ABSTRACT
Introduction The Japanese Tendai School of the late Heian and Kamakura periods is often stereotyped as a monolithic institution that persecuted the newly emerging schools of Kamakura Buddhism. Terms such as “secularization” are used to characterize its interest in political, economic, and military power. Doctrinal traditions such as “original enlightenment” (hongaku 本覚) and a complex of Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism (kenmitsu taisei 顕密体制) are said to have provided the intellectual foundations for these developments. In this chapter, I focus on one monk, Kōen 興円 (1262 or 1263-1317), who serves as a counter-example to many of these stereotypes. Sources that are similar to those employed by William Bodiford elsewhere in this volume to discuss first-hand accounts of monasticism are used; however, many of the documents considered in this essay are more prescriptive than descriptive. Because Kōen’s movement was a small one, the distinction made by James Robson and others between larger monasteries and smaller institutions such as hermitages is instructive. However, Kōen certainly had aspirations of making his reforms to Tendai broader based and perhaps applying them to large monasteries.
