Organizer: Allan G. Grapard, University of California, Santa Barbara
Chair: Jacqueline I. Stone, Princeton University
Discussant: Neil F. McMullin, University of Toronto
The works of Japanese historians such as the late Kuroda Toshio or Amino Yoshihiko and others have been instrumental in reconsidering Japanese medieval history from a decentralized point of view and have helped to focus attention away from central government and policies and shift it onto local, competing arrangements. The present panel proposes to use such works to analyze different strategies of territory-building on the part of institutions that used to be called "religious," but of which we now know that they were also economic, political and social institutions of great importance. Medieval territory is a many-faceted phenomenon that cannot be studied separately from highly varied local understandings and strategies which sometimes were subordinated to warrior power but also sometimes resisted it, both militarily and ideologically. We plan to investigate these issues by concentrating on different territorial strategies developed by temples and shrines in relation to ritual. First, we will propose that shrines and temples used specific rituals not only to constitute a territory as sacred, but also to maintain its population under their control, leading to the notion that territories were both ritually constructed and also functioned to ritualize the lives of their inhabitants. Second, we will propose that local conflicts in such territories cannot be understood without paying attention to the strategies used by temples and shrines to maintain order in the shoen they managed. Third, we will propose that there were competing networks of such institutions, such as the Tendai temples in the western regions of Japan as opposed to those being established in the Kanto region, or Shugendo centers as diverse as Mount Hiko in Kyushu and Mount Gassan in northern Japan, or Shingon constitutions of rituals to maintain order on Mt. Koya and other locations. We hope to use this panel to generate discussion on the cosmological and ideological components of life in the discrete territories established by temples and shrines, and to ask further questions concerning the relations between these components and economic, political and social aspects of the kenmitsu system of authority.
Sacred Space and Social Order, or Sacred Order and Social Space
Allan G. Grapard, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper proposes to analyze the ritual constitution of the sacred perimeter of Mount Hiko in Kyushu, and to investigate the social dimensions of the phenomenon in the medieval period. First constituted as a living template of the Tusita Heavens where the Bodhisattva Maitreya was residing and would eventually become Buddha, Mount Hiko was transformed in the Kamakura period to become the natural template of the Lotus Ritual (Hokkeho) based on a major vision contained in the Lotus Sutra. The mountain region contained within the perimeter (kekkai) granted in 1181 was conceived of as four superimposed layers interpreted by Buddhist prelates as corresponding to four steps leading to the re-enactment of the Lotus vision. Access to these four layers (from the base of the mountain to its top) was heavily regulated, and lifestyles were subjected to systematic rules in each of the four layers. The mountain ascetics (yamabushi) of the region determined their practices in relation to the ritual in question, but also used that template to enact a strict social order based on the oppositions between purity and pollution, between nature and culture, and between the emperor and commoners. But mountain ascetics were also instrumental in formulating rituals performed in the villages situated in their land domains or along the course of their mandalized peregrinations, and their influence on the economic and political parameters of local life was great. A geo-historical analysis of mountain sacrality in relation to social order allows us to gain insight into the ideological dimensions of medieval Japanese society, and to better assess what territoriality meant at the time.
Malice in Buddhaland: Divine Punishment and Social Control in Medieval Japan
Fabio Rambelli, University of California, Santa Barbara
The present paper deals with the ideology of territory of the Kenmitsu ("exoteric-esoteric") regime in medieval Japan, and with the instruments of policing employed for territorial control by the major temples. From the Insei age, the dominant religious institutions transformed their landholdings into Buddha-lands (bukkoku or butsudo). The attribution of sacred value to the land was an important step in the general mandalization of Japan and the sacralization of the life of the Japanese-influential instruments of power and social control. Thus, the violation of the social, political and economic order amounted to a rebellion against the Buddha-Dharma, and was disposed of in ritual ways. A major component of the police functions in the temples' shoen were rituals for subjugating enemies (chobuku-ho); these rituals were aimed at rebellious peasants or competing centers of territorital powers (provincial authorities, representatives of the Bakufu, or other religious institutions). Grounded in the Tantric ideology of systematic reversal, these rituals were used both to create particular constructs of alterity and externality (the enemy as "anti-Buddhist"), and also to transform that alterity into identity (the subdued enemy was eventually to become a "good Buddhist," i.e., a person integrated within the system). Through ritual, social and political struggles were given a cosmological dimension (they were equated to the fight of the Buddha to subjugate Mara and his retinue), making their outcome obvious: the Buddhist system will eventually triumph. In this way, efforts to effect social change were ideologically defined as impossible. A study of these rituals in their socio-political context enables us to assess the unmatched strength and absolute hegemony of the system.
"Not Even for A Thousand in Gold": The Politics of Secret Transmission
in Medieval Tendai
Jacqueline I. Stone, Princeton University
By the latter part of the Heian period, Tendai Buddhism had divided into a number of competing lineages. This can be seen, not only in the long-standing rivalry between Mt. Hiei and Onjoji branches, but in the emergence of numerous monastic factions on Mt. Hiei itself. Different lineages, exoteric and esoteric, were often based in geographically distinct areas of the mountain (the so-called "three pagoda precincts and sixteen valleys") and replicated factions among the aristocratic families who supplied the ranks of scholar-monks. The authority of lineage was maintained by elaborate conventions and rituals of secret transmission from master to disciple.
This paper will explore some of the political and economic aspects of secret transmission in the medieval period. It will examine some of the competing definitions of what constituted authentic transmission (e.g., mind-to-transmission, transmission by bloodline, transmission of texts, etc.) and what happened when they came into conflict. Of particular interest is the role of secret transmission in interactions between the aristocratic scholar-monks of Mt. Hiei and Tendai monks of the Kanto, where new Tendai temples were beginning to flourish under warrior patronage. The paper will suggest how the system of secret transmission worked to maintain the authority of those prelates representing the "Tendai of the capital" (miyako Tendai) and how it was challenged and to some extent subverted by their eastern counterparts.