The Ohigashi schism (お東騒動) was a religious
schism
A schism ( , , or, less commonly, ) is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a split in what had previously been a single religious body, suc ...
in the
Ōtani-ha (also known as
Higashi Honganji) subsect of the
Jōdo Shinshū
, also known as Shin Buddhism or True Pure Land Buddhism, is a school of Pure Land Buddhism. It was founded by the former Tendai Japanese monk Shinran.
Shin Buddhism is the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan.
History
Shinran ( ...
school of
Buddhism that occurred in 1969 after a reformist group created internal divisions.
History
The Dobokai Movement (同朋会運動), a reform group within Higashi Honganji, officially began on the 700th memorial of
Shinran
''Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion & Culture'' by Esben Andreasen, pp. 13, 14, 15, 17. University of Hawaii Press 1998, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, who was born in Hino (now a part of Fushimi, Kyoto) at the turbulent close of ...
in 1962, though its roots were in a movement started in 1947 by a group of practitioners calling themselves the ''shinjinsha'' "true person community".
[Popular Buddhism In Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion & Culture by Esben Andreasen, pp. 26, 69-73 / University of Hawaii Press 1998, ] The grass-roots reform group was led by
Kurube Shin'yū.
Akegarasu Haya,
Soga Ryōjin
was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher and priest of the Ōtani-ha of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. He served as the 17th president of Ōtani University from 1961 to 1967.
Biography
Soga was born in the city of Niigata, Niigata Prefecture. He ente ...
, and other disciples of
Kiyozawa Manshi were also closely involved.
[Higashi Honganji sanjūnen funsō 東本願寺三十年紛争 by Tahara Yukio 田原由紀雄, pp. 37-41 / Hakubasha 2004, INBN978-4-938651-51-0]
The goal of the Dobokai movement was to awaken and unite members of Higashi Honganji due to internal conflict over differences of doctrinal opinion such as over the idea of
shinjin and whether the
pure land
A pure land is the celestial realm of a buddha or bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. The term "pure land" is particular to East Asian Buddhism () and related traditions; in Sanskrit the equivalent concept is called a buddha-field (Sanskrit ). Th ...
was to be entered in death or in this life. The Dobokai movement based itself largely on the ''
Tannishō'', a collection of sayings attributed to Shinran with commentaries by
Yuien-bo, one of his disciples, and the idea of cutting through spiritual differences.
The movement split Higashi Honganji into four different groups. What is now known as the Higashi Honganji-ha is centered in Tokyo. The physical property of Higashi Honganji temple is run by the much-larger Ōtani-ha, which changed the temple's name to "Shinshū Mausoleum". Meanwhile, the treasure of Higashi Honganji-ha at the time, amounting to about $200 million in donations, was seized for use by a "nonprofit organization" which does not maintain any temples. In 2012 a court ruled that this money must be returned.
References
Notes
Bibliography
* Suzuki, David A. (1985). Crisis in Japanese Buddhism : case of the Otani Sect. Los Angeles : Buddhist Books International.
* Shojun Bandō, Harold Stewart, Ann T. Rogers, Minor L. Rogers (trans.)
Tannishō: Passages Deploring Deviations of Faith and Rennyo Shōnin Ofumi: The Letters of Rennyo Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research 1996.
Shinshū Ōtani-ha
History of Jōdo Shinshū
Incidents in the history of Buddhism in Japan
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