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.