Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment by Clark Chilson (review)

Serendipity can be a powerful force in any scholar’s research, as exemplified in this superb study of secrecy in Japanese Shin Buddhism. In 1998, Clark Chilson had never heard of covert Shin Buddhists while doing research on Kūya, the famous tenth-century nenbutsu holy man (hijiri). This dramatically changed after he met some mysterious attendees of an annual Kūya memorial service in Kyoto who did not fit the typical profile of Kūya devotees. With dogged persistence, he finally wrangled an invitation to visit their home temple and was surprised to learn that parishioners worshiping the Kūya icon in a modern upscale-looking house identified themselves as “real Shin Buddhists.” They told him they possessed “hidden” (ura) ultimate teachings of Shinran that the official or “surface” (omote) Shin of Higashi and Nishi Honganji, the two main branches of True Pure Land, no longer possessed.

The group he discovered calls itself Urahōmon. It is one of several secret Shin lineages that the author collectively traces to the Kakushi nenbutsu, his handy term for covert Shin Buddhism dating from the Edo period that values secrecy as a basic element of its religious tradition (p. 14). While “covert” Shin groups share similarities with “overt” Shin—for example, they trace their origins to Shinran’s teachings, accept the Pure Land scriptures as authoritative, recite the nenbutsu in gratitude, and offer their devotion to Amida—their distinction is that they have concealed themselves publicly and promote doctrines and practices considered heretical by official Jōdo Shinshū priests (p. 15).

Chilson’s book is ambitious. He provides the first detailed description in English of covert Shin Buddhists. As the author himself observes, these religious groups, located outside the mainstream, “can help us gain a new perspective on Shin and reveal aspects of it that have gone unnoticed” (p. 170). Studying them reveals that the Shin tradition is fascinatingly complex with several features that unite and divide overt and covert Shin groups. Their competing visions of Shin are highlighted by what is contested between them: the texts they consider Shinran’s sacred writings, the exegetical tacks they take on classical Shin works like Rennyo’s Ofumi, and so on.

Studying covert Shin also makes us ask new questions. For example, while both overt and covert Shin see true entrusting (shinjin) as central to the faith, why is very little ritual attention paid to it by Honganji Shin priests? The covert Shin group Urahōmon, by contrast, emphasizes the initiatory rite of ichinen kimyō in which initiates ritually obtain shinjin to become a Buddha in this very body and to gain insight into the secret teachings of Shinran (p. 156). The contrast between the overt and covert Shin could not be clearer on the matter of the power of ritual for attaining shinjin. In this respect, Chilson proves his case about the importance of covert Shin. His research adds much to recent studies of secrecy such as Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen’s seminal The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion (Routledge, 2006), which, surprisingly, does not touch on covert Shin.

Secrecy’s Power is also a landmark work in light of previous Japanese research. As the author notes in his introduction, earlier works on covert Shin only offered historical and descriptive accounts. Before the twentieth century, they often served as tendentious exposés on how these groups deviated from orthodox Shin. Even modern Japanese scholarship continues to be limited to particularistic studies, focusing on one particular lineage or group in a specific region (p. 15).

However, Chilson’s book offers a sophisticated longitudinal study of the whole phenomenon of covert Shin. It opens with a very useful historical overview of covert Shin that spans from its beginnings in early secret teachings, like those of Shinran’s son Zenran, to Rennyo’s later criticism of secrecy in Shin and to the persecution of...