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Paper short abstract

This talk examines the deity Kisshōten. It discusses her role in eighth-century Nara repentance rituals, workshops that created her statues, and her depiction in sutra as a Buddhist sovereign, arguing that she was a model of female rulership for Fujiwara women such as Empresses Kōmyō and Shōtoku.

Paper long abstract

This talk aims to conceptualize the Buddhist deity Kisshōten 吉祥天 (known in India as Lakṣmī) in classical Japan, extending into the medieval period. It explores her role in Buddhist repentance rituals (keka 悔過) at the eighth-century Nara court, the artistic workshops that produced her statues, and the textual foundations of her devotional worship and iconography as a female sovereign. Using the hidden Kisshōten statue (hibutsu 秘仏) and its cabinet shrine (zushi 厨子) in Kōfukuji’s 興福寺 Central Golden Hall 中金堂 in Nara as a case study, this talk demonstrates that this hibutsu and its zushi are based on earlier representations of Kisshōten and her sacred realm that developed in the Nara period, drawing on concepts of female rulership from ancient India and Tang China.

In Japan, as in the ancient Indian court, Kisshōten was venerated alongside the king, embodying the qualities of a divine queen. Physically and symbolically, she represented an imperial ideal of feminine virtue. Her popularity grew among women in the court, including Empress Consort Kōmyō 光明皇后 (701–760) and her daughter, Empress Kōken / Empress Shōtoku 孝謙天皇・称徳天皇 (718–770). Both devoutly worshipped the Golden Light Sutra (Konkōmyō kyō 金光明経), in which Kisshōten is presented as a divine provider, supplying the people with their basic needs, from cloth to grain. In this capacity, Kisshōten served as a model for these elite Fujiwara women, who sought to legitimize their authority through the Dharma (i.e., Buddhist law), much like the ideal male universal monarch, the Cakravarti (tenrinjōō 転輪聖王, or Wheel-Turning King).

During this period, a repentance rite (keka) also developed around Kisshōten, based on the Golden Light Sutra and keka brought from mainland China (e.g., Yakushi keka 薬師悔過). As this keka was the first to focus on a female deity, elite women in the Nara court—including Empress Shōtoku—drew on this ritual, the goddess, and her statuary to consolidate their power in this politically turbulent period.

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This paper explores how Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth shaped the jishū’s social and ritual life, showing how the paradox between destined salvation and active communal practice reconfigured the structure and function of medieval Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the intricate relationship between Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth (yotei ōjō) and the social organisation of the jishū movement within the broader landscape of medieval Japanese Pure Land thought. While previous scholarship has often treated Ippen’s soteriology as an idiosyncratic extension of Hōnen’s nembutsu tradition, its structural implications for communal practice and religious agency have remained insufficiently theorised.

Ippen’s doctrine of predetermined rebirth functioned as a social technology that enabled a radically open and mobile communal structure. The author argues that Ippen’s affirmation of an already-determined salvific destiny did not diminish religious practice; rather, it generated a distinctive mode of collective enactment in which practice operated as the performative manifestation of a pre-inscribed spiritual trajectory. Through close readings of the Ippen Hijiri-e, itinerant preaching records, and early jishū regulations, the study demonstrates how the tension between inevitability and performativity fostered a communal ethos grounded in openness, mobility, and ritual inclusivity.

By situating Ippen’s thought within contemporaneous Buddhist debates—particularly the contrasting emphases of Shinran’s interiorised faith and Nichiren’s polemical exclusivism—the study highlights how Ippen articulated a third path in medieval Japanese soteriology: one that united radical universalism with robust ritual participation. This analysis shows that yotei ōjō operated not merely as a doctrinal claim but as a social technology that shaped modes of belonging, authority, and interaction within the itinerant community.

Moreover, the jishū’s flexible engagement with local cults, pilgrimage economies, and combinatory kami–Buddha practices suggests that predetermined rebirth facilitated a porous religious identity capable of adapting to diverse ritual environments. This positions Ippen’s soteriology as a catalyst for religious hybridity rather than a doctrinal constraint.

Overall, this study contributes to current discussions on practice theory, community formation, and the performativity of belief in East Asian Buddhism, offering a revised assessment of Ippen’s place within Japanese religious history.

Keywords: Ippen, Predetermined Rebirth, Jishū, Pure Land Buddhism, Medieval Japanese Religion

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The presentation explores Tanaka Ippei’s representation of the Prophet Muhammad as a militant leader, a sage, a hero and a saint. Analysis of his early writings illuminates the indigenisation strategies through which Tanaka adapted Islamic theology to the Japanese context.

Paper long abstract

Tanaka Ippei 田中逸平 (1882–1932) is recognised as the pioneer of Islam in Japan, having established the foundation for the religion’s development. The present research analyses the image of the Prophet Muhammad that Tanaka depicts in “The Journey of the Wandering White Cloud: Islamic Pilgrimage” account and accompanying essays (“Islam and Pan-Asianism”, “Future of Chinese Muslims and Japanese Shintō”, 1924), which he completed during his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Tanaka Ippei converted to Islam in 1924 in Jinan, China, after a range of meetings with the local Muslim community, following Liu Zhi’s (劉智, 1660-1739) interpretation of Islam. Before converting to Islam, Tanaka was working on the translation of the Chinese philosopher Guan Zhong’s (管仲, 720-645 BCE) legacy while teaching Confucianism to the Chinese students in the local school. His sustained engagement with Confucian thought, together with the background in the Misogi-kyō, provided the framework for the conscious attempt to indigenize Islam in the Japanese context. The project started by reimagining the basic concepts of Islamic thought – the deity, the Prophet, the society (Arab. ummah) and the ritual.

Tanaka employed seijin (sage) to introduce Muhammad at the beginning of the pilgrimage account – following Liu Zhi's Neo-Confucian framework – to position Muhammad among five universal sages alongside Confucius, Jesus, Shakyamuni, and Laozi. At the same time, he neglected standard Japanese terms for “prophet” (yogensha, senchi). The following portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad operates across three dimensions: Muhammad as sage (moral exemplar accessible through Confucian cultivation vocabulary), as saint (drawing on Liu Zhi’s Sufi-influenced Akbarian concept of the “Light of Muhammad”), and as political leader – the “Man with Sword and Qur’an” whose disciplined militancy could fortify Japan against Western influence.

The research focuses on Tanaka’s strategies of indigenisation of the image of the Prophet Muhammad in the Japanese context. By positioning him as a cultural mediator whose vision of “Japanese Islam” anticipated the 1930s kaikyō seisaku (Islamic policy), the work illuminates both Japan’s cultural integration approach and explores Islam’s adaptability within diverse contexts.