For this reason, in the eighty years since their discovery, the manuscripts have undergone repeated editing, annotation, and translation into modern Japanese.īasic questions concerning Eshinni and her relationship with Shinran remain open to conjecture today. Several of the letters are actually yuzurijō-brief documents indicating the transfer or disposition of property, including servants-and only two deal with Shinran at any length, but in these pages we hear the voice of the person who shared various aspects of his life. All the pages are in Eshinni's own hand and were written between 12, when she was between seventy-four and eighty-six years old and living in Echigo. In all, the sheaf, often referred to as Eshinni monjo, includes ten letters on eighteen pages and a passage from the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life Buddha written out in Japanese. The publication, a year and a half later, of an annotated edition of the letters, including plates of all the manuscript pages, opened a new chapter in the study of early Shin history. These proved to be long unknown letters written by Eshin (commonly referred to as Eshinni or Eshin the nun), the wife of Shinran, to their daughter Kakushinni. Late in 1921, twenty-one manuscript pages were discovered wrapped in old newspapers in a corner of the Nishi Honganji archive.
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