I am currently Associate Professor of East Asian Religions at the University of Alberta, under a 50/50 joint appointment with the Program in Religious Studies and the Department of East Asian Studies.
Quinter, David. 2015. “Double Vision: The 'Tachikawa' Monkan and Shingon/Ritsu.” In From Outcasts to Emperors: Shingon Ritsu and the Mañjuśrī Cult in Medieval Japan, 179-233 (chapter 6). Leiden: Brill, 2015
This chapter centers on the period from 1290 to the 1350s. Building on recent iconographic and te... more This chapter centers on the period from 1290 to the 1350s. Building on recent iconographic and textual discoveries, it explores the participation of Monkan 文観 (1278–1357), a second-generation disciple of Eison 叡尊 (1201–90), in the Mañjuśrī cult alongside his twofold biographical construction as an orthodox Shingon and Ritsu monk and as a heretical tantric practitioner. I argue that many continuities between the activities of Monkan and those of Eison and his leading first-generation disciples, including their shared emphasis on the Mañjuśrī cult, have been obscured by sensationalized portrayals of Monkan and the supposed aberrant sexual rituals of the “Tachikawa cult.” While showing how distortion itself becomes part of the historical record, this chapter highlights the blurred lines between Ritsu and Shingon, the heterodox and orthodox, and the public and private in Monkan’s activities and the biographical material we use to assess those activities.
In From Outcasts to Emperors, David Quinter illuminates the Shingon Ritsu movement founded by the... more In From Outcasts to Emperors, David Quinter illuminates the Shingon Ritsu movement founded by the charismatic monk Eison (1201–90) at Saidaiji in Nara, Japan. The book's focus on Eison and his disciples' involvement in the cult of Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva reveals their innovative synthesis of Shingon esotericism, Buddhist discipline (Ritsu; Sk. vinaya), icon and temple construction, and social welfare activities as the cult embraced a spectrum of supporters, from outcasts to warrior and imperial rulers. In so doing, the book redresses typical portrayals of "Kamakura Buddhism" that cast Eison and other Nara Buddhist leaders merely as conservative reformers, rather than creative innovators, amid the dynamic religious and social changes of medieval Japan.
Quinter, David. “Eison, Preaching, and Performance in Medieval Japan.” In Oxford Handbook of Live... more Quinter, David. “Eison, Preaching, and Performance in Medieval Japan.” In Oxford Handbook of Lived Buddhism, edited by Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197658697.013.5 (PREVIEW; please contact me for the full chapter if you don’t have institutional access.)
This chapter examines Eison's (1201-1290) linked teaching, ritual, and cultic activities. Eison's Shingon Ritsu movement spread broadly in medieval Japan, as he and disciples restored temples across the archipelago and conferred the precepts on male and female monastics, lay elites, and commoners alike. Venues for Eison's activities ranged from small gatherings of monastics in temples and convents; to offering ceremonies at prisons, marketplaces, and outcast communities; to mass assemblies of monastics and laypeople and more private precept conferrals for court and warrior rulers. The chapter uses the diversity of venues and audiences for Eison's early precepts-spreading activities to argue for the value of understanding both "preaching as performance" and performance as preaching in lived Buddhism. In so doing, this chapter underscores how greater attention to the performative dimensions of official religious leaders can nuance common portrayals of doctrine versus practice, elite versus popular, and institutional versus "everyday" religion.
Quinter, David. “Eison, Monkan, and the Cult of Founders in Medieval Japan: On the Construction o... more Quinter, David. “Eison, Monkan, and the Cult of Founders in Medieval Japan: On the Construction of Narrative and Material Selves in East Asian Buddhism.” Studies in Chinese Religions 7, no. 4: 390–416 (2021a). https://doi.org/10.1080/23729988.2021.2015147 (PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
This article addresses the viability of constructions of a narrative self in light of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self by examining Eison (or Eizon; 1201–90), founder of the Shingon Ritsu movement; his grand-disciple Monkan (1278–1357); and their involvement in the cult of founders in medieval Japan. The article begins by briefly establishing Eison and Monkan’s significance, then looks at Steven Collins’s distinction between systematic and narrative thought in Pali Buddhism. I suggest that this distinction helps clarify the relationship between the self of narrativity and of conventional truth versus the no-self of ultimate truth in Buddhist traditions across times and regions. Then, using Eison, Monkan, and the medieval cult of founders as a case study, I argue that even among scholar-monks actively engaged in such systematic exposition as that related to notions of no-self, the exposition is embedded within a broader devotional framework in which tensions between no-self and a narrative self largely dissolve. I conclude by suggesting that notions of no-self posed little impediment to Eison and fellow monastics’ promotion of a cult of founders that glorifies particular narratively and materially constructed ‘selves.’
Quinter, David. “Visualization/Contemplation Sutras (Guan Jing).” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia... more Quinter, David. “Visualization/Contemplation Sutras (Guan Jing).” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.770
Quinter, David. 2019. “Eison.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism 2: Lives, edited by Jonathan A... more Quinter, David. 2019. “Eison.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism 2: Lives, edited by Jonathan A. Silk et al., 944-50. Leiden: Brill.
Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, 2019
Quinter, David. “Mañjuśrī in East Asia.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, edit... more Quinter, David. “Mañjuśrī in East Asia.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, edited by Jonathan Silk et al., 591–99. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Quinter, David. “Moving Monks and Mountains: Chōgen and the Cults of Gyōki, Mañjuśrī, and Wutai.”... more Quinter, David. “Moving Monks and Mountains: Chōgen and the Cults of Gyōki, Mañjuśrī, and Wutai.” Studies in Chinese Religions 5, no. 3-4 (2019): 391-414. DOI: 10.1080/23729988.2019.1689764
(PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
Quinter, David. 2018. “Mantras and Materialities: Saidaiji Order Kōmyō Shingon Practices.” Japane... more Quinter, David. 2018. “Mantras and Materialities: Saidaiji Order Kōmyō Shingon Practices.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45, no. 2: 309-40.
Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) practices have been among the most popular esoteric Buddhist rituals in Japan since the thirteenth century. Chinese scriptures recorded that reciting the mantra and distributing sand empowered by it could erase transgressions and ensure rebirth in the Pure Land. Subsequently, teachings on the significance of the sand empowered by the mantra received a strong boost from lectures and commentaries by Myōe (1173–1232), which many scholars have emphasized in assessing the mantra’s spread. This article argues, however, that focus on the sand and such commentarial literature obscures another key to the mantra’s popularization in medieval Japan: the annual Mantra of Light assemblies implemented by Eison (1201–1290) at Saidaiji in 1264. In particular, based on both premodern sources and ethnographic observations, the article investigates the Saidaiji order’s use of contributor rosters for fundraising, recitation, and iconographic adornment to help illuminate the intertwined social, ritual, and material culture of the assemblies.
This article illuminates the significance of the Mañjuśrī cult during Jōkei's (1155–1213) Kasagi ... more This article illuminates the significance of the Mañjuśrī cult during Jōkei's (1155–1213) Kasagi years and his innovative synthesis of material, textual, and ritual culture. The study of such medieval Nara scholar-monks as Jōkei suffers from lingering biases that privilege the Buddhist schools strongest now over the many other movements thriving in medieval Japan. Their activities are typically cast as reactionary responses to popularizing tendencies championed elsewhere rather than as creative transformations of Buddhist teachings and practices in their own right. Even amid revisionist studies, the textual concerns of scholar-monks are often contrasted with the " lived religion " in such practices as icon veneration, pilgrimage, and simplified chanting rituals. However , this article uses Jōkei's involvement in the Kasagidera restoration and the Mañjuśrī cult, including his composition of a kōshiki devoted to Mañjuśrī (Jp. Monju), to show how these same practices were integral to the concerns of Nara scholar-monks. The online supplement includes a complete annotated translation of Jōkei's Monju kōshiki.
A complete annotated translation of the Hossō monk Jōkei's (1155–1213) five-part Monju kōshiki (M... more A complete annotated translation of the Hossō monk Jōkei's (1155–1213) five-part Monju kōshiki (Manjusri Ceremonial). Published in the journal's online supplement, this translation forms a set with my article published in the same issue (print and online versions): “Materializing and Performing Prajñā: Jōkei’s Mañjuśrī Faith and the Kasagidera Restoration.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 43, no. 1 (2016): 17-54.
Quinter, David. 2015. “Double Vision: The 'Tachikawa' Monkan and Shingon/Ritsu.” In From Outcasts to Emperors: Shingon Ritsu and the Mañjuśrī Cult in Medieval Japan, 179-233 (chapter 6). Leiden: Brill, 2015
This chapter centers on the period from 1290 to the 1350s. Building on recent iconographic and te... more This chapter centers on the period from 1290 to the 1350s. Building on recent iconographic and textual discoveries, it explores the participation of Monkan 文観 (1278–1357), a second-generation disciple of Eison 叡尊 (1201–90), in the Mañjuśrī cult alongside his twofold biographical construction as an orthodox Shingon and Ritsu monk and as a heretical tantric practitioner. I argue that many continuities between the activities of Monkan and those of Eison and his leading first-generation disciples, including their shared emphasis on the Mañjuśrī cult, have been obscured by sensationalized portrayals of Monkan and the supposed aberrant sexual rituals of the “Tachikawa cult.” While showing how distortion itself becomes part of the historical record, this chapter highlights the blurred lines between Ritsu and Shingon, the heterodox and orthodox, and the public and private in Monkan’s activities and the biographical material we use to assess those activities.
In From Outcasts to Emperors, David Quinter illuminates the Shingon Ritsu movement founded by the... more In From Outcasts to Emperors, David Quinter illuminates the Shingon Ritsu movement founded by the charismatic monk Eison (1201–90) at Saidaiji in Nara, Japan. The book's focus on Eison and his disciples' involvement in the cult of Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva reveals their innovative synthesis of Shingon esotericism, Buddhist discipline (Ritsu; Sk. vinaya), icon and temple construction, and social welfare activities as the cult embraced a spectrum of supporters, from outcasts to warrior and imperial rulers. In so doing, the book redresses typical portrayals of "Kamakura Buddhism" that cast Eison and other Nara Buddhist leaders merely as conservative reformers, rather than creative innovators, amid the dynamic religious and social changes of medieval Japan.
Quinter, David. “Eison, Preaching, and Performance in Medieval Japan.” In Oxford Handbook of Live... more Quinter, David. “Eison, Preaching, and Performance in Medieval Japan.” In Oxford Handbook of Lived Buddhism, edited by Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197658697.013.5 (PREVIEW; please contact me for the full chapter if you don’t have institutional access.)
This chapter examines Eison's (1201-1290) linked teaching, ritual, and cultic activities. Eison's Shingon Ritsu movement spread broadly in medieval Japan, as he and disciples restored temples across the archipelago and conferred the precepts on male and female monastics, lay elites, and commoners alike. Venues for Eison's activities ranged from small gatherings of monastics in temples and convents; to offering ceremonies at prisons, marketplaces, and outcast communities; to mass assemblies of monastics and laypeople and more private precept conferrals for court and warrior rulers. The chapter uses the diversity of venues and audiences for Eison's early precepts-spreading activities to argue for the value of understanding both "preaching as performance" and performance as preaching in lived Buddhism. In so doing, this chapter underscores how greater attention to the performative dimensions of official religious leaders can nuance common portrayals of doctrine versus practice, elite versus popular, and institutional versus "everyday" religion.
Quinter, David. “Eison, Monkan, and the Cult of Founders in Medieval Japan: On the Construction o... more Quinter, David. “Eison, Monkan, and the Cult of Founders in Medieval Japan: On the Construction of Narrative and Material Selves in East Asian Buddhism.” Studies in Chinese Religions 7, no. 4: 390–416 (2021a). https://doi.org/10.1080/23729988.2021.2015147 (PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
This article addresses the viability of constructions of a narrative self in light of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self by examining Eison (or Eizon; 1201–90), founder of the Shingon Ritsu movement; his grand-disciple Monkan (1278–1357); and their involvement in the cult of founders in medieval Japan. The article begins by briefly establishing Eison and Monkan’s significance, then looks at Steven Collins’s distinction between systematic and narrative thought in Pali Buddhism. I suggest that this distinction helps clarify the relationship between the self of narrativity and of conventional truth versus the no-self of ultimate truth in Buddhist traditions across times and regions. Then, using Eison, Monkan, and the medieval cult of founders as a case study, I argue that even among scholar-monks actively engaged in such systematic exposition as that related to notions of no-self, the exposition is embedded within a broader devotional framework in which tensions between no-self and a narrative self largely dissolve. I conclude by suggesting that notions of no-self posed little impediment to Eison and fellow monastics’ promotion of a cult of founders that glorifies particular narratively and materially constructed ‘selves.’
Quinter, David. “Visualization/Contemplation Sutras (Guan Jing).” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia... more Quinter, David. “Visualization/Contemplation Sutras (Guan Jing).” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.770
Quinter, David. 2019. “Eison.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism 2: Lives, edited by Jonathan A... more Quinter, David. 2019. “Eison.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism 2: Lives, edited by Jonathan A. Silk et al., 944-50. Leiden: Brill.
Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, 2019
Quinter, David. “Mañjuśrī in East Asia.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, edit... more Quinter, David. “Mañjuśrī in East Asia.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2, Lives, edited by Jonathan Silk et al., 591–99. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Quinter, David. “Moving Monks and Mountains: Chōgen and the Cults of Gyōki, Mañjuśrī, and Wutai.”... more Quinter, David. “Moving Monks and Mountains: Chōgen and the Cults of Gyōki, Mañjuśrī, and Wutai.” Studies in Chinese Religions 5, no. 3-4 (2019): 391-414. DOI: 10.1080/23729988.2019.1689764
(PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
Quinter, David. 2018. “Mantras and Materialities: Saidaiji Order Kōmyō Shingon Practices.” Japane... more Quinter, David. 2018. “Mantras and Materialities: Saidaiji Order Kōmyō Shingon Practices.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45, no. 2: 309-40.
Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) practices have been among the most popular esoteric Buddhist rituals in Japan since the thirteenth century. Chinese scriptures recorded that reciting the mantra and distributing sand empowered by it could erase transgressions and ensure rebirth in the Pure Land. Subsequently, teachings on the significance of the sand empowered by the mantra received a strong boost from lectures and commentaries by Myōe (1173–1232), which many scholars have emphasized in assessing the mantra’s spread. This article argues, however, that focus on the sand and such commentarial literature obscures another key to the mantra’s popularization in medieval Japan: the annual Mantra of Light assemblies implemented by Eison (1201–1290) at Saidaiji in 1264. In particular, based on both premodern sources and ethnographic observations, the article investigates the Saidaiji order’s use of contributor rosters for fundraising, recitation, and iconographic adornment to help illuminate the intertwined social, ritual, and material culture of the assemblies.
This article illuminates the significance of the Mañjuśrī cult during Jōkei's (1155–1213) Kasagi ... more This article illuminates the significance of the Mañjuśrī cult during Jōkei's (1155–1213) Kasagi years and his innovative synthesis of material, textual, and ritual culture. The study of such medieval Nara scholar-monks as Jōkei suffers from lingering biases that privilege the Buddhist schools strongest now over the many other movements thriving in medieval Japan. Their activities are typically cast as reactionary responses to popularizing tendencies championed elsewhere rather than as creative transformations of Buddhist teachings and practices in their own right. Even amid revisionist studies, the textual concerns of scholar-monks are often contrasted with the " lived religion " in such practices as icon veneration, pilgrimage, and simplified chanting rituals. However , this article uses Jōkei's involvement in the Kasagidera restoration and the Mañjuśrī cult, including his composition of a kōshiki devoted to Mañjuśrī (Jp. Monju), to show how these same practices were integral to the concerns of Nara scholar-monks. The online supplement includes a complete annotated translation of Jōkei's Monju kōshiki.
A complete annotated translation of the Hossō monk Jōkei's (1155–1213) five-part Monju kōshiki (M... more A complete annotated translation of the Hossō monk Jōkei's (1155–1213) five-part Monju kōshiki (Manjusri Ceremonial). Published in the journal's online supplement, this translation forms a set with my article published in the same issue (print and online versions): “Materializing and Performing Prajñā: Jōkei’s Mañjuśrī Faith and the Kasagidera Restoration.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 43, no. 1 (2016): 17-54.
Votive Text for the Construction of the Hannyaji Ma? ju? r? Bodhisattva Statue A Translation of H... more Votive Text for the Construction of the Hannyaji Ma? ju? r? Bodhisattva Statue A Translation of Hannyaji Monju Bosatsu Z? Z? ry? Ganmon EISON Translated by DAVIDQUINTER CONSTRUCTED: One sixteen-foot sandalwood statue of Ma? ju? r? Bodhisattva Drawn ...
Quinter, David. 2006. "The Shingon Ritsu School and the Mañjuśrī Cult in the Kamakura Period: Fro... more Quinter, David. 2006. "The Shingon Ritsu School and the Mañjuśrī Cult in the Kamakura Period: From Eison to Monkan." Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.
Recent studies of religious rituals and other performative acts suggest that the social identitie... more Recent studies of religious rituals and other performative acts suggest that the social identities people enact during performances are not fixed entities but contingent ones, dependent on the acts themselves and their repetition. Such studies effectively illustrate how performance continuously constructs, rather than simply expresses, identity. This insight, however, holds as true for the objects used or venerated in performances as for the performers themselves.
This paper reexamines the restoration of the colossal Tōdaiji Great Buddha statue in late twelfth-century Japan, focusing on the activities of the itinerant monk Chōgen (1121-1206) and the influential courtier Kujō Kanezane (1149-1207). Analyzing their closely connected involvement in the material, narrative, and ritual restoration efforts, I argue that the monk and the courtier constructed new, multilayered identities for the ancient image and the structures housing it. In particular, I show how their ritual empowerment of the statue enacted multivalent notions of buddha-relics and sacred place to imbue the image with contingent identities as Mahāvairocana, Śākyamuni, and Mañjuśrī.
Cette séance, présidée par François Lachaud (directeur d'études EFEO), est organisée à l'occasion... more Cette séance, présidée par François Lachaud (directeur d'études EFEO), est organisée à l'occasion de la publication de "Gaétan Rappo, Rhétoriques de l'hérésie dans le Japon médiéval et moderne". Elle se composera d'une présentation du livre par l'auteur, suivie d'un exposé de Nobumi Iyanaga sur la lignée de Tachikawa, et de David Quinter sur le Saidaiji. La séance se terminera par une discussion générale.
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Books by David Quinter
Articles by David Quinter
(PREVIEW; please contact me for the full chapter if you don’t have institutional access.)
This chapter examines Eison's (1201-1290) linked teaching, ritual, and cultic activities. Eison's Shingon Ritsu movement spread broadly in medieval Japan, as he and disciples restored temples across the archipelago and conferred the precepts on male and female monastics, lay elites, and commoners alike. Venues for Eison's activities ranged from small gatherings of monastics in temples and convents; to offering ceremonies at prisons, marketplaces, and outcast communities; to mass assemblies of monastics and laypeople and more private precept conferrals for court and warrior rulers. The chapter uses the diversity of venues and audiences for Eison's early precepts-spreading activities to argue for the value of understanding both "preaching as performance" and performance as preaching in lived Buddhism. In so doing, this chapter underscores how greater attention to the performative dimensions of official religious leaders can nuance common portrayals of doctrine versus practice, elite versus popular, and institutional versus "everyday" religion.
This article addresses the viability of constructions of a narrative self in light of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self by examining Eison (or Eizon; 1201–90), founder of the Shingon Ritsu movement; his grand-disciple Monkan (1278–1357); and their involvement in the cult of founders in medieval Japan. The article begins by briefly establishing Eison and Monkan’s significance, then looks at Steven Collins’s distinction between systematic and narrative thought in Pali Buddhism. I suggest that this distinction helps clarify the relationship between the self of narrativity and of conventional truth versus the no-self of ultimate truth in Buddhist traditions across times and regions. Then, using Eison, Monkan, and the medieval cult of founders as a case study, I argue that even among scholar-monks actively engaged in such systematic exposition as that related to notions of no-self, the exposition is embedded within a broader devotional framework in which tensions between no-self and a narrative self largely dissolve. I conclude by suggesting that notions of no-self posed little impediment to Eison and fellow monastics’ promotion of a cult of founders that glorifies particular narratively and materially constructed ‘selves.’
(PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) practices have been among the most popular esoteric Buddhist rituals in Japan since the thirteenth century. Chinese scriptures recorded that reciting the mantra and distributing sand empowered by it could erase transgressions and ensure rebirth in the Pure Land. Subsequently, teachings on the significance of the sand empowered by the mantra received a strong boost from lectures and commentaries by Myōe (1173–1232), which many scholars have emphasized in assessing the mantra’s spread. This article argues, however, that focus on the sand and such commentarial literature obscures another key to the mantra’s popularization in medieval Japan: the annual Mantra of Light assemblies implemented by Eison (1201–1290) at Saidaiji in 1264. In particular, based on both premodern sources and ethnographic observations, the article investigates the Saidaiji order’s use of contributor rosters for fundraising, recitation, and iconographic adornment to help illuminate the intertwined social, ritual, and material culture of the assemblies.
(PREVIEW; please contact me for the full chapter if you don’t have institutional access.)
This chapter examines Eison's (1201-1290) linked teaching, ritual, and cultic activities. Eison's Shingon Ritsu movement spread broadly in medieval Japan, as he and disciples restored temples across the archipelago and conferred the precepts on male and female monastics, lay elites, and commoners alike. Venues for Eison's activities ranged from small gatherings of monastics in temples and convents; to offering ceremonies at prisons, marketplaces, and outcast communities; to mass assemblies of monastics and laypeople and more private precept conferrals for court and warrior rulers. The chapter uses the diversity of venues and audiences for Eison's early precepts-spreading activities to argue for the value of understanding both "preaching as performance" and performance as preaching in lived Buddhism. In so doing, this chapter underscores how greater attention to the performative dimensions of official religious leaders can nuance common portrayals of doctrine versus practice, elite versus popular, and institutional versus "everyday" religion.
This article addresses the viability of constructions of a narrative self in light of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self by examining Eison (or Eizon; 1201–90), founder of the Shingon Ritsu movement; his grand-disciple Monkan (1278–1357); and their involvement in the cult of founders in medieval Japan. The article begins by briefly establishing Eison and Monkan’s significance, then looks at Steven Collins’s distinction between systematic and narrative thought in Pali Buddhism. I suggest that this distinction helps clarify the relationship between the self of narrativity and of conventional truth versus the no-self of ultimate truth in Buddhist traditions across times and regions. Then, using Eison, Monkan, and the medieval cult of founders as a case study, I argue that even among scholar-monks actively engaged in such systematic exposition as that related to notions of no-self, the exposition is embedded within a broader devotional framework in which tensions between no-self and a narrative self largely dissolve. I conclude by suggesting that notions of no-self posed little impediment to Eison and fellow monastics’ promotion of a cult of founders that glorifies particular narratively and materially constructed ‘selves.’
(PREVIEW; for full article, please see the links under "Files" above)
Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) practices have been among the most popular esoteric Buddhist rituals in Japan since the thirteenth century. Chinese scriptures recorded that reciting the mantra and distributing sand empowered by it could erase transgressions and ensure rebirth in the Pure Land. Subsequently, teachings on the significance of the sand empowered by the mantra received a strong boost from lectures and commentaries by Myōe (1173–1232), which many scholars have emphasized in assessing the mantra’s spread. This article argues, however, that focus on the sand and such commentarial literature obscures another key to the mantra’s popularization in medieval Japan: the annual Mantra of Light assemblies implemented by Eison (1201–1290) at Saidaiji in 1264. In particular, based on both premodern sources and ethnographic observations, the article investigates the Saidaiji order’s use of contributor rosters for fundraising, recitation, and iconographic adornment to help illuminate the intertwined social, ritual, and material culture of the assemblies.
This paper reexamines the restoration of the colossal Tōdaiji Great Buddha statue in late twelfth-century Japan, focusing on the activities of the itinerant monk Chōgen (1121-1206) and the influential courtier Kujō Kanezane (1149-1207). Analyzing their closely connected involvement in the material, narrative, and ritual restoration efforts, I argue that the monk and the courtier constructed new, multilayered identities for the ancient image and the structures housing it. In particular, I show how their ritual empowerment of the statue enacted multivalent notions of buddha-relics and sacred place to imbue the image with contingent identities as Mahāvairocana, Śākyamuni, and Mañjuśrī.