Mountains, Magic, And Mothers: Envisioning The Female .

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Melissa McCormickMountains, Magic, and Mothers: Envisioning theFemale Ascetic in a Medieval Chigo TaleAn increasing amount of scholarship on Shugendō has demonstrated thedegree to which this religious practice permeated the spiritual and sociallife of the elite status groups in premodern Japan. Centered upon asceticmountain practices, and exclusively male for many centuries, Shugendōwas premised upon a deep-rooted belief in the sacred nature of mountainsas liminal spaces linked to otherworldly realms, as vital sources of lifeenergy and death.1 Certain mountains — primarily in the Kii Peninsula — wereenvisioned as the mandalas of the Diamond and Womb Realms in EsotericBuddhism and were the sites of physically grueling austerities (shugen)by male adepts known as yamabushi, literally those who “lie down in themountains.” Shugendō’s cultural history was long obscured by the fact thatduring the Meiji period, similar to Shinto, its practices were forcibly isolatedfrom Buddhism, causing it to be viewed with suspicion as a superstitiousascetic practice.2 Its reliance upon secret practices and seemingly eclecticnature — Shugendō incorporates elements of kami worship, Daoism, andEsoteric Buddhism, among many other religious elements — have furthercomplicated its historical recovery. Nevertheless, its widespread institutionalpresence and networks of practitioners continue to be brought into higherrelief, and we now have a much more sophisticated understanding of howsuch mountain-based ascetic practices conditioned everything from popularfolk belief to the daily activities of the ruling elite.3This understanding applies to a wide range of premodern artworks aswell. Images of Shugendō’s legendary seventh-century founder En no Gyōja,both painted and sculpted, were the focus of a broad array of ritual acts, andthe figure of the yamabushi was a common presence within various paintingtraditions. Powerful warlords commissioned artworks substantiating theirassociation with Shugendō, while early modern painters such as Yokoi Kinkoku(1761–1832) were avid practitioners whose numerous landscapes can be107

PA R T I I10 8v i s i o n / pr ac t i c e1Chigo first catchingsight of minister’sdaughter, painting 3of The New Lady-inWaiting Is a Chigo,Muromachi period,16th century. Twohandscrolls; inkand colors onpaper, 30.5 1166.1,30.5 1258.1 cm.Current locationunknown2Women put thefinishing touches onthe chigo’s femaledisguise usingblackened combsto pin up his longsidelocks. The womancombing his hair saysreassuringly, “noone could possiblytake you for a boy,”painting 6 of scrollin fig. 13The chigo, nowthe lady-in-waitingImamairi, instructs theminister’s daughteron the biwa. Onelady praises his skills,while two others notehis seemingly uncutsidelocks and unusualhair combs, painting 9of scroll in fig. 1

M cCo r m i c kM o u n ta i n s , M ag i c , a n d M ot h er sunderstood as shaped by spiritual exercises at high altitude.4 Indeed, artworkshave the potential of generating insights into the cultural history and reception of Shugendō not available through other means. This essay examinesone such work, a medieval literary tale titled The New Lady-in-Waiting Is aChigo (Chigo Imamairi).5 In particular it examines two illustrated handscrollversions of The New Lady-in-Waiting, a polychrome two-scroll set (figs. 1–13 )and an incomplete but nearly identical work in the small-scroll (koe) format,executed in the monochrome ink-line (hakubyō) mode (see fig. 15 ).6 Whatthese handscrolls reveal about the relationship of Shugendō to cultural historyis remarkable and unexpected. As I propose here, they demonstrate howcommunities of women in medieval Japan could imagine their own identitiesand circumstances according to the imagery, practices, and genealogies of amale-centered ascetic practice. Although such imaginings remained within therealm of fiction, they nevertheless are revealing of the ambiguous boundariesof Shugendō as a social phenomenon, and how it inflected pictorial cultureand the representation of gender in medieval Japan.The ink-line example of The New Lady-in-Waiting belongs to a group oflate medieval hakubyō scrolls that were made primarily by and for femalecommunities of readers/viewers, and whose subject matter and representational qualities can be understood through this context. As I have arguedelsewhere, such scrolls were characterized by an emphasis on femalecharacters (heroines, ladies-in-waiting, nurses); matriarchal lineages; dialogicinscriptions for female characters not found in their main texts; and pictorialdetails calling attention to childbirth, pregnancy, and domestic work.7 Inthe case of The New Lady-in-Waiting, these traits characterize both themonochrome and polychrome versions.8 The uniqueness of the literary taleupon which both handscrolls are based is underscored by the manner in whichit varies the standard tropes of a common medieval literary genre known asthe “acolyte tale” (chigo monogatari). Most acolyte tales recount an older malepriest’s romantic longing for a boy attendant, who reciprocates this attentionwith affection and loyalty. In The New Lady-in-Waiting, however, it is insteada boy attendant’s desire for a young girl that constitutes the erotic axis of thenarrative. Furthermore, it is the young girl that serves as the tale’s protagonist,one who participates in a quasi-ritualistic mountain ascent. I argue thather peregrinations within the tale negotiate a space for women within therepresentational structures of Shugendō. In disrupting the pictorial imageryassociated with Shugendō, the paintings of The New Lady-in-Waiting offer newinsights not only into the cultural legacy of this religious practice, but also intoformations and representations of gender in medieval Japan, as well as traditions of picture making by and for women during the late Muromachi period.The New Lady-in-WaitingThe New Lady-in-Waiting concerns an acolyte (chigo) of an abbot from MountHiei who falls hopelessly in love with the daughter of a court minister after109

PA R T I I110v i s i o n / pr ac t i c ehe accompanies the abbot to the girl’s home and catches sight of her fromafar (fig. 1). The boy in fact becomes so lovesick that he refuses to returnto the monastery and retires briefly to the home of his wet nurse. The nurseacts as the chigo’s confidante, and after hearing his story she devises acomplex scheme to unite the couple, which involves dressing the acolyte as alady-in-waiting (nyōbō) (fig. 2 ) and entering him into the young lady’s service.Recently betrothed to the crown prince, the minister’s daughter happens tobe in need of distinguished female attendants. With the help of an exquisitelacquer box (a gift to the acolyte by his abbot master) and a heartbreakingstory fabricated by the nurse concerning the death of a fictitious daughter, theacolyte in the guise of a lady-in-waiting joins the minister’s household andcomes to be called “Imamairi” (literally “arrived just now”).9 The boy makes apretty girl, and with his skills on the biwa, he charms the minister and his wife,eventually earning the daughter’s trust to share with her precious moments ofintimacy and friendship (fig. 3 ). As the day of the girl’s departure to the crownprince’s palace nears, the boy at last confesses his identity and acts on hispassionate desires (fig. 4 ). The painting depicts the chigo in his lady guiseapproaching the girl’s curtained bed, his long tresses trailing beautifully downhis back. From then on the two are inseparable, spending both days andnights in her bed, while no one suspects a thing, not even the girl’s mother,who is comforted that her daughter has found such a loyal companion (fig. 5 ).When the girl soon realizes that she is pregnant, however, she becomesinconsolable over the possibility of disgracing her family should the crownprince find out (fig. 6 ). To make matters worse, the chigo has been summonedback to his monastery, leaving both to despair over their separation.When the boy returns to the temple, the narrative shifts from a talecentered on the women’s quarters in the minister’s household — where the firstthirteen paintings in the handscrolls are set — to a supernatural adventure inthe mountains. It is at this point that the yamabushi character and elementsof Shugendō enter the story. The yamabushi appears as a menacing figurewho abducts the unsuspecting and lovelorn chigo as he sits alone on theveranda avoiding a boisterous banquet for the monks inside (fig. 7 ). Whennews of an acolyte’s abduction reaches the minister’s household, the pregnantminister’s daughter senses that it must be her lover who has been kidnappedand decides to end her life, secretly departing her residence and enteringinto the surrounding mountains. On her journey she encounters a tengu,birdlike creatures with beaks or long noses that frequently appear in the garbof yamabushi and become associated with mountain ascetics. The creatureencountered by the female protagonist is no ordinary goblin, however, but afemale tengu in the garb of a nun, called an ama tengu.10 This unusual figureis the mother of the yamabushi-cum-tengu who kidnapped the boy, and sheagrees to shelter the girl for one night, but warns her of terrifying things tocome (fig. 8 ). She explains that her children are horrific creatures devoid ofhuman emotion (mono no aware) and hides the girl in a cabinetlike shrine

M cCo r m i c kM o u n ta i n s , M ag i c , a n d M ot h er s4Four attendantsremain fast asleep asImamairi approachesthe curtained bedof the minister’sdaughter to confesshis love to her,painting 10 of scrollin fig. 15Ladies read aloud andplay sugoroku, whileImamairi and theminister’s daughterlie together. The girl’smother peeks in onthe scene, painting 11of scroll in fig. 16Imamairi consoles thegirl after explainingthat she must bepregnant. Twoattendants in thedoorway wonder if anevil spirit has causedtheir mistress’s illness,painting 12 of scrollin fig. 1111

PA R T I I112v i s i o n / pr ac t i c e7Banquet scene onMount Hiei. As themonks carry on, thechigo sits alone onthe veranda reciting,“Like a cluster ofbamboo amid grassyfields, I try to hide mylove ,” painting 14of scroll in fig. 18The minister’sdaughter meets thenun goblin, painting16 of scroll in fig. 19The goblin banquet.The nun goblinconvinces theyamabushi to leavethe chigo in her care,painting 17 of scrollin fig. 1

M cCo r m i c kM o u n ta i n s , M ag i c , a n d M ot h er s(zushi). From her hiding place the girl sees horrendous creatures of variousforms, seated around the room drinking sake and eating flesh of indeterminateorigin, skewered and roasted on the fire (fig. 9 ). She notices an especiallyfrightening-looking yamabushi and sees him remove, from a bundled cloth athis side, a human, none other than her beloved chigo.The nun proceeds to convince her yamabushi son to leave the boy withher. He does so, but not without threatening to kill his mother should anythinghappen to the chigo. After the yamabushi/tengu depart, the nun goblinreunites the young lovers and explains her desire to enter the Buddhist path(fig. 10 ). She professes a willingness to sacrifice her life in order to return thecouple to the capital and instructs them to pray for her salvation should therebe a sign of her demise. She then takes each one under an arm, tells them toclose their eyes, and flies across the sky.The nun goblin deposits the couple at the home of the boy’s nurse (fig. 11),where the minister’s daughter later gives birth to a boy (fig. 12 ). The nurseinforms the abbot of the chigo’s whereabouts and tells him about the girl,who, she explains, was also held captive by tengu. The priest, happy toingratiate himself to the minister and his wife, who have been distraught overtheir daughter’s disappearance, eagerly reports that she is alive and well. Thechigo’s bond with the daughter is recognized as being of an otherworldlycaliber, and he is welcomed into the minister’s family. He soon rises to therank of lesser captain (shōshō), and ultimately to that of major general (taishō).All ends well for the couple and the minister’s family; the minister’s son ispromoted to the rank of middle captain (chūjō), and the chigo and the younglady produce more beautiful and successful offspring, including a daughterwho grows up to become an imperial consort. The final painting in the scroll(fig. 13 ) depicts the happy household, with the chigo transformed into ahandsome courtier in typical adult male attire, leaning leisurely against anarmrest, while the minister’s daughter lies by his side, elegantly shielded bya standing curtain. The couple looks blissfully happy, apparently enchantedby their toddler son with his outstretched arms. The spacious room in whichthis domestic idyll is set is decorated by extensive sliding door paintings,and populated by a sea of female attendants. To the right of the minister’sdaughter sits a wet nurse who holds tenderly to her chest an infant, perhapsthe future imperial consort mentioned in the scrolls’ penultimate line of text.The oldest extant texts of The New Lady-in-Waiting are those found inthese illustrated polychrome scrolls and the single hakubyō scroll, which canbe dated stylistically to the late Muromachi period (roughly the mid-sixteenthcentury). Both illustrated versions show moments of artistic accomplishmentalongside images that appear amateurish for their lack of precision and whatmight be called perspectival irregularities. The ink-line version, for example,exhibits a casual attitude toward the depiction of spatial depth, an abruptjuxtaposition of motifs rendered in starkly different ink textures, less thanprecise lines, and radically abbreviated architectural interiors — all hallmarks113

PA R T I I114v i s i o n / pr ac t i c eof sixteenth-century hakubyō small scrolls, which stand in sharp contrast tothe immaculately clean lines and consistency of scale and proportion of earlierhakubyō narrative paintings.The polychrome scrolls too exhibit a deliberate unstudiedness, particularlyin the rendering of architectural elements, which seems unconcerned withproportion and believability. On the other hand, the rendering of the figures,the individuation of elaborately patterned and vividly colored robes, andthe fine attention to details in the room decoration of each interior scenerepresent a high point of late medieval picture making.11 In this context, theless-than-precise architectural settings, as well as the excessively large butintricately rendered flowers and insects in the landscapes, and the unnaturallysmall child in the final scene, for example, offer a degree of stylistic humanization that only adds to the visually compelling character of these scrolls. Theartist clearly shows a preoccupation and confidence with the Sino-Japaneseink painting tradition; virtually all of the paintings-within-paintings recorddifferent modes of Muromachi landscape depiction, with a clear predilectionfor ink wash, and the craggy blue mountain peaks seen frequently in the deepdistance of Kano school landscapes.12 Nevertheless, there seems to be noparticular allegiance here to the professional schools of the Muromachi period,but as Miya Tsugio points out in an introductory note to these scrolls, theartist seems liberated from the strictures of the narrative painting tradition.13The polychrome scrolls were likely executed by a semiprofessional painter,while the hakubyō scroll, because of its small format and lesser polish, is bestattributed to an amateur artist.14While The New Lady-in-Waiting bears an important connection to theacolyte-tale genre (to be elaborated upon below), it falls equally if not morewithin the category of courtly tales (ōchō monogatari) of the medieval period,stories characterized by a focus on a high-ranking courtier’s household, ahappy ending that celebrates aristocratic marriage, the attainment of courtlyrank, and lineal prestige by means of proximity to the imperial house. Manysuch examples of Muromachi courtly fiction bear the imprint of a female attendant’s perspective. This viewpoint is communicated in several ways, one of themost conspicuous being a focus on nyōbō (ladies-in-waiting) to the degreethat they perform much of the action that drives the story’s plot. The NewLady-in-Waiting, in which the nurse of the chigo enables the boy’s romance,harbors him from the abbot for as long as possible, and then ultimatelyfacilitates the reunion of the star-crossed lovers, could, on the basis of itsplot alone, be called “a tale of a nurse” (menoto monogatari). And yet theillustrated picture scrolls of The New Lady-in-Waiting go beyond an emphasison the wet nurse to create expanded roles for other female attendants in theminister’s household who are barely mentioned in the text. This enhancednyōbō presence is achieved through dialogic inscriptions embedded in thepictures (gachūshi) along with techniques of pictorial representation thatrecast the tale from the attendant point of view.

M cCo r m i c kM o u n ta i n s , M ag i c , a n d M ot h er s10The tearful reunionof the minister’sdaughter and thechigo, painting 18of scroll in fig. 111The chigo’s nurse,seated before herBuddhist altar, sutrain hand, is startled bya knock at the door.Outside, the coupleasks her to open up,painting 19 of scrollin fig. 112The minister’sdaughter givesbirth at the homeof the chigo’s nurse,painting 21 of scrollin fig. 1115

PA R T I I116v i s i o n / pr ac t i c eNyōbō StoriesEven before one reads the dialogic inscriptions, The New Lady-in-Waitingscrolls telegraph an interest in foregrounding both major and minor femalecharacters through the selection of scenes for illustration: twenty-one out oftwenty-four paintings in the polychrome scrolls focus on women, nurses, andfemale attendants. Fourteen of these twenty-one revolve around activitiesand conversations being held in the women’s quarters of the minister’shousehold. On the surface, the numerous scenes that depict the familiarrecumbent female attendants with long black hair cascading over bulkyrobes, stationed around square rooms, viewed from a steep bird’s-eye-viewperspective, seem visually repetitive, even redundant.15 Closer inspectionreveals that these scenes provide the stages for the appearance of a largecast of supporting women. Thirty-four individual ladies-in-waiting, eachidentified by name, appear within the fictional rooms of the mansion and thewet nurse’s residence. The number and variety of titles are unprecedented inmedieval picture scrolls and contrast sharply with the few named attendantsin the main text: the nurse of the minister’s daughter called Saishō, anotherattendant named Chūnagon, and the daughter of the chigo’s wet nurse, awoman called Jijū. These three characters appear in the paintings as well,but also showcased are serving women from the upper, middle, and lowerranks of attendants, providing interesting source material for the historyof women’s names and titles.16 To give but one example, The New Ladyin-Waiting scrolls depict lower-ranking attendant girls with names derivedfrom chapter titles of The Tale of Genji.17 The use of such names might beattributed to the creative imagining of a fictional aristocratic household wereit not for an actual nyōbō etiquette manual from the late sixteenth centuryprescribing the use of Genji names for lower-ranking women.18 In this way

M cCo r m i c kM o u n ta i n s , M ag i c , a n d M ot h er sthe polychrome scrolls and the hakubyō version, which bear nearly identical117labels for the women, animate the world of medieval ladies-in-waiting like fewother medieval texts.The dialogue that comes forth from these characters, through conversationsthat enhance the primary story, add humorous asides and even provide subtlemetanarrative commentary that further enlivens the world of the ladies’ chambers.19 In a lively vernacular inflected by Muromachi-period court-lady langua

M C ORMi MoUntains, Magic, anD Mothers understood as shaped by spiritual exercises at high altitude. 4deed, artworks in have the potential of generating insights into the cultural history and recep - tion of shugendō not available through other means. this essay examines one such work, a medieval literary tale titled The New lady-in-Waiting Is a

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