M.S. Adolphson
could not control matters within Kōfukuji despite being the head of the imperial family, and the
Fujiwara chieftain was almost as futile in his attempts to deal with the unruly clergy. Similarly,
each kenmon’s assets were considered to be under the exclusive judicial rights of its patrons,
although allies and knowledge of judicial precedents were important when disputes occurred.
For nobles, financial assets consisted mainly of shōen, but could also in later times apply to toll
gates and market places. For temples and shrines, these possessions included estates as well as
branch institutions. The latter were particularly essential since they contained human resources,
land, and sometimes added spiritual prestige to the patron institution. One notable example is
Tōnomine, which despite being located in Yamato not far away from Kōfukuji and being the
effective mausoleum for Kamatari (the ancestral founder of the Fujiwara), was nevertheless a
Tendai branch. This affiliation was the result of a monk named Son’ei trained at Enryakuji, who
settled at Tōnomine and began attracting a number of students. Son’ei asked an abbot at Enryakuji
for an affiliation, to which the Fujiwara regent at the time, the well- known Michinaga, agreed
despite protests from the Kōfukuji clergy. By the late eleventh century, as competition intensi-
fied between the various elites, Tōnomine became a highly contested ground between Enryakuji
and Kōfukuji, with the latter launching several outright attacks against the Tendai branch.^41 The
appropriateness of Tōnomine’s status was debated and it remained a thorn in the side of Kōfukuji
for centuries, but what is important for the purpose of this chapter is its value as a devotional
place to the Fujiwara chieftain and as an asset of land and human resources for Enryakuji.
Kuroda’s kenmon theory was and has remained attractive to many scholars because it allows
for religious institutions to be treated as not just religious but also political entities without pre-
conceived, modern notions of a separation of state and church. From an institutional perspective,
there is evidence in favor of the theory, as the blocs tended to collaborate more than compete
with one another. In fact, disturbances were more common within each bloc—between the
various kenmon of the same kind or between families—rather than between the blocs, which
lends support to Kuroda’s notion of a shared rulership. Further evidence can be found in an ideo-
logy that proclaimed the mutual dependence of the Imperial Law and the Buddhist Law, known
as ōbō buppō sōe in contemporary records. According to this idea, the state and Buddhism were as
dependent on each other as the two wings of a bird or the two wheels of a cart.^42
There were, of course, critics of Kuroda’s ideas. First, as Taira Masayuki (b. 1951; a student of
Kuroda) noted, the three blocs were never equal in terms of either political power or, more
importantly, internal coherence. Whereas the imperial court functioned as the pinnacle of the
court bloc, and the shogunate of the warriors, there was no equivalent on the religious side.
Indeed, the lack of a clear pinnacle in the religious bloc constitutes one of the major differences
between the kenmon in Kuroda’s theory.^43 Second, seeing that temples were less unified, one
might also question whether they were as independent as members of the court and the warrior
elites. The kenmon temples served mainly the noble elites and were as such in a subservient rela-
tionship with them, though this should in no way be taken to mean that they were fully dependent
upon their patrons or somehow weak. As numerous conflicts, demonstrations, and arguments
indicate, these temples could on occasion cause enough concern to shut down the imperial court
itself.
Perhaps the most vocal critic of Kuroda’s theory was Nagahara Keiji (1922–2004), who
focused primarily on the tail end of the period. While Kuroda was clear about the beginning of
the kenmon age coinciding with Shirakawa’s insei, he was far less obvious about when it ended. A
careful reading reveals that he suggested the Ōnin War of 1466–1477 to have dealt the final blow
to this kind of collaborative rule. In doing so, he emphasized a strong tie between the estate
system and the kenmon, inasmuch as the former were finally obliterated, as local warriors came to
take control of regional areas irrespective of the old estate boundaries.^44