnen lay in his attitude towards nembutsu, which Hōnen had understood as the chief way to salvation for the simple minds of people too weak to undertake the practice of meditation. Shinran saw nembutsu in a different light. The urge to pronounce the holy name was not a means toward achieving rebirth in the Pure Land but a gift from Amida. The inspiration to utter it came to the believer who knows that he is already saved. Therefore the constant repetition of the name was of no avail: salvation comes from Buddha and not from man. One single, sincere invocation would be enough, and any additional recitation of the holy name should be merely an expression of gratitude.
The Jōdo flag of Tokugawa Ieyasu, here split into two in a painted screen of the battle of Anegawa in 1570 in Fukui Prefectural Museum. It bears the slogan, ‘Renounce this Filthy World and attain the Pure Land’.
Shinran believed that ritual practices were a hindrance to true piety, not a help, writing in Kyõgyõshinshõ that ‘true faith inevitably provides the name, but the name does not assuredly provide the faith of the Vow Power’.5 Also, because salvation comes from Buddha and not from the human person, a sinner can accept his own nature as it is. Sinful human beings therefore had the potential to attain salvation in this life in a state of enlightenment and were guaranteed rebirth in the Pure Land.6 The similarities between these views and the teachings of Christ, who came ‘not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’, would not be lost on the Jesuit missionaries to Japan, who labelled Shinran’s Jōdo Shinsh
(the True Pure Land sect) the ‘Devil’s Christianity’.
Hōnen and Shinran’s approaches to Pure Land Buddhism, which contrasted sharply with the monastic approach of the older institutions, resulted in their banishment from Kyōto. Shinran’s crime was that he had taken a wife in defiance of monastic discipline.7 In 1272 Shinran’s daughter Kakushin-ni (1221–81) built the Otani mausoleum in Kyōto to house the ashes of her father, and in 1321 Shinran’s great-grandson Kakunyo (1270–1351) converted it into the first Honganji, the ‘temple of the original vow’. Kakunyo developed Shinran’s ideas into a coherent religious system, promoting the notion that Shinran was the founder of a sect. Up to that point Shinran’s followers had been organized in scattered communities. From Kakunyo’s time the expression ‘Honganji’ came to refer not only to the building that was its headquarters, but to the dominant faction in Jōdo Shinsh.8
Jōdo Shinsh shifted the emphasis of Japanese Buddhism from a monastic-centred organization to the ordinary lives of ordinary people for whom the practice of their religion was fundamental. Its teaching contrasted sharply with the older sects’ insistence on the attainment of enlightenment through study, work or asceticism. Jōdo Shinsh welcomed all into its fold and did not insist upon meditation or intellectual superiority. To a Tendai monk Jōdo Shinsh belief was an illusory short cut to salvation. Yet, within Jōdo Shinsh, the consequences of non-belief could be dire. Excommunication was much feared within a religion-based community, and even execution could be threatened during times of war.9 Jōdo Shinsh’s inclusive nature was also reflected in its social organization. This included local membership centred around village meeting places, a charismatic leadership under the headship of Shinran’s lineal descendants and a fundamental independence from traditional regimes, whether aristocratic or military.
The populist nature of the sect also led to changes in the architecture of its buildings. Orientation shifted from a south-facing hondõ to one that looked towards the east, because Amida Buddha faces east from his western paradise. Other major changes came from the fact that Jōdo Shinsh temples were not monasteries but popular temples served by comparatively few priests. There were no cloistered corridors, lecture halls and pagodas. Nor do we see formal dormitory and refectory blocks. The quarters for the married priests were more like private houses, with gardens walled off from the public area. The most striking difference concerned the hondõ. First, it was likely to be dedicated not to any conventional figure in the Buddhist pantheon but to Shinran Shonin as a goeidõ (founder’s hall). Second, a very common feature in the larger Jōdo Shinsh establishments was the existence of two main halls instead of just one. The second hall was dedicated to Amida and was smaller, although both were spacious enough for a large crowd of worshippers. Lamps twinkled on the pure gold surfaces of the altar furnishings. The air was heavy with incense and seemed to throb with the responses from hundreds of voices. To a believer the scene stood as a promise of the western paradise guaranteed by Amida Buddha, just as Shinran had intended.
The vast interior of the Nishi Honganji in Kyōto is spacious enough for a large crowd of worshippers. The scale of the building reflects the enduring popularity of the sect.
The second half of the 15th century was a time of great instability in Japan. Up to this time a remarkable consensus had provided an undercurrent of stability in Japanese society.10 The imperial court nobility held the administrative and ceremonial responsibilities of the state. The samurai kept the peace and controlled turbulent members of its own class. The religious establishment, which was more diffuse and less coherent than the other two groups, supplied Japan with spiritual protection. None of the three could operate alone; nor did any of the three ever seek to eliminate either of the other two. Powers might be curtailed, and awkward individual rivals might be removed, but for four centuries the overall pattern was one of cooperation.11
During the 15th century this mutually supportive system began to break down. The Ashikaga had ruled Japan as Shoguns for over a century, but had become dominated by the petty quarrels of the shugo, the governors of a province or a group of provinces. The weakness of the Shogunate came to a disastrous climax with the outbreak of the Onin War in 1467. Kyōto was the main battleground, and by the time the fighting ended in 1477 most of the city lay in ruins. Though the original cause of the conflict had been a succession dispute within the Shogunate, by 1477 that had become irrelevant, with the Shogun rendered almost powerless to control the course of events. Worse still, the fighting had spread to the provinces as erstwhile shugo fought for supremacy and territory. Some succeeded in transforming themselves into independent lords, for which the term daimyõ (literally ‘great name’) is used. But former shugo were not the only daimyõ. Many daimyõ were military opportunists who had seen their chances and created petty kingdoms of their own. Some hailed from ancient aristocratic families, but many seized power by usurpation, murder, war or marriage contracts to influential neighbours – indeed by any means that would safeguard their positions and their livelihoods. From chains of simple fortresses, daimyõ controlled and guarded their provinces against optimistic tax collectors and pessimistic rivals. The period between 1467 and 1615 is known by analogy with Chinese history as the Sengoku Jidai (Age of Warring States).
Throughout this time, these rival warlords showed a strange respect for the supposed central rule of the Shogun, even though the later incumbents of the post depended for their survival on making alliances with them. In 1568 the post of Shogun was abolished altogether by Oda Nobunaga, the first of the three ‘super-daimyõ’ who was to achieve the reunification of Japan. This proved to be only a temporary measure; the final unifier, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was of Minamoto descent, and became the first Tokugawa Shogun in 1603.
The rise of ‘people power’ through Jōdo Shinsh featured significantly in the period following the Onin War. Popular uprisings and riots became common, ranging from local disturbances to province-wide revolts. The latter were generally referred to as ikki (riots), the original use of the word that came to mean a league acting as a mutual protection association. Rennyo (1415–99), the eighth head of the Honganji and Jōdo Shinsh’s great revivalist, created the greatest ikki of all: the Ikkō-ikki (single-minded league).12 Their faith promising that paradise was the immediate reward for death in battle, the Ikkō-ikki monto (believers) welcomed fighting; nothing daunted them. When the Ikkō-ikki were about to go into battle, the sound of their mass nembutsu chanting chilled the blood of their enemies.
The creation of ikki alarmed the daimyõ for reasons other than purely military ones – ikki formations cut right across the vertical vassal structures that they were trying to create. In some cases samurai retained membership of their ikki even after they became vassals of a daimyõ. Weaning them away from such ties was very difficult if the ikki involved staunch religious beliefs such as were demanded by Jōdo Shinsh. A prime example is the situation that faced the young Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early 1560s. The Ikkō-ikki of Mikawa province were among his greatest rivals, but several of his retainers embraced Jōdo Shinsh. When issues of armed conflict arose, such men were placed in a quandary. For example, in the Mikawa Go Fudoki account of the battle of Azukizaka in 1564 we read the following:
Tsuchiya Chokichi was of the monto faction, but when he saw his lord hard pressed he shouted to his companions, ‘Our lord is in a critical position with his small band. I will not lift a spear against him, though I go to the most unpleasant sorts of hells!’ and he turned against his own party and fought fiercely until he fell dead.13
The structure of an ikki was broadly democratic, and the visible proof that an agreement had been reached would take the form of a document. The signatures were often written in a circle to show the equal status of the members and to avoid quarrels over precedence. Next, a ritual was celebrated called ichimi shinsui (one taste of the gods’ water), when the document was ceremoniously burned. Its ashes were mixed with water and the resulting concoction was drunk by the members. The ritual was thought to symbolize the members’ like-mindedness that was the outward sign of their solidarity.
Similar democratic rules applied initially with the Ikkō-ikki, where oaths were signed on a paper that bore an image of Amida Buddha. As it developed, however, the structure of their organization became more hierarchical, with the ruling Honganji on top of the pyramid. Rennyo urged the monto to be prepared for unhesitating sacrifice in defence of their faith. Although he made it clear to his followers that resort to arms was justified only in the most extreme cases where the survival of Jōdo Shinsh was at stake, this was a radical departure from the original teachings of Shinran, but this was the Age of Warring States.
Unfortunately Rennyo’s attitude made his organization open to possible abuse by militant monto who saw the ideological and military strength of the Honganji as a way of advancing their own interests. Rennyo soon became alarmed by the belligerence of some monto who attacked other sects and challenged the civil authorities. Membership also proved attractive for low-ranking members of the samurai class who were able to combine their own small forces under a common banner to produce an effective army. Rennyo viewed all samurai with distaste, writing that they were the ‘enemies of Buddhism’; however, increasing numbers of samurai became monto. Their fighting skills were to prove useful in the years to come, most notably in the province of Kaga, where the Ikkō-ikki ousted the Togashi family and took over the province themselves. They ruled Kaga for the next hundred years. On one occasion they fought the powerful Uesugi Kenshin to a standstill, blocking his access to the capital. Not bad for a hyakusho no motaru kuni (province ruled by peasants), to use a popular phrase!
Rennyo retired in 1489, handing over the headship of the Honganji to his son Jitsunyo. In 1496, craving solitude, he built a hermitage on a sweeping bend in the Yodo river downstream from Kyōto. It lay on a long, sloping wooded plateau, and the ‘long slope’ gave the place its name: Osaka, the first documented use of the name of what is now Japan’s second city. Osaka provided tranquillity for only a short time, however. Even in retirement, Rennyo commanded a huge and loyal following. Thousands flocked to pay homage to him, and by the time of his death in 1499 a new foundation called Ishiyama Honganji was beginning to take its final shape.
Rennyo (1415–99), the eighth head of the Honganji and Jōdo Shinsh’s great revivalist. This painted hanging scroll is in the Yoshizakiji in Yoshizaki, where Rennyō exerted great influence.
The reality of samurai warfare, with its severed heads, is shown on this scroll in Ueda Castle Museum.
Ishiyama Honganji became the headquarters of the Ikkō-ikki after a dramatic incident in Kyōto, the location of Rennyo’s former headquarters. By the early 16th century Kyōto had become the city of a rising urban class rebuilding their capital from the ashes of the Onin War. Most of these merchant families were adherents of the Nichiren sect. Jōdo Shinsh and Nichiren had much in common in terms of their defensive mentality, but were complete opposites when it came to recruitment. Jōdo Shinsh was largely drawn from peasants and country samurai, while Nichiren appealed to the townspeople. Kyōto had 21 Nichiren temples, and their members organized themselves by neighbourhoods for self-protection and mutual regulation.
During the 15th century spontaneous peasant mobs had frequently attacked the city. In the 1530s the Ikkō-ikki burned the Kōfukuji in Nara and ransacked the Kasuga shrine, causing considerable apprehension within Kyōto when it was rumoured that the capital was the next target. The Nichiren believers rallied round the flag of the Holy Lotus, and after some initial setbacks fought off an Ikkō-ikki assault. Much aggrieved, the Nichiren believers decided to hit back. Not lacking in sympathetic samurai allies, in 1532 they destroyed the Ikkō-ikki’s Kyōto headquarters at Yamashina Midō.
The abandonment of Kyōto resulted in Ishiyama Honganji becoming the sect’s headquarters for the next half century. Its strength was soon tested when an army attacked in 1533. To the great relief of the Ikkō-ikki, their massive temple complex, set within a natural moat of rivers and sea, withstood the assault and indeed appeared to be impregnable. This welcome demonstration of its strength and safety encouraged further commercial settlement; the surrounding merchant community experienced considerable growth over the next few years. Ishiyama Honganji’s wealth increased, and in 1536 the priests of the Honganji even paid all the expenses for the enthronement of Emperor Go Nara. It proved to be money well spent. In 1538 the leaders of Ishiyama Honganji negotiated a deal with the imperial court and the local military governor to make the surrounding merchant community into a jinaimachi (temple town), with immunity from debt moratoriums and from entry by outside military forces.
The Goeidō mon (founder’s gate) of Higashi Honganji, the present-day headquarters in Kyōto of the Otani branch of the Honganji, the ‘original vow’ temple of Jodō Shinsh. This immense gate was built in 1911.
The self-contained community was such a success that by the middle of the 16th century a dozen or so smaller but similar jinaimachi had arisen in the provinces of Settsu, Kawachi and Izumi, which now make up the modern metropolitan district of Osaka. All of them were commercial and military strongpoints defended by walls and ditches, and each had obtained from the outside authorities a package of self-governing privileges. The days of the Ikkō-ikki as a simple rural peasant army had passed into history.
The Osaka communities benefited unexpectedly from the destruction of their Nichiren rivals in Kyōto. In 1536, by means of a raid of a type that the city had not experienced for centuries, the warrior monks of Mount Hiei did the Ikkō-ikki’s work for them. All 21 major temples of the Nichiren sect were burned to the ground, along with much of their surroundings. The sõhei spared the area round the imperial palace and the Shogun’s headquarters, but the collateral damage was considerable.
In 1554 the leadership of the Honganji passed to Kennyo, who proved to be the most militant of all the Honganji leaders. The hour had come, and so had the man: Kennyo was soon to face the fiercest onslaught in all of the Honganji’s history.
The 1560s and 1570s in Japan are dominated by the personality of one man: Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), who began the process of the reunification of Japan. As a brilliant and ruthless general, Nobunaga had begun his rise to power with a surprise victory at the battle of Okehazama in 1560. More success followed, and in 1568 he entered the capital to set up his nominee Ashikaga Yoshiaki as Shogun. Relations with Yoshiaki soon deteriorated and Oda Nobunaga dismissed him. The dispossessed Shogun sought allies elsewhere, including the Ikkō-ikki, who soon became Nobunaga’s worst enemies.
The threat to Nobunaga from Ishiyama Honganji was not just a military one. It was also strategic and economic, with the power base of the Ikkō-ikki coinciding precisely with Nobunaga’s own primary sphere of interest. The sect was particularly well entrenched within its fortified temples of Owari, Mino and Ise, the places where Nobunaga’s own regime had been born. It lay across every approach to the capital save the west, from where the sympathetic daimyõ Mōri Motonari (1497–1571) happily supplied them from his seaborne base. The creation of jinaimachi had lifted Jōdo Shinsh from its peasant roots into a position of economic power, so that Ishiyama Honganji could confront Nobunaga on commercial terms as well. He experienced his first armed clash with the Ikkō-ikki in 1570. Nobunaga was fighting Miyoshi Yoshitsugu near Osaka when forces from Ishiyama Honganji, including 3,000 men armed with arquebuses, reinforced the Miyoshi and caused Nobunaga to withdraw. Soon afterwards they struck a more personal blow when they forced his brother Oda Nobuoki to commit suicide at the siege of Ogie castle.
That same winter of 1570/71, when Nobunaga was driving back the Asai and Asakura armies in another campaign, his flank was attacked by sõhei from Enryakuji. Nobunaga must have thought that he was surrounded by religious fanatics, and when the time came to hit back he began with the nearest target: Mount Hiei, which had provided shelter for his enemies. In an operation so one-sided that it does not deserve the appellation of a battle, his troops moved against the sõhei. The samurai moved steadily up the mountain in an orgy of fire and slaughter, killing everyone and destroying everything in their way. The following accounts present opinions of the massacre from two opposing religious points of view. The first puts words into the mouths of those monks who did not beg to be spared by Nobunaga’s samurai, but chose instead to cast themselves into the fires of the burning temple buildings:
As the world, after the lapse of 550 years, has entered upon the period of the Latter Degenerate Days of the Law, there can be no hope for the future. If we burn together with the icons and the images of the Mountain king, the great Founder, and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it may create for us the merit of attaining Buddhahood.14
Oda Nobunaga, who hated the Ikkō-ikki and supported the Christian missions because of their opposition to Buddhism. The fact that their gospel was one of opposition to Japanese religion per se, while Nobunaga was opposed merely to the use of it against him, was conveniently overlooked by the Jesuits.
By this time Jesuit missionaries were active in Japan, and Father Luis Frois concluded his own report of the events, written within days of them happening: ‘Praise be to God’s omnipotence and ultimate goodness, for he has ordered such a great hindrance to be punished with extinction, so that one day His holiest law will be propagated in these parts in abundance.’15
The destruction of Mount Hiei did not mean its end as a religious institution. The terrible message that Nobunaga had conveyed was that there was no equivalence between the samurai and the sacred, at least not when they were aimed at him. So, just as had happened in Nara after 1181, Enryakuji was rebuilt. The process cannot have taken too long, because in 1583, the ‘marathon monk’ Kōun completed a thousand-day kaihyõgõ practice.16
It was nevertheless a terrible warning to the Ikkō-ikki, and the long and bitter war between them and Nobunaga was to last a full decade. Oda Nobunaga’s last campaign against the Ishiyama Honganji finished in August 1580 after ten years of intermittent but bitter fighting that involved many features beyond siege work and assault. One crucial tactic was to deny the Ishiyama Honganji any support from fellow monto or sympathetic daimyõ. By 1574 their comrades on the Nagashima delta near modern Nagoya had been eliminated. In 1575, the same year as his famous victory at the battle of Nagashino, Oda Nobunaga swept through Echizen province against its Ikkō-ikki forces in a savage campaign that put even the destruction of Enryakuji into the shade. Nobunaga was pleased with the results, which he described in letters that emphasized his contempt for the lower-class monto. Words like ‘eradicate’ and ‘wipe out’ flowed from his brush.17 When he attacked Fuchu (now the town of Takefu) he wrote two letters from the site.18 One contained the chilling statement, ‘As for the town of Fuchu, only dead bodies can be seen without any empty space left between them. I would like to show it to you. Today I will search the mountains and the valleys and kill everybody.’ By November 1575 he could boast that he had ‘wiped out several tens of thousands of the villainous rabble in Echizen and Kaga’. In Shinchõkõki, Nobunaga’s biographer reported that from the 15th to the 19th of the eighth lunar month of 1575, a total of 12,250 people were seized. Nobunaga gave orders to his pages to execute the prisoners, while his troops took countless men and women with them to their respective home provinces.19
Nobunaga also made clever use of the jealousy that still existed between the Honganji and the smaller rival branches of Jōdo Shinsh. Any Honganji monto who survived his attacks were given the opportunity to change their allegiance. For example, a surviving letter from Nobunaga to the Senpukuji in Mino province in 1572 gives the temple two days to renounce its affiliation to Osaka. Additionally, a prolonged naval campaign was designed to cut Mōri’s supply lines until, isolated from any support, Ishiyama Honganji surrendered.
The death of Baba Nobuharu, one of the Takeda ‘Twenty-Four Generals’, at the battle of Nagashino in 1575, the great victory secured by Oda Nobunaga.
One curious feature of the Honganji’s collapse was that its final surrender occurred after peace negotiations conducted by the imperial court. Emperor Ogimachi proposed peace on the instigation of Nobunaga, who was quite clearly the driving force behind the negotiations. Why Nobunaga chose to approach the Honganji through the imperial court is something of a mystery, but it shows the respect in which the imperial institution was still held. Oaths were signed in blood by both sides, and the inhabitants of Ishiyama Honganji thronged out of the fortress unharmed, scurrying off ‘like baby spiders’.20 That night the entire complex burst into flames and was utterly destroyed, probably on the initiative of the Ikkō-ikki leaders themselves, who did not wish their glorious headquarters to become a prize for the man they had defied for so long.
Nobunaga’s war against the Ikkō-ikki is commonly regarded as having finished with the surrender of Ishiyama Honganji in 1580. However, bitter fighting continued for a few years. The first action was directed against Kaga province, where die-hard elements among the Ikkō-ikki abandoned the flat plains and entrenched themselves in fortified temples in the surrounding mountainous areas. The sites were to change hands three times within the following two years. In 1582 the temple castles were taken by Nobunaga and destroyed; this time no chance of resurgence was to be allowed. First, 300 men of the Ikkō-ikki were crucified on the river bed, and after this gruesome display the inhabitants of the local villages were annihilated.21
Oda Nobunaga died in 1582, and three years later his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, finally quelled militant Buddhism. The last Jōdo Shinsh enclaves – known as the Saiga Ikkō-ikki – were located in Kii province to the south of Osaka, around the area where the castle and city of Wakayama now stand. Not far away was the other remaining religious army in Japan: the sõhei of Negorodera, who had very unwisely fought against Hideyoshi during the Komaki campaign of 1584. This folly brought terrible retribution upon them the following year. The result was the near-total destruction of the Negorodera complex in as thorough a job as Nobunaga had performed on Hieizan. Hideyoshi then turned his attentions towards the Saiga Ikkō-ikki, and the last armed enclave of Jōdo Shinsh disappeared from Japan.
To underline his triumph, in 1585 Hideyoshi sent the following warning to the Shingon temples on Kōyasan that same year:
Item: The monks, priests in the world and others have not been prudent in their religious studies. The manufacture and retention of senseless weapons, muskets and the like is treacherous and wicked.
The monto of the Ikkō-ikki prepare to defend their temple. From a hanging scroll in the Rennyo Kinenkan, Yoshizaki.
Item: In as much as you saw with your own eyes that Hieizan and Negorodera were finally destroyed for acting with enmity against the realm, you should be discerning in this matter.22
The authorities on Mount Kōya were not slow to grasp the point. In 1588, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi enacted his famous ‘Sword Hunt’ to disarm the peasantry, the monks of Kōyasan were the first to respond by handing over their cache of arms. Meanwhile Kennyo sought every opportunity to restore the cathedral of Jōdo Shinsh, but only as a religious headquarters, not as a fortress. The opportunity came after Kennyo sent some of the few remaining Ikkō-ikki warriors to help Hideyoshi during the Shizugatake campaign in 1583. In gratitude to the monto, Hideyoshi eventually made a parcel of land available in Kyōto in 1589, and the Honganji headquarters were rebuilt there in 1591.
This statue of Amida Buddha rightfully has pride of place in the modern Yoshizakiji at Yoshizaki.
A hanging scroll depicting Amida Buddha in the museum of Yoshizakiji in Yoshizaki.
Hideyoshi’s successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), was never a man to take chances. Considering very seriously any possibility of an Ikkō-ikki revival, he gave high priority to the issue, resolving it in 1602, the year before he was officially proclaimed Shogun. The results may be seen by any visitor to Kyōto today, where there are two Jōdo Shinsh temples called Nishi (Western) Honganji and Higashi (Eastern) Honganji, both of which appear to be the headquarters of the same organization. A dispute between Junnyo, who headed the Honganji, and his older brother Gyonyo provided Ieyasu with the pretext he needed for dividing the sect. Ieyasu backed Gyonyo and founded Higashi Honganji to rival the existing one, henceforth called Nishi Honganji, built by Hideyoshi in 1591. This weakened the political power of the sect, leaving it as a strong religious organization, but never again capable of transforming itself into a monk army.
Jōdo Shinsh is today the largest Buddhist organization in Japan, a worthy acknowledgement of the genuinely populist roots that Shinran and Rennyo laid down so many centuries ago. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had already paid a compliment to the Ikkō-ikki in 1586, admiring the monto for their fine strategic eye. To hold out for ten years against Oda Nobunaga proved that the site of Ishiyama Honganji was a superb strategic and defensive location. Recalling how it had frustrated his master for so long, he chose it as the site for Osaka castle, Japan’s largest fortress. In 1615 it required Japan’s most massive siege using European artillery to crush it, and nowadays it lies at the centre of Japan’s second city – the great modern metropolis of Osaka.