Une analyse critique de l'histoire du Shōugyōhō et du Kujakukyōhō : rites ésotériques de la pluie dans le Japon de l'époque de Heian
Authors: Trenson Steven 
Published: March 2010

This article deals with the history of two esoteric Buddhist rituals for causing rain in Japan during the Heian Period (794-1192): the Shōugyōhō and the Kujakukyōhō. One generally states that the former has been established by the founder of Shingon, Kūkai (774-835), in 824, and the latter by the founder of the Daigoji temple, Shōbō (832-909), in 908. The first execution of both rituals was held at the Sacred Spring Park Shinsen.en, located southeast of the Imperial Palace of the capital. Scholars agree on the fact that, from the 10th century, both rituals were performed regularly to pray for rain in times of drought, the Shōugyōhō always at the Shinsen.en, the Kujakukyōhō sometimes at other places too (the Tōji temple, the palace). However, unlike the Shōugyōhō, which aimed exclusively at making rain, the Kujakukyōhō had many other merits: dispelling calamities, averting aggression, bringing good fortune, etc. The plurality of its merits, together with a growing faith in the power of the 'Great Queen of Peacocks' (Mahāmayūrī/Kujakumyōō) among the court by the end of the 11th century, are considered to be the main reasons why the Kujakukyōhō gradually surpassed the prestige of the Shōugyōhō which eventually disappeared afier 1117.

The above outline roughly depicts the opinion shared by many scholars today. However, though we do not of course deny the role the Kujakukyōhō played as a ritual for praying rain as such, we strongly doubt that, before the end of the 11th century, the court did consider the Kujakukyōhō as an official ritual for bringing rain. We showed that this ritual was never performed at the Shinsen.en, and that before 1082 it was just used in a few cases as a ritual which was merely secondary to the Shōugyōhō, after it had already begun to rain. We also pointed out that it is only after the Kujakukyō-midokyō ceremony (by which one recites the Kujakukyō sūtra at the Shinsen'en) was established (1065), that the Kujakukyōhō (the esoteric ritual based on the same sûtra) became an official ritual for causing rain (from 1082). In other terms, our study defines the shift from the Shōugyōhō (praying rain to a Dragon King) to the Kujakukyōhō (praying rain to the Queen of Peacocks) not as a gradual process starting from the 10th century, but as a rather quick change which took place between the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century.

This article is the result of two kinds of research. The first one focused on the legend saying that Kukai prayed for rain, using the Shōugyōhō in 824. Although many scholars have acknowledged it as a legend, their explanations on its origins lack persistence. We showed that the legend was used so as to protect the position of the Shōugyōhō in the Shinsen'en, from its first performance in 875 to its second in 891. Therefore we thought it highly unlikely that the court would have ordered a ritual other than the Shōugyōhō to be performed at the Shinsen'en after 891. The second one consists in a careful analysis of sources dealing with our rituals. We often found some similar stories about a ritual in these sources, with some differences in the dates and in the nature of the ritual though. By using the oldest (and most reliable) source as a reference, we could understand that most of the executions of the Kujakukyōhō mentioned before 1082 are merely wrong and arbitrary interpretations of older sources. Further study also revealed that in other cases (notably the ones related to the monk Kangū [884-972]), the execution of the Kujakukyōhō was actually not meant to bring rain.

The key problem in our analysis of the sources was the Kiuhō shiki, written by the monk Kanjin (1084-1153) in 1117. Far from recording objectively events related to rain prayers, Kanjin seemed to have struggled to prove the superiority of the Kujakukyō sūtra over the Shōugyō sûtra which had lost the favour of both the court and the monks. He tried to show that monks such as Shōbō and Kangū had performed the Kujakukyōhō after they had failed to make rain using the Shōugyōhō. In the following centuries, other monks positively adopted Kanjin 's point of view, which explains why the history of these two rituals has been misunderstood until now.