The focus now shifts to the capital’s immediate surroundings. There, during the medieval era, influential sectarian temples and shrines became the nuclei of large, diverse, and staunchly autonomous quasi-urban communities. In similar fashion, temple-palace complexes built by retired emperors catalyzed the formation of exurban microcities. These kenmon-centered communities are archetypes of the kind
Of nodal urban development indicative of the rise of private power. At the core of each was a nucleating kenmon that, while deriving its underlying legitimacy from its ties to the statutory state, exercised its most substantial influence through the control of vast private wealth, strong ties of personal clientage, and, in some cases, the ability to project military force. People and resources clustered around each, forming communities with discrete identities and corporate benefits.
It is of profound significance that the development nodes discussed in this section were universally located outside the capital’s formal boundaries. The original taboo that excluded religious institutions from Heian-kyo was only part of the equation. Throughout the premodern age, there remained a clear and consistent distinction between the capital’s “inside” and “outside” that impacted a broad range of building and behavior patterns. For its complexity and interrelationship to so many other phenomena, a full explanation of this particular topic must wait until the next chapter.
Temple Towns on the Outskirts
The decision to abandon the capital at Heijo was partly motivated by Emperor Kanmu’s desire to separate the state from the influence of the early Buddhist sects. The polity had become infused by sectarian intervention, and the city itself was saturated with temples large and small. In contrast, Heian-kyo had no temples except for Toji and Saiji, the two official state institutions, both of which originally had no sectarian affiliation. The precise nature of the temple/shrine taboo is not known; we have no primary sources that explain it in any detail. Circumstantial evidence suggests, however, that it applied only to the area within the capital’s formal boundaries and not the surrounding fields and hills. The founding of Heian-kyo exerted a strong gravitational pull on religious institutions seeking to be close, geographically and politically, to the center of national power. As we explore these institutions, it should be made clear from the outset that in the Kyoto basin, temples were generally much larger, richer, and in many cases the institutional superiors of their shrine counterparts.43 As a result, they receive more attention in the narrative that follows. Throughout Kyoto’s history, there was a steady stream of temple and shrine construction in the areas surrounding the city. In retrospect, however, the establishment of substantial religious institutions prior to about 1400
Took place in three great waves. The first began during Kanmu’s reign and occurred very much with the emperor’s blessing and support. He sponsored the travels and studies of Saicho and Kukai, two monks who, respectively, founded the esoteric sects of Tendai and Shingon, perhaps two of the most influential schools of the Heian period. In 788, Saicho (767-822) established the temple of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei, the highest peak surrounding the Uta basin, where Heian-kyo would be built six years later (see Figure 3.8). Enryakuji’s fortuitous northeastern location, the direction in which malevolent deities reside, and Saicho’s close relationship with Kanmu might have affected the decision about where Heian-kyo was located. Kukai (774-835) built his headquarters on Mount Koya, closer to the former capital of Heijo, but later created a foothold in Heian-kyo by converting the official state temple of Toji to Shingon in 823. Toji and Enryakuji were of matchless importance to the premodern history of the capital. Both institutions had a profound and long-lasting impact on politics, economic matters, and eventually, as armed and fortified compounds, conflict.
In the long run, Shingon was to enjoy stronger ties to the court and its members, but it was Enryakuji whose presence was most palpable in the capital region. Dozens of Enryakuji-affiliated subtemples and shrines surrounded the city, standing with particular density along the eastern hills of Higashiyama. Many, called shukubo, served as sectarian outposts and bases for charismatic monks who received patronage from the capital elite.44 Others, called monzeki, functioned as destinations for members of the imperial family or other high aristocracy seeking to escape capital politics while remaining politically relevant and financially well endowed. The great Gion Shrine, home of the annual Gion Festival, was also under Enryakuji’s institutional control.45 All played a role in extending the influence of the Enryakuji establishment, which deftly blended its official status, vast wealth, private ties to the elite, and its command of a substantial militia into a virtually irresistible lobbying force.
A second wave of temple construction began in the late ninth century with the meteoric rise of the Amida movement of Pure Land Buddhism. Concerned with individual salvation at a time when many considered the world in a state of irrevocable spiritual decline (mappo), Pure Land thought generated broad interest among the capital elite just as many began constructing private retreat palaces outside the city.46 While these same individuals often maintained discrete, nonsectarian
Oratories on the grounds of their urban residences, many saw the creation of exurban retreats as an opportunity to construct more substantial religious facilities. And true to the zeitgeist, most of these were inspired by Amida thought and would eventually become part of the emerging Pure Land establishment. The result of this trend was the creation of many of Kyoto’s largest and most opulent temples, including Byodoin, Jodoji, Kurodani, Kiyomizu, and Chion’in. Many still exist today, and their concentration in the Higashiyama Hills east of Kyoto makes that area one of the densest conglomerations of Buddhist temples in the world.
From about the thirteenth century, Pure Land temples began receiving smaller yet vastly more numerous financial contributions from commoners who flocked to temples as pilgrims. Besides religious fervor, many were drawn by pure spectacle. Visiting a temple or shrine to worship amidst grand halls and towering pagodas, sonorous bells and chanting monks, gilded icons, and the scent of incense enabled commoners to see and, to a limited extent, take part in a world of grace and refinement unlike anything available to them in the city.
The third religious wave that resulted in a spate of temple construction took place in the mid-thirteenth century with the patronage of Zen Buddhism, primarily by warrior elites. The flourishing of Zen inspired the construction of dozens of temples, mostly located in the metropolitan centers of Kyoto and Kamakura. The most famous of these built near Kyoto include Kenninji, Nanzenji, and later Tenryuji.
3.8. Map of temples, temple-towns, and exurban districts outside Kyoto.
For the location of TenryGji, see Figure 3.11.
From its adoption in the sixth century, Buddhism in Japan was tied on a fundamental level to sacerdotal imperial rule, elite pageantry, and the functioning of the statutory state.47 Despite dramatic institutional changes, both to the Buddhist establishment and to the state itself, this cardinal connection between church and state persisted throughout Heian and beyond. The building of temples, their formal recognition, and the number of priests ordained annually were all matters of close court oversight. Monks and priests were expected to perform rites and rituals at the Imperial Palace and other public venues that served to protect the state and the body of the emperor as well as legitimize the enlightened rule of the imperial government. Competition among doctrinal persuasions—what can be called “sects” only in hindsight— for monopolies over certain state rituals was fierce, sometimes violent. Economic incentives were one motivation; for their service to the state, religious institutions were granted shoen estates from which they could
Draw taxes. Prestige, however, was just as valuable. Institutions and eminent priests with the highest public profiles—meaning formal ranks and titles—were the first to receive private patronage, which could far outweigh ties to the state in terms of long-term rewards. Members of the imperial family, the aristocracy, and l ater elite warriors lavished upon them gifts of cash, precious heirlooms, animals, and even greater tracts of land. They might sponsor the construction of temples and subtemples, the overseas study of promising novices, and the commissioning or purchase of sutras and icons. Vast sums were given to institutions for their performance of certain annual observances, while special occasions such as funerals, exorcisms, and prayers for the sick commanded even greater recompense.
Temples and shrines were, in principle, extraterritorial, meaning they enjoyed exemption from taxation and their grounds were (usually) off limits to imperial police. Midlevel aristocrats sought to exploit the special legal status of religious institutions and in so doing boost their own incomes. Those serving as provincial governors (zuryo), for example, might commend newly developed provincial lands under their supervision to a powerful religious institution. In so doing, they removed that land from state tax rolls, thus channeling its wealth instead to the temple or shrine. And of course, for engaging in an act of such piety, the governor would receive a portion of the income generated annu-ally.48 Extraterritoriality was nowhere more apparent than in some institutions’ maintenance of militias or, in some cases, full-scale armies. The armed monks of Enryakuji are the most famous. They used the threat of force not only to protect their financial interests but also to launch raids on the capital aimed at asserting their rights to monopolize certain religious posts and public rituals.49
In sum, despite their foundational association with the state and unflagging enthusiasm for public rewards, religious institutions— not dissimilar from the aristocracy—came to enjoy a high degree of financial, legal, and territorial autonomy. They commanded vast private wealth and flourished due to the benefits of private patronage. Any one of the countless temples that stood along Kyoto’s eastern hills during the medieval era, for example, might have accommodated as many as several hundred novice and ordained monks who lived, worked, and practiced within a walled and gated compound encompassing dozens of large and small structures typically spread over a hectare or more. The proliferation of attached subtemples (tacchu or shiin), which was
Particularly pronounced around Zen temples, increased these figures exponentially.50 To sustain such substantial populations and large physical plants, temples, like Kamigyo palaces, retained the services of countless skilled and unskilled laborers. Teams of administrators, clerks, and even private police were employed to look after landed and other economic interests. Hundreds more were needed to maintain buildings and gardens, procure food, paper, and other daily necessities, weave robes, produce devotional art, manufacture tatami, brew sake, and much more. As de facto retainers but not formal members of the ecclesiastic community, these people generally took up residence just outside the gates of the institutions they served, usually along the road leading to the capital. There, they built homes, shops, and workshops, maintained roads, and formed neighborhood associations that were, despite their otherwise rural settings, unmistakably urban in character.51
These clusters of development evolved into lively and diverse urban communities that appear frequently in documents as monzen-machi.52 The word literally means “town in front of the gate,” but it signified much more than a geographic juxtaposition. Monzen-machi became important economic bases and resource pools to their respective religious kenmon. They provided critical goods and services, and due to their usefulness, temples and shrines sought to protect their residents legally from the intervention of outsiders, including the court, aristocrats, warriors, and rival religious institutions. In practice, this meant claiming monzen-machi as exclusive territory, making them and their occupants off-limits from outside policing or criminal investigation, taxation, and corvee labor. The most successful religious institutions could exercise legal prerogatives over adjacent lands even beyond their monzen-machi, including cultivated fields and forests. Medieval documents refer to a temple or shrine’s expanded territory as keidai.53 The word itself means “within the boundary” but the articulation of a “boundary” of any kind beyond temple or shrine walls signified an expansion of territorial jurisdiction. Examples of institutions that claimed formidable keidai include the temples of Nanzenji, Tofukuji, Toji, Ken-ninji, Tenryuji, and the shrines of Kamo (Shimogamo), Kitano, and Gion (Yasaka) (see Figure 3.8).
After the Ashikaga shogunate was established in Kyoto in 1336, warrior leaders sought to exert greater legal, economic, and, particularly in the case of Enryakuji, martial control over religious institutions in the capital region. Their success in the long run is undeniable, but it is
Important to note that military officials frequently showed deference to the principle of temple and shrine extraterritoriality. When problems arose, for example, rather than simply issuing dictatorial commands, shogunal officials tended instead to admonish religious leaders to enforce “temple law” (jiho) over the people and territories of their keidai. The very existence of “temple law” itself suggests an outstanding degree of autonomy.54 This is not to say that religious institutions were entirely exempt from forceful shogunal intervention on occasion. It does appear, however, that force alone trumped the otherwise complete control that powerful temples or shrines exercised over their affiliated keidai.
During the tumultuous Age of Warring States (1467-1580s), many temple - and shrine-based communities surrounding Kyoto, like Kami-gyo and Shimogyo themselves, built walls and dug moats around their keidai in self-defense (discussed in chapter 6). Fortifications stood as stark indicators of the era’s extreme danger and lawlessness. In a sense, however, they merely made more materially obvious circumstances that had existed for centuries: religious institutions were the nuclei of discrete territories that encompassed both sacred and profane space, a diverse population, and robust commercial and agricultural activity. Over all this, they exercised a high degree of political, legal, and economic autonomy. Temples and shrines generated nodes of development whose very existence signified the fractured state of medieval politics and society.
Temple-Palaces of Retired Emperors
For a period of just over a century starting in about 1086, a series of former emperors effectively challenged the influence of the Fujiwara to seize sweeping control over political affairs. As the embodiment of state and public authority, reigning emperors were meant to possess no private power or wealth, no individual control over land, and no personal or familial ambitions. Thus, in an environment where private wealth and political ties were becoming increasingly critical to the exercise of real-world power, the imperial family was at a stark disadvantage. During the heyday of Fujiwara domination, however, a few i ndependently minded princes and emperors who were not tied by blood to that aristocratic family began seeking ways to remedy their situation. The solution was found by Shirakawa (1053-1129), who, at the age of thirty-three, formally retired from the position of emperor and
Took the tonsure. Having left public office—and, as a cloistered oblate, “the world”—Shirakawa was suddenly free to engage in politics in ways similar to the Fujiwara. That is, he could begin amassing unrestricted wealth, engaging in sexual politics, and establishing strong personal ties with temples, aristocrats, and warriors. Succeeding in all these respects with the support of provincial governors and the great warrior houses of Minamoto and Taira, Shirakawa and his several successors— including retired emperors Toba, Goshirakawa, and Gotoba—exercised almost unmitigated influence over the court and state institutions from the comfort of massive temple-palace complexes built on Kyoto’s outskirts. Like the Kamigyo palaces and exurban temples discussed so far, these sites too drew to themselves substantial and diverse populations, eventually growing to become satellite cities in their own right.
In 1075, while still in office, Emperor Shirakawa commissioned the construction of the temple of Hosshoji along an extension of Nijo Road east of the city (for location, see Figures 3.8 and 3.11). Boasting an eight-sided, nine-story pagoda that was a staggering eighty-one meters tall, Hosshoji was merely the first and largest of six major temples built at the site, in addition to two administrative palaces, and several smaller oratories (Figures 3.9 and 3.10).55 Shirakawa’s retirement in 1086 and subsequent relocation to the nascent district—which itself came to
3.9* Shirakawa temple-palace complex, featuring Hosshoji Temple in foreground (with pagoda). Bird's-eye representation from the south-southeast. For Shirakawa's location, see Figures 3.8 and
3.11. Courtesy of Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents
3.10. Hosshoji Temple's eight-sided, nine-story pagoda (81 m). Computer-generated image created by Tomishima Yoshiyuki and Takegawa Kohei
Be called “Shirakawa”—stimulated even greater urban development. Scores of minor officials and their families flocked to the new center of political and economic concentration, where they, along with countless craftsmen, artisans, traders, and laborers, built homes, offices, and workshops.56 Fighting men who served in the retired emperor’s de facto private army further augmented the population. During Shirakawa’s tenure, warriors associated with the Seiwa Genji under the command of Minamoto no Yoshiie (1039-1106) occupied large, purpose-built
Barracks near the exurb’s northern edge. That location earned them the toponym “Warriors of the North Face” (Hokumen no bushi).57 Recent archeological excavations have shown that Shirakawa, now completely gone, covered a staggeringly broad area of more than two hundred acres and that its numerous structures and compounds were linked by a grid-road system similar to that of the capital.58 While Heike monoga-tari’s mention of “forty or fifty thousand homes” is most certainly an exaggeration, it is undisputable that Shirakawa indeed grew to be an urbanized community of substantial size and demographic diversity.59 With the retired emperor’s palaces at its core, it was a hub of highly autonomous political power, religious practice, and economic activity, located just outside Kyoto.
A similar description can be applied to two other complexes built and used by retired emperors during the so-called “Era of Rule by Retired Emperors” (Insei-ki, roughly 1086 to 1192). The first, the temple-palace complex of Toba, was located where a southern extension of the great Suzaku Road intersected with the lower Kamo and Katsura Rivers (see Figures 3.11 and 3.12).60 Construction began in 1086 with the building of a residential headquarters, followed in close succession by the creation of Jonanji Temple, several oratories, and yet another palace. Shirakawa’s patrons, those who both bankrolled his administration and provided him and his successors with the political clout to dominate the court, flocked to the area. The scale of the resulting boom is evident in this account from Fusoryakki:
On a broad area of over a hundred blocks in size, each of the vassals, ministers, attendants, and various officials were given residential plots upon which they all built houses. It was as if another movement of the capital had taken place!61
Goshirakawa (1127-1192), the third emperor to rule from retirement, based his “cloistered administration” (insei) at the temple-palace of Ho-juji, located just east of the Kamo River, parallel to Shichijo (see Figures 3.8 and 3.11).62 While the greater Hojuji complex was similar to Shirakawa and Toba in terms of its opulence and functional diversity, the size of its military component was incomparable. Taira no Kiyo-mori (1118-1181), the head of the Taira house and a strong initial ally of Goshirakawa, had established at the site the large warrior enclave
3.11. Map of greater Kyoto basin, showing the temple-palace complexes of retired emperors and major betsugyo vis-a-vis the Heian-kyo grid.
3.12. Toba temple-palace complex. Bird's-eye view from the south. For Toba's location, see Figure 3.11. Illustrated by Yoriko Igari
3.13. Sanjusangendo Hall, originally partofthe Hojujitemple-palace complexofretired Emperor Goshirakawa at Rokuhara.
Of Rokuhara (see Figure 3.8). Rokuhara’s very creation and location immediately adjacent to Kyoto likely played a key role in Kiyomori’s meteoric rise to the position of grand chancellor of state in 1167. It served as a base of operations from which the warrior-aristocrat could protect Goshirakawa while at the same time intimidate his political rivals in the capital. Before losing favor a decade later, Kiyomori paid for the substantial expansion of Hojuji through the addition of Rengeoin. That temple’s central structure, the thirty-three-bay Sanjusangendo Hall, remains standing today and is the only architectural remnant of a glorious age of exurban temple-palace construction by and for retired emperors (Figure 3.13).
World History
