ess or universality of enlightenment (Tsunoda, et al. 113, et passim).
Japanese culture or national character appears to have been an important factor in the manner in which Buddhism took hold in Japan. As Tsunoda, et al. point out, however, Buddhist sects did not succeed each other or mature from one to another in history. Rather, they overlapped and converged and manifested religious rivalries. The first flowering of Buddhism was in the Nara Period (709-84), in which six separate sects were identified (Tsunoda, et al. 94). Buddhist doctrines of enlightenment and transcendent reality were quickly identified with the state, notably in the Sutra of the Golden Light. The sutra dealt with reason, compassion, and salvation. Meanwhile, "The Revelation of the Mahayana" in the Lotus Sutra refers specifically to the Mahayana as the Great Vehicle of salvation, which is the experience of Buddhahood.
The Buddha himself is in the Great Vehicle (Mahayana)
And accordant with the Truth he has attained,
By it he saves all creatures (Lotus Sutra 118).
In the 9th century, two Buddhist sects were imported from China, known as Tendai and Shingon, even as Japanese culture became less and less Chinese and more specifically Japanese. Tsunoda, et al. say that the ultimate political aspect of these sects was that they were concentrated around the culture of the royal court,
and their characteristic forms of expression increasingly reflected the attitudes and manner of life which predominated at court. Thus, although both these forms of Buddhism were egalitarian in theory--that is, as outgrowths of the Mahayana teaching they stressed that all men had the potentialities for Buddhahood--in the Japanese setting their activities were strongly conditioned by the aristocratic nature of court society. Again, despite the universalistic claims of the Mahayana . . . there was a noticeable tendency to stress the hierarchic order of these forms of religiou...