Medieval Japanese History

This article asks what religious violence is and why it is relevant. It questions common assumptions by focusing on how monastic violence unfolded in premodern Japan. It argues that there was nothing that set this particular form of violence apart in terms of what the clerics fought for, their ideological justification, who fought, or how they fought. Although myths prevail on the largely fictive figure of the s¯ ohei, or " monk-warriors, " closer scrutiny indicates that their depiction first emerged as a coherent literary concept in the early Tokugawa period. Regarding the ideological framework in which incidents of so-called monastic violence took place, the paper demonstrates that the individuals involved in such conflicts—including the clerics—cannot be dissociated from their own socio-historical context. This is because the medieval Japanese setting was based on rules of cooperation that also implied competition among various elites. The paper further complicates our understanding by showing that the central issue is not why specific violent events involving clerics occurred, but rather what constituted the mental framework—or mentalité—of the age, and how it allowed religious institutions to play such a prominent role.

When one speaks of feudalism in Japan, one must always bear in mind that "Japanese" feudalism is as peculiar as "European" feudalism which exhibits different patterns in different countries at different times. The Japanese example is no exception in exhibiting different patterns and features at different regions and times. This study aims at discovering the periodic differences seen within the general framework of Japanese feudalism, especially in the domains under shogunal control by comparing the pre-Edo and Edo patterns of feudal structures. These differences in the administrative organization of the military and bureaucratic structures give Japanese feudalism a peculiar form different from Europe. Despite the seeming similarities attested by early modern European travelers to Japan and 19 th century historians, as the comparative approach demonstrates, what was called as Japanese feudalism by the early western visitors of Japan was in fact a culmination of a centuries long process. This article approaches the theoretical framework of Japanese feudalism in a comparative perspective between different periods.

十六世紀半ばから十七世初頭にかけ、日本イエズス会により、日本語の教理書が出版されたということは周知の通りだ。世俗のヨーロッパ文学である『イソップ物語』の和訳、そして天草版『平家物語』、『太平記抜書』の存在もよく知られている。しかし、日本語で書かれたオリジナルのキリスト教説話が現存するということは案外知られていない。近年、このテキスト群を「異文化接触」というレベルで取り上げた研究が現れているが、漢訳仏典や漢籍の影響を受けた『日本霊異記』『今昔物語集』などとは対照的に、室町末期にラテン語文脈から国語に翻案されたキリスト教文学は、残念ながらこれまで国文学として扱われてこなかった。その理由をここで詳しくは追究できないが、日本精神というものが（漢文脈との関連性ではある程度まで認められている一方で）キリスト教との関係性については根本的に異質で相容れないものと一般的には理解されていることが、その背景にあると考えられる。しかし、キリスト教説話を聞いた織豊期の日本人がこのように日本精神とキリスト教を両極的なものとして捉えていたということは、資料からは読み取れない。本稿では、キリスト教も日本精神も信仰していない筆者が日本中世キリスト教の代表的な説話集をバレト写本という資料の中から取り上げ、その原典が何であったかを明らかにし、さらに、同時代の日本文学との関係性を探る。その結果、この説話集は当時の武士階級によって評価された軍記・語り物文学、取り分け幸若舞と最も関連性が深いということを示す。

The warrior caste dominated Japan since 1192. With the establishment of a military government the bushi or samurai became the icon of strength and authority, and at the same time the symbol of order, justice and of a superior unique style of life. The “loyalty to the Lord” (chū) was a fundamental value for a bushi and one's duty derived from the chū.
Death was the extreme expression of this loyalty and one way to express one's loyalty was following the Lord in death (junshi), until it was banned by the government in 1663. This article deals with junshi and the self sacrifice committed by four retainers of the Lord Shimazu Yukihisa (1550-1610), to cancel a merciless and disloyal act to their Lord.

Figure centrale de l’histoire du Japon, le samouraï devient l’objet d’interprétations décapantes dans les arts populaires nippons après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Dès les années 50, le cinéaste Akira Kurosawa et le mangaka Osamu Tezuka revisitent cette figure pour mieux parler du Japon contemporain dans toutes ses contradictions.

L e mythe autour de la figure des samouraïs est d'autant plus présent dans nos sociétés qu'il a été relayé par une impressionnante production cinématographique qui déborde les frontières du Japon et le genre historique (pensons par exemple à Star Wars). La bande dessinée – et pas seulement les mangas – n'est pas en reste, pas plus que les jeux vidéo, comme la série de Kessen (2002-2004) ou la musique populaire, du rock au rap. Au milieu cette déferlante, la très riche exposition proposée au château des ducs de Bretagne et consacrée à ces guerriers du plus extrême des orients arrive à point nommé pour découvrir, loin des clichés, cette classe de guerriers dont les mutations ont accompagné tous les soubresauts de l'histoire de l'archipel.
La fascination pour les samouraïs s'explique par la particularité du Japon. L'archipel a été la seule région d'Extrême-Orient qui a vu la constitution durable d'une aristocratie guerrière, alors que les autres sociétés asiatiques, Chine en tête, ont été dirigées par des castes de lettrés et d'administrateurs civils. Néanmoins, il serait faux de penser que la classe sociale des bushis (guerriers) a toujours été une structure uniforme...

In the year 1582, Nobunaga was suddenly killed by his vassal, Akechi Mitsuhide. To this day, Nobunaga’s assassination remains one of the greatest mysteries of Japanese history. Nobody knows why Akechi Mitsuhide at the last minute suddenly decided to betray Nobunaga. This event is so legendary that it has been ingrained into popular culture. Lots of Japanese films and TV shows make subtle references to Mitsuhide’s betrayal, in the same way that people in the West reference the Ides of March.  Mitsuhide’s betrayal has permeated so far into the public consciousness that there are even a bunch of popular superstitions about it. For example, last year when I visited Mt. Kōya, one of the holy mountains of Japan, I stumbled across Akechi Mitsuhide’s grave. The grave itself was nothing special, but what was unique about it was that it had a massive crack running through the middle of it.  The local priest told me that no matter how many times the grave was fixed, the crack came back. He told me that the ghost of Akechi Mitsuhide cannot rest as he still has a strong attachment to this world. He has been remembered as a villain and painted as a traitor. I personally think it’s time that we let poor Mitsuhide pass onto the next life and give him the history that he deserves. Now let’s unravel the mystery of Nobunaga’s death.

INTRODUZIONE-CAPITOLO I: Il Giappone shogunale e le caratteristiche del samurai-1.1: Dalle origini dei samurai alla centralizzazione Minamoto.-1.2: Affermazione dei samurai e frammentazione politica nel Giappone feudale-1.3: L'unificazione del Giappone: dagli Oda ai Tokugawa-CAPITOLO II: Il Periodo Tokugawa (1600-1868): Affermazione e declino della classe samuraica-2.1: La fine dei Toyotomi e l'affermazione dei Tokugawa-2.2: Il primo Periodo Tokugawa: riforme e trasformazioni socio-politiche-2.3: Nascita del consumismo e crisi interna di metà XIX secolo-2.4: La crisi esterna e l'avvio della transizione Tokugawa-Meiji-CAPITOLO III: La Restaurazione Meiji: cambiamenti socio-politici e tramonto dell'era samuraica-3.1: Lo scenario della Restaurazione Meiji-3.2: Oligarchi vs ribelli: la doppia via dei samurai-3.3: Dibattiti storiografici sulla transizione Tokugawa-Meiji e sul lascito degli ultimi samurai-CONCLUSIONI-BIBLIOGRAFIA

This study investigates Yoshida Shinto founded by Yoshida Kanetomo (1435-1511), which reached its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries. Yoshida Shinto is credited as the first religious school that chose "Shinto" (way of the gods) as its denomination and regarded itself intrinsically different from Buddhism. Therefore Yoshida Shinto called itself also the "One-and-Only Way of the Gods." The study analyses the actual religious innovations of Yoshida Kanetomo and their historical and intellectual background. Thereby it addresses the general question to which extent Yoshida Shinto implied a new consciousness of Shinto as an autonomous religion. It is well known among experts of Japanese religion that Yoshida Shinto was heavily influenced by Buddhism and Taoism alike. The author argues, however, that there is a tendency to underestimate the degree, by which these influences were integrated into a comprehensive religious system that also involved indigenous ("Shinto") elements, such as ritual and mythology. The study is the first monograph of Yoshida Shinto in a Western language and includes also translations of three important Yoshida texts. It contributes to the present discussion about the notion of "Shinto," which has become the object of a critical re-evaluation in Japan as well as in the West.

Enshrined at Daigoji 醍醐寺 temple—one of the most important centers of Shingon esoteric Buddhism—is the female tutelary deity Seiryō (or Seiryū) Gongen 清瀧権現. Medieval texts depict her as a draconic goddess, usually the third daughter of the dragon king Shakara (Sk. Sāgara) 娑伽羅龍王. Traditions say that she physically traveled to Japan with Kūkai 空海 (774-835), and that her cult became particularly prominent at Daigoji after the temple was established by the Shingon monk Shōbō 聖宝 (835-909).
From the eleventh century to the middle ages, Seiryō Gongen appeared mostly within the context of rainmaking rituals. Such practices at Daigoji eventually fell out of favor during the late Kamakura period, but her cult did not lose its popularity. In fact, her name is frequently referenced in one major Muromachi source for the history of the Shingon school, the diary of the Sanbōin 三宝院 monk Manzei 満済 (also Mansai, 1378-1435).  As the abbot of Daigoji, Manzei conducted various rituals at the Seiryō shrines of Daigoji temple, such as recitations of sūtras, offerings, doctrinal discussions (dangi 談義), and even included Nō performances. He also was a central figure at the court of the Ashikaga shoguns, especially Yoshimitsu 義満 (1358-1408), and he played a crucial role in supporting their regime (Mori 2004).
This article will analyze Manzei’s Seiryō’s rituals and and replace them in the historical context of this goddess’s cult. After a presentation of Manzei’s activities, a return to the origins of the Seiryō worship will show the cult’s stability and evolution during Japan’s less-understood late Middle Ages. I will show how Manzei’s rituals, although they followed traditional patterns, also consecrated a gradual shift in the goddess’s role inside the Daigoji temple. This analysis will then allow for a discussion of the category of guardian deities in premodern Japan, as well as shed new light on the cult’s developments during the Edo period and beyond.

While the kami Hachiman is one of the most popular Shinto deities in Japan today, in its historical incarnation as Great Bodhisattva the god has been a combinatory Shinto/Buddhist deity par excellence. The cult, whose history can be traced back to the eighth century AD, comprises a broad multiplicity of theological ideas that has continued to develop over the centuries, characterized by oracular, tutelary and martial themes; today its most famous rite is the Hōjōe, in which birds, fish and insects are released at the shrines, symbolizing the Buddha's compassion. Tōdaiji in Nara houses the most famous sculpture of the deity in the form of a Buddhist priest.

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.

Did Kan'ami and Zeami create the art of Noh? How about their patrons and audiences, didn't they contribute in any way? Why are there no remains of earlier plays? In this study, the increasing literacy of Noh actors, influence of contemporary intellectuals and production of play scripts are shown to be key factors in the development of Noh.

Itakura Shigenori’s (1617-1673) letter to his son is a spiritual testament of a  feudal Lord for his successor. Together with some contemporary works of the 17th century and with a biographical document on Itakura himself, it significantly helps us with the understanding of the peaceful period of history it was written in, within a changed society, where samurai's existence and rank were no longer justified by war. In the letter Shigenori warmly recommends his son to be respectful of Japanese tradition and warrior class principles, but also emphasizes the importance of behaviours such as willing to listen to the others’ opinions, rewarding the virtuous and punishing the dishonest. His words reflect the awareness of the fact that contemporary samurai were progressively less faithful to the ancient values.

The thesis of this paper is that despite the differences in traditional Chinese and Japanese tea cultures, both cultures had members of their elite society using their tea culture to enhance their own prestige. This paper will focus on the time from the mid-8th century to the early 17th century. Three aspects of tea culture will be discussed in this paper: government, religious, and material culture. The government aspect will deal with tea as used by the Chinese emperors, specifically Emperor Huizong (1100-26) who wrote a treatise on tea. For Japan, the government aspect will focus mostly on the shoguns, the military dictators of feudal Japan who used tea culture to increase their prestige through peaceful means. The religious aspect will focus completely on Buddhism, which featured prominently in East Asian tea culture. For China, the major figure that will be discussed is Ennin, a Japanese Buddhist monk who travelled through China in the 9th century and commented often on tea. Zen Buddhism played a huge role in Japanese tea culture, particularly in the person of Sen no Rikyu (1522-91) who was a devout follower of Zen and a revolutionary figure in the Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu). Rikyu was a merchant, who would traditionally ranked very low in society, but tea culture increased his otherwise low prestige. The third aspect is material culture, particularly tea bowls, which were viewed as prestigious works of art well worth acquiring in both China and Japan to show off one’s wealth and taste. Overall, the purpose of this paper is to compare the tea cultures of China and Japan, as most scholarly research focuses on one or the other instead of noting the similarities- in this case, the elite societies’ use of their tea cultures to increase their reputation amongst their peers.

While no traces of Henmyōin 遍明院 cloister remain today at its original location, there is a thirteenth century Japanese oracle record that attests to its intriguing past and significance at the Shingon 真言 esoteric Buddhist monastic complex Kōyasan 高野山. The document reports that on the thirteenth day of the eleventh month in the third year of Kenchō 建長 (1251), a young chigo 稚児 (child acolyte) resident at Henmyōin suddenly began to exhibit alarming behavior. After declaring himself a former master of the temple and messenger of the deity “Daishi Myōjin” 大師明神, he proceeded to deliver a stream of information for a period of twelve days. This was transcribed by the eminent scholar-monk (gakuryo 学呂) Dōhan 道範 (1178–1252), and after being verified in consultation with the same deity later invoked for that purpose, the text was secreted away as a set of branch-exclusive teachings that were categorized as one of the cloister’s shōgyō 聖教 (sacred works). It was lent out to monks related to the cloister for limited periods of time for reading (and presumably, copying). The incident itself was later explained by Kōyasan scholar-monk Yūkai 宥快 (1345–1416) as having been a transmission of specific teachings necessary for the legitimization of a monk named Yūshin 祐信 (n.d.–1287) as Henmyōin head priest. Yūshin became the seventy-second head (kengyō 検校)1 of Kōyasan some years after the incident.

The incident itself attracts exploration and explanation. In what way could a possession-oracle function to transmit religious teachings and how standard was it? How might this incident be explained in terms of Kōyasan branch history and its strategies of acquiring legitimacy? How does it relate to broader issues concerning the nature of transmission in Buddhism? Focusing on the function of the oracle, the record, and several related commentaries, this paper proposes that although this specific possession-oracle was in some ways an unusual occurrence for its community, it largely conformed to general procedures and practices of knowledge transmission and legitimization of authority in pre-modern Japan and to a broader, even orthodox Buddhist context.

What constituted a child in a Buddhist monastery? How were boys treated, what was the nature of same-sex relations between boys and their superiors, and how did boys find space for autonomous action? This chapter, by Or Porath, highlights the fluidity of the child category, determined as it was not by biological age but by cultural demands. It delves into medieval treatises, one heavily influenced by Confucian values and another written by the monk-poet Sōgi, that shed light on the ideal boy and the disobedient boy, and it argues that the monastic boy oscillated between extremes of sacred and profane, occupied multiple social roles, and preoccupied himself with a variety of morally conflicting activities.

This study is a contribution to the question of the Buddhist character of medieval Nō drama. Previous studies have analyzed references to Buddhism or expressions of Buddhist practices in Nō plays. This study, however, focuses on the discourse through which plays tell their stories. It asks how the stereotypical structure for plays established by Zeami enabled the expression of voices conceived of within a Buddhist world-view. First, techniques used in some early plays to describe Buddhist ideas are considered. Next, the structural conventions developed by Zeami to portray similar subjects are investigated. It is shown how, in plays in which ghosts appear to Buddhist priests (mugen nō), Zeami’s system was well suited to expressing the contrast between the minds of beings on the Buddhist path and those trapped in delusion. Finally, three plays are explored which used these same conventions to repre- sent more complex characters. These can be understood as exhibiting the adequacy of the Buddhist world-view to the expression of wider themes. The last play considered, which describes an elderly poetess, is the most successful. In it, Zeami’s conventions produce both a recognizable portrait of an old woman, whilst at the same time exposing analogies between her predicament and that of deluded ghosts.

The Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333) is typically portrayed as the advent of autocratic rule by the Hōjō family, who dominated the regime's administration, rendering the nominal ruler-the shogun-increasingly powerless. One of the most influential approaches to elucidate these developments is found in the work of the late Satō Shin'ichi. The historian postulated a three-staged process outlining the evolution of the Kamakura polity: that of a shogunal-patrimonial autocracy, an era of consultative governance, and finally, a new type of "autocratic" rule by the headship (tokusō) of the main Hōjō lineage. The final stage of 'tokusō autocracy' has been characterized by three core aspects: (1) institutionalization of the lineage chief's personal council as the highest governing body, (2) tokusō hegemony over the wider Hōjō lineage group, and (3) creation of a personal network of vassals who occupied key positions in the shogunate administration. However, Satō's research has to be seen within the wider context of his work, centered around two general concepts: arbitrary decision-making by a single entity ('sensei'), and consensual decision-making by a collectivity ('gōgi'). These two concepts should be interpreted as dichotomous ideal-typical constructs determinative of premodern historical polities. Consequently, this paper outlines the validity of such a conceptual framework for a transcultural approach to premodern political history, through the discussion of several key topics of shogunate history centered on the decline of direct shogunal rule and the emergence of council government.

This article is a presentation of one of the most common rhetorics of "heresy" in medieval Japan, the rituals to the goddess called Dakini. Originally a demon from India, this deity was, in medieval Japan, at the center of a complex network of symbolic and doctrinal discourses revolving around the feminine, transgression and imperial power. In this article, I show concrete examples, from both literary and religious texts, of such discourse, analysing critics against the Shingon monk Monkan, and other figures.

In the medieval period a comprehensive discourse on “heresy” began to develop within Japanese Shingon Buddhist circles. This was mainly centered on the Tachikawa lineage (Tachikawa-ryū), a group known for its alleged dark rituals employing an explicit sexual imagery. Shingon monks did not only criticize such practices, but also created vast catalogues of writings considered heretical (jasho mokuroku).
Compiled in 1375, the oldest and most influential of them—the Tachikawa shōgyō mokuroku (Catalogue of Works Belonging to the Tachikawa Lineage)— lists the titles of more than 350 texts, but without much explanation as to their contents. Later works built on this catalogue’s ideas, and some even expanded the scope of such efforts. This article focuses focus on one of these, compiled in the late 17th century, the Mōsho jahō jagi-shō mokuroku (Catalogue of Texts Containing Perverse Doctrines and Rituals). This work does not only denounce alleged heretical texts, as it also contains a broader reflection on suspect or apocryphal texts and the reasons they should be considered as such –  thus applying a particular form of textual critique. This article shows how a careful reading of such catalogues can give us access to key concepts of the extremely shifting notion of “heresy” in Japanese Buddhism.

Open Access article
The concept of ‘religion’ as modern, European-derived, and therefore problematic in premodern and Asian contexts is well established, but leaves us with a problem: if the church/state sacred/secular dynamic is a modern misconception even in England, as Fitzgerald argued, then how should we go about examining the central place of specific institutions, behaviour, and belief in the workings of medieval Japanese society that have formerly been classified or understood as ‘religious’? Abandoning ‘religion’ as a separate field of study from the ‘secular’ in Japanese history has the paradoxical effect of drawing attention to the pervasive centrality of activity, performance, mentality, and observance to every aspect of medieval life. Elements of practice, performance, and the sacred were essential, core, components of the functioning of public and private governance from the imperial system to local landholding. The great temple shrine complexes of the medieval period were centres of organisation, authority, and legitimacy, which are best understood not as ‘religious’ complexes which were also ‘economic’ and ‘political’ powers, but as institutions whose authority cannot be separated out into separate (modern) categories of ‘economic’, ‘judicial’, or ‘religious’ authority. Such distinctions cut across the deeply interconnected nature of law, landholding, family, lineage, place, and belief in the period, the networks and systems by which medieval life was ordered, but they also cut across the way that they were perceived by those living within them: the ways in which people thought, behaved, and interacted with each other. In order to understand the workings of what we think of as medieval Japanese society, we must understand these connected systems as composed of elements that might look ‘religious’ or ‘secular’ to modern eyes, but which were complementary, indivisible, even, in the period.

Garrett, Philip. 2022. "Getting Away from ‘Religion’ in Medieval Japan" Religions 13, no. 4: 288.

From the late Heian period, Japanese practitioners have written a series of works describing their arts. Underlying them is a vision of the arts as michi, paths through life, an image which implies an underlying unity to all human specializations. This unity resulted in a series of creative intellectual borrowings across different areas of knowledge, and an intense investigation of the processes by which the artist is trained and the artifact is produced, but there is a corresponding lack of aesthetic analysis and little interest in the artist as an individual. In this study, the writings of fifteenth-century noh actors, Zeami and Zenchiku, are investigated as ex- emplars of the intellectual approaches to michi in its formative period. In closing the character of writings about michi is contrasted with approaches taken in the European tradition to theorizing about the arts.

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.

Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan demonstrates that rice’s significance as a foodstuff and as a cultural symbol has been vastly overestimated in the history of premodern Japan. Due to its presumed importance to Japanese civilization, rice and the irrigated agriculture that produced it dominated the attention of historians and archaeologists up to the 1990s.  Scholars since the 1990s have looked to linguistic, archaeological, textual and ethnographic evidence, and Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan refers to these sources and the secondary literature based on them to contextualize rice in the larger subsistence economy.

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 is a study in Japanese (Buddhist) aesthetics concerned with defining the "undefinable" and elusive meanings of one of the cornerstones of Japanese aesthetics, the concept of "yugen." The paper addresses the cultural-historical contexts and meanings of "yugen" from its remote origins in ancient China through the medieval eras of Japan, where the concept of yugen--and its complementary and overlapping aesthetic concepts of wabi, sabi, and mono no aware--became deeply rooted aesthetic principles chiefly under the influence of Zen Buddhism--in the artistic genres and media of Japan. Yugen, the author concludes, is a direct artistic expression and embodiment of the equally elusive truth-claims of Zen and an artistic exploration and analogue to Zen teachings.

This article uses character n-grams methods to assess the authorship of three religious texts written in medieval Japan, comparing them to the works of Monkan (1278-1357), a Shingon monk active during the first half of the 14th century. Such texts belong to a literary genre called shōgyō that presents many challenges that render the use of traditional authorship attribution methods inappropriate. They were composed in Japanese kanbun (classical Chinese read in Japanese word order), and their contents are closer to cumulative work than to original creations by a single author. This article thus draws on previous research on the translators of the Chinese Buddhist canon, which have proven to be far more effective than traditional methods developed for modern languages for the analysis of this type of literature. Concretely, it proposes a workflow proceeding from the preparation of the corpus (with manuscript edition, encoding,…) to a concrete data analysis using the variable length n-gram method. The last part of the article deals with future perspectives that would further refine the results, such as taking into account the various speaking voices found inside the shōgyō and their relationship to the author, as well as stylistic analysis based on grammatical patterns. As a whole, the experiment succeeded in showing global trends in the texts of the Japanese Shingon schools, finding stylistic differences between the works of Kūkai, of monks from the 12th century, and of Monkan. Combined with a rigorous historical enquiry into the redaction context of the texts and their manuscripts, the data analysis also demonstrates that one of them was almost certainly written by Monkan, and another either by him or by one of his close disciples.

FORTHCOMING, Sept. 2015, at BAJS Conference, SOAS
Thurs Sept 10th, 11.30-1.30
Room 4429

During the medieval period, the Shingon Buddhist temple complex Kōyasan built up an extensive domain of proprietary estates in northern Kii Province which stretched over an area equivalent to half of Greater London by the fourteenth century. In contrast to the scattered, distant estates of many other major temples and Kōyasan's own distant estates, a close and often fractious relationship developed between the the community atop the mountain and those of the estates in the valleys below.
In this talk I examine the reciprocal influence between these groups, considering both the deliberate influence exerted on warrior and commoner families by the temple, and the competition within the temple complex between councils and associations of monks drawn from local families of differing social status. Not only did inter-class tensions in village society spill over to violence within the temple, but warrior income and authority within these estates was strongly dependent on the influence and cooperation of tonsured relatives. This interrelation is demonstrated by the growth in importance of two groups within the Kōyasan community during the medieval period - the Shōshūe, a council of scholar-monks drawn from local elite families which gained control of much of the temple's decision-making process and supplied a long succession of abbots - and the Rokubanshū, an association of worker-monks, enforcers, and servants, which was drawn from the local yeomanry and peasant families, and came to control policing and punishment within the temple domain. The transfer of responsibilities from the classical temple hierarchy to the Shōshūe and Rokubanshū is indicative of the centrality of local politics and provincial kinship to the development of Kōyasan, and argues that the temple 'above' and domain 'below' must be seen as constituting a social and political whole.

From 1183 until 1333 – what historians now call the Kamakura period – two governments coexisted on the Japanese archipelago, respectively located in the eastern and western parts of its largest island Honshu. Their political centers were separated by a distance of about 500 km: the imperial court, ruled by its sovereign, the Tenno, had already existed for 600 years and was located in the west, in Kyoto; Kamakura in the east was home to the newly established shogunate, headed by the eponymous shogun. Although both these governments constituted distinct polities, six of the shogunate’s rulers were invited from the court’s elites, and the court also heeded the shogunate’s counsel pertaining issues of imperial succession.
During the latter half of this period, the imperial line was divided into two competing lineages, each with a legitimate claim to the throne. This friction established a practice of dispatching messengers to Kamakura, with the objective to obtain a shogunate counsel that would be in support of one’s own lineage. At the time, the fact that both imperial lineages were sending messengers to Kamakura was subjected to mockery: it was colloquially called a “horse‑race”.
This paper discusses the topic of imperial succession in the later Kamakura period, elucidating the circumstances surrounding these “horse‑races”.

The Fourteenth Century Japan was marked by intense political instability and a legitimacy crisis that lasted half a century, in which two centers of power declared themselves simultaneously as legitimate – the Ashikaga bakufu and the Southern Court in Yoshino. In this context, warlords changed sides in a long civil war according to what was most favorable to them. This article seeks to examine up to what point the topoi of samurai loyalty was historically existent. Furthermore, it tries to make a general summary regarding the circulating ideas concerning loyalty, especially in the gunkimonogatari and buke kakun, as well as to trace a parallel between those ideas and the historical reality of the Japanese Middle Ages.

This piece considers the role of cultural capital in the early medieval
Japanese court through a case study of the Saionji family. As a prominent courtier family, the Saionji family deployed a variety of strategies aimed at securing and expanding their wealth and influence. These included investing substantial effort in two specific arenas of cultural endeavor. The first of these was waka (classical Japanese poetry). Many Saionji family members cultivated a reputation as talented poets, but they could also make use of their influence to ensure inclusion in the major poetry anthologies of the day. They also enthusiastically patronized other families connected to poetry, as another avenue of influence. The second arena in which they invested was that of the biwa (Japanese lute). In addition to developing their own performance skills and acquiring for their family the epithet “house of the biwa,” members of the Saionji family also gained prominence by served as instructors to sovereigns. The family’s efforts at building cultural capital were a vital component of its continued prominence.

In contrast to founders of new Buddhist schools, monastic leaders of established religious centers in pre-1600 Japan have often been ignored as subjects of serious scholarship. In part, this can be explained by their involvement in political and military matters, which has been seen as of little consequence to religious studies or detrimental to the imperial state since, according to later ideals, the religious and political spheres were assumed to be separate. However, recent studies have demonstrated the extent to which state and religions were interdependent, especially through rituals, allowing monks a considerable presence in politics, the economy, and even in warfare. To get a deeper understanding of this interdependence at the individual level, this article focuses on the relationship between Taira no Kiyomori and the Tendai monk Myōun, both of whom were significant figures in the late Heian state.

This presentation will focus on two soon to be published texts. I will show how the Jewel rituals described in Monkan's (1278-1357, a monk of the Shingon school of Esoteric Buddhism) previously little know "Goyuigō Shichikadaiji" were an important step in the formation of his ritual system, and especially the "Sanzon gōgyō-hō" ritual.

In the wake of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the Central Disaster Management Council of the Japanese Cabinet Office issued new guidance for assessing seismic hazards in Japan. Following the unexpectedly large magnitude of the earthquake and the size of the tsunami, the Cabinet Office advocated renewed investigation of earthquake and tsunami occurrence timescales exceeding the historical period, with a particular focus on defining the largest possible magnitudes. The new guidelines pay close attention to the Nankai Trough, the subduction zone where the Philippine Sea Plate dives beneath the Eurasian Plate. The Nankai Trough faces the densely populated and highly industrialised coastline of south central Japan. Here, we review geological evidence for past earthquakes and tsunamis along this subduction zone. This evidence comes from a wide variety of sources, including uplifted marine terraces, turbidites, liquefaction features, subsided marshes and tsunami deposits in coastal lakes and lowlands. More than 70 sites yield evidence, however the number of events recorded at each site varies depending on site-specific evidence creation and preservation thresholds. The longest record exceeds ten thousand years, however the majority are less than four thousand years long. Our compilation suggests that earthquakes in AD 684 and 1361 were similar predecessors of the AD 1707 earthquake, widely regarded as the largest event of the historical period. The more limited distribution of evidence for other historical earthquakes highlights the variability in rupture mode that characterises the Nankai Trough. The palaeoseismic catalogue is, however, limited due to issues over alternative hypotheses for proposed palaeoseismic evidence, poor chronological control and sampling approached insufficient to address the recurrence of the largest past earthquakes and tsunamis. We highlight recent advances and propose future directions for Nankai Trough palaeoseismology.

Conference program

Around the middle of the eighth century CE different societies in
Eurasia experienced important changes. The Carolingian revolution in Western Europe, the Abbasid revolution in the Middle East and the An Lushan rebellion in China practically coincided with the sudden relocations of the capital of Japan. The eighth century in general seems to be a period of simultaneous socio-economic upswing in societies as far apart as Southeast Asia and Northwestern Europe. This two-day workshop on April 15-16, 2016, will investigate these simultaneous developments by bringing together specialists on the history of the eighth century in Western Europe, Byzantium, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, China, Japan and Southeast Asia.