The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers, and Warriors in Premodern Japan

7 Religious Elites and the Ashikaga Bakufu: Collapsing the Gates of Power

288 7 Religious Elites and the Ashikaga Bakufu: Collapsing the Gates of Power The Kamakura Bakufu—Japan’s first warrior government—actively sustained a cooperative polity with the imperial court, allowing the latter to continue exercising its judicial powers over nonwarriors . Since the Kyoto-based system included governmental responsibilities as well as elite privileges for the most powerful temples and shrines, they also remained as they were in the late Heian period: active participants in capital politics and rulership. This point supports the recent view that the Kamakura period, while marking a shift in the power constellation, did not constitute the beginning of warrior dominance. Instead, it has been suggested , the beginning of a new rulership and an entirely new era one might call Japan’s medieval age appears first in the fourteenth century.1 It is from this time that discussions of national politics, religion, and culture increasingly must focus on the warrior class, as it became the dominating force in society. While the nobility could no longer contain the rising warrior class, the old Buddhist sects continued to exert considerable influence even after the establishment of the Ashikaga Bakufu in 1336. In 1368–1369, for example, monks from the Enryakuji complex entered the capital to protest the privileges that the bakufu had awarded to a Zen temple. Eventually, the bakufu complied with the monks’ demands by exiling two prominent Zen monks and demolishing the gate of their temple. This conflict, known as the Nanzenji Gate incident , was not so much a dispute over economic privileges; rather, members of the Buddhist establishment were opposing the bakufu’s attempts to promote Zen as its officially sanctioned sect.2 Based on these observations and, in particular, on the success Enryakuji had in resisting the Ashikaga Bakufu, Kuroda stated that Religious Elites and the Ashikaga Bakufu 289 although the kenmon system survived the establishment of the second warrior government, it simultaneously began to decline, as its economic base—the shòen system—started to disintegrate. This slow death, he noted, was caused by slow-moving socioeconomic changes on the local level. Villages as well as villagers began to question the authority of the absentee proprietors and formed horizontal alliances that resulted in more independent village units. The proprietor’s control declined further as local warriors interjected themselves between the proprietor and the farming population. Subsequently, new kinds of conflicts appeared as whole regions rebelled against the old proprietors. In the end, it became increasingly difficult for the traditional elites in the central region—the imperial family, the high nobility, and religious institutions—to control and to collect dues from their estates.3 Other signs of the breakup of the old elite system were visible from the fourteenth century. Kuroda noted a decline in the prevalence of the òbò-buppò concept, as it carried less weight with the new warrior rulers and was replaced by a renewed emphasis on Shintò. Moreover, he also observed that the spirit of cooperation between the various kenmitsu (exoteric-esoteric) sects declined, resulting in more tension and conflicts between different temples and scholars.4 Though I find it difficult to substantiate any increase in conflicts between the established sects in the fourteenth century, the cooperative aspects of the old system of shared rulership did indeed disappear following Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s era (1368–1408). In particular, it was the emergence of new, populist sects, such as the Nichiren and Jòdo Shinshû (True Pure Land) sects, that changed the religious and political context. These sects offered new, simplified ways of achieving spiritual blessing, which challenged the complex and elitist rituals of the established schools. In characterizing Enryakuji’s and Kòfukuji’s aggressive responses and ensuing rivalries with the new sects, scholars have tended to stress doctrinal issues. But this opposition was not caused entirely by theological concerns. Indeed, even though disputes often centered on interpretations of Buddhism, the monks were less concerned with dogmatism than with maintaining their status and privileges. For example, when Enryakuji monks petitioned against Hònen in 1204, followed by a more aggressive petition from Kòfukuji the following year, they simply tried to make him and his followers preach other fundamental Buddhist ideas in addition to Amidism. Both Tendai and the other 290 The Gates of Power kenmitsu schools were quite syncretic, allowing for different methods of salvation and, more important, a continuation of a multidoctrinal system of state-supported Buddhism...