The eighth-century sovereign Shomu combined a
deep faith in Buddhism with an effort to incorporate
the faith into his effort to undergird his authority. Fol-
lowing several years of natural disasters and pestilence,
while queen Kogoadministered a new and extremely
active sutra-copying bureau, Shomu hatched a plan to
establish a national system of provincial temples and
nunneries (kokubunji). He surprisingly described him-
self at the dedication of the Great Buddha at Todaiji
in Nara as a “slave” of the Three Jewels (a reference to
Buddha, his teachings, and his community).
Although the period after Shomu was infamous for
the undue influence of clerics over the ruler, whatever
qualms the family and court had vis-à-vis the Bud-
dhists were no longer evident by the early ninth cen-
tury, when sovereigns balanced support of the Nara
schools with that of the new Tendai and Shingon
schools. From the 830s on, Buddhist rites formed an
increasingly large role in the ritual life of the royal fam-
ily and court: The Shingon monk KUKAIsuccessfully
petitioned for the inauguration of the annual esoteric
Latter Seven-Day Rite (go-shichinichi mishiho), to be
conducted from January 8 through January 14, simul-
taneously with the long-established exoteric Misai’e
(Gosai’e) rite for the welfare of ruler and realm, and
for the construction of the palace chapel, Shingon’in
in Kyoto.
Increasing domination of the royal family by the
northern Fujiwaras from the late ninth century on
was also marked by an effort to promote the ruler’s
authority in religious terms. For example, the in-
crease in the number and volume of accession rites
performatively represented the ruler’s sanctity and
grace on a grand scale. As part of this effort, the
court, in the name of the acceding ruler, sponsored
the Great Treasures Offering (ichidai ichido daijinpo
hobei) and the Buddha Relics Offering (ichidai ichido
busshari hoken), both of which were made to native
shrines throughout the realm. The offering of re-
mains of the Buddha (housed in small STUPAS) to
non-Buddhist religious institutions and local deities
(kami), while seemingly odd, was focused especially
on Usa Hachimangu shrine in Kyushu, where the
local gods had been venerated since at least the early
ninth century as both the spirit of the legendary
ancient ruler Ojin (ca. early fifth century) and the
bodhisattva HACHIMAN. Meanwhile, tenno were
sometimes cremated in Buddhist ceremonies, and the
royal family increasingly sponsored Buddhist masses
to memorialize their dead.
Royal culture and Buddhism
The retired ruler Uda (867–931) became the first re-
tired tennoto become a monk (in), entering the Shin-
gon order at Ninnaji Monastery in Kyoto and receiving
the denbokanjoinitiation as acarya (ajari) there. Thus
Uda set the precedent not only for royal relatives to of-
ten head Ninnaji but for princes to serve regularly as
abbots of the so-called O’muro royal-temple com-
pound (monzeki) in Ninnaji beginning in the late
eleventh century, and, from the twelfth century on, ef-
fectively ruling over the entire Buddhist community.
(Cloistered rulers also tended to have close ties with
the Tendai temples Onjoji and the monzekiShoren’in,
both near Kyoto.)At the same time, Uda also established the pattern
for a former tennoto engage in politics while donning
clerical robes. From the late eleventh century on, re-
tired sovereigns (insei) increasingly replaced the Fuji-
waras as rulers, while symbolically demonstrating
their religiosity by elaborating on precedents set by
figures such as Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027) and
those around him. Thus, retired tenno ShirakawaJAPANESEROYALFAMILY ANDBUDDHISMPrince Shotoku (574–622), great Japanese patron of Buddhism,
between two women of the court.