Comparative Literature and Asian Studies

I am part of the editorial collective for the new scholarly journal Verge: Studies in Global Asias. You can find out more information in this PDF, or by visiting https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/Journals/verge-studies-in-global-asias

Verge: Studies in Global Asias. Issue 1.2

Collecting Asias

University of Minnesota Press 2016

March 18, 2016 Carla Nappi

vergeVerge: Studies in Global Asias is an inspiring and path-breaking new journal that explores innovative forms for individual and collaborative scholarly work. I had the privilege of talking with Charlotte Eubanks, Jonathan E. Abel, and Tina Chen about Volume 1, Issue 2: Collecting Asias (Fall 2015), which includes – among several fascinating essays – a portfolio of Akamatsu Toshiko’s sketches of Micronesia, an interview about Mughal collections, an introduction to three wonderful digital projects, and a field trip to collaboratively-curated exhibition. In addition to exploring the particular contributions of this special issue, we talked about some of the features of the journal that really excitingly push the boundaries of what an academic journal can be, considering aspects of the innovative forms that are curated in the Convergence section of Verge and reflected in its essays. Highly recommended, both for reading and for teaching!

Carla Nappi is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. Her research and writing concern the histories of science, medicine, materiality, and their translations in early modern China. You can find out more about her work by visiting www.carlanappi.com. She can be reach at [email protected].

Sound file of Podcast available at
http://newbooksnetwork.com/charlotte-eubanks-miracles-of-book-and-body-buddhist-textual-culture-and-medieval-japan-u-of-california-press-2011/
Miracles of Book and Body
Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan
University of California Press 2011
February 6, 2015 Luke Thompson
In�Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), Charlotte Eubanks examines the relationship between Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras and the human body, using Japanese tale literature (setsuwa) as a lens through which to understand this particular aspect of Buddhist textual culture and the way in which text and body are not as separate as we usually assume.  Two of the questions she wants to answer are "What do sūtras want?" and "What do sūtras get?"  She examines Buddhist scriptures of continental origin to answer the former, while she turns to Japanese tale literature (setsuwa) to answer the latter. Two ideas central to the book are that bodies can become texts, and that texts can become bodies.  Concerning the first, through reciting, reproducing, and in some sense embodying a sutra, an individual can in effect turn his or her body into the text itself (a result that the sūtras themselves encourage through various admonishments, a move that can be seen as their own quest for survival). As for the second–the idea that texts can become bodies–Eubanks shows that in the Japanese context sūtras literary materialize, becoming independent actors in their own right. While it was largely through setsuwa and other such filters that medieval Japanese understood Buddhist scripture, the ease with which sūtras and bodies moved back and forth along what Eubanks terms "the text-flesh continuum" was dependent upon Mahāyāna sūtras’ concealment of their authorship.  Indeed, certain sūtras went so far as to suggest that their origins are to be found prior to the Buddha himself, the figure who in traditional Buddhism would have been considered the author of these texts.  This move allowed Mahāyāna sūtras to claim agency for themselves, and thus for Japanese setsuwa to later depict sūtras as willful, motivated actors rather than mere containers for the teachings of the Buddha. Besides using setsuwa as a source for understanding the Japanese reception of Buddhist sūtras, Eubanks examines the prefaces and colophons of setsuwa collections in order to understand how the compilers or authors of these tales intended this didactic literature to interact with human bodies (e.g., as food or medicine), showing that in the ideal relationship between setsuwa and reader/listener, the latter not only received ideas and ethical norms but also came to embody (both literally and figuratively) those very ideas and norms. Beside being rewarded with a stimulating reinterpretation of the way in which sūtras and setsuwa make their messages heard and felt, the reader will be treated to a plethora of fascinating accounts from nine medieval setsuwa collections.  In addition, Eubanks addresses gender at various points throughout the work, showing how Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike have treated this genre as an erotic object, and the way in which setsuwa were conceived by their own authors and compilers as elderly female matchmakers (to give but two examples).  And in the final chapter Eubanks discusses the relationship between material form and the practice of reading, seeking to understand the development of the revolving sūtra library and the persistence of the scroll in East Asian Buddhism long after the codex has come into use. This book will be of particular interest to those researching medieval Japanese Buddhism, Mahāyāna sūtras as a genre, setsuwa, Buddhist textual culture, gender symbolism in Japanese Buddhism, medieval traditions of preaching and proselytization, and the body in religious thought and practice.

This article offers an extended visual analysis of the Zen master Dōgen’s (1200-1253) Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen, arguing that Dōgen’s calligraphy is a carefully orchestrated performance. That is, it does precisely what it asks its readers to do:  it sits calmly, evenly, at poised attention in a real world field of objects. The brushstrokes, and the entire aesthetic layout of the manuscript, enact seated meditation. Most analyses of Dōgen’s text have focused on its use and adaptation of Chinese source material, its place in the foundation of the new school of Sōtō Zen in Japan, and the ramifications of its doctrinal assertions for our understandings of the development of Japanese religious history. Drawing attention, instead, to the material, aesthetic, art historical, and performative qualities of the text represents a completely new approach, one which foregrounds the ways in which the visual and material qualities of this Buddhist artifact are closely intertwined with its efficacy as a religious object. In pursuing this line of analysis, this article participates in the broader ritual turn in Buddhist studies, while also seeking to make a particular intervention into art historical qualifications of Zen art.

The narrative of ethnic, geographic, and linguistic isomorphism-the notion that a Japanese people speaking a Japanese language live in the Japanese islands-is strong, deeply political, and heavily naturalized. But ultimately, it is a carefully crafted fiction. Ki no Tsurayuki (872-945 CE), poet and co-compiler of the state-sponsored poetry anthology the Kokinshū , provides a classic formulation in the opening phrase of his critical introduction to the 905 CE anthology: 'Yamato uta wa, hito no kokoro o tane toshite, yorozu no koto no ha to zo narerikeru' ('Yamato poetry is that which takes the human heart as its seed, growing into the leaves of ten thousand words'). 1 'Yamato' poetry (or song, the word is the same) arises organically from the seed that is the Yamato heart; extend the metaphor and you have Yamato soil. Substitute 'Japan(ese)' 1 My translation. A searchable version of the anthology is available at http://jti.lib. virginia.edu/ japanese/ kokinshu/ kikokin.html. Accessed 16 August 2021. 7 See also LaMarre (2000).

This article combines contemporary work in social bibliography, translation theory and Buddhist studies to focus on two questions. First, what exactly does the act of "reading" sutras entail? And second, what is the precise relation between material sign and acoustic sound in Buddhist recitation? Answers to these questions are necessarily inextricably bound to local contexts and communities. The so-called 'pictorial Heart Sutras' (Jp: esetsu Shinkyō) of early modern Japan provide the particular aperture through which I pursue these queries. Following D. F. McKenzie, I understand the pictorial sutras "not simply as verbal constructs but as social products" (1999: 127) which may be examined to reveal patterns of textual engagement, practices of translation and particular techniques for associating the quotidian world of rice paddies and rounded bellies with the abiding realm of religious doctrine. In particular, I argue that the pictorial sutras develop a "visual vernacular" whose lexicon evinces an abiding interest in fecundity and a belief in the apotropaic value of sutra reading.

How does art cultivate moral reflexivity? Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi, eyewitnesses to the atomic aftermath at Hiroshima, were the first artists to publicly display works showing the effects of nuclear irradiation on the human body. While their work has long been considered antiwar, few attempts have been made to theorize how their compositions structure an ethical response to aggression. Three interconnected zones of representation are explored: the artists' murals, Toshi's testimonials regarding the creation of the murals, and the museum in which the murals are displayed. Bringing Japanese Buddhist traditions for the depiction of suffering (etoki ‘picture explanation,‘ hell screen art) into conversation with contemporary theories of performance (Turner's concept of the “subjunctive mood,” Taylor's notion of “the repertoire”), memory (Kansteiner's “collected memory,” Auron's “pain of knowledge”), and museum studies (Crane's “distortion”), I articulate a ...

This article explores the overlap between descriptions of sutra devotion that appear in setsuwa narratives and graphic traditions of sutra decoration popular in classical and medieval Japan, particularly from the eleventh century onward. Drawing on material from two Heian-period setsuwa collections, Hokke genki (1040-1044) and Konjaku monogatari shū (ca. 1120), the article focuses on the visual elements of written sutras, especially as elaborated in tales concerning "faulty memory. " The article considers particular setsuwa as written stories which can be embodied in performance (preaching) and which attempt to activate the visual imaginations of their reader-listeners. Furthermore, the article argues that these setsuwa posit the memory, the page, and the human body as intertwined locales for the inscription of sacred Buddhist text.

This article thinks through the Buddhist sutra as a mode of world literary production from the second century CE to the present. I argue for understanding the sutra as a site of remediation and as a massively open-ended textual project aimed at articulating expressions of insight.

Ars Orientalis is a peer-reviewed annual volume of scholarly articles on the art and archaeology of Asia, the ancient Near East, and the Islamic world. It is published jointly by the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the University of Michigan Department of History of Art. Fostering a broad range of topics and approaches through themed issues, the journal is intended for scholars in diverse fields. Ars Orientalis provides a forum for new scholarship, with a particular interest in work that redefines and crosses boundaries, both spatial and temporal. Authors are asked to follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Ars Orientalis is now available online at arsorientalis.si.edu. Ars Orientalis subscriptions are handled by Turpin Distribution. (For contact information, go to www.asia.si.edu/research/ArsOrientalis.asp.) Current subscription rates (including shipping