Post on 17-May-2023
Background
Commissioned in 1787 for Kameisan Daijôji, a
Shingon temple close to the Sea of Japan in
Kasumi, Hyôgo Prefecture, Maruyama Ôkyo’s
kakejiku (hanging scroll) known as Hajô hakkotsu
zazen zu (Skeleton performing zazen above the waves),
is a misnomer (fig. 1). Notwithstanding its remote
location, its early fame rested as much on studio
copies1 as on the later, 19th-century appropriation
of the image as a tool for the Zen practice of
hakkotsu kan 白骨観, or contemplation of white
bones.2 This article attempts to examine Ôkyo’s
imagery, its visual and iconographical sources,
repositioning the ‘icon’ within its original Shingon
ritual context, to elucidate its layers of meaning.
The Daijôji’s kyakuden or Guest Hall, decorated by
Ôkyo (1733–1795) and his pupils in 1787 and 1795,
served as both a guest hall and as a ritual dôjô or
Buddhist training and practice hall in a shrine-
temple complex (miyadera) dedicated to Yakushi
Nyorai, Jûichimen Kannon and the local Mikawa
daigongen. The thirteen rooms of the building are
adorned with fusuma (sliding partitions) depicting
landscapes, Chinese literati themes and auspicious
animals, and with portable screens and kakejiku
designed for ritual use, some of which reproduce
famous Buddhist icons from the capital Kyoto.
Daijôji was allegedly founded by Gyoki, a
priest of the Hossô sect, in March 745, and was
under the control of the Tendai monk Ennin
(794–864), becoming Shingon at an unknown date.
By the 18th century, it was affiliated with the Ono
Shingon Zuishin-in in Kyoto, which appointed its
abbots. The commissioning abbot, Mitsuzô, a
wealthy native of Kasumi, had been an early
patron of Ôkyo in Kyoto; the building and its
paintings were financed by Mitsuzô, and by the
Andon 99 64
Ökyo’s Skeleton
not performing zazen
Reflect ions on the iconography of the Dai jöj i ’ s kyakuden
Beatrice B. Shoemaker
Fig. 1. Maruyama Ökyo, Hajö hakkotsu zazen zu
(Skeleton performing zazen above the waves), 1787.
Kakejiku. Ink and light colours on paper.
© Kameisan Daijö-ji, Kasumi-cho, Hyögo
faithful of seven neighbouring villages, without
assistance from the local Izushi daimyô. They were
completed under Mitsuzô’s successor, Mitsuei.3
Ôkyo’s Skeleton of 1787, painted in sumi and light
colours on paper, appears from its fold creases not
to have been originally designed as a kakejiku, and
would therefore have been only opened out on
special occasions for private contemplation and
meditation.4 The skeleton clearly floats above a
white-capped sea, its westernised frontal
perspective contrasting with a conventional high-
viewpoint over the waves. The painting’s style
combines the running-water line and wash Yuan
modes of Li Gonglin and Ren Renfa with Western
shading, generating a dislocated dual perspective.
The skeleton itself is seated in the lotus posture, its
hands united in the meditation mudra of Dainichi
Nyorai, leading to the misleading description of
“performing zazen”.5 According to the present
Head Priest, Shinnô Yamasoba, the skeleton
embodies the essence of the enlightened being
who has literally shed all fleshly desires through
long meditative practices, rising above a
fathomless sea, whose turbulent surface belies the
eternal calmness beneath.6 Visually, the image
opposes, and unites by that contrast, the
changeable skein of the water’s surface with the
purified armature of what was once perishable
flesh. In essence, the skeleton illustrates the
Shingon principle of becoming a Buddha in this
body, and this life, borne aloft by the ‘ocean
assembly’ of Buddhas, Boddhisattvas and superior
beings contained in the mandala world.7
Origin of the image
Why a skeleton? This choice, made by Ôkyo in
concert with Mitsuzô, can only be understood in
reference to what this image is not as well as to
what it is.8
Ôkyo’s Skeleton may have been the first
anatomically accurate skeleton depicted in a lotus
position, but skeletons had a long and bifurcated
history in Japanese iconology.
Ôkyo’s innovative depiction rested on shasei
(写生, drawing from nature), the realism he
adopted from rangaku, Western studies, an interest
which he shared with both his early mentor Abbot
Yûjô of Enman-in and his imperial pupil and
patron Shinnô Shinnin of the Myôhô-in.9 The first
officially authorised dissection of a human body in
Japan was performed in Kyoto in 1754 by the
physician Yamawaki Tôyô, and published as the
Zôshi (Anatomical record) in 1759. Until then,
knowledge of human anatomy had rested
exclusively on Chinese medical treatises. Another
autopsy was witnessed by the physician Sugita
Genpaku in Edo in 1771.10 Ôkyo certainly had
access to the anatomical treatises of Vesalius and
Johannes Kulm, and to Sugita Genpaku’s 1774
translation of the latter’s Tafel Anatomica, known as
the Kaitai shinsho (New writings on dissection).11
Crucially, a further autopsy was conducted by
members of Ôkyo’s circle, the rangaku scholars
Koishi Genshun and Tachibana Nankei at the
latter’s medical practice in Fushimi in 1783.12
Prior to and outside of these new medical
experiments, skeletons had been a common
currency of experience in harsh times, and a long-
time subject of Zen mirth and admonition. In the
much-reprinted Gaikotsu (Skeletons, 1457), written
by the eccentric Zen priest Ikkyû Sôjun (1394–1481),
the skeletons are shown joyfully enjoying every-
day human occupations and activities beyond the
grave (fig. 2).13
More usually, bone imagery related to the Zen
practice of kusôkan, the contemplation and
meditation on the nine stages of decomposition of
a corpse.14 On occasion, meditation could be
centred on a single aspect of the process of decay,
such as Itô Jakuchû’s Skull, painted in the
hatsuboku (splashed ink) manner of Sesshû
(1420–1506), for the Zen Muryôji temple (fig. 3).
This style, derived from the Chan “apparition
Andon 99 65
Fig. 2. Ikkyü Sojun, Ikkyü
gaikotsu, Osaka 1692
edition. Ehon.
© Waseda University Library,
Tokyo
paintings” of the Song dynasty, offers little to
distract from meditative contemplation of transience.
The ancient practice of kusôkan in, primarily,
Zen and Tendai was aimed at overcoming sensual
desire through disgust, and achieving
enlightenment through meditation on impurity
and transience.15 Its poetic elaboration (kusôkanshi)
dates back to the 6th-century Tiantai (Jap. Tendai)
master Zhiyi, with later versions attributed to the
great Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo (1036–1101),
and in Japan, to Kûkai (also known as Kôbô
Daishi, 774–835), the founder of the Shingon sect.
Illustrated versions portrayed the gradual stages
of female putrefaction with some, generally
gruesome variations; however the recumbent, but
entire skeleton was never the final stage of the
process, which would end either with the
disjointment of these bones or their final
dissolution into nothingness,16 elaborating the Zen
concept of death as non-being, a transition into the
void and future rebirth.17
Death and Buddhahood
Although Ôkyo’s skeleton is neither recumbent
nor gendered, its potential allusion to illustrations
of the Nine Stages of Decay cannot be ignored.
Whilst the original texts generally referred to an
anonymous corpse, by the 18th century, the
conflation of the Nine Stages of Decay with the
Tamatsukuri Komachishi sôsuisho (玉造小町子壮衰書,
Flourish and decay of Komachi from Tamatsukuri) had
become engrained.18 The earliest reference to a
painting of the decay of Komachi dates back to
1212, in a Tendai context. It has been considered
the prototype for ‘Nine Stages’ illustrations which
survive in medieval emaki (hand-scrolls), and in
Edo-period ehon (illustrated books) and paintings
(fig. 4).19
The 9th-century poet Ono no Komachi is listed as
the only woman member of the rokkasen (Six
immortal poets) in the Kokinwakashû (Collection of
ancient and modern poems), the first imperial
compendium of waka poetry compiled between
905 and c. 920, and as one of the sanjûrokkasen (36
immortal poets) in Fujiwara no Kintô’s anthology
of the early 11th century (fig. 5).20 Over one
hundred of her waka poems about love survive. In
addition, we have a number of late-medieval
Andon 99 66
Fig. 3. Itö Jakuchü
(1716–1800), Skull.
Kakejiku, sumi on paper.
© Muryoji, Kushimoto
legends and plays about her early life as a
celebrated beauty and court poet, and her old age
as a repentant mendicant. Komachi was reputedly
born in the Ono clan lands on which the Zuishin-
in is situated. She was also allegedly buried there
following her years of destitute secluded existence
in a brushwood hut in Ono. Her legacy within the
temple consists of a ‘letter mound’ of buried love
letters from suitors, as well as a statue of Jizô said
to be made by the poet, and composed of an
under-layer of love letters.21
The transgression for which Komachi repented
was not concupiscence, but arrogant cold-
heartedness. The karmic burden she acquired
originated from the broken hearts and suicides of
the suitors she invariably rejected, and from the
jealousy and resentment felt by the neglected
wives and children of those suitors, seeking
retribution from the gods. Her downfall was
precipitated by the death of Captain Fukakusa no
Shôshô, who had been made to brave the elements
and wait by Komachi’s door for a hundred
consecutive nights, expiring, unfulfilled, on his
way to the final night.22
As possession by angry spirits (onryô) could
lead to madness and impede the way to
enlightenment, the path to salvation was through
sange, an act of recitation and repentance before
the Buddha and before others, in order to obtain
keka, expiation leading to salvation.23 The earliest
extant text associating the poet with destitution
caused by arrogance was the Tamatsukuri
Komachishi sôsuisho mentioned above – a much
copied moral tale of worldly success, fall and
repentance, highlighting the transience of worldly
desires, which until recently was attributed to
Kûkai. In other legends Komachi’s search for
salvation continued beyond her physical death,
her sun-bleached skull speaking her sange to
passers-by on the roadside.24
In Kan’ami’s 14th-century Nô play Sotoba
Komachi (Komachi of the stupa), which draws on the
preface of Tamatsukuri, Komachi is described as
possessing hongaku or ‘innate’ Buddhahood.25
Seated on a ruined stupa which she had mistaken
for a tree-stump, the decrepit Komachi is possessed
by the spirit of the vengeful Fukakusa reliving his
hundred days. She then enters into a theological
disputation with a Shingon monk, displaying both
erudition and true repentance. The stupa or sotoba,
unrecognisably worn down yet still holy, by way
of a word play on sotoba (which also means
‘without’, ‘outside’) is equated with Komachi the
liminal figure, worn out and excluded by the
transient world, but not from salvation.26
Andon 99 67
Fig. 4. Kusözu, eighth stage.
18th century. Album leaf,
watercolour on paper.
© Wellcome Library, London
Fig. 5. Kanö Tan’yü (1602–1674), Sanjürokkasen: Ono
no Komachi, 1648. Colours on card. Konpirasan,
Shikoku.
The Tendai concept of hongaku, which posits
that every being possesses inherent, if latent
enlightenment, had its counterpart in the Shingon
notion of sokushin jôbutsu, or becoming a Buddha
in this life and this body,27 that could be attained
through initiation in esoteric knowledge (mikkyô),
and through practices including dharani
recitations, mudras (hand gestures), the repetition
of mantras, and visualisations, in order to grasp
the sanmitsu (the Three Mysteries of body, speech
and mind). Burning of shirokogi, understood as
‘white bones’, a central feature of the goma fire
ritual, involved the gathering and burning of kogi,
small firewood, and belonged to the ritualised
cycle of ten practices leading to ‘enlightenment in
this body’.28 In folk belief, Kûkai himself was
thought not to have died, but to have become a
Buddha ‘in his own body’, remaining non-
decomposed and seated in the lotus position in a
stone cave on Mount Koya, awaiting the advent of
Miroku, the Maitreya Buddha of the future.29
Keka rites and patronage
Ôkyo’s Skeleton relates to Ono no Komachi
visually and iconographically. A monk depicted as
a seated skeleton in a compendium of popular
texts on the impure (the Kusôshi genkai, volume 2,
of 1693) may have served Ôkyo as his model.30
Moreover, Mitsuzô’s Zuishin-in was the head
temple of the Ono Shingon sect, which was
founded in 991 by the monk Ningai, known as
Ame no Sôjô (the rain priest). Originally called the
Mandara-ji, Zuishin-in enshrined a dual mandala
inscribed by Ningai on the hide of a cow.31 It
became the Kujô clan’s family temple and a
monzeki (imperial temple) in 1599, eventually
overseeing both the Daijôji and Kûkai’s birthplace,
the Zentsu-ji in Shikoku.
Ôkyo’s familiarity with, and canonical
interpretation of this eschatological genre can be
seen in his early emaki Ten notions of death, known
from his sketchbook Shasei zatsuroku-jô (Album of
various sketches), and in the pair of scrolls Seven
blessings and seven tribulations, painted in 1768 for
Abbot Yûjô of the Tendai Enman-in.32
Whilst these early works follow the visual
canon of gradual degradation established in
kusôkan illustrations, the Skeleton’s naturalism in a
dematerialised context elaborates an utterly
divergent conception and intentionality. As a
secret (himitsu) icon, to be unfolded and viewed on
special occasions, the Skeleton must have served a
specific ritual function, as a meditational aid
preliminary to the rites of keka (repentance) and
kanjô (anointment or consecration), and to the
curative incantations of kaji (mutual empowerment).
The Skeleton’s allusion to Ono no Komachi
leads to the notion of repentance, and must be set
within the context of the Kujô’s Zuishin-in. The
rite of keka was a repentance ritual elaborated in
the 8th century, and designed to eliminate karmic
obstructions, placate vengeful spirits in times of
calamity, and yield practical benefits such as
health and bountiful crops. Moreover, keka prayers
for the health of the emperor assured the longevity
of the nation with which his fate was bound.33 Keka
was closely associated with the cult of Yakushi, the
healing Buddha, and it may be assumed keka
would have been practiced at the Daijôji since its
Tendai days.34
The Kujô family of courtiers served as hereditary
imperial regents from the Heian to the end of the
Edo period.35 Since the 10th century, it had
sponsored various rites for the protection of the
realm.36 Carefully preserved Kujô family
documents and ancestral diaries, such as the 10th-
century Kujôdono yûkai (Admonitions to Fujiwara no
Monosuke’s descendants), show them to have been
profoundly sinicised and well-versed adherents of
Onmyôdô, the Way of Yin and Yang, and of Daoist
divination.37 Although the kuge shohatto edict of
1613 had left the imperial court with greatly
diminished power and in straightened
circumstances, by the late 18th century, the Bakufu
had allowed, and even financed, a return to
splendour and to a revival of ancient rituals.38 Kujô
Naozane served as regent to emperor Go-
Momozono for a year from 1778, before serving
the youthful emperor Kokaku until 1787; a high-
ranking member of the Kujô family would have
served as abbot of the Zuishin-in.39 The
preponderance of Chinese literati and Daoist
elements within the Guest Hall’s decorative
scheme, demonstrate the preservation and revival,
in court circles, of Heian politico-religious
observances, well into the Edo era.
The Daijôji’s early Tendai history and later
adherence to Shingon, and the Skeleton’s semantic
Andon 99 68
associations with the Kujô and with Ono no
Komachi’s repentance, define Ôkyo’s image as a
preliminary meditation aid for the keka ritual for
the benefit of the individual, the community and
the nation embodied in the emperor. Its visual
elements lead to an alternative, complementary
reading, as preparation for the Shingon kanjô
consecration rite.
The Skeleton in situ: ritual function
and context
Ôkyo effectively uses new anatomical knowledge
to represent what is left once all that is transient
has been stripped away. The visually innovative
skeleton’s frontal perspective contrasts with the
conventional patterned rendering of waves: the
fixed and solid armature of the fleshless human
body is set against the turbulent oceanic surface
that masks the calmness and permanence beneath.
In folk belief mountains and sea were the
‘otherworld’ of ancestor spirits, gods and
demons.40 The ‘ocean assembly’ was the Buddhist
realm of non-differentiation, the pure and
‘boundless ocean of reality and truth’ lying
beyond the destructive transience of human
desires.41 In Kan’ami’s play Sotoba Komachi, Ono no
Komachi describes herself as a “strand of
waterweed”, and in one of her own poems as a
“buoyant waterweed”.42 The Skeleton floats, but,
unlike the buoyant waterweed, it is not carried by
the surface currents. Its bony armature is what
remains when all delusions and impermanence
have been stripped away.
The allusion to the Nô play may not be
fortuitous; Zuishin-in was, and remains a
Andon 99 69
Figs 6a & b. Maruyama
Ökyo, Carp ascending a
waterfall and Carp in a
pond, 1789. Diptych.
Kakejiku, sumi and light
colours on silk.
© Kameisan Daijö-ji, Kasumi-cho,
Hyögo
renowned center for Nô and gagaku performances.43
Whether Sotoba Komachi was performed there, or
even whether it was written for Zuishin-in, is
unknown; however, the theatricality of the
Skeleton, and especially the theatrical environment
created within the Guest Hall by its fusuma
paintings, cannot be ignored.
The Daijôji was one of a limited number of
branch temples empowered to ordain priests.44
Consequently the Guest Hall had a dual purpose,
as a set of secular reception rooms, and as a dôjô or
training space. The fusuma paintings constituted a
mandala, guiding the ordained through a
prescribed ritual process; all the associated scrolls
and screens have to be considered as aids to both
initiation and meditation. The force of prayer was
enhanced by imagery: in Kûkai’s own words,
“illustrations and images are none other than the
source of the ocean-like assembly”, the
visualisation of transcendent reality and non-
duality.45
The Shingon ideal of achieving satori
(enlightenment) or Buddhahood through praxis
had another iteration in a pair of kakejiku in sumi
and light colours on silk, also by Ôkyo, Carp
ascending a waterfall and Carp in a pond, painted in
the autumn of 1787 (figs 6a & b). The Chinese
theme of fish crossing the Dragon Gate46 is
transposed, as the carp does not become a dragon,
instead is shown swimming contentedly amongst
Amida’s lotus flowers. Given Ôkyo’s usual
realism, the ascending carp appears unnaturally
stiff, as if standing under the waterfall – perhaps
reflecting the waterfall austerities (taki no gyô) that
served as a purifying exercise preliminary to the
ritual practice of kaji.47
Kaji (mutual empowerment) was achieved by
‘penetrating the mandala’, which was perceived as
the “visual instantiation of Esoteric practice and
the very form of Buddhahood”.48 In esoteric
thought, the Ryôkai mandara or Mandala of the
Two Worlds, composed by the union of the
Taizokai or Womb World and the Kongokai or
Diamond World, represents “the universal form”
of all things and beings. Its systematic assembly of
deities was experienced as the visible, phenomenal
manifestation of the universe, and the representation
of the relationship between the self and the Buddha.
Visualising and circumambulating the mandara,
the disciple “forms a karmic bond with the deity
in a relationship of mutual empowerment, leading
to the realisation of his innate Buddha-mind”.49
At Daijôji, the mandara was not a scroll or a set
of statuary; instead the Guest Hall itself served as
a three-dimensional mandala. Nine halls surround
two central spaces, the Buddha Hall dedicated to
Jûichimen Kannon, and the Mountain Room
enshrining the local deity Mikawa daigongen. This
ensemble of eleven rooms forms the ritual space of
the Womb World Mandala.50 The Womb World
expresses itself as an eight-petalled lotus flower,
extending itself to the four corners and four sides
of the building, radiating outward from the central
image of Kannon, who was the emanation of the
great compassion of Dainichi Nyorai, the Great
Sun Buddha.51 Each of the eleven rooms embodies
one of the eleven faces of Kannon represented on
the fusuma paintings: for example, Lotus blossoms
by Ôkyo’s son Ôzui surround the statue of
Jûichimen Kannon in the central Buddha Hall, and
Puppies, plums and bamboo (fig. 7) by Ôkyo’s pupil
Yamamoto Shurei, facing the room from across its
paper partition, reflect the Laughing Face of
Kannon. The character for laughter 笑 contains
those for dog 犬 and bamboo 竹, and laughter is
enlightenment.52
The Guest Hall as a Womb Mandala denotes ri
理 or ultimate principle, meaning heart of
enlightenment, great compassion and skilful
Andon 99 70
Fig. 7. Yamamoto Shurei (1751-1790), Puppies, plums
and bamboo, 1795 (detail). Fusuma panel, sumi and
light colours on paper.
© Kameisan Daijö-ji, Kasumi-cho, Hyögo
means. It requires a complementary Diamond
World Mandala, representing the chi 智 or
knowledge, mind and effect, to become the Ryôkai
mandara, or complete manifestation of the
Buddha’s universe.53 The duad of Jûichimen
Kannon and Yakushi Nyorai of the Womb World
enshrined in Kameisan, Daijôji’s sacred mountain,
has its Diamond World counterpart in the shrine-
temple complex serving Mikawa daigongen,
Hachiman and Miroku at Mikawayama Mirokuji,
20 km south of Daijôji. This was Daijôji’s
pilgrimage destination, and is still known today as
a Shugendô (mountain asceticism) site and host of
an important flower festival.54
There is no record of Daijôji as an officially
sanctioned Shugendô centre in the Edo period.
However, the central location of the Mountain
Room in the Guest Hall posits the importance of
the localised cult of Mikawa daigongen, the
mountain deity served by both temples. Yakushi,
paired with Kannon, enshrined at Daijôji, assured
‘this-worldly’ benefits, preventing calamities,
protecting the health of the emperor and thus the
longevity and wellbeing of the country. Hachiman,
seen as the deified emperor Ôjin and usually
paired with Miroku, enshrined at Mikawayama,
sanctioned the divine legitimacy of the emperor,
appointments to political office, and was
particularly associated with the Fujiwara, and
therefore Kujô clan.55
It may be presumed the twinning of Kameisan
Daijôji and Mikawayama Mirokuji as a Mandala of
the Two Worlds and ritual centre pre-dated any
association with the Zuishin-in; however, this
configuration would certainly have had a certain
appeal to the Kujô family in the Edo era. Granted
the Zuishin-in as their family temple by Hideyoshi,
the Kujô may have wanted to keep a low political
profile under the Tokugawa.56 As hereditary
regents and masters of ceremonial within an
increasingly marginalised imperial court, they
may have found religious affiliations an effective
means of exercising a modicum of influence
beyond the imperial palace walls. In a time of
famine and disasters, fearful people travelled to
pray to the emperor outside his palace in Kyoto.57
Shingon rituals for the emperor, who embodied
the realm and whose fate was synonymous with
the nation’s, could offer the faithful a promise of
temporal relief.
Conclusion
The Guest Hall served as a training and ritual
centre for Shingon priests, and the rites it
conducted on behalf of its parishioners and for the
benefit of the nation, transformed the sanctuary
into a Pure Land, the locus of the divine.58 Its
images represent both the ‘sounds of the world’
and the objects of the infinite compassion flowing
from the central figure of Kannon. Within this
conception, as a meditational aid, the Skeleton may
be seen as embodying the aim of the practitioner’s
union with the Dharma Body and the perfected
body of self-enlightenment.59 As a ‘secret’
initiatory image, unfolded for special rites, its
power as icon is thereby magnified. It is not a
salvific image of human decay, nor is the skeleton
performing zazen. It is a body cleansed of all that
is transient, perishable and corrupt, reflecting the
purity of white bones; it is a being who has
realised his Buddha nature; it is the innate
Buddhahood of Ono no Komachi, selected for its
association with Daijôji’s head temple Zuishin-in.
The visually new dimension of scientific
modernity Ôkyo brought to this medieval icon,
paradoxically adds a numinous layer to the
embodiment of the Shingon concept of ‘becoming
a Buddha in this body’ through praxis, and to the
empowerment of prayer for the benefit of both self
and nation.
Acknowledgements
This paper would not have been possible without the
wealth of information contained in the temple’s website:
http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/index.html, and the
extraordinary kindness, patience and advice extended to
me by Shinnô Yamasoba of the Daijôji, Professor
Gaynor Sekimori and Professor Timon Screech. I am
grateful to the Daijôji and the Murôji for their kind
permission to use their images, and big thanks are due
to my enthusiastic editor and my ever-tolerant family.
Andon 99 71
Notes
1. Sasaki, Jôhei & Sasaki Masako, Koga sôran: photographic archive of
Japanese paintings: Maruyama-Shijô school, vol. 1, Kokusho Kankôkai,
Tokyo 2000.
2. Sawada, Janine Anderson, ‘Political waves in the Zen sea; the
Engaku-ji circle in early Meiji Japan’, in: Japanese Journal of Religious
Studies, vol. 25, nos 1-2, 1998, p. 132. For images of variants on the
Skeleton: Sasaki & Sasaki, op. cit. 2000.
3. http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/06story/06_05.html
4. http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/04sakka/04_02/04_02_05.html
5. Anderson, Susanne Andrea, ‘Legends of holy men of early Japan’, in:
Monumenta Serica, vol. 28, 1969, p. 308.
6. Information provided via email by Shinnô Yamasoba, 6-12-2013.
7. Orzech, Charles, et al., Esoteric Buddhism and the tantras in East Asia,
Brill, Leiden 2011, p. 964.
8. Sasaki, Jôhei & Sasaki Masako, Daijôji – the art of Maruyama Ôkyo
and his school, Kokushokankôkai, Tokyo 2003, p. 179. Also:
http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/06story/06_05.html.
9. Sasaki, Jôhei, Ôkyo and the Maruyama-Shijô school of Japanese painting,
The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis 1980, pp. 34, 47.
10. Musée Guimet (ed.), Konpira-sa, sanctuaire de la mer. Trésors de la
peinture japonaise, Kotohira-Gu, Kagawa-ken 2008, p. 17. Deal, William
E., Handbook to life in medieval and early Japan, Facts on File Library, New
York 2006, p. 235.
11. Screech, Timon, The shogun’s painted culture: fear and creativity in the
Japanese states, 1760–1829, Reaktion Books, London 2000, p. 58. Vaporis,
Constantine N., Breaking barriers; travel and the state in early modern Japan,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. 1994, p. 53.
12. Beerens, Anna, Friends, acquaintances, pupils and patrons. Japanese
intellectual life in the late eighteenth century: a prosopographical approach,
Leiden University Press, Leiden 2006, pp. 95, 145. Genshun had
pursued Chinese studies with the Confucian scholar Minagawa Kien,
who belonged to Ôkyo’s circle, and Ôkyo provided the illustrations for
Nankei’s Tôyûki (Journey to the East) in 1795.
13. Steiner, Evgeny, Zen-life: Ikkyû and beyond, Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2014, p. 195.
14. Kanda, Fusae, ‘Behind the sensationalism. Images of a decaying
corpse in Japanese Buddhist art’, in: The Art Bulletin, vol. 87, no. 1, 2005,
p. 24.
15. Kanda, op. cit., p. 28.
16. Kanda, op. cit., pp. 24-27.
17. Milčinski, Maja, ‘Zen and the art of death’, in: Journal of the History of
Ideas, Vol. 60, no. 3, 1999), pp. 388-392.
18. Kanda, op. cit., p. 34.
19. Lachaud, François, La jeune fille et la mort, misogynie ascétique et
représentations macabres du corps humain dans le bouddhisme japonais,
Collège de France, Bibliothèque de l’Institut des Hautes Etudes
Japonaises, Paris 2006, p. 331.
20. http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/n/nanakomachi.htm; Chin,
Gail, ‘The gender of Buddhist truth. The female corpse in a group of
Japanese paintings’, in: Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 25, no.
3–4, 1998, p. 297.
21. Strong, Sarah M., ‘Performing the courtesan. In search of ghosts at
Zuishin-in letter mound’, in: Women & Performance, 12:1, 2008, pp. 79-95.
22. Strong, op. cit., 2008, p. 86.
23. Strong, op. cit., 2008, p. 83. Broma-Smenda, Karolina, ‘How to create
a legend? An analysis of constructed representations of Ono no
Komachi in Japanese medieval literature’, in: The IAFOR Journal of
Literature and Librarianship, 3:1, 2014, pp. 1-14, p. 12. Terasaki, Etsuko,
‘Images and symbols in Sotoba Komachi. A critical analysis of a Nô play’,
in: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 44:1, 1984, pp. 155–184.
24. Strong, Sarah, ‘The making of a femme fatale. Ono no Komachi in
the early mediaeval commentaries’, in: Monumenta Nipponica, 49:4, 1994,
pp. 391-412, p. 400.
25. Chin, op. cit., pp. 296, 304; Kanda, op. cit., pp. 28-29; Terasaki, op. cit.,
p. 160. Broma-Smenda, op. cit., p. 10.
26. Broma-Smenda, op. cit., p.14.
27. Rambelli, Fabio, ‘True words, silence, and the adamantine dance. On
Japanese mikkyô and the formation of the Shingon discourse’, in:
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 21:4, 1994, p. 382.
28. Fabio Rambelli, lecture on the Goma fire ritual at SOAS on 7-3-2013.
Andon 99 72
29. Hori, Ichirô, ‘Self-mummified Buddhas in Japan. An aspect of the
Shugen-dô (“Mountain Asceticism”) sect’, in: History of Religions, vol. 1,
1962, p. 227.
30. Lachaud, op. cit., p. 333.
31. http://www.zuishinin.or.jp/about/index.html. Yamasaki, Taikô,
Shingon: Japanese esoteric Buddhism, Shambhala, Boston 1988, p. 55.
32. Lachaud, op. cit., p. 335. Screech, op. cit., p. 198.
33. Suzuki, Yui, Medicine Master Buddha, the iconic worship of Yakushi in
Heian Japan, Brill, Leiden 2011, pp. 23-24.
34. Suzuki, op. cit., pp. 22, 34; Bogel, Cynthea J., With a single glance.
Buddhist icons and early Mikkyô vision, University of Washington Press,
Seattle 2010, p. 263; Orzech, op. cit., p. 668.
35. Webb, Herschel, The Japanese imperial institution in the Tokugawa
period, Columbia University Press, New York 1968, pp. 113-114. During
their heyday in the Heian era, as the holders of Buddha relics identified
with the ‘wish-fulfilling jewel’ of Nyorin Kannon, the Kujō held Tendai
relic assembly rites for the imperial family in their own residence. The
Kujō had been instrumental in re-establishing the Shingon honzon
Daigo-ji , for which they were awarded the Zuishin-in by Hideyoshi in
1599, see Ruppert, Brian D., Jewel in the ashes. Buddha relics and power in
early medieval Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000,
pp. 217-219, 275, 355.
36. Ruppert, op. cit., pp. 275, 355.
37. Hino, Takuya, Creating heresy: (mis)representation, fabrication and the
Tachikawa-ryû, Columbia University, New York, PhD thesis 2012, p. 118.
38. Hall, John Whitney (ed.), The Cambridge history of Japan, vol. 4,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, p. 148; Screech, op. cit.,
pp 148-156.
39. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessh%E2%89%88%C3%A7_and
_Kampaku
40. Miyake, Hitoshi, Shugendô. Essays on the structure of Japanese folk
religion, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2001, p. 116.
41. Quotation from Ze’ami’s 1464 Nô play Seiganji, see Marra, Michele,
‘The Buddhist mythmaking of defilement: the sacred courtesan in
medieval Japan’, in: The Journal of Asian Studies, 52:1, 1993, pp. 49-65, p. 57.
42. Terasaki, op cit., p. 164.
43. http://www.zuishinin.or.jp/bunkazai/index.html; Strong, op. cit.,
2008, pp. 79-95.
44. Verbal communications with Shinnô Yamasoba of the Daijôji
(November 2012) and with Gomyô Seperic, priest at Yugasan Rendaiji,
formerly Yugai-ji, another ordaining temple (October 2014). The best
known ordaining temples were the Tendai Hiei, and the Shingon
Daigo-ji and Koyasan.
45. Terasaki, op. cit., p. 107. Bogel, op. cit., p.36.
46. Joly, Henry L., Legend in Japanese art, London 1908 (Amazon reprint),
p. 28.
47. Boyd, James W., The discipline of Pure Fire (Saika Gyô Ho) in Shintô-
Buddhism, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, N.Y. 2011, p. 13.
48. Bogel, op. cit., p. 6.
49. Yamasaki, op. cit., pp. 127-128.
50. http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/05temple/05_03.html.
51. Ten Grotenhuis, Elizabeth, Japanese mandalas. Representations of sacred
geography, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1999, p. 59.
52. http://museum.daijyoji.or.jp/05temple/05_08.html (no.4)
53. Ten Grotenhuis, op. cit., p. 66.
54. http://www.hyogo-tourism.jp/english/fan_club/bn/2007_03.html.
55. Ruppert, op. cit., p. 52. Suzuki, op. cit., pp. 24, 92.
56. Kameda-Madar, Kazuko, Pictures of social networks. Transforming
visual representations of the Orchid Pavilion gathering in the Tokugawa Period
(1615–1868), PhD thesis, University of Hawaii, 2011, p. 113.
57. Burns, Susan L., Before the nation. Kokugaku and the imagining of
community in early modern Japan, Duke University Press, Durham 2003,
p. 26.
58. Bogel, op. cit., p. 221.
59. Yamasaki, op. cit., p. 42.
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