In Defense of Desire and Devastation: Buddhist Antinomianism in a Medieval Japanese Illustrated Scroll

BUDDHIST STUDIES FORUM

SPEAKER: Or Porath, Tel Aviv University

"A Long Tale for an Autumn Night" (Aki no yo no naga monogatari) is an illustrated narrative scroll (emaki) dating to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is the earliest pictorial work in the genre known as chigo monogatari (“acolyte tales”), stories that center on an older monk’s infatuation with a young monastic acolyte (chigo). In this tale, the love affair between the monk Keikai and the acolyte Umewaka leads to war and destruction as conflict erupts between Enryakuji and Miidera, the rival Tendai institutions with which the lovers are respectively affiliated. The plot culminates in Umewaka’s suicide and the revelation that he was a manifestation of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion at Ishiyamadera. His death also prompts Keikai to renounce carnal desire and embrace the life of a Buddhist recluse. Recognized as a masterpiece of medieval Japanese literature, the tale has generated extensive debate among scholars of art history, literature, and religious studies. This presentation examines the relationship between narrative and pictorial representation, exploring how the scroll’s text and images situate transgression within a Buddhist account of liberation. More specifically, it shows how Buddhist doctrine can serve to justify both desire and devastation.

About the Speaker

Or Porath, an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University, the Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions, and an associate editor for the journal Japanese Religions. Porath specializes in Buddhist Studies and East Asian religions, with a focus on the history of gender and sexuality and Buddhist monasticism. He is a scholar of Japanese religions, particularly focusing on the influential Tendai school of Buddhism and its doctrines and practices, as well as the intersection between the Esoteric Buddhist worldview and sexuality. Porath is the co-editor of Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts (with Fabio Rambelli, 2022). Porath’s current book project, tentatively titled The Dharma of Sex: Initiation, Deification, and Passion in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, explores the “consecration of acolytes” (Chigo Kanjō) and how male-male sexual acts were sanctified and legitimized within Tendai doctrinal thought and monastic society. 

Co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.