Reading the Miraculous Powers of Japanese Poetry: Spells, Truth Acts, and a Medieval Buddhist Poetics of the Supernatural.

Abstract

The supernatural powers of Japanese poetry are widely documented in literature of Heian and medieval Japan. Twentieth-century scholars have tended to follow Orikuchi Shinobu in interpreting and discussing miraculous verses in terms of ancient (arguably pre-Buddhist and pre-historical) beliefs in kotodama , the magic spirit power of special words. In this paper, I argue for application of a more contemporaneous hermeneutical approach to miraculous poem-stories of late-Heian and medieval Japan: thirteenth-century Japanese theory, according to which Japanese poetry is capable of supernatural effects because, as dharani of Japan, it contains reason or truth (kotowari) in a semantic superabundance. In first section of this article I discuss as it is articulated in a number of Kamakura- and Muromachi-period sources; in second, I apply that theory to several Heian and medieval rainmaking poem-tales; and in third, I argue for a possible connection between magico-religious technology of Indian Truth Acts (saccakiriya, satyakriya), imported to Japan in various sutras and sutra commentaries, and some of miraculous poems of lateHeian and medieval periods.

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