Kenni 顯意 (1239 – 1304), also styled Dōkyō Ken’i 道教顯意, the systematizer of the Fukakusa-ha 深草派 wing of the Seizan 西山 line of Japanese Pure Land (Jōdoshū). Twenty-ninth abbot (法主) of Seigan-ji 誓願寺 in Kyoto, the head temple of the Fukakusa-ha; later resided at Shinshū-in 真宗院 and retired to Chikurin-ji 竹林寺. DILA Authority A001976 (a second DILA entry, A001533, under the honorific form 道教顯意 / author of T2629 Jōdo shūyōshū, refers to the same person).
He stands in the Saizan lineage as Hōnen 法然 → Shōkū 證空 (founder of Seizan) → Risshin Enkū 立信圓空 (founder of the Fukakusa sub-line) → Kenni. His doctrinal hallmark is the integration of Pure Land thought with Sòng-period Tiāntái 天台 scholastics and the coinage of Ichijō Shinshū 一乘真宗 (“the True School of the One Vehicle”), the thesis that tariki 他力 (other-power) is the underlying ground of all Buddhist teaching, not the Pure Land tradition alone.
Kenni’s magnum opus is the Kaijōki 楷定記 (36 fascicles), a commentary on the Guānjīng paralleling — and polemically opposing — Ryōchū’s Guānjīngshū dentsūki (KR6f0081); he treated the Chinzei third patriarch as his principal rival and his Guānjīng commentaries are pervasively anti-Chinzei. In the present catalog Kenni is the author of KR6f0078 Jōdo gitan (1283) and KR6f0080 Kangyō-gisetsugi-kōtō kenkakushō, both polemical defences of Shōkū’s reading of Shàndǎo’s Xuányìfēn 玄義分 against Ryōchū’s Chinzei interpretations. A collected works edition, Ken’i Shōnin zenshū 顯意上人全集 (Jōdoshū Seizan Fukakusa-ha Shūmu-sho, ed. Inada Hiroen 稲田廣演, 2003), is available.