VOLUME 2: BORDERS
2019

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National Institute of Japanese Literature
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Editorial Board
Chief Editor
Imanishi Yūichirō
今西祐一郎

Professor Emeritus of the National Institute of Japanese
Literature; Representative Researcher

Editors
Kobayashi Kenji

Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature

Saitō Maori

Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature

Unno Keisuke

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

Koida Tomoko

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

ディディエ・ダヴァン

Didier Davin

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

Kristopher Reeves

Associate Professor at Waseda University

小林

健二

齋藤真麻理
海野
恋田

圭介
知子

クリストファー・リーブズ

Advisory Board
Jean-Noël Robert

Professor at Collège de France

X. Jie Yang

Professor at University of Calgary

Shimazaki Satoko

Associate Professor at University of Southern California

Michael Watson

Professor at Meiji Gakuin University

Araki Hiroshi

Professor at International Research Center for JapaneseStudies

ジャン＝ノエル・ロベール
楊

嶋崎

暁捷
聡子

マイケル・ワトソン荒木浩

Contents
ArticleLiminality Reimagined: Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Space andTainted Sages
	Abe Yasurō		Translated by Kristopher Reeves1

ArticleIllness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple
Yamamoto Satomi				Translated by Jeffrey Knott29
ArticleBetween the Mountain and the City – Ikkyū Sōjun and
the Blurred Border of Awakening		Didier Davin
45
ArticleWhere Yōkai Enter and Exit the Human Body: From Medieval
Picture Scrolls to Modern Folktales in Japan
Yasui Manami				Translated by Kristopher Reeves
61
ColumnBirth of a Monster Story on the Borderlands: The “Big People”(Chōjin) Legend in 8th-Century Silla		

Lee Sungsi

		Translated by Jeffrey Knott73
ColumnSacred Spaces in Medieval and Early Modern Shintō Rituals
Yonezawa Takanori				Translated by Kristopher Reeves77Column
Oracles and Offerings: The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Godsand Humans
		

Hirano Tae		
Borders Bibliography

Translated by Kristopher Reeves83		Contributors

Translated by Rachel Staum Mei87		

Submission Guidelines

Koida Tomoko

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 1–28
© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Liminality Reimagined:
Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Spaceand Tainted Sages
Abe Yasurō
Translated by Kristopher Reeves

Introduction
The concept of borders or, more broadly, liminality, as it evolved within theworld of Japanese culture and literature came to acquire a wide and complicatedset of meanings. The challenge of participating, by way of experimental enquiry,
in a comprehensive examination of the various stages along this multifaceted evolution is of special interest to scholars in the humanities. My own contribution tothis ongoing project rests on a single presupposition, one which necessarily arises
from a consideration of the very nature of liminality. It will be admitted that any
given border is, in fact, an embodiment, that is, an effort to give a degree of visible
reality to something that is otherwise intangible and invisible. That something is acomplex of memories, both those memories associated with the initial conception of
the border in question, as well as those memories latterly associated with the many
disputes that arise throughout the history of that border. A border, then, is a symbol the function of which is to vividly bring to mind a complex of associatedmemories. Like memories, these borders, once established, are far from stable.
Rather, borders are continually in flux, so much so that they are bound to be negatedand ultimately nullified. This transformation, this appearance and disappearance ofborders—a process we might refer to as the dynamism of liminality—deserves special attention. The essential nature of any border, I shall argue, lies not in any supposed stability, but rather in those aspects that are ever changing and unstable. Thisis the curious paradox of liminality: a border can only be properly grasped when
considered as something whose delineations are not at all clear or fixed; liminality has
no fixed borders. It is this paradox that I would like to examine here. Approaching
the subject from a primarily anthropological perspective, I shall shift the focus froma simple discussion of borders to a more dynamic consideration of border crossings(ekkyō 越境), that is, movement between and across liminal spaces.
Examples of border crossings are to be found most manifestly within the worldof literary and performative texts. Medieval myths and folktales are especially rich
1

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in this respect. Vernacular tales (monogatari 物語), anecdotal literature (setsuwa 説話),
foundational tales of shrines and temples (engi 縁起), miraculous accounts of divine beings (genki 験記), biographies (denki 伝記), and accounts of pilgrimages( junreiki 巡礼記), along with religious scriptures and other related texts present
include countless instances of movement between and across various borders.
Moreover, these and many other scenes of border crossing are reenacted visually
through the performative arts. In fact, one very fundamental role of the arts has
been to bring these tales of border crossing into the immediate world of experienced, observable reality.
1 . Women and Sages who Cross Borders1
1–1. Trespassing into Sacred Space: Shigisan engi emaki
Shigisan engi emaki 信貴山縁起絵巻, or the Illustrated Scroll of the Foundation of Mt.
Shigi, composed sometime during the twelfth century, is an illustrated account of
the founding, or rather the restoration, of a temple on Mt. Shigi 信貴山, locatedin the northwest of modern-day Nara. The protagonist of this work, a monk by
the name of Myōren 命蓮, is portrayed as possessing a number of supernatural
powers, and it is with him that we find one of the most striking examples of border crossing. The actual text of Shigisan engi emaki is more-or-less the same as thatfound in such collections of anecdotes and legends as Uji shūi monogatari 宇治拾遺
物語 (Collected Tales from Uji, early 13th century) and Kohon setsuwashū 古本説話集(Old Book of Anecdotal Tales, perhaps early 12th century). What makes this particular scroll so special, however, is not the text itself, but rather the illustrations.
After all, the written word can only do so much to convey scenes of miraculous
border crossing. The illustrator of Shigisan engi emaki was employed an artist’s
skill and imagination to visually portray things that might have otherwise remained unexpressed in the textual realm.
Shigisan engi emaki is divided into three main fascicles. The first, which has twoalternative entitles, namely, “Tobikura no maki” 飛倉巻 (The Flying Storehouse)or “Yamazaki chōja no maki” 山﨑長者巻 (The Wealthy Gentleman of Yamazaki),includes an account of how Myōren astonished everyone by making an entire
storehouse full of grain soar through the sky and arrive at Mt. Shiga, all bymeans of a humble begging bowl. The second fascicle, entitled “Engi kaji nomaki” 延喜加持巻 (Divine Protection of the Engi Emperor), shows Tsurugi nogohō dōji 釼護法童子—one of a band of sword-bearing Buddhist divinities,
usually taking the form of youthful boys, who are responsible for protecting
faithful devotees—flying straight into the imperial palace in order to guard Emperor
I have used the terms sage and ascetic more or less synonymously to translate the Japaneseword hijiri 聖. Abe also uses the word gyōja 行者, literally, one who cultivates (the Buddhist way),
which I have generally rendered as ascetic. The distinction, supposing there is one, between hijiri
and gyōja is not raised in this article, and so I have not made any attempt to differentiate the twoterms too rigorously in my own translation. [Translator’s note]1Liminality Reimagined

3

Daigo 醍醐天皇 (885–930, r. 897–930). It is here that Myōren’s wondrous power
to influence even these Buddhist divinities is visually represented with impressive skill. Finally, with the third fascicle, “Amagimi no maki” 尼公巻 (The Venerable Nun), we are treated to illustrations depicting the long journey of a nun,
who happens to be Myōren’s older sister, from their native land of Shinano 信濃(modern-day Nagano) all the way to Mt. Shigi for the express purpose of seeing
her beloved brother once more. One scene in particular finds this faithful nun
praying fervently throughout the night before a statue of Buddha within the Hallof the Great Buddha (Daibutsuden 大仏殿) in Tōdaiji Temple 東大寺, located,
like Mt. Shigi, in what is now Nara Prefecture. Not knowing where her brothermight be living, she had no choice but to seek divine revelation as to his whereabouts.
Now, the way in which this nun conducts her religious supplications within theHall of the Great Buddha is surely the most remarkable example of a bordercrossing to be found in this entire scroll. The precincts of this hall designated asacred space of exceptional sanctity, ritually separated from the surrounding
outside world by the strictest prohibitions. Emperor Shōmu 聖武天皇 (701–756,
r. 724–749) had commissioned the construction of Tōdaiji Temple in 745. The
Hall of the Great Buddha was completed in 751. Not even his primary consort,
Empress Kōmyō 光明皇后 (701–760), was permitted to step over the thresholdinto that most sacred hall. Once, according to Shichi daiji junrei shiki 七大寺巡礼
私記 (Private Account of a Pilgrimage to the Seven Great Temples, 1134), when she
dared to set her foot within the hall, the earth was rent asunder by a sudden
earthquake. Myōren’s sister, however, is permitted not only to step over thethreshold of the Hall of the Great Buddha, but to intone supplications before
the Buddha, to sleep in front of the hall—for it was through a dream that the
Buddha informed the nun of her brother’s whereabouts—and finally to offer up
prayers of thanksgiving after receiving this crucial revelation.
All of these actions are depicted by the artist of Shigisan engi emaki by means ofa technique known as iji dōzu 異時同図, literally “different times, one picture,” inwhich a series of successive events or actions, all performed by the same character, are shown against a single, unchanging background. On the one hand, we see
the nun standing in front of the threshold of the hall, and again sleeping justoutside the hall, an umbrella for her pillow. These two depictions of her represent actions performed in the real world. On the other hand, still in the same
picture, we see three more depictions of the nun, all within the precincts of thesacred hall. These may be understood as representing actions performed in the
dream world, when the Buddha was instructing the nun as to her brother’s location (Figure 1). The last of these three dream-world depictions shows the nun
gazing off in the direction of Mt. Shigi, where, so she has just been informed,
her brother is to be found. From here on in, the artist of Shigisan engi emaki depicts
the nun’s lengthy journey to Mt. Shigi through a series of quick snapshots: Now
we see, dispersed over the page here and there, her expressions of happiness

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Abe

Figure 1. Illustration of Tōdaiji Temple, from Shigisan engi emaki vol. 3.
(National Diet Library, Japan)
https://doi.org/10.11501/2574278

along the way; now we see the nun arriving at the mountain, calling out to herbrother, who, understandably surprised, has his head turned around in the direction of his sister’s voice. Here the scroll ends, with the emotional reunion ofbrother and sister.
There is, aside from this nun’s remarkable border crossing—out of the mundane world and into the sacred space of the Hall of the Great Buddha—
another equally astonishing border crossing that takes place in Shigisan engi
emaki. In what may be called the epilogue to this tale, we find the nun livingwith her brother in his mountain abode, where she learns from him the art ofreading the scriptures and presenting offerings to the Buddha. While thisteacher-disciple relationship shows clear separation of the genders and theirassigned roles, and while it is true that these two are siblings, even so, monastic
regulations strictly forbade men and women to live together, no matter their

Liminality Reimagined5

relationship. Here, however, the author unabashedly portrays these two livingside by side in a sanctified space, in what appears to be a blatant contradictionof Buddhist law. In the aforementioned Uji shūi monogatari, we find a tale entitled “Shinano no kuni no hijiri no koto” 信濃国聖事, or “An Account of theSage from Shinano Province (fascicle 8, tale 3), the text of which relates directly to the relationship between Myōren, the “sage from Shinano,” and his
sister, the nun.
According to this tale, the nun visited her brother for one simple reason,
namely, to present him with a sash or bellyband ( fukutai 腹帯, alternatively written 福衲) that she had woven with her own hands. She insisted, furthermore, onbinding this sash about her brother’s waist herself. With the sash bound about
his waist, the sage of Shinano was effectively invested with the feminine powerof a sister or young woman (imōto no chikara 妹の力).2 After the sage’s death, continues this tale, many people desired to get their hands on fragments of this sash,
which had since acquired the status of a holy relic. Since the sash itself was eventually lost, people resorted to the next best thing: One of the decaying pillars wasremoved from the storehouse at Mt. Shigi, the very storehouse that Myōren was
supposed to have made soar through the air atop a begging bowl, and which was
believed to have at one time housed the precious sash. Pieces of this pillar werethen used to make miniature carvings of Bishamonten 毘沙門天 (Sk: Vaiśravan·a),the principal deity worshipped at the temple atop Mt. Shigi, which carvings were,in turn, handed out to pilgrims visiting the site. This tale, then, serves as an explanation or foundational account (engi ) of the then contemporary belief in the
miraculous efficacy of Bishamonten at Mt. Shigi to bestow blessings upon faithful pilgrims. This account appeals to a popular belief in contagious magic: thesash was once worn by a great sage, and is therefore the source of blessings; anyone who comes into contact with the sash, or something else—in this case an
old pillar—which was once itself in contact with that sash, will likewise be
blessed. Considering that the power of this sash is said to have had its origin in
the symbolic union of a male sage and a nun, one might interpret this tale as amythical account of the communion of sacred and secular, as well as male andfemale.3
It is possible to understand the above tale as a foundational account aimed at
explaining the formation of a special class of sacred relics, namely those intimately connected with Buddhism. Buddhism, it must be remembered, was a religion that was not originally part of the doctrinal paradigm enshrined within
2
It should be noted here that the bellyband or fukutai was, and still is, generally made for andworn by pregnant women as a charm to assist in easy delivery. That a male monk should receive
this sash from a female is a potent symbolic gesture. [Translator’s note]
3
Kobayashi Taiichirō 小林太一郎, “Shigisan engi no bunseki—hiite sono etoki no kokoromi”
信貴山縁起の分析―ひいてその絵解きの試み, in Bukkyō geijutsu 仏教芸術 50:51 (1963) ; Sakurai
Yoshirō 桜井好朗, “Shaji engi no sekai—kyoshiteki ni” 社寺縁起の世界—巨視的に, in Taikei
bukkyō to Nihonjin 大系仏教と日本人, volume 9 (Shunjūsha, 1986).

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Japan’s ancient system of governance by codified laws (ritsuryō kokka 律令国家).4
The formation of a class of uniquely Buddhist sacred relics was decisively set inmotion by the sort of behavior attributed to the nun in Shigisan engi emaki andother closely related tales. Tōdaiji Temple was erected to serve, among otherthings, as a conspicuous symbol of the Buddhist faith in its then new capacity as
the state religion, and, at the same time, as a symbol of imperial power, which wasseen as an extension of Buddhist law. Moreover, according to Buddhist doctrine,
Tōdaiji Temple was not merely a physical structure, nor simply a symbol ofpower, but an actual embodiment of the entire cosmos (hōkai 法界). When female pilgrims and nuns began showing up at this temple unannounced, flagrantly violating the strict prohibition against women trespassing into this mostsanctified of sacred spaces (nyonin kekkai 女人結界), something revolutionary
was bound to happen.
Shigisan engi emaki, far from inciting this doctrinal revolution, merely reflected
it in a creative visual form. According to this illustrated scroll, it was only after
the nun had openly violated the prohibition against women entering the GreatHall of the Buddha that she was given the divine revelation required to discover
the whereabouts of her elusive brother. Only then was she able to make her way
to Mt. Shigi and, by binding the sash around her brother’s waist, give birth to asacred relic, the efficacy of which would be praised for generations of pilgrims
to come. Therefore, it was only by deliberately violating the prohibition against
women—by violating the sacred—that is, by crossing over and thereby effectively
nullifying the border between the mundane outside world and the sacred spacewithin the hall, that a sacred object could at last be produced. It is this paradoxthat is so skillfully represented in the illustrations of Shigisan engi emaki.
1–2. Prohibitions against Women: Tales about Violations of Sacred Space
Instances of border crossings preserved in Shigisan engi emaki did not occur ina vacuum; they were not simply products of an artist’s imagination. Quite thecontrary. Behind every example of border crossing lies, on the one hand, acountless array of legends or tales dealing with women who violated prohibitions against entering sacred spaces, and, on the other, those sacred mountains
and other geographical sites whose foundational myths were themselves built upby these same tales. Generally speaking, these tales all have as their protagonist
a woman who deliberately violates religious regulations against women in order
For a recent and concise English-language account of what is commonly referred to as the
ritsuryō state, see Sakaue Yasutoshi, with Kristopher Reeves, “The ritsuryō state,” in Karl Friday,
ed. Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2017).
The period of Japan’s ritsuryō state is generally regarded as beginning in the year 645 and ending
sometime around the middle of the tenth century. While Buddhism is thought to have come to
Japan as early as the sixth century, before the establishment of the ritsuryō state, its religious doctrines were never incorporated into the framework of this system of governance, the theoreticalbasis of which was taken over from continental Tang legal codes. [Translator’s note.]4Liminality Reimagined7

to ascend some mountain peak and enter into a sacred space located thereon. At
times this woman is none other than the mother of the male founder of a given
mountain temple.
Tōdaiji Temple, aside from the tale of the nun just discussed, has its own shareof other similar legends. The statue of the Great Buddha at this temple was inaugurated, or, to use the proper Buddhist terminology, its eyes were opened (kaigen 開眼), in the year 752. This same year, a monk by the name of Jicchū 実忠(726–?)—noted disciple of Master Rōben 良弁僧正 (689–774), founding patriarchof the temple—instituted a religious ceremony commonly known as the Shuni’e
修二会, literally “religious gathering of the second (lunar) month.” This ritual,
which takes the form of a mass confession before a statue of Jūichimen kannon
十一面観世音 (Eleven-Faced Avalokiteśvara; Sk: Avalokiteśvara-ekadaśamukha),
is conducted in Nigatsudō 二月堂, the Second Moon (Month) Hall, one of manyhalls dedicated to a specific religious ritual found within the Tōdaiji Temple
complex. The Tōdaiji engi ekotoba 東大寺縁起絵詞, or Illustrated Scroll of the Foundationof Tōdaiji Temple, completed in 1334, contains a foundational tale about this Shuni’ethat features a female protagonist referred to as Shōe no nyonin 青衣の女人, literally, the women in the blue surplice. As the story goes, the specter of a deceased woman once took it upon herself to violate the prohibitions against
women and enter into the sacred space of Nigatsudō in order to appear before
a congregation of monks then engaged in conducting the annual Shuni’e rituals.
The specter requested that her name be included in the temple’s Register of the
Departed (kakochō 過去帳) and read aloud at every Shuni’e from thereon in. Intoning the name of a departed soul is, in Buddhist contexts, a form of religious
service (kuyō 供養) aimed at ensuring perpetual repose and heavenly merit forthe deceased. Monks, as religious ascetics, are men who have renounced themundane world and are subject to strict restrictions, men who, furthermore,
dedicate their lives to austere and oft times severe practices. By placing such men
in charge of ensuring the repose of deceased souls, women included, this taleseeks to legitimate the salvific role of monks once and for all.5
Prohibitions against women trespassing on sacred spaces, as detailed in themonastic regulations of ancient Buddhist temples, are indicative of the idea thatwomen are, for one reason or another, essentially incompatible with the framework of these institutions. The reason for these prohibitions is often attributed
to an abhorrence for blood, such as that accompanying menstruation and childbirth, and hence something uniquely female. In terms of content, tales about
women breaking Buddhist prohibitions are not limited exclusively to the level of
popular beliefs. An immensely famous legend about an incident that is said to5
Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, “Yama ni okonau hijiri to nyonin—Shigisan engi emaki to Tōdaiji
Zenkōji wo megurite” 山に行う聖と女人—信貴山縁起絵巻と東大寺・善光寺をめぐりて, inYuya no kōgō—chūsei no sei to seinaru mono 湯屋の皇后—中世の性と聖なるもの (Nagoya
Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998), 246–789.

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have occurred at Dōjōji Temple 道成寺, located in modern-day Wakayama Prefecture, features as its protagonist a woman by the name of Kiyohime 清姫 (literally, Pure Princess), who, having fallen madly in love with a certain Buddhist
monk named Anchin 安珍, pursues him up a mountain and, trespassing on sacred space, charges into the temple unannounced.6 Another variation of thismotif is found in Eizan ryakki 叡山略記 (Abridged Records of Mt. Hiei, probably
13th century), in which the female protagonist, likewise madly in love with amonk, resorts to defaming her unresponsive darling with false accusations.
On the other hand, there are related versions of this motif in which, to cite
one example from Hikosan ruki 彦山流記 (Records of Hikosan Shrine, 1205), a maleascetic, having in his wonderings through the mountains accidentally stumbled
upon a female ascetic, finds himself overcome by carnal desire.7 Here the maleascetic, having been rescued by a woman, requests to engage in sexual intercourse, claiming that kissing her lips would be a source of pollution to him.
Oddly enough, it seems that, so far as the male ascetic was concerned, sexualintercourse was less polluting than kissing.8 The woman, however, manages toconvince the ascetic of the paradoxical nature of his argument. No sooner does
he kiss the woman than she transforms, first into a nine-headed dragon, and finally into her true form, the Eleven-Faced Avalokiteśvara.9 Aside from its sexual
content, this tale closely resembles the miraculous account of the Chinese monk
Xuanzang 玄奘 (J: Genjō, 602–664) and how he obtained a copy of the Heart
Sutra 般若波羅蜜多心経 (Sk: Prajñā-pāramitā-hr· daya sūtram; J: Hannya haramitta shingyō)
while travelling through India.10 In fact, miraculous tales involving the manifestation of divine beings as a direct result of sexually provocative behavior between amale ascetic and a female can be traced back to Minamoto no Tamenori’s 源為憲
This legend appears in a number of premodern sources, including Dainihon hokke genki 大日
本国法華験記 (Miraculous Accounts of the Lotus Sutra in the Great Land of Japan, completed sometime between 1040 and 1044) and Konjaku monogatarishū 今昔物語集 (A Collection of Tales Old and
6New, sometime after 1120), both of which are anthologies of anecdotal tales and legends. The
medieval nō play “Dōjōji” 道成寺 (“Dojoji Temple”), attributed to the playwright Kanze Nobumitsu 観世信光 (1435/1450–1516), is an adaptation of this same tale into a highly visual performative genre. [Translator’s note]
7
For the text of Hikosan ruki, see Gorai Shigeru 五来重, ed., Shugendō shiryōshū 修験道史料集,
volume 2 (Meicho shuppan, 1984), 466–467.
8
The word I have rendered here as ‘kiss’ is a loose translation of kuchi wo sū 口を吸う, literally,sucking of the mouth, or mouth-sucking, the precise mechanics of which sadly remain a mystery. Mouth-sucking was, in all likelihood, something more than just kissing. [Translator’s note]9
Suzuki Masataka 鈴木正崇, “Kegare to nyonin kinsei” 〈穢れ〉と女人禁制, in Shūkyō minzoku
kenkyū 宗教民俗研究, 27(2018), 113–116.
10
The earliest versions of this tale are preserved in Konjaku monogatarishū 今昔物語集,
Uchigikishū 打聞集 (A Collection of Tales Just as They Were Told, 1134), and the Bunpō MS 文保本 ofShōtoku taishiden 聖徳太子伝 (Biography of Crown Prince Shōtoku, 1317–1318). For more on
this subject, see Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, “Yuya no kōgō—Kōmyō kōgō yuswgyō no monogatari
wo megurite” 湯屋の皇后—光明皇后湯施行の物語をめぐりて, in Yuya no kōgō 湯屋の皇后(1998), 30–37, 50–56.

Liminality Reimagined

9(?–1011) Kūyarui 空也誄 (Eulogy for Kūya), completed near the end of the tenthcentury. According to this work, the ascetic Kūya 空也 (903–972) was approached by an elderly woman who, by all appearances, was stricken with a serious illness. Unbeknownst to Kūya, this was no mortal woman but an oldshape-shifting fox who lived in the Shinsen Gardens (Shinsen’en 神泉苑) within
the imperial compound. Kūya tended to the woman with great care, providing
her with both clothing and food. When she recovered, this woman then requested that Kūya have sexual intercourse with her, which request the holy man
is said to have granted. At this juncture, the fox reveals her true form, expressing
sincere gratitude for all the ascetic has done. Incidentally, this same tale can befound in a twelfth-century work entitled Rokuharamitsuji engi 六波羅蜜寺縁起, orFoundational History of Rokuharamitsuji Temple, by Miyoshi no Tameyasu 三善為康
(1049–1139).
1–3. Tales of Border Crossings and Ritual Pollution
All of the tales discussed thus far have been of a predominantly religious character, featuring as they do a sage or ascetic man, and depicting border crossings
involving some interplay between sacred and secular, male and female. It was in
the world of literary texts that we saw the processes and inevitable climactic moments of these tales depicted; it was through the written word that these tales
were brought to life. Literature does not merely gather up and record ancienttales. Literature has the power to stimulate the creative imagination of performers, playwrights, and other artist working in visual media, such that, throughthem, these tales take on a central role of their own, far beyond their originalliterary context.
Ritual pollution (kegare 穢) is the stigma imposed upon all women and holy
men portrayed in these tales as the subjects of border crossings. The precise nature of this ritual pollution and its relationship to the protagonist is by no means
straightforward; this motif can take any number of different forms. While there
are certainly very simplistic forms in which the woman is viewed more-or-less asa passive receptacle of ritual pollution, there are many more examples in which
the relationship between the female protagonist and ritual pollution is much
more nuanced. Among the varied legends surrounding Empress Kōmyō, a figure we have already encountered in relation to the Hall of the Great Buddha,
there is one relating to the Buddhist practice known as yusegyō 湯施行, or the
meritorious practice of personally bathing poor and sick people who happened
to come to a given temple. According to Kenkyū go junreiki 建久御巡礼記, or Recordof Imperial Pilgrimages during the Kenkyū Era (completed in 1191), Empress Kōmyō
made a religious vow in which she expressed a deep desire to plant the seeds ofultimate goodness before she passed away. In response to this, as a means oftesting her devotion, the deities above commanded her to perform meritorious
deeds to all without the slightest hint of prejudice (musa no kudoku 無差ノ功徳).
More specifically, she was to bathe with her own hands anyone who came her

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Abe

way, no matter what sort of person it might chance to be. Before her appeared a
beggar of hideous appearance and belonging to a group of social outcasts
known as saka no mono 坂者, literally, those who dwell upon the slopes.11 True toher vow, Empress Kōmyō ardently suppresses all feelings of disgust in order toscrape off the poor man’s grime encrusted limbs. After she has kindly requested
the man to keep this episode a secret, he, in turn, promptly replies by asking her
to tell nobody that she has this very day cleansed the body of a buddha. No
sooner has he revealed to Empress Kōmyō his true identity than he transforms
into a divine being of light and ascends to the heavens before her eyes. Here wehave a dramatic tale whose miraculous climax depends upon the simultaneous
overturning of two dichotomies, namely, that of purity and pollution, and thatof sacred and secular.12
As was discussed in the previous section, there are several examples of related
tales in which the male ascetic willingly agrees to engage in sexual intercourse witha woman as a means of ensuring the full recovery of his patient, despite the ritualpollution consequent upon such activities. At times, an otherwise celibate sage,
while expressing due hesitation at breaking his vows of chastity, nevertheless attempts to convince a woman to assist him in satisfying some newly awakened carnal desires. In these cases, it is when and only when the protagonist willingly andwholeheartedly exposes himself to the pollution of secular concupiscence that heis at last made privy to an epiphany in which the sacred is made known to him.
There is something quite profound going on beneath the surface here. Ippen hijiri’e
一遍聖絵, or the Illustrated Life of Master Ippen, completed in 1298, is a medieval biography of the famous Japanese itinerant monk Ippen 一遍 (1239–1289), founderof the Jishū Society 時衆 of Pure Land Buddhism. Here, too, we are presented
with a seeming paradox. Ippen’s own epiphany comes in the form of an encounter
with one of the avatars worshipped at Kumano Shrine, the so-called Kumano
gongen 熊野権現. While sleeping, the avatar appears before Ippen, telling him thatthe holy gods make no distinction between the pure and the impure, nor do theyplace any importance whatsoever on the faith or lack thereof. Hearing these words,
Ippen finally reaches enlightenment. It would appear that seemingly paradoxical
episodes like this might serve as allegorical representations of a deeper Buddhist
teaching. Namely, that the only path to salvation is that of abandoning all distinctions between the pure and the impure, and surrendering one’s self unconditionally to the providence of Buddha.
11
The term saka no mono, or those who dwell upon the slopes (or hills), refers historically to
two large communities of outcasts (hi’nin 非人), one based around Kiyomizuzaka 清水坂, theKiyomizu Slope, in Kyoto, the other around Narazaka 奈良坂, the Nara Slope, in Nara. These
outcasts were responsible for dealing with the disposal of corpses, the care of those sufferingfrom leprosy, and the reception of temple donations intended especially for outcasts (hi’nin segyō
非人施行).
12
Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, “Yuya no kōgō—Kōmyō kōgō yusegyō no monogatari wo megurite”
湯屋の皇后—光明皇后湯施行の物語をめぐりて, in Yuya no kōgō 湯屋の皇后 (1998), 18–64.

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2. Gods who Forgive and Praise the Tainted Sage
2–1. Medieval Anecdotal Tales about Tainted Sages
I would like to focus here on those medieval anecdotal tales in which a malesage is depicted as transgressing the boundaries of purity and thereby exposing
himself to the contaminating effects of ritual pollution.13 These tales are intimately bound up with the central role of sages in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Such sagely individuals are referred to variously as shami 沙弥 (Sk:śrāman· era), that is, a Buddhist acolyte, shōnin 聖人, one who has gained an intimate appreciation of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, or by the homophonous term shōnin 上人, literally, one who is above or superior to normal mortals.
Throughout the history of Buddhism, sages have earned the reverence of believers in one of two ways. On the one hand, there are those sages who, not satisfied at limiting themselves to meditation within the walls of a cloistered temple, go out into nature, making their way over mountains and rivers, with theexpress purpose of perfecting the Buddhist practice of tosō 斗擻 (Sk: dhūta), thatis, of completely doing away with all earthly desires for food, raiment, and shelter. These sages, having settled down in some sacred locale—often a secluded
mountain—and having, through their high level of cultivation, attained certain
miraculous powers, go on to worship the resident buddhas and gods of that locale. In response to the sage’s earnest religious practices, these local divinities
then make an appearance, thereby making their existence known once and forall. On the other hand, there are sages who voluntarily make their way into bustling cities and surrounding rural areas, mixing with the local population, intoning the salvific name of Amitābha 阿弥陀 (J: Amida), spreading the Buddhist
teachings and leading the fatuous masses to enlightenment. These two categories of sages are by no means mutually exclusive. Kūya, whom we have alreadymet, was a mixture of both.
The evolution of various religious activities carried out by such individuals, stillprevalent well into the early modern period, had their roots in ancient society.14 Let
us turn our attention to the intermediate stages of this evolution, that is, to themedieval period, and examine more specifically how sages crossed over bordersof purity and impurity in their confrontations with potentially contaminating
forces or events. Kamo no Chōmei 鴨長明 (1153/1155–1216), vernacular poetand superintendent of Shimogamo Shrine 下鴨神社 (in Kyoto), voluntarily
The modern Sino-Japanese term for this is shokue 触穢, that is, kegare ni fureru, which refers
to the act of somehow—usually physically—coming into contact with (fureru 触れる) somethingthat is deemed impure (kegare 穢れ). For the sake of brevity, I have decided to use the term
“tainted sage” to refer to sages who have incurred the stigma of pollution. [Translator’s note]
14
Hori Ichirō 堀一郎, Kūya 空也 (Yoshikawa kōbunkan,1963); Gorai Shigeru 五来重, Kōya hijiri
高野聖 (Kadokawa shoten, 1975) and Zōho Kōya hijiri 増補 高野聖 (Kadokawa shoten, 1985); Itō
Yūshin 伊藤唯真, Seibukkyōshi no kenkyū 聖仏教史の研究, in Itō Yūshin chosakushū 伊藤唯真著作集,
volume 1 (Hōzōkan, 1995).
13

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abandoned his career as a courtier and, instead of taking up residence in a monastery, retired to a small hut situated in the backwoods of Kyoto, where he pursued a life of seclusion. It was Chōmei who was the first medieval writer to record tales of the sort just mentioned. His Hosshinshū 発心集, or Tales of Religious
Awakening (completed sometime before 1216) marks the beginning of medieval
collections of Buddhist anecdotal tales. While earlier collections amounted toshort hagiographies (ōjōden 往生伝) of famous monks who had purportedly attained rebirth into the Pure Land, Chōmei’s collection went beyond this, including accounts of less known people, ancient and contemporary, who sought torenounce the world as a result of sudden religious awakening.
One such account preserved in Hosshinshū features as its protagonist an anonymous monk who makes a vow to pay his respects to the gods at Hie Shrine 日
吉大社 (located in modern-day Ōtsu City, Shiga Prefecture) for one-hundredconsecutive days. It should be noted here that Hie Shrine, also known as Hie
sannō 日吉山王, or “Hie, King of the Mountain,” served as an important center,both religious and political, throughout the whole of the medieval period. The
monk who vowed to visit this center for one hundred days was required, therefore, to observe the most austere purity and strictest chastity; he was not to comeinto contact with anything that might contaminate his person. One day in the
middle of his one-hundred day routine, as this monk was returning from theshrine, he chanced upon a young girl weeping by the roadside. Upon enquiry, themonk discovered that the poor girl had just recently lost her mother. Due tostrict religious prohibitions against coming into contact with death and decay,
however, no one in the area had offered to assist with the burial. The corpse ofher mother still lay unburied. Thinking the matter over, the monk decided thatsince the buddhas, feeling such compassion for us mortals, deign to descend to
this polluted world and appear before us in the form of myriads gods, so, too,would they forgive his act of compassion towards this poor girl; surely, considering the monk’s motives, the merciful buddhas would overlook the pollution ofcoming into contact with a dead body. Come nightfall, he went ahead and buried
the girl’s mother.
Not certain whether this potentially contaminating act had technically precluded him from continuing with the remainder of his hundred-day service, themonk, deliberately transgressing conventional prohibitions, made a trip to theshrine in order to enquire of the gods directly. On his way to the shrine, themonk is moved by a profound realization: the stigma of pollution connectedwith childbirth and death is nothing more than an expedient means employedby the gods in order to incite proper religious reverence. In other words, solong as one remains reverential towards the gods, ritual pollution is not something that can interfere with religious practice. Despite the immediacy of thisrealization, the monk harbors a lingering doubt as to its authenticity. Afterreaching the entrance of the shrine, his troubled spirits are at last relieved by
the divinely inspired words of a certain medium (kannagi 巫) in the service ofLiminality Reimagined

13

Jūzenji 十禅師, one of the seven avatars of Hie sannō: “I observed that which
you performed last night. Verily, it was a fine thing you did!” Receiving this laststatement of divine approval, the monk became certain of the authenticity of
his realization.
This tale was written to elucidate the real significance of prohibitions against
ritual pollution, namely, that such prohibitions are expedient means used by thegods in order to cultivate faith in us mortals. It was in light of this teaching thatthe monk was forgiven. However, warned the god, most people are too ignorant
to grasp the principles behind this teaching. If the monk were to share his new
realization with laymen, he would only succeed in making them less careful
about offending the gods, and hence less faithful towards them. The avatar commands the monk to keep what he has learned a secret. For the enlightened sage,
who is no longer in need of expedient means, religious prohibitions are understood for what they really are: nothing more than convenient devices geared at
assisting as-of-yet unenlightened humans.
2–2. Gods and Sages Brought Together in Medieval Tales of Pollution
Chōmei’s Hosshinshū is not the only source for tales in which tainted sages—
tainted, at least, in the strictly conventional sense—are unexpectedly praised fortheir acts of compassion. Rather, this is a motif that runs through many a medieval Japanese anecdotal tale dealing with miraculous legends (reigentan 霊験譚)
attributed to divine figures.15 Another collection of Buddhist anecdotal tales entitled Shasekishū 沙石集 (Collection of Sand and Pebbles, 1283), compiled by themonk Mujū 無住 (1227–1312), contains in its first fascicle a legend bearing thetitle “The Deity Offers Praise for An Act of Compassion” (Shinmei jihi wo tattobi
tamau koto 神明慈悲を貴び給ふ事). This tale bears striking similarities to theone found in Hosshinshū discussed above. The protagonist of this tale is a monk
named Jōkanbō 常観房 who hails from the district of Miwa 三輪 in Yamato 大和(Nara). Jōkanbō was on his way to pay his respects to an avatar known as Zōō(Zōō gongen 蔵王権現) worshipped at Mt. Kinbu 金峯山 in the district of
Yoshino 吉野, likewise situated in what is modern-day Nara. Having spied acorpse laying by the roadside, the monk takes it upon himself to see that the
body is properly buried somewhere in the wilderness. Fearing that the stain ofpollution has disqualified him from visiting the avatar, Jōkanbō decides to turnaround and head back home. To his astonishment, however, he is unable to takeeven a single step in the direction of his hometown in Miwa. On the other hand,when he turns about and tries instead to continue on his way to Yoshino, hefinds his steps light and easy, at which point he muses within himself: “Could it
be perhaps that the deity is trying to tell me, ‘Onwards! Head straight to my temple’?” As was the case with the anonymous monk in Chōmei’s tale, Jōkanbō
Watanabe Sadamaro 渡邊貞磨, Bukkyō bungaku no shūen 仏教文学の周縁 (Osaka: Izumi Shoin,1994).
15

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Abe

heads towards the temple burdened with an uneasy mind, not sure whether or
not the divine sign he has received is, in fact, legitimate. Then, a spirit medium
possessed by the avatar Zōō greets the monk, urging him to continue to the temple: “What care I for all these prohibitions against pollution? It is compassion
alone that I revere.”
Shasekishū contains a number of similar tales in which the gods are described as
attributing supreme value to acts of compassion, even when those acts transgressconventional religious prohibitions. Atsutamiya 熱田宮, one of the local deities
worshipped in Mujū’s own hometown, is recorded as forgiving those who have incurred the pollution of coming into contact with death or childbirth. It seems safe
to say, therefore, that during the medieval period these legends were not limited
exclusively to a specific set of deities or famous sages, but were rather attributed
more widely to any deity or sage, regardless of their relative fame. The monk
Jōkanbō featured in Shasekishū corresponds to a historical figure, namely, Keien
慶円 (also read Kyōen, 1140–1223), a famous monk of the Shingon Sect 真言宗,and founder of Miwa Shintō 三輪神道, which attempts to unite the teachings of
Shingon Buddhism with certain elements of Shintō. Keien was referred to by thehonorific title Miwa shōniō 三輪上人, the Sage of Miwa.
According to Keien’s biography, Miwa shōnin gyōjō 三輪上人行状 (The Life andWork of the Sage of Miwa, 1253), the shrine in question was not located on Mt.
Kinbu, but Iwashimizu hachimangū Shrine 石清水八幡宮, located in modern-day
Yawata City 八幡市, Kyoto Prefecture. Keien, having overseen a burial, and thus
deeming himself impure and unworthy of approaching the god, decides insteadto make his religious offerings in Baba 馬場, a small region located at the foot of
the mountain. As the sage is engaged in worship, a young layman possessed by
the god of Iwashimizu hachimangū Shrine approaches, informing the monk thatthe god, far from condemning his actions, commends his decision to bury an
unknown corpse: “You have committed no violation whatsoever.” Keien is thenencouraged by the deity to proceed to the shrine as initially planned. Standing
before the altar, Keien and the deity transmit to each other secret knowledge of
Buddhist inmyō 印明, that is, esoteric teachings pertaining to the use of mudras(insō 印相) and mantras (myōju 明呪, or shingon 真言). It is during this process ofmutual transmission between man and god that the true identity (honji 本地) of
the latter is at last revealed.16 This account, as preserved in Miwa shōnin gyōjō,
According to the then prevalent theory of honji suijaku 本地垂迹, “ultimate reality and temporary manifestation,” Shintō deities were understood to be temporary manifestations or“traces” (suijaku) of Buddhist divinities or “fundamental entities” (honji). The buddhas, wishing
to lead Japanese people to enlightenment, came in the form of more familiar Shintō deities. Thisis, of course, an extension of the well-known doctrine of expedient means (hōben 方便). It was
not always clear to which Buddhist divinity a particular Shintō deity corresponded. In thesecases, it was necessary for a sage like Keien to somehow incite the Buddhist divinity to reveal his
or her true identity. [Translator’s note]16Liminality Reimagined

15serves as a foundational legend explaining the unique origins of Miwa Shintō assomething that took place by way of the mutual transmission of esoteric knowledge between a sage and a deity.
2–3. Two Tales of Tainted Sages at Hachimangū Shrine
Miraculous legends centered around the Shintō deity Hachiman 八幡神 and hissacred abode, the aforementioned Iwashimizu hachimangū Shrine, in which a
Shintō god reveals his true Buddhist identity as the direct result of some sage
who has violated conventional prohibitions against ritual pollution, were in circulation as early as the beginning of the medieval period. Miyadera junpaiki 宮寺
巡拜記, or A Record of Pilgrimages to Various Shrines and Temples, a document compiled sometime around the first half of the thirteenth century, contains an account of a sage by the name of Chūrenbō 仲蓮房, about whom we know next
to nothing, save that he was, according to this same document, something of an
outsider (gairai no sō 外来の僧), the precise meaning of which is unclear. On his
way home from the shrine, Chūrenbō comes across an abandoned corpse. Outof compassion for the deceased, the sage hoists the corpse over his shoulders
and proceeds to throw it by the riverside, away from the main thoroughfare.
Ashamed at the ritual pollution of having come into direct contact with a deadbody, and yet unwilling to wholly abandon his pilgrimage to various shrines
around the area, Chūrenbō decides to pass the night in the shrine’s outer veranda, close enough to worship and far enough away not to offend the gods. The
god Hachiman appears to a slumbering Chūrenbō in the form of a Buddhist
monk, informing him that his compassionate actions have won the god’s praise:“I appear before you now, having been deeply moved by your compassionateact.” This miraculous tale ends by informing us that Chūrenbō not only received
divine approval for his actions, but was furthermore vouchsafed rebirth into thePure Land. Here, too, we are told that Hachiman made the following declarations: “My original vow to rescue all sentient beings is one of compassion,” and“I do not abhor the polluted and the unclean.” The tale of Chūrenbō, then, wasincluded as a means of explaining the initial circumstances surrounding thesedivine declarations.
The tale of Chūrenbō appears again in a document compiled in the early fourteenthcentury entitled Hachiman gudōkun 八幡愚童訓, or Hachiman for Children.17 This
work contains a chapter called “Impure Things” ( fujō no koto 不浄事), which isdedicated to demonstrating Hachiman’s utter disgust for all things impure. Interestingly, the tale of Chūrenbō is included in this chapter not, as it was in Miyadera
17

This particular work has come down to us through two lineages of manuscripts—the kōhon

甲本 lineage, or lineage A, which was completed between 1308–1318, and the otsuhon 乙本 lin-eage, or lineage B, completed sometime between 1299–1302—the contents of which show anumber of significant differences. Abe is here referring to a version of Hachiman gudōkun belonging to the kōhon lineage. [Translator’s note]

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junpaiki, as a way of showing that Hachiman does takes no offense to those whohave come into contact with conventionally impure things, so long as they havedone so out of compassion, but rather as an example of an exception to the rule.
What Miyadera junpaiki takes as its central message, Hachiman gudōki includes as a
curious exception. No less interestingly, while Miyadera junpaiki makes special
note of the fact that Chūrenbō is an outsider, Hachiman gudōki includes no suchdescription. For the compiler of this later document, Chūrenbō is just anothermonk; there is nothing exceptionally special about him. It was in virtue of thissage’s compassionate heart, we are told, that he had no need to fear the otherwise deleterious effects of pollution.
This tale of the deity at Iwashimizu hachimangū Shrine applauding the actionsof what would otherwise conventionally be condemned as a tainted sage appears, as has just been shown, in two opposite contexts. The reason for this is
not overly complicated: In the medieval period, each powerful religious institution had, as its foundation, a set of prohibitions against ritual pollution—known,
when canonized in writing, as bukkiryō 物忌令, ordinances pertaining to ritualpollution. It was this set of ordinances that ultimately served to legitimize theunique position of a given religious institution. Considering the importance ofprohibitions of this sort, each institution endeavored to present what might passfor a logical explanation regarding the origin of their ordinances. Anecdotal
tales, with their mythological motifs and conceptualizations of the world, wererecruited as a means of satisfying this demand.
These miraculous tales were used by medieval religious institutions as a vehicle
for inculcating in their audiences the perceived nature of their gods. On the one
hand, the sage, who is usually portrayed as an outsider in some respect, commits
two transgressions: First, moved solely by compassion for the suffering of others, he willingly comes into contact with some form of potentially polluting object. Second, though now in an impure state, he ignores all prohibitions against
approaching the divinities, and boldly approaches the altar, trusting wholly in the
god’s mercy and understanding.18 On the other hand, the deity is portrayed as
not only refraining from punishing the tainted sage, but as praising him. Medieval Shintō deities are portrayed as Buddhist divinities who have, in virtue of theirinfinite compassion for mankind, deign to appear in the guise of familiar forms,
ready to forgive men for their trespasses so long as these trespassed were madeout of compassion. It is possible to see in these tales a focal point through which
may be descried a fundamental type of liminality, or an approach towards liminal
space.

Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, Yuya no kōgō: chūsei no sei to seinaru mono (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai,
1998), 50–64; Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, “Kumanokō” 熊野考, in Seisha no suisan: chūsei no koe to woko
naru mono 聖者の推参—中世の声とヲコなるもの (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001), 214–220.
18

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3. Tainted Sages in Holy Sites: The Socialization of Border Crossing
3–1. The Spread of Tales about Tainted Sages Who Visit Shrines
During the latter half of the medieval period—from the Northern and Southern Courts (1336–1392) to the Muromachi period (1392–1573)—miraculous
tales of tainted sages who had nevertheless visited holy sites, where they wereconsequently praised by the local deity, gradually became to take on a more concrete, more realistic form. Instead of fictional protagonists, these latter tales feature known historical personages, most of whom, significantly, are Buddhist
monks. True, examples of tales containing well-known Buddhist monks, such as
Keien, were circulated during the first half of the medieval period. However, aswith Keien, these monks were generally portrayed as semi-mythical charactersand not as strictly historical personages. Examples of tales from the latter halfof the medieval period whose protagonists are historical Buddhist monks may
be found in the accounts of ascetics belonging to the Zen and the Ritsu Schools,monks of the Jishu Sect 時衆, and various sages associated with the True Pure
Land Sect 浄土真宗.
One such example is found in the person of Shigyoku 志玉 (1383–1463), a
Zen monk learned in the Vinaya (ritsu 律) or monastic regulations, who also lectured on the Avatam· saka Sūtra (Flower Garland Sutra; J: Kegonkyō 華厳経), andwho served as the head of the Kaidan’in 戒壇院, or Hall of the Ordination Platform, at Tōdaiji Temple 東大寺, and who, having spent some five years studying
in China, was well-versed in the doctrines of the Huayan (J: Kegon) School 華厳宗.
It was this same Shigyoku who compiled a religious commentary for Rokurinichiro no ki 六輪一露之記 (An Account of the Six Wheels and the Single Dewdrop, c. 1455),
a treatise on nō performance by the famous playwright Konparu Zenchiku 金春
禅竹 (1405–1471). The primary source for biographical information about thismonk is found in Denritsu zugen kaishū 伝律図源解集 (Collected Commentaries on the
Lineage of the Transmission of the Ritsu Sect, 1684), compiled by Jūkei 重慶 (n.d.) a monkbased in Tōdaiji Kaidan’in 東大寺戒壇院.19 According to this source, Shigyoku
played an active role in religious services conducted at Byakugōji Temple 白毫寺,
in Nara, a temple for monks of the Ritsu School that contained a large cemetery.
One day, having burnt incense at this temple on behalf the deceased, Shigyoku
proceeded to pay his respects to the Shintō deity worshipped at Kasuga Shrine
春日社. Upon arriving at the altar, the heavens suddenly become ominously
dark. Then, from out the sanctuary emerges an awe-inspiring apparition: the avatar of the shrine attired in formal court dress. The avatar upbraids Shigyoku forvisiting his shrine so soon after having come into contact with the pollution of
19
Funata Jun’ichi 舩田淳一, “Shie to jōbutsu—shingonkei shintōsho ni miru sōsō girei” 死穢と成仏—真言系神道書に見る葬送儀礼, in Shinbutsu to girei no chūsei 神仏と儀礼の中世(Hōzōkan, 2011), 288–289; a printed version of Denritsu zugen kaishū is contained in volume 64
of Dainihon bukkyō zensho 大日本仏教全書 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1972).

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death. Unshaken, Shigyoku replies by intoning a Buddhist verse from Yuanjuejing
円覚経 (J: Engakukyō, likely late 7th-early 8th century), the Sutra of Full Realization,effectively turning the tables and asking whether it is not the deity who is in thewrong. Is it not the case, retorts Shigyoku, that you, a divine being who has remained so long among us mortals, have forgotten your original vow of compassion towards all mankind? The deity, reminded of his vow, repents at once: “Indeed, it is as you say: I had forgotten the very doctrines [of compassion towards
mankind] I myself once preached. I have mingled with the dust of this world for
too long.” Here we see a Buddhist monk leading a deity towards enlightenment,
castigating him for having forgotten his original vow. The deity, we are made tounderstand, was in the wrong for accusing the monk of being polluted. In thistale, Shigyoku’s supposed pollution is employed as a foil, by means of which thedeity—and by implication readers of this tale—is brought towards a higher understanding.
Another similar account appears in the foundation legend of Iwata enmyōji
Temple 岩田円明寺. This temple was founded by Kakujō 覚乗 (1272–1362), a
monk of the Ritsu School based in Saidaiji Temple 西大寺. Kakujō was active
throughout the region surrounding Ise Shrine 伊勢神宮 (in modern-day Ise City,Mie), and was consequently involved with rituals pertaining to the worship of
Shito deities and discussions about Shintō religion in general.20 As the tale goes,
Kakujō, having set his mind on establishing the aforementioned Iwata enmyōji
Temple expressly as a family temple (ujidera 氏寺) for the priests at Ise Shrine,
desired to know the original nature—honji 本地 or shintai 真躰—of the deity worshipped at that Shrine. That is to say, he wished to know the true identity of the
Buddhist divinity who had assumed the disguise of a Shintō god. To this end,
Kakujō vowed to pay his respects to the shrine for one-hundred consecutive
days, a practice we have already encountered in previous sections. On the
one-hundredth day, just as Kakujō was about to fulfil his vow, he was asked toadminister the final rites to an unfortunate traveler who had since perished. Despite conventional prohibitions against ritual pollution, he agreed to administer
the desired rites. Shortly thereafter, as Kakujō made his way through Miyakawa
no hotori 宮川の畔 (in modern-day Ise City), a sacred space associated with local
Shintō deities, an elderly man appeared before him, scolding the monk for stepping on holy ground in a tainted state . Kakujō, having responded with “the pureheart knows no taint,” nevertheless turns about and prepares to return the way
he came, not wishing to offend the deities. At this point, the deity himself appears before Kakujō in the form of a child, and apologizes for having wrongly
accused the monk of violating prohibitions about ritual pollution: “Do not go!
It was I, it seems, who forgot [my vows of compassion]. I have mingled in thisThis account of Kakujō is preserved in a document entitled Sanbōin kyūki 三宝院旧記, or Old
Records of the Hall of Three Treasures (likely completed sometime around the beginning of the seventeenth century), which is itself found in Dainihon shiryō 大日本史料, 6:24.
20

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19

world of dust for too long.” After reciting a Buddhist verse relating to the purity
and unconditional compassion entailed in the deity’s original vow, he announcesto Kakujō a new covenant, namely, that all believers who make a pilgrimage to
Iwata enmyōji Temple will be freed of all taint.
After receiving this first revelation, Kakujō is blessed with a second, this timein the form of a dream, in which he is commanded to visit the altar once again.
Once at the altar, Kakujō is greeted by a snake—actually the divinity in disguise—who emerges from the shrine’s pond. After reverently paying his respects
to this serpent, he promptly throws his monk’s robe over its body. Incidentally,
according to this tale, the practice of carving serpent seals ( jagyō no han 蛇形判),
stamps decorated with the image of a snake, first began when Kakujō carved alikeness of this divine snake. While this is not the place to enter into details, suffice it to say that Kakujō, in an effort to uncover the true (Buddhist) identity ofthe divinity at Ise, travels from Anōtsu 安濃津, or Anō Port, in modern-day Tsu
City 津市, Mie, to Futamigaura 二見浦, or Futami Bay, in modern-day Ise City,
Mie. It is at a temple located close to Futami Bay that Kakujō at last receives his
long-sought revelation: the deity at Ise is none other than Amida 阿弥陀 himself,
as worshipped at Kōdera Temple 国府寺, located in modern-day Kōmura 国府村,
Suzuka City 鈴鹿市, Mie. When Kakujō eventually makes his way to Kōdera
Temple, whereupon the Buddhist statue, usually hidden from view, is brought
out for him to inspect, he discovers draped over its shoulders the very robe hecast over the aforementioned snake. This evidence is conclusive. In this manner,then, Kakujō was able to incite the deity at Ise Shrine to reveal his true identity.
Kakujō was the author of, Tenshō daijin kuketsu 天照太神口決 (Oral Transmission
Pertaining to the Great Goddess Amaterasu, 1328), a treatise aimed at promoting athen popular doctrine known as shinbutsu shūgō 神仏習合, in which Shintō deities
were intimately merged with complementary Buddhist divinities. Naturally, Kakujō
was especially interested in championing this doctrine insofar as it pertained to
Amaterasu 天照, the presiding goddess at Ise Shrine. In this relation, Kakujō also
promulgated a foundational legend pertaining to the esoteric ordination rites(sokuihō 即位法) used at his temple.21 As may be seen, Kakujō exerted significant
influence over contemporary discussions about the relationship between Shintō
and Buddhism. Most obviously, he played a central role in promoting the distribution to all visitors—theoretically monks and sages—at Iwata enmyōji Temple ofmagical amulets ( gofu 護符) believed to cleanse their bearers of all ritual pollution.
What Kakujō promoted was essentially a system of symbolic transference21
Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, “Iruka no seiritsu” 「入鹿」の成立, in Geinōshi kenkyū 芸能史研究,
69 (1980), 1–18. For a discussion of Kakujō’s Tenshō daijin kuketsu, see Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎,“Chūsei shūkyō shisō bunken no kenkyū (1): Ninnajibon Tenshō daijin kuketsu no honkoku to
kaidai” 「中世宗教思想文献の研究（一）「仁和寺本『天照大神口決』の翻刻と解題, in Nagoya
daigaku bungakubu kenkyū ronshū bungaku 名古屋大学文学部研究論集 文学, 43 (1997), 193–
205.

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whereby the power to purify or cleanse from pollution became enshrined withinsmall, portable artefacts.
3–2. The Role of the Sage at Ise Shrine
The tradition of tainted sages visiting Ise Shrine, home of what were then seen
as Japan’s highest divinities, was inaugurated by the aforementioned Kakujō. It
was during the end of the Muromachi period, with the composition of a certain
illustrated scroll entitled Kokua shōnin eden 国阿上人絵伝, or, the Illustrated Biographyof Master Kokua (possibly completed between 1573–1600), that this same tradition
gained increased social credence.22 Kokua 国阿 (1314–1405) was the founder of aparticular branch of the Jishu Sect known as the Ryōzen School 霊山派, based in
Shōhōji Temple 正法寺, Kyoto. Being an itinerant monk, he travelled widely
throughout Japan. Kokua paid his respects to Ise Shrine on a number of occasions, eagerly spreading his teachings throughout that particular area. According
to the third fascicle (section nos. 17–20) of Kokua shōnin eden, Kokua, feelingsympathy for those people whose ritual pollution—especially that of menstrual
blood—barred them from visiting Ise Shrine, vowed to visit the shrine every day
for one-thousand consecutive days, in hopes that the deities might find it in theirhearts to forgive the sin of pollution found in those who paid their respects tothe shrine. On the final day of his austerities, Kokua spied the putrefying corpseof a leper victim floating on Mimosuso River 御裳濯河, a river, now known as
Isuzu River 五十鈴川, which flows through the Inner Sanctum (Naikū 内宮) of
Ise Shrine. Moved by pity, Kokua performs the final rites on behalf of the deceased. No sooner has he completed these rites when the corpse suddenly takeson the appearance of the bodhisattva Kannon 観音, and, soaring into the sky,announces to the sage that his vow has been granted. The leper-turned-divinity
motif is one we have already encountered in the tales of the Chinese monk
Xuanzang (J: Genjō) and the Japanese empress Kōmyō.
As the story goes, Kokua, upon approaching the precincts of the shrine, isgreeted by none other than the great sun goddess Amaterasu herself—albeit not
in her native form but through a female medium serving in the shrine—who directs the sage to approach the sacred altar. There, Kokua is further greeted by adivinity known as Uhō dōji 雨宝童子, who presents him with the leaf of akashiwa 柏, or Japanese emperor oak, as a sign that the sage’s vow has been divinely sanctioned.23 In the medieval period, a particular species of this leaf, theWashio Junkyō 鷲尾順敬, Kokubun tōbō bukkyō sōsho 国文東方仏教叢書, second series, volume
5, “biographies” 伝記部 (Tōhō Shoin, 1928), 355–357.
23
Uhō dōji, literally, the youth (dōji) of raining or showering treasure (uhō), a divinity depicted asholding a staff in his right hand and a rosary in his left, was understood to represent the embodiment of Amaterasu when she first descended to Hyūga 日向, in modern-day northern Miyazaki.
Alternately—and this amounts to the same thing in the end—Uhō dōji was taken to be a temporary manifestation of Dainichi nyōrai 大日如来, the Great Sun Buddha (Sk: Mahāvairocana), whowas, in turn, thought to be the honji or Buddhist reality of Amaterasu. [Translator’s note]22Liminality Reimagined21

tip of which ended in three distinct points, and which was consequently known
as the mitsunagashiwa 三角柏, or triple-tipped emperor oak, served as an esotericrepresentation of the goddess Amaterasu.24 Examining the leaf, Kokua discovers the following words stamped upon its upper surface: “The sins of ritual pollution for all those who pay their respects to the shrines along Ise and Kumano
shall be forgiven for all eternity.” We are told that Kokua, having copied the image of this divine stamp, had paper copies printed for all those, ecclesiastics andlayfolk alike, who visited the shrine. Thereafter, the miraculous efficacy of Ise
Shrine was encapsulated in the following proclamation: “All unavoidable ritualpollution accidentally encountered along the way to the shrine shall be forgiven,and one’s wish to visit the shrine shall be duly granted.” Trusting in this proclamation, visitors to the sacred site established by Kokua at Ise Shrine would receive aseries of ten invocations along with a copy of the divine stamp (ofuda おふだ). This
invaluable stamp came to serve, in effect, as an indulgence or certificate of religious vindication for pilgrims. According to Kokua shōnin eden, these events occurred during the first year of Eiwa 永和, that is, in 1375.
Practically speaking, this biography of Kokua serves as a foundational tale(engi ) aimed at explaining the miraculous origins of the divine stamp distributed
to those pilgrims visiting the Shōhōji Temple in Higashiyama 東山, Kyoto. Incidentally, Shōhōji continues to hand out copies of the “divine stamp of the emperor oak” (kashiwaba no shin’in 柏葉の神印) to this very day. Kokua’s biography
is an encapsulation of the entire process leading up to the creation of salvificartefacts. Through his continued austerities and sincere compassion, Kokua wasable to move the goddess Amaterasu to bestow her divine favor on all future pilgrims inadvertently tainted with ritual pollution. This was achieved, first andforemost, by a deliberate transgression of conventional prohibitions against ritual pollution. It was only after Kokua had intoned the final rites on behalf of theleprous corpse, thereby making himself susceptible to the pollution of deathand disease, and proceeded to enter the sacred space of the altar—a space where
even the faintest taint should not be permitted—that Amaterasu rewarded thesage with blessings and a vision of herself in the form of Uhō dōji. Only thendid the goddess relay to Kokua her divine proclamation stating once and for allthat pilgrims who visited her altar were to be cleansed of any ritual pollution incurred on the way, and that by means of a divine stamp—essentially a magicaltalisman. As will be clearly seen from a comparison with the various tales of miraculous events and divine manifestations already discussed throughout this paper, the biography of Kokua has been sewn together out of a number of previously existing motifs.

Itō Satoshi 伊藤聡, Chūsei Amaterasu ōmikami shinkō no kenkyū 中世天照大神信仰の研究(Hōzōkan 法蔵館, 2011). For the text of Mitsuna kashiwadenki 三角柏伝記, see Shinpukuji zenbon
sōkan 真福寺善本叢刊, first series, volume 6, ryōbu shintōshū 両部神道集 (Rinsen Shoten, 1998).
24

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22

3–3. Some Undercurrents in Tales of Tainted Sages at Kumano
The message upon the divine stamp presented to Kokua by Amaterasu, it will
be recalled, read as follows: “The sins of ritual pollution for all those who pay
their respects to the shrines along Ise and Kumano shall be forgiven for all eternity.” Here we see two holy sites, namely, Ise and Kumano, mentioned side byside. In the beginning of the medieval period, it was believed that the presiding
deity worshipped at Kumano was the same deity worshipped at Ise. These twosites were seen as belonging to a single circuit of holy spaces. Itinerant nuns who
preached at and around both sites espoused this paradigm. Kumano, even moreso than Ise, was championed as a sanctuary par excellence: As has already been
seen in Ippen hijiri’e, the sage Ippen received a divine proclamation from the avatar of Kumano that effectively eradicated any fundamental distinctions between
purity and impurity supposed to have resulted from ritual pollution. Those who
visited Kumano were cleansed of any pollution; pilgrims were saved so long as
they made their way to the sanctuary that was Kumano. This belief in the salvific
power of Kumano is indicative of something deeper, namely, of a transformation during the medieval period in the way in which the nature of deities wasenvisioned.
The deity at Kumano not only cleansed pilgrims of all previous sin and pollution, but furthermore guaranteed a spiritual rebirth, a new life of renewed purity
and sanctity, to all those who placed their unconditional trust unconditionally inthe deity’s power. Salvation, therefore, was no longer thought to depend upon
the intensity of one’s own faith, but instead came to be seen as a more-or-lessvicarious gift of divine grace emanating from the power inherent in the deity’s
original vow (hongan 本願) of compassion towards all mankind. The salvificfunction of medieval deities, rooted as it was in the deities themselves, transcended conventional distinctions between faith and unfaith on the part of believers. This is not to say, however, that pilgrims to Kumano, trusting in the divine grace of the presiding deity, could flout prohibitions against ritual pollution
with impunity. Pilgrims making their way to Kumano had to observe strict austerities; the trek to the holy site was itself a prolonged ritual, during the whole ofwhich pilgrims strove to avoid all taint of ritual pollution, and thereby preserve
religious purity; numerous conventions and proscriptions, established in the
hoary past by those who had made the journey before, dictated and circumscribed much of the pilgrim’s behavior while travelling along the road.25
Kumano, now popularly regarded as the holiest site in all of Japan (Nihon daiichi
reigenjo 日本第一大霊験所), has come to embrace within itself two extremes: On
the one hand, the deity at Kumano has guaranteed salvation to all who come,25

For a contemporary account of these matters, see the twelfth-century anthology Shozan engi

諸山縁起, or Foundational Tales of Various Holy Mountains, especially the document found therein
entitled En no gyōja Kumano sankei nikki 役行者熊野参詣日記, or Pilgrimage to Kumano: The Diary of

En the Ascetic.

Liminality Reimagined23

regardless of what pollution they might have incurred on the way. On the other
hand, however, these same pilgrims are under the strictest obligations to maintain ritual purity throughout the entire journey. Divine grace comes side by sidewith severe prohibitions.26 Likewise, pollution comes side by side with purity. As
was the case with Ippen at Kumano and Kokua at Ise, it is the arrival of a tainted
sage within the holy precincts that miraculously brings about the creation of aholy relic. Tales of this sort were spread throughout eastern Japan, where belief
in the miraculous power of the deity at Kumano was strong, primarily by itinerant monks (nenbutsu hijiri 念仏聖) who preached the salvific effects of chanting
the name of Amida. For these monks, too, it was not the faith of the individualthat saved, but the divine power of Amida’s original vow.
3–4. Contrasting Perspectives in Tales of Hei Tarō: the True Pure Land
Sect
Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263), founder of the True Pure Land Sect (Jōdo shinshū
浄土真宗) of Buddhism, had a disciple by the name of Shinbutsu 真仏 (?–1262)
who served as a leader in the spread of Shinran’s teachings throughout easternJapan. A religious primer (dangibon 談義本), written in a combination of Sinitic
characters and hiragana, and entitled Shinran shōnin goinnen 親鸞聖人御因縁, or On
the Origins of Master Shinran, was widely circulated among believers during theearly phases of Shinran’s sect, that is, during the end of the Kamakura period.27
This primer contains a section, bearing the title “Shinbutsu innen” 真仏因縁,
that is, “On the Origins of Shinbutsu,” which states that Shinbutsu originallyhailed from a family of farmers based in Yokosone 横曾根, Hitachi 常陸 (modernday Ibaraki), and that his secular name had been Hei Tarō 平太郎. Hei Tarōlearned two things from Shinran: First, the practice of constantly intoning thename of Amida as a means of ensuring salvation; second, the doctrine that theJapanese deities are actually Buddhist divinities who have somehow become spiritually lost, and that, consequently, one who dedicates his life to reciting Amida’s
holy name ought not pray to such fatuous beings. On one occasion, Hei Tarō
was ordered to accompany Lord Satake 佐竹殿, a powerful local proprietor ofthe domain (ryōshu 領主), on a pilgrimage to Kumano, during which journey
Tarō was to serve in the capacity of a hired servant. His behavior on the road,however, was less than pleasing to his lord. Not only did Hei Tarō refuse to observe the traditional rules and proscriptions, preferring instead to focus his energies on intoning the name of Amida, he even went so far as to offer a beggar
rice that had been cooked over a ritually purified fire (imibi 忌火) used exclusively
26
Maruyama Shizuka 丸山静, Kumanokō 熊野考 (Serika shobō, 1984); Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎,“Kumanokō” 熊野考, in Seisha no suisan: chūsei no koe to woko naru mono 聖者の推参—中世の声とヲコなるもの (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001), 214–220.
27
Miyazaki Enjun 宮崎圓遵, Bukkyō bunkashi no kenkyū 仏教文化史の研究 (Nagata Bunshōdō,1989), 199–201.

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in preparing offerings destined for the gods. Nor did he refrain from eating meatand other otherwise prohibited victuals. Finally, he flouted all convention by hiding—that is, burying with his own hands—a corpse that had been washed up on
the beach.
Having at last arrived at the shrine, Lord Satake and his men lay down before
the main altar to recover from the arduous trek. Incredibly, all of the men are
visited by the same dream, one in which the avatar of the shrine pays his respectful obeisance to none but Hei Tarō. Lord Satake is understandably perplexed. Why, complains he, did the deity not bow to himself ? Why would a deity offer his blessings to a man who chose to flout all conventions of ritual
purity? In response to these complaints, the deity explains how it was in virtueof the miraculous efficacy of Amida’s name, as intoned by Hei Tarō, that thisdeity was able at long last to find liberation from the three tribulations (sannetsu
三熱 or sankan 三患) that habitually plague benighted souls.28 “You men shallknow this god’s true identity when I reveal my Buddhist origin (honji ),” declares
the deity, concluding with the following divine verses, in the vernacular: “Allmen, be they among the lowly or be they among the high-born—now all men
alike may become buddhas, so long as they intone the name of Amida!”29 The
men, their eyes now open, immediately pay homage to Hei Tarō, causing him totake the tonsure before the altar, and givng him the Buddhist name Shinbutsu,
that is, the True Buddha. On the journey back home, so the story goes, Shinbutsu
preached (kanjin 勧進) to some twenty-thousand souls, the great majority ofwhom were moved to donate wealth or labor to various Buddhist-related building projects.
The prohibitions this layman-turned-sage flouted on his way to Kumano were
not restricted to coming into contact with the pollution of death, but extended
more generally to all the time-honored conventions and proscriptions usually prescribed for pilgrims. The textual style of “Shinbutsu innen,” being a religious
primer (dangibon) aimed at a popular audience, is characteristically colloquial andstraightforward. A complete disregard for, and sometimes even outright mockeryof conventional prohibitions on the part of Shinbutsu, acting here as a representative of all who profess to be dedicated intoners of Amida’s name, is depicted ina lively manner. In this respect, Shinbutsu is another example of a broader motif
found in many medieval tales, where an ostensibly foolish protagonist turns out tobe a sage, a genuinely “enlightened fool” (sei naru gusha 聖なる愚者). The world ofThese three tribulations (sankan), or three burning afflictions (sannetsu), most commonly described as afflicting, among other things, dragons and snakes, are enumerated as follows: scorching winds (neppū 熱風) that burn a creature’s flesh and bones; violent gusts (akufū 悪風) that blow
away a creature’s shelter and any vestments he might have; the pain of being eaten alive by aflaming mythical bird known, in Sanskrit, as Garud·a ( J: Konjichō 金翅鳥). [Translator’s note]29
The original text of this poem reads as follows: Iyashiki mo / yoki mo ima wa / oshinabate /namuami dabutsu to / iu wa hotoke zo 卑きも良きも今はおしなべて南無阿弥陀仏と云ふは仏ぞ.
28Liminality Reimagined25

Muromachi-period popular vernacular tales (otogi zōshi 御伽草子) has no shortageof such enlightened fools: The protagonist of Kootoko no sōshi 小男の草子, or theTale of the Little Man, as well as that of Monokusa Tarō 物くさ太郎, or Lazy Tarō,
are both described as country bumpkins whose unexpected wit, especially in theworld of vernacular poetry, leads them to unrivalled wealth and success in thecapital.30“Shinbutsu innen,” as preserved in Shinran shōnin goinnen, is not the only version we have of a tale relating to the origins of Shinbutsu. A monk by the nameof Kakunyo 覚如 (1270–1351), recognized as Shinran’s immediate successor,
compiled a biography of his master entitled Zenshin shōnin Shinran denne 善信聖人
親鸞伝絵, or the Illustrated Biography of Master Zenshin, aka Shinran (1296), theperspective of which is quite contrary to that found in “Shinbutsu innnen.”
The story of Hei Tarō, which is woven into the second fascicle of this work,
begins in the same manner as “Shinbutsu innen”: Hei Tarō, deeply moved by
the teachings of Shinran, pays no heed to the conventional rituals prescribedfor pilgrims, and wholly ignores all prohibitions against impurity during hisjourney to Kumano. It is the next episode that makes the version of Shinbutsu’slife as told in Zenshin shōnin Shinran denne that presents us with a most striking
contrast. In this version of the tale, Hei Tarō, having fallen asleep in front of
the altar, is visited in a dream by the avatar of the shrine, who proceeds to castigate the man for blatantly transgressing all the conventional religious prohibitions. This ought to remind us of the tales of Shigyoku and Kakujō alreadymentioned. Suddenly, the figure of Shinran appears seated across the avatar,
explaining to the latter that Hei Tarō is one of his own disciples, and that he issincerely following the way of one who dedicates his life to intoning the nameof Amida. The avatar, now pacified, bows low towards Hei Tarō. In this versionof the tale, Hei Tarō is merely a subsidiary character serving to introduce theteachings of Shinran; being but a passive observer, in the dream world, of aconversation between Shinran and the avatar, Hei Tarō ends up as nothing
more than a middle man. Consequently, all traces of the tainted sage who, due
to his compassion for mankind, consciously ignores religious prohibitions inorder to pay his respects to a given deity are entirely wanting. Rather, what wehave with this second version is something akin to a mythical tale about Shinran
as founder of a unique sect of Japanese Buddhism. In later ages, such tales,
known collectively as Godenshō 御伝鈔 (Episodes from the Life of Our Master), wereregularly read aloud during commemorative ceremonies (hōonkō 報恩講) dedicated to Shinran. This shift in perspective is even more drastic than that seen
above with regards to the depiction of the sage at Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine
and the text of Hachimangu dōkun.
Satake Akihiro 佐竹昭広, “Nariagari” 成り上り, in Gekokujō no bungaku 下剋上の文学 (Chikuma
Shobō, 1962).
30

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Conclusion
The world of medieval Japanese tales and legends is full of dramatic bordercrossings. As may be seen, for example, from the manner in which artists of illustrated scrolls were able to depict single scenes with vivid detail, these bordercrossings present readers and viewers with an intense and lasting impression.
The feeling of surprise consequent upon looking at such works of art encourages us to visualize anew the nature of borders as depicted in medieval Japanese
literature and art. These borders were far from simple or monolithic entities;
each border was the product of a complex network of various interrelated elements, including social, cultural, religious, and ethnological factors. Some ofthese borders were relatively less complicated, such as those holy sites that prohibited women from entering, simply on the grounds that they were women, andpotential objects of sexual desire. Tales of women who, disguised as men, daredto trespass into these sacred spaces, along with depictions of these border crossing in the performative arts, may all be seen as varied manifestations of the sortof blurring—which blurring is itself a cultural movement—invoked by any discussion of borders. Let us turn our attention to those male sages who are depicted as both the discoverers and establishers of sacred spaces. When facedwith the dilemma of how best to deal with a woman, these sages exhibit a number of varying responses: at times the sage, pursued by an impassioned female,
succeeds in escaping; at other times, to the contrary, the sage goes so far as torequest sexual intercourse. Whatever the reaction, these sages, insofar as they
were religious figures, were responsible for fulfilling a specific role. Medieval
tales and legends bear ample witness to this fact.
The sage who, moved solely by pity and compassion for his fellow creatures,deliberately transgressions religious proscriptions is not merely breaking his
Buddhist vows of chastity and purity. In every instance, what he is breaking,even more profoundly, is some sort of border, a border that is inherently multifaceted and complex. The most deleterious sort of ritual pollution was that incurred through contact with death, especially by participating in anything relating to the burial of corpses. In Japan, from ancient times up until the presentday, it was these male sages, the protagonists of numerous miraculous tales, whocame to serve as functionaries of death, insofar as they were seen as mediatorsof funerals. It is this age-old function of sages that gave rise to the Japanese phenomenon commonly known as sōshiki bukkyō 葬式仏教, that is, the popular conceptualization of Buddhism as something more-or-less exclusively bound up
with funerals and death. It is this role, also, that imposes upon sages the stigma
of ritual pollution. The continual and inevitable existence of ritual pollution necessitates a sacred space into which such pollution must, at least theoretically,
never be permitted to enter. Thus arose the role of the shrine, and of the deities
enshrined therein: the shrine is a place charged with maintaining the boundary
between the profane and the sacred, the polluted and the pure. Indeed, the entire

Liminality Reimagined27

system of Shintoistic deities, at the apex of which stands Ise Shrine, is fundamentally incompatible with Buddhism—its monks, its doctrines, and even its
terminology—for the simple fact that Buddhism was never directly concernedwith those traditional prohibitions against ritual pollution prevailing throughout
the archipelago.
Medieval tales and legends, however, blur the boundary between Shintoistic
shrines and Buddhist elements. In these tales, the sage is obliged to pay his respects to a shrine. Just when it seems that he will be able to make his way to theshrine in a pure state, however, he is made to come into contact with some formof ritual pollution. Consequently, this sage, as though controlled by some inexorable fate—of the sort most often found in mythical stories—is now forced toenter the shrine in a state of ritual contamination. For this very reason, it is inthat climactic, decisive moment, when the deity blesses the tainted sage, that we
see a miraculous border crossing, an epiphany characterized by the transformation from a polluted subject into a sacred or sagely subject. The deity, for its part,
is no longer a vengeful, merciless judge bent on punishing the sage for some bygone sin, but rather a compassionate friend of mankind. The sage, having
moved the deity to pity through his own compassionate actions, at once receives
approval for his role as a medium between mankind and the gods, as well as receiving justification for his very existence. A new medieval concept of the sacred
was forged from the furnace of tales and legends of this sort. However, as has
been seen from the numerous cases discussed in this paper, this development
was by no means a smooth and easy one. Rather, this new type of sacred purity
is based on an extremely precarious and dubious species of liminality. It is thisvery precarious nature of the sacred that makes it susceptible to manipulation.
The context of medieval tales of the sacred can be (and were) easily altered. We
must always keep in mind the fact that texts dedicated to legitimizing a favored
regime or sanctifying some charismatic figure were likely to manipulate the sacred as a means of furthering some ideological end.
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Satake Akihiro 佐竹昭広, Gekokujō no bungaku 下剋上の文学. Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobō, 1967.
Watanabe Sadamaro 渡邊貞磨, Bukkyō bungaku no shūen 仏教文学の周縁. Osaka:
Izumi Shoin, 1994.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 29–44© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Illness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legendsof Kokawa Temple
Yamamoto Satomi
Translated by Jeffrey Knott

Introduction
Leafing through Buddhist scriptures, one finds not infrequent reference to theview that illness, ultimately, was merely the working out of karmic justice—theresult of evil acts perpetrated over the course of one’s present-or past-life existence. For example, in the “Parables” chapter (Hiyu-hon 譬喩品) of the Sutra of the
Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law (“The Lotus Sutra”, Myōhō renge kyō 妙法蓮華経),
one encounters the following explanation regarding the karmic relationship between illness and the sin of disrespecting sacred texts:
The sins to be incurred for the act of slandering this scripture are as follows.
Even should one successfully attain to humanity, he will be short in stature,prone to seizures, limp-legged, blind, deaf-mute, and hunchbacked. Should hehave aught to speak, he will not be given ear by others. His breath will everstink. He will be possessed by demons. He will be poor and mean of status, andmade servant to others’ will. He will suffer many illnesses, grow wasted andwan, and find nothing whereupon to rely. Should he do others a kindness, others will not remember it. Should ever he gain possession of something, he willsoon find it lost again. Even should he learn the craft of healing, and cure somedisease according to the art, he will only bring on further diseases besides, if notindeed cause death. And should he fall prey to disease himself, none other will
there be to save him. Indeed, even should he take an efficacious drug, it will
only multiply his pains.1

Here it is warned that anyone who has slandered the Lotus Sutra, even if he does
manage to escape rebirth in Hell or the world of Hungry Ghosts (gaki 餓鬼), andsomehow returns to life as a human being once more, will find himself short ofstature, prone to seizures, limp-legged, blind or deaf-mute, and hunchbacked.
This kind of thinking, with its tendency to inspire discrimination against the ill
and the handicapped, may be quite alien to the moral and medical understandingof the present day. In premodern Japan, however, attitudes towards illness were1

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 9, p. 15c.

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predicated to a greater or lesser extent on precisely such religious teachings.
Prayer rituals for recovery from sickness, votive scripture-copying, Buddhist
statute-casting for the sake of lengthened life—all such activities were carriedout in order to dispel the evil karma that caused illness, or to build up depositsof the good.
Inscribed, for example, in the diagrammatic painting Transformation Scenes fromthe Lotus Sutra (Myōhō renge kyō hensōzu 妙法蓮華経変相図, Southern Song period,
12th c., Seikadō Library 静嘉堂文庫 Archives), we find representations of people
suffering from dwarfism and blindness that match the sutra passage quoted
above. It is thought that the imagery of illness as a retribution for bad deeds wasdeveloped through such religious paintings, and through them also brought
eventually to Heian-period Japan. Thus we find in the illustrated scroll Yamai nosōshi 病草子 (“Diseases and Deformities”)—a late-Heian work likely produced in
the orbit of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa 後白河上皇—not only common everyday ailments like stomach pains and toothaches, but also conditions likedwarfism and hunchbackedness, in a sign of the influence that such religious
paintings could have.
Furthermore, episodes of illness and the recovery therefrom are featured frequently in the illustrated scrolls of temple and shrine legends that Medieval Japanproduced in such numbers—as signs either of one’s personal sin, or as the mostpersuasive evidence of a deity’s special favor. In this paper I investigate an earlyexample of this medieval genre, the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple (Kokawa-deraengi emaki 粉河寺縁起絵巻, Kamakura-period, 13th c., Kokawa-dera Temple Archives). Looking in particular at the way this work depicts illness, I consider the
relationship of its imagery to Buddhist concepts of karmic sin, and to ideas
about salvation.2
1. Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s Devotion to Kokawa Temple
The Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple has come down to us in the collectionsof Kokawa Temple itself (Kinokawa City 紀の川, Wakayama Prefecture), a Buddhist temple located in foothills of the Izumi 和泉 mountain range that overlook
the Kinokawa 紀の川 river to its south. From the time of its founding, probably
as early as the eighth century, the temple’s principal image, a statue of Senju(“Thousand-armed”) Kannon 千手観音, has been the object of particular religious devotion. And especially after the 11th century, with its vogue in aristocratic
circles for religious pilgrimages to destinations on the edge of the central Kinai,
like Mt. Kōya 高野山 and Kumano 熊野, we begin to find scattered references ofvisits to Kokawa Temple in contemporary documents as well.
This paper is based on my Japanese article, “Kokawa-dera engi emaki to kyōsetsu: egakareta
zaigō, yamai, kyūsai” 「粉河寺縁起絵巻」と経説：描かれた罪業、病、救済, in vol. 8 of Seikatsu
to bunka no rekishigaku: Shizen saigai to shippei 生活と文化の歴史学：自然災害と疾病. Eds. Yasuda
Masahiko 安田政彦 et al. Tokyo: Chikurinsha, 2017.
2

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In the Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi 枕草子) of Sei Shōnagon 清少納言, we findthe following list: “When it comes to temples: Tsubosaka 壺阪, Kasagi 笠置,
Hōrin 法輪. Ryōzen 霊山, as the dwelling of Śākyamuni, is said to be particularly
moving. Ishiyama 石山. Kokawa 粉河. Shiga 志賀.” The grouping in which
Kokawa here finds itself is one of temples on the periphery of the Kinai region:
Tsubosaka-dera, Kasagi-dera, Hōrin-ji, Ryōzen-ji, Ishiyama-dera, Shiga-dera, allof them located at some distance from the capital, in the provinces of Yamato,Ōmi, or Kii—though even among these Kokawa Temple is particularly far. To
Sei Shōnagon, it no doubt represented an aspirational list, spiritual places ofwhose names she perhaps had some rumor, but to which she had little hope ofmaking a visit in person.
When considering the late-Heian rise in religious devotion to Kokawa Temple,
one figure stands out for being particularly assiduous in its promotion: Retired
Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127-92), the same who during the era of Cloistered
Government oversaw the production of so many illustrated scrolls. The beginnings of his devotion to Senju Kannon lay as far back as the first year of the
Kyūan 久安 era (1145), when upon the loss of his mother Taikenmon’in 待賢門院
at the age of 19, he received from a monk of Onjō-ji 園城寺 Temple (Miidera
三井寺) a painted image depicting Senju Kannon and the Twenty-Eight Attendants.3 As he grew, becoming first emperor, then retired emperor, in the course of
his many religious endeavors this devotion of Go-Shirakawa’s to Senju Kannon
would come to leave lasting traces on his environment—most prominently withthe foundation, in the Twelfth Month of Chōkan 長寛 2 (1164), of the temple
Renge’ō-in 蓮華王院, which enshrined a full thousand-body ensemble of Senju
Kannon statues. There is also record of his foundation in Angen 安元 2 (1179)
of a small-sized Senju [Kannon] Hall in the hills to the southeast of his Hōjūji
法住寺 Palace, using building materials left-over from the construction of Kokawa
Temple’s own principal image.4 In light of such a history, the circle around theRetired Emperor, a man singularly famous for his love of illustrated scrolls,
seems eminently possible as background for the production of the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple. Regarding the particular manuscript copy in question here,
however, the most plausible characterization yet put forth sees it as something
like a replica, or perhaps an intial secondary copy, of the original scroll produced
in Go-Shirakawa’s orbit, given features like the roughness visible in its lines, or theformat that at several points has both narrative text and illustration on the same
sheet of paper, in parts even overlapping. Its date of production would probably
be set around the beginning of the 13th century.
See the passage “Honzon yurai” 本尊由来 [Origins of the Principal Image] in the text Tenpōrinshō 転法輪鈔 under the year Bunji 文治 2 (1186).
4
See Section 21 of the Japanese-language Legends of Kokawa Temple text, under the passage“Go-Shirakawa-hōō go-gan Senju-dō chūzon in’en” 後白河法皇御願千手堂中尊因縁 [Origins of
the Central Image in the Senju Hall Built by Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa], in Shoji engi shū
諸寺縁起集. Kunaichō Shoryōbu, 1970.
3

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Yet though both the narrative text and illustrations in this scroll do seem tomake reference to previous temple and shrine legend texts, for example the Legends of the Construction of the Great Stupa at Kokawa Temple (Kokawa-dera dai-sotoba
konryū engi 粉河寺大率塔婆建立縁起)—with a colophon dated to the seventeenth
day of the Second Month of Tengi 天喜 2 (1054)5—at the same time some ofwhat they contain is in fact unique, and found in no other temple and shrine legend
texts. The scroll consists of five sections in total, which divide into a two-episodestructure: the first an origin story about how Kokawa Temple was founded by
the prayers of a certain hunter (Sections 1 and 2), and the second a miracle story
about how a certain rich man’s daughter recovered from her illness by the meritsof the temple’s principal image, the statue of Senju Kannon (Sections 3–5).
Because of the text’s exposure to fire at some point in its transmission, in particular Section 1, at the head of the scroll, has suffered heavy damage. The partthat concerns this paper’s investigation, however, is the story of the rich man’sdaughter’s recovery from illness, located in the second episode and in portionsof the scroll untouched by fire. While paying due attention, then, to the physicalstate of the manuscript, it is possible to proceed with my study as planned.
In the investigation below, with a focus on this tale of recovery in the text’s
second episode, I attempt to interpret the iconography which the scroll uses for
its depictions of sin and salvation. When quotations from the manuscript happen
to include instances of textual damage, I supply the missing words in brackets [ ]from another text surviving in Kokawa Temple, the work Legends of Kokawa Temple
in Kii Province (Kishū Kokawa-dera engi 紀州粉河寺縁起), which bears a copy-dateof Genroku 元禄 16 (1703).6
2. The Illness of the Rich Man’s Daughter and the Legend of King Ajase
In the scroll’s first episode (Sections 1-2), there is a detailed depiction of ascene showing a hunter and his family eating animal flesh. As previous research
has repeatedly stressed, the significance of motifs like this meat-eating, or thedeerskin visibly depicted at the courtyard’s edge, is to emphasize that the lifestyleof the hunter’s household violates fusesshō-kai 不殺生戒—the Buddhist precept
against taking life.
This is one the Five Precepts (gokai 五戒) in Buddhism that not only those whohave taken vows, but all laypeople must obey: no taking life (fusesshō-kai 不殺生戒),
no stealing (fuchūtō-kai 不偸盗戒), no sexual incontinence (fuja’in-kai 不邪淫戒),
no lying (fumōgo-kai 不妄語戒), and no drinking (fuonju-kai 不飲酒戒). The bad
karma produced by breaking one of these can lead to rebirth in Hell or the evil
realm of Hungry Ghosts. Because the narrative text for Section 1 is missing,
there is no way of knowing if it made mention of either the meat-eating or the
5
6

In Shoji engi shū 諸寺縁起集 (Daigoji-bon 醍醐寺本 text).
In vol. 5 of Nihon emakimono zenshū 日本絵巻物全集. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1962.

Illness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple

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Figure 1. The rich man’s daughter stricken with illness. Illustrated Legends of Kokawa
Temple, Section 3. Permission of Kokawa Temple.

deerskin, but considering the case of the scroll’s second episode as discussed below, it is highly possible that such motifs connected to an evil karmic fate wereexpressed only in the illustrations. By adding details like these scenes ofmeat-eating or deerskins into the illustrated portion of the scroll, the moralistic
structure of the legend—how through the merits of Kannon those living withthe burden of bad karma came to wisdom, and how they were led at last to thegood deed of founding the temple—is communicated visually.
The central theme of the scroll’s second episode (Sections 3–5) is the illnessof the daughter of a rich man living in the Sasara 讃良 District of Kawachi 河内
Province. This illness is characterized by the narrative text accompanying Section 3 in the following way: “Her body’s [insides swelled] like a ripe persimmon,
and as her [bodily fluid leak]ed the stench was extraordinary.”In the illustrated portion of the same Section 3, the body of the bed-ridden
daughter is swollen, leaving the skin ruptured in several places, with red pus andblood oozing from the wounds. (Figure 1). Her face twisted in pain, her chest,arms, and legs exposed, her hair in disarray, her appearance is thoroughly indecorous. Even the woman servants tasked with caring for her cover their noses
with their sleeves and turn their faces away, a pose that conveys visually the unbearable stench pervading the space around the daughter.
That these symptoms exhibited by the daughter seem to be influenced by images of leprosy (Hansen’s disease)—a disease once feared to be incurable—has

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been pointed out by many scholars in the past. Yet it is also worth noting, I
would like to add, that symptoms like a foul-smelling body, or one covered withscabs, also align with diseases that many Buddhist scriptural texts see as punishments for sin. To look again at the Lotus Sutra, in the chapter “Exhortations of
the Bodhisattva Fugen” (Fugen bosatsu kanbotsu hon 普賢菩薩勧発品) we findthe following passage:(Others ridiculing those who copy out the Lotus Sutra) will, for life upon life,
have gaps in their fangs and teeth, lips that are ugly, a flattened nose, arms andlegs that twist and bend, and eyes that squint. Their bodies will stink and be unclean, with bleeding from the putrefaction of their awful scabs. Their bellies
swollen with water, their breath short, many indeed will be the awful illnesses
that assail them.7

It is explained that those who ridicule the act of copying out the Lotus Sutra
will suffer from various kinds of illness as recompense. The sentence here underlined lists symptoms reminiscent of those experienced by the rich man’sdaughter as they appear in both narrative and illustrations to Section 3 of theIllustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple: in particular the putrefaction, severe scabbing, and bloody pus.
This understanding of scabs (kasa 瘡) and pus (umi 膿) that appear on the surface of the body as punishments for sin is delineated with particular clarity in thelegend of King Ajase 阿闍世王, who killed his father-king and usurped his kingdom. Included in many Buddhist writings and Buddhist scriptural texts, it is alegend widely known even in Japan, but the version found in the “Upright Conduct” chapter (Bongyō hon 梵行品) of the sutra Daihatsu nehan kyō 大般涅槃経 isparticularly detailed in its recounting of the process by which King Ajase cameto repent of his actions, and at length aspired to enlightenment. It is a narrativethat contains the following points of interest on the topic of illness.
Born as a prince in Ōshajō 王舎城, the capital of the country of Magada 摩訶陀,Ajase was a man of superlatively evil character, combining violence, slander, greed,
wrath, and ignorance all in a single person. Preoccupied always only with the present and unable to look ahead to the future, so obsessed was he with worldly desires, that he killed his own king and father and usurped control of the country.
Immediately afterwards, however, he began burning up with a feeling ofshame, developing scabs all over his body and suffering from a stench so bad it
was difficult to approach him. At first, six ministers came to him—the jaken
rokushin 邪見六臣 (“six minsters of crooked mind”)—and tried to soothe King
Ajase by arguing from non-Buddhist principles that in fact he had not incurred
any sin. Yet in both mind and body he remained unhealed.
Next, there appeared before him a doctor who followed the Buddhist path
named Giba 耆婆, who instead argued that it was in fact his feeling of shame that
7

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 9, p. 62a.

Illness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple

35

would lead to his salvation. King Ajase, following Giba’s advice, went to visitŚākyamuni. With King Ajase before him, then, Śākyamuni entered a meditative
state called gatsuai zanmai 月愛三昧 (“the samādhi of moon-radiant love”), whereupon the King was enfolded within a great light. Immediately all the scabs on his
body were healed, and he conceived a desire to achieve enlightenment himself.
What I want to note here is how on the road to his awakening, King Ajase had
developed scabs all over his body, and had fallen seriously ill at least twice. The
first occasion was when the King, tortured by shame ever since the death of his
father, and suffering scabs all over his body, was being attended in this sickness
by the Lady Idaike 韋提希夫人, his mother. As the scene that follows makes
clear, however, this in fact only caused his symptoms to worsen:
The fact of having killed his father produced in him a burning regret, and stripping himself of his finery he no longer made recourse to music and dance. (1)The burn of regret in his heart produced scabs all over his body. Because thesescabs reeked with pollution, it was impossible to approach him. As a result King
Ajase said to himself in his heart: “Now indeed, however splendid the rewards
granted my person heretofore, that day is no longer distant when the rewards
of Hell shall grow nigh at last.” Subsequently his mother, Idaike by name, had
every species of healing ointment applied to him, yet his scabs grew only all thegreater, showing no sign of receding or falling away. The king then said to hismother: (2) “Scabs of this nature come not from the body’s four elements, butrather from the heart.” 8

The first underlined passage makes it clear that the reason scabs had broken
out on his skin was the heat caused by his feeling of regret. Because moreoversuch scabbing was only recompense for the sin he had himself committed, King
Ajase says that his descent into Hell cannot be too far off, thus admitting how
the thought of such a descent into Hell fills him with fear. In the second underlined passage, in the lower half of the paragraph, King Ajase explains to hismother that the reason for the scabbing does not lie with the four great elements—the earth, water, fire, and wind of which bodies are made. It comes
rather from his own heart. In other words, as this passage shows, the scabs appearing on King Ajase’s body are only the reflection of his own guilty feeling andrepentance, and the sign as well of a possible fall into Hell awaiting him not too
distantly.
The second occasion is the scene below, where out of thin air he hears thevoice of the very king and father he himself had killed.
“It is I, thy father, Himbashara 頻婆娑羅. Be thou now prompt in obedience tothe words of the old woman. Heed not the speech of thy six ministers ofcrooked mind.” But when the king had heard this, in agony he fainted and fellto the ground, the scabs on his body growing now even more severe, their reeking pollution twice what it had been. A chilling ointment was applied to treat
8

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 12, p. 7a.

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them, but the scabs instead grew hot and their poison burned, only ever increasing with no sign at all they might disappear.9

Here the father’s voice advises King Ajase not to heed the six ministers whosethoughts are crooked, but instead to follow the advice of Giba, trying thereby tolead to religious awakening the very son who had murdered him. When King
Ajase hears such merciful words from his father, however, in the agony of his
regret he falls to the ground unconscious, the scabs all over his body growing
even worse than before, the stench and the filth twice as bad.
In both of the scenes here examined, King Ajase’s experience of his parents’mercy merely sharpened his awareness of the great and irreparable sin he hadcommitted, only deepening his feelings of shame and worsening the seriousnessof his symptoms.
In Buddhism, patricide was one of the Five Cardinal Sins (gogyakuzai 五逆罪):
killing one’s father (seppu 殺父), killing one’s mother (setsumo 殺母), killing an
arhat (setsuarakan 殺阿羅漢), causing disunity among monks (hawagōsō 破和合僧),
and wounding the body of a Buddha. (shutsubusshinketsu 出仏身血). Commissionof one of these was as serious an offense as violating one of the Five Precepts
discussed above. The scabbing and the stench had been engraved into King
Ajase’s body, quite literally, as a “sign of sin.” Yet even as the king suffered in his
illness, he came additionally to be tortured by the fear of damnation in Hell.
When we look again now at Section 3 of the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple
with such religious teachings in mind, it is easy to imagine how contemporary
viewers might well have read into the illness of the rich man’s daughter the signof some karmic sin. Yet what indeed was this sin that the daughter had to takeupon herself thus? On this point there is no answer given in the scroll’s narrative
text. Below, therefore, I continue in my attempts to analyze the scroll’s pictorial
content.
3. The Sin of Wealth Accumulation
At the beginning of the text’s second episode, spread across Sections 3 and 4of the scroll, the prosperous state of the rich man’s household is shown throughthe depiction of a number of valuable objects (Figure 2). Though each sectionof the scroll has its accompanying narrative text, there is nowhere in them any
concrete discussion of the rich man’s wealth, making this plethora of valuables
a feature present only in the illustrations.
In the illustrated portion of Section 3, we see being brought in, from outside
the rich man’s gate to the inner courtyard of his mansion, bundles of tannedpelts, birdcages, boxes containing fish, fruits, and pots (of sake?), trunks filledwith the delicacies of sea and mountain, quails skewered on branches, and manyother items besides. In the courtyard there is a stable, and a space for storing
9

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 12, p. 723b.

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Figure 2. Treasures being carried into the rich man’s mansion. Illustrated Legends ofKokawa Temple, Section 3. Permission of Kokawa Temple.

bales of rice in large quantities, marked off by a wickerwork fence. On the mansion’s veranda, there is also what appears to be a steward in the service of therich man, checking through the inventory list of items being delivered. In thescene within the house that follows, the rich man is meeting with a young ascetic.
To the left of this, beyond a single room set with a sugoroku board, there runs ahallway leading to yet another room where the man’s sick daughter lies. Here theyoung ascetic is depicted a second time, now offering prayers at the daughter’s
pillow-side.
Section 4 presents a scene where many valuable objects—in the words of thetext shicchin manpō 七珍万宝 (Seven Rarities and Myriad Treasures)—are offered
up to the young ascetic, through whose prayers the daughter has now been completely cured. With the door to the storehouse opened wide, gold dust and boltsof silk, pots and trunks and various other items are brought forth. Of these
gifts, however, the ascetic accepts none, and leaving the mansion, takes with him
only the wood-bladed short-sword (sagesaya 提鞘) and crimson-dyed pants offered to him by the daughter herself.
In both sections, the assortment of treasures depicted is an eminently natural
motif for the setting, and serves primarily to express the sheer wealth of the richman. Nonetheless, the amount of illustrated space these depictions occupy is extravagantly large for mere purposes of situational exposition. In such a context,
it will be useful to recall how the accumulation of wealth, in the iconography of
Heian- and Kamakura-era paintings, was in fact frequently cast in a negative light.
An example of this can be seen in the Illustrated [Tale of] Major Counselor Tomo(Ban dainagon emaki 伴大納言絵巻, Idemitsu Museum Archives), another illustrated

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scroll thought to have been produced in the orbit of Retired Emperor GoShirakawa. The work’s central characters are Minamoto no Makoto 源信 andTomo no Yoshio 伴善男, two figures connected with the Burning of the Ōtenmon
Gate 応天門 incident: the former because he was indicted for the crime unjustly(though later pardoned), and the latter because he unjustly escaped being indicted, until his guilt in the arson was exposed, and he found himself banishedto far-off Izu. The scroll contains depictions of these two men in their respective living quarters. While in Minamoto no Makoto’s room the only object depicted is an ink-stone case, in Tomo no Yoshio’s room there are detailed depictions of a truly great variety of items: the bed-pillow shared with his wife, asword placed at the pillow’s head, a mirror case, a comb, a container of hair-stylingliquid (yusuru-tsuki 泔坏), dishes on a painted tray, a pedestal tray bearing sake vessels and food. Both in the number and kind of their accoutrements, there is aclear, deliberate difference in the way the rooms of the innocent Minamoto no
Makoto and the guilty Tomo no Yoshio are depicted, demonstrating that suchaccoutrements have a role beyond situational explanation alone. In particular,
the sake vessels in Tomo no Yoshio’s room are in conflict with one of the Five
Precepts already discussed—that against drinking—and signal moreover the
Buddhist character of the concept of sin here in operation.
A related iconography can be found in the motif of Niga-byakudō zu 二河白道図,
or “White Path Between Two Rivers” paintings, of which ten or more examples
survive from the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Niga-byakudō zu, whichwere used in all sects of Pure-Land Buddhism, were paintings in hanging-scroll
format based on the “parable of the white path between the two rivers,” as presented in the Kanmu ryōju kyōsho 観無量寿経疏, a scriptural commentary by Zendō
善導, an early Tang-dynasty systematizer of Pure-Land Buddhist teachings. HereI will consider the pictorial contents of such paintings, using a 13th-century example of the genre from the collection of Kōsetsu Museum 香雪美術館 (http://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/heritagebig/127087/0/1).
The lower portion of such paintings portrays the present world, overflowing
in all its suffering and filth, while the upper part portrays the paradise of thePure Land. Between lower and upper lie two rivers, one of fire and one of water,
as well as a single white road straddling them both. The river of fire symbolizes
wrath, while the river of water symbolizes desire. The white road in the center
between the two symbolizes the wish for rebirth in the Pure Land as the only
way to cast the worldly passions of wrath and desire aside, and attain entry
thereby into the world of Amida Buddha.
Within the river of fire, there are depictions of people whose anger moves
them to fight with others, or even to kill them. Meanwhile, in the river of water
there are depictions of men and women and children, and surrounding them all
sorts of treasures like bolts of silk, large baskets, bales of rice, swords, and gold
dust, among many other things. The motifs drawn in the river of water here mirror
those seen in Tomo no Yoshio’s house in the Illustrated [Tale of] Major CounselorIllness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple

39

Tomo, and bear a resemblance in structure to the various items depicted in Sections 3 and 4 of the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple.
In the Kanmu ryōju kyōsho commentary, the direct source for the Niga-byakudō zu
paintings, there is no discussion of these rivers of fire and water in their concrete details. As Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠 has already shown, however, there isa sutra that delineates in detail how wrath leads to fighting between people, andhow desire encourages likewise an attachment to one’s family and possessions:
the Bussetsu muryōju kyō 仏説無量寿経. In analyzing the iconography of such
paintings, the following passage from this sutra is helpful:
Beguiled by obsession and desire one falls short of the virtue of the right path,wallowing instead in wrath, consumed by the greed of treasure. On this account
one fails to achieve the Way. Without exception one reverts to the wretchednessof the evil realms, fated for endless repetition of the cycle of life and death.
How tragic! How truly grievous! Within the family, for a short spell, father andson, older and younger brother, husband and wife—though the one dies andthe other lives they bear feelings for one another, cherishing and loving, lamenting and worrying even as it entraps them, longing for one another even as theywound each other’s hearts.10

Religious thinking of this kind that inveighs against attachments to possessions and family can also be found in sutras like the Daihōshaku kyō 大宝積経 or
the Daihō daishū kyō 大方大集経, both of which are quoted in the anthologicalŌjō yōshū 往生要集. The following from the Ōjō yōshū is one such passage where
the Daihōshaku kyō is quoted:11
In a verse passage of the Hōshaku kyō 宝積経 it says: Though the treasure you
acquired by so many evil deeds be a fund turned to the protection and happiness of your own wife and child, when at length you face life’s end, from thesuffering that then wracks your body no one, not even the same wife and child,has the power to save you. In the midst of your fear as you cross the ThreeFord River, you can rely neither upon wife and child nor upon any other family.
Though cart and horse, wealth and treasure all pass on to others, who can sharewith you the suffering you then feel? Your father, mother, older brother andyounger, wife and child; your friends and servants, your prized treasures; at the
departure of death not a single one of them can offer you fellowship on thejourney. Only your black deeds follow you ever to the last.12

Here it is repeatedly emphasized how any wealth accumulated by immoral or
illegal means, even if used to then support one’s own wife and child, is of nobenefit when facing the hour of one’s death, and indeed only produces negative
karma. The words “cart and horse” can also be seen here alongside the other
Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 12, p. 275a.
See the passage “Sōjite ensō wo musubu” 惣じて厭相を結ぶ in section 7 of Part 1: “Onriedo” 厭離穢土 [Spurning the Polluted World].
12
Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 84, p. 39c.
10
11

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Yamamoto

treasures. This is consistent with the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple, where
inside the rich man’s mansion we indeed find depiction of a stable.
To judge by the above, it seems that the understanding of wealth as something
not only valueless and unworthy of attachment—but indeed as something far
worse, a possible source of karmic consequences—had already taken deep root
alongside the spread of Pure Land Buddhism itself.
If in this fashion we work from the assumption of such a Buddhist context—
particularly of the Pure-Land variety—then taking the illness of the rich man’sdaughter as depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple to be but the karmic result of her father’s excess wealth, will seem an entirely natural interpretation. This can also be seen in the fact that in the succeeding Section 5, having
followed the young ascetic all the way to Kokawa in longing, upon discovering
him to have been an incarnation of Senju Kannon, the daughter is not the only
one to then take vows immediately before that Kannon’s statue. The narrative
text makes it clear that vows were then taken by multiple people, with the phrase“Every one of them [in the end] left the world behind.” Likewise the illustration,
though centered on the daughter as she cuts her hair before the image of Kannon,shows not only her mother and father, but also other family members doing thesame.
In the scene with which the second episode of the scroll concludes, where theentire family takes Buddhist vows, it is not the daughter’s recovery from illness
per se that has brought them to this true salvation. It was her recovery, however,that prompted her rich father to open up his storehouse, and to offer the young
ascetic all the wealth accumulated there. It is thus in the entire household’s abandonment of attachments to excess wealth, and in their desire to take vows andleave the world behind—guided by the merits of Senju Kannon—that the true
concern of this illustrated temple legend scroll lies. Or to advance a somewhat
sharper take, using the form of such a legend, this illustrated scroll is arguing forthe dogmatic legitimacy of ridding oneself of excess wealth by donating it toreligious establishments.
4. The Merits of the Senju Dhaˉran. �� 千手陀羅尼
But let us here consider again the daughter’s illness. Though for three years
since her falling sick no prayer of any sort had had the slightest effect, with theyoung ascetic chanting the Senju dhāran. ī 千手陀羅尼, by the morning of the seventh day the daughter’s illness had been completely cured. The process by which
this recovery was effected is recorded as follows in the narrative text of Sections
3 and 4. It begins thus in Section 3: “Here the you[th], sitting at her pillow-side,prays the [entire] Senju dhāra[n. ī ] without ceasing.” Continuing this in Section 4
we have: “As he prayed, the pus [and blood drained out, while the pai]n graduallyceased. By early in the morning on the seventh day the girl was sitting up, feelingherself full of life [as before].”Illness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple

41

The Senju dhāran. ī chanted here by the young ascetic is an incantatory prayer
found in the Senju sengen Kanze’on bosatsu kōdai enman muge daihishin darani kyō 千手
千眼観世音菩薩広大円満無礙大悲心陀羅尼経, or Senju kyō 千手経, a Chinese sutratranslation made in the mid-7th century by Bhagavaddharma (J. Kabon Daruma
伽梵達磨). Indeed, the explication of this dhāran. ī ’s effective power was the Senju
kyō’s very purpose as a sutra. Possessed of every sort of merit, the Senju dhāran. īwas performed to secure a wide range of ends, from peace and prosperity at thenational level to the fulfillment of individual petitions. Believed in particular tohold an unparalleled power for curing sickness, the Senju dhāran. ī makes frequentappearance as healing agent in accounts of illness recovery from Buddhist story
collections of the Tang and Song eras. By the 8th century the sutra had beenbrought to Japan, where as it proliferated in manuscript across the ancient andmedieval periods, it left behind a rich record of literary adaptation: in waka poetry and in Buddhist tales, but also in various temple and shrine legends.
The contents of the Senju kyō and the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple display
several noteworthy points of convergence. First, the Senju kyō explains that whenchanting the Senju dhāran. ī, it is necessary to construct a purified space marked
off on all four sides by a barrier drawn in one of the following ways:
Take up a sword, and after chanting (i.e. the dhāran. ī ) 21 times, draw a line on the
ground to mark out a barrier. Or take up purified water, and after chanting 21
times, sprinkle this on all four sides to mark out a barrier. Or take up white mustard seeds, and after chanting 21 times, strew these on all four sides to mark out
a barrier. Or mark out a barrier at someplace that comes to mind. Or take up
purified ashes, and after chanting 21 times, use these to mark out a barrier. Or
take up a length of five-colored thread, and after chanting 21 times, wind it
around all four sides to mark out a barrier. Any of these is sufficient.13

In the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple, this practice of marking out a barrier
on all four sides finds expression in the hermitage the hunter constructs prior to
the appearance of the Senju Kannon statue. Called a “square-shaped hermitageroom” in the narrative text of Section 2, it is made clear that this room is one
divided off on all four sides, and by depicting such a hermitage in the illustrations repeatedly, the scroll impresses upon its viewers the image of a space purified for the appearance of Kannon’s statue.
Secondly, as seen in the sutra passage here quoted, for the marking out of abarrier, any of the following methods might be employed: swords, purified water,
white mustard seeds, thought, purified ashes, or a five-colored thread. Examining this scroll, in the illustration from Section 2 showing the Kannon statue’s
appearance, we find depicted inside the same hermitage two buckets of cypress
wood with a ladle in each, a heating tripod bearing a kettle, and a stack of firewood. In addition, we can see outside the hermitage three bound bundles ofplant leaves. Gorai Shigeru has pointed out that one might detect in such motifs a
13

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 20, p. 109b.

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kettle for conducting the yudate 湯立 (water-boiling) divination ceremony, together
with bundles of cedar leaves (sugi 杉) or bamboo grass (sasa 笹) prepared for use
in the same. Gorai has also raised the possibility of a connection with the incantations and oracles of mountain ascetics, but though the yudate ceremony was inits origins a form of divination, it was also employed for purposes of purification and exorcism. In this scene, such motifs should be understood as intended
to signal that the hermitage in which the Kannon statue would appear was aspace purified, and marked off by a set border, through the use of purified water.
A third point: in the Senju kyō there is the following passage explaining theproper method for chanting the Senju dhāran. ī itself, after a border has beenmarked out as detailed above:
When perchance in some country disaster has befallen, should the king of thatcountry be one who govern his land rightly, treating everything and everyone
generously, and never abuse the populace, pardoning their trespasses always; ifbeing such a king he will ritually purify himself in body and spirit for seven days
and seven nights, chanting aloud this divine incantation of the dhāran. ī of theGreat Merciful Heart, then shall that land be spared disaster entirely, and its
crops see a bountiful harvest, and its people know peace and security.14

This explains how in order to attain the merits of the Senju dhāran. ī, one must
chant it aloud for seven days and seven nights. Indeed, even outside this quote,the same message is stressed elsewhere in the sutra repeatedly: that by chanting
aloud the Senju dhāran. ī for seven days and seven nights, one can attain its boundless merits in any matter.
Moreover, in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple too, a period of precisely
seven days is invested with special significance, being mentioned in the scroll’s
narrative portion multiple times. The first of these is in the text of Section 2,
after the young ascetic’s self-seclusion in a hermitage: “After 7 days, when I went
again to that same place and looked about, nothing had changed at all, and nothing had been opened. But when I opened it myself, [standing there] within,gleaming, wa[s] a life-sized statue of Senju Kannon.” Here it is recorded that theappearance of the Senju Kannon statue occurred after his self-confinement of 7days. There are further such occasions in the scroll’s second episode, first of allin the narrative portion of Section 3, where the young ascetic has appeared in
the rich man’s house, and says: “If that is the case, I will try praying for sevendays,” thereby suggesting a seven-day period of prayer. Then in the narrative
text of Section 4, as promised: “By early in the morning on the seventh day thegirl was sitting up, finding herself full of life [as before].” Thus it is that thedaughter’s illness is cured on the morning of the seventh day.
As we have seen above, the manner in which the merits of Senju Kannon appear
in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple clearly draws upon the teachings of the
14

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大蔵経, vol. 20, p. 109c.

Illness as Depicted in the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple

43

Senju kyō 千手経. Indeed, for practices like boundary-marking and the performanceof seven-day prayers, a detailed understanding of actual Senju dhāran. ī rituals ispresumed. The scroll’s attitude of devotion towards this sutra is in fact so earnest throughout, that one almost feels it attempting to make manifest—on thesite of Kokawa—the world that the Senju kyō represents.
Conclusion
Recently, near Seventh Avenue there is a woman who lends money. The prosperity of her household, and the abundancy of her foodstores, have led her tosuch obesity that the very ampleness of her flesh now makes it difficult to walk.
Her maidservants try to help her, but with all her sweating and shortness ofbreath, there is nothing to end her suffering.

This is the narrative text accompanying the section “An Obese Woman” in theillustrated scroll Yamai no sōshi.15 A collection of portrayals of people sufferingfrom various illnesses and deformities, this Yamai no sōshi is yet another work believed to have been produced in the orbit of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa. It
also provides, in this passage above, an additional source for understanding thecomplex feelings its contemporary viewers had about the accumulation of wealth.
The woman depicted, a money-lender in the area of Seventh Avenue, has become so morbidly obese on all her wealth and food that she can no longer evenreally walk without assistance. Unlike with the stories in the Illustrated Legends ofKokawa Temple, however, for her there is no divine salvation forthcoming. This
points to a great difference between the two scrolls in their attitudes towards illness.
In the Illustrated Legends of Kokawa Temple, people living with the burden of karmic sin are able, with the salvation offered by Senju Kannon in his limitlessmercy, to once again be reincorporated into the order of religion. By contrast, inthe case of the “obese woman,” the reason for her illness is understood througha logic of causality wholly internal to the secular realm. The coolly critical eye
cast upon her is thus merely the justified consequence of the obese woman’s
choice of moneylending as her life’s profession.
The structural difference here between tales of illness and wealth as manifested in these two illustrated scrolls, as well as the sheer gap between their respective views on the sick, both indicate a certain fluctuation in the distance between the divine and the human. It is a fluctuation found also in the values of
the works’ assumed common patron, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, and evenin the value system of society itself, shifting as it was then from an Ancientworld to a Medieval one.
Indeed, the two scrolls’ different depictions of illness throw into sharp relief
the two-sided nature of Go-Shirakawa’s style of cloistered rule: for even as he15

In the collections of the Fukuoka Art Museum 福岡市美術館.

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trusted to the Buddhist Law through so many outbreaks of disease, war, andnatural disaster, he also sought to overcome such problems by allying himself
with the powers of this world—the newly ascendant warrior class very much included.
References
Gorai Shigeru 五来重. Emakimono to minzoku 絵巻物と民俗. Tokyo: Kadokawa
Shoten, 1981.
Kameda Tsutomu 亀田孜. “Kokawa-dera engi emaki sōkō” 粉河寺縁起絵巻綜考.
Yamato bunka 大和文華 27, September 1958.
Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠. “Niga-byakudō zu shiron: sono kyōriteki haikei to zuyō
kōsei no mondai” 二河白道図試論：その教理的背景と図様構成の問題. Bijutsushi 美術史 127, February 1990. Also in Bukkyō setsuwaga no kōzō to kinō 仏教
説話画の構造と機能. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2003.
Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠 and Yamamoto Satomi 山本聡美, eds. Yamai no sōshi
病草紙. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2017.
Matsubara Shigeru 松原茂. “Kokawa-dera engi no kotobagaki shofū ni tsuite”「粉河寺縁起」の詞書書風について, in vol. 5 of Nihon emaki taisei 日本絵巻
大成. Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1977.
Ōgushi Sumio 大串純夫. “Kokawa-dera engi bubun: zuhan yōryō” 粉河寺縁起
部分：図版要領. Bijutsu kenkyū 美術研究 171, November 1953.
Shimizu Yoshiaki 清水義明. “Kokawa-dera engi fukugen e no ichi-kōsatsu” 「粉河寺縁起」復元への一考察. Bukkyō geijutsu 仏教芸術 86, July 1972.
Umezu Jirō 梅津次郎. “Kokawa-dera engi-e to Kibi daijin nittō-e” 粉河寺縁起絵と吉備大臣入唐絵, in vol. 5 of Nihon emaki-mono zenshū 日本絵巻物全集. Tokyo:
Kadokawa Shoten, 1962.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 45–60© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Between the Mountain and the City
– Ikkyū Sōjun and the Blurred Borderof Awakening
Didier Davin
Ikkyū Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394–1481) is undoubtedly one of the most famousmonks in Japan today. In the modern period, he is mainly known as a young boy
solving apparently impossible puzzles, often in unexpected and amusing ways.
However, this Ikkyū, commonly known as “Ikkyū-san,” is only the final stage ofan image that has drastically changed since the Middle Ages. This evolution has
often been studied,1 and it is, indeed, a fascinating story leading to interestingquestions about, for instance, the diffusion of Buddhism in Japanese society, theconstruction of idea of Zen, the relation between Zen and Japanese arts, etc.
However, even if the numerous later images of Ikkyū are a rich and interesting
subject of examination, it is not to say that the monk who actually lived in the
Muromachi period does not deserve our attention. On the contrary, it is because
the “real” Ikkyū managed to be admired by his contemporaries that rumors about
him gradually transformed into legends. The downside of this celebrity is thatthe multiple images of Ikkyū affects the way we perceive the “historical Ikkyū,”
and one must be very careful not to see the “real” Ikkyū through legends constructed after his death. Of course, as one may have already noticed, the notionof the “real” Ikkyū is itself highly problematic and deserves further analysis.
However, in this article, we will simply consider the Ikkyū that we can know
through the texts and other evidence that are widely thought to have been written by him, or reflect direct testimony about him. This is to say, mainly, his two
poems collections, the Kyōun-shū 狂雲集 and the Jikai-shū 自戒集, and the biography written by his disciples soon after his death, the Ikkyū oshō nenpu 一休和尚年譜.
Among these, the Kyōun-shū, which almost extensively records the poems Ikkyū
wrote in classical Chinese during his life, is by far the most important collection
for understanding him. It is not easy to read, and its interpretation is even moresensitive, as showed by the fact that a comprehensive explanation of the collecOka Masahiko 岡雅彦, Ikkyū banashi Tonchi kōzō no raireki 一休ばなし―とんち小僧の来歴.
Tōkyō: Heibonsha, 1995. Iijima Takayoshi 飯島孝良, “Ikkyū no chosaku, Kyōun-shū, Jikai-shū
soshite Kanahōgō ” 一休の著作 : 『狂雲集』『自戒集』そして仮名法語, Bessatsu Taiyō Ikkyū 別冊
太陽一休, 2015, pp. 100–105.
1

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tion has yet to be published.2 Nevertheless, it constitutes the principal and almost exclusive way to access the thought of Ikkyū, and it is only by a close examination of these poems that several aspects of this intriguing monk can beobserved. This paper presents one such aspects and, through it, what is certainly
the most important themes of the Kyōun-shū.
Most of the studies on the Kyōun-shū emphasize Ikkyū’s image of transgression
and skirting the norms of Buddhist monastic life. Indeed, many poems openly
claim disrespect for—often interpreted as ‘transcending’—the Buddhist precepts, and for that reason, the consumption of alcohol or sexual intercourse areoften considered the main theme of the collection.
These are, undoubtedly, an important theme and should certainly not be neglected, but considering them to be the core of the Kyōun-shū in fact obscures whatreally motives Ikkyū and, ultimately, misleads the reader regarding the overall
meaning of the collection. It is the author’s position that the transgressive poems
are the result of a more fundamental attitude, and, paradoxically, they can be best
explained by putting them aside. However, this paper will not focus on this question and the perhaps too famous transgressive poems, but will rather consider thefundamental structure of Ikkyū’s thought from one particular angle of view.
More than a taste for wine or the company of courtesans, what is perhaps
most conspicuous in the Kyōun-shū is the astonishing criticism of the Zen monksof his time. No word seems strong enough when it comes to describing the villainy
and the incompetence of his co-religionists, and many poems of the Kyōun-shū express one thing clearly: “I, Ikkyū, am the only one who still knows the true Zen,
and all the other Zen monks are preaching a false teaching.” One of the most
famous stanzas of the collection summarizes this quite clearly:華叟子孫不知禅／狂雲面前誰説禅／三十年来肩上重／一人荷擔松源禅3

The descendants of Kasō do not know Zen,In front of me, Kyōun, who would expose Zen,
For thirty years, heavy is that which is on my shoulder,
The burden that I alone carry, Songyuan’s Zen

The expression “Songyuan’s Zen” may look like a very restrictive part of the
The Ikkyū ōsho zenshū 一休和尚全集, (Shunjusha 1997) contains the whole of the Kyōun-shūwith annotations and translation in modern Japanese, but, in spite of its undeniable value, it isunanimously recognized by specialists that the explanations provided in it are far to be enoughto a complete undestanding of the collection. Several other editions, including the famous yet
problematic edition by Yanagida Seizan, (Kyōun-shū 狂雲集, Chūōkōron shinsha, 2001) left many
fundamental questions unresolved.
3
K130. The Kyōun-shū quotes and numbering are based on Itō Toshiko 伊藤敏子, “Kyōun-shū
shohon ni tsuite, fu : kōi Kyōun-shū ” 狂雲集諸本について 付：考異狂雲集, Yamato bunka 大和文華,
1964, 41, pp. 10–59.
This stanza is written on one of the most famous portraits of the monk held at the Tokyo
National Museum. (Figure 1)
https://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_collection/index.php?controller=dtl&colid=A10137
2

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47

Figure 1. Portrait of Ikkyū 一休和尚像,
Botsurin Jōtō 没倫紹等, Muromachi
period, (Tokyo National Museum)Zen school, but from Ikkyū’s point of view, as a member of the Daitoku-ji
branch – a branch that considers itself as the only remaining real Zen – referring to the descendance of Songyuan is none other than the totality of the “real”
Zen. On the same principle, the “descendants of Kasō” – Ikkyū being one ofthem – are looked as the only legitimate part of the Daitoku-ji branch. In thisway, mentioning the descendants of Kasō or the Songyuan’s Zen does not describe Ikkyū as the only legitimate heir of a specific part of the Zen school, butof all the Zen teachings in the country. Suffice to say, of course, that this does
not mean that Ikkyū was the only remaining Zen monk in Japan. On the contrary, during his time the Zen school was still very active and, while his golden
age has passed, the so called “Gozan” (Five Mountains) institution was still an
influential and powerful part of the political and religious landscape. Furthermore,
the Daitoku-ji temple, which did not belong to the Gozan,4 was growing, extending
This is a simplification. In its history, the Daitoku-ji was included in the Gozan system, but
still kept a specific identity. It officially ceased to be one of the Five Mountains in 1431, during
Ikkyū’s life time, at the request of the abbot of the time, his fellow disciple Yōsō. For details see
Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, “Daitoku-ji no rekishi” 大徳寺の歴史, Nihon zenshūshiron 日本禅宗史論,
vol. 2–2. Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1981, p. 311–56.
4

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Davin

broadly his influence in society. Thus, Zen monks were present in quite a number, but for Ikkyū they were not worthy to be called real monks. This severe diagnosis applied to all branches of the Rinzai school, but his criticism was aimed
particularly at the closest monks, and among them his elder fellow disciple, Yōsō
Sōi 養叟宗頣 (1373–1458), who inherited the “Seal of Law” from the same master as Ikkyū, Kasō Sōdon 華叟宗曇 (1352–1428). Ikkyū presents himself as thelast real Zen monk, but surrounded by false monks who hold the institutional
positions and, by that, the appearance of legitimacy. A very large part of the poems and stanzas collected in the Kyōun-shū can be seen as a response, or at leasta reaction, to this situation.
In several compositions, the conception of Ikkyū takes the form of an opposition between two places, two realms with both a strong symbolic as well as very
concrete existence: the mountain and the city. There is nothing really original inthis pair of concepts, nor in the symbolism attached, but there is a specific way
by which Ikkyū uses it. He seems to move along a blurry border, puzzling hisreader by the unexpected path he takes between these two worlds. By following
him in these compositions one should be able to see not only his views on thisparticular topic, but also the very core of his thought.
The boring holiness of the mountainIn the biography compiled by his disciples soon after his death, the Ikkyū oshō
nenpu (below, ‘Nenpu’ ), the following notice can be seen. (Figure 2)
二年壬戌，
師四十九歳，師初入讓羽山，借民家住，有山居偈，後創尸陀寺徙焉，徒侶慕而到者，皆爲法忘軀之流，故拾枯掬 ，岩路盤屈，汲々勿惓，(. . .)5

Second year [of Kakitsu era], jinjutsu (1442),
The master was forty-nine years old. The master entered for the first time the
Yuzuriha Mountain. He lived in a rented house. There is a stanza called “Dwelling in the mountain”. Later, he founded the Shida-ji temple and moved in. The
disciples that came by affection to him where all of the kind who forget theirown body by aspiration for the Law. For that, they gathered dead wood, draw
water in the brooks tirelessly through the winding path of the mountain.

Looking only at this passage, one can see a monk leaving the turmoil of the mundane world and his disciples happily following him in a life finally fully devoted topractice. The mountain is a classical place for the retreat, Buddhist monks – among
many others – often express the will to move in its protective inhospitality, andthere is nothing to be surprised in the fact that, in the biography of a Zen monk,
Imaizumi Yoshio 今泉淑夫 (ed.), Ikkyū ōsho nenpu 一休和尚年譜. Heibonsha Tōyō bunko,
1998, vol. 2, p. 285.
5

Between the Mountain and the City

49

Figure 2. Ikkyū oshō nenpu 一休和尚年譜, printed in 1674 (Enpō 延宝2), NIJL collection
https://doi.org/10.20730/200007559

this episode is presented in a positive way.6 However, the stanza mentioned here
has a quite different tone. Three stanzas are in fact entitled “Dwelling in themountain” (Sankyo 山居) in the Kyōun-shū, two are in a pair entitled “Dwelling in
the mountain, two compositions” and the third one is simply “Dwelling in themountain”. This last poem reads as follows: (Figure 3)
孤峰頂上出身途／十字街頭向背衢／空聞夜々天涯雁／郷信卦書一字無7

The top of the solitary peak is the road to the elevation,
The crossroads in the city the way to the disparity.
In vain, every night, I listen to the wild goose in the heights of the sky,
But of a letter from home, not even a single character.

An examination of all the references used would exceed the scope of this article,
but a few comments must be necessary to understand the general meaning of
this stanza. The first two verses refer, very likely, to one of the most famous text
in the Zen school, the Record of Linji, where one can read:
The concrete motivations who pushed Ikkyū to go to the Yuzuriha mountain are unclear andan examination of the different hypothesis would be irrelevant here. See the edition of the nenpu,
op.cit, vol. 1, pp. 205–222 for a presentation of the various issues on the subject.
7
K350.
6

Davin50

Figure 3. Kyōun-shū 狂雲集, printed in 1642 (Kan’ei 寛永19), NIJL collection
https://doi.org/10.20730/200006559

上堂。云，一人在孤峯頂上，無出身之路。一人在十字街頭，亦無向背。那箇在前，那箇在後。不作維摩詰，不作傅大士。珍重。8The master ascended to the hall and said: “One person is on top of a solitary
peak and has no path to elevation. One person is at the street and the crossroads and has neither any disparity. Which is ahead, which is behind? (. . .)The opposition between the solitary peak and the “street and the crossroad,” orto say it more simply between the mountain and the city, is fundamentally thesame that in Ikkyū’s stanza. The mountain is the place of the elevation, shusshin(Ch. chushen 出身) a term that originally means to pass to the civil service examination, but in the specific context of Zen, refers to passing the very last stageof awakening, beyond the distinction between awakening and the mundane. At
the opposite, the city is the place of the discriminative mind, where the illusionary differentiations are still made. Of course, this distinction itself, between therealm of awakening and the common world, is still a discriminative view, and mustbe surpassed. That is, conceivably, the purpose of Linji who describe a man in themountain but without any way reaching to the awakening and another in the city
8

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, vol. 45, p. 497a.

Between the Mountain and the City51

who has no more disparity, that is to say who had reach the state of the awakening. Both cases are paradoxical and the question throw to the audience can beseen as an invitation to surpass this opposition.
Ikkyū, while referring to this passage, describes quite simply both the mountain and the city as the places of awakening and discrimination, and, unlike Linji,
does not seem to transcend immediately this opposition. He affirms only that
“The top of the solitary peak is the road to the elevation, the crossroads in thecity the way to the disparity”, and, by the title of the stanza the reader knows
that, while saying that, he is living at the mountain, that is to say, by a superposition of the metaphor and the actual mountain, the Yuzuri Mountain, that he is,actually, in the realm of the awakening. The situation, however, does not seem tobe so perfect, looking at the second half of the stanza.
The wild goose is linked with sending messages in Chinese literature since it
was said that Su Wu 蘇武 (ca. 140–60 b.c.) used the leg of one of them to senda missive to the emperor. This expression is quite common and it is difficult tosee a specific poem that Ikkyū refers here, but in most of the cases it implies asadness, the missing of the beloved persons or homesick. So, in short, Ikkyū
wrote, when he was in the mountain, a stanza telling, explicitly, that it is the placeof awakening and, at the same time, that he is sad to be here. To understand thiscontradiction, or at least this tension, let us consider the pair of stanzas entitled“Dwelling in the mountain, two compositions” whose first one reads as follows:
婬坊十載興難窮／強住空山幽谷中／好境雲遮三万里／長松逆耳屋頭風9Ten years in the brothel, the elation is not yet exhausted,
I am now constrained to live in empty mountains and deep valleys.
The pleasant place is separate by clouds on thirty thousand miles,
And in the high pines, rude for my ears is the wind who passed through houses.

The first two verses are easy to understand, and the feeling express in it does notneed any explanation. The brothel is, one can says, the ultimate symbol of theworldly pleasures, of the attachment at the common world and, the opposition
between the mountain and the city is clearly at work here. The life in a holy place,that is, the mountain, is explicitly said to be constrained, far from the will of retreat that one can expect from a monk, or from the depiction seen in his biography. It is the city far away, that is the “pleasant place” and the sound of the windin the pine, one of the sounds that the hermit in his retreat is expected to appreciate, remind him of the city which it passed on the way to him, in a complete
inversion of the classical topos.
To summarize, in this stanza, and in the preceding stanza as well, Ikkyū describes the mountain as a holy but boring place, a place from where he regrets
the forbidden pleasures of the city. One may be inclined to see in those verses thereflection of the feelings of Ikkyū and to concluded that the monk is assuming
9

K89.

Davin52

Figure 4. Kyōun-shū 狂雲集, printed in 1642 (Kan’ei 寛永19), NIJL collection
https://doi.org/10.20730/200006559

openly a kind of hedonism, and indeed many commentaries are based on thisunderstanding.
Nevertheless, it seems difficult, and a little naïve too, to look at the poems andstanza of Ikkyū as the faithful expression of what he felt. The Kyōun-shū is a collection of Chinese compositions, written in different contexts in the constraining style of the classical Chinese poetry. It is, by no mean, a diary and it would
be misleading to see it as a kind of confession. Even in compositions that seems
to express those impressions – maybe more than ever – one must read not what
was felt by Ikkyū, but what he decided to express. This warning is particularly
necessary in a poem like the following, entitled “Mountain road, Yuzuriha”(Sanro. Yuzuriha 山路 讓羽). (Figure 4)
呑声透過鬼門関／豺虎蹤多古路間／吟杖終無風月興／黄泉境在目前山10

Holding my breath, I pass the demon’s gate,
On the old road, many tracks of wolves and tigers.
My poem-stick cannot raise for the wind or the moon,
The realm of the yellow spring, it is the mountain before my eyes.

Admittedly, one can see in those verses the frank expression of the aversion
10

K88.

Between the Mountain and the City

53

toward an unfamiliar environment. The mountain, once again, is described notas the desired place of a peaceful retreat, but a scary world, compared to the yellow spring –hell –that annihilate even the desire of poetic composition, although
it is very strong in the case of Ikkyū. The rejection of the mountain is, obviously,on the same line that the precedents, but that does not mean that it reflects thepsychologic state of Ikkyū at one precise moment. Nobody knows what were
the real feelings of the monk at the time and what we only see is what he wrote
and wanted to be read.11
More than a confession which would have to say, “I have to confess that I am
feeling uncomfortable in the mountain and missing the pleasures of the city,”
Ikkyū is voluntarily claiming his rejection of the realm of the mountain, including all of its associated symbolism. The question is of course, why would he reject the mountain? If there is a clear claim, there must be a clear message. Whatis Ikkyū telling us in his poetry?
The answer, evidently, must also be sought in the Kyōun-shū. The second stanzaof the pair “Dwelling in the mountain, two compositions” gives a valuable key.
狂雲真是大燈孫／鬼窟黒山何称尊／憶昔簫歌雲雨夕／風流年少倒金樽12I, Kyōun, am truly the heir of Daitō,
In the demon’s nest of the dark mountain, what could be worthy of respect.
I remember once, the melody of the flute, the clouds and the rain in the evening,
And refined youths who brought down barrels of wine.

These verses may seem surprising, or at least a little jarring at first glance. So far,we were speaking about the attractiveness or the repulsiveness of the mountain,
or its corollary in the city, and Ikkyū is now talking, in a pair of stanzas also entitled “Dwelling in the Mountain,” about the exclusivity of his legitimacy, what
deserve, or not, to be respected and a puzzling nostalgia for bacchanals. By explaining those new elements, the purpose of the mountain theme in his compositions should be seen in a new light.
As said before, Ikkyū considers himself as the only recipient of the true teaching of the Rinzai school, and his contempt is mainly focused on his closest
co-religionists. By claiming to be the only heir of Daitō, he repeats what was told
many times and in many ways in the Kyōun-shū. One example was given in thefirst quoted stanza where “the descendants of Kasō” or “Songyuan’s Zen” refer
almost to the same group, the very branch of Zen that Ikkyū himself belonged
to. In this branch, those who should have preserved the only real Zen, themonks, had failed their duty and sinking into decadence. There is a very concreteconsequence of the diagnosis Ikkyū made: the place where those monks are living,
the temple, is no more a place of practice nor the symbol of the awakening, but
The process of the Kyōun-shū compilation is complex and not fully understood, but an examination of the various manuscripts shows that, very likely, it starts in the lifetime of Ikkyū.
12
K90.
11

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a place of hypocrisy and depravation. This is, for example, expressed in the following stanza entitled “Suppress the object, do not suppress the man”:
臨済児孫誰的伝／宗風滅却瞎馿辺／芒鞋竹杖風流友／曲木床名利禅13

Among the descendants of Linji, who transmits his legacy?
His teaching extinguishes around the blind ass.14
Straw sandals and bamboo stick are friends of the refinement,15
And the predication chair is for the Zen of fame and gain.

This stanza is one of four dedicated to a very specific passage of the Record ofLinji, and it should be understood in the whole context of the way Ikkyū interprets this passage. However, it will be sufficient to consider the issues in this article separately. The meaning of the first two verses does not contain any difficulty, and it is easy to recognize what is repeatedly claimed by Ikkyū: noone – except Ikkyū of course – is truly transmitting the Zen of Linji any longer.
The predication chair ( Jp. kyokuroku mokushō 曲 木床) is the chair where the abbot sits when he preaches, and it is, in this stanza, the symbol of the teaching
given in the temple. Here, it is said to be motivated only by the greed of glory
and gain, confirming the Ikkyū’s discrediting of the monks of his time.
It would be an oversimplification to consider the mountain and the temple asequal in Ikkyū’s perspective, but the proximity of the two should certainly not be
forgotten. The devaluation of the “demon’s nest of the dark mountain” expressed in the second stanza of the “Dwelling in the Mountain” pair, applies tothe mountain, the place Ikkyū actually stands. However, this should also be understood in the global context of his criticism, and therefore also serves as a devaluation of the temple and the ideal preached in it. The expression “demon’s
nest of the dark mountain” itself is not an original creation of Ikkyū and refers
to a totally dark place, where nothing can be seen, and, by extension, to the stateof ignorance where man is still tied by the discriminative mind. It is used here toqualify the mountain, and express, once again, the rejection of it by Ikkyū, butof course, the literal meaning, a place where demons are living, is not far removed from this. The monks, living in the place they say to be holy—the temple
or the mountains – are undoubtedly the “demons” and they deserve no respect.
In this second stanza, the temple and the monks stand in the shadow of the abhorred mountain. More than the expression of the boredom or the fear of a
new environment, this is more presumably the reject of the corrupted Zenschool that should be read in the rejection of the mountain by Ikkyū.
K14 「奪境不奪人」.
Reference to the last of Linji as recorded in the Record of Linji. On this see Yoshizawa Katsuhirō
芳澤勝弘, “Katsurō no zen,” 瞎驢の禅, Bessatsu Taiyō Ikkyū, 2015, pp. 106–108.
15
The expression fūryū 風流 is very difficult to translate, especially in the case of Ikkyū who
use it as a central concept. “Refinement” is only one of many possible translations of it. On its
meaning for Ikkyū see Yoshizawa Katsuhirō 芳澤勝弘, “Fūkyō to fūryū,” 風狂と風流, Bessatsu
Taiyō Ikkyū, 2015, pp. 110–112.
13
14

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55

The unavoidable pleasures of the city
If what Ikkyū rejects is less the mountain itself – whether as a place or as a symbol – than the Zen school of his time, if the company of his fellow monks was so
unpleasant to him, why then, one may ask, did he not simply applying the true Zen
he claims to have inherited alone and just stay away from them? Where is the necessity to claim his inclination for mundane pleasures in his critique of the corruption of the monks? Should a monk go to the brothel to be considered a truemonk? Indeed, the core of the specificity of Ikkyū lies in this puzzling attitude,
which manifests with several themes and, among them, as seen above, the praiseof the city and of its pleasures. However, before considering the meaning of thecity for Ikkyū, it is important to keep in mind that the general conception on themountain, its opposition with the city and even the necessity to surpass this duality
was a widely shared commonality of the time. One of the most evident manifestation of this is maybe to be found in the popularity of what was a very fashionable ideal of the time, being “Dwelling in the mountain within the city” (shichū
no sankyo 市中の山居). As it was pointed out by Yoshizawa Hajime,16 this idea,
expressed in a famous verse of Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) saying that “The great
hermit lives in the city, and the small hermit lives in the mountain” (大隠住朝市，
小隠入丘樊) spread widely in the society and manifested itself by a general taste
for hermitages in, or very near to, cities. No need to say that the idealization of theretreat was an important aspect of the middle age Japan as it can be seen in literature or in the taste for landscapes paintings – very often mountainous – where asmall hut is lost in the middle of the scene. But such a retreat is an ideal more
often admired than concretely applied. Considering that, by the authority of agreat Chinese poet, the real retreat should be in the city was very convenient andwas used to praise samurais or monks who built “hermitages” in the city.
Furthermore, this tendency was especially convenient for the Zen monks,
since most of their temples were actually in cities. Saying that being able to stayoutside the world while being in the very agitation of the city is the mark of thegreat hermit, and that there is much less merit to do such practice in the mountain where temptations are almost nonexistent, was very welcome by the Zenschool.
However, while situated in the same cultural context, the reject of the mountain by Ikkyū cannot be reduced to an adhesion to this fashionable ideal. First,
to be “in the mountain within the city” implies a revalorization of the city. To bein it, in this case, does not mean being attracted by the mundane pleasures, but,on the contrary, to be strong enough to stay insensitive to various temptations.
The schema is quite different with Ikkyū, and one way to understand it maybe to
examine what can be see here as a subcategory of the city: the brothel. Let look
Yoshizawa Hajime 芳澤元, Chūsei bukai hōkoku Muromachi-ki zenshū no shūzokuka to bukeshakai
中世・部会報告 室町期禅宗の習俗化と武家社会, Historia ヒストリア, 2012, 235, pp. 87–111.
16

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at an example, one of the numerous “Self-Written Tributes” ( Jisan 自賛) compiled in the Kyōun-shū.
八十窮僧大 苴／婬坊興半尚勇巴／半醒半酔花前酒／臨済徳山何作家17

The exhausted eighty years old monk I am is a big punk,
At half of my elation for the brothel, I add the appetite for boys.18
Half drank, half sober, the wine in front of the flowers,
Linji and Deshan, how can they be accomplished men?

The inclination for sensual pleasures is not here directly oppose with the respectable holiness of the mountain, but there is still a trace of this dualism
through the mention of Linji and Deshan. The first half of the Stanza is easy tounderstand and Ikkyū outbid his transgression by adding his appetite for theboys to his patronization of the brothel. Needless to say, sexual interaction between boys and men were very common at the time and the scope of this “confession” is not to be understand in a modern, let alone an occidental, perspective. It is, nevertheless, a clear expression of an insatiable lust. But the second
part seems more puzzling. To be “half drank, half sober,” beside to be a clear
reference to a poem of Du Mu 杜牧 (803–853),19 is an attitude that must be understood through the common metaphor of the sobriety as the awakening.
However, Ikkyū does not claim to be plainly sober, that is fully awakened, but heclaims also to stay half drank. In other words, he is not staying only in the levelof the awakening, no more than in the level of the vulgar. He stays between
them, fully belonging to none of them.
The necessity to transcend the awakening, to not be stuck in it, is indeed a classic question in the Zen school – and in the Buddhism as well – but, what is thepoint to disqualify Linji and Deshan, who were both of course very well awareof this point and are, moreover, respected by Ikkyū as one can see in other stanzas of the Kyōun-shū. What is Ikkyū telling us by disqualifying them? How can amonk claiming to frequent a brothel, in the same stanza, declare himself superior to two of the most eminent monks of the Zen history?
The meaning of the theme of the brothel must be understood in a proper context. A famous episode gives an important key. Here is the version one can see
in the Chanlin leiju 禪林類聚, a compilation of famous Zen texts:
世尊因自恣日，文殊三處過夏，來至靈山，迦葉問云，仁者今夏何處安居，文
殊云，一月在祇園精舎，一月在童子學堂，一月在婬坊酒肆，迦葉云，何得住
此不如法處所，遂乃白佛欲擯文殊，佛云，隨意，迦葉即白槌，纔拈槌，乃見

K620.
The characters for nanshoku 男色 ‘affection for men,’ are not directly written, but strongly
suggested by a play on the graphic composition of the two characters yūha 勇巴. By moving theupper part of the first at the top of the second the word nanshoku appears.
19“Recalling former Travel” (Nien xiyou 念昔遊). Murakami Tetsumi 村上哲見 (ed.), Santaishi
三体詩, coll. “Chūgoku koten sen” 中国古典選, 29, 1978. Tokyo: Asahi shinbun-sha shuppankyoku, vol. 1, p. 178. For an English translation of it see Angus Charles Graham, Poems of the Late
T’ang, Penguin Classics. 1965: Harmondsworth, p. 137.
17
18

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57

百千萬億文殊，迦葉盡其神力，槌不能舉，世尊遂問，汝擬貶那箇文殊，迦葉
無對20

The Venerable was present at the end of the summer retreat. Mañjuśrī had
spent the summer in three places and just came back at the Vulture Peak.
Mahākāśyapa asked him: “Vertuous man, where did you stay this summer?”
Mañjuśrī answered: “I was a month in the Jetavana temple, a month in a schoolfor children, and a month in brothels and taverns.” Mahākāśyapa said: “How
could you stay in places so against the Law?” and asked the Buddha to expel
him. The Buddha said “as you wish,” Mahākāśyapa then took the hammer (tocall the attention of all). As soon as he took the hammer, he saw one hundred
thousand trillion of Mañjuśrī and, even by using all his magical power he could
not raise the hammer. The Venerable then asked him: “Which Mañjuśrī do you
want to expel?” Mahākāśyapa did not answer.

This episode, which of course illustrates the necessity to surpass the opposition
between the vulgar and the awakened, was well known within the Zen school andthere is no doubt than an allusion to the brothel (and the tavern) would immediately be linked to this doctrinal point by an educated reader. The originality ofIkkyū is then less in the use of the brothel as a theme, than in his way to use it. By
claiming so loudly his taste for the brothel, and moreover by posing it in opposition with the teaching of Linji and Deshan, he attacks not only the Zen school, but
its very teaching in the same time. The figures of Linji and Deshan, when coming
together, seem to have a special meaning in the Kyōun-shū.21 Because of the tangle
in the references at work in the concerned compositions a convincing demonstration of this point will not be possible here, but depreciative verses like “Linji and
Deshan are not accomplished men”22 can be seen in many places of the collection.
In Ikkyū’s poetry – as well as in the works of many monks of the time –more thana precise reference to those two famous monks, it is used as a metonym for theteaching of Zen as a whole. So, what is Ikkyū’s purpose here? A stanza may be
helpful to answer that. It is entitled “Going back from the mountain to the city”(Sanchū yori shichū ni kaeru 自山中歸市中) :狂雲誰識屬狂風／朝在山中暮市中／我若當機行棒喝／徳山臨濟面通紅23

Who knows that the Crazy Cloud belongs only to the crazy wind?
In the morning I am in the mountain, at nightfall in the city.
If at the proper time I used of the stick or the shout,
The face of Deshan or Linji would turn red.

The general meaning of this stanza is similar to the previous one. The last twoverses are, to say it without going into a detailed explanation, another claim ofZenrin ruiju 禅林類聚 (C. Chanlin leiju), Zenbunka kenkyū-jo. Kyoto, 1995, p. 373.
It appears 19 times. Kyōun-shū 3, 17, 93, 106, 126, 146, 214, 312, 363, 453, 454, 468, 576, 577,
584, 607, 620, 678, 718.
22
K363. 臨済徳山非作家
23
K93.
20
21

Davin58

the superiority of Ikkyū. There is, however, in both stanzas, an important difference in the affirmation of his superiority compare to the others seen before
them. Ikkyū is not saying here “I am the only one who is still in possession of
the real Zen because no more real monk remains,” but “I am superior even to
the famous patriarchs of our school.” Deshan, known for the efficiency of his
teaching method that used beating, and Linji whose method often involved sudden shouting. Would it be then that Ikkyū not only prides itself to be the last real
Zen monk in Japan at his time, but also to be the best that the school have ever
had? Much more likely, Ikkyū considered the teaching of his own school perverted, and no longer worthy of respect. Claiming to prefer the pleasure of thecity, or the brothel, is, admittedly, a way to express the actualization of the necessity to transcend the state of the awakening – to go beyond the mountain – but
it is in the same time a way to distinguish himself from those who hypocriticallypretend to aspiring to the holy sobriety of the mountain while in fact enjoying
the very worldly benefits of their status as monks. This vision of the greedy
monks can be confirmed, among many others, in a composition entitled “By astanza on the brothel I shame the masters transmitting the law” (Inbō no ju womotte tokuhō no chishiki wo hazukashimu 婬坊頌以辱得法知識)
話頭古則長欺謾／日用折腰空対官／栄衒世上善知識／婬坊児女着金襴24

Kōan and old cases increase their hubris,
But every day wantonly they bow in front of the high officials.
Those masters hungry for glory in this world,
Are girls of the brothel wearing golden brocade.

What should be underlined here is not the attack against the monks, very common in Ikkyū’s work, but the one against the use of the kōan. It takes place in a
specific framework that would need to be fully understand to be concretely contextualized within the evolutions of the practice in the Rinzai school of the time,
but what is relevant for the present article is the verification – once again – ofthe fact that the monks, in their very functions, had declined. Not only the men,or the institution, but worst, the teaching itself. Even the treasured teaching ofthe Zen – which the practice based on the kōan is the core – is no more properly
done and became just a tool for the mundane elevation. For Ikkyū who presents
himself as the last holder of it, the situation is hopeless.
To understand properly the meaning of the transgressive attitude of Ikkyū,
one can have in mind his position against the Zen school and the desperate opinion he had about it. However, many questions remain. What did he choose to do?
Why continuing to be a monk? Or, to say it in other words, where can he find aplace to be after rejecting so radically the mountain? To answer those generalinterrogations, an examination of another question raised by the second verse of
the quoted stanza must be considered. What does it mean to be the morning in the
24

K284.

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59

mountain and the evening in the city? Naturally, this is not an information about
the daily schedule of Ikkyū, and it is, of course, on the base of the symbolism of
the mountain and the city seen before that this claim should be understood.
To be the morning in a place and the evening in another, normally unattainable, is a mark of the magic power obtained by the one who achieves Buddhahood. The expression “Going the morning in Dantaloka and arriving the evening at Luofu,”25 often seen in Zen texts, is probably the most famous exampleof this. Dantaloka is a mountain in India where the future Buddha is said to havepracticed, and Luofu is a mountain in China. The possession of this ability, andby them the affirmation of his own awakening, is coherent with Ikkyū’s discourse, but is it really only this capacity expressed here? The formulation, ofcourse, cannot not be seen as a reference to this topos, however, why talking only
about the mountain and the city? Thinking about it, there is no big mystery to be
in a mountain the morning and at a city in the evening, it looks rather like theprogram of a pleasant Sunday hike. Quite probably, to understand properly Ikkyū’sverse one can take in account the context of Ikkyū’s thought. To say it roughly,
what Ikkyū is telling us by claiming that he can going freely from the mountainto the city is, likely, meant to be taken at the symbolic level. That is, he can go
freely from the realm of awakening to the realm of the common world. However, stopping the comprehension at this level would be considering Ikkyū in theframework of the Zen school, forgetting his strong rejection of it and the specificities it implies in it his use of Zen concepts.
For Ikkyū, to be able to go freely from a place to another is not only a mark of
his freedom, but also, and paradoxically, a necessity. Because he does not resign
his stature as heir of the Zen school, he cannot quit the temple, or totally renounce to the mountain, but because of the corruption of the world, he cannot
fully embrace this ideal and must show his disagreement by going to city and,much more importantly, to publicizes his behavior. It is the same idea express by
the expression “half drank, half sober”. He is not staying only in the level ofawakening, no more than in the level of the vulgar. He stays between them, fully
belonging to none of them.
Conclusion: Between or beyond, but never staying in
The opposition between the holy mountain and the sinner city is not limited to
Ikkyū, nor the Zen school as well, no more than is the necessity to transcend thisdualism. The very hard look Ikkyū takes on his school implies a will to stay awayfrom the other monks, or at least to express it in his poetry. To leave the mountain, or to stay drank, can be seen as a clear metaphor to say avoid the “holy”
places where the monks are living. By his actions – or at least by the claim of it,
朝遊檀特､暮到羅浮, Koga Hidehiko and Iriya Yoshitaka, Zengo jiten 禅語辞典, 1991. Tokyo:
Shibunkaku Shuppansha, p. 312.
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which is a fundamental nuance – Ikkyū locates himself – symbolically as well as
physically – outside the space occupied by his co-religionists. He is seemly sayingthat we are not living in the same world. However, the second aspect of the paradoxical superiority repeatedly expressed by Ikkyū should be also found in his
rejection of the Zen teaching itself. More precisely, it is found in his refusal of
the faulty comprehension of the Zen preached by other monks. All the subtlety,
and therefore the difficulty, of the position of Ikkyū resides in the fact that herejects a teaching precisely because he values it. Praise and criticism are confusingly close in his poetry, but it is because the Zen of Linji and Deshan, the sacredness of the mountain or the aspiration to the awakening are not, per se, negated by Ikkyū. If they are criticized, and in quite violent terms, it is because thetime had changed, and because of this, of the decadence of the Zen school,
those highly valuable ideals are no longer appropriated. The necessity to transcend the awakening, present in the doctrines of the Zen, must be transcended
again. The Zen doctrine is two-fold with the specific view Ikkyū has on his
school. Ikkyū stands between two worlds, claiming to desire one – the city – todefend the true meaning of the other – the mountain.26

26

The author wants to thanks Tom Newhall for his kind proofreading on this paper.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 61–72© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Where Yōkai Enter and Exit
the Human Body:
From Medieval Picture Scrolls to Modern
Folktales in Japan
Yasui Manami
Translated by Kristopher Reeves

1. Yo�kai and the Body1
Let us begin by taking a look at Figure 1, an image from a thirteenth-century
illustrated scroll entitled Kitano tenjin engi 北野天神縁起. Here we see an illnessstricken Fujiwara no Tokihira 藤原時平 (871–909) with two snakes crawling outof his ears.
A priest was summoned to pray for the recovery of Tokihira, and during his
prayers, two snakes crawled out of his ears. The two snakes were the vengeful
spirit of Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903), Tokihira’s former rival,
who had died six years prior, after being publicly shamed and exiled. The snakes
commanded a certain courtesan to stop the priest from praying. No sooner had
the priest halted his prayers and left the room than Tokihira passed away.
It was believed that sicknesses and maladies of all sorts were caused by the intrusion into the body of evil spirits and yōkai. According to the historian Kuroda
Hideo 黒田日出男 (1943–), a popular belief held throughout the early formative
The present article is based on my research presentation of July 31, 2016, for the research group,“Borders and Japanese Literature: Constructing a Platform of Knowledge,” held at the National
Institute of Japanese Literature. I would like to thank the organizers and attendees of this meeting for their insightful feedback.
1
Komatsu Kazuhiko, who is arguably Japan’s foremost folklorist and cultural anthropologist,
has analyzed the history and culture of yōkai, and has constructed a definition, building upon his
many articles and books. In An Introduction to Yōkai Culture; Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History (2017 [originally published in Japanese in 2006]), he points out that “yōkai is an ambiguous term among both academics and lay-people. Generally speaking, it means creatures,presences, or phenomena that could be described as mysterious or eerie” (12). Note that theterm yōkai includes malevolent and unobtrusive entities alike, both corporeal and incorporeal.

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Figure 1. Illustration from Kitano tenjin engi, depicting two snakes emerging from
Tokihira’s ears. (NIJL, Kitano seibyō engi 北野聖廟縁起)
https://doi.org/10.20730/200015372

years of Japan’s medieval period saw the pores of the skin as a primary entrypoint for sickness.2 Pores and ears, both of which are perpetually open to theoutside world—unlike the eyes and mouth, which may be closed at will—were
thought to be easy targets for yōkai.
The present paper aims, by looking at medieval illustrated scrolls of the sortjust mentioned and modern folktales, at enumerating those specific parts of the
body most commonly used by yōkai as points of entry into and exit from thehuman body. In order to carry out this analysis I have taken advantage primarilyof two rich sources of information: First, the early twelfth-century Konjaku
monogatarishū 今昔物語集, particularly that section dedicated to so-called seculartales (sezokuhen 世俗編) set in Japan (honcho 本朝), hereafter known as “secular
Japanese tales”; second, the database of Folktales of Strange Phenomena and Yōkai(Spirits, Ghosts, Monsters) (Kaii yōkai denshō dētabēsu 怪異・妖怪伝承データベース),
created and made publicly available on-line by the International Research Center
for Japanese Studies (Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyū Sentā 国際日本文化研究センター), which includes data gleaned mainly by early-modern Japanese scholars of folklore studies.3 I wish to show the manner in which the illustrations2
3

Kuroda 1986, pp. 251–253.
This database may be accessed via the following link:〈http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/youkaidb/〉.

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from medieval scrolls and various tales of yōkai entering and exiting the body
were later reinterpreted in similar tales of the supernatural from the early modern period.
Komatsu Kazuhiko 小松和彦 (1947–), the leading scholar of yōkai, points outthat “It seems probable that all those particular spaces and places where yōkai aremost accustomed to appear and disappear are of a liminal character.”4 Applying
this observation to the human body, those places where yōkai are most wont toappear and disappear, that is, enter and exit the body, are likewise liminal spaces(kyōkai 境界). Indeed, the pores in our skin, seen in the popular medieval imagination as primary points of entry for supernatural sickness-causing agents, arejust such a liminal space, acting as a border between the world inside the body andthe environment without. Similarly, according to the compilers of Histoire du Corps,“the body as a whole is itself a liminal zone, for which reason it has been placedat the center of a cultural dynamics, ample evidence of which is to be found in
the social sciences.”5 Considering that the human body is a liminal zone, it is nowonder that yōkai, being accustomed as they are to appear and disappear in liminal spaces, are continually understood as entering and exiting the body.
In the illustration cited at the beginning of this paper, the two snakes are seen
to be emerging not from the pores or the mouth of Tokihira, but from his ears.
While we must certainly consider differences in detail between oral tales and illustrated depictions, we may at least presume that there were certain areas or orifices of the human body through which yōkai preferred to enter and exit. Furthermore, it should be possible, by focusing our attention on these particularareas or orifices, to gain a clearer picture of how the human body was envisioned
throughout the ages. By examining tales about yōkai and the human body, and bylooking at the human body as a liminal zone, this paper aims at taking a few steps
towards research into ways in which the human body has been imagined
throughout Japanese history.
2. Areas of the Human Body Most Susceptible to Yo�kai Intrusion
Based on what we have seen in the case of Kitano tenjin engi, we might be justified in assuming that, in the corpus of medieval Japanese literature, one may findnumerous tales of yōkai entering and exiting the human body through orifices,like the ears, that are continually open to the outside world. Is such an assumption
correct? In order to find the answer, I have made a search of the aforementioned“secular Japanese tales” section of Konjaku monogatarishū, focusing my search on
the word “ears”.6 As it turns out, though the phrase mimi ni suru 耳にする, to listen or to hear, appears several times in this collection of tales, not a single instance of yōkai entering or exiting through the ears is to be found therein.
Komatsu 2016, p. 5.
Corbin, Courtine, Vigarello 2010, p. 14.
6
Komine 2001.
4
5

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Following this, I searched the database of Folktales of Strange Phenomena andYōkai for any data pertaining to yōkai and the human body. This database, which,at the time of this writing, was last updated in 2014, contains a total of 35,826
entries. While, as already mentioned, most of the items appearing in this database have been gleaned from the works of early-modern and modern Japanesescholars of folklore studies and local histories, some of the items have beengleaned from essays written by scholars active during the end of the Edo period.
Consequently, this database includes tales of yōkai composed from the latter halfof the nineteenth century and onwards.
My first step when using the database was to conduct a search using a list ofcommon terms referring to the body. I referred to the entry for karada, or body,in the well-known Japanese dictionary Daijirin 大辞林 (Sanseidō 1988), which divides the body into four main sections: atama 頭, head; dō 胴, torso; te 手, hands;
and ashi 足, feet. I then searched for these four words in the database. I also
searched a total of thirty-seven other words related to smaller divisions of the
body and facial features.7 Among the total number of hits for each such term—te (hand), for example—I selected only those that related directly to the body,thus giving me what I called my data sets. It was these data sets, and not the total
number of hits, that I used in my analysis. The total number of hits as well as
their respective reduced data sets are listed in Figure 2. As may be seen from
Figure 2, in which I have tabulated the top twenty most frequently occurring
areas of the body, feet, hands, eyes, head, neck, hair, stomach, and back containthe largest data sets. It would appear that yōkai tended to target these areas mostfrequently when seeking entrance or exit from the human body. The feet and thehands have the largest data sets, something which may be explained by the factthat it is the feet and hands, more than any other part of the body, that are mostfrequently injured during daily manual labor. People tended to imagine that thefrequent injury of hands and feet was caused by malignant yōkai interfering inhuman labor.
3. Yo�kai Intrusion through Perpetually Open Orifices
My next step was to list all those orifices of the body, such as the ears and nostrils, which are, in virtue of their very anatomical structure, perpetually more-orless open to the outside world. Having listed these in descending order of frequency,
I found that those orifices with the largest data sets were the ears, nose, andmouth, in that order. On the other hand, those orifices with the smallest data
sets were the vagina and the anus.
Let us take a look at tales relating to yōkai and the ears. Lafcadio Hearn (1850–
1904), in his collection of Japanese stories entitled Kwaidan (1904), includes an account of Miminashi Hōichi 耳なし芳一, or Earless Hōichi. According to this tale,
7

Yasui 2014, pp. 205–229.

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Figure 2. Total hits and reduced data sets for selected top twenty parts of the human body.
The number of hits is higher than the actual relevant data due to the incidental appearance of target terms in phrases that are actually irrelevant to my purpose. For
example: “to lend someone a hand” would come up as a hit, as it includes the target
word “hand,” although here the meaning is simply to offer help.

a blind biwa player by the name of Hōichi is commanded by a deceased spirit of
the Taira clan to play him a tune. As a precaution, Hōichi requests a monk to write
scriptural verses over his entire body, thereby serving as divine protection against
the intrusion of yōkai. Here, we see how the skin was understood as a liminal zone
separating the inside of the body from the outside environment. Unfortunately,
this monk neglected to write verses on Hōichi’s ears. When the vengeful Tairaspirit, having listened to Hōichi’s tune, finally decides to depart, it tears off thepoor man’s unprotected ears as it goes. Tales of yōkai tearing off people’s ears are
frequent in folklore accounts from the early-modern and modern period. For example, a report from Naze City, Kagoshima Prefecture, published in 1970, informs us that parents used to warn their crying children that a yōkai by the nameof Mindon ミンドン would come and take off their ears if they did not stop their
weeping. The initial min in Mindon is a dialectical variant of the word mimi, or ears.8
A report from Itoman City, Okinawa Prefecture, first published in 1949, tells ofMimikiri bōzu 耳切り坊主, the ear-chopping monk, who went around the town
at night with a knife looking for random ears to chop off.9 These are examplesof yōkai cutting off ears. There are, however, examples from all over Japan ofears presaging death. For example, it is said that when one hears a ringing in the89Tabata 1974, pp. 31–46.
Miyanaga 1949, pp. 28–31.

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ears—the ringing is supposed to sound something like jinjin—someone of thesame age has recently passed away, or is soon to pass away. The ears were supposed to be able to pick up messages pertaining to border-crossings between
this world and the next faster than any other organ of the body.
However, the image from Kitano tenjin engi introduced above, in which two
snakes are seen emerging from Tokihira’s ears, is not something that can befound in any of the ethnographical writings from the early-modern or modern
period. The absence, throughout the medieval and early-modern period, of tales
about snakes coming out of people’s ears might be attributed simply to the general disappearance of such tales over time, or—and this might explain the disappearance—a preference for tales in which snakes emerge from other parts of the
body besides the ears. If this latter supposition is true, we ought to ask ourselvesfrom where, if not the ears, snakes were most likely to emerge.
Let us turn our attention to the nose, being the orifice with the second largest
data set. There is a particular species of Japanese goblin known as the tengu 天狗,
the nose of which is conventionally depicted as being extremely prominent.
Japanese novels from the early-modern period, such as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s
芥川龍之介 (1892–1927) Hana 鼻, include vivid depictions of the human nose.
What I wish to focus on here, however, is not the nose, as such, but the nostrils,
that is, the orifices of the nose. Tachibana Nankei 橘南谿 (1753–1805), a prominent Edo-period essayist, wrote a collection of strange tales entitled Kōkadō iwa
黄華堂医話, which includes a typical example of a tale centered around the nostrils. This tale is about a certain twelfth-century general by the name of Fujiwara
no Hidehira 藤原秀衡 (1122–1187) who was active in northern Japan. When Hidehira had grown quite old, he got word of a famous physician named Kentesei
見底勢, who happened to be a native of Makkatsu 靺鞨 (Ch: Mohe), a region innortheastern China once inhabited by a tribe of Tungus people.
This doctor was famous for his miraculous ability to cure all manner of illness.10 According to this tale, in order to save a mother and her child, both ofwhom died during childbirth, this doctor stuffed a quantity of medicine into
the mother’s nose, inserted acupuncture needles into her nose, mouth, and backa total of three times, and fumigated her naval. The mother promptly regained
consciousness. As for the stillborn baby, the doctor blew powdered medicine
into its nostrils, opened its mouth and inserted a dough-like substance calledryūchichi 龍乳 and wrapped its body in cloth.11 The baby, likewise, regained consciousness. That is not all. A certain old man wished to give some of his remaining years to a young man who had recently passed away. Doctor Kentesei
produced a tube, one end of which he inserted into the old man’s mouth, theMori, Kitagawa 1980, p. 238.
The exact nature of the apparently medical substance ryūchichi 龍乳, or “dragon’s milk,” remains uncertain. The proper reading, likewise, is not known. Possible readings include ryūchichi
and ryūnyū.
1011

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other end of which he inserted into the dead man’s nostril. After smearing theold man’s back with medicine and inserting acupuncture needles into the deadman’s back, the former passed away while the latter suddenly came back to life.
Doctor Kentesei was able to resurrect the dead by inserting medicine into thenostrils or by means of a tube inserted into the nostrils. His common methods
included medicine applied to the nostrils, mouth, and back, as well as acupuncture needles inserted into the back. That the life of one patient should be exchanged for the sake of another through the nostrils seems reasonable when
we consider that the nostrils are one of the orifices through which the air of life
passes.
Aside from their appearance in medical tales, the nostrils were also seen as
convenient points of entry for yōkai. In 1932, an eighty-year-old woman living inTokushima Prefecture gave a first-hand report of an incident that occurred inrelation to an individual known as an inugamisuji 犬神筋, that is, someone believed to have an intimate connection with and control over inugami 犬神, or dog
spirits. According to this woman’s account, there was a large group of people
staying together in the same inn. When most of the people had fallen asleep, thiswoman noticed a tiny dog no bigger than a bean emerge from the nostril of the
inugamisuji. The little creature proceeded to run and frolic about the room. Thisdone, it headed back towards the nostril from whence it had first emerged. Unfortunately, the bean-sized canine missed the mark and entered the nostril of
another man. The woman claims that this second man was afterwards prone tosudden possessions by dog spirits.12 It is said that travelers wary of encountering
a similar fate were accustomed to erect small folding screens beside their pillows.
It should be noted here that the dog spirit in the above account did not emerge
or reenter through the open mouths of snoring sleepers, but rather through thenostrils, which are perpetually open, and therefore seen as exceptionally vulnerable, entry points for specters of all sorts. As has already been noted, the nostrils
serve as passageways through which life-giving air can pass, and are consequently closely associated with the life of the individual. It is for this same reason that yōkai are wont to enter and exit through the nostrils.
Let us next turn our attention to tales involving the mouth. Interestingly, about
eighty percent of all tales in the database of Folktales of Strange Phenomena andYōkai involving the mouth feature the notorious Kuchisakeonna 口裂け女, a female yōkai sporting a grotesquely large mouth, both corners of which look as
though they have been cut nearly up to her ears. In most cases, this modern yōkai
wears a mask to hide her mouth. The very first report of this specter was published in December 1978, when Kuchisakeonna was apparently sighted somewhere in Gifu Prefecture. Sightings quickly increased; children all over Japan became frightened of this yōkai. Aside from accounts of Kuchisakeonna, there are12Ōta 1936, pp. 54–55.

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no other tales of specters or evil spirits concerning the mouth. This may be attributed to the fact that, unlike the ears and the nostrils, the mouth may be closed
at will, thereby ensuring that no unwanted yōkai will enter.
4. Snakes Entering and Exiting through the Vagina
Next I would like to look at tales relating to the vagina, though this is an areaof the human body with a rather small data set. There is a memorable scene in
Kojiki 古事記, in which Ame-no-uzume bears her genitals and performs a comical dance, making all the gods roar with laughter. This she does expressly in order to lure Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun, out of a stone cave into which thelatter has secluded herself, thereby flooding the world in utter darkness. There
are many other tales involving the vagina in Japanese mythology. In the tale of
the god of Mt. Miwa 三輪山, a woman is impregnated when an arrow painted allover in red finds its way into her vagina. Similarly, in the tale of Nyogo-ga-shimaIsland 女護ヶ島, a woman becomes pregnant when a gust of wind blows acrossher genitals. Despite numerous such tales in Japanese mythology from the ancient period, the database of Folktales of Strange Phenomena and Yōkai contains
very few examples of this sort. It is likely that modern-day Japanese folklorists
and scholars of local history, having been deeply influenced by the conservative
tendencies of Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男 (1875–1962), were reluctant to report
any tales involving the genitals. This, at least, would explain the dearth of tales
involving the vagina in early-modern ethnographical reports.
Among the very few tales of this sort is one in which a snake finds its way into
the vagina of a woman who happens to be taking an afternoon nap. Once in, thesnake cannot be removed.13 The magazine Dorumen ドルメン includes numerous
similar reports, all taken between 1933 and 1934, from all over Japan. The snakein this tale can, of course, be interpreted as a male penis, in which case the tale
becomes a practical warning to women, urging them not to fall asleep out ofdoors, where they are bound to be almost utterly defenseless.
The tale of the snake finding its way into a woman’s vagina is found as early as
the twelfth century, in the “secular Japanese tales” section of the already cited
Konjaku monogatarishū.14 This tale begins with a young woman who climbs a mulberry tree in order to pick leaves for her silkworms. A large snake then coils himself about the base of the tree. No sooner does the young woman jump out of
the tree than the snake darts forward and lodges himself within the woman’s vagina. No manner of pulling can remove the snake. In fact, the origin of this talegoes back even further, all the way to the early-ninth century Japanese anthology
of Buddhist anecdotal tales, Nihon ryōiki 日本霊異記.15 In the Konjaku monogatarishū
version of this tale, a doctor pours a medicinal concoction into the woman’s vagina,
Nakaichi 1936, pp. 5–6.
Komine 1994, pp. 400–401.
15
Nakada 1979, pp. 267–274.
13
14

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whereupon the snake at last decides to make its escape. Moreover, the snake’s
children, which it had apparently given birth to inside the woman’s vagina, andwhich are still creeping about the poor woman’s genitals, are likewise expelled bymeans of medicinal treatment.
It is interesting to note how a tale first told in Nihon ryōiki was later incorporated into the medieval Konjaku monogatarishū, and, many centuries later, retold in
similar form in early-modern ethnographical reports. For one reason or another,
the motif of a snake entering a woman’s vagina remained a set theme in Japanese
literature. I would go so far as to argue that the dearth of tales involving snakes
emerging out of people’s ears might be due to a general preference for tales involving snakes entering women’s vaginas.
Like tales involving the vagina, those involving the anus are also extremely rare.
Among those that do exist, most are variations on a single theme: a kappa 河童, orwater imp, inserts his hand into someone’s anus in order to pluck out a shirikodama
尻子玉, a small jewel believed to be couched somewhere in the anal cavity. Asidefrom this motif, there are a few examples of yōkai entering the body through theanus. The anus, it would seem, is not merely an orifice for the release of bodily
waste, but another entry point for yōkai.
To summarize what has been said above, tales of yōkai from the early-modern
and modern period reveal that, among those orifices that are perpetually open to
the outside world, the nostrils and the anus were exceptionally vulnerable tospectral intrusion. As I have hoped to make clear, tales of snakes emerging outof the ears, as seen in the illustrated scene from the medieval scroll Kitano tenjin
engi, are not to be found in early modern ethnographic reports. Instead, what we
do find are tales of snakes entering women’s vaginas, tales which have appearedin Japanese anthologies of ancient tales as far back as the eight century.
Oddly enough, according to the database of Folktales of Strange Phenomena andYōkai, evil spirits and specters are not accustomed to enter or exit through theeyes, ears, or mouth, despite the fact that these are prominent orifices on theface. It would seem that specters are not simply aiming indiscriminately at justany opening, but are focusing their efforts on a select few orifices. This preference for one orifice over others is likely due to the inner workings of a rich Japanese imagination as it sought to envision the body in relation to otherworldly
entities. We must now ask ourselves, aside from the orifices discussed above,
what other part of the human body did yōkai employ as points of entry andegress?
5. Protecting the Body against Specters
Human beings were not merely the helpless victims of yōkai intrusions. Various
measures were actively taken to protect the body against such attacks. An examination of these measures will benefit our understanding of how Japanese people envisioned their bodies. For example, in the past, it was customary to sew a

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Figure 3. A child’s semamori as depicted in an adapted illustration from Kasuga gongengenkie, vol. 16, in the National Diet Library Digital Collections.
https://doi.org/10.11501/1287501

charm into the back seam of two- to three-year-old children’s kimonos as ameans of fending off yōkai that might attempt to enter their bodies from behind. These charms were known as semamori 背守り, literally, protection (mamori )for the back (se), or as senui 背縫い, that which is sewn (nui ) into the back (se) of akimono. Let us take a look at a fourteenth-century illustrated scroll entitled Kasuga
gongen genkie 春日権現験記絵. A mother leads her barefooted child by the hand(see Figure 3). Note the semicircular semamori sewn into the back of this child’skimono. The fact that charms of this sort were sewn into the backs of children’skimonos is significant. Japanese people used to believe that the backs of children
were easy entry points for yōkai.
Another example that further supports what has just been said is to be foundon the island of Amami Ōshima 奄美大島, where it is believed that one’s spirit
may leave the body via the back. To prevent this, the people of Amami Ōshima
sew a triangular charm, representative of a butterfly, into the backs of their children’s kimonos up until the age of seven, a period when children are thought tobe most vulnerable to such things. In Kōchi Prefecture, when a child falls down,
it is customary to slightly loosen the collar and back portion of the child’skimono. The child is then carried three times around the house, during whichtime the child’s name is called out aloud. Then, three grains of rice are dropped

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into the opening that was created by loosening the back (semamori ) of the child’skimono. Finally, the child is made to eat these grains of rice.16 It is thought thatthese grains of rice represent the child’s spirit. We may understand from this thatthe back is thought by at least some Japanese people to be the entry point for achild’s spirit when entering—and reentering—its body. This seems to be the casenot only with children but with adults who have become temporarily stunned or
who have fallen into a momentary state of stupefaction. It was once common
practice to give such adults a brisk strike on the back in order to bring them backto their senses, that is, in order to call back their wandering spirit, which would
consequently reenter through the back.17
The back, as has been seen, was not simply the place from which a spirit could
escape a body. It was also that place to which a child’s spirit would return, as wellas that place via which yōkai were likely to intrude. For this reason, the back had
to be protected by charms of the sort discussed above. The back was a gateway
between this world and the next; the way to open this gate was by rapping or
rubbing the back. Unlike the nostrils, vagina, and anus, all of which are more-orless open orifices, the back, despite its closed nature, was also seen as a point ofentry and exit for specters. The perceived vulnerability of the back was due tothe simple fact that human beings cannot see their own backs. Considering that
this is true of all human beings, it should not come as a surprise that the back is
traditionally seen as a vulnerable entry point for yōkai in virtually all cultures
throughout the world. In those cultures where the back is not seen as a vulnerable
entry point, we can be sure that the reason lies in a unique vision of the bodythat is different from other cultures. A comparative examination across culturesof the various ways in which people envision the body in relation to yōkai is sure
to produce fruitful results.

16
17

Katsurai 1973, p. 140.
Katsurai 1973, p. 141.

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続日本随筆大成 10. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1980, p. 238.
Nakada Norio 中田祝夫. “Nyonin no ōkinaru hebi ni kunagaiserare kusuri nochikara ni tayorite, inochi wo mattaku suru koto eshi en dai yonjūichi wa” 女人の大きなる蛇に婚せられ、薬の力に頼りて、命を全くすること得し縁 第41話.
In Nihon ryōiki (chū) 日本霊異記（中）. Tokyo: Kōdansha Gakujutsu Bunko,
1979, pp. 267–274.
Nakaichi Kenzō 中市謙三. “Kashiwa no hakaze” 柏の葉風. In Tabi to densetsu 旅と伝説 106 (1936), pp. 5–6.
Ōta Akira 太田明. “Ashū inugamikō (3)” 阿州犬神考（三）. In Kyōdo kenkyū kamigata
郷土研究上方 6:65 (1936), pp. 54–55.
Tabata Eikatsu 田畑英勝. “Amami no yōkai ni tsuite” 奄美の妖怪について. In
Ryūdai shigaku 琉大史学 6 (June 1974), pp. 31–46.
Yasui Manami 安井眞奈美, Kaii to shintai no minzokugaku: ikai kara shussan to kosodate
wo toi naosu 怪異と身体の民俗学―異界から出産と子育てを問い直す. Tokyo:
Serika Shobō, 2014, pp. 205–229.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 73–76© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Birth of a Monster Story on the Borderlands:
The “Big People” (Chōjin) Legend
in 8th-Century Silla
Lee Sungsi
Translated by Jeffrey KnottThe Chinese official historical chronicle Xintang shu 新唐書 (compiled c.
1060), includes a section entitled “An Account of Silla” 新羅伝. As a contemporary historical source recording in detail the domestic affairs of themid-8th century Korean kingdom Silla 新羅, it is a document that has attracted agood deal of attention over the years. At the same time, however, it also contains
a number of indecipherable passages like the following:
Silla is bordered on the east by the Big People (Ch, changren, J. chōjin 長人). These
giants, 9 meters tall in stature, have teeth like fangs, nails like sickles, and theirwhole bodies are covered in black hair. They eat the meat of birds and beasts
raw without cooking it, and at times even capture men and eat them. Human
women they capture and force to mend their clothing. Mountains line the border of that land for thousands of li. In a certain valley among these there is agate of iron to protect against the Big People, called “the barrier gate” (Ch.
guanmen 関門). Silla always has a crossbow corps of several thousand men stationed there watching over it. (Figure 1)

The meaning of this seems to be that to the east of Silla, on the other side of abarrier gate, there exists a population of “fantastic creatures,” or igyō 異形. The
same historical document is also found in a more detailed form within the Chinese encyclopedic compendium Taiping guangji 太平広記 (compiled in the late
10th c.),1 yet both versions likely draw ultimately upon a third (now lost) source,
the mid-8th-century Jiwen 紀聞 by Niusu 牛粛. Thus even before 743, when envoy
Wei Yao 魏曜 was sent to Silla from the Tang court, this legend of the Big People
had already been related in China by some traveler, after which it made its way
to Niusu, who put it down in written from.
To the cursory glance, this might seem but another “fantastic creatures” storyof little interest. Upon further analysis, however, of various historical documents
1

Taiping guangji 太平広記, vol. 481, entry on “Silla” 新羅.

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Figure 1. In volume 220 of the Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (Bainaben 百衲本 edition), theentry about “Big People” (chōjin 長人).

surviving on the Silla side, it becomes clear that in the area of Silla’s northeasternborder frontier there lived groups of the Mohe 靺鞨 people, inhabitants of theBalhae kingdom 渤海, and that Silla, in the latter half of the 7th century, had
placed on that border some kind of military installation. This was even termeda “barrier gate,” or at times an “iron barrier fort” (Ch. tieguancheng 鉄関城). Histories also record that the early half of the 8th century saw an increase in military tensions with Balhae, and that Silla accordingly strengthened and repaired
those of its military facilities oriented towards this region. In other words, whenthe Big People legend reached Tang China around the mid-8th century, on Silla’s
northeastern border frontier, there did in fact exist a military installation named
after an iron gate, and military tensions between Silla and Balhae were indeed
on the rise.
Yet what population did these “Big People” represent? There are surviving records that place this “barrier gate” on Silla’s northeastern frontier, in the Sillaperiod Jeongcheon district 井泉郡 (modern Tŏkwŏn district 徳源郡, Hamgyŏng
Namdo province 咸境南道, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). It lay on
modern Wŏnsan 元山 Bay, to whose north—northeast of the gate itself—lay

Birth of a Monster Story on the Borderlands

75

the region of Balhae, whose people were, no doubt, identical with the legend’s
giants. As such legend had it, these Big People were massive of stature andshaped in the manner of birds and beasts, eaters of men and kidnappers of
women: a description that indicates its targets were the objects of fear, possessors of a cosmology beyond the understanding of the legend’s intended audience. It is probable that the situation of military tension on the Sillan frontier
had much to do with the creation of the Big People legend. A “fantastic creatures”-type legend that painted them as such giants only makes sense if understood as a reflection of how Sillans living on the northeastern Sillan borderlands
tended to think about people of the Balhae region.
In addition to such military tensions, part of the reason behind the spread ofsuch monstrous images seems to lay in the peculiar methods of contact employed on this frontier region. In other words, at a fundamental level, there wassomething in their very way of encountering one another that stoked fears about
people on the other side of the border. For example, the ancient Korean historical text Samguk sagi 三国史記 preserves mention of an 886 incident in which at
Bokchin 北鎮 (a Silla military outpost), people from areas to the north came andhung from a tree a slab of wood bearing the simple message “SEEK TRADE”—
whereupon they fled.2 The attitude towards interaction we glimpse in this act isa preference for “silent trade,” a strategy for pursuing mutual commerce evenwhile shunning direct contact. Most likely it was precisely such a situation, andthe anxiety and fear it might encourage towards inhabitants on the border’s farther side, that led eventually to the latter’s portrayal as monstrosities.
Indeed, when set against the customs of this region in the northeastern partof the Korean peninsula, the physical details even of fantastic aspects in descriptions of the Big People become easier to explain. In the mid-18th-century gazetteer Taengniji 択里誌 by Yi Jung-hwan 李重煥, we find the following passage
about the people dwelling in this region, which had by then been incorporated
into the Jeoseon Kingdom:
The mountains and rivers of this region are steep. The soil is poor, and millet
and barley are the only cereals. There is no cotton cloth, and they cover themselves in the pelts of dogs. The customs they have for surviving cold and hunger are like those of the Jurchen (Nüzhen 女真) people to the north.

It is recorded that at the time, the inhabitants of this region would seek cotton
cloth from the southern part of the peninsula, acquiring it by bartering for itwith specialty products of their own like ginseng and marten pelts. Descriptionsin the Big People legend like “covered in black hair” and “human women theycapture and force to mend their clothing” seem to have been made to reflect thecustoms of this region, where even up to the 18th century they lacked cotton
Samguk sagi, vol. 11, “Silla Chronicle” 新羅本紀, Year 12 of the reign of King Heongang 憲康[886], “Spring” entry.
2

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Lee

Figure 2. A Mongolian Yamaraja (Emma
閻魔). Artist unknown, late 19th-early 20th
century. In the Bogd-khaan Palace Museum.
http://www.bogdkhaanpalace.mn/
It is difficult to find images that match therepresentations of Big People given in the
Xin Tangshu. From this picture, however,
one can understand that the features ascribed to Big People, from their “mountain-like” straight-standing hair to their“teeth like fangs, and nails like sickles,”find their source in the iconography ofsuch fantastic beings. N. Tsultem. Mongol
zurag. Ulan-Bator, 1986.

clothing and dressed themselves in dog pelts. It might thus be said that legends
about the “Big People,” while based ultimately on the customs of those living inthis region, were a product of Sillan imaginations, distilled from the absence ofactual interactions with people on the border area, and the simultaneous presence
there of real Silla-Balhae military tension.(Figure 2)
One final point worth noting in connection with the origins of the Big People
legend concerns the nature of the Silla state during the period from the first half
to the middle of the 8th century, when military tensions with both Balhae andJapan had risen. The era of King Gyeongdŏk 景徳 (742–64), during which theTang court sent Wei Yao 魏曜 as envoy to Silla, was also an era when policies forthe centralization of power were being pursued across a number of fronts. Theinternational tension that continued in East Asia from 720 to 750 had put pressure on Silla to strengthen its political system internally. The Big People legend
may thus be seen as a kind of externalizing discourse, spun out by the age’s tendency to strengthen the political core.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 77–81© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Sacred Spaces in Medieval and
Early Modern Shintō Rituals
Yonezawa Takanori
Translated by Kristopher ReevesI

t is customary in Shintō shrines to delineate sacred spaces and other boundaries by means of stylized gates (torii 鳥居) and fences (mizugaki 瑞垣). Theseliminal markers of sacred space were in use from before the early modern
period. I would like here to investigate the various uses and significance of theseparticular markers in early modern Shintō rituals, especially insofar as they relate
to a certain lineage of syncretic Shintō typically referred to as Shinbutsu shūgō
shintō 神仏習合神道—hereafter referred to simply as Shinbutsu Shintō—in
which Shintoistic deities (shin 神) are understood to be temporary manifestationsof Buddhist divinities (butsu 仏). In particular, I will focus on the ordination rite
called kanjō 灌頂, which involves the pouring of water onto an acolyte’s head, of asingle sub-branch of this lineage known as Miwa Shintō (Miwaryū shintō 三輪流
神道). I hope to show how torii gates and mizugaki fences were used during thisritual as a means of creating a sacred space. Miwa Shintō was developed out ofŌmiwa Shrine 大神神社, located in Sakurai City 桜井市, Nara. According to theorigin account of this sect, an account made famous during the middle of theearly modern period, Miwa Shintō was founded at the moment when a Buddhist
monk by the name of Keien 慶円 (1140-1223), also known as Miwa shōnin 三輪
上人, or the Sage of Miwa, and Miwa myōjin 三輪明神, the god of Mt. Miwa,
exchanged vows and esoteric teachings with one another. Fortunately for us,
Miwa Shintō has preserved numerous documents relating to ritual conventions,for which reason we know a great deal about the contemporary structure of thissect’s sacred spaces.1

1
For the remainder of this paper, I have made reference primarily to the following sources:“Miwaryū kanjō shiki, kenyo” 三輪流灌頂私記 憲誉, in Ōmiwa jinja shiryō henshū iinkai 大神神社
史料編修委員会, ed., Ōmiwa jinja shiryō 大神神社史料, volume 5: Miwaryū shintō hen: ken 三輪流
神道篇 乾. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1978, pp. 222–234; “Miwaryū shintō kanjō shitaku”
三輪流神道灌頂支度, in Ibid, volume 6: Miwaryū shintō hen: kon 三輪流神道篇 坤. Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kōbunkan, 1979, pp.524–528.

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Yonezawa

The Shintō Kanjo� Rite and the Sacred Hall
The purpose of the Shintō kanjō rite is to transmit central doctrinal teachings(shintōsetsu 神道説) of the sect to the one ordained. Based on a similar ritual practiced in esoteric Buddhism, this rite consists of ceremoniously dropping a single
flowers (tōke 投華) upon the daidan 大壇, or Greater Platform, and passing on
various secret teachings and other central transmissions of the sect upon the
shōdan 小壇, or Lesser Platform. This rite takes place within a building known asa dōjō 道場, or Sacred Hall, the inner divisions of which are delineated by meansof curtains and folding screens. The various partitions of this sort that separate
the inside of the Sacred Hall from the outside environment serve also to createa sacred religious space in which statues of Shintoistic deities and Buddhist divinities may be ceremoniously placed.
Delineating Sacred Spaces within the Sacred Hall
The Sacred Hall (Figure 1), when used for conducting the kanjō rites, is separated into a number of sacred spaces by means of the following structures:
1. Shimenawa 注連縄 (sacred ropes): A number of sacred ropes are used todelineate sacred spaces: First, the entire hall itself is ritualistically separated fromthe outside world by means of a long sacred rope running around the hall’s outermost perimeter. Second, the outer chamber ( gejin 外陣), where the ordinands
and the choir (sanju 讃衆) are seated before the ceremony is likewise delineated.
Third, the inner chamber (naijin 内陣), the central location of the ceremony
where the platforms are erected, is similarly circumscribed. Here we see the original significance of shimenawa, namely, to circumscribe and maintain the ritual
purity of sacred spaces. It should be noted here that as one moves from theouter to the inner sacred spaces, in the order just described, the number of paper
streamers (shide 紙垂) and sakaki 榊 (Cleyera japonica) branches attached to each
respective sacred rope increases, thereby representing a corresponding increasein ritual purity.
Another sub-branch of Shinbutsu Shintō, established first by the Edo-period
Shingon monk Jiun Onkō 慈雲飲光 (1718-1805), and known as Unden Shintō
雲伝神道, has transmitted to us records of the structure of its ritual space used
for conducting the kanjō rite. According to these records, Unden Shintō set up
liminal markers, known as Ama no ukihashi 天の浮橋, the Heavenly Floating
Bridge, and Ama no yachimata 天の八衢, the Heavenly Eight-Branched Road, toseparate the sacred space of the ritual from the outside mundane world.2 Bothof these structures were modelled after mythical topoi supposed to have beensituated somewhere between heaven and earth, and, as such, were placed just“Shintō kanjō seiki” 神道灌頂清軌, in Hase Hōshū 長谷宝秀, ed., Jiun Sonja zensho 慈雲尊者
全書, volume 10, Kōkiji 高貴寺, 1924, pp. 881-917.
2

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79

outside the Sacred Hall as a means of signifying that the space within the hall
had thereby been transformed into a divine world.
2. Torii (gates) and Noren 暖簾 (curtains): The walkway leading up to theSacred Hall contains a total of three torii gates. According to the teachings of
Shinbutsu Shintō, those who pass under these gates are required, at each torii, to
pay their respects to the Buddhas and intone a secret poem intended to purify
the individual after the fashion of traditional Shintoistic rites. The entrance of
the Sacred Hall is covered with a curtain, upon which is depicted an image of thesun and the moon, along with the following passage: “The world of demons andthe world of Buddhas—both of these are embraced by Dainichi” (makai bukkai
kore mina Dainichi 魔界仏界皆是大日), where Dainichi is none other thanMahāvairocana, the Great Sun Buddha (Dainichi nyorai 大日如来). This curtain
simultaneously conceals the sacred space lying beyond and signifies its sacrality
to those about to enter.
3. Kaki 垣 (fences): The daidan, or Greater Platform, the central locus of thekanjō rite is surrounded by a fence, the stakes of which sport tips that are tapered
to resemble mountain peaks. There is, furthermore, a torii gate marking the place
where participants are to insert their hands through the fence in order to perform the ceremonial dropping of a flower, thereby giving the impression of aminiature replica of the outer surroundings of the shrine itself. The upper portion of the platform contains a shelf on which is displayed Buddhist scriptures,
illustrated wooden plaques (ema 絵馬), gilt engravings of floral patterns (keman華鬘), various decorative banners, along with a canopy (tengai 天蓋) to which is
attached a mirror. These items are meant to signify the amalgamation of Shintoistic deities and Buddhist divinites.
Conclusion: Special Characteristics of the Sacred Hall for Shintō Kanjo
� Rites
The use of shimenawa and torii—both of which are strongly associated with
Shintoistic and not Buddhist practices—as markers of sacred space in Shinbutsu
Shintō rituals indicates that, while creating a purified space for ritual activity,
practitioners also sought to emphasize the Shintoistic aspect of the syncretic
faith. The sort of sacred space created for Shintō kanjō rites is characterized by
set of concentric layers of sacred spaces, each marked off by a shimenawa, andeach for sacred than the previous. The same golds true for the series of three
torii gates encountered along the walkway towards the Sacred Hall, each gate representing a greater degree of purification. Naturally, the Greater Platform, locatedas it is at the center of the Hall, signifies the greatest possible degree of ritual purification. This overall structure resembles that of traditional (non-syncretic)
Shintō shrines. While Shinbutsu Shintō preached syncretic doctrines that included the amalgamation of Buddhist divinities, the sacred spaces created within

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Yonezawa

their halls, spaces where the Shintō deities were believed to appear, were characteristically Shintoistic in their structure, as well as in their consistent appeal to ritual
purity. That is to say, while the Shintō deities are not overtly represented, theirpresence was certainly felt in virtue of the characteristically Shintoistic structureof sacred spaces within their Sacred Halls. In this way, sacred spaces associatedwith Shintō rituals signified not only a fundamental separation from the mundane world, but served simultaneously as a means of drawing attention to theexistence of Shintō deities.
References
Gangōji bunkazai kenkyūjo 元興寺文化財研究所, ed., Shintō kanjō: wasurerareta
shinbutsu shūgō no sekai 神道潅頂—忘れられた神仏習合の世界. Nara: Gangōji
bunkazai kenkyūjo, 1999.
Ōmiwa jinja shiryō henshū iinkai 大神神社史料編修委員会, ed., Miwaryū shintō nokenkyū 三輪流神道の研究. Nara: Ōmiwa jinja shamusho, 1983.
Suzuki Hideyuki 鈴木英之, “Shintō kanjō dōjōzu no fukugen” 神道潅頂道場図の復原, in Bukkyō bungaku 仏教文学, 41 (April 2016), pp. 28–37.
Yonezawa Takanori 米澤貴紀, “Miwaryū shintō kanjō no ba no tokushitsu” 三輪流神道灌頂の場の特質, in Nihon kenchiku gakkai keikakukei ronbunshū 日本建築学会計画系論文集, 78: 687 (May 2013), pp. 1381–1388.
Yonezawa Takanori 米澤貴紀, “Shinbutsu shūgō girei no ba ni okeru kekkai ni
tsuite” 神仏習合儀礼の場における結界について, in Nakagawa Takeshi sensei
tainin kinen ronbunshū kankō iikai 中川武先生退任記念論文集刊行委員会,
ed., Sekai kenchikushi ronshū: Nihon, Higashi Ajia hen 世界建築史論集 日本・東
アジア篇. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2015, pp. 105–114.

Sacred Spaces in Medieval and Early Modern Shintō Rituals

Figure 1. Plan of the Sacred Hall (dōjō 道場). Note that this diagram is oriented witheast at the top. The greater platform (daidan 大壇), here listed as the hondan 本壇, islocated in the center of the Sacred Hall, while a number of lesser platforms (shōdan小壇) are located around this. The walkway running along the eastern side of the
Sacred Hall has three torii 鳥居 gates, as well as a noren 暖簾 curtain hanging over theentrance. “Miwaryū kanjō shiki” (Reproduction and Transcription by Yonezawa
Takanori).

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Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 83–86© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Oracles and Offerings:
The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Godsand Humans
Hirano Tae
Translated by Kristopher ReevesIn the world of premodern Japanese literature, vernacular poetry was depicted as something capable of transcending the established boundaries ofsocial status and nationality, a vehicle for crossing between different worlds.
I would like here to briefly examine the role of vernacular poetry as a means oftranscending the borders between gods and humans. On the one hand, the gods
give messages to humans by means of oracular verses of vernacular poetry; on
the other hand, humans seeks to please the gods by means of offerings of vernacular poetry. It is through these two special forms of presentation—oraclesfrom the gods and offerings to the gods—that vernacular poetry succeeded inblurring the borders between the mundane and the divine.
Tradition would have it that the first vernacular poem—that is, of the conventional type consisting of thirty-one syllables—was composed by a deity. According to the vernacular preface to Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (Poems ancient and modern,905), the first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular poetry, this wasa poem intoned by the god Susanoo スサノヲノミコト when marrying his new
bride Kushiinada クシイナダヒメ in the land of Izumo (in modern-day Shimane,see Figure 1).
Thus, avers the preface, began the tradition of thirty-one-syllable vernacular poetry. Since that event, it was not uncommon for gods to recite vernacular poetry,
and, more especially, to reveal their intentions to us mortals by means of oraclesof the same form. Such verses are known collectively as oracular poems. Let us
take a look at the history of those oracular poems preserved in imperially commissioned anthologies of vernacular verse, focusing our attention on ways in whichsuch poems allow the gods and humans to communicate with one another.
The first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular verse to containoracular poetry was Shūi wakashū 拾遺和歌集 (Gleanings of vernacular verse, 1005),
this being the third such anthology. In fascicle ten we find two oracular poems,
one by the god at Sumiyoshi Shrine 住吉社 (Osaka), the other by the god presiding83

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HiranoFigure 1. Kokin wakashū, kana-jo 古今和歌集 仮名序. (NIJL, item no. 99-2-1)
Eishō 16 (1519), postscript by Reizei Tamehiro 冷泉為広.
Formerly held by Seikei Shooku (Ōshima Masatarō).
https://doi.org/10.20730/200003050

over Kamo Shrine 賀茂社 (Kyoto). Both of these poems appear in a section labelled kagura uta 神楽歌, songs performed in divine music. The fourth imperiallycommissioned anthology, Goshūi wakashū 後拾遺和歌集 (Later gleanings of vernacularverse, 1086), has a small sub-section entitled jingi 神祇, gods of heaven and earth,which is embraced within the more encompassing category of miscellaneous verse(zōka 雑下). Within this jingi sub-section, the first poem is attributed to the aforementioned Sumiyoshi deity, while the second poem is purported to have been intoned by the god at Kifune Shrine 貴船社 (Kyoto). Kin’yō wakashū 金葉和歌集(Anthology of golden leaves, 1125), the fifth imperially commissioned anthology, contains no oracular poetry, while the sixth anthology, Shika wakashū 詞花和歌集(Anthology of floral verses, 1151), contains but one oracular poem, attributed to thegod of Inari Shrine 稲荷社 (Kyoto), which appears in the second section of miscellaneous poetry (zōka).
As can be seen from this cursory survey, the number of oracular poems appearing in imperially commissioned anthologies of vernacular verse is not great.
Even so, interest in oracular poetry was clearly on the rise from the tenth to thetwelfth centuries. Minamoto no Toshiyori 源俊頼 (1055–1129), sole compiler of
the aforementioned Kin’yō wakashū, was also the author of a treatise on poetics
entitled Toshiyori zuinō 俊頼髄脳 (Toshiyori’s poetic essentials, 1113). In this treatise, heincludes a total of five oracular poems, two attributed to the god at Sumiyoshi, one

Oracles and Offerings:The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Gods85

to the god at Mount Miwa 三輪山 (in Nara), one to the god at Ise Shrine
伊勢社 (Mie), and one to the god at Kifune. Among the numerous treatises onvernacular poetics that had been compiled by the middle of the twelfth century,
Fujiwara no Kiyosuke’s 藤原清輔 (1104–1177) Fukuro zōshi 袋草紙 (Poetic miscellany,c. 1159) contains nineteen oracular poems. It would appear from the rich varietyof shrine names found in this treatise that Kiyosuke sought to provide readerswith a complete list of all those gods to whom oracular poems had been attributed.
Shortly after Kiyosuke completed his Fukuro zōshi, he set about compilingwhat was intended to become the seventh imperially commissioned anthology
of vernacular verse, Shokushika wakashū 続詞花和歌集 (Second anthology of floral
verses, 1165). Emperor Nijō 二条天皇 (1143–1165, r. 1158–1165), the man who
originally commissioned this anthology, passed away before its completion,
thereby technically precluding its inclusion as one of the imperially commissioned anthologies. Whatever the case, in this anthology, Kiyosuke saw fit to expand what had been, in previous anthologies, but a small section of poems attributed to the gods, into an entire fascicle all its own. Interest among courtly
poets in oracular verses had reached a peak in the second half of the twelfth
century.
On the other hand, Senzai wakashū 千載和歌集 (Verses for a thousand years, 1188),
which became by default the seventh imperially commissioned anthology ofvernacular poetry, while containing a section on poems associated with the gods,
did not contain a single oracular poem. Instead, we see here many poems composed by humans as offerings to the gods. Here we see, also, poems of petition,
praying to the gods for protection, as well as poems composed to commemorate
wishes graciously fulfilled by the gods. These latter verses contain explanatory
headnotes, the substance of which approaches what would later develop into agenre of anecdotal literature devoted to praising the miraculous efficacy of poetry
in gaining divine favor (katoku setsuwa 歌徳説話). Vernacular poetry, in the formof a pious offering, thus came to serve as a powerful means of procuring the
god’s protection. This practice had already become quite popular about a decade
before Senzai wakashū was commissioned. Poetry competitions in which vernacularverses were dedicated as offerings to various gods had been held at Sumiyoshi
Shrine (in 1170), at Hirota Shrine 広田社 (Hyōgo, in 1172), twice at the Shinra
Shrine in Mii Temple 三井寺新羅社 (Shiga, in 1173 and 1177), and at Kamigamo
Shrine 上賀茂社 (Kyoto, in 1178), among others.
At was around this time, too, that the practice of presenting offertory poems
to shrine deities took on a further convention: the number of poems offered became set at one hundred (hōnō hyakushu 奉納百首). The first such event, hosted
by Kamo no Shigeyasu 賀茂重保 (1119–1191), head priest of the Kamo Shrine,
and known as the Juei hyakushu 寿永百首 (One hundred poems of the Juei era, 1182),
gathered together a total of thirty-six poets. Shigeyasu took poems offered during

86

Hiranoboth the Juei hyakushu and the aforementioned poetry competition held, likewise,at Kamigamo Shrine in 1178, and arranged these into an anthology entitled
Tsukimōde wakashū 月詣和歌集 (Verses offered up during monthly visits to the shrine, 1182).
Senzai wakashū was completed in 1187. The man appointed compiler of this imperial anthology was Fujiwara no Toshinari 藤原俊成 (1114–1204). Toshinari
had served as an umpire or judge (hanja 判者) at those poetry competitions justmentioned held at Sumiyoshi Shrine, Hirota Shrine, and Kamo Shrine. Six of thethirty-four poems contained in the section of Senzai wakashū relating to the gods
were taken from these poetry competitions.
As though to make up for the fact that Senzai wakashū had not contained any
oracular poems, the eighth imperially commissioned anthology of vernacularverse, Shinkokin wakashū 新古今和歌集 (A new anthology of poems ancient and modern,1205) has thirteen oracular poems. Not only was this amount unprecedented,
but the fact that these poems were placed at the very beginning of the section
on poems relating to the gods also reveals an unprecedented interest in suchverses. Why, we might rightly ask, are there so many oracular poems in Shinkokinwakashū? First, it must be noted that most of the thirteen poems were offered atshrines to which Retired Emperor Go-toba 後鳥羽院 (1180–1239, r. 1183–1198),the man who commissioned this anthology, was wont to offer his own vernacular poems. Considering Go-toba presented his offertory poems both prior toand after the compilation of Shinkokin wakashū, Asada Tōru 浅田徹 Argues thatthe retired emperor conceived of vernacular poetry as a form of prayer, and that
he saw the compilation of this poetry anthology as a means of asking for peace
and prosperity throughout his domain.1 If this interpretation does indeed approach Go-toba’s state of mind at the time of compilation, it is easy to understand why he would have showed exceptional interest in oracular poems, poems
which represented the god’s replies to his earnest prayers.
As has been shown, Senzai wakashū places importance on offertory poems, tohuman petitions for divine favor, while Shinkokin wakashū, on the contrary,shows more concern for oracular poems, that is, to the divine replies of humanprayers. In either case, vernacular verse, with its ability to transcend the borders
between gods and humans, was used as a means for the emperor to pray for apeaceful reign. Vernacular poetry allowed for the voices of humanity to reachthe ears of the gods, and for the gods, in their turn, to have their voices heard
amidst mortal ears.

Asada Tōru, “Gotoba-in to kami: Shinkokinshū ni taku sareta mono” 後鳥羽院と神―『新古今集』に託されたもの―, in Kokugakuin zasshi 国学院雑誌, 114: 8 (August 2013) 29–48.
1

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 2 (March 2019) 87–94© 2019 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Borders Bibliography
Koida Tomoko
Translated by Rachel Staum Mei

Geographical borders (borders of villages, the capital, regions, states, etc.)
Amano Tetsuya 天野哲也, Ikeda Hirofumi 池田栄史, and Isao Usuki 臼杵勲, eds.
Chūsei higashi Ajia no shūen sekai 中世東アジアの周縁世界 [ The peripheral
world of medieval East Asia]. Tokyo: Dōseisha, 2009.
Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦, and Ishii Susumu 石井進, eds. Kyōkai to hina ni ikiru
hitobito 境界と鄙に生きる人々 [People who live on the borders and in the
countryside]. Chūsei no fūkei wo yomu 3 中世の風景を読む 3. Tokyo: Shin jinbutsu ōrai sha, 1995.
Aoyama gakuin daigaku bungakubu Nihon bungakuka 青山学院大学文学部日本文学科, ed. Nihon to ‘ikoku’ no kassen to bungaku: Nihonjin ni totte ‘ikoku’ to wa,
kassen to wa nani ka 日本と〈異国〉の合戦と文学―日本人にとって〈異国〉とは、合戦とは何か [Literature and battles between Japan and ‘foreign countries’: to Japanese people, what are ‘foreign countries,’ and what are battles?].
Tokyo: Kasama shoin, 2012.
Asao Naohiro 朝尾直弘, et al., eds. Kyōkai ryōiki to kōtsū 境界領域と交通 [Borderregions and transportation]. Nihon no shakaishi 2 日本の社会史 2. Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1987.
Gomi Fumihiko 五味文彦, Yakudō suru chūsei: shinshiten chūseishi 躍動する中世―
新視点中世史 [ The lively middle ages: medieval history from a new point ofview]. Zenshū Nihon no rekishi 5 全集日本の歴史 5. Tokyo: Shōgakukan,
2008.
Hirabayashi Akihito 平林章仁, Hashi to asobi no bunkashi 橋と遊びの文化史 [ Thecultural history of bridges and play]. Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1994.
Ikeda Yoshifumi 池田榮史, ed. Kodai chūsei no kyōkai ryōiki: Kikaigashima no sekai
古代中世の境界領域―キカイガシマの世界 [Border space in antiquity andthe middle ages: the world of Kikaigashima]. Tokyo: Kōshi shoin, 2008.
Kamikawa Michio 上川通夫, ed. Kokkyō no rekishi bunka 国境の歴史文化 [ Thehistorical culture of national borders]. Osaka: Seibundō shuppan, 2012.
Kanazawa Hideyuki 金沢英之, Yoshitsune no bōken: eiyū to ikai o meguru monogatarino bunkashi 義経の冒険―英雄と異界をめぐる物語の文化史 [Yoshitsune’s
87

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Koida

adventures: the cultural history of tales of heroes and other worlds]. Mechie
536. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2012.
Kreiner, Josef ヨーゼフ・クライナー, Yoshinari Naoki 吉成直樹, and Oguchi
Masashi 小口雅史, eds. Kodai makki, Nihon no kyōkai 古代末期・日本の境界[Late antiquity, the borders of Japan]. Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2010.
Kuroda Hideo 黒田日出男, Ryū no sumu Nihon 龍の棲む日本 [Japan, where dragons
dwell]. Iwanami shinsho. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2003.
Kuroda Satoshi 黒田智, Naze Tsushima wa maruku egakareta no ka: kokkyō to seiiki
no Nihonshi なぜ対馬は円く描かれたのか―国境と聖域の日本史 [Why was
Tsushima drawn to be round? Japanese history, national borders, and sacredspace]. Tokyo: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2009.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Kyōkai o matagu hitobito 境界をまたぐ人びと [People
who straddle boundaries]. Nihonshi riburetto. Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,
2006.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Chūsei Nihon no uchi to soto 中世日本の内と外 [In-groupand out-group in medieval Japan]. Chikuma gakugei bunko. Tokyo: Chikuma
shobō, 2013.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Nihon chūsei kyōkaishiron 日本中世境界史論 [A theoryof the history of borders in medieval Japan]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013.
Ōishi Naomasa 大石直正, Takara Kurayoshi 高良倉吉, and Takahashi Kimiaki
高橋公明, Shūen kara mita chūsei Nihon 周縁から見た中世日本 [Medieval Japanas seen from the periphery]. Nihon no rekishi 14. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001.
Ōishi Naomasa 大石直正, Chūsei hoppō no seiji to shakai 中世北方の政治と社会[The politics and society of the medieval North]. Tokyo: Azekura shobō, 2010.
Ono Masatoshi 小野正敏, Gomi Fumihiko 五味文彦, and Hagiwara Mitsuo 萩原
三雄, eds. Chūsei no keifu: higashi to nishi, kita to minami no sekai 中世の系譜―
東と西、北と南の世界 [ The genealogy of the middle ages: the world of east
and west, north and south]. Tokyo: Kōshi shoin, 2004.
Osa Setsuko 長節子, Chūsei kokkyō kaiiki no Yamato to Chōsen 中世国境海域の倭と朝鮮 [Medieval maritime national borders of Japan and Korea]. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2001.
Suzuki Masataka 鈴木正崇, Saishi to kūkan no kosumorojī: Tsushima to Okinawa 祭祀と空間のコスモロジー―対馬と沖縄 [ The cosmology of ritual and space:
Tsushima and Okinawa]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2004.
Takeda Kazuo 竹田和夫, ed. Kodai, chūsei no kyōkai ishiki to bunka kōryū 古代・中世の境界意識と文化交流 [Cultural exchange and the awareness of borders in
antiquity and the middle ages]. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2011.
Takeda Mariko 武田万里子, Sakoku to kokkyō no seiritsu 鎖国と国境の成立[National isolation and the establishment of national borders]. Edo jidaishi
sōsho 21. Tokyo: Dōseisha, 2005.

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89

Tarumi Minoru 垂水稔, Kekkai no kōzō: hitotsu no rekishi minzokugakuteki ryōiki ron
結界の構造―一つの歴史民俗学的領域論 [ The structure of barriers: a historical folklore theory of regions]. Tokyo: Meicho shuppan, 1990.
Tsukuba daigaku minzokugaku kenkyūshitsu 筑波大学民俗学研究室, ed. Toshi tokyōkai no minzoku 都市と境界の民俗 [ The folklore of cities and borders].
Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2001.
Spatial borders (borders in architecture, gardens, etc.)
Akiyama Kiyoko 秋山喜代子, Chūsei kuge shakai no kūkan to geinō 中世公家社会の空間と芸能 [Space and performing arts in medieval aristocratic society]. Tokyo:
Yamakawa shuppan, 2003.
Fujita Masaya 藤田勝也, Nihon kodai chūsei jūtakushiron 日本古代中世住宅史論 [Atheory of the history of ancient and medieval Japanese residences]. Tokyo:Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2003.
Gotō Hisatarō 後藤久太郎, and Matsui Mikiko 松井みき子, Kinsei shoki jōsō kugeno yūkyō kūkan 近世初期上層公家の遊興空間 [ The leisure spaces of earlymodern upper-class nobility]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2011.
Hattori Yukio 服部幸雄, Shukujinron 宿神論 [A theory of shukujin]. Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 2009.
Hida Norio 飛田範夫, Teien no chūseishi: Ashikaga Yoshimasa to Higashiyama sansō 庭園の中世史―足利義政と東山山荘 [The history of medieval gardens: Ashikaga
Yoshimasa and the Higashiyama Villa]. Rekishi bunka raiburarī. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2006.
Hirai Kiyoshi 平井聖, Nihon jūtaku no rekishi 日本住宅の歴史 [ The history ofJapanese residences]. Tokyo: Nihon hōsō shuppan kyōkai. NHK bukkusu,
1974.
Iibuchi Kōichi 飯淵康一, Heian jidai kizoku jūtaku no kenkyū 平安時代貴族住宅の研究 [Research on the residences of Heian-period nobility]. Tokyo: Chūō
kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2006.
Kaneko Hiroyuki 金子裕之, ed. Kodai teien no shisō: shinsen sekai e no shōkei 古代庭園の思想―神仙世界への憧憬 [Ancient gardening ideology: a longing for theworld of the immortals]. Kadokawa sensho. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2002.
Kawakami Mitsugu 川上貢, Nihon chūsei jūtaku no kenkyū 日本中世住宅の硏究[Research on medieval Japanese residences]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu
shuppan, 2002.
Kawamoto Shigeo 川本重雄, Shindenzukuri no kūkan to gishiki 寝殿造の空間と儀式[ The space and ritual of shindenzukuri architecture]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron
bijutsu shuppan, 2005.
Kishi Yasuko 岸泰子, Kinsei no kinri to toshi kūkan 近世の禁裏と都市空間 [The earlymodern Imperial Palace and urban space]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2014.

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Mizoguchi Masato 溝口正人, “Heian jidai no kenchiku to teien 平安時代の建築と庭園 [Architecture and gardens in the Heian period].” In Heian jidai teien
no kenkyū: kodai teien no kenkyū II 平安時代庭園の研究―古代庭園の研究 II―[Research on Heian-period gardens: research on ancient gardens II]. Nara
bunkazai kenkyūsho gakuhō Kenkyū ronshū 奈良文化財研究所学報 [NaraNational Research Institute for Cultural Properties periodical, Collection ofresearch articles] 17 (2011): 103-119.
Momosaki Yūichirō 桃崎有一郎, Chūsei Kyōto no kūkan kōzō to reisetsu taikei 中世
京都の空間構造と礼節体系 [ The structure of space and system of propriety
in medieval Kyoto]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2010.
Nishiyama Ryōhei 西山良平, and Fujita Masaya 藤田勝也, eds. Heiankyō no sumai
平安京の住まい [Residences of the Heian capital]. Kyoto: Kyōto daigaku
gakujutsu shuppankai, 2007.
Nishiyama Ryōhei 西山良平, and Fujita Masaya 藤田勝也, eds. Heiankyō to kizoku
no sumai 平安京と貴族の住まい [ The Heian capital and aristocratic residences]. Kyoto: Kyōto daigaku gakujutsu shuppankai, 2012.
Sano Midori 佐野みどり, Fūryū, zōkei, monogatari: Nihon bijutsu no kōzō to yōtai 風流・
造形・物語：日本美術の構造と様態 [Elegance, modeling, narrative: the structure and form of Japanese art]. Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1997.
Shirahata Yōsaburō 白幡洋三郎, ed. Sakuteiki to Nihon no teien 『作庭記』と日本の庭園 [Sakuteiki and the gardens of Japan]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan,
2014.
Suzuki Wataru 鈴木亘, Heiankyū dairi no kenkyū 平安宮内裏の研究 [Research on
the Heian Imperial Palace]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 1991.
Tamakoshi Yoshio 玉腰芳夫, Sumai no genshōgaku: Tamakoshi Yoshio kenchiku ronshū
すまいの現象学―玉腰芳夫建築論集 [ The phenomenology of residences: acollection of Tamakoshi Yoshio’s articles on architecture]. Tokyo: Chūō
kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2013.
Tanita Hiroyuki 谷田博幸, Torii 鳥居 [ Torii]. Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha,
2014.
Toya Nobuhiro 登谷伸宏, Kinsei no kuge shakai to Kyōto: shūjū no katachi to toshi
shakai 近世の公家社会と京都―集住のかたちと都市社会 [Early modern aristocratic society and Kyoto: forms of living together and urban society].
Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2015.
Social boundaries (borders between emperors, outcasts, etc.)
Akasaka Norio 赤坂憲雄, Kyōkai no hassei 境界の発生 [ The origin of borders].
Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2002.
Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦, Chūsei no hinin to yūjo 中世の非人と遊女 [Medieval
outcasts and prostitutes]. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005.

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91

Buraku mondai kenkyūsho 部落問題研究所, ed. Burakushi shiryō senshū 部落史史料
選集 [A selection of records of burakumin history]. Vol. 1, Kodai, chūsei hen[Antiquity and the middle ages]. 1988.
Fujii Keisuke 藤井恵介, Mikkyō kenchiku kūkanron 密教建築空間論 [A theory ofarchitectural space in Esoteric Buddhism]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu
shuppan, 1998.
Fukutō Sanae 服藤早苗, et al., eds. Kegare no bunkashi: monogatari, jendā, girei ケガレの文化史―物語・ジェンダー・儀礼 [ The cultural history of kegare: narrative, gender, and ritual]. Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2005.
Genjō Masayoshi 源城政好, Kyōto bunka no denpa to chiiki shakai 京都文化の伝播と地域社会 [Regional society and the spread of Kyoto culture]. Kyoto:
Shibunkaku shuppan, 2006.
Hattori Hideo 服部英雄, Kawara no mono, hinin, Hideyoshi 河原ノ者・非人・秀吉[Kawaramono, outcasts, and Hideyoshi]. Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012.
Imoto Eiichi 井本英一, Kyōkai, saishi kūkan 境界・祭祀空間 [Borders, ritualspace]. Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1985.
Kawashima Masao 川嶋将生, Chūsei Kyōto bunka no shūen 中世京都文化の周縁[ The peripheries of medieval Kyoto culture]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan,
1992.
Kawashima Masao 川嶋將生, Rakuchū rakugai no shakaishi 「洛中洛外」の社会史[A cultural history of ‘rakuchū rakugai’]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 1999.
Kawashima Masao 川嶋將生, Muromachi bunka ronkō: bunkashi no naka no kōbu
室町文化論考―文化史のなかの公武 [A study of Muromachi culture: aristocrats and warriors in cultural history]. Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku,
2008.
Kujirai Chisato 鯨井千佐登, Kyōkai no genba: fōkuroa no rekishigaku 境界の現場―
フォークロアの歴史学 [Border sites: the historiography of folklore]. Tokyo:Keisō shobō, 2006.
Kuroda Hideo 黒田日出男, Kyōkai no chūsei: shōchō no chūsei 境界の中世―象徴の中世[Medieval borders, medieval symbols]. Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1986.
Kuroda Toshio 黒田俊雄, Chūsei kyōdōtairon, mibunseiron (Kuroda Toshio chosakushū
6) 中世共同体論・身分制論（黒田俊雄著作集６） [Medieval collective theory,
status system theory, Kuroda Toshio collection 6]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1995.
Matsuo Kōichi 松尾恒一, Girei kara geinō e: kyōsō, hyōi, dōke 儀礼から芸能へ―狂騒・
憑依・道化 [From ritual to performing art: mania, possession, and clowning].
Kadokawa sōsho 54. Tokyo: Kadokawa gakugei shuppan, 2011.
Minegishi Sumio 峰岸純夫, ed. Kazoku to josei 家族と女性 [Family and women].
Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1992.
Nagaike Kenji 永池健二, Itsudatsu no shōshō: kayō no seishinshi 逸脱の唱声―歌謡の精神史 [Deviant voices: the spiritual history of kayō]. Tokyo: Shinsensha, 2011.

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Niunoya Tetsuichi 丹生谷哲一, Nihon chūsei no mibun to shakai 日本中世の身分と社会 [Status and society in medieval Japan]. Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1993.
Niunoya Tetsuichi 丹生谷哲一, Mibun, sabetsu to chūsei shakai 身分・差別と中世社会[Status, discrimination, and medieval society]. Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 2005.
Ōyama Kyōhei 大山喬平, Nihon chūsei nōsonshi no kenkyū 日本中世農村史の研究[Research on the history of farm villages in medieval Japan]. Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1978.
Shimosaka Mamoru 下坂守, Chūsei jiin shakai to minshū: shuto to bashaku, shinjin,
kawaramono 中世寺院社会と民衆―衆徒と馬借・神人・河原者 [Medieval temple society and the masses: warrior-monks and bashaku, gods and men,kawaramono]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2014.
Suzuki Masataka 鈴木正崇, Nyonin kinzei 女人禁制 [Off limits to women]. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2002.
Takahashi Masaaki 高橋昌明, Chūseishi no riron to hōhō: Nihon hōken shakai, mibunsei,
shakaishi 中世史の理論と方法―日本封建社会・身分制・社会史 [Medieval
history theory and methods: Japanese feudal society, status system, and social
history]. Tokyo: Azekura shobō, 1997.
Tanigawa Ken’ichi 谷川健一, Senmin no ishin to geinō: yamabito, furōnin, hinin 賤民の異神と芸能―山人・浮浪人・非人 [ The kotogami and performing arts oflower-class people: mountain folk, vagabonds, and outcasts]. Tokyo: Kawadeshobō shinsha, 2009.
Wakita Haruko 脇田晴子, Nihon chūsei hisabetsumin no kenkyū 日本中世被差別民の研究 [Research on discriminated-against people in medieval Japan]. Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 2002.
Yamagishi Tsuneto 山岸常人, Chūsei jiin shakai to butsudō 中世寺院社会と仏堂[Medieval temple society and Buddhist temples]. Tokyo: Hanawa shobō,
1990.
Yamagishi Tsuneto 山岸常人, Chūsei jiin no sōdan, hōe, bunsho 中世寺院の僧団・法会・文書 [Monastic organizations, Buddhist masses, and writings of medieval temples]. Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppan, 2004.
Yamamoto Kōji 山本幸司, Kegare to ōharae 穢れと大祓 [Kegare and purification].
Osaka: Kaihō shuppansha, 2009.
Yokoi Kiyoshi 横井清, Chūsei minshū no seikatsu bunka 中世民衆の生活文化 [ Thelifestyle and culture of the masses in the middle ages]. Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku
shuppankai, 1975.
Yonezawa Takanori 米澤貴紀, “Shinbutsu shūgō girei no ba ni okeru kekkai ni
tsuite 神仏習合儀礼の場における結界について [About barriers in ShintoBuddhist syncretic ritual].” Sekai kenchikushi ronshū: Nakagawa Takeshi sensei
tainin kinen ronbunshū 世界建築史論集—中川武先生退任記念論文集[World architectural history collection: a collection in commemoration of Professor
Nakagawa Takeshi’s retirement]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2015.

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93

Yoshino Shūji 吉野秋二, Nihon kodai shakai hensei no kenkyū 日本古代社会編成の研究 [Research into the social composition of ancient Japan]. Tokyo: Hanawa
shobō, 2010.
Temporal borders (the boundaries of days, seasons, annual events, life, etc.)
Akasaka Norio 赤坂憲雄, ed. Hōhō toshite no kyōkai 方法としての境界 [Borders as
method]. Sōsho shisō o horu 1 叢書史層を掘る 1. Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 1991.
Akata Mitsuo 赤田光男, and Fukuta Ajio 福田アジオ, eds. Jikan no minzoku 時間の民俗 [ The folklore of time]. Kōza Nihon no minzokugaku 6. Tokyo:
Yūzankaku shuppan, 1998.
Daiki Naohiko 大喜直彦, Chūseibito no shinkō shakaishi 中世びとの信仰社会史[A socio-religious history of medieval people]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 2011.
Fukutō Sanae 服藤早苗, and Kojima Naoko 小嶋菜温子, eds. Seiiku girei no rekishi
to bunka: kodomo to jendā 生育儀礼の歴史と文化―子どもとジェンダー [ Thehistory and culture of rituals of growing up: children and gender]. Tokyo:
Shinwasha, 2003.
Fukutō Sanae 服藤早苗, Heian ōchō no kodomotachi: ōken to ie, warawa 平安王朝の子どもたち―王権と家・童 [ The children of the Heian court: royal authority
and ie, warawa]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2004.
Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠, Shōrōbyōshi no zuzōgaku 生老病死の図像学 [ The iconography of birth, aging, sickness, and death]. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 2012.
Katsuda Itaru 勝田至, Shishatachi no chūsei 死者たちの中世 [The dead in the middleages]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2003.
Kobayashi Shigefumi 小林茂文, Shūen no kodaishi: ōken to sei, kodomo, kyōkai 周縁の古代史―王権と性・子ども・境界 [Ancient history of the periphery: royalauthority and sex, children, borders]. Tokyo: Yūseidō shuppan, 1994.
Koike Jun’ichi 小池淳一, Denshō saijiki 伝承歳時記 [A folklore almanac]. Tokyo:
Iizuka shoten, 2006.
Kojima Naoko 小嶋菜温子, ed. Ōchō bungaku to tsūka girei 王朝文学と通過儀礼[Court culture and rites of passage]. Heian bungaku to rinsetsu shogaku 3.
Tokyo: Chikurinsha, 2007.
Kojima Naoko 小嶋菜温子, and Hasegawa Noriaki 長谷川範彰, eds. Genji mono­
gatari to girei 源氏物語と儀礼 [The Tale of Genji and ritual]. Tokyo: Musashino
shoin, 2012.
Kojima Naoko 小嶋菜温子, Kurata Minoru 倉田実, and Fukutō Sanae 服藤早苗,
eds. Ōchōbito no seikatsushi: Genji monogatari no jidai to shinsei 王朝びとの生活誌―『源氏物語』の時代と心性 [The lifestyle magazine of the people ofthe court: the era and disposition of The Tale of Genji]. Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2013.
Mori Takao 森隆男, ed. Minzoku girei no sekai 民俗儀礼の世界 [ The world of folk
ritual]. Osaka: Seibundō shuppan, 2002.

94

Koida

Obinata Katsumi 大日方克己, Kodai kokka to nenchū gyōji 古代国家と年中行事[ The ancient state and annual events]. Kōdansha gakujutsu bunko. Tokyo:
Kōdansha, 2008.
Ryū Gyōhō 劉暁峰 [Liu, Xiaofeng], Kodai Nihon ni okeru Chūgoku nenchū gyōji nojuyō 古代日本における中国年中行事の受容 [ The reception of Chinese annual
events in ancient Japan]. Toyama: Katsura shobō, 2002.
Saitō Ken’ichi 斉藤研一, Kodomo no chūseishi 子どもの中世史 [Children in medieval history]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2003.
Sugawara Masako 菅原正子, Chūsei no buke to kuge no ‘ie’ 中世の武家と公家の「家」[‘Ie’ among warriors and aristocrats in the middle ages]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kōbunkan, 2007.
Sugawara Masako 菅原正子, Nihonjin no seikatsu bunka: kurashi, gishiki, gyōji 日本人の生活文化―くらし・儀式・行事 [The lifestyle culture of the Japanese: living,
ceremonies, events]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2008.
Tabata Yasuko 田端泰子, and Hosokawa Ryōichi 細川涼一. Nyonin, rōjin, kodomo
女人、老人、子ども [Women, old people, and children]. Nihon no chūsei 4.
Tokyo: Chūō kōron shinsha, 2002.
Tanaka Sen’ichi 田中宣一, Nenchū gyōji no kenkyū 年中行事の研究 [Research on
annual events]. Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1992.
Yamaji Kōzō 山路興造, Kyōto geinō to minzoku no bunkashi 京都芸能と民俗の文化史[A cultural history of Kyoto’s performing arts and folklore]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku
shuppan, 2009.

Contributors
Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎
Professor at Graduate School of Humanities Research Center for Cultural Her­
itage and Texts, Nagoya University
Areas of Research: Study of religious texts
Major Publications:◆ Chūsei Nihon no sekaizō 中世日本の世界像. Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shup­pan­kai, 2018.
◆ Chūsei Nihon no shūkyō tekusuto taikei 中世日本の宗教テクスト体系. Nagoya:
Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013.
Yamamoto Satomi 山本聡美
Professor at Kyōritsu Women’s University
Areas of Research: History of medieval Japanese painting
Major Publications:◆ Kusōzu wo yomu: Kuchite yuku shitai no bijutsushi 九相図をよむ：朽ちてゆく死体の美術史. Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan, 2015.
—2015 Recipient of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology’s New Author Prize for the Promotion of the Arts.
—Recipient of the 14th Kadokawa Foundation Prize for the Arts.
◆ Yami no Nihon bijutsu 闇の日本美術. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2018.
Didier Davin ディディエ・ダヴァン
Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Areas of Research: Japanese medieval Buddhism and literature
Major Publications:◆ “Ikkyū no chinsō—Zensō no kao kara nani ga mieru no ka” 一休の頂相―
禅僧の顔から何が見えるのか. Tokyo: Shūbi 聚美 17, 2015, pp. 25–37.
◆ “Muromachi jidai no zensō to Rinzai-roku” 室町時代の禅僧と『臨済録』, in
Rinzai-roku kenkyū no genzai『臨済録』研究の現在. Kyoto: Zenbunkakenkyūjo,
2017, pp. 471–494.
Yasui Manami 安井眞奈美
Professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Areas of Research: Cultural anthropology, Japanese folklore studies
Major Publications:◆ Grief Care wo mijika ni : Taisetsuna kodomo wo ushinatta kanashimi wo idaite グリーフ
ケアを身近に―大切な子どもを失った哀しみを抱いて . Tokyo: Bensei
Shuppan, 2018.
◆ Kaii to shintai no minzokugaku: Ikai kara shussan to kosodate wo toinaosu 怪異と身体の民俗学―異界から出産と子育てを問い直す. Tokyo: Serica Shobō, 2014.

Lee Sungsi 李成市
Professor at Waseda University
Areas of Research: History of East Asia
Major Publications:◆ Kodai higashi ajia no minzoku to kokka 古代東アジアの民族と国家. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1998.
◆ Tōsō no ba toshiteno kodaishi 闘争の場としての古代史. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
2018.
Yonezawa Takanori 米澤貴紀
Assistant Professor at Meijo University
Areas of Research: Architectural history/design
Major Publications:◆ Kikudaki no chūmon 木砕之注文. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan,
2013.
◆ Jinja no kaibōzukan 神社の解剖図鑑. Tokyo: X-Knowledge, 2015.
Hirano Tae 平野多恵
Professor at Seikei University
Areas of Research: Japanese medieval literature
Major Publications:◆ Myōe: Waka to bukkyō no sōkoku 明恵 和歌と仏教の相克. Tokyo: Kasama
Shoin, 2011.
◆ Akishino gesseishū /Myōe shōnin kashū 秋篠月清集／明恵上人歌集. Tokyo:
Meiji Shoin, 2013.
Koida Tomoko 恋田知子
Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Research topics: Japanese medieval literature
Major Publications:◆ Hotoke to onna no muromachi: Monogatari-sōshi ron 仏と女の室町―物語草子論.
Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 2008.
◆ Ikai e izanau onna: Emaki nara ehon wo himotoku 異界へいざなう女: 絵巻・奈良
絵本をひもとく. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2017.

Translators
Kristopher Reeves クリストファー・リーブズ
Assistant Professor at Waseda University

Jeffrey Knott ジェフリー・ノット
Instructor at Waseda University
Rachel Staum Mei レイチェル・スタウム・メイ
Columbia University PhD Student

Translation Consultants
Keller Kimbrough ケラー・キンブロー
Professor of Japanese at the University of Colorado Boulder
Chritstina Laffin クリスティーナ・ラフィン
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Premodern Japanese Litera­ture and Culture at the University of British Columbia
Cover design: The design of the cover is based on a Japanese traditional patternfrequently used after the Heian period called uchigumori. It is made by drawing,
usually on high-quality paper, cloud-like lines, commonly indigo blue on the up­
per portion of the page and purple on the lower, thereby representing the sky andthe earth.
Designed by Power Design Co., Ltd.. (http://www.powerdesign.co.jp)

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