ABSTRACT
The transition from the court-centered society of Heian Period (ca. 794-1221) Japan to the more tumultuous warrior administrations of the Kamakura Period (ca. 1185-1333) witnessed the unprecedented production of numerous fi rst-person accounts of institutional Buddhism and its role in society. Despite having different formats, these works share a perceived need to provide a changing society with a comprehensive explanation of the key features of Japanese monasticism and their genealogical bases. Written both by laymen and by Buddhist monks, they provide us with a heretofore neglected perspective on the mainstream Buddhist monasteries. With only a few exceptions, previous scholars have examined these fi rst-person accounts merely as raw databases to be mined for names and events, to be cited or dismissed according to modern standards of historical accuracy. In this chapter I propose a different approach to these sources. I wish to suggest ways that these insider accounts can be examined on their own terms as fi rst-hand ethnographies of a world long lost, ethnographies which reveal the categories of knowledge, ceremonies, lifestyle, modes of learning, and religious concerns of Japanese monks and nuns. I hope that data from these accounts can contribute toward a historiography of medieval Japanese Buddhism that charts a middle way between (and thereby avoids some of the pitfalls of) the “Kamakura New Buddhism” and the “Exoteric-Esoteric Establishment” models of medieval Japanese Buddhist history.
