The Lotus United: The Rise and Fall of Nichiren Sect Unity in 16^th and 17^th Century Kyoto (Book Project)

In 1536, an army marched from the province of Ōmi and burned down a third of Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital. Led by the monks of Enryakuji, their main target was the fortified temples of the Nichiren sect, who had been the dominant military and political power in Kyoto since 1532. The destruction of the Nichiren sect temples, we are told, was near total, and Enryakuji extracted from the Emperor and the Military government orders that the sect be banned in perpetuity. The Nichiren sect presence in the capital was over.

But within a few years, the Nichiren sect temples began to make a return. Within a decade, the sect was reestablished in the capital, and would remain there to this day. They remained an important part of the city’s religious and political landscape until the modern era and remain so today. And they did this despite abandoning their earlier military power, in an era in which violence was nearly omnipresent in Japan. How did they do this?

The answer comes to us in a set of sources discovered relatively recently in the Nichiren sect temple Chōmyōji: a collection of documents belonging to the Nichiren’s sect’s hitherto unknown ruling council. This council allowed the Nichiren sect to negotiate with the powerful warriors who controlled the city throughout the late 16^th century in order to not only buy their protection but also to drive warrior policy in regards to the sect.

This book is a study of the rise and fall of this council. We explore why military power failed, when and why the Nichiren temples began to unify, how the new Council of Head Temples functioned, how it succeeded, how it failed, and why it ultimately became unnecessary.

Outline:

A Regrettable Reaction: The Lotus Leagues and the End of Nichirenist Military Power in Kyoto

An Amenable Arrangement: Inter-temple Peace and the Rise of the Council of Head Temples

A Suitable Sum: Oda Nobunaga and the 1576 Fundraiser

A Bad Bet: The Azuchi Religious Debate and its Consequences

A Damaging Division: The Fuju-Fuse Controversy and the decline of the Council.

 

Prayer for the Devil: The Religious Life of Oda Nobunaga

There was an interesting happening before [Takeda] Shingen invaded Tōtomi and Mikawa. When he sent Nobunaga a letter, due to his conceitedness, he signed it “Tendaino zasuxamo Xinguem.”

This means that Shingen was naming himself as the highest person in the Tendai School.

In response, Nobunaga signed his name “Duyrocu tenmauo Nobunaga”

This means that Nobunaga was calling himself the demon king who is the enemy of all the schools [of Buddhism], and that just like Daiba [Devadatta] hindered Shaka [Sakyamuni]’s propagation of his faith, so would Nobunaga hinder the veneration and worship of the various idols in Japan until today.”

Oda Nobunaga (1534 – 1582) is remembered as one of the three unifiers who took Japan from its long era of civil wars and into it’s peaceful early-modern order. He is remembered as a brutal killer, as a political and economic revolutionary, and as an enemy of Japan’s religious institutions. Indeed, he is so remembered as an enemy of Japanese religious institutions that many observers have attested to him either a rational atheism or a near boundless megalomania. As one scholar of Oda Nobunaga wrote: “However he may have rationalized or philosophized it, it appears that Nobunaga considered himself to be the highest being in whatever pantheon of beings there may have been, and no authority, in heaven or on earth, was higher than his own.”

But does the historical record justify this view? This paper will argue that Oda Nobunaga had a religious life, and will to the extent possible explain it.

Enryakuji’s Army: Considerations of Monastic Military Power in the 16^th Century

The retired emperor Shirakawa once said, “The waters of the Kamo river, the roll of the dice at backgammon, and the monks of the mountain. It is these three things that will not obey my will.”

The Buddhist temple of Enryakuji, situated on Mt. Hiei overlooking Kyoto, was an economic, political and military powerhouse. Indeed, the monks of Mt. Hiei were not averse to the use of violence to intimidate the court, to attack heretics, to settle disputes on the mountain, or to protect it’s economic interests in the provinces. Indeed, any discussions of the warrior monks of Japan, the so-called-Sōhei, will inevitably include a discussion of Enryakuji’s power. As late as 1536, Enryakuji led a powerful army into Kyoto that destroyed the entrenched Lotus League armies and a third of the city besides.

However, in the temple’s moment of greatest need, as the army of the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534 - 1582) was able to put the temple, it’s affiliated Hie shrine, and the nearby city of Sakamoto to the torch with great ease. While some debate rages about the actual damage done and death toll from Nobunaga’s attack, what is abundantly clear is that what monk warriors Enryakuji had at hand, they were ineffective. Indeed, so ineffective that one needs to look far and wide for a suggestion that Nobunaga’s armies suffered any casualties. What had become of the fearsome warrior monks? In this article, I will show explain what became of the Temple’s military power in the 16^th century.