Kakunyo (覚如) (1270-1351) is the great-grandson of

Shinran ''Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion & Culture'' by Esben Andreasen, pp. 13, 14, 15, 17. University of Hawaiʻi Press 1998, . was a Japanese Buddhist monk, who was born in Hino (now a part of Fushimi, Kyoto) at the turbulent clos ...

, founder of

Jōdo Shinshū , also known as Shin Buddhism or True Pure Land Buddhism, is a school of Pure Land Buddhism founded by the former Tendai Japanese monk Shinran. Shin Buddhism is the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan. History Shinran (founder) S ...

Buddhism, and the third caretaker, or

Monshu The Monshu (門主 or 門首), or ''keeper of the gate'' is a term used to Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism that refers to the spiritual leader of either the Nishi Hongan-ji branch, or the Higashi Hongan-ji branch, both direct descendants of its founder Sh ...

of the family mausoleum, which gradually became the

Hongan-ji , also archaically romanized as Hongwanji, is the collective name of the largest school of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism (which further sub-divides into the Nishi and Higashi branches). 'Hongan-ji' may also refer to any one of several actual temple bu ...

Temple in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. He was responsible for being the first to compile information about Shinran's life, and formalizing the new Jōdo Shinshū sect, while re-asserting power at the mausoleum away from Shinshu followers in the

Kantō region The is a geography, geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures of Japan, prefectures: Chiba Prefecture, Chiba, Gunma Prefe ...

. Kakunyo was an avid writer whose liturgies comprise an important part of Jōdo Shinshū services, while his biography on Shinran, the is still an important source for scholars.

References

Mahayana Buddhists Jōdo Shinshū Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist priests Buddhist clergy of the Kamakura period {{buddhism-stub