Paper short abstract:

The paper reconstructs ritual action through examining the Met's "A Long Tale for an Autumn Night" by focusing on the mukaekō, a ritual enactment of the coming of Amida Buddha. This practice was inaugurated at Ungoji temple by Sensai shōnin, the main protagonist of the story, the adult monk Keikai.

Paper long abstract:

Among the many variants of Aki no yo no naga monogatari (“A Long Tale for an Autumn Night”), the recension at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of four confirmed extant works that were created as illustrated scrolls (emaki). In the entry in the diary of Prince Fushimi no Miya Sadafusa (1372-1456) or Kanmon nikki, dated to the eleventh month of Eikyō 10 (1438), this pictorial scroll is mentioned by name only. Therefore, it is certain that the illustrated scroll was made before 1438. It has been argued that the variant at the Met was produced during the Ōei era (1394-1427) because of the distinctive characteristics of its narrative text, but this remains uncertain. However, given the particular style of the painting and text, there is no doubt that it was created in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

Out of all of the Aki no yo scrolls, only the Met version has a depiction of a “Welcoming Ceremony” (mukaekō), a ritual enactment of the coming of Amida Buddha at the death of a worshipper, a practice inaugurated by Sensai shōnin (?-1127) at Ungoji Temple. The paper reconstructs ritual action through an examination of the Met scroll’s mukaekō scene, which may very well be the most distinctive feature of this work. This enable us to find out the context in which this picture scroll was created.

The mukaekō practice is believed to have been originated by the master Genshin (942-1017). Mukaekō is a thespian performance of raigō (“the coming of Amida and his retinue”), in which Amida Buddha, accompanied by various bodhisattvas including Kannon and Seishi, greets a Buddhist practitioner to accompany him to paradise at the end of their life. This mukaekō ceremony began in the late Heian period and is still practiced today at several temples, including the famous temple of Taimadera. Since Ungoji temple was destroyed in a fire during the Ōnin War (1467-1477), only few temple documents have survived, but the mukaekō described in the variant at the Met constitutes valuable material for understanding the concrete details of the ritual performance of mukaekō in Ungoji temple at the time.