Organizer: Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College
A Death in the Family: Women, Property, and Graves in Medieval Japan
Hank Glassman, Stanford University
This paper examines the burial conventions of Heian and Kamakura period Japan in order to trace changes in kinship practices and related gender beliefs over time. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, aristocratic husbands and wives of different clan origin were not, as a rule, buried in the same place. If a husband and wife did share a grave site, it was generally a result of their having been born into the same clan rather than a reflection of their connubial relationship. That is, women tended to be buried with their fathers rather than with their husbands. This fact forms the core of the present inquiry into the position of women in the history of the Japanese family system. How did marriage and death affect a woman's status vis-à-vis the family of her birth?
I will trace the history of burial practices in Japan from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Included in this investigation will be the above mentioned issue of separate grave sites for husbands and wives, the changing attitude toward the bones of the dead, and the development of the custom of regular grave visits. These topics are essential to an understanding of the structure of the family, women's control over property, and the place of mothers in the ancestral cult. By applying theoretical frameworks provided by anthropology and social history to these data, I will attempt to analyse the meaning of the changing conventions and convictions surrounding proper burial in medieval Japan.
Making Charisma: Strategies for Creating Religious Authority in the Itinerant
School
Sybil A. Thornton, Arizona State University
The Itinerant School (Yugyô ha), a medieval Japanese order, began as a wayfaring confraternity of nembutsu practitioners lead by Chishin Ippen (1239-1289), and was formally recognized by the Ashikaga bakufu as an independent school of Buddhism in 1400. The fortunes of the order depended on the trilateral relationships-both cooperative and competitive-of the head of the order, the religious community, and the lay community-especially the warriors and military government. Problems were manifested in the struggle between the order's heads and temples over autonomy as well as in competition between the order's heads and lay patrons for control of the services of the priests and nuns of the order. The integrity of the religious community-including the laity-depended almost exclusively on the ability to render absolute the religious authority of the head of the order. This paper focuses on the problems of establishing. advertising, and acknowledging religious authority. This paper examines strategies employed by heads of the order: (1) to define, develop, and change the order's religious authority; (2) to use religious authority in the order's internal organization to compel obedience from religious and to regularize relations with the laity; and (3) to effect perception and recognition and thus acknowledgment of religious authority. That is, this paper examines the problem of charisma, not as a reificable property, but as a "social relationship" of "reciprocal interdependence" based on an exchange of power, in this case of salvation for obedience.
Manzan Dôhaku on Lineage Transmission: An Analysis of the Manzan oshô tômon
ejo shû
Lawrence W. Gross, Stanford University
The early Tokugawa Zen priest Manzan Dôhaku (1636-1715) is well known for his work on transforming the lineage transmission system within the Sôtô sect. Early in the 17th century Manzan and his colleagues successfully persuaded the government to establish as orthodoxy the positions that a Zen priest may hold only one Dharma lineage throughout his entire life-that of his original Dharma master-and that lineage affiliation may not be changed. However, to date little work has been done in the West examining the arguments Manzan put forth in support of his views. In this paper I take up that task by presenting an analysis of Manzan's main treastise on lineage transmission, his Tômon ejo shû. This work is a collection of nine essays edited by Manzan's principle student, Sanshû Hakuryû (1669-1760) and published in 1711, four years before Manzan's death. The work mainly dedicates itself to answering Manzan's critics, and is especially noted for being the locus classicus for Manzan's idea that enlightenment is not necessary to the process of Dharma transmission. I will particularly focus my comments on this aspect of Manzan's thought, and argue that for Manzan the greater consideration was developing on the part of the student as deep a karmic connection with Buddhism as possible.
The Debate over Clerical Marriage in Japanese Buddhism, 1868-1937
Richard Jaffe, North Carolina State University
Today the marriage of the Japanese Buddhist clergy is an accepted part of Japanese life. According to recent estimates the vast majority of the Buddhist clergy are married. As with many small family run businesses in Japan, temple succession has become a largely domestic affair, with great pressure being frequently brought to bear on the son deemed the most likely successor to the father-abbot. Temple wives have become important-although still relatively unacknowledged-participants in the management of temple affairs and the training of the successor to the abbot.
The emergence of an openly married Buddhist clergy and familial succession in non-Jodo Shinshu denominations began with the decriminalization of clerical marriage (saitai) by the Meiji government in 1872. Of the numerous reforms undertaken by the officials in charge of religious policy, the decriminalization of clerical marriage had some of the most far-reaching implications for the development of Japanese Buddhism in the modern period and gave rise to a prolonged debate within the Buddhist world. For decades following the promulgation of the new measure, the Buddhist leadership resisted the spread of clerical marriage; it was only after encountering increasingly visible problems associated with the presence of women and families in temples that the leadership was forced to tacitly accept that practice. In this paper I examine the initial government rationale for the decriminalization and early Buddhist support for the measure. In addition I trace the steadfast resistance of the Buddhist leadership to clerical marriage from the Meiji period until 1937.
Public Representation and the Sacred in Ise Jingû's Shikinen Sengû
Rosemarie Bernard, Harvard University
The rituals of Shikinen Sengû take place once in every twenty years in Ise Jingu. Established in the late seventh century, the system of the Sengû entails the reconstruction of the sanctuaries for the transfer of the symbol of the deities. The climax of the ceremonies is called "Sengyo," a nocturnal rite in which the symbol of the deity is carefully transported by priests in a shroud from the former to the new sanctuary grounds, where it will remain and be worshipped until the rituals are performed again.
Discourse about the meanings attributed to the rituals has changed over time. Every twenty years (in the post-war period, 1953, 1973, 1993), to the exegeses of the priesthood is added popular commentary concerning the implications of the Sengû, a rite performed on behalf of the Emperor. In particular, "witnessing" the Sengû on the part of believers, intellectuals, journalists and others, has had an impact on the definition of the meaning and the organized performance of the sacred rites. Moreover, since 1973 with the advent of infra-red film, this popular witnessing has involved film recording of the transfer process for diffusion by NHK and other television channels. Such witnessing by laymen and television not only has encouraged the elaboration of "marketable" explanations of ritual meaning, but also has had implications for ritual secrecy and the defense of the sacred by the Jingû priesthood.