Eshinni and Kakushinni

It all started when…

about eshinni and kakushinni

Until recently, very little was known about Eshinni, the woman Shinran Shonin married.  However, ten letters that she wrote to her daughter Kakushinni, dated from around 1254 to 1268, were discovered in the Hongwanji archives in 1921.  Eshinni’s letters described important historical events in the life of Shinran Shonin, as well as the conditions in Japan during the Kamakura Era.

Shinran Shonin and Eshinni were married around 1210 and lived in Echigo, where he had been exiled in the year 1207.  They moved to the Kanto area sometime between 1212 and  1219, returning to Kyoto with some of their children around 1233.  Eshinni lived in Kyoto with Shinran Shonin until around 1254; then it became necessary for her to return to Echigo to take care of her property.  At that time Eshinni was seventy-three years old.   She left her eighty-two-year-old husband in the care of their youngest daughter, Kakushinni.

Kakushinni  (1224 – 1283)

Kakushinni was born near Mito in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture.  Her original name was Ogozen.  Some scholars believe that Kakushinni’s birth year was when Shinran Shonin began compiling his major work, the Kyo Gyo Shin Sho (The True Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way).   Kakushinni took care of Shinran Shonin during his last years.  Shinran Shonin entered Nirvana on January 16, 1263, at the age of ninety.

From:  Eshinni and Kakushinni, Shinran’s Wife and Daughter and the Beginning of the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha.   Rev. C. Myokai Himaka, Buddhist Churches of America

In 1978, at its convention in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the World Buddhist Women’s Association passed a resolution to conduct annual services in memory of Eshinni.   In 2002 the World BWA passed a resolution to similarly honor Kakushinni