For Asai Yōrin, hongaku thought was a defilement that had to be removed if the original purity of Nichiren’s doctrine were to be restored. He was vehement about its corruptive tendencies. The kanjin style of interpretation that it fostered had contributed not only to a decline in faithful scholarly exegesis, he said, but also to the degeneracy of monks who took advantage of the decline of imperial authority in the Insei period to flaunt their power. “From the outset, the original enlightenment doctrine of medieval Tendai actually spurred on corruption.” Asai saw its claim that “the worldly passions are enlightenment” as serving to rationalize widespread monastic license in the Muromachi period, such as descents from Mt. Hiei on nightly pleasure-seeking forays or homosexual relations with male novices (chigo). Nichiren, he argued, had stressed text-based exegesis, not subjective interpretation; the primordial Buddha of the Lotus Sūtra was for him a transcendent object of faith, not equated with the mind of deluded beings. In short, Nichiren’s thought was not to be grasped within the same frame as medieval Tendai, which was permeated throughout by the very Mikkyō that Nichiren had so bitterly criticized. (Page 70)