Yuten Shonin

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Yuuten, Yūten 祐天 Yuten Shami
Yuuten Shoonin 祐天上人 Yuten Shonin
(1637 - 1718)





- source : www.robynbuntin.com

- quote
Fudo Myoo Threatening the Young Priest Yuten Shami
Fantastic depiction of the Buddhist deity Fudu Myoo threatening the young priest Yuten Shami with a sword. The kneeling acolyte clasps his hands together in prayer as the deity grips him by the neck, inserting the sword down his victim's throat. Surrounded by red flames, the fiery spirit grimaces at the young man.
According to legend, Yuten Shami was a terrible scholar and could not learn the sutras. After his teachers gave him up as hopeless, he swore a vow before an image of Fudu Myoo to become a better student. That night, he dreamed of swallowing a sword. The next morning he woke up coughing up blood, and long with it, his stupidity. From that day on, he was a gifted and wise student.
- source : Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) - facebook




another print by Yoshitoshi


Yuten prayed at Narita Fudo 成田不動尊 - 新勝寺 Temple Shinsho-Ji
. Fudō Myō-ō, Fudoo Myoo-Oo 不動明王 Fudo Myo-O
Acala Vidyârâja - Vidyaraja - Fudo Myoo .


. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 月岡芳年 .
(1839 – June 9, 1892)


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Fudo-Myo Threatening a Novice, 1885
Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892)

This is one of the great and outstanding works by Yoshitoshi. He presents a supernatural event laden with symbolism and significance and overlaid with an astonishing sense of the dramatic and the powerful design for which he is now so famous. The influence of the ukiyo-e tradition of theatre prints is evident in the composition of the piece - the placement of each character on its own sheet recalls the habit of selling kabuki triptychs in single or multiple sheets. The shallow space evokes the traditional stage of the kabuki theatre as do the dramatic roles - frozen in time as in the climax of kabuki scenes.
Yoshitoshi uses these devices to order his composition for maximum effect - focusing the eye on the terrifying aspect of the statue of the fire god Fudo Myo, now come to life, leaning over the child-like figure of Yuten Shonin, the novitiate priest.




One interpretation of this print (not helped by the title), is that the young priest is being assaulted by the monstrous demon, but this is incorrect. The piece is intimately tied up with Buddhist legend and some historical fact. Yuten Shonin (1637 - 1718) is an historical character. He studied at the temple in Zojoji, (where the scene is set) and became influential with the fifth Tokugawa Shogun and his mother.
He eventually became Abbot at the temple and an important Buddhist scholar. Fudo-Myo is one of the five “Kings of Wisdom" in Buddhist lore and is often attended by the goddess of mercy, Kannon - pictured here in the right hand sheet. The legend has it that the statue appears to Shonin as the living God, Shonin prostates himself and consumes the sword of wisdom, thereby gaining supernatural wisdom and enlightenment.
This act of consummation is the subject of the print. Yoshitoshi has pictured Fudo-Myo and Kannon before in a stunning vertical diptych which illustrates the mercy of the Gods to a penitent sinner.
- source : www.toshidama-japanese-prints.com

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The Exorcist: Yuten and Genroku Politics
Dr. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey, Lecture 2004-09-27

The Jodo sect monk Yuten Shonin (1637-1718) succeeded where others failed in freeing women from demonic possession by his gift of hearing the voices of vengeful spirits. His first spectacular success occurred in Kanbun 12 (1672) while attached as gakuso, or acolyte studying the scriptures, to a temple in Shimo-osa (present-day Chiba), the Iinuma Gukyōji. Yuten subsequently moved to the Zojo temple at Edo, but then, aged nearly fifty, he crossed his name off the temple register and spent the next thirteen years as a wandering monk. Yet even though he shunned religious status and affiliation, his impact on society was significant, and, as he attended the afflicted, the stories of his exorcisms began to circulate even in print.

Yuten came to be patronized by Keisho-in, the mother of the fifth Tokugawa shogun Tsunayoshi, who is said to have called on him in his hermit's hut on the outskirts of Edo. In Genroku 12 (1699) he was in unprecedented fashion summoned to Edo castle and promoted from being a lowly wandering monk to the position of head priest of one of the Jodo sect's eighteen major temples in the Kanto area. In samurai terms, his status had become equal to that of a daimyo with a fief of 100,000 koku. The following year he was further promoted by an appointment as head priest to the Iinuma Gukyoji temple in Shimo-osa, the very temple where he had performed his first famous act of exorcism. Finally in Hoei 1 (1704), he was placed in charge of Koishikawa Denzuin in Edo, a temple next in standing only to the Zojo ancestral temple at Shiba.

Unlike other priests who had risen under the fifth shogun and his mother, Yuten was not retired on the death of the fifth shogun. To the contrary: under the sixth shogun Ienobu, Yuten was promoted to one of the highest posts in the religious hierarchy, namely to the headship of Zojoji at Shiba. Even when at the age of seventy-six Yuten asked to retire, he was refused on the grounds that his brain was still in perfect working order. When he finally did retire, the sixth shogun established a temple for him in Meguro that still bears his name today.
- source : www.asjapan.org


. Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi 徳川綱吉 .

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Yuutenji, Yūtenji 祐天寺 Yuten-Ji
東京都目黒区中目黒５丁目２４番５３号 - Nakameguro, Tokyo



In 1718 the 36th Buddhist monk of Zōjōji called Yūten died.
His disciple Yumi 祐海 built Yutenji as his last hermitage and made him the founder.

- Homepage of the temple
- source : www.yutenji.or.jp


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- quote
Yuuten 祐天（ゆうてん)
(寛永14年4月8日（1637年5月31日）- 享保3年7月15日（1718年8月11日））
とは、浄土宗大本山増上寺36世法主で、江戸時代を代表する呪術師。字は愚心。号は明蓮社顕誉。密教僧でなかったにもかかわらず、強力な怨霊に襲われていた者達を救済、その怨霊までも念仏の力で成仏させたという。



祐天は陸奥国（後の磐城国）磐城郡新妻村に生まれ、12歳で増上寺の檀通上人に弟子入りしたが、暗愚のため経文が覚えられず破門され、それを恥じて成田山新勝寺に参篭。不動尊から剣を喉に刺し込まれる夢を見て智慧を授かり、以後力量を発揮。5代将軍徳川綱吉、その生母桂昌院、徳川家宣の帰依を受け、幕命により下総国大巌寺・同国弘経寺・江戸伝通院の住持を歴任し、正徳元年（1711年）増上寺36世法主となり、大僧正に任じられた。晩年は江戸目黒の地に草庵（現在の祐天寺）を結んで隠居し、その地で没した。享保3年（1718年）82歳で入寂するまで、多くの霊験を残した。
祐天の奇端で名高いのは、下総国飯沼の弘経寺に居た時、羽生村（現在の茨城県常総市水海道羽生町）の累という女の怨霊を成仏させた累ヶ淵の説話である。この説話をもとに多くの作品が創作されており、曲亭馬琴の読本『新累解脱物語』や、三遊亭円朝の怪談『真景累ヶ淵』などが有名である。
©　More in the WIKIPEDIA !

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Yuten Nembutsu-odori and more . . .
- further reference -


. Fudō Myō-ō, Fudoo Myoo-Oo 不動明王 Fudo Myo-O
Acala Vidyârâja - Vidyaraja - Fudo Myoo .


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. Japanese Legends - 伝説　民話　昔話 – ABC-List .

Yuuten Shoonin no rei 祐天上人の霊 The soul of Saint Yuten
The daughter of a kiseruya 煙管屋 pipe maker living in Odenmacho could not learn how to read or write.
One day the soul of Saint Yuten appeared to her and wrote rokuji no myoogo 六字名号 a Buddhist name of a dead person, with six letters for her.
This changed her life and now she could read and write.

. Odenmacho 大伝馬町 Chuo, Tokyo - Legends .



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