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- Convenors:
-
Claudio Caniglia
(SOAS, University of London)
Gaetan Rappo (Harvard University)
Chiara Ghidini (L'Orientale, Naples)
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- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 02
- Sessions:
- Saturday 2 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The panel's aim is to stimulate discussion on the ways pre-existing or commonly accepted ideas, self-representations, ideologies and visions later labeled as "essentialistic" have come to inform and influence studies on specific topics and notions within the field of Japan's history of religions.
Long Abstract:
Academic and theoretical works play a crucial role in shaping "ordinary" perceptions of historical periods, and contribute greatly to the processes of invention or reinvention of tradition. Even though theoretical concepts and frameworks commonly used in the academia can provide a sense of "scientific" security, they should not be considered as absolute or self-evident. As previous scholarship, notably by Reinhart Koselleck, and more recently by Olivier Christin on the idea of "nomadic concepts," has shown, such notions are born in defined contexts, linguistic, historical and sociological, often to answer specific issues, and they have their own history. Their use can thus have crucial, and often unconscious, implications on scholarly work, and especially on the process of history writing.
The aim of the panel is to stimulate a debate on the ways in which such preconceived or commonly accepted ideas, self-representations, ideological perspectives, and visions -- which have been critically assessed as either "essentialistic" or unhistorically romantic-- have come to influence specific research in the wide field of Japan's cultural history and, more in detail, in its history of religions.
In particular, we will attempt on analysing research carried out in the 20th century on Japan's religious systems, beliefs and practices, which has produced a strong impact both within and outside Japanese academia, and has enhanced notions and/or groups at the expense of others, that have been, as a result, either ignored or minimised. Such studies, still considered authoritative, have partly undergone a process of deconstruction and revisitation, but constitute a theoretical reference impossible to overlook or bypass.
We aim to engage with such scholarly works, investigating not only the context which saw their emergence, but also whether and how their influential authors have informed or even "formed" the very organisation of sources and documents, thereby affecting and moulding the results of the research. We intend to pay particular attention to the way they have worked towards the fabrication of fixed, artificial or romanticised historical periods (e.g. the Middle Ages, "primitive" Japan, kodai), as well as towards historically questionable interpretations of notions such as heresy or kotodama.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 2 September, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
Pre-war discourses on the Tachikawa lineage in Japan had a lasting and often misunderstood legacy. This paper will focus on Mizuhara Gyōei and Moriyama Shōshin, showing how and why they wrote about this topic, and assessing their impact on our understanding of Tachikawa as a "Buddhist heresy."
Paper long abstract:
The Tachikawa lineage (Tachikawa-ryū) was a presumed group inside the Shingon School of Buddhism mainly known for its dark rituals, which employed extremely explicit sexual imagery. This view, which stems from medieval sources, has been, until recently, largely accepted by scholars. Drawing on recent studies have shed doubt on the historical validity of what had been considered one of the most famous "heresy" of Japanese Buddhism, this presentation will show that the very act of writing about the Tachikawa lineage as a Buddhist "heresy" means accepting a framework which is not completely neutral, and goes beyond importing a Western notion such as "heresy" in the study of Japanese religions. In fact, the contemporary image of the Tachikawa lineage was constructed through not only medieval sources, which had the own agenda, but also through monastic debates and scholarly studies dating from before the War.
Concretely, this presentation will show how the historical image of sexual heresies in the Shingon School was built, and assess the impact of such constructions on contemporary scholarship. After a quick summary of how and why such discourses appeared in the Buddhist press of the Meiji and early Taishō period, I will center my discussion on two contrasting figures, Mizuhara Gyōei (1890-1965), a monk of the main center of the Shingon School, the Mount Kōya, and the main promoter of studies on Tachikawa in the Meiji and early Shōwa periods, and Moriyama Shōshin (1888-1967), another monk active during the same period, and the author of a seminal work on the most famous presumed member of this lineage, Monkan (1278-1357). I will especially assess how in both their cases, their studies of medieval materials were greatly influenced not only by conceptual issues, such as their conception of "heresy" as a defined movement, but also by contemporary matters, such as the problem of clerical celibacy and the place of women and sex in a newly defined monastic life for Mizuhara, and the relationship between the Shingon school and the emperor for Moriyama, which led them to very contrasted, and often misunderstood, conclusions.
Paper short abstract:
Orikuchi Shinobu focused on kodai in his academic and fictional works,aiming to revive in 20th-century Japan ritualised everyday life and belief in kotodama (spiritual efficacy of words).This paper deals with his notions of kodai and kotodama, assessing their legacy on a variety of research fields.
Paper long abstract:
Orikuchi Shinobu (1887-1953) is well known within Japanese and international academia above all as one of the first minzoku (Japanese folklore) scholars, but also as poet and writer of fiction. In some respects, he could be considered an historian of religions, in spite of his peculiar understanding of the notion of history. In particular, Orikuchi believes the foundation of Japan's history to be poetry and prose transmitted through the oral narration of kataribe (storytellers). In this sense, he tends towards the identification of "history" with "story", one that is ordinarily extraordinary, since katari (narration, recitation) is understood as the performance of a ritual linguistic act occurring within ritual, or ritualised, time. A passionate scholar of Japan's antiquity, Orikuchi devotes most of his attention to the Man'yō period, emphasising how (aristocratic) life back then was meaningfully ritualised, revolved around the supernatural efficacy of the spoken word (kotodama), and was genuinely led by a type of "religious" passion and by strong faith in miracles. It is such a "society" that Orikuchi names kodai (ancient Japan), fruit of his familiarity with textual sources as much as of his own visionary and oneiric perspective. Re-enacting ritual time in 20th-century Japan, reviving the supernatural origin of the spoken word, and discovering through a particular type of fieldwork places where traces of his envisioned kodai seem to endure (especially in the Ryukyus) are Orikuchi's priorities within his project of turning Shinto into a world religion as Shintō shūkyō.
In my paper, I intend to explore Orikuchi's perspective on kodai and kotodama, while historically contextualising his "creative" theories, which seem to come together in fictional form in The Book of the Dead (Shisha no sho, 1939), his monogatari-style novel. Also, I aim to point out those scholars, Japanese or otherwise, who have criticised or overcome Orikuchi's views, and assess the impact that his multifaceted oeuvre, often focusing on the notion of threshold, has exerted on a variety of research fields, extending from Ryūkyū Studies to Literature and the Arts, and History of Religions.
Paper short abstract:
Seen from the standpoint of recent criticism, Gorai Shigeru's vision of Shugendō sharply contrasts with the amount of data he collects and his knowledge. My paper aims to assess to what extent his ideas on original religion and Japaneseness oriented data organisation and the results of his studies.
Paper long abstract:
Recently emerging trends in Japanese Shugendō studies are radically reconsidering the chronology, development and actual position of Shugendō in the pre-modern Japan religious landscape.
One of the objects of major criticism is the essentialistic vision at the basis of the interpretation of Shugendō as part of folk religion (minzoku shūkyō) and representing an example of the distinctiveness of the Japanese national character.
This idea, dating back to the initial studies on Shugendō published by the anthropologist Unō Enku (1885-1949), continued in the seminal work by the founder of Shugendō studies Wakamori Tarō (1915-1977), and came to be theorized by Gorai Shigeru (1908-1993), who, at the beginning of the seventies, moved his studies from folk Buddhism to Shugendō. Heavily influenced by Yanagita Kunio, Gorai sees Shugendō as originating from the beliefs of "mountain people" (yamabito) and especially from their purificatory practices. Shugendō is thus read as the core of an original religion (genshi shūkyō) to which imported traditions such as Buddhism and Onmyōdō were later added without really modifying its essential characteristic of a "natural religion" (shizen shūkyō). The processes of historical transformations of Shugendō are seen as a departure from this essential nucleus, with the effect of scattering and breaking the original tradition.
The process of reconstruction implies a great deal of creativity and, in spite of his extensive use of different sources, Gorai's data organization and analysis are informed by his ideological assumptions and oriented toward his own personal narration of Japanese folk religion.
In my presentation I will consider different aspects of Gorai's Shugendō interpretation and his influence on Shugendō studies. I will also consider his treatment of some ascetic practices, highlighting the contrast between the strict use of sources and "partly narrative" conclusions, as well as some problems emerging from the use of "Shugendō" as a heuristic tool.
The main works historicising Shugendō in contrast with the Gorai approach appeared already at the beginning of the nineties. The reasons why they were so late in becoming the centre of debate would be another interesting point of discussion.