Japanese Buddhist texts

Japanese book compiled prior to 1330

literary work

, variously translated as An Account of My Hut or The Ten Foot Square Hut, is an important and popular short work of the early Kamakura period (1185–1333) in Japan by Kamo no Chōmei. Written in March 1212, the work depicts the Buddhist concept of impermanence (mujō) through the description of various disasters such as earthquake, famine, whirlwind and conflagration that befall the people of the capital city Kyoto. The author Chōmei, who in his early career worked as court poet and was also an accomplished player of the biwa and koto, became a renunciant in his fifties and moved farther and far

short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

literary work

collection of Japanese folk songs

The , also known as the Lamentations of Divergences, is a late 13th century short Buddhist text generally thought to have been written by Yuien, a disciple of Shinran. In the Tannishō, Yuien is concerned about the rising doctrinal divergences that emerged in Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism after the death of their founder, so he wrote down dialogues between himself and Shinran that he could recall when his master was alive.

The is a Japanese setsuwa collection in ten volumes, believed to date from the Nanboku-chō period (1336–1392). It illustrates with tales about various shrines the Buddhist honji suijaku theory, according to which Japanese kami were simply local manifestations of the Indian gods of Buddhism. This theory, created and developed mostly by Tendai monks, was never systematized but was nonetheless very pervasive and influential. The book had thereafter great influence over literature and the arts.

The , also read as Sasekishū, translated into English as Collection of Stone and Sand, is a five-volume collection of Buddhist parables written by the Japanese monk Mujū in 1283 during the Kamakura period.

The was an influential medieval Buddhist text composed in 985 by the Japanese Buddhist monk Genshin. The text is a comprehensive analysis of Buddhist practices related to rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, drawing upon earlier Buddhist texts from China, and sutras such as the Contemplation Sutra. Genshin advocated a collection of mutually supportive practices, such as sutra recitation, centered around visual meditation of Amitabha Buddha where later Pure Land sects favored an approach that relied on exclusive recitation of the verbal nembutsu. The text is also well known for its graphic