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.