. taimitsu 749
The scant scholarly attention paid so far to Taimitsu in both Japa-
nese and Western scholarship seems to me due to the specific sectarian
context in which the history of Japanese tantrism has been narrated.^7
Two factors in particular have affected the study of Taimitsu. The
first has to do with the emphasis placed on the founder of a school.
Saichō, the founder of Tendai, was instrumental in the establishment
of esoteric Buddhism in Japan, but his role as a tantric thinker and the
extent of his ritual knowledge was negligible when compared to that of
his “rival” Kūkai. Nor did he become the object of a devotional cult at
as popular a level as Kūkai did.^8 On the other hand, the three Heian-
period scholiasts who shaped Taimitsu each developed a different line
of esoteric thought, and thus none of them alone can be said to rep-
resent the entirety of Taimitsu. Similarly, a hierarchical institutional
approach has hindered the importance of figures such as Annen, argu-
ably the most important esoteric thinker of the Heian period, who,
however, never rose to the position of zasu.
The second factor is related to the fact that, contrary to Shingon,
Taimitsu developed in an institutional context that was also inter-
ested in the exoteric doctrinal and liturgical practices inherited from
Chinese Tiantai. The intellectual discourse of Tendai scholiasts in the
Tokugawa period privileged the latter to the disadvantage of esoteric
Buddhism, even though esoteric practice continued to account for
most of the activity of Tendai temples. This imbalance was exasperated
by the modern construction of Buddhism, with its emphasis on the
philosophical rather than ritual aspects of Buddhism. Much twentieth-
century scholarship viewed the distinctive strength of Tendai as based
in Chinese Tiantai philosophy and thus devoted study to that tradi-
tion, rather than esoteric thought.
The Taimitsu Corpus
The peculiar position held by Taimitsu within its own school is reflected
by the unsystematic way the Taimitsu literary corpus has been made
(^7) A plea for the recognition of Taimitsu’s place in Japanese Buddhist history vis-à-
vis Shingon was first made by Stanley Weinstein in a review article published in the
1970s (Weinstein 1974), but it has remained largely unresolved. Although he focused
his argument on Saichō, Weinstein alerted readers to the partisan interpretations of
Kūkai’s contribution and the neglect of Taimitsu. On the relation between Kūkai and
Saichō, see Groner 1984a, 1984b; Abé 1995.
(^8) Indeed, only Ennin and Ryōgen among Tendai clerics seem to have acquired
some popularity, though it seems to have been circumscribed by geographical areas.
The lore of Ennin’s extraordinary deeds, for instance, circulated in northern Japan.