. tachikawa-ry 807
probably of the Sanbōin-ryū tradition, without any peculiar features,
and no traces of sexual teachings are found in these documents.^3
This is practically all we can know for certain about the real
Tachikawa-ryū: it was a normal and minor Shingon lineage, with
some great names in its blood lineage. But it should be added that
from the thirteenth century onward the name Tachikawa-ryū seems
to have been regarded with some suspicion. A manuscript, of which
the original seems to date to the mid-thirteenth century (copied by
Kenna [1261–1338] of Shōmyōji), notes that the Tachikawa-ryū
is to be “half trusted, half distrusted” (hanshin han-fushin
) (Kushida 1964, 342). A more extreme form of this distrustful
attitude can be found in the appendix to the text of the Juhō-yōjin
shū composed by Shinjō (also called Seiganbō ), a monk
of Echizen, in 1268. The oldest manuscript of this text, dated 1313,
is preserved in Kōzanji (this manuscript is not yet entirely
revealed; see Sueki 2007 and 2008), and it is itself a copy of a manu-
script by a certain Ekai dated 1281. Ekai added an appendix to
the Juhō-yōjin shū, in which he quotes a work entitled Haja kenshō shū
(Collection for Refuting the Perverse and Manifesting the
Correct). He writes:
The Collection for Refuting the Perverse and Manifesting the Correct
says the following.
[Question:] Is the tradition which claims that this teaching was trans-
mitted from the lineage of the master Rennen a true one?
[Answer:] That master was the disciple of deputy archbishop Shōkaku
named Ninkan (later, he changed [his name] to Rennen;
he was exiled to Izu); it is said that this person originally began [this
teaching]. According to another opinion, Rennen’s disciple Kenren
Shōnin (who resided in Tachikawa, in Bushū [that is, the region
of Musashi]) was the original source (ranshō [of this teaching]).
(Sueki 2007, 7a)All we can know about the Haja kenshō shū is that it existed in 1281;
its author remains unknown. The manuscript was no doubt known by
Yūkai, and it was certainly the origin of all the confusion about the
origins of the Tachikawa-ryū after the fourteenth century.
(^3) See Kushida 1964, 344–62, esp. 347; Kōda 1981, esp. 67b; and Köck 2000. Many
of these manuscripts are edited in the ninth volume of the Kanazawa bunko komonjo
series, the Butsuji hen ge (see Kanazawa bunko, ed.
1956); and many of these edited texts were converted into yomikudashi by Shibata
Kenryū and are available online at http://www.ab.auone-net.jp/~badra20/.