67. DHARMA PRINCE SHUKAKU AND THE ESOTERIC
BUDDHIST CULTURE OF SACRED WORKS SHŌGYŌ IN
MEDIEVAL JAPAN
Brian O. RuppertShukaku Hosshinnō (1150–1202), pronounced Shūkaku
at Ninnaji, the second son of cloistered sovereign Go-Shirakawa
(r. 1155–1158), was one of the most influential masters in the history
of Shingon lineages. Along with the Tendai abbot Jien (1155–1225),
Shukaku broadly influenced not only the temple-complex establish-
ment of his time but also the aristocratic lineages in the arts. However,
until recently, modern and contemporary scholars have all but ignored
him in the larger development of Japanese Shingon. As with such fig-
ures as Ninnaji’s Saisen (1025–1115), editor of Kūkai’s works
and the first great commentator on Kūkai’s oeuvre, who remains
largely ignored by academia throughout the world, Shukaku’s remark-
able activity and clear influence in the course of medieval and early
modern Shingon ritual and intellectual practice has been until recently
a largely untold—and unstudied—story.
The literary scholar Wada Hidematsu, in his classic study of impe-
rial house manuscripts, included numerous works by or attributed to
Shukaku Hosshinnō that outnumbered those included for any other
imperial figure in Japanese history (Wada 1933, 566–621). Yet surpris-
ingly, in his massive study of the history of Japanese Buddhism, Tsuji
Zennosuke seems not to have even mentioned Shukaku (Tsuji 1969–
1970).^1 For his part, the Shingon scholar Kushida Ryōkō devoted only
sparse attention to Shukaku, although he did take note of Shukaku’s
central position in the development of the royal Ninnaji Go-ryū
ritual lineage, his ritual ability, his encyclopedic knowledge, and the
dissemination of his lineage to Shōmyōji (“Kanazawa Bunko”)
in the Kantō region (Kushida 1979, 418–19, 570–73).
The fact that Shukaku did not establish a distinct school (shūha) or
feature as a prominent figure in one of the extant historical tales of
(^1) There are no sections concerning Shukaku, and I have yet to find mention of his
name in Tsuji’s ten-volume study.