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commissioned mandalas at Longxingsi. The tantric material
that these two scholar-monks brought back to Japan, in terms of scrip-
tural texts, ritual knowledge, and material culture, matched in both
quantity and quality that acquired by Kūkai^12 and opened the door to
a new interpretation of tantric Buddhism.
Characteristics of Taimitsu Doctrine
The Tendai system of tantric Buddhism is often evaluated vis-à-vis
Shingon, with the assumption that the latter constitutes the “orthodox”
form of Japanese tantrism. This assessment may be justified by the his-
torical importance of Kūkai’s speculation, to which Taimitsu thinkers
referred and responded. Yet the specificity of the Chinese transmis-
sions received by Ennin and Enchin, and the particular hermeneutical
context in which they operated, made it possible for Tendai scholi-
asts to produce a discrete contribution to the history of East Asian
tantrism. Although Ennin, Enchin, and their successors presented dif-
ferent interpretations of the tantric discourse, it is possible to identify
two main concerns that underlined classic Taimitsu speculation and
praxis: the reformulation of the meaning of “esoteric,” and the devel-
opment of a third hermeneutical category that complements the two
mandalic realities of Womb and Diamond (sanbu ).
The taxonomic question: Taimitsu scholiasts needed to devise strate-
gies that would make meaningful the ideal of identity of perfect teach-
ings (i.e., the continental interpretation based primarily on the Lotus
Sūtra) and esoteric teachings (enmitsu itchi ) put forward
by Saichō. In the scholiastic context of Sino-Japanese Buddhism, this
meant placing esoteric teachings within the Tiantai hermeneutical
system, which originally did not contain them, as the major esoteric
sūtras had not yet been introduced in China when this taxonomy was
devised.
The so-called “Chinese decisions” (Tōketsu ) are the first docu-
ment of this concern. These are questions presented by Tendai monks
to the Chinese Tiantai establishment to receive instructions on how to
deal with issues left unresolved by Saichō. Several focused on the clas-
sificatory evaluation of esoteric teachings, demonstrating the difficulty
(^12) The catalogues of imported materials supply evidence of this. See, for instance,
Ennin’s Nittō shingū shōgyō mokuroku and the overview of Heian-
period catalogues in Annen’s Hakke hiroku.