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C H A P T E R 3 Jôdo Shin Buddhism and the Edo Period Debate over Nikujiki Saitai Against the backdrop of the systematization of the status system, the increased control of clerical behavior by the Tokugawa and domainal authorities, the sporadic but prominent enforcement of antifornication statutes, and the increasingly vocal contention over meat eating, a sustained debate over nikujiki saitai arose among the Buddhist clergy. As shown in the previous chapter, premodern attacks on the Buddhist clergy for violating the protocols of clerical behavior that related to sexual relations and diet were frequent, but it was not until the Edo period that sustained defenses of those practices, not as transgressions, but rather as a legitimate style of Buddhist clerical practice, arose. At the center of that debate was the Shin clergy,1 the largest and most centrally organized group of what the Tokugawa authorities had referred to in their antifornication temple regulation as those who were “formerly married” (yûrai saitai).2 The Tokugawas had good reason for approaching Shin organizations— particularly the Honganji branch—with some caution. Over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the leadership of Rennyo (1415–99) in particular, the Honganji organization had grown massively. Although the large Shin groups were gradually subjugated by the succession of powerful unifiers of Japan—Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu— the sheer size of their membership made them a force to be reckoned with even after Ieyasu had achieved hegemony.3 Ieyasu utilized a variety of strategies, including accommodation, alliances, and division, to control the Shin Buddhist clergy and their parishioners. To weaken the Honganji, Ieyasu exacerbated a nascent lineage dispute among the leadership. By offering land for a temple to Kyônyo (1558–1614), who had been removed 1 Throughout the book I have chosen to use the more familiar term Shin Buddhism to refer to what was commonly known as Ikkô Buddhism prior to the Meiji period. Although in 1774 a number of sects of Ikkô Buddhism petitioned the Tokugawa authorities for the right to use the name Jôdo Shinshû, the petition was rejected because of protests by members of the Jôdo denomination. The Ikkô denominations were not allowed to use the more familiar name Jôdo Shinshû until 1872. See Tamamuro Taijô (1967, 99–100). 2 Tamamuro has shown that in official surveys of the clergy only the yamabushi and the Shin clerics openly acknowledged the presence of women in their temples. See Tamamuro (1986, 3). 3 See Amstutz (1997, 21–24). E D O P E R I O D D E B A T E 37 as head of the Honganji by Hideyoshi in 1593 and was succeeded by his younger brother Jyunnyo (1577–1630), Ieyasu managed to split the organization into two factions, the Nishi and Higashi Honganji, in 1602. Kyônyo had reached a rapprochement with Ieyasu even prior to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, making his wing of the Shin denomination one of earliest Buddhist groups to forge ties with the future shogun. After the founding of the Higashi Honganji, Ieyasu and his successors Iemitsu and Ietsuna remained closely allied with the Higashi Honganji, granting the organization control of important parcels of land, including the site of Shinran’s mausoleum at Ôtani in the Higashiyama section of Kyoto. The Tokugawas remained far more circumspect toward the Nishi Honganji, led by Jyunnyo, who, after all, had been placed in power by Hideyoshi. It was perhaps a sign of this lingering suspicion that the head (monshu) of the Nishi Honganji was frequently summoned to Edo to appear before the shogun.4 Even split into two competing religious organizations, however, Shin Buddhism remained a powerful force that required careful handling by the ruling authorities. The striking absence of any hatto specifically directed toward the Shin denomination during the two most active periods of religious legislation during the seventeenth century is indicative of both the caution taken by the Tokugawas with regard to the Shin denomination and their recognition of the centralized nature of Shin’s institutional structure . Additionally, the early submission of the Shin leadership to Tokugawa hegemony and the relatively mature head-branch temple organization of the Shin denominations made direct regulation of Shin Buddhism super- fluous, at least for the first century of Tokugawa rule.5 The Tokugawas, while outlawing the lodging of women in temples as a form of fornication for clerics of other denominations, refrained from challenging those longstanding...

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