Hello, and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 24.

In Buddha's name,

The Rise and Fall of the Ikoiki, Part 2.

We left off last week with Joldo Shinshu, or True Pearland Buddhism, on the Ascent.

The ninth patriarch, Shonyo, had secured an independent power base for his faith in the chaos of the Sangoku period during the 1530s, and the position of patriarch had made him,

in terms of prestige, roughly co-equal with most daimyo.

Shōnō and his faith directly controlled the province of Kaga by virtue of the religion's

armed followers, called Ikoiki.

In addition, Joldo Shinshu communities, with their own towns and fortified monasteries

or fortresses, were spread throughout, around a third or so of Japan.

While these communities did not control provinces, they were powerful enough to make for serious trouble for the daimyo in whose territory they resided.

One word from the patriarch could cause an Iki to rise against the provincial government, and could potentially bring down the daimyo, as it happened in Etchu and Kaga provinces.

When Shonyo died in 1555,

the Ikkoiki appeared to have taken root as a seriously powerful military and religious force in medieval Japan.

A European observer, the Europeans having arrived in Japan only a little over a decade earlier,

wrote of Jodos Shinshu believers that they

viewed the patriarch with such veneration that, quote, even a glimpse of him moves them to tears

as they beg him to absolve them for their sins. They give this priest so much money in alms that

he controls a large part of the country's wealth. Every year a great festival is held in his honor, and so many people wait at the gate of

the temple to enter that many die in the stampede which results when they open the gates.

Such people, however, are considered very lucky to have died in this way, and some at their

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