The Halo of Golden Light: Imperial Authority and Buddhist Ritual in Heian Japan by Asuka Sango (review)

The Halo of Golden Light: Imperial Authority and Buddhist Ritual in Heian Japan. By Asuka Sango. University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2015. xxii, 216 pages. $54.00.

Asuka Sango argues that three Buddhist rituals reveal a profound shift in the structure of state and society in the Heian era (794–1185). Misai-e Assemblies, which entailed monks debating doctrine in the palace, epitomized the system of institutional authority—or, in her words, bureaucracy—and focused on the office of emperor. Nevertheless, changes in social practices led to the rise of the performance of the Golden Light Sutra, which exemplified a personal system, described here as the “politics of affinity,” whereby individuals, most often retired emperors, demanded loyalty through their patronage. Finally, “provisional” or Jun Misai-e rites, which originated in the ninth century and gained prominence in the twelfth, reveal the shift between these two “systems” and represent an attempt by emperors and retired emperors to “reinvent imperial religious authority.”

Sango relies on a variety of picture scrolls, chronicles, and doctrinal sources to explain the rationale behind these rites and to illustrate how they were performed. Her analysis of the Misai-e Assemblies provides an important corrective to standard observations of Heian Buddhism, as she shows how doctrinal debates were central to the performance of this rite and often influenced monastic promotion. The Misai-e Assembly both increased the state’s control over Buddhism and, at the same time, ensured that doctrine, rather than “esoteric” ritual per se, would remain prominent, something which many generalizations about Buddhism, epitomized by the research of Kuroda Toshio, tend to ignore.

Sango explains how Heian Buddhism was not tightly controlled by the state, as commonly assumed, for many opportunities existed for resistance by monks, although this apparently became less likely in the late Heian period when the notion of loyalty to a patron predominated. Thereupon, retired emperors became “masters of risk,” because, through their powers of patronage, they could ensure that their rites were well staffed and attended and thus, in Sango’s view, successful.

Adopting a thematic rather than chronological narrative, Sango first explores the Misai-e Assembly and Golden Light Sutra before discussing monastic promotions, failed rites, and the mimetic provisional (Jun) Misai-e rites. This approach obscures her argument. Chronologically, the third chapter, “Clerical Promotion,” recounts events of the tenth through twelfth centuries and should be juxtaposed with the fourth chapter, “Buddhist Rituals and the Reconstitution of the Ritsuryō Polity,” which primarily focuses on events of the ninth. Likewise, because Jun Misai-e rites represent a transitory phase between a bureaucratic “system” to one dominated by the “politics of affinity,” this sixth chapter, which focuses on events of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, belongs before the fifth chapter, “When Rites Go Wrong,” in which Sango explores the dominance of retired emperors in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

The lack of a chronological framework for this monograph leads to an episodic narrative, whereby certain processes can only be fully understood after reading the entire book. For example, on page 54, Sango notes an increase in alternate avenues of promotion, irrespective of the Misai-e Assembly during the latter half of the eleventh century, but she does not explain until pages 112–14 that this happened because retired emperors started promoting monks through abiseka initiation rituals.

Sango inexplicably limits her analysis to the Nara and Heian eras, which is curious as both the Misai-e Assembly and the Golden Light Sutra rites continued to be performed through the latter half of the fourteenth century. As the abeyance of these rites coincided with Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s assertion of rites of sovereignty, Sango’s monograph would have been improved if she had extended her narrative through this time.

The careful reader will note sources concerning the Golden Light Sutra dating from the early Kamakura era (1191) (pp. 37–38) as well as criticisms concerning monastic appointment from the monk Sonnen in the fourteenth century (p. 55), but the continuation of these rites through this time...