Shaka no honji: Preaching, Intertextuality, and Popular Hagiography

Shaka no Honji Preaching, Intertextuality, and Popular Hagiography

Glassman, Hank.

Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 62, Number 3, Autumn 2007,pp. 299-321 (Article)

Published by Sophia UniversityDOI: 10.1353/mni.2007.0055

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Haverford College at 08/10/10 8:17PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mni/summary/v062/62.3glassman.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mni/summary/v062/62.3glassman.html

Shaka no Honji

Preaching, Intertextuality, and Popular Hagiography

HANK GLASSMAN

THE TRADITION of telling the life story of the Buddha, Sâkyamuni, is as oldas Buddhism itself. Such accounts served as a prototype for religiousbiographies as a category, but at the same time, the original tale also was

transformed as it was retold in different contexts. Shaka no honji , thework of hagiography I will describe here, exemplifies this process. First appear-ing in the early Muromachi and much transcribed throughout the late medievalperiod, the tale spread widely during the early Edo period when printed editionsproliferated. Many manuscript and printed copies survive.1 It was owned by agreat number of temples and households and indeed was likely the most popu-lar hagiography of the Buddha during those centuries. That is to say, for manypeople of the time, the story told in Shaka no honji was the story of SâkyamuniBuddha, known to them as Shaka nyorai or Shakuson . There canbe little doubt that the text was widely read and that it was adopted for the per-formance of “picture-explaining,” or etoki .2

THE AUTHOR is assistant professor of East Asian Studies at Haverford College. He wishes to thankthe two anonymous readers for their useful criticism of an earlier draft. What appears here hasbenefited greatly from their advice.

1 For published variants, see Muromachi jidai monogatari taisei 195 and 196; vol. 7, pp. 90–117and 118–62. Volume 4 of Muromachi jidai monogatari shû contains versions with the alternativetitles Shaka monogatari and Shaka shusse honkai denki . For a briefoverview of the textual history of Sâkyamuni’s hagiography in Japan, see Honda 1995. While Iwill write in general terms about this tale as a single work, it should be noted that there are somevariations between texts, and a few different textual lineages are represented among the printededitions and manuscripts. Translations are from the early Edo hand-copied manuscript transcribedin Muromachi jidai monogatari taisei 195. In this version the book’s cover says Shaka no honjiin kana, and the alternative title Shaka shusse honkai denki is written, also in kana, on the firstpage before the text. This version is close to the work titled Shaka shusse honkai denki inMuromachi jidai monogatari shû.

2 While illustrated editions of Shaka no honji and related texts are comparatively rare, thereare some wonderfully charming examples, such as Shakuson shusse ryaku denki ,an early sixteenth-century hand-painted emaki based on a close textual variant, of which twoscrolls of an original three are preserved in the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library

Shaka no honji is a fascinating combination of traditional hagiographical ele-ments with innovative departures. While many events are copied faithfully fromearlier renditions, other scenes, including some of the most central ones, are quitenovel. As the tale evolved in the Japanese context, it was shaped by themes fig-uring in stories about noted Japanese monks that in turn engaged concerns EastAsian Buddhism developed many centuries after the death of the founder. Primeamong these was the salvation of parents. Popular hagiographies of saints oftenemphasized the role played by their mothers in their lives and depicted the sal-vation of one’s parents as a key reason for entering the path of religion. Reflectingthese influences, a distinctive feature of Shaka no honji is that the primary moti-vation for the religious quest of the young prince Siddhârtha (Jp. Shitta taishi

), who would become the Buddha, is the salvation of his mother. In thepages that follow, I will trace some of the factors that led to the great renunciantbeing recast as a filial son in this Japanese version of his life story.

Shaka no honji also came to be deeply colored by the conventions of classi-cal Japanese literature. A prose narrative, written almost exclusively in the hira-gana syllabary, the text can be placed within the modern scholarly rubric of theMuromachi tale, Muromachi jidai monogatari , or otogizôshi

, a broad category consisting of a great number of disparate and overlappingsubtypes.3 Otogizôshi are known for their hybridity, their propensity for jump-ing generic categories, recycling old plots, and borrowing narrative details. Thethemes and narrative tropes of many such works took shape out of the practiceof oral explication in Japanese of collections of legends written in Sino-Japanesekanbun. As such they were part of an economy of texts and preaching that, pick-ing up and reworking religious themes, played a central role in shaping the beliefsand aspirations of people in medieval and early modern Japan. Created from thevoices of marketplace preachers and sprinkled with strains of Buddhist liturgyand snippets of philosophical discourse, such stories came to be written down inJapanese and then circulated among religious communities to be performed inthe streets, in the marketplace, in temples, and in private homes.4 In this processof circulation, texts floated free of their anonymous authors, mutually shapingand influencing each other. The preachers who were the curators of these textsoften borrowed details from one story to embellish another.5 Intersecting with

Monumenta Nipponica 62:3300

(MS 60). Another example is the richly illustrated version of Shaka no honji held by the rare bookscollection of Shirayuri Women’s University. Paintings from this version can be viewed at:http://sclib1.shirayuri.ac.jp/rare_books/shaka/html (viewed 14 May 2007). The written text wasalso influential for the preachers (they, too, were called etoki) who explicated paintings of the lifeof the Buddha, such as Shaka hassô denki . See Watanabe 1996; Kurobe 1994;Donohashi 1988. For the relationship between oral performance and written text in the develop-ment of Shaka no honji through preaching, see Komine 1985 and 1991.

3 MN has a long history of publishing in the field of otogizôshi studies; see, for example,Mulhern 1974; Araki 1981; Skord 1989; Kavanagh 1996.

4 See Ruch 1977; Ruch 2002; and Kaminishi 2006.5 On this process, see inter alia Kadokawa 1975, pp. 403–610; Ishikawa 2002, pp. 7–152; Ruch

1991, pp. 165–208; Tokuda 1988a.

the world of masters of linked verse, the rengashi , they also borrowed lib-erally from the rich body of poetry and prose writings in the Japanese classicaltradition. Before examining the features of Shaka no honji, we thus should takea somewhat closer look at the parameters of the genre of medieval otogizôshi ofwhich it was part.

The Parameters of OtogizôshiAs noted above, groups of traveling preachers played a key part in the develop-ment of otogizôshi like Shaka no honji. As preachers spread knowledge of thekinds of didactic legends contained in works such as the mid-thirteenth centurycompendium Shiju hyaku innen shû , and as the itinerant monks ofthe Agui school came to disseminate the miracle tales and origin storiesof the fourteenth-century Shintôshû , a new type of literature emergedthat combined the themes of terse miracle tales, setsuwa, with extended atten-tion to the interior moods and motivations of characters found in classical proseworks, or monogatari. In the course of the late medieval period, diverse types ofprofessionals—preaching monks and nuns, aristocratic patrons, temple admin-istrators, artists and illustrators, chônin book makers and publishers, renga poets,etc.—became involved in producing and distributing this literature. By the Edoperiod many otogizôshi were in wide circulation as printed texts. In a fluid con-text of literary production that valued allusion and intertextuality, some of thestories were also adopted as the basis for noh plays; Dôjôji and Taema

are just two examples out of many.6 Filled as they were with poetic allusionsand references to earlier iconic works such as Genji monogatari and Heike mono-gatari, stories of this sort in fact served as an important cultural and literarybridge between elite and popular modes.7

At the same time, the principle purpose of tales of a specifically Buddhist bent,which were great in number, was always didactic in the truest sense of the word:they were intended to inspire people’s devotion and to spur them on in their reli-gious development. Many such tales were used in fund-raising, to encourage thefaithful to practice the Buddhist virtue of giving alms to religious institutions.8

Indeed, stories of this sort were often related to the origins of a particular tem-ple or shrine. Modern scholars know such tales as honjimono , a term thatdraws from the common element found in the title of many of them, and as jishaengi , a name that alludes to the “karmic causes and conditions” under-lying the history of a religious institution. Inspired by the Indian tradition of theavadâna, stories of past lives, honjimono usually concern the former incarnationsof gods as human beings. The stories contained in the Agui school’s Shintôshûare widely seen as the earliest models for this kind of tale. The formula “so-and-so no honji” promises the reader or hearer that the story will reveal the causes

GLASSMAN: Shaka no honji 301

6 See Waters 1997; ten Grotenhuis1992; Glassman 2003.7 See Ishikawa 2002.8 See Tokuda 1988a, pp. 130–200; Goodwin 1994, pp. 21–106; Ushiyama 1994; Kaminishi

2006.

and conditions that led to the apotheosis of the hero or heroine. Many such sto-ries trace the former incarnation of a Japanese deity who, during a past life inIndia, underwent harrowing trials and sufferings to emerge in the end triumphantand vindicated, reborn as an immortal kami in Japan. In some cases the talesinvolve several interrelated characters, all of whom finally come to reside at someparticular holy site as a set of local gods. Examples of this type include such talesas Kumano no honji , Sumiyoshi no honji , Kibune no honji

, Mishima no honji , or Hachiman no honji , eachof which employs a Buddhist epistemological framework to recount the “origi-nal” incarnations of important and famous Shinto deities.9

Another closely related sort of tale also explores origins, but with a signifi-cant difference. Here, the hero or heroine is not a deity but rather a historical orquasi-historical figure, and the story probes the psychological and material sit-uation that first prompted the protagonist to take up the religious life. In this cat-egory we can mention, specifically, Shaka no honji and two other works withclosely related themes: Mokuren no sôshi and Chûjôhime no honji

. A distinctive feature of each is its emphasis on the salvation of theprotagonist’s mother, a commonality that reveals key aspects of medievalJapanese religious culture and its creation through the literary and textual prac-tices of the time.

Mokuren and His Mother in East Asian BuddhismOne of the most important dimensions of the Buddhist encounter with Chinesesociety was engagement with the ancestral cult. Although taking religious orderswas seen initially as a threat to filial piety, over time a strong link was forgedbetween the act of becoming a monk or nun and the nourishment of deceasedparents into ancestors. Buddhist renunciation thus came to be refigured as a keymeans of ensuring the salvation of one’s parents.10

Various Buddhist narratives were reworked to support this trope. An exam-ple is the story of the bodhisattva Dizang (Jp. Jizô) who, as described in theDizang benyuan jing (a sutra most likely of Chinese origin), twice inprevious lives was a brahmin girl who saved her evil and voracious mother fromhell.11 The key instance, however, is the legend cycle of Maudgalyâyana (Ch.Mulian , Jp. Mokuren), the disciple of the Buddha foremost in the practiceof “spiritual penetrations” (Sk. abhijña, Ch. shentong , Jp. jinzû).12 Ex-panded and developed in China, the legend cycle came to center on Mulian’srescue of his mother from hell. In this story, Mulian’s mother was mean-spiritedand stingy; she took every opportunity to slight the Buddhist teachings and,


9 See Skord 1989, pp. 173–74; Ruch 1965; and Matsumoto 1996.10 The issue of filial piety in the sinicization of Buddhism is a complex one. See Ch’en 1968;

Jan 1991; and Schopen 1984.11 T 412. For an English translation, see Hsuan Hua 1974.12 The “spiritual penetrations” are the six magical powers of clairvoyance and self-transformation

available to the person advanced in the practice of Buddhist meditation.

deceiving her son, withheld offerings to the monastic community. For these sinsshe fell into the evil realms, and yet it was of course incumbent upon the dutifulson Mulian to save her.

The versions of the legend with the widest influence in premodern China werethose belonging to the genre of synthetic picture/text performances, bianwen

, or “transformation texts,” which flourished from the Tang dynasty on. Dis-cussing the Transformation Text on Mulian Rescuing His Mother from the DarkRegions (Damujianlian mingjian jiumu bianwen ), StephenTeiser points out that “People learned about [Mulian] not through the lecturesor commentaries of Buddhist monks, but from the popular storytellers who usedpicture scrolls to illustrate the scenes they describe in their prosemetric tales.”13

A major occasion for such recitations of the story of Mulian was the so-called“Ghost Festival” (Yulanpen , Jp. Urabon or Obon) celebrated in mid-summer throughout Buddhist East Asia.14 In this festival the participants,making offerings to the sangha on the final day of their summer retreat, reenactMulian’s liberation of his mother from hell. Eulogizing the virtue of filial piety,the festival provides the Buddhist faithful with an annual opportunity to followthe model of this filial monk and save not only their parents, but seven generationsof ancestors.

Merging with the indigenous tama matsuri , a late summer “All-Souls’Festival” in which the dead were welcomed back to dwell with the living for afew short days, Obon was practiced in Japan from quite an early date.15 Whilethe earliest reliable recorded celebration of the Buddhist festival in Japan was in657, the Nihon shoki traces it back into the early seventh century. State-sponsored observance of the ceremonies was instituted by Emperor Shômu

in 735. The tenth-century Engi shiki refers to the festival numeroustimes, and it is also mentioned often in court diaries and “women’s writing”through the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The eleventh-century Eiga mono-gatari , for example, records Fujiwara no Michinaga’s spon-sorship of an Urabon festival at Hôjôji .16

As the basis for the Obon festival, the story of the faithful and dutiful sonMulian, who rescues a parent through the power of Buddhism, was also wellknown in Japan from early on. The oldest extant appearance in Japan of theMulian/Mokuren legend related in full is in the tenth-century Sanbô ekotoba

.17 An allusion to the story of Mokuren saving his mother also figures inGenji monogatari.18 Later versions, based on noncanonical Chinese popular


13 Teiser 1988, p. 46. The most famous example of this bianwen genre is, in fact, the story ofMulian. Operatic plays based on the narrative have continued into modern times to serve an impor-tant liturgical function in funerals for women in China and Taiwan. See Johnson 1989; Seaman1981.

14 On the etymology of the word Yulanpen/Urabon, see Teiser 1988, pp. 21–23.15 Fujii 1980, p. 135.16 Iwamoto 1979, pp. 50–55.17 See the translation in Kamens 1988.18 See Tyler 2001, p. 715; Genji monogatari, vol. 4, p. 90.

renditions of the story, are included in two Japanese compendia of Buddhist folkliterature, the thirteenth-century Shiju hyaku innen shû and the fifteenth-centurySangoku denki .19 From the antiquity of the practice of the Obon festi-val and the wide distribution of references to it and the Mokuren legend in writ-ten remains, we can surmise that the narrative cycle associated with the festivalwas well known throughout Buddhist Japan during the medieval period. As inChina, people further came to know the story of Mokuren and his filial actthrough popular storytelling and picture-narration traditions.

The sixteenth-century Japanese vernacular version of the story Mokuren nosôshi stands in this tradition, and we can imagine that the extant text may havebeen performed, like Chinese versions, with pictures illustrating the protago-nist’s visit to hell.20 At the same time, however, Mokuren no sôshi reflects theamalgamation of several distinct genres and narrative themes,21 and it displaysat least three unique elements: the prominence of the childhood experiences ofthe hero, the depth of description of his relationship with his mother, and the nar-rative development of the interior psychological motivations of the characters.

In other versions of the legend, Mokuren’s mother is an evil, foul-mouthed,and greedy woman, but in this medieval Japanese retelling, she becomes a sym-pathetic character, a mother whose deep and abiding love for her son leads herinto a secret and obsessive preoccupation with his success. Her sin in this ver-sion is a parent’s blind love for her child (kokoro no yami , “darkness ofthe heart”), a prominent trope in classical Japanese poetry. The psychologicalaspects of their relationship are given full expression, and the mother, whowas a rather flat character in the various Chinese antecedents, becomes three-dimensional. Only thinly described in the Chinese texts and earlier Japaneseversions, here she becomes a doting and admonishing mother.

These novel aspects of the narrative call to mind the hagiographies of notedJapanese monks. Most particularly, they echo the legend of the great tenth-century prelate Eshin sôzu Genshin . Both the story of Mokuren andthat of Genshin are to be found in Shiju hyaku innen shû and Sangoku denki. Theformer, an anthology of some 147 Buddhist tales from India, China, and Japan,was compiled in 1257, probably by a Pure Land preacher (dangisô ), andthe latter, comprising 360 stories, was put together in the mid-fifteenth century.Both collections are quite large, and it comes as no surprise that the two famousstories, the Mokuren-saves-his-mother legend and the hagiography of Genshin,should appear in both. One can easily imagine, however, that once included inthe two collections, the two stories may have come to influence one another,since these texts were widely used as material for sermons. As religious texts


19 Iwamoto 1979, pp. 57, 63.20 The only surviving manuscript copy of the text is in the Tenri Library, Tenri University. An

edited text is available in Iwamoto 1979, pp. 81–133. For an English translation, see Glassman1999.

21 For the variety of influences on the text, see Iwamoto 1976, p. 88.

were so often transformed through performance, it seems plausible that a themefrom one hagiography emphasizing a mother might be drawn into another ofsimilar genre. Given this background, the reshaping of Mokuren’s mother intoa more complex character was a quite natural development.

Mothers in the Lives of Japanese SaintsIn 1182, the founder of the Agui school of preachers, Chôken , delivering asermon to an esteemed audience that included his kinsman Kujô Kanezane

, said that women are superior to men because “every woman is the truemother of the Buddhas of past, present, and future,” whereas men are not theirfathers. He went on to explain that this is because every Buddha who comes intothe world must temporarily dwell in the womb.22 This famous preacher, aprincipal force in the burgeoning of religious vocal performance during theKamakura period, was expressing an idea that would become increasinglyprominent over the subsequent three centuries.

The focus on mothers in medieval Japanese hagiography is well known.23

Clearly, any hagiographical tradition has its mothers, and, as we have seen withMulian, the salvation of parents had long been a focus of attention for Buddhistsin East Asia. But as Marian Ury noted, over thirty-five years ago at this writing,the narratives of Japanese monks reserve a central role for their mothers,24 andthat role is depicted in a different mode than that found in Chinese and Koreanprecedents. Ury made this observation in regard to the great hagiographical com-pendium of the early fourteenth century Genkô shakusho , but the ten-dency to praise mothers or to blame them, the desire to watch them intently asthey pursue or withdraw can be seen in many Buddhist writings of this time andlater. Many hagiographies of famous monks—Kûkai , Jôkei , Ryôgen

, Genshin, En no Gyôja , Eikô , Eizon and his disciple Sôji , to cite but a few examples—hold up a mother’s influence, or her death, as the

primary motivation for taking tonsure.25 By the end of the Kamakura period,many vitae that had neglected the holy man’s mother were being rewritten tohighlight her influence in his religious life.26

Perhaps the most famous story of a Japanese monk’s relationship with hismother is that of Genshin. An early version of the tale, contained in the thirteenth-century collection Konjaku monogatari shû , paints the portrait of a sternbut loving mother who is the prime motivating personage behind her son’s illus-trious career. Entitled Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto

(How the Nun, Mother of the sôzu Genshin, Attained Birth in the Pure


22 Kanezane records this statement in his diary, Gyokuyô , for Juei 1 (1182).11.18. Cited inWakita 1985, p. 172.

23 See Glassman 2003; Wakita 1985.24 See Ury 1970.25 Glassman 2002, pp. 403–405.26 See Ôsumi 1983.

Land), the tale is explicitly marked as a story about the mother rather than herson the monk.27 She has very clear expectations regarding her son’s monasticpath and explicitly states that he must fulfill these in order to guarantee her sal-vation.

The tale has it that Genshin was once summoned to the imperial palace to per-form a series of lectures on the Lotus Sutra, a Hokke hakkô , for the ben-efit of the empress dowager. He ordered that a share of the lavish gifts he receivedbe sent off to his mother. She was not pleased. On the contrary, she wrote in aletter:

I received the gifts you sent. While I am boundlessly happy with the diligenceyou have displayed in scholarship, when I sent you off to the temple to becomea monk, I had no intention of your attending such hakkô lectures. When I decidedto put you in the monastery as a little boy, I thought, “I have many daughters,but only this one son. Although he has not yet reached the age of the cappingceremony [fifteen years old], I shall send him up on Mt. Hiei to pursue scholar-ship and train his body. That he may become revered like the saint of Tamu-no-mine and save his mother in the hereafter!”28 It was not my intentionthat you become a grand monk traveling about in high style. I think to myself,“I am old now. If only I could see my son become an honored saint before I die,I could rest easy.”29

Much chagrined by his mother’s words of admonition, Genshin went intoretreat in the Yokawa district of Mt. Hiei and dashed off a letter of apologyto her. In her reply she expressed relief that he had realized the misplaced natureof his ambitions and added that she could now face death with an easy mind.After seven years of living in isolation, Genshin notified his mother of his inten-tion to pay her a visit in the capital below. She ordered him instead to remain onthe mountain, redouble his efforts in study, and train his body and mind assidu-ously. In the ninth year, on the force of a physical premonition about his moth-er’s death, Genshin rushed to the capital below, was together with her in her lastmoments, and led her in the chanting of the name of Amida Buddha on herdeathbed.30

In the “Tenarai” chapter of Genji monogatari, a priest the author, MurasakiShikibu, calls “the high priest so-and-so” (nanigashi no sôzu )rushes to the capital from Yokawa in a similar fashion to administer last rites atthe eleventh hour.31 Whether or not Genshin actually provided Murasaki with amodel, the parallels between her account of a high-ranking monk from Mt. Hiei


27 See Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto; and Takahashi 1979.28 The saint of “Tamu no mine” (Tônomine) is the recluse monk Zôga , a contemporary of

Genshin’s mother. An older co-disciple of Genshin’s, he was famous for his eccentricity and hisdisregard for worldly status.

29 Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto, p. 397.30 Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto, pp. 397–98.31 See Tyler 2001, pp. 1075–110; Genji monogatari, vol. 5, pp. 339 ff. and supplementary note

514, p. 485. Also see Kamens 1993a; Shirane 1987, pp. 194–99; Field 1987, pp. 180–82.

who hurries to the capital to pray for his dying mother and Genshin’s hagiogra-phy are undeniable. If the Yokawa priest in Genji was in fact inspired by a storyMurasaki heard about her contemporary Genshin, it would be an early instanceof what was to become common in later centuries; that is, the movement ofdetails from hagiographic narratives into other literary modes. On the other hand,it also is not impossible to imagine that Murasaki’s priest “so-and-so” of Yokawalater came to serve as a model for the Genshin hagiography, rather than thereverse, as has so often been assumed. As we will see more fully below, as leg-ends circulated in both written and oral form, influences from secular literaryworks such as Genji also came to shape religious texts in various regards.

Women’s Salvation in Japanese BuddhismThere are many possible reasons for the focus on mothers in the medievalJapanese religious tradition. One is the shift in the ideology of kinship and gen-der beliefs that, beginning during the late Heian period, first at the highest lev-els of society and then filtering down through the masses over the followingcenturies, accompanied the establishment, spread, and entrenchment of the iefamily system. Women went from being lifelong members of their natal homesto leaving as brides to live and die in the households of their husbands’ families.32

In this context, women’s salvation came to be seen, in certain formulations, asalmost wholly dependent upon the birth and maturation of male offspring whocould bring them into the family in a fuller way after death, as consorts of ances-tors.33

Ironically, female reproductive capacity, which I have just described as thekey to women’s salvation, also became, especially from the late medieval periodon, the principal source of their damnation, according to a widespread discoursebased on the Ketsubonkyô , or Blood Bowl Sutra. The very name of theketsubon cult signals its connection to the Mokuren legend through its resonancewith the festival of Urabon or Obon, and indeed he and his mother are centralcharacters here as well.34 Doctrines such as the five obstacles, which stated thatwomen could not “become Buddhas,” reinforced concerns over women’s sote-riological status.35 This doctrine did not, in its original context, exclude womenfrom salvation, but since the term “becoming a Buddha” ( jôbutsu ) eventu-ally became synonymous with salvation itself, it fostered a presumption that allwomen faced the danger of bad births in the next life. Tropes of this sort werecarried throughout the country by itinerant groups like the Kumano bikuni,whose audiences were comprised primarily of women.36 Of course, as with manysoteriological schemes, this dark picture was held out to make more lustrous the


32 See Fukutô 1991.33 See Seaman 1981; Ahern 1974; Ahern 1978.34 See Kodate 1991; Kodate and Makino 1996.35 See Kamens 1993b.36 See Yanagita 1932; Ruch 2002; Moerman 2005; Kaminishi 2006, pp. 137–64; Kadokawa

1975, pp. 23–39, 551–58.

guarantee of salvation through karmic connection to the text, image, practice, orsite being promoted by the preacher. To what degree people actually thought thatmost women were bound for hell is a very hard question to answer. Nevertheless,these circumstances undoubtedly helped sustain the focus on the place of moth-ers in the hagiography of saints.

Indeed, by the seventeenth century, reflecting another twist in these inter-secting concerns, pregnant and lactating women came to rely upon the power ofthe departed spirits of the mothers of the saints, and there was an upwelling ofcults dedicated to these bearers, these wombs, of the patriarchs. These cults offertility and child protection can be found at the women’s halls (nyonindô

) of Mt. Kôya, where the mother of Kûkai became a favorite object of devotionamong female pilgrims.37 At Kumano’s Myôshinji and at Kôkokuji

at Yura , the mother of the thirteenth-century Zen master Kakushin(Hottô Kokushi ) similarly came to be regarded as a savior and pro-

tector for women.38 The same social factors that drew attention to the mothersof saints surely contributed as well to the emphasis on Sâkyamuni’s relationshipwith his mother seen in Shaka no honji.

At Play in the GardenMost of the scenes familiar from other hagiographies are present in Shaka nohonji: the dream of a white elephant by Sâkyamuni’s mother, Mâyâ, on the nightof his conception, Mâyâ’s death a week after the birth of the baby prince, hiscompetition for the hand of the lovely Yasodharâ in an archery contest, his flightfrom the palace upon his trusty steed Ka

˙n˙thaka (Jp. Kondeikoma ) ac-

companied by Chandaka (Jp. Shanoku ), the faithful squire. From there thestory continues with his enlightenment and first teaching, his journey to theTrâyastri

˙msa heaven (Jp. Sanjûsanten or Tôriten � ) to preach to his

late mother, the establishment of the Buddhist order, the parinirvâ˙na of the

Buddha between twin Sal trees, and so on. In various important respects, how-ever, Shaka no honji departs from the traditional story. One of these is the rea-son for the prince’s initial aspiration to enlightenment, hotsu bodaishinor hosshin . This term, originally and fundamentally, refers to that first andessential element of the bodhisattva path, the awakening of bodhicitta (bodaishin

)—the desire to gain enlightenment—the initial step toward the ultimateattainment of Buddhahood.

In most examples of the Buddha biography the arousal in the mind of the youngprince of the aspiration for enlightenment occurs as a result of four excursionshe takes outside the palace walls. On these occasions he sees an old person, asick person, a corpse, and a renunciant, and it is these signs of impermanencethat inspire his religious quest to conquer sickness, old age, and death. In Shakano honji, by contrast, the cause for his internal conversion and his renunciation


37 See Matisoff 1996; Faure 1997.38 Hagiwara 1983, pp. 272–95; Tokuda 1990, pp. 107–109, 111–16.

is not his four excursions outside the gates.39 In our text, the king has created amiraculous garden that allows his son to experience each of the seasons at anytime of year by visiting its four quarters, and it is here, in the spring garden tothe south, that the prince undergoes the conversion experience of hosshin.40 Inthis setting he realizes for the first time his mother’s absence. What had been inthe earlier versions of the tale a dissatisfaction stemming from a generalizedawareness of impermanence, here becomes a deeply personal sense of loss ofthe mother he never knew.

In Shaka no honji, the young Siddhârtha knows nothing of his mother’s death,having been shielded from this fact. His father, the king, has forbidden anyonein the palace to discuss the matter, on the pain of death.41 Thus the eventual andinevitable revelation of the death of his mother comes as a terrible shock to thechild prince. He experiences this sudden epiphany—the moment of hosshinitself—while casually watching a family of birds:

Once, when the prince was seven years old, he was in the palace’s southern gar-den in the month of the rabbit when he saw two little birds making a nest andkeeping their eggs warm. The female would fly off to get a worm, the male wouldtake her place, and thus they took turns brooding and caring for the eggs. It waswatching this that led him to give rise to the aspiration for enlightenment(hosshin).

“From ancient times, the beasts of mountain and field—even all the fish in theGanges—have always had two parents, but I, though I am lord of 506 kingdoms,have only a father. How is it that I have no mother?”

When he said this to the people of his court, there was not one who could uttera word in response. Finally, Kyôdonmi [� ], crying and wringingthe tears from her wet sleeves, spoke. Kyôdonmi sobbed,

“Ah, how sad! The Prince does not yet know! Your dear mother was the daugh-ter of the great merchant Zengaku [ ] and was named Lady Maya

[ ]. She was my sister. When she passed away just seven days after givingbirth to you, my Prince, she entrusted you to my care.”

The prince’s grief upon hearing this news was beyond limit . . .42

Thus, finally, Siddhârtha’s aunt and foster mother Mahâprajâpatî (Gotami, orKyôdonmi in Japanese) reveals the terrible secret of the queen’s death. Imme-diately following this scene, the prince laments the “winds of impermanence”


39 The four excursions appear in Shaka no honji, but later in the text and in much altered form:the prince encounters the same old man on three consecutive days.

40 In her description of Siddhârtha’s youth, the mother of the eleventh-century Tendai monkJôjin also mentions this remarkable pleasure garden. See Jôjin ajari no haha no shû, pp.238ff. Also see Tokuda 1988b, pp. 47–55; and Watanabe 1996.

41 The threat by the father, King Suddhodana, to kill anyone who informs the young prince ofhis mother’s demise occurs in some, but not all, versions of Shaka no honji. See Kurobe 1989,pp. 235–37.

42 Shaka no honji, pp. 95–96. For the number of kingdoms, both the text cited here and variantshave go hyaku roku oku. In modern Japanese, oku is a hundred million. Even if we take oku inthe older meaning of ten thousand factored ten times, the resulting number would be 50,600,000kingdoms. This seems unlikely, and I take oku here as an expression adding emphasis to the alreadyimprobably large number 506.

that have carried away his mother and resolves to dedicate his life to religiouspursuits with the goal of ensuring her salvation in the hereafter:

“The winds of impermanence, it seems, have carried off the petals of the flower.The pitch-black sky has, is seems, hidden the fair face of the moon. If I were todie, who would remain behind to say prayers towards the enlightenment of LadyMaya?”

And so, he decided that in order to pray for her enlightenment, he wouldrenounce his 506 kingdoms and enter the Buddha Way. So did our lord, fromthis young age, give rise to the mind that seeks the Way.43

Not only does this medieval Japanese retelling of the Buddha’s biographyforeground his psychological anguish over the realization of his mother’sabsence, it makes concern for her salvation the main impetus for his renunciation.Mâyâ does, to be sure, receive some attention in earlier versions of the hagiog-raphy of Sâkyamuni as the Buddha’s genetrix and as the target of his famous ser-mon in the Trâyastri

˙msa heaven. Nevertheless, as Kurobe Michiyoshi

emphasizes, it is precisely Sâkyamuni’s preoccupation with the postmortem fateof his mother that distinguishes the Japanese version from its Indian and Chineseancestors.44

At Play in the Garden ReduxIf Shaka no honji’s presentation of the source of Sâkyamuni’s aspiration toenlightenment is singular within the Asian tradition of hagiography of theBuddha, it also attests to the effects of intertextuality with a variety of contem-porary Japanese works. The theme of hosshin through the mutual cooperationof a mother and father bird rearing their young appears in several other textsknown as “awakening stories,” or hosshin tan . One possible commonancestor was the Izu/Hakone tale Nisho gongen no koto , containedin Shintôshû, where a princess first realizes her mother’s absence upon hearingthe cry of the bush warbler (uguisu) one morning in early spring while visitinga garden in bloom. Hakone gongen engi , a descendant of the Nishogongen text, has the same scene. The motif also appears in the sekkyô bushi

version of the Karukaya Dôshin story, where the boy hero,Ishidômaru , hearing swallows chirping, experiences a sudden realizationthat his family is not intact. In this case it is the boy’s father, Karukaya, who ismissing.45


43 Shaka no honji, pp. 96–97.44 Kurobe 1994, pp. 210–14. Kurobe also stresses this point repeatedly in a longer study: Kurobe

1989, pp. 226–89. For the role of the Buddha’s mother in Chinese versions of the biography, seeTeiser 1988, pp. 114–16, 130–39; and Cole 1998, pp. 65–79, 138–40. In the late medieval Palitradition, however, a parallel can be found in a past life of the Buddha, one even before his birthas Sumedha the ascetic, the stage of existence commonly cited as the one in which the Buddhabegan on the bodhisattva path. The Pali story tells of a past life in which the future Buddha foundhimself as a son drowning with his mother after a shipwreck and was consumed with a loving andaltruistic desire to save her life; this inspired in him the desire to some day become a buddha. SeeDerris 2000, pp. 45–63.

45 On this motif of bird families, see Abe 1983, pp. 51–52.

One of the most notable instances of intertextual influence of this sort can befound in this legend of Chûjôhime, a girl of noble birth who becomes an abusedstepdaughter and later a Buddhist saint.46 She first realizes that her mother isgone when she is seven, standing like Prince Siddhârtha of Shaka no honji in aspring garden:

In the spring of her seventh year, the princess entered the flower gardens just tothe south of her residence. As she gazed over the double-petaled cherries inriotous full bloom, she saw two small children come and break off some blos-soming sprays. Then there came a man and woman who took the flowers anddivided them between the two children. The mother handed the little one hisflowers and lifted him in her arms; the father gave the older one his flowers andtook him by the hand. Seeing this, the princess asked, “What manner of thingwas that?”

Her wet nurse answered, “Those were the children’s mother and father. Thefather led the big brother away and the mother carried off the little brother.” Theprincess’s face went pale, and she asked, “If it is usual for everyone to have amother and a father, then how is it that I have only a father and no mother?” Herwet nurse broke down in tears and could scarcely manage to choke out an answer.

Again the princess asked her, “Why is it so?” The wet nurse replied, “Whenyou were but three years old, your beloved mother was carried off by the windsof impermanence and passed away.” Hearing this, the princess fell to the floorand sobbed, “Show me the place where my mother is!”47

Reference to the passage from Shaka no honji discussed above will confirmthat the two scenes are nearly identical in their structure, development, and nar-rative function. In the Chûjôhime tale, the pair of birds of the old conceit becomereal human parents, a mother and a father with two small children. This trans-position from animal to human makes Chûjôhime’s realization that much moreconcrete, the pain of the revelation that much sharper, but for both the youngSiddhârtha and for Chûjôhime the response is the same. Their carefree play inthe south garden on a warm spring afternoon is abruptly ended by the intrusionof an absence they had always felt but could never name. Seeing a parent-and-child scene, they suddenly and intuitively know for the first time of their moth-ers’ deaths, and that realization leads them to resolve to dedicate their lives tosaving those mothers through the attainment of sainthood. In the case ofChûjôhime, she ultimately gains her long cherished wish for a vision of the PureLand; this comes in the form of one of the great miraculous icons of Japan, theTaima mandara .


46 For the legend and textual history of Chûjôhime, see Glassman 2003.47 Translated from the Nara ehon version of Chûjôhime in the collection of Hiroshima

University transcribed in Muromachi jidai monogatari shû, vol. 4, pp. 344–45. In most other ver-sions, the two children are an older boy and a younger girl. See, for instance, the woodblock-printed edition of 1651 transcribed and annotated in Muromachi monogatari sôshi shû, p. 400;and Muromachi jidai monogatari taisei, vol. 9, p. 289. For an English translation of the latter ver-sion, see Kimbrough 2007.

Intertextuality of this sort was an ongoing process. We noted above that theconcern for the salvation of mothers seen in the hagiography of Japanese saintssuch as Genshin was likely a key source for the similar emphasis found in Shakano honji (and Chûjôhime no honji). Yet influence can be seen operating in thereverse direction as well. The awakening of bodaishin by the seven-year-oldprince Siddhârtha became—retroactively to be sure—the classic case of a monkwho saves his mother. A late medieval hagiography of Genshin titled Eshin sôzu

thus relates:

The Original Teacher, the Venerable Sâkyamuni, when he was seven years old,for the sake of his mother, first gave rise to the mind that seeks the way. For thesake of his mother, he ascended to the Trâyastri

˙msa Heaven and preached the

Dharma for the ninety days of the summer retreat . . .48

This sort of mutual influence is hardly surprising given the context of literaryproduction as discussed above. As preachers carried texts from place to placeand expanded their repertoires, they came both to focus on certain motifs andthemes and to bring different works into juxtaposition with each other. Thefamous literatus Sanjônishi Sanetaka reports in his diary for the year1531, for instance, a visit from one Yûzen , a preacher of Nara’s Taimadera

. Yûzen brought with him a copy of a text about Chûjôhime, closely asso-ciated with his own temple. He also brought a copy of the life of Genshin enti-tled Eshin sôzu . Although we cannot know the exact relationshipbetween that text and the late medieval version of the Genshin story of the samename cited above, it is quite possible that it included a similar allusion toSâkyamuni’s hosshin at the age of seven “for the sake of his mother.”49

The Influence of Courtly Aesthetic Values and Liturgical MotifsAs the repeated references to cherry blossoms in Chûjôhime no honji and Shakano honji suggest, the intertextuality evident in such works extends to variousconventions of classical literature. The aesthetic values of Heian and medievalliterature shape the narrative of Shaka no honji and related works at every turn.Primary among these is the emphasis on the sad beauty of impermanence as seenin the ephemeral nature of human life and as reflected metaphorically in the nat-ural world. This is of course the trope of mujô , or impermanence, so widelyevident in classical Japanese literature.50

The language of mujô is apparent from the first lines of Shaka no honji. Thetext opens with story of Sessen dôji , “the youth of the Himalayas,” who


48 Eshin sôzu, p. 27. Also see Eshin sôzu monogatari, p. 43.49 See Tokuda 1988c; Glassman 2003, pp. 153–54.50 There is a vast literature on the Buddhist-inflected aesthetic quality of mujô and the related

concept of mono no aware; Yoshida Kenkô’s Tsurezuregusa and Kamo noChômei’s Hôjôki are particlarly famous examples of its use. In English, see, forexample, Pandey 1998; Chance 1999, pp. 189–211; Pandey 2005. Two classic studies in Japaneseare Karaki 1964 and Nishida 1970.

happens to hear the first half of a famous four-line verse on impermanence fromthe Nirvâ

˙na Sûtra: “All constructed things are impermanent; this is the truth of

arising and perishing” (shogyô mujô/ zeshô meppô ).51 Havingheard the first two lines, the youth sacrifices his life, feeding himself to a vora-cious demon, in payment for receiving the remainder of the verse. AlthoughSessen dôji is destined to become the Buddha in a future incarnation, his storyis not a standard feature of the Buddha biography. Its presence here can be attrib-uted to the familiarity of the shogyô mujô phrase to a medieval and early mod-ern audience. Echoed in the famous opening passage of the Tale of the Heike, itcan be found throughout noh, kabuki, poetry, and many other contemporary pop-ular media. Allusions to the verse also appear twice in Mokuren no sôshi.52

The aesthetic of mujô also resounds throughout the description of Siddhârtha’srealization of the loss of his mother:

Yes, it is hard to remain long in this world—like a dream or a phantasm. It is atemporary lodging where the only law is “samsara is impermanence,” where,under the sway of the sureness of death, “all who meet are destined to be parted.”Life is but the foam on the water, blown about by the will of the winds. The soulis like a bird in a tree; when the tree withers and dies, it flies away home. Theywho vanish will never be seen again. They who die depart never to return. No,they pass away in an instant; they are scattered in a twinkling. How true it is—life is like a bolt of lightning, like the morning dew. Death comes like an ambushin the night, how can we battle against it?53 The body, it is said, is but a momen-tary flash in a burning red fire.

Her jeweled throne at the imperial hall—this was also a mere dream. Deathknows no season. Only the law that the young and old alike cannot be sure whentheir moment will come is constant. There is not a single person who remains inthis world. Fame and success are pleasures limited to the world. None low orhigh can escape the trials of the dark road of the afterlife. So too, Lady Maya,arising from her brocade cushion and stepping out from behind her jeweledscreens, with none to accompany her, has now set out alone down that long road.How sad! Oh, the sufferings she will surely endure in that place!54

The connotations of mujô in the medieval cultural context also color the notionof hosshin figuring in the text. Although by origin the term referred to the awak-ening of a desire for enlightenment, in the medieval period it came also to sig-nify, more simply, aspiration to leave the home life and become a monk or a nun.Within a literary context, this decision was almost always tinged with tragedy,so that hosshin came to mean as well a deep awareness of impermanence occa-sioned by some great loss. Both senses are operative in Shaka no honji.


51 See T 375.52 Glassman 1999, pp. 129, 134.53 kagyû no tsuno no ue nite, “as on the horns of a fire-bull . . .” “Fire-bull,” or kagyû ,

alludes to the ancient Chinese practice of sending a bull with flaming torches tied to its hornscharging into an enemy camp to initiate a night ambush.

54 Shaka no honji, pp. 96.

Apart from playing on the trope of mujô, Shaka no honji also employs otherdimensions of the aesthetic values of classical court culture to draw the hearerof the tale deeply into the story. In its atmospherics Shaka no honji stronglyevokes the Japanese cultural past, a world of “brocade cushions and jeweledscreens” (nishiki no shitone, tama no sudare ). Siddhârtha islike a tender child of the Heian court, adored and protected, a prince akin to theshining Genji—another privileged but unfortunate orphan, deeply marked by thesense of loss of his mother. The “Genjification” of Siddhârtha in Shaka no honjihas a great deal in common with other examples from medieval Japanese hagiog-raphy. We can see another clear instance in Mokuren no sôshi.

Although the Obon story almost certainly originated in China and the settingof Mokuren’s tale is ostensibly an Indian one, the characters and their culturalmilieu are unmistakably Japanese. The boy monk Mokuren recalls a sad poemfrom The Tale of Genji as geese wing overhead, making their way back to thecapital he misses so much.55 He is refigured as a person of noble birth now liv-ing in exile, a motif prominent in classical literature and religious tales (referredto as kishu ryûri by the folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu ).56 Mokurenis thus assimilated to Genji in Suma or to Ariwara no Narihira , lan-guishing in the east. He is a child borne away from his natal home, living in astrange place, like Kaguyahime.

Another element of intertextuality in such tales is the inclusion of liturgicalelements and other motifs familiar from the Buddhist preaching and ritual of themedieval period. Shaka no honji features practices and texts hardly known in theBuddha’s day, such as the nenbutsu or the Lotus Sutra. The young Gotama isthus ordained according to the formula typically used in Japan for the ordinationof a monk. While clearly anachronistic, the liturgical elements of the ceremony(shukke sahô ) that appear in Shaka no honji would have been wellknown to a late medieval audience, for the same phrases appear widely in clas-sical literature and poetry as well as in contemporary tales such as Mokuren nosôshi and Bishamon no honji . Members of the audience would likelyalso have encountered the phrases in funeral ceremonies, where the dead wereordained posthumously.57

Mokuren no sôshi introduces the formula as follows: Mokuren has heard thathis mother is dying, and he hurriedly seeks to take formal ordination before heleaves the temple to see her. To his teacher’s insistence that parental permissionis required, he rejoins:

“My mother, the queen, has been stricken with a grave illness. Moreover she hadme promise not to return until I had become a monk, so surely there can be no


55 Glassman 1999, p. 129.56 Orikuchi 1972; also see Shirane 1987, pp. 20–21.57 I thank readers of the online list PMJS (http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/), particularly

Niels Guelberg and Iyanaga Nobumi, for replies confirming that this liturgical verse appearswidely, in both ritual and literary contexts, throughout the medieval and early modern period.

cause for hesitation.” The Arhat assented, “ Well, if that is the case . . .” and tookhim before the main image of the temple to perform the ordination ceremony.

Ruten sangai chû/ on’ai funô dankion nyû mui/ shinjitsu hô’on ja

In this revolving triple world,there is no end to loving indebtedness to parents,To cast away indebtedness and enter the unconditioned,this is true filiality.58

The formula is explicit in its assertion that the only true form of filial piety isto cut off family ties and enter the unconditioned world of nirvana, promised asthe fruit of the Buddhist path. “Forget your duty to parents,” it insists; “only bythrowing yourself into practice as a celibate monastic can you repay the greaterdebt.” Like so many other tales in the Japanese medieval tradition, Shaka nohonji places these two contradictory motivations side by side. Familial love andthe pain of separation become here the initial catalyst as well as the continuingmotivation for Buddhist practice.

The themes of this article have been plural, but interrelated. I have tried to revealthe deeply intertextual practices of medieval fiction, or otogizôshi, through ref-erence to a number of works similar in genre, tone, language, and plot. In speak-ing about Shaka no honji, I have shown something more generally true about therole of performance and creative borrowing in the construction of medieval reli-gious tales. A dynamic hybridity is apparent in the common motifs and imagesshared in the three tales considered here: Mokuren no sôshi, Chûjôhime no honji,and Shaka no honji. Each of these sixteenth-century hagiographies incorporatesa number of basic elements in its retelling of old and familiar stories. Theyemphasize the prominent role of the saint’s mother, or more specifically the roleof the mother’s death, in the hosshin of the child. They draw on a library of lit-erary tropes from the classical tradition to enrich the details of the description.Each punctuates its narrative with powerful and familiar fragments of Buddhistliturgy. Explanations of Buddhist doctrine are interwoven with lively tales froma folkloric literary tradition of orphans and stepchildren. The story of a youngprince living in ancient India who set out to defeat rebirth in samsara, a storytold over so many centuries in so many places, is here shaped to the narrativelogic of the late medieval Japanese imagination and tuned to the local conven-tions of emotional response.


58 Glassman 1999, p. 131. For the original formula, see Shifenlu xingshi chao (Jp.Shibunritsu gyôji shô; T 1804), compiled by Daoxuan in the seventh century.

REFERENCES

Abe 1983Abe Yasurô . “Chûjôhime setsuwa to bungaku” . InChûjôhime setsuwa no chôsa kenkyû hôkoku sho , ed.Gangôji Bunkazai Kenkyûjo , pp. 49–87. Nara: Gangôji Bunka-zai Kenkyûjo, 1983.

Ahern 1974Emily Martin Ahern. “Affines and the Rituals of Kinship.” In Religion and Ritualin Chinese Society, ed. Arthur P. Wolf, pp. 279–307. Stanford University Press,1974.

Ahern 1978Emily Martin Ahern. “The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women.” In Studies inChinese Society, ed. Arthur P. Wolf, pp. 269–89. Stanford University Press, 1978.

Araki 1981James Araki. “Otogi-zôshi and Nara-ehon: A Field of Study in Flux.” MN 36:1(1981), pp. 1–20.

Chance 1997Linda Chance. Formless in Form: Kenkô, ‘Tsurezuregusa,’ and the Rhetoric ofJapanese Fragmentary Prose. Stanford University Press, 1997.

Ch’en 1968Kenneth Ch’en. “Filial Piety in Chinese Buddhism.” HJAS 28 (1968), pp. 81–97.

ChûjôhimeChûjôhime . In vol. 4 of Muromachi jidai monogatari shû.

Cole 1998R. Alan Cole. Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Stanford University Press,1998.

Derris 2000Karen Derris. “Virtue and Relationships in a Theravadin Biography of theBodhisattva: A Study of the Sotatthakimahanidana.” Ph.D. dissertation, HarvardUniversity, 2000.

Donohashi 1988Donohashi Akio . Butsuden zu . Nihon no bijutsu 267.Shibundô, 1988.

Eshin sôzuEshin sôzu . In vol. 11 of Dai Nihon shiryô , second series.

Eshin sôzu monogatariEshin sôzu monogatari . In vol. 3 of Muromachi jidai monogatari tai-sei.

Faure 1997Bernard Faure. “Images de la mère dans le bouddhisme médéval japonais.” In Levase de béryl: Études sur le Japon et la Chine en hommage à Bernard Frank, ed.Jacqueline Pigeot and Hartmut O. Rotermund, pp. 85–108. Arbes: Phillipe Picquer,1997.


Field 1987Norma Field. The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji. Princeton UniversityPress, 1987.

Fujii 1980Fujii Masao . “Urabon to minzoku” . In vol. 2 of Kôza Nihonno minzoku shûkyô , ed. Gorai Shigeru et al. Kôbundô,1980.

Fukutô 1991Fukutô Sanae . Ie seiritsu no kenkyû: Sosen saishi, onna, kodomo

: . Kokura Shoin, 1991.Genji monogatari

Murasaki Shikibu . Genji monogatari . 5 vols. NKBT 14–18.Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto

Genshin sôzu no haha no ama, ôjô seru koto . In vol. 3 of Konjakumonogatari shû . 5 vols. NBKT 22–26.

Glassman 1999Hank Glassman, trans. “The Tale of Mokuren: A Translation of Mokuren no sôshi.”Buddhist Literature 1 (1999), pp. 120–61.

Glassman 2002Hank Glassman. “The Nude Jizô at Denkôji: Notes on Women’s Salvation inKamakura Buddhism.” In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in PremodernJapan, ed. Barbara Ruch, pp. 383–413. Center for Japanese Studies, University ofMichigan, 2002.

Glassman 2003Hank Glassman. “‘Show Me the Place Where My Mother Is!’ Chûjôhime, Preach-ing, and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Japan.” In Approaching thePure Land, ed. Richard Payne and Kenneth Tanaka, pp. 139–68. University ofHawai‘i Press, 2003.

Goodwin 1994Janet Goodwin. Alms and Vagabonds. University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994.

Hagiwara 1983Hagiwara Tatsuo . Miko to bukkyô shi . Yoshikawa Kôbunkan,1983.

Honda 1995Honda Giken . “Shaka den” . In Sôden, jisha engi, emaki, eden

, ed. Itô Hiroyuki et al., pp. 11–50. Benseisha, 1995.Hsuan Hua 1974

Hsuan Hua, Heng Ching et al., trans. Sutra of the Past Vow of Earth Store Bod-hisattva. San Francisco: Sino-American Buddhist Association, 1974.

Ishikawa 2002Ishikawa Tôru . “Muromachi monogatari ni okeru shosakuhin kyôju”

. In Muromachi monogatari to kochûshaku ,pp. 7–152. Miyai Shoten, 2002.

Iwamoto 1976Iwamoto Yutaka . “Mokuren no sôshi no haikei” .Bungaku 44:9 (1976), pp. 1206–17.


Iwamoto 1979Iwamoto Yutaka. Jigoku meguri no bungaku . Vol. 4 of Bukkyô se-tsuwa kenkyû . Kaimei Shoten, 1979.

Jan 1991Jan Yün-hua. “The Role of Filial Piety in Chinese Buddhism: A Reassessment.” InBuddhist Ethics and Modern Society: An International Symposium (Contributionsto the Study of Religion no. 31), ed. Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Sandra A. Wawrytko,pp. 27–39. Greenwood Press, 1991.

Johnson 1989David Johnson, ed. Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual. Berkeley: Institute for East AsianStudies, 1989.

Jôjin ajari no haha no shûJôjin ajari no haha no shû, zenshaku , . Ed. Ii Haruki .Kazama Shobô, 1996.

Kadokawa 1975Kadokawa Gen’yoshi . Katarimono bungei no hassei .Tôkyôdô, 1975.

Kamens 1988Edward Kamens. The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori’sSanbôe. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988.

Kamens 1993aEdward Kamens. “Genshin’s ‘Shadow.’” In Approaches to Teaching MurasakiShikibu’s The Tale of Genji, ed. Edward Kamens, pp. 132–41. New York: ModernLanguage Association of America, 1993.

Kamens 1993bEdward Kamens. “Dragon-Girl, Maiden Flower, Buddha: The Transformation ofa Waka Topos, ‘The Five Obstructions.’” HJAS 53:2 (1993), pp. 389–442.

Kaminishi 2006Ikumi Kaminishi. Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytell-ing in Japan. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

Karaki 1964Karaki Junzô . Mujô . Chikuma Shobô, 1964.

Kavanagh 1996Frederick G. Kavanagh. “An Errant Priest: Sasayaki Take.” MN 51:2 (1996), pp.219–44.

Kimbrough 2007R. Keller Kimbrough, trans. Chûjôhime no honji. In Traditional Japanese Litera-ture: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane, pp. 1138–50. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2007.

Kôdate 1991Kôdate Naomi . “Ketsubonkyô to nyonin kyûsai: ‘Chi no ike no katari’o chûshin ni” : . Kokubungaku: Kaishakuto kanshô : 56:5 (1991), pp. 124–28.

Kôdate and Makino 1996Kôdate Naomi and Makino Kazuo . “Ketsubonkyô no juyô to hatten”

. In Onna to otoko no jikû: Nihon joseishi saikô : , ed. Tsurumi Kazuko , pp. 81–114. Fujiwara Shoten, 1996.


Komine 1985Komine Kazuaki . “Chûsei setsuwa bungaku to etoki”

. In Etoki , vol. 3 of Issatsu no kôza: Nihon no koten bungaku :, pp. 13–26. Yûseidô, 1985.

Komine 1991Komine Kazuaki. “Butsuden to etoki II: Chûsei butsuden no yôsô” II:

. Etoki kenkyû 9 (1991), pp. 17–29.Kurobe 1989

Kurobe Michiyoshi . Nihon butsuden bungaku no kenkyû. Izumi Shoin, 1989.

Kurobe 1994Kurobe Michiyoshi. “Shaka no hon’en: Nihonteki butsuden bungaku no seiritsu”

: . In Kyôten , vol. 6 of Nihon no bungaku tobukkyô , ed. Konno Tôru et al., pp. 209–32. Iwanami Shoten,1994.

Matisoff 1996Susan Matisoff. “Holy Horrors: The Sermon-Ballads of Medieval and EarlyModern Japan.” In Flowing Traces: Buddhism in the Literary and Visual Arts ofJapan, ed. James Sanford et al., pp. 234–62. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Matsumoto 1996Matsumoto Ryûshin . Chûsei ni okeru honjimono no kenkyû

. Kyûko Shoin, 1996.Moerman 2005

David Leo Moerman. Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the ReligiousLandscape of Premodern Japan. Harvard University Asia Center, 2005.

Mulhern 1974Chieko Irie Mulhern. “Otogi-zôshi and Short Stories of the Muromachi Period.”MN 29:2 (1974), pp. 181–98.

Muromachi jidai monogatari shûMuromachi jidai monogatari shû . Ed. Yokoyama Shigeru . 14vols. Ôoka Shoten, 1942.

Muromachi jidai monogatari taiseiMuromachi jidai monogatari taisei . Ed. Yokoyama Shigeru

and Matsumoto Ryûshin . 5 vols. Kadokawa Shoten, 1987.Muromachi monogatari sôshi shû

Muromachi monogatari sôshi shû . Ed. Ôshima Takehiko and Watari Kôichi . SNKZ 63.

Nishida 1970Nishida Masayoshi . Mujôkan no keifu: Nihon bukkyô bungei shisôshi;Kodai, chûsei hen : . Ôfûsha, 1970.

Orikuchi 1972Orikuchi Shinobu . “Shôsetsu gikyoku bungaku ni okeru monogatari noyôso” . In vol. 7 of Orikuchi Shinobu zenshû

, pp. 263–70. Chûô Kôron Sha, 1972.Ôsumi 1983

Ôsumi Kazuo . “Josei to bukkyô: Kôsô to sono haha” : . Historica (Shiron) 36 (1983), pp. 1–10.


Pandey 1998Rajyashree Pandey. Writing and Renunciation in Medieval Japan: The Works ofthe Poet-priest Kamo no Chômei. Center for Japanese Studies, University ofMichigan, 1998.

Pandey 2005Rajyashree Pandey. “Desire and Disgust: Meditations on the Impure Body inMedieval Japanese Narratives.” MN 60:2 (2005), pp. 195–234.

Ruch 1965Barbara Ruch. “Otogi bunko and Short Stories of the Muromachi Period.” Ph.D.dissertation, Columbia University, 1965.

Ruch 1977Barbara Ruch. “Medieval Jongleurs and the Making of a National Literature.” InJapan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Toyoda Takeshi, pp. 93–130.University of California Press, 1977.

Ruch 1991Barbara Ruch . Mô hitotsu no chûseizô: Bikuni, otogizôshi, raise

: . Shibundô, 1991.Ruch 2002

Barbara Ruch. “Woman to Woman: Kumano Bikuni Proselytizers in Medieval andEarly Modern Japan.” In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in PremodernJapan, ed. Barbara Ruch, pp. 537–80. Center for Japanese Studies, University ofMichigan, 2002.

Schopen 1984Gregory Schopen. “Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism:A Question of ‘Sinicization’ Viewed from the Other Side.” T’oung Pao: Revue-internationale de sinologie 70 (1984), pp. 110–26.

Seaman 1981Gary Seaman. “The Sexual Politics of Karmic Retribution.” In The Anthropologyof Taiwanese Society, ed. Emily Ahern, pp. 382–96. Stanford University Press,1981.

Shaka no honjiShaka no honji . In vol. 7 of Muromachi jidai monogatari taisei.

Shirane 1987Haruo Shirane. The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji. StanfordUniversity Press, 1987.

Skord 1989Virginia Skord. “Monogusa Tarô: From Rags to Riches and Beyond.” MN 44:2(1989), pp. 171–98.

Takahashi 1979Takahashi Mitsugu . “Genshin no haha no hanashi (‘Konjaku monogatarishû’ kan jûgo dai sanjûgo) no boshi zô” )

. In Ronsan: Setsuwa to setsuwa bungaku : , pp. 183–97.Kasama Shobô, 1979.

Teiser 1988Stephen F. Teiser. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton UniversityPress, 1988.


ten Grotenhuis 1992Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis. “Chûjôhime: The Weaving of Her Legend.” In FlowingTraces: Buddhism in the Literary and Visual Arts of Japan, ed. James Sanford etal., pp. 180–200. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Tokuda 1988aTokuda Kazuo . “Kanjin hijiri to shaji engi: Muromachi-ki o chûshin ni”

: . In Otogizôshi kenkyû , pp. 130–200.Miyai Shoten, 1988.

Tokuda 1988bTokuda Kazuo.“Shihô, shiki no fûryû” . In Otogizôshi kenkyû

, pp. 47–79. Miyai Shoten, 1988.Tokuda 1988c

Tokuda Kazuo. “Kyôroku-bon Taimadera engi emaki to Chûjôhime no honji” . In Otogizôshi kenkyû , pp. 369–

84. Miyai Shoten, 1988.Tokuda 1990

Tokuda Kazuo. “Igyô no kanjin bikuni: Kumano bikuni zenshi no ittan” : . In Chûsei henrekimin no sekai , vol.

6 of Nihon rekishi to geinô , ed. Amino Yoshihiko et al., pp.102–19. Heibonsha, 1990.

Tyler 2001Royall Tyler, trans. The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu. New York: VikingPress, 2001.

Ury 1970Marian Ury.“Genkô shakusho: Japan’s First Comprehensive History of Buddhism.”Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1970.

Ushiyama 1994Ushiyama Yoshiyuki . “Jiinshi no kaiko to tenbô: Chûsei no ama to amaderani yosete” : . In Nihon no bukkyô 3:Bukkyô o minaosu 3: , ed. Nihon Bukkyô Kenkyûkai

, pp. 159–71. Kyoto: Hôzôkan, 1994.Wakita 1985

Wakita Haruko . “Bosei sonchô shisô to zaigôkan” .In vol. 1 of Bosei o tou , ed. Wakita Haruko, pp. 172–203. Jinbun Shoin,1985.

Watanabe 1996Masako Watanabe. “A Preliminary Study of ‘Life of the Buddha’ in MediaevalJapan: The Metropolitan Museum Paintings.” Orientations 27:8 (1996), pp. 46–56.

Waters 1997Virginia Skord Waters. “Sex, Lies, and the Illustrated Scroll: The Dôjôji EngiEmaki.” MN 52:1 (1997), pp. 59–84.

Yanagita 1932Yanagita Kunio . Josei to minkan denshô . Oka Shoin, 1932.Repr. in vol. 8 of Teihon Yanagita Kunio shû , pp. 315–447. ChikumaShobô, 1962.


Shaka no honji: Preaching, Intertextuality, and Popular Hagiography

Documents

Transcript of Shaka no honji: Preaching, Intertextuality, and Popular Hagiography