Paper short abstract:

Sanshō ruijūshō (1318), an encyclopedia on childbirth based on Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist sutras, describes pregnancy as 38 weeks. I ask how early Indian embryological knowledge, pejorative toward women's bodies, was adapted by esoteric monks for pregnant noble women in medieval Japan.

Paper long abstract:

In principle, ordained Buddhist monks were not supposed to touch women; the Vinaya regulations for male monks guarded strongly against physical contact with laywomen and nuns. And yet, in medieval Japan, Buddhists had a keen (if detached) interest in the inner workings of women's bodies. Recent research shows a little-studied tradition of compiling handbooks on childbirth and women's health by Japanese Tendai and Shingon scholar-monks. Focusing on Sanshō ruijūshō (Encyclopedia of Childbirth, ca. 1318) from Kanazawa Bunko, this paper will trace the adoption of Indian and Chinese embryological knowledge and its reconfiguration in medieval Japan, focusing specifically on the thirty-eight-week gestation model. This model was present in Japan since at least the late ninth century, when it appeared in Japan's earliest handbook for noble women, Gushi nintai sanshō himitsu hōshū (Secret Methods for Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth) attributed to the Tendai monk Annen (840?-880?). This pattern, deriving from Sui- and Tang-dynasty Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist treatises, was adopted by the Japanese esoteric temple milieu for the benefit of noble women from aristocratic families, who could potentially become imperial or shogunal wives and consorts. This paper will argue that the Buddhists' logic for promoting this particular model was its particular level of detail, which superseded the medical ten-month gestation model seen in Tanba Yasuyori's Ishinpō (984). However, in order to be acceptable to the Japanese nobility, especially its high-ranking women, the original sutra passages containing pejorative rhetoric toward women's bodies had to be toned down by Japanese medieval scholar-monks. Thus, the rendition of the thirty-eight-week gestation model seen in the Sanshō ruijūshō differed considerably from its original source, the Mahāratnakuta sutra and its Chinese translation of the earliest Buddhist embryological text, the Garbhāvakrānti sutra (Sutra of Entry into the Womb, late third century).

Paper short abstract:

Empress Jingū is held to have conquered the Korean peninsula in the third century while heavily pregnant. Here, I consider how late medieval origin stories imagine her pregnancy, demonstrating both interest and ambivalence toward the female reproductive body as well as popular medical knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Empress Jingū (traditional reign 200-269 CE) is held to have conquered the Korean peninsula in the third century with the help of the gods while heavily pregnant with the future Emperor Ōjin (traditional reign 270-310). A key moment in the legend occurs when Jingū, ready to cross the sea, postpones childbirth until she returns to Japan victorious. While scholarship on Jingū has largely focused on her conquest journey and relationship with the gods, less attention has been paid to her pregnant state and postponement of labor. Yet, the subject is dealt with directly many temple-shrine origin stories (jisha engi) and picture scrolls (emaki) of the late medieval period, in which Jingū's pregnant body and its needs are discussed. From adjusting her armor to accommodate enlarged breasts in the Hachiman gudōkun (1310-1318) to the use of a stone to halt childbirth, medieval texts and the priests who wrote them considered how pregnancy affected Jingū's body during her expedition.

These attempts to explicate and describe Jingū's pregnancy demonstrate an interest and appreciation for the practicalities of pregnancy as well as its potentially miraculous nature, particularly given that the forthcoming child was the deity Hachiman. Yet, the same origin stories also mask Jingū's pregnant body in various ways, from describing Jingū as slender to depicting only the parturition hut in which she gave birth. I suggest that these diverse origin stories, both written and visualized, demonstrate two important trends: 1) a deep interest and yet ambivalence toward the female body and its capacity for reproduction, seen as biological but also miraculous and unsettling, and 2) an emerging body of knowledge and folklore surrounding pregnancy that differs considerably from the embryological theories developed by elite Buddhist thinkers, showcasing alternative beliefs regarding pregnant women's bodies and fetal development.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on Zen, Shinto and esoteric texts, I analyse embryological imagery, such as "images of the ten months in the womb" (tainai totsuki zu) and "five stages of embryo" (tainai goi). In this paper, I trace the emergence of such theories to the ideas of the Tendai monk Yōsai (1141-1215).

Paper long abstract:

The "images of the ten months in the womb" (tainai totsuki zu) depicting human embryological growth from conception to birth were known from early modern printed books, such as Shōge mibun no wa (Tales of Bodies Descending for Birth) and Sanken icchisho (Manuscript Combining the Three Wisdoms). At its core, these books employed the esoteric Buddhist theory of "enlightenment with this very body" (sokushin jōbutsu), but they also invoked Zen and Shinto ideas to explain human birth and death. For example, Sanken icchisho mixed esoteric and Zen elements. The recently discovered "Mandala of the Five Embryonic Stages in the Womb" (tainai goi mandara) from Kongōji temple in Osaka Prefecture included Zen-themed questions and answers (mondō); Sōtō Zen kirikami referred to the ten-month gestation in the womb as controlled by thirteen esoteric buddhas (jūsanbutsu).

I trace the emergence and development of such theories, focusing on the ideas of the Tendai monk Yōsai (1141-1215). Yōsai, who went to study in China twice, authored a little-studied compendium, the Ingoshū (Collection of Hidden Words), in which a ritual merging of two esoteric mandalas was explained through the metaphor of sexual congress between men and women. This text also includes theories that built upon early medieval Tendai concepts of embodiment, such as those seen in ritual meditation on the "Five Viscera Mandala" (gozō mandara). Shinto texts from the late Kamakura period (1185-1333) and late medieval Zen kirikami documents also incorporated embodiment theories attributed to Yōsai. In this presentation, I focus on the rise of embryological knowledge as seen in the "images of ten months in the womb" (tainai totsuki zu) and the "five embryonic stages in the womb" (tainai goi) and investigate the role of Yōsai in their transmission in medieval Japan.

Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the process of formation and change of the "images of the ten months in the womb" (tainai notsuki zu) and their links to medieval Japanese religious thought and embryological theories, found in esoteric Buddhist and Shinto texts from the Kumano and Goryū Shinto traditions.

Paper long abstract:

In medieval Japan, the theory of "five embryonic stages in the womb" (tainai goi), which envisioned the ritual perfection of a religious practitioner, was created by analogy with the processes of formation of the human body. Medieval Shinto theories took this tainai goi thought as foundational, but expanded and reconfigured it into the so-called "images of the ten months in the womb" (tainai totsuki no zu). These images aligned each stage of the embryo's formation with a certain Buddhist ritual implement, finally depicting the fetus descending from the womb and about to be born, as a buddha. This theory first emerged as a secret transmission called "hiding in the box" (hakogakushi) within the esoteric tradition of Goryū Shinto. In late medieval Japan, the "ten months in the womb" imagery, together with Buddhist ideas about salvation and the notion of the deficient, sinful female body as a primary cause of suffering, were spread by the religious preachers and performers, such as mountain ascetics and bikuni nuns, who proselytized the worship of the Kumano shrines through ritual pictures (etoki). Although the tainai totsuki zu imagery was a secret transmission in medieval Japan, during the early modern period it gradually came to be seen as an eccentric, entertaining theory. This, in turn, led to a creation of model dolls offered for public display, thus losing any semblance of sacrality and secrecy. In this paper, I trace the process of formation and change of the "images of the ten months in the womb" and their links to medieval Japanese religious thought and embryological theories.