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Paper short abstract:

I explore conceptions of space and time in the mythical narrations of the Yōtenki, a text on the deities of the Hie shrines. Picturing a Buddhist "world atlas", the text finds within it a place for Japan. I explore the destabilising effect of this emplacement on conceptions of time.

Paper long abstract:

The Yōtenki (13-15th century) is a collection of traditions related to the Hie shrines and their deities (Sannō, mountain sovereigns). Its longest section, most likely produced at the Enryakuji, is entitled "Sannō no koto". While half of the Yōtenki is mostly historical with mythological asides, "Sannō no koto" is an entirely mythological narrative, covering the millennia leading to the development of honji suijaku, the salvific project which has Buddhas and bodhisattvas appearing as "local" deities to save a populace still unprepared for the mental and emotional labour of Buddhist salvation.

Different from most medieval sources, which theorise honji suijaku as a technology of salvation tailored exclusively for Japan, the Yōtenki recounts it as having been first planned in India by Śakyamuni himself, and then tested in China. In doing so, it creates a Buddhist "world atlas," finding within it a place for Japan. My talk explores the consequences of this emplacement on the concept of time.

The map of "Sannō no koto" is a patchwork of real and imaginary spaces, whose timelines do not quite work in the same way; woven together in the same narrative, they are bound to collapse onto each other. China and Japan are subject to historical time, narrated in the style of dynastic histories. However, the whole history of China is re-imagined as a conspiracy to diffuse Buddhism which draws heavily from Chinese sources, and biographies of Japanese historical figures echo the life of the Buddha. India is the India of sūtras, dominated by the cyclical time of Buddhism, whose continuity is nonetheless interrupted by the salvific intervention of deities in China and Japan. This renders flexible the deadlines imposed by the decline of the dharma.

Treating the narrative as a deleuzian "assemblage", I explode its components to highlight interactions among dynastic, cyclical and soteriological timelines. I argue that the creation of a Buddhist map redefining Japan as a sacred space does not produce a well-ordered narrative of space and time, but instead generates multiple contrasting timelines simultaneously present in the same narration.