Ippen was born at Hōgon-ji, a temple in Iyo Province on the island of Shikoku. He was originally named Chishin. He first studied Tendai at Mount Hiei, Kyoto, and then Jōdo-shū at Dazaifu, Fukuoka on Kyushu. When his father died, the 25-year old Ippen returned to secular life and assumed family responsibilities. He got married and became head of the household. During a pilgrimage to the Kumano Shrines, the kami enshrined there revealed to Ippen that enlightenment was determined by Amitābha and that Ippen should devote himself to preaching the importance of reciting his name, a practice called nembutsu. Ippen and a band of followers then travelled throughout the country proselytizing with their ecstatic nembutsu dance, and won a wide following among common people. Other practices associated with the Ji-shū include scheduled sessions of chanting, the handing out of slips of paper with the nembutsu written on them, and keeping a register of the converted. Ippen's insistence on constant traveling and giving up of family and possessions led to his nicknames: Traveling Saint and Holy Man of Renunciation.
Doctrine
Ippen's doctrine was primarily influenced by Shōkū, founder of the Seizan branch of the Jōdo-shū, who "insisted that the various Buddhist practices contain no more than a portion of the merit of the single practice of the nembutsu and serve merely to lead people to recite the nembutsu." However he was also strongly influenced by the nondualism of Zen and even received Dharma transmission as a Zen master from Rōshi Kakushin.
Legacy
Before his death Ippen burnt all his writings, saying that "they have all become namuamidabutsu ", but copies were kept by some of his disciples. An English translation of his writings is No Abode: The Record of Ippen. After Ippen's death many of his disciples appear to have committed suicide, throwing themselves into the sea in the hope of being born in the Pure Land. Such phenomena perhaps help to explain the limited spread of the Ji-shu, and certainly the ecstatic fervor of the early Ji-shu seems to have militated against mainstream acceptance. In 1292, three years after Ippen's death, Ippen's birthplace, Hōgon-ji, was rebuilt by Ippen's disciple, Sen'a and became a Ji sect temple.
Art
Ippen himself was greatly devoted to paintings of Shandao's allegory of the "White Path", so it is appropriate that his life led to the production of a great many portraits, sculpted images, and illustrated narrative scrolls. The Ippen Hijiri-e was edited by Ippen's disciple Shōkai and, according to an inscription dated 1299, was painted by the artistEn'i . The twelve handscrolls on silk show Ippen's trip around Japan, and are well known for their naturalistic depiction of "famous places", including Mount Fuji, Kumano, Shitennō-ji, Zenkō-ji, Enoshima, Yoshino, Itsukushima, and Naruto, edited by Ippen's other disciple, Sōshun, was painted sometime between 1304 and 1307. The original scrolls no longer exist but were copied in many other versions including those at Shinkō-ji, Hyōgo Prefecture. These versions are characterized by the addition of the biography of Ippen's most important disciple, Taa. In the Shinkō-ji version, the first four scrolls depict Ippen's life, while the last six concern the life of Taa and the spread of Ji Sect teaching. The Kinren-ji in Kyoto has a Muromachi period copy of the now-lost work dated 1307.
