The Warrior Monks of Japan - Buddhism Took on Violence

Buddhism is known as a religion of peace and harmony, with values promoting a non-harmful and honest way of life. While not as widespread and influential as the big three, Buddhism still left it mark in many countries in Asia. One such place is the island archipelago of Japan, where it took root in two different forms. The first and most common is through Shinto-Buddhism, with the imported faith blending with the native religion. The second, and topic of today’s being the development of its own branch of Buddhism, giving it a completely new identity in the land of the rising sun. 

You see, Japanese Buddhist monks, called Sohei, differed greatly from their mainland counterparts. Instead of being peaceful meditators, seeking purification, Soheis were more into splitting your face in half while getting shit drunk on sake. This is because, to the Soheis, the mortal world was irreversibly corrupted and the only path to salvation was to die and be reborn in the lands of the Buddha Amida. As such, monks didn’t care much about their purity on earth and didn’t shy from earthly vices, which made them far less hypocritical than a lot of ‘pious’ figures.  

The Soheis lived in a vast temple-fortress complex, being a mix of a religious place and a military complex. They held not only living quarters for the Monks, but also training grounds, armouries, and manufactories to produce weapons and armour. Warfare was an important part of Sohei’s life, as they weren’t afraid to use arms to prove a point. When they weren’t fighting, the monks were training in the arts of war, becoming fighters as fearsome as the samurai, being particularly adept in the Naginata, Yumi and later Arquebus. In many ways, they were just like the Western Templar orders operating in the Levant, religious military orders defending their faith with force of arms. The main difference was that while the Templar orders operated under the authority of a greater figure, the Sohei monasteries answered only to themselves. 

This level of independence originates from their early support of the emperor during the Nara period, the second-to-last era of Japan not ruled by Shogunates before the Meiji Restoration. As mentioned before, Buddhism blended exceptionally well with the native Shinto religion of Japan. As such, pure Buddhist orders enjoyed a very high degree of acceptance in this new nation. This went to the point where the Nara emperors sponsored many shrines purely dedicated to their faith, giving the early Soheis their own place of power. The only control the court had over these temples was that the emperor himself could appoint the head abbot, the Zasu, and outside of this, the monks were free to do whatever they wanted. They rapidly took advantage of this new position, gaining political power and wealth by providing religious services to noble families. Over time, the temples broke into smaller sects, each fighting for their own standing in the Imperial Court. Conflicts started off in line with traditional Buddhist ideologies, non-violent and respectful. However, things quickly took a nasty turn as blows started to be exchanged between rival monks, and then armed combat took place.  

Monasteries rapidly formed their own standing military to assert their own authority, triggering the time of the warrior-monks. The monastery of Mount Hiei was by far the most feared and powerful during the Heian era. You see at the time Kyoto was the capital city of the island, and Mount Hiei sat right at its doorstep, so the warrior monks could go down to the imperial city whenever they felt like it and muscle their way, as the emperor was mostly powerless to oppose them. Outside of this blatant disrespect for Imperial authority, which would ultimately lead to the Genpei War, the various Buddhist orders all around the country went completely nuts. I mean seriously, you could bump into the Zasu of a rival temple during a religious festival and next thing you know his Soheis are at your doorstep trying to kill everyone. Here again, the monks of Mount Hiei would set themselves above the others, sacking the temple of Miidera four times in the span of sixty years, among other things. The violence got the bad that Emperor Go Shirakawa, who appeared in my ‘Rise of the Samourai’ post, made a joke about the three things he couldn’t control in his realms: the flow of a river, dice at gambling and the Soheis. 

Following the end of the Heian era and the outbreak of the Genpei War, the Soheis found themselves in high demand as fighting forces by the quarrelling samurai. Many stayed neutral, more interested in their own religious feuds, some joined the Minamoto clan. These decisions would backfire horribly for the Miidera and Nara monks, as the Minamoto were defeated in the opening stages of the conflict. While the Samurai clan would ultimately bounce back and overcome their foes, forming the Kamakura Shogunate, Nara and Miidera never recovered from the destruction of the Taira’s reprisal and would forever stay a backstage power. 

Despite the Samurai taking the front stage in Japanese politics, the Sohei were far from having fallen from grace. Despite the devastation of Nara, other orders would fill in the gap and maintain a powerful economic presence in the country, with monks going around as debt collectors in the streets of major cities like Kyoto. This new status quo would stay until the advent of the Onin War and the beginning of the famous Sengoku Jidai, the warring age. Here, Samurai clans were at each other's throats for over a century, beating each other to a pulp while terrorizing the lesser class. The Sohei stayed out of the conflict for the most part, not being interested in samurai affairs and actually having the strength to beat back anyone foolish enough to go after them. However, this would change with the rise of Rennyo, forming the Ikko Ikki sect and taking over the province of Kaga, which would be the only state not ruled by samurai. The Ikko Ikki would carve out their own domain, beating back every daimyo trying to invade their lands until they crossed blades with the great unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. 

The Ikko-Ikki would trigger a series of brutal conflicts with the three men, most especially Nobunaga. While successful at repelling them, they would ultimately be defeated and subjugated by the daimyo, triggering the end of the Soheis as a fighting force. You see the unifiers. Seeing the threat these warriors' monks posed to order, launched many campaigns to extinguish their operations once and for all with great success. The most famous of which was the campaign against Mount Hiei, which had allied themselves with the Azai and Asakura, as all three of them had attracted the personal ire of Nobunaga. None of them would survive this encounter, with the monks of Mount Hiei in particular getting a taste of their own medicine as the Oda daimyo torched their temple. 

By the time of Nobunaga’s and Toyotomi’s, Sohei had all but ceased to exist as a military force, and would revert back to their peaceful roots.