東方仏教徒協会（EBS）
公開講演会
「What is Japanese Medieval Buddhism? New perspectives from Tantric ritual material」

The scholarly understanding of medieval Japanese Buddhism has greatly changed in the last two decades. The centrality of esoteric Buddhism, and its influence on other forms of Buddhism in particular, has forcefully come to the fore. However, little has been done to map out what specific terms characterised esoteric Buddhism in the medieval period (11th–16th centuries) and how distinct its development was in comparison to earlier articulations. This talk is an attempt to sketch out these trends from a ritual perspective, drawing on sources of diverse provenance, both published and recently unveiled from temple archives. The discussion will focus on initiatory rituals that were created anew in the medieval period and spread across lineages. These practices highlight the reformulation of crucial esoteric concepts in performative and visual terms and point to a more complex relation than is usually understood, with continental (i.e. Indo-Tibetan) Tantric Buddhism opening new avenues to rethink medieval Japanese Buddhism within a larger Asian context.