Paper short abstract:

This paper explores medieval military techniques (hyōhō) from the Kamakura to the late Muromachi periods, in particular the transformation in their constructs of the body-mind complex from a dominance of Esoteric Buddhism to classical Chinese thought (especially, the Sunzi and the Yijing).

Paper long abstract:

Beginning in the Muromachi period, intellectual systems alternative to Buddhism began to spread and acquire growing importance. Newly imported ideas from China, together with a re-evaluation of texts already present in Japan, were at the basis of this development. Ideas about the body-mind complex were also affected in various ways. This paper explores a discursive field that is seldom subject to scrutiny from the point of view of religious and intellectual history, namely, medieval military techniques (hyōhō). The increasing power and status of the samurai was associated with a growing relevance of military-related discourses. Even a cursory look at the available sources indicates a massive shift away from Buddhism toward Chinese thought. Kamakura-period military texts are essentially collections of mantras to be deployed in battle. In contrast, later texts show a predominance of tactical and strategic suggestions, many of which were based on the Chinese classic Sunzi (The Art of War); subsequently, the Yijing (Book of Changes) came to play an important role, opening the way for a radical reconfiguration of the field in the Tokugawa period as "military studies" (heigaku) framed in Neo-Confucian thought.

This paper discusses some representative texts from late medieval Japan: the Shikyō ruijū (Collected personal teachings), the Hyōhō hijutsu ikkansho (Secret arts of military techniques in one fascicle), and the Yoshitsune hyakushu (Hundred poems by Yoshitsune), which together outline the shift away from Esoteric Buddhism in late medieval Japanese military discourse (Buddhism was later re-included in some military texts of the Edo period, such as those by Miyamoto Musashi and Suzuki Shōsan, but with only an ancillary role to Confucianism). In particular, this paper focuses on the different visions of the mind-body complex that these texts expound, and suggests some larger cultural trends that took place between the late Muromachi and the early Edo periods.