Tengu Wakabayashi

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The Seven Scrolls Tengu

QUOTE
JOSEPH S. O'LEARY
©　Japan Times, August 2012

Japanese Buddhist thought and evil forces

The Seven Scrolls Tengu:
Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism,
by Haruko Wakabayashi.

Residents of Japan will be vaguely aware of the long-nose impish figures known as Tengu, thinking of them as piquant figurines without deep religious significance. Tengu take many shapes in Japanese folklore, for instance as mischievous kidnappers of children or Pucks leading travelers astray.


"Tengu and a Buddhist monk," by Kawanabe Kyosai.

Haruko Wakabayashi focuses on a grimmer aspect of the imp, as he appears in Buddhist thought, connected with evil forces such as the demon Mara who distracts monks from their spiritual path. She shows how Buddhists used Tengu images to "demonize" challengers of authority and to shore up their own institutional legitimacy.

If Tengu are really so wicked, it may become hard for us to look on them benignly any longer as cute ornaments. But perhaps what Buddhist monks see as evil is really only something mildly naughty. In any case the author is of the devil's party, locating the real "evil" in the repressive Buddhist establishment, though she does not develop this idea very much.

In the Heian Period, Tengu had a lot of clout as instigators of epidemics, natural calamities and wars. They figure often in literature, for instance in scenes of spirit-possession in "The Tale of Genji." The Shingon Buddhist leader, Shinzei, turned into a Tengu and possessed the Empress Somedono, or so the Tendai rivals of Shingon claimed. Tengu were shifty beings, who could turn themselves into shining Buddhas or cure an emperor where others had failed.

Analyzing the tales in the 12th century Konjaku Monagatarishu, Wakabayashi shows that the Tengu are systematically presented as the antithesis of Buddhism:
"They are portrayed as an evil that defies religion, uses magic to deceive, symbolizes those who cannot achieve ojo (rebirth in the Pure Land), spreads heresy and attracts weak-minded practitioners."

In the Kamakura Period, adherents of new forms of Buddhism, including Zen, were denounced as falling into the realm of Tengu (tengudo), a novel addition to the six realms usually distinguished. Speaking though a possessed woman, a Tengu revealed to the Tendai monk Keisei in 1239 that lots of important religious and political figures were consigned to this realm, including Emperors Sutoku and Goshirakawa.

However, there are also good Tengu, and the Tengu realm can be a place where monks continue to practice and seek enlightenment. This "shows an interesting development in the concept of evil," which reflects the ideology of "original enlightenment," according to which all beings manifest the primordially enlightened Buddha and "passions themselves are enlightenment."

This leads to a rhetoric about the nonduality of good and evil that is hard to swallow. Mara and the Buddha are one and the same; "hell and heaven are both pure lands"; "Tengu are indeed buddhas as they are, regardless of their evil nature"; "evil is affirmed as being one with the good."

Do such declarations do justice to the reality of evil? Wakabayashi suggests that having a good understanding of evil helps one to pursue enlightenment more effectively. Even the Buddha has an evil nature, in this sense, but it does not necessarily lead him to commit evil deeds. Evil and good are one only for those who recognize evil as evil, and sincerely undertake reform.

This book centers on a copiously illustrated study of seven Tengu scrolls, composed by Tendai monks in the line of Enchin at Onjoji, rival to that of Ennin at Mount Hiei. Five of the scrolls deal with the topography and history of the seven major temples of Nara and Kyoto and the fate of their monks who became Tengu because of their arrogance. Tengu are arranged in a hierarchy resembling that of the Buddhist clergy, but more rigid. Indeed the Tengu are presented as more disciplined than the Buddhist clergy, in an ironic contrast recalling Milton's "devil with devil damned, firm concord holds."

The lecture meeting known as the Yuima-e was in a state of decline at this time, and the scrolls present it critically. A lecturer has the beak of a Tengu, and the ritual dance is presented with emphasis on the monks' profane enjoyment, extravagant costumes, and voyeuristic interest in the boy dancers.

The other two scrolls target the new schools of Buddhism. Ippen (1239-1289) is depicted as in the hagiographic Ippen hijiri-e distributing food to the poor, performing the nenbutsu dance, and distributing slips of paper bearing the name of Amida Buddha; then, with mocking intent, he is portrayed giving out his urine, an unclean medicine for his less well-off followers. These new Buddhist leaders are consigned not to the realm of Tengu, where they could still seek enlightenment, but to that of beasts.

Haruko Wakabayashi may not have solved the problem of evil, but she has brought into focus a neglected chapter in Japanese culture, revealing its unsuspected depth and coherence.




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source : buddhistartnews.wordpress.com

April 2012

This is a study of visual and textual images of the mythical creature tengu from the late Heian (897–1185) to the late Kamakura (1185–1333) periods. Popularly depicted as half-bird, half-human creatures with beaks or long noses, wings, and human bodies, tengu today are commonly seen as guardian spirits associated with the mountain ascetics known as yamabushi.

In the medieval period, however, the character of tengu most often had a darker, more malevolent aspect. Haruko Wakabashi focuses in this study particularly on tengu as manifestations of the Buddhist concept of Māra (or ma), the personification of evil in the form of the passions and desires that are obstacles to enlightenment. Her larger aim is to investigate the use of evil in the rhetoric of Buddhist institutions of medieval Japan. Through a close examination of tengu that appear in various forms and contexts, Wakabayashi considers the functions of a discourse on evil as defined by the Buddhist clergy to justify their position and marginalize others.

Early chapters discuss Buddhist appropriations of tengu during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in relation to the concept of ma. Multiple interpretations of ma developed in response to changes in society and challenges to the Buddhist community, which recruited tengu in its efforts to legitimize its institutions.

The highlight of the work discusses in detail the thirteenth-century narrative scroll Tengu zōshi (also known as the Shichi Tengu-e, or the Seven Tengu Scrolls), in which monks from prominent temples in Nara and Kyoto and leaders of “new” Buddhist sects (Pure Land and Zen) are depicted as tengu. Through a close analysis of the Tengu zōshi’s pictures and text, the author reveals one aspect of the critique against Kamakura Buddhism and how tengu images were used to express this in the late thirteenth century. She concludes with a reexamination of the meaning of tengu and a discussion of how ma was essentially socially constructed not only to explain the problems that plague this world, but also to justify the existence of an institution that depended on the presence of evil for its survival.

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Wakabayashi provides a thoughtful and innovative analysis of history and religion through art. The Seven Tengu Scrolls will therefore appeal to those with an interest in Japanese art, history, and religion, as well as in interdisciplinary approaches to socio-cultural history.

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. Shichitengu, Shichi Tengu 七天狗 Seven Tengu .
- Introduction -

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Exhibition Tendai Art

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The embodiment of Buddha Shakyamuni through art
MATTHEW LARKING

QUOTE
©　Japan Times, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011


"What is national treasure?" wrote Saicho (767-822), the founding monk of Tendai Buddhism, in his 818 "The Essential Teachings for Tendai Lotus Sect Priests," which he presented to Emperor Saga to bolster the standing of his esoteric order. His answer was pursuing the Buddhist path, and that
"shining light into one corner is itself a national treasure."



That text is itself now a national treasure, and casting a light on the religious evolution of the Saicho sect is the theme of "The Path to Tendai Buddhism: In Quest of the Eternal Shakyamuni" at the Miho Museum in Shiga Prefecture. It is an exhibition that pays homage to the religion's outstanding aesthetic sensibility, and it is accompanied by a magisterial and edifying catalog.

Take, for example, the sutra-copying project initiated by Empress Komyo (701-760) that exceeded 7,000 in number and spanned approximately 15 years. Among them is the "Angulimala Sutra" (8th century), which relays a tale of a young priest led astray by mis-teachings that end up with him murdering 999 people. He cut off their fingers and strung them together in a garland. When the priest was about to kill his 1,000th victim — his own mother — the Buddha Shakyamuni perceived his agony and took him as a disciple, and under Shakyamuni the priest attained enlightenment. The entire canon of sutras was commissioned in memorial to Empress Komyo's mother and father, and also as an entreaty for the happy reign of her husband.

Saicho trained in Buddhism at the foot of Mount Hiei, which bridges present-day Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, and was determined to seek the truth of Buddhism as set forth in the Lotus Sutra. The exhibition gets under way with the death of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, a time of great pain for his followers, though for him a sublime transition from the bodily state to celestial tranquility. In "The Passing of Shakyamuni" (14th century), all the bodhisattvas, celestials and creatures of the world gather around his lying figure. He is writ large, compositionally the most significant, but also quite literally in that he dwarfs an elephant.

With Shakyamuni departed, and seven Buddhas said to have appeared on earth in the past, the appearance of a future Buddha, presently in training in the fourth of the six heavens, was conceived. So came about the Miroku Bosatsu, here rendered in bronze through the lost wax-technique of casting. It was to take 5,670 million years after Shakyamuni's death, however, before the Miroku Bosatsu was to manifest, and until then, impatient as the public were for salvation and solace, the Buddhas proliferated.

A good example is found in the "Mandala of the Two Realms" (14th century), which pictures the Womb Realm and the Diamond Realm with the Vairocana Buddha in the center surrounded by a host of deities. The mandala shows the compassion of the Buddha spreading out in every direction, and it was introduced to Japan via the priest Kukai (774-835), who brought it back from China.

The later Tendai priests En'nin (793-864) and Enchin (814-891), who were successors to Saicho, also visited China and brought back similar works. Kukai's esoteric Shingon Buddhism proved to be a strong adversary to that of Saicho's, and so his legacy and the advancement of Tendai Buddhism was entrusted to En'nin and Enchin following Saicho's death, though frictions ensued.

A curious picture in the exhibition, "Tendai Daishi, Dengyo Daishi, Jikaku Daishi" (14th century) depicts the Chinese founder of Tiantai Buddhism, Zhi-yi, with Saicho and En'nin, a combination of which no other precedent is known.

Arguably the most engaging and stupefying work, however, is the "Standing Thousand-armed Kannon" (11th century), carved from a single piece of cypress wood, and unfortunately charred in its entirety by fire at some point in its history. Its two extra faces on either side of its head, one wrathful and the other showing a gentle expression, are simply sublime.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fa20111117a2.html



http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fa20111007o3.html


"The Path to Tendai Buddhism:
In Quest of the Eternal Shakyamuni"
at the Miho Museum
www.miho.jp/english/index.htm.



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Victims in Japanese religion

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Tragic Victims in Japanese Religion, Politics, and the Arts


QUOTE
©　Herbert Plutschow
East Asian Languages & Cultures
University of California at Los Angeles


The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the presence in Japan of a victimary discourse and a scapegoat mechanism which, beyond religion, helped shape Japanese politics, literature and the arts. This victimary discourse, which yet needs to be defined, has been so influential in pre-modern Japanese culture, that it became a national ideology. A thorough understanding of Japanese culture without realizing the religious, political and cultural importance of this ideology would at best be incomplete and superficial.

Historical evidence of a victimary discourse in Japan is as old as historiography and written literature. Entire portions of histories such as the Nihongiryaku and the Fuso Ryakki, and the Gukansho were based on the scapegoating ideology. An entire genre of Japanese literature – the tales of the failing heroes – including such great classics as the Heike Monogatari, and numerous dramatic as well as pictorial works such as the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki, a national treasure, draw from it. By sponsoring religious institutions and literary as well as artistic works around scapegoats, political leaders have drawn their legitimacy from this ideology.

The fear and worship of political victims occupies an important place in Japanese religion. Like ancestral and nature gods (kami in Japanese), political victims were deified and subject to worship from the lowest echelons of society to the very top. Let me discuss some concrete examples and try to define the kind of victim worship, which, in the course of history, has assumed such importance.

Perhaps we should begin with Japan’s oldest and most revered anthology of poetry entitled the Manyoshu. Containing more than 4500 songs, some of which transmitted orally for generations, the first two books of the Manyoshu already existed by the middle of the eighth century. Given the craze for things Chinese at that time, the Manyoshu may have been a Japanese version of its great Chinese predecessor, the Shih Ching. Whereas the idea to compile such an anthology was certainly Chinese, the nature and content of the songs differs greatly, for Manyoshu songs are mainly ritual songs sung at such ritual occasions as travel, marriage, enthronement, funerals, etc., often it seems by important persons such as emperors, empresses, officials, and, perhaps most importantly, by official ritualistic poets.(1) Umehara Takashi suggested convincingly that the oldest, original books of the Manyoshu contain a disproportionate number of songs sung by political victims: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Otomo no Yakamochi, Prince Arima, Prince Otsu’s sister and possibly more.(2) This was in the 1960’s and 70’s, when Japanese scholars became acutely aware of the importance of scapegoats in their culture, Hitomaro died in obscure circumstance in exile. His ranks were posthumously restored, an effort to appease his spirit as we can tell from similar facts in later Japanese history. Yakamochi was executed, as a result of having been implicated in the assassination of Fujiwara no Tanetsugu in 785. This was between the Nara period (710-784) and the Heian period (794-1185) when, because of political instability, the emperor Kanmu decided to relocate his capital from Nara to Nagaoka (784-94) and then to what is now known as Kyoto. Princes Arima and Otsu were executed because of their involvement in imperial succession disputes. Was the original Manyoshu an attempt to publish the works of political victims to appease their spirits?

Before defining the "theology" of victims, let me briefly present another series of prominent victims, victimized by the political ascendancy of the Fujiwara clan. The Japanese history entitled Shoku Nihongi, records under the date of 20/5/863 (all dates henceforth will be in the order of day, lunar month, and year) a cult offered to a number of political victims at the imperial garden called Shinsen-en just south of Kyoto’s imperial compound. The worshipped victims were as follows: 1. Prince Sawara (posth. Emperor Sudo, d. 785) who was accused of having plotted against the above Fujiwara no Tanetsugu and against the transfer of the capital from Nara to Nagaoka. Prince Sawara was exiled and died in mysterious circumstances without having ever been pardoned, aged 36. 2. Prince Iyo (executed in 807) and his mother Kisshi both victims of an imperial succession dispute in 807. 3. Fujiwara no Nakanari (executed in 810) responsible for the Kusuko Uprising. 4. Tachibana no Hayanari, involved in the Jowa Uprising and executed in 842. He had been in China with Saicho (posthumously Dengyo Daishi), the founder of the Japanese Tendai school of Buddhism. 5. Bunya no Miyatamaro was put to death the following year as a result of the same uprising. 6. Mononobe no Moriya who, with the rest of the Mononobe clan, was killed by the Soga clan in 587.(3)

2

Later, two more prominent victims were added to the list. Kibi no Makibi (693-775), who had spent some years in China and is credited with the transfer to Japan of the Korean deity Gozu Tenno. According to the scroll entitled Kibi Daijin Nitto Emaki (Scroll of Minister Kibi’s Journey to China now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) Kibi studied Chinese poetry, closed in a tower and engaged the Chinese in chess and, aided by the ghost of Abe no Nakamaro, was able to outdo other Chinese scholars in the interpretation of the Shih Ching.(4) They also added to the list Sugawara no Michizane (more on him below) to become the Eight Goryo, the Eight August Spirits, the most worshipped victims.

The 863 cult called goryo-e or "meeting with the august spirits" worshipped these victims in ways no different than many Japanese festivals today. They were offered a popular festival including a lecture on the sutras Konkomyo-gyo and Hannayshin-gyo followed by performances by the artists of the Bureau of Music of Chinese and Korean dances, sangaku performances, shooting arrows from horseback, sumo wrestling, and puppet plays. The purpose of the 863 goryo-e was to appease these spirits but not, as is the case in other cultures, to banish them from the human world. Rather than to banish them, the community tried to convert these victims into beneficent, tutelary deities. The nature of Japanese deities, whether nature, ancestral or scapegoat ones, has traditionally been ambivalent. Deities can be both good and evil; when ‘good’ the members try periodically to maintain that quality in their deities, because they believe that their agriculture and wellbeing depended on it. When bad for any reason, they try to convert the deity/deities back to good ones by offering them, often on an ad hoc basis, gay and elaborate festivals as tokens of community effort and sacrifice. One of the methods to appease these victims was to restore their ranks or, as in the case of Emperor Sudo, bestow on them even higher ranks, which they then enjoy forever in the heavenly bureaucracy.

The 863 goryo-e was not the only rite held to appease these spirits. Such goryo-e were also held in the provinces. More was done to appease the spirit of Prince Sawara. After the premature death in 9/intercalary3/785 of his wife as a result of an epidemic, Emperor Kanmu declared a general amnesty and restored Prince Sawara to the rank of Crown Prince and offered the prince a proper burial. In 11/6/785, when the new crown prince fell ill, an oracle revealed that he was possessed by Prince Sawara’s spirit. In 19/7 therefore, the Emperor gave the dead prince the title of Sudo Tenno (Emperor Sudo) and his grave was transferred to the Yamato region, the proper site for imperial burials. This is the only known case in which the title of emperor was given to a dead person. When this proved insufficient, the Emperor decided to relocate the capital and to move to present Kyoto.

Similar efforts had already been made concerning other members of the goryo. In 3/850 Emperor Ninmyo died followed two days later by his wife. In the belief that this was the work of Hayanari, in 5/850, the new emperor promoted Hayanari to Fifth Rank and his grave was transferred to his native province, thus ending, posthumously, Hayanari’s demotion and exile. In 5/853, after an epidemic in the Third Month, the court awarded him the even higher Junior Forth Rank.

From what we have learned so far, we can offer the following definition of Japanese victim/deities. Traditionally, many East Asian (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) religions are based on a parallelism of real and supernatural worlds. The real world is meant to reflect a supernatural one. An exact replica of the Chinese government, with all its offices and officials was believed to exist in the other world as well. Based on this parallelism, the Japanese believed that a victim will take its office, power, or that to which it felt entitled to, or that which was injustly taken away from him, into the world of the dead. The power, which they enjoyed or were supposed to enjoy in life, is the same power from which they can exact their revenge and perpetrate evil upon their communities from the other world. Hence the name ‘vengeful deities’ some scholars have given to them.

By definition, these victims were people who died prematurely, in unnatural circumstances. These include: execution, exile, death during travel (kykaushi), suicide, death as a result of grudge, jealousy or any other strong emotion, death on the battlefield, death as a result of natural calamities such as epidemics, floods, earthquakes, fires, and starvation.

It is only logical therefore that the more powerful a victim has been during his or her life, the more it was feared. For if an emperor, an imperial prince or any other high government official is victimized, that spirit can effect a revenge on the living that is commensurate with the power it enjoyed or took as granted, when it were alive. Such victims were for the Japanese the very raison d’être of all natural disasters, social and political upheavals, epidemics, unusual natural phenomena (eclipses, snow in summer, etc) and provided them with an explanation of their volatile world and lives.

Once these victimary spirits are appeased by the efforts of those who were not directly involved in their deaths or by later leaders, they turn into good deities willing to protect the community. Many Japanese festivals, which actuate such victims, make them into scapegoats. Not only do they have the potential to cause harm to the community but also, as appeased deities, they become scapegoats who, absorbing the sins of the community, help to prevent the very harms they potentially perpetrate. Such is indeed the ambivalence of practically all Japanese deities.

3

That such a religious system could become the mainstay of the political system comes as no surprise. For those who have the political, social and economic power to build shrines for them and offer them elaborate worship, are also those who were believed to control these victims as well as the natural and human disasters they allegedly cause. Hence the fact that, as far back we can trace this religious phenomenon in historiography, the worship of political victims has been the prerogative of powerful people and families. Hence also the fact that the 863 goryo-e was sponsored by people who, at the start of the sessho-kanpaku system of government, had considerable political ambition. Sessho are the regents who served during the reign of infant emperors and kanpaku (e.g. prime minister) was the highest position in the imperial government. The combined sessho-kanpaku was equal to civil dictator. These titles have been traditionally given to leading members of the Fujiwara clan who controlled the imperial throne by marrying their daughters to the emperors (traditional imperial in-laws) and often by enthroning their infant grandsons. The fact that the sessho-kanpaku system developed at the same time as the first goryo-e is no coincidence. It was sponsored by Fujiwara no Mototsune (836-91), kanpaku in 887 (related to 3 emperors) and Fujiwara no Tsuneyuki. The sessho regent system has already begun under Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (804-72) Mototsune’s father, in 866.

Such a cult did not appear suddenly and out-of-nowhere in 863. It had existed already before, sponsored by political outs to embarrass the leaders whenever natural disaster stroke. Natural disasters have traditionally been considered portents of heaven’s displeasure with the current political leadership. Why was it that Fujiwara no Yoshifusa and his son Mototsune brought such ‘out’ cult into the political mainstream? Was it that Yoshifusa used this system to compete religiously against rivals within his own clan? Or was it that he needed to legitimize his newly acquired power by sponsoring this cult? We may never know the answer to all these questions without taking later development into account. It is well known, however, that Yoshifusa competed with many brothers (he had four) and competition among siblings was common in the Japanese clan system. This was true especially when, under Yoshifusa, the Fujiwara developed into a family system (Kajuji, Kan’in, Kujo, Nijo, Ichijo, Iwakura, Saionji, etc.) on the basis of hereditary rights to office.

In order to reply to these questions, we need to take into account the later developments of the cult of political victims and to discuss the details of Sugawara no Michizane’s career. The above-mentioned Mototsune had four sons and four daughters. Under the Chinese political system the Japanese had adopted by the seventh century, women had no rights to political office, but a matrilineal and matrilocal system was still lingering on before it changed, beginning with the leading Fujiwara in the tenth century, into a patrilineal family system. Under Mototsune, political rivalry among brothers continued unabated. Mototsune’s eldest son Tokihira ((871-909) took over the political authority from his father and his career began early when, in 14/2/899, Emperor Uda (r. 887-97), appointed him Sadaijin (Minister of the Left), the most powerful office under the Kanpaku. Uda whose mother was not a Fujiwara, however, was a strong-willed emperor intent on balancing Fujiwara power with other clans. He therefore appointed Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) Udaijin (Minister of the Right). Under the hereditary system developing at that time, the Sugawara had no rights to such high office and the Fujiwara under Tokihira profited from every chance to intrigue against Michizane. Michizane however was the descendent of a scholarly family. His father was an expert in Chinese studies and his expertise was particularly important when the imperial government needed information about Chinese precedent and a scholar-diplomat in its foreign relations. His grandfather had opened a school of Chinese learning and the precocious Michizane, able to compose Chinese poems at age 10, eventually became an expert in his own rights. In 874, he was promoted to Fifth Rank, which gave him access to the court and opened the door to high government positions. In 880, at the death of his father, he took over his grandfather’s college. As an expert in Chinese studies, he was charged in 883 and 7/5/895 with receiving the ambassadors of the kingdom of Parhae. After the death of Fujiwara no Mototsune, his first son Tokihira succeeded him. Emperor Uda appointed Michizane to head his private office. In 893, he became adjunct to the crown prince’s (later Emperor Daigo) office headed by Tokihira. In 894, Michizane was appointed ambassador to China but, concerned about the decline of the T’ang dynasty and perhaps about his own political future, he advised the emperor to discontinue sending embassies to China for the time being. In 897, Emperor Uda abdicated in favor of Emperor Daigo. After the enthronement ceremonies, both Tokihira and Michizane were promoted to Third Rank and to the positions of Minister of the Left and Minister of the Right respectively. This promotion gave Michizane access to all correspondence. Three daughters of Michizane entered the court, one married Emperor Uda’s second son. In 900, Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki, whom Michizane had once refused the doctorate, warns Michizane that a plot is being prepared against him at court.

Uda was able to keep the political rivalry between his two ministers under check but, as was customary by the time, he abdicated in favor of the younger Emperor Daigo (885-930). Soon after the Daigo’s enthronement, Tokihira assembled such disgruntled politicians as Fujiwara no Kiyotsura (34), Minamoto no Hikaru (56), the son of Emperor Ninmyo (810-50), Fujiwara no Sadakuni (34) and Fujiwara no Sugane (45). Tokihira promised Hikaru the position of Uchuben (Secretary of the Right) if successful Sugane who served as Uchuben aspired to the position of Udaisho (General of the Right Guard). At first, Michizane promoted Sugane but, during a banquet, slapped him on grounds of insubordination. The marriage of Michizane’s daughter to Prince Tokiyo, the maternal brother of Emperor Daigo, served as food for the plotters. They accused Michizane of promoting Tokiyo at the expense of Daigo, who at age seventeen was already too old for the emperorship. In 3/1/901, the credulous Daigo immediately decreed that Michzane should be stripped from his court rank and sent to the Dazaifu (Military Headquarters of the West) as a low-ranking official.(5) This amounted to nothing else but exile. His entire family was sent away from Kyoto under the harshest conditions. In 25/1/901, Michizane left Kyoto. Before leaving, he sent his Chinese poems to his friend Ki no Haseo. Intent on preventing Michizane’s exile, Ex-emperor Toba tried to force his way into the palace but Minamoto no Sugane prevented him.(6) The Ex-emperor sat in the grass and waited until the end of the day without avail. That day, Minamoto no Hikaru was appointed Minister of the Right and took over Michizane’s post. On 25/2/903, after having proclaimed his innocence, Michizane died unpardoned at the Dazaifu. He was sixty years old.

4

It is worth our while to consult the two major histories which cover that time, not only to know what happened in the years immediately after Michizane’s untimely death, but also to realize how the victimary ideology shaped contemporary historiography. Let me begin with the more detailed Nihongiryaku (a history compiled by an unknown person, covering from the age of the gods to Emperor Goichijo (reigned 1016-36) assuming the format of a diary from the reign of Emperor Uda). Then I will proceed to the Fuso Ryakki (Compiled by monk Koen (1119-69?), covering from Emperor Jinmu (first official emperor, dates unknown) till Emperor Horikawa (reigned 1079-1107)

25/12/902 the death of Michizane reported

7/7/903 Drought

8/7/903 Prayers for rain

7/intercalary3/904 Epidemic

1/4/904 Solar eclipse

7/4/904 Thunderstorm

23/6/904 Floods

1/10/904 Solar eclipse

1/4/905 Solar eclipse

15/4/905 Lunar eclipse

1/4/906 Solar eclipse

2/4/906 violent thunderstorm. Hail as big as eggs

3/7/906 Death of Fujiwara no Sadakuni

7/6/907 Death of Fujiwara no Atsuko, Emperor Daigo’s wetnurse

1/9/907 Solar eclipse

7/11/907 Death of Fujiwara no Sugane, age 54

1/2/908 Solar eclipse

4/4/908 Death of Fujiwara no Tokihira, age 39

1/5/908 Epidemic

19/5/908 Floods

9/6/908 Thunderstorm

12/6/908 Prayer for the cessation of rain

1/7/908 Insurrection in Shimofusa Province

7/908 Epidemic

1/1/909 Abundant rain

22/4/909 Violent storms

5

23/4/909 Violent storms

14/5/909 Thunderstorm

1/7/909 Solar eclipse

1/1/910 Solar eclipse

1/6/910 Solar eclipse

6/910 Flood in the capital

1/12/910 Solar eclipse

8/4/911 Solar eclipse

10/4/911 Prayers for rain

5/5/911 Epidemic

1/interc.5/911 Solar eclipse

2/6/911 Prayers for rain

1/11/911 Solar eclipse

21/3/912 Minamoto no Hikaru dies age 68 during a hunt. His horse dragged him and his body disappeared in the mud

1/5/912 Solar eclipse

14/8/912 A kite dropped a mouse it had caught onto Fujiwara no Kiyotsura

1/11/912 Solar eclipse

7/11/912 Violent storms

1/4/913 Solar eclipse

2/5/913 Fire in the capital destroys 617 houses

1/10/913 Solar eclipse

1/3/914 Solar eclipse

1/9/914 Solar eclipse

10/15/914 Epidemic. Continues into the following year

1/3/916 Solar eclipse

3/5/916 Hail

7/5/916 Hail with violent winds

29/6/916 Earthquake

1/9/916 Solar eclipse

Disturbances in eastern Japan

6

1/3/917 Solar eclipse

7/917 Beginning of a famine

1/1/918 Solar eclipse

1/8/918 Solar eclipse

15/8/918 Violent storms

Such reports continue until 923. Below I select only the events related to the people who played a role in Michizane’s exile and supported Fujiwara no Tokihira.

21/3/923 Death of Crown Prince Yasuakira. People cried as loud as thunder. He was possessed by Kan’s (Michizane’s) spirit.

20/4/923 Michizane restored to Minister of the Right, Second Rank

11/interc.4/923 Epidemic

26/6/930 The weather was clear. A black cloud moved in from Mt. Atago and quickie covered the sky. It thundered loudly and lightning struck the Seiryoden. The wall caught fire. Dainagon Fujiwara no Kiyotsura’s dress caught fire, his breast split and he died instantly, age 64. Uchuben Taira no Mareyo suffered burns in his face. At the Shishinden: Hyoe-no-Suke Mibu Tadakane’s hair caught fire and he died. Ki no Kagetsura’s stomach split open and he lost consciousness. Azumi Munehito’s knees sustained burns and he could no longer get up. The Emperor fell ill. An epidemic reigned.

15/9/930 The Emperor began to cough

29/9/930 The Emperor passed away.(7)



Fuso Ryakki.

20/4/903 Report of an oracle in which Michizane revealed that he turned into a god of thunder

10/2/904 Yasuakira (two years old) appointed crown prince

7/8/908 Minamoto no Sugane dies at age 54

14/1/909 Lunar eclipse.

909/ Spring and Summer Epidemic

4/4/909 Tokihira dies at age 39. During his illness, ten monks came to offer prayers but they were afraid of the evil spirit that was haunting Tokihira. In broad daylight, Michizane’s spirit came out of Tokihira’s ears as a blue dragon.

1/1/911 Solar eclipse

7/6/911 Floods

12/3/913 Minamoto no Hikaru dies at age 68. He dreamed of Michizane the year before

2/5/915 Fire destroys 617 houses in the capital

7

5/6/915 Floods

916 Autumn Epidemic

8/918 Floods

20/4/923 Michizane’s rank restored after an oracle

11/intercalary 4/923 Epidemic

18/6/925 Crown Prince Yasuyori dies at age 5. His mother was Tokihira’s daughter

925 Summer Drought

4-5/927 severe epidemic

1/6/927 Earthquake

11/7/927 Thunder storm. Lighting strikes pagoda of Saidai-ji Temple

3/929 Epidemic in Home Provinces. The deads fill the streets

16/6/929 Lunar eclipse

26/7/929 Typhoon and floods

8/929 Typhoon

930 Spring and Summer Epidemic

26/6/930 Lightning strikes Imperial Palace twice. Michizane caused the lightning.

Emperor Daigo dies at age 36.

The Fuso Ryakki includes an entire supplement on the lightning.

No only in the enumeration of natural calamities and the death of Michizane’s rivals, in some cases, the histories specifically mention Michizane’s spirit as the perpetrator. In its report of Minamoto no Hikaru’s cruel death, the Nihongiryaku strongly suggests that it was Michizane who was behind it. The same can be said about the kite dropping a dead mouse onto Fujiwara no Kiyotsura’s head. Furthermore, in its report of Crown Prince Yasuakira’s death, it refers to Michizane as the cause. In the case of the lightning striking the private quarters of Emperor Daigo, and his consequent death, both histories make it unequivocally clear that the cause of the lightning was no other than the god of thunder, Michizane. The thirteenth-century scroll entitled Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki, now a national treasure clearly represents the lightning as engendered by Sugawara no Michizane’s vengeful spirit. Both histories were compiled at least partly according to a victimary discourse.

According to the Okagami (Great Mirror), a collection of stories about Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027) and his times claims that "People say Tokihira’s descendents died out because of the terrible sin he committed. No doubt they are right…" Tokihira’s eldest son Yasutada died in 936, at age 47, a ghost haunting his deathbed. Tokihira’s third son Atsusada died in 943 at the age of thirty-eight. Both daughters died prematurely. Only his second son Akitada was able to live over sixty and rose to the position of Minister of the Right, but as the Okagami points out, only because he lived simply and frugally. Yet his line died out too in the end allegedly because of Michizane’s grudge.(8)

Under the year 941, the Fuso Ryakki reports that Priest Nichizo (905?-985?) had met Michizane in hell as the god of lightning (Karai Tenjin). Nichizo was undergoing austerities in Yoshino and went to hell and back.(9) Already in 905, Umasake Yasuyuki, an official who followed Michizane into exile, received an oracle instructing him to erect a shrine and to worship Michizane as the deity Tenman Daijisai Tenjin. This deity whose Sanskrit name is Mahesvara, was originally a Brahman deity ruling over the Great One Thousand Worlds and who is surrounded sixty protective deities and one hundred thousand heavenly deesses.(10) Upon receiving this oracle, he built the Anraku-ji (lit. Peace and Comfort Temple) at the Dazaifu.

8

These histories make it absolutely clear that, in the context of Japanese religion at that time, Michizane’s spirit needs to be placated and converted into a benevolent deity. Ironically perhaps, the person who started this task was no other than Tokihira’s younger brother and political rival Fujiwara no Tadahira (880-949) and his descendents. Upon Minamoto no Hikaru’s death, Tadahira managed to promote himself Minister of the Right and, when Michizane was posthumously reappointed Minister of the Right, Tadahira was given the position of Minister of the Left. He also profited from Tokihira’s premature death to revive the regency and served as sessho under Emperor Suzaku (r. 930-46) and kanpaku (941-48) under Suzaku and Emperor Murakami.

In 919, Tadahira rebuilt the Anraku-ji at the Dazaifu and in 959, Tadahira’s son Morosuke (908-60) sponsored a building in what was later to become the celebrated Kitano Shrine in Kyoto. The shrine goes back to a miko(11) called Ayako who received an oracle from Michizane instructing her to worship him at Ukon no Baba; a site in an area of Kyoto generally referred to as Kitano. Ukon no Baba had been a place of agricultural worship dedicated to the thunder and water gods and numerous prayers for rain or a good harvest were held there, some offered by Emperor Daigo and prominent politicians like Tokihira. Morosuke also offered treasures to the Kitano Shrine, which helped it, become a permanent institution with branches all over Japan.

The year 959 is significant. Morosuke rivaled Sugane’s son Motokata (888-953). Motokata married his daughter to Emperor Murakami (r. 946-67) who bore him his first son. But Morosuke also managed to marry his daughters to the emperor and gave birth to two sons who became future emperors (Reizei r. 967-69 and Enyu r. 969-84) and succeeded in making his son crown prince. The building of the Kitano Shrine also coincided with Morosuke’s efforts to establish his branch of the Fujiwara as a separate family called the Kujo. After his death in 960, the Tadahira-Morosuke’s line became the most powerful faction at court. His elder brother revived the regency system under Emperor Reizei whereupon it became hereditary within the Kujo line. All subsequent Kujo leaders sponsored the Kitano Shrine: Kaneie (929-90) and Michinaga (966-1027). In 8/5/987, Kaneie had the Kitano shrine included among the Nineteen Great Shrines of the imperial family.(12)In 22/5/993, Michinaga, Kaneie’s fifth son, sessho in 1015 and kanpaku in 1018, sent an emissary to the Dazaifu in Kyushu to promote Michizane to Minister of the Left, Senior First Rank. On the 22/interc.10/993, Michizane was promoted to Dajo Daijin (Chief Minister). In 21/10/1004 he arranged for the first imperial visit to the shrine. The imperial visit coincided with Michinaga’s rise to supreme power.(13)

By now, the Kitano Shrine dedicated to the spirit of Sugawara no Michizane had become the tutelary shrine of the Kujo Family. The Kujo also made an effort to restore the Sugawara family and eventually both the Anraku-ji and the Kitano shrine were placed under Michizane’s descendents. The leading Fujiwara also sponsored the Sugawara to write Michizane’s in-life and after-life biographies. The Kitano Tenjin Goden, written during the years 931 and 947 was written by a Sugawara and destined for a new history of Japan entitled Shinkokushi. (14) In 1106, a Sugawara Nobutsune compiled his Kanke Godenki (Biography of the Sugawara Family) about the Michizane’s life and deification.(15) Sugawara Tamenaga (1158-1246) may have been the author he Tenjin Ki in which we learn for the first time that Michizane may have been an incarnation of the bodhisattva Kannon.(16)

In 12/994, Michizane revealed in an oracle that that he no longer holds any grudge and that he will henceforth protect the state.(17) This set the stage for Michizane’s worship as a god of literature. Literature became an important part of the Kitano cult. It began with the readings of Michizane’s poems from his private collection entitled Kanke Koshu within a Shinto/Buddhist ritual called Tenjin Koshiki offered to the Kitano shrine.(18) Beginning perhaps with Yoshishige no Yasutane (934?-97), poets with literary ambitions offered prayers at the shrine. When, in the year 986, Yasutane offered a series of Chinese poems to the shrine, he called Michizane "the father of literature."(19) The Gonara Tenno Shinki also considers Michizane as a god of poetry.(20) In 25/6/1012, Oe no Masahira called Michizane "a true master of poetry" when he visited the Kitano shrine.(21) Some compare Michizane with Confucius and the Buddha. These statements contributed to Michizane’s deification as a god of literature and promoted the visits to the Kitano shrine of numerous poets throughout subsequent history.

Kujo Kanezane (1149-1207), sixth descendent of Michinaga, was behind the compilation of the Kitano Tenjin Engi, the history of the Kitano Shrine. Kanezane became regent at age 38 and in 1189, strongly supported by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo, was appointed Chief Minister. The 1219 copy of the manuscript reveals that Priest Jien (1155-1225), Kanezane’s younger brother was one of its authors. It also reveals that the history was probably written in the years 1190-99. This was a time of deep political and social changes in Japan when the old imperial government lost power to a military, shogunal government. It is therefore conceivable that the Kujo intended the work to sustain their new position as liaison between the imperial and shogunal governments.

The Kitano Tenjin Engi begins with Michizane’s brilliant career. Then it gives an account of Tokihira’s intrigue, Michizane’s exile and tragic death. His soul turned into an evil deity who caused misfortunes at the court and upon his rivals. Then it tells the story of the Kitano shrine and extols the virtues of the Kujo. The history ends with an explanation of the virtues of the Kitano shrine and those of the deity Tenjin (Michizane) as a beneficent deity.(22)

9

In 1219, Kujo Michiie (1191-1252), Kanezane’s grandson offered an illustrated version of the history entitled Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki (Illustrated Scroll of the History of the Kitano Shrine) and an enlarged version of the history to the Kitano shrine in 1223.(23) This was after the assassination in 1219 of third shogun Sanetomo and after Ex-emperor Gotoba’s abortive attempt to topple the shogunate of 1121. He perhaps intended this new version to placate the spirit of Michizane so that peace may prevail in the nation (of course under Kujo leadership). In 1226, Michiie managed to have his son Yoritsune appointed fourth shogun. Like before, Kujo sponsorship of building projects and literary and artistic works coincided with important political developments and cannot be said to be entirely selfless sacrifice.

Priest Jien contributed considerably to the cult of victims. Understandably so because he lived in a time of deep turmoil. In mid-twelfth century much of the political power of the imperial government shifted to the warriors (samurai). This was not because the warriors usurped imperial power by force, but rather because political factions in the imperial government increasingly used military force to press their demands. By the middle of the twelfth century, two prominent military clans, both originally from the Kanto area of present-day Tokyo emerged: the Taira (also Heike) and the Minamoto (also Genji). At first the Taira dominated but between 1180 and 1185, the Minamoto eliminated the Taira. During the last battle between the rivaling clans at Dannoura on the Western edge of Japan’s main island Honshu, the child emperor Antoku (1178-85) whom the Taira had taken along with his mother and many court nobles perished. After the news of the battle reached the capital Kyoto, the earth shook violently. This was bad news for anyone believing in the power of dead victims.

Concerned about a victimized emperor and nobles, Jien wrote a private moral history entitled the Gukansho, petitioned the ex-emperor to build the temple Daisenpoin in Kyoto to appease the spirits and organized the Heike Monogatari (Tales of the Heike), one of Japan’s great literary classic. As a member of the Kujo, Jien has a stake in promoting the cult of political victims and his activities were in tune with Kujo religious tradition. The Gukansho dates to the year 1219; the year Shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo was assassinated and two years before Ex-emperor Gotoba marched against the military government in Kamakura and coincides with the compilation of the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki. This was also a highly unstable time when the Kujo needed to consolidate their political future and sponsor the religious activities needed for that end. The Gukansho is a history in which the vengeful spirits are the main historical driving force. Here is what Jien had to say about vengeful spirits in his Gukansho:

Vengeful spirits are those which, when they were alive, felt an implacable hatred toward those who caused it. From the tiniest hermit huts to the end of the empire, they slog at their rivals in the traps they tend and seek to destroy them by slander and false accusations; this is how they cause disorder in the world and harm the people. When they cannot exact their revenge from the visible world, they do so from the world of the dead.(24)

Furthermore, Jien claims that it was the cult his ancestors offered that placated Michizane’s spirit and allowed the Kujo to prosper. He claims that Michizane was an incarnation of the bodhisattva Kannon who sacrificed himself for the good politics of the Kujo.

In 12/1204, Jien presented to the emperor the following petition for the construction of the temple Daisenpoin:

Since the disturbances started in the Hogen [1154-59] and Genryaku [1184-85] eras, the warriors have made the people uneasy with their constant movements… Maleficent ministers and rebellious warriors have disturbed the nation and have caused wars and many have died far away from their families and have turned into demons. They are like the southern barbarians aspiring to high position, and eastern barbarians who have deviated from the way seeking prosperity. We must safeguard the nation by overcoming the ills of our times and convert them into good.(25)

Jien wrote further that a person of virtue who has undergone Buddhist discipline must placate these spirits by the Buddhist means of eko (Skt. parinamama) and guide them to salvation. He also emphasizes the use of raku (sukah) to restore the spirits to normal condition.(26)

In this petition, Jien points out the dangers the victimary spirits present to the nation and urges the emperor to fund the building. Jien suggests that the temple be organized according to four categories of priests, the fourth of which are monks specializing in the recitation of the sutras (sekkyo-shi). Furthermore, he proposes that a group of blind monks with a good voice should be placed under the Sekkyo-shi.(27) One of the professions open to the blind in ancient Japan was to eulogize the dead in a lyrical recitation at the rhythm of a musical instrument called the Biwa. According to the Moso Yurai (Origin of the Blind Priests), Empress Genmei (661-712) ordered that blind monks placate the spirits who cause havoc.(28) The blind monks did so by reciting the sutra Chijin-kyo (Sutra of the God of the Earth) with their biwa.(29) It was believed that lyrical eulogy and the sympathy it engenders among the living will placate the dead and prevent them from causing calamities. Jien saw in the most talented among these blinds, potent instruments for the placation of the evil spirits. In presenting this proposal, Jien set the foundation for a recitative art called the Heike-gatari (Recitation of the Tales of the Heike) which survived until the present.(30) The Daisenpoin was built according to Jien’s specifications, but it has not survived.

10

It is not until the Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) written between 1310 and 1331 that we learn more about how Jien organized the Tales.

During the reign of ex-Emperor Gotoba, Yukinaga, the Former Governor of Shinano [Province] was known for his learning but, summoned to discuss the poetry of Po Chu-I, but having forgotten two of Po Chu-I’s poems about the Dance of the Seven Virtues, was given the nickname "Wearing the hat of the Five Virtues", which depressed him so much that he abandoned his studies and retired from the mundane world. When Priest Jichin [Jien] had difficulties in organizing monk-specialists of an art into a sub-category, he relied on this Lay-priest of Shinano.

This lay-priest created the Heike Monogatari and taught the blind monk Jobutsu how to recite it… Because he was from the East, Jobutsu wrote what the warriors told him about the battles. The Biwa priests of today continue to imitate the natural voice of Jobutsu.(31)

We do not know anything about the activities of these monks during the time the Daisenpoin stood, but, by the thirteenth century, these Biwa monks (Biwa Hoshi) as they were called were placed under the supervision of a family called the Todoza. To place a group of artists under the umbrella of an authoritative family was the norm in the Middle Ages. It was a means for the political sponsors to control the art and to prevent free-for-all creativity. Since these arts were so closely linked to politics, politicians had a major stake in ‘correct’ performance because any deviation from the sponsored norm could potentially undermine political authority. It was also under the Todoza that an authoritative written text was established precisely to standardize the recitation.(32)

Some of these recitations were subject to a ritual protocol and calendar. On 16/2 every year, the blind monks gathered at a place to the northeast of Kyoto called Shinomiya Kawara to perform a ritual called shakuto-e.(33) They did this in honor of their tutelary deity, the fourth prince (Shinomiya) of the emperor Ninmyo (810-50) who was blind and a skilled Biwa performer. Shinomiya Kawara was a liminal area associated with the ten deities called shiku which were believed to control the so-called Kimon, the Gate of the Devils in the northeast, through which all evil was believed to pass into the city. According to ancient Japanese belief, Shinomiya Kawara was located in a particularly dangerous direction. On a rock called Biwa-ishi (Biwa Rock), the monks built a stone stupa and recited ten thousand times the sutra Hannya Shingyo also called the Heart Sutra. Whether they also recited parts of the Tales is unknown but likely.

The blind reciters also gathered on the 24/4 every year at the dry riverbed of the Kamo River at the height of Shijo street to worship Emperor Antoku (1178-85) at the anniversary of his tragic death. They did this in an area controlled by the deity of epidemics Gozu Tenno whose shrine, the Gion Shrine, was nearby. The highlight of the ritual was floating a sutra downriver (kyo-nagashi). Floating downriver effigies or other representative objects, was a widely used means to rid oneself of the evil spirits.

The Ashikaga shoguns sponsored public recitation of the Heike Monogatari. Called Kanjin Heike, they were also fund-raising events to benefit the building or rebuilding of temples. The 16/4/1466 Kanjin Heike attracted thousands of spectators.

Perhaps most importantly, it was the shoguns of the Kamakura (1185-1333) and Ashikaga (1336-1568) and the Tokugawa (1603-1868) Periods, who came to sponsor the victimary spirits the most. The Kamakura leaders sponsored Dengaku performances as means to appease the noxious spirits. The Ashikaga are on record for having sponsored Dengaku and Sarugaku (both precursors of the modern Noh) events in the dry Kamo riverbed. Under the names Dengaku or Sarugaku, Noh actors performed the evil spirits on a stage constructed in the dry riverbed or other liminal areas around Kyoto. There were numerous Sarugaku events the Ashikaga sponsored in liminal areas of the capital Kyoto: 11-13/7/1412 such an event took place for three days at the Imamiya shrine, on 12/5/1412 one took place in the Kamo dry riverbed at Shijo. The one of 10/7/1413 occurred not far from the shogunal headquarters. Thousands of Kyoto citizens came to see the lavish performances of the Sarugaku actor On’ami (?-1467). Zeami (1363-1443), a Sarugaku Noh actor of the subdued yugen style performed during seven days at Kitano shrine. By 1433, Zeami lost out to the ostentatious style of On’ami. Some of these events ended in fights and quarrels to the extent that the shogunal officials had to shortcut, even prohibit the performances. They had become popular events allowing people to vent their frustrations. But, such prohibitions were only temporary.

Among the many Noh plays staging evil spirits there is a particularly exemplary play. It is Sanemori written by the playwright and shogun-sponsored actor Zeami. Saito Sanemori (?-1183) was a warrior fighting on the side of the Taira. He proceeded to Shinohara (Kaga Province) in an effort to halt the advancing Minamoto troops. He was close to sixty, an age far too advanced to go into battle at that time and he was killed. His horse dragged him into the ricefields. Since that time, whenever the villagers faced a bad harvest, they attributed it to the vengeful spirit of Saito Sanemori and offered him a cult called Sanemori-okuri (Sending Off Sanemori) or Mushi-okuri (Sending Off [Noxious] Insects). On the 11/5/1414, according to the Manzai Jugo Nikki, a diary kept by the monk Manzai during the years 1411-35, an itinerant priest called Yugyo Shonin, happened to pass through the area, when the spirit of Sanemori appeared to him.(34) The villagers told him that the vision predicted a bad harvest. Yugyo Shonin therefore proceeded immediately to exorcise the spirit. Zeami wrote his Sanemori on the basis of this story. Evil spirits are usually exorcised on stage which is why the Noh theater became a kind of exorcist theater, the performance of which would safeguard the nation from the havoc these spirits can cause. Sanemore, however, also became a kind of scapegoat deity. In the Mushi-okuri festival which takes place each year, the people touch the puppet representing Sanemori as if to hand their impurities over to him and begin a new cycle free of sin. The floats in the Gion Festival of Kyoto (highlight, July 17 and 18), the modern version of the 836 goryo-e, a boy called chigo rides on the first Naginata float. The sword (naginata) on top of the float seems threatens the evil spirits into submission. The chigo is supposed to absorb all impurities that had accumulated over the years in the community. This is why he has to undergo extensive purification at the end of the festival in order to be readmitted into society.

11

Conclusion

One plausible reason why political leaders such as the Kujo and later the shoguns sacrificed so much to appease politcal victims is that this system could be used to explain the world and to maintain the political status quo at the same time. The way this worked should be clear from the above examples. Natural calamities do occur, but they always subside eventually. To attribute them to political victims, that is, giving them a human cause, ultimately places these calamities under human, political control. Practically all natural calamities in pre-modern Japan were believed to have a had a human cause. Before modern science, this allowed the political and religious leaders to identify the cause of natural calamities and to direct their placatory efforts to an identifiable human entity. Natural disaster does strike from time to time but rather than to leave them unexplained and incomprehensible in the minds of the people, the political leaders used them to legitimize their authority. By offering elaborate cult to the political victims, the leaders claimed that evil spirits caused by their predecessors, but they made it clear that it was thanks to their efforts to pacify these spirits that brought about a return of normal conditions. It allows political leaders to claim that, when the calamities subside, it was thanks to their good offices and benevolent, pious government. These deified victims became the mainstay of society and the center of religion. Victimary deities were believed to maintain their presence and to have a strong stake in the state. This is why state affairs could not be conducted without offering them cult. Because of this ‘presence’, these victimary deities were also revered as oracle-delivering deities, and used to predict the future. Like in Delphi, Japanese political leaders manipulated such oracles to benefit the state.

These deified victims also functioned as scapegoats. They were highly ambivalent. They are both devils and deities, able to cause, but also to abate and prevent calamities. These were the deities on whom the community would hand their sins and on whom they would rely to overcome their calamities. This system balances the forces of good and evil and creates structure and anti-structure. Sympathy with failing heroes, making heroes out of political rivals, villains and rebels, became a cult in which ironically even the victors had to participate.

Perhaps because of the dominant Confucian philosophy, the Chinese have not made heroes out of the defeated, at least not at the national level. Defeat was a divine judgment rather than a human feat. Confucianists tended to make it the "victim's fault." Also, the Chinese did not need to explain natural calamities in terms of the goryo. Natural calamities were caused by a "heaven" dissatisfied with official conduct "under heaven" and not by victims seeking justice or revenge. in Japan, however, the goryo, like other deities, were placed beyond the morality of good and evil.They were heroes despite the dominant socio-political ideology and regradless of whether or not they were wrong or unjust. In China, a Sugawara no Michizane would probably never have been deified as he was in Japan, on a national level, even though, according to popular opinion, he was wronged.

In Japan, political victims are the anti-heroes religion and the arts engendered. Seeing a play or hearing a story or reading about these victims was believed not only to prevent calamities and perpetuate the order but , psychologically, to defer resentment, revenge and violence. Literary and theatrical heroes are also proxies. They stand for any victim that may threaten the stability of the state. Rather than sacrificing some living human or animal for the good of the rest, as was practiced in many other cultures, this is a system whereby already dead victims are called to play the role of scapegoats. The tragic heroes in literature and the theater are not living but substitute scapegoats.

Thus the Japanese have used their victims to explain uncontrollable natural forces and human fate. The fear of evil spirits tended to curb unlimited violence. One can kill an enemy, but then one has to worship him. It is conceivable that, emphasizing the power of political victims, Jien intended just that, namely, to curb violence in an age dominated by the warriors. But, at the same time, he wanted to contribute to the political fate of his family. Such dual purpose is a common feature in pre-modern Japanese religion. It is an attempt to divert violence into the metaphysical realm and convert it into an instrument of peace and stability.

12

Notes

1. See on this Herbert Plutschow, Chaos and Cosmos – Ritual in early and medieval Japanese literature (Leiden, 1990)(back)

2. "Suitei no uta," Subaru, vol 12 (1973) pp. 270-324. See also Masuda Katsumi, "Nagasarebito Hitomaro," Kokubungaku (Kaishaku to Kyozai no Kenkyu) vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 82-84 and Ohama Itsuhiko, "Chinkon no shi," Bungaku, vol. 39, no. 9, pp. 1005-15.(back)

3. Kokushi Taikei, vol. 4 (Tokyo, 1934) pp. 112-13.(back)

4. Abe no Nakamaro (701-70) went to China with Kibi but failed to return and died in China. The scroll was probably painted to appease Kibi’s spirit. (back)

5. The Dazaifu was established as an office of the ritsuryo government in mid-seventh century to guard the northern coast of Kyushu, the nearest point between Japan and the Asiatic continent.(back)

6. The Minamoto surname was given to imperial princes not eligible to become crown princes.(back)

7. Nihongiryaku (Shintei Zoho-)Kokushi Taikei, vol. 11 (Tokyo, 1929) pp. 8-42.(back)

8. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 21 (Tokyo, 1970) p. 79.(back)

9. Kokushi Taikei, vol. 6 (Tokyo, 1907) pp. 708-12.(back)

10. On Umasake Yasuyuki’s shrine, see Tenmangu Anrakuji Soso Nikki, Shinto Taikei, Jinja-hen, vol. 48 "Dazaifu" (Tokyo, 1991) p. 4. On the oracle, see Tenmangu Takusen Ki, Gunsho Ruiju, vol. 2 Jingi-bu (Tokyo, 1932) p. 130 and Tenjin Koshiki, Zoku Gunsho Ruiju, vol. 3, part 1, Jingi-bu, p. 34.(back)

11. Miko are shaman-type virgins serving the deities at their shrines. They were believed to becomes possessed by the deities they represent and deliver oracles.(back)

12. According to the Dainihon Shiryo under 24/6/Shoryaku 2. Later, in 3/1039, more shrines were added to the Nineteen. On this, see Nijunisha Chushiki, Gunsho Ruiju, vol. 2, Jingi-bu (Tokyo, 1932) p. 209ff.(back)

13. See on this Francine Herail, Notes Journalieres de Fujiwara no Michinaga – Ministre a la Court de Heian 993-1018 – Traduction du Midokanpakuki, vol. 3 (Geneve, 1991) pp. 444-45.(back)

14. Compiled during the years 936 and 969.(back)

15. This is included in the Shinto Taikei, vol. 11, Jinja-hen, pp. 83-90. (back)

16. This is included in Shinto Taikei, vol. 11, Jinja-hen, pp. 103-29. The original Tenjin Ki is lost. The earliest copy dates to the year 1194.(back)

17. This is recorded in the Kitano Tenjin Goden, Shinto Taikei, vol. 11, Jinja-hen, "Kitano", pp. 14-15. (back)

18. For an example, see Zoku Gunsho Ruiju, vol. 3, part 1, Jingi-bu, pp. 42-43. The Kanke Koshu peoms are the ones Michizane sent to his friend Ki no Haseo before going into exile. They are included in the Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 72 (Tokyo, 1966). See also note about poem no. 514 (p. 524).(back)

19. See on this Josef Kyburz, pp. 349-50 and Sakamoto Taro, Sugawara Michizane, Jinbutsu Sosho, vol. 100 (Tokyo, 1966) pp. 161-62.(back)

20. See on this Sakamoto Taro, op. Cit., pp. 163-64.(back)

21. Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 27 (Tokyo, 1992) p. 347.(back)

22. Gunsho Ruiju, vol 2, Jingi-bu, p. 147.(back)

23. Shinshui-)Nihon Emakimono Zenshu(back)

24. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 86 (Tokyo, 1965) p. 339.(back)

13

25. Reprinted in Fukuda Akira, "Kataribon no seiritsu," Nihon Bungaku (June, 1990) p. 58. For a discussion of this document, see Akamatsu Toshihide, Kamakura Bukkyo no Kenkyu (Tokyo, 1959) pp. 276-79 and Zoku Kamakura Bukkyo no Kenkyu (Tokyo, 1966) pp. 384-87.(back)

26. Dainihon Shiryo, vol. 4, 10, pp. 279-80 "Daisenpoin no koto".(back)

27. Dainihon Shiryo, vol. 4, 10, p. 266.(back)

28. Nihon Shomin Seikatsu Shiryo Shusei, vol. 17, p. 247. (back)

29. The text entitled Chijin Moso Engi explains the history of this practice. See Nihon Shomin Seikatsu Shiryo Shusei, vol. 17, pp. 225-27. Yanagita Kunio reports that blind monks were summoned to pray against floods and droughts because they were supposed to control the dragon. See on this (Teihon-)Yanagita Kunio Shu, vol. 8 (Tokyo, 1962) pp. 309-11.(back)

30. The Tales of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) the story of the downfall of the Heike (Taira) clan between 1156 and 1185 told according to the Buddhist law of cause and effect. The oldest manuscript dates to the years between 1219-1243. There are various versions. (back)

31. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 30 (Tokyo, 1957) pp. 271-72.(back)

32. See Todoyoshu, Nihon Shomin Seikatsu Shiryo Shusei, vol. 17 (Tokyo, 1972) p. 230.(back)

33. On this ritual, see Honcho Seiki, (Shintei Zoho-)Kokushi Taikei, vol. 9 (Tokyo, 1933) p. 12.(back)

34. Zoku Gunsho Ruiju, suppl. Vol. 1 (Tokyo, 1924) p. 46.(back)


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Anthropoetics subscribers may copy or download this text from the network, but its distribution or publication shall constitute an infringement of the Author's copyright.
Anthropoetics - The Electronic Journal of Generative Anthropology
Volume VI, number 2 (Fall 2000/Winter 2001)
ISSN 1083-7264
URL: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/


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. The vengeful spirits, goryoo, onryoo 御霊、怨霊

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Where are you now?

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When you're not here... Where are you?

QUOTE
©　Official Newsletter of Seishindo(tm)
Charlie Badenhop
Volume. 7, No. 12; June 16, 2009

"When you're not here... Where are you?" This was the question posed by a Japanese friend sitting at a table near me in our local coffee shop.

"Huh?" I said, as I oriented back to being in the room.

"Well I've known you for some time now" he said, "And I've never seen you go so far away while sitting here."

It's true that I was sitting in the coffee shop, but was somewhere else emotionally. I had transported myself back in time, thinking about the wonderful experiences I had with my teacher Eva who recently passed away, and her husband Gene.

Over the following days, I began to notice there were many times when I was sitting somewhere, or doing something, while my emotional self was actually somewhere else. In fact, I began to realize that my whole self was rarely in any one place, all at the same time!

Recognizing this was both amusing and somewhat unsettling.

I begin to realize I often have an emotional residue from the past, that carries over into the present. Sort of like having the taste of ice cream linger in my mouth for some time after I've finished eating it.

The troubling part being that the aftertaste is not always a pleasant one.

Think about it. How are you feeling right now? Are you fully alive in the moment, or do you find your past experience intruding into the present?

For me, I'm feeling a bit anxious right now. Needing to write this story, while at the same time thinking about other things I need to do after I finish. Part of me is writing this story, while another part of me is feeling "I have so much I need to do!".

How strange this is. Of course I have other things to do. My life would be pretty empty if I didn't!

I ask myself what I'll need to do to feel calm right now,
And I find myself taking a deep breath and beginning to rock back and forth some.

Then I take another deep breath,
As I look out the window and see some people passing by on bicycles.

Finally coming back into the room and looking at the letters of the words I'm typing now, magically appear on the screen.

Another deep breath,
And then I make some short intense sounds and shake my head back and forth. Like a dog shaking off the water after getting drenched by the neighbourhood kids on a hot summer day.

I tense all the muscles of my body,
And hold my breath for as long as I can.
Then I release into a sigh, and another deep breath.

For a few moments there's no thinking,
Only feeling,
And the feeling is one of expansive calmness.

It's like an emotional storm has just blown through me, and is passing by to another locale.


I ask you now, "When you're not here, where are you?"

What will you need to do to find yourself being only here, only now?
Without a past or a future.
Only being in communion with the words on this page.

Realizing that regardless of how you might feel, everything is just as it should be.
In this moment.
Breathe deeply and give thanks for what you do have.

The more you can be here now,
The more you'll find your future will take care of itself.

The more you'll find you are capable of taking care of yourself,
And those you love.

One breath, and one step, at a time.
Is all you'll ever need.


by Charlie Badenhop
http://www.seishindo.org/newsletter.html



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GenkiJuku <> Wellness Center

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Kamakura Kaido

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Kamakura Kaido 鎌倉街道




QUOTE ©　wikipedia

This highway is also called "Jin Kaido 陣街道 or
Bubaigawara Jin-kaidō 分倍河原 陣街道.

Kamakura Kaidō (鎌倉街道,
Kamakura Highway or Highways)
is the generic name of a great number of roads built during the Kamakura period which, from all directions, converged on the military capital of Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan[1]. The term itself however was created probably during the Edo Period to mean simply any old road going to Kamakura; it is used for example in the Fudokikō. The famous Tōkaidō highway which connects Kyoto to Kamakura can therefore also be considered a Kamakura Kaidō.

Texts like the Taiheiki and the Azuma Kagami see things from a Kamakura-centric perspective and therefore use for the very same roads individual names deriving from their destination, for example Kyōto Ōkan or the generic term Kamakura Ōkan (鎌倉往還, Kamakura Highway). Today, modern paved roads that approximately follow one of the routes of an Old Kamakura Kaidō are named either Kamakura Kaidō, as Tokyo Prefecture Machida Route 18, or Old Kamakura Kaidō (旧鎌倉街道, Kyū Kamakura Kaidō).



The three main routes
The three main roads in the Kantō region were called Kami no Michi (上の道) ("Upper Route"), Naka no Michi (中の道 ("Middle Route"), and Shimo no Michi (下の道) ("Lower Route"). Their course is well known because it's described in several medieval book. They ended at the Shinto gate (torii) at the entrance of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū in Kamakura.

Like the other routes, these roads were built to allow quick army movements from and to Kamakura and were of great importance during the many internal wars of the period. The Kami no Michi, in particular, was used by Nitta Yoshisada for his 1333 attack on Kamakura, and all the battlefields of that campaign (for example Kotesashigahara (小手差原) and Kumegawa (久米河, both in today's Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, or Bubaigawara (分倍河原 in today's Fuchū) are therefore along its course.

The Kamakura Kaidō/Ōkan network remained important during the Muromachi period (1336- 1573) because Kamakura continued to be essential to control the Kantō region, however, after the last Kantō kubō Ashikaga Shigeuji was driven out of Kamakura and established himself in Shimoosa Province, the Late Hōjō clan supremacy made Kantō's political and economic center move to Odawara. The final blow to the network was given by the Tokugawa, who in the 17th century made Edo their capital. With Kamakura's importance waning, the network fell in disrepair and in places disappeared.

Even though they are described in several old texts like the Azuma Kagami, the Taiheiki, the Gukanshō and the Baishōron (梅松論) the three roads' exact courses aren't known with certainty, and their description can therefore vary considerably with the source. The following are considered the most likely.

The Kami no Michi
From Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's gate, the Kami no Michi passed through the Kewaizaka Pass, then Susaki, Watauchi (today's Fujisawa), Karasawa, Iida (within today's Yokohama), then Seya, Tsuruma (today's Machida), Tamagawa, Bubai, Fuchū, Kokubunji, Sayama, and Ogawa, then, at the Usui Pass, divided in three, forming the Shinanoji (信濃路) (that went towards today's Nagano Prefecture), Jōshūji (上州路) (that went towards today's Gunma Prefecture) and the Musashiji (武蔵路), that went towards Musashi Province, today's Tokyo Prefecture. For unknown reasons, this route appears to be what the Azuma Kagami calls it Shimo no Michi.

The Naka no Michi
The Naka no Michi departed from Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū with a left turn and passed through the Kobukurozaka Pass, Yamanouchi, Ofuna, Kasama (within today's Yokohama), Nagaya, Futamatagawa, and Nakayama, finally joining the Kami no Michi there. In Kamakura this particular road is still known as Kamakura Kaidō.

The Shimo no Michi
The Shimo no Michi was a branch of the Naka no Michi that departed before Tsurumi (within today's Yokohama), then crossed Maruko, Shibuya, Hatogaya, Yono, Iwatsuki, Iwatsuki, Koga, and Yūki, then reaching Utsunomiya. In Maruko (near today's Kawasaki), the Shimo no Michi divided into the Bōsōji (房総路) and the Hitachiji (常陸) the first going to Kisarazu, the second going to Ishioka in Northern Ibaraki Prefecture.


Hiroshige　広重
"The fifty-stree stages of the Tōkaidō" - Totsuka.
The road signal before the bridge says that the road to the left is the "Kamakura Michi" (Kamakura Road)

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Hongo Village and the worship of
. Dairokuten Stone 大六天 .

Itabashi　板橋　
was a busy crossroads during the Edo period, where the Kawagoe Road and the Kamakura Kaido Road crossed.
川越街道

. Itabashi　板橋　 .
and
O-Fuku Jizo Sama お福地蔵さま O-Fuku Jizo

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World Kigo Database : KAMAKURA
[ . BACK to DARUMA　MUSEUM　TOP . ]
[ . BACK to WORLDKIGO . TOP . ]

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Sake Barrels

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Sake barrels at shrines




QUOTE
©　Japan Times, Oct. 16, 2007

Sake barrels at shrines
By ALICE GORDENKER

Question

What the heck are those displays of barrels you sometimes see outside at Shinto shrines, especially at this time of year? My friend says they are sake barrels and full of rice wine. I find that hard to believe because I've seen them stacked up to six barrels high. If there's really sake inside, wouldn't such stacks be dangerously heavy, particularly in case of an earthquake? Wouldn't there be danger of theft? Please could you get to the bottom of these barrels?


Answer

Those are indeed sake barrels, but as their name reveals, they are not full of rice wine. When displayed near a Shinto shrine, such barrels are called kazaridaru　飾り樽　, which means "decoration barrels." As you surmised, the barrels on display are empty, at least in physical terms. Spiritually, they're chock full of significance.

"In Japan, sake has always been a way of bringing our gods and people together," Tetsuo Hasuo of the Japan Sake Brewers Association explained when I brought your question to him. "In some of this country's oldest texts the word used for sake is miki 神酒, written with the characters for 'god' and 'wine.' People would go a shrine festival and be given rice wine to drink, and they would feel happy and closer to the gods."

These days, the word miki (or o-miki when given its honorific prefix) is reserved for rice wine used in Shinto rites and festivals. Sipping a cup is still a prayerful act of symbolic unification with the gods. Shinto shrines and sake manufacturers maintain a symbiotic relationship, in which the shrines conduct rites to ask the gods for the prosperity of the brewers, and — this is where the barrels come in — the brewers donate the grog that shrines need for ceremonies and festivals. There is no particular season for donations, according to Hasuo.

"Shrines need more sake when they have festivals, the timing of which varies by shrine," he said. "But festivals are most often held in the spring and fall, so those are the busiest season for donations."

Smaller shrines usually get their o-miki from local sake companies, but two shrines, Meiji Jingu in Tokyo and Ise Jingu in Mie Prefecture, look after the entire national product by accepting donations from every rice-wine brewer in the country.

Given that there are about 1,800 sake manufacturers in Japan, that's quite an undertaking. The logistics are handled by a special committee at each shrine called the shuzokeishinkai (brewer reverence committee), which works out who sends what.

When it comes to barrels, the committee will ask for only as many full ones as the shrine actually needs for festivals and ceremonies.

"Generally, a brewer provides just one bottle, or an empty barrel for display. It's the kimochi (gesture) that's important," Hasuo said, "because asking for or giving more sake than is actually needed would be mottainai (wasteful)."

This strikes me as an example of traditional Japanese values: Shinto gods don't make unreasonable demands of people, and people show respect for the natural world inhabited by Shinto gods by avoiding waste.

At many shrines, including Meiji Jingu, empty barrels received as donations are stacked and bound together, then fixed with rope to a simple frame to keep them from falling over.

Other shrines, including the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura, have a permanent wooden structure that looks like a gigantic bookcase on which the barrels are neatly shelved. Smaller shrines line up their casks on a dais or simply display them wherever it's convenient.

A few shrines don't have to rely on donations to get their o-miki because they brew their own. The number of shrines doing so, however, is extremely limited. Rice-wine production has been regulated in Japan since the eighth century and even shrines making sake for onsite consumption are required to have a government license. This is true for individuals too, which is why you don't hear about home sake brewing as a hobby in Japan.

In any case, there are only four shrines in all of Japan licensed to make sake. One of them, Okazaki Hachiman Shrine in Yamaguchi Prefecture, makes an unusual white sake called shiroki that can be sampled during the shrine's fall festival, held on the third Saturday in October. Another 40 shrines are licensed to make an unrefined rice wine called doburoku, also served at festivals.

Rice wine is not normally stored in barrels because it picks up too much of the taste and smell of the wood. But a short stay gives the sake a pleasant woody aroma, so upon request brewers fill barrels (from a steel tank) a few days in advance of festivals and other special occasions.





You don't have to be connected with a shrine to get your hands on one of those sake barrels, which are called komodaru 菰樽(こもだる). (Komo is the woven straw wrapped around the staves.) You can buy an empty barrel if you really want to, or you can order a full one for a wedding or party. A standard komodaru holds four to (an old measure), or 72 liters, and will set you back about ¥100,000. If that's too much sake for your party but you still want the impact of a big barrel, you can request an agezoku (false bottom) that reduces the fill to as little as one to (18 liters).

It's a custom at New Year's parties, weddings and consecrations of new buildings to break open a barrel of sake in a ceremony called kagamibiraki. Kagami usually means "mirror," but in this case it refers to the wooden lid on the top of the barrel. A favored few are armed with wooden mallets, and after appropriate wishes for health, happiness and prosperity, the hammer holders give a cry and smash open the top of the barrel. Cups of the sake are distributed to all and a toast is made.

And after that? Well, there's really only one thing to do: try to get to the bottom of the barrel!

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20071016wh.html




PHOTOS on this page from GOOGLE IMAGES Search.

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A sake barrel,
Born without hands, makes merry —
Cherry blossom time

modern Ihara Saikaku
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/26238-Ihara-Saikaku-A-Sake-Barrel

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Compiled by Larry Bole:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kigohotline/message/103


Robin Gill's translation:

hiradaru ya te-naku umaruru hanamizake

A flat keg
born without a handle
blossom-viewing sake

Gill's comment:

Handles and hands are both 'te 手' in Japanese, so the metaphor is natural...

Gill includes this haiku of Saikaku's in explicating the following haiku:

shiranu hito ni sakazuki shiiru sakura kana

cherry blossoms
forcing cups of sake
on other men

alternately:

pushing sake
upon utter strangers
it's sakura

Shiki (1896), trans. Gill

Gill continues his comment:

...and those who force others to drink were doomed to be reborn limbless. With monks, this punishment was supposed to last for five hundred generations! Clever Saikaku has them reborn as kegs. Others turn them into sea cucumbers!
(See "Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!")



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Sake and Haiku

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Folding Screens byoobu

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kigo for the New Year

. hatsubyoobu 初屏風 (はつびょうぶ)
first use of a folding screen


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kigo for all summer

. yoshi byoobu 葭屏風（よしびょうぶ）reed folding screen 　　
moji byoobu 綟屏風（もじびょうぶ） folding screen with hemp cloth
sudare すだれ　and more kigo



kigo for late summer

. byoobu matsuri 屏風祭（びょうぶまつり）folding screen festival
　
During the Gion Festival in Kyoto.
The rich merchant homes display the folding screns which are usually hidden with the family treasures in the special storehouses.



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kigo for all winter

. portable folding　screens, byoobu 屏風 　
with more byoobu kigo



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BIOMBO .. Byoobu

QUOTE
© MICHAEL DUNN /　Japan Times, Oct. 4, 2007

East and West in mists of gold
By MICHAEL DUNN

Most people outside of Japan demonstrate their wealth and success by living in ever-larger spaces and by accumulating more and more stuff to fill them. Contrast walls covered with paintings and every level surface cluttered with objects to the traditional Japanese ideal of an empty room in which artworks join furnishings just for a particular chapter in life's drama — and are then put away again.



With the exception of decorated sliding doors already in situ, paintings in the form of hanging scrolls or folding screens were brought out of storage to briefly echo a mood or season. One feels there is something to be learned here.

Even a taste for grandeur could be satisfied temporarily by the magnificent painted screens that can be seen in "BIOMBO — Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold," the current exhibition at the new Suntory Museum in Tokyo Midtown. The organizers have employed the Portuguese / Spanish word biombo (a transliteration of byobu: a folding screen, or wind-block) to underscore the historic importance of screen paintings as diplomatic gifts. (Although guessing the meaning of the rest of the title, "Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold," requires some creative imagination).

To my knowledge, this is the first major show dedicated solely to screens since that of the Fenollosa Collection from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was displayed at a Takashimaya department store in 1991. The selection includes masterpieces from various traditional schools of painting, including some of the aforementioned gifts that have returned on loan from museums in Europe, America and South Korea.

Folding screens arrived in Japan from China via Korea during the 7th century and functioned until the modern period as folding walls to delineate space and thwart chilling drafts in unheated buildings. In keeping with a preference for paintings that could be easily stored, the folding screen provided an ideal, portable format for artists who liked to work on a much grander scale.

The concept of large-scale painting evolved so, that during the Muromachi Period (14th-16th centuries), we see pairs of six-panel screens, each roughly 3.5 meters wide by over 1.5 meters high, decorated with contiguous paintings. This format lends itself perfectly to scenes from nature, especially paintings of idealized landscapes such as the celebrated West Lake in China, or compositions of birds, flowers, trees and animals. At the same time, artists found inspiration in what they experienced daily, and we also see the appearance of genre paintings depicting such subjects as shrine horses, court scenes and ordinary but colorful street life.

Budget permitting, gold was often employed for decorative effect and to reflect light, no matter how dim the source — be it from the moon or a candle flame. Gold leaf was pasted on to provide backgrounds or clouds, while gold dust was applied to suggest a glowing mist or luminous atmosphere.

Apart from domestic roles, screens also served a ritual function at Imperial and shogunal courts, military and religious institutions, and in the various ceremonies for life's rites of passage. Even today, plain gold screens often appear in the background of important events, as if to add gravitas to the promises of politicians or newlyweds.

The screen paintings displayed in this exhibition are organized to show their formation and development, their role in ceremony, those influenced by contact with the West, the profusion of styles since the 16th century, and those, that for one reason or another, left Japan.

Most of them are breathtakingly beautiful and I would be very happy to take home the Muromachi Period pair of landscapes with the sun and the moon from Kongoji Temple, or the Suntory's 19th-century pair showing waves on gold by Kano Seisenin Osanobu.

But perhaps the most historically fascinating are the screens depicting Western subjects: Western kings, European cities, the Battle of Lepanto, and the arrival of Europeans at the ports of Kyushu, all dating from that brief late-16th- to early-17th-century period before Japan isolated itself from the rest of the world until the 1850s.

Despite the latest state-of-the-art museum lighting boasting all the UV-control that conservators require, these screens are still lighted from overhead in a way that didn't exist when they were made. While their splendor is undiminished, it should be remembered that they were never, ever seen this way by their creators, nor painted with anything other than lateral light in mind, and so a little imagination will be needed to envisage them as they were intended.

These wonderful objects were made for another time, a traditional way of living that has all but perished, and as almost no one has any space for them anymore, good examples turn up in better antique shops. It is still possible to buy magnificent Edo Period screens for a few million yen — a fraction of what one would pay for mediocre paintings of the same period in Europe. The Biombo show provides an excellent opportunity to polish one's eyes and connoisseurship.

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© Santory Museum




. Nanban art (南蛮美術) .
Akita ranga (秋田蘭画)
Dutch learning 蘭學 / 蘭学　rangaku


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Osaka Zu Byobu (Scenes of Osaka)
大阪図屏風




Medieval Japan artifact inspires Germany-based Japanese artist
By Marjan Bex

In an exhibition in the Netherlands, Keiko Sadakane, a Japanese artist based in Germany, attempts a modern, sober interpretation of a medieval Japanese folding screen recently discovered in Europe, counterposing a fragment of Japanese history with events taking place in the West in the same era.

The piece, known as ''Paravento Regale,'' makes reference to the format and the golden ground of the Japanese folding screen, which depicts Osaka Castle before it was destroyed in 1615.
The screen, ''Osakajo-zu-byobu,'' was found in the Eggenberg Palace in the Austrian city of Graz, and mostly likely found its way there through the hands of Dutch merchants.
The eight panels into which it was divided were each embedded into the rococo walls of one of the most fashionable Indian rooms of the palace, expert Barbara Kaiser from the Eggenberg Palace explained to Kyodo News over the phone from Graz.

''We always knew this screen was there, and it was always visible, but it was only after a thorough restoration lasting from 2001 to 2004 that its importance became clear to us,'' she said.
''To fully understand the piece of art, in 2007 an investigation project was started in cooperation with the universities of Cologne and Osaka,'' she said. ''Now visitors can again see it in its full glory where it has been since its arrival at the castle in the early 18th century, as part of the rococo wall decoration.''

Sadakane was occupied with a project called ''Besuch'' (Visit) about Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), a medieval Japanese warlord, and Jesuits who were making visits to Japan at that time. Oda entrusted a folding screen depicting the famous Azuchi Castle in what is now Shiga Prefecture to the Jesuit delegation as a gift to the pope in Rome but the screen has gone missing.
The painter of this screen, Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), was involved in decorating Osaka Castle --- the subject of the screen found in Graz.

''Paravento'' is the Italian word for screen. ''Regale'' makes reference not only to ''royalty'' but also to ''Palazzo Regale,'' an installation created by the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), whose art Sadakane greatly admires.

The collection of 33 shining brass plates contains references to European and Japanese history in the form of inscribed words in Japanese, Latin, Dutch and German.
Sadakane's interpretation of the folded screen is multilayered and its meaning stretches out to other objects at the exposition.
''In choosing the Latin, Dutch and Japanese words in 'Paravento Regale,' I deliberately thought of very old Japanese terms, and I think perhaps not all Japanese will immediately understand it,'' Sadakane said. ''But that will form part of the mystery of art.''
Full text
source : home.kyodo.co.jp


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Symposium zum japanischen Stellschirm
des Schlosses Eggenberg




Am 21. August 2008 war das Kunsthaus Graz Schauplatz eines Symposiums, bei welchem der in Schloss Eggenberg in Graz wiederentdeckte japanische Stellschirm mit Ansichten der Stadt und des Schlosses Osaka (Ôsakajô-zu-byôbu) aus dem 17. Jahrhundert im Mittelpunkt stand. Noch zuvor war aus diesem Anlass ein Empfang am 18. August 2008 im Schloss Eggenberg gegeben worden. Eine einmalige Gelegenheit, den Byôbu bei Kerzen- und Mondlicht zu besichtigen, wurde den Gästen des Empfangs zuteil. Herr Ryuta Mizuuchi, Gesandter der Japanischen Botschaft in Wien, hob in seiner Begrüßungsrede hervor, dass der Stellschirm Beweis des bis auf das 17. Jahrhundert zurückzuverfolgenden Kulturaustausches zwischen Österreich und Japan sei und drückte seine Hoffnung aus, dass dessen gemeinsame Erforschung unter japanischen und österreichischen Akademikern neue Ansätze zur weiteren Zusammenarbeit und zum verstärkten Austausch auch auf der Landes- bzw. Gemeindeebene im Lichte des Austauschjahres Japan-Österreich 2009 führen werde.


Beim Symposium beleuchteten japanische und deutsche Fachleute in jeweils 30-minütigen Vorträgen die Darstellungen auf dem Stellschirm, seine Verwendung, die Bedeutung seiner Entdeckung und die Geschichte von Schloss Osaka. Der Eggenberger Stellschirm besitzt einen außergewöhnlich hohen kulturhistorischen Wert und hat auch in Japan großes Interesse erregt. Abgebildet ist Osaka, die blühende Residenzstadt von Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), in einer Ansicht aus der Zeit vor 1614/1615. Da Osaka in zwei Kämpfen in den Jahren 1614 und 1615 dem Erdboden gleichgemacht wurde, ist die Darstellung des Paravents in ihrer Vollständigkeit von umso größerer Bedeutung.

Darüber hinaus zeichnet sich der Stellschirm durch einzigartige Details aus: So zeigt er etwa die „Paradies-Brücke“ mit ihren prachtvollen Brückenaufbauten. Die Brücke, die auf den Übergang in das Paradies des Buddha Amida, in das alle Gläubigen nach ihrem Tod zu gelangen wünschten, anspielt, befand sich nur von 1596 bis 1600 in dieser Form vor Ort. Danach wurden die prächtigen Brückenaufbauten abgebaut und in das Mausoleum für Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Kyoto integriert.


Toyotomi Hideyoshi liebte es, sich mit seinen Frauen auf Booten zu vergnügen. Der Ôsakajô-zu-byôbu zeigt Hideyoshis berühmtes Vergnügungsschiff „Phönixboot“, von dem bisher keine andere Abbildung existiert. Auf die luxuriöse Ausstattung deuten der vergoldete Phönix auf dem Dach, die weißen Reiherdarstellungen auf den Außenwänden und die Weidenmalereien im Inneren hin.

Der „Dritte Schlossverteidigungsbezirk“, der 1598/1599 errichtet wurde, ist ebenfalls von keinem anderen Bild bekannt. Dargestellt ist der Bereich Sasanomaru, der dem Schutz des Eingangs zum „Zweiten Schlossbezirk“ dient. Die reich verzierten, goldfarbenen Wolkenbänder - ein typisch japanisches Stilmittel, um verschiedene Ortsansichten und zeitlich getrennte Ereignisse in einer Komposition zu vereinen - sind in einmaliger Weise reliefartig mit drei verschiedenen Blumenmustern ausgearbeitet.

Vor dem Jahr 2001 war die Bedeutung des Stellschirms unbekannt.
Der Raum, in dem er untergebracht war, war auch „indianisches Kabinett“ genannt. Ursprünglich handelte es sich um einen achtteiligen Paravent. Dieser wurde im 18. Jahrhundert in seine acht Teile zerlegt, die einzeln als Wanddekoration, kombiniert mit exotisierenden Wandmalereien, eingepasst wurden. Die Restaurierung 2001 führte zur Wiederentdeckung des japanischen Stellschirms, nachfolgend wurde durch Frau Dr. Franziska Ehmcke, Universität zu Köln, die Kansai Universität in Japan zu Rate gezogen. Die eingehende Untersuchung des Stellschirms führte schließlich zur Erkenntnis, dass es sich beim Ôsakajô-zu-byôbu um ein kostbares Zeugnis der Toyotomi-Periode handelt. Der tatkräftige Einsatz der japanischen, deutschen und österreichischen Fachleute wirft nun ein neues Licht auf den akademischen Wert des Stellschirms und die Entwicklung des damit in Zusammenhang stehenden japanisch-europäischen Austausches.

Das „indianische“ Kabinett wurde dann schließlich zum „japanischen“ Kabinett umbenannt.

source : www.at.emb-japan.go.jp



japanese LINK with all details
tategaki.jp/data_B/2009/11/post_3.html



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Byoobu and Tsuitate - Daruma on a Screen　屏風, 衝立とだるま


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襖絵とだるま


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