Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture最新文献

{"title":"Dōgen’s Religious Discourse and Hieroglossia","authors":"Jean-Noël","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.001.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.001.0","url":null,"abstract":"There are at least two difficulties for a correct understanding of this article.1 The first one, clearly, is the precise meaning of the cryptic word “hieroglossia,”2 a term surely opaque to anybody who comes across it for the first time. It is a word that I partially coined myself,3 and my only hope is that the pedantic temerity of this neologism will not obscure the fact that the underlying reality it tries to evoke is sufficiently interesting for such a coinage to be not only forgiven, but also used as a workable concept. The second difficulty is the choice I made to focus on the writings of Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253). I do realize how impudent it is for someone who has mainly studied the teachings of Tendai 天台 Buddhism, Japanese Buddhist poetry (particularly on the Lotus Sutra), and scholastic Buddhist debates (rongi 論義) to address as towering a figure of Japanese Buddhism as Dōgen-zenji, who cannot be approached without a life of study. He who perpetrates such a deed will embody perfectly a famous line from an old French movie: “You can know a fool by the fact that he would dare anything.” Therefore, before entering upon the main topic, I deem it to be both a courtesy and a duty to explain these two points.","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120810154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From “Pointing Straight to the Human Mind” to “Pointing Round to the Human Mind”","authors":"Katsuhiro, J. Knott","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.051.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.051.0","url":null,"abstract":"Today the Zen school is thought of as having been founded, in China, through the efforts of Bodhidharma. Later generations of Zen practitioners, however, going back far beyond the First Patriarch Bodhidharma, sought the sect’s deeper origins in the Buddha himself. According to a legend found in various texts,1 at the end of his life the Buddha, giving up on teaching by means of words, presented his disciples instead with the sight of a single flower taken to hand. None of them could understand what this signified, but there was one, Mahākāśyapa, who alone understood and smiled subtly. This “subtle smile at the plucked flower” (nenge-mishō 拈華微笑) was taken to be the origin of Zen. Its essence was in “mind-to-mind transmission” (ishin-denshin 以心伝心)—transmission beyond the bounds of words—and in “non-elevation of writing” (furyū-monji 不立文字)— the refusal to invest any text with ultimate authority. The foundational teachings of Bodhidharma in turn were encapsulated in the Buddhist slogan “pointing straight to the human mind, one sees its nature and becomes a Buddha” (jikishi ninshin, kenshō jōbutsu 直指人心, 見性成仏), meaning essentially that, through a direct demonstration of the human mind’s identity with the Buddha’s Mind, one comes to see one’s own buddha-nature, realizing thereby that one is, already, a buddha oneself. Stories resembling the above can be found in several different sutras. For instance, in the Ru bu’er famen ben 入不二法門品 (“Grasping the Teaching of Non-Duality”) chapter of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sutra (Ch. Weimo-jing 維摩経, Jp.","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128997563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The kōan in Japanese Society at the Beginning of the Early Modern Period","authors":"Didier","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.067.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.067.0","url":null,"abstract":"The teaching of the Japanese Rinzai school is, in its principles, relatively simple: the practitioner focuses on a kōan 公案, grasps its real meaning—that is, the one beyond the trivial meaning of the words—and then receives another kōan on which he focuses in turn, this process being repeated until there is attainment of complete awakening. The fundamental difference between the Japanese Rinzai school and the other Chan or Sŏn branches, in China and Korea, is that in Japan a series of kōan is seen as necessary to reach awakening, while in China and Korea going through one gong’an is considered the equivalent of awakening itself. Leaving aside this difference—despite its importance—such use of kōan by the Japanese Rinzai school is based on a practice originating in the Song dynasty, that of kanhua-chan 看話禅 (Jp. kanna-zen). From its introduction to Japan at the beginning of the 13th century and up to the present era, this kanna-zen—though in fact only one mode of kōan Zen and not (as often imagined) its totality—has been the Rinzai school’s very core, as indeed it is for the vast majority of all Chan or Sŏn practice in the world today.1 During the Edo period, from its very beginning, the teaching of Zen was spread to Japanese society at large, notably through texts written in vernacular Japanese that explained the principles of the Zen school easily and comprehensibly. Yet herein lies what can be seen as a paradox: how is it that such a school, whose stated teachings preach above all the need to go beyond words’ mere meaning, can produce texts like kana hōgo 仮名法語, specifically designed to be easily understood? Certainly one of the most common answers to this question would be that there are different levels to the presentation the school makes of itself: a profounder one, leading to awakening, suitable for monks or lay practitioners, and a more superficial one—the one seen in kana hōgo—that explains only the teaching’s main principles. In a sense, this answer would be correct, but The kōan in Japanese Society at the Beginning of the Early Modern Period: Kana hōgo and kanna-zen","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121797259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Medieval Buddhism and Music","authors":"","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.113.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.113.0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127775594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The March of Dancing Skeletons","authors":"","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.085.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.085.0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114192323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"A Forgotten Aesop: Shiba Kōkan, European Emblems, and Aesopian Fable Reception in Late Edo Japan\"","authors":"SmitS","doi":"10.7221/sjlc03.023.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc03.023.0","url":null,"abstract":"When Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century entered a period of rapid modernization and orientation towards the West, Aesopian fables became a prominent presence in didactic literature of the modern age, with several translations into Japanese from 1873 onwards. When Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were expelled from Japan in 1639, this marked the beginning of the suppression of European books in that country. The only title introduced by the Jesuits to survive in Japan was a collection of Aesop’s fables.2 Its contents were not seen as Christian by the authorities and therefore they were not potentially dangerous. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, a number of Japanese editions of the fables were published. However, after the middle of the century, Aesop appeared to have faded from sight in Japan. In a sense, Aesop’s fables bookend early modern Japan’s image of a “closed country,” and their appearance, disappearance, and subsequent reappearance seem to symbolize the bracketing of its isolation from European literature. Between 1639 and 1854, Japan’s contacts with the Western world, especially Europe, were limited to its contacts with its sole European trade partner, Holland, and to a lesser extent through mediation by Chinese traders. Bleak views of these contacts paint a history of missed opportunities. In such narratives both parties learned little from each other; or, worse, if they tried to learn, they misunderstood. This misunderstanding arose largely from the inability of both parties to frame outside of prevailing worldviews whatever was learned; no one was capable of “thinking outside the box.” For Japan, this translates as the view that the study of Europe was framed within templates for studying Chinese classics, neo-Confucianism (or perhaps better “Zhu Xi learning,” Jp. shushigaku 朱子学), A Forgotten Aesop: Shiba Kōkan, European Emblems, and Aesopian Fable Reception in Late Edo Japan1","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116424407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between the Mountain and the City – Ikkyū Sōjun and the Blurred Border of Awakening","authors":"Didier","doi":"10.7221/sjlc02.045.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc02.045.0","url":null,"abstract":"Ikkyū Sōjun 一休宗純 (1394–1481) is undoubtedly one of the most famous monks in Japan today. In the modern period, he is mainly known as a young boy solving apparently impossible puzzles, often in unexpected and amusing ways. However, this Ikkyū, commonly known as “Ikkyū-san,” is only the final stage of an image that has drastically changed since the Middle Ages. This evolution has often been studied,1 and it is, indeed, a fascinating story leading to interesting questions about, for instance, the diffusion of Buddhism in Japanese society, the construction of idea of Zen, the relation between Zen and Japanese arts, etc. However, even if the numerous later images of Ikkyū are a rich and interesting subject of examination, it is not to say that the monk who actually lived in the Muromachi period does not deserve our attention. On the contrary, it is because the “real” Ikkyū managed to be admired by his contemporaries that rumors about him gradually transformed into legends. The downside of this celebrity is that the multiple images of Ikkyū affects the way we perceive the “historical Ikkyū,” and one must be very careful not to see the “real” Ikkyū through legends constructed after his death. Of course, as one may have already noticed, the notion of the “real” Ikkyū is itself highly problematic and deserves further analysis. However, in this article, we will simply consider the Ikkyū that we can know through the texts and other evidence that are widely thought to have been written by him, or reflect direct testimony about him. This is to say, mainly, his two poems collections, the Kyōun-shū 狂雲集 and the Jikai-shū 自戒集, and the biography written by his disciples soon after his death, the Ikkyū oshō nenpu 一休和尚年譜. Among these, the Kyōun-shū, which almost extensively records the poems Ikkyū wrote in classical Chinese during his life, is by far the most important collection for understanding him. It is not easy to read, and its interpretation is even more sensitive, as showed by the fact that a comprehensive explanation of the collecBetween the Mountain and the City – Ikkyū Sōjun and the Blurred Border of Awakening","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129557512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Liminality Reimagined: Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Space and Tainted Sages","authors":"Reeves","doi":"10.7221/sjlc02.001.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc02.001.0","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of borders or, more broadly, liminality, as it evolved within the world of Japanese culture and literature came to acquire a wide and complicated set of meanings. The challenge of participating, by way of experimental enquiry, in a comprehensive examination of the various stages along this multifaceted evolution is of special interest to scholars in the humanities. My own contribution to this ongoing project rests on a single presupposition, one which necessarily arises from a consideration of the very nature of liminality. It will be admitted that any given border is, in fact, an embodiment, that is, an effort to give a degree of visible reality to something that is otherwise intangible and invisible. That something is a complex of memories, both those memories associated with the initial conception of the border in question, as well as those memories latterly associated with the many disputes that arise throughout the history of that border. A border, then, is a symbol the function of which is to vividly bring to mind a complex of associated memories. Like memories, these borders, once established, are far from stable. Rather, borders are continually in flux, so much so that they are bound to be negated and ultimately nullified. This transformation, this appearance and disappearance of borders—a process we might refer to as the dynamism of liminality—deserves special attention. The essential nature of any border, I shall argue, lies not in any supposed stability, but rather in those aspects that are ever changing and unstable. This is the curious paradox of liminality: a border can only be properly grasped when considered as something whose delineations are not at all clear or fixed; liminality has no fixed borders. It is this paradox that I would like to examine here. Approaching the subject from a primarily anthropological perspective, I shall shift the focus from a simple discussion of borders to a more dynamic consideration of border crossings (ekkyō 越境), that is, movement between and across liminal spaces. Examples of border crossings are to be found most manifestly within the world of literary and performative texts. Medieval myths and folktales are especially rich Liminality Reimagined: Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Space and Tainted Sages","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122670197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sacred Spaces in Medieval and Early Modern Shintō Rituals","authors":"Y. O. Takanori","doi":"10.7221/sjlc02.077.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc02.077.0","url":null,"abstract":"It is customary in Shintō shrines to delineate sacred spaces and other boundaries by means of stylized gates (torii 鳥居) and fences (mizugaki 瑞垣). These liminal markers of sacred space were in use from before the early modern period. I would like here to investigate the various uses and significance of these particular markers in early modern Shintō rituals, especially insofar as they relate to a certain lineage of syncretic Shintō typically referred to as Shinbutsu shūgō shintō 神仏習合神道—hereafter referred to simply as Shinbutsu Shintō—in which Shintoistic deities (shin 神) are understood to be temporary manifestations of Buddhist divinities (butsu 仏). In particular, I will focus on the ordination rite called kanjō 灌頂, which involves the pouring of water onto an acolyte’s head, of a single sub-branch of this lineage known as Miwa Shintō (Miwaryū shintō 三輪流 神道). I hope to show how torii gates and mizugaki fences were used during this ritual as a means of creating a sacred space. Miwa Shintō was developed out of Ōmiwa Shrine 大神神社, located in Sakurai City 桜井市, Nara. According to the origin account of this sect, an account made famous during the middle of the early modern period, Miwa Shintō was founded at the moment when a Buddhist monk by the name of Keien 慶円 (1140-1223), also known as Miwa shōnin 三輪 上人, or the Sage of Miwa, and Miwa myōjin 三輪明神, the god of Mt. Miwa, exchanged vows and esoteric teachings with one another. Fortunately for us, Miwa Shintō has preserved numerous documents relating to ritual conventions, for which reason we know a great deal about the contemporary structure of this sect’s sacred spaces.1 Sacred Spaces in Medieval and Early Modern Shintō Rituals","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127180310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Oracles and Offerings: The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Gods and Humans","authors":"Hirano","doi":"10.7221/sjlc02.083.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc02.083.0","url":null,"abstract":"In the world of premodern Japanese literature, vernacular poetry was depicted as something capable of transcending the established boundaries of social status and nationality, a vehicle for crossing between different worlds. I would like here to briefly examine the role of vernacular poetry as a means of transcending the borders between gods and humans. On the one hand, the gods give messages to humans by means of oracular verses of vernacular poetry; on the other hand, humans seeks to please the gods by means of offerings of vernacular poetry. It is through these two special forms of presentation—oracles from the gods and offerings to the gods—that vernacular poetry succeeded in blurring the borders between the mundane and the divine. Tradition would have it that the first vernacular poem—that is, of the conventional type consisting of thirty-one syllables—was composed by a deity. According to the vernacular preface to Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (Poems ancient and modern, 905), the first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular poetry, this was a poem intoned by the god Susanoo スサノヲノミコト when marrying his new bride Kushiinada クシイナダヒメ in the land of Izumo (in modern-day Shimane, see Figure 1). Thus, avers the preface, began the tradition of thirty-one-syllable vernacular poetry. Since that event, it was not uncommon for gods to recite vernacular poetry, and, more especially, to reveal their intentions to us mortals by means of oracles of the same form. Such verses are known collectively as oracular poems. Let us take a look at the history of those oracular poems preserved in imperially commissioned anthologies of vernacular verse, focusing our attention on ways in which such poems allow the gods and humans to communicate with one another. The first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular verse to contain oracular poetry was Shūi wakashū 拾遺和歌集 (Gleanings of vernacular verse, 1005), this being the third such anthology. In fascicle ten we find two oracular poems, one by the god at Sumiyoshi Shrine 住吉社 (Osaka), the other by the god presiding Oracles and Offerings: The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Gods and Humans","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116154072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}