A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

BUDDHIST VIOLENCE

The decline of the Muromachi Bakufu's authority encouraged the monks as well as the samurai to become a law to themselves. Incidental references have already been made to this subject, but the religious commotions of the Sengoku period invite special attention. The Buddhists of the Shin sect, founded by Shinran Shonin (1184-1268), which had for headquarters the great temple Hongwan-ji in Kyoto, were from the outset hostile to the monks of Enryaku-ji. Religious doctrine was not so much concerned in this feud as rivalry. Shinran had been educated in the Tendai tenets at Enryaku-ji. Therefore, from the latter's point of view he was a renegade, and while vehemently attacking the creed of his youth, he had acquired power and influence that placed the Hongwan-ji almost on a level with the great Hiei-zan. In the days of Kenju, popularly called Rennyo Shonin (1415-1479), seventh in descent from the founder, Shinran, the Ikko—by which name the Shin sect was known—developed conspicuous strength. Kenju possessed extraordinary eloquence. Extracts from his sermons were printed on an amulet and distributed among worshippers, who grew so numerous and so zealous that the wealth of the sect became enormous, and its leaders did not hesitate to provide themselves with an armed following. Finally the monks of Hiei-zan swept down on Hongwan-ji, applied the torch to the great temple, and compelled the abbot, Kenju, to fly for his life.

It is significant of the time that this outrage received no punishment. Kenju escaped through Omi to Echizen, where the high constable, an Asakura, combining with the high constable, a Togashi, of the neighbouring province of Kaga, erected a temple for the fugitive abbot, whose favour was well worth courting. The Ikko-shu, however, had its own internal dissensions. In the province of Kaga, a sub-sect, the Takata, endeavoured to oust the Hongwan disciples, and rising in their might, attacked (1488) the high constable; compelled him to flee; drove out their Takata rivals; invaded Etchu; raided Noto, routing the forces of the high constable, Hatakeyama Yoshizumi; seized the three provinces—Kaga, Noto, and Etchu—and attempted to take possession of Echizen. This wholesale campaign was spoken of as the Ikko-ikki (revolt of Ikko). A few years later, the Shin believers in Echizen joined these revolters, and marched through the province, looting and burning wherever they passed. No measure of secular warfare had been more ruthless than were the ways of these monks. The high constable, Asakura Norikage, now took the field, and after fierce fighting, drove back the fanatics, destroyed their temples, and expelled their priests.

This was only one of several similar commotions. So turbulent did the monks show themselves under the influence of Shin-shu teachers that the Uesugi of Echigo, the Hojo of Izu, and other great daimyo interdicted the propagandism of that form of Buddhism altogether. The most presumptuous insurrection of all stands to the credit of the Osaka priests. A great temple had been erected there to replace the Hongwan-ji of Kyoto, and in, 1529, its lord-abbot, Kokyo, entered Kaga, calling himself the "son of heaven" (Emperor) and assigning to his steward, Shimoma Yorihide, the title of shogun. This was called the "great revolt" (dai-ikki), and the movement of opposition provoked by it was termed the "small revolt" (sho-ikki). Again recourse was had to the most cruel methods. Men's houses were robbed and burned simply because their inmates stood aloof from the insurrection. Just at that time the septs of Hosokawa and Miyoshi were engaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. Kokyo threw in his lot with Hosokawa Harumoto, and, at the head of fifty thousand troops, attacked and killed Miyoshi Motonaga. Very soon, however, the Hosokawa chief fell out with his cassocked allies. But he did not venture to take the field against them single handed. The priests of the twenty-one Nichiren temples in Kyoto, old enemies of the Ikko, were incited to attack the Hongwan-ji in Osaka. This is known in history as the Hokke-ikki, Hokke-shu being the name of the Nichiren sect. Hiei-zan was involved in the attack, but the warlike monks of Enryaku-ji replied by pouring down into the capital, burning the twenty-one temples of the Nichiren and butchering three thousand of their priests. Such were the ways of the Buddhists in the Sengoku period.

THE KWANTO

During the Sengoku period (1490-1600) the Japanese empire may be compared to a seething cauldron, the bubbles that unceasingly rose to the surface disappearing almost as soon as they emerged, or uniting into groups with more or less semblance of permanence. To follow in detail these superficial changes would be a task equally interminable and fruitless. They will therefore be traced here in the merest outline, except in cases where large results or national effects are concerned. The group of eight provinces called collectively Kwanto first claims attention as the region where all the great captains and statesmen of the age had their origin and found their chief sphere of action. It has been seen that the fifth Ashikaga kwanryo, Shigeuji, driven out of Kamakura, took refuge at Koga in Shimotsuke; that he was thenceforth known as Koga Kubo; that the Muromachi shogun, Yoshimasa, then sent his younger brother, Masatomo, to rule in the Kwanto; that he established his headquarters at Horigoe in Izu, and that he was officially termed Horigoe Gosho. His chief retainers were the two Uesugi families—distinguished as Ogigayatsu Uesugi and Yamanouchi Uesugi, after the names of the palaces where their mansions were situated—both of whom held the office of kwanryo hereditarily.

These Uesugi families soon engaged in hostile rivalry, and the Ogigayatsu branch, being allied with Ota Dokwan, the founder of Yedo Castle, gained the upper hand, until the assassination of Dokwan, when the Yamanouchi became powerful. It was at this time—close of the fifteenth century—that there occurred in the Horigoe house one of those succession quarrels so common since the Onin era. Ashikaga Masatomo, seeking to disinherit his eldest son, Chachamaru, in favour of his second son, Yoshimichi, was killed by the former, the latter taking refuge with the Imagawa family in Suruga, by whom he was escorted to the capital, where he became the Muromachi shogun under the name of Yoshizumi. Parricides and fratricides were too common in that disturbed age for Chachamaru's crime to cause any moral commotion. But it chanced that among the rear vassals of the Imagawa there was one, Nagauji, who, during many years, had harboured designs of large ambition. Seizing the occasion offered by Chachamaru's crime, he constituted himself Masatomo's avenger, and marching into Izu, destroyed the Horigoe mansion, and killed Chachamaru. Then (1491) Nagauji quietly took possession of the province of Izu, building for himself a castle at Hojo. He had no legal authority of any kind for the act, neither command from the Throne nor commission from the shogun.

ENGRAVING: HOJO SOUN

It was an act of unqualified usurpation. Yet its perpetrator showed that he had carefully studied all the essentials of stable government—careful selection of official instruments; strict administration of justice; benevolent treatment of the people, and the practice of frugality. Being descended from the Taira of Ise and having occupied the domains long held by the Hojo, he adopted the uji name of "Hojo," and having extended his conquests to Sagami province, built a strong castle at Odawara. He is often spoken of as Soun, the name he adopted in taking the tonsure, which step did not in any degree interfere with his secular activities. A profoundly skilled tactician, he never met with a military reverse, and his fame attracted adherents from many provinces. His instructions to his son Ujitsuna were characteristic. Side by side with an injunction to hold himself in perpetual readiness for establishing the Hojo sway over the whole of the Kwanto, as soon as the growing debility of the Uesugi family offered favourable opportunity, stood a series of rules elementary almost to affectation: to believe in the Kami; to rise early in the morning; to go to bed while the night is still young, and other counsels of cognate simplicity formed the ethical thesaurus of a philosopher wise enough to formulate the astute maxim that a ruler, in choosing his instruments, must remember that they, too, choose him.

Ujitsuna proved himself a worthy son of Soun, but much had still to be accomplished before the Kwanto was fully won. Among the eight provinces, two, Awa and Kazusa, which looked across the sea to Odawara, were under the firm sway of the Satomi family—one of the "eight generals" of the Kwanto—and not until 1538 could the Hojo chief find an opportunity to crush this strong sept. The fruits of his victory had hardly been gathered when death overtook him, in 1543. His sword descended, however, to a still greater leader, his son Ujiyasu, who pushed westward into Suruga; stood opposed to Kai in the north, and threatened the Uesugi in the east. The two branches of the Uesugi had joined hands in the presence of the Hojo menace, and a powerful league including the Imagawa and the Ashikaga of Koga, had been formed to attack the Hojo. So long did they hesitate in view of the might of Odawara, that the expression "Odawara-hyogi" passed into the language as a synonym for reluctance; and when at length they moved to the attack with eighty thousand men, Hojo Ujiyasu, at the head of a mere fraction of that number, inflicted a defeat which settled the supremacy of the Kwanto.