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  • From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth-Century Japan by Thomas Donald Conlan
  • Karen M. Gerhart (bio)
From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth-Century Japan. By Thomas Donald Conlan. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011. xiv, 231 pages. £45.00.

Thomas Conlan’s From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth-Century Japan dramatically refocuses and reconfigures how we look at the Era of the Southern and Northern Courts (1339–99) by re-evaluating inherent prejudices found in the Taiheki, an epic quasi- history that has heretofore significantly molded our understanding of Japan’s fourteenth century. He points out that the writers of said text and its editor, Hosokawa Yoriyuki (1329–93), a regent for the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu, largely ignored (for political reasons) the role of supporters of the Jimyōin line in their characterization of the period while favoring individuals who supported Go-Daigo and the Daikakuji lineage. This led Conlan to look more closely at other important players in this turbulent period, in particular courtier and author of Entairyaku, Tōin Kinkata (1291–1360), writer-historian Kitabatake Chikafusa (1293–1354), and the Shingon priests Kenshun (1299–1357) and Kōzei (1325–79). The result is a volume that presents a complicated and nuanced picture that shifts our focus from the battles and political struggles between the loyalists of Go-Daigo’s Southern Court and the Northern Court in Kyoto (although there is still plenty of that) to the role Shingon rituals played in determining the legitimacy of the state in the fourteenth century. In Conlan’s words, “ritual became the very essence of power as it alone created the seals of office and enthroned emperors, thereby transforming the ancient institution of Japan’s ‘heavenly sovereigns’ into symbols of authority” (p. 15).

After setting the stage for the decline of precedent as a legitimating principle at the court in chapter 1, the author discusses Chikafusa’s and Go-Daigo’s understanding of the divine regalia (the mirror, the jewel, and the sword) as durable and stable objects in chapter 2. It was their thinking that “true” copies of the regalia needed to be controlled by the ruler, albeit not necessarily be in their possession. Chikafusa espoused the idea that the “true” sword and mirror resided at Atsuta and Ise shrines respectively and were therefore indestructible, but the jewel needed to be in the ruler’s possession. The physical regalia were deemed such critical markers of legitimacy that Chikafusa went to the extent of kidnapping the Northern sovereigns and stealing their regalia, without which, he believed, rulers could not take the throne. This dire act, along with efforts to physically occupy the sacred sites associated with the original sword and mirror—Atsuta and Ise [End Page 489] shrines—was deemed necessary, although the existence of any original or “true” regalia in the fourteenth century was questionable at best.

Chapter 3 considers how Shingon rituals were revived and redirected to enhance the prestige of the Ashikaga. While the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are more often discussed in terms of the popularity of the New Buddhist sects (Pure Land and Zen), Conlan presents a startling picture of Shingon Buddhism as the most fundamental and effective language of politics, in its continuing importance as protector of the throne but also as it remade itself as the champion of the Ashikaga government through the enactment of imperial rites for the shoguns. Chapters 4 and 5 explore Kenshun’s brilliant notion that the no-longer-extant regalia could still be used to conjure up a new sovereign. With the support of the regent Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–88), and against the wishes of most other courtiers, Kenshun raised the Northern sovereign Go-Kōgon to the throne in 1352 by simply treating the absent regalia “as if they existed” (nyozai no gi), a clever ritual mimesis emphasizing that the ceremonies constructed around them mattered but the objects did not. Because of his success in positioning Shingon Buddhism as the foundation of political legitimacy, Kenshun became the most powerful ritual specialist in the new Northern Court.

Chapter 6 follows Kenshun’s consolidation...

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