Organizer and Chair: Donald F. McCallum, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: David Moerman, Stanford University
This panel examines a number of important Japanese religious sites, considering each from the perspective of sacred geography. We are concerned with the ways in which such sites take on profound spiritual and political meanings which then become an inextricable component of the broader cult and belief systems. All of the sites considered achieved national recognition, although none is located in any of the Japanese capitals. In this context, we are interested in the interaction between capital and periphery, and the processes whereby a local center achieves broader significance. Most of our sites became important pilgrimage goals, attracting worshippers from all areas of Japan. The literal geography of these places-a remote, mountainous area of Yamato, a small island in the middle of Lake Biwa, a plain surrounded by the Japanese Alps in Shinano, and, most distant of all, an outlying area in the Far North-is in all cases exceptionally beautiful, forcing us to consider the relationship between actual topography and the type of sacred space which is such a fundamental feature of the Japanese religious imagination. These papers will illuminate important aspects of pre-modern Japanese religious institutions, showing how representative examples were able to exploit their locations in order to gain patronage and support from all levels of society, up to the highest reaches of the ecclesiastical, aristocratic and military elite.
Creating and Replicating the Sacred Site: The Case of Chikubushima
Andrew M. Watsky, Vassar College
The island of Chikubushima is today rather remote and peripheral, best known as a scenic tourist spot and the thirtieth of the thirty-three stops of the Kannon pilgrimage route of Western Japan. In the pre-modern era, however, Chikubushima was a far more central place within the sacred geography and national consciousness of Japan. In this paper, I will examine the sacred culture of Chikubushima, focusing primarily on its role in the Momoyama period, and then on its literally extended presence in the Edo period.
Archeological remains suggest Chikubushima was the site of sacred activities from as early as the Jomon period; after the introduction of Buddhism, the island eventually became a place of truly national significance as one of the three major Benzaiten cult centers in Japan. The importance of Chikubushima, and that of Benzaiten, however, was greatly amplified in the late sixteenth century by a propitious fusion of religious, political, and cultural factors. Island rituals engaged nationally celebrated political figures. Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi focused attention on Chikubushima, exchanging bureaucratic attention for spiritual favors. Prominent Momoyama-period religious figures not only made pilgrimages to the island, but also re-discovered scriptural references substantiating its sacred character. Frequent stagings of the No drama Chikubushima in Kyoto for diverse elite audiences reinforced the image of the island as a spiritual center of national importance. This Momoyama history provides the backdrop for the subsequent replication of Chikubushima in the city of Edo and the transfer of its sacred associations from Omi to the new capital.
In Search of the Dragon: Mt. Muro's Sacred Topography
Sherry Fowler, Lewis and Clark College
Mt. Muro, located deep in the countryside in southern Nara prefecture, is considered so sacred that no one is allowed to set foot on its slopes behind Muroji, a temple which holds some of the finest examples of Japanese sculpture and architecture. The dramatic mountain scenery of Mt. Muro, formed by ancient volcanic eruptions and subsequent erosion, was of major importance to the founding of Muroji and the neighboring shrine, Ryuketsu jinja (Dragon-cave shrine). On Mt. Muro there are several caves that are believed to be the openings to the abode of a powerful dragon spirit. This paper will address the issues of why this site was chosen for the temple and how the presence of the Muro dragon was perceived.
Evidence to support the importance of the local worship of the dragon, or water spirit, to the founding of the temple is the long tradition of rain prayers offered at Mt. Muro. The earliest temple document, dating back to 937, records the eighth century origin of the temple and early events at the site and in addition it seeks legitimization for the temple by claiming that the dragon vowed to protect the country and the temple site. Maps of Mt. Muro preserved from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries serve as evidence for the sanctity of the terrain as do stories and paintings that attributed spectacular properties to the dragon and the caves, grounding the site with additional internal power and authority. One of the caves still serves as a pilgrimage site and a festival is held in honor of the dragon every Autumn, demonstrating that the dragon is still revered twelve centuries after the founding of the temple.
Visualization of the Temple as Sacred Space: Zenkoji sankei mandara
Donald F. McCallum, University of California, Los Angeles
In previous studies I have dealt at length with the Amida Triad-the "Living Buddha"-of Zenkoji, Nagano City, and with the many replications of that triad spread throughout Japan. Basic to the Zenkoji cult is the unseen but overwhelming presence of the Living Buddha, enshrined deep within the altar of the Main Hall as a hibutsu (secret Buddha). The extraordinary popularity from the Kamakura period onward of the Zenkoji cult indicates that the manifestation of the animate Amida Triad was highly compelling to countless pilgrims who came to the remote temple to worship a holy icon which they in fact could not see.
The spiritual resonance of the Amida Triad necessarily transformed the surrounding structures and grounds into a type of sacred space. I am concerned here with efforts to represent this space in pictorial terms. From a relatively early stage in the cult there are many prints and paintings showing the Amida Triad and attendant figures alone, and there are also numerous representations of the engi (legends) of the Zenkoji cult. Specifically relevant to our theme, however, is the Zenkoji sankei mandara, a large painting of the broad category Jisha sankei mandara (Mandalas of Pilgrimage to Shrines and Temples). Paintings of this type depict important shrines and temples as sacred spaces, offering crucial details that define the specific cult. The Zenkoji sankei mandara provides a detailed representation of the Zenkoji compound in its large central area, and aspects of the engi at narrow, vertical bands at the sides. We will be concerned with the way in which this painting expresses in visual terms the sacral geography of the cult.
Hakusan at Hiraizumi and the Geopolitics of Mandate in the Eastern Provinces
Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, Yale University
Hiraizumi is a celebrated site in the cognitive scheme of Buddhist sacred geography in the Japanese outback of the 11th and 12th centuries. Its rich material culture of Buddhist temples and treasures, rising like a lotus out of the turbid waters of the conflicted north, yields important insights into the nature of art and power in the hinterland, and about the language of religious legitimization as brought to bear in the projects and concerns of its founders, the local military lineage known to history as the Hiraizumi Fujiwara.
That a Hakusan Shrine stands at the heart of Hiraizumi, as domain and as culture, is not well known. But long before Hiraizumi became what it was, a strange and powerful presence on the edge of the mainstream Japanese world, the three Hakusan kami were worshipped on the mountain around which the city was built. And long after the fall of Hiraizumi to Minamoto soldiers in 1189, the Hakusan Shrine was maintained and cherished by the descendants of those once under the purview of warlords now dead and buried in a hall not far from the original location of Hakusan Gongen on that mountain.
This paper marks a preliminary investigation of the role of the Hakusan Shrine at Hiraizumi with attention to its political and ideological ramifications in the territorialization of the north by the competing Hiraizumi Fujiwara and Minamoto military lineages. It considers how, and why, the Hakusan kami were crucial to the Hiraizumi Fujiwara in their land politics, to focus on the specific circumstances of a shared commitment to Hakusan Gongen by Kiso Yoshinaka and Hidehira, Minamoto and Hiraizumi Fujiwara leaders respectively, in the face of impending conflict with Minamoto no Yoritomo after 1180. And it puts to analysis the observation that, in the drive to protect and strengthen a geography both political and sacred, local warlords turned to a conclave of eastern kami as their tutelary force