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.