Hoshinno (法親王)

Hoshinno was an Imperial Prince who became a priest and renounced the world remaining within the imperial court. Also called Nudo Shinno, Hoshi Shinno, Zenji Shinno.

The origin and transition of Hoshinno

Until the Heian period, the Shinno who became a priest was called Nudo Shinno, Hoshi Shinno, and Zenji Shinno, but since the Prince of Emperor Shirakawa was given an order to become Shinno by the emperor after becoming a priest and came to be called Kakugyo Hosshinno, the title took hold as a title for imperial family members who became Shinno after becoming a priest. However, in the case where a Shinno who was ordered to become a Shinno by the emperor later became a priest, he was called a Nudo Shinno, but the usage of this distinction later gradually disappeared, and it became used in a broad sense as the meaning of Shinno who had renounced the world.

Hoshinno played the part of Monzeki (a temple at which the head priest had always been a member of the imperial family or nobility) that had a deep connection with the imperial court until the end of the Edo period, the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, but at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, the imperial family resigned from the priesthood one after the other, and Ninnajinomiya Sumihito Hoshinno became secular again as Imperial Prince Komatsunomiya Akihito, Rinnojinomiya Kogen Hoshinno as Imperial Prince Kitashirakawanomiya Yoshihisa, Chioninnomiya Sonshu Hosshinno as Imperial Prince Kachonomiya Hirotsune and Kajiinomiya Kakujun Nyudo Shinno as Imperial Prince Nashimotonomiya Moriosa, and as a result from the Meiji period, Shinno who had become a priest, disappeared and the title Hoshinno was no longer used.

[Original Japanese]