Pub Date : 2020-12-16DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.353-358
J. LeFebvre
{"title":"Review of: James C. Dobbins, Behold the Buddha: Religious Meanings of Japanese Buddhist Icons","authors":"J. LeFebvre","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.353-358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.353-358","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41758545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-16DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.225-246
Wai-ming Ng
Mazu was a Chinese sea goddess worshiped by fishermen, villagers, maritime merchants, and local officials in the Sinic world including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Ryūkyū Kingdom. In a sense, the Chinese cultural sphere was also the “sphere of Mazu belief.” Compared with China’s other neighboring nations, Japan settled at a deeper level of localization, turning Mazu into a Shinto deity, worshiping the Chinese goddess in the Shinto way, and enshrining her along with other Shinto deities. In the Tokugawa period, Mazu was worshiped by the Japanese as the manifestation of different Shinto deities. Based on Japanese primary sources, this study investigates the Shintoization of Mazu in Tokugawa Japan using Funadama belief among seafarers and shipbuilders, Noma Gongen belief in the Satsuma domain, and Ototachibanahime belief in the Mito domain as the main points of reference. Mazu was associated with Funadama, the Japanese protector god of seafarers, in different parts of Japan. In the Satsuma and Mito domains, Mazu belief differed tremendously from that in China in terms of religious titles, festival dates, forms of worship, and functions. This research aims to deepen our understanding of how Chinese folk religions were incorporated into the Shinto framework of Tokugawa Japan and the nature of the popularization of Chinese culture in Japan through the lens of localization.
{"title":"The Shintoization of Mazu in Tokugawa Japan","authors":"Wai-ming Ng","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.225-246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.225-246","url":null,"abstract":"Mazu was a Chinese sea goddess worshiped by fishermen, villagers, maritime merchants, and local officials in the Sinic world including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Ryūkyū Kingdom. In a sense, the Chinese cultural sphere was also the “sphere of Mazu belief.” Compared with China’s other neighboring nations, Japan settled at a deeper level of localization, turning Mazu into a Shinto deity, worshiping the Chinese goddess in the Shinto way, and enshrining her along with other Shinto deities. In the Tokugawa period, Mazu was worshiped by the Japanese as the manifestation of different Shinto deities. Based on Japanese primary sources, this study investigates the Shintoization of Mazu in Tokugawa Japan using Funadama belief among seafarers and shipbuilders, Noma Gongen belief in the Satsuma domain, and Ototachibanahime belief in the Mito domain as the main points of reference. Mazu was associated with Funadama, the Japanese protector god of seafarers, in different parts of Japan. In the Satsuma and Mito domains, Mazu belief differed tremendously from that in China in terms of religious titles, festival dates, forms of worship, and functions. This research aims to deepen our understanding of how Chinese folk religions were incorporated into the Shinto framework of Tokugawa Japan and the nature of the popularization of Chinese culture in Japan through the lens of localization.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49176885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-16DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.363-366
April D. Hughes
{"title":"Review of: Takashi Miura, Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan","authors":"April D. Hughes","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.363-366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.363-366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45588435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.135-160
Aaron P. Proffitt
New approaches to Buddhist doctrine and practice flourished within and across diverse lineages and sub-lineages in early medieval Japan. The early-modern and modern sectarianization of Japanese Buddhism, however, has tended to obscure the complex ways that the very idea of orthodoxy functioned in this fluid medieval environment. In this article, I explore attempts to account for the diversity of views regarding] nenbutsu orthodoxy in trea- tises composed by scholars monks affiliated with Mt. Kōya and Mt. Hiei. In particular, this article contextualizes how these monks constructed the idea of an esoteric nenbutsu by drawing upon earlier taxonomies developed in the Tendai school as well as the East Asian esoteric Buddhist corpus. Ultimately, this study concludes that the esoteric nenbutsu was not the provenance of a particular school or sect, but rather served as a polemical construct designed to subsume the diversity of approaches to nenbutsu praxis as monks in diverse lineages competed with one another to define esoteric Buddhism in the early medieval context.
{"title":"Nenbutsu Orthodoxies in Medieval Japan","authors":"Aaron P. Proffitt","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.135-160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.135-160","url":null,"abstract":"New approaches to Buddhist doctrine and practice flourished within and across diverse lineages and sub-lineages in early medieval Japan. The early-modern and modern sectarianization of Japanese Buddhism, however, has tended to obscure the complex ways that the very idea of orthodoxy functioned in this fluid medieval environment. In this article, I explore attempts to account for the diversity of views regarding] nenbutsu orthodoxy in trea- tises composed by scholars monks affiliated with Mt. Kōya and Mt. Hiei. In particular, this article contextualizes how these monks constructed the idea of an esoteric nenbutsu by drawing upon earlier taxonomies developed in the Tendai school as well as the East Asian esoteric Buddhist corpus. Ultimately, this study concludes that the esoteric nenbutsu was not the provenance of a particular school or sect, but rather served as a polemical construct designed to subsume the diversity of approaches to nenbutsu praxis as monks in diverse lineages competed with one another to define esoteric Buddhism in the early medieval context.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41752923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.183-185
Or Porath
{"title":"Review of: Anna Andreeva, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan","authors":"Or Porath","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.183-185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.183-185","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45854228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.85-102
T. Kameyama
In this article, I discuss the significance of embryological knowledge, such as the red and white drops and the five developmental stages of the embryo, in medieval Shingon esoteric Buddhism. Specifically, I examine the writings of Kakuban, an eminent Shingon Buddhist monk in early medieval Japan, and point out that, according to Kakuban, embryological knowledge was connected with the six elements, which were fundamental to Shingon conceptions of ontology. In other words, by constructing embryological theories, medieval Shingon monks such as Kakuban attempted to make a correlation between abstract and distant cosmologies and the life and death realities of their daily lives.
{"title":"The Doctrinal Origins of Embryology in the Shingon School","authors":"T. Kameyama","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.85-102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.85-102","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I discuss the significance of embryological knowledge, such as the red and white drops and the five developmental stages of the embryo, in medieval Shingon esoteric Buddhism. Specifically, I examine the writings of Kakuban, an eminent Shingon Buddhist monk in early medieval Japan, and point out that, according to Kakuban, embryological knowledge was connected with the six elements, which were fundamental to Shingon conceptions of ontology. In other words, by constructing embryological theories, medieval Shingon monks such as Kakuban attempted to make a correlation between abstract and distant cosmologies and the life and death realities of their daily lives.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46764985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.11-41
A. Andreeva
The intellectual links between medieval esoteric temples and localized Shingon movements are still far from being well understood. Although a part of education at major monastic complexes such as Daigoji and Mt. Kōya, transmissions of esoteric theories were not uniform and varied depending on their recipients’ social status. A comparative reading of the Yugikyō transmissions imparted by the abbot Jikken of Kongōōin to his official disciple Dōhan and a lesser-known semi-itinerant priest, Rendōbō Hōkyō, from a local training hall at Mt. Miwa in Nara Prefecture shows that during the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries non-elite practitioners in medieval Japan, such as those associated with the local Miwa lineage, did not simply study the Yugikyō teachings but were actively involved in their dissemination. They used theories associated with this sutra as key parts of their own religious capital and transported them from large esoteric temples further afield to Japan’s countryside.
{"title":"Buddhist Temple Networks in Medieval Japan: Daigoji, Mt. Kōya, and the Miwa Lineage","authors":"A. Andreeva","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.11-41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.11-41","url":null,"abstract":"The intellectual links between medieval esoteric temples and localized Shingon movements are still far from being well understood. Although a part of education at major monastic complexes such as Daigoji and Mt. Kōya, transmissions of esoteric theories were not uniform and varied depending on their recipients’ social status. A comparative reading of the Yugikyō transmissions imparted by the abbot Jikken of Kongōōin to his official disciple Dōhan and a lesser-known semi-itinerant priest, Rendōbō Hōkyō, from a local training hall at Mt. Miwa in Nara Prefecture shows that during the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries non-elite practitioners in medieval Japan, such as those associated with the local Miwa lineage, did not simply study the Yugikyō teachings but were actively involved in their dissemination. They used theories associated with this sutra as key parts of their own religious capital and transported them from large esoteric temples further afield to Japan’s countryside.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42028368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.161-176
Yeonjoo Park
This study explores depictions of Sannō in the Keiran shūyōshū, a collection of orally transmitted teachings on Mt. Hiei compiled in the early fourteenth century. Originally a conglomeration of protective kami, Sannō rose in prominence to become the primary deity of the mountain and, by extension, the divine representation of the Tendai teachings. Based on the medieval hermeneutic of source-trace, Sannō was posited as the embodiment of Tendai esoteric doctrine. This article demonstrates that the Sannō deity of Mt. Hiei, as constructed in the Keiran, represents a concerted effort among Tendai scholastics in medieval Japan to specify an orthodox esoteric Buddhist tradition by associating the fundamental doctrines of their school and consolidating competing interpretations into the guise of a singular deity.
{"title":"The Making of an Esoteric Deity: Sannō Discourse in the Keiran shūyōshū","authors":"Yeonjoo Park","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.161-176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.161-176","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores depictions of Sannō in the Keiran shūyōshū, a collection of orally transmitted teachings on Mt. Hiei compiled in the early fourteenth century. Originally a conglomeration of protective kami, Sannō rose in prominence to become the primary deity of the mountain and, by extension, the divine representation of the Tendai teachings. Based on the medieval hermeneutic of source-trace, Sannō was posited as the embodiment of Tendai esoteric doctrine. This article demonstrates that the Sannō deity of Mt. Hiei, as constructed in the Keiran, represents a concerted effort among Tendai scholastics in medieval Japan to specify an orthodox esoteric Buddhist tradition by associating the fundamental doctrines of their school and consolidating competing interpretations into the guise of a singular deity.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46280536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.1-10
M. Mcmullen
{"title":"Editor's Introduction: Esoteric Traditions in Medieval Japan","authors":"M. Mcmullen","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.1-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.1-10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47757614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}