in the tenth and eleventh centuries and eventually resulted in the development of new sects of Japanese Buddhism, quite different from the earlier sects established in Japan in the eighth and ninth centuries, which had emphasized for the most part fine points of metaphysics and theology. The first of the new popular sects in Japan was founded by the monk Honen in 1175. It quite understandably took the name of Pure Land Sect, for the Pure Land was a term for Paradise. In true reforming fashion, Shinran, one of the disciples of Honen, split away from his teacher, and in 1224 founded the True Pure Land Sect. This sect in time outstripped in popularity all other Japanese Buddhist sects. Even today it is the largest and strongest Buddhist group within Japan and the only one with a significant missionary movement abroad.
Both of these Pure Land Sects were definitely expressions of the religious feelings of the lower classes, which were assuming importance for the first time in the intellectual life of the nation. These sects taught a simpler way to salvation for less sophisticated minds, and from the start they won much of their strength by direct street-corner preaching to the poor.
Shinran showed his opposition to the intellectual aristocracy of the earlier monastic sects by at first forbidding the founding of monasteries, and he preached the “equality of all in Buddhism.” In an effort to bring the clergy closer to the people and nearer every day life, he permitted his priests to marry, a custom which gradually spread to most types of the clergy in all sects. One of Shinran’s successors started a movement to translate into Japanese certain of the Buddhist