Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 487, The Nation's Kitchen, Part 2.

It can be hard from a modern perspective to grasp just what made Jodo Shinshu, or true

Pureland Buddhism, seem so threatening to the elites of late medieval Japan.

One thing you have to understand from the jump about Pure Land Buddhism in general in order to grasp why this was the case is the extent to which it represented an absolute

social leveling of a long-established religious and political order.

For a very long time in Japanese history, Buddhism was really an elite preserve.

That was not to say that poor people could not be Buddhists,

but the religious institutions of Buddhism really did not cater to those without money. Partially, this was a matter

of social and economic structures. These institutions funded themselves off of donations, which obviously

come in far greater monetary amounts from the rich than from the poor. But it was also a matter

of theology. Early Japanese Buddhism was dominated by

esoteric sects like shingon and tendai, which relied heavily on mandala visualization or other

practices that required a lot of time and money. Not everyone, after all, can afford to just have an

expensive mandala they can stare at

to visualize the complex interrelationship of all things lying around the house.

During the medieval era, however, three distinct Buddhist sects challenging this class

component of the religion emerged.

Zen, with its focus on simplicity and iconoclasm,

on the idea that the truths of Buddhism were literally non-representable, and that meditation

should be a simple-seated practice, was one. Nietzschean Buddhism, with its single-minded focus on

the Lotus Sutra as the source of All Salvation,

was another. Last came Pure Land Buddhism, most directly associated with the monk Holnen and his disciple,

...