Buddhism, Medicine and Gender in 10th-16th century Japan: toward a transcultural history of women's health in premodern East Asia

• Applicant: Dr. Anna Andreeva
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329397061

This project investigates the impact of Buddhist concepts, theories, and practices on the formation of knowledge about women’s bodies and women’s health in medieval Japan. Its aim is, for the first time, to write a cultural history of childbirth as seen through the Buddhist manuscripts from Japanese temple archives, which cast new light on the histories of knowledge, medicine, and gender. Forming the basis for a second book, the project analyses the primary source materials that were previously not considered significant by the historians of East Asia who so far tended to privilege Chinese medical sources. The project rectifies this problem by considering the Japanese primary sources against the background of transcultural flows of Buddhist and medical knowledge from India, China, and Korea that brought with them Buddhist scriptures and medical texts as well as ritual technologies focusing on risk control, divination, longevity, and talisman-writing. It is proposed that these flows shaped the spheres of medico-religious knowledge about women’s bodies in medieval Japan. This project thus clarifies how heterogeneous types of knowledge with regard to healing, materia medica, calculation of risks, and ritual technologies focusing on the reproductive health of women were adopted and further developed by Japanese Buddhist scholar-monks, and how such Buddhist expertise was used in the historical, political, and economic settings of pre-1600 Japan. A particularly important objective of this project is to find, transcribe, transliterate, and historically contextualise the medieval manuscripts preserved in Buddhist temples of esoteric persuasion, particularly those specialising in Shingon, Tendai, and Zen teachings, and to cast light on their historic position vis-a-vis classic Indian Abhidharmic and Yogācāra teachings as those were understood in premodern East Asia, primarily through Chinese Buddhist translations. More broadly, the project brings to the fore the multiple strategies of forecasting and risk management developed by the Buddhist monks, physicians, and diviners for the benefit of noble women from the imperial court, elite warrior and shogunal families, and later, non-elite women. As a result, this project elucidates the complex historical, religious, and cultural factors that defined the concepts of womanhood in medieval Japan.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants