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Paper short abstract:

In childbirth, the female body becomes a site of semiotic and physical struggle and a choice between carrying a life and being alive or a rapid decline to death. This paper analyses the key ritual actions undertaken by medieval Saionji family and esoteric temple lineages during the consorts’ labour.

Paper long abstract:

The reproductive bodies of women were a focus of special interest for their natal families and religious specialists linked to them. Such interest almost bordered on anxiety, if the pregnant women happened to be imperial consorts, and their natal families were expecting to welcome a possible future emperor into their fold. How did these aristocratic households deal with the ever-present danger of death in childbirth? Which practical and rituals measures did they take as a precaution and a precursor to the unpredictable processes of labour and childbirth? The general historical answer tends to be complex, but it is possible to consider the process of organizing and facilitating ritual protection for pregnant consorts and their unborn children in the period leading to the extreme and mostly violent process of birth itself, understood as a possibility for rapid or protracted escalation from a state of being pregnant to a state of being dead as a result of intense physical suffering. The female body here becomes a site of semiotic and physical struggle and a choice between reconciliation with one’s status of carrying another human life and being alive, or an unstoppable, rapid procedure to the finality of a deceased, with unpredictable results. Fixing its gaze on the medieval Saionji household, this paper will trace and analyse the preparatory actions by this aristocratic family and esoteric Buddhist temple lineages for the day of consort’s labour. Of particular interest will be the uneasy quest to procure a “wish-fulfilling gem” (nyoi hōju 如意宝珠) which could be used for inviting instant changes to the pregnant female body during the protective rituals for Saionji women in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Japan.

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Paper short abstract:

How could women actualize their wish for Buddhahood in medieval Japan? Using vernacular medieval literature as primary source, this paper will show that, despite the perceived necessity to be first reborn as a man, women had distinct possibilities to become enlightened.

Paper long abstract:

Buddhist scriptures, for example, the Lotus Sutra, state that, to become a buddha, a woman must first be reborn as a man. The ideas privileging the male body were transmitted to Japan, making an impact on literature and theories proselytized by religious school founders. How could women living in such environment actualize their wish for Buddhahood? This paper will rethink this question from three key viewpoints.

First is a transformation of the female body after death. Medieval Japanese paintings depicting the “nine stages of decay” (kusōzu 九相図) featured women as an example of a polluted, physical human body. These images, evoking sadness and terror of death were supposed to activate a state of enlightenment in people viewing them. The second point is a burial, which involved burning and collection of a deceased woman’s bones and ashes and depositing them into a grave. Bifukumon’in 美福門院 (1117–1170), emperor Toba’s consort, refused to have her corpse buried in a grave prepared before her death, ordering instead to be cremated and having her bones deposited at Mt. Kōya, a religious site otherwise prohibited for access by women. Last point is women’s sudden enlightenment. Chiyono monogatari 千代野物語, a medieval tale depicting women’s enlightenment, presents a case in which a woman of humble origins, starting from a state most distant from that of a buddha, instantaneously transforms her body into a physical boddhisattva (nikushin no bosatsu 肉身の菩薩). This story, too, was supposed to elicit the state of enlightenment from a male audience.

Using vernacular medieval literature as primary source, I will show that in medieval Japanese society, despite the ideas of not being suitable to act as the “Buddha’s vessel” and necessity to be first reborn as a man, women had distinct possibilities to become enlightened and transcend from the state of physical female body into divine existence. It appears that female bodies, while remaining so, had inherent possibilities and power to transform their environment and lead the surrounding world to its purer state.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper questions how kami acquired “flesh” (nikutaisei 肉体性) in the process of merging with Buddhist divinities in medieval Japan, by arguing that his process was closely related to the worship of “living bodies” (shōjin shinkō 生身信仰).

Paper long abstract:

This paper questions how kami acquired “flesh” (nikutaisei 肉体性) in the process of merging with Buddhist divinities in medieval Japan. In early Japan, kami were perceived as as spirits without a physical body. However, as the process of merging kami and buddhas advanced, local deities gradually came to be seen as “traces” or substitutes of buddhas in the physical world. This state of affairs is closely related to the worship of “living bodies” (shōjin shinkō 生身信仰), relating miracles of buddhas and bodhisattvas appearing as living beings. In fact, already in the Heian period the poet-scholar Ōe no Masafusa (1041–1111) in his account of Shin’en Shōnin in Zoku honchō ōjōden called the Hachiman deity, known as the “trace” of buddha Amida, a “living buddha” (shōjin no hotoke 生身の仏). This example shows that kami had acquired a certain state of embodiment by that time. Still, the idea that kami were invisible entities did not completely lose its currency in medieval Japan. As such, they did not acquire “fleshiness,” but rather, it was the manner of their manifestation that became refracted. The very topic of the “original buddhas” (honjibutsu 本地物) in medieval Japan, which praised the buddha born as a human who eventually became a divinity after his hardships and death, is a classic example of such refracted, symbolic “acquisition of fleshiness.” Also, the idea of a fetus living inside the mother’s body and coming out to be born also merged with the image of a buddha manifesting itself in the physical world as a kami. Moreover, the relics (essentially, buddha’s bones) and gems (crystallised buddha’s flesh) were also perceived as representations of kami. Such merging of the suijaku belief and worship of the “living bodies” reached its last stage in the medieval period, when the Yoshida Shintō priests proclaimed that the dead can be worshipped as kami. Using concrete primary sources, this paper will highlight key aspects representing how kami came to be seen as having the real, “fleshy” bodies in medieval Japan.

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Paper short abstract:

This talk focuses on the body as a tool in Shugendō practices of self-mummification. It examines northern Japan's (male) mummies from the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). These practitioners displayed their mastery over the human body through extreme mountain practices, surmounting death and immortalizing.

Paper long abstract:

This talk focuses on the body as a tool of praxis in the Shugendō (mountain asceticism) tradition of self-mummification (i.e., “becoming a buddha in this body, Jp. sokushin butsu 即身仏). It examines the mummies of northern Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture, which were mummified during the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). Through extreme physical practices in the Dewa mountains, viewed as maṇḍala of the six realms, these practitioners became living buddhas in their communities. By exerting severe self-discipline, which was both a rejection of and a reliance on the physical body, they engaged in ascetic practices particular to this region and to its extreme temperatures (e.g., limiting their food intake to rid their bodies of fat and moisture, therein hindering posthumous decomposition). Through these practices, publicized in local communities, practitioners displayed their mastery over the perishable human body and their capacity to prevail over the natural processes of aging, sickness, and death. In sum, this talk discusses the practice of surmounting death and immortalizing (man’s age-long quest) through the physical body, as well as the belief and performance aspects of becoming a living buddha in this body (self-divinization) in the Shugendō tradition.