B. Ruppert
4 Students of medieval primary religious sources should avail themselves of the searchable databases
online, including the Taisho canon (http://21dzk.l.u- tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/), a series of collections (includ-
ing Dainihon shiryō, Kamakura ibun, Dainihon komonjo, and aristocrats’ diaries) on the Historiographical
Institute website (wwwap.hi.u- tokyo.ac.jp/ships/db.html), the National museum of Japanese Literature
(www.nijl.ac.jp/pages/database/), and the National Diet Library (http://kindai.ndl.go.jp/). Sueki
Fumihiko has claimed that the ongoing and comprehensive study of these manuscript collections over
the last twenty to thirty years has enabled scholars to transcend the tendency to cherry- pick medieval
works and to work collaboratively to incorporate the insights of a broad range of disciplines, and to
increasingly interact with scholars from other countries and recognize the influence of continental Asia
on medieval Japan. See Sueki, “Sōron: chūsei no nihon shisō,” 17–18.
5 See Brian Ruppert, “Ejū, Kanjin, Shingon ‘Ruijū’ and the Early Medieval Japanese Aristocracy,”
171–177; Matsuzono Hitoshi, “Shukaku Hosshinnō to nikki: chūsei zenki no jike no nikki no rikai no
tame ni.” See also Kamikawa Michio, Nihon chūsei bukkyō keiseishi ron, 302–312.
6 Abe Yasurō, Chūsei Nihon no shūkyō tekusuto taikei, 186; Kamikawa, Nihon chūsei bukkyō to higashi ajia
sekai, 78.
7 Satō Hiroo, “Wrathful Deities and Saving Deities”; and Kishōmon no seishinshi: chūsei sekai no kami to
hotoke, esp. 14–19.
8 The seminal beginnings of such a development could be seen, in part, in the marked prominence of
Shingon abbots at the “non”-Shingon Tōdaiji temple from the tenth century onward. See Nagamura
Makoto, Chūsei Tōdaiji no soshiki to keiei, 342.
9 See Kuroda Toshio, “The Development of the Kenmitsu System as Japan’s Medieval Orthodoxy”; Taira
Masayuki, the heir to Kuroda’s theory, has questioned whether the supposition of the centrality of eso-
teric Buddhism in “Kuroda Toshio and the Kenmitsu Taisei Theory.” Additionally, see Sueki Fumihiko,
“A Reexamination of the Kenmitsu Taisei Theory” and Kamakura bukkyō keisei ron, and Jacqueline I.
Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Japanese Buddhism. While the term Kenmitsu (eso-
exoteric) dates to the medieval period, it was in modern scholarship that the term came to be used to
refer to the temples connected with the establishment families and related institutions, the power- bloc
system (kenmon taisei).
10 See “Kamakura mikkyō,” in Kanagawa kenritsu Kanazawa bunko, Kamakura mikkyō: shōgungoji no tera
to sō. See also Taira Masayuki, “Kamakura ni okeru kenmitsu Bukkyō no tenkai.”
11 “Kamakura mikkyō,” ibid., 7–8. This discussion of the shogunate’s incorporation of Kenmitsu monks
is particularly indebted to this article.
12 Concerning Jōgō, see Taira Masayuki, “Jōgō to Kamakura bakufu.”
13 Mikael Bauer, “Monastic Lineages and Ritual Participation: A Proposed Revision of Kuroda Toshio’s
Kenmitsui Taisei.” I would just note that Kuroda included an extensive discussion of the monks’ assem-
blies and organization in the monasteries and implicitly held a position close to that of Bauer.
14 Nenbutsu- only refers to exclusive devotion to the practice of calling upon the Pure Land Buddha Amida
(Skt. Amitābha), typically undertaken in the belief that the world had entered the Final Age of the
Dharma (mappō), a notion common throughout East Asia. Hōnen was the first to openly promote this
practice on Mount Hiei, and it was broadly criticized by the authorities there because Hiei featured a
catholic approach to the Buddhist path.
15 See Matsuo Kenji, A History of Japanese Buddhism. Matsuo’s effort to create a broad- ranging theory based
on this observation, to support the notion that Kamakura New Buddhists were major historical actors
in the early medieval era has, however, had little impact on the larger field.
16 For a recent study reflecting the ongoing impact of Kenmitsu institutions, see Thomas Conlan, From
Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth- Century Japan.
17 Taira, Nihon chūsei no shakai to bukkyō. For a discussion taking the same general view as Taira’s, see
Yoshida Kazuhiko, “Nihon bukkyōshi no jiki kubun.” See also Ōtsuka Norihiro, “Mondai no shozai to
honcho no kōsei.”
18 Concerning his devotion to Jizō, see Hank Glassman, The Face of Jizō: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese
Buddhism, 72.
19 See Sueki Fumihiko. “Yōsai shū sōsetsu.”
20 For a discussion of the “great fundraiser post” see Yoshikawa Satoshi et al., “Tōdaiji daikanjin monjo
shū no kenkyū.”
21 See Harada Masatoshi, “Kujō Michi’ie no Tōfukuji to Enni.”
22 Concerning Keizan, see Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism, 47–70;
with regard to Nōnin and Daruma- shū, see Bernard Faure, “The Daruma- shū, Dōgen, and Sōtō Zen.”