Yùsúxìng yùwén 御俗姓御文
The Letter on [the Founder’s] Lay Family Name by 蓮如 Rennyo (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle pastoral letter by Rennyo 蓮如 蓮如 (1415–1499), composed at the Yoshizaki gobō in Bunmei 5 / 1473, ninth month, and traditionally counted as one of the most doctrinally substantial of his letters. The Go-zokushō o-fumi — “The Letter on [the Founder’s] Lay Family Name” — circulates separately from the main Ofumi collection KR6t0379 (Taishō no. 2668) because of its liturgical use as the recitation text for Shinran’s annual memorial (shōki) observance and for memorial services more generally.
Abstract
The letter opens with a recitation of Shinran’s lay family lineage — his birth into the Hino aristocratic family, descended from the Fujiwara — establishing the Shinran ancestry as a matter of proper Shinshū devotional knowledge. It then surveys Shinran’s principal life-episodes: ordination at age 9, encounter with Hōnen at 29, the Jōgen-no-hōnan exile, the Kantō evangelization, the Kyoto return, and the death in 1262. The doctrinal substance — about three-quarters of the letter — is an exhortation to proper Shinshū anjin: the settled-mind doctrine that shinjin once attained, established by Amida’s vow-power not by the practitioner’s effort, secures rebirth.
The letter has become the standard memorial-service recitation text in Shinshū to this day: it is recited at the meinichi (monthly memorial day) of Shinran, at the Hō-on kō annual observance, and at most memorial services for deceased members of Shinshū families. Its rhetorical mode — combining biographical narrative with direct doctrinal exhortation — is the model for late-medieval Shinshū devotional rhetoric.
Date. Internally dated Bunmei 5 / 1473, ninth month, when Rennyo was 59, during the Yoshizaki period (1471–1475).
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T83N2670) records the work as a single-fascicle letter by Rennyo Kenju 蓮如兼壽 (Rennyo’s clerical name) with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
English in Rogers & Rogers, Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism (Asian Humanities, 1991); Inagaki, Letters of Rennyo (Numata, 2000). Critical edition: Shinshū shōgyō zensho, vol. 3.
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 蓮如 (Rennyo)
- Companion: KR6t0379 (Ofumi), KR6t0380 (Go-ichidaiki kikigaki)
- Subject: 親鸞 (Shinran)