Buddhism and the transformation of old age in medieval Japan / Edward R. Drott.

Author
Drott, Edward Robertson [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2016]
Description
xxi, 220 pages ; 24 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks BQ678 .D76 2016 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    Drott examines how the aged body was used to conceptualize forms of difference and to convey religious meanings in a variety of texts: official chronicles, literary works, Buddhist legends and didactic tales. In early Japan, old age was most commonly seen as a mark of negative distinction, one that represented the ugliness, barrenness, and pollution against which the imperial court sought to define itself. From the late-Heian period, however, certain Buddhist authors seized upon the aged body as a symbolic medium though which to challenge traditional dichotomies between center and margin, high and low, and purity and defilement, crafting narratives that associated aged saints and avatars with the cults, lineages, sacred sites, or religious practices these authors sought to promote. --Publisher description.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-207) and index.
    Contents
    • Gods of the earth and the making of the vital center
    • "Lamenting gray hair" : the poetics of retirement in early Japan
    • Decrepit demons and defiled deities : elders at the crossroads in late Heian Japan
    • Between this world and the next : reappraising the aged body in medieval Japan
    • From outcast to saint : overcoming pollution in an age of decline
    • The eccentric avatar : reimagining the body of the bodhisattva in early medieval engi
    • The graying of the gods : the return of the okina kami in medieval myth
    • "Tranquil heart, gazing afar" : reimagining the aged body in noh.
    ISBN
    • 9780824851507 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    • 0824851501
    LCCN
    2015043302
    OCLC
    930026717
    Other standard number
    • 99969460317
    Statement on language in description
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