The Largest Buddhist School in Japan

From these radical beginnings Jodo Shinshu grew into the largest Buddhist tradition in Japan. The decisive organiser was Rennyo (1415-1499), the eighth head of the Honganji, who through vernacular pastoral letters and shrewd leadership turned scattered congregations into a mass movement; in the turbulent late medieval period some Shin communities became the ikko-ikki, self-governing leagues of believers whose military power for a time rivalled the warlords.

The tradition centres on the great Honganji temples in Kyoto, later split into the Nishi (West) and Higashi (East) Honganji branches that remain its two largest bodies. Its married priesthood, its lay-centred devotion, and its accessibility to ordinary working people made it enormously widespread, and it was among the first forms of Japanese Buddhism to establish itself abroad, notably through the Buddhist Churches of America. Doctrinally it remains the great exemplar within Buddhism of salvation by grace through faith rather than by self-generated merit.