Centre for the Study of

Japanese Religions

CSJR Newsletter

January 2006
Issue 12-13


2 From the Centre Chair

From the
Centre Chair

Centre Activities

Warm greetings from a grey and cold London, and welcome to a new issue of
the CSJR Newsletter.

In This Issue

3 CSJR Seminar Schedule

Japanese Religions Forum

Bugaku-He Concert Report

Shmy Workshop

PiezoGraph Exhibition

10 Symposium: Foundation Myths

in Japan

Postgraduate
14

From Past Fellows

16

Prayers for Rain in the

Shinsen-en in Medieval Kyto:
Concerning the Walls and
Gates Protecting Sacred Space

21

MA Japanese Religions

22

Ko-Mikky: The Incipient Stages

of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism

27

Buddhist Vocal Arts

28

Personal and Social

Dimensions of the Akinomine
(Autumn Peak) Practice on
Haguro Mountain

Information on
Japanese Religion
34
36

38

IAHR XIXth World Congress

The Theme of Pure Lands in
Japanese Religions: 11th EAJS
Conference
A Ritual of Sacred
Entertainment: Hongawa
Kagura Tour

Japanese Religions
and Popular Culture
40

Japanese Sacred Places in

Stereoscopic Relief

In 2005 we celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Centre activities and of our
Newsletter, and several events have reminded us of how much the Centre
has expanded its activities since its inception. I should perhaps mention two
highlights: in June the international symposium on foundation myths brought
to London an impressive array of scholars of pre-modern Japan to bring to
light new research on the construction of Japanese mythology from different
disciplines; in December, an extraordinary concert of Buddhist chanting and
gagaku music closed the calendar year, attended by an audience of more than
800 people. Similarly remarkable has been the involvement of our students, as
the articles in this double issue demonstrate.
Given the nature of the many events that have enriched us during the past
year, we have dedicated the theme of this Newsletter to religious performance.
As illustrated by the cover, rituals, music, dance, ascetic training, and more,
are discussed in this issue, through the reports on the Centre activities and
the fieldwork notes we have received from Japan. The issue is also enriched
by some 19th century photographs of Japanese sacred places in stereoscopic
relief, which our Centre Assistant Janet Foster has provided, together with the
glasses with which to enjoy them.
While we bid farewell to our previous post-doctoral fellow, Katja Triplett,
knowing that she will continue to be in London and take part in the Centres
activities, I have to announce that unfortunately the Centre will not be able to
award a post-doctoral fellowship and a studentship for the next academic year.
We hope in the coming years to raise enough funds to resume these grants,
which have brought fine researchers to the Centre. In the meantime
I would like to express our uttermost gratitude to our sponsor for continuing
to support the weekly activities of the Centre, and this newsletter. His considerate support, which enables us to hold seminars with major scholars in the
field, benefits enormously our students and more broadly the study of Japanese religion in Europe.
Last term our seminars addressed themes as different as classic concepts of
hell, Buddhism in Hokkaido, rainmaking rituals and medieval religious cartography, while in the Japanese Religions Forum our postgraduate students discussed religion and politics, the contemporary realities of Shinto and Buddhist
priesthood, sacred vocal arts and medieval kami worship. The CSJR lecture
series and forum continues on Thursday evenings with another promising list
of speakers addressing topics in Japanese religion from different disciplinary
approaches. We will also host a small international workshop, dedicated to
contemporary philosophies of the body, and organized by Ornella Corazza, a
PhD candidate in the department of Study of Religions. All our gatherings are
open to the public and we hope to see many of you in the audience.
I look forward to an exciting 2006. Happy Year of the Dog!
Lucia Dolce

Front cover: Bugaku-he. A performance of Buddhist chanting (shmy) and court dance and music
(gagaku/bugaku). As part of the liturgy the head-priests also perform esoteric rituals with the use of
mantras and mudras in front of small altars set on stage (cover). The ceremony is also called mandalahe as the two major mandalas of esoteric Buddhism are placed on the stage during the entire
performance (left). The two mandalas are sacred diagrams that embody the reality of esoteric Buddhism. The womb mandala (taizkai) represents compassion, and the diamond mandala (kongkai)
knowledge; they are used together to signify non-duality. The chanting is performed by monks seated
on the left, which is associated with the eastern direction and the sun, is Tendai shmy, and monks
on the right, which is associated with the western direction and the moon, chant Shingon shmy. The
bugaku dancers perform two different pieces, one called ry-, in praise of the taizkai mandala, and
the other called nasori, in praise of the kongkai mandala. (Photo by Lucia Dolce)

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Centre for the Study of

Japanese Religions
Seminars and Postgraduate Fora
2006
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
Thornhaugh Street Russell Square, WC1H 0XG
5:00-6:30 pm Room G3
12 January

Zenga: Japanese Zen Painting and Calligraphy

Stephen Addiss (University of Richmond)
26 January

Writing on Japanese Religion Today

Richard Bowring (University of Cambridge)
9 February

The Stanza of the Bell in the Wind: Zen and Nenbutsu

in the Early Kamakura Period
Frdric Girard (Ecole Franaise d' Extrme-Orient)
23 February

The Daruma School and Japanese Zen

Vincent Breugem (Leiden University) Postgraduate Forum
2 March

The Japanese Pantheon on Paper Charms

Josef Kyburz (Collge de France)
9 March

The Religious Significance of Settlement Enclosures in the Yayoi Period

Jane Oksbjerg (SOAS) Postgraduate Forum
16 March

Pure Land Buddhism in Europe

Louella Matsunaga (SOAS)
23 March

Bat Kannon: Practising a Ritual Image

Benedetta Lomi (SOAS) Postgraduate Forum
27 April

Daoism in the Meiji Period

Kazumi Taguchi (SOAS)

Postgraduate Forum
All welcome

For further information please contact the

convenor Dr Lucia Dolce ([email protected])


CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

The Performers

The shmy chanters belong to two schools of Japanese Buddhism, which have preserved different styles ofl
liturgical chanting.
The Tendai monks are from the Hgi Onritsu Research Institute of Hiei-zan Enryaku-ji, the headquarters of the Tendai
school. The institute was established in 1948 to preserve the shmy tradition and conduct research on the liturgies of the Tendai school. Taki Donin, the chief authority on Tendai shmy at that time, played a central role as an
advisor, while Nakayama Geny and Honda Gensh acted as instructors. Currently under the leadership of Tsukuma
Sonno, its 20 members have performed shmy in Japan and abroad, and have also experimented with writing
shmy using Western scores.
The Shingon group, Chisan Shmy Kenky-kai, was founded in 2004. Its parent organization, the Shmy Association of the Kanz-in Temple in Tokyo, has been active since 1990, researching prosody and the history of the Shingon style of shmy as transmitted in the Chisan lineage. The organization holds regular workshops and Buddhist
ceremonies several times a year. It has also worked with non-Buddhist and ethnic musicians, and has performed in
Japan and abroad.
The gagaku music is played by the Tokyo Gakuso ensemble. Established in 1973, its core members are from the
Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency, but it also includes outstanding players from other unofficial
groups. Its forerunner, the Shigenkai, was formed in the late 1950s by musicians of the Imperial Agency as a means
to promote public appreciation of their ancient art through activities outside their official duties at the Imperial
Palace. With the aim of popularizing gagaku, the group is active worldwide, and has produced about a dozen CDs.

kongkai mandala

taizkai mandala

CSJRNewsletter
January 2006 Issue 12-13
CSJRNewsletter
January 2006 Issue 12-13

Centre Activities

Bugaku-he: A Buddhist Liturgy

Fumi Ouchi
The Bugaku-He concert, held under the auspices
of the CSJR at Logan Hall on 4 December 2005,
was a unique opportunity to experience shmy
and bugaku in a theatre. Both represent a precious
Japanese cultural tradition, but, even in Japan, it is
indeed rare to see it performed in such a setting.
Gagaku originated as court music played during religious rituals and official ceremonies of the
Imperial House, and was also played by aristocrats
for enjoyment. The orthodox tradition was passed
down through generations in families that were employed by the court. Since gagaku also became the
ritual music of Shinto, the instrumental form can
be heard today at Shinto shrines or at weddings.
Yet, the public is seldom invited to a performance
given by professional players, most of whom are
the descendants of generations of court musicians.
This is especially so in the case of bugaku, the
court dance which is accompanied by instrumental
music to create a large-scale gagaku performance.
Shmy, the most sophisticated Buddhist vocal
art in Japan, has been also transmitted within a
closed society, that of Buddhist priests. For most
Japanese people, shmy is an unfamiliar melody
that might be heard at funeral ceremonies. It is
not, however, a relic. Recently, musicians, scholars
and those who have become aware of Japanese
traditional performing arts, are eager to attend
performances of gagaku or shmy, but the opportunities are very limited. It is both fortunate and
ironic that such a rare opportunity arose in London,
rather than in Japan. The performance was not,
however, entirely traditional.
In ancient and medieval times, gagaku, bugaku,
and shmy were often played together as an embellishment to court ceremonies. Buddhist priests
from various groups attended these events. Later
gagaku and shmy were transmitted to different
communities and the shmy tradition was divided
into several sects, which then began to develop
separately. In addition, most monks held the
conviction that shmy should only be performed
for the purpose of religious training or for Buddhist
rituals. Consequently, shmy remained within the
realm of particular sects of Buddhist priests.
Then, in modern Japan, Professor Kido Toshiro,
Director of the Tokyo International Theatre, was
inspired to produce a shmy performance for the
stage. He planned a series of shmy concerts
throughout the 1980s. Thanks to this bold project,

the name shmy became more widely known,

and its value and potential as a performing art
came to be appreciated by many.
Professor Kido also directed this European concert tour. The Bugaku-he performance in the
style of a concert was his concept. In this sense,
the Bugaku-he concert at SOAS did not conform
to a traditional style, and may be regarded as an
invented tradition. However, it was not simply
invented tradition, but rather a kind of restoration
of the vital performance as it originally was. Recent
studies on ancient and medieval Buddhist ceremonies and Buddhist vocal arts suggest that in former
times there was a more positive attitude to the sensory nature of performing arts in religious activities.
In those days, people did not seem to make a strict
distinction between religious and artistic activities.
In this sense, the Bugaku-he concert was an attempt to develop the rich potentiality that shmy
and gagaku had originally.
Professor Kidos approach has provoked some
controversy. Some scholars of Japanese traditional music have criticized Professor Kidos work,
claiming that it is not in keeping with tradition. As a
Buddhist priestess myself, I can imagine that some
Buddhist priests would feel uncomfortable when
asked to recite sutras and perform rituals on stage.
To be honest, I felt like running away when I saw

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

the priests performing the exoteric Buddhist rituals

on stage, whilst facing the audience. Essentially,
these rituals should be performed as a secret communication with Buddhas or deities. My discomfort
notwithstanding, I highly appreciated Professor
Kidos work and this project at SOAS. I thought
that his works were aimed at drawing out the
potentiality of traditional arts, and in this context,
shmy may be regarded as a performing art, and
not a religious ritual.
It could be argued that this stance might compromise the spiritual value of shmy, but on the other
hand, this concert made some Buddhist monks
aware of the new value of their heritage. Some of
them even organized study groups for shmy.
Those who attended the lecture-workshop held at
SOAS on the day before the performance must
have noticed the confidence of the priests who
demonstrated the polished art of their great tradition.
The performance surely captivated the audience. It
was an exciting event in which one of the precious
Japanese traditions displayed its infinite potentiality. I believe that this project provided a great
opportunity to consider how to work with traditional
resources; what type of contribution could be
made by scholars in order to preserve or develop
its potentiality; and what should be done to honor
those who succeed their tradition. I felt that some
of these significant questions were answered by
the applause of the audience.
I would like to close my report with a comment by
the leader of the Shingon group of this project,
Reverend Ryk Ogasawara: This concert tour
was not actually easy for us. However, when we
met the sophisticated audience in London and got
their warm applause, I felt the hard experience turn
into great happiness and satisfaction. I learned
how important it is to meet the world.

Report: Shmy Workshop and

Bugaku-He Performance
Akane Tsuji-Nakanishi
On Saturday the 3rd of December 2005, a workshop on shmy (melodic chanting used to recite
Buddhist scriptures) was held in the SOAS senior
common room. The workshop was given in advance of Bugaku-He, a performance which was
staged at Logan Hall on the next day. Professor
Toshiro Kido (Kyto University of Art and Design)
gave a lecture in collaboration with Buddhist priests
who provided a live demonstration. The lecture
was introduced by Associate Professor Fumi Ouchi
(Miyagi Gakuin Womens University) and translated
by Dr David Hughes (SOAS), who also chaired the
workshop.
Professor Kido began by presenting historical
aspects of shmy. Having originated in ancient India, shmy reached Japan via China, where it was
developed into a unique Japanese style. Daisoj
Tsukuma, the leader of Tendai group, provided a
demonstration, singing both in Sanskrit and Chinese. Then in turn, to illustrate the Japanese style,
the two schools chanted in medieval Japanese.
This also served to provide a comparison between
Tendai and Shingon styles. Shingon shmy
sounded rather active with lots of jumps between
the wider intervals, and Tendai shmy sounded
rather legato, having smooth melodic lines. The
explanation given for the difference was that Tendai
was affiliated with the court, while Shingon appealed more to the general populace. He explained
and demonstrated shmy theory and notation,
and then led the audience in a chanting of the basic
ornamentation.

Fumi Ouchi (a senior shugen priestess at Hagurosan) is an ethnomusicologist and an associate

professor at Miyagi Gakuin Womens University in
Sendai. A PhD candidate at SOAS, her research
is on the vocal arts in medieval Japan and Tendai
hongaku thought (See her fieldwork report in this
issue). Ms Ouchi flew in from Tokyo for four days,
especially to attend the performance.
Lucia Dolce

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Lucia Dolce
Lucia Dolce

It was, in a sense, a strange experience to see

priests as performers. Can you imagine archbishops celebrating the liturgy on stage and being applauded? I had a chance to talk to some of the
priests after the workshop and found that even
though theirs is a religious vocation, they also
really loved performing. One of the priests told me
that he practiced two hours everyday while driving his car to work. Surely he has given enormous
blessings to his fellow motorists! He seemed to
be able to keep a good internal balance between
chanting for sacred rituals and for performances.

at a Buddhist ritual all one can see are the priests

backs and hear the resonance of prayers. The shmy workshop and concert given at SOAS offered
a rare opportunity to see the priests faces during
the ritual, and to listen to chanting of two schools,
Shingon and Tendai Buddhism. It also afforded an
opportunity to compare them, and based on the
clear explanation given at the workshop, to understand the difference between them. Professor
Kido, who produced and established this special
group of performers, surely put much effort into this
and we, who filled the Logan Hall on that Sunday,
were indeed fortunate. Appreciation is also due to
Drs David Hughes and Lucia Dolce for their efforts
in having organized this opportunity in London. It
was truly a remarkable opportunity to learn about
this important aspect of Japanese religion, whilst
at the same time being a deeply inspiring cultural
experience.

The concert was held the following day, on Sunday, at Logan Hall. The gagaku musicians of the
Tokyo Gakuso Ensemble and its dancers accompanied the choruses of the two schools. They were
marvelous players, and the chanters voices deeply
touched the hearts of the audience. But what really
thrilled me was the very last part of the concert,
when all the priests said prayers simultaneously
while gagaku was still sounding. It was as though
their performance was circulating back into their
own sacred hearts.
In Japan, if you are living near a Japanese Buddhist community, you may sometimes have occasions to hear shmy chanting, but a Japanese
layperson like myself does not usually have an
opportunity to learn what it really means. Normally

Dr Akane Tsuji-Nakanishi is an associate professor at Miyagi Gakuin Womens University in

Sendai. A composer and pianist, in 1999 she
earned her doctorate in composition at Kings College, London, under Sir Harrison Birtwistle. She
is currently in London as a research fellow with a
grant from the Japanese government.

Lucia Dolce

CSJRNewsletter
CSJRNewsletter January
January 2006
2006 Issue
Issue 12-13
12-13

Creative Tradition 2005

PiezoGraph Exhibition
at the SOAS Brunei Gallery
Janet Leigh Foster
Modernity met antiquity during the PiezoGraph
Exhibition, held at the SOAS Brunei Gallery from 3-5
December. Part of the Creative Tradition 2005 event, it
took place in conjunction with the Bugaku-He workshop and performance. The exhibition showcased a
range of digitally re-mastered images representing
several genres of traditional Japanese art, from
nihonga and ukiy-e to Esoteric Buddhist mandalas.
The digitally reproduced versions of mandalas painted
by Eisuke Somekawa, did justice to the fifteen years
the artist dedicated to creating the originals. The
reproductions were so pristine and colorful they
evoked a question as to whether a replica of a sacred
painting imbued with spirit might still contain a spark
of divinity. The images were, in fact, so vibrant that
they stood as forms of artistic expression unto themselves. The presentation was also unique; although
the mandalas appeared to be mounted on cloth, the
borders were actually printed onto the same sheet of
paper to create a perfect illusion of textured fabric.
The incredulous were invited to touch the works. This
not only introduced a unique sensory aspect to the
exhibition, but also highlighted the durability of the
reproductions, which underscored the practicality of
PiezoGraph reproductions to scholars who otherwise
might hesitate to handle fragile, antique works.
At the Brunei Lecture Theatre, Epson PiezoGraph technology was explained in a presentation by Noritake
Uchibori, Manager and Creative Director of the Epson
PiezoGraph Laboratory. The range of textures such as
cloth and brush strokes; and colour tones, including
white, are achieved with a scanner and ink-jet based
technique. The colour is applied by means of a unique
ink jet system, which sprays the paper, rather than
by application of force. This enables reproduction of
textured media, such as cloth and washi (rice paper).
Piezograph technicians work in collaboration with
artists, transforming the work into a digital format and
then facilitating colour enrichment, and the possibilities of retouching the print with paint, or introducing new media through the scanning process. In this
respect, the PiezoGraph process goes beyond duplication to suggest a new genre of artistic expression.

Janet Leigh Foster, Assistant to the CSJR, is a graduate of

the MA Japanese Religions course at SOAS. She is a freelance
photojournalist and fine arts photographer. (www.janetfoster.
co.uk)

(Above) A digitally re-mastered print of the Myken (Polar Star

Deity) Mandala from the Sjiji Temple in Yokohama. The original
painting is by Eisuke Somekawa. (Below) A detail, from the Myken
Mandala above, which depicts the dog, the animal of the Asian
Zodiac for 2006.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Backstage:
The Power of En and Creative Tradition
2005 at SOAS
Jun Abe

Jun Abe is a student in the M.Phil in Philosophy course at

Taish University, and a SOAS alumna.

Lucia Dolce

On 4th December an event called Creative Tradition

2005, took place at SOAS. Hosted by the Centre for the
Study of Japanese Religions (CSJR), Creative Tradition 2005 was an expression of medieval Japanese
religious art brought to a modern setting. Comprised
of a concert of ritual Japanese temple music (bugakuhe) held at Logan Hall, and an exhibition of digitally
re-mastered Buddhist mandalas at the Brunei Gallery, the event was part of the 2005 EU-Japan Year of
People-to-People Exchanges programme, sponsored
by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese
Government and Japan Airlines. It did indeed embody
an exchange of knowledge about religion, music
and culture, not only with regard to the interaction
between the Japanese performers and artists with an
audience in the United Kingdom, but also by the way
in which it came to be staged at SOAS: it was the result
of a collaboration between the Centre for the Study of
Japanese Religions and Taish University in Tokyo.
I was not able to travel to London for Creative
Traditions 2005, but I can easily imagine that people
coming to this event must have enjoyed the harmony
and unity of religions, cultures, and something old and
new which engaged the five senses. My vantage point
was actually from back stage, watching the whole
process until the event was carried out. This story cannot be told without talking about Taish University,
SOAS, and en (fateful bond).
In 2002 I finished a two-year MA course at Taish
University, Tokyo, which is famous for Buddhist
studies in Japan. When I started studying at SOAS,
I found many similarities between the two institutions, especially in relation to Asian religious studies.
I thought that it would be very good if both institutions might be able to cooperate in order to develop
an academic exchange and, after finishing my MA at
SOAS, I contacted various people to discuss this possibility. My role as liaison was challenging because I
needed to find first a key person in Buddhist studies
from each institution, but I had not studied Buddhism
at either institution. However, this is exactly the power
of en, which beckons another en: Several professors at Taish University knew the chair of the CSJR
and through the Centre a wider relation with SOAS
could be established. During the IAHR held in Tokyo
in spring 2005 various meetings took place between
SOAS and Taish representatives, and eventually an
MOU was signed between the two institutions. This
agreement fostered research collaboration through
reciprocal visits and other projects. We also discussed
the possibility of collaborating on a larger project.
Astonishingly, the opportunity arrived sooner than
any of us might have imagined. During a visit to the

Mandala Museum owned by the vice-president of

Taish University, Prof Komine, the CSJR Chair admired
some digital reproductions of contemporary Buddhist
paintings in the museum collection and learned that
they would be taken on a European tour in the autumn, together with a shmy concert. The organizer
of Creative Tradition 2005 was very pleased at the possibility of including London in the European tour. Help
from SOAS became indispensable in order to finalize
the project. This led to SOAS becoming the London
host during the tour of Creative Tradition 2005.
That this wonderful event was ultimately staged
at SOAS is indicative of a much wider scale of international cooperation. It speaks of the human interrelatedness encapsulated in the concept of en, which
resulted in a sharing of knowledge about religions
and culture. My experience has given credence to the
expression, Where there is a will there is a way. Furthermore it underscores the benefits of international
cooperation across cultures.
My personal view is that we should strive to make
a difference with each encounter in our lives, one
that can be called en. We should make enhance and
expand it not only for ourselves, but for others too.
Hence, I aim to continue my role as intercultural liaison
and endeavour to expand the en-s that have enriched
my life.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Centre Activities

Foundation Myths in Japan

CSJR Symposium
9-10 June 2005
Lone Takeuchi
The chair of the CSJR, Dr Lucia Dolce, opened
the symposium by thanking the Japan Foundation,
the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, and the
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, whose generous support had made possible this international
interdisciplinary forum for a fifth time.
The seed text of the symposium was the 17th c.
short narrative Tsubosaka engi emaki/Sayohime
studied by the symposiums coordinator Dr Katja
Triplett, the CSJR postdoctoral fellow for 2004-5.
Dr Triplett began proceedings by sketching the
vast textual landscape of Medieval Japanese imagination focussing on Sayohime: myths/shinwa, and
the two Japanese narrative types linking a tradition
(or elements of it) to the past, engi (on the origin of
a temple or shrine) and honjimono (on the origin
of a deity), all considered in every communicative
aspect.

the Korean Peninsula, or Ma from the Buddhist

tradition.

The opening session, chaired by Professor Brian

Bocking (SOAS), focused on Foundation myths in
esoteric Buddhism. In the first paper, The return of
the native: the myth of Japans foundation and its
esoteric Buddhist reinterpretation, Professor Bernard Faure (Stanford University) traced recurrent
features of the Buddhist rewriting of mythical hand
overs of land (kuniyuzuri) pertaining to the foundation of the Hiei-zan multiplex and to the state
mythology (Ma ceding Japan to Amaterasu): (i)
aspects of the bargain, such as resistance on the
part of the landlord deities (jinushi) or usurpation
on the part of the requesting deity, etc., and (ii) the
landlord deities claim to ancient rights to the locality, a claim that contrasted to the historical understanding of these deities, for example Shirahige,
originally associated with immigrants from

Professor Abe Yasur (Nagoya University) presented an array of textual evidence to provide an
Outline of Medieval Buddhist myths: from Ma and
Amaterasu to Mononobe no Moriya and Shtoku
Taishi. The identification of Amaterasu with the
Great Buddha of Tdaiji originated with monks of
that temple (rather than with the Ise Shrine) in the
Insei Period (12th c.). This was developed and
propagated during fund raising to rebuild the Great
Buddha Hall. The identification was communicated
by Amaterasu appearing in the dream of a monk.
Professor Abe also presented versions of the myth
of the origins of Japan as the land of Dainichi, all
involving an element of cunning or trickery in dealing with Ma on the part of the negotiator (Dainichi
in Kya monogatari, Amaterasu in Shasekish, and
Izanagi in Daijing sankeiki).

Glen Ratcliffe

10

In his paper, The imagery of destruction in foundation myths of Japanese Buddhism, Professor
Fabio Rambelli (Sapporo University) argued that
the history of Buddhism in Japan is a history of
destruction and violence, and that violence and
destruction have constituted a recurrent semantic
framework in the metahistorical discourse underlying many foundation myths of Japanese Buddhism.
The metahistorical interpretations of the conflict
between Shtoku Taishi and Mononobe no Moriya
were surveyed, including the view of the struggle

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

nuns themselves and also of interviewing nuns

in the present day. In this connection, she noted
that one-sided reliance on the tradition of Saidaiji,
which credits Eizon (1201-90) with a decisive role
in Hokkejis history, is bound to produce a very
different historical account from one that takes the
nuns own tradition into account.

Glen Ratcliffe

Glen Ratcliffe

as evidence of the prevalence of Buddha over

Mara (Ma) (Good over Evil); Moriya metahistorized as jissha; and the view of both Shtoku Taishi
and Moriya as bodhisattvas (Honganji engi), a
logical reversal whereby the antithesis becomes
the ultimate equivalence, and the anti-Buddhist
destruction, self-sacrifice. The notion of history
as degenerating simplified the cosmic struggle,
and Professor Rambelli identified three visions
of history within this discourse: move to the pure
land where a final state of stasis is obtained; total
destruction (mapp); and finally, the return to the
origin before the dichotomy between Buddha and
Mara, which was the soteriological point of new
chsei discourse (hongaku or shint).

Associate Professor Hayashi Kumiko (Tachibana

University) demonstrated in Old puppet plays
about Zenkji temple and its secret Buddhas how
it is possible by means of the rich Edo period
sources not only to chart revisions to the mythical
material of a temple, such as the printed texts of
jruri plays of the Genroku and Hei eras based on
Zenkji engi, but also to show how such a revision
directly reflects a contemporary occasion, namely

the interest and religious sentiments engendered

by kaich, the revelation of the secret Buddha statues and icons (hibutsu) and accompanying ceremonies, which took place for fund-raising purposes
both in Zenkji, Edo and other cities.

Dr Angus Lockyer (SOAS) chaired the morning

session on the second day, Communities, myths
and memories. In her paper, Foundation accounts
and the continuity of community: the case of the
imperial nunneries, Chgji and Hokkeji, Professor Barbara Ruch (Columbia University) singled
out these two convents because they uniquely
among monzeki amadera had been able to survive
difficult times such as the shintoization during the
Meiji period. She considered that their appealing
foundation stories (e.g. empress Kmy washing
the leper, etc.) and reformation accounts, and the
continued respect and inspirations of the founding empresses and nuns, had been crucial to their
survival. Professor Ruch stressed the importance
of studying the primary sources written by the

Dr Tripletts paper, Tsubosaka testimonials: origin

tales of Minami Hokkejis Kannon for the Blind,
addressed the question of how considerations of
memory management might have prompted Tsubosaka engi, which was apparently once important to
the cult of Minami Hokkeji near Nara, to be backgrounded by the puppet play Tsubosaka reigenki
during the Meiji Period. The dramatic climax of
the engi is a miracle brought about by the recitation of the Lotus Sutra. It was suggested that other
elements of the narrative in its various versions,
such as Kannon, and the curing of blindness, while
central to Minami Hokkejis tradition, had a more
peripheral function in the narrative, and that this
might have contributed to Sayohimes story having
been de-emphasized in the temples cult.

Glen Ratcliffe

The afternoon session, chaired by Dr John Breen

(SOAS), dealt with Visual and performative aspects
of foundation narratives. Professor Tokuda Kazuo
(Gakushuin Womens University) introduced two
examples of development of honjimono gleaned
from scrutiny of textual and pictorial materials. In
the oldest version of Kumano no honji. (MinamiAizu-bon with a colophon from 1540), Zenzais

11

CSJRNewsletter
CSJRNewsletter January
January 2006
2006 Issue
Issue 12-13
12-13

999 jealous empresses (the villains of this narrative) are included among the honji, as they too, reborn as snakes (akamushi), appear in Kumano and
are in the end worshipped in their own shrines. In
an example of how setsuwa narratives fertilized the
imagination creating honjimono, Professor Tokuda
traced the development of Hitokotonushis honji as
Fud and of Fuds kami counterpart in Kasuga
shrine mandala, a female figure hiding her face behind a fan, in a plentiful line of texts beginning with
the setsuwa about En no gyja and Hitokotonushi
(Shoku-Nihongi etc.).
Pilgrims visiting Sayohime-Benzaiten on the island of Chikubushima at
Lake Biwa (Nara ehon, ca 17th c., courtesy of the Kyoto University School
of Letters Library).

Glen Ratcliffe

In The life and afterlives of Hachiman paintings

(1433 CE), Professor Melanie Trede (University
of Heidelberg) used the scrolls of Hachiman engi
donated to three Hachiman shrines by Ashikaga
Yoshinori to show how a myth and in particular, its
recreation as a superlative work of art was continuously transformed on three levels, namely visual
appearance, political meaning and aesthetic reception. The circulation of the scrolls kept the myth
alive while also inducing changes in its interpretation. Four steps were noted: (1) the myth and its
manifestation in the scrolls as an object of devotion
(15th-17th c.); (2) the scrolls as model for professional painters (17th-19th c.); (3) popular commodification in printed guides for travellers, etc.; (4) art
historical evaluation, the scrolls being designated
as a national treasure in 1910 and as important
cultural property in 1950. Professor Tredes discussion was inspired by the theoretical framework of
Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedchtnis.

12

Given the wealth of texts and approaches, one

would not have liked to be without the discussants,
Dr Lucia Dolce (SOAS), Professor Richard Bowring (Cambridge) and Dr John Carpenter (SOAS),
to sort out the many strands of ideas presented in
each session. The many observations on similarities in memory management in various traditions
made this a defining theme of the discussion of
papers. The final discussion, however, focused on
specifics of interpretation of sokui-h, and the part
of Hachiman engi dealing with Jings military expedition to the Korean Peninsula. The symposium
was concluded by the wish that the encyclopedic
and the more formal approaches - between which
a stimulating tension was felt at times in the discussion - might be joined in a narratology of engi: a
comprehensive charting of the changes of meaning
that constituted their transmission.
Dr Lone Takeuchi is an independent researcher,
working on a study of nasake and its action in
some mid-Heian monogatari.

Glen Ratcliffe

The last paper dealt with Imperial myths and Shingon Buddhism: sokui kanj and enthronement rites
for the tenn. Dr Matsumoto Ikuyo (Ritsumeikan
University) introduced some sokui-h accession
ritual protocols, documents describing imagined
enthronement rituals produced and transmitted by
jike (temple families or factions). It was suggested
that the ritual and its interpretation in Tji gosokuih (14th c., transmitted in Kanchi-in, Tji) could be
understood as a Shingon restructuring of the preBuddhist trinity legitimizing and upholding imperial
power. In this revised structure, Kkai took the

place of Amanokoyane-no-mikoto (the Fujiwara

ancestral deity) among Amaterasu and the emperor. Other similar texts transmitted by other Shingon
lineages assigned a cosmological kingship on
the emperor, interpreting the central mudra (shikai
rysh-in) as a sign denoting the emperor as ruler
of the continents surrounding Mount Sumeru.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

2005CSJR

689
SOAS2CSJR

Foundation Myths in Japan

1CSJR

20

9
2

Glen Ratcliffe

SOAS

Glen Ratcliffe

13

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

From Past Fellows

A Postdoctoral Year at SOAS

Katja Triplett
Writing this report seems to me almost like composing an engi, or account of origins, of various
research interests and activities that evolved over
the past academic year. Whether these evolved
according to some unseen and inescapable matrix
of seeds planted in former lifetimes as it is assumed in engi, or whether they arose from undirected coincidences of whatever took my fancy,
the events of the past year were exceedingly
fulfilling and I am grateful to many individuals, both
colleagues and other fellows whom I met along
the way.
My year began at a fast pace with a CSJR
seminar on Human sacrifice in Japanese legends.
This was the topic of my doctoral dissertation
(2002), which was published last year. I presented
my analysis of the topic, focussing on the motifs
of ritual human sacrifice and self-sacrifice, as
well as discussing the academic discourse on
the historicity of a cult of human sacrifice found in
Japan. Both motifs are found, intricately linked, in
Sayohime, a Lotus Sutra miracle tale that I treated
in some detail in my presentation. In late medieval
and early modern Japan, this tale served as an
origin tale (honjimono) of the main objects of worship of the temples Tsubosakasan Minami Hokkeji
near Nara and the sanctuary on the island of Chikubushima in Lake Biwa. What struck me was the
waxing and waning of honjimono and their motifs;
this made me curious as to whether there might
be patterns in the narrative strategies for creating
origin accounts of religious institutions.
My presentation at SOAS was on the heels of
my having delivered a paper, on The discourse on
wa (harmony) in contemporary Japanese religions
and society, at an international conference in Indonesia from 27 September to 3 October 2004. The
conference addressed problems and practices
of religious harmony and educational concepts.
My paper touched on the subjects of syncretism
and pluralism, topics that have interested me for
some time. Several conference participants from
Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia were tragically
affected by the tsunami catastrophe of 26 December 2004. Some lost members of their fami14

lies, and the buildings of the university, Institut

Agama Islam Negeri Ar-Raniry, in Banda Aceh,
including the library, were totally destroyed in
the flood. A help network of colleagues from
other parts of Indonesia, as well as the University of Hannover, Germany and others was
organised using the network established by the
conference. The efforts sought especially to assist in the rebuilding of the library, which formerly held over 100,000 volumes with a focus on
the study of Islam and the social sciences. The
relief effort gave credence to the philosophy of
the conference, namely that knowledge gained
in the context of institutions of higher learning should benefit all of humanity, and support
peace efforts.
Action, reaction and the responsibility of
researchers in the study of religions were also
the main themes of the quinquennial 19th World
Congress of the International Association for the
History of Religions (IAHR) held in Tokyo, 24-30
March 2005. The official motto of the conference was Religion: Conflict and Peace. Needless to say, several members of the CSJR, and
also the majority of colleagues from the SOAS
Department of the Study of Religions were
present at this exciting conference, which was
attended by close to 1,600 participants form 53
countries. The Congress was a major event with
about 350 presentations given during five days.
In my own paper, I presented results of my research on civil religion in Asia. During the Conference I was able to enjoy the kind hospitality
of the members of motoky at their Tokyo
headquarters. This arrangement was thanks
to contacts provided by a former CSJR Fellow,
John LoBreglio (UC Santa Barbara). motoky
(or Oomoto) is well known for its interreligious
activities, and representatives of this religion
convened and chaired an enormously interesting panel at the Conference on the Exchange
between Islam and Oomoto.
After the conference I took part as a guide in
a ten-day research excursion to significant religious centres and research institutions in Tokyo,
the Kansai area and Shikoku. The aim of the
tour was to provide an overview of Japanese
religion to specialists in the study of religions
who are experts in areas and fields other than
Japan. The excursion was the result of several
years of careful planning and coordination by
Professor Michael Pye (Marburg University/
Otani University), who was also the principal
guide. The participants, a group of around
twelve, returned to their various home countries
with impressions of some famous sites and also
of rarely seen places such as the worship hall in
the main gate to the Higashi Honganji in Kyto.
After the tour, I visited a Buddhist pilgrimage

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Tsubo ganby fji kigan, "petition for stamping out diseases of the
eye", say banners in gallery leading to the petition reception desk at
Tsubosakadera, near Nara, visit April 2005

site near Nara, the aforementioned Tsubosakasan

Minami Hokkeji, in order to do some preliminary
fieldwork connected to my project on narrative
strategies of temple and shrine foundation legends
(engi).
Foundation accounts, or myths, have been my
main focus of research this past year. Therefore,
I was very happy that the Centre for the Study of
Japanese Religions to dedicated the 2005 CSJR
Symposium to the subject of Foundation Myths in
Japan. The planning and organising of the CSJR
Symposium was a very rewarding experience.
It provided a platform for international academic
exchange, and enabled me to work with specialists
in the field more closely than if only through their
published work. The contributors came from different parts of the world, and I feel very honoured
that senior researchers such as Professor Barbara
Ruch and Professor Tokuda Kazuo, whose work on
otogizshi deeply inspired me as a student in the
1980s, flew halfway around the world to London in
order to present their research and discuss foundation myths.
One of my most cherished memories is the
way we communicated during the symposium. In
varying shades of colourful English and Japanese
we discussed issues of mythmaking, religious
politics and narrativity, especially of the medieval
period. Since then I have been working to untangle
the different threads of the discussions with the
aim of creating an edited volume.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank
Centre Chair, Dr Lucia Dolce, and Dr John Breen
and Prof Brian Bocking for their encouragement
and cooperation. The Centre Assistant, Janet
Foster, did a tremendous job in all areas of conference organisation, and students Tullio Lobetti and
Miriam Chusid were also a great source of support.

Whereas the conference was a time of heightened activity during my postdoctoral year, I also
had regular teaching assignments in four courses
connected with the study of Japanese religions.
I hope I was able to make a small contribution to
the students path of learning about Japan and the
study of religions. I did enjoy teaching at SOAS,
although the larger courses with over 50 students
were stressful for me in that I could not learn the
students' names or their backgrounds, and this
prohibited me from interacting with them more
purposefully. This was quite different in the more
intimate MA course, and the smaller BA groups.
But overall, I feel that I reaped great benefit from
the students stimulating questions and thoughtprovoking discussions.
Another expectation of the CSJR postdoctoral
fellow, in addition to research, publication, teaching and organising an international symposium, is
to take part in Centre activities. In the academic
year 2004/05 these were numerous indeed and
included seminars, fora, and a special film screening about the Akinomine Practice.
My year ended with yet another conference,
a kind of grand finale: the 15th conference of the
International Association for Buddhist Studies
(IABS), held from 29 August to 3rd September at
SOAS, The British Museum and the British Library.
I presented a paper on the worship of the Kannon
at Tsubosakadera, a deity petitioned in rituals for
the prevention and healing of sight-related disease.
This is a subject on which I would like to do some
more research in the future.
Perhaps what I valued most from my postdoctoral year at SOAS was the feeling of being part of
a team made up of the colleagues from the CSJR
and the various sister centres such as the Japan
Research Centre, the Sainsbury Institute for Japanese Arts and Cultures, the Centre for Religion
and Gender Studies and the Centre for Buddhist
Studies. I was deeply impressed by the high level
of academic exchange, also involving other nonSOAS institutions, at workshops and numerous
other occasions, both formal and informal, where I
could observe and take part in the generous sharing of expertise and knowledge.
This year I shall remain at the CSJR as a Research Associate, devoting my time to the completion of publications resulting from research during
my postdoctoral year, as well as assisting in some
matters of the Centre. One of these projects is an
edition of the CSJR symposium papers. I am also
going to teach on Contemporary Japanese religion
and society at Basel University this coming
summer.

15

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Research Notes

Prayers for Rain at the Shinsen-en in

Medieval Kyto: Concerning the Walls
and Gates Protecting Sacred Space
Ikuyo Matsumoto
Today the Shinsen-en, at the eastern border of
Nij Castle in Kyto, resembles a humble park
distinguished by a small shrine (hokura) that floats
in the centre of a small pond. But the Shinsenen was once the site of a very large pond where
various important events, including the Shukyh (rainmaking ritual), were held. Analyses of the
ritual and of diagrams of the site, found in the
collections of the Fuji Eikan Bunko collection at
the Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University
and the Nara National Museum, suggest that the
former walls and gates of the Shinsen-en were an
important religious aspect of the location.
The Shinsen-en was constructed southeast of the
greater palace grounds (daidairi), at the time of
the founding of the Heian capital, Heianky, in the
thirteenth year of the Enryaku era, 794. It was there
that the priest Shinga first performed the Shukyh in the seventeenth year of the Jgan era,
875. By the late 9th century, the Shinsen-en was
regularly used as a site for prayers for rain, and
after the mid 10th century it came to be recognized
as a site invested with sacred power (reij) for rain
rituals. The Shuky-h was conducted frequently
from the end of the 10th century through the first
half of the 12th century. It was an esoteric Buddhist
ritual for which the Shinsen-en became a special
site. The ritual was based on the Daiunrin-shuky,
a sutra that was imported from China. According
to this scripture, the conditions required that the
site for conducting this ritual be a good location
for protecting the nation, and contain a spring and
a pond suitable as a residence for a dragon that
would bring about rainfall.
In considering the grounds for why the Shinsenen was recognized as a sacred site in medieval
Kyto, I would like to focus on the significance of
the shiheki, the four walls that enclosed it. From
the 9th century, the Shinsen-en was considered
to be unsullied ground, surrounded by walls on
the east, west, north and south. These served to
prevent any impure elements from entering. The
shiheki were the walls that separated the Shinsenen from the outside world, but each contained a
gate that signified a link between the Shinsen-en
and the outer world. There were several such
conventions associated with this site and it is in

16

light of these that I would like to interpret the

Shinsen-en Shuky-h sashizu, a Kamakura
period diagram of the ritual, found in the Fujii
Eikan Bunko collection at the Art Research Center
at Ritsumeikan University.
Before proceeding, based on Shingon Buddhist
texts such as the Kakuzensh, I would like to
provide a brief explanation of how the Shukyh was conducted.
The first step was to prepare the area (dj)
where the esoteric ritual proper would be
performed. A blue cloth was stretched around to
delineate the dj. Then the altars created within
this space, the great altar (daidan), the altar for
the goma fire ritual, and the altars for the deities
Jniten and Shten, were decorated. In addition
to the dj, there were other buildings constructed
within the walls. There was a kurysho, where
offerings were placed, a jinkusho, where prayers
were offered to the indigenous gods, and
temporary quarters for the priests who would
conduct the ritual. The Five Treasures, Five
Incenses, Five Medicinal Items and Five Grains,
as well as oil, rice, tiles and blue banners, were
prepared in advance for the ritual.
On the first day of the ritual, specialists in
preparing iconographic images (eshi) produced
two mandalas, a dai-mandara and a shikimandara. Next, the Dai-Ajari (the great acarya or
esoteric practitioner), who was the chief officiant
(dshi) at the rite; the attendant priests (bans),
who assisted the dshi; the sextons (shji),
who readied the ritual implements and purified the
dj; and the guards, who were to usher away all
those not involved in the rite, took their assigned
places.
The rite was conducted over a period of seven
days. A yin-yang master (onmyji) performed the
Five-Dragon Rite a certain number of days after
the Shuky-h began. The Five-Dragon Rite was
a rainmaking ritual to petition the blue, red, yellow,
white and black dragons, which were water-gods.
It was generally performed on the fifth day, but
this varied according to the religious faction. A yinyang master from the government Yin-yang Office
(Onmyry) performed the rite. It is thought that
the onmyji performed it because the Onmyry
was the government office charged with divining
astronomical events, the timing of events, and the
weather.
Now I would like to move on to explaining the
significance of the walls and gates. While the
ritual was being conducted, the Shinsen-en
became a kekkai-chi, a sacred space cut off from

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Shinsen-en Shuky-h sashizu (illustrated diagram of the rainmaking ritual) (Fujii Eikan Bunko Collection, Art Research
Center, Ritsumeikan University, Kyto)

the secular world. The gates of the Shinsen-en

were closed to prevent entrance to anyone who
might interfere with the ritual. Only priests who had
been selected for pure conduct were allowed to
enter the Shinsen-en. They had to purify both mind
and body, and wear special, pure robes. All of the
various items used in the dj were blue, and red
objects were forbidden.
However, an entry from the Gyokuy, the diary of
the aristocrat, Kuj Kanezane, for the 14th day of
the 5th month of the second year of the Kenky
era (1191) describes the Shinsen-en with no walls
or gates. The area had been left to ruin, and what
remained was a scene of rampant chaos and
defilement. The Shinsen-en had been devastated,
and even if cleaned, there were no walls or gates,
which could be closed. In particular, the eastern
gate that was always supposed to be firmly shut;
the outer hedge had been lost, and there was no
trace of doors of the gate.
The destruction of the walls and gates raises
questions about their significance. The Kamakura
period source the Kakuzensh records that defiled
persons and red objects were not to be brought
into the Shinsen-en; people should enter through

the northern gate, and the altars at which the

rituals were conducted should be brought in and
out through the western gate. The same source
records that it had already been established that
the eastern gate was to be open and the western
gate closed. Moreover, it notes that when the high
priest Szu Geng (914-995) conducted the ritual
at Enmei-in, lightening struck and burned down the
western gate. Thereafter the northern gate of the
Shinsen-en was to be left open, and the eastern
one closed. Since there were no walls or gates, it
is clear that the Shinsen-en had been left to ruin.
The above can be summarized as follows: Firstly,
we see that the four walls formed the boundary
of the sacred space (kekkai) for conducting the
Shuky-h. Secondly, the prohibitions against
the entry of defiled persons and red objects, in
order to preserve the purity of the ground, were
sustained by the four walls that surrounded the
Shinsen-en. Thirdly, the prescription to close
the northern and western gates and to leave
the eastern and southern gates open intensified
the awareness of the boundary with the outside
(other).
Next, I would like to elucidate each of the four

17

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

gates in the walls enclosing the Shinsen-en. In

regard to the western gate, the Kamakura period
illustrated diagram of the Shinsen-en, from the
collection of the Nara National Museum, records
that the western gate was supposed to have
been the entrance, but that in recent times the
northern gate had been left open. Concerning the
eastern gate, the Nara National Museum diagram
notes that it was made of Japanese cypress
(hinoki), and thatched with hinoki bark, and
usually closed. Likewise, the diagram of the dj
for the Shuky-h, from the Fujii Eikan Bunko
collection, records that the gate was always
closed.
Concerning the northern gate, the Nara National
Museum diagram records that Buddhist priests
and those associated with them, whether
intimates or distant relations, were not to use
this entrance because it would interfere with their
spiritual development. The same source records
that in regard to the northern gate, the attendant
priests and others involved with conducting the
ritual were to use this entrance exclusively. It was
to be left open day and night, but from the first
day after the ritual began, it was to be closed.
A note explains that if the gate were to be left
open, the atmosphere would become yin. The
significance of yin in this context seems to be
that the efficacy of the ritual would be marred. It
is also clear that a sign was erected stating the
prohibitions against the entrance of impure or
defiled persons and red objects. These sources
thus offer evidence that the northern gate
served as the entrance to the Shinsen-en in the
Kamakura period.
The evidence thus far suggests that in medieval
Japan, the four walls and gates of the Shinsenen formed an enclosure that was an important
religious aspect of the space in which the esoteric
Buddhist rainmaking ritual, the Shuky-h, was
conducted.
Dr Ikuyo Matsumoto is a Research Fellow of
the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
(JSPS) at the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan
University (Kyto). Concurrently a Visiting Scholar
at the Sainsbury Institute at SOAS, Dr Matsumoto
spoke on this topic in March 2005 for the CSJR
seminar series. Her book, Chsei ken to sokui
kanj (Imperial Authority and Accession
Initiation (Abhiseka) Rituals in Medieval
Japan: Historical Evidence from Buddhist
Texts) has just been published in Tokyo by
Shinwasha (2005).

18

The BUKKYO DENDO KYOKAI

VISITING PROFESSORSHIP
in BUDDHIST STUDIES 2006
Lectures and Seminars
Professor Masahiro Shimoda
(University of Tokyo)
18 JANUARY to 17 MARCH
School of Oriental and African Studies
Inaugural Lecture followed by a reception
Wednesday, 18 January, 5.30-7.00 pm,
Khalili Lecture Theatre:
Revival of the Buddha in narratives: conflict
between philology
and historical science
Lecture Series: Reconsidering the Methodology of Buddhist Studies in Japan:
Understandings of the Formation Process of
Buddhist Scriptures in India
3.00- 4.30 pm, Room G2 College Building
20 Jan: Enlightenment and salvation: a review of
typology of Indian Buddhism
27 Jan: The Lotus sutra and the episode of the
god Brahmas entreaty to the Buddha to teach
3 Feb: Reconsidering bodhisattva in the light of
recently developed studies
10 Feb: Mahayanasutra as auto-commentary:
as evidenced in the Mahaparinirvanasutra
17 Feb: Liberating ourselves from modernity:
Buddhist studies and Zeitgeist in Japan
24 Feb: The Taisho tripitaka: Japanese scholars
contribution to modern Buddhist studies
3 Mar: Some reflections on oral transmission in
Buddhist scriptures
10 Mar: Topics essential to the study of Mahayana Buddhism
17: Mar: The formation process of Buddhist
scriptures in ancient India
Seminars: Reading the Mahayana Mahaparinirvanasutra and its related texts
Fridays, 5.00- 6.30pm, Room G3 Main Building
Dates: 20, 27 January, 3, 10,17, 24 Feburary; 3,
10, 17 March
Overview of Seminars:
The Mahayana Mahaparinirvanasutra, which has
been proved to consist of three layers of compilation
and contains various citations from other Buddhist
texts, is an ideal model for the study of Mahayana
sutras, especially in elucidating the formation process of a sutra. This seminar will deal with selected
discourses of the sutra, mainly using Tibetan and
Chinese versions, together with related materials in
Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Chinese.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

FORTHCOMING:

CSJR Workshop 2006

Rethinking embodiment: a Japanese contemporary perspective
A workshop in commemoration of Professor Yasuo Yuasa (1925-2005)
5 -6 June
Venue: SOAS, University of London

In the past few years, there has been a growing

interest in issues related to the human body. This
workshop represents a first attempt to discuss the
topic from a Japanese perspective, focusing on the
thought of a major figure in the field, Yasuo Yuasa
(1925-2005).
The Japanese way of perceiving the human body
is radically different from that upheld in Western
cultures, where a sharp distinction between body
and mind largely prevails. The concept is well
summarized in Descartes famous dictum cogito
ergo sum (I think therefore I am). On the contrary,
in a Japanese context, the mind and the body
are intertwined through the process of self-cultivation to form a oneness. Working with these
assumptions, Yuasa suggested that the body is
also something knowable. More specifically, he
proposed a distinction between the bright cogito
and the dark cogito (later conceptually refined as
bodily scheme). While the former can be related
to Descartes cogito, the latter is buried beneath
the former but can become knowable, revealing its
brilliance, through the meditative process.
In this way Yuasa indicated the direction for a new
research approach called subjective science. This
is a science that focuses on the inner cosmos of
human subjects. Its scope has various implications
for a growing number of disciplines that attempt to
understand the nature of subjective experience,
where the human body is central. Yuasa compared
and opposed his concept of subjective science
with that of objective science and argued that we
cannot appreciate the meaning of truth in toto unless we delve into the inner cosmos buried in ourselves. This process, he suggested, will also enable us to experience an enlarged sense of identity
between the macrocosmos (physical universe) and
the microcosmos (human nature).

Nagatomo, Hiroshi Ichikawa, and Nishida Kitaro.

The workshop will also serve as a commemorative
event for Yuasa on the day of his birthday.
Invited participants include: Prof. Shigenori
Nagatomo, (Temple University), Prof Hiroshi
Motoyama, (President of the Motoyama for Life
Physics, Tokyo), Dr James Robinson, (University of
Lampeter), Dr Matteo Cestari, (University of Turin),
Dr Peter Fenwick (President, International Association for Near-Death Studies), Professor Donna
Dickenson (Birkbeck), and Dr Cosimo
Zene (SOAS).

Professor Yasuo Yuasa (1925-2005)

For information and registration, please contact

the workshop coordinator, Ornella Corazza (PhD
candidate, Department of the Study of Religions at
SOAS) e-mail: [email protected]

Prof Yuasa passed away in November 2005. The

workshop, which was planned before his death, will
bring together the contribution of scholars from different disciplines to discuss his innovative theories
of the human body and address other contemporary Japanese perspectives of embodiment, such
as those of Hiroshi Motoyama, Shigenori

19

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Members' Research Related Activities

Brian Bocking presented a paper on Mysticism revisited in the light of "Experience"'.IAHR, Tokyo, 24 March30 March 2005; chaired the panel on "Underlying Religiosity in East Asia" IAHR, Tokyo, 25 March 2005; was
a discussant for Isomae Jun'ichi's panel "Buddhism in
West/ West in Buddhism" IAHR, Tokyo, 25th of March
2005; was elected to the Executive Committee of the
IAHR as Publications Officer for 2005-10; chaired the
panel on Foundation Myths in Esoteric Buddhism at
the CSJR International Symposium "Foundation Myths
in Japan," London, June 9-10; published 'Shinto' was
published in the new Macmillan *Encyclopedia of
Religion* (Gale Macmillan 2005).
John Breen gave a talk on Tokugawa calendars
and how to read them, SISJAC Norwich, 20 January
2005; spoke on The problem of Yasukuni, Eton Japan
society, Eton 7 March 2005; presented a paper on
Shinto no kingendai ni okeru jidaikubun (Problems
of periodisation in the modern history of Shinto at
Panel Shinto no jidai kubun o kangaeru (Rethinking periodisaton in Shinto studies), IAHR conference,
Tokyo, 25 March 2005; gave a talk on Kingendai no
Shinto (Prewar and post war Shinto), Shinto zemi,
Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, 27 March 2005; spoke
on The Emperor and politics in early Meiji Japan, JRC
Emperor workshop, SOAS, 29 April 2005; chaired the
panel on Visual and Perfomative Aspects of Foundation Narratives at the CSJR International Symposium
"Foundation Myths in Japan," London, June 9 2005;
gave the keynote lecture on Komei seiken to kakuritsu
to tenkai (The Komei administration: establishment
and development), Chuo shigakkai 50th anniversary
conference, Chuo university, Tokyo, 2 July 2005; spoke
on Komei seiken ron; 1863-66 (On the Komei administration: 1863-66), Sakamoto zemi, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, 4 July 2005; gave a talk on Yasukuni shiron
(On Yasukuni), Matsuo zemi, Chuo University, Tokyo,
6 July 2005; November 12 Yasukuni: senso kioku no
soshitsu (Yasukuni and the loss of historical memory),
ISF Shinto seminar, Tokyo; spoke on Yasukuni: and
the loss of historical memory at the Daiwa seminar
'The Yasukuni Shrine: Religion, Politics and the Legacy
of War', Daiwa house, London, 16 November 2005;
published Juyondai shogun Iemochi no joraku (The
Kyoto progress of the 14th shogun Iemochi) in Meiji
ishinshi gakkai ed., Meiji ishin to bunka, Yoshikawa
kobunkan, 2005; Yasukuni shrine: ritual and memory,
Japan Focus, 293 (2005)

20

Lucia Dolce presented a paper on "Localizing Buddhism In the Japanese Cultic Context - A Ritual Approach" in the panel 'Buddhism in West/West in Buddhism', IAHR , Tokyo, 24 March - 30 March 2005; gave a
lecture on Ritual in Japanese religion in the occasion
of the kagura performance at Bath International Music
festival, May 22, 2005; gave a lecture on "Esoteric
turns: ritual appropriations and the creation of new
Buddhist icons in medieval Japan" at the Sainsbury
Institute, Norwich, June 16, 2005; was a discussant at
the CSJR International Symposium "Foundation Myths
in Japan," London, June 9-10; chaired the session
"Buddhism in Japan" at the 14th IABS conference,
London, 29 August-3 Sept 2005; gave a lecture on
Reconstructing the end of the dharma in medieval
Japan at the Institute of Oriental Philosophy European Centre, Taplow, October 22, 2005; participated
in the panel Life, Sex, and Death: Araki and Japanese
Culture at Barbican Art Gallery, December 7, 2005;
gave a paper on Icons, scriptures, and their ritual use:
reflections on nineteenth-century European understandings of Japanese Buddhism at the Centre europen d'tudes japonaises d'Alsace, Strasbourg and
Colmar, 8-10 Dec 2005; Publications: The Worship of
Stars in Japanese Religious Practice, guest editor, special issue of Culture and Cosmos. A Journal of the History of Astrology and Cultural Astronomy, Vol. 9 no 2,
Autumn/Winter 2005. (forthcoming); "Reconsidering
the Taxonomy of the 'Esoteric': Taimitsu Hermeneutical and Ritual Practices," in Mark Teeuwen and Bernard
Scheid, eds., The Culture of Secrecy in Pre-modern
Japan, London: RoutledgeCurzon (forthcoming).
Katja Triplett presented a paper on Body, ash and
spirit. Images in memorial cults of founders of new
religions in Japan", Interdisciplinary Seminar of the
Study of Religions on the Material and Aesthetic
Dimension of Religions, Mansfield College and Oriel,
Oxford University, 2 August 2005; presented a paper
on Freedom of Religion in Vietnam: Persistent Policy
and Vivid Reality?" IAHR, Tokyo, 28 March 2005; presented a paper on Tsubosaka testimonials: Origin
tales of Minami Hokkeji's Kannon for the Blind at the
CSJR International Symposium "Foundation Myths in
Japan," London, 10 June 2005; presented a paper on
The worship of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara of the
Blind' in Japan at the 14th IABS conference, London,
30 August 2005; Publications: Das Pluralismodell
,Religionsfreiheit' und die religise Vielfalt Japans." In
Religionen nebeneinander. Modelle religser Vielfalt in
Ost- und Sdostasien, ed. by Edith Franke und Michael
Pye. Mnster: Lit-Verlag 2005, 103-120; Tenriky." In
Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Hans
Dieter Betz. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Postgraduate

PhD Research at SOAS on

Japanese Religions
Satomi Horiuchi, Contemporary Japanese Christianity:
Ancestors, rites and graves (Dr Dolce, Study of Religions)
Yoshiko Imaizumi, The Meiji Jingu (Dr Breen, Department of Japan and Korea)
Tullio Lobetti, Faith in the flesh: body and ascetic practices in contemporary Japanese religious context (Dr
Dolce, Study of Religions)
Benedetta Lomi, Bat Kannon/Matou Guanyin: cult,
images and rituals of the Horse-Headed One
(Dr Dolce, Study of Religions)
Shinya Mano, Eisai and the development of Zen-Esoteric
Buddhism (Dr Lucia Dolce, Study of Religions)
Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen, Religious idealism and political reality in civil society: young Sokka/Gakkai members'
support for Komeito
(Dr Martinez, Department of Anthropology)
Yukiko Nishimura, Worship of Avalokitesvara in Japan
(Dr Dolce, Study of Religions)
Fumi Ouchi, The vocal arts in medieval Japan and Tendai
hongaku thought (Dr Dolce, Study of Religions)
Anna Schegoleva, Ghosts in Japan: reconstructing
horror in modernity (Dr Dolce, Study of Religions)
Carla Tronu Montane, A sociology of the Christian mission to Japan (Dr Breen, Department of Japan and Korea)

MA Japanese Religions
Dissertations 2004-2005
Izumi Beppu Yasukuni Shrine and its influence on the
nation before and after the end of World War 2
Roger Farrow Life from the dead: The secret life of icons
and the functionality of relics
Katsuji Iwahashi The shrine reduction policy: The policy
and protest in Wakayama prefecture
Zuzana Kubovakova Zen monks and warriors in medieval Japan: realities behind the warriors adherence to
Zen Buddhism
Shinya Mano Ysai and Yj lineage: Yjb Ysai
(Acarya) or Myan Eisai (Zen master)

MA Japanese Religions
The SOAS MA Programme
in Japanese Religion is the
first European taught graduate
programme devoted to the
study of Japanese religions.
The degree is designed to
provide a comprehensive
overview of the various
traditions of Japanese religion,
past and present, at the
same time supplying tools of
analysis for further research in
the field. It is intended either
as an end qualification in
itself or to prepare students
for more advanced graduate
work. The programme
consists of three components:
one compulsory core course, two optional courses (or
the equivalent of two units), and a dissertation. It may be
completed in one calendar year (full time), or in two or three
calendar years (part-time).
The programme centres around the core course Religious
Practice in Japan: Texts, Rituals and Believers, which presents
the religious phenomena in Japan in their historical
context and addresses specific themes relevant to the
understanding of the social aspects of Japanese religion and
the influence of religion upon Japanese culture. Issues that
have been taken up include the relation between religion
and the state; the role of women in Japanese religion; the
meaning of rituals; the geography of sacred space; and the
dynamics of ascetic experiences.
Students have the opportunity to select other courses,
depending on their specific interests and previous
knowledge, in order to gain a more comprehensive grasp
of the Japanese religious phenomena. Options include the
religious history of China and other aspects of the Asian
context of Japanese religion; contemporary developments
in Japanese religion; introductions to textual studies;
Buddhist art; and methodologies for the analysis of religious
phenomena.
Please note three courses recently created for the
programme: East Asian Buddhist Thought, a thematic course
which every year explores one major form of Japanese
Buddhism; Japanese New Religions, which evaluates
theories and typologies relating to the development of new
religions in Japan and abroad; Individual Research Project in
Japanese Religions, which enables students to undertake a
guided in-depth study of a specific topic.
A prior knowledge of the Japanese language is not required.
However, students with a sufficient knowledge of the
Japanese language and an interest in approaching primary
sources will be able to take the unit Readings in Japanese
Religions. In addition, the programme offers language
courses in modern Japanese. Students in the programme
will also benefit from seminars, discussion groups, guest
lectures and international workshops organized by the
Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions.
Application forms are available from the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, and downloadable from the SOAS website.
For further information see the SOAS webpage (http://
www.soas.ac.uk/Religions/MAdegrees.htm) or contact the
Director of Studies, Dr Lucia Dolce, room 334, ext 4217,
email: [email protected].
21

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Exhibition Review

Ko-Mikky : The Incipient Stages of

Japanese Esoteric Buddhism
Yukiko Nishimura,
holder of the 2001 CSJR Research Studentship
A special exhibition on Ko-Mikky (Ancient Esoteric
Buddhism) was held at the Nara National Museum
from 26 July to 4 September 2005. According to the
exhibition catalogue, it celebrated the 1200th anniversary of Saichs return from China, and of Kkais
tantric initiation, but more emphasis was put on Kkai
as he is known as the monk who introduced esoteric
Buddhism from Tang China in the early Heian period.
Obviously one of the aims of this exhibition was to
cast a spotlight on the esoteric Buddhism of the Nara
period in the sense that this was functional in giving
birth to Kkais esoteric Buddhism. Although the English subtitle of the exhibition The Incipient Stages of
Japanese Esoteric Buddhism does not mention Kkai,
the Japanese subtitle clearly states Kkai started from
here. Furthermore, each part of the exhibition was
constructed to lead to the final section, Komikky kara
Kkai he (From Ancient Esoteric Buddhism to Kkai),
where artifacts representative of the Shingon Buddhism of the Heian period, especially those related to
Kkai such as his Go-shrai-mokuroku (Catalogue of
Imported Item by Kkai), Shry-sh (Chinese writings
by Kkai), and the twofold mandalas, were exhibited.
The first six sections of the exhibition comprised
Chinese images (Part 1) and materials from the Nara
period (Part 2-6), some of which were exhibited for the
first time, or at least grouped together for the first time
emphasizing their esoteric nature. As the exhibition
foreword stated, there had never been an exhibition
which focuses on the esoteric Buddhism in the Nara
period. The first section, titled the Transmission of
Ancient Esoteric Buddhism, exhibited six Chinese images of Jichimen Kannon (Eleven-headed Kannon),
most of which were imported to Japan and have been
preserved in Japanese temples, shrines or museums.
It included a statue, now in Tokyo National Museum,
which was originally at Tanzan shrine, T-no-mine,
Nara (cat. no.4). A study by Matsuda Seiichir has suggested that this image was imported to Japan as early
as the mid-seventh century: the iconography of the
image shows a mixture of elements drawn from old
and new translations of the scripture devoted to this
type of Kannon (Jichimen Kannon ky); furthermore, a
son of the founder of the shrine where the image was
kept (J-e) was connected to the translation of the
new version, having studied in the capital city of Tang
China ( Matsuda 1988: 38ff.)
There is sufficient evidence that the worship of the
Eleven-headed Kannon in Japan developed around
22

the late seventh century at the latest. The second section of the exhibition, entitled Transformed Kannon
the Forms of Salvation (Henge Kannon Sukui no
katachi-) included nine images of multi-headed and
other Transformed Kannon such as Bat and Fukkenjaku, some of which are usually not open to the
public or are accessible only during special periods of
the year. It started with the earliest extant Japanese
image of the Eleven-headed Kannon (cat.no.7), a statue from the late Hakuh period, which was excavated
from Nachi mountain, one of the most venerated
centres of mountain worship in Japan. This part also
included two texts: (i) T dai-waj t-sei den (The Life of
the Great Monk of Tang (=Ganjin)) (cat. no.21) and (ii)
Saidai-ji shizai ruki ch (The History and Properties of the
Saidaiji Temple) (cat. no.22). Although the editions that
were exhibited were copies of later periods (thirteenth
and fourteenth century, respectively), both documents are considered to be important evidence of
the significance of Henge Kannon worship in the Nara
period. Hayami Tasuku employed this Saidaiji record
to conclude that the most evident characteristic of
the worship of Kannon in the Nara period is of esoteric
nature.( Hayami 1970: 43 & 65; Hayami 2000: 78.)
The third part of the exhibition, titled The Lord of
Dharani, focused on Kokuz bosatsu, the Bodhisattva
of limitless wisdom and benefits (Skt: Akasagarbha).
The ritual centering on this deity, Kokuz gumonji h,
was widely practiced in the Nara period by Buddhist
monks, especially those who pursued ascetic practices
in the mountains, including Kkai. The ritual consisted
of chanting the dharani of this bodhisattava, by which
the practitioner could understand the meaning of

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

the conventional view on this matter, though it does

not employ the traditional term z-mitsu (miscellaneous esoteric Buddhism), which has been used as
the opposite of jun-mitsu (pure esoteric Buddhism),
allegedly imported and founded by Kkai. The curators state that, although there already existed many
Buddhist texts of pure esoteric Buddhism in the Nara
period, the rituals in practices were still those of Ancient Esoteric Buddhism.
The fifth section of the exhibition focused on one of
these rituals called keka. It included the images of
Buddhist deities who were the central object of worship in keka rituals, such as Amida (Skt: Amitabha),
Yakushi (Skt: Bhaisajyaguru) and Kissh-ten (Skt:
Sri-mahadevi), their related Buddhist texts and other
ritual instruments. The scriptural items exhibited
included two fascicles of Konkmy-saish--ky, each
designated as a National Treasure. This sutra was the
basic text of the keka devoted to Kissh-ten, but was
itself worshipped and copied on many occasions during the Nara period.

The earliest extant Japanese image of the

Eleven-headed Kannon (cat.no.7), a statue
from the late Hakuh period.

difficult sutras instantly and remember them for a long

time. The earliest extant image of Kokuz bosatsu,
from the Nara period, and now kept at Gakuan-ji, Nara
(cat.no.24) was exhibited together with other later images and related sutras.
The fourth section of the exhibition, Sutras of Ancient
Esoteric Buddhism, mostly consisted of eight Buddhist
texts, one copied in the Asuka period and the others
from the Nara period, each of which is quite rarely
exhibited publicly. They were texts relating to dharani,
such as Kongj darani ky and Bucch sonsh darani
ky, and texts relating to the Transformed Kannon,
such as Senju sengen darani ky and Fuk kenjaku jinpen shingon ky. According to the catalogue description, the Buddhist texts of Ancient Esoteric Buddhism
are those translated in China before Subhakarasinha,
Vajirabodhi, Yi-xing, and Amoghavajira, while the
sutras translated in the eighth century by these monks
represented a systematized type of esotericism. The
texts of ancient esotericism advocate the worship of
deities such as Jichimen Kannon and Senju Kannon,
and expound the means by which to obtain benefits
from these deities, whether dharani or meditation or
devotions. (Ko-mikky: 51.) The monumental work by
Ishida Mosaku on Buddhist texts copied in the Nara
period clearly shows that Dainichi-ky, Kong-ch-ky
and Soshitsuji-kara-ky, which are regarded the most
important texts in the esoteric Buddhism after Kkai,
existed and started being copied in the Nara period.
(Ishida 1930: 146ff.) However the exhibition follows

Finally, the sixth section, titled Practitioners of the

Mountains (Yama no shugy-sha), exhibited ritual
instruments and some images of legendary practitioners, such as En no odunu (or En no gyja), who has
been venerated as the founder of Shugend (mountain asceticism), and Taich, who is considered to be
the founder of the worship of Mt. Hakusan. These
materials were included in the exhibition on the
grounds that in the Nara period monks and nuns
were required to obtain the powers to cure illness by
chanting mantras. These magical powers could be
attained through ascetic practices conducted in deep
mountains.Legends tell that.the gumonji-h was
earnestly performed in Yoshino ..These ascetic practitioners were usually also invited to keka rituals.(Kmikky: 89.) In short, it is obvious that the curators
assume that dharani and mantras, and certain rituals
such as keka and gumonji-h can tell something about
Ancient Esoteric Buddhism.
As the catalogue foreword states, this exhibition is
significant in that it is the first and thorough exhibition that focuses on certain aspects of the Nara period,
which the curators have called Ancient Esoteric Buddhism. It also exhibited a numbers of artifacts that are
usually inaccessible to the public. But I think that the
exhibition is even more significant in that it coins a
new term, Ancient Esoteric Buddhism, to replace the
more common word zmitsu (miscellaneous esoteric
Buddhism). The latter started being used by scholarmonks of Shingon Buddhism who tried to emphasize
the achievements of the founder of their school, Kkai,
and later it was widely accepted in spite of its negative
connotations: zmitsu has been seen as contrary to
the other Buddhist schools of the Nara period, which

23

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

a number of images of transformed Kannon (which he

called esoteric Kannon) were recorded to have been
created during the Nara period. Ishida Mosaku, too,
calls certain Buddhist texts esoteric without supplying any explanation as to why he assumes these texts
to be esoteric. This exhibition clearly shows what is
widely and usually acknowledged today as the mark
of esoteric Buddhism: the transformed Kannon, dharani (magical spells), and keka rituals. Images, rituals,
scriptures and practitioners in the Nara period were
chosen as evidence of esoteric Buddhism (ancient or
miscellaneous, whatever) since they have one of these
markers.

Saidai-ji shizai ruki ch (The History and Properties of the Saidaiji

Temple) (cat. no.22)

were involved in philosophical speculations (Horiike

1960: 71); different from intellectual Buddhist schools
since it consisted of occult arts aimed only at seeking
worldly desires (Katsumata 1977: 183); and lacking of
philosophical thoughts and consistent ideals (Wada
1970: 74). The exhibition catalogue still takes the
bipolar views of pure versus miscellaneous/ancient
and puts higher value on pure esoteric Buddhism,
but I think that an attempt has been made to free the
Buddhism of the Nara period from the negative value
attached to the word z-mitsu and to review what
can be called esoteric Buddhism in the Nara period.
There is a more problematic question, which was
never asked in the exhibition, and indeed has hardly
been asked by scholars in the field. We cannot find a
concept or word corresponding to esoteric Buddhism
in the documents from the Nara period. However, this
exhibition and also previous studies have assumed
that there is something, which can be universally
called esoteric Buddhism, or which maintains certain
esoteric elements throughout history. Whenever
any of these elements is found in the expressions of
Nara Buddhism, these are labeled esoteric. As briefly
mentioned above, Hayami Tasuku concluded that the
worship of Kannon in the Nara period was esoteric
mainly on the basis that certain Buddhist texts relating to transformed Kannon (which he called esoteric
texts) existed and were copied in the Nara period, and

24

Ironically, the attempt to define esoteric Buddhism

by modern apologists leads to a totally different
conclusion. Matsunaga Yukei, for instance, takes the
position that there is a universal esoteric Buddhism
and concludes that when taking into account not
only the Esoteric Buddhism of Kkai but also Esoteric
Buddhism in its wider sense, it is possible to define its
characteristics under the following five headings: 1)
mysticism, 2) synthetism, 2) symbolism, 4) soteriology
and 5) realism. ( Matsunaga 1990: 26.) Matsunaga denies that specific elements work as markers of esoteric
Buddhism and writes that Esoteric Buddhism consists
of a combination of all five these elements. It should
be noted that, interestingly, Matsunaga even thinks
that Kkais definition (which Matsunaga clearly identifies in one of Kkais writings, Ben-kenmitsu-nikyron) is insufficient for dealing with Indian, or even
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism; and that even within
Japan there is also the esoteric branch of the Tendai
school to which it is not possible to apply this same
yard stick.(Ibid: 25.) As he himself admits, his attempt
at drawing a definition of mikky cannot be said to be
fully successful as these five characteristics are all to
be found in Mahayana Buddhism, too" (Ibid: 40).
Based on the detailed analysis of the whole body of
writings of Kkai, Abe Ryichi has recently concluded
that even in Kkais construction (which, though not
the only one, set the standard for subsequent constructions in the history of the Shingon and Tendai
Schools), the distinction between the two categories
(esoteric and exoteric) is far more fluid than has been
assumed by existing modern studies. The esoteric and
exoteric are relative to each other at best. (Abe 1999:
12.) Then, what shall or can we consider as the elements necessary for a definition of esoteric that can
be applicable to the Nara period, when there was no
concept of esoteric? A preliminary attempt by the art
historian Cynthea Bogel has focused on the reception
of the people in the Nara period, trying to find whether they perceived the difference between esoteric and
exoteric and if there was any, what was considered as
esoteric or different from other types of Buddhism. I
address the question of what esoteric Buddhism was
for people of the Nara period in my PhD research on

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Fieldwork Report
Carla Tronu Montane,
holder of the 2003 CSJR Research Studentship
Since October 2004 I have been in Japan conducting
fieldwork, as a recipient of a scholarship from the
Japanese Ministry of Science, Culture and Sports.
I am based at the Osaka University of Foreign
Studies (OUFS), in Minoh, which is northeast of
Osaka. My advisor at OUFS is a specialist in Christian
literature, Professor Rikiya Komei, from the Faculty
of International Relations. At OUFS I attend some
lectures on Japanese culture and religion, as well as
courses on pre-modern Japanese and kanbun.

The earliest extant image of Kokuz bosatsu, from

the Nara period, and now kept at Gakuan-ji, Nara
(cat.no.24).

the early worship of Kannon. I think this question is

crucial for the study of Japanese religion after Kkai as
well, since the definition of esoteric Buddhism and its
central elements changed from time to time, and still
does, as modern scholars have different perceptions of
what Buddhist practice should be.

My PhD research approaches the Japanese Christian

mission in the sixteenth century from a historical
perspective, so that my fieldwork in Japan mainly
consists of archival and bibliographical research. I do
most of my research at the OUFS Library, gathering
and reading Japanese research papers and primary
sources on Christianity in pre-modern Japan. I have
periodical meetings with Professor Komei and regular
reading seminars with Dr Emi Kishimoto, who does
research on missionary publications and dictionaries
in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Japan within
the field of Japanese linguistics.

Bibliographic references:

Carla Tronu Montane

Abe Ryuichi, 1999, The Weaving of Mantra Kkai and the

Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse, New York: Columbia University Press.
Bogel, Cynthea, 1995, Ritual and Representation in EighthCentury Japanese Esoteric Buddhist Sculpture, PhD thesis,
Harvard University.
Hayami Tasuku, 1970, Kannon Shink (The worship of Kannon), Tokyo: Hanawa Shoin.
Hayami Tasuku, ed., 2000, Kannon Shinko jiten, (Encyclopedia
of the worship of Kannon), Ebisu Ksh shuppan.
Horiike Shunp, 1960, Nara jidai bukky no mikky-teki
seikaku, republished in Hayami Tasuku, ed., Nara Bukky no
tenkai, Tokyo: Yzankaku, 1994, pp71-87.
Ishida Mosaku, 1930, Shaky yori mitaru Nara-ch Bukky no
kenky , Ty bunko.
Katsumata Shunky, 1977, Narajidai no mikky in Mikky no
rekishi, Toky Shunj-sha.
Matsuda Seiichir, Toky Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan hokan
Jichimen Kannon z (Tnomine denrai) ni tsuite (The
Statue of Jichimen Kannon in the Tokyo National Museum,
originally preserved at Tnomine), Kokka, No.1118, pp. 7-23
and No.1119, pp. 32-48, 1988.
K-mikky, Exhibition catalogue, 2005.
Matsunaga Yukei, 1990 Esoteric Buddhism: A Definition
from Mikky, Special Issue, October 1990, pp. 23-40.
Wada Teiichi, 1970, Nara-ch ni okeru mikky no seikaku
Shs-in monjo wo chshin to shite, in Seishin Kagaku.

This is a view of Hirado Bay from Hirado Castle.

Being based in Osaka offers a good opportunity

for some short research trips to relevant Christian
places and archives. Last autumn I went to Hirado
and Ikitsuki on a research trip with members of the
Japanese Association of Folklore Studies where I was
able to meet some senior Kakure Kirishitan and local
historians. In March, thanks to a travel grant from the
Japanese Foundation Endowment Committee (JFEC),
I spent three weeks conducting archival research in
Tokyo, at the Kirishitan Bunko of Sophia University,
and also at the Historiographical Institute of the
University of Tokyo. While I was in Tokyo the 19th
World Conference of the International Association
for the History of Religion took place, and I attended
some of the presentations. This also gave me a chance
to meet my SOAS supervisor, Dr John Breen, as well as

25

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Dr Lucia Dolce and Professor Brian Bocking. I also had

the opportunity to meet Dr Ikuo Higashibaba (Tenri
University, Nara), a specialist in Christianity in early
modern Japan.

church and its martyrs.

Carla Tronu Montane

This artifact of a tile with a pattern of a cross is from the remains of

the Santo Domingo Church in Nagasaki.

than forty years in Japan researching the Japanese

26

I plan to stay at the Osaka University of Foreign

Studies for one more academic year and return to
SOAS in September 2006.

Carla Tronu Montane

Also under the auspices of the JFEC, last September I

went to Nagasaki for one week, to conduct research
at the Museum of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki and
the Nagasaki Prefectural Library. I also visited some
interesting Christian sites, like the remains of the
church of Santo Domingo, discovered in 2000 at
Sakuramachi. This site is especially interesting
because it presents remains of three different periods,
the oldest being those of the Dominican church
built by Father Morales in 1609, with a separate
building for the convent of the fathers and a garden.
However, it was destroyed after five years, when the
order expelling the missionaries from Japan was
issued in 1614, and two years later the house of the
Magistrate of Nagasaki (Suetsugu Heiz) was built
at the site. At the end of the eighteenth century the
Suetsugu family was replaced by the Takagi family,
which inherited their post and property. The result
is that several domestic artefacts and wells from this
period have also been unearthed. In the adjacent
Museum for the Former Site of Santo Domingo
Church, findings from the three different periods are
exhibited. The most numerous are those related to
Christianity, such as tiles with a cross pattern, rosaries,
medals and holy relic boxes. I also visited ura
Tenshud, a highlight of the revival of Christianity
in Nagasaki. It was built by French missionaries in
1864, and in 1865, when Christianity was still under
prohibition, some Japanese people who had kept
the Christian faith underground for generations,
recognizing the statue of Saint Mary in the altar of the
Oura Tenshud, told Father Petit-Jean that they kept
the same faith. The most exciting and motivating part
of the trip to Nagasaki was the talking with Father
Yki Ryogo (formerly named Diego Pacheco), a very
knowledgeable Spanish Jesuit, who has spent more

However, I did not need to venture far from Minoh

to visit Christian remains, because the neighbouring
cities of Ibaraki and Takatsuki hosted Christian
communities in the past. In the sixteenth century
Christian communities flourished under the lead of
the Takayama family in the surroundings of Takatsuki
castle. In the early twentieth century, a Christian
tombstone was discovered in Ibaraki by a school
teacher, whose persistent investigations led to two
families that had supposedly been Christian. They
denied it at first, but finally Christian objects and
paintings that had been hidden and passed down for
generations over centuries were brought to light. Last
spring, I visited the Ibaraki City Museum of Christian
Remains together with Professor Komei, Dr Kishimoto
and other PhD students from OUFS. We also looked
for the extant Christian tombstones that were
discovered around the area in the early 20th century,
which was not an easy task, since some of them are
still well hidden in the woods.

Oura Catholic Church, Nagasaki

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Fieldwork Report

Buddhist Vocal Arts

Fumi Ouchi

During the fist year of my research, I found out that

the early Japanese Tendai school developed its
original interpretation of the meaning of our natural bodies. That is to say, compared with Chinese
Tien-tai teaching, Japanese Tendai monks tended
to show a more positive attitude to our natural bodies. This validated the usefulness of my approach,
which considers the development of Buddhism
in medieval Japan from its attitude to the somatic
nature of human beings, especially its sensory
phase. In my view, such an affirmative posture
also stimulated the formation of various types of
vocal arts at that time, as the aesthetics of Tendai
shmy demand an impressive performance and
emotional expression. For example, according to
several treatises on shmy, the most important
technique is yuri, a kind of ornamental melody pattern, because it sounds effective.
A few years ago, I had the good fortune to meet
a great shmy performer, Ms Makiko Sakurai.
She is the only professional female performer of
shmy. Although she is not a Buddhist priestess, she was trained in this Buddhist vocal art by
Geny Nakayama, a high ranking Tendai priest,
and a master shmy performer. Ms Sakurai has
been also working on the restoration of a kind of
medieval performing arts, shirabyshi, which is
deeply connected with Buddhist vocal arts. She
has also learned gagaku, the oldest type of musical performance which was historically performed
at the Japanese Imperial court. The musical theory
of shmy is highly influenced by that of gagaku.
Therefore, Ms Sakurai is the most appropriate

Akiko Mitomo

During the 2005-2006 academic year, I am staying

in Japan to conduct fieldwork for my dissertation.
This fieldwork has two main purposes: one is to
explore the primary sources on medieval Buddhist vocal arts, and the other is to learn shmy,
a chanting form of sutra recitation with a sophisticated melody. Hopefully they will provide me with
important information with which to expand my
research on the attitude of Japanese medieval
Buddhism as it relates to the sensory nature of
human beings. This is deeply connected with one
of the core arguments in my thesis. I suspect that
the original development of Buddhism in Japan
is highly correlated with the affirmative posture of
Japanese culture to our somatic nature. Exploring
the actual conditions of the performance of Buddhist vocal arts, formed in medieval Japanese,
should therefore provide a clue for discussing this
issue.
Fumi Ouchi with her shmy teacher Ms Sakurai. Ms Sakurai is
wearing the costume of Shirabyoshi, female performers of the
medieval period who sang and danced in male costume.

teacher to help me to start exploring the world of

medieval Buddhist vocal arts.
I started lessons with her last October. I am learning nij-go-zanmai-shiki with four classmates, one
of whom is a scholar of Japanese literature, Dr
Kayono Shiba, who has published on the development of the method of reciting sutras (doky-d) in
medieval Japan.
Nij-go-zanmai-shiki is a liturgy based on the Pure
Land teaching and it is the earliest form of the
Japanised Buddhist vocal art, kshiki. The melody
patterns and vocal technique of kshiki are simpler than the original shmy imported from China
and polished by Japanese monks to use for their
religious training, or for adorning their rituals. This
seems to be connected with the fact that kshiki
was created as a liturgy for groups including lay
believers. In addition, while shmy was basically
learned and performed exclusively by Buddhist
monks or priests, lay people could recite or sing
at nij-go-zanmai-shiki. Training can enable me to
gain significant information to consider what types
of musical methods were adopted to attract different types of believers, and how their aural or sensory natures were treated within religious contexts.
In fact, I discovered some interesting facts whilst
learning the central parts of nij-go-zanmai-shiki,
which include the description of the six realms
(roku-d): hell, the realm of hungry ghosts, beasts,
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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

fighting demons, human beings, and heaven. Of

particular interest was to me was that the most emphasized part among the six realms is that of human beings, whilst it is hell that is always depicted
most closely and impressively in literature and
pictures that feature the six realms as their theme.
Why is the realm of human beings not emphasized
in nij-go-zanmai-shiki ? I have not got a clear
answer yet, but it might be related to the affirmative
attitude to the real world as expressed in medieval
Buddhist thought.
Another interesting feature I noticed is the way in
which the description of the realm of human beings
is emphasized. When one recites kshiki tunes,
different ranges of tone systems are used, ranging
from low to high pitch. Among the six realms, only
the realm of human beings uses the highest range,
and consequently this part sounds most impressive
and dramatic. Here can be observed an attempt
to produce an effective representation in koshiki
as well. This implies that rather than a negative attitude to the sensory nature of human beings, there
is the notion that our somatic nature plays significant role in religious activities.
Thus, my lessons in Buddhist vocal arts have got
off to a favorable start. I also had a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of Japanese
Buddhist vocal arts last December in London. As
I mentioned in another report in this newsletter, I
joined the stimulating workshop and the concert on
shmy at SOAS, which afforded me the opportunity to meet some shmy masters. I am considering studying shmy with them, too. Learning
from Buddhist priests would surely provide further
experience and knowledge. Although it is very cold
in Japan this winter and we have a lot of snow, I
hope to be able to continue to sustain my pace and
to further draw out rich fruit for my dissertation from
the deep snow. I look forward to sharing more findings with you in the future.

Fieldwork Report

Personal and Social Dimensions of the

Akinomine (Autumn Peak) Practice on
Haguro Mountain
Tullio Lobetti,
Holder of the 2004 CSJR Research Studentship
Introduction
As is evident from the title, I will not address the
theoretical and historical background of the akinomine (autumn peak) practice on Haguro-san, as
extremely relevant scholars, like Miyake and Sekimori, have already studied this topic in depth, and
recently a full-length documentary was produced
which unveiled all the remaining secrets about
this important Shugend practice. The purpose
of this work is instead to analyse, and possibly
understand, the personal and social dimensions
of such a practice. Personal motivation, social
and institutional pressure and the mere desire for
evasion are just some of the possible reasons that
may lead ordinary and less ordinary Japanese
and non-Japanese people to pursue a path of spiritual election by following the mountain paths of the
Dewa Sanzan (Yamagata prefecture) on the trail
of more seasoned yamabushi. Having participated
in the akinomine myself, this paper represents an
attempt to record my first-hand experience, as well
as the impressions that I got from the other participants. In the wider context of present-day Japanese shgy (physical exertion practices), this may
represent a small step in to understand by which
terms many of the practices roughly labelled as
ascetic are still alive in Japan today, and why, in
some cases, they are gaining increasing popularity.
The Akinomine
The akinomine practice begins every year on the
24th of August and ends on the 1st of September. The first gathering of all participants is at the
Shzennin temple, in the village of Tge, located
at the base of Haguro-san. The initial gathering is
a merry event. On the afternoon of the 24th, the
main hall of the Shzennin quickly fills up with
practitioners who come from all over Japan and
occasionally also from abroad. Many of them are
practitioners who meet no more than once a year
on this occasion, so their boisterous exchange of
greetings is understandable.
As the room fills up, everybody has to find a suitable place to store belongings and to unroll the

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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Tullio Lobetti

The main hall of the Shzennin

Newcomers, conversely, stick together regardless of age and gender, and even nationality. The
social glue that binds them is the stress of the
new experience in the midst of a group of already
well-acquainted strangers. Their luggage is sparse,
mostly packed in suitcases or backpacks. The
commodities that they bring with them are mainly
essentials, based on instructions provided by the
temple heads some weeks before. Therefore, all
newcomers bring more or less the same equipment. Their general expectation is that their stay at
Haguro-san is not supposed to be comfortable, so
nobody packs an extended set of goods. None of

Tullio Lobetti

futon at night. As in other kinds of social meetings,

people tend to group. Those practitioners who are
already well acquainted, generally choose a space
in the hall, sometimes the same space of the
previous year, and set up their equipment quickly
and confidently. By virtue of the same principle,
newcomers (including myself) also tend to stay
together, placing their belongings on the ground
more or less randomly, whilst nervously looking
around, trying to understand what the next step will
be. How people organise themselves inside the
main hall of the Shzennin might provide a number of hints about their personal background and
motivation. Expert practitioners tend to form age
and gender homogeneous groups. Their luggage
is abundant, and smartly packed in plastic boxes.
They generally bring all sorts of commodities with
which to fulfil their physical exigencies during the
practice. Wet tissues, crank-charging lamps and
mobile phones; full sets of medicines, bandages,
and first aid in case of minor accidents, are just
some of the commodities included in their boxes.
The general feeling is that their stay at Haguro-san
should be as comfortable as possible. The majority
already possess a complete shugenja outfit, which
they can neatly put on in a matter of few seconds,
and they have lengthy conversations comparing
the quality of the fabric, the colour, and the circumstances in which their equipment was obtained.

the newcomers possessed a shugenja outfit that

was hired from the temple, with the exception of a
few items that had to be bought. Although the subgroups that comprise the newly formed community
of practitioners form separately, some interaction
between them occurs from the very beginning. It
seems, in fact, that expert practitioners think that
it is their duty to take care of the newcomers, and
they generously give advice on practical matters,
even if not explicitly asked for it. They are indeed
attentive to the needs of others, generous and encouraging. Although the groups are not so prone
to mix, the interaction is abundant and productive.
The heads of the temple seem to be aware of this;
in fact a large share of practical training is entrusted to senior practitioners, instead of being performed in an official way by the temple leaders.
We were taught by older practitioners, for example,
how to wear the shugenja outfit properly, how to
hold the juzu (the Buddhist rosary), and the meaning of some elements in the attire. In addition, we
were given a number of practical tips about how
not to slip on wet ground, what to put in our carrier
bags, and how to prevent small injuries.

Preparing the hashirinawa (a waist rope to hold the surcoat

in place). Shzennin, first day.

At the end of the first day the people participating

in the Haguro-san akinomine seem to belong to
at least three different groups. The temple heads
and clergy form the first. Most of them are ordained
Tendai priests, due to affiliation of the Koganed
to Hiezan. In this early phase of the training they
are generally very busy with all the arrangements
and so their contact with the other practitioners is
necessarily limited. The people regularly attending
the akinomine training every year form the second
group. They have developed strong ties between
themselves and also feel confident about the practice and all the formal procedures that will follow.
For them, participating in the retreat has become
a pleasurable routine, a periodic event that marks
this specific period of the year. Newcomers or
occasional practitioners form the last group. They,
of course, lack the knowledge and confidence of
the more seasoned practitioners, but they share
the enthusiasm. Feeling like a stranger inside an

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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

already well-acquainted group, forces people to

consider at least two strategies. The first is to isolate themselves completely, avoiding any form of
confrontation that might result in possible damage.
The second is to fight pressure and isolation by
taking as many occasions as possible to produce
a fruitful interaction. The easiest way to achieve
the latter result in such a context is to continuously
ask for information. In the beginning, in fact, the
main form of interaction between newcomers and
experts is the exchange of information, mostly
oriented one-way from the expert to the novice.
Although this facilitates interaction, it also has the
side effect of creating a system of implicit vertical relationships. The scheme at this point is thus
characterised by a three-group structure bound
together by vertical relationships, with strong horizontal relationships present on the inside.

Temple Heads

Experienced Practitioners

Occasional Practitioners and

Newcomers

The following day the attention of all practitioners

is concentrated on the preparations for the Ritual
of Conception at the Koganed. Although the
akinomine itself actually starts the day before, with
the Oikaragaki (the ceremony of decoration of
the oi, the portable altar, where the spirits of the
shugenja are held), the rite at Koganed is the one
that, in my understanding, really marks the start of
the practice. It is first of all a doctrinal mark, since
the rite symbolises conception, the conception of
the embryos of the shugenja that will be held in
the oi and nurtured through the practice until their
full development. But it is also a powerful spatial
mark. The sensation of setting out from Shzennin is sharp, clear, and perfectly understandable.
It is the setting out from the normal life made of
everyday meals, water-flushed toilets, bathrooms,
bedding, electricity etc. for the unknown world of
the mountain where none of those commodities will
be available.
This passage into a different dimension creates
a palpable, though subtle, state of tension in all
practitioners. The newcomers consider the days
ahead with some worries, while the seasoned
practitioners try to get into the proper state of mind
for the efforts that will follow. One visible sign of all
this is the fact that, unlike on the previous day, the
participants level of concentration is visibly much
higher. Eyes are more attentive, faces more serious. Jokes and laughter disappear from everybodys lips. There is now a serious atmosphere.

Tullio Lobetti

The relationship between the temple heads and

the experienced practitioners is indicated with a
double arrow because, in my opinion, there is a
higher degree of dual interaction between the two
groups. In many cases, expert practitioners help
the heads and provide valuable advice, direct
activities and organise the work of the other practitioners. During the communal supper at the end of
the first day this tripartite scheme is again replicated in the location of people in the main hall. The
temple heads have assigned seats in front of the
altar, but all the other people are free to sit wherever they think is appropriate. Again the newcomers
and the experienced practitioners group separately, replicating more or less the same subgroups of
the initial luggage and bedding arrangement. Thus,
at this early stage, the shugenja community is still
fragmented, far from being homogeneous, and
bound by horizontal style relationships. During this
communal meal there is time for a short self-introduction, then futons are distributed to all participants, and the room is set for the night.

The first night at Shzennin may be a somewhat

unpleasant experience for people brought up in city
flats and used to at least some degree of privacy.
Apart from the unavoidable snoring, some people
continue to chat and drink sake noisily late in to the
night, apparently disregarding others needs. This
makes sleeping rather difficult, and many have
only a few hours of sleep before being awoken by
the sound of the hora (the conch-shell used as a
trumpet by shugenja) in the early morning.

Arriving at the Koganed for the Ritual of Conception. In the centre

is the bonten, the paper decorated pole symbolising male fertility.

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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

After the ritual at the Koganed, the column of

shugenja-in-training passes through the village of
Tge until arriving at the outer precinct of the Dewa
Sanzan shrine. During this walk a number of mantras are chanted in a responsorial form, following a
leading voice. The walk lasts for around 30 minutes and during this time the atmosphere loosens
a little bit. People start chatting between mantras
and many enjoy the nice landscape of Tge village
surroundings. No particular order is kept during the
walk, and everybody feels free to change his or her
position in the procession.

Elena Russo

Upon entering the precinct of the jinja, the atmosphere changes again abruptly. Again this change
seems to happen due to a spatial motif. Passing through the red torii (gate) reveals a stunning
view. Centuries old sugi trees (cryptomeria) are
everywhere, powerful as columns and straight as
needles while enormous fern leaves cover the
ground. Broken rays of sun filtering through the
leaves illuminate this dreamlike landscape, while
all the signs of human civilization suddenly disappear. The sensation of entering is indeed powerful,
and one is absorbed into a different reality. These
kinds of mountain practices are in fact known as
mountain entering rather than merely mountain
climbing. The doctrinal symbology, that sees the
mountain as the womb in which the foetus of the
shugenja starts growing, finds here a powerful
sensorial justification.
The way to the First Lodging is quite an enjoyable
walk in the forest. The pace is slow in order to allow the older practitioners to follow the procession
with ease; and the only demanding part constitutes
the 2600-steps long staircase leading to the top of
the mountain. At the end of the stairs the shugenja
can enjoy a brief rest and some simple refreshment.

Upon arrival at the Ktakuji a number of practical tasks are performed. First the participants are
assigned to their room in the Ktakuji. The word
room is in inverted commas because many of
these rooms are actually divisions of the main hall
and other smaller halls, divisions made in a very
theoretical way, since nothing marks the boundaries between one room and the others. All the
rooms are named after the Chinese zodiac signs,
for example, ushi no heia (room of the ox), the ki
no heia (room of the snake) etc. Various criteria
are used to group the practitioners in their rooms.
First of all, a room is reserved only for women,
regardless of their age or experience in the practice. Then two bigger rooms are assigned to the
newcomers and the less experienced practitioners. Since the rooms are divisions of the main
hall, there is plenty of possibility of communication
between these three groups of practitioners. This
division of the main hall also underlines an interesting feature of contemporary Haguro Shugend.
There seems to be almost no form of gender
discrimination. Men and women sleep and change
their clothes in the same room, share the same
toilets and perform the same practices, sumo being
the only exception. Women themselves seem to
be quite conscious of this state of equality. In the
words of Mrs. Kamimura, the eldest female practitioner and one of the most seasoned practitioners
at all: Here there is no man or woman. We are all
equal, all shugenja.
The new arrangement at the Ktakuji somehow
upsets the balances that spontaneously formed
at the Shzennin. The occupants of my room, for
example, are exclusively newcomers, irrespective
of age. All are Japanese, and separated from the
other foreigners, I have to build new relationships
from scratch.
Most of us arrange our belongings against the
outer wall, except for someone who puts his luggage in the middle of the room. We are thus arranged in a sort of square shape, lying on the floor
side by side following the perimeter of the room,
and facing the other people staying in the middle
of the room. This means also that when everybody is at his place there is no way of not looking
at other people, except maybe for staring at the
ceiling. In this circumstance interaction is a social
prerequisite. Not being able to flee somewhere
else, everybody has to cope with the reality of the
others in the room. We know that we are going
to share a number of nights together, dine and
attend services at the temple, thus the sooner we
get to know each other the better. Where are you
from? is the typical question in these cases. But at
Ktakuji it gains a completely different undertone. It
does not matter that everybody except me is Japa-

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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

nese; we were all strangers in a different world.

The name of Japanese cities like Tokyo and Osaka
belong to different realities that seem to be millions
of kilometers away.
I have another question to ask to my fellow roommates: Why are you here? This simple question
brings out how variegated and heterogeneous
personal motivations for religious practice can
be. Someone is there because it is a tradition
of Haguro, and I belong to this area; somebody
else to benefit my family; because this brings
me good luck; because this makes me stronger.
Apparently only a minority is there for reasons that,
from a western protestant point of view, may be
defined as spiritual. The person sleeping right
beside me is there to find himself, after a life of
hard work. In this sort of restricted environment it
might seem natural to expect a certain uniformity
in belief and purpose, but this is apparently not
the case. This unveils a substantial characteristic
of Haguro Shugend hidden under the structured
collective environment of the shugenja community.
From the point of view of intentions and belief, it is
indeed a very individual experience. Everyone has
his or her reasons for being there, and some are
willing to unveil them, while others are not. Some
are willing participants; some are forced by circumstances and tradition; and some are driven by
a strong will to competition. Hiroshi, for instance,
is a very clever and well-prepared Tendai monk;
he came to Haguro-san because his master sent
him there, telling him that the akinomine would be
good for his general training. Together with Hiroshi there are some other full-ordered monks from
various denominations. They constitute a smaller
group within the newcomers group, being new to
Haguro-san, but not to that kind of practice. They
already know all major sutras and mudras by heart
and are familiar with the procedure for rituals.
Given their background and experience, it might
seem as though the akinomine would be less arduous for them, but there is another point to consider.
Having been sent by their master or religious organisation on an official basis it is implicit that they
do every step of the practice to the utmost. In fact
they are always the first to act and the last to rest,
working hard until their energies are exhausted,
competing among themselves for the best results.
They are probably also part of a delicate diplomacy
between their home institution and the Shzennin
officials. It is in fact very likely that the Shzennins
sendatsu (a term originally meaning guide, now
indicating the heads of the temple) may have some
kind of relationship with the masters and temples
of the ordained monks participating to the practice.
If so, they will probably enquire about their performance. On the other hand, practitioners that go
on the Haguro akinomine on a personal basis do

32

not have to deal with such pressure, and the first

evidence of this may be found in their behaviour.
I mentioned before the fact that almost all expert
practitioners came to Haguro with copious amenities for their stay. Despite the fact that during the
first three days of practice everybody is supposed
to fast completely, drinking just water or green tea,
almost all of the older practitioners enact a wide
spectrum of little cheatings. Sugar tablets, energy
drinks, small candies, anpan and dorayaki are
just some of the many kinds of snacks that people
brings with them to relieve their fast at the Ktakuji.
This innocent cheating also includes perfumed
wiping tissues, antiperspirants, inflatable pillows
and so on.

Elena Russo is a SOAS alumna (MA Japanese Linguistics). During

2003-2004 she attended CSJR seminars, and the film screening:
Death and Rebirth in the Mountains: The Ascetic Training of Shugenja
Practitioners in Japan, and was inspired to participate in the practice.

As the practice goes on, our weariness, of course,

increases. The sait goma (fire sacrifice) rite marks
the passage to the Third Lodging and, at the same
time, our deliverance from the status of Hungry
Ghosts. It is an important moment of progress in
the practice, and for many it represents the occasion to benefit from the power and good influences emanating from the goma pyre. On a more
practical level it is also the moment in which the
practitioners are allowed to eat again, and for this
reason it marks a peak in the practitioners weariness. After three days of incessant fasting and
practice, and after having spent ones last energies
in building the goma pyre, we are all exhausted.
Regardless of the doctrinal importance of the saito
goma, most of the people are visibly nodding,
including myself, and a few fall totally asleep. Even
sitting properly on a bench while holding the sutra
book, pretending to read, requires a considerable

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

I dearly remember all the people I met on Hagurosan. Although I may have failed to understand their
minds, I clearly remember the smell of their sweat,
their bleeding feet and their heavy breath when
climbing the steep slopes of the Dewa Sanzan.
They were like me; their bodies were like mine. Together we built a social and communal dimension
grounded on our physicality and on the physical
constituency of the environment, rather than on
the basis of a shared mental and cultural framework. It feels strange to be so close to somebody
yet understand so little; it deeply challenged my
rationalistic formation, my will of knowledge in intellectualistic terms, and the dualistic background that
separates body from mind for the welfare of the
latter. Bodily practices acted instead as a means of
reconciliation of these two entities, giving us a new
unity, in a sense, a new birth.
Note: The names of the participants mentioned
above were changed to maintain anonymity.
Bibliographic references:
Miyake Hitoshi and Sekimori, Gaynor. The Mandala of
the Mountain: Shugend and Folk Religion. Tokyo: Keio
University Press, 2005.
Miyake Hitoshi. Shugend : essays on the structure of
Japanese folk religion. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, the University of Michigan, 2001.
Miyake Hitoshi. Religious Rituals in Shugend. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 16/2-3, 1989, pp.
101-116.

Elena Russo

effort. In that circumstance I begin to understand

the meaning of a word that I have read many times
in Japanese books about ascetic practices: suteru
(to dispose, throw away). There we are, having
expended our last energies in prostrating in front
of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas more than 400 times
on that day and having sawed wood for the pyre in
the remaining time. Our legs cannot move another
step; our backs cannot stay straight; our eyes
cannot stay open. The goma pyre crackles the
sutras in our stead. My everyday life seems to be
thousands of miles away. I cannot say, of course, if
everybody at the Ktakuji shares these sensations,
but from what I witness, I can at least say that all
of our physical sensations are the same in that we
are all equally prostrate. If a communal experience
does exist in this sort of practice, it is my opinion
that it should not be sought by considerations of
apparent communal belief or behaviour. The centre
of the collective experience is in fact the body, the
physical dimension of all practitioners. We share
physical conditions, rather than religious belief. It is
for this reason that perhaps the practice is fulfilled
by all in the same way, regardless of the different
levels of ability in reading sutras or making mudras. At the conclusion of the sait goma, I develop
a new way of understanding the condition of my
fellow practitioners. Although their opinions are
sometimes conflicted, and their behaviour is sometimes hard to understand, I develop the subtle
certainty that all of our bodies are feeling the same,
soaked in the same physical dimension of the holy
mountain. The effectiveness of the spatial component is most vividly perceivable in many moments
of the practice, and this may be attributed to the
interaction between the macroscopic environment
of the mountain and the microcosms of our bodies.
The ontologically shared dimension of this interaction is in fact defined by the coalescence of these
two universes in mere spatial terms: entering the
mountain. The practice works towards discarding
the remainders of the outer world by severely testing the body. Once the older body is disposed of,
the individual can be reborn as new from the same
substance of the holy place. This sensation of
rebirth is vivid and sharp on the last day of practice
when, after a last service at the Dewa Sanzan, the
newborn shugenja give a loud cry (the cry of birth)
and then rush outside the shrine precinct with the
same desperate will for life as that of a newborn
baby. Just as on the day when we entered the precinct, the idea of now being out is equally strong. It
may mean different things to different people. For
me it means above all the fact that it was all over,
and although arduous, I have made it until the end.
But to all of our bodies this certainly means the
possibility to finally eat a decent meal, to take a
bath, and to rest properly.

The author, Tullio Lobetti, practices sum on the fourth day, alongside the entire group of male practitioners, regardless of age.

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CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Information on Japanese Religions

The International Association for the

History of Religions (IAHR)
XIXth World Congress
Tokyo 2005
Gaynor Sekimori
One of the largest congresses ever held by
the International Association for the History
of Religions (IAHR) took place in Tokyo from
March 24 to March 30, 2005. Organized by
Professor Susumu Shimazono (University of
Tokyo), President of the Japanese Association
for Religious Studies, it attracted over 1600
participants. The world congress is held every
five years by the IAHR, which is made up of 35
national and four regional member associations.
This year, five plenary sessions and seventeen
sessions (averaging eighteen panels in each),
broadly covering the theme, Religion: Conflict and
Peace, were held in conjunction with a special
session devoted to Japanese religions and also
to
the study of religion in general. Given the vast
scale of the conference, it is inevitable that any
one participant was able to experience only a tiny
amount of what was on offer. I would like therefore
to report here on that segment of the conference
that I participated in directly, and pass on certain
observations that I made at the time.
The conference was held at the Takanawa
Prince Hotel complex in Tokyo, in a number of
buildings situated amidst beautiful gardens which
are a famous site for cherry blossoms. It opened
on March 24 with addresses by IAHR officials,

34

including Noriyoshi Tamaru, the Congress Chair,

Peter Antes, President of IAHR and Armin
Geertz, Chair of the International Congress
Committee, as well as congratulatory speeches by
Prince Mikasa, the Honorary Congress Chair, and
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (in abstentia).
The Opening Symposium, entitled Religions
and Dialogue among Civilizations, followed
with four panelists presenting a variety of views
concerning whether the clash of civilizations and
religions is the main threat facing the world today,
and suggesting the possibilities and limitations of
dialogue among them. The plurality of religious,
cultural and academic viewpoints covered suggest
that it can only be through the appreciation
of diversity that critical issues can fruitfully be
discussed.
Of interest was the panel held early in the
conference entitled The Lotus Sutra and Peace.
Chaired by Gene Reeves (University of Tsukuba),
it discussed various aspects of the influence of
the Lotus Sutra on society, particularly in terms
of its potential for resolving conflict. Hiroshi
Kanno (Soka University) spoke on inclusivism
and tolerance in the Lotus Sutra, Chieko Osawa
(University of Tokyo) on the Sutras influence
on the writer Kenji Miyazawa, and Tomonobu
Shinozaki (Rissh Kosei-kai) on Nikkyo Niwanos
understanding of peace based on the Sutra. The
discussion of the influence of Lotus teaching on
Miyazawa Kenji held great interest for me, as I can
see considerable Miyazawa influence in the works
of the great animation artist, Hayao Miyazaki,
known worldwide for his film, Spirited Away. In
addition, the W
orld
C
ongress for R

eligion and
P
eace
(WCRP) sponsored a panel, chaired
by Yoshiaki Sanada (Chuo University), which
discussed Peace Studies and the role of people of
religion in the modern world.
Two other panels that attracted considerable
interest discussed the religious dimension of
Japanese popular culture and the nature of
Japanese Buddhism. The former was concerned
with how anime, manga and music portray
religious themes, either intentionally or
subconsciously. Western culture, though
increasingly influenced by Japanese anime and
manga through film, computer games and the
printed media, does not tend to associate such
media with religious proselytization, so
Mark McWilliams (St. Lawrence University)
presentation on how comic books are used within
the new religion Kofuku no Kagaku gave many
participants a new dimension of understanding
about Japanese religious culture. The latter
panel provided various perspectives on the study
of Japanese Buddhism, particularly from the
viewpoint of the dominance of western discourse
about religion on the way it is studied both in

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Katja Triplett
IAHR Tokyo Conference Organizer, Professor Susumo Shimazono
(University of Tokyo), President of the Japanese Association for
Religious Studies

Peter Flgel

Japan and abroad. Dr Lucia Dolce (SOAS) in

particular provided a fascinating glimpse of the
way Japanese Buddhism was seen in the west
from the seventeenth century, particularly of the
way Buddhist images were portrayed through the
European gaze.
On the evening of March 25, the ethnographic
filmmaker Minao Kitamura (Visual Folklore)
presented a two-hour documentary of the
annual mountain-entry ritual practice of Hagur
Shugend called Aki no Mine (Autumn Peak). The
Akinomine takes the form of a religious drama of
death and rebirth in the mountain, and Mt Hagur
preserves what is considered a medieval form of a
mountain-entry ritual which can no longer be found
anywhere else in Japan. Shugend rituals are
essentially private, and this film represents the first
time movie cameras were allowed inside Kotakuji
temple at Mt Hagur, Yamagata prefecture, where
the ritual takes place over nine days in August
each year. A capacity audience of around 200
heard an introduction from the pre-eminent scholar
of Shugend, Hitoshi Miyake (Kokugakuin
University), before the film started. Although
the soundtrack was in Japanese, I prepared an
English translation, which I read out in conjunction
with the Japanese, and which is also available on
the Internet(www.mfj.gr.jp/film/
narrationhagurof.pdf).
On March 27 a series of panels on
Japanese religions was held, with Japanese as
the chief medium of discussion. It began with
a special session chaired by Paul Swanson
(Nanzan University), and with Makoto Hayashi
(Aichi Gakuen) as respondent, looking at
religion and politics in Japan. Helen Hardacre
(Harvard University) took up the thorny issue
of constitutional revision and its implications for
religious groups and organizations, stressing
that the stances they take will largely define
the position of religion in Japanese society in
the coming years. Fumihiko Sueki (University
of Tokyo) looked at the combinatory nature of

Japanese religion, where a clear cut divide

between Shinto and Buddhism did not exist
formally before the religious changes that took
place in the 1870s and did not disappear even
after the government legislated to clarify what
belonged to each. Professor Sueki believes that
modern Buddhism has been too concerned with
appearing to be rational and so has tried to gloss
over its esoteric, magical, and even funerary,
elements. He calls such surface rationalization
the upper structure and contrasts it to a lower
structure which includes the above elements.
Thus he criticises modern Buddhism as having
failed to deal openly with the faith of the people.
The third speaker was Yoshio Yasumaru
(Hitotsubashi University), who spoke about issues
concerning the separation of religion and state
in modern Japan and the way that freedom of
religion was interpreted.
I was involved again that afternoon, in a panel
organized by the Association for the Study of
Japanese Mountain Religion (Sangaku Shugen
Gakkai) called Shugend and Mountain Beliefs
and Practices in Japan. Hitoshi Miyake, the
President to the Association, opened the panel
with a paper entitled Shugend and Mountain
Beliefs and Practices, where he made reference
to the designation of the sacred mountains and
pilgrimage routes of the Kii peninsula as a World
Heritage site in 2004. Shugend emerged from
this region and formed into an independent
organization around the thirteenth century,
centred on priests from the esoteric Tendai and
Shingon schools who went to the mountains to
gain spiritual power, which became the pivot of
their magico-religious activities. It represents a
combination of native beliefs, Buddhism, Daoism
and Yin-Yang divinatory practices (Onmyd) and
it was an important current in medieval religion
(Akeshi Kiba). Christian missionaries who lived
in Japan in the sixteenth century wrote of its
existence in their reports to Europe (Hartmut
O. Rotermund). During the early modern period
Shugend centred on great mountain shrinetemple complexes and village shugenja, who
performed a variety of religious services for
their communities and were closely involved

35

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Dr Gaynor Sekimori (University of Tokyo)

was holder of the 2000-1 CSJR Postdoctoral
Fellowship. Now an associate professor at the
Institute of Oriental Culture at the University of
Tokyo, she is also the managing editor of the
International Journal of Asian Studies.

36

Katja Triplett

in local ritual events (Kesao Miyamoto). It was

banned in 1872 by the Meiji government as part
of their policy to separate Buddhism and Shinto,
though the way the policy was carried out was
not uniform among Shugend centres, being
affected by local interests and conditions (Gaynor
Sekimori). However after the Second World War,
religious organizations were given the freedom to
operate independently, and female practitioners
in particular have greatly increased in number in
recent years, in what was traditionally a male-only
preserve. Where restrictions on female practice
still remain, questions have been raised about
whether this represents religious differentiation
or social and gender discrimination (Masataka
Suzuki). This session drew a near-capacity
audience, again attesting to the interest Shugend
o
has evoked in contemporary academic circles.
This emphasis on my personal interests is
perhaps misleading as to the great variety of
reports that were presented at the conference.
Social engagement, home schooling, New Age
movements, bioethics, the media, non-religious
spiritual culture, religion and science, death,
suicide and euthanasia, medicine and healing,
and abortion and infanticide were issues covered
in regards the social dimension of religion. There
were a large number of papers on the major world
religions as well.
There were also a number of panels
that discussed arts and music within religion.
Participants had the additional opportunity to
examine various facets of these themes through
used by performers in the religious dance dramas
called kagura, through the special lecture on the
Ten Ox-herding Pictures of Chinese Chan (Zen).
I particularly enjoyed the kagura performance
centring on the dance of the mountain deity
(Gongen-mai) that closed the conference. It was
given by the Otsugunai troupe of performers from
Mt Hayachine in Iwate prefecture, and gave
many of us the opportunity to be bitten by the
lion-headed deity
, so as
to be purified by

pass
ing
beneath its body, and

to be reborn.
I was delighted by the degree of interaction
and dialogue that was achieved among all the
scholars present. I look forward to the further
internationalization of my own field of Japanese
religious history, as Japanese it and foreign
scholars continue to work together,
enriching one another, and the field, with their own
particular academic strengths.

A Japanese religious blessing ceremony first for the outgoing and

the newly elected Executive Committe of the IAHR.

The Theme of Pure Lands in

Japanese Religions: A report on
the 11th EAJS Conference
Vienna, September 2005
Anna Andreeva
In September 2005, the University of Vienna hosted the 11th Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS). Held once every
three years, the Conference always attracts a large
number of scholars from Europe, Japan and United
States, and needless to say, has a catalytic effect
on many fields of Japanese Studies. This year,
the section on Religion and History of Ideas was
no different: for three days scholars from many
countries presented their research and exchanged
ideas on the topic of Pure Lands in Japanese Religions. The section was hugely successful, and due
to the pervasiveness of this theme in many areas
of Japanese religious discourse, a great number of
the papers presented brought up a variety of exciting perspectives on the topic.
The opening session was held on August 31.
The keynote speaker, Professor Sueki Fumihiko
(University of Tokyo), addressed the concepts of
this-worldness and other-worldness in Pure Land
Buddhism. His lecture, whilst encompassing many
aspects of Pure Land thought in Japan, highlighted
the complexities of the discourse and provoked
much thought on the purpose and function of the
addressed concepts in the various religious practices of Japan.
The first day of the Conference, gave a good
start to the work of the section. It was opened by
Meri Arichi (SOAS) who presented a discussion
of the iconography of the Pure Land as seen on
the medieval Sann Miya Mandara, as well as its
representations at the actual sacred sites. Anna
Andreeva (University of Cambridge) followed

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

suit with a case study of kami worship in Miwa,

and its relationship to the activities of the Saidaiji
monks who attempted the restoration of the Vinaya
precepts amidst the rise of the Amidist practices
in the 13th-14th century. Peter Knecht (Nanzan
University) presented a paper which concentrated
on the Ise Sankei Mandala and the image of the
Pure Land.
The next session consisted of three papers,
all of which investigated the concept of the Pure
Land in varying contexts. Karen Mack (Jodo
Shu Research Institute) presented an interesting perspective on the phenomenon of invoking
Fud for rebirth in image and text, whereas P.
Keller Kimbrough (Colby College) talked about the
topographies of the Pure Land in medieval Japanese fiction. William Lee (University of Manitoba)
assessed the concepts of the Pure Land as they
appear in Shugend rituals, kagura and hanamatsuri. In the afternoon, Gail Chins (University of
Regina) consideration of the skilful means of the
Abject Buddhist Body in the Yamai no soshi, was
followed by the presentation by Kimura Saeko
(Tsurumi University), who approached the imagery
of Tosotsu Heaven in medieval Japan as a another
land of rebirth for women. Fabio Rambelli (Sapporo University) prompted a sparkling discussion
with his ideas on the limits of Buddhist salvation,
where he touched upon the problem of icchantikas,
bodhisattvas and lepers in the Buddhist universe
of meaning as it appears in medieval Japan. The
last session of the first day was opened by Harold Bolitho (Harvard University) who talked about
Takizawa Bakins beliefs. The day was rounded
up by the discussion of the Jish monasticism in
the Pure Land tradition, presented by Sybil Anne
Thorton (Arizona State University).
Day two was just as stimulating and productive.
Agnieszka Kozyra (Warsaw University) brought up
the discussion of the Pure Land elements in the
philosophy of Nishida Kitar in her paper dedicated
to the process of overcoming jiriki-tariki dualism.
Maximiliane Demmel (University of Munich) followed with the discussion of rebirth in the Pure
Land as it appears in the controversial interpretation by Suzuki Daisetsu. Steffen Dolls (University
of Munich) talk entitled, A phenomenology of self
concentrated on the interpretation of the Ten OxHerding pictures by Ueda Shizuteru. The figure
of Shiratori Kurakichi became a focal point for the
presentation by Yoko Takau-Drobin (Goeteborg
University), who discussed the transition of his
theories of Yamataikoku between 1910 and 1942.
Paul Swanson (Nanzan University) drew attention
to a figure of Takagi Kenmyo: a forgotten silhouette
of martyr and misfit in the political landscape of
the Meiji era. Brian Victoria presented a paper on
the militarization of the Pure Land in the context of
Modern Japan.

The afternoon session was dedicated to a panel

aimed at contextualizing the Pure Land Buddhist
tradition in modern Japan. The Panel comprised
four speakers and a discussant, Shinya Yasutomi,
from Otani University. Michael Conway discussed
the Dbkai Und movement in the post-war
Japan, particularly, the figure of Yasuda Rijin. Ugo
Dessi assessed the present-day social activities
of Jdo Shinsh. The modernization of Shinsh in
modern contexts, such as in case of Matsumoto,
was a theme of the presentation by Takami Inoue.
Elizabetta Porcu presented a discussion on the
facets of Pure Land Buddhism in Japanese culture.
The last session of the day was started by
Kayoko Nohara (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
who observed religious culture as it appears in
translated literature and reality in Japan. Yoshida
Tomoko (University of Oklahoma) discussed the
activities of Kuroda Toshio (1926-1993) in regards
to modern historiography on Jdo Shinsh. The
last presentation of the day was delivered by Galen
Amstutz (Rykoku University), who discussed the
concepts of tariki, the adaptive unconscious and
authority.
The third and the last day of the conference
began with a presentation by David Plath and
Ronald Toby (both University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign) of the film, Cosmic Disc: the Kumano
Kanji Jikkai Mandala. The session was followed by
a fruitful discussion. Ineke Van Put (Leiden University) presented her work on Sukhvatii in the Context of Intermediate Existence. Mark Blum (State
University of New York at Albany) talked about the
Antarbhava stra and its implications for linking
the Itermediate Existence doctrine with Amitbhas
Pure Land. The last session of the conference was
closed by the appointment of the convenors for the
next EAJS conference, and proposals for topics.
Many thanks go to the organising committee of the 11th EAJS Conference, the University
of Vienna, and the convenors of the section, Drs
Galen Amstutz and Mark Blum. Their work ensured
a productive and stimulating time for all the participants of the section on Religion and History of
Ideas. Galen Amstutz and Dr Susan Formaneck
(Austrian Academy of Sciences) will take over as
the organizers of the next panel at the 12th EAJS
Conference, which will be held in September 2008
at the University of Lecce, Italy.
Anna Andreeva is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research is concentrated on
the activities of the Ritsu lineage in the Kamakura
and Kenmu periods, and one of the examples of
medieval kami worship, Miwa Shinto.

37

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Ritual of Sacred Entertainment:

Hongawa Kagura UK Tour
Shino Arisawa
This year a Hongawa Kagura troupe from Kchi
prefecture in Japan came to the UK to give a tour of
performances and workshops in Bath, London, and
Llangollen between the 21st of May and the 3rd of
June. The tour offered a rare opportunity for western
audiences to see one of the oldest extant forms of
kagura, a religious ritual of sacred entertainment.

Lucia Dolce

The first performance took place at the Guildhall

in Bath, as a part of the Bath International Music
Festival. The windows in the hall were shaded and
the lights were dimmed to create a twilight effect;
Hongawa Kagura has been performed at night
since its inception in the early 16th century. The
troupe consisted of five male performers, whose
performance included recitations of prayer, dances,
which represented several deities, and also a theatrical
performance with dialogues. Although the music
seemed to be very simple at first, with repeated
sequences of drums and cymbals (sometimes with
singing or recitation), the atmosphere gradually
increased in intensity and the dancers danced more
vigorously. The performers wore masks depicting
deities, and this made their appearance rather
unearthly. The theatrical repertoire, which started
with dialogues between a deity of a woodman and
villagers, was very comical and its personalised
deity illustrated the Japanese religious belief that,
just like human beings, deities have individual
personalities and are approachable. The audience
looked particularly excited when the performance
reached the moment in which the deity Yata scattered
handfuls of dried beans onto the stage and towards
the audience. This segment reflected the belief that
one still has a wicked heart if pain is felt when the
beans make contact with the body.

Not only was the Hongawa Kagura performance

itself fascinating, but also of great interest were the
lectures given before the performance by Mr Noritake
Kanzaki, a Shinto priest and folklorist, and Dr Lucia
Dolce (SOAS). The lectures described the aspects
of Japanese religion found in kagura, including the
veneration of nature, ancestral worship, polytheistic
belief, and its amalgamation with Buddhism. The
lectures also covered the history and performance
context of kagura, its development from ritualistic
form (celebrating and worshipping ancestors and
deities in individual regions) to a more theatrical
aspect, which provides more entertaining features for
the audience.
Mr Kanzaki explained that Japanese deities live close
to people, usually in natural environments such as
in forests, rivers, and mountains. Kagura generally
starts with a ritual to purify the stage in preparation
for inviting deities to participate in the performance
along with the participants, to possess the performer
during the dance, or to tell the oracle. Mr Kanzaki
said, When we ask our deities to come down to our
place they do so quicker than I travel from Tokyo to
Bath.
As part of the Hongawa Kagura visit, workshops were
also held for families to learn about the music and
dance, as well as making gohei, a religious implement
for purification made of plaited strips of paper. Many
children accompanied by their parents were jumping
up and down to the kagura music, and they also
waved gohei around enthusiastically.
Lucia Dolce

38

As an ethnomusicology research student, I enjoyed

talking to the performers, finding out about their

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

lives, and hearing various stories about their early

encounters with Hongawa Kagura. Nowadays it is very
common for most kagura to depend on part-time
performers who have other regular work. Members of
the Hongawa Kagura troupe, for example, also work
for private companies, or at government offices. They
volunteer their time to train, rehearse and perform
kagura during the peak season in November and
December.

Lucia Dolce

Mitsuo Aochi (27), for example, works for a

construction company. Mitsuos first encounter with
Hongawa Kagura was in a workshop at his primary
school. After that first encounter, Hongawa Kagura
stayed within the recesses of his mind, and every
time he saw performances at shrines he thought that
someday he would take part in this sacred event.
Mitsuo told me that it was the weight of 500 years
of tradition that attracted him. Mitsuo also said that
whenever he dances he feels the existence of deities
within himself. For example, when he performs the
Dance of the Tray, he tries to dance with the feeling
that deities are on the trays that rest on his palms.

years, because they are in themselves very broad and

deep. Mitsuo told me that his attraction to performing
kagura is to train himself to achieve the breadth
and depth of this tradition, which is somewhat like
climbing Mt. Everest, where people struggle to reach
the top by training for many decades.

Lucia Dolce

Prior to the performance, I wondered if the

audience in the UK would appreciate the religious
significance of the ceremony, or whether it would
be regarded only as entertainment with music and
dance. Mituso was also wondering how kagura
would be perceived by the audience that might
have never seen Japanese people in kimono. His
anxiety was alleviated at the start of the performance
when he spoke in English to an audience for the
first time saying, I am a woodman, OK? When
the performance was received with laughter and
clapping, Mitsuo thought to himself I have got
through to my audience. They understand me!
I asked Mitsuo what motivates him to continue
performing kagura. Mitsuo explained to me that
there are many repertoires in Hongawa Kagura, each
of which has a different recitation and dance, even
the drum playing different. It is therefore impossible
to master all of these repertoires within one or two

He later told me that he realized human beings are

great because even Mitsuo, who was unable to speak
English, could communicate with people, even if only
by means of paper and scissors, as in the example of
the gohei-making workshop. Kagura performances
in different contexts, either in Japan or abroad, at a
shrine or a concert hall, evoke a variety of feelings
and impressions on the audience, as well as on the
performers. This first Honkawa Kagura overseas tour
not only offered a unique opportunity for western
audiences to be introduced to an ancient and rare
Japanese religious ritual, but also for the members
of the Honkawa Kagura troupe to enjoy a cultural
exchange with people in the UK.
Shino Arisawa, who acted as a translator during the
Hongawa Kagura tour, is a PhD candidate at the Department
of Music, (SOAS). Her research centres on the perception of
continuity and change within Japanese traditional music.

39

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Japanese Religion and Popular Culture

Japanese Sacred Places in

Stereoscopic Relief
Janet Leigh Foster
Stereoscopy was borne of the Age of Enlightenment.
The impulse to scientific inquiry sparked by the 18th
century philosophical movement, which advocated
wisdom as the foundation for a system encompassing
ethics, aesthetics and knowledge, led people to look
for new means to expand their vision of the world.
It was a time when science was often opposed to
religion, yet at the beginning of the next century, the
invention of stereoscopic photography would result in
representing the essence of sacred sites.

Stereo cards were often sold in boxed sets as travel libraries to be

seen through viewers such as the Holmes model shown below, produced by Underwood & Underwood in 1901. The anaglyph shown
on the facing page is a digital re-mastering of this stereo card.

In 1838, Sir Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the first

stereoscopic viewing apparatus, gave a lecture at the
Royal Society of London in which he explained how
images could be made in stereoscopic relief. Imitating
the way our eyes work together to perceive the world
in three dimensions, stereoscopic image pairs depict
the same view from slightly different angles. When
the images converge through a viewer, the result is a
three dimensional picture. In 1849 Sir David Brewster
invented a portable device, the lenticular stereoscope,
and collaborated with William Fox Talbot to make the
first photographs in stereoscopic relief.
Unveiled to great acclaim at the 1851 Festival of Britain, stereoscopic photography became a major industry in 19th century Britain and the United States. Image pairs were mounted on cards that could be seen
in 3-D through viewers. Themed sets of cards were
produced in multiples of thousands, and then printed
again as companies sold their negatives to other concerns. Most of the exported stereoscopic photographs
of Japanese religious sites were taken by anonymous
foreign photographers who were on assignment for
British and American companies between 1860 and
1900. Scenes of temples and shrines were considered
to be traditional and uniquely Japanese, and were
therefore popular subjects.
These photographers captured not only the scene
itself, but because they were working in a stereoscopic
genre, also inadvertently expressed an intrinsic aspect
of the subject. Viewing a photograph in stereoscopic
relief evokes considerations of spatial representation,
an important feature of religious sites, used to convey ontological conditions that cannot otherwise be
expressed.

40

The stereoscopic photographs of Japanese sacred

places included here are image pairs from stereo
cards, which have been digitally re-mastered as
anaglyphs. A method devised in 1891 by Luis Ducas
du Hauron to free stereoscopic photographs from the
confines of a mechanical stereo-viewer, anaglyphs
were produced by printing both negatives of a stereoscopic image onto one sheet of paper through filters,
one blue or green, and the other, red. When seen
through glasses with filters of the same hues, the result was a three dimensional image. The stereoscopic
photographs included here are from the collection of
the author. The anaglyphs were made by David Burder
FRPS FBIPP, Director of 3-D Images Ltd.

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Anaglyph by David Burder FRPS FBIPP

At high tide Itsukushima Shrine, on the island of Miyajima, appears to be floating on the water. The entrance to the shrine is
indicated by a torii (gate), a structure which demarcates sacred and secular space. The composition of this photograph, however, leads the viewer away from the shrine, towards the landscape. Thus the torii, which symbolizes an entrance, is depicted
as an exit, and the sacred area it delineates becomes ambiguous. Is it the shrine which is not visible in the image, or is it the
landscape?

41

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Anaglyph by David Burder FRPS FBIPP

The Great Buddha of Kamakura, cast in bronze, was erected in 1252 on the grounds of the
Kotokuin temple, in the western part of Kamakura. Designated a National Treasure, this statue
has been a source of inspiration for centuries. Featured in an 1892 poem by Rudyard Kipling,
Buddha at Kamakura, it was also a popular subject for stereo photographers. Although the
stereo card (below) is dated 1896, copyrighted by the firm of Strohmeyer & Wyman, the exact
date is unknown. The photograph could have been made before that, depending on the
amount of time it took for the negative to travel from Japan, and on whether the company
which produced this card was the first to issue it.

42

CSJRNewsletter January 2006 Issue 12-13

Anaglyph by David Burder FRPS FBIPP

In Japanese sacred architecture, spatial representation is used to convey ontological conditions which cannot
otherwise be expressed. This stereoscopic photograph depicts one of the temple gates at Tshg in Nikk. The
gate dates to the beginning of the 17th century, to Ieyasu Tokugawa, founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, who is
enshrined at the site.

The author wishes to thank David Burder FRPS FBIPP,

Director of 3-D Images Ltd . (www.3Dimages.co.uk) for
the anaglyphs and 3-D glasses. Appreciation is also due
to David Starkman of Reel 3-D for further advice.

43

Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions

School of Oriental and African Studies
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1 0XG
email: [email protected]
Centre Website
www.soas.ac.uk/Centres/JapaneseReligions

Centre Chair
Dr Lucia Dolce ([email protected])

Executive:
Professor Brian Bocking ([email protected])
Dr John Breen ([email protected])
Dr Lucia Dolce ([email protected])

Associate Members
Anna Andreeva ([email protected])
Mitsutoshi Horii ([email protected])
Tullio Lobetti ([email protected])
Yukiko Nishimura ([email protected])
Carla Tronu Montana ([email protected])
Katja Triplett ([email protected])

Centre Assistant
Janet Leigh Foster ([email protected])

Newsletter Editors
Lucia Dolce and Janet Leigh Foster

Design
Janet Leigh Foster
Printed by The Print Room (SOAS)
For information on the Centre and updates on events, please consult the
Centre website:
www.soas.ac.uk/Centres/JapaneseReligions
To be added to our electronic mailing list and/or to send us your comments, news and announcements, please e-mail us at: [email protected]

Centre for the Study of

Japanese Religions
SOAS Russell Square London WC1H 0XG Email: [email protected]