Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello, and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 512, The New Buddhism's.

Today we're going to put a brief pin in the story of warrior government in Japan to talk about a massive change in the world of Japanese religion, the effects of which profoundly reshaped the religious map of the country.

Up until this point, Buddhism, one of the world's foremost religions spanning the Asian continent

and with a history going back, at the point we've arrived to chronologically,

a millennium and a half, was mostly an elite religion in Japan.

As we've covered, there were attempts to missionize to the Japanese masses, but these were few

and far between. And while the two dominant sects of Buddhism in Japan by the time of the Genpei

War, Tendai and Shingun, rejected the notion that you had to be born into a high social status

to attain enlightenment, their focus on esoteric secret practices that most working people would

not have the time or money for meant that Buddhism remained largely an elite religion.

But over the course of what we might call the early medieval era in Japan, three new sects would

arrive from China or emerge domestically, which would challenge the elite grip on Buddhism,

and begin the practice of democratizing the faith, so to speak, and spreading its influence into

...