Biographical Studies of Nichiren (1999).pdf

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 1999 26/3–4

REVIEW ARTICLE

Biographical Studies of Nichiren

Jacqueline I. S TONE

T AKAGI Yutaka ¢ … Ì. Nichiren: Sono kõdõ to shisõ Õ ¥ —du ‘ {o„ `

[Nichiren: His actions and thought]. Nihonjin no kõdõ to shisõ Õû^

u ‘ {o„ ` 4. Tokyo: Hyõronsha, 1970. 280 pp., including bibliogra-

phy, chronology, and index.

T AMURA Yoshirõ , ª Æ µ . Nichiren: Junkyõ no nyoraishi Õ ¥ —{ î u

Øûq [Nichiren: Martyr and envoy of the Tath„gata]. NHK Bukkusu

240. Tokyo: Nippon Hõsõ Shuppan Kyõkai, 1975. 221 pp., including

chronology and bibliography.

K AWAZOE Shõji ëþÅÌ. Nichiren to Mõko shðrai Õ ¥ oƒòMû

[Nichiren and the Mongol invasion]. Kiyomizu Shinsho ²vG– 002.

Tokyo: Kiyomizu Shoin, 1984. 226 pp., including chronology and bib-

liography.

A CCOUNTS OF N ICHIREN ’ S LIFE go back to the early fourteenth century.

Perhaps the earliest, the Goden dodai : )F Ö , was written by Nichidõ

ÕŠ (1283–1341), a third-generation disciple. What purports to be an

autobiographical account contained within the apocryphal Hokke hon-

monshð yõshõ ÀTû–;êƒ ( STN 3: 2158–68) probably dates from

around the same time. Hagiographies of Nichiren continued to

appear throughout the medieval and early modern periods. Over the

centuries, the dramatic events of his life have been represented not

only in written accounts but also in painting, sculpture, plays, novels,

poetry, and, more recently, films and manga . 1 Critical scholarly biography

1 Several influential medieval and early modern accounts are contained in Nichiren

Shõnin denkishð (N ICHIRENSHÐ Z ENSHO K ANKÕKAI 1974). For an index of Nichiren biographi-

cal literature from the medieval period through 1981, see N ICHIREN S HÕSHÐ 1982. For an

overview of modern literary treatments of Nichiren, see I SHIKAWA 1980.

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Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26/3–4

is another recent development. Especially since World War II, there has

been a growing trend in scholarly Nichiren biography to explicitly reject

the one-sided, stereotypical images of Nichiren found in sectarian

hagiographies and popular representations and to present more

nuanced, historically grounded treatments. Postwar Nichiren biogra-

phical studies also reflect the findings of modern bibliographic and

critical textual work on the Nichiren collection. This review introduces

three of the most important of these postwar Nichiren biographies.

The most outstanding overall modern biography of Nichiren is the

late Takagi Yutaka’s Nichiren: Sono kõdõ to shisõ . It presents a clearly

written and comprehensive overview of Nichiren’s life and thought,

and Takagi’s references direct the reader to other valuable sources for

further study. His treatment is especially helpful in locating Nichiren

within the early medieval bushi Dw (warrior) society of the Kantõ

provinces, from which Nichiren drew most of his following.

In his introduction, Takagi summarizes the major difficulties

encountered in an attempt to place Nichiren in historical context.

First, there are no extant, external sources of the time that refer to

him. This leaves Nichiren’s own writings as the biographer’s major

primary source. Here, a second difficulty arises in that critical textual

studies of this corpus are not yet complete or definitive, and the

authenticity of some texts remains to be determined. Third is the

issue of Nichiren’s own retrospective editing in his autobiographical

reflections, which in some cases appear to reconstruct his earlier

thought and actions in light of his later conclusions. And fourth, data

for Nichiren’s early years, a formative period, are extremely limited.

A particular strength of this study, relative to the fourth point

above, is Takagi’s thoughtful reconstructions of the events of Nichi-

ren’s youth. While he modestly notes that these are no more than sur-

mises based on a few fragmentary data and Nichiren’s later reflections,

they are plausible and thought-provoking. An example concerns

Nichiren’s hostility toward Pure Land practices, which appears in his

earliest writings. It is virtually certain that, as a novice at Kiyosumi-

dera ²˜± in Awa Province, Nichiren was taught to chant the nenbut-

su ç[ and also studied Pure Land teachings—probably Tendai Pure

Land thought rather than the exclusive nenbutsu , which he would not

have encountered until later. His teacher at Kiyosumi-dera, Dõzen-bõ

Š 3 Û, was a nenbutsu practitioner, and Kiyosumi-dera itself is thought

to have had ties with the Yokawa precinct of Mt. Hiei, which transmit-

ted the Pure Land teachings of Genshin è= (942– 1017). Why, then,

should Nichiren so early on have developed an aversion to this

extremely widespread practice? Takagi notes that Nichiren came to

S TONE : Biographical Studies of Nichiren

443

have doubts about Pure Land practice even before arriving at his ulti-

mate conviction in the exclusive truth of the Lotus Sðtra and suggests

that these doubts may have had their basis less in doctrinal issues than

in the experience of witnessing the painful death of some Pure Land

practitioner close to him. The manner of one’s death was widely

understood at the time to be an index of that person’s post-mortem

fate, and a peaceful death was deemed a sign of attaining having

reached the Pure Land. Jõdo teachings stressed that a good death and

subsequent birth in the Pure Land were possible through chanting

the nenbutsu , which was frequently employed as a deathbed practice.

According to the medieval hagiography Nichiren Shõnin chðgasan

Õ ¥ î^icg, Nichiren rejected the nenbutsu teachings during the

period of his youthful studies in Kamakura when he learned that, con-

trary to the promise of such teachings, the Pure Land master Dai’a

Ø % had died in agony ( Nichiren Shõnin denkishð , p. 87). While no evi-

dence exists to suggest any historical connection between Nichiren

and Dai’a, Takagi argues that witnessing something of this sort in his

early years might well have engendered Nichiren’s original doubts,

doubts that would have then gained intellectual reinforcement as his

doctrinal studies progressed. In support of this hypothesis, Tagaki

notes that Nichiren’s later writings make several references to agoniz-

ing deaths suffered by Pure Land devotees and, by contrast, to calm

and dignified deaths that occurred among his own followers.

Takagi also offers an intriguing thesis about Nichiren’s years on Mt.

Hiei, where he studied for an extended period sometime between

1239 and 1252. Exactly what he studied or with whom is not known.

Tradition holds that he became a disciple of Shunpan p – , who was

then the sõgakuto r ¿w or chief of doctrinal instruction for the

mountain, a formidable Tendai scholar and current patriarch of the

influential Eshin Sugiu ˆD“´ lineage. However, Takagi argues that

while Nichiren may have heard Shunpan’s public lectures, he would

not have been welcomed into the intimate circle of disciples sur-

rounding this aristocratic master. First, his provincial dialect would

have instantly identified him as a native of the Kantõ, regarded by

inhabitants of the imperial capital as a cultural backwater. Years later,

in 1269, Nichiren wrote a letter in which he rebuked a disciple then

studying in Kyoto for his slavish admiration of the court nobility: “No

doubt you have also adopted the speech and accent of the capital.…

Just use your own provincial speech” ( Hõmon mõsarubekiyõ no koto

À–= ¼ Màîª, STN 1: 448–49). Takagi finds in this admonition

Nichiren’s recollection of the difficulties he himself must have suf-

fered during his student days on account of his Kantõ accent, whose

hindrance he had eventually surmounted and in which he had even

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Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26/3–4

come to take pride. Nichiren’s low social status would also have pre-

sented an obstacle on Mt. Hiei, where aristocratic factions dominated

the higher ranks of the clergy. Isolated and thrown back on his own

resources, he might well have turned on his own to the sutras and

commentaries, taking advantage of Hiei’s extensive libraries. Though

Nichiren would eventually trace his Dharma lineage from Š„kyamuni

through Zhiyi J* (538–597) and Saichõ è ˜ (767-822), he never did

form a close personal relationship with any living person whom he

revered throughout life as his teacher, as Dõgen did Ruzhing Øþ or

Shinran did Hõnen. It was during his early years on Hiei, Takagi sug-

gests, that Nichiren developed his lifelong habit of turning to texts,

rather than human teachers, for instruction and the resolution of

doubts, an approach that he later equated with the Nirv„«a Sðtra ’s

admonition to “rely on the Dharma and not upon persons.”

Equally suggestive is Takagi’s reading of the events leading to

Nichiren’s ousting from Kiyosumi-dera, to which he returned around

1252, at about the age of thirty-one, following his studies in the region

of the capital (see also T AKAGI 1966). Nichiren gave his first public ser-

mon at Kiyosumi-dera on 4/28/1253, a date traditionally observed as

marking the founding of the Nichiren sect. Nichiren himself certainly

had no intention at the time of founding a new sect, and the content

of his lecture is not known, but it presumably included some criticism

of Pure Land practices. Traditional hagiographies say that he was

forced to flee the temple that very day to escape the wrath of Tõjõ

Kagenobu Xû“=, the local jitõ Gw or Bakufu steward and a nen-

butsu devotee. Takagi, however, suggests that Nichiren probably did

not leave until the winter of 1254. In the meantime, his presence

polarized the Kiyosumi-dera community into two factions struggling

for its leadership, those who opted for what had become a traditional

mode of Tendai practice combining Lotus and Pure Land elements,

and those who, following Nichiren, chose a more exclusively Lotus-

based form of practice. This conflict, Takagi suggests, was inseparably

intertwined with a parallel struggle over rights concerning the shõen

v Ó or estate on which the temple stood, between the jitõ Kagenobu

and the hereditary shõen proprietor, a woman referred to in Nichi-

ren’s writings as Nagoe-no-ama e Î uÍ or “the nun of the overlord’s

house” ( ryõke no ama i BuÍ ). This was no isolated case, Takagi

notes, but part of a larger shift in which Bakufu-appointed jitõ were

gaining power at the expense of resident shõen overlords. In this case,

the Pure Land practitioners of Kiyosumi-dera, including the temple’s

abbot, Enchi-bõ Ò JÛ, sought Kagenobu’s support against Nichiren’s

Lotus-only faction, while Nichiren’s side supported the nun—to

whom, he wrote in later life, his parents had been indebted. (Takagi

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445

supports the theory that Nichiren’s father may have been employed by

her as a shõen functionary.) Nichiren undertook a lawsuit on her

behalf and also offered ritual prayers. His efforts were successful, fur-

ther provoking the Enchi-bõ–Kagenobu faction and eventually forcing

him to leave Kiyosumi-dera for his own safety. From there he set out,

probably by boat, for Kamakura, where he would launch his career of

teaching and proselytizing. This sort of detailed reconstruction of

Nichiren’s pre-Kamakura years, pieced together from clues in

Nichiren’s writings and Takagi’s historical knowledge, is an outstand-

ing feature of this biography.

A second strength of the volume is Takagi’s detailed picture of

Nichiren’s community—monks, laity, and lay people who had taken

religious vows ( nyðdõ ×Š and ama Í)—as it developed over the

course of his life. This volume summarizes the findings of T AKAGI ’s

earlier research into the composition of Nichiren’s following (1965).

Most of Nichiren’s lay followers were middle- and lower-ranking samu-

rai and local landholders ( myõshu eü). Some were gokenin : B^ or

direct vassals of the Hõjõ who met Nichiren and embraced his teach-

ing while on tour of duty in Kamakura. On returning to their outlying

estates, they converted their households, which became the nuclei of

communities in Kai, Suruga, Shimõsa, and other Kantõ provinces.

These communities gave economic support to Nichiren’s clerical dis-

ciples, who in turn provided religious leadership. Takagi identifies

three patterns of activity among the monks or clerical disciples. These

were: (1) monks who maintained their own cloisters at local Tendai

temples, which they used for preaching and instruction and as resi-

dences between travels. These disciples journeyed to the homes of lay

followers in the surrounding areas to preach and relay Nichiren’s

teachings, often reading aloud and elaborating on letters he had writ-

ten. (The fact that such monks maintained residences at Tendai tem-

ples raises questions about how Nichiren’s disciples understood their

relationship to Tendai lineages. Though Takagi does not address this

here, elsewhere he suggests that these monks did not yet have suffi-

cient lay support to enable them to live independently; at the same

time, such arrangements may have reflected a consciousness on the

part of Nichiren and his disciples that they themselves were the most

orthodox representatives of the Tendai tradition, which they desired

to purify and reform. See T AKAGI 1965, pp. 53–54.) They served as the

religious leaders of Nichiren’s following in specific geographical areas

and won a substantial number of converts among both laity and other

clergy, converts who in effect became the “second generation” of the

community; (2) monks who enjoyed the support of a particular lay

patron and shared his religious life, providing the patron’s family with

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