Controversy as Hagiography: The Disputed Life of Shinran in Early-Modern Shin Buddhism

In 1715 there was a protracted controversy surrounding the life of Shinran, the putative founder of the Shin school of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. In that year the Pure Land Buddhist scholiast Ryōkū 良空 (fl. 1815–1830s) published a new hagiography of the founder titled Tradition of the True Lineage of Saint Shinran 親鸞聖人正統伝 that lambasted previous accounts for their many mistakes and shortcomings. Vigorous debate ensued across the Shin Buddhist community. Critics from all corners in turn railed against the new life of Shinran and its author. This exchange called into question established truths and interpretation, casting doubt on hagiographies that had been considered authoritative and casting doubt on the authenticity of key sources about the founder’s life. Some of the issues raised at this time continue to occupy scholars of Shinran’s life to this day.

In the study of Shinran hagiography, scholarship to date has focused first and foremost on formal hagiographical texts such as the aforementioned Tradition of the True Lineage of Saint Shinran. Accordingly, controversies such as the one that followed in 1715 tend to be overlooked. This paper seeks to counter that trend and explores how we can think of this intense and explicit debate over the life of Shinran as a distinct kind of hagiography in its own right. It demonstrates that, much like formal hagiographies, the controversy over Shinran’s biography reshaped his image, reinforced claims to authority within the eighteenth-century Shin Buddhist community, and helped define sectarian boundaries. Yet, unlike traditional hagiographies, this form of hagiographical production operated through the mediation of systematic and explicit rhetoric associated with the form of the treatise rather than the literary strategies of storytelling associated with more literary forms of hagiography.

To support this thesis, the paper examines the arguments made back and forth in various treatises and other publications that appeared in response to Ryōkū’s hagiography. Among these are critiques such as Shōtōden tesseki 正統伝鉄関 (1721) and Ha shōtōden 非正統伝 (1784), as well as Ryōkū’s responses to critiques which he recorded in his Tesseki tōha 鉄関踏破 (1721) and further publications such as Shōtōden goshū 正統伝後集 in which he presented the evidence on the basis of which his Shinran hagiography had been written. This includes another hagiography, Shinran shōnin shōmyōden 親鸞聖人正明伝, which Ryōkū published in 1733 as evidence supporting his claims. He asserted that it was a rediscovered fourteenth-century text of great authority, but critics quickly dismissed it as a forgery. Beyond rhetorical analysis, the paper situates these debates in two key contexts: (1) the social and institutional dynamics of eighteenth-century Shin Buddhism, and (2) the broader development of Shinran hagiography. This approach reconstructs the controversy’s impact on later accounts of Shinran’s life.

The paper concludes by stressing the need for a broader approach to the study of hagiography—one that recognizes not just different media, but also different modes of discursive practice. The case of Shinran suggests that argumentation, as much as storytelling, can serve as a means of hagiographical construction. Recognizing this dynamic can offer new insights into hagiography in Japanese Buddhism, as well as in other religious and cultural contexts.