Memories and Strategic Silence in Jodoji engi

Abstract

Jodoji engi, begun in 1372, records the history of a small temple established in 1192 on the grounds of Obe estate in Harima province. This article will compare the engi's account of the temple's founder Chogen and his successor Kan'amidabutsu, and of the construction of the temple itself, with documentary records. We note the engi's emphasis on the wondrous and miraculous rather than on the temple's role in land reclamation and estate supervision that the documents stress. We also examine the engi's silences, particularly in regard to violent confrontations between Jodoji monks and Obe estate's proprietor, Todaiji, and the estate's local managers beginning in the 1290s. The documentary record has little else to say about Jodoji after the 1220s; and the engi does not fill us in. We will ask what picture of the temple the engi's compilers were trying to project through what they chose to record and to omit.KEYWORDS: Jodoji-Chogen-Kan'amidabutsu-Obe estate-Todaiji-jishu-cultural capital(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)AT THE END of the twelfth century in Harima province (present-day Hyogo prefecture), the monk Chogen ... (1121-1206) founded the small temple Jodoji ... on the grounds of Obe estate ..., a holding of the great Nara monastic complex Todaiji ... Although Chogen was then working to reconstruct the Todaiji facilities that had been incinerated in battle fires in 1180, he established Jodoji as a bessho ..., to be independently funded and free of Todaiji control. A colossal Amida triad ..., installed in the temple's Jodo Hall ..., is generally attributed to the famed Buddhist sculptor Kaikei ... (active 1183-1236).1 Both the original Jodo Hall and the triad can be seen today.Jodoji was founded by a famous monk, graced by a famous sculptor's magnificent images, and heavily involved in the development of an important landholding, and so one would expect it to have a well-documented history. However, there is very little concerning Jodoji in the extant documentary record between Chogen's death and 1292, when it reappears in a very different role, as adversary of the Obe estate proprietor and on-site management in a violent quarrel that lasted at least until 1303. Thereafter, despite substantial documentation of the estate itself in the interval, we hear little more about the temple until it reappears near the end of the fifteenth century as the beneficiary of privileges conferred by provincial warlords.The temple's history and its founding traditions, however, are recorded in an account now known as Jodoji engi, the oldest extant copy of which is dated 1614. Like many engi, this text combines apparently factual material about the temple's structures, rituals, and history with legends and miracle tales. In this article, we will compare the engi with documents that include petitions to the court, instructions to provincial officials, and depositions in lawsuits, as well as other historical sources such as memoirs and collections of tales. We will ask how the engi fleshes out the history of the temple, and why and how certain elements made their way into the engi. We will explore the gaps in the historical record in both documents and engi-gaps that can be characterized as intentional silences-and suggest some reasons why the engi developed as it did. In particular, we will focus on the conflict at the end of the thirteenth century, asking how it shaped the way in which the engi was written and assembled.Engi, Documents, and Cultural CapitalEngi are not documents (monjo ...), but rather, they are attempts to tell the story of a particular shrine or temple, depicting it in a favorable light to attract support-perhaps in the form of donations or political backing. Yet medieval documents often do the very same thing, and like engi, need to be scrutinized skeptically. While engi are replete with miracle tales and accounts of the supernatural, such elements are hardly absent from documents. …