Harding, Christopher

English

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese ReligionCitation for published version:Harding, C 2009, 'Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion' Journal of Asian Studies, vol68, no. 3, pp. 995-997., 10.1017/S0021911809990477Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.1017/S0021911809990477Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher final version (usually the publisher pdf)Published In:Journal of Asian StudiesPublisher Rights Statement:© Harding, C. (2009). The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited by Bernhard Scheid and MarkTeeuwen. Journal of Asian Studies, 68(3), 995-997doi: 10.1017/S0021911809990477General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 20. Feb. 2015The Journal of Asian Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/JASAdditional services for The Journal of Asian Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereThe Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited byBernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen. New York:Routledge, 2006. xvii, 397 pp. \$180.00 (cloth).Christopher HardingThe Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 68 / Issue 03 / August 2009, pp 995 - 997DOI: 10.1017/S0021911809990477, Published online: 19 August 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911809990477How to cite this article:Christopher Harding (2009). The Journal of Asian Studies, 68, pp 995-997 doi:10.1017/S0021911809990477Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/JAS, IP address: 129.215.19.197 on 16 Dec 2013continues to improve its political position, its emphasis on soft power andglobal engagement will mean that middle-power internationalists will likelyregain some of their status in Tokyo, and the normal nation-alists will fallback on the defensive. But regardless of the results of Japan’s next electionsor the trajectory of the Nikkei, grand strategists on both side of the Pacificwill be grappling with the dilemmas and choices laid out in Securing Japanfor some time to come.JOHN FEFFERInstitute for Policy Studiesjohnfeffer@gmail.comThe Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited by BERNHARD SCHEIDand MARK TEEUWEN. New York: Routledge, 2006. xvii, 397 pp. $180.00(cloth).doi:10.1017/S0021911809990477This is a collection of fifteen essays investigating a wave of secrecy in thetransmission of knowledge that swept Japan between the twelfth and sixteenthcenturies. This “culture” appeared to develop first in esoteric Buddhism, thenspreading to the world of Shinto, the theater, and beyond before naturallydeteriorating and then becoming marginalized altogether at the hands of askeptical and well-informed early modern public. As Mark Teeuwen notesin the introduction, this is still a relatively new field of inquiry, seeking tobuild upon and move beyond two broad themes in past scholarship: secrecyin religion as a corrupt offshoot of a central mystery in which many religionshave some basis (Mircea Eliade, Kees W. Bolle), and secrecy as a necessaryelement of human social intercourse (Georg Simmel, and more recentlyHugh B. Urban and others).In the present volume, secrecy is tackled primarily in terms of the relation-ship between content and context (the what and why of secrecy) and the persist-ent tension between concealment and partial disclosure. Teeuwen provides uswith a road map of sorts at the outset, suggesting that we think about the Japa-nese case in terms of three broad periods of time, each characterized by a particu-lar “discourse of secrecy” (p. 10). Up to the twelfth century, secrecy primarilyinvolved a “skill in means” (p. 10), with certain Buddhist teachings appropriateonly for those who had progressed to a given level in spiritual training; followingthis, the period up until the seventeenth century witnessed the turning of objects,places, and texts into mandalas that, to those with the necessary esoteric knowl-edge, contained representations of absolute reality; finally, from the seventeenthcentury, secrecy was increasingly viewed as “a violation of the public good” (p.16), perceived to be synonymous with fakery, fraud, and the perversion of reli-gious development among the general public.Book Reviews—Japan 995This framework, which Teeuwen is careful to stress is intentionally rathergeneral, will likely be of great utility to readers who are interested in the dynamicsof secrecy but relatively unfamiliar with medieval Japanese Buddhism. The four-teen main essays are written by scholars in religious studies, language and litera-ture, theology, and history; though many of them offer some useful generalthoughts on “secrecy” at the outset, few of the pieces include the sort ofgeneral introduction to their highly specialized subject matter that might sparethe blushes of the uninitiated.The essays are organized into three parts: Part I, “Prologue,” offers threeessays on secrecy outside Japan; this is followed by eight essays in Part IIunder the heading “Japan’s Medieval Culture of Secrecy”; finally, Part III com-prises three pieces on “The Demise of Secrecy.”Albert de Jong’s essay in part I offers useful analytical clarifications wheresecrecy, restrictions, privacy, esotericism, and mysticism are concerned, beforediscussing the religions of the ancient world. De Jong points out that “secretsand secrecy are annoying for scholars,” because it is difficult to be certain thatthe available sources give an accurate impression of the content of secret trans-missions (pp. 53–54). Methodological considerations such as this might profitablyhave been given more in-depth treatment in the introduction.Indian and Chinese Tantric Buddhism around the eighth and ninth centuriesare considered in subsequent essays by Ronald M. Davidson andMartin Lehnert,respectively. Textual analysis here uncovers vivid examples of sociopolitical andmissionary uses of religious secrecy, most notably through a rhetoric of secrecythat was both built into religious texts and featured in dramatic accounts by reli-gious leaders such as Amoghavajra (a Buddhist monk who wielded great politicalinfluence in Tang China) about the circumstances surrounding the transmissionof secret teachings. Concealment and disclosure appear not always as a proble-matic tension for religious leaders, but often as a useful rhetorical tool for enhan-cing the prestige of both the teaching and the teacher through an insistence onthe privileged nature of the knowledge involved and its potency where rulershipis concerned.Part II begins with two pieces on Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Fabio Ram-belli’s essay includes an examination of the training of Shingon monks thatsuggests many aspects of a supposedly “secret” tradition were transmitted in lec-tures rather than invariably taking the more exclusive form of a one-to-one trans-mission. Looking at Tendai, Lucia Dolce discusses the “mandalisation”—theturning into a mandala—of the Lotus Sutra as part of an expansion of the esotericelements of Tendai.Secrecy as social and cultural as well as symbolic currency, and an unstableone at that, is a theme shared by four of the remaining six essays in Part II.Teeuwen uses the example of the sokui kanjo¯ (the imperial enthronementunction) to illustrate the rewards attached to the ownership of a secret.Nobumi Iyanaga, in discussing the thirteenth-century text Juho¯ yo¯jin-shu¯ andthe “golden mean” that esoteric Buddhism had to keep between concealmentand disclosure (p. 204), suggests that the proliferation and transmission ofsecret teachings—including cross-transmission (between different master–996 The Journal of Asian Studiesdisciple lineages)—was influential in the short term, but oversupply eventuallyled to an inflationary loss of value. Susan Blakeley-Klein moves the collectionaway from religion into the intimately related area of Noh theater. She examinesthe development of a set of secret teachings as one of a number of strategiesemployed by a troupe leader, Konparu Zenchiku, seeking to enhance the for-tunes of his troupe in competing for patronage. Bernhard Scheid examines twodistinct modes of secrecy in the transmission of knowledge about the Nihonshoki by the Urabe family, whose members had established themselves atcourt as experts on the text; the first mode involved the arrogation and carefulguardianship of knowledge about the Nihon shoki, while the second and latermode, influenced by esoteric Buddhism, involved a shift in content toward a sug-gestion of hidden meanings within the text.Finally, Bernard Faure and Kadoya Atsushi return the collection to a con-sideration of content over and above context. Faure looks at the evocativepower of concealment in the case of hibutsu, (hidden buddhas), and Sho¯tenin particular. Kadoya examines and illustrates a list of “Ten Sacred Treasures”as a means of gaining insight into the nature and workings of the logic under-lying medieval Shinto thought, which he characterizes as “synthetic,” in con-trast to the “analytic” logic emerging from the early modern period onward(pp. 279–81).Part III looks at how medieval secrecy lost its authority yet lived on invarious guises in the early modern period. William M. Bodiford suggests amultiplicity of factors contributing to the demise of secret transmission ofknowledge in Tendai, from a desire to reform both its teachings and itsmonks to a broad new interest in textual study and the passing of religiousteachings increasingly into the public domain. Anne Walthall and KateWildman Nakai both point to a shift in the function of secrecy toward the rep-resentation of political authority to the public. Walthall looks at how Tokugawashogunal concealment, through the use of screens and the careful positioningof the shogun and regional leaders or foreign envoys during audiences, servedto project a highly nuanced sense of power. Nakai discusses the fresh ways inwhich esoteric medieval texts were read by nineteenth-century scholars newlyconcerned with public loyalty.With its diverse essays, each accompanied by an extensive bibliography ofits own, The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion provides students andscholars not so much with an integrated study as a rich sample of potentialdirections for further scholarship. For a topic still in the relatively earlystages of development, this is a very welcome approach. It means, however,that considerable investment is required of nonspecialist readers seeking tofurther the general comparative debate on secrecy to which Teeuwen alludesin the introduction.CHRISTOPHER HARDINGUniversity of Edinburghcgmharding@yahoo.co.ukBook Reviews—Japan 997

Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese ReligionCitation for published version:Harding, C 2009, 'Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion', The Journal of Asian Studies(JAS), vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 995-997. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911809990477Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.1017/S0021911809990477Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:The Journal of Asian Studies (JAS)Publisher Rights Statement:© Harding, C. (2009). The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited by Bernhard Scheid and MarkTeeuwen. Journal of Asian Studies, 68(3), 995-997doi: 10.1017/S0021911809990477General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 30. Nov. 2025The Journal of Asian Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/JASAdditional services for The Journal of Asian Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereThe Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited byBernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen. New York:Routledge, 2006. xvii, 397 pp. \$180.00 (cloth).Christopher HardingThe Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 68 / Issue 03 / August 2009, pp 995 - 997DOI: 10.1017/S0021911809990477, Published online: 19 August 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911809990477How to cite this article:Christopher Harding (2009). The Journal of Asian Studies, 68, pp 995-997 doi:10.1017/S0021911809990477Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/JAS, IP address: 129.215.19.197 on 16 Dec 2013continues to improve its political position, its emphasis on soft power andglobal engagement will mean that middle-power internationalists will likelyregain some of their status in Tokyo, and the normal nation-alists will fallback on the defensive. But regardless of the results of Japan’s next electionsor the trajectory of the Nikkei, grand strategists on both side of the Pacificwill be grappling with the dilemmas and choices laid out in Securing Japanfor some time to come.JOHN FEFFERInstitute for Policy Studiesjohnfeffer@gmail.comThe Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited by BERNHARD SCHEIDand MARK TEEUWEN. New York: Routledge, 2006. xvii, 397 pp. $180.00(cloth).doi:10.1017/S0021911809990477This is a collection of fifteen essays investigating a wave of secrecy in thetransmission of knowledge that swept Japan between the twelfth and sixteenthcenturies. This “culture” appeared to develop first in esoteric Buddhism, thenspreading to the world of Shinto, the theater, and beyond before naturallydeteriorating and then becoming marginalized altogether at the hands of askeptical and well-informed early modern public. As Mark Teeuwen notesin the introduction, this is still a relatively new field of inquiry, seeking tobuild upon and move beyond two broad themes in past scholarship: secrecyin religion as a corrupt offshoot of a central mystery in which many religionshave some basis (Mircea Eliade, Kees W. Bolle), and secrecy as a necessaryelement of human social intercourse (Georg Simmel, and more recentlyHugh B. Urban and others).In the present volume, secrecy is tackled primarily in terms of the relation-ship between content and context (the what and why of secrecy) and the persist-ent tension between concealment and partial disclosure. Teeuwen provides uswith a road map of sorts at the outset, suggesting that we think about the Japa-nese case in terms of three broad periods of time, each characterized by a particu-lar “discourse of secrecy” (p. 10). Up to the twelfth century, secrecy primarilyinvolved a “skill in means” (p. 10), with certain Buddhist teachings appropriateonly for those who had progressed to a given level in spiritual training; followingthis, the period up until the seventeenth century witnessed the turning of objects,places, and texts into mandalas that, to those with the necessary esoteric knowl-edge, contained representations of absolute reality; finally, from the seventeenthcentury, secrecy was increasingly viewed as “a violation of the public good” (p.16), perceived to be synonymous with fakery, fraud, and the perversion of reli-gious development among the general public.Book Reviews—Japan 995This framework, which Teeuwen is careful to stress is intentionally rathergeneral, will likely be of great utility to readers who are interested in the dynamicsof secrecy but relatively unfamiliar with medieval Japanese Buddhism. The four-teen main essays are written by scholars in religious studies, language and litera-ture, theology, and history; though many of them offer some useful generalthoughts on “secrecy” at the outset, few of the pieces include the sort ofgeneral introduction to their highly specialized subject matter that might sparethe blushes of the uninitiated.The essays are organized into three parts: Part I, “Prologue,” offers threeessays on secrecy outside Japan; this is followed by eight essays in Part IIunder the heading “Japan’s Medieval Culture of Secrecy”; finally, Part III com-prises three pieces on “The Demise of Secrecy.”Albert de Jong’s essay in part I offers useful analytical clarifications wheresecrecy, restrictions, privacy, esotericism, and mysticism are concerned, beforediscussing the religions of the ancient world. De Jong points out that “secretsand secrecy are annoying for scholars,” because it is difficult to be certain thatthe available sources give an accurate impression of the content of secret trans-missions (pp. 53–54). Methodological considerations such as this might profitablyhave been given more in-depth treatment in the introduction.Indian and Chinese Tantric Buddhism around the eighth and ninth centuriesare considered in subsequent essays by Ronald M. Davidson andMartin Lehnert,respectively. Textual analysis here uncovers vivid examples of sociopolitical andmissionary uses of religious secrecy, most notably through a rhetoric of secrecythat was both built into religious texts and featured in dramatic accounts by reli-gious leaders such as Amoghavajra (a Buddhist monk who wielded great politicalinfluence in Tang China) about the circumstances surrounding the transmissionof secret teachings. Concealment and disclosure appear not always as a proble-matic tension for religious leaders, but often as a useful rhetorical tool for enhan-cing the prestige of both the teaching and the teacher through an insistence onthe privileged nature of the knowledge involved and its potency where rulershipis concerned.Part II begins with two pieces on Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Fabio Ram-belli’s essay includes an examination of the training of Shingon monks thatsuggests many aspects of a supposedly “secret” tradition were transmitted in lec-tures rather than invariably taking the more exclusive form of a one-to-one trans-mission. Looking at Tendai, Lucia Dolce discusses the “mandalisation”—theturning into a mandala—of the Lotus Sutra as part of an expansion of the esotericelements of Tendai.Secrecy as social and cultural as well as symbolic currency, and an unstableone at that, is a theme shared by four of the remaining six essays in Part II.Teeuwen uses the example of the sokui kanjō (the imperial enthronementunction) to illustrate the rewards attached to the ownership of a secret.Nobumi Iyanaga, in discussing the thirteenth-century text Juhō yōjin-shū andthe “golden mean” that esoteric Buddhism had to keep between concealmentand disclosure (p. 204), suggests that the proliferation and transmission ofsecret teachings—including cross-transmission (between different master–996 The Journal of Asian Studiesdisciple lineages)—was influential in the short term, but oversupply eventuallyled to an inflationary loss of value. Susan Blakeley-Klein moves the collectionaway from religion into the intimately related area of Noh theater. She examinesthe development of a set of secret teachings as one of a number of strategiesemployed by a troupe leader, Konparu Zenchiku, seeking to enhance the for-tunes of his troupe in competing for patronage. Bernhard Scheid examines twodistinct modes of secrecy in the transmission of knowledge about the Nihonshoki by the Urabe family, whose members had established themselves atcourt as experts on the text; the first mode involved the arrogation and carefulguardianship of knowledge about the Nihon shoki, while the second and latermode, influenced by esoteric Buddhism, involved a shift in content toward a sug-gestion of hidden meanings within the text.Finally, Bernard Faure and Kadoya Atsushi return the collection to a con-sideration of content over and above context. Faure looks at the evocativepower of concealment in the case of hibutsu, (hidden buddhas), and Shōtenin particular. Kadoya examines and illustrates a list of “Ten Sacred Treasures”as a means of gaining insight into the nature and workings of the logic under-lying medieval Shinto thought, which he characterizes as “synthetic,” in con-trast to the “analytic” logic emerging from the early modern period onward(pp. 279–81).Part III looks at how medieval secrecy lost its authority yet lived on invarious guises in the early modern period. William M. Bodiford suggests amultiplicity of factors contributing to the demise of secret transmission ofknowledge in Tendai, from a desire to reform both its teachings and itsmonks to a broad new interest in textual study and the passing of religiousteachings increasingly into the public domain. Anne Walthall and KateWildman Nakai both point to a shift in the function of secrecy toward the rep-resentation of political authority to the public. Walthall looks at how Tokugawashogunal concealment, through the use of screens and the careful positioningof the shogun and regional leaders or foreign envoys during audiences, servedto project a highly nuanced sense of power. Nakai discusses the fresh ways inwhich esoteric medieval texts were read by nineteenth-century scholars newlyconcerned with public loyalty.With its diverse essays, each accompanied by an extensive bibliography ofits own, The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion provides students andscholars not so much with an integrated study as a rich sample of potentialdirections for further scholarship. For a topic still in the relatively earlystages of development, this is a very welcome approach. It means, however,that considerable investment is required of nonspecialist readers seeking tofurther the general comparative debate on secrecy to which Teeuwen alludesin the introduction.CHRISTOPHER HARDINGUniversity of Edinburghcgmharding@yahoo.co.ukBook Reviews—Japan 997

Christopher Harding

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The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion. Edited by Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen. New York: Routledge, 2006. xvii, 397 pp. $180.00 (cloth).

https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/11876646/The_Culture_of_Secrecy_in_Japanese_Religion.pdf

Book review: The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion

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