How to Do Things with Hagiography: Bodhidharma’s Rebirth in Premodern Japanese Buddhism

The present study joins Massimo Rondolino’s 2017 study and Aaron Hollander’s 2021 study, among others, to consider the processes underlying the creation, adoption, and adaptation of hagiography in premodern Japan by different people over a long span of time covering more than eight centuries. In particular, the focus is placed on “the tale of Mt. Kataoka,” a story developed during the Nara period (710–94) narrating the rebirth of the First Chan Patriarch, Bodhidharma, in the outskirts of Nara, on Mt. Kataoka, and his encounter with the statesman Prince Shōtoku. This article sheds light on the evolution of this story by focusing on how different actors and communities did things with and used Bodhidharma’s hagiography. The present contribution has identified four main usages of Bodhidharma’s hagiography that are termed “hagiographic spheres of usage.” Such spheres are determined by shared adoptions of hagiography rooted in intricate networks of actors, institutions, practices, texts, and artifacts. These four spheres are as follows: (1) hagiography as historiography, (2) hagiography as memory, (3) hagiography as place-making, and (4) hagiography as endo-rhetoric. Accordingly, the presence of patriarchs (or saints) through their life accounts is never detached from the ways through which human beings actualize these stories by means of various media and expressions that reflect their present-day experiences. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to shift our investigations to how hagiographies have continued to exist through human history, recentering our attention to the place of hagiographies within the chaotic and imperfect lives of real communities.