Pope Hanazono (1297–1348, 花園法皇) founded Myōshinji Zen-Temple in the year 1337, and his master Shūhō named this temple ‘Shōbōzan Myōshinji Zen-Temple’ (正法山妙心禅寺), as we saw in the last volume of this journal. Pope Hanazono was an earnest Buddhist and wrote the Hokkebonjaku (法華品釋) in Chinese style as well as authoring his famous diary (宸記).
The Lotus Sūtra (法華経) is the most important scripture of Tendai Buddhism. Therefore Pope Hanazono wrote a compendium of all the 28 chapters of this Sūtra naming it Hokkebonjaku. We here announce our revised edition of an approximately 280 year-old publication, in which we have revised and corrected some erroneous or simplified characters, and supplied several omitted words.
Pope Hanazono relates in his preface that he studied Tendai Buddhim for many years. After that, he began to study Zen Buddhism under Master Shūhō and became a Buddhist monk in 1335, after which he moved his palace to Hanazono. The Hokkebonjaku was perhaps produced in this period, because he used the first personal pronoun ‘nossō’ (衲僧) in the style of Zen, as well as the first personal pronoun ‘chin’ (朕) in the style of emperor.
He added verses at the end of each chapter’s interpretation or epitome. The verses show a Zen-style. In the appendix, we added his short ‘curriculum vitae’. Here we decided that he had moved to his palace at Hanazono on the occasion of his becoming a monk, and he opened the temple Myōshinji of Kanzan with his palace Gyokuhōin 1337.
