iar institutional struggle for patronage but the rise of
a novel model of religious organization, in which the
laity identifies with, and becomes, in effect, a mem-
ber of a particular Buddhist faction. The new model
would become increasingly popular during the me-
dieval period (especially in the traditions of Pure
Land, Nichiren, and SotoZen) and led to the devel-
opment of powerful national organizations that could
claim millions of adherents. This is the prime institu-
tional development that made possible the formal di-
vision of Japanese Buddhism into the denominations
of early modern and modern times.
Belief and practice
The outreach to lay believers characteristic of some of
the new movements of the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies involved not only novel institutional models but
new styles of Buddhist belief and practice. Conspicu-
ous among these is a style, sometimes termed “selec-
tive Buddhism” (senchaku bukkyo), in which the
believer is urged to exclusive faith in a particular ver-
sion of Buddhist teaching and exclusive commitment
to a particular form of spiritual practice. So, for ex-
ample, preachers of the Pure Land movement called
for abandonment of the spiritual exercises of the bod-
hisattva path in favor of faith in the vow of the Bud-
dha Amida to take his devotees into his Western Pure
Land. Similarly, followers of the Tendai reformer
Nichiren sharply criticized other forms of Buddhism
and taught exclusive resort to the Lotus Sutraand its
revelation of the ongoing ministry of the Buddha
S ́akyamuni. In both these movements, the new selec-
tive style was justified in part by the doctrine that Bud-
dhist history had entered its “final age” (mappo), a
period of spiritual decline during which it was no
longer possible to achieve buddhahood through the
traditional practices of the monastic community.
This new religious style of popular outreach, lay or-
ganization, and sectarian faith is often said to consti-
tute a “reformation” of Japanese Buddhism, through
which the religion emerged from the confines of the
cloister into the lives of ordinary people. Yet this ac-
count, based heavily on a model provided by the Pure
Land tradition (and influenced in modern times by
Western religious historiography), hardly does justice
to the full range of Buddhism in the late Heian and
Kamakura periods. It does not, for example, ade-
quately account for one of the most conspicuous de-
velopments of the age: the renewed emphasis within
the Buddhist establishment on monastic discipline and
the founding of major centers of Chinese-style monas-
tic practice within the new Zen movement. And it tells
us little about the religious lives of the bulk of Bud-
dhists, who neither entered the monasteries nor joined
the new movements. Hence, historians of the period
warn against a narrow focus on the novel teachings of
the new Kamakura movements, often preferring to see
them against the background of an older, broader re-
ligious style of thought and practice that permeated the
medieval Buddhist world—a style we may loosely call
mikkyo,or “esoteric teachings.”
The esoteric style developed initially within the
schools of Tendai and Shingon but spread widely dur-
ing the Heian period to influence all forms of Japan-
ese Buddhism. This style was built on a common
MAHAYANAvision of universal buddhahood—univer-
sal both in the metaphysical sense that the “dharma
body” of the buddha was present in all things and all
people, and in the soteriological sense that all people
could themselves become buddhas through the real-
ization of this presence. Given such a vision—what
scholars sometimes call ORIGINAL ENLIGHTENMENTJAPANMonks of Tofukuji, Kyoto, going out to beg for alms, 1992. © Don
Farber 2003. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.