道元論4On Dogen, Part 4
In the mid-twelfth century, as the Kyoto aristocracy—which had held the reins of the Heian court for centuries—began its slow descent into obsolescence, it was the Imperial family that stirred to reclaim the power once lost to them. Long relegated to the status of ornamental figures, suppressed by the machinery of noble politics, the royals seized upon the burgeoning chaos of the era to reassert their authority. The central protagonist of this resurgence was the Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127–1192).
The decline of Japan today, and the impoverishment of its people as a whole, trace directly to the privatization of the system during the 2010s. Mocked as a "cabinet of friends," the government placed those who would do its bidding in ministerial posts, joined hands with the bureaucracy, and ran the affairs of a nation as if they were the property of a single circle of acquaintances. A healthy state would not allow such an arrangement to last. In a state that has lost its balance, it held on for the longest tenure in the nation's history, and that is how we arrived at the ruin of the present. Living in Japan today, one cannot help but feel an echo of the mid-twelfth century, when Go-Shirakawa likewise bent the structures of the world to his private will.
Only two days ago, I released an article contemplating our modern homeland through the life of Dogen (1200–1253). On that same day, news broke of Prime Minister Takaichi visiting the Ise Grand Shrine, carrying a portrait of the late Shinzo Abe. A prime minister carrying the portrait of a deceased figure to the shrine of the Imperial ancestors: in that scene I see the line between politics and ritual dissolving. Some supporters take delight in the performance, and international media tends to label them all simply as far-right, but both seem to me to skim only the surface of the phenomenon. As I wrote yesterday, we are in what Buddhism calls mappo (末法), the age of the Dharma's decline. Or more accurately, mappo has only just begun.
Japan will continue to wither in terrifying ways. However, if we view history as a cycle and consider the medium to long term, it is vital for our future to discern the shifts in faith that occurred during the upheaval of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the world transitioned from an aristocratic structure to a warrior-led one. From here, I shall proceed based on the foundations laid in yesterday’s essay.
The mid-twelfth century was a liminal period where the old trinity of the aristocracy, the Imperial family, and Enryaku-ji Temple collapsed, giving way to a new alignment: the Cloistered Emperor, Enryaku-ji, and Taira no Kiyomori. As mentioned previously, this structure was originally upheld by three pillars: Go-Shirakawa, Shinzei, and Taira no Kiyomori. Go-Shirakawa commanded the authority of the Imperial bloodline; Shinzei became a political autocrat; and Taira no Kiyomori achieved unparalleled military merit. In other words, the integration of ritual, politics, and military power was privatized by just three men. At the time, this exerted a staggering impact.
However, the establishment of this dictatorship by Go-Shirakawa and his close confidant Shinzei (1106–1160) provoked a violent backlash from the old guard of nobles whose vested interests were threatened. This ignited a civil war that cleaved the court in two. Taking advantage of the absence of Taira no Kiyomori (1118–1181), opposing forces launched an assault on Kyoto, leading to the abrupt death of Shinzei. The sight of Shinzei—who only the day before had reigned as an autocrat—having his severed head displayed in the streets of Kyoto sent a shockwave through the populace. They realized then that mappo had entered a truly grave stage. For Go-Shirakawa, losing Shinzei was a devastating blow to his attempts to maintain a centralized grip on power. Yet, once a man tastes the nectar of absolute rule, he does not easily relinquish it. Thus, Go-Shirakawa’s privatization of the state intensified, and the people were tossed about by the whims and avarice of a single dictator, until the situation deteriorated beyond the point of any simple resolution.
To maintain his grip, Go-Shirakawa had to suppress two forces: the Enryaku-ji Temple on Mt. Hiei, which held an invisible power far exceeding that of the nobles or royals, and Taira no Kiyomori, the head of the rising Taira clan. Simultaneously, both Enryaku-ji and the Taira clan derived significant prestige from the backing of the Imperial house. Unable to easily discard one another, they fell into a triangular struggle for supremacy. It may be difficult for a modern observer to grasp why Mt. Hiei’s Enryaku-ji wielded such absolute hegemony; today, I wish to focus our gaze specifically upon that.
The roots of the Enryaku-ji Temple—the head temple of the Tendai sect founded by Saicho (767–822)—lie in its designation as the most critical strategic point for warding off calamity and malevolent spirits during the relocation of the capital to Heian-kyo (Kyoto) in 794. Simply put, Mt. Hiei was established as a sacred sanctuary where neither noble nor Emperor could intervene. This was maintained by fanning religious dread; it was believed that any interference with Mt. Hiei would invite an invisible, catastrophic threat. Mt. Hiei was the vital organ for the maintenance of Heian-kyo; if its hegemony crumbled, it was believed the capital itself would perish. They were, in essence, a single body.
The health of the Emperor and the stability of his reign were believed to depend entirely on the esoteric rituals performed on the mountain. The fear that a cessation of these prayers would lead to the Emperor’s illness and the nation’s ruin was etched deeply into the hearts of the aristocracy. This was no mere superstition; given the historical context of the capital’s relocation, it was an immensely practical concern in their reality, though I will move forward without dwelling on those specifics today.
Furthermore, in understanding Enryaku-ji, it is essential to recognize its unity with the Hiyoshi Taisha Shrine, located near Lake Biwa at the foot of the mountain on the Shiga side. Hiyoshi Taisha is one of Japan’s oldest shrines, with a history stretching back 2,100 years, and it remains the head of some 3,800 Hiyoshi, Hie, and Sanno shrines nationwide. It was positioned at the primary demon gate of Heian-kyo. This means Hiyoshi Taisha served as the frontline defense against calamity, while Enryaku-ji, deeper in the mountains, acted as its absolute guardian. Within the geography of Mt. Hiei, the shrine to the gods (kami) stood at the base, while the temple to the Buddha stood in the peaks protecting it. This layout makes visible how people of the time understood shinbutsu-shugo (神仏習合), the syncretism of gods and buddhas, in which the divinity of the Buddha came to be seen as transcending that of the local gods.
For the people of Heian-kyo, Mt. Hiei was not merely the name of a mountain, but the name of the actual structure of power. Even today, Japanese people often say Mt. Hiei rather than Enryaku-ji. The same is true for Kongobu-ji on Mt. Koya, founded by Kukai (774–835); we call it Mt. Koya. These names are less geographical markers and more the names of an indefinable, phantasmal reality.
The true nature of Mt. Hiei was the frontline of shinbutsu-shugo, an integration of the Buddhist Enryaku-ji and the Shinto Hiyoshi Taisha, possessing the highest prestige of both paths. Their power was immense; the sacred palanquins (mikoshi) they carried down the mountain were regarded as the gods themselves. To oppose them was to become an enemy of the divine. In our modern age, we serve only the visible world and neglect the invisible; in that era, the reverse was true. All calamity was believed to originate in the unseen realm. Thus, neither the nobles nor the royals of Heian-kyo dared to raise a hand against the supreme authority that commanded both Buddha and God.
Yet, their immunity was not rooted solely in faith. Enryaku-ji held thousands of estates across the country, creating an automated flow of vast wealth through land taxes. Moreover, the temple paid no taxes and possessed the power to refuse entry to government officials, allowing for unfettered money laundering and financial autonomy.
Leveraging this concentrated capital, Mt. Hiei dominated logistics. The mountain sat at the final gateway for goods traveling from the Sea of Japan (via Fukui and Ishikawa) through Lake Biwa to Kyoto. Utilizing this geography, the temple centralized the flow of materials into the capital, establishing checkpoints to collect tolls. With these massive profits, they expanded into high-interest moneylending, counting the royals, nobles, and merchants of the capital among their clients. Mt. Hiei ruled the economy of Heian-kyo from the shadows. It was a giant economic kingdom, independent of the state—a shadow capital that held the reins of the apparent capital. Interestingly, distorted remnants of this structure persist in Kyoto even today.
To this day, religious organizations in Japan are exempt from taxation. Consequently, even as Kyoto is flooded with tourists visiting temples, the temples themselves pay no taxes. They accumulate wealth while the city of Kyoto teeters on the brink of financial collapse—a strange reality where the citizenry is exhausted while religious institutions are privileged.
Furthermore, Enryaku-ji was positioned as the shortest path to social advancement for the aristocracy. Noble sons entered the priesthood on Mt. Hiei in succession, but the mountain was also a secret venue for arranging political marriages. Mt. Hiei functioned as a hidden headquarters for binding the court and the temple through blood. As a result, for the Heian court to attack Mt. Hiei was to attack their own kin, rendering them paralyzed.
Thus, Mt. Hiei acquired the supreme authority of faith, wealth, and bloodline. But its greatest power was military. It is hard to imagine now, but Enryaku-ji was the largest armed organization in Japan. With abundant funds and the status of a sacred ground that no one dared touch, the mountain itself functioned as a massive fortress. While the functions of the capital resided in the streets of Heian-kyo, the functions of true hegemony were held by the mountain. Mt. Hiei was a city unto itself. This perspective is vital.
Around the time Dogen appeared, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the population of Heian-kyo was roughly 100,000 to 150,000. Astonishingly, between 10,000 and several tens of thousands lived on Mt. Hiei. Because many were of unknown origin, the exact number is elusive, but the mountain was divided into three areas across sixteen valleys, housing some 3,000 dwellings that served as both temples and monk residences. Crucially, only about 3,000 to 5,000 of these inhabitants were ordained monks. Who, then, were the rest? They were servants, artisans, and most notably, a vast group known as the doshu.
Mt. Hiei was a class-based society; not everyone was a monk devoted to asceticism. They were divided into the gakusho (学匠) (elites, often noble sons, focused on scholarship and ritual), the doshu (堂衆) (the administrative and ceremonial laborers), and others (tasked with manual labor like woodcutting and cooking). Over time, the massive number of doshu was organized under Enryaku-ji’s command, emerging as armed monks. These were the sohei (僧兵), the monk soldiers, a professional army direct under Enryaku-ji, equipped and trained using the mountain’s vast resources and seclusion. They were called akuso (悪僧) in those days, though "evil" here carried the nuance of being fiercely, terrifyingly strong.
I believe the sohei were a military organization in the modern sense, centering on the doshu but incorporating various outcasts and rough-hewn men from across the provinces. Since the mountain controlled the Lake Biwa trade routes and barred government officials, they could amass any military equipment flowing from the Sea of Japan. By recruiting those who could not survive in Heian-kyo or those driven from their homes, they forged an army that feared nothing.
Mt. Hiei dispatched this army as mercenaries through its own networks. These trained soldiers were sent to the temple’s countless estates to protect its interests from rival forces or officials. Military systems were organized by monks, and training was expanded across their territories. Eventually, temples began to use this military might to plunder the interests of others, leading to intense internal strife.
In short, Mt. Hiei was a city possessing religious, economic, and military functions—the true capital of the era.
While the sohei are thought to have been organized in the late tenth century, they began to run wild as mappo progressed. Ryogen (912–985), the 18th Abbot and the restorer of Enryaku-ji, issued regulations in 970 warning monks not to arm themselves or engage in combat. Even the Abbot himself viewed the rampaging monk-soldiers as a danger.
But Ryogen’s words could not stem the tide of the times. The sohei of Mt. Hiei continued to grow, eventually abandoning Buddhist practice altogether to live as career soldiers. Thousands strong, they began to pressure the court through a political tactic known as goso (強訴), the forced petition. These petitions involved thousands of monks descending the mountain in a massive host, carrying the sacred mikoshi, and encamping at the Kamo River, the gateway to Heian-kyo. They demanded the return of seized lands or the dismissal of unfavorable officials. If their demands were met with silence, they would abandon the mikoshi at the gates of the Imperial Palace and withdraw.
As mentioned, the mikoshi was the god itself. Leaving it at the palace gates was a declaration that Mt. Hiei would cease its ritual protections. Believing this would bring illness to the Emperor or ruin to the land, the aristocrats would fall into a panic. They had no choice but to yield, which only emboldened the monks further.
Goso was, in essence, extortion. Once successful, it inevitably escalated. These protests were not unique to Enryaku-ji; the Kofuku-ji Temple in Nara, a titan of the previous era, also adopted the practice. By this age, Buddhist monks had ceased to be religious figures; they had become a militarized political syndicate.
For Enryaku-ji, the court was no longer a threat—it had already been broken. However, a formidable nemesis appeared from an unexpected quarter: Onjo-ji, a rival branch of the same Tendai sect. A factional struggle over the succession of the Abbotship intensified between Enryaku-ji and Onjo-ji (located in Otsu, Shiga). This conflict lasted over a century, eventually drawing in the nobles, the royals, and the entire court. Originating in the late ninth century, by the eleventh century it had devolved into repeated military clashes. The sohei of Mt. Hiei, with their superior numbers, burned Onjo-ji to the ground, resulting in mass casualties. This internal schism within Tendai Buddhism would later serve as the axis for the Genpei War between the Minamoto and Taira clans, and eventually the conflict between the Northern and Southern Courts in the medieval period.
The deep divisions in Kyoto’s history are, in fact, rooted in these Tendai factional wars—a structure that still haunts Japanese politics today.
The excesses of Enryaku-ji destabilized the systems of Heian-kyo and destroyed its public order. Yet, the old guard could not suppress them for fear of divine retribution. Into this vacuum stepped the samurai, a new class of people who lived outside the vested interests of the old system. Taira no Tadamori (1096–1153) and his son Taira no Kiyomori (1118–1181), among the first warriors to enter the core of the court, reached the limit of their patience with the monk-soldiers’ tyranny. They stepped forward to confront the mountain in an era of violent transition.
Until then, no one dared touch the mikoshi—the tool of the monks’ spiritual blackmail. Kiyomori, however, was of a different mind. If an arrow hits the palanquin, we can simply repair it later, he is said to have declared. While the nobles trembled at the thought of calamity, Kiyomori looked at the world as it was and saw that mappo had already arrived. With the appearance of such powerful warriors, the monks’ threats masked in divine authority lost their potency. The rise of Tadamori and Kiyomori signaled the collapse of Mt. Hiei’s religious authority. The people of Heian-kyo began to wake from a fiction centuries in the making, finding the protagonists of the next age in the samurai.
Thus began the era when the warriors, once called mononofu, dispelled the illusion of Mt. Hiei that had served as the shadow ruler of the capital. What Mt. Hiei feared most was the arrival of those who could separate God and Buddha from politics and economics.
How did the Taira clan destroy this monster cloaked in religion? You may have guessed by now, but it is my view that it was only because the Taira dispelled the illusion of Mt. Hiei that the Pure Land schools of Honen and Shinran could rise, and that the zen of Dogen emerged as a counter-resonance.
This period of history is dense, but if your interest is piqued, I recommend the 1955 film Shin Heike Monogatari by Kenji Mizoguchi. While based on the historical fiction of Eiji Yoshikawa, it provides a foundational understanding of why the samurai rose in Heian-kyo and what Mt. Hiei truly represented.
To be continued.