Bibliographical Essay

The first book-length historical study of the warrior monks during the Heian and Kamakura periods in English is Mikael S. Adolphson, The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007).

If the Buddhist literature from the Insei period is read in its social context, as Martin Repp in Honens religioses Denken: Eine Untersuchung zu Strukturen religioser Erneuerung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), pp. 496-512 does, justification for violence can be found. First, the Mappo tomyo-ki (Record of the Candle of the Final Dharma) argues that, since during the present period of the ‘final dharma' the sutras including the precepts have disappeared, it is impossible to keep them any longer. Second, the hongaku homon (Dharma Gate of Inherent Awakening) literature argues that monks may attain liberation without religious practice, such as keeping the precepts, because they are already inherently awakened. Hence, murder and warfare are no hindrance for them. Whereas on the one hand Jacqueline Stone, in Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press 1999), treats these texts as purely religious discourses, thereby following well-known Japanese scholars, Adolphson on the other hand neglects these and other relevant texts justifying Buddhist violence. Because of religious justifications we may speak here of ‘religious violence'.

The first comprehensive research on the ikkoo ikki (peasant revolts by Shin-Buddhist communities) in a European language is the dissertation by Ulrich Pauly, ‘Ikko-Ikki: Die Ikko-Aufstände und ihre Entwicklung aus den Aufständen der bündischen Bauern und Provinzialen des japanischen Mittelalters' (Bonn University, 1985). This unpublished dissertation starts with a description of the peasant uprisings between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its main part consists of a detailed account and analysis of the various ikko ikki uprisings and their developments between 1465 and 1585, keeping the religious as well as the socio-economic factors in mind. He also provides relevant illustrations and maps.

Carol Richmond Tsang's War and Faith: Ikko Ikki in Late Muromachi Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) was the first book in English on the ikko ikki uprisings. It covers the period between the Hongan-ji abbots Rennyo (d. 1499) and Kennyo (d. 1592). However, it falls far behind Pauly's study because of its inaccuracies in the religious terminology, mistakes in historical dates and shortcomings concerning references to sources, including maps. Most of all, the author fails to situate the ikko ikki in its socio-economic contexts, in order to make this phenomenon understandable. As in the case of ‘warrior monks', research into ‘religious wars' requires a focus on secular and religious sources at the same time.