Enacting Identities: Chōgen, Kujō Kanezane, and the Tōdaiji Great Buddha
This article examines the collaboration of the Shingon monk Chōgen (1121-1206) and the powerful courtier Kujō Kanezane (1149-1207) in the restoration of Tōdaiji's Great Buddha statue, which still stands as one of Japan's leading national symbols. Resituating Judith Butler's insights o...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
History of religions
Year: 2025, Volume: 64, Issue: 3, Pages: 168-214 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Tōdaiji (Nara)
/ Ādi-Buddha
/ Statue
/ Identity
/ Social function
/ Religious change
/ Material popular culture
/ History 743-1400
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism KBM Asia TE Middle Ages |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article examines the collaboration of the Shingon monk Chōgen (1121-1206) and the powerful courtier Kujō Kanezane (1149-1207) in the restoration of Tōdaiji's Great Buddha statue, which still stands as one of Japan's leading national symbols. Resituating Judith Butler's insights on how performance continuously constructs rather than simply expresses identity, I use Chōgen's and Kanezane's material, ritual, and narrative restoration activities to argue that this insight holds as true for the objects and places venerated in religious performances as for the performers themselves. The article is most concerned with the shifting deity identities for the Great Buddha enacted by the monk and the courtier in connection with their dedications of relics and other material-ritual offerings. The article also shows that those deity identities were tied to identifications of the statue as an embodiment of imperial and Buddhist law (ōbō-buppō) and to constructions of Tōdaiji and Japan as Buddhist centers in their own right. I argue that these multiple, intertwined identities for icon, object, and place were - like the gender and sexual identities that Butler explores - all contingently constructed through performances that changed over time. Moreover, I suggest, the very need for repetition underscores the fluidity and instability of the identities invoked in the performances. Simultaneously, however, I argue that we must also recognize the constraints for resignification imposed by the particular contexts of materiality and precedent that we examine. |
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| ISSN: | 1545-6935 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: History of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1086/734104 |
