Religion in medieval Japanof the major religious institutions of their day.^44 Over the past two decades, however, a series of
scholars have argued forcefully that the holy ones were typically associated with established
temples or shrines.^45 Chōgen (1121–1206), mentioned earlier, was one of the best- known of the
fundraising holy ones (kanjin hijiri) and been described as a “reclusive monk” (tonseisō), but actu-
ally seems to have continued to be a Shingon- lineage monk throughout his life, suggesting that
his status as a hijiri was in no way incongruent with his Shingon affiliation.^46
Recent scholarship has focused on the fact that there were multiple groups of peripatetic
practitioners who combined physical mobility with practices of associating with other groups in
a variety of settings. There were, moreover, multiple terms used to refer to them (e.g., hijiri,
shōnin, jikyōsha, and, later, mokujiki, kyakusō). They were varied and yet united by the fact that
they wove paths between institutional roles and activities that brought them to local populations
around the Japanese isles. Their increasing presence, especially from the mid- thirteenth century
onward, was undoubtedly propelled by the vast increase in Buddhist lineages throughout the
Japanese isles. This included both the lineages sometimes referred to as Kamakura “New” Bud-
dhism but also those rapidly expanding groups within the established institutions—the lineages
and sub- lineages (all called ryū) of, for example, Tendai and Shingon—the numbers of which had
increased rapidly beginning in the early twelfth century.^47
A series of notable groups related to yet often distinct from the holy ones were those of the
mountain ascetics (shugenja, yamabushi), the study of which has made great strides in recent decades
partly due to archival research in established Buddhist institutions such as Daigoji.^48 Perhaps
originally possessing a connection with continental hermit traditions, these groups undertook
religious austerities (tosō) in a number of mountain ranges, especially Ōmine. By the thirteenth
century, they were acting as guides for pilgrims at prominent sacred mountains such as at Kumano
and Yoshino, and most were affiliated, in this early period, with the Tendai cloister Shōgo’in at
Onjōji just to the east of Heian- kyō. Over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
such peripatetic practitioners seem to have become much more prominent, and major sets of line-
ages developed which would be generally affiliated with Onjōji and the Shingon cloister Sanbō’in
at the monastery Daigoji as well, which was southeast of the capital.^49 Their ascetic practices were
attempts to undertake repentance and purification through pilgrimage in specific mountains,
which by at least the fourteenth century were conceived of respectively as the main mandalas of
esoteric Buddhist practice or as an embodiment of the Lotus Sutra.^50
Scholars have recognized over the past few decades that the established monasteries, the devel-
opment of new Buddhist lineages, and the related groups of itinerant practitioners helped spawn the
development of new kinds of scripture, which were referred to often as “sacred works” (shōgyō),
although there was clearly a series of related terms, such as goroku (records [of Zen masters’ teach-
ings]), used in some of the new lineages. Their scriptural status is suggested, for example, by the fact
that the sacred works of specific masters were transmitted in rites of initiation, not sutras, and the
most sacred of such works were carried on or near the master’s person and bequeathed only to his
Dharma- lineage heir. In Tendai and the Nara schools, sacred works were also written to support
the practice of lineages at monastic debates, as noted by Nagamura Makoto and, more recently, by
Asuka Sango.^51 Japanese monks’ works even on “exoteric” topics such as Buddhist logic were some-
times passed down through oral transmission (kuden), suggesting that the imperative to transmit
sacred works transmitted even distinctions between esoteric and exoteric Buddhism.^52 Epistolary
practices were particularly common among the novel lineages, and figures like the holy man Kenchi
(1226–1310) of the True Pure Land lineages carried the letters of figures like Shinran to other parts
of the Japanese isles—sometimes even compiling them into scriptural corpuses.^53
The new modes of scripture and ritual practice were also intimately related to the increasing
practice of ancestral- master veneration (soshi shinkō) within monasteries and temples throughout