The Lotus Lectures.

Hokke Hakkō in the Heian Period

Author(s): Willa Jane Tanabe
Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 393-407
Published by: Sophia University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2384573
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 The Lotus Lectures

Hokke Hakko in the Heian Period

by WILLA JANE TANABE

T v HE diaries, histories, and novels of the Heian period contain numerous

references to Buddhist rituals and ceremonies that were important and
frequent activities among the upper class in Japan. Little, however, is
known about the development and use of the various rituals. They are often
treated summarily, when treated at all, and despite the written testimony that a
great deal of interest lay in these rituals, the study of Heian religious life has
almost unswervingly been approached through doctrinal history rather than
through the history and development of rituals. Yet these rituals were at the
heart of Japanese Buddhism and they reveal both the cultural conceptions of
that religion and the uses to which the religion was put.- Doctrinal formulations
were not so important to the Heian aristocrat as were rituals, for ritual 'fuses
the world as lived and the world as imagined."
One of the most popular of Heian rituals was the Hokke hakko , or
series of eight lectures on the Lotus Sutra. This was originally intended for
religious edification and petition, but later developed into occasions for
displaying and buttressing the sponsor's social position and power. The
hakko, like so many other ceremonies performed in Japan, had its origins in
China. It was first performed when a Liang priest, Hui-ming EA, lectured on
the Lotus Sutra in eight sessions patterned on the belief that Shakamuni had
preached the sutra over eight years, but little is known about the subsequent
development of this practice.2 Despite the popularity of the sutra in Japan,
however, lectures on the Lotus Sutra were seldom delivered in the Asuka and
Nara periods. While Prince Shotoku t lectured on the Lotus Sutra in 606,3
there is no further extant reference to lectures on this sutra for the following
140 years until 746 when Roben At, 685-773, organized an assembly on the

THE AUTHOR is Assistant Professor in the
Department of Art, University of Hawaii at
Manoa.
1 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures, Basic Books, New York, 1973, p.
112.
2 Mochizuki Shinko VA rAB, ed., Bukkyo
Daijiten 4i , Sekai Seiten Kanko
Kyokai, 1955-1958, 8 vols., v, p. 4585.
3 W. G. Aston, tr., Nihongi, 1896 edition
reprint, Paragon, New York, 1956, p. 135.

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 394 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:4

Lotus Sutra, a hokke-e R , at Todaiji V9k:X beginning on the 16th day of

the Third Month. The ceremony, also called a sakura-e WA, lasted four days,
but the lectures were apparently based on the seven-fascicle Lotus Sutra.4 This
assembly continued to be held annually for the purpose of insuring prosperity
and tranquility for the imperial family and the nation, a common purpose for
many of the early Buddhist ceremonies in Japan.
The hakko, however, did not gain avid proponents by being an occasion for
doctrinal exposition or petitions for national well-being but rather for the
assurance of personal salvation. The memorial service became the primary,
although not sole, context for a hakko. This pattern was established by the
first hakko to be performed in Japan by the Sanron =E monk Gonzo , d.
827, who was subsequently the teacher of Kuikai Sr. In 796 Gonzo organize
eight lectures, to be given by himself and seven other priests over a period of
four days for the mother of the monk Eiko Xi.5 These sessions, held at
Iwabuchidera fiX, were known as the Iwabuchi no hakko, and according to
Genko Shakusho x'9V4, this type of hakko service was adopted in time by
other temples.6 As the ritual spread, it was often expanded into a five-day
series of ten lectures (jikko +t) that included expositions on the Muryogi-ky
~ Xgand the Kanfugen-gyo , the two sutras used as the opening an
closing texts respectively to the Lotus Sutra. The distinction between a Lotus
Sutra hakko and jikko is not always clearly made in the records, and thus a lec-
ture series held over five days will sometimes be referred to as a hakko even
when it should be more accurately called a jikko.
The purpose of the memorial service was to transfer merit (tsuizen ) ac-
cumulated through the performance of the hakko to the deceased in order to
assure their felicity in the next world. In the Heian period, as in earlier times, it
was customary to hold services on every seventh day after a person's death for
a period of seven weeks so that the seventh, and final, seventh-day service was
performed on the forty-ninth day, the shichi shichi no ki 'c'c v ,\. This was

4 Tsutsui Eishun .,- , ed., Todaiji History of Buddhism, A Partial Translation,

Yoroku , Zenkoku Shobo, Osaka,
1944, pp. 166 & 300. There is disagreement
whether a seven- or eight-fascicle Lotus Sutra
was used at this ceremony. While it is true that
the Japanese generally used an eight-fascicle
edition, the hokke-e at Todaiji in 1037 was ex-
panded to nine sessions with the addition of
the opening and closing sutras. It can thus be
assumed that the earlier hokke-e featured
seven sessions based on seven fascicles.
5 Gonzo organized these lectures as Eiko
had predeceased his mother and thus was
unable to hold memorial services for her.
6 Kokushi Taikei S1*9, 1929, xxxi,
pp. 51-53. See also Marian Ury, Genko
Shakusho: Japan's First Comprehensive
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California, 1970, p. 241.
The story of Gonzo's hakko is repeated in a
number of records. Todaiji Yoroku and
Sambo Ekotoba ?^tMOM agree with the
Genko Shakusho account that this was the
first hakko to be held in Japan.
A few sources, however, credit the first oc-
currence to another temple or a different date.
For example, Hokke Hakko Engi
dates the Iwabuchi hakko as 793, while
Kasagidera Engi t gives 783. For a
complete discussion on the subject, see Takagi
Yutaku ,8t, Heian Jidai Hokke Bukkyo
Shi Kenkyu i JT 97 , Heirakuji
Shoten, Kyoto, 1979, p. 211.

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 395

then followed by a service held on the hundred

and on the first annual anniversary (shuki )31) k). In the case of high-ranking
people, services sometimes continued to be held at yearly intervals, although it
was not until the Kamakura period that the services carried out in the third,
seventh, thirteenth, and thirty-third years came to hold special significance.7
The rites performed on the forty-ninth day and on the first annual anniver-
sary were particularly important in the Heian period. The form of these
ceremonies varied, but it has been suggested that the service on the forty-ninth
day was most likely a shichiso ho-e - in which seven functions presided
over by seven principal priests were performed: lecturing on and reading the
sutras, reading the gammon ZlR (or petitions), performing ceremonial
obeisances, chanting hymns or spells, scattering flowers, and assisting in the
transmission of petitions.8 In the first annual service, however, the hakko was
often the central feature, although it could be accompanied by many of the ac-
tivities common to the shichiso ho-e.
During the late eighth and the first half of the ninth century, lectures on the
Lotus Sutra were delivered chiefly by priests for other priests. In 798, for exam-
ple, Saicho AM invited ten priests to deliver ten lectures on the Lotus Sutra at a
ceremony called the shimotsuki-e j' h as a memorial service for Chih-i ,
founder of Chinese T'ien-t'ai )Q.9 In 802, Wake no Ason Hiroyo fnZ*[:rt
invited Saicho to Mt Takao to participate in ten lectures on the sutra. Later
this Takao hokke jikko developed into a memorial service for Kukai, thus
reflecting the non-sectarian character of the Lotus lectures.10 In 823, a Sixth
Month assembly, minazuki-e -,A, was organized as a memorial service for
Saicho, who had died in the previous year, and its main feature was a jikko.
Later in the ninth century, Shobo a (also known as Rigen Daishi Sfi,k%),
823-909, sponsored a hakko on the tenth day of every month at Daigoji-in MM
1 for Gonzo, the founder of hakko in Japan." Thus the practice spread
among the priesthood throughout the ninth century and was connected with
memorial services that often became annual events.
During the ninth century the aristocrats too began to sponsor hakko at
memorial services. In lists of sutras and donations at memorial services in the
ninth through eleventh centuries, the sutra that most often appears is the
Lotus. 12 In time the lectures came to be part of the service, although in the firs
7 The thirteen memorial services were made
ROD=+X, in Bukkyo Geijutsu L 77
up of the nine services held during the first (September 1970) & 78 (October 1970), 77, p.
year plus those in the third, seventh, thir- 77.
teenth, and thirty-third years after death. The 9 Fuso Ryakki AX-n2, in Kokushi Taikei,
scriptural basis for these thirteen services is xii, p. 114.
found in Jizo Hongan-gyo tiWJP44 and 10 Tsuji Zennosuke L+ AX ; W, Nihon
Juo-kyo tFE, both of which works were in- Bukkyo Shi AILFt, Iwanami, 1944, 10
fluenced by Chinese folk beliefs of the tenth vols., I, pp. 259-60.
century. 1 Yamamoto, 77, p. 82.
8 Yamamoto Nobuyoshi 4$;{+, 'Hokke 12 Both Takagi and Yamamoto have compil-
Hakko to Michinaga no Sanjikko & A az ; ed charts of the sutras used and offerings made

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396 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:4

half of the ninth century their format was not always regularized and it is
difficult to distinguish between general lectures on the Lotus Sutra and a
Hokke hakko in which the lectures were divided into eight sections. In 817, for
example, Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu g;X] initiated an annual assembly on the
Lotus Sutra (hokke-e) at Kofukuji W as a memorial service for his father,
Uchimaro Pkjgg, who had died in 812. This service was based on the seven-
fascicle Lotus and was carried out over seven days and thus is not considered a
real hakko.13 The imperial family also began to hold lectures on the Lotus
Sutra. In 826 Emperor Junna 1+Tg held a service for his father, Emperor Kam-
mu tgj-, who had died twenty years earlier; he dedicated a copy of the sutra
copied in gold characters by Emperor Saga kj and held an exposition on the
sutra over seven days. While these ceremonies did not follow the later format
of the hakko, they were held at memorial services, centered around expositions
on the Lotus Sutra, and helped to establish the Lotus lectures as part of
memorial services in court circles.
By the end of the ninth century, lecture services in aristocratic circles were
more often called hakko or were held over four or five days in eight or ten ses-
sions. A common motive was the transference of merit to deceased family
members. But it was not merely priestly and filial ties that led to a hakko, nor
was the only setting a temple. In 851 Fujiwara no Yoshifusa As, who had serv-
ed Emperor Nimmyo fzM as Great Minister of the Right, organized a first-year
memorial service for that emperor; the service featured a hakko and was held
in Yoshifusa's mansion. In like manner, Fujiwara no Yoshinawa AX, who
had served Emperor Montoku ct, sponsored an annual memorial service
centered on a hakko for his departed sovereign for as long as he lived.'4 Thus
priestly, filial, and liege ties were all honored by carrying out a hakko in
memory of the dead.
The increasing popularity of hakko from the ninth century on was
stimulated by the influence of two men, Emperor Nimmyo and the priest En-
nin FRf.15 Nimmyo helped to promulgate the Lotus Sutra by ordering in 836
and 839 its reading in Buddhist nunneries and Shinto shrines. His interest in
the sutra, however, was not confined to readings and recitations, for the
emperor was also fond of debates and discussions on the sutra's contents. As a

at memorial services in the first half of the
Heian period, taking the information from
family records as well as national histories.
The Lotus Sutra was used at most of the ser-
vices, either alone or within a set of five sutras
which included the opening sutra (Muryogi-
kyo * the closing sutra (Kanfugen-gyo
IRWg), Amida-kyo VaRT , and Han-
nyashin-gyo . Esoteric texts were
seldom used, but it was quite common to
dedicate esoteric mandalas even when the
Lotus or Amida sutras were used as the prin-
cipal text for the service. Yamamoto, 77, p.
80, and Takagi, pp. 160-63.
13 M. W. De Visser, Ancient Buddhism in
Japan, Brill, Leiden, 1935, 2 vols., ii, p. 701.
De Visser includes many more references
to dates of performances than can be sum-
marized here.
14 Yamamoto, 77, p. 75.
15 Yamamoto, 77, pp. 74-75.

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 397

memorial service for Emperor Saga in 847 and again in 848, Nimmyo invited
monks of several different sects to the Seiryoden PM, where they lectured on
the Lotus for three days. Nimmyo himself often participated as one of the ques-
tioners at the services. The lectures gained in importance as worthy events in
themselves, and in 850 Nimmyo, no longer considering them as mere adjuncts
to the memorial service, organized a debate simply for his own instruction and
edification. His separation of the lectures from the memorial service would
be repeated by others who found the lectures appropriate for a wide variety of
occasions.
Unlike Nimmyo, Ennin was not in a position to sponsor these costly gather-
ings, but he had around him a coterie of influential ladies who could. Ennin
was the featured hakko lecturer at several events, which were often, but not
always, memorial services. Princess Masako Iif, d. 874, asked Ennin to ex-
pound on the Lotus during a sai-e WA, or vegetarian banquet, held for five
days in 860 for the sake of her late husband, Emperor Junna, who had died
twenty years earlier. Masako later received the tonsure and the precepts from
Ennin, who again lectured on the Lotus. Empress Dowager Fujiwara no
Nobuko JIR-, d. 871, wife of Emperor Nimmyo and mother of Emperor Mon-
toku, held a memorial service in 859 to which she invited sixty priests to lecture
on the Lotus. Two years later she featured Ennin alone both as her preceptor
and as a lecturer on the Lotus for five days. The legitimacy and reputation that
Ennin imparted to these religious events helped to establish the Lotus lectures
firmly in the activities of the court.

Competitive Aspects of Hakko

The hakko continued to be performed through the tenth to twelfth centuries

and were used for a wider variety of occasions, although the memorial service
remained chief among them. Regardless of the occasion, these events came to
take on a competitive aspect much like the poetry and incense-smelling com-
petitions, with both participants and referees playing well-defined roles.
There were two aspects of the hakko that lent themselves to competition.
The first was the structure of the lectures themselves; they were more like
debates than sermons and participants risked their personal and institutional
reputations in heated arguments to determine no less a matter than doctrinal,
that is, sectarian truth. At the center of contention were the lecturers (koji ni),
who numbered eight for a hakko and ten for a jikko, and the auditors (choju
4V), more descriptively called the interrogators (monja tIHA).16 Pitted against

16 In William H. & Helen Craig Mc- NOkyo no Kenkyu g Kodansha,

Cullough, tr., A Tale of Flowering Fortunes,
Stanford U.P., 2 vols., 1980, I, p. 236, n. 25,
participants in a hakko are said to include the
shogisha, k5ji, monja, and choju, but accor-
ding to Komatsu Shigemi 'JiRS, Heike
1976, 2 vols., I, p. 32, monja and choju are
two different terms for the same people who
questioned the lecturer.
Dictionaries also differ in their interpreta-
tions. Mochizuki, v, pp. 4585-86, lists only

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398 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:4

the lecturers, the interrogators, who could number from eight to twenty or
more, took on the advocate's task of trying to trip and better their opponents
in argument. As if personal stakes in doctrinal combat were not high enough,
the monks were usually drawn from and therefore represented different sects
with their different versions of the truth. The results were predictable, and
possibly one of the causes of the deep enmity between Kofukuji and Enryakuji
F,- was the adversary roles that their respective priests repeatedly played in
the hakko.17 Carefully weighing the merits of the arguments were from one to
four judges (shogi AE or ryugi EWA), who declared in the end the winners
-and the losers.
The debate held during a jikko to commemorate Emperor Murakami's tt?.
copying of the Lotus Sutra in 963 was waged with mounting but ultimately
equal competitive fervor. The five-day event called for ten lectures featuring
Tendai monks pitted against priests from the various Nara schools. The two
lectures of the first day were uneventful, but in the evening lecture of the
second day, the Tendai monk Gakukei t opened an old wound when he ask-
ed Hozo &, the Hosso lecturer, how it was that some people could never
become buddhas when the Lotus Sutra promised salvation to all. The issue had
already been worked over before by Saicho and Tokuichi f -, 749-824, the
Hosso thinker who distinguished different kinds of buddha natures whereby
only those with the right kind could become enlightened. The matter was too
crucial to leave to lesser hands, and Ryogen fo,, 912-985, the Tendai abbot,
replaced Gakukei to engage Hozo long into the night until a draw was
declared. On the third day, Ryogen was the lecturer, and because of the
previous night's proceedings, Hozo was allowed to replace the scheduled inter-
rogator. The debate resumed, and when Hozo finally found himself unable to
reply, Ryogen was declared the winner.
All were impressed, but not all were happy. Fujiwara no Fuminori tC, con-
cluding that the Kasuga deity, the protector of the Hosso school, must be ill to
allow such a defeat, rushed to Nara and prayed to the deity, who then in-
structed him to enter Chuisan Wg into the conflict. The fourth day passed, and
on the morning of the fifth and last day, Fuminori arrived with Chusan, who
replaced the Hosso interrogator and thus faced Ryogen, who had also replaced

three kinds of participants: the k5ji who lec-
ture, the ch5ju who question, and the shogi
who judge. On the other hand, Nakamura Ha-
jime 43t4jt, Bukkyo-go Daijiten L k;It ,
Tokyo Shoseki, 1976, 3 vols., II, p. 967,
defines chaju as priests who officially attended
the lectures but did not act as judges, lec-
turers, or questioners.
The preface of Shimpitsu Gohakko Ki VA
Wpv@X"d, in Gunsho Ruijui f, XXIV, pp.
90-91, lists the participants in three categories,
shogi, k5ji, and ch5ju, but in the day-by-day
accounts the names of individual priests who
appear in the preface as part of the choju are
listed as monja. Thus the questioners appear
to have been drawn from the ch4fu or official
audience. If the choju consisted of only eight
priests, as was sometimes the case, then the
ch5ju and monja were the same; if the ch5ju
were particularly numerous, then not every
member would play a role as questioner.
17 Komatsu, i, p. 32.

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 399

his counterpart. The argument, a variation of the previous one, concerned the
enlightenment of grasses and trees, with Chasan contending that non-sentient
beings did not have the right kind of buddha nature and Ryogen insisting that
quite literally everything could become a buddha. Again, the judges could not
declare a clear winner, and, as it is with most impasses, both sides claimed their
victories. 18
The hakko, exhilarating for its eloquent speakers, was also splendid as a
ceremony. Just as competition was built into the format of the lectures, so too
the ceremony surrounding the lectures took on a competitive nature.
Precedents in the Nara period had already established the custom of elaborate
ceremony and donations as part of memorial services. In the Nara period,
memorial services centered on the reading of sutras and the donation of offer-
ings such as paintings or statues, and such services often included a sai-e or a
musha dai-e ajkch, a 'universal great assembly' in which alms were given to
priests and laymen.
When Emperor Shomu mR died, for example, sutra readings were carried
out at the seven great temples of Nara on the first, second, and seventh days of
the seven-day services, and in all the temples of Nara on the third seventh-day.
In addition, more than a thousand priests and nuns partook of a vegetarian
banquet at the fifth seventh-day service at Daianji , at the sixth at
Yakushiji , and at the seventh at Kofukuji. On the forty-ninth day,
Komyo, widow of Shomu, dedicated more than 650 objects to Vairocana Bud-
dha enshrined at Todaiji. These items were put into the temple storehouse and
formed the nucleus of the Shoso-in AR- collection. On the hundredth-day
and the first annual anniversary of Shomu's death, readings and vegetarian
banquets for 1,500 priests were organized at Todaiji. Finally, during the twelve
months after Shomu's death and at the first annual memorial service, orders
were sent to all provinces to construct halls and statues in preparation for the
first annual service.19
Thus, when hakko became the center of memorial services, the lectures were
embedded within a tradition of pomp and ceremony. Clear-toned chanters
(bonnon i) were accompanied by shakujoju iSR,t priests who punctuated
the chanting by ringing metal staffs. At times the hakko were elaborate by vir-
tue of the sheer number of participants if nothing else. At a hakko sponsored
by Emperor Murakami in 955, there were four judges, eight lecturers, twenty
interrogators, fourteen chanters, and fourteen staff ringers for a total of sixty
20
priests. 0 In a later jikko, there were two judges, ten lecturers, fourteen inter-
rogators, and several others priests who variously scattered flowers, made
ceremonial obeisances, and read the petitions.21 Following the religious perfor-
mances, dancers and musicians entertained the audience.

20I,Mochizuki, V, p. 4584.
18 Tsuji, I, pp. 425-27, and Mochizuki,
pp. 351-52. 21 Shimpitsu Gohakko Ki, in Gunsho Rui-
19 Shoku Nihongi M- H , in Kokushi jiU, xxiv, p. 102.
Taikei, II, pp. 225-26.

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 400 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix: 4

Often the ceremonies involved the general audience, who avidly responded
to what has been called an 'invitation to a dream world'.22 On the day on
which lectures on the fifth fascicle were delivered (itsumaki no hi H H ), some
of the resplendent processions included a dramatic portrayal of scenes from
the Lotus Sutra. At a hakko organized in 899 in memory of Emperor Koko X
X, d. 887, at Kajoji , those who had been close to the late emperor played
the role of Shakamuni in the Daibadatta chapter by forming a procession to
carry firewood and water.23 This was followed by another procession of people
bearing sprigs of gold and silver or of real trees, to which were attached silver
and quartz rosaries, incense, censers, ceremonial banners, peacock feathers,
and jewels. In addition, the sponsor of the services often dedicated a hand-
copied and decorated sutra. The splendor was irresistible to some people. At a
hakko at Hoko-in it, the weather was so bad that the sponsor despaired of
anyone coming through the flooded streets. Much to his delight, however, the
audience came anyway, declaring that it was as if they had crossed the ocean to
attend the ceremony.24
One of the obvious consequences of the emphasis on ceremony and the
debate format was the considerable cost involved. The imperial family and
high-ranking aristocrats and priests could afford such an outlay, but lesser peo-
ple obviously could not. A certain woman of the Oeda ik1 clan earnestly
desired to sponsor a hakko for her parents, for although she had had the Lotus
Sutra read and copied, she felt that nothing could compare with the benefits ac-
cruing from a hakko. Unable to afford such a ceremony, she decided to save
enough money by fasting, as a result of which she fell ill and died. Through
great effort and sacrifice, her grieving sons managed to put on a hakko for her
and her parents.25 Other people tried to make their own arrangements to in-
sure a hakko for themselves. Those who could afford it sometimes provided
for the expenses in their wills in case their descendants might experience a
decline in fortune and be unable or unwilling to organize the ceremony. Thus
Fujiwara no Morosuke Offl, d. 960, left instructions in his will that one third
of the annual revenues from his estates in Yamashiro be given to Enryakuji for
an annual hakko in his memory.26
It is not easy to ascertain the actual cost of a hakko since the modern
equivalents are difficult to establish and costs in the capital ran higher than in
the provinces. A hakko at Kanzeonji S1T in Chikuzen cost 45 koku ;F, 2 to
4 of rice in 1137, but six years later, in 1143, the same service cost 56 koku: 3

22 Komatsu, I, p. 32.
ward Seidensticker, tr., The Tale of Genji,
23 A famous poem, Shiuishiu t 1,346, Knopf, New York, 1978, p. 713.
24 Komatsu, I, p. 32.
attributed to the monk Gyogi FT of the Nara
period, echoes this rite from the Daibadatta 25 Yamamoto, 77, pp. 76-77.
chapter; the poem is repeated in Genji 26 Takeuchi Rizo kpqT , ed., Heian Ibun
Monogatari MW1CPMr3: 'I brought in water,/
;a, Tokyodo, 1948, 13 vols., II, 305.
gathered herbs and brushwood,/ my This is discussed in Takagi, pp. 215-16.
recompense was the Lotus of the Law.' See Ed-

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 401

for the chanters, 24 for the eight lecturers, and 24 koku 8 to for the other par-
ticipating priests. In addition, 3 koku were set aside for the cost of food, and 1
koku 2 to for beverages.27 There was also the expense of the offerings carried
in processions, and individual donors vied with each other in their attempts to
donate nothing but the best. There were no upper limits to cost except those
dictated by the participant's ability to pay. After a hakko sponsored by
Jotomon-in kvrw in 1026, an observer noted that in ancient times, 'Shomu
exhausted the nation's supply of copper in building Todaiji, but on this day
Jotomon-in's hakko exhausted the nation's supply of silver.'28 It is clear that
priests and temples benefitted financially from participation in such costly
rituals.

Further Occasions for Hakko

As the hakko grew more elaborate and costly, the occasions for which they
were held also increased. For those people who could afford it, the dedication
of a statue, a hand-copied sutra, or a temple, or even the celebration of a birth-
day were as much an excuse for a hakko as was a memorial service. Moreover,
by the late tenth century, certain types of hakko had been upgraded to national
status. More public in character than the ordinary rites, the gohakko j'i
were a kind of national memorial service in which the last day of the ceremony
corresponded to the anniversary of the beneficiary's death. The gohakko
became one of the court's annual events (nenju gyoji *rK7 i), although they
were not always performed as such. The accompanying chart lists the principal
gohakko, their frequency, the beneficiaries, and the temples in which they were
conducted.29
As a term indicating a national ceremony, gohakko should strictly refer to
only those lecture sessions for emperors, but the chart indicates that the early
gohakko of Hoshoji, Hoko-in, Jitokuji, and Hojoji were for leading members
of the Fujiwara clan, especially those in the circle of the all-powerful
Michinaga &A, 966-1027. It is clear from the dates that many of these
gohakko were not established directly after the death of the beneficiary; this
suggests that they did not originate from a fresh and keen sense of grief but
that their establishment was a deliberate attempt to reenforce the status and
memory of leading members of the Fujiwara clan. As the chart shows,
Michinaga's hakko were the most frequently performed, far more often than
those of emperors. As is also evident, imperial beneficiaries tended to be

27 Takeuchi, v, #2366, & VI, #2504.
28 Hyakurensho J in Kokushi Taikei,
xi, p. 17.
29 The term gohakko, also read mihakk5,
was first used in 948.
The chart is an abridged amalgamation of
charts in Komatsu, I, pp. 23-30, and Takagi,
pp. 216-20, which are based on court diaries
and records of nenju gyoji. Emperors Go-
Suzaku &,* Toba ,4T, and Takakura A. A
also were beneficiaries of gohakko, but these
were performed less often than those for the
emperors listed in the chart.

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 402 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix: 4

emperors who were in special favor with the Fujiwara and as a result not all
sovereigns received the honor of a gohakko.30
More than any other Fujiwara, Michinaga is associated with the use of ser-
vices and lectures on the Lotus Sutra. According to Eiga Monogatari 1tK:
Ever since Michinaga's assumption of power, he had sponsored perpetual recita-
tions of the Lotus Sutra. The Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the Imperial
ladies had adopted the same practice.... Impressed by the results which had
clearly been splendid, all the other Fujiwara gentlemen had arranged for Lotus
recitations of their own.... It is impossible to imagine how much merit
Michinaga must have amassed by spreading the Lotus teachings.31

The merit amassed by Michinaga was not only spiritual but also social and
political as well. This can be clearly seen in Michinaga's use of the sanjikko zE.
+?, a series of thirty lectures, to emphasize the honor of his family and, more
specifically, of himself.
Although often credited with its inception, Michinaga did not actually in-
augurate the series of thirty lectures, one on each of the twenty-eight chapters
of the Lotus Sutra and on the opening and closing sutras, held over fifteen or
thirty days. Shakke Kamban Ki fTRfE" records what is perhaps the earliest
occurrence when, in 895, thirty lectures were given in the Eastern Pagoda and
twenty-eight in the Western Pagoda at Enryakuji.32 Closer to Michinaga's
time, the priest Shokut V'N sponsored thirty lectures in 988 at Enkyoji F91AE,3
and Michinaga was surely inspired by the twenty-eight lectures that his sister,
Higashi Sanj0-in _ sponsored in 996.34 Both of these lecture series were
probably conducted as memorial services. Michinaga thus had precedents,
although he may be credited with the establishment of the sanjikko for pur-
poses other than memorial services.
In 1002, Michinaga had a new hall built at his palace. He installed statues of
Shaka, Fugen, Monju, Amida, Kannon, and Seishi, and at the dedication ser-
vice he held his first sanjikko, which was thereafter repeated annually. Even
when he was ill in 1025, his daughter Jotomon-in organized the event for him.
After Michinaga's death in 1027, his son Yorimichi L-M continued the practice
from 1030 to 1035, and his daughter sponsored it in 1036.35
Although the first of Michinaga's sanjikko took place only two months after
Higashi Sanjo-in died, the ceremony did not fall on any specific memorial day,
nor is the lady mentioned in later performances. The lectures, then, had little
to do with memorial services and, except for the first one which was used in a

30 Takagi, p. 218. 35 After the performance in 1036, there was

31 McCullough, II, p. 505. a hiatus for seventy-five years until the ritual
32 Shakke Kamban Ki W*-[:-H , in Gun-
was revived in 1111. From then until 1185 the
sho Ruijiu, xxiv, p. 47. sanjikko was performed at least thirty-two
33 Takagi, p. 205. times over periods ranging from ten to fifteen
34 Nihon Kiryaku HFi *tkdW, in Kokushi
days.
Taikei, XI, p. 184.

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 403

Chart of Important Gohakko

First Place Beneficiary Number of Subse-

performed quent Performances

960 Hoshoji Fujiwara no Onshi, d. 954 2: 987 & 1004

970 Hoshoji Fujiwara no Tadahira, d. 949 4: 999-1153

998 Hoko-in Fujiwara no Kaneie, d. 990 20: 1003-1283

1003 Jitokuji Fujiwara no Senshi, d. 1002, 13: 1004-1157

1004 En'yui-in Emperor En'yui, d. 991 10: 1005-1174

1013 Enkyoji Emperor Ichijo, d. 1011 5: 1015-1025

1028 Hojoji Fujiwara no Michinaga, d. 1027 76: 1031-1293

1080 Enshuiji Emperor Go-Sanjo, d. 1073 28: 1081-1187

1109 Sonshoji Emperor Horikawa, d. 1107 28: 1110-1231

1131 Hoshoji Emperor Shirakawa, d. 1129 43: 1133-1249

dedication ceremony, they seem to have been held simply for Michinaga's per-
sonal pleasure and political benefit. The basis for the suggestion that these
events had political implications lies in the fact that they became a means for
determining political patronage. To sponsor thirty lectures was an even more
expensive undertaking than the hakko-, especially since it was not specifically
for a memorial service for which there would have been grieving relatives will-
ing to help with the expenses. The list of those who contributed to the costs
shows that political appointees drawn from other clans participated, and those
who had received or hoped to receive Michinaga's favor made known their am-
bitions by helping him with the expenses of the elaborate affair.
The sanjikko were at first held over thirty days, but were later shortened to
thirty lectures over fifteen or sixteen days. The burden of paying for meals,
lodging, and the professional participants was greater than that for the eight-
or ten-day lectures. The lecturers, for example, were given fifteen koku of rice
each, and the judges received twenty koku. The political appointees too
donated gifts to the priests; in one particular case, the expensive gift of twenty-
four horses was donated.36 To add to the festivities and to the event's in-
creasingly social character, Michinaga sometimes held poetry parties in which
the poems were written in praise of each chapter of the Lotus Sutra. The lec-
ture services, elaborated to the point of political and literary as well as
religious significance, no longer memorialized a person's death, but were con-
ducted for the living-for the splendor reflected upon their sponsors and for
the hopes of immediate reward for those who helped the sponsors.

36 Yamamoto, 78, p. 95.

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 404 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix: 4

Michinaga also freely employed the ritual on occasions that did not by
custom call for them. In one case, for instance, he held a jikko for fish on the
banks of the Uji River in 1023. That the beneficiaries were fish did nothing to
limit the lengths to which Michinaga went, for the real beneficiary after all was
Michinaga himself.

In the hope of atoning for many years of indulgence in river sports ...
[Michinaga] had drawn an Amitabha mandala and made copies of the Lotus and
the [Konkomyo-kyo], and he took along five Lecturers to provide for five days of
lectures....
The atmosphere during the five days was most moving and holy. There was a
feeling of tranquility at Uji that could not be duplicated in the city, and the
monks performed their duties in a spirit of deep piety. A myriad fishes, we are
told, were reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-three Divinities after they had
heard the titles of the works in the twelve types of scripture. How much greater
must have been the meritorious virtue amassed during the five days and ten ses-
sions of Lotus expositions!37
Whether it was for himself, his family, or fish, Michinaga brought fresh use
to the Lotus lectures. There was an immediacy in the desired effects that were
related to his own present situation. While there was a certain vanity in the em-
phasis placed on himself, an exploitive willfulness in his innovations,
Michinaga was only putting into practice what the Lotus Sutra itself
guaranteed-that reading, copying, and lecturing on the sutra was the path to
enlightenment and innumerable benefits. And Michinaga was not alone in the
use of the lectures for his own benefit.
As early as the late ninth century, the practice of gyakushu ij*W was carried
out as a kind of guarantee obtained in the present for benefits to be enjoyed
after death. The character gyaku i: is used in the sense of arakajime NT, or
'beforehand', and thus refers to a memorial service that people organized for
themselves well before their deaths. The idea is explained in the Kuan-ting
ching (J. Kanjo-gyo) 41idg, an apocryphal text of uncertain origin. Hanging
banners, it says, burning lamps, reciting sutras, and so forth after a person's
death earn only one-seventh the merit that can be gained if all such efforts are
made before death.38 This provided, in short, a chance to celebrate one's own
funeral service in life. Since the hakko was the most common activity at a
memorial service, it inevitably became a regular part of the gyakushu.
The earliest gyakushu appears to have been held in 876 by Abe no Sadayuki
9e f- at Kezanji , where he copied the Lotus Sutra and held a hakko on
the first anniversary of his father's death. But in the invocation Abe noted that
the ceremony was also a gyakushu for himself. A few years later a woman of
the Fujiwara clan held a memorial service, with a hakko, for herself. Both of

37 McCullough, II, pp. 594-95. rituals other than the hakko and with texts
38 Mochizuki, I, p. 549. The gyakushu ser-
other than the Lotus Sutra.
vice could, of course, be carried out with

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 405

these gyakushu were carried out because the petitioners did not have children
to conduct services for them after they died. The early examples of gyakushu
often had this element of necessity to them. In 976, for example, when Chonen
jt, d. 1016, was about to leave for China, he organized an anticipatory
memorial service for his mother lest she might die while he was still abroad.
The gyakushu, then, was ingenious for its capacity to preempt any threat to
the due performance of a memorial service-loss of financial resources, lack of
children, or absence of family members.39
The contemplation of one's own death is most sobering and the gyakushu
seem to have been carried out with more than ordinary fervor. They were per-
formed over forty-nine days to correspond to the first forty-nine days after
death, with each of the seventh days being of particular importance. The
preparations for the forty-nine days involved months of preparation.
Michinaga's gyakushu in 1023, as might be expected, was appropriately
elaborate:

In view of the lengths to which Michinaga had already gone, it is hard to see
why he should have worried about the future, but for several months he had been
making sacred images and copies of sutras in preparation for forty-nine days of
services on his own behalf. The rituals began late in the Fifth Month, with an
Ultimate Bliss mandala as the principal object of worship. A copy of the Lotus
Sutra was offered daily, and forty-nine copies of the Amitabha Sutra were also
dedicated. On each seventh day, sets of robes and other appropriate offerings
were presented in return for the sutra-chanting. Since the services were particular-
ly holy ones, the Lecturers performed their duties with great zeal.40

If Michinaga's offerings seem excessive, they pale beside those of Emperor

Toba }>, d. 1156, who carried out three different gyakushu for himself. At
the one held in 1151, the service began with the presentation of statues of the
Amida triad, copies of the Lotus, Muryogi, Kanfugen, Amida, and Heart
sutras in gold characters, and, on this day alone, ten additional copies of the
above five sutras written in ink. In each of the seventh-day services the follow-
ing items were dedicated:
1st seventh day: painting of the nine stages of rebirth in Amida's paradise;
copies of the Lotus Sutra and of the opening and closing sutras.
2nd seventh day: a painting of a Pure Land mandala; copies of the same
sutras as above.
3rd seventh day: a life-size painting of JizO Bosatsu t ; copies of the
same sutras as above.
4th seventh day: a life-size painting of Kokuzo Bosatsu JS ri copies of
the same sutras as above.
5th seventh day: gilded statues of the Shaka triad; copies of the same sutras
as above.

39 Yamamoto, 77, p. 84. 40 McCullough, II, p. 593.

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 406 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:4

6th seventh day: life-size painting of Miroku; copies of the same sutras as
above.
7th seventh day: painting of the Amida triad; copies of the same sutras as
above.
In addition, on almost every day of the forty-nine days a painting of Amida
and a set of the Lotus Sutra were dedicated.41
The sheer volume of offerings was matched by the splendor of such
ceremonies. Surely the most beautiful account of a gyakushu is the one describ-
ing the ceremony sponsored by Lady Murasaki t in GenjiMonogatari jt4,
which, although fictitious, best reveals the magnificence associated with such
occasions. Murasaki prepared for her own memorial service by overseeing
every detail from the ordering of one thousand copies of the Lotus Sutra that
were to be her final offering to the provision of elaborate robes for the priests.
She chose a clear spring day when the scent of flowering trees filled the air, and
the courtiers attending the ceemonies felt that

... Amitadha's paradise could not be far away, and for even the less than devout
it was as if a burden of sin was being lifted. At the grand climax the voices of the
brushwood bearers and of all the priests rose to describe in solemn tones the
labors of the Blessed One....
The chanting went on all through the night, and the drums beat intricate
rhythms. As the first touches of dawn came over the sky the scene was as if made
especially for her who so loved the spring.... One would have thought that the
possibilities of beauty were here exhausted, and then the dancer on the stage
became the handsome General Ling and as the dance gathered momentum and
the delighted onlookers stripped off multicolored robes and showered them upon
him, the season and the occasion brought a yet higher access of beauty.42

The offerings, the hakko, the music, the dance-the entire ritual setting func-
tioned to unite beauty and life in the common fact that both were but passing.
While commoners could never hope to partake in such elaborate
ceremonies, they could nevertheless be included in certain kechien
A@X. Kechien literally means to form a bond (in this case, with t
and originally referred to religious activities aimed at establishing a relation-
ship to the Buddha among those who did not possess one. In time, the term
came to indicate a group activity whose sponsors reap the merit of such an ac-
tivity. Thus a group would form to sponsor a statue, a lecture, or a painting
whose merit would benefit all the participants. In the second half of the Heian
period there are an increasing number of references to kechien hakko whose
purpose was not to honor or transfer merit to the dead but to benefit the living,
both high and low alike.
The kechien kuge-e VMff,-. performed at Rokuharamitsuji -, , in-
cluded a hakko during the day and the chanting of the nembutsu ,{L every
night. The first day of the hakko was dedicated to the enlightenment and

41 Takagi, pp. 171-73. 42 Seidensticker, pp. 713-15.

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 TANABE: The Lotus Lectures 407

benefit of men, the second day to women, the third day to children, and the
fourth day to priests. The offering of ordinary and inexpensive flowers that
was central to the rite enabled commoners to participate in the ceremonies.43
The ceremony was held in the Third Month of each year, and it may have
originated during the lifetime of Kaya Qit, d. 972. Many of the kechien hakko
were performed by priests noted for their zealous activities among the
peasants. The priest Gyoen EM, for example, performed a hakko for high and
low alike in 1005, and he was active in various large projects for which he
solicited funds from commoners. Moreover, hakko for ordinary people were
carried out in Shinto shrines and out-of-the-way places. The Kumano hakko
was held in the spring and autumn for people living by the mountains and the
sea, that is, the hunters and fishermen in Kumano who had sinned by taking
the lives of animals and fish. The priests who participated in these services did
not use the normal robes, but wore deer skins, leggings, and straw rain coats,
thus conforming to the image of hijiri i or shugendo 0AI priests who
brought Buddhist ceremonies to the remote countryside." References to such
hakko for commoners, then, provide evidence that the Lotus lectures spread to
a far wider audience than merely the nobility in Kyoto.
Thus, by the end of the Heian period the lectures were richly varied as regard
purpose and occasion. The hakko were employed as memorial services first for
others as a sign of familial, priestly, or liege ties, and later directly for a per-
son's own benefit; as platforms for debate where the reputations of priests
were made or lost and the competitive power of influential temples was played
out; as subtle means to determine political favors; as grand social events to
vaunt a person's power, although this did not subtract from the religious
significance; and finally as a means to spread Buddhist teachings to the coun-
tryside to benefit even the lowliest peasant.
On the whole, however, the hakko were aristocratic in nature, and both
sponsors and participants truly believed that the greater the offerings, the more
complex and lavish the ritual, the greater would be the benefits. That the
benefits were not only of the next world but also of this was only proof of the
efficacy of the ritual, for the hakko and its ceremony did indeed fuse the world
as it was with the world as the aristocrats and the Lotus Sutra imagined it
could be.

4 Takagi, p. 244. Zensho A~ H *ALFkt Bussho Kanko Kai,

44 Sambo Ekotoba, in Dai Nihon Bukkyo 1922, vol. 111, pp. 471-72.

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