Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth shaped the jishū’s social and ritual life, showing how the paradox between destined salvation and active communal practice reconfigured the structure and function of medieval Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the intricate relationship between Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth (yotei ōjō) and the social organisation of the jishū movement within the broader landscape of medieval Japanese Pure Land thought. While previous scholarship has often treated Ippen’s soteriology as an idiosyncratic extension of Hōnen’s nembutsu tradition, its structural implications for communal practice and religious agency have remained insufficiently theorised.

Ippen’s doctrine of predetermined rebirth functioned as a social technology that enabled a radically open and mobile communal structure. The author argues that Ippen’s affirmation of an already-determined salvific destiny did not diminish religious practice; rather, it generated a distinctive mode of collective enactment in which practice operated as the performative manifestation of a pre-inscribed spiritual trajectory. Through close readings of the Ippen Hijiri-e, itinerant preaching records, and early jishū regulations, the study demonstrates how the tension between inevitability and performativity fostered a communal ethos grounded in openness, mobility, and ritual inclusivity.

By situating Ippen’s thought within contemporaneous Buddhist debates—particularly the contrasting emphases of Shinran’s interiorised faith and Nichiren’s polemical exclusivism—the study highlights how Ippen articulated a third path in medieval Japanese soteriology: one that united radical universalism with robust ritual participation. This analysis shows that yotei ōjō operated not merely as a doctrinal claim but as a social technology that shaped modes of belonging, authority, and interaction within the itinerant community.

Moreover, the jishū’s flexible engagement with local cults, pilgrimage economies, and combinatory kami–Buddha practices suggests that predetermined rebirth facilitated a porous religious identity capable of adapting to diverse ritual environments. This positions Ippen’s soteriology as a catalyst for religious hybridity rather than a doctrinal constraint.

Overall, this study contributes to current discussions on practice theory, community formation, and the performativity of belief in East Asian Buddhism, offering a revised assessment of Ippen’s place within Japanese religious history.

Keywords: Ippen, Predetermined Rebirth, Jishū, Pure Land Buddhism, Medieval Japanese Religion