Religion in medieval Japanroyal family and the larger temple organization (jike) but also the cloisters themselves as well as
distinct groups of practitioner- monks (e.g., rengyōshū).^61
Scholars of literary history Komine Kazuaki and Abe Yasurō have also turned to the Dharma
assemblies for insights into the developing relationship between learning, performance, and the
dissemination of Buddhism. Komine has proposed what he sees as a field of “Dharma- assembly
literary arts” (hō’e bungei gaku) and sees medieval consolidation of the Dharma assembly as such a
site occurring from the twelfth century onward, but he has primarily focused on case studies
rather than developing an explanatory paradigm; it is to be noted, however, that he stresses that
East Asian liturgical performance, recorded at Dunhuang and elsewhere, had an important influ-
ence on the development of ganmon petitions and, though less directly, forms such as pronounce-
ments (hyōbyaku) and liturgies (kōshiki) written by the officiating monks.^62
Abe has incorporated the Dharma assemblies within his proposal for a field of “religious texts
study” (shūkyo tekusuto gaku) as modes of sacred space in which physical texts, images, and rites
were activated to produce a unified religious text, arguing that the medieval amalgam of sacred
works such as ritual protocols (shidai sho), performance, and audience helped propel the trans-
mission of Buddhist belief and practice.^63 A series of scholars have called particular attention to
the relationship between medieval performance texts and preaching (shōdō). It was commonly
assumed by many that the new lineages innovated with preaching when, in fact, the pronounce-
ments and other ritual features undertaken by Tendai, Shingon, Kegon, and other Kenmitsu
monks directly involved preaching to their audiences over the course of the medieval era.^64
Continental influences and “vernacular” religion
Learning in the medieval era was intimately related to continental notions of education, and like
earlier eras owed a great debt to Chinese notions of pedagogy and practical learning. One of the
principal terms for learning in the Japanese court was kangaku or “Han Learning” (study of
Chinese classics and philosophy) and thus the association with China was often direct. At the
same time, in the Japanese case, the cultures of learning developed as much within the monastic
walls as within, say, the state university, given the emphasis in Buddhism on learning as a central
feature of the Buddhist path and the positioning of scions of the royal court—and now upper-
echelon warriors as well—within cloisters of the major complexes; moreover, as noted above,
Kūkai was seen by early medieval nobles as one of the leading scholars of earlier times and hence
his associations with the writing of literary treatises, Sino- Japanese prose and poems (kanbun,
kanshi), and with superior calligraphy were firmly entrenched, not to mention the seminal begin-
nings of monastic versions of court performance- poetry (rōei)—Tendai and Shingon lineages
combining court practice with shōmyō music and Buddhist verses.^65
All these developments featured topoi and practices of learning as a prominent feature, and
many also included performance, derived both from the temple complexes as well as the court
itself along with society, which tended to emulate the royal culture. Recently, a series of scholars
have considered the divinatory traditions of Yin- yang masters (onmyōji), who interacted with a
series of sectors of society in the medieval era and had similar features. Pioneered in recent times
by Murayama Shūichi, study of the Ying- Yang way (Onmyōdō) has concentrated on a combina-
tion of historical overviews and analyses of specific rites such as divination and purification or
calendar and astronomical practices.
The term Onmyōdō arose in the mid- Heian period as part of the development of the so- called
“ways,” which were codes of learning and practice distinct from what had come earlier, such as
the official Yin- Yang Bureau (Onmyōryō) of the government. In particular, the Kamo and Abe
families gained control over yin- yang practices of the royal court and, like other incipient houses