Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the impact of Esoteric Buddhist elements, especially Shingon visualizations on the five organs, on medieval waka poetic treatises and relates consecration rituals (waka kanjo). Moreover, it addresses the role of sexual imagery based on the Yugikyo.

Paper long abstract:

Since the Heian period, waka poetry treatises have theorized the relationship between spirit (interpreted meaning) and word (the poetic expression). However, from the beginning of the 13th century, waka experts and practitioners came to be active in the provinces, and as a consequence, new poetry treatises appeared showing different understandings from those circulating at court. In particular, a secret text entitled Kokin kanjō, which explains the spirit and the letter of waka based on the doctrines of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, is a waka treatise characteristic of the Kamakura period (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries). Because of limitations in the available sources, it was difficult until recently to analyze this text in depth beyond generic references to "esoteric elements"; however, a series of texts rediscovered in recent years, such as the Gochi gozōtō himitsushō (New York Public Library), the Gochizō hishō (Ninnaji), and the Gozō mandara waeshaku (Kanazawa bunko), all reinterpretations of Kakuban's thought, enable us to clarify concrete aspects of the influence of Esoteric Buddhism on waka theories and, at the same time, on the cultural activities of secular society.

In this paper, I will first present the influence of the above texts, and then discuss some specific examples of the relations between this type of waka theories and Esoteric Buddhist views of the body-mind complex. Furthermore, I would like to contribute to a better understanding of early medieval conceptualizations of the body-mind through a reading of recently rediscovered secret texts based on Yugikyō, which marks further developments of the Esoteric Buddhist body-mind discourse.