Genshin (源信 942–1017) was the most influential of a number
of Tendai scholars active during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Japan. He was not a wandering evangelist as Kūya was, but was an elite cleric who
espoused a doctrine of devotion to Amida Buddha which taught that because Japan was thought to
have entered mappō, the "degenerate age" of the "latter law," the only hope for
salvation lay in the reliance on the power of Amitabha. Other doctrines, he claimed, could not aid an individual because
they depended on "self-power" (jiriki), which cannot prevail during the chaos of the degenerate age, when the power of
another (tariki) is necessary. This doctrine is documented in his treatise Ōjōyōshū ("Essentials of rebirth"),
which in later copies of the text came complete with graphic depictions of the joy of the
blessed and the suffering of those doomed to chaos.
Genshin's influence in contemporary Japanese culture today is primarily due to his treatise, Ojoyoshu, particularly the
graphic descriptions of the Buddhist hell realms (jigoku), which inspired a genre of horror and morality stories. The 1960
Japanese film Jigoku was influenced by Genshin's Ojoyoshu.
In Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, he is considered the Sixth Patriarch.
Amida-nyorai image at the main building of Yasaka-ji Temple in Shikoku is said to have been made by Genshin in the Nara Era.
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