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The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism. By Haruko Wakabayashi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2012. xx + 203 pages. ISBN 978 0 8248 3416 6.

The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism. By... The Tengu zōshi consists of seven illustrated scrolls about Kōfukuji, Tōdaiji, Enryakuji, Onjōji, and other major monasteries in the Kyoto and Nara areas during the Heian and Kamakura periods. Combining illustrations with texts, the scrolls use art as argument by letting loose varieties of tengu , the human-birdlike creatures with wings and beaks, to carry out the polemic work of praising what is right and castigating wrong. At one level, the accounts of good and evil are clear and simple, but the artistic and textual arguments are couched in a web of complexity and contradictions that require an expert to help viewers make their way through the magical realism of the scrolls and the wider landscape of medieval Buddhism. Haruko Wakabayashi is our able guide, and she starts our journey by showing how tengu , which appear in Heian literature as malign versions of mononoke spirits that can possess someone who then sets about making mischief for others. In the hands of Buddhist writers, the tengu became manifestations of Māra, the personification of passion bedeviling monks as inner temptations or as external ma , demons disrupting their ritual and moral efforts. As the “new” Buddhism of the Kamakura http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Religion in Japan Brill

The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism. By Haruko Wakabayashi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2012. xx + 203 pages. ISBN 978 0 8248 3416 6.

Journal of Religion in Japan , Volume 2 (1): 108 – Jan 1, 2013

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Book Reviews
ISSN
2211-8330
eISSN
2211-8349
DOI
10.1163/22118349-12341247
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Tengu zōshi consists of seven illustrated scrolls about Kōfukuji, Tōdaiji, Enryakuji, Onjōji, and other major monasteries in the Kyoto and Nara areas during the Heian and Kamakura periods. Combining illustrations with texts, the scrolls use art as argument by letting loose varieties of tengu , the human-birdlike creatures with wings and beaks, to carry out the polemic work of praising what is right and castigating wrong. At one level, the accounts of good and evil are clear and simple, but the artistic and textual arguments are couched in a web of complexity and contradictions that require an expert to help viewers make their way through the magical realism of the scrolls and the wider landscape of medieval Buddhism. Haruko Wakabayashi is our able guide, and she starts our journey by showing how tengu , which appear in Heian literature as malign versions of mononoke spirits that can possess someone who then sets about making mischief for others. In the hands of Buddhist writers, the tengu became manifestations of Māra, the personification of passion bedeviling monks as inner temptations or as external ma , demons disrupting their ritual and moral efforts. As the “new” Buddhism of the Kamakura

Journal

Journal of Religion in JapanBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2013

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