Output details
33 - Theology and Religious Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies
Nigenteki genri no gireika: Fudô, Aizen to chikara no hizô' 二元的原理の儀礼化ー不動・愛染 と力の秘像', [Ritualizing Duality: Fudô, Aizen and the Secret Iconography of Empowerment]
L. Dolce also co-edited this book
This study explores a new ritual tradition that emerged in medieval Japan and combined the cult of two Tantric deities, Fudô and Aizen. It draws on unpublished documents recently unveiled in mediaeval temples archives and on a number of obscure iconographic sources of difference provenance. It demonstrates that the new liturgical interpretations served to develop a distinct perspective on duality and its overcoming, and thus provide grounds for reconsidering how a practitioner’s empowerment and the potential transformation embodied in the ritual act was understood in Japanese Buddhism. It also suggests that a multilayered unorthodox imagery was necessary to disclose new perceptions of buddhahood.