Chapter 6 Refusing the Ruler’s Offerings: Accommodation and Martyrdom in Early Modern Nichiren Buddhism in: Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia

Abstract This study examines the fuju fuse 不受不施 (“neither giving nor receiving”) controversy that divided the Nichiren sect in seventeenth-century Japan, highlighting the issue of Buddhist resistance to the state. Rooted in the founder Nichiren’s (1222–1282) teaching of exclusive devotion to the Lotus Sūtra, fuju fuse doctrine meant that a Nichiren priest should neither accept donations from, nor perform ritual services for, nonbelievers in the Lotus, to avoid complicity with “slander of the True Dharna.” Fuju fuse proponents accordingly refused to participate in state-sponsored ceremonies or to receive offerings from rulers who were not Lotus devotees, asserting the claims of the dharma over those of worldly rule. Their stance proved intolerable to the newly established Tokugawa shogunate, which sought to subordinate Buddhist temples within its own ideology and bureaucratic structure. Faced with government threats, the Nichiren sect divided over whether to compromise the strict fuju fuse principle to ensure institutional survival. Eventually, the conciliatory faction gained control of the sect, while committed fuju fuse adherents suffered arrest, exile, and execution. By way of historical analysis, the chapter situates fuju fuse resistance within a long, transregional tradition of Buddhist moral exemplars who defied the state.
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