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

The supernatural powers of Japanese poetry are widely documented in the 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 言霊, 'the magic spirit power of special words'' In this paper, I argue for the application of a more contemporaneous hermeneutical approach to the miraculous poem-stories of late-Heian and medieval Japan: thirteenthcentury Japanese 'dharani theory,' according to which Japanese poetry is capable of supernatural effects because, as the dharani of Japan, it contains 'reason' or 'truth' (kotowari) in a semantic superabundance. In the first section of this article I discuss 'dharani theory' as it is articulated in a number of Kamakura-and Muromachi-period sources; in the second, I apply that theory to several Heian and medieval rainmaking poem-tales; and in the third, I argue for a possible connection between the magico-religious technology of Indian 'Truth Acts' (saccakiriyā, satyakriyā), imported to Japan in various sutras and sutra commentaries, and some of the miraculous poems of the lateHeian and medieval periods.

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