This article recovers the memorial and placatory function of the Illustrated Story of Emperor Antoku and its etoki (picture-explaining) at Amidaji, the non-extant mortuary temple for the tragically killed Antoku and the Taira. After discussing the content, date, and authorship of the Illustrated Story, this article reconstructs the ritual context and structure of the etoki, and the meaning of each component of this ritual-location, facility, narration, and the paintings. By embedding these meanings into the entire structure of the ritual, the article reveals that Amidaji's etoki was expected to commemorate, pacify, and help the spirits of Antoku and the Taira to attain rebirth in Amida's Pure Land. This study calls for a shift in our view of etoki, from a practical tool to a ritual practice also guided by spiritual purposes, thereby emphasizing the significance of mortuary art as a central medium in spirit pacification.KEYWORDS: Amidaji-Antoku-the Taira-the Illustrated Story of Emperor Antoku-etoki-spirit pacification-mortuary art(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)At the end of the final battle of the Genpei War (1180-1185), the eight-year-old emperor Antoku ... (1178-1185; r.1180-1185) and hundreds of defeated Taira ... clansmen jumped to their deaths into the sea of Dannoura in Nagato province (now part of Yamaguchi prefecture). In commemoration of this event, Amidaji ..., a temple that overlooked this sea, was revived as a mortuary temple for the drowned emperor and Taira clansmen. Because the tragic deaths of the child emperor and the Taira were followed by various calamities, it was believed that their spirits, unable to access the next world, became malicious ghosts who threatened the living and the nation. In order to appease these ghosts and to assist them in attaining rebirth in the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha, the imperial court ordered Nagato province to construct a Buddhist hall at Amidaji in 1191.In this special hall dedicated to the pacification of the spirits of Antoku and the Taira, a set of eight paintings known as Antoku tenn? engi-e ... or the Illustrated Story of Emperor Antoku (see figure 1) (hereafter, the Illustrated Story), was installed. The paintings depict the short life of Antoku as well as scenes from the Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari ...), and they were vocally narrated in the practice of etoki ... (picture-explaining). During the Meiji-period persecution of Buddhism, Amidaji was abolished and then replaced by a Shinto shrine (today called Akama Jing? ...; see Gunji 2011). The temple buildings were demolished and the majority of Buddhist icons and implements were destroyed, and subsequently all rituals, except for a few, were abolished and replaced by so-called Shinto-style rituals. Nevertheless, a handful of key pieces of artwork, including the Illustrated Story and portraits of Antoku and select Taira members, survived the persecution and have survived to this day. They were removed from their original place of enshrinement, however, and their original functions have been forgotten.The subject of this article is those lost functions of the Illustrated Story and its etoki. In particular, this article seeks to recover, and to show the importance of, functions that probably subjected the etoki to the Meiji persecution of Bud- dhism-namely, the function of the etoki as an essentially Buddhist ritual and the function of the Illustrated Story as a central object in that ritual-as opposed to the practical or institutional functions that could have profited the new Shinto shrine as well as they did Amidaji.This study will introduce a new perspective in the research on the Illustrated Story and its etoki and to the study of etoki in general. In previous studies art historians have focused primarily on identifying the date and authorship on iconographic and stylistic grounds, as well as on identifying what goes on in the scenes using not only the inscriptions on the paintings but also the Tale of the Heike (Ky? …
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Jan 1, 2014
Aiko Nakatsu 
Open Access
