89 Asuka Sango with a Strong Focus on the Heian Period (794–1185)

book reviews 89

Asuka Sango The Halo of Golden Light: Imperial Authority and Buddhist Ritual in Heian Japan. 2015. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. 240 pages. isbn 978 0 8248 3986 4.

With a strong focus on the Heian period (794–1185), The Halo of Golden Light analyzes court-sponsored Buddhist ritual as a window onto interactions between the state and monastic elites. Borrowing a characterization from R.A.L.H. Gunawardana’s work on Buddhism in medieval Sri Lanka, Asuka Sango frames the Heian state-saṅgha relationship as one of “antagonistic symbiosis” (xiii, passim). This borrowing is apt, for it highlights the ways in which the present monograph speaks to questions of longstanding interest among schol- ars in the fields of Buddhist studies and Asian history: how have Buddhists negotiated political rapprochements with their rulers (who may or may not be Buddhist themselves), and how has Buddhist ideology—or in this case, ritual— sustained specific political regimes? For Japan specialists, Sango’s monograph fills an important gap in scholar- ship on Heian religious history. To date, seminal books have chronicled the lives and legacies of sectarian patriarchs and institutional histories have illu- minated friction between and within temples. Beyond the scope of the careers of eminent monks, however, little attention has been paid in English-language research to the hybrid state-cum-monastic systems that supported the training and promotion of educated monks. By integrating the findings of Japanese researchers with her own analysis of the Golden Light Sūtra and its associated rites, Sango offers a salutary perspective. Her contributions to the field include revisions to the widely accepted theorization advanced by Kuroda Toshio: she shows that rather than being subsumed by esoteric thought and practice, expertise in exoteric Buddhism remained an important avenue to recognition and preferment for Heian monks. Sango also calls attention to the political sig- nificance of ritual practice and brings important sources to bear on the study of Heian Buddhism, namely ritual manuals like the Jōgan gishiki, male courtiers’ journals (kanbun nikki), and debate records (mondōki). In terms of organization and style, Sango has been kind to her readers. The book follows a well-defined chronological trajectory and the structure of each chapter is clearly articulated. Moreover, the writing style, at once careful and direct, ensures that those who do not specialize in Heian Buddhism will com- prehend the institutional complexities Sango describes. The primary categories of analysis (tradition, authority, ritual) are plainly laid out in the introduction, and whether they describe historical actors or technical concepts, key terms are explained at first use. Although kanji are not provided in the main text or the index, a character glossary has been included in the book’s back matter.

As the title suggests, consideration of the Golden Light Sūtra (Ch. Jinguang- ming zuisheng wang jing; Jp. Konkōmyō saishō ō kyō) threads through the entire monograph. (Note that there are three translations of this scripture in the Chi- nese canon. Because Yijing’s translation [t. no. 665, 16:403a–456c] was in broad circulation during the Heian period, that is the version of the text Sango uses). This lends the work thematic coherence, but readers should not imagine that the book is about the sutra per se. Rather, Sango uses this particular scripture and the Heian-period rituals associated with it (the Misai-e, and to a lesser extent the Saishōkō) to illustrate larger arguments about monastic training, political change, and ritual competition. Readers not familiar with the Golden Light Sūtra and its cognate Japanese rites will need to consult Chapter 1 for a partial summary of the sutra’s doctri- nal content and a structural outline of the portions of the Misai-e that were oriented around the sutra. More generally, this chapter focuses our attention squarely on the scripture’s ritual use by the royal house during the Hakuhō, Nara, and early Heian periods, when “ceremonial performance was the primary art of statecraft” (p. 2). Thus, the sutra text appears here as a ritual tool for pro- tecting the nation and legitimating the king. Indeed, Sango concludes, rituals based on the Golden Light Sūtra operated on an ongoing basis to produce the king as a “dual ideogram of state-defined political power and Buddhist king- ship” (p. 21). Chapter 2 scrutinizes Buddhist debate rituals, which Sango portrays as enacting the antagonistic symbiosis between the state and the monastic estab- lishment. Based on an analysis of a record of the Golden Light Lecture (Saishōkō) held in 1191, she demonstrates that although a scripture might give its name to a specific rite, debates that took place within the rite were not tied to the content of that scripture (p. 40). Thus, Sango concludes, the purpose of debate was less scriptural exegesis than “interdisciplinary dialogue” among Buddhist schools (p. 41)—an aim made pressing by early-Heian reforms that emphasized the importance of sectarian learning in ordination and monastic promotion. Sango’s findings are certainly warranted by the evidence at hand, but it is worth noting that after beginning with a lucid discussion of changes in monastic culture circa 800, this chapter jumps forward to a case-study of a late-twelfth-century debate as described in a Kamakura-period source. This juxtaposition gave me a touch of historical vertigo and led me to wonder just how stable debate practices were over that nearly four-hundred-year period. Building on her discussion of debate as a “clerical training program” (p. 52, passim), in Chapter 3 Sango describes methods by which educated monks achieved promotion to and within the Sōgō (Sango leaves this term untrans- lated; it refers to the central office for monastic affairs). Here the political sig-

Journal of Religion in Japan 5 (2016) 71–92