EASC Colloquium

EAST ASIAN COLLOQUIUM (Presented by the East Asian Studies Center)

PRESENTER: Heather Blair (Religious Studies, IU Bloomington)
TOPIC: "Ritual Regimes—Elite Religiosity in Heian Japan"
DATE: Friday, February 18
TIME: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine Hall 004

(Light refreshments will be served.  You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)

Japanese aristocrats ritualized constantly, even obsessively, during the Heian period (794-1185). In part, they were seeking blessings from the gods and the buddhas, but they were also consciously working to enhance their own social status. Ritual practice furthered networks of clientage, legitimated rule by particular members of the apical elite, and displayed control over natural and human resources. That is, it exerted profound political and economic effects well beyond what many contemporary thinkers would regard as the religious sphere. This project lays out a theoretical model of "ritual regimes," and seeks to account for their political potency, institutional structures and social patterns. In the course of the talk, we will consider the ritual regimes of the regents and the retired sovereigns, and the reasons that pilgrimage, temple construction, and textual reproduction became crucial spheres of activity for men and women of consequence. I argue that ritual regimes, no less than administrative and political changes, mediated the shift from one mode of government to another, as the regency gave way to insei rule by retired sovereigns. Moreover, ritual regimes played a major role in bringing the Heian period to an end, for they helped to support the rise of Taira no Kiyomori, the military noble turned senior aristocrat who helped to precipitate the epochal Genpei war.

In the fall of 2009, Heather Blair joined the Department of Religious Studies, where she teaches courses such as East Asian Buddhism and Japanese Religions. Before coming to IU, Heather completed her Ph.D. at Harvard in 2008 and then spent a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University. She is currently working on a book project that analyzes the role of mountain pilgrimage in the aristocratic religious culture of the Heian period. More generally, she specializes in Heian history, and her research interests focus on the intersections between visual and religious culture, lay religiosity, religious landscapes, mountain religion, and manuscript culture.

For more information about any upcoming event, please contact:East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University
Memorial Hall West 207
1021 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-3765easc@indiana.edu