The Introduction of Pure Land Buddhism to Japan

Abstract

This chapter takes up the early development of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, focusing especially on the Nara period (710-794). In this early period, Pure Land Buddhism was understood primarily as a religion to ensure the post-mortem welfare of one’s relatives and ancestors but by the Heian period, it came to be seen as a way of attaining one’s own birth in the Pure Land. By the Nara period, all of the major Pure Land sūtras and treatises had been transmitted to Japan and scholar-monks began to produce highly sophisticated studies on Pure Land texts.