896 sarah fremerman aptilon
Muromachi period (1392–1573), salvation from the Blood Pool
Hell (chi no ike jigoku ) that was believed to await women
after death.9
Some of the earliest of these feminine associations occurred within
the Ono lineage, which takes its name from the area of southeastern
Kyōto where it flourished. This was where the Ono patriarch Nin-
gai (951–1046) established Ono’s main temple, Mandaraji
(later Zuishin’in ) in 991, not far from where its legend-
ary founder Shōbō (832–909) established the Daigoji.^10
Beginning with Shōbō’s mysterious encounter with Nyoirin on Mt.
Kasatori , the future site of Daigoji, the Ono branch of Shin-
gon did much to promote Nyoirin’s early career in Japan. Among
the earliest records of Shingon worship of Nyoirin are the writings
of the palace monk Shunnyū (890–953), grandson of Sugawara
no Michizane (845–903). Shunnyū later retired to Ishiya-
madera due to illness and devoted himself to the worship of
Nyoirin Kannon there.
Ono monks also established an important place for Nyoirin in
court-sponsored rituals. From the Heian period onward Japanese
sovereigns used possession of relics to strengthen their legitimacy in
times of contested authority, and Kūkai (774–835) identified
relics as cintāmaṇi and established several major Shingon rituals in
which they reaffirmed and regenerated the power of the sovereign (see
(574–622) (who was also the founder of the Rokkakudō , the Kyōto tem-
ple where Shinran was on retreat when he had his dream about Kannon). 9
The teaching of the Blood Pool Hell is found in the Foshuo dacang zhengjiao
xiepen jing ( Bussetsu daizō shōkyō ketsubon kyō), BZ 87, 4:
2999; for a study of this sūtra, see Takemi 1983, 229–46. For a study of the etoki bikuni
and other itinerant Kumano nuns who spread the visual teaching of Nyoirin as savior
from this hell, see Ruch 2002, 537–80. See also Kodate 1991, 667–90. Despite Nyoirin’s
importance in both clerical and lay circles in medieval Japan, she never attained the
widespread popular devotion that other forms of Kannon received during that time.
She does not appear, for example, in medieval tale collections such as the Hokke genki
or the Konjaku monogatari shū (though she does appear in the
fourteenth-century 10 Shintōshū , a topic for future research).
While the other major branch of Shingon, the Hirosawa , drew most of its
clergy from aristocratic families and tended to focus more on the formal details of
ritual practice, Ono priests often came from humbler families, and Ono ritual was
more concerned with cultivating mystical experience and supernatural powers (see
Kasahara 2001, 109–111). For an illuminating example of Nyoirin worship in Ono
ritual, see Sharf 2001, 157–66. For a full treatment of Sanbōin lineage rituals, see Takai
Kankai 1953.