. kkai and the development of shingon buddhism 693
a series of legal and penal codes modeled on the Chinese system.^4 The
state ideology was a mélange of Confucianism and Buddhism, utilized
to protect the nation. It fulfilled this requirement through the perfor-
mance of rituals for the court and aristocracy. However, during the
late Nara period, the clergy’s increasing political influence prompted
Emperor Kanmu ( 737–806; r. 781–806) to transfer the capital
from Nara to Nagaoka in 784, and in 794 to Heiankyō (Kyoto).
Much of Kūkai’s written works and activities were responses to the
Nara Buddhist community, and are also indicative of his critical atti-
tude toward the ruling system and its stance regarding Buddhism. It
has been argued that the displacement of the Confucian ideology that
anchored this system was among Kūkai’s major achievements (Abé
1999). In establishing Shingon in Japan, Kūkai employed a strategy
of cooperation. He systematized the teachings he had imported from
China with existing esoteric elements, and defined a position for them
in relation to other religions and other forms of Buddhism. He also
created alliances with the clergy and court. Thus, his career was driven
by a well-tuned combination of ideological dissent from and coopera-
tion with religio-political society. Nonetheless, his personal writings
suggest perhaps less successful attempts to balance the maintenance of
his public role with a yearning to practice and study in retreat.
Kūkai was by all accounts a precocious and erudite young man. He
was born in 774^5 into the aristocratic house of Saeki, a branch of the
Ōtomo clan in Sanuki province on Shikoku. At the age of fifteen he
was taken by his maternal uncle and tutor, the Confucian scholar Ato
no Otari, to the capital to be educated; at age eighteen he was admitted
to the State College to study Chinese poetry and the Confucian clas-
sics. Unlike its Chinese equivalents, the college was an elite institution
open only to young men of prominent families, and the education
Kūkai received there was to prepare him for a prestigious bureau-
cratic government post. However, at the age of twenty-four he left
without completing his course and renounced the world to become an
(^4) On the political aspects of Nara Buddhism see Inoue 1971; Matsunaga and Mat-
sunaga 1974, 115–18; and Hardacre 2006, 277–78.
(^5) There are two theories as to the year of his birth, see Fujii 2008: 19. The day and
month are unknown. Although it is celebrated on June 15th, this date emerged long
after Kukai’s life probably to coincide with the date of Amoghavajra’s death in relation
to theories of reincarnation.