Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan 0824851501, 9780824851507

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BUDDHISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF OLD AGE IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN

BUDDHISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF OLD AGE IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN Edward R. Drott

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2016 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ a 20 19 18 17 16 15

6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Drott, Edward Robertson, author. Title: Buddhism and the transformation of old age in medieval Japan / Edward R. Drott. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015043302 | ISBN 9780824851507 cloth : alk. paper  

Subjects: LCSH: Aging—­Japan. | Buddhism—­Japan—­History—1185–1600. | Buddhism—­Japan—­Philosophy. Classification: LCC BQ678 .D76 2016 | DDC 294.3084/6—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at   http://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2015043302

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-­free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Contents

Acknowl­edgments

vii

Introduction

ix

I. Making Elders ­Others in Early Japan 1. Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors: The Uses of Old Age in Early Japa­nese Myth

5

2. “Lamenting Gray Hair”: The Poetics of Retirement in Early Japan

20

3. Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities: Elders at the Crossroads in Late Heian Japan

39

II. Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan 4. From Outcast to Saint: Overcoming Pollution in an Age of Decline

53

5. The Eccentric Avatar: Reimagining the Body of the Bodhisattva in Early Medieval Engi 74 6. The Graying of the Gods: The Return of the Okina Kami in Medieval Myth 7. “Tranquil Heart, Gazing Afar”: Reimagining the Aged Body in Noh

96 118

Conclusion 145 Abbreviations

149

Notes

151

Works Cited

193

Index

209

v

Acknowl­e dgments

It is perhaps fitting that this work, a book about old age, has under­gone a long pro­cess of maturation. During ­those years many individuals and institutions have made invaluable contributions to its development. To begin with, I wish to express deep gratitude to my late adviser William LaFleur, who first ignited my interest in the relationship between religion and the body in Japan, and whose example continues to inspire me. I am also indebted to my other mentors from gradu­ate school, particularly Linda Chance, Cappy Hurst, Victor Mair, and Nathan Sivin, and from my undergraduate years, Stephen Dunning, Robert Kraft, Ann ­Matter, and Guy Welbon. The questions that motivated this study came into focus during the 2006–2007 academic year, which I spent as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japa­nese Studies. During my fellowship, I benefited enormously from my interactions with several scholars, particularly Mikael Adolphson, Helen Hardacre, and Shigehisa Kuriyama. I also enjoyed many fruitful exchanges with Katrina Moore, Christopher Hanscom, Hans Martin Krämer, and my fellow postdocs, Anna Andreeva, Christopher Bondy, Seth Jacobowitz, and Aaron Moore. ­Later, as a lecturer at Dartmouth College, I was fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues who stimulated and challenged me. In ­t hose years and since, I have received all manner of support, encouragement, and advice from Susan Ackerman, Reiko Ohnuma, Steven Ericson, and Gil Raz. At the University of Missouri I was once again blessed with brilliant and supportive colleagues. Rabia Gregory, Nate Hofer, Dennis Kelley, and Chip Callahan provided extremely insightful comments and criticism on vari­ous chapters and helped me clarify my framing of the proj­ect as a ­whole. While at Missouri, vari­ous funding agencies provided me with support necessary to conduct research in Japan. A University of Missouri Summer Research Fellowship and grant from MU’s Center for Arts and Humanities allowed me to spend the summer of 2010 as a visiting research scholar at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. In the summer of 2011, funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science enabled me to conduct research at Sophia University. A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, vii

viii  Acknowl­ e dgments

and funding from the University of Missouri Research Board and Research Council, allowed me another period as a visiting research scholar at the Nanzan Institute in 2012. Since taking up my position at Sophia University in 2014, I have enjoyed generous research support and benefited greatly from interaction with my new colleagues. Parts of this study have been presented at vari­ous conferences and workshops, including the 2010 meeting of the Académie du Midi; the 2011 meeting of the Association for Asian Studies; the 2011 session of the Body and Religion Group held at the annual meeting of the American Acad­emy of Religion; at a workshop on East Asian medicine and Buddhism convened by Benedetta Lomi at the University of California, Berkeley; and at a colloquium at the University of Nagoya Gradu­ate School of Letters in 2012. A generous grant from the Japan Foundation enabled me to spend the 2012– 2013 academic year based at the University of Nagoya, and in Kyoto. During that year Abe Yasurō, who acted as my host, offered many valuable suggestions and invited me to participate in vari­ous research seminars and activities. I also profited greatly from discussions with Araki Hiroshi, Carl Becker, Onjōji’s Shitsujichō, Fuke Toshihiko, Michele Mason, Satō Yasuhisa, Jacqueline Stone, Tanaka Takako, and Uejima Susumu. I am grateful to Hashimoto Michinori for spending a g­ reat deal of time talking with me about my proj­ect and introducing me to other scholars and resources. Amano Fumio was very generous with his time, allowing me to confer with him about numerous issues pertaining to okina sarugaku and the development of early Noh. I also enjoyed numerous exceedingly detailed discussions with Michael Jamentz, who shared his vast knowledge of late Heian religious and literary culture. During my final months in Kyoto, I was extremely fortunate to be able to discuss my work with Heather Blair, who read and commented on extensive portions of this manuscript. Over the years, I have benefited significantly from discussing aspects of my proj­ect with numerous other scholars, including Robert Borgen, Michael Como, Gary Ebersole, Andrew Goble, James Heisig, Leith Morton, Paul Swanson, and John Traphagan. Richard Gardner has been especially generous with his time, reading and conferring with me on several chapters and the shape of the proj­ect as a w ­ hole. Christopher Bondy and Anna Andreeva have continued to provide valuable feedback on portions of the manuscript at vari­ous stages. I am deeply grateful to Patricia Crosby, who began the pro­cess of guiding this proj­ect ­toward publication, and to Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press, who worked closely with me seeing it through to completion. Fi­nally, this book would never have come to fruition without the support of friends and the love and understanding of my f­ amily—my parents, my ­brother, my c­ hildren, and my wife.

Introduction

The pre­sen­ta­tion of the old man is the heart of Noh. [ . . . ​] Without years of practice and lofty achievements, you cannot perform the role suitably. [ . . . ​] ­Don’t fidget and fuss; comport yourself with grace. Most impor­tant of all is the dance of the old man. You must inquire deeply into the mystery (kōan) of how to look old and yet retain the dramatic flower. It is just like [the mystery] of blossoms on an ancient tree. —­Zeami Motokiyo1

The late-­medieval Noh dramatist and theorist Zeami Motokiyo (ca. 1363–1443) devoted a ­great deal of thought to the appearances and meanings of vari­ous bodily types, t­ hose of men, w ­ omen, animals, ghosts, gods, demons, warriors, priests, and ­others. But one form in par­tic­u ­lar held a special fascination for him: the rōtai, or “aged body.” According to Zeami, the correct pre­sen­ta­tion of the role of the old man (rōjin) required the utmost skill from an actor and epitomized the innermost essence of the art of Noh. Successfully performing the rōjin produced the effect of “an old tree that puts forth flowers.”2 The image of blossoms on a withered branch was at once a reference to The Flower—­a term for dramatic perfection—as well as an allusion to the Buddhist trope that the appearance of flowers on dead branches heralded the arrival in the world of an enlightened being. By producing beauty from the aged form, Zeami implied, the performer facilitated the revelation on the Noh stage of something divine.3 Zeami followed through on t­ hese intimations, writing elsewhere that the bearing of the old man was the basis for representing the awesome dignity of gods.4 Zeami’s observations clearly reflect the centrality to Noh of the figure of the okina—­a mysterious old man featured in Noh’s ceremonial Shikisanban dances and revealed in many Noh plays to be a god. Zeami’s treatment of the aged body as a form through which actors ­were able to attain the ultimate expression of beauty and sacred power, coupled with the abundance of medieval legends in which gods w ­ ere depicted as old men, might ix

x  Introduction

create the impression that the aged had been highly esteemed throughout Japa­ nese history. And yet even a cursory examination of materials from earlier centuries reveals quite a dif­fer­ent story. In the Nara and Heian periods (710–1185), old age was routinely described as a time of misery and social ostracism, with the aged body subjected to widespread disparagement. In fact, aside from a handful of textual references from the early eighth ­century, it is not ­until the late Heian period (ca. 1050–1185)—­a period I designate as the cusp of the medieval—­t hat we witness a sudden proliferation of legends centering on okina gods. In the centuries that followed, all manner of transcendent beings came to be represented in the form of okina: buddhas, bodhisattvas, immortals, saints, local and immigrant kami (divine beings), and deities who protected the Buddhist teachings or Dharma (gohō).5 Many of the figures that ­were re­imagined in aged guises during the medieval period ­were associated with established cults and ­were the subject of legends, which in earlier centuries had made no mention of their age or appearance (even in legends in which ­t hese beings ­were described revealing themselves directly to mortals).6 And yet in the closing centuries of the Heian period it became common to portray ­t hese beings with white hair and bent backs, inaugurating what Kim Hyŏn-uk calls the “transformation of medieval kami” into okina—­a pro­cess I refer to as “the graying of the gods.”7 This trend only intensified in the Kamakura (1185–1333) and Muromachi periods (1333–1573). First-­person accounts of old age in premodern Japan underwent similar shifts, with religious discourse playing a key role.8 Early Japa­nese authors consistently depicted the onset of white hair and wrinkles as a cause of despair. However, in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods an authorial voice developed that celebrated old age as an escape from the constraints of social and po­liti­cal entanglements—­a time to achieve insight into Buddhist truths unavailable to ­t hose who remained mired in social obligations. How do we account for the emergence of a new intuition in medieval Japan that the aged body was highly suitable for realizing truth and representing otherworldly powers? I explain t­hese transformations by identifying the religious, po­liti­cal, and cultural shifts that opened new possibilities for representing and reflecting on the aged body in medieval Japan and by examining the ways individuals and groups acted on ­t hese new opportunities. The transformation of the meanings ascribed to the aged body coincided with the emergence of a new symbolic vocabulary for expressing sacred and po­liti­cal power. In Japan’s early history (ca. 500–1050), ruling elites promoted a complex of continental religious and po­liti­cal ideologies—­combining ele­ments of Buddhist, Confucian, and Chinese naturalist thought—to or­ga­nize society around the axial figure of the emperor. The emperor, or tennō, was presented as ruling from a capital portrayed as the

Introduction  xi

civilized, purified center of the world. The aged body, on the other hand, was commonly employed to represent all that should be excluded from the center: an uncomfortable reminder of h ­ uman weakness, barrenness, ugliness, stagnation, and pollution that had no place in a court that compared itself to the timeless and deathless lands of Tokoyo (a mythic other world, u ­ nder or beyond the sea), Penglai (a storied isle of immortals), or Kunlun (the mountain paradise of the Queen ­Mother of the West).9 However, from the late Heian through the early medieval periods—­concurrent with the reconfiguration of the classical po­liti­cal order and the growing sense that the world had entered an age marked by the degeneration of the Dharma (mappō)—­new religious worldviews emerged that drew inspiration from innovative readings of Buddhist scriptures and challenged traditional dichotomies between center and margin, high and low, and purity and defilement, thus complicating the po­liti­cal and religious ideologies that had promoted the image of Japan as a realm or­ga­nized around a single, stable center. It was in this context that individuals and groups seized upon the aged body as a means of expressing the power of their cult, their lineage, their religious site, or their religious practice. The reimagining of old age thus came about in part ­because, for vari­ous parties at vari­ous historical junctures, aged bodies ­were “good to think with.”10 That is to say, the aged body, when construed as a fundamentally dif­fer­ent ­human type, could be used to cognize and symbolize vari­ous other sets of differences: to express the opposition between center and margin, between power and powerlessness, or between the sacred and the mundane. Old age as difference became a means of relating and contrasting self and other, not only individual selves, but also the collective selves of kinship groups, clerical lineages, Buddhist sects, devotional cults, or the geo­graph­i­cally delimited units of province, country, or realm. Throughout the period in question, the aged body was recruited for multiple, often conflicting proj­ects of difference-­making—­the most impor­tant of which involved the legitimation of royal or sacred authority. In the wake of the so-­called somatic turn in the humanities and social sciences, numerous studies have charted the ways in which anx­i­eties about the social body have been mapped onto the bodies of “deviant” individuals, which then become the subjects of social control and discipline.11 In premodern Japan, the aged body also functioned as a medium onto which anx­i­eties ­were projected and through which ideological strug­gles ­were waged. It is thus no coincidence that the meanings of the aged body underwent their most radical transformations in the turbulent years of the late Heian period, when Buddhist institutions and court intellectuals alike w ­ ere searching for new ways to represent and legitimate power.

xii  Introduction

Although I argue that the transformation of old age coincided with larger po­ liti­cal, cultural, and religious shifts, ­t hese broader patterns cannot in themselves be considered c­ auses. The reimagining of old age was constituted by and must be understood through specific instances of meaning-­making and identity formation. ­Here I follow the insights of the proponents of practice theory, who have shifted scholarly attention away from charting the structures that order a given society to the question of how individuals and collectives seek to work within and, at times, against ­those structures.12 In the pages that follow, I examine concrete examples in which the aged body was used strategically in proj­ects of legitimation and re­sis­tance by both t­ hose writing about elders and ­t hose writing as elders.

Defining Old Age in Premodern Japan At the outset it seems reasonable to ask at what age a person in premodern Japan would have been considered old, but the answer differs depending on w ­ hether we rely on a l­ egal, medical, or ceremonial framework. Depending on the context, old age was said to begin at the age of thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy.13 This variability underlines one of the central points of this work: that old age had vari­ous definitions and meanings. Calling oneself or another old was never a s­ imple act of describing an objective fact—it was an act of repre­sen­ta­tion, identity formation, and social positioning. Although some texts sought to generalize and identify the onset of old age with a par­tic­u ­lar de­cade of life, in the case of individuals, old age was more often defined by the presence of certain ste­reo­t ypical physical characteristics, such as a bent back or wrinkles, than by the number of years that person had lived. Premodern authors w ­ ere acutely attentive to the vis­i­ble, auditory, and, occasionally, olfactory aspects of the aged body. Thus, men or ­women who ­were portrayed as successful prac­ti­tion­ers of the arts of longevity or immortality, who maintained black hair and a glowing complexion into their seventies, eighties, or beyond, ­were not deemed elders. Similarly, even gods or immortals who ­were described as having existed for eons would still be referred to as “youths” if that was the form in which they appeared. ­Those who bore the telltale marks of senescence w ­ ere labeled using a number of terms, many including the character rō 老 (old), also read oi.14 This character appeared in many compound words that served to foreground the otherness of the aged body. We read, for instance, of men and ­women whose voices became “hoarse with old age” (oigaru); p ­ eople “bent over with age” (oikagamaru); or ­people suffering from the “weakness of old age” (rōsui), “farsightedness” (rōgan),

Introduction  xiii

or “vagueness” (oibore).15 Tellingly, we read of elders removing themselves from sight (oikakuru) perhaps out of deference to “the shame of old age” (oi no hazukashisa).16 In certain cases, el­derly men w ­ ere referred to as okina (written 翁 or, less frequently, 叟), el­derly w ­ omen as ōna (嫗, sometimes read omina).17 Texts from the Nara period forward reserved t­hese terms for elders who w ­ ere perceived to be especially base, strange, or outlandish. Fukutō Sanae observes that in the Heian period ­t hese labels referred to elders who “did not conform to aristocratic common sense, ­were of low social standing, had unusual talents, or whose clownishness inspired curiosity, in other words, elders somehow removed from ‘the world’ or the social order.”18 Emperors, high-­ranking aristocrats, and priests, regardless of their age, ­were never referred to as okina or ōna.19 Paradoxically, ­these ­were also the terms used to designate a handful of el­derly male and female earth gods in Japan’s earliest official chronicles, a subject addressed in chapter 1. Buddhism and other forms of continental knowledge made significant contributions to Japa­nese understandings of old age. Buddhist texts and continental medical traditions commonly depicted the aging body as inherently problematic and then proposed vari­ous solutions. Some solutions required self-­control, spiritual purity, or moral discipline, making the aged body a particularly rich marker of difference, since it could be used as an index of moral worth and spiritual advancement. For many Heian-­period Buddhists, the aged body, as a body that vividly displayed the effects of time, became a tacit symbol of the temporal realm of samsara—­the profane world of the “six paths,” characterized by impermanence and suffering, along which ignorant beings died and ­were reborn. Certain strains of Pure Land discourse in par­tic­u ­lar promoted a stark vision of the miseries incumbent on the samsaric body, while at the same time holding up the changeless, pure, and hermetic bodies of t­ hose born in Amida’s Pure Land as goals t­ oward which to strive.20

Of Margins and Limens One of the most significant ways the aged body was employed to articulate distinctions was its use in distinguishing between centers and margins. In order to produce a vision of Japan as a centered “realm ­under heaven” (tenka), the aged body was at times appropriated to symbolize the social and spatial margin. But just as the aged body was critical in elucidating this geographic imaginary, in ­later centuries it became just as useful in challenging ­t hose visions. Scholars often describe the status of ­t hose relegated to the social periphery as one of liminality—an analytic concept widely employed by Victor Turner to

xiv  Introduction

describe the special characteristics of individuals and groups inhabiting areas conceived as bound­aries, “betwixt and between” the temporal and spatial zones in which ­human interactions ­were ordered and structured.21 Turner described how, due to their extra-­mundane existence, p ­ eople of liminal status could be seen as possessing an aura of the sacred.22 In an influential essay on the medieval Japa­ nese life cycle, Kuroda Hideo drew on this concept when he described both childhood and old age as life stages that stood symbolically between the realm of fully fledged adults (ichininmae) and the realm of the gods and buddhas (shinbutsu). According to Kuroda, the liminal status of elders and ­children and their perceived proximity to the other world helps account for the widespread perception that ­children and elders had a deeper connection to the sacred than normative ichininmae ­humans.23 In addition to Kuroda’s work, studies of sacred elders (sei naru rōjin) conducted by folklorists such as Yamaori Tetsuo and Miyata Noboru have also been based on the premise that the el­derly have been interpreted as liminal beings.24 However, such an approach runs the risk of presenting the el­derly as a monolithic social category. Treating premodern Japa­nese elders as essentially liminal elides impor­tant distinctions between elders. Sekizawa Mayumi warns that such sweeping assessments overlook what Katata Jun called “subcultures” of old age—­ differences based on ­factors such as social class, gender, occupation, or geo­graph­ i­cal region.25 Attention to ­t hese subcultures and subcategories leads to an awareness that not all elders w ­ ere equally disengaged from the social realm, and not all who attained the status of outsider ­were able to enjoy the aura of sacrality that their liminal status was supposed to confer. Rather, we see that, just as ­t here w ­ ere va­ri­e­ties of elders, ­t here ­were va­ri­e­ties of liminalities, and the meanings of social disengagement varied according to context and according to the motivations of ­t hose who represented o ­ thers or themselves as elders. This book is dedicated to understanding ­t hese inconsistencies—­especially the dif­fer­ent meanings liminality and marginality acquired in dif­fer­ent historical contexts. It is dedicated to explaining why it was only in the mid-­eleventh ­century that the aged body, having been subjected to marginalization for centuries, began to be imbued with the sacred power that presumably should have always been its due. To understand t­ hese disparities, it is impor­tant to treat marginality not as some essential characteristic but as a product of social practices. The marginality of the el­derly or of a par­tic­u­lar elder was never a given, but was in a constant pro­ cess of being constructed, negotiated, and reconstituted in specific texts and practices, ­whether an author was describing his or her own reactions to growing old or depicting an aged statesman, an aged beggar, or an aged god.26 By approaching old age and the repre­sen­ta­tion of old age as performative acts, we can begin to see

Introduction  xv

how authors utilized available cultural resources to shape images of the aged to suit their own par­tic­u ­lar interests, with each case representing a complex confluence and collision of expectations and desires.

Sources and Approaches This study treats a wide variety of materials. Although a major focus is the manner in which the image of the aged body was used to make meaning in religious texts—­including doctrinal works, legend collections, miracle tales, and other genres of Buddhist lit­er­a­t ure—­t he authors and compilers of ­t hese texts, even when they claimed the mantle of Buddhist renunciants or “world-­leavers,” remained part of their broader social and cultural milieus and did not confine themselves, in their own reading, to Buddhist texts. Furthermore, it is clear that throughout the premodern period even self-­proclaimed recluses had extensive contacts, depending on their own social positions, with courtiers, warriors, provincial governors, estate man­ag­ers, artisans, fishermen, and other commoners, including ­those of low status, such as beggars, shrine/­temple menials (jinnin), and outcasts (hinin). While I see religious discourse as the prime mover in reimagining old age, certain laypeople, including poets, court scribes, mid-­ranking officials, and scholars, had a major role in the formation of key legends featuring aged avatars. Thus, even though our modern academic disciplines are or­ga­nized such that certain genres of writing are more likely to fall u ­ nder the purview of the historian or literary specialist than the scholar of religious studies, I have cast a wide net. Of course the term “religious” itself, when applied to premodern Japa­nese texts, brings certain unhelpful associations. Whereas it is now common to imagine religion as a distinct sphere of activity in which an individual claims affiliation with one par­tic­u­lar tradition or sect, or pledges exclusive devotion to a par­ tic­u ­lar doctrine or deity, in premodern Japan, religious concepts and concerns seeped into vari­ous aspects of everyday discourse and practice, and any par­tic­u­ lar individual was likely si­mul­ta­neously involved in multiple devotional activities and cultic networks.27 Some of the sources examined in the chapters that follow would t­oday be regarded as self-­evidently “religious”: doctrinal works, legends that promoted par­tic­u­lar holy sites (engi), or genres of Buddhist didactic lit­er­a­ture, including accounts of propitious rebirths (ōjoden), explanatory tales used in sermons (setsuwa), and hagiographies (den). But I also employ other types of sources, such as official histories, l­egal codes, diaries, vernacular court fiction, and poetry. Moreover, I examine materials that defy categorization according to a binary model of “religious” versus “secular” lit­er­a­ture: the poetic travel diaries

xvi  Introduction

of aged pilgrims (kikō) and theoretical and dramatic works from Noh—­a dramatic form that claimed to have its origins in religious ritual. Taking such a wide view reveals in­ter­est­ing confluences. For instance, we find that certain narratives that appear in engi and setsuwa collections flowed freely across historical and literary genres, and that the key players in promoting the image of white-­haired deities ­were often court literati. One other type of intertextuality deserves attention ­here. Throughout the period u ­ nder examination, continental texts w ­ ere highly influential in Japan. For example, China had rich traditions of depicting perfected ­humans as xian (仙 J. sen), commonly translated as “immortals” or “transcendents.” Japa­nese elites displayed a keen interest in literary and medical works that described ­t hese beings. This interface with continental sources had a major impact on Japa­nese views of aging, longevity, and repre­sen­ta­tions of divinity, but it cannot completely explain the medieval Japa­nese tendency to represent divine beings as elders. Premodern Japa­nese authors, while exhibiting clear admiration for continental writings, mined ­t hese sources selectively to find allusions and pre­ce­dents that suited their own requirements. In the earliest and most influential Chinese collections of immortality tales, roughly half the immortals ­were depicted as elders, but the other half appeared as youths brimming with vigor, with black hair and radiant, wrinkle-­free skin. ­There is thus ­little reason to think that interest in Chinese immortals alone could account for ­either the proliferation of tales involving “youthful” immortals we find in early Japan or the glorification of the aged body we find in medieval Japan.28 Similarly, Bo (also Bai) Juyi (772–846), by far the most influential Chinese poet in premodern Japan, often wrote about old age, but his tone was ambivalent, at times celebrating and at times reviling his gray hair. Japa­nese authors writing on the topic of aging could and did choose which poems to quote depending on the mood of their own composition. Other trajectories of continental influence have been described by Kim Hyŏn-uk, who has observed that the majority of Japa­nese okina gods had some connection to kinship groups who traced their origins to the Korean peninsula—­ the implication being that many of ­these legends had Korean roots.29 While I take ­t hese connections to be significant, even if we could demonstrate the peninsular origins of certain divine figures or the tales told about them, it would not necessarily tell us why ­t hese par­tic­u­lar narratives proliferated or how they ­were used in Japan.30 Understanding the origins of certain legends may be relevant as we attempt to track the ways they ­were reworked and rewritten by successive generations, but my true aim is to understand t­ hese narratives in terms of the performative functions they fulfilled in their par­tic­u ­lar historical, social, and po­liti­cal contexts—­

Introduction  xvii

how they served to establish or contest identities, authority, social bound­aries, or ­imagined geographies.31 In adopting this stance I am most indebted to the advocates of practice theory. In par­tic­u ­lar, the work of philosopher-­sociologist Pierre Bourdieu provides a model for how individuals and groups stake out positions within social, cultural, or religious fields and then, through an embodied “feel for the game” or “habitus,” work within or against established social codes to advance their interests.32 Habitus—­t he physically imprinted sets of be­hav­iors, styles of speech, and comportment unconsciously appropriated through a pro­cess of mimesis—­a llows individuals to navigate social interactions but also provides them with a semi-­instinctual sense of how to maximize their cultural and material capital in ­t hese engagements. Bourdieu has noted that the act of writing also engages an embodied sense of the “rules of the game,” and that authors in the act of textually objectifying social relations might intuitively attempt to push back against limitations imposed on them by powers entrenched in social structures.33 Thus, while the authors I study inherited certain sets of associations that told them how elders ­were supposed to feel or act and where elders ­were supposed to be socially “positioned,” many creatively improvised around ­t hose limitations and, in the pro­cess, produced new sets of meanings. Another touchstone for this study has been the field of gender studies, particularly works that have sought to illuminate the constructed and performative nature of seemingly natu­ral, foundational categories such as sex and gender.34 In a similar vein, this study treats old age not as an immutable “natu­ral object” but as a category of knowledge through which ­people seek to understand themselves and o ­ thers.35 And just as per­for­mance theorists of gender have argued that the styles of adornment, speech, or comportment that cultures associate with maleness or femaleness come to be regarded as natu­ral only through repeated instances of enactment, the styles of expression and be­hav­ior expected of elders in early and medieval Japan w ­ ere not natu­ral or given. Old age was also an identity to be performed. While the focus of this book is on repre­sen­ta­tions of aged o ­ thers, we also examine texts in which old age figured in acts of self-­representation. In early Japan, “writing old” often required highlighting one’s physical ailments and social alienation. In certain circumstances, however, and increasingly in the medieval period, ­t hose adopting the persona of the elder could utilize available resources (particularly Buddhist ideologies) to craft potentially authoritative identities. In illuminating and explaining the disjunctions between early and medieval pre­sen­ta­tions of old age, I am cognizant that historical and cultural change is never characterized by bright lines and clean breaks. Tropes have a life of their own and continue to exert influence long ­after the original conditions that led to

xviii  Introduction

their emergence have passed. While this study seeks to compare what might be described as two distinct “cultures” of old age, I have done my best to pres­ent ­t hese cultures in their own complexity. At no time was ­t here a perfectly fixed, stable, uniformly agreed-to way of being old. ­There was as much contention over the meanings of old age in early Japan as t­here was in medieval Japan. The story, therefore, is not of one meaning giving way to another, but of one way of framing the debates and negotiations over meaning being joined and then overshadowed by new ways of framing ­those debates and negotiations—­a re­orientation of the axes along which dif­fer­ent positions in ­t hese negotiations ­were arranged. And while my approach is informed by theories of practice and per­for­mance, I have tried not to be overly beholden to them; I am more interested in describing the vari­ous ways ­people made old age meaningful than in attempting to fit my data into a single theoretical scheme.36

Buddhism versus Buddhisms; Transformation versus Transformations Buddhists played a decisive role in reimagining the aged body in medieval Japan. Since one of the most striking features of this shift was the sudden proliferation of aged kami—­a term usually reserved for Japa­nese deities—it might strike some readers as odd that I label this a Buddhist transformation. But in the period u ­ nder examination, aside from the activities of the governmental Council of Kami Affairs (Jingikan) and sacerdotal lineages attached to major shines, rites of kami veneration ­were performed for the most part by Buddhist priests within a Buddhist intellectual framework. It was Buddhists, as well, who did the bulk of speculative writing about the gods. Thus, while many of the gods who ­were re­imagined as elders are t­ oday associated with institutions designated “Shintō,” the premodern manipulations of the images of ­t hese gods almost always occurred in texts produced by or for Buddhist institutions. Buddhist authors and lay authors recording Buddhist legends ­were the first to use the aged body as a new means of symbolizing power. Furthermore, it was Buddhist ideology that provided complex theories of embodiment that formed the backdrop for shifting repre­sen­ta­tions of the sacred. The transformation of the image of ­t hese gods was intimately related to theories of honji suijaku, which held kami to be manifestations (suijaku) of buddhas or bodhisattvas, who served as their “original ground” (honji). It was in the combinatory milieu of ­t hese shrine-­temple complexes that Japa­nese gods ­were first given the visages of old men. However, we should not treat Buddhism as a monolithic entity. Although the title of this work refers to “Buddhism” and the “transformation” of old age, perhaps

Introduction  xix

a more accurate title would have invoked “Buddhisms” and “transformations.” Indeed, the trope of the otherworldly okina was born in large part out of the tensions between dif­fer­ent Buddhist factions as they strug­gled to establish the grounds for their authority. Although never the center of explicit debate, the aged body, since it was regarded as particularly subject to pollution, sickness, death, and decay, served as a symbol of impermanence, the ­human condition, or samsara in general. It thus became a medium through which authors could articulate competing opinions about the nature of this world and the next, the meanings of purity and pollution, appropriate attitudes ­toward impermanence, and the efficacy of a par­tic­u­lar doctrine or practice to achieve transcendence.

Chapter Summaries This book is divided into two parts. ­These parts are thematic, but they also proceed in a roughly chronological fashion. Part 1, “Making Elders ­Others,” comprises chapters 1, 2, and 3 and investigates the ways the aged body was used as a symbolic scapegoat against which to define and reinforce the sacred and po­liti­cal authority of the court in Nara and Heian Japan. Chapter 1 examines repre­sen­ta­ tions of the aged body in some of Japan’s earliest texts in light of the religious and po­liti­cal ideologies they employed to produce an image of Japan as a realm or­ga­ nized around the axial figure of the emperor. This involves an exploration of early Japa­nese myths, in which aged male and female earth gods ­were used to represent ­peoples of outlying provinces in contrast to the awesome, youthful, vital bodies of the heavenly ancestors of the sovereign. Chapter 2 provides an analy­sis of the rhe­toric employed in official retirement petitions (chijihyō) and poems appearing in imperial anthologies, in which authors strategically ­adopted the persona of the elder as outsider to enhance their prestige as a poet, serve their po­liti­ cal interests, or both. Chapter 3 provides an analy­sis of two Heian-­period legends in which the aged body was used to represent otherworldy beings associated with death, disease, pollution, and dangerous liminal zones. Although t­ hese legends represent some of the first instances of the reemergence of elder gods in the late-­ Heian period, their portrayal of the aged form has more in common with earlier Japa­nese treatments of old age as a mark of negative distinction than with the glorified elder divinities of medieval legend. Part 2, “Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan” (chapter 4 through chapter 7), surveys early medieval and medieval Buddhist legends, hagiographies, and literary and dramatic works in which the aged body was presented in positive terms, despite its problematic nature. Chapter 4 looks at Buddhist didactic tales that depicted elders with the power to overcome distinctions between purity and

xx  Introduction

defilement. In chapter 5 and chapter 6, I turn to Buddhist engi and other religious texts in which buddhas, bodhisattvas, local kami, and foreign deities ­were depicted as okina, some of whom engaged in activities generally considered to be polluting as well as morally troubling. Significantly, some of the earliest texts featuring gods and buddhas as okina ­were compiled not by high-­ranking Buddhist priests but by less eminent religious prac­ti­tion­ers and mid-­ranking scholars who served reigning and cloistered emperors. Furthermore, ­t hese texts featured legends that w ­ ere not derived from the Buddhist canon or other “official” sources but from the experiences of p ­ eople who had long been marginalized: lower-­ ranking nobles of the provincial governor class, religious institutions that existed near the periphery of Buddhist “gates of power,” unofficial beggar priests, outcast mendicant preachers, and underclass lay communities attached to shrine-­temple complexes through ties of patronage or ser­v ice.37 I argue that as an emblem of all that po­liti­cal and religious elites had sought to repress and exclude—­weakness, impermanence, and pollution—­the aged body became useful to groups that wished to challenge established social hierarchies and articulations of centers and margins. Chapter 7 examines sources from the fifteenth c­ entury, near the end of what is usually regarded as the medieval period. ­There I return to Zeami, who sought to harness the otherworldly charisma of the aged body in Noh.

Ancient Anx­i­eties and Con­temporary Concerns In the closing de­cades of the twentieth c­ entury, Japa­nese social scientists began to voice the opinion that Japan was approaching a demographic crisis as its population “aged”—as the percentage of the population that was el­derly, retired, or required care grew relative to the percentage of ­those in the workforce.38 This development coincided with a deluge of publications both academic and popu­lar that presented aging and the aged as a “prob­lem.”39 Many of ­t hese works linked the difficulties of aging to the predicament of modernity, assuming that Japa­nese elders had enjoyed a level of care and re­spect in ages past that modern society was ­either unable or unwilling to provide.40 Despite nostalgic dreams to the contrary, however, ­there never was a golden age in the past in which elders ­were universally loved and respected; the historical rec­ord certainly does not reveal anything that might be mistaken for a lost “gerontopia.” Although the aged male body came to be the primary means for representing the earthly manifestations of gods and buddhas, this was not a perennial feature of Japa­nese myth. Furthermore, such repre­sen­ta­tions continued to rely on visions of old men and ­women as somehow uncanny. The aged body continued to be viewed with deep ambivalence throughout the premodern period.

Introduction  xxi

While this study is focused on premodern Japan, ­t here are also broader issues to address. I am fascinated by the ways that religious narratives and practices function to form, shore up, or undermine intuitions about the nature of our physical being. By suggesting that the methods that have proved so fruitful in revealing the influence of religious ideology on gender can also be applied to studying the role of religion in the formation of generational categories, I hope to contribute to and expand the horizons of a subgenre of works focusing on the history of religion and the body. I also intend to contribute to conversations about how ­those who study Japa­nese religion might approach their data. Recent de­cades have seen scholars of premodern Japa­nese religion engage more fully in examining the ways that religious institutions functioned as social and po­liti­cal forces in Japa­nese history. In addition, while this study is attentive to the ways premodern religious institutions functioned as “power blocs” (kenmon), working to legitimate their authority and amass material resources, it also seeks to describe another level of materiality. By disclosing the role that religious ideas and practices played in the formation of what might be called the habitus of aging at vari­ous historical junctures, I hope to illuminate yet another way that ­t hose who used ­t hose ideas or practices made their impact felt beyond the walls of the t­ emple or shrine. Fi­nally, I hope this study w ­ ill be of interest beyond the circle of specialists in religion or Japan. In the twenty-­first century, aging is considered primarily a question of biology. This is all the more reason to stress the extent to which old age is also a cultural product, especially as what might be called the “medical-­ nutritional-­industrial complex” stokes dreams of preventing and eventually defeating aging altogether. In the pages that follow we w ­ ill encounter many who held similar dreams, but also dissenting voices that celebrated the aged body even in the midst of its messiness. I hope this book w ­ ill contribute to the recognition that our own quests ­today for eternal youth and virility and our own notions of what is natu­ral for elders to think or feel are also tied to deeper cultural, religious, and po­liti­cal agendas, and that our own self-­understanding need not be completely determined by t­ hese templates. We are just as f­ ree to accept or resist t­ hese frameworks as our pre­de­ces­sors ­were in early and medieval Japan.

PA R T I

Making Elders ­Others in Early Japan

Literary texts from the Heian period vividly depict men and ­women confronting old age and its consequences. The Genji monogatari pres­ents one character in particular—­t he Akashi priest—­who epitomizes the complex and contradictory qualities that ­were ascribed to this life stage in early Japan. In the Akashi chapter, Prince Genji has been forced into exile and taken up residence in the western region of Suma. Engulfed in a tremendous storm, he dreams of a strange figure beckoning him. This, he understands, is Watatsumi, the Dragon King who rules the seas from a palace beneath the waves. Upon awakening, Genji learns that an aged priest has arrived on a small boat and offered his hospitality in Akashi, farther down the coast. The priest, now in his sixties, is the son of a minister (Daijin), a position near the pinnacle of Japan’s imperial bureaucracy. Having achieved the respectable office of ­M iddle Captain of the Imperial Bodyguards, however, he opted to remove himself from the capital, volunteering to fill the post of governor of the province of Harima. The priest eventually retired from that post as well, remaining in the province to live out his remaining years as a lay priest (nyūdō). In some ways, the old priest’s ­career exemplifies the paradigmatic life course for noble men and ­women of classical and medieval Japan, tracing a trajectory from secular life and worldly duty to retirement and tonsure, mirrored geo­ graph­i­cally in a movement from the center of the capital to the provincial periphery. This passage to the periphery also represented, in the eyes of the Heian courtier, a movement from the civilized, social realm—­t he metropolitan core where personal cultivation and thus po­liti­cal advancement was pos­si­ble—to a wilderness, a zone of po­liti­cal irrelevance and crude customs.1 In this regard, the setting of Harima is significant. Suma, while exotic, was still in Settsu, one of the five inner or “home” provinces (kinai), the region immediately surrounding the capital. By moving from Suma to Akashi, Genji has made a symbolic leap, stepping outside the pacified center of the classical imagination.2

1

2   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

The Akashi priest’s spatial marginality is mirrored in his social marginality. Throughout the tale, he is ridiculed in ways that foreground his old age, reflecting the assumption that the aged body was an inherently asocial body, one whose ugliness and crassness made it impossible to harmonize with the rest of humanity, propelling it outward to the social fringe. Youths laugh openly at his contorted face, his wrinkled, pursed lips likened to a clam shell.3 He is depicted as so lacking in social graces that the narrator at times truncates his soliloquies, judging them to be “tiresome” (urasashiya).4 He is referred to as “stubborn” (uchihigami horebore), “an odd sort of man who does not get along well with p ­ eople” (yo no higamono), an object of disdain (anazurarete).5 Although he retired of his own volition, the old priest is unable to sever all ties to the world and still harbors the desire to see his ­daughter married to someone of po­liti­cal consequence. His per­sis­tent concern for such worldly ­matters only contributes to rumors of his eccentricity. Despite the contempt with which he is treated, however, the old priest is deeply connected to super­natu­ral forces. His miraculous appearance on the shores of Suma following Genji’s dream suggests that he is perhaps an emissary of fate, the Dragon King, or the sea god Sumiyoshi. Scholars have noted parallels between the Akashi sequence and the myth of Hiko-­hoho-­demi no Mikoto from the eighth-­century Kojiki and Nihon shoki.6 In both tales, a member of the imperial line (Genji/Hiko-­hoho-­demi) wanders forlorn by the coast where he encounters an old man who becomes his guide. Both tales involve the marriage of the heavenly prince to the ­daughter of a denizen of the sea (the Akashi priest/Watatsumi) and result in a child whose offspring w ­ ill become ­emperor. At the completion of the Akashi sequence, Genji has married Lady Akashi, the old priest’s ­daughter. And the ­daughter of Genji and Lady Akashi—­ the Akashi Princess—­eventually goes on to become empress, and ­mother of the ­f uture emperor.7 We are left with a strange composite image of the Akashi priest; he is at once a foolish, marginal creature, exiled from the center and, at the same time, an other­ worldly agent, who serves to perpetuate the royal line. It is impor­tant to note that the latter reading only fully emerged in the medieval period—­a time in which the aged body increasingly came to be used as a symbol of otherworldly powers.8 Unlike medieval legends, the Genji monogatari itself provides no clear revelation that the Akashi priest was anything other than a strange old man. Once he learns that his grand­d aughter ­w ill be an imperial consort he bids a tearful farewell to his attendant monks and heads off alone into the mountains, presumably to die. In this, the Genji monogatari adheres to classical-­era conventions in its treatment of old age as an all-­too-­mundane form of existence.

Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan   3

The tensions revealed h ­ ere ­were also pres­ent in other early texts, most signi­ficantly in Japan’s earliest collections of myths. The following chapters examine how the aged body came to function in the early Japa­nese imagination as a figure of powerlessness, social alienation, and marginality, but also as an impor­tant symbolic ele­ment in the construction and legitimation of the imagined center.

C HA P T E R ON E

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors The Uses of Old Age in Early Japa­nese Myth

Nara-­and Heian-­period texts—­including diaries, literary works, collections of poetry, and official chronicles—­regularly associated old age with humiliation, social alienation, po­liti­cal marginalization, physical enfeeblement, disease, filth, and the imminence of death. At least among the literate, old age was treated with deep ambivalence, often as ­little more than a cause of misery and despair. It is thus surprising to note that Japan’s earliest extant writings—­t he Kojiki of 712, the Nihon shoki of 720, and numerous gazetteers ( fudoki) of the early eighth ­century—­nonetheless represented a handful of kami as old men and w ­ omen.1 Scholars have theorized that the association of the aged body with godliness indicates that elders in pre-­Nara and early Nara society must have been held in high regard, perhaps acting as shamans or clan chieftains.2 However, far from the exalted status their deification might suggest, even in ­t hese early myths in which elders figured as gods, they ­were associated not with power but with marginality. The aged body was made to serve the rhetorical and narrative imperatives of texts whose main purpose was to legitimate the burgeoning royal tradition of the Yamato court. In contradistinction to the glorious, potent, and youthful bodies of the heavenly royal ancestors, the gods of boundary p ­ eoples ­were presented as elders to underline their nonthreatening, submissive status. Attention to the symbolic role of the body in ­t hese early texts illuminates not only the meanings they projected onto dif­fer­ent bodily types, but also some of the subtler strategies employed to or­ga­nize space and create social and po­liti­cal hierarchies. Our analy­sis of myths from the Kojiki and Nihon shoki (the so-­called kikishinwa) featuring elder gods begins with an explanation of their identification with marginal spaces and bound­aries, their roles as mediators, matchmakers, and guides, and how the par­tic­u ­lar demands of t­ hese texts required portraying the bodies of t­ hese gods as physically weak, sexually barren, and unsightly. Next we examine how the bodies of the legendary and proto-­historical descendants of heavenly and earthly deities w ­ ere described in ­these texts, paying par­tic­u ­lar attention to the anomalous case of the Emperor Seinei, the only heir of the sun

5

6   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

lineage described in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki as possessing one of the marks of old age: white hair.

Reading the Bodies of the Gods Gods of Heaven, Gods of Earth The Kojiki and Nihon shoki ­were commissioned by rulers determined to produce narratives, in the vein of Chinese dynastic histories, that would establish the legitimacy and sacred authority of the ruling ­house and promote an image of the ruler as more than a mere king ruling a par­tic­u ­lar state (kuni), but as a heavenly sovereign, or tennō, ruling a “realm u ­ nder heaven” (tenka) from a capital situated at the pivot of heaven and earth. Th ­ ese early compendia and the official court histories that followed played a major role in shoring up the early ritsuryō state, an imperial bureaucracy based on Chinese and Korean pre­ce­dents. Although the Kojiki and Nihon shoki utilized a variety of theories of sacred kingship and strategies of legitimation lifted from authoritative Chinese texts, one of the most impor­ tant sought to establish a genealogy linking the contemporaneous line of rulers to a line of heavenly kami originating with the high lord of heaven Takamimusuhi (High Generative-­Force Deity), the sun goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami (­Great Heavenly Shining Deity), her grand­son Amatsuhiko-­kuniteruhiko-­hono ninigi no Mikoto (hereafter abbreviated as Ninigi), and his g­ reat-­grand­son, known posthumously as Jinmu, depicted in the chronicles as the first ­human tennō.3 The rulers who commissioned ­these early texts had to rely on advisers with ties to the Korean Peninsula whose superior literary skill and knowledge of the Chinese textual corpus gave them the necessary qualifications to produce appropriate images of sacred kingship.4 ­These court officials ­were also well versed in Chinese religious and medical knowledge, which colored their pre­sen­ta­tion of the aged body. While the most impor­tant lineage traced in the kikishinwa was that of the imperial line, myths of the sun line ­were interwoven with narratives describing the divine origins of vari­ous less-­eminent kinship groups and their ties to the royal line. Many of the myths that served as raw material for the ­grand narratives at the center of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki ­were the product not of the Yamato line itself, but of the cults of vari­ous lower ranking kinship (uji) and ser­vice groups (be) who often hailed from outlying areas of the Japa­nese archipelago.5 Thus, although the thrust of ­t hese texts was to pres­ent a unified view from the center of a stable, harmonious polity grounded in cosmic princi­ples, they ­were in fact the product of negotiation and compromise.

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   7

Despite the complex conditions under­lying their production, the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bodies of the gods in ­t hese compilations conformed to certain recognizable patterns. First, only one species of gods appeared as elders in ­t hese early myths: earthly deities (kunitsukami). ­These deities ­were “earthly” in two senses. First, they ­were presented in contradistinction to the heavenly deities (amatsukami) who inhabited the Plain of High Heaven (Takama no hara) and from whom the imperial line purportedly descended. Second, the kunitsukami ­were often presented as tutelary gods, associated with par­tic­u ­lar geo­graph­i­cal regions and their inhabitants, or the ancestors of nonroyal clans or ser­v ice groups.6 Although myths of divine descent enhanced the status of vari­ous other kinship groups, distinctions between heavenly and earthly divine ancestors w ­ ere used to signal further gradations of status. ­There is evidence that contention over which gods w ­ ere included in which categories continued into the Heian period. Texts such as the Shinsen shōjiroku, Ryō no gige, Kogo shūi, and Kuji hongi often applied the designation amatsukami to gods that had not been so identified in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, reflecting the recently elevated status of the clans or ser­v ice groups that claimed ­t hose gods as ancestors.7

Elder Earth Gods as Mediators and Matchmakers The el­derly earth gods of the kikishinwa ­were consistently depicted as both marginal and liminal, inhabiting zones external to ­imagined centers, or bound­a ries between regions that had been pacified by the heavenly deities and wild, untamed areas. The narratives further underscored the liminality of ­t hese gods by positioning them as mediators who offered up their lands to scions of the sun lineage (kuniyuzuri) or served as go-­betweens in strategic marriages, facilitating the unification of heaven and earth, land and sea, or this world and the ­u nderworld. Shiotsutsu-­no-­oji serves as the paradigmatic example of an aged earth deity, appearing at several pivotal moments in the early chapters of the Nihon shoki.8 He is the first kunitsukami to cede his territory to Ninigi, who had been commanded to descend from the Plain of High Heaven to rule the earth (the Land of the Central Reed Plains).9 Following Chinese notions of spatial organ­ization, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki sought to map concentric rings around an ­imagined center, with ever-­increasing degrees of authority associated with the innermost zones. As the name “Central Reed Plains” implies, the Japa­nese isles ­were construed in ­t hese texts as the center of the terrestrial sphere. But within the Central Reed Plains, ­there w ­ ere further sets of centers and margins. Although Hyūga, Shiotsutsu-­ oji’s domain, served as the site of Ninigi’s descent and the seat of his original court,

8   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

the texts identify it as a mere “western border-­land” (西偏), not to be regarded as the true center of the land.10 In addition to their marginality, the kikishinwa depicted earth gods inhabiting liminal boundary zones, allowing them to facilitate strategic marriages. Shiotsutsu-­oji, whose name suggests a connection to both the ocean (shio) and the land (tsuchi), appears on the coast, at the border of the land and the sea. This locus becomes significant in a myth in which he assists in the marriage of Ninigi’s son, Hiko-­hoho-­demi no Mikoto, and Toyo-­tama-­hime, the ­daughter of the sea god, Watatsumi, symbolically uniting ­these two realms.11 The ­union of Hiko-­ hoho-­demi and Toyo-­tama-­hime produces a child that eventually becomes the ­father of Jinmu tennō. The kikishinwa also implied that Shiotsutsu-­oji had arranged an alliance between heaven and earth. Immediately a­ fter offering his land to Ninigi, the heavenly deity encountered and married the d ­ aughter of an earthly mountain god.12 Both marriages produced royal ancestors who could claim not only descent from heaven, but also the right to rule the domains described in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki’s creation myths: the Central Reed Plain and the Sea Plain. Although his progeny do not figure directly in the imperial line, a myth concerning Susanowo, the god of wind and storms, follows a similar pattern. A ­ fter committing vari­ous offenses, Susanowo is banished from the heavens and ordered to rule the land of the dead. Susanowo descends first to the Land of Izumo, where he meets two kunitsukami, Ashinazuchi (Foot Stroking Elder) and his wife Tenazuchi (Hand Stroking Elder). Susanowo saves their ­daughter from a monstrous serpent, marries her, and descends to the underworld. Before departing, however, he grants the two kunitsukami titles, ordering them to govern Izumo in his stead.13 The relationships of suzerainty and fealty mapped in ­t hese myths sought to si­mul­ta­neously mirror and justify relationships between the court and the leaders of outlying regions at the time they ­were being recorded and compiled. The kikishinwa describe a po­liti­cal paradigm in which local leaders (zaichi shuchō) ­were invested with certain rights or titles in exchange for yielding their land to trans-­ local authorities capable of pacifying unruly agents. By arranging marital ties between young ­women of the local community and the rulers who inhabited the core domain (kinai) local leaders further cemented relations between the center and periphery.14 Although in Heian society strategic marriage between members of one’s immediate f­ amily and the royal ­house was a way for aristocratic men to gain influence and po­liti­cal leverage, in the pre-­Nara context, offering ­daughters or s­ isters to court was presented as an act of submission undertaken by conquered parties to demonstrate subjugation to the throne.15

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   9

Earth Gods as Chieftains: Images of Power or Capitulation? As ­t hese patterns of investiture suggest, in Japan’s earliest textual sources, tutelary deities w ­ ere often depicted playing roles that local chieftains (shuchō) are thought to have performed prior to the rise of the ritsuryō state. In addition to arranging marriages, ­t hese deities are depicted greeting representatives of the throne, providing them with information about the local area, and at times acting as guides, signaling their submission to central authority.16 In the Nihon shoki, for example, the ruler Yūryaku is recorded sending an envoy to the Korean kingdom of Paekche, who encountered “a god of the country (kunitsukami), assuming the form of an old ­woman,” meeting the envoy on the road and providing him with directions.17 In a similar fashion, the Bungo fudoki describes Hisazu-­hime (a god marked as female, but whose age is not specified) appearing to receive a royal pro­cession and provide a report on her territory.18 Myths describing interactions between heavenly and earthly deities depicted similar arrangements. Aged kunitsukami ­were often portrayed as the first beings heavenly deities or their descendants encountered when entering a new region. They ­were further portrayed offering their ser­vices as guides. It was Shiotsutsu-­oji who first informed Ninigi that t­ here was “a country h ­ ere,” and who guided Hiko-­ hoho-­demi to the kingdom of the Sea God. According to one etymological theory, Shiotsutsu-­oji’s name can be parsed as “Guide to the Roads of the Ocean.”19 Ninigi’s ­great-­grand­son Jinmu l­ater credits Shiotsutsu-­oji with having informed him of the existence of the land of Yamato, which he would eventually conquer and declare to be the purified center of the world.20 Considering ­these parallels, and given that tutelary gods w ­ ere commonly represented as elders, some scholars have theorized that the leaders of the local pre-­ ritsuryō collectives that produced or ­were represented in ­t hese myths would have also been old men or ­women.21 Even ­after the promulgation of the ritsuryō codes, certain centrally appointed provincial posts ­were understood to be positions for life. ­There is evidence that, given no mandated retirement age, the men who held ­t hese posts served well into old age.22 Although the argument that old men and ­women often served as chieftains or local authorities in the pre-­and early ritsuryō order is persuasive, that fact alone does not fully explain the role that old age plays in t­ hese myths. Certainly it was not the aim of ­t hese narratives to demonstrate the power of elders in pre-­ Nara Japan. In t­ hese myths, el­derly earth gods appear and perform, each time, the same function, yielding their territory and at times their ­daughters to their superiors, descendants of the sun lineage. Standing in for the subjugated p ­ eoples

10   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

of the Japa­nese archipelago, the aged body did not symbolize awe-­inspiring divinity, but powerlessness in the face of the majestic sun line. Another way that old age figured in the kikishinwa as a mark of submission relates to the role of elder gods as matchmakers. Since a major function of ­t hese texts was to establish and fix lineages, since marital relations connoted not just alliance and interrelation but also sovereignty and subjecthood, and since the ability to produce an heir in a timely fashion was presented as a key qualification for rulership, the kikishinwa required certain deities to be gendered and marked according to their reproductive capacity—­t heir virility or fecundity—in order to produce their desired ideological effects. The heavenly deities who accepted marriages instigated by el­derly kunitsukami w ­ ere therefore presented as males in their sexual prime. Furthermore, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki provide extravagant accounts of the fecundity of the entire line of imperial ancestors, beginning with the heavenly deities and continuing down through the generations of legendary ­human emperors from Jinmu forward. To begin with, the name of the high lord of the Plain of High Heaven, Takamimusuhi, suggests vitalistic generative force (musubi).23 Izanagi and Izanami famously gave birth to the land and myriad other deities through their sexual intercourse, their bodies so inherently fecund that even their detritus gives rise to progeny. Izanagi “gives birth” to Amaterasu when she emerges from his left eye as he purifies himself in a river. The sun goddess Amaterasu’s link to fertility—­specifically agricultural productivity—­hardly bears explication. The chronicles portray the heavenly grand­son Ninigi as so sexually potent that even he has trou­ble believing it.24 Impregnating his wife ­after just one night together, he doubts that he can ­really be the ­father. When his indignant wife proves her faithfulness, Ninigi declares that he, in fact, knew that the child was his, but wanted to allay the doubts of ­others: “I wished to let every­body know that [ . . . ​] a Heavenly Deity can cause pregnancy in one night.”25 In contradistinction to this parade of fecundity, the elder gods who offer up ­daughters in ­t hese myths pose no pos­si­ble threat to the sun lineage. In keeping with Chinese naturalist and medical knowledge that formed an impor­tant backdrop to official documents composed in the de­cades leading up to the Nara period and beyond, one of the key defining traits of old age (rō) was a depletion of vital pneumas (Ch. qi; J. ki) and the weakening of crucial ki conduits resulting in the cessation of reproductive viability in both men and ­women, as well as a withered or desiccated body, graying and thinning hair, wrinkled skin, pale complexion, weakened teeth, and other symptoms.26 Placing earth gods beyond procreative age, rendering them sexually and, to a degree, po­liti­cally impotent, took them out of sexual competition with the heavenly deities ­t hese texts sought to promote. Given the age at which ­t hese earth deities ­were depicted, it becomes a

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   11

violation of medical and narrative logic for a heavenly deity or emperor to offer a son or a ­daughter to them. The unidirectional flow of fealty ­t hese texts construct was thus made natu­ral, rendering any alternative course inconceivable.

Straw Raincoats and Ugly Elders Fecundity and barrenness was just one of many sets of oppositional categories ­t hese texts employed to draw a bright line between the gods of heaven and the gods of earth. Descriptions of the beauty or ugliness of t­ hese divinities w ­ ere also part of this larger proj­ect of differentiation. In this regard, myths involving the earth deity Shihinetsu-­hiko are instructive. The Nihon shoki describes Jinmu, on his campaign to conquer the lands between Hyūga and Yamato, encountering Shihinetsu-­hiko fishing off the coast of Bungo.27 L ­ ater, Jinmu and his entourage come to the district of Uda, where a local chieftain, Ukashi the Younger, pledges his loyalty and reports on the lay of the land ahead.28 He warns that ­t here are tribes of rebels or bandits in the province of Yamato and advises Jinmu, before proceeding, to fashion platters out of clay from the peak of Mount Kagu and use them to make offerings to the gods. Jinmu ­orders Shihinetsu-­hiko to don “ragged garments and a sedge hat and cloak (minokasa 蓑笠) to disguise himself as an old man. He also had Ukashi the Younger cover himself with a winnowing tray 箕 to assume the appearance of an old w ­ oman.”29 Shihinetsu-­hiko and Ukashi approach the e­ nemy, who are somehow fooled by their makeshift disguises. The bandits ridicule them, calling out, “What an ugly (minikui) old man and ­woman!” Regarded as no threat, the two pass through their lines, obtain the red clay, and deliver it to Jinmu’s encampment. Scholars have observed that taking possession of the clay from Mount Kagu was intended to represent Jinmu’s owner­ship of the land.30 ­Here is perhaps the most explicit example of an earth deity handing over land (in this case in the form of ­actual earth) to the ruler. I would like to return to one of this episode’s most intriguing features: the laughter of the bandits when confronted with the old man and ­woman. Just as the kikishinwa presented aged earth gods as essentially impotent, sidelined by a series of potent imperial ancestors, the laughter of the bandits further marks the aged body as nonthreatening—­disqualified from the military contests that would decide who would rule the Central Reed Plains. The old man and ­woman are allowed to pass ­because they are perceived to be constitutionally incapable of involving themselves in worldly strug­gle. Not only does the laughter reinforce the notion that el­derly earth gods are inherently inferior, it also points to the fact that ­these texts sought to pres­ent the aged body as fundamentally heteromorphous—­a strange, nonstandard form of embodiment.

12   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

In this regard, the use of sedge hats and raincoats (minokasa) in this narrative is significant. Many scholars, beginning with Orikuchi Shinobu, have commented on the complex symbolism of the minokasa.31 The first time we encounter this garb in Japa­nese myth is in the episode in which Susanowo, having committed acts of pollution, is banished and sent off wearing a minokasa. We read that “ever since that time p ­ eople have avoided entering the h ­ ouse of another wearing a sedge hat and a grass raincoat.”32 In this instance the minokasa is clearly associated with both banishment and pollution (Susanowo’s crime).33 ­These and other tales strongly suggest that the minokasa was closely connected with beggars and outcasts in the premodern imagination.34 It is significant, therefore, that Shihinetsu-­hiko and Ukashi are transformed into elders by donning the minokasa, once again correlating the aged body with low status and marginality, conjuring visions of elders as quin­tes­sen­tial outsiders.35 Presenting ­t hese elders as ugly and laughable was consistent with the other ways in which the kikishinwa utilized the aged body to serve as a foil for the bodies of heavenly imperial ancestors. Where earth gods w ­ ere weak, heavenly deities ­were strong; where earth gods ­were laughable, heavenly deities inspired fear and awe.

The Heavenly Bodies of the Sun Lineage Producing the Normative Body of the Imperial Ancestors Since one of the most impor­tant strategies employed in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki to legitimate the Japa­nese imperial h ­ ouse was linking the current monarch and his or her progeny genealogically to power­f ul, life-­giving heavenly deities, the repre­sen­ta­tions of ­these heavenly ancestors in terms of both their moral and physical qualities took on heightened significance.36 Royal ancestors needed to be portrayed in ways that would reflect positively on the current occupants of the throne. However, aside from their virility, discussed above, we find few concrete descriptions of the physical attributes of the heavenly deities or the line of mythical founding emperors who w ­ ere said to have descended from them. Imperial heavenly ancestors w ­ ere commonly marked only as awesome (indicated by the prefix mi 御, commonly translated as “august”) and beautiful.37 When Toyo-­tama-­hime first encounters the divine ancestor Hiko-­hoho-­demi, for instance, she reports to her f­ ather that she has encountered “a noble stranger of no ordinary build.”38 In a variant of this episode, she describes him as follows: “His countenance is very beautiful, and his form comely. He is surely no ordinary person.”39 The exceeding beauty of the consorts of the heavenly deities was also often emphasized. For example, Toyo-­tama-­hime herself was described as “a beautiful ­woman, whose countenance was such as is not anywhere to be seen.”40

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   13

Much of what we learn about the bodies of imperial ancestors is through a via negativa; the chronicles presented vari­ous “­others” who w ­ ere meant to compare unfavorably with the heavenly deities. One non-­Yamato group, the Tsuchigumo, for instance, was singled out as particularly ill-­proportioned, described possessing short torsos but long arms and legs.41 For torsos to be “short” or arms and legs to be “long,” of course, requires some i­ magined standard. Although never explic­itly described, the bodies of the descendants of the sun line and, by association, their ­people, the Yamato, became the norm against which all ­others ­were mea­sured. Kim Hyŏn-uk observes that non-­Yamato p ­ eople ­were described in gazetteers and official chronicles in a manner that highlighted, from the perspective of the center, what amounted to their heteromorphism, ascribing to them animalistic be­ hav­iors or physical characteristics. For instance, the Chinese characters designating the intransigent Emishi, 蝦夷, identify them as pest-­like, with the first character including the insect radical 虫, also used in words for “shrimp” or “toad.”42 The Tsuchigumo w ­ ere saddled with a name suggesting “mud spiders” (土蜘蛛). ­These labels followed the Chinese practice of naming ­peoples inhabiting border zones with characters containing animal radicals, indicating their bestial nature compared with subjects of the civilized central kingdom.43 In the Japa­nese case, some of the most prominent examples of this strategy of differentiation through dehumanization come during descriptions of Jinmu’s conquests. Jinmu and his entourage encounter a series of tutelary deities and ­peoples who possess tails, or are captured and killed en masse using a method usually reserved for animals, in nets. The Tsuchigumo ­were described living in pits, highlighting their primitive proto-­humanity.44 Outlandish dwelling places ­were another common trope in Chinese texts depicting the otherness of p ­ eople at the bound­aries of the empire, or ­t hose who lived in periods prior to the civilizing force of ancient sage-­rulers. Having pacified the Yamato plain, Jinmu reflects on the areas of his tenka that remain in a savage state, where “­people’s minds are unsophisticated [and they still] roost in nests or dwell in caves.”45 When placed in this context, we see that for the purposes of t­ hese texts, as ancestors or tutelary gods of subjugated ­peoples, the aged bodies of the kunitsukami served as yet another, perhaps less extreme, version of a nonstandard body type with which to represent groups that the compilers wished to position in an outer, inferior situation relative to the Yamato court.46

The Curious Case of the White-­Haired Tennō Considering the degree to which old age was employed in ­t hese texts as a means of “othering,” it is perhaps not surprising that imperial ancestors and their heavenly forebears ­were never depicted growing old. Heavenly deities like Ninigi

14   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

became mortal once they descended to earth, but ­t hese narratives made no mention of any period of senescence.47 Biographies of several generations of ­human rulers following Jinmu followed a similar pattern. Interestingly, t­ here was one emperor in the early section of the chronicles whose name identified him as “white haired” (shiraka), one of the characteristic marks of old age. The Kojiki pres­ents a Prince Shiraka, one of the sons of Yūryaku, taking the throne as Shiraka-­ no-­ōyamato-­neko-­no-­Mikoto (白髪大倭根子命).48 Posthumously identified as Seinei tennō, his reign is short, and he is recorded producing no heirs. Given the rhetorical emphasis in ­t hese texts on the vitality of the imperial line, the rec­ord of Seinei represents a glaring anomaly. Although the rec­ord of a presumably white-­haired imperial ancestor unable to produce an heir deviates significantly from the ideological thrust of ­these texts, in the context of the broader genealogical map laid out in the Kojiki, Shiraka’s name and infertility actually serve impor­t ant strategic aims. Specifically, the compilers needed to justify a detour from the direct line of descendants of the quasi-­mythical sage-­rulers Ōjin and Nintoku to the line of Keitai, the g­ reat king who could be reliably linked to the dynasty for whom the Kojiki and Nihon shoki ­were produced, but whose connection to Ōjin was tenuous. Keitai was said to have been a fifth-­generation descendant of Ōjin, but none of the intervening links in the genealogical chain are named—­a unique occurrence in the chronicles. Many scholars believe that Keitai was, in fact, the founder of a new dynasty with no blood ties to earlier g­ reat kings, and that the chronicles not only manufactured his descent from Ōjin, but also attempted to explain his succession as a necessary response to the failure of Ōjin’s main line. The Kojiki and Nihon shoki identified Shiraka/Seinei, and his distant cousin Buretsu, as the sage-­k ing Ōjin’s final direct descendants, but t­ here are serious doubts about the historicity of their reigns.49 Buretsu was famously depicted in the Nihon shoki as a sadistic tyrant, whose lack of redeeming qualities signified that Ōjin and Nintoku’s abundant virtue had somehow become depleted over the generations.50 Seinei’s position at the other terminal point of Ōjin’s lineage has garnered less scholarly attention. Like Buretsu, ­t here are reasons to suspect that Prince Shiraka never actually reigned.51 This raises the possibility that the compilers of ­t hese texts, looking for fictional rulers to fill narrative gaps, took advantage of a con­ve­niently named prince and sought to signal that he had taken the throne, if not at an advanced age, then at least in a diminished physical capacity, and was thus unable to conceive. Although a long line of commentators have speculated that Shiraka’s name derived from a physical trait, this need not have been the case to have made him strategically useful to the chroniclers. Ōjin was recorded having acceded at the

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   15

age of seventy and in the next year fathering a child, followed ­later by another nineteen offspring. Given the strong connection the early chronicles sought to draw between divine descent, procreative ability, and the right to rule, Shiraka’s name and purported sterility ­were sufficient to imply that he had somehow succumbed to the depleting effects of old age, providing more evidence that the virtue and vitality of the ­great sage-­k ings had somehow become exhausted and rendering the shift to Keitai’s line natu­ral and necessary.52 Attending to the literary quality of t­hese rec­ords, Araki Hiroshi notes that the announcement of Shiraka’s elevation to the rank of crown prince in the Nihon shoki was followed immediately by a brief, enigmatic recap of the legend of Urashimako—­a fisherman who had dwelt for a time in the land of the immortals, but who ended his life exiled from the undying land. Araki notes that the complete version of the tale in the Man’yōshū stressed that once back in the world of mortals, Urashimako had quickly aged. His face grew wrinkled, his hair grew gray, his vitality left him, and he died. The juxtaposition of the announcement that the “white haired” prince would succeed Yūryaku with reference to a legend in which white hair was treated as a symbol of mortality and death served as a clue that Yūryaku’s line had lost its virtue, vitality, and legitimacy and would terminate with his successor, Seinei.53 Depicting Seinei as a less than virile ruler helped justify the transfer of the imperial dignity to a remote lateral branch of Ōjin’s line, but also created its own prob­lems. The depiction gave lie to the notion that imperial ancestors ­were possessed of superhuman vitality. The degree to which this episode was regarded with ambivalence by the chroniclers becomes evident when we compare the Kojiki account of Seinei with his treatment in the Nihon shoki, presented to court eight years l­ater. To begin with, the compilers of the Nihon shoki identify him as Shiraka-­no-­take-­hirokuni-­oshi-­waka-­Yamato-­neko, adding to his name epithets implying both martial prowess (take 武) and youth (waka 稚).54 Furthermore, the Nihon shoki’s rec­ord of Seinei begins with a passage disassociating his white hair from old age, claiming that his hair was white from birth.55 The fact that he was childless, however, was clearly an anomaly the compilers w ­ ere unable to finesse, the genealogical rec­ord having been more or less fixed in the Kojiki.

Vitalizing the Center and “Nourishing Old Age” in the Yōrō Era The care with which Seinei’s white hair was explained away in the Nihon shoki is evidence of a heightened attention to ­matters of the aged body and its symbolic significance in that text, relative to the Kojiki. Neither Ninigi’s first encounter with Shiotsutsu-­oji on the Cape of Kasasa nor Shihinetsu-­hiko and Ukashi the

16   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

Younger’s transformation into elders w ­ ere recorded in the Kojiki. And although Shiotsutsu-­oji appeared in the Kojiki’s treatment of the Hiko-­hoho-­demi myth, his name in that variant, Shiotsuchi-­kami, lacked the characters that would have identified him as an elder. In fact the only earth deities of the Kojiki that are explic­itly described as elders are Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi. The Nihon shoki also displays a heightened sensitivity to portrayals of the vitality of ruler. Although the compilation of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki likely occurred si­mul­ta­neously, it is pos­si­ble that events that occurred in the years ­after the completion of the Kojiki resulted in a more systematic use of life stages to articulate the centrality, authority, and vitality of the imperial line.56 An episode recorded in the third official court history, the Shoku Nihongi (Continued Chronicles of Japan), I believe, sheds light on this issue. In the ninth month of 717, Genshō tennō made a royal pro­g ress to the province of Mino, an area to which a priest had been dispatched in the year prior to the death of her grand­father, Tenmu tennō (r. 673–686), to collect the herb okera (or hakuchi 白朮), which was used in a Daoist-­ style elixir for his consumption.57 In Mino, Genshō was reported to have discovered a pure spring, the ­waters of which tasted like sweet wine (rei) and could purportedly reverse the aging pro­cess.58 The discovery of this spring was given as the impetus for changing the era name from Reiki (sacred tortoise) to Yōrō 養老, literally “nourishing old age.” Changing era names mid-­reign in response to auspicious omens was one of many methods believed to positively affect the fortunes of the court and the nation.59 Scholars have generally taken the reign name Yōrō to mean “nurturing the aged” in a Confucian vein. Chinese texts indicated that virtuous rulers took special care to ensure the welfare of the poor, sick, and el­derly. Although we do find instances of food, medicine, and other gifts being offered to the indigent and elders of all ranks in the Yōrō era, such practices had also been undertaken in earlier reigns, meaning that the new era name did not signal a new policy of nourishing the el­der­ly.60 Given the fact that the era name was changed in commemoration of Genshō’s discovery of life-­restoring ­waters, I would argue that the era name “Yōrō” was intended instead to signal “nourishing longevity.”61 In a proclamation (mikotonori) issued shortly ­a fter Genshō’s return to the capital, the miraculous spring was explic­itly cast in light of an episode from the History of the L ­ ater Han (Ch. Hou Hanshu), in which the virtue of the Emperor Guangwu (5 BCE–57 CE) was sufficient to cause “sweet springs” to appear miraculously around the realm.62 Other Chinese texts indicated that subjects who drank from such springs or partook of local provender fed by their w ­ aters ­were blessed with longevity, providing proof

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   17

of the sovereign’s virtue and of Heaven’s approval of his reign.63 Similarly, Genshō’s proclamation reported that she had washed her hands and face in the w ­ aters of the Mino spring, leaving her skin smooth and relieving her of unspecified pains. The edict further ascribed to ­these w ­ aters the power to change white hair to black, to reverse hair loss, to return vision to the blind, and to cure illness.64 Mirroring the legitimating function ­t hese magical ­waters performed in the Hou Hanshu, it seems that Genshō’s discovery of this auspicious spring was meant to preemptively demonstrate Heaven’s acquiescence to her po­liti­cally unpopular maneuvers, specifically her promotion of Fujiwara no Fusasaki (681–737) to the Council of State (Daijōkan) while his ­father, Fujiwara no Fuhito (659–720), was serving as Minister of the Right.65 This granted the Fujiwara clan an unpre­ce­dented degree of po­liti­cal authority, considering their nonroyal status.66 But Genshō’s pro­gress to Mino differed in impor­tant ways from Chinese textual pre­ce­dents. In ­those examples, the ruler’s virtue contributed to the longevity of his subjects. Why, then, did Genshō herself need to travel to the site of the miracle and personally partake of the ­waters? Although rulers like Tenmu and Genshō clearly received elixirs due to a belief in their practical efficacy, t­ hese potions also served as symbols of power.67 Tenmu was the first Japa­nese monarch known to have received an immortality draught, staged to create an image of health and vitality in the face of what was to prove a terminal illness. Unlike Genshō’s sweet spring, however, Tenmu’s elixir was not explic­itly framed as youth-­restoring. Whereas Tenmu had been given a potion to save his life, Genshō, who by traditional reckoning was entering her fourth de­cade of life around the time of her pro­gress, had found a spring to restore her youth. To understand the enhanced emphasis on the youth-­restoring qualities of this spring, we should note that far from inaugurating an era of kindness t­ oward the el­derly, the Yōrō saw new policies enacted that served to disenfranchise aged officials of the ritsuryō state. In the years Fujiwara no Fuhito was at the height of his power, the Council of State—to which he had been attached since 708—­instituted rules that allowed for the removal of el­derly officials when they had been deemed unfit for ser­v ice. A directive (sei) issued in 713 gave governors the right to force their subordinates into retirement if old age had rendered them incompetent to fulfill their duties, stipulating that district officials (gunji) of seventy years old and “feeble, with weakened qi or bodies, their spirit wandering or disordered, laid low with serious illness without hope for recovery, uttering mad words, and unfit for ser­v ice, must be examined, sent back to their h ­ ouse, to nurse themselves.”68 Fuhito was also the driving force ­behind the revision of the ritsuryō statutes that resulted in the Yōrō code, completed in 718.69 Paralleling the directive

18   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

of 713, article fourteen of the section of the Yōrō codes that regulated the Buddhist community, the Sōniryō, allowed for appointees of the Office of Monastic Affairs (Sōgō) to be removed by their superiors in case of illness or old age.70 Interestingly, Wada Atsumu also sees Fuhito, his sons, and his allies as the prime movers in arranging Genshō’s royal pro­gress to Mino and in framing the discovery of the spring as evidence of royal legitimacy.71 At the same time the court was issuing o ­ rders that justified removing elders from positions of authority and that implicitly associated old age with potential enfeeblement and incompetence, Genshō was depicted performing ablutions with youth-­restoring ­waters. Publicized in a proclamation and celebrated in the change of era name, Genshō’s encounter in Mino amounted to a public ritual of royal rejuvenation. By portraying the tennō as one in possession of the means of perennial youth, ­t here could be no question of her incapacitation. Taken together, the evidence suggests that in the second de­cade of the eighth ­century court elites began to expand the symbolic vocabulary that had developed greatly ­under Tenmu and Jitō to incorporate a more explicit attention to youth and old age as indices of power and powerlessness. The court ­under Tenmu and Jitō had clothed their reigns in the quasi-­Daoist language of immortality and longevity—­but had employed terminology and meta­phors signaling eternal life and superhuman sagacity that lacked specific age-­graded connotations.72 The years in which the court appears to have added this new symbolic motif to its repertoire of legitimation strategies w ­ ere the same years in which the finishing touches ­were being put on the Nihon shoki.73 The correlation of vitality, youth, and rejuvenation with royal virtue and authority articulated at the inauguration of the Yōrō era accords closely with the ideological uses of youth and old age in that text. ­These w ­ ere also, as I have noted, the years that directives and l­egal codes w ­ ere produced that contributed to the po­liti­cal marginalization of the aged. This is not to say, however, that the symbolic repositioning of the aged body in the reports of Genshō’s pro­gress or in the rewritten myths and legends of the Nihon shoki should be regarded as reactions to t­ hese laws. Rather than treating one f­ actor as the sole cause of the ­others, we should understand this confluence of shifts in the framing of the aged body as complexly interrelated and recursive.74 In each case, t­ hose with the power to craft official histories, stage and publicize auspicious omens, and reshape the ­legal codes, regardless of their inspiration, consciously or unconsciously began to wield old age as a form of difference to further legitimate the ritsuryō state and enhance their control over it. The symbolic positioning of the aged body articulated in the Yōrō era set the stage for the ideological uses of old age in official documents, imperial anthologies, and other examples of court-­centric lit­er­a­ture for centuries to come. Especially

Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors   19

for t­ hose who had an interest in maintaining the imperial state, or in maintaining the illusion of an imperial state, the aged body continued to serve as a foil for the center, a symbol of margins or bound­aries, with white hair and other marks of age suggesting not so much chronological age as weakness, impotence, and social ostracism.

C HA P T E R T WO

“Lamenting Gray Hair” The Poetics of Retirement in Early Japan

Just as the early documents of the ritsuryō state—­its mythohistories and gazetteers—­used the aged body as a symbol for the margins of the realm to produce a par­t ic­u ­lar vision of the center and associate the rulers who dwelt t­ here with the beauty and vitality of bodies in their prime, Nara-­and early Heian-­ period literary works reveal that the meanings assigned to the aged body in t­ hese narratives continued to be promoted by ­those with a vested interest in maintaining the i­ magined geography of the ritsuryō order, or who wished to employ ritsuryō-­ style rhe­toric to advance their own po­liti­cal, artistic, or religious agendas.1 This remained the case even as the institutions of the tennō-­centered polity began to be reconfigured, especially as power shifted away from the throne with the rise of the Fujiwara regency in the ninth c­ entury.2 Th ­ ese uses of old age are particularly clear in depictions of official retirement practices presented in the official chronicles and early court-­sponsored poetry collections. This chapter begins by examining the poetics of retirement exemplified in official Nara-­and early Heian-­ period retirement petitions. We then consider the shift to Buddhist renunciation as the norm for retirees in the Heian period and how earlier images of retirement continued to color t­hese practices. Fi­nally, we explore how tropes employed in retirement petitions—­depictions of the capital as a life-­giving center and associations of the marks of old age with exile from the center—­functioned in other examples of early Japa­nese poetry and prose. Most of the materials examined in this chapter w ­ ere produced in an era dominated by what has been called keikoku shisō, which Ryūichi Abe has translated as “statecraftism”: the Confucian notion that the purpose of lit­er­a­ture and the arts was to praise the virtuous ruler, sharpen the intellectual acuity of bureaucrats, and reinforce the authority of the state.3 Ikeda Genta, who coined the term, sees it as particularly dominant in the eighth and ninth centuries, reaching its zenith during the reign of Saga tennō (r. 809–823).4 But the use of art to reflect the glories of the tennō and his or her reign was not unique to ­t hese centuries, and state-­ centric ideologies continued to color the cultural products of the court throughout the Nara and Heian periods. The ways ­t hese texts situated the aged body in 20

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   21

court-­centric spatial imaginaries had impor­tant ramifications in l­ater periods as well, as new generations of literati working in Buddhist textual genres began the pro­cess of inverting and overturning the meanings that t­ hese texts had ascribed to the aged body.

Retirement and the Ritsuryō Order Based on surviving fragments of the Taihō codes of 701, it appears that this early iteration of the ritsuryō included regulations concerning retirement based on continental pre­ce­dents.5 Retirement from office, referred to as chiji, entailed the submission of a formal request, or chijihyō, to court, with officials of fifth rank and above submitting their petitions directly to the tennō.6 The earliest occurrence of the term chiji is found in the Nihon shoki, in the rec­ord of Emperor Ōjin, its only occurrence in that text.7 Like much of the account of Ōjin’s reign, the description of Japan’s first official retirement straddles legend and history, serving as a kind of charter myth for ­later practices. The Kojiki and Nihon shoki describe Ōjin as a paragon of virtuous rule, who from childhood bore the marks of a sage-­k ing.8 During his reign, a minister, “Ushi, the Kimi of Morogata from the country of Hyūga,” having become “old in years” and unable to serve, retired to his native land.9 It is likely that the compilers of the Nihon shoki hoped to pres­ent this episode as a template for the proper order of t­ hings: ministers would serve u ­ ntil they became “old in years,” at which point they would step down, remove themselves from the capital, and return to their home provinces. The Kojiki and Nihon shoki also rec­ord an example of an old w ­ oman, Okime, who had served at court, being allowed to return to her home province once her “vigor had decayed” and she was “old, infirm and emaciated.”10 Okime’s retirement, however, is not described using the term chiji, reflecting the informal nature of her ser­v ice. Nonetheless her withdrawal fits the pattern: unable to be of further use to the ruler, Okime begs to return to her home in the provinces. The rec­ord of Ushi’s retirement draws several structural oppositions between the aged minister who removes himself to the periphery and the ruler whose supermundane vigor allows him to continue to rule all u ­ nder heaven, well into chronological “old age.”11 First, Ōjin was himself recorded acceding to the throne at the age of seventy, precisely the age at which the ritsuryō codes required retirement. ­Later, on an imperial pro­gress, Ōjin encounters men dressed in outlandish costumes made of deerskins and antlers—­highlighting the uncivilized nature of the periphery—­who inform him that they have been sent by Ushi to offer his ­daughter, Kaminaga-­hime, to the emperor, recapitulating themes in the kikishinwa

22   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

in which el­derly earth gods offered their d ­ aughters in marriage to the heavenly sovereign.12 Scholars have long noted that many power­f ul protagonists of Japa­nese myth ­were portrayed enhancing their authority by claiming w ­ omen from the provinces. Orikuchi identified this as the paradigm of the irogonomi (erotic) hero, able to symbolically possess the land by marrying ­women from vari­ous regions.13 But ­here, in addition to dramatizing imperial possession of the hinterlands, the episode accords with attempts by the early chroniclers to concentrate symbols of youth, beauty, and vigor in the center, while excluding the marks of old age.14 Kaminaga-­hime’s name (Long-­Haired Beauty) attests to her youth and vitality, since long hair was regarded as a mark of sexual attractiveness and was highlighted in the Chinese medical corpus as a sign of fertility.15 In contrast to the centrifugal pull of the el­derly minister to the provinces, the emperor is portrayed returning to the capital with a young w ­ oman.16 Further underlining Ōjin’s undiminished vitality, and thus implicitly his right rule, the Nihon shoki reports that Kaminaga-­hime gave birth to two imperial princes, making Ōjin a ­father well over the age of eighty.17 As the aged body is portrayed finding its natu­ral home at the periphery, youth and vitality are transferred to the center. If this episode was intended as a guide for official retirement practices, ­later court histories demonstrate that real­ity often failed to conform to pre­ce­dent. Officials with sufficient po­liti­cal clout often maintained their positions well past the age of seventy, and el­derly ministers who perhaps earnestly wished to depart from court w ­ ere often pressed to remain in ser­v ice. As courtiers and sovereigns exchanged petitions and responses, they worked with and against paradigms established in the Nihon shoki and Chinese textual sources, adumbrating the possibilities and limitations of the aged.

Chijihyō in the Six National Histories In his classic work on Japa­nese retirement customs, Hozumi Nobushige made an exhaustive survey of court rec­ords and found that 80 to 90 ­percent of ­t hose submitting official petitions requesting retirement did so at or above the age of seventy.18 This conforms to the stipulation in the Yōrō code that officials (kanjin) over the age of seventy ­were expected to retire.19 Although Hozumi’s findings seem to indicate a well-­ordered regime of age-­grading among Nara and early Heian officialdom, they conceal what amounted to ­battles of competing desires, in which chronological age had to be balanced against an official’s a­ ctual physical and ­mental capabilities, his po­liti­cal standing, his wish to maintain his position or withdraw, and the ruler’s need to keep well-­established, experienced allies close by. Official retirement in Nara and Heian Japan was actually less a function of

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   23

chronological age than a question of w ­ hether or not one was believed to be po­liti­ cally v­ iable and competent in one’s duties. We find many examples of rulers who ­were loath to lose older statesmen and would rebuff their repeated requests for retirement.20 In such cases, however, ministers could appeal to the pre­ce­dent that old age rightly meant removal from the center. Although chijihyō w ­ ere official documents, they w ­ ere also, from an early stage, literary exercises demonstrating the erudition of courtiers who could locate appropriate textual examples from Chinese historical and literary sources to express their desires. Representing some of the richest per­for­mances of old age in early Japan, chijihyō extravagantly described the petitioner’s unworthiness to serve the tennō, coupled with his despair at the prospect of withdrawing from court. Occasionally they ­were deemed of sufficient interest to be preserved in the six official court histories (rikkokushi), or in collections of exemplary Chinese prose such as the Honchō monzui or the Honchō zoku monzui, indicating they w ­ ere often seen both as paragons of literary finesse and as examples of proper comportment for ­f uture generations of loyal ministers.21 ­These elegantly worded per­for­mances of old age often concealed agendas that had less to do with loyalty to the throne or to the ritsuryō order than with personal interests. We find many cases in which retirement requests seem to have been made as a display of humility or in order to conform to age-­appropriate be­hav­ior, rather than out of a true wish to leave office. In other cases, the appeal to old age provided a polite cover for ­t hose who wished to remove themselves from court for reasons they did not wish to acknowledge publicly. ­These documents thus demonstrate their authors’ tactical uses of old age to maximize their social, po­liti­cal, or cultural capital. Serving complex and contradictory sets of strategic goals, ­these works are rife with rhetorical tensions. Although masterly works of prose, they portray their authors as doddering fools, associating their old age with illness, physical frailty, and weakened ki—­implying a lack of ­either energy or ­mental clarity.22 Rhetorical tensions ­were also inevitable when courtiers sought to balance claims that retirement would bring them peace and possibly longevity against the need to express sufficient regret that retirement would entail separation from the beloved sovereign and the glorious, life-­sustaining center. The retirement petitions of Kibi no Makibi (ca. 693–775) exemplify ­these tensions. In the ninth month of 770, Makibi, serving si­mul­ta­neously as Minister of the Right and Captain of the Inner Imperial Guards, submitted a retirement petition to Emperor Kōnin (r. 770–781), observing that “the one who is forced to work although his powers are not equal to his responsibilities w ­ ill soon be of no use; the one who is pushed to his limits although his mind is not up to the task

24   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

­ ill certainly make errors in judgment.”23 Although he had requested retirement w at the age of seventy, he had instead received a new assignment. Soon a­ fter, he had been struck by illness. In spite of what Makibi describes as his meager abilities, he continued to rise to higher and higher positions. Old age and illness now envelop me. Even with medical treatment, my condition does not improve. Working in this heavenly office (tenkan) as Minister of the Right is difficult. [ . . . ​] How could I, with this body stricken with disease, have been allowed to disgrace this high position for so long? [ . . . ​] Prostrating myself, I plead to be allowed to retire and remove this obstruction from the paths of the wise. To Your Majesty above, I pray that the virtue of the saintly court (seichō) ­will nourish my longevity; and for myself below, I pray to achieve the heart of the s­ imple fool who knows his limitations.24 Although Makibi argues that his disgraceful aged frame provided the impetus for seeking to remove himself from the heavenly precincts of the palace compound, ­later, unofficial court histories attributed his wish to step down to his support for rival claimants to the throne prior to Kōnin’s accession.25 If this was in fact the case, old age would have provided a useful means of concealing an uncomfortable truth. Apparently Kōnin was only half persuaded by Makibi’s protestations, allowing him to lay down the post of Captain of the Imperial Guards but requiring that he remain as Minister of the Right. The Nihon Montoku tennō jitsuroku of 879 preserves a particularly significant series of memorials submitted in 857 by Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (804–872), one of the most power­f ul figures of his day, requesting retirement from his position as Minister of the Right. Yoshifusa established a pattern, which his nephew and ­adopted heir, Mototsune (836–891), followed, of utilizing the position of regent to the throne to dominate court politics. Mototsune was also the chief compiler of the Montoku jitsuroku. Since Mototsune wished not only to emulate, but also to legitimate Yoshifusa’s activities, it is no accident that so many of Yoshifusa’s chijihyō—­portraying him as nothing more than a ­humble servant of the throne—­ found their way into the text. Yoshifusa’s first petition begins by quoting the Liang dynasty poet, Yu Xin 庾 信 (513–581), comparing himself to an emaciated old ­horse, exhausted from pulling the royal carriage.26 Noting that he had requested retirement in 850, at the time his son-­in-­law, Emperor Montoku, took the throne, but that his request had been rejected, his petition continued:

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   25

Thereupon, Your Majesty’s subject [ . . . ​] exhausted his energy and sincerity, attempting to be worthy of Your Majesty’s ­great graciousness. However, since the past year, old age and ills (rōbyō) have multiplied within me. The beard of Gu Yue 顧悦 became prematurely white, and the words [of refusal] of Zhu Wu 燭武 ­were not ill-­founded. The days and moons have revolved numerous times, and my years have become many; my pres­ent ills have come about in accordance with the princi­ple that fullness invites loss and extremes cause change. [ . . . ​] Humbly I beg that I be relieved of my duties, that I may tend my ills at home. Then, when recovered, I may participate in state affairs beyond the walls and steps leading to the Imperial abode. For an aged subject, this would be the utmost of good fortune. This was declined.27 In the following days, Yoshifusa presented two more memorials expressing his desire to be relieved of office, so that he could return to his “native home.” Although he would face sorrow when forced to distance himself from the emperor, he explained, he needed to remove himself from court to “escape ridicule” in his old age.28 It is doubtful that Yoshifusa would have traveled far to reach his “native home” since most high-­ranking courtiers retired to mansions within the capital. In spite of the proximity many would have maintained to the palace, the authors of chijihyō commonly dramatized the gulf that would come between them and their beloved lord using spatial meta­phors, relying on the image of the retired elder as one who abides in the far-­flung reaches of the realm. The following month, Yoshifusa wrote again of his fear that in his debilitated state he might fail his lord, or be subject to mockery. Although derision was a real concern for any courtiers elevated above their abilities, as the most influential official in the land, Yoshifusa had l­ ittle to fear. Yoshifusa’s petitions represent a tour-­de-­force of humility. All w ­ ere promptly rejected, and ­t here is ample reason to doubt their sincerity. The year he submitted the first of this series of chijihyō, Yoshifusa was fifty-­t hree—­old, but not the full seventy years that was the norm for official retirement. And his po­liti­c al power was only to increase in the years to come. That same month, he was appointed chancellor (Daijō Daijin), the highest position in the ritsuryō state. In 858, the year a­ fter he had painted himself as a weary old man, Yoshifusa was appointed sesshō, regent to his grand­son, the ­f uture Emperor Seiwa. Yoshifusa was the first nonroyal regent, his appointment heralding the beginning of a span of centuries (ca. 850–ca. 1050) during which his branch of the Fujiwara clan would dominate court politics.

26   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

By the mid-­ninth ­century, then, the assumption that old age required removal to the periphery had become such a cliché that courtiers such as Yoshifusa felt obliged to invoke it at appropriate times, even if it was clear to all parties involved that it amounted to nothing more than posturing. ­There was no danger that Yoshifusa’s chijihyō would be accepted, but by presenting himself as a frail old man protesting his unworthiness to serve, he could demonstrate to ­others at court his humility before the sovereign, and thus, paradoxically, his worthiness to serve. And by being repeatedly pressed into ser­v ice, he could also enhance and publicize his strong ties to the throne.

Buddhist Retirement Practices in Early Japan Taking Vows and Leaving Home Through elaborate allusions and overblown language, chijihyō reproduced and ­reinforced normative attitudes about the meanings of old age. They drove home the message that old age entailed decrepitude, unsuitability for the center, and grief over the distance that would inevitably come between their authors and the social, po­liti­cal, and geographic core. Ultimately the cultural significance of practices surrounding official retirement was overshadowed by another mode of late-­life retirement originating in early Japan: Buddhist lay ordination, which nonetheless came to be described in ways that echoed themes first articulated in chijihyō. The earliest references to the administration of Buddhist o ­ rders as a form of retirement in Japan treat it as a means of producing and transferring merit (tsuizen) to one’s parent or superior. This merit was believed to be able to cure diseases, and also to have a positive effect on the well-­being of the spirits of the deceased.29 ­Later, taking the tonsure on the death of one’s lord came to be seen as a means of demonstrating one’s loyalty to the departed.30 Buddhist retirement was also presented as an option for princes who wished to remove themselves from contestation over the throne.31 It eventually became an accepted course of action for ­t hose of all ranks whose frailty or incompetence made them unsuitable for continued ser ­v ice.32 The early chronicles also depict numerous instances in which Buddhist renunciation was undertaken in an attempt to cure the tennō of a disease. This could take the form of individual ordination or mass (possibly forced) ordination (do), sometimes of as many as one thousand individuals.33 Gradually, however, motivations for the tonsure shifted from a desire to produce merit on behalf of one’s ancestors or superiors to a desire to produce merit for oneself. Taking vows to become a Buddhist monk or nun was commonly referred to as nyūdō (entering the way), but also as “home leaving” (shukke) or “abandoning the

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   27

world” (yosute).34 Beginning in the tenth ­century it became customary among the highest ranks of the aristocracy to be ordained on their deathbeds (rinjū shukke) as a last-­d itch effort to effect recovery, or in preparation for a positive rebirth. Generally Heian-­period aristocrats waited u ­ ntil t­ here was no hope of extending life to renounce their worldly status and become a monk, taking their vows only days before death.35 Since shukke was seen as irreversible, ­those at the pinnacle of worldly success w ­ ere understandably reluctant to “abandon the world.”36 Among emperors, practices varied. In 749, Shōmu became the first tennō to take the tonsure immediately following his abdication for reasons unrelated to illness or impending death. But for centuries this remained an anomaly. This began to change in the Heian period, starting with the deathbed tonsure of Ninmyō in 850; among the remaining twenty-­eight sovereigns of the Heian period, eigh­ teen ­were administered Buddhist vows.37 Emperor Uda (r. 887–897) was ordained two years a­ fter his abdication and became the first ruler since Shōmu to spend his final years as a lay renunciant.38 At his death, he had spent more than three de­cades as a Buddhist monk. Importantly, even in retirement, Uda remained po­ liti­cally involved, foreshadowing the post-­tonsure ­career of the power­ful regent Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028). Michinaga shaved his head in 1019 in response to what he believed was a terminal illness. His unexpected recovery resulted in almost nine years in which he remained the most power­ful man in Japan, despite his having laid down his appointments, and despite his status as a world-­renouncer. His example was l­ ater followed by abdicated emperors of the so-­called Insei period of “government by cloistered emperors” (ca. 1050–1185).39 Literary sources from around the turn of the eleventh c­ entury point to similar trends of tonsure among laity of less exalted status for whom death was not imminent. Retirement well in advance of death allowed lay renunciants to expend their full energy on devotional endeavors, providing ample time to perform prayers and other merit-­making activities to secure a favorable rebirth.40 This was in keeping with Hayami Tasuku’s observations that the religious culture of Heian Japan was dominated by a “quantitative ideology of merit,” which held that the more devotional activities one could engage in or sponsor, the more merit one could accrue.41 By the mid-­Heian period, late-­life tonsure appears to have become the norm, at least among the nobility. Among aristocrats, the desire to renounce the world early enough to build merit for the next life required walking a fine line. Taking vows too early invited the resentment of f­ amily members and other dependents, especially t­ hose wishing to advance at court.42 But to remain too long in the world in one’s declining years was to invite derision.43 For ­t hose who lacked sufficient influence to elevate their dependents, refusing to take vows was seen as vanity. Heian lit­er­a­ture provides

28   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

ample examples of ineffectual elders who refused to go gracefully into Buddhist retirement being subjected to ridicule or worse.44 Leaving aside the examples of faux tonsure among supremely power­ful figures such as retired emperors, regents, or chancellors, as a cultural ideal, late-­life renunciation in Heian Japan was strongly associated with po­liti­cal disempowerment. For kugyō—­those of sufficient rank to sit on the Council of State—­deathbed tonsure remained the norm. But for most, since old age brought with it a decline in po­liti­cal fortunes, Buddhist retirement was seen as the natu­ral course. Late-­ life lay renunciation was thus framed in ways that resembled court retirement practices, and many of the discursive conventions developed in earlier centuries to describe court retirement practices w ­ ere now invoked in depictions of late-­life shukke, which thus came to make its own contributions to the classical conceit of old age as a time of despair. As in the case of chiji, the tonsure was often in response to illness or incapacity. Furthermore, becoming a Buddhist renunciant in old age was understood to require removing oneself from the putative center to a less civilized area. Well-­to-do elders could retreat to a private chapel or separate wing within the ­house­hold complex.45 ­Others could afford their own mansions.46 The less fortunate, however, w ­ ere depicted taking up residence in relatively remote ­temples, hermitages, huts, wilderness areas, or, at times, to run-­down zones within the capital.47 While late-­life tonsure was commonly described in Heian and l­ater sources as the fulfillment of a long-­held wish, it was treated, even in t­ hose cases, with deep ambivalence. Originally envisioned as a response to illness, lack of po­liti­cal viability, or imminent death, it retained ­those negative connotations. As in court retirement petitions, even ­t hose whose wealth or influence rendered them retirees in name only still expressed (if only out of a sense of propriety) their misery at departing the world. In spite of many exceptions, shukke was regarded as an irreversible act, removing the retiree from the life he or she had known, taking him or her one step closer to death. Literary treatments of Heian tonsure ceremonies never fail to mention the weeping of all pres­ent.48 For Heian-­period elders, therefore, Buddhist retirement was treated as a source not only of solace, but also of sorrow.

The Poetics of Old Age in Early Japan Placing and Displacing the Aged Body in Early Japanese Poetry Although the chijihyō ­were likely read by very few, the men who composed them ­were often engaged in other literary pursuits as well. Yoshifusa, for example, had

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   29

one of his poems included in the Kokin wakashū (ca. 920), the first official compilation of Japa­nese verse. His entry echoes some of the tropes that he engaged so fluently in his retirement petitions. In the poem, Yoshifusa pres­ents himself as an old man revivified by the presence of his d ­ aughter Meishi (829–900), who, as the wife and ­mother of emperors, connected him to the symbolic youth and transcendence of the imperial line.49 Since Japan’s earliest imperial anthologies of Chinese and Japa­nese verse ­were also products of the court-­centric ideological milieu of the ritsuryō and regency periods, the poems selected for inclusion in ­these collections often employed similar sets of tropes and spatial logics as retirement petitions. Regarded by the literati of l­ater centuries as touchstones of lyrical elegance, the poems in t­ hese prestigious collections can thus not only tell us how the aged body was being ­imagined in the period in which they w ­ ere compiled, but also provide a basis for understanding how their structuring of space, the ­human life cycle, and royal authority came to be reworked or revised in the medieval period. In recent de­cades, Japan’s earliest imperial anthologies, the Kaifūsō (751) and the Man’yōshū (ca. 759), have come to be examined not just in terms of their aesthetic contributions, but also for what they can tell us about the social, religious, and po­liti­cal world in which they ­were produced. Like early court histories, ­t hese works ­were compiled in imitation of Chinese models to proj­ect an image of Nihon as a unified, centralized polity, revolving around a virtuous sovereign. The extent to which the Kaifūsō and the Man’yōshū ­were embedded in ritsuryō po­liti­ cal ideologies becomes clear when we recognize that many of the poems they preserved ­were to be recited orally or presented at gatherings, often in the presence of the emperor.50 Songs performed at banquets, royal progresses, and other quasi-­ official events commonly made reference to the divine descent of the sovereign, included prayers for his or her longevity, or alluded to his or her power to civilize, subdue, and pacify the realm. And by publicly demonstrating his or her affection for the sovereign and giving voice to ritsuryō notions of a “natu­ral” social, po­liti­ cal, and cosmic order, the poet reminded ­t hose pres­ent of his or her own place in that order. The composition and recitation of poetry was thus a po­liti­cal act of social positioning and identity formation. Efforts to reinforce authorized visions of the cosmos, ruler, and realm are clear in the preface of the Kaifūsō, a collection of poems in Chinese (kanshi). The Kaifūsō’s preface seeks to situate the composition of Chinese verse in the mythohistory of Japan and its royal tradition, describing such pivotal moments as Ninigi’s descent and the flourishing of kanshi at the court of Tenji, a ruler who sought to order the realm, in part, through learning (i.e., poetry).51 The preface continues its history of Japa­nese kanshi through oblique references to the poetic contributions of vari­ous historical figures. Of par­tic­u ­lar interest is one such reference

30   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

to the eigh­teenth poem in the collection, in which Councilor of State Ōmiwa no Takechimaro (657–706) “lamented his gray hair (hakubin).”52 The poem in question begins with a headnote indicating that the author composed it at the age of fifty. It continues: Laid low by illness, my hair already turned white Feeling as though I am about to enter the other world When unexpectedly an imperial command reached me To join him in his spring pro­cession to the Imperial Park. From pine cliffs the gurgling ­water falls Freshly blooming flowers smile by bamboo banks [What an honor to have been invited since] I am just a s­ imple rustic Unworthy to ­ride in the last of the carriages.53 What begins as a reflection on old age abruptly changes direction, giving way to a work whose main theme is spring, but also rescue, rebirth, and the revivifying effect of the imperial invitation. Takechimaro opens his poem emphasizing his old age, white hair, illness, and closeness to death, in order to dramatize the power of the emperor’s benevolent attention to reawaken life. Only the grace of the virtuous sovereign could call back one so far gone. Takechimaro’s “lamenting gray hair” was thus not so much a reflection on the aging pro­cess as an opportunity to celebrate the power of the sovereign to turn back old age and death.54 This is the type of poem that would have been presented at the event it memorializes, although it is unclear ­whether or not Takechimaro had the opportunity, since he died around the time it was supposed to have been offered. Although the Kaifūsō is thought to have been essentially ignored for roughly two centuries, the motif of “lamenting” gray hair continued to be deployed in the interim. The celebrated preface of the Kokin wakashū, for example, refers to this poetic practice, perhaps also gesturing to the preface of the Kaifūsō, when it notes that poets of old “lamented as the years brought snow and waves to the reflections in their mirrors,” referring to white hair and wrinkles, respectively.55 The Man’yōshū contains relatively few poems discussing old age and, as Okuda Hisashi notes, many of t­ hose are not focused on aging per se.56 Many love poems, for instance, use old age as a meta­phor for abandonment, among them a famous poem attributed to Empress Iwa-­no-­hime, yearning for the ruler Nintoku: Aritsutsu mo ­Here s­ hall I abide kimi wo ba matamu and wait the coming of my lord, uchinabiku ­until the streaming

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   31

waga kurokami ni shimo no oku made ni

banner of my long black hair is stiff and white with frost.57

On one level, Iwa-­no-­hime’s white hair is a sign of constancy and devotion—­ evidence of the length of time she is willing to wait for a visit from her beloved. But the poem also evinces the fear that Nintoku w ­ ill arrive too late, once she has passed her reproductive prime. In this regard it echoes an episode in the Kojiki, in which Yūryaku encounters a young w ­ oman washing clothes. Commanding her not to marry and promising to summon her soon, he returns to his palace. De­ cades ­later, dismayed by her “decrepit and withered” body, the w ­ oman realizes that she has been forgotten.58 Taking m ­ atters into her own hands, she approaches the emperor, explaining that she has waited respectfully for eighty years. “Now my appearance has become old (ki), and t­ here is no longer any hope. Nevertheless, I have come forth to declare my constancy.” Yūryaku finds it pitiable that she has “wasted away the prime” of her life. “In his heart he wished to wed her but, out of consideration for her extreme age, he was not able to.”59 Yūryaku sends her home.60 Iwa-­no-­hime’s poem expresses a similar anxiety: that old age would render her susceptible to exclusion, forced to return to a home situated if not in the provinces at the very least outside the palace walls.61 The use of the aged body to signal misery over separation from the sovereign was not limited to poems involving emperors and consorts. Similar tropes appear in poems dealing with anx­i­eties surrounding travel. Judith Rabinovitch and Timothy Bradstock observe that homesickness and exile ­were common themes in Chinese poetry, but that in Japa­nese kanshi, they w ­ ere transposed into a longing for the capital.62 The same can be said of many poems of the Man’yōshū depicting officials ordered to take up posts in remote areas. What is fascinating is how the aged body figures in ­t hese verses as a symptom and symbol of displacement. A set of five poems by Ōtomo no Tabito, for instance, pairs his yearning for the capital of Heijō-­k yō with reflections on the passing of his youth: Waga sakari My own blossoming youth mata ochime ya mo can it come back to me? hotohoto ni ­Unless I am wrong nara no miyako wo the chances are I ­shall never see mizu ka nari namu the Nara capital again.63 The other four poems of the set describe his wish to live long enough to return to the capital. Some feature references to Yoshino, a mountain not far from Heijō-­k yō, presented in the early chronicles and poetry collections as a land of immortals,

32   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

whose soil, ­waters, and herbs contained life-­prolonging properties. Implicit, therefore, in Tabito’s lament is the notion that his distance from the central province of Yamato places him at the mercies of old age and mortality. Cut off from the life-­ giving center, he feels the passage of time all the more profoundly. While texts from the Nara period forward often treated Yoshino, Katsuragi, and other mountains as immortal realms, the capital city, palace complex, and especially the imperial residence w ­ ere also commonly graced with super­natu­ral epithets. Specifically, the environs of the capital and court ­were likened to Penglai, the isles of the immortals from Chinese legend; Kunlun, the paradise of the Queen ­Mother of the West; or Tokoyo, the “world of perpetuity,” a deathless realm envisioned beyond or ­under the sea, which was at times ­imagined as a land in which the old w ­ ere returned to youth.64 ­These three mythical topoi w ­ ere enthusiastically deployed in Japa­nese attempts to celebrate the center. In the Man’yōshū (1/50), for instance, a paean by the poet laureate Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl. ca. 690) describing the construction of the Fujiwara palace, the seat of government from 694 to 710, likens it to Tokoyo and celebrates the arrival of a sacred tortoise bearing mysterious marks on its shell.65 Herman Ooms observes that the strange markings would have represented the three divine mountains thought to be situated off the coast of China: Penglai (J. Hōrai-­san), Fangzhang (J. Hōjō-­san), and Yingzhou (J. Eishū-­san), collectively known as Penglai. According to some legends, ­t hese three islands ­were, in fact, perched on the back of a tortoise—­itself a symbol of immortality.66 Penglai was first identified in the “Rec­ords of the ­Grand Historian” (Ch. Shiji, 109 to 91 BCE) as an immortal realm where youth-­ restoring elixirs could be found. Since the Fujiwara palace was cradled by three mountains to the east, west, and north, the poem meant to further identify the capital not only with Tokoyo but with Penglai as well.67 Ooms also notes that three of Japan’s four early capitals, Fujiwara-­kyō, Heijō-­kyō, and Heian-­k yō, ­were bounded on three sides by mountain ranges, in conformity with Chinese geomantic princi­ples but also, perhaps, to maintain the illusion that the capital was itself comparable to Penglai.68 ­These associations carried over into the Heian period as well. Penglai became a favorite trope of court literati describing the environs of the palace compound. Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), for instance, described a scene in the garden of the retired Emperor Suzaku, noting that “every­t hing upon which one casts one’s eyes is removed from the dust of the mundane world; I do not even envy ­those who could spend the entire night hidden in Penglai.”69 In a petition requesting appointment at court, Tachibana no Naomoto (dates unknown) humbly acknowledged that his “mortal bones” (shokukotsu) ­were not worthy to tread on the clouds of Penglai.70

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   33

Another popu­lar meta­phor was Kunlun (J. Konron), the mythical mountain of Chinese lore, understood to be the site of the paradise of the Queen ­Mother of the West. Kunlun’s divine geography included several landmarks, one of which was the Yao Pond (Turquoise Pond 瑶池 J. Yōchi).71 A pond in the imperial garden of Heijō-­k yō was given the same name, allowing courtiers at gatherings within the palace compound to imagine themselves, once again, in an immortal realm. A pair of poems from the Kaifūsō (21 and 24) play with ­t hese associations. An offering by the scholar Mino no Kiyomaro (dates unknown) describes sparkling fish sporting about in Yao Pond. He also mentions peach trees in glorious bloom, another clear allusion to the paradise of the Queen ­Mother of the West, famous for a peach tree that bloomed once e­ very three thousand years, producing fruit that bestowed eternal life upon t­ hose who tasted it.72 The imperial compound of the Heian capital featured other sites whose names recalled immortal lands. For example, the tennō frequently hosted banquets and poetry gatherings in the Shinsen’en or “Garden of the Divine Spring”—­a designation that evoked images of ­waters of immortality issuing forth during reigns of virtuous monarchs.73 Heian-­period poets commonly rendered the palace itself a celestial realm—­ thus the common epithet for the court indicated that it was situated “above the clouds.” Fujiwara no Toshiyuki (d. 901), for instance, wrote of his bedazzlement on entering the inner sanctum of the imperial residence, “in the celestial realm, above the clouds” (hisakata no kumo no ue nite).74 Another pair of poems from the Man’yōshū (847 and 848), possibly also by Tabito, describe how the mere sight of the capital would be more effective than elixirs of immortality.75 The second of the two reads Kumo ni tobu kusuri hamu yo wa miyako miba iyashiki aga mi mata wochinu beshi

It is not drinking an elixir that lets you fly through the clouds but seeing the capital that would cure this villainous old age and give me youth again.76

Centuries ­later, the conceit that the capital held youth-­restoring powers and that, conversely, the aging pro­cess continued unabated in the provinces found its most compelling expression in the poetry of one of Heian Japan’s most celebrated scholar-­poets, Sugawara no Michizane, in the two major anthologies of his work. At the age of forty-­t wo, while serving as governor of Sanuki province, Michizane wrote, in “Noticing My First Scattered Gray Hairs”: I am ten years older than Pan Yue Gray hairs, where have you been hiding?

34   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

At first I did not notice you, but now I do! Surely it is b ­ ecause I live in sorrow ­here by the seashore.77 In this work, Michizane connects his location by the seashore with the onset of the physical marks of aging. Since Japan’s early capitals ­were situated inland, the seashore was commonly depicted as an exotic locus for poetic composition. Pan Yue (Pan Anren, 265–317) of the Qin dynasty was a poet who went gray at only thirty-­two, due to the rigors of officialdom. Michizane, however, attributes his aging (or at least his consciousness of it) not to the t­ rials of ser­v ice at court, but to his distance from the capital. Interestingly, all of Michizane’s poems about his gray hair collected in the first of his two anthologies, the Kanke bunsō, w ­ ere composed between the ages of forty-­t wo and forty-­six, the period in which he served in the provinces.78 This anthology, presented to the throne in 900 along with other collected works of the Sugawara h ­ ouse, reveals that once he returned to the capital ­a fter his tenure as governor of Sanuki ­either his writing on that theme came to an abrupt halt or such poems had been edited out. Of the poems in this collection composed in the following eleven years he spent in Heian-­k yō, not one laments his old age, although chronologically he would have been older than he was in Sanuki.79 Michizane, famously, was not able to spend his final days in the capital. In 901, his po­liti­cal rivals succeeded in having him demoted and sent into de facto exile in Dazaifu, an area described in his writings as a wilderness to which imperial authority did not fully extend.80 It was in Dazaifu that Michizane once again began to reflect on his aging body, in poems included in his second anthology, the Kanke kōshū. Michizane’s most famous laments in exile call attention once again to his white hair. Commenting on the distance that was growing between him and the world of the capital, he wrote of crying over “the faded purple of my official robes. Looking into the mirror, I lamented my gray hair.”81 Michizane’s emphasis on old age in t­ hese late poems has traditionally been interpreted as expressing fear that he would die without ever returning to the capital. This cannot be discounted. But such a reading fails to account for his preoccupation with his gray hair years earlier in Sanuki province. The association of old age with exile and ostracism, tragically exemplified in Michizane’s biography and poignantly reflected in his writings, was perhaps most vividly expressed in fiction describing Obasute-­yama (or Ubasute-­yama), “The Mountain for Abandoning Old ­Women.” The tenth-­century Yamato monogatari, for instance, tells of a man whose wife pressures him into abandoning his aged aunt once she becomes “decrepit and bent.”82 The man succumbs and takes his aunt to Obasute-­yama. That night, however, overcome with regret, he goes to

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   35

retrieve her.83 The prevalence of such tales in premodern lit­er­a­ture has led some scholars to speculate that abandonment of the el­derly was a widespread practice. The basis for this legend, however, is actually of continental origin, brought to Japan in the popu­lar collection of Buddhist parables, the Store­house of Sundry Trea­sures Sutra (Zappōzōkyō T no. 203). Although they cannot serve as evidence of ­actual social practices, legends of abandonment w ­ ere a product of the Nara and Heian intuition that the aged body was an asocial body—­one that the social body sought to expel or, at the very least, relegate to social and geo­graph­i­cal margins. In our discussion of the poetics of aging in early Japan, ­there is another mountain that bears mention: Kagami-­yama or “Mirror Mountain.” The fact that a mountain on the outskirts of the Heian capital happened to be named “mirror mountain” led to an especially rich vein of associations for poets to mine.84 In Heian-­period poetry, mirrors commonly served to alert authors to their physical transformation.85 This, combined with the motif of elders removing themselves or being removed to the periphery, made Kagami-­yama a popu­lar setting for poetic reflection on the aging body. It attained its status as an utamakura, a place-­ name charged with intertextual and allusive potential, from a poem in the Kokin wakashū attributed to Ōtomo no Kuronushi (dates unknown), in which he stopped at Mirror Mountain to inspect himself and learn ­whether, ­a fter living many years, he had truly become an old ­man.86 Kagami-­yama lay near Lake Biwa, along one of the few major cir­cuits leading out of the capital ­toward the eastern provinces. The Kokin wakashū provides no indication of why Kuronushi was traveling this route, but it is likely that ­people of the time would have interpreted it as a poem composed as he returned to his native province of Ōmi, perhaps in retirement. L ­ ater poets followed Kuronushi’s lead. Kagami-­yama became a favorite stop for authors of medieval travel diaries (kikō), who commonly portrayed themselves as aged recluses, striking out into relatively untamed territories.87 The authors of the Tōkan kikō, Shinshō hōshi nikki, Miyako no tsuto, and Nagusamegusa all took a moment to offer poetic accounts of their somatic situation as they passed this site.88

Frosty Temples and Red Eyes: Heian Writings on the Marks of Age and Their Chinese Precedents The image of the poet regarding himself in a mirror and discovering gray hairs became a commonplace of Heian-­period laments, not limited to works included in imperial collections. The theme had its roots in Chinese lit­er­a­ture of the Six Dynasties, but also appeared frequently in the work of the Tang-­dyansty poet Bo Juyi—­k nown in Japan as Hakurakuten—­a favorite of Japa­nese literati.89 Japa­ nese writers also inherited meta­phors from the continent with which to describe

36   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

their physical transformations. White hair, for instance, was commonly referred to as “frost” on one’s ­temples (bin). But Japa­nese literati often reworked ­t hese tropes to achieve effects that w ­ ere quite dif­fer­ent from t­ hose realized in continental verse. One well-­k nown Heian-­period text involving a mirror and the unwelcome recognition of old age is the essay “Seeing Gray Hairs” by Minamoto no Fusaakira (d. 939). Fusaakira describes the shock of finding evidence of encroaching old age as he gazed at his reflection one morning. Hair, as has been noted, was an impor­tant index of health and vitality in premodern Japan. Plucking the offending strands, he pauses to consider his years of ser­v ice to the throne, the stresses of which might be to blame for his premature aging.90 Both Fusaakira’s essay and Michizane’s “mirror” poems w ­ ere modeled on Bo Juyi’s “Looking in the Mirror and Rejoicing in Old Age.”91 Bo’s poem, however, is strikingly dif­fer­ent from t­ hose of his Japa­nese admirers, presenting gray hair as a sign that he might fi­nally put down worldly cares and retreat to the mountains to live in contented retirement. (Bo also wrote happily about ­going bald.) ­These works echoed the valorization of nonnormative bodies in proto-­Daoist texts such as the Laozi and Zhuangzi. In ­so-­called Zhuang-­Lao thought, deformed or useless bodies could live in peaceful disengagement from society and the state and thus avoid having their vitality sapped.92 Demonstrating a playful, subversive attitude, Bo celebrated physical decay. In the early through mid-­Heian period at least, his Japa­nese imitators seemed much more brittle. Michizane, Fusaakira, and ­t hose who followed in their wake ­were almost uniformly somber in their reflections on white hair, hair loss, and the like. Some of the clearest examples of the gap between the construction of old age in the Heian literary imagination and its pre­sen­ta­tion in Chinese sources can be found in poetry produced at Shōshikai, literary banquets to celebrate the longevity of their honorees.93 The first banquet celebrating old age was attributed to Bo Juyi, who described its boisterous mood in a prose preface and poem: Taken together ­t hese seven [old men] have five-­hundred seventy years All dressed in robes of purple or vermillion, our white beards hang down We have no gold in our pockets, but that is not cause to sigh Let us anyway enjoy the fact that we have wine in our cups Reciting just two verses of a song puts me in high spirits Drinking three cups of wine puts me in an even wilder mood Jabbering away at a mad song, the maidservant keeps the rhythm Tottering in my drunken dance, I am propped up by my grand­child.94

“Lamenting Gray Hair”   37

The poems by the other guests also describe an atmosphere of festive drunkenness, as they extemporized on drinking, dancing, singing, joy, and the idyllic beauty of nature. Collectively, they pres­ent a picture of old age as a time of rustic repose, f­ ree from worries.95 We might expect Japa­nese authors emulating this banquet to take emotional cues from the original, but they do not. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries we have rec­ords of five major Shōshikai banquets in Japan. The first, known as the Jōgan Shōshikai, was held in 877 by Minafuchi no Toshina (808–877). Although none of its poems survived, it was described in an essay by one of the participants, Sugawara no Koreyoshi (812–880), and in a poem by Koreyoshi’s son, Michizane. Although Michizane writes of feeling as though he had happened upon a gathering of immortals (sennin) and makes mention of wine and song, his poem ends on a solemn note: Looking at my old ­father, who could suppress their tears? This assembly ­w ill surely be a source of anguish for the young.96 Koreyoshi’s essay, while for the most part lighthearted, also introduces a hint of darkness. He describes Toshina congratulating his friends for producing excellent poems despite the weakness of old age.97 Koreyoshi portrays wine and song not as celebratory, but as a balm to put his “old mind” (rōshi 老志) at ease. Rather than an opportunity to revel in old age, therefore, Japan’s first Shōshikai is presented as something held despite the frailty of its participants, in part to provide solace. ­These themes ­were echoed in Sugawara no Funtoki’s (899–981) preface to the second Japa­nese Shōshikai, known as the Anna Shōshikai, held by Fujiwara no Arihira (892–970) at his Awata estate.98 Funtoki (also written Fumitoki) rec­ords the host paraphrasing Koreyoshi: “My many friends, the day grows late and we are near the end of our lives. Let this cele­bration ease our old minds.”99 Unlike the Jōgan Shōshikai, many poems survive from this banquet.100 Couplets from t­ hese poems ­were featured in the Wakan rōeishū. Interestingly, ­t hese tended to be among the most mournful. The first and third of ­t hese read Just as ­t here is no eve­ning in which the rivers flow back to their source, Neither the passing years, nor the tears I shed for them, w ­ ill return. [Once the season has passed] how could the flowers that bloomed in spring, Return to beautify old age? Sugawara no Funtoki

38   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

Drunk, I face the scattering blossoms, But my heart is calm of its own accord; Drifting off to sleep, I think of my remaining years, And my eyes grow red with tears.

Sugawara no Gaki 101

Whereas wine is served to elevate spirits at Bo Juyi’s original Shōshikai, in Sugawara no Gaki’s poem it provokes morose reflection on falling flowers, giving way in the end to tearful red eyes. The third Japa­nese Shōshikai for which we have rec­ords was held in 1131 by Dainagon Fujiwara no Munetada (1062–1141).102 Although late Heian authors had begun to reflect on their old age in a more consistently positive tone, certain poems from this banquet still show deep ambivalence. One participant, Fujiwara no Sanemitsu (1069–1147), writes that having passed the sake cup, “birds sing; flowers dance; flute m ­ usic plays softly; but my body and mind are old and weak. Although I wear a garland, I am listless (monoushi).” Sanemitsu claims to be lucky to have lived so long, but he quickly notes that many of his friends have died. “Of my friends who have reached the age of sixty, ­t here is no one but the solitary pine tree.”103 For Sanemitsu and other Nara-­and Heian-­period authors, the persona of the elder was useful for achieving certain aesthetic effects, which, given the hierarchical structures of the prevailing social, po­liti­cal, and literary fields, w ­ ere never far removed from the ideological effects that elites sought to achieve through their uses of the aged body in official documents, from mythohistories to retirement petitions. For the literate of Nara and Heian Japan, to write about one’s old age was to position oneself within an ­imagined geography, rendering oneself, to some degree, an outsider, which then elicited a par­tic­u ­lar style of expression or tone. Of course ­t hese conceits ­were not always employed in total sincerity. Painting oneself as a miserable, marginal elder could at times ensure even more secure ties to the center, as in Yoshifusa’s gratuitous retirement petitions. Regardless of how elites like Yoshifusa actually fared in old age, however, the premise that elders ­were ugly, uncouth outsiders was rarely challenged.

C HA P T E R T H R E E

Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities Elders at the Crossroads in Late Heian Japan

In early Japan, the aged body was treated not only as unsightly, shameful, or ridicu­lous, but also as a potential source of filth and pollution. Concerns about the defiling nature of the aged body w ­ ere expressed in vari­ous ways in a range of texts, from official chronicles, literary texts, and diaries to Buddhist doctrinal and didactic works. Certain texts, relying on meta­phors from the Chinese naturalist tradition equating fluidity and flow with health and purity, portrayed elders exemplifying the kinds of stagnation and decay regarded as a dangerous precursor to disease. ­Others devoted attention to elders’ perceived inability to maintain their physical integrity and their tendency to produce excreta such as urine and feces at inopportune moments. Some writings portrayed old age as a liminal state in which the pollution of illness and death was pos­si­ble at any moment.1 This chapter centers on an analy­sis of two Heian-­period Buddhist tales that played on ­these associations, utilizing aged male and female bodies to represent otherworldly figures implicated in the defiling influences of death, disease, and dangerous liminal spaces. The first involves a roadside god or dōsojin, the second the datsueba—­the hag of the Japa­nese Styx who greeted the deceased before they crossed into the underworld. ­These tales provide examples of how certain Buddhist writings contributed to repre­sen­ta­tions of the aged body as an inherently problematic other. They also provide a basis for comparison with contemporaneous and l­ater Buddhist legends, in which the aged body came to serve quite dif­fer­ent narrative purposes. Since concepts of purity and pollution played an impor­tant role in the ensemble of religio-­political practices employed in early Japan to privilege the center, associating elders with pollution contributed to marginalizing discourses that constructed old age as an asocial form of being, best relegated to social and geographic peripheries.2 Since at least the seventh ­century, large-­scale purification proj­ects had been framed as an essential responsibility of the ruler, who demonstrated his or her virtue and authority, in part, by sponsoring rituals to rid the land of pollution, ensuring the well-­being of the populace.3 Annual rituals of purification and propitiation ­were performed at the borders of the capital and 39

40   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

at sites seen to be especially susceptible to infiltration by defilement or vengeful spirits of the unsettled dead (onryō or goryō). Concerns over pollution w ­ ere most intense within the palace compound and major shrine-­temple complexes, which ­were treated as organs of the body of state, tasked with rites that guaranteed its continued health. Thus, for instance, we read in the Nihon shoki that Tenmu tennō ordered bedridden elders removed from ­temples out of fear that their physical stagnation would incur disease and defilement, producing pollution (kegare) in “places which should be pure.”4 For ­t hose attached to the court or the major shrine-­temple complexes, contact with kegare—­ the most dangerous form of pollution, associated with death, disease, blood, menstruation, and childbirth—­often required a period of sequestration or the ser­v ices of a ritual specialist. Although other forms of “­matter out of place” such as urine, feces, or other bodily effluvia fell ­under the less threatening rubric of “filth” ( fujō), ­these categories tended to blur in the premodern imagination, with vari­ous merely “unclean” substances commonly described as kegare. Purity and pollution ­were used not only to distinguish between centers and peripheries, but also to or­ga­nize bodies within ­these geographic imaginaries, and had a significant impact on premodern Japa­nese social stratification. While the emperor was ­imagined inhabiting the pinnacle of purity, high-­ranking aristocrats and clerics, whose work involved e­ ither physical presence within the imperial compound or the per­for­mance of rituals on behalf of the state, ­were also among the most concerned with maintaining purity and among the most likely to rigorously observe taboos. Th ­ ose tasked with removing defilement from the capital, however, the kiyome, ­were seen as the bottom rung on the social ladder, embodying the impurity they managed.5 In the Mahāyāna sutras, purity and pollution had been used primarily as meta­phors for states of mind. In early Japan, however, “pure conduct”—­mainly defined as abstaining from sex and the consumption of meat—­became key quali­fications for ­those hoping to receive official ordination. Since purity was seen as a crucial f­ actor determining the success or failure of the prayers and rituals the Buddhist clergy performed, protecting the purity of ­temples, shrines, and other sites in which t­ hese rituals w ­ ere conducted became a major concern. Scholars have generally held that Buddhist teachings and practices relating to pollution in the Heian through medieval periods w ­ ere instrumental in the formation of outcast groups and ever-­more-­concrete practices of social ­d iscrimination.6 In Heian Japan, the notion that the world was about to enter, or had already entered, the “defiled age” of mappō (“the latter age of the law”)—­a period marked

Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities   41

by the decline of the Dharma preached by the historical buddha, Śākyamuni—­ appears to have heightened kegare consciousness. Texts promoting practices aimed at rebirth in a Buddhist Pure Land, especially that of Amida Nyorai, relied in part on anx­i­eties over mappō and pollution to make their case, drawing a stark contrast between the miseries of embodiment in samsara, portrayed as a realm steeped in pollution, and the pure, indestructible bodies of t­ hose reborn in the Pure Land. This was, for example, the thrust of the early chapters of the Tendai priest Genshin’s (942–1017) celebrated Ōjōyōshū, epitomized in the motto onri edo, that called on the faithful to “despise and seek to flee the polluted land [of samsara].”7 The belief that this world was utterly polluted elicited varied reactions. On the one hand, Pure Land discourse opened the way for certain recluses, gosesha (or goseisha), to disregard pollution taboos, since all samsaric existence was seen to be equally contaminated and their only concern was for the next world.8 On the other hand, the majority of lay and ordained Buddhists evinced, if anything, a heightened concern over pollution, attempting to create or maintain sites of purity to stave off the deleterious effects of mappō. This is evident, for instance, in Genshin’s institution of the Śākyamuni assembly of Reizan-in (Reizan-in Shakakō), which engaged in daily recitations and rituals venerating a Śākyamuni icon installed on Mount Hiei.9 ­Every day Genshin and the assembly would intone before the statue the number of years remaining u ­ ntil the onset of mappō, as they carried out vari­ous practices to sustain Śākyamuni’s presence in this increasingly debased world.10 The icon was constructed to be the same height as the historical buddha (tōshin) and enshrined in a manner that re-­created the scene of his sermon on Numinous Ea­gle Peak (Ryōjusen), where he preached the Lotus Sutra.11 Attendees treated the icon as a living buddha (shōjin kuyō), offering rice, vegetables, and fruit at meal times, fanning the statue when it was hot and keeping it warm in the winter.12 In keeping with Pure Land ideologies of the day, which held that the only solution to the inherent misery and pollution of samsaric embodiment was escape, the faithful sought, through their devotional practices at this microcosmic Numinous Ea­gle Peak, to establish karmic bonds that would allow them to transcend this world and be reborn in a Pure Land: “We carry out vari­ous tasks such as sweeping and cleaning in order to be reborn for eternity in a pure world that is ­free from dust.”13 Producing a mirror image of the heavenly perfection of Numinous Ea­gle Peak, Śākyamuni’s Pure Land, on earth required purification; the confraternity’s charter documents make clear that Genshin intended nothing less than to carve out a tiny enclave of purity in this defiled world. Participants had

42   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

to maintain strict protocols of be­hav­ior and cleanliness when approaching the image: Numinous Ea­gle Peak is where Śākyamuni perpetually resides. [ . . . ​] This cloister, Reizan-in, has been created to manifest Numinous Ea­gle Peak. Thus, only ­t hose who maintain purity of body and mind w ­ ill be permitted to enter. Of t­ hose with unclean or licentious ( fujō hōmen) bodies, or ­t hose who neglect to follow the rules of propriety, not one ­shall be permitted to enter.14 Unlike the goseisha who saw mappō as reason enough to abandon purity taboos, Genshin’s rhe­toric indicates a belief that it was still pos­si­ble to maintain a semblance of purity at certain sites. Despite the egalitarian tone of the Reizan-in Shakakō’s charter, Genshin was far from abandoning taboos.15 Similarly, even as most forms of mid-­Heian Pure Land discourse rhetorically elided distinctions between lay and monastic, male and female, elite and commoner, they continued to reproduce and reinforce distinctions between purity and pollution, between sacred and profane space, between world-­renouncers and the laity, and between this world and the next. As for the aged body, its negative associations made it an appropriate symbol for Buddhist authors who wished to utilize the oppositional categories of purity and pollution to contrast the miseries of samsara with the joys of vari­ous Pure Lands. As opposed to the immortal, adamantine bodies promised to t­ hose reborn in a Pure Land, the bodies of this world w ­ ere characterized by impermanence, decay, and pollution. The aged body thus epitomized all that mortals should wish to transcend. This perspective is evident, for example, in certain mid-­Heian Buddhist hagiographies and tales of auspicious rebirth. One such tale, for instance, described the final words of a saint, who, on his deathbed, celebrated the fact that he was “abandoning the body of delusion, impurity, impermanence and kegare, and receiving the pure, adamantine, unbreakable fruit of the Buddha!”16 Some didactic tales encouraged empathy with aged protagonists, to serve as a reminder that all samsaric beings ­were subject to the depredations of time. Other works treated the aged body as a defiled other, to inspire fear and revulsion sufficient to encourage a course of moral action. Both modes ­were employed in the tales examined below.

Intersections with Illness and Death: The Dōsojin and the Datsueba Due to its associations with liminality, pollution, and disease, the aged body became an opportune form for representing certain insalubrious otherworldly

Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities   43

beings situated at boundary zones connected to defilement, illness, and death. One such being was the roadside god or dōsojin, alternatively known as sae no kami, funado, or kunado no kami, the center of an ancient f­ amily of cults.17 Commonly represented by stone effigies placed at borders or crossroads, they w ­ ere sometimes referred to as ishigami, or “stone gods.” The dōsojin was a complex, composite figure with roots in diverse sets of rites performed from at least the Nara period, possibly much earlier.18 Th ­ ese cults can be grouped into two broad categories: ­t hose encouraging fertility and ­t hose involving purification or the pacification of dangerous spirits—­either the unsettled spirits of the dead or gods of disease (ekijin) who w ­ ere ­imagined traveling along the roadways. The situation of t­ hese gods at crossroads was significant, for in state-­sponsored purification rites in effect from at least the time of Tenmu, par­tic­u ­lar attention was given to nodes in the nation’s transportation network, points of perceived vulnerability such as the capital’s main sites of ingress or egress, intersections, and canals. The most famous of ­these rites was the Seven Shallows Purification, in which effigies bearing the pollution of the center w ­ ere brought to special interstices along the two major waterways of the Heian capital and caused to flow outward, eventually reaching the sea to be “lost.” Other purification rituals ­were conducted at intersections (chimata) around the capital and at sites spanning the entire realm.19 The earliest extant text to provide a concrete description of a dōsojin is the eleventh-­century Dai Nihonkoku Hokke-­kyō genki (hereafter referred to as the Hokke genki).20 The Hokke genki and some texts that followed depicted dōsojin as underclass old men (okina), occasionally accompanied by old w ­ omen. The Hokke genki (3/128) describes how a traveling priest, Dōkō, returning to his home ­temple from a pilgrimage to Kumano, took shelter for the night ­under a tree. He soon heard some twenty or thirty riders approaching, and a voice asking, “Is the okina ­here? Come quickly and act as our guide!” In the morning the priest found an old, broken, decaying icon of a male dōsojin.21 The second night the dōsojin appeared to Dōkō as an old man and told him, ­ ose [ . . . ​] riders are the roaming spirits of epidemics (gyōekijin). WhenTh ever t­hese spirits travel around the country, this okina is forced to lead them. I now wish to throw away the form of a lowly god and gain a superior, virtuous body. My [current] body is subject to limitless suffering. By means of your saintly power, I wish to achieve this [transformation]. [ . . . ​] Stay u ­ nder this tree three days and nights and recite the Lotus Sutra. Through the miraculous efficacy of this sutra, my suffering body ­w ill be transformed and I ­w ill receive a purified and subtle body.22

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Dōkō did as he was instructed and on the fourth day the dōsojin informed him that he had quit his suffering, debased body and gained a superior, pure, and virtuous body. Furthermore he was destined to attain the status of ­bodhisattva.23 The fact that the dōsojin was portrayed in league with the spirits of epidemics is significant, since many of the gods who ­were enlisted to protect against disease ­were originally understood to be ­bearers of calamity and disease.24 Rites of propitiation sought to placate gods who would other­w ise do harm, in essence bribing them into cooperation. This is the under­lying logic of many of the ritual prayers (norito) of the tenth-­century Engishiki (Procedures of the Engi Era), where we find references to dōsojin (given as kunado no kami) propitiated in the Michiae no matsuri (Ceremony of Roadside Offerings).25 We are left with a double image of a god who is both an embodiment of pollution and disease and a protector against ­t hose influences. Although it is unclear ­whether the dōsojin was ever explic­itly regarded as an ekijin, a similar ambivalence is at work in the Hokke genki tale. The aged dōsojin is too weak to resist the commands of the ekijin. Forced to act as their guide, he becomes a facilitator for the spread of disease.26 The association of the okina dōsojin with deleterious influences resonates with his emphatic desire to abandon his pres­ent form of embodiment. Although, to many readers, it might seem odd that a “god” would complain so vociferously about the shortcomings of his or her body, this was in fact a relatively common trope in early and medieval Japan. Technically, deities ­were still inhabitants of samsara, often presented seeking release from the path of the gods (tendō) and elevation to the status of enlightened being. In this tale, the aged dōsojin complains to the point of hyperbole about his dissatisfaction with his debased body. He twice expresses his desire to attain a noble, “purified” body. His physical location at a crossroads, a site of purification rituals that w ­ ere also commonly associated with death, disease, and pollution, is also suggestive. The connections between the aged body of the dōsojin and the pollution arising from physical disintegration are underlined when we read of the broken, weather-­worn, and decayed votive tablet that stands in as the physical form (shintai) of this god.27 ­T hese associations ­were further adumbrated in a ­later legend involving an okina dōsojin from the Ujishūi monogatari (1/1), involving the monk Dōmyō. Numerous legends told that when Dōmyō, renowned for the beauty of his voice, recited the Lotus Sutra, gods would gather round to listen. The Ujishūi puts an ironic twist on t­ hese legends. It pres­ents Dōmyō beginning his recitation immediately a­ fter engaging in sexual intercourse, but without having first purified himself. By engaging in fujō seppō, or “defiled preaching,” Dōmyō attracts, instead of his usual divine audience, only a solitary god: an okina dōsojin, who expresses his

Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities   45

joy at fi­nally being able to hear Dōmyō’s recitation. The okina notes that, usually, Dōmyō performed the proper ablutions and his recital would attract a crowd of high-­ranking protective deities, “But to­night you read it without having cleansed yourself first. [ . . . ​] This gave me a chance to come and hear it myself.”28 Although we are meant to understand that the lowly roadside god can fi­nally approach Dōmyō in part b ­ ecause of the lack of a crowd, he also represents the kind of inauspicious being that protective gods would have prevented from drawing near. The uninvited okina dōsojin is thus an implicitly threatening presence. The tale ends with the warning that one should never recite the sutra without purifying oneself first. Although other tales connected (not necessarily aged) dōsojin with fertility, sex, and even incest, the Ujishūi narrative utilizes the aged dōsojin quite simply as an object of fear on account of his connections with pollution.29 Hank Glassman has shown how dōsojin cults w ­ ere eventually co-­opted by Buddhists promoting the Bodhisattva Jizō—­another figure who came to be represented by stone icons at crossroads.30 While Jizō (whose iconographic repre­sen­ ta­tions increasingly became ever more youthful or childlike) a­ dopted the aspects of the dōsojin’s persona associated with fertility, sexuality, childbirth, and the protection of travelers, the aged body was used in the Hokke genki, Konjaku mono­ gatarishū, and Ujishūi monogatari to represent the side of ­t hese boundary gods connected to pollution, death, and disease. In the Hokke genki legend, it is not Jizō, but Kannon and the Lotus Sutra that take center stage. Presenting the dōsojin as a decrepit old man, the tale argues that standard rites of propitiation dedicated to roadside gods w ­ ere not effective, for the gods themselves ­were feeble and implicated in the very pollution and disease from which petitioners sought protection. Rather it is Dōkō, the traveling priest, who is able, through the power of the Lotus Sutra, to save the dōsojin and deprive the ekijin of their guide. This tale functioned as propaganda in support of wandering Lotus Sutra devotees ( jikyōsha), specifically ­t hose linked to Kumano, regarded as a gateway to Kannon’s paradise above Mount Fudaraku (Sk. Potalaka). The tale ends with a vision of the dōsojin speeding south in a small boat, destined for Fudaraku.31 Likely used in sermons by Kumano jikyōsha, this tale strongly implied that offerings that had hitherto been made to stone gods by the roadside would be better redirected to the jikyōsha instead. The Hokke genki also includes one of the earliest references to an equally unsavory elder of the crossroads—­t he datsueba, or “clothes ripping hag” (2/70). In this legend, another devotee of the Lotus Sutra and the Bodhisattva Kannon, the monk Renshū, dies suddenly. Passing into the underworld, he crosses a high mountain range and arrives at a ­great river.

46   Making Elders ­O thers in Early Japan

On the north bank of this river was a solitary old female (ōna) demon. Her form was ugly and crude. She sat beneath a ­great tree. On the branches of the tree ­were hung countless garments. The demon looked at the monk and said: “As you should know, this is the river Sanzu (Sōzu). [ . . . ​] You must take off your clothes, give them to me, and cross over.” At that moment, four heavenly youths suddenly arrived and said, “Old w ­ oman demon, why are you trying to take this monk’s clothing? This śramaṇa is an upholder of the Lotus Sutra and is u ­ nder the protection of Kannon.”32 The locus classicus for the datsueba is the Japa­nese version of the late Heian apocryphon, Sutra of the Ten Kings (Jizōbosatsu hosshin innen jūōgyō), which describes the afterlife as a series of ten tribunals overseen by ten kings of the underworld. Before approaching the tenth and final king of hell, the deceased crosses the river Sōzu (­here given as Sanzu). By its shore is a tree, in the shadow of which stands the datsueba and her assistant, the ken’eō, or “clothes-­hanging okina.” The weight of the clothes on the branches determines the degree of one’s sins and thus the extent of one’s postmortem punishment.33 The figure of the old ­woman, while only very rarely presented in medieval legend as an avatar of a god or buddha, was quite often used to represent demons associated with vio­lence and death. For example, the Konjaku monogatari includes a tale (27/22) in which a man’s m ­ other grows old and gradually transforms into a flesh-­eating demon.34 Another story from the same collection (27/15) describes how a young ­woman wishing to conceal her pregnancy goes into the woods and is assisted by an old ­woman. The young ­woman flees, however, when she hears the old w ­ oman mumbling to herself about her plan to devour the infant.35 The contrast presented in this tale between the body of the young ­woman, which is capable of producing life, and the body of the aged w ­ oman, which is capable only of taking life, is mirrored in the figure of the datsueba as well. Michael Como has shown that the figure of the celestial weaver maiden in Chinese and Japa­nese myth highlighted the social and economic value that young ­women had within the ancient ­family structure. Young ­women traditionally produced the vestments necessary to perform ceremonies of state, which thus served as both material and symbolic capital. Accordingly, certain myths presented youthful female bodies as capable of marshaling generative forces, employing silk-­and textile-­producing young ­women as meta­phors for life and rebirth.36 The datsueba and other el­derly de­mon­esses symbolized the inverse. Where the youthful weaver maidens produced silk and clothing, the aged datsueba stripped one of t­hese symbols of social status and humanity. If the body of the youthful female was employed to symbolize generative force, the body of the aged female was used to symbolize

Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities   47

de-­generative force. No longer fecund, the aged female body could only take, thus contributing to the pro­cesses of death and decay.37 In contrast to the Hokke genki’s dōsojin, ­t here was no salvation for t­ hese aged female demons. They ­were merely part of the machinery of the narrative.38 The datsueba tale ends with the priest Renshū, the protagonist, rescued from the clutches of the clothing-­stripping hag, leaving the old datsueba standing forever at the river marking the boundary of life and death. The disparity in the treatment of t­ hese two otherworldly elders discloses the two ways in which the aged body was most often used in early Japa­nese Buddhist didacticism. On the one hand, readers or auditors ­were often encouraged to empathize with elders and reflect on the fact that all w ­ ill encounter such miseries should they live long enough. On the other hand, certain works presented the aged body as an unsettling other, to inspire fear or disgust and encourage the faithful to engage in practices that could rescue them from attachment to the ­human form or from horrific figures like the datsueba. ­These two didactic modes ­were often bifurcated along gender lines, with auditors encouraged to empathize with aged male bodies but presented with aged female o ­ thers to inspire revulsion. Both examples analyzed above presented what might be called transcendentalist solutions to the prob­lem of the defiled aged body. In the case of the dōsojin, the prayers of a Buddhist priest allowed him to exchange his decrepit form for the glorified body of a bodhisattva and achieve rebirth in Kannon’s Pure Land. In the case of the datsueba, it is the priest Renshū whose faith allows him to escape from the defiled underworld and the terrifying proximity of the clothes-­stripping hag. In the late Heian period, however, another, “immanentist” salvific mode emerged that held out the possibility of redemption for the polluted aged subjects even while maintaining their aged form. Many of the earliest examples of such tales ­were also found in the Hokke genki, an ideologically heterogeneous work comprising vari­ ous perspectives. Therefore, in addition to their positioning in their respective narratives at bound­aries and thresholds, the el­derly dōsojin and datsueba of the Hokke genki stood at another kind of crossroads as well—­an intersection between early and medieval Japa­nese pre­sen­ta­tions of the aged body.

PA R T I I

Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan

The previous chapters have shown how early Japa­nese courtiers, chroniclers, poets, and priests employed repre­sen­ta­tions of the aged body to further a variety of po­liti­cal, aesthetic, and didactic agendas, most prominently in discourses that sought to promote an image of the capital and palace as the glorious, pure, timeless center of the world. To perpetuate this vision, the aged body was often used to symbolize much of what t­ hese authors sought to exclude from the imaginary center—­ugliness, weakness, barrenness, and pollution. Not surprisingly, poetry composed by imperial command, performed at public poetry gatherings or banquets, or selected for inclusion in prestigious imperially sponsored anthologies, was the most likely to conform to ­t hese conventions.1 In spite of the influence of Zhuang-­Lao thought on lit­er­a­ture of the Nara and Heian periods, examples of poetry or prose promoting the notion that retirement from the center could be equated with freedom ­were remarkably rare.2 Early Japa­nese literati had toyed with t­ hese themes, but they ­were submerged in the much more substantial corpus that took a less sanguine view of retirement. In the late Heian and medieval periods, however, t­ hese themes would spring to the fore. Nowhere is this shift in tone more evident than in Kamo no Chōmei’s (1155– 1216) early Kamakura-­period work, Hōjōki. The Hōjōki famously describes the vari­ous forms of tumult that shook the capital at the end of the Heian period. Chōmei comments on natu­ral calamities that had befallen the city, including famine, earthquakes, and fires, and bemoans the increased influence of uncouth warriors, such as the Taira, who dominated politics before their downfall in 1185. He describes, in short, a world falling apart—­t he ancient dream of a stable, centralized imperial bureaucracy ruled through virtue fi­nally rendered utterly obsolete. In its place, we find a world characterized by fragmentation and flux.3 Although the dominant mood of the work is one of regret over the passing of the classical order, Chōmei also admits to enjoying his life as an aged recluse.4 He describes how, following what by his day had become a well-­established custom, he became a Buddhist monk at the age of fifty. But nowhere do we find the histrionics that generally accompanied Heian-­period depictions of lay renunciation. In 49

50   Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan

fact the work closes with his concerns that he might be too comfortable with his position; Chōmei won­ders if living in this ­humble, detached manner had become yet another form of attachment.5 It would be wrong, of course, to take Chōmei’s assertions completely at face value. Rather than viewing Chōmei and o ­ thers of his ilk as individuals who had successfully extricated themselves from the court-­ centric social system, it is more accurate to view them as attempting to position themselves as such in order to stake out their own fields of authority.6 A situation that in ages past had given rise mainly to grief, now, paradoxically, might allow such contentedness that it inspired feelings of guilt. As the center crumbled, a seat on the sidelines became increasingly appealing. Part of the lasting value attributed to the Hōjōki derived from the skill with which it narrated the pro­cess by which the centered space of classical order gave way to the decentered space of the medieval period. In one of the most telling segments from the Hōjōki, Chōmei discusses the failed attempt of the upstart Taira to forcibly shift the capital from Heian-­k yō to Fukuhara, situated near the Inland Sea. The passage reads as a parody of earlier works, such as Hitomaro’s paean to Fujiwara-­k yō, in which the erection of the capital city was treated as a cosmogonic act. The Fukuhara capital is a blatant failure: When I came to look at it the site was cramped and too narrow to lay out the ave­nues properly. And the mountains towered over it to the north while the sea hemmed it in on the south and the noise of the waves and the scent of the brine w ­ ere indeed too much to be borne.7 Reminiscent of Michizane’s “sorrow by the sea shore,” Chōmei’s visceral r­ eaction to “the scent of brine” reminds us that capitals of the classical period had always been situated inland. The sea was, in the Heian imagination, an exotic locale—no place to center the realm. The Fukuhara capital also fails to conform to the geomantic patterns that w ­ ere the mark of the proper Sino-­Japanese center, used to order the realm and validate the authority of the tennō. ­These princi­ ples ­were clearly instantiated in the arrangement of the classical-­era capitals of Fujiwara-­k yō, Heijō-­k yō, and Heian-­k yō. By renouncing them, the ersatz capital of the Taira indicates a disordered, decentered realm. Also striking in this regard is Chōmei’s description of his own hut. Although before his retirement he had been a member of the Kamo sacerdotal lineage, one of the two families to staff the Bureau of Divination (Onmyōryō), Chōmei writes that since he planned it as only a temporary residence, he built his hut “without conducting divination.”8 While deriding the Taira capital for its failure to abide by the time-­honored rules of geomancy, Chōmei is blasé about the unmoored

Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan   51

positioning of his own dwelling. The unsettled, nomadic life of the aged recluse, Chōmei implies, is one that can ignore the rules that the center had used to enforce bound­aries, social hierarchies, and order. Despite inhabiting a fragmented landscape, Chōmei took pains to describe the orderliness of his own dwelling. The eaves of his hut point south, to the north he has a small garden, his writing ­table sits by the east wall, and on his west wall hangs a shelf “for the offerings of ­water and flowers to the Buddha,” and a picture of Amida, arranged such that “the setting sun shines from between his brows as though he ­were emitting his ray of light, while on the doors of his shrine are painted pictures of Fugen and Fudō.”9 Without consulting a diviner, he has nonetheless aligned his hut along the north-­south axis. What he has abandoned is the yin-­yang geomantic hermeneutic. The orientation of the objects in and around his hut in the four ordinal directions gives special attention to the situation of his Buddhist images. The passage reads a bit like the description of a mandala. Chōmei, it seems, no longer inhabits a tennō-­centered world, but a space oriented by Buddhist entities. This is reinforced in another passage in which he indicates that he could enjoy the views of Mounts Kobata, Fushimi, Toba, and Hatsukashi, “since beautiful scenery,” Chōmei wrote, “has no master” (shōchi wa nushi nakereba).10 ­Under the ritsuryō regime, the land was technically the property of the emperor, to be managed on his behalf by loyal governors and cultivated by loyal subjects. To say that the land has no master was to reject the notion of the life-­ giving center and the emperor’s role in rituals of world renewal. Along with Chōmei, numerous authors of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods a­ dopted the literary persona of the aged reclusive poet-­priest.11 In travel diaries (kikō), the motif of the elder inhabiting boundary zones and wildernesses became an organ­izing princi­ple, as they recorded their journeys, generally away from the capital ­toward the eastern provinces.12 ­These works echoed Chōmei’s sentiments, which refigured late-­life Buddhist retirement from a cause for tears and regret into an opportunity for freedom, spiritual advancement, and aesthetic mastery.13 The social, po­liti­cal, and cultural transformations that allowed for the new perspectives on the ostensibly asocial body of the elder exemplified in t­ hese works ­were the result of pro­cesses that had begun centuries earlier, in the mid-­to late Heian period. Changing ideals of reclusion ­were deeply connected to the breakdown of the traditional spatial imaginary, which was itself connected to shifting visions of royal authority. It was in the closing centuries of the Heian period that retired emperors (in) sought to amass private wealth using the same techniques as other power blocs of the time, particularly the Northern Fujiwara. At the same time, they took advantage of their status as nominal home-­leavers to position

52   Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan

themselves as chakravartin—­Buddhist wheel-­turning kings. Although the symbolism of the chakravartin had first been introduced in the Heian period, most notably in the esoteric enthronement rites, or sokui kanjō, to enhance the prestige of the ruling emperor, retired emperors ­were able to don the mantle of Buddhist kingship more comfortably. The symbolic valences of the reigning tennō remained colored by associations from the Chinese textual tradition and the early mythohistories that associated the body of the ruler with generative, procreative forces. Since, by the late Heian period, retirement for elites had come to be instinctively equated with tonsure, and since tonsure (ideally) removed one from the procreative realm, retired emperors could be fully fledged priest-­k ings in ways that reigning tennō could not. Paradoxically, however, both of ­t hese strategies undermined the symbolic order on which the prestige of the royal ­house had long been based, further weakening the conceit of a stable, centered realm. Although the shifting strategies of royal legitimation ­were among the more salient manifestations of the deep po­liti­cal, social, and cultural upheavals taking place t­ oward the end of the Heian period, they ­were not the only f­ actors contributing to the reimagination of the aged body. A variety of individuals and groups, working in this new, fluid cultural scene, sought to rework the symbolism of the aged body to advance their own agendas; in the pro­cess, old age was transformed from a life stage mainly associated with alienation and misery into one that could represent power and sacred potential.

C HA P T E R F OU R

From Outcast to Saint Overcoming Pollution in an Age of Decline

Although the aged body had been portrayed as potentially defiled, starting in the late Heian period this association came to be employed in unexpected ways. In collections of setsuwa or “explanatory tales” compiled from the late Heian period forward, stories of aged Buddhist lay prac­ti­tion­ers, priests, and recluses at times portrayed the transformation of the defiling marks of the aged body into symbols of purity and salvation. Before proceeding to an analy­sis of ­t hese tales, we begin by outlining some of the fissures that had begun to develop, starting in the mid-­Heian period, between the continued use of concepts of purity and pollution to legitimate social hierarchies both at court and within elite religious institutions and some of the po­liti­ cal and social transformations that rendered ­t hese strategies increasingly untenable.1 It was in this context that legends w ­ ere circulated in which discourses of purity and pollution, long used to legitimate social hierarchies within the po­liti­ cal and religious spheres, came to be redeployed to critique the perceived moral corruption of members of elite Buddhist institutions. Th ­ ese tales often valorized moral purity over the forms of cleanliness achieved through the observation of taboos, crediting moral w ­ holesomeness with the potential to miraculously transform samsaric bodies into exemplars of physical integrity. We then turn to an examination of three sets of legends in which the aged body was used to demonstrate that salvation was pos­si­ble even in the midst of pollution and decay. In legends of the lay recluse Okina Oshō, the holy man Zōga, and the outcast preacher said to have performed the inaugural sermon at Tokujōju-in, the aged male body’s potential for pollution was miraculously revealed to be a source of purity. Rather than employing the specter of pollution to evoke fear or disgust, t­ hese legends treated the tendencies of the aged body to disintegrate or produce unclean outflows as opportunities to demonstrate the awe-­inspiring efficacy of a given sacred text, holy site, or saintly individual, or the purifying faith of a retired emperor. ­These legends came into being at a time in which Japan was undergoing radical po­liti­cal, religious, and cultural transformations. The teachings, practices, and 53

54   Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan

sites they featured w ­ ere often connected to groups who had reasons to challenge discourses of purity and pollution that emanated from the court or elite monastic centers. ­These groups included underclass mendicant preachers and entertainers, and lower-­ranking aristocrats who ­were members of the provincial governor class, all of whom inhabited zones regarded as defiled from the perspective of the center. Th ­ ese narratives thus reflect the social positioning of their sources and the low-­status performers and popu­lar sermonizers who circulated them, and who used them not only as vehicles for fundraising, awakening faith, or making merit, but also as means to challenge social hierarchies and spatial imaginaries that had become increasingly difficult to justify in light of new po­liti­cal realities.2 The period in which ­t hese tales ­were recorded and compiled was also marked by an intensified anxiety over the prospect that Japan was entering the age of the decline of the Buddhist Dharma or mappō. Chapter 3 discussed the ways in which anx­i­eties over pollution w ­ ere exploited in mid-­Heian mappō discourse, and vice versa. ­These interwoven discourses also had some bearing on views of the aging pro­cess. Mappō was commonly referred to as “the evil age of five defilements (gojoku).” The “five defilements” comprised (1) the defilements of the age (kōjoku), (2) the defilement of ignorance (bonnō), (3) the defilement of sentient beings, (4) the defilement of views, and (5) the defilement of shortened lifespans.3 The first of t­ hese—­t he defilements of the age—­referred to both a general increase in pollution over time and the sum of the remaining four, which referred respectively to an increase in deluded attachments and desires (bonnō); a gradual weakening, depletion, and coarsening of the bodies of sentient beings; the spread of false doctrines; and a gradual shortening of the ­human life span, eventually reaching a point at which ­people would live no more than ten years.4 The notion that the pres­ent age was one of decline, and that ­people of the past had enjoyed greater vitality and longevity, was not only articulated in vari­ous Buddhist sutras. It was also attested to in vari­ous classical Chinese texts, which described the golden age of “high antiquity” (Ch. shanggu) as a time in which ­people lived in harmony with the Way and thus enjoyed longevity.5 Since, in mappō, the decline of the age was manifested in the wearing down and pollution of the bodies that inhabited this age, the aged body was the quin­tes­sen­tial body of mappō, a symbol of all humanity in a period of decay. Certain of the Buddhist responses to the prob­lem of mappō therefore also sought, directly or indirectly, to address the twin prob­lems of pollution and aging. Since it was regarded as particularly subject to pollution, sickness, death, and decay, the aged body could thus be used to demonstrate the efficacy of a par­tic­u­lar doctrine or practice to achieve something approximating perfection and salvation.

From Outcast to Saint   55

Physical Purity, Moral Purity, and Social Status in the Post-­Ritsuryō Imagination The classical vision of the realm was one in which, provided the proper taboos ­were observed and rituals enacted, institutional rank correlated with degree of access to purified centers, and corresponded, in the case of officials, with wisdom and rectitude and, in the case of religious specialists, with moral purity. However, with the disintegration of the merit-­based ritsuryō system and the rise of private wealth and heredity as the major determinants of po­liti­cal power, cracks appeared in this façade. Since at least the ninth c­ entury, the vision of the tennō-­centered realm had been more a poetic conceit than a practical real­ity. The mid-­Heian period saw the rise of extra-­ritsuryō institutions that substantially weakened the ability of the tennō to rule. One of ­t hese was the estate or shōen system, whereby land was allowed to come ­under private management. Another major ­factor was the rise of the Fujiwara regency, through which members of one subbranch of the Fujiwara clan came to exercise an inordinate influence on state policy by acting as regents to relatively youthful emperors to whom they w ­ ere related by ­marriage—as f­ athers-­in-­law, ­uncles, or grand­fathers. The regents’ branch (sekkanke) of the Northern Fujiwara was able to perpetuate their power by monopolizing the regency, making it essentially a hereditary position, taken up by successive heads of the sekkanke Fujiwara line—­v iolating the meritocratic ideals of the ritsuryō state. The sekkanke translated their influence into vast private wealth, in part through the accumulation of shōen and also the development of networks of clients, especially among the ranks of custodial governors (zuryō).6 The attenuation of imperial power and trends t­oward privatization led not only to the po­liti­cal and economic dominance of the Northern Fujiwara, but also to a situation in which power was determined less by office or rank and more by ties between clients and patrons. In the mid-­eleventh ­century, retired emperors began themselves to employ extra-­ritsuryō institutions to increase the po­liti­cal and economic power of the royal ­house and combat the influence of the Northern Fujiwara. In some ways, the so-­called Insei period or “period of rule by retired emperors” was merely an acceleration of the trends that had begun u ­ nder the Fujiwara regency. Religious institutions joined the rush t­ oward the accumulation of estates and other means of income, as funding from the central government began to dry up from the tenth c­ entury forward. Skillful po­liti­cal players like the Tendai head abbot (zasu) Ryōgen (912–985) ­were able to find patrons among power­f ul members of the regents’ branch of the Fujiwara clan.7

56   Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan

Even as the ritsuryō order was drastically reconfigured, purity remained a concern for official monks (kansō) tasked with performing rites for the protection of the state and for high-­ranking aristocrats who had to attend to their duties within the sanctum of the palace compound. At the level of rhe­toric, elites, including the Fujiwara regents and retired emperors, continued to employ customary continental tropes to describe royal authority and the structure of the realm. Similarly, even as high-­ranking prelates and aristocrats ­were engaged in activities that undermined ritsuryō institutions, they continued to couch their activities in language that glorified the tennō and to rely on established means of enforcing social hierarchies, including pollution taboos. However, increasingly in the Heian period, ­t hose displaced and disgusted by the incongruity between rhe­toric and real­ity began to make veiled critiques of ­t hose like Ryōgen who ­were able to exploit post-­ritsuryō social and po­liti­cal arrangements to empower themselves and enrich their institutions. Since purity was one of the most salient means of expressing status, ­t hese critiques often involved e­ ither accusations of moral or physical impurity directed at elites or attempts to valorize the moral purity of the marginalized over the forms of purity maintained through adherence to taboos.

Challenging Institutions and Spatial Imaginaries in the Hokke Genki Many scholars have described Genshin’s Reizan-in Shakakō, discussed in chapter 3, as an attempt to carve out a zone of “pure practice” in response to the perceived corruption of the Enryakuji leadership.8 One of the names to appear on the register of the Reizan-in Shakakō was that of the Tendai priest Chingen, who, between the years 1040 and 1044, is thought to have compiled the Dai Nihonkoku Hokke-­kyō genki (Hokke genki).9 Genshin’s urge to re-­create Numinous Ea­gle Peak on Mount Hiei was a reaction to life in a world without a Buddha, the approach of the latter age of the Dharma, and perhaps his dissatisfaction with Enryakuji elites. Chingen’s Hokke genki shares t­ hese concerns but offers startlingly dif­fer­ ent solutions. The Hokke genki collected tales of diverse origins demonstrating the miraculous potency of the Lotus Sutra, a scripture that presented itself as a substitute body of the Buddha, especially directed t­ oward t­ hose born in an age of the five defilements.10 The text of the Lotus called upon ­t hose who would uphold it ( jikyōsha) to treat it as if it ­were a shari (Sk. śarīra)—­miraculous, jewel-­like relics found in the cremated remains of saints, symbols of the permanent and abiding nature of the Buddha and his teachings.11 Jikyōsha ­were depicted engaging in four paradigmatic activities: reciting, reading, copying, or auditing Lotus recitations.12

From Outcast to Saint   57

The Hokke genki was one of the first works to prominently feature the activities of Lotus jikyōsha known as hokke hijiri, ascetic recluses who, in apparent dis­ plea­sure with developments on Mount Hiei and other power­f ul Buddhist institutions, retreated to remote mountains and other marginal sites to conduct ascetic practices in relative solitude.13 Many of ­t hese sites ­were identified as bessho, literally “separate places,” loci for religious austerities that had ­either been established by or become connected to major shrine-­temple complexes, particularly Mount Kōya, Shitennōji, and Mount Hiei.14 Most of the earliest references to bessho are found in the Hokke genki, indicating major social transformations in the mid-­eleventh ­century and an increasing tendency for ordained priests to abandon ­temple precincts to become nominal tonsei or recluses.15 The Hokke genki presented t­ hese hermits congregating in diverse locales such as Yoshino, Mitake, Hira, Kumano, and unnamed sites in Kyūshū. Interestingly, some of the territories to which t­ hese recluses retreated, such as Mount Atago, also appear to have functioned as burial grounds.16 Recluses w ­ ere shown engaging in vari­ous forms of asceticism, combining recitation and other styles of Lotus devotion with Daoist-­style immortality practices—­abstaining from cereals and other coarse foods, living on rainwater, pine n ­ eedles, mushrooms, and other mountain provender. Some ­were depicted maintaining a state of youth, physical integrity, and purity well beyond the average h ­ uman life span.17 Whereas, in early Japan, elites had attributed the power to overcome aging to the virtue of sovereigns like Genshō who caused sweet springs to appear throughout the land, the Hokke genki attributed the vitality of t­ hese hijiri to the Lotus Sutra, which promised that ­those who heard its teachings would not suffer old age, illness, or death.18 Since the Lotus Sutra claimed to represent the body of the Buddha, devotion to it required maintaining the purity and integrity of the text itself. Accordingly, many of the tales from the Hokke genki maintain a strongly dualistic view of purity and pollution. Indeed, tales featuring the youthful, pure bodies of hokke hijiri reiterated the classical dichotomy between old age/pollution and youth/purity, characterizing bodies susceptible to old age, illness, and death as unclean.19 The Hokke genki, however, often employed ­t hese categories to critique the very sites that the power­f ul sought to pres­ent as eminently pure. Mount Hiei in par­tic­u ­lar was described as a site of moral and physical defilement from which sincere Buddhists should flee.20 The Hokke genki thus presented an upside-­down world in which a charnel ground might become a locus in which a virtuous Lotus devotee could receive a body f­ ree of decay and old age, whereas a site like Enryakuji—­ protected by vari­ous restrictions and taboos—­was considered polluted due to the moral taint of t­ hose who dwelt t­ here. Other tales from the Hokke genki and l­ater texts, however, presented an even more radical vision, in which moral purity was

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sufficient to secure the salvation of even a polluted aged body. It is to ­t hese tales that we now turn.

Overcoming Pollution through the Aged Body In response to deep anxiety over the inherent pollution of the samsaric body, influential strains of mid-­Heian Pure Land thought proposed a “transcendental” solution that encouraged escape from this world and from bodies subject to the influences of time and decay. The texts examined h ­ ere, on the other hand, proposed what might be called “immanentist” solutions. Rather than depicting miraculous transformations whereby the aged body was cleansed of its polluting nature, or instances in which faithful Buddhists succeed in escaping their tainted bodies (as, for instance, in the case of the okina dōsojin examined in chapter 3), ­t hese texts celebrated the aged body and its disintegration, suggesting the per­sis­ tence of the sacred and the possibility of spiritual purity even in a world characterized by the decay of the Buddhist law.

Challenging the Somatic Status Quo: Okina Oshō, Zoga Shōnin, and the Reimagination of Effluvia Although the Hokke genki contained tales that continued to treat old age as a polluted state that could be remedied through Daoist-­style practices and Lotus devotion, it was a rhetorically and ideologically varied work, reflecting the diversity of its sources. Thus, a few of the miracles reported in the Hokke genki involved recluses who overturned the somatic common sense of their day, subverting accepted understandings of purity and pollution and providing a reappraisal of the aged body and its tendency to pollute. One such legend (3/109) involves a certain “Okina Oshō of Kaga Province,” a layman identified as an okina, a marginal elder. A recluse whose “heart was clean and pure,” he made his living by begging and reciting the Lotus Sutra for offerings. Having made his rounds, he would retire to a “quiet place” and continue his recitations in private.21 One day “while reciting, a tooth fell from his mouth on the copy of the sutra. The surprised Okina Oshō took it in his hand and found that it was a relic of the Buddha [busshari]. Feeling this most extraordinary, he paid homage to it and put it away carefully.”22 The tale continues: “On another occasion, as he was reciting the sutra, another relic fell from his mouth.” Fi­nally he retreated to a quiet mountain t­emple to spend his final days, reciting the sutra “with no delusion in his mind and no pain in his body.” “When he recited the words in the Chapter on the Lifespan of the Buddha [ . . . ​] Okina Oshō ­rose, paid homage to the sutra with deep re­spect and passed away.”23

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Devotional practices such as reading, reciting, or copying a sutra ­were understood to require proper ritual purification.24 The Hokke genki vividly described the punishments for damaging or defiling a physical copy of the Lotus Sutra as well as the purification necessary before h ­ andling the text, including bathing, putting on clean clothes, and washing one’s hands and mouth.25 Since bodily “­matter out of place” was the source of many premodern taboos, the tooth that this okina inadvertently dropped onto the sutra would ordinarily have caused alarm. Instead, this bit of detritus was transformed into a physical manifestation of the surpassingly pure body of the Buddha. In this account, the tendency of the aged body to shed bits and pieces was treated not as a source of fear but as an opportunity to demonstrate the salvific power of the Lotus Sutra, especially in light of the fact that among the punishments the scripture delineated for ­t hose who disrespected it w ­ ere ailments of the teeth.26 Whereas in the tale of the priest Dōkō and the dōsojin the polluted body of the okina god was rescued through the intervention of an ordained priest, in the case of Okina Oshō, it is the pure faith of an underclass layman that was able to overcome pollution. Although the manner of the Okina Oshō’s death implied rebirth in a Pure Land, unlike other ōjōden, or even the tale of the dōsojin, he made no complaint about his physical disintegration. Rather it was that disintegration itself that provided the occasion for miraculous proof of his salvation. Put another way, we might say that although this tale hints at auspicious rebirth, and thus transcendence, its didactic thrust is immanentist. Instead of a miraculous release from the aged body, the Okina Oshō finds proof of his salvation within and through the aged body itself. The Hokke genki was the first text to feature the hagiography of another recluse who became one of the most popu­lar subjects of medieval Buddhist lit­er­a­ ture: Zōga Shōnin. The title shōnin could be translated as “saint” or “holy person,” and, like the term hijiri, often designated an individual who pursued devotional activities outside the strictures of monastic institutions. Contemporaneous rec­ ords show Zōga (917–1003) to have been a relatively high-­ranking priest of the Tendai School and disciple of the power­f ul Tendai zasu Ryōgen. In his late forties, however, Zōga appears to have suddenly departed Mount Hiei and taken up residence at the shrine-­temple complex at Tōnomine. Regarded with ­great re­spect during his time at Mount Hiei, he was known as a brilliant scholar comparable to two of the ten disciples of the historical Buddha: the ­great debater Mahākātyāyana (J. Kasennen) and Subhūti (J. Shubodai or Kūshō).27 But popu­lar hagiography starting with the Hokke genki presented Zōga primarily as an eccentric, dis­ respectful of authority, and, as hagiographic traditions developed, as someone who mingled with polluted individuals or engaged in defiling activities in order to

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prove his lack of interest in status and worldly concerns. To avoid the promotion and acclaim that w ­ ere his due, he sought to disguise his virtue, presenting a repulsive front. Over the centuries, the accounts of Zōga’s be­hav­ior became more and more explicit, and his transgressions become more and more explic­itly connected to the aged body. The Hokke genki account of his life begins by stressing his seriousness as a scholar-­monk, but then notes that he “hated fame and wealth” and desired to live in seclusion (tonsei inkyo).28 We read that the Emperor Reizei summoned him to court but, to escape this obligation, he “spoke mad words and committed mad acts.” He also denied a request to officiate in the tonsure of Fujiwara no Senshi (962–1002, also read as Akiko), consort to Emperor En’yū and ­mother of Emperor Ichijō, by speaking in a rough or vulgar manner. In neither case, however, are his acts described in any specificity. Fi­nally, Zōga is recorded retreating to Tōnomine. Despite the fact that the Hokke genki pres­ents Zōga living ­t here in isolation (“he hardly met or spoke to p ­ eople”), at the time he arrived, Tōnomine was already the site of a substantial shrine-­temple complex.29 Established in the Nara period as the mausoleum for Fujiwara Kamatari (614–669), originating ancestor of the Fujiwara clan, it was transformed into a monastic complex by the Tendai monk Jisshō (892–956).30 T ­ emple rec­ords also show Zōga playing a major role in building institutions and establishing patronage for regular rites and ser­v ices.31 At the end of his life, the Hokke genki has him predicting his death ten days in advance. When the morning of his departure arrived, he stated that “this old fool Zōga long wished to leave this life sooner and be reborn in the West. This ­will be realized in the morning, and I am most pleased.”32 ­After offering a lecture, he recited a poem: Mizuha sasu yasoji amari no oi no nami kurage no hone ni au zo ureshiki

At this g­ reat age, how joyful to encounter, when over eighty, something as rare as jellyfish bones amidst the “waves of old age”!33

We read that Zōga died peacefully, while reciting the Lotus Sutra, and that he was indeed over eighty years of age. His death poem plays on the analogous images of jellyfish bones and mizuha—­a new set of teeth that ­were said to sprout from the gums of elders who lived long enough—­both considered remarkable rarities.34 “The waves of old age” (oi no nami) is a trope employed quite frequently in Heian poetry likening the wrinkles on the face of an elder to r­ ipples on the “face” of a body of ­water, one of many stock images used to lament the miseries

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of aging. But in Zōga’s poem, the “waves of old age” are the locus in which one might find something extraordinary and felicitous. The poem repurposes the vocabulary of despair to glorify not just long life, but old age—­wrinkles and all. Although the text ends with assurances that Zōga attained rebirth in an unspecified Pure Land, his statement predicting his death and his death poem pres­ent a subtle rebuke of the transcendentalist logic under­lying mid-­Heian Pure Land thought. Although, he claims, he had often wished to have died years ago, presumably to be spared the indignities of old age, he now refers to t­ hose sentiments as foolish. His death poem revels in, rather than bemoans, having lived more than eighty years. Instead of “despising the defiled realm,” Zōga’s attitude seems one of accepting an aged body, providing an immanentist cele­bration of having remained in this world so long. Perhaps it was this attitude that led l­ater hagiographers to increasingly treat Zōga not just as an eccentric, but as an aged eccentric—­ perfectly at ease with his physical dysfunction even when it caused consternation to ­t hose around him. Although this biography makes no reference to pollution, l­ater iterations of Zōga’s legend did so emphatically. Zōga is the focus of two tales in the twelfth-­ century Konjaku monogatarishū.35 In one (12/33), he is depicted mingling with low-­ranking “menial monks” (gesō) who w ­ ere tasked with performing duties involving pollutants that scholar-­monks like Zōga ­were forbidden from coming into contact with. Zōga sits by the side of the road to take a meal with them, using twigs as chopsticks. Other scholar-­monks “avoided him like he was polluted.”36 The early thirteenth-­century Hosshinshū (1/5) also shows Zōga mingling with unclean individuals of low status, in this case beggars (kojiki) who ­were regarded as hinin or “non-­persons.” In this account, Zōga made his decision to abandon his priestly position in the midst of a Buddhist ritual debate (nairongi). When the rice from the offering was thrown out into the courtyard for the beggars, Zōga entered the fray, struggling with the outcasts for the discarded rice.37 The second tale from the Konjaku monogatari (19/18) describes Zōga’s be­hav­ ior when asked to officiate the lay ordination of a consort of En’yū tennō, identified as the retired Empress Dowager Sanjō.38 A ­ fter the ceremony, Zōga shocked the assembly by speculating aloud that the retired empress had invited him to be her preceptor only ­because of the size of his genitalia (kitanaki mono), although he notes that in his old age it has become “soft and limp as a piece of silk.”39 He then exclaimed, “When you get old, the wind becomes difficult to endure. Nowadays, since I am suffering from diarrhea I thought I would refrain from coming. But [ . . . ​] I made my best effort. Now, however, my condition is becoming unbearable and I must leave in haste.” At which point he proceeded to defecate off the veranda. The “filthy noise” made by his excretion was so loud that all the assorted

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dignitaries also heard it (oto kiwamete kitanashi). The young nobles burst out laughing but the monks complained among themselves, asking, “Who would invite such a madman?”40 This portrayal of Zōga’s incontinence contrasts sharply with examples from other premodern Japa­nese texts, in which elders became the object of grotesque humor.41 H ­ ere, Zōga is depicted using his body to humiliate his noble hosts, the mortification over his impotence and incontinence turned around and projected onto them. Even in the act of losing control, Zōga is presented as in command of the situation. The legendary Zōga uses pollution, in the form of his own incontinence, to paradoxically demonstrate his spiritual purity: on the one hand, he ensures his distance from worldly entrapments, on the other, he displays his nondualistic indifference to m ­ atters of purity and pollution. What in earlier lit­er­a­ture had been a sign of helplessness and a cause of ridicule and exclusion was ­here transformed into a symbol of world-­rejection and power. Although not directly connected to Zōga’s age, a similar inversion is at work in the Hosshinshū legend. The setting of Zōga’s mad outburst at a debate within the palace is significant. Ryōgen came to power at a time in which Enryakuji’s rivals had entrenched institutional advantages. He famously used debates as a means of securing patronage and advancing Enryakuji’s economic and po­liti­ cal fortunes. Contemporaneous sources describe Zōga as an excellent debater, yet shortly before his retirement to Tōnomine he withdrew from one of the most impor­tant contests of Ryōgen’s c­ areer, the Ōwa no shūron. The Hosshinshū satirized this episode, depicting Zōga joining the outcasts ­a fter a debate and fighting for rice—­a parody of Ryōgen “battling” in debates for prestige and material resources. As zasu, Ryōgen was deeply involved in traditional economies of purity. In his set of regulations for Mount Hiei’s Buddhist community (Nijū rokkajō), he prohibited donors from delivering food baskets containing smelly and greasy foods (meat) not b ­ ecause they v­ iolated the precept against taking life, but ­because they carried the physical taint of blood: “Some guests who visit monks deliver defiled food containers to our pure abode. [ . . . ​] Contaminating the pure with kegare ­w ill produce roots of evil.”42 The corpus of legends featuring Zōga points to the hy­poc­risy under­lying such efforts to maintain the physical purity of sacred sites like Mount Hiei. Both Ryōgen and the legend in which Zōga shares a meal with menial monks associate food baskets with pollution.43 In the legend, however, discarding the pretense of purity, Zōga reveals that ­t hese baskets provide sustenance for the community. Ryōgen’s attempts to enforce taboos ­were undercut by his efforts to encourage lay patronage and donations that ­were, to the minds of the hokke hijiri and other tonsei, themselves a source of corruption (and, in the

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case of the meal baskets sent up the mountain by patrons, the source of physical pollution, as well). The legend of Zōga at the nairongi juxtaposes the strug­gle of monks for patronage and the strug­gle of outcasts for nourishment. Although ordinarily the former would have been coded pure and the latter impure, by crossing over from one group to the other, Zōga demonstrates the similarity between the two groups, both battling for material support. The purity and superiority of the monks is revealed to be no more than an illusion.44 By presenting Zōga as physically tainted but spiritually superior, the promulgators of t­ hese and other late Heian Buddhist legends illuminated the ways in which discourses of purity and pollution served to ennoble the power­f ul but morally base while marginalizing the weak but morally pure.

Zōga at Tōnomine: Recluse or Institution Builder? To more thoroughly unpack the ways that purity, pollution, and the aged body ­were used in Zōga’s hagiographies, it is necessary to place them within their broader institutional and intellectual contexts. The ­actual reasons b ­ ehind Zōga’s move to Tōnomine w ­ ill likely forever remain a mystery, but the move coincided with an impor­tant trend at major shrine-­temple complexes t­ oward what scholars have called “aristocratization.” We have no reliable accounts of Zōga’s parentage, indicating that he was likely not of aristocratic stock.45 Although aristocratization affected most major shrine-­temple complexes, developments on Mount Hiei provide a clear example. One of the strategies initiated by Ryōgen to secure Enryakuji’s po­liti­cal and economic fortunes involved placing the sons of the ­temple’s elite supporters—­high-­ranking aristocrats or members of the imperial house—in positions of ecclesiastic authority on Mount Hiei. For example, Ryōgen saw to it that Jinzen (943–990)—­t he son of his patron, Regent Fujiwara Morosuke (908–960)— became his successor as Tendai zasu. Se­niority, calculated based on the number of years from ordination, was an impor­tant ­factor for promotion within ­temples and the governmental Office of Monastic Affairs (Sōgō). Aristocratization under­ cut the established seniority system and propelled relative youths into lofty monastic offices.46 Especially ­a fter the tenth ­century, as the average rank of appointees to leadership positions at Enryakuji and Kōfukuji, of t­ hose selected as lecturers at the three major yearly Dharma assemblies, and of ­t hose elevated to positions of authority in the Sōgō moved steadily up, the average age at the time of appointment crept steadily down.47 In other words, between the tenth and twelfth c­ entury, high-­status individuals closer to the prime of life w ­ ere increasingly pushing out lower-­status elders from positions of authority in major Buddhist institutions. Older priests ­were thus motivated to leave ­t hese major t­ emples and seek to establish themselves elsewhere. Although he does not use the term

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aristocratization (preferring the more problematic “secularization”), Takagi Yutaka points to increased competition for ecclesiastic positions as one of the major ­factors contributing to the rise of bessho hijiri in the late Heian period.48 Mid-­ ranking priests who increasingly saw no hope of promotion within the Sōgō began to populate bessho. Like Zōga, ­t hese “reclusive” elders did not fully remove themselves from institutional Buddhism, but merely transferred to smaller, less influential institutions. Abe Yasurō describes the Zōga of legend as “the quin­tes­sen­tial example of the hosshin tonsei,” a monk originally attached to a major Buddhist institution who is suddenly struck by the vanity of wealth and status and “awakens the Way-­ seeking mind” (hosshin)—­a sincere desire to achieve salvation.49 According to this archetype, it was religious insight that motivated ­t hese priests to abandon their posts.50 And yet, while hagiographies commonly placed tonsei and hijiri in an oppositional relationship with their home ­temples and portrayed them retreating into the wild, many of ­t hese hijiri types, in fact, joined established communities. Despite their being depicted as undeveloped wildernesses, many bessho ­were institutions in their own right, often maintaining close ties with their home ­temples. In other cases, so-­called tonsei appear to have set out to establish their own lineages at what amounted to fully fledged branch ­temples, sometimes referred to as matsuji, or in separate cloisters (betsuin) on the grounds of the main ­temple complex.51 Zōga is a case in point. Zōga was Ryōgen’s disciple, but only five years younger than he. He was thus among Ryōgen’s most se­nior disciples and, in light of his reputed brilliance as a scholar and debater, would have been a strong candidate for high monastic office.52 In spite of his qualifications, however, Zōga’s ­career was unspectacular; he was never appointed to the Sōgō. Considering Ryōgen’s accelerated promotion of the relatively inexperienced Jinzen, Zōga’s move must be read as a consequence of aristocratization. Zōga’s first contact with Tōnomine came when Ryōgen sent him and Fujiwara Takamitsu—­a nother of Morosuke’s sons and half-­brother of Ryōgen’s protégé Jinzen—to establish closer relations between the two t­ emples.53 Once permanently relocated to Tōnomine, Zōga engaged in the same fundraising and institution-­ building tactics that Ryōgen had, forming an especially close connection with Morosuke’s son, the Regent Fujiwara no Koretada (924–972, also read Koremasa).54 Although early biographies made vague references to Zōga’s eccentricity, detailed accounts of Zōga’s rejection of aristocratic values and violation of purity taboos w ­ ere the creation of l­ater generations. It is pos­si­ble that legends with a strong anti-­Enryakuji (and anti-­Ryōgen) bias ­were produced by Tōnomine monks at a time the ­temple was attempting to assert its own in­de­pen­dence from Mount Hiei.55

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Although the Hokke genki claimed Zōga behaved in a vulgar fashion when summoned by Fujiwara no Senshi/Akiko—­identified as the ­mother of Ichijō tennō—­t he Konjaku monogatari tells of Zōga defecating in the presence of a dif­ fer­ent consort who, the text specifies, was the d ­ aughter of a regent but who bore En’yū no princes or princesses. Of En’yū consorts, the only one who fits that description was Fujiwara no Junshi (957–1017), d ­ aughter of Fujiwara no Yoritada (924–989).56 In fact, Junshi is the main focus of the Konjaku tale. She is described as unsuccessfully attempting to ingratiate herself with Genshin by presenting him with lavish gifts and sponsoring elaborate Buddhist rites—­which rightfully should have been held only for the emperor—­involving twenty monks of high reputation and superlative moral and physical purity. Despite her efforts, ­people ­were surprised by the lack of miraculous signs t­ hese rites produced, implying that they had not been efficacious. In essence, Junshi is treated as a w ­ oman whose wealth and aristocratic status have somehow nullified the efficacy of her Buddhist faith. Her e­ very act, including her extravagant efforts to ensure physical purity, is portrayed as an attempt to buy her way into the com­pany of Buddhist saints and purchase miracles. Even her inability to have c­ hildren is implied to be a form of punishment for her spiritual failings. It is pos­si­ble that this legend, making Junshi rather than Senshi the victim of Zōga’s offensive be­hav­ior, was intended to advance the interests of Tōnomine. Junshi’s f­ ather, Yoritada, was the cousin and chief rival of Tōnomine’s major patron, Koretada, for the position of regent.57 By presenting Yoritada’s ­daughter as incapable of sincere faith, Tōnomine monks could indirectly elevate the Buddhist credentials of Koretada’s line. The factional tensions under­lying the Junshi legend illuminate a broader point. Taken as a w ­ hole, tales involving oppositions between, on the one hand, shallow aristocrats and vain aristocratic monks and, on the other hand, sincere, but lowly hijiri or tonsei types often masked conflicts not between monasticism and reclusion, or even between “institutional Buddhism” and “anti-­institutional Buddhism,” but between larger, better-­connected institutions with relatively young aristocratic leadership and smaller, less-­ prosperous institutions with older, lower-­status leadership.58 In the centuries following his death, Zōga was taken up by ­others not necessarily associated with Tōnomine who had an interest in mocking high-­status clerics and aristocrats and subverting the protocols and taboos—­including t­hose concerning pollution—­t hat helped them maintain their status. The Ujishūi monogatari, for instance, reproduced the Konjaku legend but shifted the emphasis back to the saintly, but physically dysfunctional, Zōga, highlighting his comments on the effects of age on the male anatomy and the scene of him emptying his bowels off the side of the veranda.59 It is unclear why Zōga came to be regarded as the

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paragon of hosshin tonsei, but I would suggest that his death poem praising the spiritual fruition available only to the aged made him an attractive medium through which to express the frustrations of ­t hose displaced by successive waves of aristocratization. It is likely that Chingen received his account of Zōga’s death directly from his disciples, monks who had watched their master, a brilliant scholar and debater, fail to attain high rank in the Sōgō, while at Enryakuji the relatively underqualified son of a Fujiwara regent held the post of zasu.60 The poem’s praise of the aged body—­and the unexpected, miraculous insights available to one who had piled up many years of practice—­offered a compelling protest against ­t hese developments.61 In the late Heian period, starting with the Hokke genki, we find numerous references to recluses who made their decision to abandon monastic institutions, such as Tōdaiji, Kōfukuji, Hōryūji, Gangōji, Enryakuji, Onjōji, Tōji, Ninnaji, and ­others, on the cusp of old age.62 Although the term tonsei could be applied to anyone who had chosen a life of reclusion, it was often used to refer to ­t hose who had undertaken a “second” retreat from the world—­cases in which monastics, who ­were already presumably living apart from the world of mundane social intercourse, opted to retire and retreat from monastic institutions as well. Although Buddhist tonsure and retirement had always been described as home-­leaving (shukke), texts dealing with t­ hese figures stressed the emphatic quality of their desire to abandon the world (yosute). The pattern of Zōga’s retirement is echoed in many tales from late Heian setsuwa collections. Although some of t­ hese tales featured recluses who deci­ded to abandon the world in the prime of life or even in youth, many featured individuals well along in their monastic c­ areer, whose aging figured prominently in their decisions to abandon their status.63 Furthermore, while hagiographies found in earlier legend collections, such as the Nihon ryōiki or the Ōjō gokurakuki, occasionally indicated the number of years of practice or the number of daily recitations of a given sutra or the nenbutsu that the hagiographic subject had undertaken, such quantitative mea­sures came increasingly to be stressed in the Hokke genki.64 In ­t hese tales, the age of the ascetic came to be used as an index of years of practice, which came to be treated as a form of symbolic capital. We read, for instance, of Raishin (1/24), who recited the Lotus Sutra three times a day into his old age and who, by the age of seventy, had recited it sixty thousand times; or of Hōju (2/50), who “from his youth to his old age never missed a day’s recitation”; or Chōzō of Mount Atago (2/56), who “from his youth till he reached the age of eighty-­some years [ . . . ​] did nothing but recite the Lotus Sutra.”65 In t­ hese tales, the aged ­were still associated with liminal or polluted spaces, poverty, or social alienation, but t­ hese f­actors w ­ ere

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Figure  1. En no Gyōja. En no gyōja daibosatsu koshikake zō oyobi zenki goki zō. Kamakura period. Courtesy of Ishibaji.

given a new, positive valuation as necessary preconditions for the kinds of concerted and sustained practices in which they engaged. Whereas previously t­ hese associations had been employed to disparage the aged body, in late Heian and medieval Buddhist lit­er­a­ture they became evidence of au­t hen­tic faith. Significantly, many of ­these tales described forms of mountain asceticism that are recognized as precursors to the Shugendō movement. Buddhist institutions had long encouraged certain of their members to engage in ascetic practices out of the perception that ascesis rendered clerics more effective in the per­for­mance of rites for worldly benefit (kitō). Shugendō, which Heather Blair aptly translates as “the Way of practice,” established its sectarian credentials around the mystique that derived from extensive, strenuous praxis (shugyō).66 Although ­t hese mountain ascetics also participated in traditional economies of prestige that derived symbolic capital from imperially bestowed titles or the opportunity to lead high-­ ranking aristocrats, emperors, or retired emperors on pilgrimages, the main

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source of their charisma derived from the length and severity of their ascesis. Nowhere is this self-­presentation more obvious than in repre­sen­ta­tions of E no Ozuno (fl. 699), a thaumaturge who, in his legendary guise as En no Gyōja (En the Ascetic), was venerated as the founder of Shugendō.67 Although the Hokke genki depicts some eleventh-­century mountain ascetics in the Ōmine Range engaged in practices believed to allow them to maintain a perpetual state of youth, significantly, the Kamakura-­era cult of En no Gyōja chose not to portray him as a youthful immortal, but as a wizened old man. Statues of En from the Kamakura period forward utilize his skeletal frame, wrinkles, and dangling whis­kers to demonstrate his years of practice (see figure 1). Unlike earlier repre­sen­ta­tions of old age as loss and decay, this was a body that wore its age proudly—as a mark of charisma that could only accumulate in a frame subjected to years of training.

The Outcast Okina Preacher and the Dedication of the Tokujōju-­in The final legend I would like to consider coalesced centuries ­after ­t hose recorded in the Hokke genki. It comes from the Enkyōbon Heike, one of the oldest variants of the Heike monogatari—­a collection of ballads on the rise and fall of the Taira clan. The Enkyōbon colophon is dated 1309–1310, but its narratives are thought to have developed in the roughly one-­hundred-­year span following the downfall of the Heike in 1185. The episode in question revolves around the dedicatory mass (kuyō) for the Tokujōju-in, a t­ emple constructed to fulfill a vow made by Toba-in (r. 1107– 1123), who presided as cloistered emperor from 1129 to 1156.68 Although vari­ous prideful noble priests w ­ ere clamoring to be the officiant at the inaugural ser­v ice, the retired emperor declared that he was willing to employ someone who was not necessarily wise or even a skilled preacher if they w ­ ere compassionate and virtuous, even if they w ­ ere “of base lineage,” or “the poorest priest in the land.”69 At that moment a strange old priest wearing a sedge hat and cloak (minokasa) appeared and addressed the retired sovereign with his qualifications: “I may be lacking in compassion and virtuous conduct, but in regard to poverty, this foolish priest is the poorest in Japan.”70 The nobles reacted to this strange ( fushigi) unsightly (migurishi) priest with revulsion, but the retired emperor immediately commissioned him to perform the ser­v ice. We learn that the old priest lived “beneath the floorboards of the shrine to Sakamoto’s tutelary deity,” where he also engaged in menial l­ abor. A ­ fter returning to the shrine, the old priest is described placing a few pine ­needles into a cup, drinking them down, and expressing his desire to live long enough to perform the dedicatory mass. He is confident he ­w ill, however, ­because “the purity

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of the retired sovereign’s good roots (gozenkon) are indeed felicitous,” and he “practices purifying good deeds and austerities.”71 On the day of the ser­v ice, the old priest arrived accompanied by twelve low-­ class priests (gesō). He looked frail, with a crooked back, his knees quivering as he ascended the dais. At first he seemed confused about the order of the ser­v ice. ­After a few unsettling moments, however, he hit his stride. “His petition was truly a polished jewel. [ . . . ​] The multitude gathered to listen shed tears of joy and purified karmic sins that had come down from the infinite past. The lay p ­ eople and priests who saw, heard, felt and understood straightened themselves up out of joy and achieved instant enlightenment (sokushin no bodai wo satoru).”72 Fi­nally, the old priest flew into the air and was revealed to be Yakushi Nyorai, the “original ground” (honji) of the tutelary deity of the Sannō shrine and the Buddha installed in Enryakuji’s main hall. The twelve gesō ­were revealed to be Yakushi’s twelve guardian deities. The tale concludes with the observation that “although it is now said to be the latter age of the Dharma, b ­ ecause the dedicant’s faith was pure, the majestic light of the gods and buddhas is still awesome.”73 This narrative destabilizes many of the structural oppositions ­f undamental to ritsuryō and court-­centric strategies for defining power, purity, and sacred authority. Most glaringly, it collapses the distinction between the highest-­and lowest-­status individuals in the land. Whereas the supporters of the tennō-­ centered polity had utilized ritual and other symbolic practices to protect the tennō from pollution, this tale envisions a deep interdependence b ­ etween the lofty retired sovereign and a polluted el­derly priest of the lowest pos­si­ble status. Not only does the priest describe himself as the “poorest in the land,” his living situation makes clear that he was a hinin, a “non-­person” whose work as a shrine menial would have also put him in regular contact with kegare.74 The old priest’s garb is also noteworthy: he is described wearing a minokasa, which was not only a symbol for the aged body, but also a mark of the polluted outcast since at least the Nara period.75 Abe Yasurō has noted that this legend is clearly a reworking of earlier setsuwa (dating from the late Heian period) that depicted the arrival of vari­ous strange otherworldly elders to sanctify the dedication of the G ­ reat Buddha in Nara. But in the Enkyōbon rendition, the relationship between the authority of the sovereign and the authority of the mysterious elder has been reversed—­the retired emperor requires the miraculous intervention of the outcast priest to consecrate his vow t­ emple and thus reaffirm his right to rulership.76 The Enkyōbon thus exemplifies the po­liti­cal and cultural shifts that began in the late Heian. Whereas the tennō-­centric polity had established elaborate protocols to guard the sovereign from sources of pollution, the late Heian period saw an increasing intercourse

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between retired sovereigns and marginalized ­others, including low-­status aristocrats and warriors, as well as non-­agrarian groups, in an effort to shore up the economic and military power of the imperial h ­ ouse and ­counter the Northern 77 Fujiwara. Cloistered emperors at times also saw fit to employ symbols of the margin to enhance their authority.78 Conversely, the Enkyōbon belittles prideful aristocratic priests associated with power­f ul ­temples—­who would usually have been expected to perform such an impor­tant ser­v ice for Toba-in. The compilers of this legend clearly identified with its protagonist. Just as he was situated beneath the floorboards conducting protective and purifying rites, scholars believe that the marginal itinerant performers, known as biwa hōshi, who created the Heike corpus fulfilled a similar function—­propitiating the spirits of defeated Taira warriors, undoing the kegare associated with their violent demise—­and ­were also regarded in their day as virtual outcasts, inhabiting zones of the capital associated with pollution and death.79 As in all of the tales related in this chapter, purity of faith trumps physical purity, just as experience and ascesis (undertaken in eccentric spaces, ­under the floorboards, in bessho, or in mountain wildernesses) trump aristocratic prestige. But why specify that this was not just an outcast, but an aged outcast, and dwell upon such details as his frailty, his bent back, trembling knees, and his befuddlement over the order of the ser­v ice? First of all, it allowed the compilers of the Enkyōbon to make deliberate use of the symbolism of the aged body. A major theme of this legend was the miraculous overcoming of duality, facilitated on the one hand by the purifying good deeds of the retired sovereign and on the other hand by the power of the gods and buddhas. Asami Kazuhiko, writing about this ­family of legends, sees them based around transformations of the mundane (zoku) and polluted (kegare) into the sacred (sei).80 But in order for the overcoming of oppositions to be suitably impressive, the oppositions need to be forcefully drawn. This tale heightens the contrasts by invoking centuries-­old associations linking the aged body with decay and pollution. Paradoxically, therefore, t­ hese tales required the very sets of associations they dramatically undermined. Indeed, none of the legends examined in this chapter went so far as to invoke the well-­ established Mahāyāna argument that the difference between purity and pollution was merely a product of deluded dualistic thought. While providing examples of bodies that seemed to violate established rules of purity and pollution, the didactic thrust of t­hese tales was not to argue that pollution was unreal, but to use unexpected conflations and inversions to shock the audience, leaving them awed by the miraculous power of the sacred scripture, practice, holy site, or, in this case, retired sovereign that ­t hese legends sought to celebrate.

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I would also call our attention to the okina preacher’s engagement with the arts of longevity. He lives on pine n ­ eedles and performs austerities in order to prolong his life ­until he is able to complete his role in the fulfillment of Toba-­in’s vow. But what a remarkable contrast this old hinin priest pres­ents, with his trembling legs and crooked back, compared with the black-­haired, pink-­skinned marvels that populated the majority of early Japa­nese immortality legends.81 This points to an impor­tant resonance between the figure of the retired emperor and the hinin priest qua aged immortal. Whereas enormous effort had been exerted from at least the time of the compilation of the Nihon shoki to associate the tennō with the trappings of youth and vitality, the cloistered emperor, while also a consumer of longevity rites, was necessarily positioned as an elder relative to his son or grand­son, the sitting ruler. While the symbolism of eternal youth was reserved for the reigning sovereign, a newly empowered old age became instrumental in the rise of the Insei. It is thus significant that the Tokujōju-in kuyō setsuwa employs a discourse of immortality that has been decoupled from images of youth and vitality. In contrast to the classical image of the tennō, the retired emperor projected a two-­sided character as king and Buddhist retiree (and thus elder).82 But the vocabulary describing the world of the cloistered emperor was also dominated by sennin metaphors—­for instance, he dwelt and conducted his affairs from a detached palace known as the Sentō, or the “Grotto of the Immortals.”83 If the retired ­emperor was ­imagined to be a sennin, he would have to be one whose old age was seen not as a prob­lem to be overcome but as an opportunity to be exploited. ­Especially following the Emperor Shirakawa, who lived to the ripe old age of seventy-­six and spent the majority of his life (forty-­two years) in “retirement,” old age and postretirement c­ areers became central to maintaining the power and prestige of the royal ­house, and thus royal authority, in the late Heian through Kamakura periods.84 Gomi Fumihiko writes of how the Insei system produced a two-­sided kingship in which the sacred (hare) character of the sovereign was embodied by the tennō, while the cloistered emperor (jōkō) was able to engage in the polluted mundane realm (ke) in order to accrue wealth and po­liti­cal power. At the same time, Gomi acknowledges that the retired emperor bolstered his sacred authority through pilgrimage and the sponsorship of Buddhist rites and construction proj­ ects.85 Hayami Tasuku has noted that certain of ­t hese proj­ects ­were aimed at presenting the retired emperor as a Buddhist wheel-­turning king or chakravartin, rendering the implicitly aged Buddhist retiree the pinnacle of worldly power and the key mediator of sacred power as well.86 The Tokujōju-in narrative thus traces

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the complex contours of the po­liti­cal, religious, and cultural landscapes of the post-­ritsuryō world, in which an aged Buddhist retiree qua wheel-­turning king could traffic in polluted realms and still enjoy the blessings of longevity and the grace of the gods and buddhas. What inspired the compilers of t­ hese tales to challenge what might be described as orthodox pre­sen­ta­tions of the aged body? Certainly t­ here w ­ ere numerous complex f­ actors, but one must not overlook the growing role of nonelites and the laity in the formation of late Heian Buddhist discourse. The Hokke genki, for example, is noteworthy for its inclusion of voices from the purported social and geo­graph­ i­cal margins of the realm. The register of the Reizan-in Shakakō, where Chingen was listed, also included the names of lay Buddhists of vari­ous ranks. Many of the tales that make up the Hokke genki ­were likely transmitted orally by provincial governors of mid-­to low-­ranking ­houses and their retinues who had returned to the capital ­a fter their tour in the provinces.87 Since governors ­were the rare aristocrats who actually ventured out to remote corners of the realm, Chingen must have seen them as a valuable source of tales hitherto unknown in the capital. In the pro­cess, the perspectives of second-­and third-­tier nobles as well as commoners and even outcasts became imprinted on t­ hese materials.88 Much of what was innovative in t­hese tales, therefore, reflected the difference between narratives that arose at court, where imperially bestowed rank remained the primary source of prestige, and narratives that developed in the provinces, where connections to power­f ul sites, local lore, and miraculous occurrences made as much or more of an impression. In the economies of purity established by Buddhist elites, it was underclass individuals who w ­ ere charged with work that necessitated contact with pollution. But as ­t hese groups came to have a larger role in the economic viability of major shrine-­temple complexes from the eleventh c­ entury forward, their perspectives and desires came to be reflected in the texts produced by ­t hose institutions. Ironically, as pollution taboos became ever stricter at Buddhist ­temples throughout the medieval period, and as the social status of hinin became ever more fixed, outcasts became ever more the subject of aggrandizement in legends and didactic tales—­presented as uncanny beings with direct access to sacred powers. This was likely due, in part, to the fact that t­ hose charged with managing pollution, and thus violating taboos, w ­ ere seen to be capable of something miraculous in its own right. But it also surely stemmed from the fact that ­those situated on the margins of elite Buddhist institutions, whose voices became increasingly prominent from the late Heian period forward, would not have been as invested in discourses of purity and pollution and would have had ­little interest in maintaining the

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hierarchies of status and space they served. Thus, as the symbolic order of the tennō-­centered polity became less tenable, the aged body, long associated with decay, defilement, and an unsettling proximity to death, became an opportune device for ­t hose marginalized by traditional spatial and social schemas to challenge ­t hose hierarchies and assert their own symbolic power.

C HA P T E R F I V E

The Eccentric Avatar Reimagining the Body of the Bodhisattva in Early Medieval Engi

The early medieval period saw a rapid proliferation of legends in which local deities or kami appeared as mysterious old men. However, some of the earliest instances of medieval legends featuring divine elders used the aged body to represent not kami, but figures from the Buddhist pantheon: most notably bodhisattvas and, occasionally, buddhas.1 Perhaps the most startling early example of a Buddhist divinity adopting the persona of an elder occurs in the eleventh-­century Onjōji ryūge-­e engi. The text centers on a legend concerning an old monk named Kyōtai who spent his days consuming alcohol, fish, and turtles, leaving a pile of fish on the grounds of the ­temple Onjōji. And yet this sinful old monk was revealed to be an avatar of the Bodhisattva Maitreya (J. Miroku Bosatsu)—­the Buddha of the ­future age. In the last chapter we saw examples of early medieval legends in which old men, due to some combination of faith and the salvific power of the Lotus Sutra, overcame pollution, thus symbolizing the per­sis­tent power of the Buddha in the age of the Dharma’s decline. But, in the case of Kyōtai and other legends examined in this chapter, the aged body was revealed as more than just a vehicle through which divine powers could work, but an embodiment of divinity itself. The Ryūge-­e engi’s depiction of Kyōtai was a truly radical departure from the standard repre­sen­ta­tions of Miroku Bosatsu. Bodhisattvas tended to be presented iconographically as princes, younger than buddhas, perhaps symbolizing that they w ­ ere still undergoing a pro­cess of maturation on the path to buddhahood.2 Although we read that Kyōtai lived on fish and tortoises, the Daijō honjō shinji kangyō, a sutra quoted in the Ryūge-­e engi, states that Maitreya “from the first time he awakened the way-­seeking mind did not eat meat. For that reason he is named Honored One of ­Great Kindness (Jison).”3 The legend of Kyōtai thus raises several questions. Given that Onjōji was likely established in the seventh or eighth c­ entury, why is it that the earliest extant legend dealing with this old monk only dates from the second half of the eleventh c­ entury?4 What is the significance of his consumption of fish? And, why specify that Maitreya assumed the form of an old man? To answer t­hese questions we 74

The Eccentric Avatar   75

r­ econstruct the conditions for the production of this text by examining the positioning of its vari­ous facilitators and the social and cultural fields in which they operated. In addition to the religious and literary contexts for the figure of the divine old fisherman, we explore Onjōji’s position relative to its power­f ul rival Enryakuji, and its geographic setting in Ōmi province—­a province encompassing Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake. Kyōtai’s role in this legend can be best understood by viewing him in light of the complex relationships between the Buddhist institutions proximate to Lake Biwa—­including Onjōji, Sekidera, Sūfukuji, and Ishiyama-­dera—­and the ­people who made their living from this body of ­water. Before delving into the prob­lem of this eccentric avatar, however, it would be useful to step back and reflect on how Buddhist doctrines of avatarism—­the belief that its divinities could choose to take ­human form to interact with mortals—­ intersected with practices of iconographic and textual repre­sen­ta­tion in Japan, and particularly how t­ hose practices came together in the production of engi, origin accounts of sacred sites.5

Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Image and Text By the time Buddhism reached Japa­nese shores, it had developed sophisticated theories of avatarism. The eminent scholar of Japa­nese folklore, Yamaori Tetsuo, has speculated that part of the appeal of Buddhism to the early Japa­nese was the fact that buddhas and bodhisattvas ­were capable of manifesting themselves in ­human form, with a panoply of anthropomorphic icons greatly enhancing the cult’s attraction.6 In addition to their aesthetic appeal, Buddhist icons, when consecrated and installed in a ­temple hall, ­were regarded as honzon (principal objects of veneration) and treated as the functional equivalent of living buddhas, repositories of sacred power and focal points for rituals and devotional activities. At the level of textual repre­sen­ta­tion, Buddhist legends and didactic tales took advantage of the narratological potential afforded by the notion that buddhas and bodhisattvas could interact directly with humanity, not just as mysterious disembodied presences, but in recognizable forms. ­These stories w ­ ere used as the basis for sermons and lectures that helped foster devotion and explain an abstruse doctrine in terms that could be grasped by the wider population. Centuries before Buddhist icons or scriptures reached Japan, Mahāyāna Buddhists had determined that buddhas existed in three corporeal modes (Sk. trikāya J. sanshin). In their fundamental state as embodiments of the Dharma (Sk. dharmakāya J. hosshin), buddhas ­were formless, pervading the cosmos.7 In visions or dreams, however, celestial buddhas (Sk. sambhogakāya J. hōjin) displayed radiant, glorified, but ­human-­like bodies. ­These ­were also the bodies

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buddhas manifested in their buddha fields, paradisiacal projections of their enlightened minds. At rare moments, at the dawn of an age, buddhas took physical bodies (Sk. nirmāṇakāya J. ōjin), “response bodies” such as the one that Śākyamuni ­adopted in the years he walked the earth. Mahāyāna sutras explic­itly acknowledged that embodied divinities ­were more relatable than abstract concepts, explaining that buddhas and bodhisattvas appeared in fleshly forms as an example of skillful means (Sk. upāya J. hōben), the notion that out of their supreme wisdom and compassion, buddhas and ­bodhisattvas modulated their teachings to perfectly accord to each individual’s specific needs. Buddhist divinities, particularly bodhisattvas—­depicted as especially ­eager to intervene in the lives of mortals—­could take forms that ­were appropriate to the needs and level of comprehension of the person they wished to save. For example, in the twenty-­fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, we read of the thirty-­three forms (some of them not particularly exalted) that the Bodhisattva Avalokiteś­vara (J. Kannon Bosatsu) could assume depending on the requirements of the situation. Mahāyāna Buddhists i­ magined a cosmos teeming with buddhas and bodhisattvas ready to come to the aid of suffering worldlings. Since the Māhāyana tradition repeatedly underlined the miraculous adaptability of its divinities’ manifestations, one might assume that buddhas and bodhisattvas would have been depicted assuming a wide variety of physical forms, some lofty, some lowly, to accommodate themselves to the variety of predicaments in which mortals found themselves. And yet, prior to the eleventh ­century, the repertoire of somatic forms available to buddhas and bodhisattvas in Japa­nese legends was oddly limited. Part of this can be explained by the sheer weight of the Mahāyāna iconographic and textual tradition—­a tradition that overwhelmingly presented ­t hese entities possessing bodies that reflected contemporaneous understandings of how the most power­ful, dignified, and beautiful beings should appear. Iconographically, buddhas ­were consistently presented as men in their prime, seated in a meditative posture, clothed in ­humble robes, with serene expressions on their beautiful, symmetrical ­faces; bodhisattvas ­were most often represented as young men, dressed in more elaborate robes and headdresses or crowns.8 In cases in which the bodies of buddhas or bodhisattvas w ­ ere presented with anomalous features, ­t hese marks always gestured t­ oward a superhuman rather than a subhuman status. For example, numerous figures from the Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhist pantheon w ­ ere endowed with multiple ­faces or arms to symbolize their superior watchfulness or power. But, even in ­t hese cases, the bodies of buddhas and bodhisattvas w ­ ere presented as youths or men in their prime. Aside from relatively rare examples of bodhisattvas with jarringly chimeric bodies, such as

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the “horse-­headed” Batō Kannon, and occasional instances from the tenth ­century forward in which Kannon was depicted in female form, the overwhelming majority of bodhisattva images reflected the normative body of the youthful or ichininmae male. In Mahāyāna scriptures, or in so-­called Buddhist apocrypha—­texts composed l­ ater but accepted as canonical in the Chinese cultural sphere—­t he bodies of buddhas and bodhisattvas, when described at all, generally conformed to the same patterns.9 The Buddhist corpus included detailed descriptions of the miraculous thirty-­two marks and eighty minor marks that distinguished the anatomies of buddhas from t­ hose of lesser beings. Buddhas ­were known by miraculous features, such as the thousand-­spoke dharma-­wheel symbols on the ­soles of their feet (J. sokuge nirinsō). O ­ ther marks ­were comparatively mundane, but still ennobling. The skin of a buddha, in addition to its golden hue, was extremely supple and smooth, implying that it possessed no wrinkles or other marks of age. A buddha had a perfectly erect posture. According to the eighty minor marks, his skin was lustrous, his body pure, flexible, and emitting a pleasant fragrance—in short, the clean, soft, stainless body of youth.10 Such descriptions informed Buddhist iconography.11 Perhaps even more importantly, they formed the basis for meditative visualization practices, imprinting the minds of the initiated with prescribed images of Buddhist divinities. While officially sponsored works of art and canonical texts might be thought of as Buddhism’s “hard” tradition, Buddhism also included a “soft” tradition of popu­lar lit­er­a­t ure. In China, from at least the fourth c­ entury, inspired by the genre of “anomaly accounts” (Ch. zhiguai), Buddhist laypeople circulated miracle stories. Th ­ ese texts became highly influential in the development of Japa­nese Buddhist lit­er­a­ture.12 In Japan, popu­lar Buddhist lit­er­a­ture was produced out of a desire to collect materials for preaching, to promote a par­tic­u ­lar site or cult, or to make merit, and came to be grouped ­under generic categories such as setsuwa (explanatory tales), den (hagiographies), genki (rec­ords of miracles), or engi (origin accounts of sacred sites).13 Unlike Buddhist apocrypha, which followed the formulae of sutras, ­these texts made no attempt to masquerade as canonical works. Although their compilers often gleaned materials from sutras, earlier collections, or other textual sources, they often supplemented t­ hese with materials gathered by word of mouth from their contemporaries, who related their own encounters with Buddhist divinities, or the experiences of o ­ thers that had been transmitted 14 to them verbally. The oral component of t­hese texts allowed a more diverse set of voices to contribute—­from low-­ranking and unofficial or “self-­ordained” monks and nuns, to laypeople from vari­ous social strata. ­These noncanonical writings ­were thus

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able to capture images of buddhas and bodhisattvas that had formed in the popu­ lar imagination—an imagination that had no doubt been influenced by official narratives and icons, but which also was f­ ree from the constraints that went along with being embedded in Buddhist institutions. It was in this arena of narrative fluidity that legends emerged in which buddhas and bodhisattvas ­were portrayed taking nonnormative bodies.15 Although, according to the standard canonical categories, buddhas and bodhisattvas existed as “dharma,” “reward,” or “response” bodies, in Buddhist popu­lar lit­er­a­ture, they ­were most often described manifesting “transformation bodies” or keshin, sometimes rendered hengeshin or henge.16 In Nara and early Heian-­period texts, the term keshin referred to a variety of super­natu­ral beings.17 However, most early legends failed to associate a given keshin with any par­tic­u ­lar member of the Buddhist pantheon, depicting them instead as mysterious beings that appeared in this world to fulfill some sacred duty, only to vanish once their task was accomplished. Such legends bear a clear imprint of Daoist tales in which immortals rode away on clouds, ascended into the sky, or “concealed their form” (J. ongyō) at w ­ ill.18 In certain Buddhist scriptures, the keshin replaced the “reward body.”19 But, broadly speaking, t­ here ­were impor­tant distinctions between depictions of the reward body and the transformation body. The reward body was understood to appear only to experienced meditators. Keshin, on the other hand, appeared to laypeople as well.20 Another impor­tant difference was the diversity of forms available to keshin. The reward body was revealed through guided meditation, which involved repeatedly calling to mind (J. nen) aspects of the prescribed image of the celestial body of a Buddhist divinity ­until ­t hese ele­ments could be combined into a complete image. Keshin, on the other hand, ­were more often described appearing unbidden in dreams or in the waking experiences of laypeople. The keshin thus provided a medium through which the religious imagination had relatively ­free rein—­a field of imaginative play in which eccentric avatars might appear. Nonetheless, in the overwhelming majority of Buddhist tales of the Nara through mid-­Heian periods, the physical appearance of keshin—­even of specific buddhas, bodhisattvas, or honzon—­were not described. Most early legends provided no details about their physiognomy, besides noting their “noble appearance” or “strangeness.” ­These conspicuously unmarked keshin would likely have been understood as normative, ichininmae males. In the late Heian period, however, numerous legends appeared involving keshin of specific buddhas or bodhisattvas, which provided concrete descriptions of their physical forms and identified them as anonymous or low-­status individuals, or, at times, individuals possessing nonnormative bodies.21

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The emergence of tales depicting keshin with nonnormative bodies was the result of multiple f­ actors, one of which was an outgrowth of the theory that buddhas and bodhisattvas could divide their bodies (bunshin) and manifest themselves in multiple concrete, localized instantiations, most saliently as honzon. Through the interplay of scripture, icon, and the legends that glorified them, honzon developed their own individual characters and charisma, contributing, as well, to the identities of the specific sacred sites that h ­ oused them. Engi played a key role in “fleshing out” the lives of t­ hese icons. Often ­these narratives elaborated on the special powers of localized Buddhist divinities for healing, protection from enemies, matchmaking, safe childbirth, or other worldly benefits. ­These narratives fulfilled a promotional function, broadcasting the distinguished histories and unique rec­ord of miracles of ­t hese buddhas and bodhisattvas. Thus, while many in premodern Japan venerated non-­localized Buddhist divinities, we also find plentiful examples of p ­ eople dedicated, for instance, to the “Hasedera Kannon” or the “Yata Jizō,” or reporting the miraculous intervention of the “Yakushi Nyorai of Kamunaidera.”22 It is in engi and popu­lar legends describing miracles associated with specific, localized instantiations of a given Buddhist divinity that we begin to encounter non-­standard bodies assigned to buddhas and bodhisattvas. Thus, for example, in the Konjaku monogatari we find the exceedingly rare case of a bodhisattva taking the form of an old ­woman (ōna). In the tale (16/9), an impoverished young female devotee of the Kannon of Kiyomizu-­dera, a t­ emple in the Higashiyama district of the Heian capital, encounters an old w ­ oman who helps her find a husband. The old ­woman is ­later revealed to have been a keshin of Kiyomizu-­dera’s Kannon honzon.23 Interestingly, the old ­woman’s hut seems to have been located at or near the site of a pair of ancient standing stones, on a small rise ­behind Kiyomizu-­dera’s main hall. ­These stones ­were likely venerated as ishigami, gods that assisted in securing a mate, and which from at least the eleventh ­century had at times been represented as old men and w ­ omen.24 ­These stones are not mentioned in extant versions of this legend, but their proximity to the hall housing Kiyomizu-­dera’s honzon raises the possibility that this tale sought to associate their powers with the ­temple’s main icon. By revealing this miraculous old ­woman to have been the Kannon of Kiyomizu-­dera, this tale thus made a bid to contribute to the ­temple’s sacred history, and the identity of its honzon, adding matchmaking to its cata­logue of powers and the body of an aged ­woman to its list of potential manifestations.25 Just as the concept of keshin opened up new narratological possibilities, it also allowed for the identities of honzon to be negotiated between clerics at Buddhist institutions and the populations of lay-­devotees and unofficial religious professionals who saw themselves to be affiliated in some way with t­ hese institutions or

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their honzon. Legends and engi involving keshin combined or preserved side by side vari­ous interpretations and associations. But not ­every new legend would be taken up gladly by members of a given Buddhist institution and incorporated into the rec­ords they kept. Honzon ­were a major source of symbolic capital for t­ emples. ­Temples could translate the cachet of their icons into material resources by motivating wealthy patrons to engage in pilgrimages or fund ceremonies or rituals, or by extracting smaller donations from the less affluent. Buddhist institutions thus had an interest in maintaining control over the image and prestige of their honzon. However, as ­temple engi developed from the classical to the medieval period, popu­lar narratives increasingly came to be included in texts compiled by ­t hose with formal ties to the institutions whose histories they described. The earliest examples of engi from the Nara period w ­ ere compiled at the ­request of the Office of Monastic Affairs and lack the mysterious, miraculous ­ele­ments of ­later engi.26 Their central concern was to connect their t­emple to some illustrious (preferably royal) historical personage.27 From the Heian period forward, however, even engi kept by the institutions themselves increasingly became repositories for popu­lar legends and miracle tales. The introduction of folk ele­ments into ­t hese rec­ords contributed to the individuation of the honzon they celebrated. ­These legends ­were subtly s­haped by the many voices that reproduced ­these tales ­until they ­were rendered into text, at which point they ­were molded once again by their compilers. Through ­t hese complex pro­cesses, as legends ­were juxtaposed and combined, the localized buddhas and bodhisattvas at their center took on complex, com­ posite identities. Th ­ ese new, negotiated identities of t­ emple honzon could then, in turn, be used to reflect and symbolize the collective identities of the institutions and the lay communities that formed around them. This provides us with another framework for understanding how the symbolic resonances associated with dif­ fer­ent corporeal forms ­were used to strategically enhance the status of a given site or cult, especially in cases in which legends originated with or ­were ­adopted by ­t hose formally attached to the institutions featured in ­t hese tales. In the case of the Ryūge-­e engi, the legends of the bizarre old avatar Kyōtai likely originated with Onjōji monks, possibly even t­ hose in positions of authority. Furthermore, although the story of Kyōtai was l­ater taken up in setsuwa collections that w ­ ere produced by ­people without a clear connection to Onjōji, many of ­t hese legends found their way into the Onjōji denki and Jimon denki horoku, semiofficial histories compiled by t­emple priests in the Muromachi period.28 All of this suggests that although the Ryūge-­e engi was composed by an aristocratic layman, ­people attached to the institution strongly endorsed the manner in which it equated Onjōji’s honzon with one of the most lowly of bodies imaginable.29

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Onjōji’s Ignoble Avatar The earliest extant account of the eccentric avatar Kyōtai comes in the Onjōji ryūge-­e engi, written by Fujiwara no Sanenori (active 1023–1062), a mid-­ranking scholar-­poet.30 The text sought to promote the Dragon Flower Dharma Assembly (Ryūge-­e) of its title—to distinguish it from other major Dharma assemblies (hōe) of the day and place it on par with the prestigious assemblies of Enryakuji and the major Nara-­based ­temple complex of Kōfukuji. The Dragon Flower Assembly anticipated the moment in the ­f uture at which Maitreya, having descended from his Tuṣita heaven (J. Tosotsu ten), would achieve enlightenment and give his first sermon u ­ nder the Dragon Flower Tree (Ryūge Jū). By promoting the Ryūge-­e at Onjōji, this text underscored the ­temple’s connection to Maitreya (Onjōji’s honzon) and implicitly situated it as the site from which Maitreya would give his first sermon, heralding the dawn of a new age.31 The Ryūge-­e engi also sought to explain how the ninth-­century Tendai prelate Enchin (814–891) came to choose Onjōji, also known as Miidera, to base his lineage—­what would come to be known as the Jimon or “­temple gate” branch of the Tendai School. Although Enchin served as chōri (head) and bettō (supervisor) of Onjōji, his connections to the t­emple w ­ ere not as deep or as exclusive as 32 ­later texts would have us believe. In the centuries a­ fter his death, Enchin’s clerical lineage entered into a fierce rivalry with the descendants of his con­temporary, Ennin (793 or 794–864), a line that came to be known as the Tendai Sanmon or “mountain gate” school, on account of their being based on Mount Hiei.33 It was only generations ­after Enchin’s death that his spiritual descendants came to be based exclusively at Onjōji, and generations ­after that that they sought to revise the historical rec­ord and cement his connection to the ­temple. The Ryūge-­e engi represents an early example of such efforts. The Ryūge-­e engi begins with a description of Enchin’s journey to the Tang and his return, during which he receives a visitation from an elder god, identified as Shinra Myōjin, who directs him to Onjōji to ­house the texts he had brought back from China. At Onjōji, Enchin encounters Kyōtai, described as an old (rō) bhikṣu, 162 years of age, living in a hut. We learn that “if it was not fish, he would not eat it; if it was not wine, he would not drink it. He caught fish and tortoises and treated them as the ‘vegetables’ of his daily meal.” Kyōtai transfers responsibility for the ­temple to Enchin and dis­appears. Intrigued, Enchin notices a pile of fish near Kyōtai’s hut, which suddenly transforms into lotus roots, stems, and flowers. From this, Enchin “truly knew this was a keshin of Maitreya.”34 In the centuries ­a fter it was first recorded, Kyōtai’s legend spread beyond Onjōji, to be featured in vari­ous setsuwa collections, including the Honchō

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shinsenden, Konjaku monogatarishū, Uchigikishū, Kokonchomonjū, and Genkō shakusho, as well as the Kakuichibon Heike monogatari and the Genpeijosuiki. But texts compiled and maintained by Onjōji itself show that if t­ here was ever an attempt to redact or repress potentially embarrassing aspects of Kyōtai’s pre­ sen­ta­tion, they ­were unsuccessful. By the medieval period, Kyōtai was clearly seen as an essential ele­ment of the ­temple’s identity. The Jimon denki horoku, compiled between 1398 and 1428, contains numerous variants of the legend, demonstrating how it had grown through repeated retellings. From the Jimon denki horoku we gather that the Kyōtai mitamaya, a shrine at which yearly rites w ­ ere performed on November 11, was situated in the central cloister, near the ­temple’s main hall, according with Sanenori’s description of the location of Kyōtai’s hut in the eleventh ­century.35 To understand what this figure signified to the Onjōji community, we should first note that the Kyōtai of the Ryūge-­e engi was clearly already a composite figure—­the product of multiple layers of legend.36 Some have theorized that Kyōtai was originally based on Onjōji’s head monk at the time Enchin returned from the Tang.37 At some point, however, Kyōtai came to be seen as something akin to a gohō, a divine protector of the Dharma. Tsuji Zennosuke has noted that Kyōtai’s name translates literally to “awaiting the teachings,” suggesting someone blessed with sufficient longevity to guard the ­temple ­either u ­ ntil Enchin returned from the Tang or u ­ ntil Maitreya promulgated the Dharma at the dawn of the next aeon.38 Eventually, Kyōtai came to be portrayed as more than a mere protector of Maitreya’s teachings, but as Maitreya himself. The Ryūge-­e engi dramatically underscores the identity of Kyōtai and Maitreya in a section in which Sanenori recounts his own experiences at Onjōji: Now, gazing at the most sacred part of the ­temple precincts, I reflect on the former times through which Kyōtai dwelt ­here to preserve the Dharma. The thousand-­spoke Dharma wheels on the bottoms of his feet went up and down the stone bridges ­running east and west. His fin­gers of hundredfold-­ blessings opened and closed [his hut’s] north and south-­facing win­dows and doors. ­Those of us whose karma has brought us to reside for a time in this place can walk precisely in Maitreya’s ancient footsteps. Happily I entered Kyōtai’s former dwelling. Looking up at the ­temple’s Golden Hall, I could see it was no dif­fer­ent from [Maitreya’s] forty-­nine story wish-­fulfilling gem hall. Gazing down at mirror-­like Lake Biwa, I could see it was just the same as the ­waters of the eight attributes of the lotus pond of Maitreya’s Tuṣita heaven.39

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The text maps well-­k nown features of Maitreya’s paradise onto the traces of Kyōtai’s former presence at Onjōji. The Shinji kangyō, for example, describes Maitreya tirelessly engaged in bodhisattvic practice in his “forty-­nine story wish-­ fulfilling jewel hall in the fourth Tuṣita heaven,” such that “­those who have formed a karmic bond with him ­will be born in a lotus flower in the lake of ‘­water of eight attributes.’ ”40 The Ryūge-­e engi makes Lake Biwa the lotus pond into which devotees would be reborn and identifies Onjōji’s main hall with Maitreya’s wish-­ fulfilling (mani) jewel hall. The most in­ter­est­ing of ­t hese parallels is Sanenori’s references to Kyōtai’s “thousand-­spoke dharma-­wheel” footprints and “hundred-­ blessing” fin­gers.41 ­These are, of course, among the major marks of Buddhahood, another reminder that Kyōtai was, in fact, Maitreya. Other aspects of Kyōtai’s character w ­ ere brought to the fore in l­ ater texts. For example, although the Ryūge-­e engi notes that Kyōtai left a pile of fish on ­temple grounds, it does not dwell on the pollution this would have incurred. L ­ ater versions, however, expanded on this, adding fish scales, bones, and tortoise shells to the list of pollutants with which he defiled Onjōji’s sacred precincts. The Konjaku monogatari (11/28) describes Kyōtai “spitting out and scattering” scales and bones, adding to the sense of slovenliness, and notes the horrific stench emanating from his piles of refuse.42 As in the case of Okina Oshō, the transformation of the polluted products of fleshly decay into symbols of purity and sacred power— in this case lotus flowers—­contributes to the sense of awe the tale could inspire.43 A second impor­tant point established in the Ryūge-­e engi and elaborated on in ­later versions was that Kyōtai not only consumed fish, he caught them. The ­Jimon denki horoku, for example, preserves a variant highlighting his identity as an old fisherman. He is described spending his days wandering idly by the edge of the lake, catching turtles. The pile of shells and bones he left became so tall it came to be known as kameoka (turtle hill).44 Given ­these ­factors, we are left with the question: Why would anyone, especially ­those associated with Onjōji, seek to associate the body of Maitreya with that of an old, filthy fisherman? In order to better grasp how Kyōtai’s multifarious identities functioned in Onjōji’s own proj­ects of identity formation, I w ­ ill, in the following pages, attempt to reconstruct some of the religious, literary, and geo­ graph­i­cal contexts through which this strange figure would have been understood.

Fishy Old Men of Medieval Legend Premodern Japa­nese Buddhist lit­er­a­ture includes a remarkable number of miracle tales featuring old fishermen or old men engaged in selling, purchasing, or

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consuming fish. Interestingly, if we trace the development of t­ hese narratives, we find a trend ­toward, on the one hand, fishermen in early legends whose age was not specified gradually being identified as elders in ­later accounts, and, on the other hand, a tendency for aged fishermen who had only a peripheral role in a given narrative gradually coming to be identified as divine beings. The germs of certain of t­ hese tales appear in the early ninth-­century Nihon ryōiki.45 Two tales in par­tic­u­lar provided the basis for impor­tant ­later legends involving a miraculous fish-­bearing elder, who according to some legends provided the dedicatory sermon at the eye-­opening ceremony of the monumental G ­ reat Buddha (Daibutsu) enshrined at the Nara t­ emple of Tōdaiji. In the first tale (2/15), a beggar with no real knowledge of Buddhist scriptures is selected to become the lecturer for a memorial ser­v ice but is miraculously able to conduct a lecture on the Lotus Sutra.46 In the second tale (3/6), a monk wishes to eat fish and sends his disciple to obtain some. When the acolyte encounters an acquaintance on the road, the fish transform into eight fascicles of the Lotus Sutra. Although in neither of ­t hese original narratives is the subject described as old, in the early twelfth-­century Tōdaiji yōroku ­t hese tales merge into an account of a miraculous old man carrying a load of mackerel, identified as the Ke’nin Kōshi or Saba Okina.47 The Tōdaiji yōroku contains four variants of the Saba-­u ri Okina legend. Although the Tōdaiji yōroku claims ­t hese tales ­were transmitted orally by ­temple elders (kikyū), all four bear close resemblance to the legends set down in the Nihon ryōiki. Each describes how the Emperor Shōmu has a dream in which he is instructed to make the first person who appears at the gate the lecturer for the eye-­opening ceremony for the G ­ reat Buddha. On the appointed day, an old man carrying mackerel appears and is selected. Against all expectations, the old man is an exemplary lecturer (in certain variants he lectures in Sanskrit, demonstrating ­either extreme erudition or exotic origins). A ­ fter the lecture, the elder mysteriously vanishes, and it is revealed that the fish he was carry­ing had transformed into (or had always been) the eighty scrolls of the Kegonkyō.48 The Tōdaiji yōroku also contains narrative rudiments that would l­ ater be combined and elaborated on in a group of legends describing another miraculous old fisherman: Hira Myōjin, a tutelary deity of the area at the base of the Hira mountain range, which skirts the southwest edge of Lake Biwa. Medieval engi used Hira Myōjin as a narrative lynchpin linking the sacred history of Tōdaiji with that of the Ōmi ­temple Ishiyama-­dera. The thirteenth-­century Shoji ryakki, for instance, tells of how the priest Rōben (689–774) was tasked with securing gold to gild the ­Great Buddha. Instructed by the god Zaō to proceed to Ōmi province, Rōben finds an old man sitting atop a ­great boulder, fishing. The okina identifies himself as Hira Myōjin and offers his land to Rōben on the condition that he install an

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icon of Nyoirin Kannon t­ here. The ­temple constructed to h ­ ouse this icon comes to be known as Ishiyama-­dera. The creation and installation of the icon miraculously facilitates the discovery of gold for the first time in Japan.49 Rōben’s encounter with Hira Myōjin was depicted in the Kamakura-­period Ishiyama-­dera engi emaki (see figure 2). The original versions of this legend presented in the tenth-­century Sanbō ekotoba and the Tōdaiji yōroku, however, lacked many of ­t hese narrative ele­ments. In the Tōdaiji yōroku we find six variants. The first four include no mention of Ishiyama-­dera. The fifth describes the origins of Ishiyama-­dera, but makes no mention of an okina or Hira Myōjin.50 In the Sanbō ekotoba and the Tōdaiji yōroku’s sixth variant, having received instructions from the god Zaō in a dream, the emperor directs Rōben to proceed to a par­tic­u­lar boulder by the side of a river on top of which is (or was) a fishing okina, and to place a carved image of Nyoirin

Figure  2. Rōben encountering Hira Myōjin. Ishiyama-­dera engi emaki. Kamakura period. Courtesy of Ishiyama-­dera.

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Kannon atop that boulder. Once this task is completed, gold is discovered in Mutsu province.51 Significantly, in none of ­t hese early narratives is the old fisherman described as a god—­five of six make no mention of an okina at all. The sixth variant, a nascent version of the Ishiyama-­dera engi, mentions the fishing okina. However, it pres­ents him not as a god, but simply as a means of identifying a par­tic­u ­lar rock on which to install an icon.52 It is not u ­ ntil the Shoji ryakki of 1297 that the fishing okina was identified as Hira Myōjin and was depicted conversing with Rōben.53 What began as a story involving a passing reference to an innocuous old fisherman had by the thirteenth c­ entury developed into a tale in which a divine old fisherman played a pivotal role. Like Onjōji, in the case of Ishiyama-­dera we are once again dealing with a ­temple in close proximity to Lake Biwa. What was it about this region that led to the development of two families of medieval legend in which old fishermen were revealed to be divine beings? Although this is not a question to which ­there could ever be a single definitive answer, we can begin to understand some of the forces under­lying the production of t­hese legends, and ­others involving otherworldly fish-­bearing okina, if we consider the place of fishermen and fishing communities in the early and medieval Japa­nese imagination—­how the aged fisherman became an object of poetic curiosity, and how the rise of the estate system in the late Heian period affected the status of t­ hose who sustained themselves by fishing.

Fishing Communities in the Early and Medieval Imagination As an occupation, fishing was regarded with considerable ambivalence in early and medieval Japan. On the one hand, in some of Japan’s earliest texts, we see fishing communities providing a portion of their catch directly to the throne or to major shrines as tribute (nie).54 Such offerings ­were presented as acts of gratitude to the sovereign and evidence of his or her virtue. In the eighth-­century Sumiyoshi taisha jindaiki, for instance, fishermen identify sea bream (tai) as an appropriate offering for a sage-­k ing.55 However, since t­ hese offerings circumvented the ritsuryō system of taxation, they placed t­ hese communities in an ambiguous situation. At the same time that ­t hese groups enjoyed direct connections with the highest authorities of the land, they ­were paradoxically outside the ­legal framework that or­ga­nized and defined the state. The mobility and in­de­pen­dence of t­ hese groups was also unsettling to officials tasked with translating the l­abor of the able-­bodied inhabitants of their district or province into rice that could serve as taxes.56 As non-­agrarian types, fishermen w ­ ere perceived to fall outside the

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structures of the ritsuryō state and were often treated as a prob­lem to be managed, the functional equivalent of furōnin, a term for absconders and o ­ thers unattached to the land.57 Such views persisted into the medieval period, u ­ nder the estate system (shōensei). Estate supervisors in areas where the bounty of the sea was readily available complained that the ­people ­under their management preferred the relatively easy life of fishing to the arduous ­labor of agriculture.58 While fish was an integral part of the premodern Japa­nese economy, attempts to model the ritsuryō regime ­after Chinese pre­ce­dents led to a desire among early Japa­nese elites to proj­ect an image of Japan as “Mizuho no kuni,” the land of plentiful ears of rice.59 This emphasis on agriculture placed fishermen, if not outside, then at least near the bottom of the social hierarchies articulated in the court-­ centric cultural products of the Nara and Heian periods.60 Despite the fact that offerings of fish ­were, to some degree, deemed necessary for the proper function of the state—­official documents, such as the Engishiki, detailed the precise number and kind of fish to be presented by provincial officials for major festivals and ceremonies of state—­t he ­people actually tasked with procuring fish ­were treated in official and literary sources as quasi-­deviants, exotic outsiders—­not fully part of a realm whose collective identity was symbolized by a tennō who, according to Amino Yoshihiko, was characterized as a “rice-­k ing.”61 Although fishing was regarded with suspicion in some corners of the ritsuryō state, the royal ­family relied on fish not only as symbolic tokens of fealty or ceremonial offerings, but also to stock their pantries. To ensure an uninterrupted supply of fish, as early as the ninth c­ entury, protected zones known as mikuri w ­ ere established, most of the earliest of which ­were shallow-­water fisheries around Lake Biwa.62 The communities based at ­t hese mikuri had exclusive rights to fish the w ­ aters contained within or bordering them. Parallel systems developed in the late Heian period to protect the rights of other groups, known as kugonin or jinnin. Kugonin w ­ ere groups that had special arrangements with the imperial ­house­hold or other power­ful patrons to provide nonagricultural produce gleaned from the ­waters (kakai) or uncultivated fields or mountains (san’ya) of estates or public land.63 Jinnin (divinely protected ­people) generally referred to underclass individuals who performed menial l­abor on shrine grounds, but could also refer to groups who had tributary arrangements with shrines.64 The proliferation of t­hese groups in the Heian period led to numerous ­conflicts over rights to the resources of ­waters, mountains, and wilderness (san’ya­ ­kakai).65 In addition to conflicts between fishing groups, and frictions between ­t hese collectives and their patrons, t­ hese communities often found themselves in an adversarial relationship with local Buddhist institutions. While well-­connected and po­liti­c ally power­ful shrines formed tight bonds with their jinnin and

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protected their rights in exchange for regular offerings of fish, Buddhist strictures against taking life precluded such arrangements for temples. For temples bordering major bodies of water, the potential for conflict was high. The Takami net group, for instance, was active in an area located somewhere in the vicinity of, and possibly inside, the grounds of Ishiyama-dera.66 But between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, temple officials, their allies at court, and eventually the Kamakura warrior government issued a series of orders banning hunting and fishing in the area.67 Bans on taking life (sesshō kindan) were relatively common in premodern Japan. From at least the seventh century, rulers or regional authorities instituted bans of hunting and fishing in regions they controlled in order to prove their devotion to the Dharma or qualifications as enlightened leaders, to transfer merit to deceased relatives, or to ensure the efficacy of rituals of state or rituals for longevity or other worldly benefits.68 In addition to these temporary governmental orders, temple grounds were themselves regarded as zones in which the taking of life was strictly prohibited.69 The Ishiyama-dera engi emaki beautifully illustrates Ishiyama-dera’s efforts to interrupt the activities of fishermen and hunters on temple grounds. One section of this illustrated scroll contains a long frame in which monks, identifiable by their shaved heads but nonetheless dressed in armor and carry ing weapons, chased off hunters.70 In an ironic twist on the Buddhist tenet of nonviolence (Sk. ahiṃsā), these ruffian monks are depicted protecting wildlife by inflicting a beating on one of the hunters with a long staff. To the left of that scene, another band of armed monks drives away three fishermen. In the river, two monks and a layman disassemble a weir, while monks on shore cut up the nets and release fish back into the water (see figure 3). Clearly sesshō kindan declarations were not just a means of demonstrating Buddhist compassion, but also a means for temples to reinforce boundaries and assert control over their territory. Furthermore, the Ishiyama-dera engi emaki demonstrates that for temples bordering rivers, lakes, or seas, the temple’s domain was often believed to include some portion of those bodies of water. Importantly, at least four documents, likely dating from the medieval period, which provide Onjōji’s four boundaries (shishi, sometimes pronounced shiji or shiishi), assert that the temple’s eastern border extended into Lake Biwa “to the depth of a standing oar.”71 If the temple’s borders had been conceived this way at the time the Onjōji ryūge-e engi was composed, Kyōtai would have been understood to have been fishing not near Onjōji, but within Onjōji, suggesting that he was not only consuming fish on temple grounds and polluting the site with animal refuse, but also taking life on temple grounds.72 By associating him with marginal groups that lived on the edges of ritsuryō culture and often found themselves in conflict

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Figure 3. Monks attacking fishermen. Ishiyama-­dera engi emaki. Kamakura period. Courtesy of Ishiyama-­dera.

with Buddhist institutions, the Ryūge-­e engi hinted that Kyōtai was guilty not only of eccentricity, but of sin.

The Aged Fisherman as Literary Motif Contributing significantly to the range of meanings that the aged fisherman evoked was a poetic tradition, of which Sanenori and possibly ­others at Onjōji ­were surely aware, associating aged fishermen with solitude, homesickness, and tears. In the poetry and prose of both China and Japan we find a distinct tendency to represent fishermen as old men, due in part, perhaps, to the fact that a Chinese term for fisherman, yufu, translates literally to “fishing ­father,” and thus carries age-­graded connotations. The most famous examples of old fishermen from the Chinese classics romanticize the ­free and easy life of the fisherman, who remains disengaged from the stresses of the world, embodying an idealized reclusive existence.73 Japa­nese poets inherited this image of the aged fisherman, but ­were less likely to portray him in such unabashedly positive terms.74 Their treatment of old fisher­ men had more in common with other poems describing elders scraping out a

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living on the margins of society. Especially among prac­ti­tion­ers of Chinese verse or kanshi, the means by which elders w ­ ere able to support themselves was a subject of poetic curiosity. Heian-­period kanshi display, if not a concern for, at least an interest in, the plight of the poor, miserable, and underclass.75 Ivo Smits observes that such poems treat “the social fringe as exotic subject m ­ atter.”76 The exoticism of ­these subjects stemmed from their embodying every­thing that the center had sought symbolically and rhetorically to expel: t­ hose depicted as dirty, diseased, poor, miserable, and, of course, old. Since the self-­image of early Japa­ nese rulers and nobles was tied in part to the conceit that rice was the foundation of the realm, non-­agrarian elders became a subject of special fascination, to be examined from a safe distance. Once again, the body of the elder occupied the symbolic shadow formed by a poetics that sought to illuminate only certain aspects of life at court. Heian-­period kanshi poets turned their gaze on t­ hese repressed ele­ments of the social body that the center had seen fit to ignore.77 An example from a twelfth-­century poetry competition (uta awase) held at Onjōji demonstrates that the poetic potential of the aged fisherman inspired Japa­ nese verse (waka), as well. In the fifth round of offerings on the theme of “Moon over Lake Biwa,” the judge, Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204), awarded victory to Taira no Chikamune’s (1144–1199) contribution: Karasaki ya shiga no urawa ni tsuki sumeba haruka ni utau oki no tsuribune

As the moon shines on Shiga bay, from Karasaki, the far-­off song of a fishing boat on the open ­water.

Shunzei judged this poem to be superior for the way it produced an atmosphere of loneliness, evoking the “single oar-­song of the fishing-­boat okina,” a reference to a Chinese poem by Yoshishige no Yasutane: “Tears of homesickness form several rows on the face of the border guard / From his fishing boat, the okina sings a solitary oar-­song.”78 Yasutane’s poem produces its own air of loneliness by presenting a homesick soldier, posted at the very edge of the realm. The appearance of the old fisherman further underscores his distance from the center, situating him in the far-­off, eccentric zone of the okina. Although ­there is nothing to indicate that Yasutane’s poem was set at night, the Wakan rōeishū appended a note indicating that it called to mind the moon. This might be one reason Shunzei drew a connection between Yasutane’s poem and Chikamune’s. But why would the Wakan rōeishū’s compilers have claimed that Yasutane’s poem evoked the moon? Images from the medieval period depicting fishing communities show pairs

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or groups of men working during the daytime. Fishing at night presumably would have been a solitary, private pursuit, appropriate for the okina, the quin­tes­sen­tial outsider, cut off from society, forced to make his way in the world. Chikamune’s poem makes no mention of the age of the fisherman whose song he hears from Karasaki. Shunzei’s interpolation of the okina into the scene shows the degree to which, by the late Heian period, a solitary fisherman evoked not just loneliness, exile, tears, and moonlight, but the okina. The mere mention of a fishing boat in moonlight was enough to call to mind the body of the elder. Such ­associations ­were also at play in the repre­sen­ta­tions of Kyōtai, especially in ­later variants that indicate that he fished b ­ ecause he had “no other means with which to support himself.”79 In the context of the late Heian poetic imagination, Kyōtai was a figure that would have been immediately recognizable: a poor, underclass elder, living apart from the group, forced, through his poverty, to engage in a form of livelihood that implicated him in pollution and sin.80 Since fishing groups had long been represented as not fully part of the social body of the imperial state, the aged fisherman of poetry and legend could also serve as a stand-in for t­ hese collectives. Just as the aged kunitsukami in Japan’s earliest myths represented the collective identities of vari­ous non-­Yamato ­peoples who came to acknowledge the suzerainty of the center, the aged fisherman of poetry and myth was treated as a representative of outlying non-­agrarian groups. But in the Ryūge-­e engi, Kyōtai is more than a representative of a marginal group submitting to a superior party. Kyōtai is himself revealed to be Maitreya, the primary object of worship at Onjōji. The aged, polluted, sinful body was redeemed not through its contact with a superior power—it was revealed to be a superior power in and of itself. To understand why ­t hose involved in originating and disseminating this legend should have hoped to valorize such a body requires one final piece of context: the shifting dynamics of patronage of Buddhist institutions in the mid-­eleventh c­ entury.

Incorporating the Fringe: The Estate System and the Bound­aries of the Monastic Body in Late Heian Japan In the eleventh c­ entury, t­ emples w ­ ere forced to search for alternative sources of funding.81 Traditionally, major shrine-­temple complexes could rely on steady support from the central government in return for protective rites performed for the state or the imperial ­house­hold. As this system faltered, ­temples turned increasingly to lower-­status individuals for support, often through fundraising campaigns (kanjin). The Sekidera engi, for example, describes efforts to rebuild the ­temple in the 1020s, uniting high and low, including the fishermen and merchants

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who dwelt near Lake Biwa.82 ­Temples also began to accumulate rights to portions of the produce of private estates or shōen. By the eleventh c­ entury, proprietors w ­ ere exerting ever more control over t­ hese territories, seeking to extract a share not only of their agricultural produce, but also of the output of their rivers, lakes, the sea, mountains, and uncultivated lands (san’yakakai). In ­these years, Onjōji was also forging new relationships with laypeople of diverse backgrounds through the burgeoning estate system. At the time the Ryūge-­e engi was being composed, the head (chōri) of Onjōji was Myōson (971–1063), who was also the proprietor of the Ōura-­no-­shō, an estate situated on the northern edge of Lake Biwa. Identified in the Man’yōshū as a major port, Ōura was likely settled early on by communities whose livelihood was closely connected to the lake, a situation that appears to have continued well into the medieval period.83 In 1041, Myōson transferred rights to this estate to a ­temple that soon became one of Onjōji’s imperial cloisters, effectively passing the proprietorship of the Ōura estate to Onjōji itself. Unlike shrines, t­ here is no evidence that t­ emples demanded a portion of the fish caught on their estates. Nonetheless, t­ emple proprietors could hardly ignore violations of the Buddhist precepts taking place on lands nominally u ­ nder their control. Although t­ emples occasionally sought to restrict activities like hunting and fishing on their territories through sesshō kindan declarations, such cases ­were relatively rare. More often, t­ emples turned to ideological means to manage the commoners on their lands. Taira Masayuki argues that the proliferation of tales depicting the salvation of sinners (akunin ōjō) in preaching texts dating from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries resulted from increased contact between t­ emple priests and laity who had no choice but to engage in forms of livelihood that Buddhist teachings deemed immoral. ­These sermons implicated fishermen, hunters, warriors, and vari­ous other non-­agrarian occupational groups in killing, and sought to convince auditors that ­those who engaged in such activities ­were destined for hell ­unless they repented.84 Although ­t hese sermons provide evidence that ­temples ­were attempting to adjust the be­hav­ior of laypeople ostensibly ­under their management, I would argue that influence flowed back in the other direction as well. Th ­ ese tales often provided ideological cover for hunters and fishermen by demonstrating that even such sinners could be saved if they displayed sufficient piety at appropriate moments. L ­ ater legends found other ways of justifying fishing in par­tic­u­lar, especially when a portion of the catch was destined to become an offering to a shrine.85 Late Heian-­period ­temples that found themselves in possession of lands on which sinful activities w ­ ere being performed w ­ ere forced to rethink their sense of the bound­aries of their sacred domain and their community. Shōen, especially

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as they came ­under tighter control by religious leaders, came to be ­imagined as an extension of the sacred grounds of the t­ emple, and an extension of the monastic body. In the case of Onjōji, this is clear in the Kujō-ke Onjōji engi, a document purporting to be from the ninth c­ entury, but clearly of much l­ ater provenance. It begins by delineating the four bound­aries of the ­temple and then lists seven shōen whose taxes contributed annually to the repair of t­ emple buildings and the sustenance of the resident monks.86 The document invites “­people of high or low status, men or ­women, to gather and dwell within the four bound­a ries of the above mentioned estates that are the territory (ryō) of this ­temple,” especially their uncultivated “mountains, ­waters and wilderness.”87 In this engi, Kyōtai himself insists that the area “within the four bound­aries of this ­temple’s territory (ryō) is exclusive; it is not the territory of any other person,” emphasizing that Onjōji is meant exclusively for Enchin’s Jimon lineage, but also asserting Onjōji’s rights against encroachment on its estates.88 Interestingly, all of the shōen listed in the text’s introduction ­were located in Ōmi province, relatively close to Onjōji and the shores of Lake Biwa.89 As a document adamant about protecting bound­aries (reiterating Onjōji’s shishi three times within the text), its welcoming, inclusive attitude ­toward ­those who would populate the ­temple’s shōen and utilize their mountains and ­waters is significant. It explic­itly recognizes the fact that Onjōji is dependent on t­ hose properties, and the ­people of “high and low” status who dwelt t­ here.90 And the p ­ eople the text invited to “cultivate” t­ hese areas would invariably have also engaged in the same problematic forms of livelihood as Kyōtai.91 The aged, polluted avatar Kyōtai appeared at precisely the historical moment that Onjōji was coming into possession of territories inhabited by groups that had long been regarded as marginal or even sinful. Just as akunin ōjō tales w ­ ere the product of the increased contact between priests and commoners brought about by the involvement of t­ emples in their estates, the figure of Kyōtai was the product of a similar cross-­fertilization. His identity is one that straddles and unites several communities. He is an old fisherman, making him the representative of marginal occupational groups of Onjōji’s shōen and the vicinity around the ­temple. But he is also a monk—­self-­ordained perhaps, but living on ­temple grounds. Indeed, his hut is positioned within the ­temple’s innermost sanctum, directly across from the hall housing the ­temple’s honzon. Fi­nally, through the revelation that Kyōtai is himself Maitreya, his identity brings together all of t­ hese groups. As a living embodiment of Onjōji’s honzon, Kyōtai becomes a quasi-­totemic figure, symbolically encompassing ­those of high and low status the ­temple sought to unite to ensure its ­f uture.92 Kyōtai served to reassure the faithful that polluting activities such as fishing could be sacred duties if they served to maintain the ­temple ­until Maitreya made his appearance u ­ nder the Dragon Flower Tree. And as a monk

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who lived on fish, Kyōtai also became a subtle symbol of the monastic community, which, although it did not directly consume the fish being caught on its ­estates, also began in the eleventh ­century to owe its own livelihood in part to ­t hose activities.93 Scholars have cast the Onjōji ryūge-­e engi as an attempt to articulate a compelling sectarian identity for Onjōji, distinct from that of its more power­f ul rival, Enryakuji.94 Although at times ­t hese two ­temples, as representatives of the Tendai School, presented a united front against their mutual rival Kōfukuji, conflicts over Myōson’s brief appointment as Tendai zasu marked the beginning of a long period of often violent clashes between the Jimon and Sanmon branches.95 The portrayal of Onjōji’s honzon as an aged fisherman was clearly connected to the new identity that Onjōji was attempting to forge at this time. As a literary trope, the aged fisherman reflected the status of fishing communities—­ communicating their marginal place in the ritsuryō imagination, not fully integrated into the body of the state. Kyōtai thus represented all the non-­agrarian, quasi-­deviant bodies residing on the shōen that had only recently become part of Onjōji’s corporate body as well. In stark opposition to earlier views of the aged body as something problematic that might—as in the time of Tenmu—­require expulsion from sacred sites to protect their purity, as an avatar of Onjōji’s central buddha, the aged body was embraced and “incorporated” not only as part of the collective body of the Jimon branch, but also as its emblem.96 Asserting the power of the alienated, unclean body of the aged fisherman, ­these legends also proclaimed the power of marginal groups at a time that the structures of the classical center ­were being reconfigured. In the pro­cess, they implicitly affirmed the power of Onjōji as a marginal entity relative to Enryakuji. As long as the ritsuryō economic and symbolic economy functioned, ­temples had no interest in elevating marginalized bodies symbolized by the aged male. In the ritsuryō worldview, shrines and t­ emples functioned as “organs” of the body of the state, providing rites (kitō) to protect it. With the accelerating disintegration of that symbolic and economic system in the eleventh ­century, ­temples ­were forced to incorporate bodies that had hitherto caused consternation. The Ryūge-­e engi and ­later variants of the Ishiyama dera engi show how ­t hese communities transformed the meanings of t­ hese bodies in light of t­ hese new realities, eventually embracing and celebrating them.97 Of course t­ emples with legends involving sacred old fishermen w ­ ere not the only ones to come into possession of estates with fishing populations in the late Heian period.98 But the proximity of Onjōji, Ishiyama-­dera, and Seki­dera to Lake Biwa forced them into more direct contact with ­these groups, evidenced by the long rec­ord of conflicts between Ishiyama-­dera and local mikuri. From the

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lofty heights of Mount Hiei or distant Mount Kōya ­these deviant types could continue to be ignored, or ­imagined as exterior to the ­temple body. This was not so s­ imple on the shores of Lake Biwa. Nonetheless, we should not assume that the appearance of legends featuring divine old fishermen meant that fishing communities, long seen as incorrigible adversaries, w ­ ere immediately accepted by the entire monastic community as allies. As negotiated texts, ­t hese legends ­were never completely successful in their attempt to blend and reduce multiple competing voices to a single narrative. Onjōji monks continued debating Kyōtai’s significance well into the Muromachi period. A document preserved in the Jimon denki horoku notes that “some rec­ords claim Kyōtai was the founder of this ­temple,” an allegation the author denies.99 ­Were assertions that Kyōtai had founded the t­ emple attempts to undermine the notion that he was a filthy old fisherman, or that he was an avatar of Onjōji’s honzon? It is impossible to know. At the very least, the document reveals that the community continued to discuss and debate Kyōtai’s identity and his connection to the ­temple long ­after the composition of the Ryūge-­e engi. It also reveals that ­t hose with the authority to make theirs the final word supported the view that Kyōtai was at once fisherman, monk, and Maitreya. Although this chapter has demonstrated that Kyōtai served a quasi-­totemic role, representing the incorporation into Onjōji’s collective body of ele­ments that ­t hose invested in the ritsuryō order had sought to exclude, it would be more precise to say that Kyōtai was an image of collective identity projected by certain members of the group, over the pos­si­ble objections of other members. David Bialock has remarked that in the late Heian period the borders of the realm w ­ ere “reinvested” as sites of symbolic power.100 Indeed, ­t hese ­were the centuries in which the aged body, as a symbol of the border and exterior, was also at times ascribed a sacred aura. But ­t hese broad epistemic shifts ­were only the result of countless smaller acts of reinterpretation and renegotiation undertaken by specific historically, eco­nom­ically, and po­liti­cally situated actors. Although questions remain, we are blessed with relatively detailed knowledge of Onjōji and its interests at the time it began promoting the Kyōtai legend. We cannot reconstruct a full account of how the aged avatar became the norm in medieval legend, but the case of Kyōtai demonstrates how a complex set of shifting circumstances motivated par­tic­u­lar individuals and groups with ties to the social and po­liti­cal margins to appropriate the aged body and reimagine it as a symbol of power.

C HA P T E R SI X

The Graying of the Gods The Return of the Okina Kami in Medieval Myth

The eleventh ­century saw the emergence of Buddhist legends in which the aged body was a­ dopted as a novel symbol of otherworldly power, in some cases employed to represent unlikely keshin of buddhas or bodhisattvas. In the centuries that followed, a remarkable number of legends w ­ ere recorded in which the aged body was also used to represent kami of vari­ous types.1 The allure of the okina god became so ­great in medieval Japan that we find numerous instances in which sacred sites with relatively ancient and well-­established histories or origin legends revised t­ hese accounts ­either to incorporate a mysterious old man or to provide a more concrete description of their tutelary deities that marked them as elders—­a pro­cess I call the “graying of the gods.” By the Kamakura period, legends had appeared portraying kami associated with diverse cultic sites as old men, including Gozu Tennō, Hachiman, Hakusan Myōjin, Hira Myōjin, Inari Myōjin, Kasuga Gongen, Kifune Myōjin, Kumano Gongen, Matsuo Myōjin, Mio Myōjin, Sekizan Myōjin, Shinra Myōjin, Sōtō Gongen, Sumiyoshi Myōjin, and Yoko’o Myōjin.2 Many of ­these gods made their first appearance in what have been called “medieval shinwa.”3 The term shinwa, usually translated as “myth,” also carries the narrower connotation of “kami tales.” Aside from their date of composition, “medieval shinwa” share certain characteristics that distinguish them from ritsuryō-­era kami tales, most notably the kikishinwa—­myths first recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki—­a nd from ­t hose found in eighth-­century fudoki. First, while early kami tales often featured the gods of elites and served to articulate and reinforce the social and po­liti­cal hierarchies of the imperial state, medieval shinwa ­were of more diverse origins. Generally, they ­were the product of shrine-­ temple complexes and ­were used to advance their interests, often as fund-­raising tools. A second impor­tant distinction involves the ways ­t hese texts represented their gods. The sections of the early chronicles dealing with the “age of the gods” depicted mortals—­usually tennō or their representatives—­interacting with kami on the terrestrial plane. But with each successive imperial reign, kami became ever more remote. In post-­kikishinwa texts, it became the norm to pres­ent gods as invisible presences whose voices could be heard through oracles, but who did not 96

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reveal themselves materially.4 Medieval shinwa, however, once again depicted kami taking concrete, humanlike form, although instead of appearing to rulers or their emissaries, they almost always revealed themselves to religious professionals—­ esteemed Buddhist clerics or thaumaturges.5 A third characteristic of medieval shinwa was their tendency to revise earlier narratives, reworking or expanding the character of a par­tic­u ­lar kami, often reimagining their physical appearance as well. Kami who had earlier been depicted as youths, or not been described at all, ­were commonly reenvisioned in medieval shinwa as old men.6 In other cases medieval shinwa introduced “medieval gods”—­kami that made their first appearance, most often as an okina, in texts that dated from the medieval period but that often claimed to describe much earlier events.7 The prevalence of myths featuring okina kami contributed to the modern notion that the okina was the archetypal form of the Japa­nese god, as opposed to buddhas who w ­ ere traditionally portrayed as youths or men in their prime.8 Of course, Japa­nese legends did portray bodhisattvas and buddhas as old men or even, in rare instances, as old w ­ omen. And while an overwhelming majority of legends featuring otherworldly okina used the aged body to represent kami rather than buddhas, we should not assume that okina kami ­were a perennial feature of the Japa­nese religious imagination, or that the categories of kami and buddhas aligned neatly with categories of “Japa­nese” and “foreign.” Many early kami long regarded as “native” to Japan likely had foreign origins or cults so deeply influenced by continental legends, liturgies, and ritual forms that it is impossible to tease out native ele­ments from t­ hose that originated abroad.9 Furthermore, while certain early medieval okina kami ­were portrayed as chthonic, identified as protectors of a local territory ( jishu), ­others ­were not marked as local, let alone “Japa­ nese.” Many ­were explic­itly portrayed as foreign, some identified as Dharma protectors (gohō or gohōjin) who had traveled to Japan from ­Korea or China for the purpose of protecting a Buddhist site or clerical lineage.10 This chapter pres­ents an analy­sis of representative examples of medieval shinwa to show, first, that the groups or individuals who crafted t­ hese images of okina gods w ­ ere, for the most part, from the m ­ iddle echelons of court or religious hierarchies, conscious of their marginal status, and produced t­ hese legends to legitimate their religious or artistic lineages. Second, and importantly, the texts in which t­ hese legends first appeared ­were not the work of sacerdotal lineages charged with maintaining kami cults, but mainly the work of lay Buddhists, usually scholars or literati. The archetype of the okina kami was produced within a Buddhist context, most often to promote Buddhist sites. In spite of modern Shintō rhe­toric, the gods discussed in this chapter w ­ ere not envisioned occupying a separate pantheon from that of Buddhist divinities.11 Their legends arose within a

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milieu of shinbutsu shūgō, a scholarly term denoting the combinatory nature of premodern religious sites and cults. Th ­ ose who originated or compiled ­t hese narratives envisioned a cooperative, not oppositional, relationship between buddhas and kami. By the Kamakura period the okina kami had become more or less a stock figure, more likely deployed out of obedience to convention than a desire to work with or against the meanings evoked by the aged body. Therefore I have sought to examine the strategic positioning of the aged body in some of the earliest recorded instances of gods being presented as okina, focusing on narratives surrounding three kami—­Shinra Myōjin, Matsuo Myōjin, and the Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin. Before analyzing ­these legends, it is impor­tant to consider why it was the aged male, and not the aged female, that came to enjoy such widespread use as a repre­ sen­ta­tion of the divine in medieval Japan.12 Roughly half the elder gods in the kikishinwa ­were depicted as ōna (old ­women).13 However, medieval legends featuring el­derly female avatars of any kind—­kami, buddhas, or bodhisattvas—­were exceedingly rare. Fukutō Sanae explains this shift as a reflection of the declining social standing of w ­ omen between the early and medieval periods. Fukutō points to archaeological and textual evidence that in pre-­ritsuryō ­Korea and Japan ­women occupied positions of authority and numbered among the ranks of local chieftains (shuchō).14 Although the early ritsuryō state continued to employ the ser­v ices of leaders of traditional collectives, ­women ­were increasingly disenfranchised.15 Ninth-­century laws completely removed local leaders, introducing a new degree of social stratification.16 The ninth ­century also saw the end of official female ordination. From that point forward all major posts within the Buddhist sangha came to be occupied by male monastics, with many state-­sponsored nunneries that had been established in the Nara period converted into monasteries.17 Following the gradual weakening of ritsuryō institutions, in the late Heian period, something resembling pre-­r itsuryō structures of authority began to reemerge at the local level, based not on court appointment but on seniority. The shōen system led to the development of positions, such as the satanin and korō, to manage production on behalf of off-­site patrons, providing new authoritative roles for elder males. ­Women, however, enjoyed no new forms of social empowerment in the post-­ritsuryō world. In the realm of kami cults, similar dynamics ­were at play. As villages developed into guild-­like structures in the early medieval period, shrines came to be managed by miya-­za, headed by village elders (toshiyori, otona).18 ­These would also have been men. Fukutō theorizes that as el­ derly men came once again to enjoy positions of local authority, local deities came to be seen as old men.19 Although compelling, this argument offers only a partial explanation. It ignores the fact that many of the first medieval okina kami

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­ ere not local deities but gods from abroad, not tutelary deities but Dharma w protectors.20 We might also note that the elevated image of aged saints in early medieval texts, discussed in chapter 4, was connected, in some mea­sure, to the disempowerment of se­nior members of the Buddhist community. While it seems reasonable to assume that repre­sen­ta­tions of divine beings mirror social realities and power structures “on the ground,” the situation is clearly more complex and requires consideration of a broader set of social and cultural f­ actors. Although the mystery of the vanishing ōna kami is not one that can be fully solved ­here, I suggest that we must attend to the positioning not only of ­t hose being represented, but also of ­t hose who produced and promulgated ­t hese repre­ sen­ta­tions. We must further consider ­whether a given figure was being used to represent “­others” or to represent individual or collective “selves.” As best we can determine, the late-­Heian and early-­medieval legends in which the figure of the okina was once again used to represent kami ­were for the most part the product of interaction between male religious experts and male literati. In many of t­ hese cases, the gods in question ­were also implicitly positioned as surrogates for ­t hese predominantly male collectives. The aged male form was thus well suited to function as a marker of difference with which t­ hese groups could, nonetheless, partially identify. Similarly, in the rare medieval legends portraying aged female divinities, most notably a trinity collectively known as Onbasama enshrined at Tateyama, t­ hese figures ­were the center of cults that addressed the concerns of ­women and w ­ ere presumably comprised mainly, if not exclusively of ­women.21 When called upon in texts authored by men to represent otherworldly powers, however, the aged female body invariably represented the “other”—­oppositional, demonic forces, such as ­t hose discussed in chapter 3. Given ­t hese observations, one still might expect more gender parity within the medieval pantheon, considering the degree to which w ­ omen w ­ ere active pa22 trons of and participants in religious life in medieval Japan. Caroline Bynum’s studies of the biographies of medieval Eu­ro­pean w ­ omen and response to Victor Turner’s theories of liminality provide a promising starting point for further investigation. Bynum observes that in order for liminality to function as a form of power, it had to represent a break with and an inversion of an individual’s original status. Since, she claims, ­women in medieval Eu­rope ­were construed as “permanently liminal” relative to men, they could not enjoy the symbolic empowerment that accompanied a break with their earlier status.23 Although t­ here are limits to the parallels that might be drawn, similar dynamics ­were at work in premodern Japan. In the case of men, old age had traditionally been represented as a fall from power and expulsion from the center. In the late Heian, however, elite discourses of retirement increasingly came to describe reclusion as an opportunity

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for new forms of authority that ­were only available once one escaped the social hierarchies of the court or the monastery. For w ­ omen, who beginning in the eighth ­century could no longer aspire to the status of tennō—­the pinnacle of worldly power—­and who from the ninth ­century ­were increasingly excluded from publicly recognized forms of authority, old age and retirement had a much more ambiguous set of meanings.24 This, in turn, made the aged female body a much more problematic signifier. For male authors, the female body was presumably already sufficiently “other” to serve as a form of difference through which to imagine otherworldly beings, and did not require the further distinction of being old. Thus in medieval legends we do find references to divinities appearing as females (onna) marked as neither young nor old and thus presumed to be ­women in their prime.25 Female authors, on the other hand, might have perceived old age and retirement from “the world” as a less drastic break than their male counter­ parts, and thus the aged female form as a less useful conceptual tool for expressing difference.

Dharma Protectors and Tutelary Kami The Exotic Okina: Shinra Myōjin One of the earliest depictions of a medieval god as an okina occurs in the Onjōji ryūge-­e engi of 1059, in its descriptions of Shinra Myōjin, a gohō or Dharma-­ protecting deity. The Ryūge-­e engi was produced as Onjōji was struggling to establish itself as an in­de­pen­dent branch of the Tendai School, reflecting Onjōji’s awareness of its marginality relative to its more dominant rival, Enryakuji. Although Onjōji stood alongside Enryakuji and Kōfukuji as one of the three most power­f ul ­temples in Japan, compared to Enryakuji, the Jimon lineage had reason to feel insecure. Throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries, Jimon monks ­were denied the position of zasu, or forced to resign ­a fter a short term in office. Although Enryakuji had been allowed to establish an ordination platform in the ninth c­ entury, it repeatedly blocked Onjōji from creating its own.26 The Ryūge-­e engi presented a fictional account of how Enchin’s lineage came to be based at Onjōji, describing his journey to the Tang and his initiation into the esoteric lineage of Faquan. On his return voyage, an “old okina” (rōō) appeared, identifying himself as “the bright deity (myōjin) of this country of Silla.” Shinra Myōjin vowed to protect the Buddha Dharma that Enchin had received ­u ntil the coming of Maitreya—­t he buddha of the f­ uture age.27 Upon reaching Japan, Enchin was ordered to store the icons and scriptures he had brought back at the G ­ reat Hall of State. Enchin was then once more visited by Shinra Myōjin,

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who instructed him to take his scriptures, instead, to a sacred (“superior”) site in Ōmi province. Enchin proceeded to Onjōji. A ­ fter vowing to base his lineage ­t here, we read that a shrine to Shinra Myōjin was established in the t­ emple’s northern cloister.28 Although this narrative gives Shinra Myōjin a pivotal role in the founding of the Jimon lineage, ­t here is nothing prior to the Ryūge-­e engi connecting this deity to Enchin. The earliest, most reliable rec­ords concerning Enchin—­his diary (Gyōrekishō) and his earliest biography, Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki’s (847–918) Chishō daishiden—­make no mention of Shinra Myōjin.29 Tellingly, in 886, when the emperor contracted a serious illness, Enchin’s prayers for his recovery ­were directed not to Shinra Myōjin but to the Sannō deity, the tutelary deity of Mount Hiei.30 Narratives involving Enchin’s visions of Shinra Myōjin ­were ­later fabrications, likely dating from the late tenth or mid-­eleventh ­century. The development of Shinra Myōjin’s cultic identity was intimately connected with that of another continental gohō, Sekizan Myōjin. Sekizan Myōjin had purportedly been brought back from the Tang by Ennin, regarded as the founder of the Sanmon lineage, based at Enryakuji. Shinra Myōjin was likely first enshrined at Onjōji in the tenth ­century in emulation of the installation of Sekizan Myōjin at the foot of Mount Hiei. The first document naming Shinra Myōjin and connecting him to Onjōji dates from 971, showing that the god was elevated to Se­nior Fourth Rank, Upper Grade, in response to a petition by an Onjōji monk.31 Twenty-­some years ­later, a Jimon monk attacked the Sekizan shrine in retaliation for the refusal of Sanmon authorities to promote Jimon monks within the Tendai School.32 By at least the tenth ­century, therefore, continental gohō ­were being treated as totem-­ like emblems of Jimon and Sanmon lines. Elevating the rank of a Jimon gohō served to elevate the status of the lineage as a w ­ hole; vio­lence against a Sanmon gohō was seen as a strike against that lineage as a ­whole. The mid-­eleventh ­century saw a flurry of repre­sen­ta­tional activity around the figure of Shinra Myōjin that was deeply intertwined with Myōson’s efforts as chōri to secure patronage, shore up Onjōji’s institutional in­de­pen­dence, and fashion a sectarian identity for the Jimon lineage. Although Shinra Myōjin had had a presence at Onjōji since at least 971, the Onjōji denki and Jimon denki horoku rec­ord that when the god was first brought to Onjōji, no one knew its true name. Presumably it was for this reason that it was first identified in the petition of 971 only by the generic moniker of “bright deity of Silla.” The first public rites (saishi) honoring the god ­were not performed u ­ ntil 1052. ­These rites, overseen by Myōson, are thought to have served as the shrine’s dedication ceremony.33 It appears that Onjōji had been unable to perform the dedication when Shinra Myōjin was first installed ­because without its name, it could not be formally addressed in public

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prayers.34 The Onjōji denki and Jimon denki horoku describe how a Song merchant fi­nally identified the deity, providing four names: Sūkaku 崧嶽, Sekizan’ō 赤山王, Sūzan’ō 嵩山王, and Shiten Fujin 四天夫人.35 The merchant also revealed that in its home country, it customarily received an offering of one thousand swords.36 Since this was the very offering Myōson arranged in 1052, it suggests that the merchant provided details about Shinra Myōjin sometime just prior to its dedication ceremony.37 ­Temple rec­ords also show that around this time the head of the Seiwa Genji warrior clan, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi (988–1075), prayed to Shinra Myōjin for success in the Latter Nine Years’ War, promising to offer his third son to Onjōji should he prevail. The Seiwa Genji was to become one of Onjōji’s most impor­tant patrons, treating Shinra Myōjin as one of their clan deities (ujigami). The dedicatory ceremony in 1052 was perhaps timed to correspond with Yoriyoshi’s prayers.38 Christine Guth argues that one of the most striking images of Shinra Myōjin, a wooden icon or shinzō, was created for this ceremony.39 The icon portrays him as a pale figure dressed in Chinese-­style robes, with vis­i­ble wrinkles, a white beard, and drooping white eyebrows.40 Seven years ­after the ceremony, Sanenori produced the Ryūge-­e engi, the first text to explic­itly depict Shinra Myōjin as an okina god traveling with Enchin to Japan from abroad. The formation of a concrete image and legend for the god, therefore, must be understood as part of Myōson’s larger proj­ect of securing patronage and producing an in­de­pen­dent identity for the Jimon line. Unlike the Ryūge-­e engi’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Onjōji’s other super­natu­ral elder, Kyōtai, as a fisherman, Shinra Myōjin was not depicted textually or iconographically as particularly polluted or sinful. What was foregrounded, however, was his foreign origin. Guth proposes that by emphasizing the foreign character of gohōjin associated with found­ers of Buddhist lineages, ­t hese texts and icons reminded the faithful that their spiritual ancestors had received the correct transmission of the Dharma from its sources abroad. In the case of the Shinra Myōjin icon, vari­ous details highlight this figure’s outlandishness: its unusual ­triple-­pointed cap, its ghostly pallor, its tall leather boots, and its dramatically slanting eyes. Portrayals of gohō as outsiders also provided them with the charisma of the mysterious other. It is ­here that the aged body also had a role to play. From at least the eighth ­century, the aged body had been utilized in a variety of texts as a symbol of otherness—of beings that existed at the margins of or outside the royal ambit. In the Ryūge-­e engi, Shinra Myōjin’s position as a foreign divinity empowers him to resist royal authority. He has Enchin disobey the ­orders of the court and transport the materials he had brought back from the Tang to Onjōji, rather than depositing them at the ­Great Hall of State. A group of legends preserved in

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the Onjōji denki and Jimon denki horoku described further conflicts between Shinra Myōjin and the tennō. When Onjōji was denied the right to establish its own ordination platform ­under Go-­Suzaku tennō, Shinra Myōjin reputedly subjected his grand­son, Emperor Go-­Sanjō, to a curse (tatari).41 The Jimon denki horoku also recorded an oracle in which the god expressed his lack of interest in attaining court rank, thus indicating his indifference to the court-­centered status system. Similarly, in the f­ ourteenth-­century Jitokushū, Shinra Myōjin stated that he came to Japan “for the sole purpose of protecting the Dharma of Chishō Daishi (Enchin), not to be recognized by the lord of this land.”42

Competition and Convergence: Okina in the Legends of Shinra Myōjin, Sekizan Myōjin, and Beyond The development of the legends of Shinra Myōjin and Sekizan Myōjin involved a fascinating dialectical pro­cess. From Ennin’s diaries, we have a clear account of the circumstances by which he came in contact with Sekizan Myōjin. Sekizan is the Japa­nese reading for Chi Shan, a sacred mountain on the coast of Shandong province. On his journey to the Tang in 838, Ennin’s boat encountered a storm. The crew averted disaster by pointing the bow of the vessel ­toward Chi Shan and praying to its deity. Having survived the storm, Ennin climbed Mount Chi and showed his gratitude to the god. Although ­later accounts would claim he vowed to build a shrine to the god in Japan, t­ here is no mention of such a vow in his diary, and it was only a­ fter his death in 888 that Sekizan was installed at the foot of Mount Hiei.43 The Ryūge-­e engi’s depiction of Enchin’s encounter with Shinra Myōjin at sea clearly sought to mimic the way Sekizan Myōjin was shown to protect Ennin on his own voyage. However, whereas in Ennin’s account Sekizan Myōjin remained an unseen presence, the Ryūge-­e engi described Shinra Myōjin appearing bodily to Enchin, marking it as a “medieval” style myth. In an ironic reversal, l­ater legends dealing with Sekizan Myōjin began to incorporate narrative ele­ments from the Ryūge-­e engi. In the thirteenth-­century Hie Sannō rishōki we read of Ennin once again aboard a ship caught in a storm, but this time directing his prayers to Mount Hiei. Suddenly a man appears who identifies himself as Sekizan Myōjin.44 Although described as an old man elsewhere in the text, in his encounter with Ennin he is not marked as an elder. In the l­ater Sekizan myōjin engi, however, the god appears on Ennin’s boat as an “old okina”—­a rōō, the same term employed in the Ryūge-­e engi. And, not to be outdone, he is depicted as over one-­million years of age.45 ­These examples of competitive mythmaking are all the more ironic when we consider that numerous scholars have postulated that Sekizan and Shinra Myōjin ­were originally the same god.46 Kim Hyŏn-uk notes that Sekizan was originally venerated at the Sillan cloister on Mount Chi and that Sekizan’ō was one of the

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names the Song merchant provided for Shinra Myōjin. On the other hand, while ­t hese gods may very well have shared a common origin, it is unclear what significance this would have had in premodern Japan, where the “identity” of a god was determined more by the local cultic networks that formed around it. What is more impor­tant is the way rival lineages developed distinct identities for ­t hese gods through competition and, at times perhaps, unwitting collaboration. While the Jimon lineage started out imitating ele­ments of the Sekizan cult in its long quest to achieve parity with Enryakuji, certain features of the Ryūge-­e engi narrative ­were successful enough to inspire their own imitators. For example, in addition to ­later Sekizan legends, a Kamakura-­period narrative explaining the Sumiyoshi deity’s protection of the Way of Poetry had the god appearing as an okina on the boat of famed poet Fujiwara no Shunzei to save him from drowning in a storm.47

Localizing the Legitimating Okina Shinra Myōjin and Sekizan Myōjin began their ­careers in Japan as deities whose physical appearance was not central to their cult.48 By the Kamakura period, however, legends had developed in which both revealed themselves as old men to high-­ranking Buddhist prelates. Similar pro­cesses ­were at work at other sites around Japan. Although our discussion has focused on narratives featuring foreign gohō, legends that formed around kami that w ­ ere explic­itly positioned as local or tutelary underwent similar transformations in the late Heian and medieval periods. Chapter 5 described the evolving identity and image of Hira Myōjin from unnamed okina fisherman to tutelary deity in the corpus of engi related to Ishiyama-­dera. Legends describing the origins of the Tōji, Tōnomine, Hasedera, and Daigoji also disclose a pattern of development in which tutelary deities, ­either not mentioned or presented as invisible in early texts, are depicted in ­later texts as okina.49 In the case of Daigoji, the earliest document dealing with its founder, Shōbō, the Daigo konpon sōjō ryakuden, makes no mention of any tutelary kami.50 But the late Heian-­period Daigoji engi describes Shōbō climbing Kasatori-­yama and encountering an okina, identified as Yoko’o Myōjin, sipping from a sacred spring.51 The Daigoji engi consists of three parts, the earliest of which, appended to the end of the document, has a colophon dated 937. But the first section, in which the okina kami appears, is clearly a work of the late Heian period, since it also mentions the Enkō-in and Muryōkō-in, which w ­ ere constructed in 1085 and 1097, respectively.52 Texts imputing links between aged tutelary gods and ancient sites employed vari­ous strategies to enhance their authority. Some forgeries bore improbable attributions, e­ ither to the founder of the t­ emple or renowned figures such as, in the case of the Hasedera engi, Sugawara no Michizane.53 But the frequent inter-

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polation of aged tutelary deities into established narratives indicates that by the Kamakura period, elder gods ­were themselves seen as virtual sine qua non of Buddhist engi; the imprimatur of an aged kami was another means of lending credence to a narrative and prestige to a given site. While maintaining its status as a symbol of the margins, the okina was gaining a paradoxical form of authority. On the one hand, medieval shinwa recapitulated the structure of ancient myths where aged kunitsukami, representing inferior, conquered groups, ceded their land. Medieval legends, as well, portrayed the submission of local powers to trans-­local powers. But rather than submitting to the tennō, they offered their land to Buddhist prelates, illustrating a shift from a tennō-­oriented ideology to a medieval ideology, in which vari­ous power blocs competed for and shared power but recognized ultimate authority resting with the Dharma. Unlike early myths in which the aged body could not resist the majesty of the sun line, medieval okina kami would, if required, serve the Dharma over and against the interests of the throne. The fact that so many Buddhist sites deemed it a necessity to alter their origin narratives to include aged tutelary deities suggests that ­t hese gods brought other benefits as well. Just as Shinra Myōjin had strengthened ties between Onjōji and the Seiwa Genji, ­t hese gods could be sources of symbolic capital, inspiring cults that helped expand the network of patronage at a given t­ emple.

Okina Kami as Suijaku Visions of the Matsuo Diety The tendency to envision a cooperative relationship between Buddhist divinities and local gods is a pan-­Buddhist phenomenon. In Japan t­ hese combinatory sensibilities, cast against a backdrop of Tiantai reflection on the three bodies of the Buddha (sanshin) led to the widespread understanding that local kami ­were avatars or “traces” (suijaku) of Buddhist “originals” (honji)—­so-­called honji suijaku thought. A few early examples notwithstanding, the theory came to be widely applied beginning in the eleventh ­century.54 Although no theory can fully account for why combinatory practices accelerated in the late Heian, the pro­cess is generally understood as an outgrowth of Buddhist institutions seeking to expand their influence into territories or zones of ritual activity that had previously been the domain of kami cults. Some have proposed that honji suijaku provided Buddhist institutions a means to forge closer ties with and control the ­people who lived and worked on their shōen.55 By claiming that tutelary deities venerated by shōen inhabitants ­were in fact manifestations of the ­temple’s honzon, ­temple leaders encouraged loyalty to their institution and, when necessary, threatened

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divine punishment for ­those who failed to obey commands or submit taxes. Uejima Susumu has identified another impor­tant locus of combinatory activity: twenty-­ two official shrines (nijūnisha), singled out for imperial support in return for rites to protect the state and emperor.56 The nijūnisha system was formed partly in reaction to the dominance of the esoteric Shingon and Tendai schools in this field of ritual activity.57 But ­after a few centuries, esoteric Buddhist monks (gojisō) began inserting themselves into nijūnisha rites as well. The gojisō incorporated rituals undertaken at t­ hese shrines into an esoteric Buddhist paradigm. But in order to conduct ­these Buddhist rituals, the honji of t­ hese deities had to be identified. Some have proposed that honji suijaku discourse spread in response to mappō consciousness.58 Japa­nese Buddhists took solace in the notion that exalted buddhas and bodhisattvas had made special efforts to guide ­t hose born in the degenerate age by taking forms to which the Japa­nese could more easily relate. This resonated with the view that buddhas “softened their illumination and merged with the dust” (wakō dōjin) of this polluted world to become more accessible to us. Since “dust” was a term commonly employed to indicate filth, and Buddhist lit­er­a­ture often treated the aged body as emblematic of the coarse, polluted nature of samsara, a symbolic logic undergirded the many tales in which suijaku ­were portrayed as okina.59 That surpassingly pure buddhas or bodhisattvas would lower themselves to such a status demonstrated, once again, the miraculous ability of ­t hese beings to overcome dualities. Although the pro­cesses by which par­tic­u­lar local gods came to be associated with specific buddhas and bodhisattvas ­were complex and multifaceted, the newfound urge in the late Heian period to identify the honji of vari­ous kami spurred the production and compilation of legends that disclosed t­ hese relationships and accelerated the proliferation of narratives in which okina played a central role, ­either as embodied suijaku or as ambiguous otherworldly figures who revealed the secret Buddhist identity of a given kami. Ōe no Masafusa’s (1041–1111) Honchō shinsenden provides one of the earliest examples involving an okina suijaku, recording that the monk Nichizō (also known as Dōken) once resolved to discover the original ground (­here written as hongaku) of the deity of the Matsuo (Matsuno’o) shrine. Having prayed and chanted sutras continuously for twenty-­ one days, he was engulfed in dark clouds and rain.60 Suddenly out of the gloom an old man appeared and attempted to remove Nichizō from the sanctuary. Although Nichizō covered his ears, he heard a voice call out: “Vipasyin Buddha.” Nichizō looked up, only to see the old man standing over him.61 Several aspects of this narrative commend themselves to our attention. First, the revelation of the god and his honji is only in response to the interest of a Buddhist priest. Since it was generally understood that gods tended not to reveal their

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“true bodies” to ignorant laypeople, the pro­cess of determining t­ hose relations required the involvement of priests like Nichizō. It was also impor­tant that t­ hese priests possess sufficient charisma to make their visions authoritative.62 The Shinsenden also describes the activities of the mountain monk Taichō, who traveled to sites around Japan, revealing the originals of vari­ous traces.63 The motif of the okina god appearing to announce his honji became a commonplace from the early medieval period forward. Noteworthy examples include the legends of Hachiman Daibosatsu from the twelfth-­century Tōdaiji yōroku and Fusō ryakki, of Kasuga Daimyōjin from the f­ ourteenth-­century Kasuga gongen genki e, and of a tutelary deity of Mount Haku (Hakusan or Shirayama) from the ­fourteenth-­century Genkō shakusho.64 Although we cannot know w ­ hether the historical Nichizō had any interest in the Matsuo deity, the persona established for him by the late eleventh ­century satisfied the requirements of the legend. Nichizō was well-­k nown for his alleged sojourn to the underworld, where he had witnessed the punishments meted out to vari­ous parties for Michizane’s wrongful exile. Nichizō’s fame as a visionary likely made him an appealing stand-in for a host of nameless monks engaged in similar practices in the late Heian and medieval periods, allowing him to serve as an authoritative voice in legends that hoped to fix relationships between a given local god and a buddha.65 Nichizō’s persona as seer also highlights the central role of dreams and visions in the revelation of the physical forms of gods in medieval legends. In the Shinsenden, the Matsuo deity appears only ­after Nichizō has engaged in twenty-­one days of continuous prayer and mindfulness (nen), presumably uninterrupted by sleep. This reflects the longstanding practice of okomori (incubation), in which individuals spent the night in a ­temple or shrine sanctuary to accrue merit and, if pos­si­ble, receive a visitation from its honzon or other divine beings. Pilgrimage and incubation became popu­lar from the mid-­Heian period, providing a matrix for the development of images for gods, buddhas, and bodhisattvas. Before undertaking a pilgrimage it was customary to engage in fasting and “contemplative devotion to a Buddhist deity” (hotoke o nenjitatematsuru).66 During both the preparatory period and their incubation, devotees would pay special attention to dreams in which divinities might appear. In Nichizō’s case we are meant to believe that his encounter took place in waking consciousness, but ­after twenty-­one days of sleeplessness, we have reason to be skeptical. It is also clear from textual and pictorial repre­sen­ta­tions of okomori dating from the Heian and Kamakura periods that although pilgrims attempted to stay awake for the entire three-­or seven-­day length of their visit, they often spent ­t hose long hours drifting in and out of sleep. One frame from the Ishiyama-­dera

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engi emaki shows the wife of Fujiwara Kumiyoshi asleep in front of the sanctuary being visited in a dream by the honzon.67 Similar scenes in the second, fourth, and fifth scrolls show the faithful in vari­ous states of wakefulness, some reclining, some praying, and some blatantly sleeping.68 Clearly, visions of super­natu­ral beings in dreams ­were taken as seriously as encounters in waking life. Indeed this was the case for religious professionals as well. Respected clerics are known to have kept diaries in which they probed their dreams for clues about the intentions of kami and buddhas.69 Dream diaries and other sources show that by the Kamakura period both laypeople and religious professionals w ­ ere dreaming with surprising regularity of mysterious old men.70 But it was often not clear who or what t­ hese el­derly apparitions ­were meant to represent. In the Ishiyama-­dera engi emaki’s okomori scenes, for example, although the t­ emple’s honzon makes a few appearances, the majority of visions involved old men, often old monks. None, however, ­were explic­itly identified as any specific form of divinity. In one section, a wealthy man who had come to Ishiyama-­dera to pray for the recovery of his d ­ aughter from rai—­a category of skin diseases thought to include what is ­today identified as Hansen’s disease—­dreamt of an old monk stripping his d ­ aughter of a persimmon-­colored robe (see figure 4).71 Beggars, outcasts, and ­t hose afflicted with rai often wore persimmon-­colored robes.72 By removing them, the old man symbolically

Figure  4. Apparition of el­derly monk curing disease. Ishiyama-­dera engi emaki. Kamakura period. Courtesy of Ishiyama-­dera.

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r­ emoved her diseased skin, effecting a miraculous cure.73 Overjoyed, the f­ ather showed his appreciation with a generous offering. Although clearly a vehicle of super­natu­ral power, nowhere was the old man identified as a god or buddha. The ambiguity in ­t hese sources over ­whether a given apparitional elder was a kami, a divine messenger, or just an old man demonstrates that such identifications ­were seen to require expertise and authority.74 Narratives in which mysterious elders w ­ ere identified as gods always involved high-­ranking Buddhist priests or ascetics (kenza). But even ­t hese thaumaturges did not necessarily have the final word; t­ hose who recorded and transmitted t­ hese legends also played a crucial role. In par­tic­u­lar, Ōe no Masafusa became a key figure in the advancement of honji suijaku thought.75 In the Shinsenden and other writings, Masafusa provided the honji for sixteen gods, most of whom ­were associated with the twenty-­t wo official shrines. Yoshihara Hiroto points out that of ­these sixteen honji, fifteen are the earliest attestation. In all cases the honji recorded by Masafusa eventually became widely accepted.76 Many of ­t hese cases ­were directly connected to Masafusa’s role as advisor to the throne during the period in which power was shifting from the Fujiwara regents’ line to retired emperors.77 More than half the associations Masafusa recorded appeared in ganmon, votive texts that he composed on behalf of royal and noble patrons, articulating prayers to accompany offerings to buddhas and bodhisattvas.78 Th ­ ese ganmon often followed a compositional template in which the Buddhist original and kami trace to which prayers w ­ ere directed ­were listed in sequence.79 Thus one reason Masafusa was so curious about legends identifying the originals of vari­ous kami was to aid him in composing poetically balanced, accurate, and thus effective prayer petitions. By rendering legends into text, literati like Masafusa attempted to fix honji suijaku relationships, which then aided them in proj­ects like the composition of ganmon, allowing them to use their knowledge to acquire social and material capital. While the practice of okomori likely generated much of the “raw data” that determined relationships between par­tic­u­lar gods and buddhas, okomori’s role as a literary device was thus just as impor­tant. In the pro­cess of producing and disseminating memorable and authoritative accounts publicizing the discovery of a given honji suijaku relationship, the aged body once again became a useful narrative tool. Some texts ­were vague as to w ­ hether the okina was the kami in question or a divine messenger sent to announce the god’s honji. But l­ ater texts increasingly featured mysterious okina explic­itly identifying themselves as specific gods, often for the purpose of revealing their honji. Although the spread of honji suijaku discourse occurred in a piecemeal fashion, in the aggregate it increased repre­sen­ta­tional activities that contributed to the proliferation of the image of local deities as mysterious old men.

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Aged Avatars in the Formation of the Rokujō Poetic Lineage The Key to Dreams: Hitomaro, Sumiyoshi, and Narihira as Deified Okina Dreams and visions of mysterious old men often served as raw material out of which religious and scholarly authorities constructed relationships between gods and buddhas. But, ­t here was one dream in par­tic­u ­lar that proved quite consequential in cementing the image of the okina as a super­natu­ral figure. This dream was recorded and rerecorded in vari­ous compendia, becoming the basis for legitimating a new poetic ­house, the Rokujō School, whose scions produced esoteric literary treatises that would come to have a subtle but widespread influence, particularly in the development of Noh. The okina was a crucial f­actor in this pro­ cess, serving once again as a m ­ iddle term—­one that could unite vari­ous streams of cultic and poetic tradition. In his Kokonchomonjū (204), Tachibana no Narisue recorded that Fujiwara no Kanefusa (1001–1069) had deep love of Japa­nese poetry and wished to know what the ­g reat poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro looked like.80 One night Hitomaro appeared to him in a dream. When Kanefusa awoke, he had someone create an image based on his memory.81 Although the original image was lost in a fire, Fujiwara no Akisue (Rokujō Akisue 1055–1123) had been allowed to make a copy, which was then passed down to his descendants, starting with his son, Rokujō Akisuke (1090–1155). This copy came to be treated as a cultic object, proof of headship of the Rokujō School, venerated as a honzon to which offerings would be made in rites that would come to be known as Kakinomoto eigu or Hitomaro eigu (memorial ser­v ice for Hitomaro).82 Narisue’s essay gave no description of Hitomaro’s appearance in e­ ither Kanefusa’s dream or the portrait he commissioned. But another essay in the Kokonchomonjū (178) by Fujiwara no Atsumitsu (1063–1144), a renowned scholar of Chinese learning, described the copy in use at the first Hitomaro eigu in 1118.83 The portrait presented Hitomaro as a man in his sixties (despite the fact that he was thought to have died in his forties), wearing a court cap, with paper in his left hand and a writing brush in his right.84 Ōgushi Sumio has demonstrated that this portrait was actually based on the image of a white-­haired Bo Juyi from a landscape screen (sansui byōbu) in the possession of Tōji.85 The similarities between t­ hese two images are close enough to suggest that the Hitomaro image had been made by tracing the image of Bo Juyi. Yamada Shōzen concludes that the Hitomaro portrait passed down within Akisue’s Rokujō lineage bore no connection to Kanefusa’s original.86 Given that the first account of Kanefusa’s portrait

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appeared roughly two hundred years ­after his death, in sources compiled ­after the image had taken on a significant legitimating role, we have reason to doubt ­whether the original portrait ever actually existed. It seems more likely that narratives connecting Akisue’s portrait to Kanefusa’s dream w ­ ere an attempt to produce a miraculous origin narrative involving an apparitional okina for what had become the honzon of this poetic lineage. The thirteenth-­century Jikkinshō (1/4) presented an enhanced origin account for the image, retroactively describing Kanefusa’s original vision of Hitomaro such that it conformed perfectly to the Rokujō School’s portrait.87 The Jikkinshō also introduced another impor­tant ele­ment into the narrative, claiming that Kanefusa “for many years loved waka, but was unable to produce good poetry.”88 ­A fter commissioning his portrait of the el­derly Hitomaro, he “regularly performed rites of veneration (rai) before it. Perhaps as a miraculous sign, from that point on he was able to compose better poetry.”89 Narisue’s original account of Kanefusa’s dream included nothing to indicate that the image had been used in a ritual setting, but by the time the Jikkinshō was compiled around 1252, the Hitomaro eigu and related rites ­were widespread, indicating that this was yet another attempt to retrofit the legend of Kanefusa’s dream to accommodate contemporaneous practices. The Hitomaro eigu was likely born out of the poetic (and po­liti­cal) rivalry between Akisue and Fujiwara no Tadamichi (1097–1164), who was not only a talented poet, but also a member of the power­f ul sekkanke branch of the Fujiwara, giving him obvious advantages in having his poems chosen for imperial collections and other f­ actors that greatly increased a Heian poet’s artistic cachet.90 The Hitomaro eigu was a ritual means of establishing Akisue’s poetic credentials. By mimicking the structure of Confucian-­style ancestral rites (sekiten or shakuten), the eigu allowed Akisue to position himself as the head of a new poetic lineage, formalizing ties within his poetic network and creating a familial structure: the Rokujō House. ­These rites also legitimated this burgeoning poetic ­house by placing it in a purportedly lineal relationship with one of the greatest poets of Japa­ nese history, rendering Hitomaro an ancestral deity and implying that members of the Rokujō House would enjoy the blessings of a quasi-­deified Hitomaro, just as Kanefusa had, enabling them to compose superior verse.91 The image of a par­tic­u­lar elder, the deified Hitomaro, thus became central to the identity of a poetic h ­ ouse that was to have remarkable influence on the late medieval cultural scene. The aged Hitomaro also became a nexus linking quasi-­ legendary poets and gods in a complex network of rituals and esoteric treatises. The Hitomaro eigu eventually developed into the Waka kōshiki, sometimes translated as “waka lecture ceremonies.” Kōshiki w ­ ere originally Buddhist ser­v ices

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that sought to establish karmic bonds between a devotee and a Buddhist divinity. The Waka kōshiki expanded on the Hitomaro eigu, adding images of the early Heian poet Ariwara no Narihira (825–880) and the Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin to the ceremony, eventually utilizing honji suijaku logic to explain that both Hitomaro and Narihira ­were emanations of the Sumiyoshi god, who by that time had come to be regarded as the guardian deity of waka.92

From God of the Sea to God of Poetry It is unclear at what point the Sumiyoshi god came to be thought of as a protector of poetry, but the development of this identity appears to have gone hand in hand with the development of his image as an okina. Earliest rec­ords indicate that Sumiyoshi was a composite deity, a triumvirate that protected fishermen, sailors, and other seafarers. Despite receiving the epithet “god appearing in ­human form” (arahitogami) in the Man’yōshū, no concrete description of its physical appearance is given in that or any other early text.93 Interestingly, although not explic­ itly identified as a god of poetry, some early sources have Sumiyoshi composing waka. The eighth-­century Sumiyoshi taisha jindaiki, for instance, rec­ords the god arriving in Japan and reciting a waka that expressed his loyalty to the Japa­nese royal ­house.94 The first reference to the Sumiyoshi god as an elder comes in the mid-­eleventh-­ century Akazome emon shū, a collection of the poetry of Akazome Emon, reputed author of the Eiga monogatari and wife of literatus Ōe no Masahira. Perhaps as a god who had composed waka, the Sumiyoshi god commended itself to the attention of literati. The Akazome emon shū contains three poems dedicated to the deity, praying for the health of the poet’s child, who had contracted a serious illness. The poems w ­ ere written on paper offerings (mitegura) presented to the god.95 That night someone had a dream in which an okina with a “pure white beard” (hige ito shiroki okina) took possession of the mitegura. Soon a­ fter, we read, Akazome Emon’s son’s illness was cured.96 The episode was l­ ater described in Rokujō Kiyosuke’s Fukuro zōshi (ca. 1157– 1160). Grand­son of Fujiwara no Akisue, founder of the Rokujō House, Kiyosuke (1104–1177) likely sought to preserve and promote Akazome Emon’s encounter with the white-­bearded Sumiyoshi deity b ­ ecause of its parallels with the legend of Kanefusa’s dream of Hitomaro, which purportedly gave rise to the all-­impor­ tant portrait of Hitomaro as okina.97 ­Later variants further strengthened ­t hese parallels by implying that it was Akazome Emon herself who dreamt of the aged Sumiyoshi deity.98 Other writings from Kiyosuke make clear that he was also involved in some of the earliest attempts to unite Sumiyoshi and Hitomaro using Buddhist theories of avatarism.99 But it was the poet and Shingon priest Fujiwara

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no Tameaki (1295–1364), grand­son of the ­great poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162– 1241), who made t­ hese connections most emphatically. Although Tameaki was not a member of the Rokujō House, he admitted having been inspired by their Waka kōshiki ceremonies and appears to have had access to their esoteric writings.100 Tameaki inaugurated the Waka kanjō, or esoteric poetic initiation, which mirrored tantric Buddhist practices most commonly associated with Shingon and esoteric Tendai (Taimitsu) lineages. Such initiations allowed for a transfer of charisma from master to pupil and regulated access to esoteric texts and the transfer of esoteric knowledge or oral traditions. Tameaki also composed esoteric literary treatises that relied on the correlative logic of esoteric Buddhism and combinatory ethos of honji suijaku thought. Th ­ ese treatises sought to unpack hidden religious meanings that had supposedly been planted in classical literary texts by poets who ­were ­either themselves avatars or had been initiated by okina gods into the secret Buddhist significance of poetry. Tameaki seems to have had some connection to the notorious Tachikawa lineage of esoteric Buddhism, which promoted tantric sexual practices based on a radical reading of the doctrine that defiled ignorance and desire (bonnō) was nondual with enlightenment (bodai). Tameaki used Tachikawa reasoning to argue that poetry, as a vehicle for passion and eroticism, was rightly understood as a tool through which Buddhist divinities sought to communicate hidden truths via godly and mortal avatars: particularly the Sumiyoshi deity and Ariwara no Narihira. ­These radically nondual modes of Buddhist thought paved the way for a series of conflations that allowed the figure of the okina to become a pivot around which an elaborate system of correlations could be or­ga­nized. Tameaki’s esoteric commentaries on the Ise monogatari and Kokin wakashū pres­ent a fully developed theory that both Hitomaro and Narihira ­were avatars of the Sumiyoshi deity. In his Gyokuden jinpi no maki, Tameaki used creative readings of classical texts to demonstrate that not only Hitomaro, but also Sumiyoshi and Narihira at times appeared as okina, allowing him to merge all three into a composite figure.

Narihira as God; Narihira as Okina As with Hitomaro, the deification of Ariwara no Narihira involved envisioning him as an okina. Narihira had been immortalized, in the centuries following his death, in the Ise monogatari, a so-­called uta monogatari that arranged his poems and ­t hose of ­others into a narrative that followed a fictionalized biography, highlighting his romances and eventual exile. Kamakura-­period readings of the Ise monogatari, led by Tameaki’s treatises, latched on to the fact that at a certain point in the text, Narihira was referred to as a ­humble old man (katai okina).101 Tameaki and l­ ater commentators took this as a clue that e­ very okina in the tale was, in

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fact, Narihira in disguise.102 The ­actual text of the Ise monogatari depicts Narihira’s old age, in a mode typical of early to mid-­Heian lit­er­a­ture, as decline rather than deification. From the point at which Narihira comes to be identified as an old man, his poems begin lamenting his failure to achieve promotion at court and the swift passage of time—­hardly the concerns of a god. But once Tameaki had seized upon this hermeneutic key, it became a means of “uncovering” hidden meanings sprinkled throughout the text and, importantly, a means of uniting the figures of Sumiyoshi, Hitomaro, and Narihira. Tameaki’s reading of the Ise monogatari’s eighty-­first episode illustrates the type of creative reimagination that occurred when ­every okina was interpreted as Narihira. The passage describes a banquet at Minamoto no Tōru’s (822–895) Kawara-­no-in mansion. One of the celebrated features of Tōru’s mansion was its re-creation of Mutsu province’s exotic saltwater bay, Shiogama. As his guests exchanged poems praising the verisimilitude of Tōru’s replica, a lowly okina beggar appeared from ­under the floorboards (itajiki) of the veranda and offered a poem, in which he i­magined he had somehow been transported to the far-­off site.103 The episode ends on an ambiguous note, the narrator observing, “When traveling to Michinoku [Mutsu] Province one encounters numerous strange and fascinating places [ . . . ​] but in all sixty provinces of our realm, nowhere compares to Shiogama.”104 If nowhere can match the real Shiogama, of course, then Tōru’s virtual Shiogama is a failure. Although the episode portrays the katai okina as an unsettling interloper, possibly representing the exotic fringes of the realm, Tameaki and ­later commentators gloss over the passage’s ambivalence, presenting him as Narihira delivering felicitations.105 Since Narihira was a descendant of royalty and ­later seen as a divine avatar, medieval commentators ­were troubled by the fact that this okina was referred to with the epithet katai, generally written with characters that ­were read kojiki (beggar). Although it is clear from context that the old man sheltering himself beneath the eaves of Tōru’s veranda would have been an underclass vagrant, ­later commentators substituted other characters that could also be read as katai but carried more auspicious meanings, or extolled Narihira’s poetic genius.”106 Commentaries associated with Tameaki and his school used the Ise monogatari’s 117th episode—­involving a poetic exchange between the Sumiyoshi deity, the Emperor Montoku, Narihira, and, in some variants, another okina beggar—to demonstrate that Narihira was an avatar of Sumiyoshi.107 In Tameaki’s imaginative reading, the Sumiyoshi deity’s verse contained a veiled revelation that he was Narihira’s honji.108 The Gyokuden jinpi no maki claims that ­after reciting his verse, the Sumiyoshi god then delivered to Narihira the “Akone no ura kuden” (Oral Transmission of Akone Bay), explaining that as his suijaku, Narihira’s

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mission was to save sentient beings by spreading the Dharma—­particularly in its radically non-dualistic, tantric mode—­concealed in poetry.109 Tameaki’s association of Narihira with the vari­ous okina of the Ise monogatari facilitated his equation with the Sumiyoshi god, who by this time had also come to be depicted as an okina. Tameaki could thus unite Hitomaro, Narihira, and Sumiyoshi, referring to them as the “three okina” (mitari okina) who exist as “one body” (mitari ittai).110 Tameaki had numerous strategies for positing secret relations between what, on the surface, appeared to be disparate phenomena. He resorted to numerological analy­sis and parsed Chinese characters into their graphic ele­ments in order to unpack hidden messages. Claiming to reveal latent relationships, he, in fact, created new relationships. The okina became yet another signifier to be manipulated in his attempt to show connections between the Sumiyoshi god, Hitomaro, and Narihira, the three ancestor-­deities of his poetic cult. By transposing Buddhist practices and esoteric Buddhist reasoning to a lay setting, Tameaki and his followers produced knowledge, in part about the secret sacred identities of strange old men, which helped establish them as authorities in their field. In the pro­cess, aged bodies that had been used as symbols of disquieting incongruity or humor became invested with new meanings as mysterious but awesome avatars. It is significant that this enterprise was initiated by the veneration of ­Hitomaro, the original Japa­nese poet laureate, who served Jitō and Monmu tennō, composing verse that fulfilled both aesthetic and po­l iti­c al purposes si­ mul­ta­neously.111 Hitomaro lauded his patrons, including the late Emperor Tenmu, and elevated their status above that of mere monarch to that of heavenly sovereign, at times using continental symbolism of immortality.112 The late eleventh-­ century literati who venerated Hitomaro w ­ ere similarly tasked from time to time with the composition of poetry and prose that would proj­ect a carefully crafted image of the sovereign and, in a new twist, legitimate the royal authority of the retired sovereign as well. Although late Heian scholar-poets (bunjin) saw themselves reflected in Hitomaro’s role as the poetic voice of the sovereign, they lived in a very dif­fer­ent time. Whereas Hitomaro and other poets of his era availed themselves of continental meta­phors comparing the ruler to eternally vital transcendent beings, in the late Heian period, the religio-­political valences of youthful and aged bodies had become more complex. For instance, Fujiwara no Atsumitsu, who had been invited to rec­ord the proceedings of the first Hitomaro eigu, moved in vari­ous social circles, at one point exchanging poems with Akisue’s main rival, Tadamichi, on the theme of the wretched old charcoal seller, modeled ­after Bo Juyi’s “Maitan weng.”113 The same Atsumitsu who wrote the essay that popu­lar­ized the veneration of an aged Hitomaro also shared his poetic observations of the miseries of old age with a prominent member of the regents’ branch.

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Atsumitsu also composed a ganmon for the cloistered Emperor Shirakawa, praying for ten more years of life. Writing in Shirakawa-­in’s voice, he referred unabashedly to his dangling eyebrows forming the shape of the Chinese character for the number eight, a poetic metonym for the aged body, which had also been employed in the Shinra Myōjin shinzō to emphasize his old age. Atsumitsu’s ganmon marks a shift to an Insei-­style discourse of rulership. In the classical era, rulers had referred to their own aging sparingly, if at all, except to indicate they ­were preparing to retire.114 Cloistered rulers, however, needed to acknowledge their aged bodies in order to justify their status as Buddhist retirees, but si­mul­ta­ neously employ other tropes and strategies to emphasize their supreme power. It was literati like Atsumitsu who w ­ ere called on to walk this rhetorical tightrope. Although the okina figure a­ dopted by Akisue and his descendants as their ancestral deity was not particularly subversive, it once again became an emblem for a group (the nascent Rokujō House) attempting to define and legitimate itself in opposition to powers more tightly aligned with the i­magined center. Similarly, Shinra Myōjin, a figure represented in the Ryūge-­e engi defying imperial o ­ rders, played an impor­tant role in forging an identity for Onjōji, a t­emple highly conscious of its marginality relative to Enryakuji. The Ryūge-­e engi’s author, Fujiwara no Sanenori, occupied a similarly tenuous position in late Heian literary, po­liti­cal, and social fields. Sanenori was a scion of the Southern House of the Fujiwara clan (nanke), a lineage that had long been pushed to the po­liti­cal periphery by the dominant Northern House, from which the h ­ ouse of regents derived. As a specialist in Chinese learning and poetry (kangakusha), Sanenori was part of what Ivo Smits classifies as the “literary fringe” of the Heian period. Although scholars enjoyed prestige on account of their erudition and, as tutors to royal princes, had access to the inner sanctum of the court, they rarely achieved high rank and tended to cut a rather shabby figure.115 Sanenori served as secretary to the Emperor Go-­Ichijō and head of the Imperial University, but only ­rose to Ju­nior Fourth Rank, Upper Grade.116 Clearly, for the m ­ iddle echelons of the court that specialized in Chinese lore, knowledge was indeed their most reliable source of power. Bunjin augmented their cultural capital through the production of knowledge and strategies of secrecy. Modern scholars have noted the emergence of a new “taste for the exotic” among late Heian literati, a reflection perhaps of their need to gather obscure materials that could be deployed, for instance, in the composition of engi on behalf of Buddhist institutions, or in the composition of ganmon for power­f ul patrons. The trend ­toward the “privatization” of the knowledge economy had begun in the ninth c­ entury when the Imperial University came to be dominated by three schol-

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arly families. The hunger for esoterica accelerated in the wake of the Genpei War (1180–1185), when the balance of po­liti­cal power shifted t­ oward the eastern city of Kamakura, where the newly dominant Minamoto warrior clan had established its headquarters. Aristocrats who remained in the Heian capital found themselves increasingly divested of po­liti­cal and economic clout. What they still possessed in abundance, however, was social and cultural prestige. The rise of esotericism in the arts allowed t­ hese kinship groups to leverage the ties they maintained to older artistic and literary traditions, transforming their symbolic capital into economic and po­liti­cal gain.117 The figure of the okina became useful to the purveyors of esoteric theories as a means of extending their perceived expertise, integrating disparate, unrelated poems, tales, and cults into their interpretive schema, placing them, to some extent, ­under their control. The fact that knowledge was fundamental to po­liti­cal and economic viability was well understood by the players at the time. Fujiwara no Munetada was critical of Masafusa’s practice of recording legends and “gossip”: accounts of historical figures and events gathered by word of mouth.118 Masafusa, for his part, wrote that it was not necessary for the kanpaku or sesshō to write poetry or be good scholars, a backhanded critique of sekkanke anti-­intellectualism.119 The disapproval some quarters of the regents’ branch showed ­toward oral tradition likely stemmed from the sense that ­t hese narratives often undercut official readings of history that had once been controlled by the court. The historical narratives originating with ­people of vari­ous social positions promulgated by Insei-­period literati represented a loss of control on the part of the p ­ eople who sought to preserve court-­centric social hierarchies and systems of prestige.120

C HA P T E R SE V E N

“Tranquil Heart, Gazing Afar” Reimagining the Aged Body in Noh

Noh played a pivotal role in establishing the divinized okina as the paradigmatic symbol of otherworldy power in the Japa­nese religio-­cultural imagination. The aged body held a special fascination for Noh’s earliest theorist, playwright, and effective founder, Zeami Motokiyo (ca. 1363–1443) and for his artistic heir, Konparu Zenchiku (1405–1468). A substantial portion of extant plays feature aged men or w ­ omen as protagonists or shite.1 In his Nikyoku santai ningyōzu (Illustrated Manual of the Two Arts and Three Bodies), Zeami made the elder one of the three fundamental “bodies” to be mastered by the Noh actor. But more than the other two forms, Zeami presented the per­for­mance of the aged body (rōtai) as the very heart of Noh.2 Zenchiku devoted his unfinished esoteric treatise Meishukushū to tracing the origins of vari­ous okina, revealing them to be manifestations of a god who encompassed the threefold body of the Buddha, and who had “appeared at the primordial unfolding of Heaven and Earth, protected the sovereign, rendered the land fruitful, and provided relief to the p ­ eople without 3 interruption up through the pres­ent reign.” The intense interest with which Zeami and his heirs regarded the aged body, particularly the okina, was due in large part to the importance they placed on the Shikisanban—­a set of ceremonial dances originally performed by actors wearing masks representing three old men, including the enigmatic, smiling Okina (see figure 5), set within a rudimentary dramatic framework.4 The Shikisanban was purported to ensure peace, fertility, prosperity, and longevity throughout the realm. It was a key ele­ment in legitimation strategies that helped early Noh troupes secure and maintain patronage, mainly from the dominant Ashikaga military clan and major ­temples and shrines, particularly the Kasuga-Kōfukuji complex in Nara. Zeami and Zenchiku framed the Shikisanban as a primordial religious ritual rather than entertainment, presenting it as the sacred core of their art, a taproot extending down into the mythic past able to access primeval energies.5 Through its connection to the Shikisanban, Zeami could claim that Noh was an “elegant and life-­sustaining” art ( fūgetsu ennen).6 Zenchiku, for his part, based the legitimacy of his Konparu troupe on the fact that it alone was capable of 118

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Figure  5. Okina mask. Muromachi period. Courtesy of the Tōkyō National Museum.

properly performing the Okina role.7 Through their efforts to maintain the prestige of the Shikisanban and profit from its symbolic capital, the okina became the sine qua non of Noh. In this chapter we explore Zeami’s efforts to refashion the received image of the elder and harness what he took to be the charisma of the aged body to promote his burgeoning art, through an examination of his writings on the Shikisanban, his theories about age-­graded training, and his pre­sen­ta­tion of the aged body in god plays and vari­ous other Noh entertainments. While concerned mainly with Zeami, we ­w ill also attend to theatrical and theoretical works of ­others, most importantly Zenchiku and Zeami’s ­father, Kan’ami (1333–1384). Zeami employed three basic strategies involving the aged form to enhance the prestige of his art. First, he argued that the Shikisanban was effective as a religious technology for rendering the realm peaceful and prosperous. Second, he produced entertainments that reproduced the classical image of the state as a realm ­under heaven (tenka), which would appeal to audiences comprising both aristocrats and warriors—­t he dominant power blocs of the day. This was particularly true of the so-­called god plays or Waki Noh, in which deities, usually taking the form of el­derly men and ­women, express their satisfaction with and willingness

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to protect the realm of virtuous sovereigns. Third, Zeami presented Noh as a distillation of elite, aristocratic arts to appeal to the cultural aspirations of warriors who craved the trappings of refinement. Zeami played to ­t hese desires, splicing allusions to classical lit­er­a­ture into his dramas and basing them on poetic themes and subjects, injecting aristocratic aesthetics into a per­for­mance genre that had previously (as sangaku and sarugaku) included crude ele­ments of acrobatics and physical humor.8 The aged body had a part to play in the aristocratization of Noh. One of the dominant themes of classical poetry and prose that Zeami sought to incorporate into his plays, the transience of life and love and nostalgia for the past glories of the court, could be dramatized quite effectively in per­for­mances featuring aged protagonists. ­These legitimation strategies w ­ ere interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Zeami repeatedly suggested that Noh’s efficacy derived not only from its origins in sacred ritual, but also from its emotional impact—­its ability to pacify the hearts of the p ­ eople, rendering them civilized subjects. The idealized repre­sen­ta­tions of the realm in Waki Noh also blurred the line between drama and ritual. Th ­ ese plays culminated in scenes in which an actor, speaking on behalf of a god, proclaimed his or her intention to protect the realm and ensure the longevity of the sovereign and his subjects and performed songs and dances understood to effect ­t hese desiderata. Even what appeared to be the most purely aesthetic aspects of Noh—­its poetic allusions—­often hinted at Noh’s salvific power, making subtle references to esoteric literary treatises, which purported to unveil hidden meanings that had been planted in classical lit­er­a­ture, most importantly the Kokin wakashū (Kokinshū) and the Ise monogatari. ­These texts declared that poetry was the supreme vehicle for communicating the non-­dual relationship of desire or passion (bonnō) and awakening (bodai).9 ­These treatises not only provided source materials (honzetsu or honsetsu) that formed the germ for many plays, they also provided the theoretical tools that allowed Zeami to argue that poetry, dance, and, by extension, Noh, possessed soteriological efficacy. And as an art form that conveyed Buddhist truth, Noh claimed the power to produce worldly benefit for ­t hose who witnessed and patronized it.

Envisioning Auspicious Okina The Dances of Owari no Hamanushi and the Fushimi Okina Before discussing interpretations of the Shikisanban, it is useful to consider two earlier narratives depicting auspicious dances, in which the aged body was central to the meanings and effects ­these per­for­mances ­were intended to produce. In both cases, the fact that the elder was able to rouse himself to perform was presented

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as miraculous, perhaps evidence of the intervention of otherworldly powers. ­These dances also point to the roots, if not of the Shikisanban, at least of the paradigm in which the okina served as an enigmatic emissary, whose dance and song held secret meanings. The Shoku Nihon kōki rec­ords that during the reign of Ninmyō—­marked by near constant anxiety over the health of the sovereign—­a low-­ranking court musician, Owari Muraji Hamanushi, offered to perform a “Japanese-­style” dance of longevity (chōjuraku) for the emperor. Hamanushi was reputedly 113 years old at the time, and many of the spectators expressed doubts that he was up to the task. Once the ­music started, however, to every­one’s amazement Hamanushi danced as skillfully “as a youth.” Along with his request to perform, he had included a poem: Nanatsugi no An okina miyo ni mawaeru of one hundred years momochimari plus ten, tō no okina no having seen seven reigns, mai tatematsuru now wishes to offer a dance.10 Two days l­ater, the emperor summoned Hamanushi to perform a dance for longevity in front of the Seiryōden, a hall attached to the imperial residence. Completing his dance, Hamanushi recited another poem: Okina tote wabi ya wa oramu kusa mo ki mo sakayuru toki ni idete maitemu

Just ­because I am an okina, why should I feel downhearted? When the grasses and trees are in full bloom, I too ­w ill go out and dance.11

Although ostensibly a dance to promote the longevity of the tennō, the display of such a physically vital elder was also an implicit comment on the virtue of Ninmyō’s reign. Early Japa­nese elites commonly drew on passages from Chinese textual sources that described the existence of resonant relationships between the virtue of the sovereign and the health and longevity of his or her “black-­haired subjects” (reigen or kenshu). Hamanushi’s dance thus fulfilled both instrumental and expressive functions. On the one hand, ­people surely hoped the dance would indeed fulfill its stated purpose. On the other hand, by publicly demonstrating the existence in the realm of vital, long-­lived subjects, the dance provided proof of the sovereign’s right to rule. On both occasions Hamanushi presented a poem

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that served the role of hokai, a congratulatory felicitation that was also believed to be capable of extending life, protecting against calamity, and imparting blessings.12 Since Hamanushi’s longevity was a result of the virtue of the sovereign, his per­for­mance was implicitly an act of gratitude. The entire affair, presented as it was in a state-­sponsored court history, sought to demonstrate that the “economy of virtue”—­the circle of reciprocity in which imperial virtue gave rise to national well-­being, which in return gave rise to gratitude and life-­extending felicitations directed ­toward the ruler—­continued to function in spite of Ninmyō’s fragile condition.13 Although identified as a court musician and presumably well-­versed in continental traditions, Hamanushi nonetheless chose to perform an unnamed “Japanese-­style” dance of longevity. The entry for the eighth day of the first month of 845—­t he date the first dance was performed—­a lso notes the beginning of the Golden Light Assembly (Saishō-­e), a series of lectures and debates on the Golden Light Sutra, at the ­Great Hall of Audience.14 By the Heian period, the eighth day of the first month had come to mark the beginning of a week of Buddhist rites undertaken for the welfare of the state and ruler. ­These rites ­were held in coordination with a series of per­for­mances held at major shrine-­temples—­the Shushō-­e, regarded as the birthplace of an ancient form of the Shikisanban. It would be tempting, therefore, to read this auspicious okina dance as a distant ancestor of the Shikisanban.15 Unfortunately, ­t here is no evidence that Hamanushi’s dance was part of or gave rise to any tradition—­described as his own creation, it began and ended with him.16 Another striking example of an elder offering a felicitous song and dance, despite his presumed physical limitations, is found in a cluster of legends describing the Nara-­period dedication of the “­Great Buddha” (Daibutsu), Tōdaiji’s massive honzon. ­These legends featured a mysterious old man originally referred to as Yamato no Kunimi, ­later known as the Fushimi Okina, and formed, in an extremely roundabout way, the honzetsu of what is generally regarded as the earliest example of Waki Noh, the play Kinsatsu. The late Heian-­period Daianji bodai [mai] denraiki contains the earliest reliable reference to Kunimi/Fushimi Okina.17 The text describes the activities of the peripatetic Gyōki Bosatsu, enlisted by Shōmu tennō to raise funds for the construction of the ­Great Buddha, and Bodhisena, a monk of South Asian origin who ostensibly performed the eye-­ opening ceremony that symbolically vivified the ­great honzon.18 The relevant passages from the Daianji bodai denraiki describe Bodhisena’s journey to Japan and first encounter with Gyōki. The two exchange songs revealing that both w ­ ere, in fact, reincarnations of bodhisattvas who w ­ ere pres­ent at Śākyamuni’s preaching of the Lotus Sutra.19 On their way to the capital in Nara

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(Heijō-­kyō), they pass Sugawara ­temple. ­There they encounter an old man named Yamato Kunimi. Following the pattern of many late Heian legends in which the lowly okina is revealed to be a miraculous being, we learn that Kunimi was actually a reincarnation of one of Bodhisena’s novices. Although he had stopped speaking from the age of seventy, he approached Gyōki with a question: “If you are greeting a guest from far away, is ­there not something lacking?” Gyōki answered: “The only ­thing missing is song and dance.” To this, Kunimi replied: “This okina also wishes to offer something, but he is poor, lacking all but the roughest clothing and food. How can I serve him?” At this, the other disciples all sneered and ridiculed him. [ . . . ​] Kunimi then brought out two boys, both of whom ­were ­under the age of ten. [ . . . ​] They took some chopsticks and tapped out a rhythm on one of the ­tables. Every­one sang the song that the Brahman had composed. At which point, the small boys ­rose and danced.20 Where Hamanushi had been a low-­ranking courtier, ­here, the okina is a beggar. His offering of song and dance is explic­itly related to his ­humble status and poverty. Although in this earliest version two c­ hildren dance on his behalf, all ­later variants have the okina himself performing the dance. Abe Yasurō notes that although Kunimi’s legend is interwoven with narratives centering on Gyōki and Bodhisena, the Daianji bodai [mai] denraiki in fact serves as an engi, describing the origins of a par­tic­u ­lar form of dance—­t he Bodaimai (the Dance of the Bodhisattva, also known as the Bosatsumai) indirectly invoked in the text’s title.21 The Bodaimai was, in fact, one of the dances performed at the eye-­opening ceremony for the ­Great Buddha by Buttetsu, a monk of Amanese origins thought to have accompanied the historical Bodhisena to Japan. The twelfth-­century Fusō ryakki pres­ents a variant of the Kunimi legend as the source of another form of ceremonial dance (gagaku) connected to Tōdaiji, the “Dance of the Ten Heavens” (Jittenraku).22 The purpose of ­t hese early narratives thus appears to have been to create more impressive accounts of the origins of certain continental per­for­mance traditions associated with Tōdaiji, which would connect them more directly with Gyōki and Bodhisena, who had come to figure prominently in the sacred history of the G ­ reat Buddha. Replacing Buttetsu with a miraculous okina, ­these tales added another layer of awe to the events surrounding the construction and dedication of the Daibutsu. The construction of the ­Great Buddha served to legitimate Shōmu’s reign, allowing him to cast himself as Buddhist monarch. The Yamato Kunimi legend, however, exemplifies the drastic shift in the figuring of royal authority in medieval

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myth. The name Kunimi, literally “viewing the country,” designated an ancient rite in which the sovereign asserted owner­ship of the land by gazing at it from on high. The kikishinwa depicted two aged gods facilitating Jinmu’s inaugural kunimi. ­Here, however, it is not the ruler but an okina who occupies the high ground, his name identifying him as the one looking down over Yamato. ­Later variants bear this out, situating the old man on Mount Fushimi, which, like Kunimi, includes the character mi, meaning “to look.” Symbolically displacing the godlike tennō surveying his realm, t­ hese legends pres­ent a super­natu­ral okina who sustains imperial rule, but only indirectly, by glorifying Tōdaiji’s honzon—­a symbol of the emperor’s status not as heavenly sovereign but as servant and promoter of the Dharma. Importantly, each successive rewriting of this tale rendered the okina increasingly mysterious. In the oldest stratum of the legend, the origins of the Fushimi Okina (a.k.a. Kunimi) are clear and intelligible; he is a disciple of Bodhisena’s who has been reborn in Japan. In variants from the Ryūmeishō and Kyōkunshō, Gyōki identifies the enigmatic elder or elders as avatars of deva from the Tōriten heaven (Sk. Trāyastriṃśa).23 In a parallel set of narratives found in the Fusō ryakki and the thirteenth-­century Genkō shakusho, however, the origins of the Fushimi Okina and the significance of his dance have become almost completely obscure: I do not know where the Fushimi Okina came from, but certain ­people said he was from India. This okina lay down on a hill beside the Sugawara ­temple in the Heijō capital in Yamato province. For three years he did not rise, and since he never spoke a word even when p ­ eople called him, every­ one assumed he was a mute. From time to time he would raise his head and look to the east. Then, in the eighth year of the Tenpyō era [736 CE] Gyōki hōshi welcomed the Brahman monk Bodhisena and returned with him to Sugawara ­temple where offerings had been prepared [for a Buddhist ser­v ice]. They ­were both in exceedingly high spirits. In fact, t­ hese two bhikṣus danced together using a pair of chopsticks to keep time. At that very moment, the okina suddenly arose and entered the t­ emple. Joining their dance he began to chant: “Is it time? Is it time? Has this karma reached fruition?” The three danced together like old friends. Doubtless, the act of spending all ­t hose years without speaking was for the purpose of fi­nally uttering ­t hese words. [The reason] he had lifted his head from time to time to gaze east was in order to see the work g­ oing on at Tōdaiji [on the Daibutsu]. Afterwards, the place where he had lain came to be known as Fushimi no Oka [Lying Down and Watching Hill], and from this the okina got his name.24

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Just as Kunimi/Fushimi Okina’s origins became increasing murky with each retelling, so too did the meaning of his song. Like Hamanushi, who offered poetic felicitations that w ­ ere completely intelligible, Kunimi’s original song merely repeated that of Bodhisena, presumably understood by all. By the Genkō shakusho, however, his “song” no longer conforms to the meter of Japa­nese verse. Nor is its meaning entirely clear. The unintelligibility of the Fushimi Okina’s song resonates with another set of legends connecting a mysterious old man to the dedication of the ­Great Buddha, dating from the late Heian period. The legend reports that through a strange set of circumstances, an old mackerel seller was selected to give the dedicatory sermon at the eye-­opening ceremony. ­After ascending the platform, he began to “­mumble” (saezuru), pronouncing syllables that ­people suspected might be Sanskrit.25 The unintelligibility of the old mackerel seller’s speech seems to mark him as yet another avatar from a distant land. But removing speech from the realm of semantic sense is also a strategy for elevating utterances to the level of magical spell. Th ­ ese legends thus anticipate the enigmatic song intoned by the Okina early in the Shikisanban: “dō dō tarari tararira tarari agari rari tō”—­a series of syllables that defy comprehension, and which have long been compared to Buddhist spells or darani, which supposedly tap into deeper levels of meaning than are usually accessible to the unenlightened mind, and which, to the uninitiated, sound like strings of nonsense syllables.26 Strictly speaking, none of t­ hese chants are darani. But like darani, they derive their power from the fascination inspired by vocalizations removed from the domain of everyday speech. The Kunimi/Fushimi Okina legends further emphasized the miraculous nature of his song and dance by playing on assumptions about the inherent weakness and incapacity of the aged body. For example, the effects of the okina’s utterances are amplified by the claims that prior to offering his song he had been mute for many years. The variant in the twelfth-­century Ryūmeishō foregrounds other forms of disability. Bodhisena in this case encounters a c­ ouple—an ōna and okina—­both over one hundred years old. One, from birth, could not see; the other could not stand. Neither could speak. However, on hearing the song of Bodhi­ sena the eyes of the first elder opened and the second stood up and danced for joy.27 Despite identifying their physical shortcomings as congenital, and thus unrelated to old age, just as in the Hamanushi narrative, the Kunimi/Fushimi Okina legends treat the okina’s dance as something remarkable. In each case, the aged body is animated by some miraculous power—­t he incongruity of an old man dancing and singing adding to the sense of awe. While Hamanushi’s dance and the rec­ords of it w ­ ere intended for elite audiences, the Kunimi/Fushimi Okina legends likely originated with marginal

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specialists of ritual theater connected to Daianji or Tōdaiji who made their living performing the Bodaimai or Jittenraku at Buddhist ceremonies. As the purported originator of ­these dances, the okina once again became an ancestral figure, serving as a unifying symbol for a marginal lineage. Although we cannot draw a direct genealogical link between any of t­ hese dances and the Shikisanban, the itinerant ritualists who generated ­t hese tales inhabited the same religio-­cultural milieu as the performers who originated the precursors of the Shikisanban. Th ­ ese tales provide charter myths of underclass individuals offering dance and/or song to their superiors or to the Dharma, justifying such practices and illustrating the benefits that might result from sponsoring such per­for­mances.

The Mysterious Okina of the Shikisanban Within the earliest stratum of extant writings on the Shikisanban, ­t here was consensus that it was an ancient, mysterious, and deeply significant tradition, but no agreement about what it actually signified. Several ele­ments set the Shikisanban, also known by the title “Okina,” apart from other plays. Cumulatively, t­ hese ­factors amount to framing strategies signaling to audience and actors that the Shikisanban is something that aspires to the status of ritual.28 ­Today, the Shikisanban holds a preeminent position in the repertoire, performed annually by each of the five active Noh troupes as the first per­for­mance of the New Year.29 Noh plays are generally structured around the interactions of a shite (doer) and waki (side role). The waki encounters the masked shite, who often appears in the guise of a poor old man or w ­ oman. In the second half of the play, the shite is revealed to be an entity of super­natu­ral origin, leading to a climax in which the otherworldly shite performs a dance. In the Okina play, on the other hand, the shite first appears unmasked, donning the mask onstage.30 Instead of one climactic dance, the Okina play features three, originally performed by actors using Okina, Chichi no jō, and Sanbasō masks. Another remarkable feature of the Shikisanban is the enigmatic song intoned by the Okina. Although the dialogue in most Noh plays is allusive to the point of being almost unintelligible, the Okina song is of a qualitatively dif­fer­ent level of opacity, inviting a wide range of interpretations. While its origins are obscure, the Shikisanban is thought to have reached something approximating its final form by the early Kamakura period.31 In recent de­cades, scholarly consensus has formed around the theory that the Shikisanban is a survival of an earlier form of ritual theater, known as okina sarugaku, the pre­de­ces­sor of Noh. Okina sarugaku had its roots in the ritual theater of jushi (also rendered sushi or shushi, “spell masters”) who performed at major shrine-­ temple complexes in Ōmi, Tōnomine, and Yamato, particularly the KasugaKōfukuji complex, and conducted purificatory and propitiatory rituals known

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as jushi no hashiri in the first and second months at the Shushō-­e and Shuni-­e assemblies, pivotal junctures in the Buddhist liturgical calendar.32 Culminating in a scene in which demons, symbolizing kegare and other evil influences, would be driven out of the ritual arena, t­ hese rites w ­ ere regarded as especially effective in purifying the realm and ensuring peace, health, and a bountiful harvest in the year to come.33 The four Yamato sarugaku troupes (za) most active in the formation of Noh, as well as other regional troupes, ­were originally jushi.34 At some point, ­these troupes began to perform the Okina dance to replace the jushi no hashiri at these assemblies, but it is unclear why it was seen to be a suitable substitute.35 Unlike t­ hose in other Noh plays, the Okina of the Shikisanban is not identified as any par­tic­u ­lar god or buddha, or with any par­tic­u ­lar site. Since Kasuga is regarded as the matrix of the four Yamato troupes, scholars have theorized that the Okina of the Shikisanban was intended to represent the Kasuga god. The f­ ourteenth-­century Kasuga gongen genki e, for instance, describes how the priest Jōkei sequestered himself at the Kasuga shrine and prayed to see the living form of the god, who then appeared as an okina.36 Although this episode is suggestive, it should be remembered that by the Kamakura period the figure of the okina god was widespread in Buddhist legends. Kamakura-­period texts dealing with other sites connected to early Noh troupes, such as Tōnomine and the Hie shrine, also included legends of deities appearing as okina.37 Furthermore, certain passages from the Shikisanban libretto suggest a strategic unwillingness to associate its okina with any par­tic­u­lar locale. In keeping with the fact that the Shikisanban was originally conducted by itinerant ritualists, the play begins by depicting a sarugaku troupe arriving at an unnamed site and preparing for a per­for­mance. Since the setting could be anywhere, it seems that the Shikisanban was designed or developed such that its divine referents ­were interchangeable, allowing it to be performed identically at Kasuga-­Kōfukuji, Tōnomine, Hie, or other shrine-­temple complexes. The earliest extant commentary on the Shikisanban is found in the Hokkegobukukanjo (Writings on the Lotus Sutra in Five Parts and Nine Volumes), attributed to the twelfth-­century Tendai zasu Chūjin, but likely written in the thirteenth ­century.38 The text describes a per­for­mance of the Shikisanban, interpreting its three Okina as avatars of three central figures of the Lotus Sutra—Śākyamuni, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya—and providing a convoluted decryption of the Okina chant, revealing a set of pithy slogans explaining the non-­duality of ignorance and enlightenment. Although this exegesis is not particularly compelling, it demonstrates that the Okina dance had arrived at something approximating its classical form and was already considered something of an enigma more than a ­century before Zeami.39

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Both Zeami and Zenchiku recorded mythohistories of okina sarugaku colored by their desire to pres­ent Noh as an ancient and noble tradition. Zeami, in fact, provides three accounts of its origins, all of which likely predated him.40 In the Fūshikaden he associates the earliest per­for­mance of sarugaku with the myth in which the sun deity Amaterasu, having hidden herself in a cave, was lured out by a group of gods performing song and dance, restoring light and life to the universe. He then asserts that sarugaku began when the Buddha had his disciples perform flute and drum m ­ usic at the rear of the hall to distract a crowd of unbelievers who sought to disrupt the dedicatory sermon at the Jetavana Monastery.41 He identified a third “origin” in Japan, when Prince Shōtoku, responding to disturbances in the land, had Hata no Kawakatsu perform the same sixty-­six pieces. ­These ­were eventually narrowed to three, corresponding to the three bodies of the Buddha, performed with masks representing Inatsumi no Okina, Yonatsumi no Okina, and Chichi no jō.42 Zeami writes that Shōtoku described the Shikisanban as a means of spreading the teachings of the Buddha, with the sacred power to “chase away evil affinities, [and] call forth happiness, so that the country ­w ill remain in tranquility, bringing gentleness and long life to the ­people.”43 For Zeami, the Shikisanban’s significance stemmed from its connection to primordial divine powers, be they Buddhist or kami-­centric, and its purported efficacy as sacred ritual. Similarly, in his Meishukushū, Zenchiku claimed that the Okina of the Shikisanban manifested a transcendent Okina deity, which stood ­behind the multitude of okina gods and avatars of legend. He furthermore connected this original Okina to the Shukujin (or Shukushin), a god of creativity, whom scholars have identified as a tutelary deity venerated by medieval performers.44 Zenchiku never seems to question why this primeval god would have the form of an okina. Nor does Zeami seek to explain why the Shikisanban should center on the dances of three old men. Both pres­ent the aged body as a natu­ral vessel for mysterious powers and secret meanings.

Displacing the Osa Leaving aside the supposedly divine origins of the Shikisanban, for Zeami, the most significant moment in the history of Noh was the fateful day at the Imakumano shrine when his f­ ather, Kan’ami, performed the role of Okina for the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.45 Deeply impressed, Yoshimitsu became the key patron of Zeami’s Kanze troupe. Kan’ami’s per­for­mance had broken with pre­ce­dent. The role of Okina had traditionally been reserved for the se­nior troupe member or osa, but at the time, Kan’ami had been a tayū or lead performer. As in other medieval guilds, sarugaku za ­were or­ga­nized according to seniority—by chronological age or number of years since entering the group. The osa was therefore not only

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the leader of the troupe, but likely its oldest member.46 In addition to the undeniable logic of having the oldest member perform the role of Okina, as the most prestigious piece in the repertoire, it stands to reason that it would only have been performed by the troupe’s highest-­ranking member. Although it is clear from Zeami’s treatises that he still saw the role of Okina as one best reserved for actors over forty, Kan’ami’s displacement of the osa signaled a shift away from seniority as the main criterion in selecting roles.47 The per­for­mance at the Imakumano shrine opened the way for a new emphasis in the Kanze troupe on skill over chronological age when selecting performers.48 Zeami was critical of most el­derly actors. Even a fantastic creature like a kirin, he noted, was “worse than a worn out pack­horse” once it grew old.49 However, Zeami still held certain older actors in high regard—­especially his ­father Kan’ami. In fact, actors who, like Kan’ami, w ­ ere able to maintain their skill late in life w ­ ere capable of producing much more in­ter­est­ing and beautiful per­for­mances than youths, whose beauty was obvious, but lacked depth. The actor who maintained his skills into old age could generate the effect of “flowers on a withered branch.” The high esteem in which Zeami held certain se­nior actors was based not on a system of seniority, but on theories of lifelong training articulated in his treatises. For Zeami, the key to a g­ reat per­for­mance was not mimetic verisimilitude. Successful monomane (mimicry) meant attaining the “essence” (hon’i) of a role, which involved mastery of hundreds of gestures and postures, through repetitive training (keiko).50 ­These patterns of movement would be rehearsed to the point they could be enacted almost unconsciously. Reaching that stage, an actor “possessed mastery of style” (ushufū).51 Analyzing theories of training in Noh and other medieval arts, Yuasa Yasuo has shown that their practical regimens bore similarities to the forms of bodily discipline (shugyō) found in esoteric Buddhism and Zen, which also purported to remake the body-­mind through repetitive training.52 In Noh, “true per­for­mance was not something to be understood mentally, rather it was something absorbed and remembered by the body. [ . . . ​] It was something created by a body that has been built up by long years of strict training.”53 In the Fūshikaden, Zeami broke his training regimen into seven broad life-­ stages.54 He noted that young actors possessed a “Flower”—­Zeami’s term for the ability to elicit fascination—­simply by virtue of their youthful charms. However, Zeami repeatedly warned against mistaking the ­simple beauty of youth for the “true” flower (makoto no hana or shōka). While young actors could achieve a “temporary flower” ( jibun no hana 時分の花 or yōka 用花), which might fool an unsophisticated audience, the true flower was only gained through training.55 Zeami admitted that in competitions, audiences would at times prefer a youth to a more experienced actor, but insisted that an actor over fifty who had not lost his

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flower would never be defeated by superficial beauty.56 Throughout his writings, Zeami stressed maturity and mastery (tatsujin). “A truly novel [in­ter­est­ing] flower,” he wrote, “comes about ­because of an actor’s experience and maturity (toshi no sakari),” literally when he is at the “peak of his years.”57 Such mastery was not a ­return to youth, but a sublimation of and movement beyond youthful artistry. In the Shūgyoku tokka, Zeami elaborated on the relationship between the temporary flower and the true flower, using a Zen kōan: “Vari­ous truths are manifestations of the one truth. The one truth only exists in its vari­ous manifestations.”58 Similarly, the temporary flower was no more than a manifestation of the innate flower (shōka 性花) of the accomplished actor (tatsujin).59 Although counterintuitive, Zeami argues that the flower of youth is somehow derived from the true flower that can only be achieved in ­later life. Echoing the logic of Buddhist training, and theories of “original enlightenment” (hongaku), Zeami claimed that only with cultivation could the actor access what was already inherently possessed. Although ­t here was no way for a ju­nior actor to imitate the mature flower, elsewhere Zeami wrote that the elder actor still had access to the flower of youth: An actor must not forget the Flower that he has established at vari­ous phases of his c­ areer. Th ­ ese vari­ous flowers, past and f­ uture, make up the vari­ous ele­ments of one’s acting style. By “past and ­f uture” I mean that the vari­ous styles that an actor has naturally mastered at vari­ous times, such as his presence as a child actor, his art as a young adult, and his elaborate skill as a mature actor, as well as his technique as an older performer, should all form a part of his art.60 Although aged actors could call on an entire range of acting styles, Zeami counseled them to avoid showy parts involving energetic motion and instead opt for ­t hose that could “be played in a relaxed manner without physical strain.”61 While this might sound as though Zeami ­were seeking to ­gently usher aged actors off the stage, Zeami’s aesthetics actually favored such understated per­for­ mances.62 He famously counseled that the mind of the actor should be completely engaged (at “ten”), but his body should not be utilized fully (only at “seven”).63 In his efforts to aristocratize his art, Zeami demanded refinement even in roles that would traditionally have been performed energetically. Demons, for instance, ­were to be enacted with “strength within delicacy.”64 Although an aged actor’s physical condition might curtail the number of roles he might perform, it left open the types of roles that Zeami saw as the greatest of Noh—­t hose that required holding back and relying more on “inner” power than showy physical displays. In the Kakyō, Zeami stated that only ­after the age of forty

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could actors start to use “restraint” (oshimu futei) in their per­for­mances, since at that age they truly possessed something to hold back.65 Training built up reserves of skill that w ­ ere pres­ent with the mature actor on stage, enriching their per­for­ mance with a depth that the audience could sense but not fully fathom.66 Zeami’s theories of training also help explain his writings on the ultimate level of artistic achievement: the stage of myō. The term originates in Buddhism, where its range of meanings include “subtle,” “mysterious,” “wondrous.” In the Tendai School, myō indicated the inexplicable nature of the universe characterized by infinite interpenetration.67 Writing on myō, Zeami quoted an unidentified Tiantai text that asked prac­ti­tion­ers to “cut off all verbal expression, transcend thought, and enter the realm of myō.”68 In his “Nine Levels” (Kyūi), Zeami “explained” myō using another Zen kōan: “In Silla, in the dead of night, the sun shines brightly,” meaning that myō “surpasses any explanation in words and lies beyond consciousness.”69 Given Zeami’s reliance on esoteric literary treatises, we might read the kōan’s conflation of night and day as expressing the unification of oppositions—­y in/yang, female/male, delusion/enlightenment. An actor achieving the level of myō presumably provided audiences with a direct revelation of Buddhist truth that overcame the dualities through which the unenlightened intellect perceived the world.70 Zeami not only appropriated Buddhist vocabulary in his aesthetic theories, he also treated the won­der and awe experienced in the presence of super­natu­ral powers as comparable to the won­der that could be generated on stage. In the Shūgyoku tokka, he explained the audience’s experience of myō in terms of the Buddhist concept of kannō—an emotional resonance between divinities and devotees.71 The performer who possessed myō produced won­der in the audience in the same way that divine beings amazed and inspired the faithful. Such expressions of transcendent real­ity needed to be perceived and intuited directly; they could not be analyzed and explained verbally. Since myō was characterized not by clarity, but by mystery, this highest sphere of dramatic accomplishment was compatible with the style of the aged actor epitomized by restraint—­a style that withheld expression and made per­for­mance less, rather than more, intellectually accessible. ­There was but one actor Zeami described having achieved this level of perfection: his ­father, Kan’ami. The Sarugaku dangi, a rec­ord of Zeami’s discourses on Noh taken down by his son, Motoyoshi, rec­ords that while he found t­ hings to praise about con­temporary performers like Kiami and Dōami, it was Kan’ami who had reached an “unexcelled style of elegance” (yūgen mujō no fūtei).72 “He showed skill worthy of the gods themselves ( jinben).”73 “Even a player descended from heaven itself (amakudari) could not have achieved such a level of art.”74 In

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his final work, Zeami intimated that ­t here was one stage of per­for­mance higher than myō, “the flower of returning” (kyakuraika), which, once again, only the aged actor could produce.75 The only actor he had ever witnessed capable of it was Kan’ami.76 Zeami’s idealization of his f­ather obviously derived from a complex set of motivations, including his desire to further elevate and legitimate his own dramatic lineage. But one of the key criteria Zeami used to set apart his f­ ather’s Noh was his ability to remain compelling in old age.77 It is pos­si­ble that Zeami’s reflections on training and the aged actor ­were derived, in part, from a wish to explain and justify the magnificence of his f­ ather’s art.78 Zeami’s theories of lifelong training posited that the body of the actor was a repository for accumulated skill. As outward, obvious beauty dis­appeared with age, the true flower of experience could be revealed. It is perhaps for this reason that Zeami never questioned why the most power­f ul per­for­mance tradition in Noh should have the Okina as its focal point. The mysterious quality of the Shikisanban, with its shadowy origins and incomprehensible song, accorded with the notion that bodies stored up hidden skills and powers through accumulated years of training, eventually reaching a godlike level of efficacy. The Okina and the aged actor embodied restraint, mystery, and hidden depths that resisted overt explication but could communicate, through the experience of the audience, profound truths.

The Aged Body in Waki Noh “Tranquil Heart, Gazing Afar”: The Rōtai as Template for God Plays Turning from the Shikisanban to the treatment of the aged body in Noh plays, the natu­ral place to begin is Waki Noh, sometimes called “kami no mono” or “god plays.” While the Noh repertoire includes a broader set of plays centering on divine figures, generally known as Kami Noh, Zeami is credited with having s­ haped the genre of Waki Noh, a term he himself employed, by slowing the tempo of the plays, rendering them more in keeping with the aesthetics of the aged body (rōtai). Waki Noh was traditionally performed immediately ­after the Shikisanban, which inaugurated a day’s program.79 In a typical Waki Noh, the waki, often an emissary of the throne, encounters the maejite, an old man, at times accompanied by an old w ­ oman, who in the second half is revealed to be a god, the nochijite, who performs a dance and delivers “auspicious blessings” (shūgen), celebrating imperial rule.80 The majority of Zeami’s Waki Noh, including Yumi Yawata, Oimatsu, Hōjōgawa, Takasago, and Yōrō, featured deities that appeared, at least at first, as aged avatars. In many ways, Waki Noh is an extension of the Shikisanban—­plays

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within plays in which the song and dance of an elder god is meant to pacify the realm and sanctify the rule of the sovereign. In Waki Noh, dramatists sought to pres­ent visions of the world that would satisfy power­f ul patrons, relying on ancient literary and mythohistorical tropes to reproduce, with certain modifications, the classical image of a purified, pacified, tennō-­centered realm. One of their challenges was harmonizing ­these ritsuryō-­era visions with the po­liti­cal realities of their day. Although the ritsuryō regime had always been as much a cultural fantasy as a functioning system of government, ­t here was a particularly stark disjunction between that dream and the realpolitik of Muromachi Japan, in which the court was significantly weakened and military clans, particularly the Ashikaga, held ultimate sway. As if to acknowledge this, Waki Noh ­were generally set in the distant past and praised sovereigns whose reigns w ­ ere long over. Nonetheless, Zeami intimated, the tranquility of ancient times could be re-created through Noh’s function as “a ritual prayer (kitō) for achieving peace in the realm.”81 This message was complicated, however, by the diverse makeup of the audience.82 It required no small mea­sure of finesse to craft ideologically multifarious works that appealed not only to aristocrats, but also to members of warrior clans, as well as high-­ranking Buddhist clergy. Most Waki Noh w ­ ere performed with the rōtai, one of the three bodies that Zeami wrote ­were the basis of all roles. Noh per­for­mance required mastery of the “two arts” of singing and dancing, and the “three bodies” of the ­woman, warrior, and elder. From ­t hese three basic types, actors could develop any of the numerous roles required of them. For instance, actors seeking to convey the delicacy and grace of an aristocrat would model their per­for­mance on the w ­ oman’s body (nyotai). A raging demon would be based on the warrior. Reflecting the positioning of the aged body in the Shikisanban, Waki Noh ­were most often written such that their gods ­were performed in the rōtai. Although Zeami admitted ­there w ­ ere plays using the rōtai that ­were not Waki Noh, and Waki Noh that employed the nyotai, he also asserted the essential suitability of the rōtai for Waki Noh.83 The Nikyoku santai ningyōzu contains illustrations of the rōtai showing an old man, slightly stooped, with a walking stick. Zeami’s descriptions of the proper per­for­mance of the elder stressed its reserve, ease, and mildness. Th ­ ese qualities ­were epitomized in the slogan appended to the illustration: “Tranquil heart, gazing afar” (see figure 6). Per­for­mances in the rōtai thus perfectly embodied Zeami’s aesthetic of restraint. In other writings, Zeami attempted to prune away the layers of tradition that would have made the body of the elder an object of ridicule. Anyone, he wrote, could play the role of an aged salt dripper or woodcutter, but it took true skill to perform the role of an elder in court attire.84 Since the okina

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Figure 6. Illustration of the aged mode (rōtai). Nikyoku santai ningyōzu. The caption reads: “Tranquil heart, gazing afar.” Courtesy of Nogami kinen Hōsei Daigaku Nōgaku kenkyūjo.

was widely associated with lowly professions in lit­er­a­ture and legend, such roles presented ­little challenge. Using the aged body to proj­ect the dignity of a courtier apparently required more skill. Zeami’s attempts to repurpose the aged body followed trends that had begun in late Heian legends—­transforming it from an object of pity or ridicule into something worthy of awe. Since the standing of its art was based on the majesty of the Okina, the Kanze School had an interest in redacting pre­sen­ta­tions of the elder to produce an image of dignity and solemnity that w ­ as also the basis of Waki Noh. Prior to Zeami, sarugaku and other per­for­mance traditions appear to have relied on aged stock characters that, in Zeami’s view, degraded the image of the rōtai. In discussing a con­temporary of his ­father, the dengaku performer Kiami, Zeami described how he was able, in his l­ater years, to perform the role of a rustic old man in a way that had some charm but was nonetheless “straightforward and artless.”85 Zeami had much higher praise for Kiami’s per­for­mance

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of the okina god Tenazuchi, which he described as “majestic.”86 Zeami is recorded having criticized what he characterized as a recent tendency to perform the Sanbasō role in the Shikisanban to produce a “comic effect.”87 Heian-­ period texts suggest that sarugaku performers occasionally turned to the aged body for cheap laughs. The Konjaku monogatari (28/35), for instance, describes a kusa awase competition in which rivals of the pompous Shimotsuke no Kintada sought to humiliate him by sending out, as his opponent, an old man with a ridicu­lous headpiece, riding a cow, with a dried fish as a sword. The old man “looked like a humorous sarugaku performer.” Kintada was furious.88 In an episode from the Shinsarugakuki, Fujiwara no Akihira reported witnessing an example of ritual theater, prob­ably a fertility rite, at the Inari shrine involving sexual intercourse between an old man and a young ­woman. The comic incongruity of an aged body seeking to arouse generative energies was greeted by hysterical laughter from the audience.89 In addition to providing a template for certain roles, the “aged mode” (rōtai) served as a style of dramatic composition that structured the pace and mood of an entire play.90 Zeami’s idealized vision of the elder also colored his descriptions of this dramatic style. The majority of Waki Noh w ­ ere written in the “aged mode,” which consisted of five parts, moving in a slow, stately fashion, without any major dramatic twists to jar the audience out of a mood of quiet repose.91 When writing in the aged mode, Zeami sought to establish tonal consistency between the first and second halves of the play. Prior to Zeami it was already conventional in Kami Noh to portray the maejite as an old man. But surviving plays and per­for­mance notes demonstrate that one of Zeami’s major innovations in Waki Noh involved reshaping the character of the nochijite.92 In god plays from the period in which Kan’ami was active, it was popu­lar to pres­ent fearsome, energetic nochijite whose dance displayed violent energy. Prior to Zeami, the line between gods and demons had been less clearly drawn on the Noh stage; gods ­were ambivalent entities that could be benevolent or threatening in turn. Zeami, however, consistently presented gods as calm, beneficent beings.93 While not the first to feature the aged body as the quin­tes­sen­t ial vehicle for sacred power in sarugaku, Zeami significantly revised the image of the elder and the gods they represented.

Kinsatsu and Fushimi: From the Spectacle of Kami Noh to the Subtlety of Waki Noh The earliest surviving example of a god play is thought to be Kinsatsu, attributed to Kan’ami. Another closely related play, Fushimi, appears to be Zeami’s revision of Kinsatsu.94 ­These plays provide examples of how Zeami presented the aged

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body as a vehicle of auspicious blessings but also actively reworked classical tropes to accommodate new po­liti­cal and religious realities. Both plays rely heavi­ly on materials gleaned from esoteric literary treatises, specifically passages providing exegesis on the so-­called Izakokoni poem (981) from the Kokinshū: Iza koko ni waga yo wa henamu sugawara ya fushimi no sato no aremaku mo oshi

I, at least, ­will live in no other place than this. How sad that old homes at Sugawara Fushimi must decay into ruins.95

Lacking both headnote and identified author, the poem presented an open field of interpretive possibilities for the compilers of medieval allegorical commentaries. In the Kokinshūchū, the priest Kenshō (ca. 1130–ca. 1210) claimed that “according to Ryūen Hōshi, this is a poem by Fushimi Sennin,” other­wise known as the Fushimi no Okina.96 Kumazawa Reiko suggests that early exegetes sought to link the Izakokoni poem to the mysterious Fushimi Okina ­because of his connections with Sugawara Fushimi in Yamato province, the poem’s subject.97 By the late thirteenth ­century, exegeses on the poem had expanded to include the Emperor Kanmu and the founding of the Fushimi shrine, pushing the role of the Fushimi Okina to the periphery. This version was recorded in a short passage titled Kinsatsuden from Fujiwara no Tameaki’s Gyokuden jinpi no maki, a work dedicated to revealing the meanings supposedly hidden in the poems of the Kokinshū. The Kinsatsuden states that the Izakokoni poem is a kanjō uta—­a song that accompanied an initiation into esoteric Buddhist truths—­dating from the reign of Kanmu. Although the setting of the poem is clearly Yamato province, site of the Nara capital, the Kinsatsuden claims that the poem relates to a fictitious Sugawara Fushimi village in Yamashiro, near the Heian capital. It recounts how at one point Kanmu lived in this village, which was also home to a heavenly ke’nin 化人, another term for a keshin. One day, a golden tablet fell from the sky, inscribed on one side with the mysterious Izakokoni poem. On the reverse side the author was identified as Tenshō Daijin (Amaterasu). Tameaki relates that Fushimi was the original name for all of Japan, since a­ fter creating this land, the gods Izanagi and Izanami lay down ( fushi) and gazed (mi) at their creation. He thus interprets the poem as Amaterasu’s vow to protect Japan in perpetuity. The Kinsatsuden informs us that Kanmu had a shrine constructed to ­house the golden tablet.98 Kan’ami’s Kinsatsu is a relatively straightforward retelling of this legend, although with certain significant alterations. It describes Kanmu’s construction

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of a g­ reat shrine (daigū) at Fushimi at the time he relocated the capital from Hiejō-­k yō to Heian-­k yō.99 The play opens with Kanmu’s messenger arriving at the site and encountering an old man who has arrived from Akone Bay in Ise. Suddenly, a golden tablet descends from the sky inscribed with verses praising the reign of the sovereign: “Clear lies this land, bright girdled round with suchness Dharma nature! Guard, I w ­ ill, the ceaseless flow of the Mimosuso River. And for this, I vow to dwell in Fushimi.”100 The imperial messenger takes this to mean that the god ­w ill dwell in the Fushimi shrine, but the old man explains that Fushimi is a name for all of Japan, providing the same gloss as the Kinsatsuden involving Izanagi and Izanami. The old man enters the shrine and emerges in his true form, Amatsu Futodama, one of the gods who lured Amaterasu out of the rock cave, restoring light to the universe. Futodama’s role as Amaterasu’s servant implies that the golden tablet’s message has come from the sun goddess. In the final scene of the play, Futodama produces a “Zelkova-­Moon Bow of Suchness” (shinyo no tsuki yumi) and engages in a ritual dance (Hataraki) warding off the barbarians of the four directions.101 Declaring the realm at peace, he unstrings the bow and casts it aside, intoning the phrase “bow unstrung and sword sheathed.”102 The first half of Zeami’s Fushimi follows Kinsatsu closely, but omits the ele­ment of the golden tablet, returning the play to something closer to Kenshō’s original account. In Zeami’s telling, the shite identifies himself as Fushimi no Okina, who spends his time tending to and waxing poetic over chrysanthemums, also known as okina kusa (old man grass). An exposition (kuse) explains that the Fushimi no Okina appeared and recited the Izakokoni poem when Kanmu began constructing his g­ reat shrine at Fushimi. The second half of the play reveals the okina to be the god Kazahae (or Kazehaya, “speedy wind-­deity”) from Ise’s Akone Bay.103 Both Kinsatsu and Fushimi derived source material from esoteric literary treatises, including the Gyokuden jinpi no maki, which described Akone Bay as the site at which an okina Sumiyoshi deity—­god of war and poetry—­t ransmitted the esoteric secrets of poetry to Narihira and reaffirmed his vow to protect the imperial line.104 The mention in ­t hese plays of Akone Bay would have caught the attention of t­ hose in the audience with access to secret poetic traditions (which w ­ ere apparently not so secret among late medieval cognoscenti), and suggested that their okina gods might also be avatars of Sumiyoshi. The shift in tone between t­ hese two plays exemplifies Zeami’s attempts to aristocratize his art, reining in forceful displays and featuring instead dignified, understated per­for­mances. Kinsatsu reveals its okina to be a virile god in a Tenjin mask—an image of the deified Sugawara Michizane, exhibiting his fierce aspect—­ who performs an aggressive ritual dance (Hataraki) to ward off enemies. Fushimi

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is more in keeping with the central theme of certain influential esoteric poetic commentaries, which saw the power of the Sumiyoshi deity not in his military might but in the power of song and dance to order the realm and reveal Buddhist truth. The dance performed at the end of Fushimi is gentle and felicitous, celebrating the “ten-­thousand year reign of the sovereign.”105 It also accords with Zeami’s aesthetics of the aged form. Older stage manuals in the Kanze lineage indicate that the play originally featured a stately Shinnojo-­no-­mai performed with an aged mask and white wig.106 This indicates that Zeami composed Fushimi around the time he was experimenting with a new style of Waki Noh, in which the shite remained an elder even a­ fter having been revealed as a god.107 Such is still the case in Oimatsu and Hōjōgawa; the same might also have been true of the original version of Takasago.108 Although Zeami wrote that it was impor­tant to adhere closely to the honzetsu when composing Waki Noh, ­t here is no extant source that contains all the ele­ ments of Kinsatsu or Fushimi. Kan’ami and Zeami clearly reworked their respective narratives to make the plays more palatable to prospective audiences and more compatible with their own tastes and their own agendas.109 For example, Zeami’s Waki Noh, including plays like Yōrō, Oimatsu, Hōjōgawa, favored the configurations of royal authority presented in medieval shinwa. ­These plays ended with an otherworldly elder promising to protect the sovereign and the realm. Unlike the kikishinwa, in which elder gods symbolized submission to the natu­ral superiority of the sun lineage, t­ hese plays posited a symbiosis between the ruler and the Dharma, made manifest through aged avatars. By promoting a vision of reciprocity between temporal powers and otherworldly elders, Waki Noh provided a template for the relationship that early Noh dramatists sought to establish with their patrons. By sponsoring Noh (particularly the Shikisanban), medieval Japa­nese elites, including warriors, royals, or aristocrats, could stage public displays of super­natu­ral approval for their rule—­a situation that benefited Noh troupes as well. Zeami’s Waki Noh thus empowered its aged avatars, not by endowing them with martial vigor, but by making them the vehicle for oracular pronouncements that promoted per­for­mance, in the form of poetry and dance, as the highest expressions of truth and the key to maintaining worldly power.

Misery Remade The Aged Body beyond Waki Noh Where for Zeami the goal of Waki Noh had been to create scenes of quiet, dignified joy, the rest of Noh repertoire required displays of stronger emotion in order

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to achieve dramatic interest. Despite his efforts to place the rōtai securely in a zone of grace, Zeami was mindful of its potential for generating pathos.110 In the Fūshikaden, he wrote that when performing an old man one should bear in mind that “an old man wants to appear young.”111 Echoing classical-­era aesthetics in which elegiac beauty was seen to emerge out of a consciousness of transience, many Noh plays revolved around themes of loss and the irretrievability of the past. Zeami and other dramatists drew on earlier readings of old age as a life stage characterized by loss to symbolize the disjuncture between the beauties of the former age and the fallen world of the pres­ent. The aged protagonists of t­ hese plays typically appeared in the guise of woodcutters, fishermen, or other non-­agrarian types that ­were the mainstay of poetry and legend featuring okina.112 Although they sampled heavi­ly from poetic laments over the aged body, certain of t­ hese plays suggested that old age, or even time itself, could be conquered through Buddhist salvation. In Zeami’s Suma Genji, for instance, the waki encounters an old man at Suma, the site of Genji’s exile, who is, of course, Genji himself. Interestingly, in the Genji monogatari, Murasaki Shikibu never subjected her audience to an image of Genji in his decline—­the narrative jumps abruptly from chapters depicting him on the cusp of old age to chapters set a­ fter his death. The Genji monogatari allows the shining prince—­a symbol of the beauties of the flowering court—to remain in our imagination ever as a youth or man in his prime. Perhaps to minimize the cognitive dissonance aroused by the image of an aged Genji, Suma Genji’s shite does not harp on the miseries of old age to the degree we find in other plays. And at the moment the shite is revealed to be Genji, he miraculously returns to his beautiful, youthful form, an apotheosis of Genji as an eternal, shining ideal, but also, the play implies, a bodhisattva descending to save the ignorant.113 Zeami’s Tōru also involves an old man who, in the second half of the play, recaptures the beauty of youth as the courtier Minamoto no Tōru. Both Suma Genji and Tōru end with a dance by the nochijite, which overcomes the discontinuity between the aged body and youth, symbolically healing the rift between miserable pres­ent and glorious past as well. Many Noh plays pres­ent dance as a means by which oppositions—­between the sacred and profane, this world and the next, past and pres­ent—­can be reconciled. The denouements of Suma Genji and Tōru include language suggesting their protagonists have found Buddhist salvation (or are perhaps themselves avatars of Buddhist divinities), in some ways echoing Pure Land Buddhist rhe­toric that promised radiant, ageless bodies to the faithful who w ­ ere able to transcend this world and be reborn in Amida’s paradise.114 The body used in Noh to symbolize the complete rupture with past glories was that of the aged female, particularly in plays featuring Ono no Komachi (fl. 850).

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A celebrated Heian-­period poet, several of Komachi’s works had appeared in the Kokinshū. Perhaps ­because so ­little was recorded of her biography, and ­because of the romantic passion evident in her poems, legends emerged that Komachi had, in her youth, been a haughty beauty who toyed with the affections of her lovesick suitors. As recompense, in her old age she had been reduced to the status of a wandering hag.115 In Zeami’s Sekidera Komachi, she is an anonymous old ­woman. When a party of priests and acolytes finds her and discovers her true identity, she is overcome by longing for her former glories: “O how I miss the past!” she cries, “I hunger to regain even the earliest years of my old age.”116 Performing a “mad dance,” she vividly describes scenes from her youth in the imperial palace compound. Unlike in Suma Genji or Tōru, however, Komachi’s dance is not transformative. She awakens from her dream and returns to her hut weeping. While many plays involving historical figures, particularly warrior plays, allowed their aged shite to overcome their attachments, Sekidera Komachi ends on a note of despair. The break with the past, symbolized by Komachi’s aged body, is incontrovertible. And yet another Komachi play suggests that the suffering of the aged body could itself be a source of salvation. In Sotoba Komachi, generally attributed to Kan’ami but heavi­ly revised by Zeami, two priests encounter a haggard old ­woman, Komachi, who enters singing mournfully of her former beauty and pres­ ent decrepitude, sitting down to rest on an old, weatherworn grave marker (sotoba; Sk. stupa), which she takes to be a stump. Sotoba ­were often carved from stone in the form of gorintō: towers comprising five shapes representing the five ele­ments, and thus the body of the cosmic Buddha. The sotoba in the play was presumably made of wood; through exposure to the ele­ments, it bore no resemblance to its former state, symbolizing Komachi’s condition, as well. The priests are appalled to find her sitting on this sacred object. Komachi, however, shows no remorse, arguing that “it was on the ground already.”117 This inspires a debate, which segues into a broader discussion of Buddhist doctrine, culminating in an exchange of passages from the Nirvana Sutra and the Platform Sutra: “What we call evil / is also good / delusion (bonnō) / is salvation (bodai) [ . . . ​] Of Buddha and man ­there is no distinction [ . . . ​] even from discord salvation springs.”118 Utilizing non-­dualistic Buddhist logic, Komachi reminds the priests that just as ­t here is ultimately no difference between a rotten stump and sacred stupa, a filthy old beggar ­woman could also be a hidden saint. Recognizing her superior wisdom, they marvel that “truly this is an awakened beggar (satoreru hinin)” and prostrate themselves before her. Immediately thereafter, however, Komachi, possessed by the spirit of her jilted suitor, engages in a mad dance demonstrating she is still entangled in delusion.

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A curious retrogression ­after her display of Buddhist wisdom, this frenzy nonetheless provides the final impetus for her redemption. The play concludes with the chorus singing that Komachi ­will pray for the salvation of her departed suitor and make offerings by piling up pebbles to make stupas. She has gone from a defiler to producer of a sotoba. The final lines of the play indicate that Komachi is “entering the Way,” the path to Buddhahood. Elsewhere, the play relates that although Komachi is like a withered branch, she holds within her heart the flower of poetry. This image, of course, served in Zeami’s writings and Buddhist sutras as a meta­phor for not only artistic talent, but enlightenment. It suggests that Komachi from the beginning possessed within herself the seeds of salvation. The innovative nature of this treatment of Komachi is evident when compared to its main honzetsu, the mid-­to late Heian “Tamatsukuri Komachishi sōsuisho,” a poem with a lengthy prose prologue.119 This was prob­ably used as a Buddhist preaching text (shōdō) to illustrate the miseries of birth, old age, sickness, and death and encourage faith in the Pure Land. Stylistically, “Tamatsukuri” owes much to kanshi and Bo Juyi’s “Pipa xing,” which depicted a lady of the capital who, when her beauty fades, is forced to marry a merchant in the provinces.120 “Tamatsukuri” traces an arc from Komachi’s youthful elegance and prosperity to her destitution and abandonment in old age. Didactically, the text uses the encroachment of old age to inspire a search for transcendence. The prose introduction ends with Komachi admitting she should become a nun. The poem ends with her sorrowful realization that ­t here is nothing left for her in this world and she must “abhor defilement and wish for the absolute [ . . . ​] making offerings for the sake of rebirth in the Pure Land.”121 In “Tamatsukuri,” the only solution to Komachi’s plight is escape from this world and, implicitly, her defiled aged frame. In Sotoba Komachi, however, she realizes salvation in this world. Moreover, the victory of Komachi’s immanentist, non-­dualistic position over the transcendentalist, dualistic position espoused by the priests, suggests that her “entering the Way” would not result—as it did in Suma Genji or Tōru—­in a return to youth, but in an awakening “within this very body” (sokushin)—­a promise held out in certain strains of Buddhist discourse.122 The possibility of salvation absent physical transformation and the notion that suffering itself was the impetus for that salvation ­were in keeping with Buddhist dialectical reflection that saw the passions (bonnō) not as obstacles to realization (bodai), but as necessary concomitants.123 ­These themes appear to have been even more pronounced in earlier versions of Sotoba Komachi. A passage from the Sarugaku dangi reveals that Sotoba Komachi was originally written as Kami Noh and included a scene in which Komachi made an offering to a shrine dedicated to the imperial consort Soto’ori-­hime,

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deified as Tamatsushima Myōjin—­the female god of poetry.124 The play ended with Komachi receiving blessings from Soto’ori-­hime. Tamatsushima Myōjin figured prominently in esoteric poetic treatises as the female counterpart of the male god of poetry, Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin. Esoteric commentators took references to Komachi and Soto’ori-­hime in the Kokinshū’s preface to mean that Komachi was a poetic descendant of Soto’ori-­hime and recipient of her secret poetic transmission.125 Tameaki also made her the romantic and poetic counterpart of Narihira. Since Narihira was presented as an avatar of Sumiyoshi, esoteric commentaries positioned Komachi as an incarnation of Tamatsushima/Soto’ori-­ h ime.126 Kan’ami’s original version of the play similarly intimated that Komachi was an aged female avatar of the female consort of the okina Sumiyoshi god.127 Although Zeami removed the portions of the play that would have signaled Komachi’s status as an avatar, Sotoba Komachi still hints at this decrepit old ­woman’s exalted status. Just as Narihira’s role in esoteric commentaries was to preach the Dharma through the erotic medium of poetry, the same can be said of Komachi’s role in Sotoba Komachi. The flower in her heart is at once a symbol of her poetic genius and her status as a vessel for Buddhist truth. Presenting her as the complete inverse of the classical image of an enlightened being—­old, female, poor, dirty, and deluded—­reinforces the under­lying esoteric Buddhist theme of the play: the non-­duality of seeming opposites. But where esoteric literary treatises and other Noh plays stressed the unity of erotic passion and Buddhist wisdom, Sotoba Komachi posited the unity of the pathos of old age and Buddhist wisdom. Demonstrating that a lump of wood on the ground could be both a decaying stump and a holy stupa, the play reveals that the aged body as well could maintain the inner flower of poetry and enlightenment. In Noh, the misery of old age was just one of a litany of passions transmuted into salvation through the alchemy of per­for­mance, following the well-­k nown formula positing the unity of passion and enlightenment (bonnō soku bodai). This was the central theme of the esoteric literary treatises that informed much of Zeami and, ­later, Zenchiku’s work. Inspired by the Tachikawa-­r yū strain of esoteric Buddhism, t­ hese treatises focused on erotic passions. But Noh dealt with bonnō in its many forms: Kakitsubata, Kinuta, and Koi no omoni centered on erotic passion and longing; Atsumori and other warrior plays focused on the emotional traumas of b ­ attle; still other plays, such as Miidera and Yuya, ­were propelled by examples of parental or filial attachment. Although the aged body was not alone in producing pathos, Zeami and t­ hose who followed him considered it a potent source. In plays in which the misery of old age seems unresolved, the emotions that ­were generated w ­ ere understood to give rise to a form of beauty that Zeami

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praised as more than just a ­matter of aesthetics. Zeami embraced the theory that poetry and drama ­were skillful means employed by gods and buddhas to lead mortals to truth and bring peace and prosperity to the realm. In Sekidera Komachi, Komachi offers a paean to poetry, describing it as an art that dates to the age of the gods, unites high and low, and remains ever green like pine n ­ eedles—­themes highlighted as well in the Waki Noh Takasago.128 If the poignancy of old age could give rise to poetry, it too could teach ultimate truth. The court literary tradition suggested ­little hope of ameliorating the tragic dimension of aging. But Sotoba Komachi portrays Komachi achieving salvation both in spite of and in the midst of her unresolved longing to return to the past, to youth. This might be why five plays featuring el­derly ­women—­t he three Komachi plays, Higaki, and Obasute—­are regarded as of the highest dignity or rank (kurai).129 ­These plays depict no overt redemption. The actors must provide the audience with a sense of grace and beauty even as they remain grounded in the ultimate embodiment of despair—­the aged female form—­a form that, unlike the okina, found few instances of miraculous elevation or deification. ­These sentiments are eloquently expressed in Zeami’s Higaki, which again features an aged female as a symbol of irredeemable rupture with the past.130 Once a shirabyōshi dancer of g­ reat renown, the nearly one-­hundred-­year-­old protagonist has grown old and weak (rōsui). Invoking the standard laments over the aged body gleaned from classical literary sources, the apex of the drama occurs when the w ­ oman recalls how her patron discovered her late in life and ordered her to dance for him once more. Although she protested that her beauty had faded and the dancer of the past was now nowhere to be found, her patron replied with a sentiment reminiscent of Zeami’s theoretical writings: “Regardless of your appearance, since in the past you ­were a dancer of g­ reat skill, you must still be able to dance ­today.”131 The dance of the elder had the potential to achieve greater emotional depth than one that any youth could muster. Even in plays featuring the ugliness and loss that w ­ ere the focus of classical writings on the aged body, Zeami found grace and dignity. In t­ hese plays, the protagonist’s misery was not unmade but became nonetheless the fertile ground from which new beauty could grow. In this way, the miseries of old age ­were remade. Zeami employed vari­ous strategies to achieve an elevated position for Noh. In most, the aged body played a pivotal role. Zeami reworked and recombined ele­ ments from lit­er­a­ture and legend to pres­ent a vision of the aged body that could justify the sacred aura of the Okina and at the same time extract beauty from its supposed wretchedness. Following esoteric commentaries arguing that poetry was a means of bringing ­people to enlightenment, Zeami held the same was true

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of dance and drama. The okina gods of the Shikisanban and Waki Noh, and the miserable elders who left the audience mesmerized by the tragedy of impermanence, all performed the role that Sumiyoshi and Narihira did in the esoteric literary commentaries—­communicating Buddhist truths in a form that could be more easily accepted by ignorant worldlings and delivering the promise of salvation and worldly benefit to their elite patrons and the realm at large. Although Zeami and Zenchiku presented the okina as a timeless, sacred presence, this notion was itself the product of a historical pro­cess. It was a pro­cess that began in Japan’s earliest myths and legends in which the aged body came to symbolize that which authors glorifying the tennō-­centered polity sought to wish away—­mortality, ugliness, and pollution. It was only in the medieval period that Buddhists began to work against ­t hese readings, opening new ways of imagining the aged body and opening a discursive space in which a purportedly asocial, enigmatic, but spiritually potent otherworldly elder was conceivable. Claims that the okina was a power­f ul, primordial being thus came only at the end of a long, complex pro­cess. The divinized okina was not the beginning of that pro­cess, but its result.

Conclusion

The route by which the okina went from object of derision to object of veneration involved many twists and turns, its reinvention driven by a diverse cast of social agents, often working ­toward disparate ends. Of course, to frame this history as a “route,” no m ­ atter how circuitous, implies a degree of continuity between the okina that began the journey in early Japan and the one that emerged at the end of the medieval period. But unlike medieval literary theorists (or some ­later scholars) who ­were confident that regardless of context ­every reference to an okina denoted a timeless, transcendent, divine being, I have sought to pres­ent each okina as the product of par­tic­u ­lar moments of meaning-­making. And yet t­ hese moments ­were never perfectly discrete, for although this history encompassed breaks and disjunctures, each refashioning of the okina was also a reaction to and reappropriation of what had come before. I have tried to navigate between two interpretive extremes—­between an approach that would reify i­magined okina traditions and one that would treat each historical episteme as hermetically sealed off from e­ very other. Although I have presented the history of the okina as a pro­ cess of transformation, I trust that the narrative I have constructed has not been too ­grand. The coming into being of the sacred elder was not inevitable; it was not the working out in history of innate Japa­nese religio-­cultural sensibilities or values. Rather, it was the result of numerous small maneuvers on the part of interested parties, many of whom, ironically, had no par­tic­u ­lar interest or investment in the aged body per se. Among the most prominent of ­t hese parties ­were lay and ordained Buddhists, motivated not out of any special desire to improve the image of the el­derly, but out of a perhaps unconscious sense that the aged body carried symbolic resonances that made it a highly effective device in polemical and sectarian ­battles. Rather than the result of some or­ga­nized movement, the okina’s rehabilitation was an unintended consequence of countless small acts of appropriation and adaptation. Our study of the okina has also served as an aperture through which to engage in a broader examination of the ideological uses of old age in premodern Japan,

145

146  Conclusion

revealing some of the ways in which religious ideas and practices served both to naturalize but also to challenge common sense about the body.1 Early Japanese religio-­political discourse used old age as a symbol of weakness against which power could be defined. This served the interests of t­ hose in power, but also allowed space for t­hose adopting the persona of marginalized elder to position themselves strategically. Especially among ritsuryō and regency-­era elites, assuming the persona of the pathetic elder could at times be advantageous, even as it added to discourse presenting old age as a time of misery and alienation.2 Buddhists had a hand in naturalizing the association of the aged body with pollution and filth. But ­later Buddhist authors used ­those associations to undermine received notions about purity and pollution, employing the aged body to destabilize court-­centric configurations of oppositional categories, such as purity and pollution or center and margin. In the pro­cess, they challenged naturalized images of the aged body, but only obliquely, by shifting the valences of the categories through which the aged body was understood. The perceived eccentricity of the aged, for instance, became useful in fashioning authoritative identities for ­those who positioned themselves as outsiders, distanced from the ultimately insubstantial glories of “the world.” But t­ hese new identities ­were never unambiguously power­f ul. In cases in which ­those “writing old” or seeking to ally themselves in some way with the mystique of the elder presented old age as a form of power, their repre­sen­ta­tions often continued to rely on and reproduce associations of the aged body with eccentricity and enfeeblement. The social disposition of t­hose who manipulated ­t hese images was often a more significant f­ actor in determining how they sought to construe the aged body than their own chronological age or ­whether they self-­identified as old. Specifically, the aged body was used by ­t hose of comparatively marginal status to gain prestige and secure symbolic capital. ­These marginal players included not only the underclass, but also lower- to mid-­ranking aristocrats, as well. In other words, their marginality was never an essential trait, but always situational—­a status that was manifested only through interaction with more power­f ul rivals. It is also significant that among the most impor­tant reconfigurations of the meanings of the aged body w ­ ere the works of t­ hose engaged in the medieval “knowledge economy.” We have traced examples of how certain Buddhist laypeople—­ particularly late Heian literati like Sanenori and Masafusa, but also Tameaki, Zeami, and ­others with access to secret or oral traditions concerning the okina—­ attempted to translate their knowledge into cultural and social power. In their attempts to shore up their own positions, ­t hese authors recorded and circulated narratives in which aged saints or avatars served as figures of re­sis­tance, challenging court-­centric social hierarchies and geographic imaginaries.

Conclusion  147

This book has focused on the shifting meanings with which the aged body and the aged subject ­were imbued, and the symbolic uses to which they could be put. But to what extent did shifting repre­sen­ta­tions and self-­representations of the aged affect their social or po­liti­cal status? Put another way, how did new styles of representing old age affect the ways in which t­ hose identified as elders operated within l­egal, po­liti­cal, or economic frameworks, what Bourdieu called “fields of power”?3 ­There can be no ­simple answer to this question. Just as shifting repre­sen­ ta­tions of old age ­were not wholly determined by institutional or po­liti­cal changes, shifts in repre­sen­ta­tion cannot wholly account for, say, the reemergence of authoritative roles for el­derly men in medieval guilds or farming communities. No doubt new styles of representing old age, along with innumerable other f­ actors, contributed to social, po­liti­cal, or institutional changes.4 But the relationships between images of the el­derly, their standing within familial, governmental, or religious hierarchies, and the power they came to exercise within t­ hese institutions w ­ ere complex and recursive. I have suggested, for example, that some of the new valences of old age in late Heian Japan w ­ ere useful to retired emperors as they worked to legitimate their “rule” and bolster existing institutions that provided them with greater po­liti­cal and economic power.5 But through their own establishment of new forms of authority, ­these retired, yet po­liti­cally potent, Buddhist sovereigns also played a role in once again redefining the image of old age and its potentials. The example of cloistered emperors also demonstrates why we cannot make blanket statements about the relationship between repre­sen­ta­tions of the el­derly and their status as a purported social bloc. It suggests that t­ hose who w ­ ere able to take advantage of the identities t­ hese innovative repre­sen­ta­tions made pos­si­ble already had at their disposal sufficient cultural, po­liti­cal, or economic capital to ensure that o ­ thers recognized their refashioned identity as power­f ul. To determine the effects of the imagination of old age on the social opportunities of the aged once again requires clarifying, in each case, who was attempting to appropriate and renegotiate the meanings of old age, their social position, and the degree of access they had to vari­ous forms of capital to begin with. This study has presented some of the myriad ways in which lay and ordained Buddhists produced knowledge about and adjusted the range of meanings through which old age could be understood and aged identities performed. Just as the visions of the aged body constructed by Buddhist preachers, scholars, poets, or dramatists often borrowed tropes or reworked themes from literary works or official chronicles, the new meanings they produced overflowed the bounds of Buddhist lit­er­a­ture, becoming resources for fashioning identities across vari­ous social contexts. It was in this way—by expanding and reformulating the ways in which old age could be conceived and performed—­that Buddhists transformed old age.

Abbreviations

DNBZ

Dai Nihon Bukkyō zensho. 1970–1973. Ed. Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan. 161 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha.

DNK

Dai Nihon kokiroku. 1952– . Ed. Tōkyō Daigaku shiryō hensanjo. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

DNS

Dai Nihon shiryō. 1901– . Ed. Tōkyō Daigaku shiryō hensanjo. 373 vols. (to date). Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai.

GR

Gunsho ruijū (3rd edition). 1959–1960 (1906–1907). Ed. Hokinoichi Hanawa and Zoku Gunsho Ruijū kanseikai. 29 vols. Tokyo: Zoku Gunsho Ruijū kanseikai.

KK

Kokuyaku issaikyō. 1958–1970. Ed. Iwano Shin’yū. 100 vols. Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha.

KT

Shintei zōho kokushi taikei. 1929–1967. Ed. Kuroita Katsumi. 66 vols. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan.

NEZ

Nihon emakimono zenshū. 1958–1969. Ed. Tanaka Ichimatsu. 24 vols. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.

NKBT

Nihon koten bungaku taikei. 1957–1967. Ed. Takagi Ichinosuke et al. 100 vols. and 2 index vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

NST

Nihon shisō taikei. 1970–1982. 67 vols. Iwanami shoten.

SNKBT

Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei. 1989–2005. Ed. Satake Akihiro et al. 100 vols. and 6 index vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

SNKBZ

Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū. 1994–2002. 88 vols. Tokyo: Shōgakkan.

ST

Shintō taikei. 1978–1992. Ed. Shintō Taikei hensankai. 120 vols. Tokyo: Shintō Taikei hensankai.

T

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō. 1924–1932. Ed. Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaikyoku. 85 vols. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō kankōkai.

ZGR

Zoku gunsho ruijū (3rd edition). 1957–1959. Ed. Hanawa Hokinoichi and Ōta Tōshirō. 37 vols. Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruijū kanseikai.

149

Notes

Introduction 1. NST (24:21–22). Translation adapted from Hare (1986, 66). 2. NST (24:21–22). 3. Although con­temporary Noh performers claim to achieve apotheosis when enacting the role of the mysterious old man or Okina, Eric Rath (2004, 77) has argued that this is a modern conceit. Nonetheless, Zeami consistently described the role of the old man as one most suitable for representing sacred power, and attempted to pres­ent Noh as an art capable of producing salvific effects, subjects explored in chapter 7. 4. NST (24:11). 5. Although many of ­these entities w ­ ere labeled kami—­the Japa­nese term for divine ­beings or gods—­and might t­ oday be venerated at Shintō institutions, in premodern Japan kami that ­were ­imagined to be native as well as ­t hose of continental origin ­were worshiped primarily within Buddhist doctrinal, ritual, and institutional settings. See Teeuwen and Rambelli (2003, 1–53). 6. Gods ­were occasionally described, but only in vague terms, indicating, for instance, that they appeared “noble” or “strange.” It was also uncommon to specify their gender. 7. Kim (2008, i–ii, 3). 8. I use the term “premodern” to refer to the centuries prior to 1600, encompassing the periods Japa­nese historians have traditionally designated jōdai (ancient), kodai (early/classical), and chūsei (medieval). 9. ­These associations are analyzed in chapter 2. For more on the impact of concepts of pollution on views of the aged body in early Japan, see Drott (2015a). 10. This phrase, of course, originates with Lévi-­Strauss (1964). The notion that p ­ eople often use certain species of bodies to “think with” has also been taken up by scholars investigating the ideological or polemical functions that repre­sen­ta­t ions of the body can serve. This is the sense in which I employ the expression. See, for instance, Clark (2004, 178–181). 11. Douglas (1966); Foucault (1978, 1979). Lawrence Cohen, in his writings on senility in modern India, was among the first to utilize t­ hese approaches to study old age as a form of difference. Cohen (1998, xvii) observes that in discussions of senility in India, the aged body serves as a “critical idiom through which collectives imagine and articulate” their consciousness of “temporal and po­liti­cal ruptures in the order of t­ hings.” John Traphagan (2000) has done extensive work on old age as a form of difference in con­temporary Japan. Also worthy of mention is Margaret Lock’s study of menopause in Japan (1995). 12. Lincoln (2000, 493).

151

152   Notes to Pages xii–xvi 13. Sei Shōnagon, for example, described herself as an old ­woman at the age of thirty (Morris 1991, 94). See also Shinmura (1991, 8–9) and Hotate (1993a, 240–242). 14. When rendering classical Japa­nese, I use modern readings (e.g., rō for rau). Japa­nese texts occasionally used more obscure terms to indicate old age, such as kō 耈, ki 耆, or mō 耄. Although the Rec­ord of Rites (Liji) used ki to designate ­t hose between the ages of sixty-­five and sixty-­nine, and mō for ­t hose aged e­ ither eighty or ninety, they ­were rarely used with such precision in Japan. The Sino-­Japanese character chō 長, usually meaning “long,” also appears in numerous compounds meaning “old” (Hotate 1993a, 241). 15. See Genji monogatari (NKBT 17:456); Yamato monogatari (NKBT 9:327); Taketori monogatari (NKBT 9:62); Kokin wakashū (NKBT 8:342); Utsubo monogatari (NKBT 11:388), respectively. 16. See Kokin wakashū (NKBT 8:111); Kagerō nikki (NKBT 20:288). 17. The tenth-­century dictionary Wamyō ruiju shō gives the reading omuna for ōna (Minamoto 1967, 7). 18. Fukutō (2001, 45). Okina was also used as a humble first-­person pronoun, for example, in the Taketori monogatari (NKBT 9:31–32). 19. Apparently, however, it was acceptable for an emperor to obliquely refer to himself as an okina. One of Emperor Saga’s Chinese poems collected in the Keikokushū (11/104) described a drunken, solitary but contented okina, living in a rustic environment, apparently reflecting Saga’s hopes for his own life ­a fter retirement (Kojima 1968–1998, 3.1:3112–3116; Gotō 2011, 47–48). See also Keikokushū (14/214), Kojima (1968–1998, 3.3:4083–4087). 20. Conversely, ­later writings—­especially t­ hose encouraging devotion to the Lotus Sutra or Maitreya, the Buddha of the ­f uture age—­often glorified the aged body and, not coincidentally, maintained that salvation was still pos­si­ble in this world. 21. Social margins are often described displaying characteristics of liminality. Individuals or groups removed from normative social hierarchies could be interpreted as inhabiting a zone of indeterminacy that Turner (1995, 128) identified as “anti-­structure.” 22. Ibid., 94–130, esp. 96–97, 128. 23. Kuroda (1986, 209). 24. Yamaori (1984) and Miyata (1996). Orikuchi Shinobu coined the term “sacred elders” in his influential essay “Okina no hassei” (1995, 2:348–388). See Orikuchi (1995, 2:356). 25. Sekizawa (2003, 102–104). If elders w ­ ere uniformly regarded as marginal we might ask why, for instance, the aged female body did not enjoy the same re­nais­sance the aged male body did in the medieval period. 26. The performative nature of the center/margin binary is discussed by Terry Kawashima (2001, 9–10) in her study of the marginalization of ­women in Heian and Kamakura texts. 27. Although Japa­nese religiosity remains eclectic, a key difference between premodern ­religion and con­temporary practices resulted from the nineteenth-­century separation of Buddhist institutions and kami cults (shinbutsu bunri), which had previously functioned in a complementary, combinatory fashion. 28. On the fascination among early Japa­nese elites with legends featuring youthful immortals and techniques for restoring the marks of youth, see Drott (2015b). 29. Kim (2008). 30. It is also worth noting that Korean groups apparently responsible for certain Japa­nese okina legends, such as the Hata clan, had been in Japan from ancient times, many centuries before the vast majority of ­t hese tales began to appear in the early medieval period.

Notes to Pages xvii–5   153 31. On the performative function of texts, see Bell (1992, 81–82). 32. Bourdieu (1977, 1990). On the applicability of Bourdieu’s models and approaches to the study of history, see Gorski (2013, esp. 1–15, 327–365). 33. Bourdieu (1993, 192–211, esp. 198–199). 34. See especially Butler (1990). 35. For a discussion of Foucault’s pioneering work destabilizing “natu­ral objects,” such as madness and sexuality, see Clark (2004, 115–117). 36. Charles Camic (2013, 193) notes that Bourdieu himself was wary of “conceptual straightjackets [sic]” and his empirical work, at times, produced an “observational surplus.” 37. The term “gates of power” is Mikael Adolphson’s translation of Kuroda Toshio’s term kenmon, referring to the major power blocs—­court nobles, warrior clans, and major shrines and ­temples—­t hat engaged in a system of shared power that, for Kuroda, defined the medieval age (Adolphson 2000, 10–20). It also served as the title of Adolphson’s monograph on the po­liti­cal and military might of major medieval Japa­nese religious institutions. 38. The five-­volume series Oi no hakken pres­ents itself as a response to the “graying” of the population that began in the 1970s (Itō et al. 1986–1987, 1:5). The editors of a special issue of the journal Nihon rekishi (January 2013), dedicated to the theme of aging in Japa­nese history, also acknowledged Japan’s “aging society” (kōreikashakai) as an impetus for sustained treatment of the topic (Nihon rekishi henshū iinkai 2013, 1). Im­por­tant Western-­language studies on old age in premodern Japan include Formanek (1988, 1992, 1994, 1997); Scheid (1996); Formanek and Linhart (1992, 1997). 39. See Itō et al. (1986–1987, vols. 1–5). See also Toshitani et al. (1990, vol. 5). 4 0. See, for instance, Kōkotsu no hito, Ariyoshi Sawako’s popu­lar novel about a w ­ oman struggling to care for her senile ­father-­in-­law (1972).

Part 1: Making Elders ­Others in Early Japan 1. ­Children raised in the provinces w ­ ere portrayed in Heian-­period texts as uncouth, requiring a g­ reat deal of training before they could function properly at court. 2. Tyler (2009, 134–135). 3. Seidensticker (1976, 267); SNKBZ (21:269). 4. SNKBZ (21:246–247); Seidensticker (1976, 258). 5. Seidensticker (1976, 86, 254). SNKBZ (21:238); SNKBZ (20:202). 6. Shirane (1987, 77–80). 7. Tyler (2009, 152). 8. It seems likely that Murasaki Shikibu consciously drew on ­t hese myths. But t­ hese parallels ­were first explic­itly noted in the Kakaishō of 1367 (ibid., 132).

Chapter 1: Aged Earth Gods and Majestic Imperial Ancestors 1. Although this chapter focuses on myths recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, versions of ­t hese tales also appeared in ­later texts, such as the Kogo shūi of 807, or the Sendai kuji hongi, generally believed to have been compiled in the ninth through tenth centuries. I have limited my discussion of such texts to cases in which they introduced new ele­ments relevant to their treatment of the aged body.

154   Notes to Pages 5–9 2. See, for example, Shinmura (1991, 31) and Yamaori (1984, 156–160). Fukutō Sanae discusses the evidence that old men and ­women acted as chieftains in early Japan (2001, 79–82). 3. In ancient Japan, kami ­were likely ­imagined to be invisible forces that at times resided in sacred objects or features of the natu­ral environment (Brown 1993, 16–17). Unlike mono­ the­istic traditions, kami ­were not perceived to be utterly transcendent beings. They ­were seen as power­f ul but still possessing ­human-­like traits, desires, and foibles (Matsumae 1993, 317– 318). It is unclear when tales involving anthropomorphized kami first arose, but the Kojiki and Nihon shoki represent the earliest rec­ords we have of such myths. For speculation on the development of narratives involving anthropomorphized kami, see Matsumae (1993, 323–326). 4. Como (2003, 2008, 2009). 5. Matsumura (1954–1958, 1:118–124). See also Matsumae (1993, 323). 6. The merging of tutelary and ancestral gods appears to have been a relatively late innovation (Bock 1970, 1:32). For a discussion of the distinction between the gods of the land and gods of heaven see Yamaori (1984, 126–136) and Formanek (1988, 11–28). Although the term chigi 地祇 (gods of the land), utilized in the construction “gods of heaven and earth” (tenjin chigi 天神地祇), was also sometimes read kunitsukami, Kumagai Yasutaka (1991) argues that ­t hese ­were distinct categories that became confused in the compilation of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. At least one of the kunitsukami ­under examination, Shihinetsu-­hiko, is listed in the early ninth-­century rec­ord of hereditary titles and f­amily names, the Shinsen shōjiroku, ­under the rubric of chigi (Saeki 1962, 268). 7. For example, Inobe Jūichirō speculates that the elevation of the Sumiyoshi god from earthly to heavenly in the Shinsen shōjiroku reflected the growing power of the Tsumori clan, who claimed Sumiyoshi as their tutelary deity (Inobe 1976, 67b–68a, esp. 68a). 8. In the Kojiki, Shiotsuchikami 鹽椎神 is not marked as an elder, but his names in the Nihon shoki (Shiotsutsu-­no-­oji 鹽土老翁 and Shiotsuchi-­no-­oji 鹽筒老翁) identify him as an old man (NKBT 67:157). For a discussion of his name and his role in the Nihon shoki, see ibid., 157n22. 9. His name is originally given as Kotokatsu-­kunikatsu-­Nagasa 事勝國勝長狹. See ­Aston (1972, 1:87–88). 10. Ibid., 110; see also 131. Following the work of Mizubayashi Takeshi and ­others, Herman Ooms (2009, 40) has shown that the relationship between the heavenly and earthly realm in ­t hese myths was constructed not merely in vertical, hierarchical terms, but horizontally— as center (heaven) and periphery (earth). For an outline of t­ hese spatial structures and their relations to marital ties, see Mizubayashi (2001, 54–55, 82, 247). 11. NKBT (67:164–167; see also 274n29). For the Kojiki version, see Philippi (1969, 150). 12. Aston (1972, 1:84). 13. NKBT (67:120–121); Aston (1972, 1:55); Philippi (1969, 92). 14. Mizubayashi (2001, 85, 246–253). Finding parallels in the work of Marshall Sahlins and Stanley Tambiah, Joan Piggott (1997, 38, 59–60) also points to evidence from the Nihon shoki that marital alliances ­were used in the pre-­ritsuryō period to strengthen ties between the ­center and periphery. 15. This appears to be related to the pre-­r itsuryō practice of sending uneme 釆女, the ­daughters of local potentates, to serve at court. See Aston (1972, 1:304). 16. See Fukutō (2001, 81–82); Aoki (1997, 236). Modern scholars use the term shuchō 首長 to refer to chieftains of Yayoi and Kofun periods (Piggott 1997, 18). Chieftains are also believed to have played a priestly role in ancient Japan (Brown 1993, 14).

Notes to Pages 9–11   155 17. Adapted from Aston (1972, 1:349). 18. Aoki (1997, 236). 19. Fukutō (2001, 80). 20. Aston (1972, 1:110–111, 131–132). Another kunitsukami, Shihinetsu-­hiko, also played a crucial role as Jinmu’s guide on his journey east. 21. The relatively high proportion of ­women who appear in ­t hese sources as tutelary gods or chieftains appears to support the widely held theory that w ­ omen enjoyed greater po­liti­cal power prior to the rise of the ritsuryō state (Fukutō 2001, 81–82). Archaeological evidence has also been put forward to support t­ hese claims. See Mizoguchi (1989, 1997). See also Piggott (1997, 39–40). 22. A directive (sei 制) issued in 713 affirmed that ­t here was no retirement age for directors and vice directors of the offices of district magistrates (gunji dairyō and shoryō), but made provisions for governors to remove individuals from t­ hose posts if they ­were judged no longer capable of fulfilling their duties. SNKBT (12:198–199). See also Shinmura (1991, 15). 23. Matsumae (1993, 319). In Ooms’s reading (2009, 32) it is the creative energy of Takamimusuhi and Kamumusuhi that “infuse Izanagi and Izanami with the sexual power to bring the world into being.” 24. According to Sakurai Yoshirō (1993, 63–67), unlike other myths in which agricultural fertility is achieved through the marriage of a “stranger god” and a “­woman of the land,” Ninigi—­who in other re­spects appears as a quin­tes­sen­t ial stranger god—is himself identified as a symbol of the fertile earth. 25. Aston (1972, 1:89). 26. Detailed speculation about the aging pro­cess, its ­causes, and its potential remedies ­were found, for instance, in the Huangdi nejing suwen (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic, Basic Questions), regarded since the Han dynasty as the sine qua non of medical education. It describes ­women reaching their prime between the ages of fourteen and forty-­nine, once qi becomes abundant and initiates the production of a vital fluid necessary for childbearing. The parallel pro­cess in men results in fertility between the ages of sixteen and forty (Ishida 1991, 1:33–37). Works such as the Suwen ­were likely being studied at the Yamato court for two, possibly three centuries prior to the compilation of the kikishinwa. The Nihon shoki rec­ords a Sillan doctor bringing continental medicine during the reign of Ingyō (Aston 1972, 1:315) and numerous experts in medicine arriving from Paekche at the request of Kinmei (Aston 1972, 2:68, 72). ­Later, more reliable attestations to the study of continental medicine at the Yamato court come in the Yōrō code of 718, which was likely largely based on the Taihō code of 701 (Bock 1970, 1:8–9). In the section outlining the functions of the Imperial Medical Bureau, the Ten’yakuryō, the Yōrō code lists several Chinese medical works to be mastered by its staff prior to their appointment. Along with the Huangdi neijing, we find works on acu­punc­ture, moxibustion, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. NST (3:422–429). 27. Aston (1972, 1:111). The Kojiki gives his name as Sawonetsu-­hiko 槁根津日子, identifying him as the first ancestor of the Kuni-­no-­miyatsuko of Yamato (SNKBZ 1:142–143). The Nihon shoki states that he was the first ancestor of the Yamato no Atae 倭直部 (Aston 1972, 1:112). The Shinsen shōjiroku describes Shihinetsu-­hiko offering his land to Jinmu, a detail not included in the Kojiki or Nihon shoki (Saeki 1962, 251). 28. Aston (1972, 1:117). 29. NKBT (67:200–201); adapted from Aston (1972, 1:120). 30. SNKBZ (2:211n18); Ebersole (1989, 26).

156   Notes to Pages 12–13 31. Orikuchi (1995, 1:20) saw the minokasa as a form of dress associated in ancient Japan with otherworldly beings. Donning it was a method of separating from humanity and taking on godly form. In t­ hese myths, of course, the reverse seems to be the case. Shihinetsu-­hiko, and perhaps Susanowo, don the minokasa to take the form of mortals. 32. Adapted from Aston (1972, 1:50). Susanowo’s minokasa is written with the characters reversed, as kasamino 笠蓑 (NKBT 67:118–119). 33. This point is made forcefully by Tanaka (1997, esp. 10–11). 34. See Amino (1986, 106–113) and Abe (1991, 223). 35. The editors of the Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū describe the minokasa as a symbol of the okina and ōna (SNKBZ 2:212n4 and n5). Mizuhara Hajime (1979, 414) observes that in l­ ater texts the minokasa came to symbolize the recluse—­t he archetypal figure removed from worldly contests. 36. In her classic study of kami iconography, Christine Guth (1985, 15) notes that gods ­were represented as courtiers, reflecting the perceived superiority of the class that commissioned them. 37. Formanek (1988, 16) observes that in comparison with earth deities, heavenly deities are presented as “youthful,” perhaps drawing this conclusion from their implicit contrast to the gods of the earth. ­There are also rec­ords of ancient rulers learning of beautiful ­women in the realm and simply claiming them as consorts (Aston 1972, 1:348). 38. Aston (1972, 1:97). 39. NKBT (67:172–173); Aston (1972, 1:99). 40. NKBT (67:169); Aston (1972, 1:96). An episode from the rec­ord of Keikō underscores this point. A ­woman chosen by the emperor seeks to offer her elder s­ ister in her stead, claiming that her own “face is hideous and she is unworthy of being added to the side courts,” but her elder s­ ister has a “beautiful countenance, and also a virtuous disposition” (Aston 1972, 1:190). The Empress Jingū is also described as wondrously beautiful (Aston 1972, 1:224). 41. The passage continues, stating that they are in the “same class as the hikihiko 侏儒 [also read shuju],” a term for ­people of very small stature (NKBT 67:210–211; Aston 1972, 1:130). References to the Tsuchigumo are also found in certain fudoki (Mizoguchi 1997, 6–8). 42. Kim (2008, 17). 43. A passage from the rec­ord of Saimei distinguishes between the Ara-­Emishi 麁蝦夷 and the Nigi-­Emishi 熟蝦夷 (Aston 1972, 2:261–262). ­Those closer to the Yamato capital, having come ­under the civilizing influence of the central realm of Nihon and in tributary relations with it, are portrayed as nigi (pacified). ­Those farther out are designated ara (wild). Even the bodies of the pacified Emishi, however, are described as strange 異. 4 4. Philippi (1969, 170, 174); SNKBZ (1:148–149, 152–153); Aston (1972, 1:118–119, 130); NKBT (67:198–199, 210–211). For a discussion of the significance of “pit-­dwelling,” see Aston (1972, 1:71–72n4). 45. Philippi (1969, 169); Aston (1972, 1:131). Both the earth deities and the savage h ­ umans inhabiting ­these areas ­were depicted possessing tails, implying genealogical links between semidivine ancestors (earth gods), their p ­ eoples, and contemporaneous ethnic or kinship groups, who themselves w ­ ere positioned in a subservient role relative to the Yamato court (Matsumura 1954–1958, 1:156–157). 4 6. That is not to say that elders w ­ ere such a rarity in early Japan. Our best demographic estimates show that in the pre-­Nara and Nara periods, a substantial proportion of ­people

Notes to Pages 14–16   157 could expect to live beyond the age of forty and thus presumably would not have been as shocking a sight as some of the chimerical beings found in the chronicles (Formanek 1988, 11–12). 47. The same is true of Hiko-­hoho-­demi (Aston 1972, 1:95). Discussed in Drott (2015b). 48. SNKBZ (1:354–355); Philippi (1969, 369). 49. Katō (1988, 232). 50. Sakamoto (1991, 67). 51. Katō (1988, 232–233). 52. The chronology of the Nihon shoki indicates that emperor Seinei would have been in his twenties when he took the throne. His ­mother became a consort to Yūryaku in the first year of his reign (Aston 1972, 1:337), and he is named heir apparent in the twenty-­second year of Yūryaku (ibid., 368). But the notion that Seinei acceded at a young age is contradicted by the fact that ­a fter a mere five-­year reign he is reported to have died when “his years ­were many” (ibid., 337). A note in NKBT (67:508n6) refers to ­later histories, such as the Jinnō shōtoki, which give his age at time of death as thirty-­n ine, forty-­one, or forty-­t wo. See also Aston (1972, 1:377n4). Seinei dies leaving no heir, and rulership is recorded passing to a descendant of one of Nintoku’s sons. But this line ends with the abominable Buretsu, who is also depicted as childless. From ­t here the line moves through an unnamed, likely fabricated branch of descendants of Ōjin to Keitai (Ooms 2009, 15). Seinei and Buretsu ­were thus meant to represent terminal points in the imperial f­ amily tree that required passing the dignity to a new branch. 53. Araki (1998, 42). 54. NKBT (67:502–503). “Waka 幼” and “take 武” ­were also components of Yūryaku’s posthumous name (Katō 1988, 230). 55. NKBT (67:502–503); Aston (1972, 1:373). Aston observes that Laozi and other Chinese sages ­were also reported to have been born with white hair, implying that Seinei’s unusual coloring could have been regarded as a sign of sagehood. However, the hagiographic traditions claiming that Laozi was born with white hair, beginning with Ge Xuan’s Laozi daodejing xu jue, ­were merely attempts to make sense of his name, which could be read to mean “Old Child.” Similarly, the Nihon shoki makes no indication that his white hair was an auspicious sign. Such claims are made only in ­later Japa­nese histories, such as the Heian-­period Renchūshō and Jien’s Gukanshō. See Brown and Ishida (1979, 259); NKBT (86:54). 56. Yoshida Takashi (1994, 37) claims that while the Kojiki was intended as a private record for the imperial line, the Nihon shoki, written in Chinese, was meant to play a role in Japan’s international relations. It is also clear that the Nihon shoki was still being actively reworked in the years immediately prior to its pre­sen­ta­tion. See Sakamoto (1991, 42). 57. Ooms (2009, 146); Bialock (2007, 76–77). Herman Ooms (2009, 244) also describes Genshō as the first Japa­nese ruler to receive an elixir of cinnabar, in Yōrō 6 (722) 4/21, presumably reading 飛舟 (flying boat) as a copyist error for 飛丹 (flying [volatized?] cinnabar/elixir) (SNKBT 13:114–115, esp. n9). See also Campany (2002, 42). 58. For more on the etymology of rei 醴, see Wada (1995, 2:251). 59. Ooms (2009, 184–185). 60. ­Under Tenmu, individual aged priests received special support (Aston 1972, 2:371, 378). ­Under Jitō the custom began of offering charity to groups of elders (Aston 1972, 2:397). For examples from the reign of Monmu, see Snellen (1934, 171, 185, 197, 217, 221–222). Th ­ ese

158   Notes to Pages 16–18 a­ ctivities ­were eventually curtailed in the Heian period due to financial constraints (Fukutō 2001, 115). 61. Similarly, Ooms (2009, 147) translates Yōrō as “Nurture Aging.” He notes that many of the reign names chosen between the years 701 and 782 ­were rendered in a quasi-­Daoist idiom that alluded to auspicious omens such as white tortoises or mysterious cloud formations. He has proposed that in times of par­t ic­u ­lar stress, the Nara court “in dire need of assurances that it would last,” relied especially on Daoist-­style legitimating techniques, since “Daoism presented symbols that promised overcoming the debilitating work of time” (Ooms 2009, 185). 62. Yōrō 1 (717), 11/17. SNKBT (13:34–35); Ujitani (1992–1995, 1:188). 63. Wada (1995, 2:251). Wada also notes that in the second month of the year following Genshō’s pro­gress, ­water from her spring was brought to the capital to make sweet sake (kosake or reishu 醴酒). Sweet springs also figured in Daoist works, such as Ge Hong’s celebrated Baopuzi, a fourth-­century text that dealt extensively with alchemy and the quest for immortality (ibid., 252). 64. SNKBT (13:34–35). 65. Ooms (2009, 147). 66. Traditionally, only one member of each clan was allowed to serve on the council at any given time (Wada 1995, 2:249). 67. David Bialock (2007, 76–84) discusses the complex symbolism that allowed Tenmu’s elixir to buttress his royal authority. See also Ooms (2009, 161). 68. Adapted from Snellen (1937, 257). Framed as an attempt to protect low-­level bureaucrats from the caprices of governors, the directive in fact empowered governors to remove el­ derly subordinates (Wadō 6 [713], 5/7; SNKBT 12:198–199). 69. Although the Yōrō code was not enacted u ­ ntil 757, it serves, at the very least, as a rec­ ord of the attitudes of court elites at the time it was composed. 70. NST (3:220). The Yōrō ritsuryō also included retirement procedures for court officials upon reaching the age of seventy. Retirement guidelines are given in the Senjoryō section of the Yōrō code. See NST (3:269–280, esp. 275–276). The first reliable rec­ord of an official stepping down due to old age appears in 756, one year before the Yōrō code was fi­nally enacted. This would seem to indicate that the earlier Taihō codes also included retirement guidelines, but that for nearly half a c­ entury no one had actually put them into practice. This too, then, points to evolving attitudes t­ oward the role of the aged in the early through mid-­eighth ­century. 71. Wada (1995, 2:250). Fuhito and his son Umakai contributed Chinese poems to the Kaifūsō that demonstrated a deep familiarity with Chinese theories of longevity and immortality. Another of Fuhito’s sons, Muchimaro, is recorded having “trea­sured” the Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Ijing (Ooms 2009, 136). 72. Ooms (2009). 73. Scholars have discovered other examples of late additions and edits, most notably the inclusion in the Nihon shoki of language from the Golden Light Sutra, which only reached Japan in 718 (Sakamoto 1991, 42). 74. Although we might attempt to trace t­ hese tangled lines of influence (Gorski 2013, 356), we do not have enough information about the pro­cess by which the Nihon shoki or the Yōrō codes w ­ ere compiled to conduct such a fine-­tuned analy­sis. On the uncertainties surrounding the compilation of the Nihon shoki, see Sakamoto (1991, 33–39).

Notes to Pages 20–22   159

Chapter 2. “Lamenting Gray Hair” 1. In this and the following chapters I rely on a concept of “spatial imaginaries” adapted from Henri Lefebvre’s work on the social production of space (1991). Lefebvre describes how social practices (what he terms “spatial practices”) contribute to and reinforce given conceptualizations of space, which can also be made concrete in repre­sen­ta­t ions such as maps or diagrams. He also describes what he calls “repre­sen­ta­tional space,” the lived experience of space that is perhaps only dimly intuited, but can at times be expressed by artists or writers (1991, 38–39). David Bialock makes effective use of t­ hese frameworks in his analy­sis of the spatial imaginaries of early and medieval Japan (2007). 2. On the vari­ous ways in which power was reconfigured in the mid-­Heian period, see Adolphson, Kamens, and Matsumoto (2007, 3–5). 3. See Abe (1999, 305–306). Abe (2007, 182–183) sees a sharp break between the kinds of discourse found within official collections of Chinese verse and imperially sponsored collections of Japa­nese verse. But, as the examples discussed below serve to illustrate, waka was not immune from the influence of state-­centric ideologies. 4. Ikeda (1977, 159–163). 5. See NST (3:269–280, esp. 275–276). 6. Chiji 致仕, sometimes rendered chishi, or, as a verb, shi wo itasu. Ibid., 275–276. 7. The first reliable rec­ord of an official stepping down due to old age appears in the Shoku Nihongi. The emperor allowed Tachibana no Moroe to retire in 756. 8. Aston (1972, 1:254). 9. Adapted from ibid., 260. 10. Ibid., 391; SNKBZ (1:363–364). See also Cranston (1993, 66–67). 11. Legendary rulers such as Jinmu, Jingū, and Ōjin embodied the continental ideal of the ancient sage-­k ing who, by harmonizing yin and yang, remained active beyond even the life­ span of the average mortal. 12. In this variant it is unclear if Kaminaga-­hime is offered to the emperor or to his son, who reigned as Nintoku. Her offspring with Ōjin are discussed at the beginning of his rec­ord, where her name is abbreviated to “Naga-­hime” of Hyūga (Aston 1972, 1:255). But the rec­ord of Nintoku indicates that she became his consort, which accords with the version found in the Kojiki (Philippi 1969, 279). It is striking that Ushi hails from Hyūga, the area where Ninigi ­encountered Shiotsutsu-­oji and a local “­daughter,” a goddess who became his consort. See Philippi (1969, 413n18) for a discussion of the pos­si­ble significance of Hyūga. 13. This pattern is repeated in the myths of Ninigi, Hiko-­hoho-­demi, Susanowo, and Ōjin, as well as ­t hose of Ōkuninushi, Jinmu, Yamato-­takeru, and Nintoku tennō. See Orikuchi (1995, 15:319–341, esp. 333–334). 14. The Montoku jitsuroku contains a strikingly candid example of this proj­ect. The biography of Fujiwara no Matsukage describes him as exceedingly attractive: “By nature he was of erect bearing, and his beard and eyebrows w ­ ere as if drawn.” Since officials of the Crown Prince ­were looking for “men of good appearance,” Matsukage was “transferred and appointed Ju­nior Secretary of the Office of the Crown Prince’s Quarters” (Saikō 2 [855], 1/22; Shimizu 1951, 386–387; Saeki 1930, 108). 15. The Huangdi neijing pres­ents hair as an index of female sexual maturity (Veith 1966, 99).

160   Notes to Pages 22–26 16. Edwin Cranston (1993, 163) sees this motif at work in the opening poem of the Man’yōshū, where “the ruler asks for the name of [a young girl with a basket], and thus for her yielding—­like his realm at ­large.” 17. Kaminaga-­hime is reported to have become a consort in the thirteenth year of Ōjin’s reign. Ōjin was said to have acceded at the age of seventy (Aston 1972, 1:255). 18. Hozumi (1989, 108). 19. NST (3:275–276); Hozumi (1989, 109). 20. For example, Ōnakatomi no Kiyomaro (702–788), whose biography appears in the Shoku Nihongi (Enryaku 7 [788], 7/28), had a remarkable c­ areer, serving from the reigns of Shōmu to Kanmu, and was deeply knowledgeable about ancient pre­ce­dent and court ceremonial. At the age of seventy, he requested retirement but it was not allowed. He was fi­nally ­a llowed to retire in 781 (SNKBT 16:410–413; Ujitani 1992–1995, 3:401). 21. Since the upper echelon of officialdom was an exclusively male preserve, chijihyō ­were uniformly composed by men. On the place of ­women in the ritsuryō bureaucracy, see Yoshikawa (1990, 105–142). 22. Courtiers commonly appealed to the same kinds of criteria found in the directive of 713 discussed in chapter 1, calling for the removal of incapacitated elders from provincial posts (SNKBT 12:198–199). 23. Hōki 1 (770), 10/8; SNKBT (15:314–315). 24. SNKBT (15:316–317). 25. The twelfth-­century Mizukagami has Makibi supporting Funya no Ōchi and then Funya no Kiyomi (KT 21:71–72). 26. Ten’an (Tennan) 1 (857), 1/21. Saeki (1930, 135). 27. Ten’an 1 (857), 1/21. Adapted from Shimizu (1951, 449–50); Saeki (1930, 135). 28. Ten’an 1 (857), 1/26. Shimizu (1951, 451–452); Saeki (1930, 136–137). 29. The first reference to Buddhist retirement (shukke) in the Nihon shoki comes in the ­rec­ord of Kinmei, describing a Korean prince’s wish to take the tonsure to ensure the repose of his f­ ather’s sprit (Aston 1972, 2:77–78). 30. For example, Tachibana no Tsuneko (788–817), who became a nun in response to the death of Kanmu tennō (Mo­rita 2006, 3:42). Yoshimine no Munesada (816–890) took the tonsure to “repay his debt” to the late Ninmyō tennō. Montoku jitsuroku, Kashō 3 (850), 3/28 (Saeki 1930, 4). 31. The Nihon shoki pres­ents both Princes Furuhito-­no-­Ōe and Ōama seeking to take themselves out of contention for the throne by donning Buddhist robes and retreating to Mount Yoshino. Furuhito reportedly sought to “leave home” (shukke) and devote himself to “the practice of the way of the Buddha, thus rendering support to the Emperor.” Adapted from Aston (1972, 2:196); NKBT (68:269). 32. Often ­t hese two modes of Buddhist retirement went hand in hand. Okano Kōji (1998, 81–84) analyzed patterns of Buddhist retirement among Heian-­period aristocrats and found that among the most common reasons for retirement was a change in the po­liti­cal climate, or death of a tennō. Since the death of one’s patron could result in a precipitous fall from grace, removing oneself to pray for the afterlife of one’s deceased lord was a con­ve­nient way of removing oneself from the danger of court intrigues. Adolphson (2007, 215) also sees an early spike in lay renunciation ­after the rise of Yoshifusa and the displacement of many non-­Fujiwara elites from high office. 33. In the reign of Tenji, for example, 330 p ­ eople ­were made to enter religion for the sake of the recently deceased Empress Dowager Hashihito (Aston 1972, 2:283).

Notes to Pages 27–30   161 3 4. A lay monk might be referred to as a nyūdō (novice), a lay nun as a nyūdō ama. 35. Katata (1985, 383). 36. ­There ­were exceptions, but shukke was perceived to be irreversible. See Meeks (2010, 18, 23). 37. Out of ­t hose, only five ­were given deathbed tonsure (Katata 1985, 394). 38. Hurst (1976, 69–74). 39. The significance of Michinaga’s post-­tonsure ­career and its influence on Insei models of rulership are discussed in Uejima (2010, 161–189). 40. For example, in the late tenth-­century Ochikubo monogatari, the seventy-­year-­old stepmother of the protagonist is encouraged to become a nun to begin making merit (kudoku) for the next life (NKBT 13:247). 41. Hayami (1975, 107–108). 42. In the Eiga monogatari we read that the tonsure of Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1040) at age sixty caused his f­ amily ­great consternation. Discussed in Meeks (2010, 12–13). 43. Fujiwara no Akimitsu (944–1021) reportedly elicited chuckles as he prattled on about his plans “­because it was ridicu­lous for a dotard in his seventies to be planning for the remote ­f uture instead of reciting Amida Butsu’s name” (McCullough and McCullough 1980, 519–520; NKBT 76:28). 4 4. For example, in the Ochikubo monogatari, the lecherous old Ten’yaku no suke, who is treated with utter disdain by all, fi­nally has his lacquered court cap (eboshi)—­symbol of his official status—­k nocked off his head (White­house and Yanagisawa 1965, 165). Sei Shōnagon was particularly barbed in her assessment of elders at court. She observes that white-­haired candidates for official appointments ­were often mocked b ­ ehind their backs, judging them “pathetic” (Morris 1991, 23–24). 45. In the Sarashina nikki, we read that the author’s ­mother had become a nun and that, although she remained in the same ­house­hold, she lived separately from her ­family in another section of the building (NKBT 20:510). Meeks (2010, 37) interprets this passage to mean that her m ­ other had moved to a separate annex on the same estate. 46. In the Kagerō nikki, the narrator reports that she had heard about the wife of a governor who had become a nun and moved to her own mansion (Seidensticker 1973, 75). 47. The Genji monogatari, for example, describes Genji paying a visit to his former nurse, who had become a Buddhist nun. As he looked “up and down the dirty, cluttered street,” he was somewhat taken aback by the dubious (ayashiki) neighborhood she had retired to. Seidensticker (1976, 57–58). 48. This ambivalence is discussed in Meeks (2010, 10). 49. McCullough (1985, 24). 50. Discussed in Ebersole (1989, 17, 46–47). 51. NKBT (69:58). Confucian ideology held that poetry and lit­er­a­ture had a refining effect and could bring order and rectitude to the vagaries of ­human emotion, transforming rough, uncultured men and ­women into domesticated subjects. This ideology informs the title of a ninth-­century imperial anthology, the Keikokushū (Collection of Verses to Bring Order to the Realm). See Kojima (1968–1998, 2.3, part 1:2134). 52. Bin ­were “side-­tresses,” the hair on one’s ­temples (NKBT 69:60–61). 53. Ibid., 88–89. Adapted from Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 41–42). 54. Other works from this time commonly compared the emperor’s grace to the arrival of spring. See, for example, Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 55).

162   Notes to Pages 30–33 55. McCullough (1985, 5). 56. Out of some 4,500 poems, only seventy-­six deal with old age (Okuda 1997, 46–47). 57. Cranston (1993, 162). 58. Philippi (1969, 353); SNKBZ (1:340–341). 59. Philippi (1969, 354); SNKBZ (1:342–343). 60. Philippi (1969, 356, 344–345). Cranston (1993, 54) notes that the w ­ oman ages, but Yūryaku does not. This is, of course, in keeping with the rhe­toric of the virtue and vitality of heavenly sovereigns found in the early chronicles. 61. Both episodes rework the themes of Chinese poems describing aging consorts losing imperial ­favor. 62. Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 12). 63. Adapted from Cranston (1993, 559). NKBT (4:174); SNKBZ (6:205). 64. Although Tokoyo has generally been taken to be an ele­ment of native Japa­nese folklore, it clearly incorporated concepts of immortality derived from continental sources. The Urashimako legend in the Man’yōshū combines the mythic topology of Tokoyo with that of Penglai. See Senda (2003, 40–47). In the Nihon shoki, Tajima Mori was reported to have traveled to Tokoyo (described as a land of shinsen) to bring back the fruit of the “Seasonless Fragrant Tree” (tachibana) of immortality to pres­ent to the sovereign (Cranston 1993, 463–464). A poem by Ōtomo no Miyori (d. 744) hints that Tokoyo was a land in which youth was restored. Expressing joy on being re­united with his love, he writes that she must have been living in Tokoyo, since she seems to have grown even younger than the last time they met (Cranston 1993, 406–407; SNKBZ 6:334). 65. SNKBZ (6:53–54). 66. In addition to immortals, Penglai is inhabited by auspicious fauna and flora, including tortoises, cranes, stags, mushrooms, pine, peach, and plum trees—­a ll symbols of longevity (Pregadio 2008, 2:788–790). 67. On the poetic connections between Penglai and Japan’s first capital, see Ooms (2009, 80) and Senda (2003, 46–47). 68. Ooms (2009, 78–80). 69. NKBT (72:460). The Japa­nese w ­ ere following Chinese pre­ce­dent ­here. The palace gate in the Han-­dynasty capital of Luoyang was known as the “Gate of Non-­Aging” (NKBT 73:250). The Imperial Palace in the Tang capital was known as the Penglai Palace (Akiyama and Yamanaka 1967, 3:38b). A poem by the Tang-­era poet Yang Heng collected in the Wakan rōeishū claimed that the Tang sovereign, dwelling in the palace of long life, had no need to visit Penglai or Kunlun (NKBT 73:218–219). The gardens of nonroyals w ­ ere also at times compared to Penglai. The Kawara-­no-in no fu, an essay by Minamoto no Sumeru (dates unknown), boasts in a similar vein of the garden of his Kawara-­no-in (NKBT 69:330–333). In rare cases, the natu­ral world might inspire comparison to immortal lands. Michizane, for instance, composed a poem reveling in the purity of the snow in Sanuki province, likening it to walking on jewels in Penglai (NKBT 72:327). 70. NKBT (73:246). 71. Pregadio (2008, 2:602–604). 72. NKBT (69:91–92, 94); Tatsumi (2012, 133–137, 145–150). 73. On the Shinsen’en as a locus of poetic composition, see Akiyama and Yamanaka (1967, 3:52–57). 74. McCullough (1968, 33).

Notes to Pages 33–36   163 75. SNKBZ (7:49–50). 76. Adapted from Cranston (1993, 548–549). 77. (Kanke bunsō 194) NKBT (72:256). Translated by Borgen (1994, 192–193). Borgen (1994, 361n72) lists four other poems in the Kanke bunsō in which Michizane laments his gray hair, all dating from his years in Sanuki: 224, 254, 297, and 301 (NKBT 72:279, 303–304, 343, 345). 78. Michizane’s corpus allows us to track how his poetic reflections on the aged body responded to his social and geographic position. As a rule, he composed no laments for his gray hair in the capital, with the pos­si­ble exception of one poem he wrote when, during his tenure in Sanuki, he was allowed to return temporarily to Heian-­k yō (Kanke bunsō 239) (NKBT 72:293–294). 79. Part of this has to do with the nature of the poetry being composed in ­t hese two distinct settings. Scholars note that his poetry in Sanuki was private in nature, consisting mainly of melancholy verse. Upon his return to the capital, however, he was elevated to the post of Minister of the Right, which required that the style of his poetic output shift to accommodate this public role. The majority of the verses in the Kanke bunsō from this period ­were composed at formal gatherings, often in response to imperial command. See Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 122), and Borgen (1994, 225). But we should not underestimate the po­liti­cal component of his supposedly private poems from Sanuki, especially in light of the fact that they ­were ­selected for inclusion in an anthology presented to the throne in 900. The first seven poems of the Kanke kōshū ­were also composed during the period prior to his exile. One of ­t hese mentions his old age in comparison with the youthful Emperor Daigo (Kanke kōshū 473) but does not take up the aged body as a sustained theme for melancholy ­reflection (NKBT 72:474). 80. Borgen (1994, 297). 81. Ibid., 299. 82. Tahara (1980, 109); NKBT (9:327–328). 83. Hozumi (1989, 69–91) gives a detailed treatment of the instances in which the legend is recounted in Japa­nese lit­er­a­ture. 8 4. The earliest references to Kagami-­yama in Nara-­period texts ­were actually to other mountains with the same name. See, for instance, the Buzen fudoki (SNKBZ 5:550) and Man’yōshū (NKBT 4:90, 140, 166, 200). Regardless, it was not ­until the Heian period that the trope of seeing one’s reflection in Mirror Mountain emerged. 85. One of the earliest examples is by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune (859–925) (Rimer and Chaves 1997, 219). 86. NKBT (8:282); McCullough (1985, 197). 87. Herbert Plutschow (1975, 57) observes that “consciousness of the age of the authors pres­ents a peculiar feature of kikō. In the prefaces, the authors frequently introduce themselves as hermits over fifty.” 88. Tōkan kikō (SNKBT 51:131); Shinshō hōshi nikki (SNKBZ 48:85–104); Nagusamegusa (SNKBZ 48:431). Another popu­lar landmark for poetic composition for kikō diarists was the nearby Oiso Forest, the name of which combined the characters for “old age” and “rebirth” 老蘇. Oiso was visited by authors of the Tōkan kikō, Nagsusamegusa, Fujikawa-­no-­ki (SNKBT 51:400), and o ­ thers. 89. Tatsumi (2012, 511). 90. Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 167–168).

164   Notes to Pages 36–41 91. Ibid., 168. Konishi (1948–1953, 2:169). 92. In the Zhuangzi, for instance, a massive, gnarled old tree is praised for its uselessness. ­Because of its defects, it would never be cut down for timber (Mair 1998, 37–38). 93. Shōshi 尚齒 is a term of re­spect for elders, the character shi 齒 (歯), for “tooth,” providing a graphic ele­ment for the character rei 齡 (齢) for age. 94. Nawabon Hakushi bunshū 71. Kawai (2011, 2:347–353). 95. Zen Tōshi 463. Honma (1992–1994, 1:47–48). 96. NKBT (72:168). For the preface, see SNKBT (27:61–62). 97. SNKBT (27:62, 276a). 98. Discussed in Gotō (2012, 352). 99. SNKBT (27:276b). Funtoki’s preface is translated in Gotō (2012, 131). Funtoki also authored an essay deceptively titled “Song about the Peaceful Retirement of an Old Man” that is, once again, essentially a lament (Rabinovitch and Bradstock 2005, 180–181). 100. These are well known, published in GR (9:265b–269a). Recently a new set was discovered in the Tokugawa Bijutsukan, treated in Gotō (1993, 113–134). 101. Poems 729 and 731 (NKBT 73:238–239). 102. A description of this event is found in the Chōshūki, the diary of Minamoto no ­Morotoki (Tenshō 1 [1131], 3/22). Discussed in Gotō (2012, 352–353). Poems from this Shōshikai are found in ZGR (9:3–4) and Honchō mudaishi (Honma 1992–1994, 1:44–60). 103. Honma (1992–1994, 1:44–45, 48–49).

Chapter 3. Decrepit Demons and Defiled Deities 1. I discuss ­t hese three repre­sen­ta­t ional modes in depth in Drott (2015a). 2. In the Nihon shoki, for example, the Yamato plain—­site of Japan’s first “permanent” capitals—­was cast as a pure, pacified center, ­f ree of “dust and wind,” set apart from the “unclean frontier lands” (Aston 1972, 1:131). 3. Itō Kiyoshi (1993, 28) observes that taboos and purification rites enhanced the status of the tennō. By claiming to protect the body of the emperor they implied its essential purity. 4. Aston (1972, 2:344); NKBT (68:438–439). 5. Murai (1988, 108–109); Ōji (2002, 71–95, esp. 71–77). 6. The classic study of this pro­cess was conducted by Yokoi Kiyoshi (1975). See also, Stone (2007, 175). Buddhist discourse on pollution also played a role in gender discrimination, with ­women barred from many sacred sites (nyonin kinsei), in part due to fears of menstruation. 7. 厭離穢土 NST (6:10, 324a). 8. Stone (2007, 203). 9. Hayami (1988, 221–231). 10. Ibid., 228. 11. Around the icon, images of the Buddha’s ten g­ reat disciples, Kannon and Fugen Bosatsu, and the four deva kings ­were hung on the walls (Hori 1983, 282). Each day without fail the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, “Fathoming the Lifespan of the Tathāgata” (Juryōbon), was recited nine times. This chapter held that the death of the historical Śākyamuni was but an illusion and that his lifespan as a manifestation of buddhahood was, in fact, endless (Kawasaki 1972, 390a; Hayami 1988, 222).

Notes to Pages 41–45   165 1 2. Takeuchi (1963–1976, 11:262–273); Hori (1983, 284); Kawasaki (1972, 389b). 13. Kawasaki (1972, 388b–389a). Although Genshin is famous for his promotion of the Pure Land of Amida, it is unclear h ­ ere ­whether he was in fact addressing aspirations to be reborn in Śākyamuni’s Buddha land. 14. Kawasaki (1972, 389b). 15. The Reizan-in Shakakō’s charter documents describe a diverse membership, listing individuals of vari­ous ranks and stations, including an unnamed imperial princess, an imperial consort, a minister of state, provincial governors, and monks and nuns of vari­ous ranks (Kawasaki 1972, 44a; Hayami 1988, 225–226). It is unclear ­whether female members of the association ­were allowed to ignore nyonin kinsei taboos to access the Reizan-in or ­whether they ­were forced to send proxies. Hori Daiji (1983, 288, 299) takes the view that w ­ omen ­were allowed to participate. Sarah Horton (2004, 45n16) raises the possibility that ­women sent proxies. 16. Hokke genki 2/49; NST (7:117, 535b). 17. The early tenth-­century dictionary Wamyō ruijushō has an entry indicating that the characters that l­ ater came to be read as dōsojin (道祖神 literally “road ancestor god”) w ­ ere pronounced sae no kami. Another entry gives the pronunciation funado no kami for the characters chimata kami (literally “crossroad god”). See Daigo (1966, 2:6–7). 18. Several scholars have seen evidence of dōsojin-­style cults in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. See Ōshima (1972, 68–69); Itō and Endō (1972, 223). 19. The geography of t­hese rites is explained in detail in Itō (1993, 22–28). Although ­Bialock (2007, 221–224) observes that, as ­t hese rituals came ­under the purview of privatized Yin-­Yang masters, practices of purification became a destabilizing force that undermined the authority of the throne, they continued to contribute to the cultural fantasy of a purified center at least ­until the late Heian. 20. Also known as the Honchō hokke genki. 21. NST (7:567b, 215). The icon (votive tablet) described ­here also resembles the hitogata, effigies that ­were at times used in purification rituals as scapegoats, to soak up pollution and then be cast out. 22. NST (7:567b–568a). 23. Ibid. Hank Glassman (2012, 170) sees the reference h ­ ere to the “vulgar” body as an indication of the phallic form that many dōsojin took. In this case, however, the votive statue appears to have been in h ­ uman form rather than phallic, since it is depicted riding a ­horse. 24. McMullin (1987, 166). 25. Philippi (1990, 53). 26. Abe Yasurō (1995, 139–140) makes a similar point. A tale from the Konjaku mono­ gatarishū also used the aged body to symbolize a likely disease agent, depicting a tiny okina emerging out of brackish w ­ ater to stroke the face of a sleeping man (Drott 2015a, 10–12). 27. For a discussion of the lowly status of the okina dōsojin, see Abe (1998, 286–288); Hotate (1993b, 31); Kim (2008, 74–76). 28. Mills (1970, 136); NKBT (27:53–54). 29. Abe Yasurō has shown that numerous references to dōsojin from the Heian and medieval periods associated the deity with sex and fertility. ­People commonly prayed to ­t hese gods of the crossroads in hopes of “intersecting with” their own marital or sexual partner (Abe 1998, 288, see also 284–285). Variants of this tale portray Dōmyō as guilty not just of violating his celibacy, but of incest as well. In this case, however, the heart of the ­matter is the fact that he

166   Notes to Pages 45–51 dared to ­handle the Lotus Sutra without purifying himself first. The dōsojin’s appearance does not instigate this sexual activity. It is in response to impurity. 30. Glassman (2012, 162–166). 31. Abe (1998, 288). 32. NST (7:138–139, 542a–542b). 33. Seidel (2003, 1159b–1160a). 34. NKBT (25:507–508). Discussed in Iinuma (1990, 166) and Formanek (1997, 118). 35. NKBT (25:496–498). 36. Como (2009, esp. 195–196). 37. The insatiability of the aged female is also a feature of certain tales of the mountain hag (yamanba). In one, a man leading a cow laden with salted mackerel is accosted by a ­yamanba. Not satisfied with just one fish, she ends up eating the entire load, and even the cow. See Yanagita (1963, 6:439). 38. In the medieval period, the image of the datsueba came to overlap with that of a trinity of aged female deities (collectively known as Onbasama) enshrined at Tateyama, eventually transforming the fearful datsueba into a protective deity for w ­ omen, able to ensure safe childbirth (Seidel 2003, 1163–1167).

Part 2. Reappraising the Aged Body in Medieval Japan 1. The prestige attached to ­t hese collections likely played a major role in setting the tone for classical-­period verse. 2. One of the bangai poems appended to the received version of the Kaifūsō, misleadingly titled “Lamenting Old Age,” is a pos­si­ble exception. However, noting its similarity to works from the ninth-­century Chinese collection Hanshan (Cold Mountain), Yamagishi Tokuhei theorizes it was added as late as the Muromachi period (NKBT 69:7–9). See also Rabinovitch and Bradstock (2005, 48). 3. The fact that fires destroyed the Suzakumon, the Daigokuden, and other key landmarks in the geography of the court further underlines the sense that the center has been wiped away (NKBT 30:24). 4. Discussed by Itō Hiroyuki (1975, 78–90). 5. NKBT (30:44). 6. On this point, see Marra (1991, 75–100). 7. Sadler (1972, 5). 8. NKBT (30:36). 9. Sadler (1972, 13–14); NKBT (30:37–38). 10. NKBT (30:39). 11. Another famous example is Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa, wherein he takes several opportunities to reflect on his own old age and eccentricity. See, especially, NKBT (30:180–181). The degree to which the persona of the aged recluse had become a literary pose is evident in Nijō Yoshimoto’s Ojima no kuchizusami. Donald Keene (1989, 186) observes that Yoshimoto “writes in the manner of an old man, though he was only thirty-­five.” 12. Classic examples of the genre are the Kaidōki (Rec­ord of the Route along the Sea) and the Tōkan kikō (Travel Diary of the Barrier Gate) (SNKBT 51). 13. Chōmei writes: “Since I forsook the world and broke off all its ties, I have felt neither fear nor resentment. [ . . . ​] Like a drifting cloud I rely on none and have no attachments” (Sadler

Notes to Pages 53–57   167 1972, 19). Similar sentiments are expressed in the Kaidōki. Gazing out at fishermen, the author is reminded of ­t hose sent out by the Qin emperor on their failed mission to discover Penglai and writes: Omoiseji to kokoro wo tsune ni yaru hito zo na wo kiku shima no kusuri wo motoru

It is ­t hose who are not troubled by the thought [of growing old] and whose hearts are always at ease; it is they who ­w ill obtain the elixir of the famous isle. (SNKBT 51:82)

Chapter 4. From Outcast to Saint 1. In part in reaction to t­ hese developments, certain Buddhist priests, such as Genshin, sought to establish special sites for practice in which physical and moral purity could be maintained. His establishment of the Reizan-in Shakakō can be understood as one such effort. 2. Although the perspective of a given work cannot be fully explained by the social class of its producers or patrons, valuable insights can be gained by contextualizing cultural products in terms of the social positioning of their producers and what Bourdieu terms the “space of pos­si­bles”—­t he “universe of prob­lems, references, intellectual benchmarks”—­out of which they emerged (Bourdieu 1993, 9, 30–32, 176). 3. The five defilements are mentioned, for example, in the “Skillful Means” (Hōben) chapter of the Lotus Sutra. 4. Japa­nese Pure Land discourse incorporated the concept of the five defilements very early on. The early Heian Jōgū Shōtoku taishi den hoketsuki, for instance, depicts the death and ascent to the Pure Land of Shōtoku Taishi’s son Yuge-­no-­miko, who declares that he is “abandoning his body of five defilements” (GR 5:339b). 5. Buddhist scriptures explained that at the beginning of each four-­kalpa (aeon) temporal cycle, ­humans would live as long as eighty thousand years (Sadakata 1997, 104). Two early medieval histories, the Ōkagami (NKBT 21:278; McCullough 1980, 235) and Gukanshō (Brown and Ishida 1979, 211–212) employed ­t hese theories to account for the gradual diminution of lifespans of Japa­nese sovereigns compared with the superhuman longevity of legendary rulers in the early chronicles. Since the vitality of sovereigns was linked rhetorically to their virtue, the Buddhist view of time could con­ve­niently explain the short reigns of recent emperors as a function of their having acceded in a degenerate age. 6. See Kiley (1999, 239). 7. Groner (2002). 8. See, for instance, Hori (1983, 296). 9. Dykstra (1983) has translated the text in full. To foreground certain relevant nuances in the original, I have used my own translations, except where noted. 10. Eubanks (2011, 41). 11. Ruppert (2000). 12. For an excellent discussion of the jikyōsha see Eubanks (2011, 46). See also Kikuchi (2007, 44–84). 13. Dykstra (1983, 5).

168   Notes to Pages 57–60 14. Although bessho ­were designated as places apart, they also made impor­tant economic contributions to their home ­temples (honji) and at times acted as mediators between the main ­temple and the laypeople who lived and worked on ­temple lands (Takagi 1973, 322–375; Hayami 1991, 22). 15. Discussed in Takagi (1973, 356–357) and Deal (1993). 16. On Atago as a site for funeral rites, reclusion, and Lotus devotion, see Bouchy (1987, 255–258). For an example of a recluse who chose Atago as his final abode, see Hokke genki (1/16) (Dykstra 1983, 45). While bessho w ­ ere a heterogeneous set of loci, Takagi Yutaka (1973, 351) finds that many of them ­were also situated in or near areas that ­were used as burial grounds. 17. See, for example, the case of the youthful 140-­year-­old jikyōsha in the mountains between Kumano and Ōmine (1/11) (NST 7:66–68, 518b–519a); of Ryōsan (2/49), who abstained from cereals and fashioned clothing out of club moss and bark, but whose complexion was “fresh and fair” even on his death bed (NST 7:116, 535a–535b); or Kitō (2/69), who lived to be over 140 years old, but appeared as a man of thirty. His back unbent and his senses still sharp, he “escaped the sufferings of old age and sickness” (NST 7:137–138, 542a). See also Dykstra (1983, 40–42, 76–77, 91). 18. For example 1/11. NST (7:67, 519a); Dykstra (1983, 41). 19. See, for instance, 2/49. NST (7:117, 535b); Dykstra (1983, 77). 20. See episodes 1/18 and  2/44 (NST 7:76–77, 521b–522a, 107–109, 532b–533a; Dykstra 1983, 47–48, 70–71). We also read of Yōshō Sōzu (2/42) expressing dis­plea­sure at being appointed to the post of zasu on account of his exceedingly “pure (清浄 shōjō) Way-­seeking mind,” implying that moral purity was incompatible with high monastic office (NST 7:105–106, 531b–532a; Dykstra 1983, 67–68). 21. NST (7:190–191, 559b–560a). See also Dykstra (1983, 127–128). The evocation of a “serene” space for recitation recalls a passage from the Lotus Sutra quoted in another tale (1/18) promising that Śākyamuni would appear manifesting a pure, glowing body to t­ hose who recited the scripture in a quiet place NST (7:77, 521b). 22. Slightly adapted from Dykstra (1983, 128). NST (7:191, 560a). 23. Slightly adapted from Dykstra (1983, 128). The Konjaku version of this tale (13/14) claims that he passed away at Ōjō-ji 往生寺, but we have no information about this t­emple (SNKBZ 35:326). 24. It ­w ill be remembered that in the Ujishūi monogatari, a dōsojin (an unsettling symbol of pollution) appeared when Dōmyō had attempted a recitation without having first purified himself (Mills 1970, 136). 25. On punishments for defiling a copy of the Lotus Sutra, see 2/78 and 3/93 (Dykstra 1983, 98, 115–116). Purification practices prior to ­handling the sutra included bathing and donning clean robes: see 3/113 and 3/121 (Dykstra 1983, 131–132, 137–138). 26. Hurvitz (1976, 337). 27. NST (7:157, 548b). Certain twelfth-­century documents referred to him as “court chaplain (naigubu).” Thus, contrary to the thrust of his hagiographies, Zōga might have served at court (Hirabayashi 1981, 270). 28. NST (7:157, 548b–549a). 29. Ibid., 549a. 30. Groner (2002, 327).

Notes to Pages 60–64   169 31. Paul Groner (2002, 112–114, 341–343) devotes several pages of his work on Ryōgen to Zōga, noting his early reputation as a gifted scholar-­monk and institution builder at Tōnomine. On Zōga’s scholarly activities see also Itō (1979, 61). 32. Adapted from Dykstra (1983, 104). NST (7:158, 549a). 33. NST (7:158, 549a). 34. See SNKBZ (35:249n20). 35. In another tale (15/39) Genshin’s ­mother instructs her son to follow the example of the Tōnomine Shōnin (Zōga). 36. SNKBZ (35:248). 37. Miki (1976, 61). 38. The text does not refer to her by name, identifying her as Empress Dowager Sanjō (Sanjō no Taikō Taigō no Miya), consort (kisaki) to En’yū, ­daughter of Sanjō no Kanpaku Daijō Daijin (Fujiwara no Yoritada). The editors of the Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū assume this refers to Yoritada’s ­daughter Junshi 遵子 but note that ­t here are no sources referring to her as Empress Dowager Sanjō. This misattribution was likely on account of her f­ather’s epithet: “the Sanjō Lord” (SNKBZ 36:514n2). See also NKBT (25:99–100). 39. SNKBZ (36:515). 40. Ibid., 516. 41. Drott (2015a, 2, 20–21). 42. Groner (2002, 357). 43. Although the texts use dif­fer­ent terms to refer to food baskets (warigo in the Nijū rokkajō, oribitsu in the Konjaku tale), both are connected to pollution. 4 4. Miki Sumito (1988, 47) also sees this episode as a social critique. 45. Ibid., 11–13. 4 6. The rise of esotericism also undermined the seniority system, since a master could initiate any one of his disciples regardless of their age or experience, automatically rendering them a “master” (Groner 2002, 33). Ryōgen’s successor, Jinzen, continued the trend when he appointed Morosuke’s grand­son Jinkō (971–1038) to be the abbot of Myōkōin, an eco­nom­ically critical part of the Enryakuji complex, when he had just fifteen years of seniority. Paul Groner notes that all the monks assigned to assist Jinkō ­were older than he and also held more seniority (2002, 196–197). Neil McMullin (1984, 105n66) observed that beginning in 1019 with Myoku “all subsequent Tendai zasu ­were members of the Imperial f­amily” or the regents’ branch (sekkanke) of the Fujiwara. 47. Hirata (1965, 90–98). See also Groner (2002, 47–48). 48. Takagi (1973, 390). 49. Okano Kōji (1998, 80) describes such practices as a reaction against the “second secular world” (daini no sezoku) of aristocratized shrine-­temple complexes. 50. Abe (1983, 17a). 51. Takagi (1973, 324–325). 52. Ryōgen had been ordained at the age of eleven, Zōga at the age of ten. Th ­ ere is reason to suspect that Ryōgen was not Zōga’s first teacher, as biographies from the Hokke genki forward claim, since Ryōgen would have been only fifteen years old at the time Zōga arrived at Mount Hiei. See Hirabayashi (1981, 58, 267). 53. This was part of a strategy undertaken by Ryōgen and Morosuke to set up Enryakuji and Tōnomine as religious bases for the northern branch of the Fujiwara, allowing it in­de­pen­dence

170   Notes to Pages 64–69 from the Fujiwara-­clan ­temple, Kōfukuji in Nara. Morosuke’s alliance with Ryōgen helped him gain and maintain control of the headship of the Fujiwara ­family. 54. Groner (2002, 341). 55. Some of the ­later legends seem to cut against Tōnomine’s interests as well. Miki Sumito (1988, 12) notes that the Sonpi bunmyaku entry connecting Zōga with the Tachibana clan also lists numerous noteworthy recluses and recluse poets in that line. Miki hints that l­ ater generations of literati might have attempted to insert Zōga and ­others into their lineages. 56. See note 38. 57. In her analy­sis of ele­ments of the grotesque in the Konjaku monogatari, Michele Li (2009, 97–99) has shown how the humiliation of another imperial consort served to express resentment ­toward her ­father, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa, who was responsible for displacing other aristocratic lineages from power. 58. Even the examples from the Hokke genki of monks entering reclusion on Mount Atago—­ where lone ascetics supposedly dwelt in caves or wandered dressed in rags and deerskins—­ described them taking disciples and even, in two cases, receiving patronage from p ­ eople attached to the regent’s ­house. See 1/21 (NST 7:79–80) and 2/55 (NST 7:122–123). See also Chimoto (1991, 148). 59. In the Ujishūi version, the consort is once again identified as Akiko/Senshi and the criticism of Junshi is removed. 60. Takahashi (1962, 49b). Age might also have played a role in Takamitsu’s accompanying Zōga to Tōnomine. Ryōgen sought to dissuade Takamitsu from taking the tonsure and eventually sent him to Tōnomine b ­ ecause he was grooming Takamitsu’s younger b ­ rother Jinzen for the post of zasu. Takamitsu’s chronological seniority could have caused complications since, as Paul Groner observes (2002, 83), Morosuke had willed “considerable landholdings to Jinzen and the Tendai school.” 61. ­These tales mirror a trend that began with the inception of the Fujiwara regency in the ninth ­century. Adolphson (2007, 215–216) notes that the tendency for the po­liti­cally outmaneuvered to retire into Buddhist ­orders increased ­a fter the Jōwa incident, in which Yoshifusa assured the po­liti­cal dominance of the Northern Fujiwara. 62. Takagi (1973, 390). 63. See, for example, Hokke genki 1/39 and  1/40 (NST 7:98–100, 528b–529b). Dykstra (1983, 64). 64. See, for example, 1/24, 1/32, 2/42, 2/49, 2/50, 2/56, 2/69, 3/109, 3/121 (Dykstra 1983, 53, 58, 76–77, 82, 91, 128, 137). The trend ­toward quantitative mea­sures of practice is discussed in Kawazoe (1999, 39–41). 65. Slightly adapted from Dykstra (1983, 53, 77, 82). NST 7:83–84 (524a), 117 (535b), 123 (537b). 66. Blair (2015, 2, 273–294). 67. Ibid., esp. 253–263. 68. This legend is treated in detail by Bialock (2002). For the most part I have used his translation, with minor alterations. 69. Adapted from ibid., 240; Kitahara (1990, 19). 70. Adapted from Bialock (2002, 240); Kitahara (1990, 19–20). 71. Adapted from Bialock (2002, 241); Kitahara (1990, 21). 72. Adapted from Bialock (2002, 242); Kitahara (1990, 22). 73. Adapted from Bialock (2002, 242–243); Kitahara (1990, 22).

Notes to Pages 69–74   171 74. Bialock (2002, 252). The priest’s living situation also exposes him to dirt and filth. 75. Discussed in chapter 1. 76. Abe (1991, 226, 229). See also Asami (1997, 306) and Bialock (2002, 243–244). 77. This pro­cess is discussed in detail by Gomi (1993, 96–98). 78. See Bialock (2007, 218–219) and Tanaka (1989). 79. Bialock (2002, 234–235). 80. Asami (1997, 303, 310). 81. On the prominence of youthful immortals in early Japa­nese legends, see Drott (2015b). 82. Uejima Susumu (2010, 161–189) has argued that it was the Regent Fujiwara no Michinaga who first utilized Buddhist retirement as a means of consolidating resources, sacred authority, and a new form of royal authority, paradoxically, by removing himself from the structures of the ritsuryō bureaucracy. The Insei borrowed ­these practical and symbolic techniques. 83. In the words of Araki Hiroshi, the cloistered emperor “inhabited the world of the sennin” (personal communication). See also Gomi (1993, 87) on the contrasting spaces occupied by the tennō and jōkō. 84. Hurst (1976). 85. Gomi (1993). 86. Hayami (1987, 134). 87. Chimoto (1991, 147). Even tales that had appeared in earlier collections bear the marks of oral transmission in the Hokke genki, introducing novel perspectives into the text (Chimoto 1991, 149–151). 88. Chingen’s treatment of Sōō Shōnin, for example (1/5), stresses his austerities, thaumaturgical powers, and longevity (Dykstra 1983, 35–36). The Sōō oshō den (ca. 923), on the other hand, likely compiled by an aristocrat, was much more concerned with establishing Sōō’s connections to numerous high-­ranking personages and detailing his activities on Mount Hiei. It describes his appointments as court chaplain, ­a fter performing efficacious rituals for the court, and his successful petition to grant the imperially bestowed title of G ­ reat Master (Daishi) to Saichō and Ennin (GR 5:544–553).

Chapter 5. The Eccentric Avatar 1. The Hokke genki, for instance, describes priests from ­temples around Japan reporting dreams in which diverse figures of Buddhist provenance appeared to them as old men, including Shubodai (Subhūti) (1/17), Yakushi Nyorai (1/30), Kannon Bosatsu (1/31), and the g­ reat Buddhist logician Nāgārjuna (2/53) (NST 7:74–75, 521a; 89–91, 525b–526b; 120–121, 536b– 537a). Throughout this chapter I use the term “Buddhist divinities” to refer to superhuman beings from the Buddhist pantheon, including buddhas and bodhisattvas, which are not technically gods. It is also worth noting that Buddhists brought to Japan a pantheon of deities of South Asian origin, often cast as protectors or supporters of buddhas or bodhisattvas, some of whom w ­ ere portrayed as elders—­for example, the gods of wind (Fūten) and fire (Katen) (two of the jūniten, the gods of the twelve directions), or Basu Sennin and Mawaranyo (two of the Thousand-­Armed Avalokiteśvara’s twenty-­eight guardians). 2. One of the most famous Miroku icons, the Hōkei Miroku of Chūgūji, highlighted his delicate, youthful features. See Guth (1988, 191–213). 3. T no. 159, 3:306a. 4. Saeki (1990, 207).

172   Notes to Pages 75–78 5. For a discussion of the historical development and scholarly treatment of engi, see Blair and Kawasaki (2015). 6. Yamaori (2004, 1–6). 7. T no. 159, 3:305b. 8. The notable exception is Jizō, who was portrayed as a monk. Another pos­si­ble exception is a group of Heian-­period statues of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (J. Monju Bosatsu), which portrayed him as an aged monk (sōgyō Monju zō). But Kaneko Hiroaki (1992, 79–80) notes that ­t here is nothing to distinguish ­t hese statues from typical sōgyōzō, statues that captured the likeness of high-­ranking Buddhist prelates, suggesting ­t hese ­were not originally considered Monju images. 9. On the question of “canon” in East Asian Buddhism, see Zhiru (2010, 85–105). We should be careful to distinguish between the bodies of bodhisattvas in the traditional sense of incipient buddhas, and the Mahāyāna vision of bodhisattvas as celestial savior figures. The Jātaka tales, for instance, described the previous lives of Śākyamuni, as he was reborn as a “bod­ hisattva” in a variety of ­human and animal forms. The most noteworthy Mahāyāna example of a bodhisattva appearing in a less-than-glorious body comes in the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra (T no. 474–476), which features the layman Vimalakirti, who, although recognized as a bodhisattva, used skillful means to manifest a sick body. 10. Other scriptures that encouraged visualization of par­t ic­u ­lar Buddhist divinities expanded on this list. The Pure Land Treatise, for example, called on devotees to meditate on the 84,000 marks of the body of Amida (T no. 1963, 47:89b). 11. Of course, ­t here was never a perfect correspondence between text and image—­v isual repre­sen­ta­tions did not always spring from textual sources—­a nd textual descriptions ­were at times inspired by iconography, rather than the other way around. On the complex interplay of image and text in early Buddhism, see Lamotte (1988, 666–667). 12. Campany (2012, 1–7). 13. While I place ­t hese vari­ous genres ­u nder the rubric of “popu­lar Buddhist lit­er­a­t ure,” I do not mean to imply that they comprised a “low” tradition as opposed to one maintained by elites. The authors of ­t hese works ­were often ordained priests or aristocrats. By “popu­l ar” I simply mean that ­t hese works w ­ ere extra-­canonical and aimed at a broad audience. 14. On oral tradition in Chinese Buddhist tales, see Campany (2012, 17). At times, premodern Japa­nese texts attributed legends to unnamed “elders”—­furuokina/korō 古老 or kikyū 耆舊 (耆旧)—­who ­were treated as living repositories of ancient lore. Such tales appear, for instance, in vari­ous fudoki, the Nihon ōjō gokurakuki, the Tōdaiji yōroku, and the Kōyasan ōjōden. The compilers of popu­lar Buddhist tale collections often appended prefaces to ­t hese works in which they acknowledged some anxiety over the dubious origins of many of the narratives they included. For a discussion of the prefaces of setsuwa collections, see Eubanks (2011, 77–90). 15. In addition to the bodies of elders, we also find examples of popu­lar legends of buddhas manifesting themselves as animals. In the eleventh c­ entury, for instance, a rumor spread that an ox employed at Sekidera was an incarnation of Śākyamuni (Hirabayashi 1981, 307–330). An early example of an animal avatar is a tale from the Nihon ryōiki (2/18) in which a heron is taken to be a manifestation of Kannon (Nakamura 1973, 184–185). 16. Certain scriptures made the keshin one of the “four bodies” of the Buddha (shishin). While the “four bodies” became a part of Tendai doctrine, its use was not widespread. See “Shishin” in Nakamura (2001, 2:671–672).

Notes to Pages 78–80   173 17. The most prominent early uses of the term posthumously designated impor­tant figures from Japa­nese Buddhist history as avatars of specific buddhas or bodhisattvas, as in the cults that formed around Shōtoku Taishi or the holy man Gyōki that identified them with the bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī, respectively. 18. The Enryaku sōroku also identified several Japa­nese royals as bodhisattvas, but did not designate them keshin (KT 31:78–92). Of the vari­ous princes, sovereigns, aristocrats, and priests listed, only the seven royals are identified as bodhisattvas. 19. For example, the Golden Light Sutra (T no. 663–665) and the Mahāyāna-­saṃgraha (T no. 1595). 20. See “Keshin” in Nakamura (2001, 1:372). 21. The Nihon ryōiki provides a remarkable exception (1/6) depicting the monk Gyōzen encountering Kannon as an old man who saves his life by ferrying him across a river (Nakamura 1973, 115–156). The persona of the ferryman corresponds to the Mahāyāna meta­phor of the bodhisattva as one who ferries the faithful to the other shore of nirvana. His depiction as an old man might have been based on one of the thirty-­t hree forms attributed to Kannon in the Lotus Sutra, a chōja 長者 (Sk. gṛhapati). The term is generally understood to mean a ­house­holder or a man of wealth, but could also be interpreted as the head of a guild (Sk. śreṣṭhin) or “elder.” Ennin’s celebrated rec­ord of his travels to the Tang provides one other significant early case of a Japa­nese text describing a bodhisattva appearing as an old man. He refers at several points to the legend that the Indian monk Buddhapāla encountered the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī in the form of an old man (老人) at Mount Wutai. DNBZ (72:110b, 111c, 114b, 116c–117a). This tale clearly contributed to the development of legends describing the dedication of the ­Great Buddha at Tōdaiji, to be discussed in chapter 7. 22. Mark MacWilliams (1990, 57–59) and Hank Glassman (2012, 13) raise this point regarding cults dedicated to the bodhisattvas Kannon and Jizō, respectively. I think it has broader applications as well. On the Kamunaidera Yakushi, see NST (7:89). 23. NKBT (24:441–444); SNKBZ (36:187–192). Discussed in Fukutō (2001, 46). 24. ­These stones are clearly depicted in two extant versions of the sixteenth-­century Kiyomizu-­dera sankei mandara (both of which, intriguingly, show an old ­woman e­ ither climbing or descending the slope to the shrine). See Kiyomizu-­dera shi hensan iinkai (1995–2011, 4:38) and Ōsaka shiritsu hakubutsukan (1987, 121). 25. The sixteenth book of the Konjaku monogatari features tales of Kannon, roughly half of which are taken from earlier written sources. Six of the “new” tales deal with Kiyomizu-­dera. Five of ­t hese demonstrated the efficacy of this honzon in matchmaking, suggesting that this was a relatively recent addition to the Kiyomizu-­dera Kannon’s repertoire of powers (NKBT 24:421). Th ­ ese tales likely served as the germ of medieval and early modern beliefs that Kiyomizu-­dera’s honzon was effective in helping one secure a mate (Kiyomizu-­dera shi hensan iinkai 1995–2011, 1:157–159). 26. Examples include the Hōryūji garan engi narabi ni ruki shizaichō (DNBZ 85:114–124), the Daianji garan engi narabi ni ruki shizaichō (DNBZ 84:385–391), and the Gangōji garan engi narabi ruki shizaichō (DNBZ 85:1–5). See Sakurai (1976, 21). See also Blair and Kawasaki (2015, 4). 27. Buddhist theories of avatarism ­were employed in ­these early engi only to further bolster the reputation of already high-­s tatus individuals, most notably members of the royal ­family. They thus participated in the ritsuryō system of prestige in which sacred status

174   Notes to Pages 80–82 corresponded closely to one’s place within its social and po­liti­cal hierarchies, with the tennō at its pinnacle. 28. Shindō (2005, 20). 29. Such repre­sen­ta­tions of a honzon seem to represent the inverse of the pro­cess described in chapter 1, in which lineages associated with given ancestral kami jockeyed to have their gods’ status elevated in the Shinsen shōjiroku and other rec­ords. 30. ­There are several pos­si­ble explanations for Sanenori’s connection to Onjōji. His wife was the ­daughter of Ono no Sukemichi, and thus member of a clan with roots in the Shiga district of Ōmi province, where Onjōji was located. Another impor­tant member of the Ono clan and con­temporary of Sanenori was Myōson, the head of Onjōji. Myōson was a respected poet, and thus likely traveled in the same circles as Sanenori. From the Onjōji denki and Jimon denki horoku, we also see that both had connections to the nearby ­temple of Sūfukuji. Although it is conceivable that the legends of Kyōtai w ­ ere transmitted to Sanenori by Myōson, we have no solid evidence of this. See Onjōji chōri shidai in ZGR (4.2:688a). The text was included in two early medieval collections, the Sanjūgo bunshū and Honchō zoku monzui. The colophon of the Honchō zoku monzui version is dated Kōhei 5 (1062), but also gives the year according to the sixty-­year Chinese sexagenary cycle as tsuchi no toi or kigai 己亥, corresponding to Kōhei 2 (1059). The latter is the likely date of composition. My translations are based on the Honchō zoku monzui version (KT 29.2:186–188), consulting the Sanjūgo bunshū (ZGR 12.1:57a–59a). 31. ­There is only one documented instance of this Dharma assembly being performed at Onjōji, in 1060, the year ­a fter the Ryūge-­e engi was likely composed. See Ichidai yōki Kōhei 3 (1060), 8/18 (Kondō 1983, 1:187). ­A fter that, we have rec­ords of its being performed four times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at Sekidera: on Hōgen 3 (1158), 4/18 in the Jimon denki horoku (DNBZ 127:265a); Antei 2 (1228), 11/5 in Hyakurenshō 13 (KT 11:166); Kenchō 2 (1250), 11/5  in the Ryūhen hōin saijōki (DNS 5.34:1–4); and on Kōan 8 (1285), 4/5  in Zoku shigushō 7 (KT 13:175). 32. In addition to constructing new buildings at Onjōji, Enchin also developed areas of Enryakuji (McMullin 1984, 87). And while he is credited with helping rebuild Onjōji in 859, the extent of his involvement is debatable. See Saeki (1990, 210) and Oyamada (1990, 126–137). 33. Enchin’s lineage was based in cloisters at Enryakuji as late as one hundred years ­a fter his death. In 993, monks of Ennin’s lineage burned down the Senju-in where many of Enchin’s line had been based. In the eighth month of that year, one thousand monks of Enchin’s faction descended Mount Hiei to take up residence at Onjōji (NST 7:414b). See also Fusō ryakki, Shōryaku 4 (993), 8 (KT 12:260–261). 34. KT (29.2:187). 35. DNBZ (127:69a). Two variants of the Heike monogatari rec­ord that Kyōtai’s original hut and statue ­were burned in the twelfth-­century Genpei war. A Kamakura-­era map, the Onjōji kedai kozu, shows a Kumano shrine on the site, and a structure labeled as the Kyōtaidō (Kyōtai Hall) in the Northern cloister (Izumi 1990, 1–21). Descriptions of the Kyōtai mitamaya in the Jimon denki horoku indicate that by the Muromachi period it had once again come to be situated steps from the main hall. This is also the site of the current Kyōtaidō, a small structure containing an icon representing Kyōtai of unknown date, which I was permitted to view on March 9, 2013. 36. On the composite nature of the Ryūge-­e engi, see Miyaji (1931, 329). 37. Saeki (1990, 208–209).

Notes to Pages 82–85   175 38. Tsuji (1931, 214). Several aspects of Kyōtai’s pre­sen­ta­t ion also call to mind the figure of the Daoist transcendent (Ch. xian). ­Later versions of the legend identify him as Kyōtai Sennin (the immortal Kyōtai). 39. KT (29.2:187). 40. T no. 159, 3:306a. 41. “Marks of hundredfold blessing” (hyakufuku shōgon) refers to the karmic rewards ­realized by the bodies of buddhas, presumably indicating slender fin­gers, one of the thirty-­t wo marks of Buddhahood. 42. SNKBT (35:77). 43. Early Chinese Buddhist texts at times presented filthy-­looking, low-­status individuals testing the charity and spiritual insight of Buddhist priests or laypeople. See, for example, tales 11 and 12 of Signs from the Unseen Realm (Campany 2012, 95–98). To my knowledge Kyōtai is the first Japa­nese case of the polluter being revealed to be a bodhisattva. 4 4. DNBZ (127:183b). A small stream began to flow from the hill and in its w ­ aters the turtles miraculously returned to life, recalling a legend involving the saint Gyōki (Kamens 1988, 197; NST 7:17, 502a). 45. For example, in one tale, a young ­woman purchases a crab from an old man to ­release it in an act of Buddhist compassion (2/8). It is revealed that the old man was “a transformation body of a sage,” a common, early Japa­nese use of the term keshin to refer not to avatars of buddhas or bodhisattvas, but to vaguely Daoist super­natu­ral beings (Nakamura 1973, 171–173). 46. This was likely based on a tale from the Daichidoron (T no. 1509, 16:161b), also appearing in Daoshi’s Fayuan zhulin (T no. 2122, 53:449a) (Nakamura 1973, 180–181, 230–231). 47. The late twelfth-­century Kenkyū gojunreiki and ­later texts refer to the old man as Saba-­ uri Okina, the “mackerel-­selling okina.” 4 8. Tsutsui (2003, 52–53). Some have interpreted references to a Konomoto no Okina (此本老 or コノモトノ翁) in two of the three manuscripts of the tenth-­century Sanbō ekotoba as an allusion to the Ke’nin Kōshi (Koizumi and Takahashi 1980, 316). The editors of the Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, for instance, suggest this connection (SNKBT 31:195n7). But the Ke’nin Kōshi legend is not recounted in the Sanbō ekotoba. And why refer to this fish-­bearing okina as “Konomoto”? I propose that the name actually derives from a misreading of the first line of the Ke’nin Kōshi tale from the Tōdaiji yōroku, interpreting 有買鯖翁。爰本願聖皇召留之 (Tsutsui 2003, 52) as the less grammatical 有買鯖翁爰本。願聖皇召留之, giving the name “Saba Okina Konomoto” (鯖翁爰本). The Tōdaiji yōroku attributes the Ke’nin Kōshi tale to oral tradition (kikyūden), meaning t­ here was no earlier textual source from which the compilers of the two Sanbō ekotoba manuscripts could have misread the name. The most reliable Sanbō ekotoba manuscript, the Tōdaiji-­gire, contains no reference to “Konomoto Okina,” confirming this to be a l­ater interpolation. Although we cannot date the oral tradition on which the original Ke’nin Kōshi tale was based, we can say with some confidence that it had not been rendered textually ­until the twelfth ­century. Although ­t here appear to be cases in which the Tōdaiji yōroku quoted the Sanbō ekotoba (see note 51), the relationship between ­these two corpora is clearly more complex than has been suspected. 49. DNBZ (60:265c). ­Here, as in the Ke’nin Kōshi/Saba Okina legend, an aged fisherman facilitates the spread of the Dharma in Japan, and legitimates the authority of the ruler who promotes Buddhism. 50. Tsutsui (2003, 44).

176   Notes to Pages 86–88 51. Ibid., 45. The Tōdaiji yōroku version is attributed to “a certain diary,” thought to be a reference to the Sanbō ekotoba (Kamens 1988, 328, 330n6). 52. Due to the terseness of the classical Chinese, it is unclear ­whether this is a boulder where one or many okina fish, or a boulder from which an okina once fished, or continues to fish. What is clear is that the okina is simply a means of identifying a par­tic­u ­lar boulder. In neither this version of the engi, nor in the twelfth-­century Konjaku monogatari, does Rōben actually encounter the okina. 53. DNBZ (60:265c). Discussed in Matsuoka (1999, 42a). 54. Hotate (1981, 15a). 55. The ruler Jingū was described hosting a banquet on a boat and attracting a large number of bream, which fishermen happily gathered up, exclaiming: “­These are fish to be offered to a sage-­k ing!” (Tanaka 1998, 7:45, 109, 168). This treatment of tai calls to mind the well-­k nown wordplay that describes ­t hese fish as “mede-­tai” or auspicious. 56. For examples of fishermen being pressed into agricultural ­labor, see Hotate (1981, 19b– 20a). A decree issued to district magistrates in Izumi Province noted that although the p ­ eople ­were numerous, “half concentrate on fishing and have no liking for farm work” (Kiley 1999, 240). Heian ibun 462 (Takeuchi, 1963–1976, 2:630). 57. Amino (1998, 189). 58. Carl Steenstrup (2003, 109–110) notes that Kyūshū estates ­were particularly vulnerable. 59. Between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, for instance, in addition to rice tax (nengū), estates ­were often obliged to provide supplementary taxes or kuji to the central government or to estate proprietors (ryōke). Kuji could include handicrafts or nonagricultural products including fish. Amino (2001, 238) notes that despite the ritsuryō state’s “agricultural fundamentalism,” the majority of tax payments from shōen between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries w ­ ere not in rice, but in nonagricultural produce. 60. A poem by Sugawara no Michizane, for instance, depicts the decree of the sovereign issuing from the palace gates, reaching the ocean, and extending to lowly woodcutters and fishermen. The poem seeks to pres­ent the power of the sovereign radiating from center to periphery, and from high to low, positioning woodcutters and fishermen at the outermost borders of the realm, and the very bottom of the social hierarchy. Kanke bunsō 294. NKBT (72:341). 61. Amino (2001, 243). 62. Hotate (1981, 16b); Miyamoto (1979, 20–27). 63. Nakamura (1978–1979, 2:200b–201a). 64. On jinnin, see Amino (1998, 196–208). 65. A document from 883, for instance, describes trou­bles caused by the Takami net group, attached to the office of the empress dowager and invested with the rights to fish the Seta Mikuri. Emboldened by their relationship with the royal f­amily, they encroached on other areas, brandishing documents from central authorities (Miyamoto 1979, 24b). 66. Ibid. Sometimes ­t hese conflicts pitted shrines against ­temples. See Hashimoto (2015, 121–124). 67. The number of bans issued over the centuries implies they ­were never wholly successful (Miyamoto 1979, 24b). 68. Taira (1997, 149–150). The Shoku Nihon kōki rec­ords that fishing and hunting ­were prohibited in the entire province of Ōmi while the Enmeihō was being performed for the ailing emperor Ninmyō at Bonshakuji, a ­temple in that province (Mo­rita 2010, 2:366, 369). Shirakawain issued two such bans, adding the ostentatious gesture of having fishing nets collected and

Notes to Pages 88–90   177 burned. See Hyakurenshō (Taiji 1 [1126], 6/21); KT (11:56) and Chōshūki (Taiji 4 [1129], 6/26); Sasagawa and Yano (1934–1944, 6:279b). Discussed in Gomi (1993, 92–93). 69. Hashimoto Michinori (2015, 118–119) provides examples of sesshō kindan ­orders that encompassed an area of two ri 里 around a given t­ emple. 70. The monks are presented in the guise of sōhei or akutō (NEZ 22:9, 39–40, plates 48, 49). 71. Kunaichō Shoryōbu (1970, 129a). Three of t­ hese, the Onjōji engi and two appended documents—­a petition (ge) and a provincial order (kokufu)—­claim to be from the ninth ­century, but are clearly forgeries. See Oyamada (1990, 142–146). Akamatsu Toshihide (1968, 495) puts the composition of the Onjōji engi somewhere between the years 1075 and 1081, but the Kunaichō Shoryōbu (1970, 26) notes that it has the character of an okibumi, defined in the Cambridge History of Japan as “[a] testamentary document form in use during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods to regulate ­matters of inheritance and property” (Yamamura 1990, 696). 72. The Kokonchomonjū (2/14) states that Kyōtai “was always ­going to the spot where the ­temple bordered the lake and catching fish and turtles to make his daily meal” (NKBT 84:78). 73. The Chuci (Songs of Chu) features an encounter between an emaciated, exiled prince and a contented fisherman, and ends with the fisherman’s carefree song celebrating his harmonious relationship with the river (SKT 34:278–281). The Zhuangzi features two instances in which an aged fisherman meets his social superior and is recognized as a sage. Confucius, for example, is presented encountering a ragged, white-­haired fisherman, acknowledging that he “possesses the Way,” and begging for instruction (Mair 1998, 323; SKT 8:771–783). See also Mair (1998, 205). 74. Exceptions are to be found in the Keikokushū, which contains a series of five poems by the retired Emperor Saga and ­others on the theme of the fisherman’s song (14/216–220) (Kojima 1968–1998, 3.3:4089–4128). Two poems by Princess Uchiko (14/221–222) depict the white-­ haired fisherman leading a peaceful, happy life (Kojima 1968–1998, 3.3:4105–4111; translated in Rabinovitch and Bradstock 2005, 97). Two other poems in the set pres­ent their fishermen as content (14/223) or even as a sage (14/227) but do not explic­itly mark them as elders (Kojima 1968–1998, 3.3:4111–4128). 75. For example, Minamoto no Shitagō (911–983) writes of an old night watchman who complains of his vari­ous age-­related ailments, wondering why he is “without imperial ­favor in his declining years” (SNKBT 27:13–16; Rabinovitch and Bradstock 2005, 175–176). Kanshi from the early eleventh ­century on ­were also influenced by the “new ballads” (xinyuefu) of Bo Juyi (772–846), intended to fulfill the Confucian duty of calling the attention of the ruler to the suffering of the commoners (Smits 1997, 172). 76. Smits (1997, 179). 77. Michizane, for instance, wrote several poems on elders engaged in non-­agrarian work during his tenure as governor of Sanuki. One describes a fisherman for whom “the land brings forth no bounty,” who “grows old in his l­ittle boat” (Watson 1975, 94). Echoing Bo Juyi’s satirical “Hai manman,” Michizane makes a sly reference to the Qin Emperor’s failed mission to discover the isle of the immortals. All who set sail, including five hundred prepubescent youths, grew old at sea. Michizane’s poem subverts the positive, quasi-­Daoist depictions of the el­derly fisherman as carefree sage. Rather than the positive bounty of the sea, he is motivated by the paucity of the land; rather than an immortal, we find a man growing old on his boat. See also, Kanke bunsō 236 (Borgen 1994, 171–172). An earlier poem offered a more idealized image of the aged fisherman (Kanke bunsō 167). Incongruities in tone between this poem and his other compositions are discussed in Borgen (1994, 172–173).

178   Notes to Pages 90–93 7 8. DNBZ (127:162b); NKBT (73:112). 79. NKBT (24:111). 80. Fujiwara no Sanenori was also a respected composer of Chinese verse around the time that ­t hese “exotic” subject ­matters ­were coming into vogue. In the Honchō mudaishi (431) we read his poetic accounts of encounters with vari­ous commoners, including a fisherman (whose age is not specified) who shares some raw fish (膾 J. namasu; Ch. kuai) (Honma 1992–1994, 2:368). 81. Koyama (1987, 32). 82. Sekidera engi in Onjoji denki 3/4 (DNBZ 127:44a). The Ryūge-­e engi also clearly functioned as a promotional document for a kanjin campaign. Sanenori describes the plan to hold a Dragon Flower Assembly at Onjōji, entreating men and ­women of high and low status to offer even a “single flower or a single stick of incense” to support its per­for­mance (KT 29.2:187). 83. Nakamura (1978–1979, 2:206a, 208b). Onjōji’s Ōura estate famously engaged in a protracted ­legal strug­gle with what came to be known as Suga-­no-­ura, over bound­a ries of their respective estates and fishing rights. See Hayashiya (1983, 335); Kudō (1978, 146–147); and Nakamura (1978–1979, 2:206b). 84. Taira (1992, 247). 85. The Shasekishū describes a monk releasing a carp back into Lake Biwa, only to learn in a dream that the fish was bitterly disappointed, having lost its opportunity to achieve salvation by being offered to the Kamo shrine (Hashimoto 2015, 124). 86. Kunaichō Shoryōbu (1970, 129a–135a). The term ryō 領, often used merely to indicate “proprietorship” of a given estate, h ­ ere suggests its other connotations of “territory” or “domain.” 87. See Kunaichō Shoryōbu (1970, 129b, 131a). Discussed in Akamatsu (1968, 493–496). 88. Kunaichō Shoryōbu (1970, 131a); Oyamada (1990, 142). 89. Although the Onjōji engi claims to protect Onjōji’s rights, no other extant document links Onjōji to any of t­ hese shōen: Ikago, Kinokawa, Takashima, Toira, Harihata, Yasu, and Yoshishima. See Kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan (1995, 1:393–394, 408, 419, 422, 426–427, 435, 438). 90. For a discussion of the ways in which the shōen system encouraged the underclass to align themselves with t­ emples, in turn, allowing them an ever greater voice in t­ emple affairs, see Satō (1987, 31–33). 91. Even if cultivation was understood to mean agriculture, farmers w ­ ere also known to have turned to san’yakakai to supplement their livelihood (Koyama 1987, 43–45). 92. My use of the term “totem” is, of course, figurative. The classic work identifying totems as symbols of group identity is Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995, 208–216). While his study focused on the role of sacred animals and plants in the cultic lives of native Australians, he also suggested that the concept of totem had broader applications, pointing, for instance, to the example of soldiers willing to die to protect their national flag (1995, 228–229, 233–235). Nonetheless, ­t here ­were significant prob­lems with the ways Durkheim and other nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century thinkers abstracted the concept of the totem from its original cultural contexts, designating it a key feature of “primitive religion.” Of course, Buddhist divinities w ­ ere not the only symbols around which medieval religious communities rallied. This is evident in the many forceful demonstrations beginning in the late Heian period in which monks carried portable shrines or sacred objects embodying the tutelary deities of shrines affiliated with their monastic complexes. See Adolphson (2000, 248–251).

Notes to Pages 94–97   179 93. Underscoring Kyōtai’s status as a symbol of the monastic community, the Jimon denki horoku rec­ords that upon taking the tonsure, monks would place their shorn hair into a small pit or cave (sekkutsu) ­under Kyōtai’s mitamaya (DNBZ 127:183b–184a). 94. For example, Miyaji (1931, 331–333) and Tsuji (1931, 216–217). 95. Myōson’s ties to Onjōji made him unacceptable to the Sanmon monks, who succeeded, through violent protest, in forcing him to resign ­a fter only three days. 96. Tenmu’s order to expel elders from t­ emples is discussed in chapter 3. See also Drott (2015a, 8–12). 97. Although our rec­ords of medieval estates are far from complete, they reveal that in the de­cades that the image of Hira Myōjin as both fishing okina and tutelary deity was crystallizing, Ishiyama-­dera was also in possession of several estates bordering Lake Biwa. For example, twelfth-­century documents assert Ishiyama-­dera’s proprietorship of Mio and Terabe estates (Takeuchi 1963–1976, 7:2670b–2671a [Heian ibun 3387]; and Takeuchi 1971–­, 2:261a– 261b [Kamakura ibun 945]). 98. Enryakuji established Katada-­no-­shō on the grounds of a fishery (Kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan 1995, 1:404; Abe and Satō 1997, 399). Ryōgen also held property that might have been home to fishing groups (Hotate 1981, 17a). Kakuban (1095–1143) was active in securing rights to lakes on Mount Kōya’s Santō-­no-­shō and Yamazaki-­no-­shō (Takeuchi 1963–1976, 5:1913b–1914b [Heian ibun 2249 and  2250]). Discussed in Koyama (1987, 27). 99. DNBZ (127:183–184). 100. Bialock (2007, 9).

Chapter 6. The Graying of the Gods 1. Including “Dharma-­protecting” deities attached to Buddhist ­temples (gohō), tutelary gods (known as jishu, jishujin, jinushigami, jigami, or jijin), and gods revealed as local manifestations (suijaku) of Buddhist divinities. Although ­t hese members of the medieval pantheon would eventually come to be identified as “Shintō” deities, in the materials we are examining, they w ­ ere part of a Buddhist milieu. 2. Due to difficulties dating premodern texts it is impossible to establish exact dates for the first appearance of many gods. Even when dates can be affixed to texts with a fair degree of certainty, the legends they recorded might have been transmitted orally for generations before being put to paper, or earlier texts might have existed that have vanished from the historical rec­ord. Nonetheless, the extant textual rec­ord attests to what can only be described as a remarkable upsurge in tales of okina kami from the eleventh ­century forward, perhaps reaching a peak in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. The fact that many examples of okina gods bore the titles myōjin (明神 bright deity), daimyōjin (­great bright deity) or gongen (権現 god appearing in temporary form) hints at the Buddhist involvement in the development of their identities. Although references to myōjin or daimyōjin had appeared centuries earlier, in the late Heian ­t hese titles came to be associated with gods who sought Buddhist salvation, or who w ­ ere avatars of buddhas (Nakamura 2009). Similarly, gongen designated avatars of Buddhist “originals” (honji). 3. I am adapting a category introduced by Yamamoto Hiroko (1998a). 4. For instance, in the Hizen fudoki, ­people determine a god is a female only by her association in a dream with weaving implements (NKBT 2:382–385; Aoki 1997, 253–254).

180   Notes to Pages 97–99 5. Art historian Yamamoto Yōko (2006, 11–13) writes that in early Japan kami ­were perceived to be without form, but notes many exceptions to this rule, explaining the circumstances deemed acceptable to artistically render the form of kami. The sources she works from, however, date from the late Heian period forward, thus falling ­under the rubric of medieval shinwa. 6. The cult of Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin, for instance, possibly dates back to the seventh ­century, with a textual tradition recoverable to the early eighth ­century. However, the earliest extant text depicting the Sumiyoshi god as a white-­haired old man, the Akazome emon shū, only dates from the eleventh ­century. Other gods, like Sekizan Myōjin, ­were the object of more recent cults, but still had hundreds of years of history prior to “­going gray” in the medieval period. 7. For a discussion of “medieval gods,” see Yamamoto (1998a, 1998b). 8. See, for example, Yamaori (1984, 2004). 9. See, for instance, Como’s work on this subject (2008, 2009). Kim Hyŏn-uk (2008) has shown that Usa Hachiman, Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin, Inari, and ­others ­were originally gods of Korean kinship groups. 10. To describe t­ hese kami, Yamamoto Hiroko has coined the term ikoku no kami or ishin (foreign gods). But the ideograph i 異 also fittingly carries the sense of “strange” or “mysterious.” As she notes, most medieval ishin w ­ ere odd entities of uncertain provenance, difficult to identify unequivocally as gods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, or some combination (1998b, i). 11. Satō Hiroo (2003, 113) questions ­whether “the assumed dichotomy of kami versus Buddhist divinities” was “impor­tant or even recognized in premodern Japan.” 12. Although the okina was the most common form given to gods in medieval shinwa, some legends also presented kami appearing as ­children (warawa) and ­women (onna). Kuroda Hideo (1986, 228) has theorized that t­ hese three social categories w ­ ere used to symbolize the realm of gods and buddhas (shinbutsu) since old men, w ­ omen, and c­ hildren ­were excluded from the normative category of adult males (ichininmae) that epitomized the h ­ uman realm. Unfortunately this does not account for the fact that gods ­were so rarely depicted as old ­women (ōna), who also possessed “nonnormative” bodies. 13. For example, the mirror-­maker Ishikōri-­hime (in the Kojiki, Ishikōri-­dome) (Aston 1972, 1:52, 76–77). 14. Fukutō (2001, 132–133). For example, we read in the Nihon shoki of a Japa­nese emissary to Paekche meeting an el­derly female kunitsukami acting as a local chieftain (Aston 1972, 1:349). 15. Local chieftains (zaichi shuchō) served as district magistrates (gunji) ­under the ritsuryō system (Matsumae 1993, 351–352). See also ­Inoue (2006, 113). 16. Fukutō (2001, 106). 17. Meeks (2010, 4). 18. Itō (2003, 67). 19. Fukutō (2001, 54–57). 20. In this period, immortals also began to “go gray.” Early Japa­nese legends had been dominated by tales of superannuated individuals who had “halted old age and prolonged their life” (駐老延命 chūrōenmei), retaining the marks of youth (Drott 2015b). In the late Heian, immortals came to be more consistently depicted bearing the telltale marks of old age. 21. Seidel (2003, 1159b–1160a). 22. On the influence of Buddhist ­women in the period in question, see Meeks (2010, 4–5). 23. Bynum (1992, 48–51).

Notes to Pages 100–104   181 24. Compare, for instance, the tone of the Hōjōki with that of the eleventh-­century Jōjin ajari no haha no shū and the thirteenth-­century Izayoi nikki, two of the most prominent examples of writing by aged female renunciants, both of whom display continued anxiety over the well-­being of their sons. Discussed in Keene (1989, 62–67, 136–140). For a discussion of the shifting ways in which po­liti­cal power was gendered in early Japan, see Fukutō (2007, 26). 25. Kuroda (1986, 228). 26. Yamamoto (1998b, 19). 27. Also transliterated as Shira Myōjin. 28. KT (29.2:187). 29. Tsuji (1931, 215). 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 216. 32. Groner (2002, 233). 33. DNBZ (127:35b). 34. Yamamoto (1998b, 73). 35. Onjōji denki 1/2 (DNBZ 127:8a). Onjōji denki 3/4 (DNBZ 127:35b–36a) gives five names: Sūkaku, Sūshi, Sekizan’ō, Shiten Fujin, and Sugami hoshikashi Kami. Discussed in Kim (2008, 132). While we might assume that the merchant was identifying a god known by multiple names, it was not uncommon for a deity to be considered a composite of multiple gods. This was the case for Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin and Kasuga Daimyōjin. 36. Onjōji denki 3/4 (DNBZ 127:40b). 37. Myōson had also successfully petitioned to have the god raised to third rank in 1049 (Yamamoto 1998b, 22). 38. Guth (1999, 112). 39. Ibid. Sujung Kim offers the intriguing theory that the image of Shinra Myōjin as an elder was based on Chinese repre­sen­ta­tions of one of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s attendants, Taishō rōnin. See Kim (forthcoming). 40. Although the icon is treated as a hibutsu 秘仏 (hidden buddha) and not publicly displayed, its image has been reproduced in vari­ous publications. See, for example, Guth (1999). 41. Yamamoto (1998b, 19–20). 42. Ibid., 22. 43. Guth (1999, 118). Another set of legends concerning Shinra Myōjin’s origins hold that Enchin first encountered the god in Dazaifu when, having returned from the Tang, he stayed at the Kōrokan, the hall where foreign monks and visitors ­were ­housed as they awaited permission to proceed to the capital (Yamamoto 1998b, 69). But if we start from the premise that the Jimon lineage’s adoption of Shinra Myōjin was part of an ongoing effort to achieve parity with Enryakuji, this seems unlikely, since Enchin had returned from the Kōrokan de­cades before the Sekizan shrine was built, and more than a ­century before the first reliable attestations to Shinra Myōjin. 4 4. ST (6.29:666). 45. ST (7.4:623). The mid-­t hirteenth-­century Genpei jōsuiki also pres­ents Sekizan as an okina (Kim 2008, 128). 46. Ogino (1964, 141–155); Murayama (1974, 307–310); Kim (2008, 129). 47. Kokonchomonjū 165 (NKBT 84:153–154). 4 8. It appears that shinzō w ­ ere not created for ­either god u ­ ntil well a­ fter they w ­ ere enshrined.

182   Notes to Pages 104–107 49. Discussing the shifting image of the Sumiyoshi deity, Kim (2008, 50) refers to this pro­ cess as okina-­ka, or “okina-­ization,” providing numerous other examples from the eleventh ­century forward, such as the immortal Gyōei who, in the Honchō shinsenden, was described having a complexion like gold, but became an aged immortal in the l­ater Fusō ryakki and Genkō shakusho (2008, 67–68). 50. Ōsumi (1976, 11, 165–168). 51. The w ­ ater, he declares, tastes like clarified ghee (daigo), a meta­phor for the most refined of the Buddha’s teachings (ibid., 101–103). On dating the three sections, see also Van Put (2004). 52. I am indebted to Michael Jamentz for alerting me to t­ hese anachronisms. 53. Borgen (2007, 28). 54. Yoshihara (1994, 103). 55. Matsunaga (1969, 229–230); Koyama (1987, 30); Satō (1998, 21–24). 56. Uejima (2011, 23a). 57. Grapard (1988). 58. Teeuwen and Rambelli (2003, 18) note that this is a common explanation in Japa­nese scholarship, but the earliest example they provide is from the twelfth-­century Yōtenki. 59. Ibid., 20, also see wakō dōjin implying the assumption of more coarse, earthy ­b odies. 60. Masafusa used several terms for honji, including hon’en (original karmic cause) and hontai (original body) (Yoshihara 1994, 109). His use of hongaku (original nature as an awakened being) points to the roots of honji suijaku theories in Tendai (Ch. Tiantai) thought. Zhiyi, regarded as the founder of the Tiantai School, analyzed the Lotus Sutra into two sections, the “gate of traces” ( jakumon), in which the Buddha appears as Śākyamuni to reveal the provisional truth, and the “gate of original” (honmon) where the Buddha spoke from his original form (hongaku) (Kuroda 1989, 143). 61. NST (7:274, 585b). See also Kleine and Kohn (1999, 182). Nowhere does the text indicate that this old man was the Matsuo deity, although it is strongly implied. Three of the earliest extant shinzō are from the Matsuo Taisha, likely dating from the mid-­Heian period. Relying on the work of Oka Naomi, Yamaori Tetsuo (1990, 153; 2004, 9–12, 394) has described one of ­t hese icons as an okina. Although the icon is bearded, ­t here are no indications it was meant to be seen as old. Nowhere does Oka (1966, 61–83) indicate that the statue represents an elder. Viewed in­de­pen­dently of the ­later textual accounts describing the Matsuo deity as aged, it is doubtful anyone would have identified this figure as an “okina.” See also Guth (1985, 53–54, and plate 10). Stephen Marvin (2010, 1:13) is also careful to distinguish aged shinzō from the figure of the okina. 62. Yoshihara (1994, 106); Teeuwen and Rambelli (2003, 17). 63. NST (7:259). Translated in Kleine and Kohn (1999, 152–154). 64. The Tōdaiji yōroku and Fusō ryakki contain nearly identical accounts of a strange okina blacksmith who arouses the curiosity of a sixth-­century local potentate, Ōga no Higi. Ōga abstained from cereals and practiced okomori for three years, making offerings and praying for a revelation. At last a three-­year-­old child appeared (presumably the okina blacksmith in another guise), standing on a bamboo leaf, and announced: “I am the sixteenth ­human tennō of Japan, Ōmuda [Ōjin] tennō, the wide-­bannered Hachiman-­maro. My name is Gokoku reiken iryoku shinzū, Daijizaiō Bosatsu. In vari­ous countries, in vari­ous places, I have descended as an avatar from the kami path (suijaku shindō)” (Tsutsui 2003, 117).

Notes to Pages 107–110   183 The Kasuga gongen genki e describes the priest Jōkei practicing okomori at the Kasuga shrine and being visited by a mysterious old man who carves a statue of Jizō, stating that this was his honji. Since the Kasuga deity was recognized as a suijaku of Jizō, this episode indirectly identified the old man as the god (DNK 13:30; Glassman 2012, 53). A section of the Genkō shakusho dealing with Hakusan Myōjin describes an okina with strange clothes (奇服 perhaps a miscopying of “strange eyes” 奇眼) appearing before the priest Taichō, announcing that he is an “assistant” 弼 of Myōri Daibosatsu (KK 50:333). Kim (2008, 97) takes this to mean he is an avatar of this bodhisattva, but misattributes the passage to the twelfth-­century Shirayama no ki, which associates the okina with Amida Nyorai instead. See NST (20:303). 65. Yamamoto Satsuki (2000, 96) believes that the figure of Nichizō was often used as a literary device, representing Daigoji-­lineage monks who performed austerities at Kinpusen. 66. Ambros (1997, 306). 67. NEZ (22:17, 54). 68. Ibid., 34, 36, 54, 60. 69. The best-known example is Myōe. See Tanabe (1992). 70. Mid-­Heian diarists w ­ ere attentive to their dreams and made efforts to rec­ord them, but ­were vague about many details. Diarists commonly described mysterious beings appearing simply as “­women” (onna), “men” (hito), or “monks” (sō). At times they recorded encounters with disembodied voices (Ueno 2013, 22). Kanbun diaries recorded dreams in which figures such as Hachiman Daiosatsu or the Kasuga Myōjin made impor­tant pronouncements, but did not describe their appearance. See, for example, Teishinkōki: Engi 20 (920), 1/2 (DNK 8:69) and Shōyūki: Eiso 1 (989), 4/14 (DNK 10.1:175). In his diary (Gonki), Fujiwara no Yukinari recorded a fascinating vision he had, while sick, of three Chinese characters—­Fu Dō Son (不動尊)—­ warding off agents of disease (byōma 病魔). From that, he understood that the wisdom king Fudō Myōō was acting as his protector. Literary diaries of court ­women ­were slightly more prolix, but still did not mention the apparent age of mysterious figures appearing in dreams, as when the author of the Sarashina nikki dreamt of a “priest in yellow,” or of a priest “in blue garments with loose brocade hood and brocade shoes.” Ueno Katsuyuki (2013, 21–23) observes that often in Heian-­period dreams, Buddhist divinities took the form of icons, or had appearances that resembled ­icons. 71. Ishiyama-­dera engi no sekai ten jikkō iinkai (2012, 165); NEZ (22:60, plate 83). 72. Kuroda (1986, 150–151). 73. This interpretation was suggested by Tanaka Takako (personal communication). 74. Yoshihara (1994, 106). 75. Ibid., 104. 76. Ibid., 115. 77. On Masafusa’s engagement with the royal ­family and tensions with Michinaga’s son Yorimichi, see Hurst (1976, 104–107). 78. Masafusa also occasionally composed ganmon for his social inferiors (Yamasaki 2010). 79. Five of eight ganmon composed on behalf of cloistered Emperor Shirakawa fit this pattern. ­Others used dif­fer­ent wording, but w ­ ere similarly structured (Yoshihara 1994, 116). 80. NKBT (84:181–182). Also in Jikkinshō 4/2 (SNKBZ 51:150–152). 81. The relevant passage from the Kokonchomonjū is translated in Klein (2002, 86). Discussed in Kim (2008, 42–43). 82. Klein (2002, 171–175).

184   Notes to Pages 110–114 83. Atsumitsu wrote that for the ceremony Akisue gathered members of his poetic salon, the burgeoning Rokujō School. Flowers ­were arrayed before the trea­sured image. Having made offerings, the participants held a poetry meeting, composing on the theme of “a breeze upon the ­water at dusk” (NKBT 84:162–164). 84. Ōgushi (1952, 98b). 85. Ōgushi (1952). 86. Yamada (1966, 92). In Sugawara no Koreyoshi’s essay on the first Japa­nese Shōshikai, he described a similar screen that had been brought to Japan from China, depicting Bo Juyi’s original Shōshikai banquet. Copies of this image would likely have been pres­ent at many such Japa­nese banquets (SNKBT 27:63–64, 276a); discussed in Kim (2008, 40–41). Given the ways earlier generations of Japa­nese literati had selectively appropriated themes from Bo Juyi’s poetry to craft an image of old age as a time of misery, the fact that Bo came to be used as a model for a deified okina figure is deeply ironic, demonstrating, once again, that the Japa­nese ­were not engaged in mindless borrowing, but in a creative dialogue with Chinese pre­ce­dents. 87. Kim (2008, 41–42). 88. SNKBZ (51:150). 89. Ibid., 151. 90. Yamada (1966). 91. Klein (2002, 86). 92. Plutschow (1990, 119); Klein (2002, 80); Kim (2008, 47–48). 93. Man’yōshū 6/1020–1021; NKBT (5:177). The Sumiyoshi taisha jindaiki simply describes the god appearing as a “beautiful person” (美麗貌人 uruwashiki hito) (Kim 2008, 27–28). 94. Nishimoto (1977, 107); Tanaka (1998, 120, 198). 95. Sekine et al. (1986, 478–481). 96. Ibid., 480. 97. Ōgushi (1952, 103) argues that paintings of the el­derly Sumiyoshi god that circulated in the medieval period had the same origins as Akisue’s famed portrait of Hitomaro. Tsumori Kunimoto (1023–1102), the head administrator of the Sumiyoshi shrine and a ­respected poet, was a close friend of Akisue at the time he was initiating the Hitomaro eigu. Kunimoto sponsored poetry competitions at the Sumiyoshi shrine and was likely active in promoting the Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin and Tamatsushima Myōjin as guardians of waka (Klein 2002, 80n7). See also Asō (1973, 23). 98. Jikkinshō 10/15 (SNKBZ 51:402). 99. Asō (1973, 22–23). 100. Klein (2002, 89, 207). 101. McCullough (1968, 56–57) translates katai okina as “­humble old fellow.” 102. Klein (2002, 204). 103. McCullough (1968, 124). 104. Katagiri (1975, 183). 105. Bialock (2007, 154–155) discusses the subversive tone of the okina’s poem. Since travelers, beggars, and the sick often sheltered beneath veranda floorboards, the area was associated with the underclass. But since it was also a space for okomori, ascetic practices, and rites performed by underclass ritual specialists, scholars have suggested that the okina’s presence ­t here might be connected to the sacred okina of Noh. See Asami (1997, 307). Katagiri Yōichi (1975, 189) also compares the role of the katai okina to that of the okina in Noh. Texts from the Heike corpus further identified the katai okina as the tutelary deity of Shiogama.

Notes to Pages 114–118   185 1 06. Katagiri (1975, 189). 107. Klein (2002, 187–188). 108. Katagiri (1986, 5:546). 109. Ibid., 529–531. The “truths” revealed to Narihira bear the clear imprint of Tachikawa-­ ryū thought (Klein 1997, 450). 110. Katagiri (1986, 5:528). 111. The poem accompanying the description of first eigu highlights Hitomaro’s ser­v ice to the throne (Klein 2002, 81–82). 112. Ooms (2009, 65–67). 113. Smits (1997, 177). 114. Discussed in Drott (2015b, 276–282). As the power ­behind a series of emperors enthroned as c­ hildren or youths, the Fujiwara regents had an obvious interest in maintaining symbolic systems that legitimated youthful rulership. 115. Smits (2007). Masafusa was the exception, achieving Se­nior Second Rank. 116. Resentment over the sekkanke mono­poly on power was a key subtext of many impor­ tant works of Heian lit­er­at­ ure (Marra 1991). Since the sekkanke had close ties to Enryakuji, similar dynamics can be detected ­here. Of course we should not put too much weight in the explanatory power of court factionalism. In the Heian period and beyond, the bonds of clan, ­house, and lineage ­were intricate and ever shifting, meaning that ­battle lines ­were never so clearly drawn. Bunjin like Fujiwara no Atsumitsu ­were able to move in vari­ous circles. And, although Onjōji continued to occupy a tenuous position relative to Enryakuji, in the late Heian, both Myōson and his successor, Gyōson, had close ties to Michinaga’s son, the Regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi. 117. Klein (2002, 78) notes that “the contemporaneous appearance in other artistic traditions, such as gardening and m ­ usic, of secret traditions within families was symptomatic of broader social changes.” 118. Ury (1993, 359). 119. SNKBT (32:312–313). See also Borgen (1994, 57); Mostow (2001, 135); and Smits (2007, 107). 120. On the diminished authority of officially sanctioned rec­ords and the rise of rival histories in the early medieval period, see Bialock (2007, 160).

Chapter 7. “Tranquil Heart, Gazing Afar” 1. Yamaori (2012, 39–40) estimates that, out of the current repertory of 235 plays, more than fifty feature aged shite. In many ­others, elders play the role of waki (side), or include gods that, while not presented as aged, are performed in the “aged mode” (rōtai). 2. Kono michi no ōgi nari (NST 24:21). 3. Ibid., 400a. 4. One part was replaced by a youth, whose name (Senzai, “one thousand years”) betrays the fact that the role originally represented an elder. Although certain Okina masks are attributed to Heian-­period artisans, Marvin (2010, 1:12) notes that the earliest example with a plausible provenance is inscribed Shōwa 5 (1316), “and the first unambiguous written reference to an Okina mask appears in the description of a ­temple festival held in 1283. The carving style and aging patterns of several other unmarked examples suggest a somewhat older origin, possibly the ­middle Kamakura period.”

186   Notes to Pages 118–122 5. Noel Pinnington (2006, 206, 215–216) notes that in Zeami’s time the Shikisanban was not popu­lar with aristocratic audiences and was gradually dropped from the program. It was only late in his ­career that Zeami became more committed to promoting its special status. Zenchiku displayed a more consistent investment in elevating the status of the Shikisanban. 6. NST (24:167). Rath (2015, 68, 80–81) argues that Zeami sought to draw a sharp distinction between the status of the Shikisanban as ritual and the status of other Noh entertainments as art. But throughout this chapter I ­w ill argue that Zeami also sought to exploit the notion that as a per­for­mance tradition with a sacred ritual at its “core” Noh could boast not only of its aesthetic profundity, but also of its efficacy in conveying truths and ensuring peace and longevity. 7. Klein (2006, 239). 8. Positioning Noh as an expression of high culture was a remarkable feat, given that in Zeami’s time the nobility continued to look upon sarugaku performers as the equivalent of beggars (Brown 2001, 32). 9. Susan Blakeley Klein has produced the most thorough English-­language work on ­t hese treatises, noting that they are invaluable sources for producing historicized readings of Noh plays (see Klein 2002, 3). Itō Masayuki (1970, 1975) was the first to bring to light the extent to which Noh dramas relied on ­t hese works. 10. Jōwa 12 (845), 1/8. Mo­rita (2010, 2:164–165). 11. Mo­rita (2010, 2:165). The following year (Jōwa 13 (846), 1/26), the 114-­year-­old Hamanushi was elevated to Ju­nior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade (Mo­rita 2010, 2:196). This episode seems to contradict the prevailing tendency in mid-­Heian Japan to treat the aged body as inauspicious. Hamanushi twice refers to himself self-­deprecatingly as an “okina,” underscoring the incongruity of the ­humble old man’s audience with the sovereign. Instead of the typical exotic setting, this okina is brought to the innermost sanctum of the court, an area that writings of this period, most saliently official retirement petitions, claimed should not be disgraced by the unsightliness of an old man. The anx­i­eties expressed by the spectators over Hamanushi’s abilities remind us of the unpre­ce­dented nature of this event. Only ­a fter he demonstrates his vigor is he allowed to proceed to the presence of the ruler. 12. Katata (1991, 142–144). 13. On the concept of an “economy of virtue” in early Japa­nese statecraft, see Abe (1999, 313–314) and Ōmuro (1981). 14. Mo­rita (2010, 2:164). 15. Although he does not suggest Hamanushi’s dance is directly connected to the Shikisanban, Kanai Kiyomitsu (1969, 16) treats it as perhaps the dawn of a long tradition of felicitous dances performed by elders. 16. Neither Zeami nor Zenchiku saw fit to include Hamanushi in their histories of okina sarugaku, perhaps b ­ ecause the symbolism of the aged body in the case of Hamanushi provided more contrasts with the Shikisanban than continuities. 17. What might be taken as the earliest mention of the Fushimi no Okina appears in the Sanbō ekotoba, but only in the less reliable manuscripts, and only in the highly suspect sentence that also refers to a “Konomoto no Okina.” See chapter 5, note 48. 18. This cluster of legends has been referred to as “the eye opening of the three saints,” Gyōki, Bodhisena, and Shōmu tennō. The “eye opening” is the ceremony to animate the ­great Buddha of Tōdaiji (Mizuhara 1979, 424). 19. Horiike (1995, 54–57). Variants of this legend have Bodhisena traveling first to Mount Wutai in search of Mañjuśrī echoing the legend of Buddhapāla described in Ennin’s diary. But

Notes to Pages 123–129   187 unlike ­t hose tales, their Japa­nese retellings have Bodhisena encountering an old man who directs him to Japan, where he encounters Gyōki, whom they identified as an avatar of Mañjuśrī. ­These variants sought to establish Japan as a Buddhist nation on par with China. 20. Tsutsui (2003, 54–56). 21. Abe (2011, 246–247). Koma no Chikazane’s (1177–1242) Kyōkunshō explic­itly pres­ents this tale as the origin of the Dance of the Bodhisattva. 22. Tenpyō 18 (746), 7 (KT 12:96). 23. GR (19:32a); NST (23:78). 24. KT (31:224–225); KK (50:250–251). 25. Asami (1997, 302). 26. The Konparu troupe sings “dō dō,” the Kanze troupe sings “tō tō,” and the Hōshō troupe sings “tō dō” (Amano 1995, 77, 81). 27. It is unclear which elder was blind and which could not stand (GR 19:31b–32a; discussed in Abe 2011, 256n10). A variant appears in the thirteenth-­century Kyōkunshō. 28. My analy­sis follows Catherine Bell’s observation (1992, 88–93, see also 140) that what defines ritual is not some static set of criteria, but pro­cesses of “ritualization” that seek to distinguish certain actions and per­for­mances from their more mundane analogues in order to fulfill socially strategic purposes. 29. In the Edo period, e­ very daylong program of Noh began with the Shikisanban (Hare 1986, 67). Okina also forms part of the repertoire of Kabuki and puppet theater. 30. For a detailed synopsis of a Shikisanban per­for­mance, see Pinnington (1998). 31. Umehara et al. (2013, 1:22). 32. For a discussion of the connections between the ritual theater of the jushi and the Okina dance, see Amano (1995, esp. 55–75). 33. The demons represent Binayakas (Sk. Vināyakas), personifications of obstructions to the Dharma (Matsuoka 2000, 227). 34. Omote (1983). 35. Matsuoka (2000, 224–225). Concurrently, other sarugaku troupes began to perform Okina in smaller shrine ­temple complexes around Japan. 36. DNK (13:30); Glassman (2012, 53). 37. In the Tōnomine ryakki, for instance, Zōga encounters an aged sennin (revealed to be Vimalakirti) who guides him to Tōnomine (DNBZ 118:492a). 38. Pinnington (1998, 499–500). 39. The fact that the author of this text sought to explain the per­for­mance in terms of the Lotus Sutra demonstrates that the earliest impulse was to see it as a vehicle for Buddhist truths. It was only in the late medieval period that Shintō readings emerged (Pinnington 1998, 512–516). 40. Pinnington (2006, 207–213). 41. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 31–32). 42. Ibid., 35–36. 43. Ibid., 34–35. 4 4. ­There is disagreement over this. Pinnington (2006, 226n573) raises serious doubts about the existence of a Shukushin cult among sarugaku performers. 45. The episode is, in fact, related by Zeami’s son Motoyoshi, in the Sarugaku dangi, a rec­ ord of Zeami’s lectures on Noh. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 224). 46. Osa was written with the character 長 (long), indicating old age in many Sino-­Japanese compounds.

188   Notes to Pages 129–132 47. Nearman (1980, 169). 48. Zenchiku, however, in his promotion of the Shikisanban, seems to have sought to ­revive the authority of the osa (Pinnington 2006, 207). 49. Adapted from Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 9). 50. Brown (2001, 26). 51. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, xli, 261). 52. Yuasa (1977, 124, 130); Yuasa (1987, 99–109). 53. Yuasa (1977, 130–131). For an alternate translation, see Yuasa (1987, 104–105). 54. NST (24:15–20). 55. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 131); NST (24:16, 187). 56. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 23). Zeami wrote that the first flower faded at the age of seventeen or eigh­teen, at which point one entered a phase of awkward adolescence. 57. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 6); NST (24:17). 58. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 132). 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 57. NST (24:59). 61. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 9). 62. Or, “exercised restraint” (mi wo oshimite) (NST 24:85). 63. Kokoro wo jubun ni ugokashite, mi wo shichibu ni ugokase (ibid., 84–85). Elsewhere this motto is abbreviated: shinshichibundō 身七分動 (ibid., 107): “When you feel ten in your heart, express seven in your movements” (Rimer and Yamazaki 1984, 75). 64. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 46–47, 93–94). 65. NST (24:106). Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 106). 66. Rimer and Yamazaki’s translation of ushufū as “internalization” seems apt. 67. Swanson (1989, 15). See also Sharf (2002, 124–125). 68. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 117). The occasion for the quotation is his reflection on a poem by Fujiwara no Teika that seems, on the surface, to be nothing special but is inexplicably moving. Zeami attributes this to myō. 69. Ibid., 120. 70. Ibid., 117; NST (24:166). See also Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 98–99); NST (24:101). 71. He likens an audience’s experience of myō to the amazement of ­t hose witnessing Amaterasu emerge from her rock cave to illuminate the world (NST 24:188–189; Rimer and Yamazaki 1984, 132–134). 72. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 179). 73. NST (24:264–265). 74. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 180). 75. Nearman (1980, 157). 76. Ibid., 176. 77. “Even a­ fter forty he could act convincingly in the style of a youth” (Rimer and Yamazaki 1984, 57). 78. Not ­every aged actor could possess the true flower, let alone achieve myō; although not universally beautiful, old bodies had the potential to reveal surprising hidden depths and produce the effect of a flower on a withered branch (rōkotsu ni nokorishi hana), a flower that did not fade although the physical body grew frail (NST 24:20). 79. They ­were thus grouped u ­ nder the rubric of “category one,” in the five-­part taxonomy developed in the Edo period (Brown 2001, 21–22).

Notes to Pages 132–138   189 80. I am following Steven Brown’s (2001, 21) translation of shūgen. For an overview of the major Waki Noh, see Ienaga (1984, 105–110). 81. NST (24:41). 82. Aristocrats likely clung to nostalgic visions of the realm as it had been ­u nder the ritsuryō regime, but warriors would prob­ably have hoped to see the realm portrayed in a way that accommodated their role. 83. Thus he asserts that Waki Noh using nyotai should still follow the rōtai sequence (Rimer and Yamazaki 1984, 152). 84. NST (24:22). 85. For instance, Zeami once witnessed Kiami perform the role of an old man bemoaning his loss of sexual attractiveness (Rimer and Yamazaki 1984, 175). 86. NKBT (65:505). Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 199). 87. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 225). 88. The kusa awase, literally “grass comparing contest,” held on the fifth day of the fifth month, appears to have involved some sort of debate (NKBT 26:112). This is perhaps the origin of a legend in which Zōga appears in similarly ridicu­lous accoutrements. 89. The libretto of the Okina play contains fragments of a sexual poem, hinting that certain strands of this tradition extended back to similarly bawdy ritual per­for­mances used to call forth the fertility of the land. 90. My translation of rōtai as “aged mode” follows Thomas Hare (1986). 91. Ibid. 92. See Omoto (2010, 201–219); Yokota-­Murakami (1997, 21–84). 93. Although he sought to soften his demons as well, Zeami allowed them to be performed with frightening frenetic energy (Matsuoka 2013, 514–545; see also Oda 1983). 94. Kumazawa (1970, 7). Yokota-­Murakami (1997, 96–97). 95. McCullough (1985, 214). 96. Kumazawa (1970, 10b). 97. Ibid., 11b. It is unclear ­whether or not Zeami or Kan’ami w ­ ere aware of the full context of the Fushimi no Okina legends. But a Konparu-­lineage text stored in Hōzanji, entitled “Fushimi Okina,” reproduces the Genkō shakusho version of the legend (ibid.). 98. Katagiri (1986, 5:551). 99. Although the Kinsatsu shrine existed at the time the play was written, t­ here is no historical basis for linking it to Kanmu. 100. Tyler (1978, 22). 101. The bow’s name is an elegant pun (kakekotoba), combining the phrases tsuki yumi (an unvarnished, zelkova bow) and shinnyo no tsuki (the moon of suchness). 102. This resembles the rhe­toric of the play Yumi yawata, featuring Hachiman, a god of war, who declares that since the realm is governed by a virtuous ruler, ­t here is no longer any need for weapons. See Bender (1978). 103. Nonomura (1928, 672a). 104. Another esoteric treatise, the Kokin waka kanjō no maki, contains the only other reference to Kazehae, describing him transmitting six “esoteric” poems from the Kokinshū, including Izakokoni, to Narihira at Ise (Kumazawa 1970, 12). 105. Nonomura (1928, 672c). 106. Nishino and Haneda (2011, 137b). ­Today Fushimi features a Kamimai—­a youthful dance that is nonetheless more in keeping with the gentle rhythms of the rōtai. “The shift from

190   Notes to Pages 138–142 the vigorous, mimetic hataraki to the dignified, abstract kamimai is one of Zeami’s major contributions to the successful establishment of Nō as a fine art” (Yokota-­Murakami 1997, 25). Another of Zeami’s innovations was to alter plays with female protagonists such as Sotoba Komachi, excluding them from the canon of god plays (ibid., 15). 107. Ibid., 96–97. 108. Omoto (2010, 201–219). 109. Kanai (1970, 57a, 62b) accounts for some of the differences between Kinsatsu and Fushimi by noting that, unlike Zeami, Kan’ami had to pass the Kinsatsu shrine when commuting from his home base in Yamato to the Heian capital, thus requiring that he appease its gods and the clan that oversaw the shrine. In Kinsatsu, Kan’ami was able to skillfully weave together ele­ments that allowed dif­fer­ent audience members to see their social roles reflected positively on stage. Aristocrats would have seen its depiction of the establishment of the glorious Heian capital reaffirming the value of the royal and courtly tradition. The Ashikaga might have seen themselves reflected in the protective dance of the bow-­w ielding god. The ­great shrine ­under construction in the play, referred to as the daigū, might have carried a double meaning. Amano (2007, 100, 131–138, esp. 134) notes that Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s palace, which was ­u nder construction when Kinsatsu was first presented, was also referred to as daigū, meaning that the act of cosmogony symbolized by the establishment of a capital might also have been read as celebrating the pacification of the realm by the Ashikaga. 110. The desire of an elder to return to youth could give rise to two contradictory forms of pathos: one tragic and one comic. Zeami emphatically sought to eliminate the latter from his art in ­favor of the former. 111. Rimer and Yamazaki (1984, 55–56); NST (24:58). 112. Often it was unresolved trauma that kept the aged protagonist attached to this world, unable to move on to the next, a theme typical of “category two,” or warrior plays. Drawing upon the laments of classical poetry, t­ hese plays often exhibited a tension between the courtly values embedded in t­ hese literary sources and the immanentist strains of Buddhist discourse—­ also taken up assiduously in Noh—­t hat celebrated phenomenal existence. 113. Goff (1991, 150–151, 158–159). 114. Yugyō yanagi follows this pattern (NKBT 41:122–128). 115. Kawashima (2001, 134–136). 116. Tyler (1992, 232). 117. Keene (1955, 267). 118. Adapted from ibid. NKBT (40:85). 119. Translated in Kawashima (2001, 306–321). 120. Ibid., 307n26. 121. Ibid., 317. 122. One of the most influential proponents of this notion was, of course, Kūkai. See Abe (1999, 281–282). 123. Susan Klein (2006, 239) notes that in medieval religious culture, bonnō soku bodai implied not only an equation between passion and enlightenment, but that “passion is the necessary flipside to enlightenment.” 124. See Klein (2002, 198–199). See also See Yokota-­Murakami (1997, 27–26). 125. See Klein (2002, 202–204). 126. Ibid., 2­ 04.

Notes to Pages 142–147   191 127. Tameaki-­a ffiliated treatises identified Shōkannon, one of Kannon’s six forms, as Tamatsushima’s honji. Komachi was also said to be an incarnation of Shōkannon, supporting the notion that Komachi was meant to be seen as an avatar of Tamatsushima Myōjin. 128. Gardner (1992). 129. Wakita (2005, ix, 203–227); Kurushima (2013, 20a); Tyler (1992, 226). 130. NKBT (40:281). 131. Ibid., 285–286.

Conclusion 1. On religion’s role in producing naturalized images of the body, see LaFleur (1998, 37–40). 2. John Traphagan (2000, 6–7) has shown that in con­temporary Japan anx­i­eties over aging often center on the folk medical category of boke (senility), which he describes as a disintegration of habitus—­the mimetically acquired sense of appropriate be­hav­iors necessary for maintaining social viability. While some of the elders we have examined, especially in early Japan, expressed similar fears to t­ hose of Traphagan’s in­for­mants, many clearly maintained enough of a sense of the “rules of the game” to be able to use their perceived eccentricity strategically to advance their own interests. 3. On fields of power, see Bourdieu (1993, 14, 37–38). 4. ­Here again I follow Bourdieu, who, like Weber, saw the social world as “an infinite manifold of causal interdependencies” and insisted that we “attempt to track multiple lines and levels of causation to what­ever extent is practically pos­si­ble.” Gorski (2013, 356). 5. On the manipulation of ritsuryō institutions by cloistered emperors, see Hurst (1976, 110–150).

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Index

Abe Yasurō 阿部泰郎, 64, 69, 123, 165n29 aged body: as asocial, 2, 35, 39; association with “exotic” spaces, 1, 34, 84, 90, 102, 114; as “good to think with,” xi, 5, 18–19, 99–100; as object of derision, 2, 11–12, 25, 27–28, 62, 133–135; and pollution, 39, 42, 44–45, 53–54, 57–63, 69–70; as symbol of divine/otherworldly power, 74, 91, 95–100, 106, 109, 118, 138; as symbol of mappō, 54, 58; as symbol of margins, xiii, 18–21, 95, 102, 105; as symbol of samsara, xiii–xix, 42, 106; as symbol of submission, 9–10; as ugly (minikui 醜), 2, 11–12, 46, 49, 68, 140–142. See also aged body, distinguishing marks; aged body, Zeami’s writings on; old age aged body (rōtai 老体), Zeami’s writings on: as source of pathos, 138–143; as template for Noh performance, ix, 118, 132–135, 139. See also Zeami, theoretical works of aged body, distinguishing marks: bent back (or oikagamaru 老い屈まる), xii, 34, 69–71, 133, 168n17; drooping eyebrows, 102, 116; farsightedness (rōgan 老眼), xii, 133–134; hoarseness (oikagaru 老い がる), xii; impotence/sterility, 10–11, 15, 61–62, 155n26; loss of mental acuity or “vagueness” (oibore 老い耄れ), xiii, 69; mizuha 瑞歯 or 稚歯, 60; pursed lips, 2; sickness (or rōbyō 老病), 23–25, 30, 39, 54; weakness (rōsui or oisui 老衰, or depleted ki 気), xii, 10, 23, 17, 69; wrinkles (or oi no nami 老いの波), 2, 10, 15, 30, 60–61, 68, 102. See also hair

Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神, 6, 10, 128, 136–137, 188n71 Amida Nyorai 阿弥陀如来, xiii, 41, 51, 172n10, 183n64; and nenbutsu 念仏, 66, 161n43 ancestors: Confucian-style rites (sekiten or shakuten 釈奠) for, 111; legitimating function of, 6–8, 102, 111, 115–116, 126. See also ancestors, imperial ancestors, imperial, 5–8, 11–12; beauty of, 12–13; longevity of, 13–14, 162n60 Ariwara no Narihira 在原業平, 112–115, 137, 142, 144 Ashinazuchi (Foot Stroking Elder) 脚摩乳, 8, 16 Atago, Mount 愛宕山, 57, 66, 170n58 Avalokiteśvara. See Kannon Bosatsu avatars. See gods, categories of; keshin Bai Juyi. See Bo Juyi bessho 別所, 57, 64, 70, 168n16 Biwa, Lake 琵琶湖, 35, 90; estates proximate to, 92–93, 179n97; and fisheries (mikuri 御厨), 87, 94, 176n65; and fishing, 92–95, 178n85; and Tuṣita heaven (J. Tosotsu ten), 82–83; temples proximate to, 75, 86–88, 91–92, 94 bodhisattvas: definitions of, 171n1, 172n9; as elders, 74, 79, 97, 172n8, 173n21; glorified bodies of, 47; identification with historical or literary figures, 122, 139, 173nn17–18; “localized,” 79–80; taking anomalous forms, 76–77; taking human form, 75–76, 78; as youths, 74, 76–77. See also honji suijaku; and names of specific bodhisattvas

209

210  Index Bodhisena, 122–125 Bo Juyi 白居易, a.k.a. Hakurakuten 白楽天, xvi, 35–36, 110, 115, 141; Shōshikai of, 36, 38, 184n86; works of: Hai manman 海漫漫 (“Boundless Sea”), 177n77; Lan jing xi lao 覽鏡喜老 (“Looking in the Mirror and Rejoicing in Old Age”), 36; Maitan weng 売炭翁 (“Old Charcoal Seller”), 115; Pipa xing 琵琶行 (“Lute Song”), 141; xinyuefu 新楽府 (“New Ballads”), 177n75 boundaries/liminal spaces: between center and periphery, 7; between land and sea, 8; crossroads (chimata 岐), 43–45; between world and underworld, 8, 46. See also spatial/geographic imaginaries Bourdieu, Pierre, xvii, 147, 167n2. See also capital, symbolic forms of; habitus buddhas: “localized,” 79–80; major and minor marks of, 77, 83; representations of, 74–78, 97–98; three bodies of (sanshin 三身, Sk. trikāya: “Dharma body,” hosshin 法身, Sk. dharmakāya; “reward body” hōjin 報身, Sk. sambhogakāya; “response body,” ōjin 応身, Sk. nirmāṇakāya), 75–76, 78; and visualization, 70, 75, 77–78, 172n10. See also honji suijaku; honzon; keshin Buddhism: “anti-institutional,” 65; diversity within, xviii–xix; Mahāyāna, 40, 75–77; and royal authority, x, 51, 57, 69, 105; and Shintō, xviii, 97; Zen, 129–131. See also Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism; shinbutsu shūgō Buddhist literature, xv–xvi, 77; explanatory tales (setsuwa 説話), 53, 66, 69, 81–82; hagiographies (den 伝), 42, 59–61, 64–67, 77; miracle tales (genki or kenki 験記), 58, 77; origin accounts (engi 縁起), 75, 79–80, 104–105, 116, 123; tales of rebirth (ōjōden 往生伝), 42, 59; travel diaries (kikō 紀行), 35, 51. See also engi, early vs. medieval; legends Buddhist ordination, 40, 98; mass ordination (do 度), 26; platform for, 100, 103. See also retirement, Buddhist Bynum, Caroline, 99

capital, symbolic forms of (cultural and social), xvii, 23, 46, 66–67, 105, 119, 147; honzon 本尊 as source of, 80; and knowledge, 109, 113, 115–117, 146 capitals (miyako 都 or 京): as center, x–xi, 1, 6, 49–50; Fujiwara-kyō 藤原京, 32, 50; Fukuhara-kyō 福原京, 50–51; and generative/revivifying powers, 22, 32–34; purity of, 39–40, 40, 43; Heian-kyō 平安 京, 33–34, 50, 137; Heijō-kyō 平城京 (Nara 奈良), 31–33, 50. See also under immortal realms center: as heavenly/sacred (e.g. seichō 聖朝), 24; as pure, 40; as life-giving, 20, 22, 32; challenges to, 54, 56–57, 146. See also capitals; spatial/geographic imaginaries chiji 致仕, 21–26; of Ushi, Kimi of Morogata 諸縣君牛, 21–22 Chinese sources: influence of, xvi, 6–7, 13, 16–17, 23, 29, 31–33, 35–36, 116, 181n39, 184n86; of naturalist/medical knowledge, x, xiii, 6, 10–11, 22, 39; zhiguai 志怪 (anomaly accounts), 77; Zhuang-Lao thought 荘老思想, 36, 49, 158n71, 177n73. See also immortality practices Confucianism, x, 16, 20, 111, 177n75 Daianji bodai denraiki 大安寺菩提伝来記, 122–123 Daigoji 醍醐寺, 183n65; in Daigoji engi 醍 醐寺縁起, 104; in Daigo konpon sōjō ryakuden 醍醐根本僧正略伝, 104 Daijō honjō shinji kangyō 大乗本生心地観 経 (T no. 159), 74, 83 dance, ceremonial: Bodaimai 菩提舞 (or Bosatsumai 菩薩舞), 123, 126; Jittenraku 十天楽, 123, 126; of longevity (chōjuraku 長寿楽), 121–122 dance in Noh: Hataraki 働, 137; Kamimai 神舞, 189n106; Shinnojo-no-mai 真ノ序 ノ舞, 138; of shirabyōshi 白拍子, 143; in Waki Noh 脇能, 132–133. See also Shikisanban dance of old men, ix, 120–123, 125

Index  211 datsueba 奪衣婆, 39, 45–47 demographics, xx, 156n46; kōreikashakai 高齢化社会 (“aging society”) and, 153n38 demons. See datsueba; under Noh; ōna Dharma protectors (gohō). See under gods, categories of Dōmyō 道明, 44–45, 168n24 dōsojin 道祖神 ( funado or kunado no kami 岐神, sae or sai no kami 障の神 or 塞の 神), 39, 43–45, 47, 58–59 dreams/visions: of buddhas, 75, 107–108; of gods, 107–108, 112; of keshin, 78; of Hitomaro, 110–111; of mysterious old men, 108; role in honj suijaku thought, 107–109 early/classical Japan (kodai 古代 ca. 500–1050), x–xi, and court-centric ideologies, 18–19, 20–21, 29, 69, 72, 117, 146. See also regency and regency period; ritsuryō state; tennō earthly deities (or earth gods, kunitsukami 国神 or 国津神), 7–13, 16, 22, 91, 105, 180n14; at boundaries and margins, 5, 7–8; elevation to heavenly status, 154n7 elders (e.g. chōrō 長老, furuokina or korō 古老, kikyū 耆旧, rōfu 老父, rōjin 老人, rōō 老翁): as liminal beings, xiv; as source of oral traditions, 84, 172n14, 175n8. See also old age; okina; ōna elixirs: okera (or hakuchi 白朮), 16; sweet springs (美泉), 16–17, 33, 57; Tenmu’s use of, 17 Enchin 円珍, a.k.a. Chishō Daishi 智証大師, 81–82, 100–103; in Chishō daishiden 智 証大師伝, 101; Gyōrekishō 行歴抄, 101; and Onjōji/Jimon lineage, 81, 100; and Shinra Myōjin, 100–102 engi 縁起, early vs. medieval, 80, 105. See also under Buddhist literature Ennin 円仁, 81, 101, 103 En no Gyōja 役行者, a.k.a. E no Ozuno 役小角, 67–68

Enryakuji 延暦寺, 69, 101; criticism of, 56–57, 64, 66. See also Onjōji: relations with Enryakuji; Ryōgen; Sanmon; Tendai Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism, 76, 100, 113, 115, 129, 142; and gojisō 護持僧, 106; Tachikawa lineage 立川流, 113, 142. See also Shingon; Tendai: Taimitsu esoteric literary treatises, 110, 113. See also under Noh estates. See shōen fish, 81, 83, 94; in premodern Japanese economy, 87–88; as tribute (nie 贄), 87–88. See also okina: fish-bearing fishing communities, 86–89, 91–95. See also Biwa, Lake: and fisheries flower: of poetry, 141; on an ancient tree (oiki no hana 老木の花), ix. See also Flower, Zeami’s concept of Flower (hana 花), Zeami’s concept of, ix; jibun no hana 時分の花 (or yōka 用花), 129; kyakuraika 却来華, 132; makoto no hana 真の花 (or shōka 性花), 129–130 Formanek, Susanne, 153n38, 154n6, 156n37, 156n46 fudoki 風土記 (gazetteers), 5, 9, 96, 172n14; portrayal of non-Yamato people, 156n41 Fujiwara clan 藤原氏, 17, 60; Northern House (hokke 北家), 51, 55, 70, 116; Southern House (nanke 南家), 116; regents’ branch (sekkanke 摂関家), 25, 55 Fujiwara no Akisue 藤原顕季, 110–112, 115–116 Fujiwara no Akisuke 藤原顕輔, 110 Fujiwara no Atsumitsu 藤原敦光, 110, 115–116 Fujiwara no Fuhito 藤原不比等, 17–18, 158n71 Fujiwara no Junshi 藤原遵子, 65 Fujiwara no Kanefusa 藤原兼房, 110–112; in Jikkinshō 十訓抄, 111 Fujiwara no Koretada (alt. Koremasa) 藤原 伊尹, 64–65 Fujiwara no Michinaga 藤原道長, 27, 171n82 Fujiwara no Morosuke 藤原師輔, 63–64

212  Index Fujiwara no Mototsune 藤原基経, 24 Fujiwara no Munetada 藤原宗忠, 38, 117 Fujiwara no Sanenori 藤原実範, 81–83, 89, 116, 146, 174n30, 178n80 Fujiwara no Senshi (alt. Akiko) 藤原詮子, 60, 65 Fujiwara no Shunzei 藤原俊成, 90–91, 104 Fujiwara no Tadamichi 藤原忠通, 111, 115 Fujiwara no Takamitsu 藤原高光, 64, 170n60 Fujiwara no Tameaki 藤原為顕, 112–115, 136, 142, 146 Fujiwara no Yoritada 藤原頼忠, a.k.a. Sanjō no Kanpaku Daijō Daijin三条関白太政 大臣, 65 Fujiwara no Yoshifusa 藤原良房, 24–26, 28–29, 38 fujō 不浄 (filth): and pollution, 40; and preaching ( fujō seppō 不浄説法), 42. See also pollution Fukutō Sanae 服藤早苗, xiii, 98 Fushimi no Okina 伏見翁 (alt. 伏見老翁), a.k.a. Yamato no Kunimi 大倭国看, 122–125, 136–137; purported reference to in Sanbō ekotoba (mistranscribed as 深身老), 186n17 Fusō ryakki 扶桑略記, 107, 123–124 gender: in Buddhist didacticism, 47; of gods, 9–10, 98–100; theories of (gender studies), xvii, xxi. See also ōna Genji monogatari 源氏物語, 1–2, 139–141, 161n47 Genkō shakusho 元亨釈書, 82, 107, 124–125 Genshin 源信, 41–42, 56, 65; Ōjōyōshū 往生 要集, 41 Genshō 元正 (Empress), 57, 157n57; progress to Mino province 美濃国, 16–18, 57 gods: as ancestors, 6, 12, 115, 156n46; as elders/okina, ix–x, xvi, 97–98, 105, 119, 128, 179n2; formless/invisible, 96–97, 104, 154n3; medieval, 97, 100; in Noh, 119, 132–133; shifting representations (“graying”) of, xii, 7, 96, 180n6; within samsara, 44. See also gods, categories of

gods, categories of: avatar (gongen 権現), 179n2; “bright deity”( myōjin 明神) or “great bright deity” (daimyōjin 大明神), 100, 179n2; clan gods (ujigami 氏神), 102; Dharma protectors (gohō 護法, gohōjin 護法神), 45, 97, 99, 100–102; disease (ekijin 疫神), 43–45; tutelary/ local (jishu 地主, jishujin or jinushigami 地主神, jigami or jijin 地神), 7, 9, 13, 96–101, 104–107, 109. See also earthly deities; heavenly deities; kami; okina; and names of individual deities Gyōki 行基, 122–124, 173n17, 175n44, 186n19 Gyokuden jinpi no maki 玉伝深秘巻, 113–114, 136–137 habitus, xvii; and old age, xxi, 191n2 Hachiman Daibosatsu 八幡大菩薩, 96, 107; encounter with Ōga no Higi 大神比義, 182n64 hair: gray or white (“frosted temples” hakubin 白鬢 or 白鬂), xvi, 10, 15; as index of fertility or sterility, 14–15; as index of youth or old age, xii, xvi; loss of (baldness) or thinning, 10, 36, 161n44 Hakusan (alt. Shirayama) 白山, 96, 107 Hasedera 長谷寺, 104–105 Hata no Motoyoshi 秦元能, a.k.a. Kanze Motoyoshi 観世元能, 131; Sarugaku dangi 申楽談儀, 131, 141 Hayami Tasuku 速水侑, 27, 71 heavenly deities (amatsukami 天神 or 天津 神), 6–13 Heike monogatari 平家物語: and biwa hōshi 琵琶法師, 70; Enkyōbon or Enkeibon 延 慶本, 68–70; Genpeijosuiki 源平盛衰記, 82; Kakuichibon 覚一本, 82 Hiei, Mount 比叡山. See Enryakuji hijiri 聖, 57. See also Lotus Sutra: devotees of Hiko-hoho-demi no Mikoto 彦火火出見尊, 2, 8–9, 12 Hira Myōjin 比良明神, 84–86, 96, 104 Hitomaro. See Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Hitomaro eigu 人麻呂影供 (or Kakinomoto eigu), 110–112

Index  213 hōben 方便 (“skillful means,” Sk. upāya), 76, 143, 172n9. See also under Lotus Sutra Hōjōki 方丈記, 49–51 Hokke genki 法華験記 (Dai Nihonkoku Hokkekyō genki 大日本国法華経験記), 43–47, 56–60, 66–68, 72 hokke hijiri. See Lotus Sutra: devotees of Honchō monzui 本朝文粋, 23 Honchō shinsenden 本朝神仙伝, 81–82, 106–107, 109 Honchō zoku monzui 本朝続文粋, 23 honji suijaku 本地垂迹, xviii, 105–106, 112–114; revelation of honji, 69, 106–109, 114; wakō dōjin 和光同塵, 106 honzon 本尊, 75, 78–80, 105, 107–108; Hitomaro portrait as, 110–111; of Onjōji, 81, 93–95; of Tōdaiji, 122–124. See also icons Hosshinshū 発心集, 61–62 Hyūga province 日向国, 7, 11, 21, 159n12 ichininmae 一人前 (normative human form), xiv, 77–78 icons, 43, 45; Buddhist, 74–80; as emblems of collective identity, 80, 93, 95, 101; shintai 神体, 44; shinzō 神像, 102, 116, 162n61; tōshin 等身 (replicating historical Buddha), 41. See also honzon identity, collective, xi, 99; divine beings as symbols of, 7, 13, 80, 82, 93, 99, 101–102, 116; of marginalized groups, 91, 93–95 immanentist theories of salvation, 47, 58–59, 61, 141 immortality, 18, 33, 115; symbols of, peaches, 33; pine trees, 143, 162n66; tachibana 橘 (“seasonless fragrant tree”), 162n62; tortoises, 32. See also immortality practices immortality practices (Daoist-style), 57–58, 68, 71. See also elixirs; longevity immortal realms (Kunlun (J. Konron) 崑崙, Penglai (J. Hōrai 蓬莱), Tokoyo (常世): capital or palace likened to, xi, 32–33; mountains (Katsuragi 葛城山, Yoshino 吉野, etc.) likened to, 31–32

immortals (Ch. xian 仙 J. shinsen 神仙 or sennin 仙人), xvi, 15, 37, 71, 78, 136; portrayed as elders, 68, 71, 182n49; portrayed as youths, xii, xvi, 152n28 Insei 院政 period (ca. 1050–1185), 27, 55; and royal authority, 71, 116. See also retired emperors Ise monogatari 伊勢物語, 113–115, 120 ishigami 石神 (stone gods). See dōsojin Ishiyama-dera 石山寺, 75, 84, 86, 108; relations with fishing communities, 88, 94 Ishiyama-dera engi emaki 石山寺縁起絵巻, 85, 88–89, 107–109 Iwa-no-hime 磐之媛, 30–31 Izanagi 伊弉諾 and Izanami 伊弉冉, 10, 136–137 jikyōsha. See Lotus Sutra: devotees of Jimon denki horoku 寺門伝記補録, 80, 82–83, 95, 101–103 Jimon lineage 寺門派, 81, 93–94, 100–102, 104 Jinmu 神武 (Emperor), 6, 8–11, 13–14, 124 jinnin (alt. jinin) 神人 (shrine/temple menials), xv, 87–88 Jinzen 尋禅, 63–64 Jitō 持統 (Empress), 18, 115 Jitokushū 寺徳衆, 103 Jizō Bosatsu 地蔵菩薩 (Sk. Kṣitigarbha), 45–46, 79 Jōkei 貞慶, 127 jushi (alt. sushi, shushi) 呪師, 126–127; jushi no hashiri 呪師走り, 127 Kagami-yama 鏡山 (Mirror Mountain), 35 Kaifūsō 懐風藻, 29–30, 33, 166n2 Kakinomoto eigu. See Hitomaro eigu Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 柿本人麻呂, 32, 50, 110–115 kami 神: as native or “Shintō” deities, xviii, 97–98; as local and immigrant deities, 97; “in human form” (arahitogami 現人 神), 112. See also earthly deities; gods, categories of; heavenly deities

214  Index Kaminaga-hime 髪長媛, 21–22 Kamo no Chōmei 鴨長明, 49–51 Kan’ami 観阿弥, 119, 131–132, 135–138, 140, 142; performance at Imakumano shrine 今熊野神社, 128–129 kanjō uta 灌頂歌, 136 Kanmu 桓武 (Emperor), 136–137 Kannon Bosatsu 観音菩薩 (Sk. Avalokiteśvara), 45–47, 76–77, 79, 172n15; Batō Kannon 馬頭観音, 77; as elder, 171n1, 173n21; Nyoirin Kannon 如 意輪観音, 85; Shōkannon 聖観音, 191n27 kanshi 漢詩 (poetry in Chinese): on exotic subject matter, 90, 178n80; post-eleventh century, 90, 141; prior to eleventh century, 29, 31 Kasuga Daimyōjin 春日大明神, a.k.a. Kasuga Gongen 春日権現, 96, 107, 181n35, 183n70 Kasuga gongen genki e 春日権現験記絵, 107, 127 Kasuga Taisha 春日大社 (Kasuga-Kōfukuji complex), 118, 126–127, 183n64 Kawara-no-in 河原院, 114, 162n69 kegare. See pollution Keitai 継体 (Emperor), 14–15 Ke’nin Kōshi 化人講師, a.k.a. Saba Okina 鯖翁, Saba-uri Okina 売鯖翁, 84, 125, 175nn48–49 Kenshō 顕昭, 136–137; Kokinshūchū 古今集註, 136 keshin 化身 (“transformation bodies,” also hengeshin 変化身 or ke’nin 化人), 78–81, 136, 175n45; as one of “four bodies” (shishin 四身), 172n16; evolving descriptions of, 78. See also honji suijaku ki 気 (Ch. qi), 10, 17, 155n26 Kibi no Makibi 吉備真備, 23–24 kikō 紀行, xv–xvi, 35, 51 Kim Hyŏn-uk 金賢旭, x, xvi, 13, 103 Kiyomizu-dera 清水寺, 79 Kōfukuji 興福寺, 63, 66, 81, 94, 100, 169n53. See also Kasuga Taisha Kogo shūi 古語拾遺, 7

Kojiki 古事記, 5–7; Nihon shoki’s divergence from, 15–16, 157n56; presentation of non-Yamato people, 13 Kokin wakashū (Kokinshū) 古今和歌集, 29–30, 35, 113, 120, 136, 140, 142 Kokonchomonjū 古今著聞集, 82, 110 Kōnin 光仁 (Emperor), 23–24 Konjaku monogatarishū 今昔物語集, 45–46, 61, 65, 79, 82–83, 135 Konomoto no Okina (此本老 or コノモトノ 翁), a.k.a. 翁爰本, 175n48. See also Ke’nin Kōshi Konparu Zenchiku 金春禅竹, 118–119, 128, 142, 144; Meishukushū 明宿集, 118, 128 Korea: Paekche, 9, 155n26; Silla, 100–101, 103; as source of knowledge, 6, 97, 155n26; as source of okina legends, xvi, 180n9 Kōya, Mount 高野山, 57, 95, 179n98 Kuji hongi 旧事本紀 (Sendai kuji hongi 先代 旧事本紀), 7 Kujō-ke Onjōji engi 九条家園城寺縁起, 93 Kumano 熊野, 43, 45, 57, 96 Kyōkunshō 教訓抄, 124 Kyōtai 教待, a.k.a. Kyōtai Sennin, 74–75, 80–83, 88–89, 91, 93–95; mitamaya 廟 (shrine) to, 82 legends: and borrowed narrative elements, 84, 103–104; collective authorship of, 78–82, 95, 109; and continental influence, xvi, 35, 78; and legitimation, 12, 110–112, 125–126; and oral traditions, 77–78, 84, 109, 117; social positioning of sources, xx, 53–54, 64–65, 70, 72, 74–75, 99, 116–117, 146. See also Buddhist literature; myths or “kami tales” liminality: and social marginality, xiii–xiv; variable meanings of, xiv, 99. See also boundaries/liminal spaces literati, 29, 32; in dialogue with continental sources, xvi, 35–36, 49; role in development of myths and legends, xv, 97, 109, 146; scholar-poets (bunjin 文人), 115–116. See also names of specific literati

Index  215 longevity: “ageless” (chūrōenmei 駐老延命), 180n20; dance of (chōjuraku 長寿楽), 121–122; in mythic past (e.g. Ch. shanggu 上古), 54; and Noh, 118, 120, 132; retirement and, 23–24; and royal authority, 16–18, 71–72; songs/prayers/ felicitations (hokai 賀, 壽, 祝 or shūgen 祝言) for, 29, 121, 132. See also immortality; ritual: of longevity; Shōshikai Lotus Sutra (Myōhōrengekyō 妙法蓮華経 or Hokkekyō 法華経, T no. 262), 41, 43–46; devotees of (hokke hijiri 法華聖 or jikyōsha 持経者), 45, 56–57; Juryōbon 寿 量品 (Chapter on Fathoming the Lifespan of the Tathāgata), 164n11; Hōbenbon 方便品 (Chapter on Skillful Means), 167n3 Maitreya (Miroku Bosatsu 弥勒菩薩, a.k.a. Jison 慈尊), 74, 81–83; Hōkei Miroku 宝 髻弥勒, 171n2. See also Kyōtai Manjuśrī (Monju Bosatsu 文殊菩薩), 127, 172n8, 173n21, 181n39, 186n19. See also Gyōki Man’yōshū 万葉集, 15, 29–33, 92, 112 mappō 末法, xi, 56; as “defiled age” or “age of five defilements” (gojoku 五濁), 40–42, 54; and honji suijaku, 69, 106 marginality: as socially produced and negotiated, xiv; as relative or situational, 100, 116, 146. See also margins margins (periphery), xiii, 1, 21, 40; use of aged body in articulating, xiii, 90, 163n78. See also spatial/geographic imaginaries Matsuo deity, a.k.a. Matsuo/Matsuno’o Myōjin 松尾明神, 96, 98, 106–107, 162n61 medieval (chūsei 中世) Japan (ca. 1185– 1573): as decentered realm, xi, 50–51, 105, 153n37; Insei (late-Heian) period as cusp of, xiv; politics of, 51, 55–56, 105. See also Buddhism: and royal authority; myths or “kami tales”: medieval; royal authority

Miidera 三井寺. See Onjōji Minafuchi no Toshina 南淵年名, 37 Minamoto clan (Genji 源氏), 102, 117; Seiwa Genji, 102, 105 Minamoto no Fusaakira 源英明, 36 Minamoto no Tōru 源融, 114. See also Noh plays: Tōru Minamoto no Yoriyoshi 源頼義, 102 minokasa 蓑笠, 11–12, 68 Mino no Kiyomaro 美努浄麻呂, 33 Miroku Bosatsu. See Maitreya Mirror Mountain. See Kagami-yama Miyako no tsuto 都のつと, 35 Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki 三善清行, 101 Monju Bosatsu. See Manjuśrī Montoku 文徳 (Emperor), 24, 114 Montoku jitsuroku (Nihon Montoku tennō jitsuroku 日本文徳天皇実録), 24 Motoyoshi. See Hata no Motoyoshi Mutsu province (alt. Michinoku) 陸奥国, 86, 114 myōjin. See gods, categories of Myōson 明尊, 92, 94, 101–102, 181n37, 185n16 myths or “kami tales” (shinwa 神話): kikishinwa 記紀神話, 5–7, 8, 10, 12, 21–22, 98, 124; “medieval shinwa,” 96–97, 105, 138 Nagusamegusa なぐさめ草, 35 Narihira. See Ariwara no Narihira nen 念 (“mindfulness”), 78, 107. See also Amida Nyorai: and nenbutsu; buddhas: and visualization Nichizō 日蔵, a.k.a. Dōken 道賢, 106–107 Nihon ōjō gokurakuki 日本往生極楽記, 66, 172n14 Nihon ryōiki 日本霊異記, 66, 84, 172n15, 173n21 Nihon shoki 日本書紀, 5–7; heightened attention to aged body in, 15–16, 18 Ninigi 瓊瓊杵, 6–10, 13, 29 Ninmyō 仁明 (Emperor), 27, 121–122, 176n68 Nintoku 仁徳 (Emperor), 14, 30–31 Nirvana Sutra (T no. 374), 140

216  Index Noh: demons in, 127, 130, 133; and esoteric literary treatises, 131, 136–137, 142, 144; Kami Noh 神能, 132, 135, 141; old man (rōjin 老人) in, ix; promoting peace and longevity (e.g. as “elegant and life sustaining” fūgetsu ennen 風月延年), 118, 120, 128. See also Noh plays; okina sarugaku; Shikisanban; Zeami Motokiyo Noh plays: Atsumori 敦盛, 142; Fushimi 伏見, 135, 137–138; Higaki 檜垣, 143; Hōjōgawa 放生川, 132, 138; Kakitsubata 杜若, 142; Kinsatsu 金札, 135–138; Kinuta 砧, 142; Koi no omoni 恋重荷, 142; Obasute 姨捨, 143; Oimatsu 老松, 132, 138; Sekidera Komachi 関寺小町, 140, 143; Suma Genji 須磨源氏, 139, 140–141; Takasago 高砂, 138, 143; Tōru 融, 139–141; Yōrō 養老, 132, 138; Yugyō yanagi 遊行柳, 190n114; Yumi Yawata 弓八幡, 132 nondualism, 62, 70; bonnō soku bodai 煩悩 即菩提, 113–115, 120, 140–142 Numinous Eagle Peak (Ryōjusen 霊鷲山), 41–42, 56 Obasute-yama (alt. Ubasute-yama) 姨捨山, 34. See also Noh plays: Obasute Ōe no Masafusa 大江匡房, 117, 146; ganmon 願文 of, 109; and honji suijaku, 106, 109 Ōjin 応神 (Emperor), 14–15, 21–22, 159n11 okina 翁: association with native Japanese deities, 97, 145; fish-bearing, 83–86; interpolation into medieval tales, 96–97, 103–105; katai okina 乞食翁 (alt. 佳体翁 or 歌代翁), 113–114; ken’eō 懸衣翁 (clothes-hanging okina), 46; mitari okina 三人翁, 115; representing various kinds of divinities, x, 96–97, 180n20; as transcendent god in Zenchiku, 118, 128; as underclass old man, xiii, 43, 67–69, 91, 113–114. See also Noh; Noh plays; okina sarugaku; and names of specific okina Okina Oshō 翁和尚, 58–59, 83 okina sarugaku, 126–128; performances at Shushō-e 修正会 and Shuni-e 修二会, 122, 127 okomori 御籠り, 107–109

old age: associations with exile or abandonment, 15, 31, 34–35, 91; definitions of, xii–xiii; as form of difference, xi, xiii, 18, 99–100; dissociated from chronological age, xii; and eccentricity, 2, 61, 146, 166n11, 191n2; as liminal state between life and death, 39; as persona/performed identity, xiv–xv, xvii, 23, 38, 51, 146; poetics of, 28–38; reduced to biology, xxi; and seniority, 63–66, 98, 128–129; and social or political disempowerment, 17–19, 28, 63–64; as source of authority based on experience, xvii, 66–67, 70, 129–132, 143; as source of misery, x, 23, 28, 31, 47, 60–61, 138–142; as source of shame (or oi no hazukashisa 老いの恥ずかしさ), xii, 24; terms for (e.g. ki 耆, kō 耈, mō 耄, rō or oi 老), xii; variable meanings of, x, xvii–xvii. See also aged body; elders; okina; ōna Ōmine mountain range 大峰山脈, 68 Ōmi province 近江国, 75, 84, 93, 101 Ōmiwa no Takechimaro 大神高市麻呂, 30 ōna 嫗 (underclass old woman), xiii; divine, 98–99; as demon, 45–47, 99 Onbasama, a.k.a. Ubason 姥尊, 99 Onjōji 園城寺, 74; relations with Enryakuji, 75, 81, 94, 100–101, 104, 116. See also Jimon lineage Onjōji denki 園城寺伝記, 80, 101–103 Onjōji ryūge-e engi 園城寺竜華会縁記 (also written 縁起), 74, 80–83, 94, 100–104 Ono no Komachi 小野小町, 139–143 Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫, 12; concept of “sacred elder” (sei naru rōjin 聖なる老 人), xiv, 152n24; on irogonomi 色好み (erotic) hero, 22 Ōtomo no Kuronushi 大友黒主, 35 Ōtomo no Tabito 大伴旅人, 31–33 outcast preacher or “impoverished priest” (binsō 貧僧) (a.k.a. preacher at Tokujōju-in kuyō 得長寿院供養), 68–69 Owari Muraji Hamanushi 尾張連濱主, 121–123, 125

Index  217 Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (T no. 2008), 140 poetry: and esoteric literary treatises, 113–115; ideological subtexts of, 20–21, 29, 49; on mirrors, 34–35; waka 和歌 (Japanese verse), 28–29. See also kanshi; longevity: songs/prayers/felicitations for pollution (kegare 穢), 39–40; and crossroads (chimata 岐), 43–44; as metaphor for mental states, 40; and miraculous purification, 56–58; miraculous release from, 43–44; miraculous transformation of, 58–59, 83; and moral corruption, 53, 55–57, 63; nondualism and, 70; protection of social body from, 40, 94; and social hierarchy, 40, 53–54, 56, 61–63, 69, 72–73; strategic uses of, 61–62. See also aged body: and pollution; datsueba; dōsojin; fujō; mappō: as “defiled age” or “age of five defilements” Pure Land (jōdo 浄土): of Amida Nyorai, 41; ideologies, 41–42, 58–59, 61, 139, 141; of Kannon, 45, 47; and promise of pure bodies, xiii, 41; of Śākyamuni, 41. See also transcendentalist theories of salvation purity: attempts to preserve, 40–42; and morality, 68–69; and social hierarchy, 40; and the tennō, 40. See also ritual: of purification Queen Mother of the West (Ch. Xi Wangmu) 西王母, 32–33 reclusion (tonsei 遁世), 35, 57–58, 63–66, 99–100; gosesha or goseisha 後世者, 41–42; as peaceful detachment, 36, 49–51, 89 regency (sekkan seiji 摂関政治) and regency period (sekkan jidai 摂関時代 ca. 850–1050), 20, 24, 55; continuity with earlier court-centric ideologies, 29, 56, 146; and Insei-period rulership, 27, 51, 55 regent (sesshō 摂政 or kanpaku 関白), 25, 27–28. See also Fujiwara clan: regents’ branch

Reizan-in Shakakō 霊山院釈迦講, 41–42, 56, 72 retired emperors (in 院), 51; as chakravartin, 51–52, 71–72; as elders, 71, 115–116, 147. See also Insei period retirement: poetics of, 28, 35, 49–50; and relocation to margins, 1–2, 25–26, 28, 161n47. See also chiji; Insei period; retired emperors; retirement, Buddhist retirement, Buddhist: as “abandoning the world” (yosute 世捨て), 26–27; and “awakening the Way-seeking mind” (hosshin tonsei 発心遁世), 64–66; and “deathbed tonsure” (rinjū shukke 臨終出 家), 27; as “entering the way” (nyūdō 入 道), 26; as home leaving (shukke 出家), 26; and lay ordination as “novice” (nyūdō 入道) or “lay nun” (nyūdō ama 入道尼), 1, 161n34. See also reclusion retirement, official. See chiji ritsuryō 律令 state, 6; attenuation/ reconfiguration of, 20, 55–56; as cultural imaginary, 20, 29, 51, 55–56, 86–87, 94–95, 133; ideological continuities with regency, 29, 56, 146; ideologies of, 20, 29, 51, 133; and retirement provisions: for provincial posts, 9; in Senjoryō 選叙令, 158n70; in Sōniryō 僧尼令, 18. See also ritsuryō state, administrative agencies of; Taihō code; Yōrō code ritsuryō 律令 state, administrative agencies of: Bureau of Divination (Onmyōryō 陰陽寮), 50; Bureau of Medicine (Ten’yakuryō 典薬寮), 155n26; Council of Kami Affairs (Jingikan 神祇官), xviii; Council of State (Daijōkan 太政官), 17; Office of Monastic Affairs (Sōgō 僧綱), 18, 63–64, 65 ritual: kami-centric, 105–106; of longevity (e.g. Enmeihō 延命法), 88, 176n68; and Noh, xvi, 118, 120, 126, 128, 133; of propitiation, 44; of purification, 39–40, 43–44, 59, 69; and ritualization, 187n28; and royal authority, 18, 39, 69; theater, 126, 135. See also dance, ceremonial; Hitomaro eigu; jushi; okina sarugaku

218  Index Rōben 良弁, 84–86 Rokujō Akisuke. See Fujiwara no Akisuke Rokujō Kiyosuke 六条淸輔, a.k.a. Fujiwara no Kiyosuke 藤原淸輔, 112 rōtai. See aged body, Zeami’s writings on royal authority: concept of sage-king, 13–15, 21, 86; early theories of, 6; and “generative force” or vitality, 10, 14–18, 29; of the “heavenly sovereign” (tennō 天 皇), x–xi, 6. See also ancestors, imperial; longevity: and royal authority; virtue, royal Ryōgen 良源, 55–56, 59, 62–64; Nijū rokkajō (Jie Daishi nijūrokkajō kishō 慈恵大師廿 六箇条起請), 62 Ryūge-e 竜華会 (Dragon Flower Dharma Assembly), 81, 178n82 Ryūge-e engi. See Onjōji ryūge-e engi Ryūmeishō 龍鳴抄, 124–125 Saba Okina, a.k.a. Saba-uri Okina. See Ke’nin Kōshi Saga 嵯峨 (Emperor), 20, 152n19, 177n74 saints (shōnin 上人 or 聖人), 59; hidden, 140; and prestige, 65; and relics, 56. See also Buddhist literature: hagiographies Śākyamuni (Shaka Nyorai 釈迦如来), 41–42, 76, 122, 127; and Jetavana Monastery, 128 samsara, xiii, 44; aged body as symbol of, xiii–xix, 42, 106; as polluted, 41, 58 Sanbō ekotoba 三宝絵詞, 85 Sanjō (Empress Dowager) (Sanjō no Taikō Taigō no Miya 三條大皇大后宮), 61, 169n38 Sanmon lineage 山門派, 81, 94, 101 Sannō 山王 deity, 68–69, 101 sarugaku (alt. sangaku) 申楽 or 猿楽, 120, 127–128, 134–135; sarugaku za 申楽座 (guilds), 127–128. See also okina sarugaku Seinei 清寧 (Emperor), 14–15, 157n52, 157n55 Sekidera 関寺, 75, 91–92, 94. See also Noh plays: Sekidera Komachi Sekidera engi 関寺縁起, 91–92

Sekizan Myōjin 赤山明神, in Hie Sannō rishōki 日吉山王利生記, 103; in Sekizan myōjin engi 赤山明神縁起, 103 sennin 仙人. See immortals sesshō kindan 殺生禁断, 88, 92 shari 舎利 (Sk. śarīra) (alt. busshari 仏舎利), 56, 58 Shihinetsu-hiko 椎根津彦, a.k.a. Sawonetsu-hiko 槁根津日子, 11–12, 15–16 Shikisanban 式三番, ix; in Hokkegobukukanjo 法華五部九巻書, 127; and strategies of ritualization, 126, 128, 187n28. See also okina sarugaku; Shikisanban, roles in Shikisanban 式三番, roles in: Chichi no jō 父尉, 126, 128; Inatsumi no Okina 稲経 翁, 128; Sanbasō 三番叟, 126, 135; Senzai 千歳, 185n4; Yonatsumi no Okina 代経 翁, 128 shinbutsu shūgō 神仏習合, 98. See also honji suijaku Shingon 真言, 106, 112–113. See also Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism Shinji kangyō. See Daijō honjō shinji kangyō Shinra Myōjin (alt. Shira Myōjin) 新羅明神, 81, 100–105, 116; names of, 102–104, 181n35; public rites (saishi 祭祀) for, 101–102 Shinsarugakuki 新猿楽記, 135 Shinsen shōjiroku 新撰姓氏録, 7, 154nn6–7, 155n27 Shinshō hōshi nikki 信生法師日記, 35 Shintō 神道, and Buddhism in premodern Japan, xviii–xix. See also shinbutsu shūgō Shiotsutsu-no-oji 鹽土老翁, 7–9, 15–16, 154n8 Shirakawa 白河 (Emperor), 71, 176n68; ganmon 願文 for, 116 Shōbō 聖宝, 104 shōen 荘園 (estates), 55, 86–87, 92–98, 105; local administrative positions (satanin 沙汰人, korō 古老) of, 98; Ōura-no-shō 大浦荘 and Suga-no-ura 菅浦, 92, 178n83

Index  219 Shoji ryakki 諸寺略記, 84, 86 Shoku Nihongi 続日本紀, 16 Shoku Nihon kōki 続日本後紀, 121 Shōmu 聖武 (Emperor), 27, 84, 122–123 shōnin. See saints Shōshikai 尚歯会, 36–38 Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子, 128 shuchō (local chieftains) 首長, 8–9, 98 Shugendō 修験道, 67–68 Shukujin (alt. Shukushin) 宿神, 128 Smits, Ivo, 90, 116 Soto’ori-hime 衣通姫, 141–142 Sōzu, River 葬頭川 (alt. Sanzu 三途河), 46 spatial/geographic imaginaries, 159n1; Chinese, 7; of “home provinces” (kinai 機内), 1; of Japan as “realm under heaven” (tenka 天下), xiii, 1, 6; medieval (decentered), 50–51; and territory (ryō 領), 88, 92–94. See also boundaries/ liminal spaces; under center; margins Storehouse of Sundry Treasures Sutra (J. Zappōzōkyō 雑宝蔵経 T no. 203), 35 Sūfukuji 崇福寺, 75, 174n30 Sugawara no Funtoki (alt. Fumitoki) 菅原文 時, 37 Sugawara no Koreyoshi 菅原是善, 37 Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真, 32–34, 36–37, 50, 104, 107, 137, 162n69, 176n60, 177n77; anthologies of (Kanke bunsō 菅家文草, Kanke kōshū 菅家後集), 34; exile in Dazaifu 大宰府, 34; as governor of Sanuki province 讃岐国, 33–34 Sumiyoshi Deity (Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin 住 吉大明神), 2, 96, 104, 112–115, 142, 154n7; in Akazome emon shū 赤染衛門 集, 112; in Fukuro zōshi 袋草子, 112; in Noh, 137–138 Sumiyoshi taisha jindaiki 住吉大社神代記, 86, 112 Susanowo 素戔鳴, 8, 12 Sutra of the Ten Kings (Jizōbosatsu hosshin innen jūōgyō 地蔵菩薩発心因縁十王 経), 46 Tachikawa lineage 立川流, 113, 142 Taihō code 大宝律令, 21, 158n70

Taira warrior house (Heike 平家), 49–50, 68, 70 Taira no Chikamune 平親宗, 90–91 Tamatsukuri Komachishi sōsuisho 玉造小 町子壮衰書, 141 Tamatsushima Myōjin 玉津島明神, 142 Tenazuchi (Hand Stroking Elder) 手摩乳, 8, 16, 135 Tendai (Ch. Tiantai) 天台, 94, 105–106, 131; Taimitsu 台密, 113; zasu 座主 (head abbot), 55, 63, 94, 100, 168n20. See also Enryakuji; Onjōji; Ryōgen Tenji 天智 (Emperor), 29, 137 Tenmu 天武 (Emperor), 16–18, 40, 43, 94, 115 tennō 天皇, x–xi, 6; -centric ideologies, 6, 20–21, 133; and “economy of virtue,” 121–122; purified body of, 40, 65, 69–71; symbolic displacement of, 105, 124. See also retired emperors Toba 鳥羽 (Emperor), 68, 69–71 Tōdaiji 東大寺, 66, 84, 126; and Daibutsu 大仏, 84, 122–124 Tōdaiji yōroku 東大寺要禄, 84–85, 107 Tōkan kikō 東関紀行, 35 Tokujōju-in 得長寿院, 53, 68. See also outcast preacher or “impoverished priest” Tōnomine 多武峰, 59–60, 62–65, 104, 126–127; in Tōnomine ryakki 多武峰略 記, 187n37 transcendentalist theories of salvation, 47, 58, 61, 141 Turner, Victor, xiii–xiv, 99 Tuṣita heaven (Tosotsu ten 兜率天), 81–83 tutelary deities. See gods, categories of Ujishūi monogatari 宇治拾遺物語, 44–45, 65 Ukashi the Younger 弟猾, 11–12, 15–16 Urashimako 浦嶋兒 or 浦島子, 15, 162n64 virtue (toku 徳), royal, 86; and longevity, 16–18, 24, 39, 57, 121–122; and vitality, 14–15, 162n60, 167n5 Waka kōshiki 和歌講式, 111–113 Wakan rōeishū 和漢朗詠集, 37, 90 Watatsumi 海神 (Dragon King), 1–2, 8

220  Index Yakushi Nyorai 薬師如来, 69, 79, 171n1 Yamanba 山姥, 166n37 Yamaori Tetsuo 山折哲雄, xiv, 75 Yamashiro province 山城国, 136 Yamato monogatari 大和物語, 34 Yamato no Kunimi. See Fushimi no Okina Yamato province 倭國 or 大和国, 11, 124, 126, 136; as civilized center, 13, 156n43; as life-giving center, 32; as purified center, 9, 164n2 Yoko’o Myōjin 横尾明神, 104 Yōrō 養老 code, 17–18, 22, 158nn69–70 Yōrō 養老 era, 16–19. See also Noh plays: Yōrō Yoshino, Mount 吉野山, 31–32, 57, 160n31 Yoshishige no Yasutane 慶滋保胤, 90 youth: association with center/imperial line, 5, 15, 17–18, 22, 29, 32–33, 55, 71; “black-haired subjects” (reigen 黎元 or kenshu 黔首) as, 121; dissociated from chronological age, xii; possessing “temporary flower” in Noh, 129–130;

and purity, 57, 77. See also immortality; longevity Yūryaku 雄略 (Emperor), 9, 14–15, 31, 162n60 Zaō 蔵王, 84–85 Zeami, theoretical works of: Fūshikaden 風 姿花伝, 128–129, 139; Kakyō 花鏡, 130; Kyūi 九位, 131; Nikyoku santai ningyōzu 二曲三体人形図, 118, 133–134; Shūgyoku tokka 拾玉得花, 130–131 Zeami Motokiyo 世阿弥元清, 118–120, 143–144; on myō 妙, 131–132; on Shikisanban, 128; theories of age-graded training (keiko 稽古), 129–132; and Waki Noh 脇能, 132–138. See also aged body, Zeami’s writings on; Flower, Zeami’s concept of; Zeami, theoretical works of Zenchiku. See Konparu Zenchiku Zōga 増賀, a.k.a. Zōga Shōnin 増賀聖人 or 増賀上人, 58–66; at Tōnomine, 63–64

About the Author

Edward R. Drott is assistant professor of Japa­nese religions at Sophia University in Tokyo. His research explores the role of the body in religion and the role of religious ideologies and practices in producing knowledge about the body.