Thoughts from Episode 4: Religion in Torikae baya

This week’s chapter introduces a major new character and reveals some more about something that we got a touch of last time: organised religion at the court.

Episode 4 begins shortly after the eclipse incident, with Tsuwabuki increasingly sticking his nose into Sara’s business. According to Tsuwabuki, and reportedly others in the palace, Sara isn’t as amorous as a real young man at court should be. Tsuwabuki and his usual two buddies try to teach Sara about romance and how to seek it most efficiently, all of which sounds like a huge hassle to Sara. Especially annoying for Sara is Tsuwabuki’s continued insistence on getting to meet Suiren. It all results in Sara feeling quite forlorn about his place in the world.

Meanwhile, we meet Lady Reikeiden, the Emperor’s consort, and Lady Umetsubo, the Crown Prince’s consort. They’re also Kakumitsu’s two eldest daughters, making them Sara and Suiren’s cousins. Umetsubo is mad with jealousy over her father’s interest in the pair, and is convinced that there’s something fishy about them. Finally, she learns from a former employee at Marumitsu’s home that Sara’s mother supposedly had a baby girl while Suiren’s mother had a baby boy. This isn’t enough for Umetsubo to figure everything out, but she’s suspicious – and she’s not happy about it.

Dainichi Nyorai.

Cropped panel from volume 1, page 131. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

In this story, we hear a lot about fate, and particularly how people’s misfortunes are the consequence of their previous lives. This is the most obvious link to Buddhist ideas, but religion shows up regularly in lots of other forms too. Episodes 3 and 4 have introduced quite a few of these.

Last time, I mentioned the men from the on’yoryo. They introduce themselves as the Masters of Astronomy (天文博士), Chronometry (歴博士) and Divination (陰陽博士). These guys are experts in strands of what we call onmyodo, covering various forms of divination based on yin and yang, the elements, the movements of celestial bodies, etc. I think of these three as somewhere between scientists, priests, magicians and (this being the Heian court) bureaucrats. They don’t play a huge role in the story, but they provide a little taste of the varied belief systems involved in court life.

Another detail in Episode 3 was a crystal ball, which the Emperor says he once stole from his younger brother Togu. The crystal ball contains an image of Kundali, a fearsome deity with many arms holding various religious implements and wrapped in snakes. The title page for the chapter shows Togu dressed like Kundali and holding the same items: a vajra (thunderbolt) and a trisula (trident). Elements like these can be very useful for me as the translator, as some of them can be distinctive features of a particular deity, helping me figure out exactly what I’m looking at and why that matters. As one of the Five Wisdom Kings, Kundali is an originally Hindu deity with the power to repel evil, and when Togu faces the eclipse with this crystal in hand, he too displays that power.

So what sort of Buddhism are we looking at? The sects that really took off during the Heian period were Tendai and Shingon, but can we get more specific? A scene in Episode 4 gives us a bit more information on this front. When Tsuwabuki is giving Sara tips on being more manly, he suggests that temples are good places to meet people, because esoteric teachings (mikkyo 密教) are popular with the nobility. They attend a sermon, where we see a statue that appears to be of Vairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), a central buddha in esoteric sects – handily (heh) recognisable by the position of his hands.

Tsuwabuki also claims that listening to these sermons is a great way to pick up chicks – which sounds a lot more plausible when the priest starts talking about “entering a state of ecstasy through sexual intercourse between man and woman” (男と女が性の交わりによって恍惚境に入ること). It sounds like this comes from the Rishukyo (理趣経), an important scripture in Shingon, which draws from Tantric Buddhism, or Vajrayana. That’s the same “vajra” as the thunderbolt held by Kundali/Togu in the previous chapter, by the way. Overall, I’m inclined to think that the focus on these more mystical-sounding ideas is pointing towards Shingon being the fashionable branch of Buddhism in Torikae baya. There are some other details that might help pinpoint it even more closely, but I’m no expert, so at least for now, that’s as definitive as I’m willing to get!