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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the myth of Minamoto no Yoshitsune's survival in relation to the shifting borders to the north of Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods, and how Yoshitsune acted as a placeholder for the Japanese claim to new territory: through war, marriage, and descendants.

Paper long abstract:

The Zoku honchō tsūgan 続本朝通鑑, compiled in 1670, is one of the earliest known written sources of a strange tale. A short annotation to the main text mentions a popular belief that Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159-1189) did not die in Hiraizumi 平泉, but fled to Ezo 蝦夷 (present-day Hokkaido), where his descendants still resided five hundred years later. By the end of the Edo period, this simple narrative had diversified significantly. Now, Yoshitsune did not only flee to Ezo and became revered as a god there, he also (alternatively) became a general of the Chinese Jin dynasty 金朝 (1115-1234) or produced offspring that would eventually found the Manchurian Qing dynasty 清朝 (1636-1912). By the time the Meiji period arrived, he had also gained an additional identity: he had now become Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227), the founder of the Mongolian empire.

Despite the extremely shaky historical foundation of these theories, they were accompanied both by lively academic discourse and a sustained output of media relating to the topic. After the Second World War, these theories have become mostly discredited, although the Genghis Khan theory has a notable following to this very day.

The timing of the development of these narratives is not coincidental. Yoshitsune set foot on what would become Hokkaido precisely when Japanese interest in the northern region spiked, and as Japanese interest in the Asian continent grew, his own journey to the north and west became longer in response. This paper aims to analyze the myth of Yoshitsune's survival in relation to the shifting borders to the north of Japan, and how Yoshitsune acted as a placeholder for the Japanese claim to new territory: through war, marriage, and descendants.

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Paper short abstract:

The research is focused on describing history in 13 c. in terms associated with Buddhism. The study aims to analyze a perception of Japan as a country ruled by its kami on the distant borders of the Buddhist world. The research is based on the "Gukansho" and poems by the Tendai monk Jien (1155-1255)

Paper long abstract:

One of the most representative histories of Japan is "Gukansho" by the Tendai monk Jien (1155-1255). It was intended as "yotsugi" (rekishi monogatari) however the author went beyond the narrative method of this genre. Jien searched for the roots of historical events in the past and in a cause-effect relationship.

Ishida Ichiro, Hideo Akamatsu, Charles H. Hambrick, M. Blum and others pointed that Jien depicted historical events of Japan in the context of a Buddhist vision of the world and added non-Indian ideas to the Indian Buddhist cosmology. However even with its famous "theoretical" scroll "Gukansho" lacks clearly articulated Buddhist theories. They can be restored by textual analysis of the "Gukansho" and Jien's poems expressing complex philosophical concepts. This makes it possible to demonstrate the way in which Buddhist ideas shaped his historical explanation.

The historical model of Jien is changing forms of imperial rule willed by Amataresu and subjected to the main Principle - rhythm of the kalpa. Our analysis of Jien's writings provides evidences that Indian Buddhist cosmology explains the place of Japan in the world while features of Japanese Buddhism define local history.

We focus on 2 peculiarities that modeled Jien's historical views.

1. The time-spatial concept of the sangoku-mappō (re-interpreted Indian

Buddhist cosmology enriched by notion about three periods of the Law) defined a place of Japan on the outskirt of the world and a time of Japanese history.

2. The concept of honji-suijaku ('original nature, trace manifestation')

determined a hierarchy of kami. This hierarchy clarifies multiple meanings of the word 'Principles' (dōri) - factors that conditioned historical process.

Both concepts imply Jien's assertion of uniqueness of the country. The term shinkoku ('the divine land') are widely used in Jien's poems, and a textual analysis of his writings sheds light on the development of this notion inside Buddhist intellectual tradition.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how Muromachi elites pacified vengeful ghosts. Earlier pacification activities are shown to have been replaced with ghost-feeding rites adopted from the continent, because they offered an alternative vision of the relationship between the governing and the governed.

Paper long abstract:

In the fourteenth century, Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58), the founder of the Ashikaga shogunate helped establish a temple to pacify his dead enemy, Emperor Go-Daigo. In doing so, he was engaging in a long tradition of enshrining vengeful spirits so as to neutralise them, and hence protect regime and polity from catastrophe. However, even as he drew on tradition to pacify the casualties of the violence that that brought him to power, the methods and objects of pacification were undergoing significant change. Where the august spirits of aristocrats had loomed large in the elite imagination regarding the vengeful dead, hungry ghosts now took centre stage. 

My presentation explores the factors underlying the Muromachi-period shift in the landscape of elite spirit pacification, and its implications for how regime legitimacy was conceived. Through an analysis of rituals as accounted for in elite diaries, I demonstrate that continental ghost-feeding rites, introduced and practiced primarily by Zen clerics, helped to construct for the Ashikaga regime an alternative framework by which to conceptualise the relationship between the ruler and his dead subjects, and more broadly, between the governing and the governed. Nonetheless, this framework did not completely replace, but existed alongside older spirit pacification practices, providing an arena in which elites, traditional or new, could contest their positions within the dual polity.